REVIEW: Adventure Games Journal, Issue #1

The Adventure Games Journal is a new magazine published by (not surprisingly) Adventure Games Publishing, which is, in the words of its editor and publisher, James Mishler, "dedicated to role-playing games, most specifically, Castles & Crusades and the Wilderlands of High Adventure Campaign Setting. Every issue will be filled with new adventures, monsters, treasures, classes, races, and the campaign setting information that you as a player and/or judge can use to improve your role-playing game experiences." In short, AGJ roughly follows the model of many old school game periodicals, particularly Judges Guild's legendary Pegasus and The Dungeoneer. The Judges Guild connection only makes sense, of course, given that "no less than half of every issue ... will consist of coverage of ... Wilderlands of High Adventure." Likewise, Mr Mishler has repeatedly expressed his admiration for both Judges Guild and its founder, the late Bob Bledsaw, whose importance in the history of the roleplaying hobby cannot be underestimated.

The connection to Pegasus is made even more explicit in Peter Bradley's evocative cover art, depicting the eponymous Invincible Overlord, Hygelak XI, seated upon his throne, surrounded by his two closest advisers. The throne is surmounted by the carving of a pegasus, its wings outstretched. Longtime fan of the Wilderlands setting though I am, I can't honestly recall whether the throne of the City State was ever described in this way or not, but I have no doubt that Mr Mishler knows, as his knowledge of the setting is encyclopedic. If the device is entirely his invention, it's well-chosen and a respectful nod to the hobby's past that I can't help but appreciate. If it's based on Wilderlands lore, the fact remains that it's a terrific reminder of the pioneers of this hobby and all that they contributed to its early success. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

While the physical format of AGJ #1 is similar to that of of the previously-reviewed XXXI, it's clear that AGP has improved upon its initial offering in many subtle but welcome ways. Firstly, the magazine has a proper cover and a clear title, so there should be no confusion as to what you are getting. The back cover is a map of a single hex in the Wilderlands setting and the insides of both the front and back covers have advertisements for current and future AGP products. The remainder of the product's 48 pages -- the cover pages are still numbered, unfortunately, so the actual journal itself doesn't start until page 3 and ends at page 46 -- uses the same densely-packed two-column layout as XXXI.

There's quite a lot of material in these pages, but it's all easy on the eyes and breezily written. It helps too that the material chosen for the first issue was, for the most part, very engaging. I have some qualms about specific elements of the content, but I'll save those for after I give an overview of Issue #1's articles. They are, in order:

