Perhaps one of the most infamous editorials Gary Gygax ever penned was published in the June 1979 issue of The Dragon. Along with the much later (November 1982) -- and probably far more infamous -- "Poker, Chess, and the AD&D System," this editorial was written by "TSR Gary," which is the name I give to one particular persona of Ernest Gary Gygax. TSR Gary was the persona whose sole purpose was the relentless -- and often shameless -- promotion of TSR's corporate interests above all else, including common sense and, occasionally, truth. In the two aforementioned articles, TSR Gary is in fine form, arguing not only that Dungeons & Dragons reaches its perfect form in AD&D but also that any deviation from that perfect form is a sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance. TSR Gary's efforts even go so far as to dub OD&D a "non-game" and bearing as little similarity to AD&D as OD&D's imitators bore to it.
TSR Gary's disingenuousness aside, I mention the June 1979 article because, in it, Gygax explains why he believes AD&D was necessary for the good of the game. One of his most interesting points is that "The target audience to which we thought D&D would appeal was principally the same as that of historical wargames in general and military miniatures in particular." He goes on to explain that that assumption was "a bit off target" and, consequently, there was a need for a new roleplaying game that "addresses itself to a broad audience of hundreds of thousands of people—wargamers, game hobbyists, science fiction and fantasy fans,
those who have never read fantasy fiction or played strategy games, young and old, male and female." In short, TSR Gary claims that AD&D is necessary, because it will be more accessible to a wider audience of people than that stodgy old non-game OD&D, which was written for a more narrow audience.
I could quibble at some length about Gygax's points, even his basic one, but what's more immediately interesting to me is the implication that, in its original conception, OD&D was too narrow in its intended audience. Back at the beginning, the people who picked up and played OD&D all shared a common "culture," one rooted simultaneously in wargaming (and, specifically, the wargaming of the late 60s/early 70s) and in pulp fantasy literature. You'll often hear younger gamers who claim, upon reading OD&D for the first time, that the game's rules are both incomplete and don't support the style of fantasy people like me claim they do. That's because, to read OD&D out of its proper cultural context is to misunderstand it. The guys who bought those little brown books simply got it, because OD&D was a product of their culture. They didn't need to be told how to make the rules work or how they supported pulp fantasy gameplay. Those things were givens, by and large.
That's not to say there were no disagreements or misunderstandings. Even a cursory reading of fanzines from the period will suggest otherwise. However, what's absolutely essential is the realization that OD&D arose out of a particular culture and most of its supposed "deficiencies" are only deficiencies to people not steeped in that culture. The best analogy I can think of is slang. Non-native speakers of a language often have difficulty with non-standard language that native speakers simply understand without any trouble. OD&D is written in a kind of slang -- the jargon of early 70s fantasy wargaming. It doesn't explain a lot, because Gygax and Arneson never expected that anyone outside the culture would read it. There was thus no need for explaining that, in this context, "bad" means "good," so to speak.
Once D&D expanded beyond its original audience, the game's intentions and focus became problematic. Gygax is partially to blame for this. Despite his aforementioned claim that OD&D had a specific target audience in mind, I think he also suspected that the game might be able to attract players other than that audience. That's part of the reason why he inserted Tolkien references into the game, alongside those from Burroughs. At the time, The Lord of the Rings was a huge hit in fantasy fandom. Gygax later claimed, and I believe his claim, that the game wasn't much influenced by Tolkien and the references were (mostly) an attempt to connect the game to the then-faddish interest in the Professor's works.
The plan certainly worked and OD&D did quickly become popular beyond its target audience. But with that popularity came frustration. If you read early issues of The Dragon, Gygax sometimes seems almost apoplectic in his attempts to explain that, no, Dungeons & Dragons was never intended to simulate Tolkien's world, since he didn't in fact care much for it himself. (I believe that Dave Arneson was in fact much more strongly influenced by Tolkien and, weirdly, Bob Bledsaw's Wilderlands began as a homebrew Middle Earth campaign -- just look at its name) By that point, though, the damage had been done and what D&D was about no longer lay in the hands of Gygax; it had acquired a life of its own and that life included not just Tolkien but other kinds of non-pulp fantasy. In short, the original vision for D&D didn't long survive contact with reality.