• The Bully Pulpit: This is Mr Mishler's editorial column, where he introduces both the AGJ generally and also its specific content. He notes that "The articles you find within these pages are designed to be usable right away in your games." I find that a commendably old school approach. He goes on to say that "What you won't find are any articles about 'game theory' or 'game style.' My philosophy on such is each player and judge must develop their own through experience and game play." Again, much as I love theorizing about games, I think this is a praiseworthy approach.
• The World of the Wilderlands of High Adventure: This 12-page article is an overview of the cosmology and geography of AGP's take on the Wilderlands setting. There's a lot of very fascinating material here, some of which I'd never seen before (such as the names of the Wilderlands three moons, one of which is called Ioun -- pure genius!). Even those things I had seen, such as capsule descriptions of the various maps, called "districts" here, of the Wilderlands, included new tidbits and spins that made them refreshing. However, this first article is quite long and at times somewhat dry compared to the rest of the magazine. I certainly see much value in it, but I can also see how someone who isn't interested in minutiae would find it dull in places.
• The Invincible Overlord, His Concubines, and His Children: This 5-page article is the first installment of "Hanging Out in the City State," a regular feature detailing some aspect of the City State of the Invincible Overlord. Though I was initially quite skeptical about the utility of an article dealing with the Overlord's twelve concubines and many children, complete with capsule descriptions and game stats, I have to admit that I found it quite fascinating reading that gave me plenty of ideas for adventures and long-term plots. In particular, the notion that one of the leading contenders to rise to the rulership of the evil City State is a 15 year-old Lawful Good wizard struck me as ripe with possibilities.
• Knights of the Realm and FEAR: This 4-page article describes several orders of knighthood active in the City State. Many include simple game mechanics to represent their unique fighting styles or talents, which I liked a great deal. The article also describes a secret society called FEAR -- the Fraternity for the Eradication of Armored Riffraff -- made up of knights and nobleman who see adventurers as upstarts unworthy of the armor they wear. FEAR is a delightfully old school organization and one's reaction to its name and existence are, I think, a Rorschach Test whose results will tell a lot about one's gaming sensibilities. The article is rounded out with some sample knights and rules for ransoming captive knights and nobles.
• Maze of the Mad Mage: This 4-page dungeon (with 1-page map) is an old school adventure locale sure to infuriate players, both with its labyrinthine layout and its teleporting corridors that will frustrate mapping efforts. The adventure is written for C&C, but game mechanics are minimal enough that it should be easily convertible to other systems.
• Monsters & Treasure: This 2-page article gives us several varieties of "orblings," creatures distantly related to prysmal eyes (C&C's name for a beholder-like species, since beholders are not Open Content). Two new magic items are also introduced, the wand of witchery and the cauldron of wisdom.
• Rash'l: God of Tyranny: This is the first installment of the "Lost Gods of the Wilderlands" column. Over 2 pages, this lesser deity is described, as are the beliefs and practices of his followers. Also included are stats for the god himself -- another old school touch I appreciated. Rash'l is no pushover, but neither is he so mighty that a group of determined adventurers could not slay him, which I appreciate. In a setting like the Wilderlands, the mortality even of gods should be a given.
• Esgalbar -- Hidden Dwelling of the Elves: This 7-page article (with maps) is the first installment of the "Lost Lore of the Wilderlands" column. The article describes an elven waystation in the Dearthwood. Housed in a beech tree over 240 feet tall, Esgalbar would make a nice base of operations for adventurers in the region or a memorable set piece that illustrates elven ways and magic. The hex map on the back cover covers the region around Esgalbar and the article itself includes random encounter tables for it. I found this article quite fascinating and "modular" in the best sense of the word.
• Rumors Around the Wilderlands: This 1-page article is, as you would expect, a collection of rumors from different locations in the Wilderlands, some specific (e.g. Viridistan) and some generic (e.g. "Any village or hamlet"). I liked this brief article a great deal, because of the flexibility of its content. It'd be very easy pick a rumor and spin it into an adventure and I like that.
• Shopping List: This 1-page section lists upcoming and recent fantasy RPG releases from a variety of publishers.
• Adventure Finder: This 2-page section lists 122 different fantasy adventures, from a variety of publishers. The adventures are arranged according to their recommended level.
  

As you can see, AGJ #1 contains a wide diversity of material. Likewise, it seems apparent to me that Adventure Games Publishing hopes that it might be of interest to more than just dedicated fans of the Wilderlands or players of Castles & Crusades. Indeed, the opening editorial says that "In the future we will have articles on other role-playing game systems and campaign settings, including the Known Realms Campaign Setting and Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure modules from Goodman Games and Rifts, Palladium Fantasy, Heroes Unlimited, and other fine products from Palladium Books. We'll be talking with more publishers down the road about coverage of their role-playing systems and campaign worlds." At the risk of overusing an adjective, let me again say that this intention is commendable and in keeping with the approach of old school magazines back in the day.

That said, I have a couple of concerns. Firstly, I worry that, as time goes on, AGJ will pile up the minutiae of the Wilderlands. I enjoyed and appreciated the details in the articles on the cosmology of the Wilderlands and the Invincible Overlord's family. Both gave me lots of ideas for adventures and situations. However, I would hate to see too many articles with that level of depth in the future, since what makes the Wilderlands so attractive is its "sketchiness." Beyond some broad details, it's a wide open sword and sorcery setting that can easily be altered to suit a lot of different approaches. In future, I'd much prefer to see shorter "toolbox" articles that introduce locations, characters, items, rumors, and so on. Issue #1 already includes some of this, but I want more in this vein. I think there's a genuine need for "plug and play" fantasy gaming material and AGJ is well-placed to provide it.

My other concern relates to the irregularity of its publication. Issue #1 is listed as January/February 2008. Even though Issue #2 was supposed to have been released in March and Issue #3 in May, there's no indication that either is forthcoming anytime soon. Subscribers to the AGJ are also supposed to get a 48-page Campaign Installment every two months as well. As of now, no Campaign Installment has been published to coincide with the first issue. I imagine that, for a variety of reasons, AGP has run afoul of many of the problems small businesses encounter and that's responsible for some of the delays. Likewise, the death of Bob Bledsaw, who granted a license to AGP to produce Wilderlands materials, has probably wreaked some havoc as well. I fully understand this and can sympathize.