In the decades since, D&D has undergone several different reinventions of its vision, very few of which are in fact compatible with its origins. This has caused lots of problems for many gamers, because the game has never, not at the beginning and certainly not now, really explained itself well. Just what is D&D supposed to be about? What are its inspirations and influences? Nowadays, in light of a new edition that seems to gleefully have rejected much of the game's prior history and concepts, you'll hear lots of people opining about the essential qualities of the game and almost all of them are mistaken. They're mistaken because they usually begin without any knowledge of the history of the game or of the culture from which it sprang. If I seem a little cranky about this point, it's because I think it's important to remember the origins of the D&D. It may well be true that what D&D is in the minds of many gamers is not what it was intended to be, but I don't think that makes a whit of difference. If anything, it only strengthens my contention that D&D has lost itself over the years.
Had I been in charge of a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, I'd have made my number one priority the elimination of the game's identity crisis. I'd have striven to explain the origins and intentions of the game, as well as its inspirations and influences. The end result would perhaps have been something that's no longer very commercially viable, so it's just as well that no one has entrusted me with this task. However, the fact remains that D&D has never explained itself well and needs to do so ever more desperately. I realize it's too late for the game calling itself Dungeons & Dragons to get in touch with its roots again, but I can dream, can't I?
Monday, June 2, 2008
Mutant Future
Fans of the original Gamma World, rejoice! Today, Goblinoid Games released Mutant Future, a new post-apocalyptic roleplaying game based on the Labyrinth Lord RPG. Mutant Future is not a "true" retro-clone, in the sense that it does not restate a previously existing ruleset, in this case Gamma World, using Open Game Content. Instead, it's a "spiritual" successor to Gamma World, meaning that fans of the original should find a lot in it that harkens back to the good ol' days of post-apocalyptic gaming, even if the specifics are different.
I'll be posting a review of the game later this week, when time permits, but I'll say now that I think Mutant Future is well worth a look and a purchase. In many ways, it represents an excellent model for the kind of games I'd like to see the old school community produce, but I'll talk about just what I mean by that at greater length in the review itself.
I'll be posting a review of the game later this week, when time permits, but I'll say now that I think Mutant Future is well worth a look and a purchase. In many ways, it represents an excellent model for the kind of games I'd like to see the old school community produce, but I'll talk about just what I mean by that at greater length in the review itself.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Medic!
One of the commonest complaints leveled against the cleric is that the class is just a glorified healer and nobody likes to play the healer. I have to admit that I've always been puzzled by this assertion, because in my experience, while cleric is indeed a healing class, that's not all that it is. Yet, you'll still hear lots of people make the baseless assertion, for example, that the reason the cleric was included in OD&D is because of the need for magical healing. I call this assertion baseless, because Chainmail, whose fantasy supplement is the immediate precursor to OD&D, does not include clerics among the options for play. There are "heroes," "superheroes," (both examples of what would later be called fighting men or fighters) and wizards, but no clerics. So where did clerics come from?
Like many things from the prehistory of roleplaying, the answer to this question is murky, but the most consistent explanation and the one offered by Mike "Old Geezer" Mornard, who enjoys the possibly unique distinction having played in the campaigns of Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax, and M.A.R. Barker. According to Mornard, Dave Arneson created the cleric class, modeling him on Abraham van Helsing as portrayed by Peter Cushing's portrayal of the vampire hunter in the Hammer Films series. According to this version, the cleric was intended as a foil to a vampire player character in Arneson's campaign, Sir Fang by name, meaning that the class was first and foremost conceived as a fighter of the undead, a role it has retained throughout every edition, including 4e.
As presented in OD&D, a cleric can heal. However, of the 26 clerical spells offered in the little brown books, only two -- cure light wounds and cure serious wounds -- are direct healing spells. Supplement I expands the total number of clerical spells to 46, but adds no more healing spells. There were, of course, "restorative" spells of various sorts, such as remove curse (which the cleric shared with the magic-user) and cure disease, as well as neutralize poison and raise dead. Nevertheless, the bulk of the cleric's spell selection in OD&D is made up of what might best be called "utility" spells -- light (again, shared with the MU), find traps, locate object, speak with plants, create food, word of recall, control weather, and so on.