But the delays have prevented me from subscribing to the Adventure Games Journal as I'd like to do. I have no doubt that the material we will eventually see will be of similarly good quality to the first issue and very likely even better. When we will see it, though, is a question to which I have no answer as yet and it's disappointing. I see a great deal of potential in this magazine and would love to see it succeed. Right now, I see untapped potential -- a tantalizing taste of something that could be remarkable and unique. I'll admit to a certain amount of frustration at this; I want more issues to read and enjoy and I'm not getting them. That's a pity on many levels and I hope that whatever problems are plaguing AGP's release schedule, they can be rectified before long. A magazine like this is just what the old school gaming community needs.

Final Score: 4 out of 5 polearms

Seeking Advice

I'm thinking very seriously about self-publishing an old school fantasy product that'd be compatible with OD&D and AD&D. I'm not sure whether I'll even bother with explicitly connecting it to OSRIC or Labyrinth Lord or any of the other retro-clones, because I'm not at all certain it'd make a whit of difference. That's not intended as a knock against either of those retro-clones, which I happen to like a great deal; it's more a comment on the state of the market for old school games right now.

The problem I'm having as I think about this, though, is that I'm not quite sure what I ought to produce. One of the fascinating things about old school games is that, with a few noteworthy exceptions, they didn't really have supplements. The vast majority of their products were adventures -- why that is I plan to use as the basis for an upcoming post -- but the market is already pretty crowded with old school adventures and I'm not a name like Rob Kuntz, so I'm not sure how much attention I could garner. On the other hand, I have a couple of ideas, one being a full-tilt pulp fantasy adventure to lay the groundwork for my pulp fantasy D&D project. The other idea would be an old school "adventure path," basically a series of loosely connected adventures that do for old school gaming what Paizo has done for the newfangled stuff. More to the point, I think a lot of gamers don't have a good sense of how an old school campaign was structured and a series of adventures would nicely illustrate its differences from more contemporary models.

I have some other ideas too, but I'm still not sure which way to go. Mostly, I want to put my money where my mouth is and see if I can produce something whose production values and presentation are attractive and modern but whose content doesn't just feel old school but in fact is old school. I truly think there's a market for this stuff, a market far bigger than the make-it-look-like-TSR-circa-1981 stuff that strikes me as what Jeff Rients has called "symptomatic of stodginess."

Old school gaming isn't stodgy and shouldn't be stodgy. I think I can prove that, but I need the right product to do it. So, suggestions please! If you were to give me an assignment to create the ultimate new old school product, what would it be? What would you want to buy? What do you think would attract the most gamers who might otherwise never give an old school product a chance?

Old School

My Secret Life

In the comments to one of my recent posts, I admitted to a deep dark secret: I regularly play and enjoy World of Warcraft. In many gaming circles, not just old school ones, WoW is viewed as the Devil's own tool. Ritual denunciations of the most successful MMO in history are de rigeur for these gamers, as a way of establishing their bona fides as "true" gamers. Heck, even game designers go out of their way to bash WoW, to ensure that we know they're "one of us" and not one of those guys.

Well, I'm one of those guys and I make no bones about it. I play World of Warcraft and have since shortly after its release in November 2004. I'm even among that rarefied sub-set within WoW players -- a raider, which is to say, that I get together for several hours every few nights with twenty-four other people scattered across the globe to take on the most difficult encounters the game has to offer.

I find World of Warcraft a great deal of fun. I'm not much of a video game player and had never touched an MMO before WoW. I'm still far from certain that, when WoW loses its appeal for me, I'll seek out a replacement. WoW is, quite frankly, a brilliantly designed video game and anyone with an interest in good game design of any sort would be wise to familiarize oneself with what WoW does and how it does it. Like all such things, it's not for everyone, but I also think that there's little to be gained by sneering at it -- or indeed any MMO -- as if the very idea were somehow repulsive.

The simple reality is that, for a lot of gamers out there, WoW scratches a number of itches that tabletop RPGs either don't or can't. First and foremost, WoW is very easy to play, both in terms of its actual mechanics, but, perhaps more importantly, in terms of the time investment needed to enjoy it. Lots of people will tell you that MMOs are massive time sinks and, for many players, they certainly are. Raiding at the level I do does take lots of time, but most MMO players don't raid and have no interest in doing so. These "casual" players simply want to play a fantasy character in a beautifully presented world, where they can fight bad guys and quest with their friends -- or alone -- for a few hours. That's it and WoW accommodates that style of play superbly -- no more 20 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours.

No, MMOs like WoW do not allow you to go anywhere or do anything. There are "walls" in the world that you can't surmount, no matter how hard you try. Likewise, the main storylines of the Warcraft world -- and make no mistake, there are storylines -- are all pre-scripted and follow trajectories determined by the good folks at Blizzard rather than your own imagination. But, frankly, these storylines are (mostly) extremely well-done and engaging and use technology effectively to give the impression -- a false one, to be sure -- that your individual character is a unique individual whose actions have forever changed the world. For many gamers, this is more than they get in their tabletop games -- and they can play whenever they want for as long as they want without the need to schedule a mutually agreeable time to get together with their friends. That's a powerful advantage of MMOs, particularly for gamers who work, have families, or are otherwise unable to drop everything to game as they did in high school or college.

So it's true that MMOs are not flexible or as open-ended as tabletop RPGs, at least not yet. On the other hand, gamers are by nature inn0vative and clever. Roleplayers have found many ways to create their own stories and use the tools MMOs give them to do in a virtual environment what they might do on the tabletop. There are still limits, of course. For example, some in-game characters are unkillable and others, though killable, don't stay dead. This tends to limit the extent of roleplaying that is possible, but it doesn't wholly preclude it and anyone who claims that "you can't roleplay in an MMO" is either trying to sell you something -- probably his RPG -- or has never played an MMO for any length of time.

For myself, I see World of Warcraft as a video game. I enjoy it primarily as tactical combat game with some roleplaying elements, much like a first-person shooter game, but in a far more complex environment. It's a great way to unwind with friends I've made online, much in the way some people watch TV. I don't see it as an alternative to tabletop roleplaying, at least not for me. Rather, I see it as a complementary entertainment that more than satisfies my need for flashy special effects -- "better graphics than my imagination," in the famous words of a friend -- and exciting "gamist" play. That is, I never once think about why my WoW character's powers and abilities work as they do or what their impact would be on the game's setting. It's just a fun diversion, nothing more. (I won't say "mindless," because most high-level raid encounters require a lot of thought, planning, and skill)

Despite all this, MMOs clearly cause a lot of apprehension in the hobby. Beneath of a lot of the contempt for the medium, I sense a fair bit of envy. World of Warcraft is the D&D of the 21st century -- a huge fad that makes the RPG boom of the late 70s/early 80s look utterly insignificant by comparison. I think there's also an implicit acknowledgment that the future of fantasy gaming belongs to computer games and MMOs. As technology gets better and the capacity for open-ended, individually customizable games becomes ever more possible, tabletop RPGs will seem even more "quaint" than they already do and no amount of harrumphing about how MMOs are as much fun as banging your head against the wall will change that.

That's why I believe, if tabletop RPGs are to survive and prosper, the last thing they should be doing is conceding computer games a home field advantage. Tabletop RPGs will never be able to beat video games when it comes to exciting combats or flashy graphics. Computer games own those things and always will. But what tabletop RPGs have always done best is provide context and continuity to those combats that are emergent properties rather than carefully designed ones.

Tabletop RPGs are notoriously "swingy" things, sometimes uproariously fun, sometimes mind-bendingly boring. Their fun depends almost entirely on intangibles -- personal chemistry, mental nimbleness, and random chance -- that simply cannot be boiled down into algorithms and mechanized. There is no way to guarantee that any given tabletop RPG session will be fun or even tolerable. Many sessions, in my experience, are painful and yet, in retrospect, those painful sessions can often lay the groundwork for the fun that emerges later on. And there's nothing even the most talented and determined game designer can do to lay that groundwork or ensure that there is ever a payoff in the end. Sometimes it happens; often it doesn't. When it does, though, it's glorious and no technology will ever be able to duplicate that.

For me, it's this that RPGs should focus on and teach people to expect and enjoy. Anything else is just ceding the field to the machines.

Creative Anachronisms

For me, one of the characteristics of old school gaming is its gleeful embrace of anachronisms. This is in keeping with its pulp literary roots. Howard's Hyborian Age, for example, was a pastiche of several different historical periods, all existing side by side because it allowed Two-Gun Bob to spin more interesting yarns that way. Leiber's Nehwon is much the same, with Lankhmar being at once an ancient, a medieval, and a modern city -- New York seen through pulp fantasy eyes. And of course Vance's Dying Earth is explicitly set in a time after time, perhaps making the very idea of anachronism devoid of meaning.

Early gaming walked the same path. The assumption in those days was that, since it was all fantasy anyway, why worry about historical accuracy? Sure, D&D borrows most heavily from the medieval period -- OD&D even bills itself "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns" -- but that's not the only period from which it borrows. Anyone who knows the details of the Greyhawk or Blackmoor campaigns will quickly see that neither was simply an imaginary medieval Europe with monsters and magic. What would be the fun in that? Gary and Dave saw inspirations in a lot of different sources and incorporated them into their home campaigns without any concern about whether it was "realistic" or not.