AD&D expands the spell list for clerics yet again. There are 76 cleric spells in First Edition. Of these, there are only two new direct healing spells -- cure critical wounds and heal. The majority of the new spells are additional utility spells, particularly abjurations and divinations. Second Edition follows First quite closely in most respects, but the addition of specialty priests (of which the traditional mace-wielding cleric is but one possible example) actually made it possible to play a "cleric" who couldn't heal at all. Third Edition adds many, many more spells to the cleric's repertoire, including some new direct healing spells to fill in gaps in the progression (cure moderate wounds, for example), but, again, the vast majority of a cleric's spells are utility spells. Moreover, 3e seems to have gone out of its way to ensure there were also direct damage-dealing options available to clerics, a category that was largely non-existent in previous editions. Of course, 3e also added the spontaneous casting of healing spells, which allowed a cleric to freely convert any spell into a healing spell of the same level. Thus, if any edition formally turned the cleric into the "medic," it was 3e, but, even there, the charge is weak. (As an aside, in OD&D, evil clerics -- called "anti-clerics" -- could not heal at all and cast damage-dealing spells instead)
The identification of the cleric with "healer" is a classic example of how game rules sometimes take on a life of their own through play. Because the cleric was initially the only character class who could heal at all, that ability soon became its singular distinction. OD&D describes clerics in terms that suggest it was intended to be a "hybrid" between the fighting man and the magic-user. Likewise, AD&D -- and Gygax himself -- makes a connection between clerics and the medieval orders of religious knighthood, like the Templars. Thus, they were intended to be religious militants: crusaders who went toe to toe with their enemies rather than standing in the back and healing, to borrow a MMO turn of phrase. Part of the problem is that, in AD&D, the paladin usurped that role (OD&D's paladin is a slightly different class -- it's not a spellcaster, for one), leaving the cleric holding the medkit. The other issue is that, except during the 2e era, D&D has never provided examples of non-clerical "priests," which is to say, religious leaders who tended to the needs of the faithful. That made it hard to make a distinction between adventuring clerics who bashed skulls for their gods and the parish priests who hung around Hommlet preaching and giving alms.
Unfortunately, the D&D cleric is an incoherent mess -- half what its creators intended it to be and half what players expect it to be. I can't in good conscience recommend ditching either half, because the tension between the two is part of what makes the cleric what it is. On the other hand, I'm completely sympathetic to the notion that the cleric is in need of something; I'm just not sure what that is. In any pulp fantasy game I write, I'd be inclined to ditch the cleric entirely or subsume most of his abilities into an expanded magic-user class. That seems truer to the source material. But if I were doing anything that had to be recognizable as "D&D," I don't quite know what I'd do. Moreso than any other class, the cleric has issues that aren't easily resolvable and pretty much any proposed solution is sure to tick someone off.
Like many things from the prehistory of roleplaying, the answer to this question is murky, but the most consistent explanation and the one offered by Mike "Old Geezer" Mornard, who enjoys the possibly unique distinction having played in the campaigns of Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax, and M.A.R. Barker. According to Mornard, Dave Arneson created the cleric class, modeling him on Abraham van Helsing as portrayed by Peter Cushing's portrayal of the vampire hunter in the Hammer Films series. According to this version, the cleric was intended as a foil to a vampire player character in Arneson's campaign, Sir Fang by name, meaning that the class was first and foremost conceived as a fighter of the undead, a role it has retained throughout every edition, including 4e.
As presented in OD&D, a cleric can heal. However, of the 26 clerical spells offered in the little brown books, only two -- cure light wounds and cure serious wounds -- are direct healing spells. Supplement I expands the total number of clerical spells to 46, but adds no more healing spells. There were, of course, "restorative" spells of various sorts, such as remove curse (which the cleric shared with the magic-user) and cure disease, as well as neutralize poison and raise dead. Nevertheless, the bulk of the cleric's spell selection in OD&D is made up of what might best be called "utility" spells -- light (again, shared with the MU), find traps, locate object, speak with plants, create food, word of recall, control weather, and so on.
AD&D expands the spell list for clerics yet again. There are 76 cleric spells in First Edition. Of these, there are only two new direct healing spells -- cure critical wounds and heal. The majority of the new spells are additional utility spells, particularly abjurations and divinations. Second Edition follows First quite closely in most respects, but the addition of specialty priests (of which the traditional mace-wielding cleric is but one possible example) actually made it possible to play a "cleric" who couldn't heal at all. Third Edition adds many, many more spells to the cleric's repertoire, including some new direct healing spells to fill in gaps in the progression (cure moderate wounds, for example), but, again, the vast majority of a cleric's spells are utility spells. Moreover, 3e seems to have gone out of its way to ensure there were also direct damage-dealing options available to clerics, a category that was largely non-existent in previous editions. Of course, 3e also added the spontaneous casting of healing spells, which allowed a cleric to freely convert any spell into a healing spell of the same level. Thus, if any edition formally turned the cleric into the "medic," it was 3e, but, even there, the charge is weak. (As an aside, in OD&D, evil clerics -- called "anti-clerics" -- could not heal at all and cast damage-dealing spells instead)
The identification of the cleric with "healer" is a classic example of how game rules sometimes take on a life of their own through play. Because the cleric was initially the only character class who could heal at all, that ability soon became its singular distinction. OD&D describes clerics in terms that suggest it was intended to be a "hybrid" between the fighting man and the magic-user. Likewise, AD&D -- and Gygax himself -- makes a connection between clerics and the medieval orders of religious knighthood, like the Templars. Thus, they were intended to be religious militants: crusaders who went toe to toe with their enemies rather than standing in the back and healing, to borrow a MMO turn of phrase. Part of the problem is that, in AD&D, the paladin usurped that role (OD&D's paladin is a slightly different class -- it's not a spellcaster, for one), leaving the cleric holding the medkit. The other issue is that, except during the 2e era, D&D has never provided examples of non-clerical "priests," which is to say, religious leaders who tended to the needs of the faithful. That made it hard to make a distinction between adventuring clerics who bashed skulls for their gods and the parish priests who hung around Hommlet preaching and giving alms.
Unfortunately, the D&D cleric is an incoherent mess -- half what its creators intended it to be and half what players expect it to be. I can't in good conscience recommend ditching either half, because the tension between the two is part of what makes the cleric what it is. On the other hand, I'm completely sympathetic to the notion that the cleric is in need of something; I'm just not sure what that is. In any pulp fantasy game I write, I'd be inclined to ditch the cleric entirely or subsume most of his abilities into an expanded magic-user class. That seems truer to the source material. But if I were doing anything that had to be recognizable as "D&D," I don't quite know what I'd do. Moreso than any other class, the cleric has issues that aren't easily resolvable and pretty much any proposed solution is sure to tick someone off.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Beloved Nylissa
I've been reading a lot of Clark Ashton Smith lately. As I believe I mentioned in a previous post, he's my favorite of the three best known writers for Weird Tales back in its heyday. Smith's "prose poetry" is something I find remarkably evocative and, more to the point, affecting. It's actually quite rare that I find the written word emotionally moving, at least in the case of popular literature. Besides Smith, Tolkien is one of the few others who can manage it for me, but that's probably because the two of them, despite their vast differences in world view, both share a melancholy awareness of the ravages of time. It's this in particular that I find strikes a powerful chord with me, particularly of late.
Last night, I read "The Last Incantation," a short story that tells the tale of Malygris of Poseidonis, a necromancer of the last surviving colony of Atlantis. Filled with ennui, he recalls a beautiful girl of his youth, whom he loved and whom he now wishes to recall from the abode of the dead. He consults his familiar, a viper, to see if such a feat is within his powers and whether it be a wise thing to do. The viper tells him that it is of course within his power to recall Nylissa, the girl from his youth, back from the dead, but whether doing so be good or ill can only be decided by Malygris himself.
So, the necromancer calls back the girl's shade and cannot believe, upon seeing her, that she is the same girl he once loved, for she is nothing like what he believed she would be. Disappointed, he ceases his necromancy before restoring her to life and returns to the viper to bitterly complain. He asks:
Last night, I read "The Last Incantation," a short story that tells the tale of Malygris of Poseidonis, a necromancer of the last surviving colony of Atlantis. Filled with ennui, he recalls a beautiful girl of his youth, whom he loved and whom he now wishes to recall from the abode of the dead. He consults his familiar, a viper, to see if such a feat is within his powers and whether it be a wise thing to do. The viper tells him that it is of course within his power to recall Nylissa, the girl from his youth, back from the dead, but whether doing so be good or ill can only be decided by Malygris himself.
So, the necromancer calls back the girl's shade and cannot believe, upon seeing her, that she is the same girl he once loved, for she is nothing like what he believed she would be. Disappointed, he ceases his necromancy before restoring her to life and returns to the viper to bitterly complain. He asks:
"Why did you not warn me?"