The only concern that matter was fun and so those early campaign settings are filled with lots of oddities and strangements, at least to modern gamer eyes. My feeling is that such things add to the charm of those settings and help establish that you're playing in a fantasy world whose rules , such as they are, do not necessarily mirror those of our own world. That's sometimes forgotten, which is throwing some anachronism into your adventures can often serve a useful purpose.

Of course, not everyone has the same sense of how much anachronism is too much. As referees, we must each draw our own lines in the sand. I tend to be pretty lenient, drawing the line primarily at anything "jokey," which is to say, at anything whose presence makes my players laugh (unless laughter is my explicit goal). By way of example, here are a handful of anachronisms I don't mind in my fantasy worlds and in fact often include:

• Tobacco: Why invent "pipeweed" or some other replacement when you can have the real thing? Every fantasy world needs tobacco for wizards' pipes, if nothing else, and cigars were made for the Guildmaster of Thieves or corpulent merchant princes to wave around dramatically.
• Eyeglasses: Yes, these did exist in the late Middle Ages, but they weren't widespread or as effective as modern lenses. More importantly, there were no sunglasses and I have no problem with them in my fantasy worlds. Heck, there's already precedent for magical glasses in D&D anyway, so why not mundane ones? I also seem to recall the Gray Mouser wore shades on occasion, though I may have imagined that.
• Powdered Wigs: Nothing says pompous official or effete nobleman like a powdered wig.
  
• Eating Utensils: How can you have a proper bar fight if someone can't grab a fork off the table and try to stab some half-orc ruffian with it?
• Gender Equality: Believe it or not, there weren't female warriors in the Middle Ages or indeed pretty much anytime in history. Funny that.
  

I could go on, but I hope my point has been made. I don't mind if my fantasy worlds include lots of anachronistic details, big or small, so long as their inclusion doesn't hinder the fun. More to the point, I'm very much in favor of their inclusion if they help promote fun in some way or other. These are as close to cardinal principles of old school setting design as I can imagine. Everything else pales in importance.

Old School Minis

I'm not a big fan of miniatures, never have been. Actually, that's not entirely true. When I was a kid, I liked the idea of miniatures -- still do, come to think of it. I remember going down to a game store at Harbor Place whose name escapes me now, but which had a huge glass case filled with individual miniatures. I used to spend far too long staring at that case and creating characters and situations based on the little lead figurines I saw inside. Other game stores had such glass cases too, including the Compleat Strategist -- that was how minis were displayed back then -- but it was the one at the store in Harbor Place that I remember most vividly.

So, of course, I bought miniatures when I was younger. I even attempted to paint them -- badly -- and used them when playing D&D (and Gamma World too, since I had some Gamma World miniatures). Even so, miniatures often felt like unnecessary accessories to me. You didn't need minis to run combats and I wasn't a model builder, so I couldn't adequately represent a dungeon environment like some guys did and whom I always envied. Instead, we just put the minis on the table in marching order and looked at them.

Now, don't get me wrong: despite all of what I've said so far, I loved my minis. Accessories they may have been but they were evocative accessories nonetheless. Finding just the right miniature to represent your character was a numinous moment. Alternately, some characters were born as a result of finding an inspiring mini whose inherent coolness demanded I include them in my game. Ashad Raghul, the Grandfather of Assassins, owes his existence to a Ral Partha miniature I found especially intriguing. So, while I was never a minis fanatic and saw them as far from a gaming necessity, I owned and adored miniatures but mostly for what they evoked in me and my friends rather than their immediate utility.

Still, it's really hard not to be jazzed about the existence of Otherworld Miniatures, a British company whose products are "a range of 28mm fantasy gaming figures inspired by the iconic imagery of the early role-playing games." For example, take a look at this familiar face -- you don't get more iconic than that. And what grognard doesn't have his fancy tickled by a pig-faced orc or a hill giant who looks like Abraham Lincoln sans the stovepipe hat. Otherworld has already produced quite a large collection of minis based on the art of Dave Trampier and Dave Sutherland. I am so tempted to buy up the lot of them and have my talented painter friend paint them up for me, but the cost of the minis (not to mention the shipping from the UK) coupled with the reality that I'll likely never use them as anything other than decorations for my desk has held my geek lust in check -- for now.

What I will say, though, is that these minis are, in metallic form, the kind of thing I'd like to see from old school publishers. They're products that draw on the iconic imagery of older games but do so using modern materials. These miniatures are not exact reproductions of the horribly sculpted, clunky Grenadier miniatures of my youth and thank Gygax for that! Instead, these minis are finely crafted and highly detailed. They use the contemporary 28 mm scale (as opposed to the 25 mm one of yore) and are made from resin or pewter rather than the lead I remember. In short, they're not exact replicas of old minis or even done in the style of old minis. They are thoroughly modern miniatures that have all the features and craftsmanship we've come to expect from such products, even as they completely capture the old school flair that seems missing from WotC's latest efforts to remake D&D iconography in silly and stupid ways.

That's what I wish more print publishers would do with their products. Honestly, I don't need yet another product that apes TSR's trade dress from 1980 or that use badly executed, amateurish black and white line art. And the "blueprint" style dungeon maps? You can keep those in the vault. As I noted elsewhere, I think the one area where modern games and game companies have it over their illustrious predecessors is in the field of graphic design and presentation. Most old school products simply look awful, even if their content has yet to be surpassed.

A marriage between old school content and new school presentation would make me very happy indeed and would go far to get old school products out of the nostalgia ghetto. Because let's face it: that's where most old school products exist. They're specifically geared to appeal to aging gamers who want to remember the good times of their youths. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, I think nostalgia is a good and powerful feeling that, properly harnessed, will help the hobby immensely. But making products in 2008 with the production values of 1978 isn't what I'd call properly harnessing nostalgia. What it does is make old school products even easier to dismiss as irrelevant than it already is. Old school games face an uphill battle in gaining the hearts and minds of younger gamers as it is; why make it even harder by producing games and supplements that look terrible? The technology now exists for even hobbyists to make slick, well presented products without having to spend a fortune. Why not avail ourselves of that technology? Old school content kicks ass in so many ways. Now's our chance to prove it, as Otherworld Miniatures is doing.

James Mishler Answers All

Well, maybe not all, but Adventure Games Publishing's president took the time to provide some comments and clarifications about XXXI, which I reviewed yesterday on these virtual pages. Since James is a nice guy and I really liked his product, I thought it only fair to quote his replies to some of my critiques here, which he has kindly given me permission to do.

The Name

Yeah, if I knew then what I know now, it would have had a different name. I've had so many people ask "What does the name mean?" that I've given up hope of Roman numerals surviving the current generation. Some even though the name of the town was actually "Xxxi" as in "Zhee." This year's Gen Con special will not be titled after the year of Judges Guild...

The Cover

Starting with the second issue of Adventure Games Journal we are going to a standard color cover. We are still working on trade dress... trying to figure out what looks good that hasn't already been used in the d20 morass is rather difficult. I was going to take a riff off of C&C products to tie in the product line, but now that they are going to different color covers, too, I'm not sure what we'll do yet. But color cover and proper page numbering is coming soon.

The Art

This was a time and space factor rather than a conscious design choice. We needed to get the product done and to the printers (one of more than a dozen products Peter finished just in time for Gen Con last year), and when my text ended up taking so much space and came in so late, rather than cut text to fit in quickly-drawn art we decided to simply go minimalist. AGJ #1 has more art, and as we move on down the line and bring in more artists, more products will have more art. I eventually want to get to the point where we have ~1/4 page of art ever two-page spread, on the average.

Grid-Like Streets of Tell Qa

Unfortunately, a huge swath of history got cut out of Tell Qa, which explains that the modern town was founded on a "castra" style encampment following the destruction of the prior town after a Tharbrian raid. It became law that the streets had to follow this tradition, and so rather than grow organically, as medieval towns and cities did, it grew under strict control. Tell Qa is notable in the Wilderlands of High Adventure for having such orderly streets. My modified versions of the CSIO and CSWE are even more jumbled than the originals...

Moldvay Easter Eggs

You are the first to comment on finding those! I gotta look around for your No-Prize... it's sitting here somewhere... :)

Presentation

As mentioned above, full-color covers and more expansive art are in the works, though we'll never go full-color interiors (well, maybe if things take off huge and we can print 10,000 copies at a time at a non-POD printer... one can dream). Additionally, every product will have a thorough Table of Contents, and the larger, more detailed products will be supported by online indexes.

And there you have it. As I said yesterday, I was very pleased with XXXI and my quibbles were just that -- quibbles. They're the kinds of nitpicks I felt I could make because the product is so solid and well-done that I almost have to find something to grouse about, lest my objectivity as a reviewer be called into question.