"Would the warning have availed?" was the counter-question. "All knowledge was yours, Malygris, excepting this one thing; and in no other way could you have learned it."
"What thing?" queried the magician. "I have learned nothing except the vanity of wisdom, the impotence of magic, the nullity of love, and the delusiveness of memory ... Tell me, why could I not recall to life the same Nylissa whom I knew, or thought I knew?"
"It was indeed Nylissa whom you summoned and saw," replied the viper. "Your necromancy was potent up to this point: but no necromantic spell could recall for you your own lost youth or the fervent and guileless heart that loved Nylissa, or the ardent eyes that beheld her then. This, my master, was the thing that you had to learn."
Truth
Penny Arcade is one of those comics that alternately befuddles and amuses me. Much of the time, especially when it veers into the world of console games, I haven't a clue what's going on. At other times, though, I feel as if Tycho is my own personal comic avatar.
This is one of those times.
This is one of those times.
Kids
It is both amusing and frustrating to read about gamers who've only ever played Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons calling themselves "grognards" -- amusing because it's good to see that younger gamers might finally understand that preferring an older edition doesn't mean you're "afraid of change" and frustrating because I don't believe invitations to the clubhouse have actually been sent out to these guys yet. Heck, I didn't start gaming until five years after OD&D was released; I began with the Holmes Basic Set rather than the little brown books and I never played a wargame until after I'd started roleplaying. I'm not even sure that I qualify as a grognard, so I'm pretty sure that gamers who didn't join the hobby until after 2000 don't.
But life is full of stuff like this, so I shouldn't complain.
Too much.
But life is full of stuff like this, so I shouldn't complain.
Too much.
Monday, May 26, 2008
My First Character
I've always been the Dungeon Master.
From the moment I broke the cellophane wrapping on my Holmes Basic Set in December 1979, I was the default referee for all the many RPG adventures and campaigns in which my group of friends and I would participate. I certainly didn't mind. By temperament, I generally prefer being the referee and, when I am inspired, I think I can say, without too much hubris, that I keep the game entertaining. My forte, to the extent I have one, is the off-beat characterization of NPCs, both major and minor. My best creations are almost always eccentrics of one sort or another, individuals with personality tics or peculiar obsessions. Sometimes they're just background color and sometimes they're important elements of the unfolding story, but I think it's fair to say that, although many other details of my campaigns may be forgettable, my NPCs rarely are.
Consequently, I actually rarely get to play a character of my own. When I do, they often turn into somewhat toned down versions of my NPCs, oddities and all. Part of it, I suspect, is that I simply don't have a lot of experience with player characters, which are a very different beast than NPCs in my experience -- at least good ones are. By this I mean that a good NPC is often, by necessity, nothing more than a bundle of memorable quirks. That's how your players can keep them straight and not confuse one orc chieftain with another. PCs, on the other hand, need to be (generally) less caricatured while still being broad enough to admit change when random chance and other circumstances require it. That's why the best PCs I've encountered in recent years have all had both very thin backgrounds and "archetypal" personalities to start. Over time, of course, their backgrounds firmed up and their personalities developed subtleties, but, at the beginning, they often have less distinctiveness than NPCs.
All that aside, I did once have a character I played for some time, who, as it turns out, was my first character as well. Back in the ancient days, we played D&D almost every day we weren't in school and, while I was DM 90% of the time, that remaining 10% still represented untold hours of my wasted youth. So I was actually able to create a character and play him often enough for him to achieve the lofty level of 14 under the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. Ironically, he was probably the second highest level character in our old campaign, because, unlike my friends, I never got bored with my character and created a new one every adventure. So, our campaign was littered, not just with the corpses of PCs who fell victim to untold hazards of the dungeons, but with literally dozens of characters between the levels of 4th and 7th levels, with the occasional one reaching in the 8th to 10th level range. Perhaps this is why I've got an almost congenital aversion to high-level play: we simply never managed to get characters to such lofty ranks.