Thanks to James for being a good sport. Here's to many more more great products from AGP in the future!

REVIEW: XXXI

The limited edition XXXI -- a reference to 2007 being the thiry-first year since the founding of the late Bob Bledsaw's Judges Guild -- is the first product in Adventure Games Publishing's Wilderlands of High Adventure series. Released at GenCon 2007, XXXI is a 48-page staple-bound booklet with a stiff cover. The cover, although it does include a small piece of black and white art by Peter Bradley, as well as the product's title and byline, isn't a cover in the "traditional" sense, since it actually includes game text on it and is in fact treated as the first page of the book (it's even numbered so). This gives XXXI a kind of "incomplete" appearance to grognard eyes, since we're expecting an outer cover with advertising text like the TSR modules of old. However, XXXI is far from incomplete -- it's 48 pages are densely packed with text, using the two-column layout style so beloved of old school gamers.

Before continuing on with the review proper, a brief explanation about Adventure Games Publishing and its products. AGP was founded by James Mishler to bring Judges Guild's Wilderlands setting to Troll Lord Games' Castles & Crusades system. The Wilderlands of High Fantasy was published in a series of releases by JG, starting in 1977, making it one of the oldest published campaign settings in gaming. The Wilderlands have a distinctly "sword & sorcery" feel, in keeping with the origins of the hobby and put the "hexcrawl" on the map (no pun intended) as a viable alternative to the dungeoncrawl style of play. AGP's Wilderlands of High Adventure -- notice the slight name change -- are a variation on the classic setting, retaining most of the basic geography and details, but being more "coherent," in the sense of making explicit connections between its disparate parts. In addition, this new take on the setting is native to C&C, a very fine system that is itself a different take on an existing one -- in this case D20 -- that has a more old school feel.

One of my main complaints about XXXI is its title, which makes it hard to know just what it's about. As it turns out, the book is a description of the Imperial Town of Tell Qa, which is a complete setting for urban adventures, as well as a springboard for lots of other excitement and intrigue. The center of the book contains a nice map of Tell Qa done in the style of the old JG modules, right down to most buildings being regularly shaped and streets laid out in a grid-like pattern. I mention this not as a complaint, because, truthfully, I have no complaint about this set-up at all. Certainly it's not very "realistic," since ancient and medieval cities had little in the way of urban planning. But there's nothing realistic about the Wilderlands or early gaming in general. Indeed, the quest for verisimilitude in gaming is a later importation into the hobby and not one I find particularly appealing.

XXXI details Tell Qa from top to body -- its history, population, currency, defenses, and (of course) its locations. Tell Qa is a smallish city, with about 3300 inhabitants, but it's a very flavorful place nonetheless. A dependency of the City-State of the World Emperor, Viridistan, Tell Qa is also a hotbed of Mycretianism, a peculiar monotheistic religion that seems a fantasy analog of Christianity and Mithraism whose worship has been outlawed in many areas of the Wilderlands. This creates some excellent tension in the city and many possibilities for adventures. Mind you, XXXI already provides adventure hooks in spades as it is. Mishler's locations are wonderfully diverse and in keeping with the classic JG spirit. Each locale is practically a mini-adventure in itself, with eccentric NPCs that not only have distinct personalities but also situations and conflicts that the referee -- I mean, the Judge -- can easily spin into fuller scenarios. Fans of Tom Moldvay, who is listed as one of Mishler's inspirations, will find several "Easter eggs" in the text to delight them as well.

XXXI also includes a smattering of new rules for use with C&C, but easily adaptable to other old school games. The most extensive of these is the Mycretian class, a pacific (though not pacifistic) cleric-like class of "pre-martyrs" who travel the Wilderlands spreading the word of the One True God, Mycr, and are possessed of many supernatural gifts. I doubt the class is for everyone, but I certainly found it intriguing and one that would do much to bring a touch of the exotic to a Wilderlands campaign. XXXI also includes two new non-human races, a rumor table, and details about Mycretianism and its sects.

All in all, it's a nice, tight package that is well worth its $10.00 price tag. Because it was a limited edition -- I think only 300 copies were printed -- it will eventually become unavailable, so I'd recommend purchasing it if you have any interest either in the Wilderlands or in a well-crafted old school fantasy city. The product has less utility if you're not interested in either, so its appeal won't be universal. My only real complaint about XXXI is the same complaint I have about many neo-old school products -- the layout and graphic design. I sincerely wish that someone would make an old school product with new school production values. Troll Lord Games comes close to this with C&C, which uses Peter Bradley's excellent -- and very modern -- art to good effect. But that's not enough in my opinion and I'd be a less cranky grognard if I saw some take up this challenge. Again, there's nothing wrong with imitating TSR's style from the late 70s, but the one thing I think newer games do genuinely have on their more illustrious predecessors is presentation. I may just have to do something about this myself, if only to show you don't need to ape the past to carry on the old school spirit.

Final Score: 4 out of 5 polearms.

It would be no great task to devise an elaborate set of rules for highly complex individual combats with rounds but a few seconds length. It is not in the best interests of an adventure game, however, to delve too deeply into cut and thrust, parry and riposte. The location of a hit or wound, the sort of damage done, sprains, breaks, and dislocations are not the stuff of heroic fantasy. The reasons for this are manifold.

--Gary Gygax, Dungeon Masters Guide (1979)

The Meaning of Magic

A long-standing beef many gamers have long had with D&D's magic system as written is that it functions identically for both clerics and magic-users, even though clerics are generally held to receive their spells from their deities rather than through memorization. I say "generally held," because OD&D never made this connection explicit, although, to be fair, AD&D did and that edition has exerted the strongest influence over the game's development over the years, while OD&D is relegated to being an evolutionary "dead end."

That's unfortunate, because the AD&D's interpretation makes no sense. If clerics and magic-users both use the same game mechanics -- memorization, spell slots, etc. -- then why do they use two entirely different spell lists? Likewise, why do they learn spells at different rates? Simply saying, "Because the gods grant a cleric's spells" isn't a solution, since it only highlights that, if a cleric's spells have a different origin than a magic-user's, then they should use different mechanics -- at least that's what it says to me.

You'll note, though, that I say "if a cleric's spells have a different origin." That's because I've come to believe that they don't have a different origin and the only way to make sense of the similar but not identical mechanics for both spell casting classes when it comes to magic is to assume that all magic has the same origin. OD&D never spells out this origin and that's for the better, since it lets each referee decide for himself what best suits his campaign. Nevertheless, reading between the lines, it's easy to get the impression that magic is some kind of "natural" aspect of reality that spell casters know how to tap into and manipulate to create various kinds of effects.

If that's so, what differentiates a cleric from a magic-user and why do they have very different spell lists? Again, OD&D isn't explicit on this point, but it is suggestive. A cleric has Wisdom for his Prime Requisite, while a magic-user has Intelligence. Under OD&D as written, neither of those ability scores has any game mechanical effects, except the determination of the experience point bonus (if any) the character receives. And yet the rules specify two different abilities as the Prime Requisite for these classes. What does that suggest? To me, it suggests that Intelligence and Wisdom represent two different "philosophies" or approaches to magic, the former about understanding the ambient energies of the universe in order to control them and the latter about using those energies to achieve enlightenment -- in short the Way of Intelligence and the Way of Wisdom.

Under my interpretation, both are "sorcerers" in a broad sense, for both tap into the same universal power source. The difference is that magic-users bend that power to their wills, which is why they acquire spells faster and their magicks are generally destructive and self-aggrandizing. Clerics, on the other hand, bend themselves to match the warp and weft of the universe's power; they improve themselves in accordance with its laws. Many clerics use gods -- who are more truly distant "supernatural" beings -- as foci in this process of magical enlightenment, but not all clerics do so. Many are reclusive hermits or wise men who achieve wisdom without the need for intermediaries. OD&D clearly supports this, since the rules barely ever mention gods at all or their connection to clerics. Likewise, both pulp fantasy and chivalric romances, both of which were major influences on OD&D, often include the character of a wise old man with the ability to heal or read the fates without any explicit notion that their powers are "divine," even though both abilities are closely tied to the D&D cleric archetype.

But what of evil clerics, which OD&D calls, suggestively, "anti-clerics?" My own feeling is that such individuals are twisted reflections of true clerics. Under the direction of their foul deities or, worse yet, demons and devils, they seek to put the Way of Wisdom toward corrupt ends. Like shadows, though, they cannot exist without the light. Evil clerical magic is thus a mirror image of the good, a pale imitation. Under OD&D rules, anti-clerics could only cast the reversed versions of clerical spells and I think this notion works well with my interpretation.

Like many aspects of D&D, its magic system isn't one that can withstand close scrutiny, as it's mostly a convenient game mechanic rather than a carefully considered metaphysical system. Nevertheless, I think the system we have can be made to work in a way that's more internally consistent, flavorful, and evocative of the game's pulp fantasy heritage.