My first character was, I am mildly embarrassed to report, named Sir James Calvert (his heraldic device looked like a thinly disguised version of the Maryland state flag). He was initially a Fighter, but I converted him into a Paladin once we got hold of the Players Handbook, because it better suited the concept of the character. He was basically a Knight of the Round Table of the Sir Galahad mold -- morally unimpeachable and a bit of a know-it-all. He traveled around with four henchmen who were themselves lower-level paladins that my friends would occasionally play. Unsurprisingly, we tended to battle demons and devils -- Sir James had a long-standing feud with Demogorgon and the various anti-paladins and death knights who served him -- and other exemplars of metaphysical evil. In time, Sir James acquired a +5 holy avenger, was granted a fiefdom, built a castle for himself, and adopted a young boy he'd rescued somewhere, whom he raised as his son. The son's name was Philip, if I recall, and I intended for him to become a ranger and take off into the wilds against Sir James's wishes, but I don't think I ever got around to that.
Looking back on him now, a lot of stuff I did with Sir James -- not least of which are his name and escutcheon -- were rather silly, but then I was barely 10 years-old and I had fun with it all, as did my friends. In the end, I guess that's all that really matters.
From the moment I broke the cellophane wrapping on my Holmes Basic Set in December 1979, I was the default referee for all the many RPG adventures and campaigns in which my group of friends and I would participate. I certainly didn't mind. By temperament, I generally prefer being the referee and, when I am inspired, I think I can say, without too much hubris, that I keep the game entertaining. My forte, to the extent I have one, is the off-beat characterization of NPCs, both major and minor. My best creations are almost always eccentrics of one sort or another, individuals with personality tics or peculiar obsessions. Sometimes they're just background color and sometimes they're important elements of the unfolding story, but I think it's fair to say that, although many other details of my campaigns may be forgettable, my NPCs rarely are.
Consequently, I actually rarely get to play a character of my own. When I do, they often turn into somewhat toned down versions of my NPCs, oddities and all. Part of it, I suspect, is that I simply don't have a lot of experience with player characters, which are a very different beast than NPCs in my experience -- at least good ones are. By this I mean that a good NPC is often, by necessity, nothing more than a bundle of memorable quirks. That's how your players can keep them straight and not confuse one orc chieftain with another. PCs, on the other hand, need to be (generally) less caricatured while still being broad enough to admit change when random chance and other circumstances require it. That's why the best PCs I've encountered in recent years have all had both very thin backgrounds and "archetypal" personalities to start. Over time, of course, their backgrounds firmed up and their personalities developed subtleties, but, at the beginning, they often have less distinctiveness than NPCs.
All that aside, I did once have a character I played for some time, who, as it turns out, was my first character as well. Back in the ancient days, we played D&D almost every day we weren't in school and, while I was DM 90% of the time, that remaining 10% still represented untold hours of my wasted youth. So I was actually able to create a character and play him often enough for him to achieve the lofty level of 14 under the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. Ironically, he was probably the second highest level character in our old campaign, because, unlike my friends, I never got bored with my character and created a new one every adventure. So, our campaign was littered, not just with the corpses of PCs who fell victim to untold hazards of the dungeons, but with literally dozens of characters between the levels of 4th and 7th levels, with the occasional one reaching in the 8th to 10th level range. Perhaps this is why I've got an almost congenital aversion to high-level play: we simply never managed to get characters to such lofty ranks.
My first character was, I am mildly embarrassed to report, named Sir James Calvert (his heraldic device looked like a thinly disguised version of the Maryland state flag). He was initially a Fighter, but I converted him into a Paladin once we got hold of the Players Handbook, because it better suited the concept of the character. He was basically a Knight of the Round Table of the Sir Galahad mold -- morally unimpeachable and a bit of a know-it-all. He traveled around with four henchmen who were themselves lower-level paladins that my friends would occasionally play. Unsurprisingly, we tended to battle demons and devils -- Sir James had a long-standing feud with Demogorgon and the various anti-paladins and death knights who served him -- and other exemplars of metaphysical evil. In time, Sir James acquired a +5 holy avenger, was granted a fiefdom, built a castle for himself, and adopted a young boy he'd rescued somewhere, whom he raised as his son. The son's name was Philip, if I recall, and I intended for him to become a ranger and take off into the wilds against Sir James's wishes, but I don't think I ever got around to that.
Looking back on him now, a lot of stuff I did with Sir James -- not least of which are his name and escutcheon -- were rather silly, but then I was barely 10 years-old and I had fun with it all, as did my friends. In the end, I guess that's all that really matters.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
REVIEW: Monsters of Myth
Monsters of Myth is an important book. Besides being packed with 128 pages of new monsters for use with, as it says on its back cover, "First Edition-compatible games," it is in many ways emblematic of the possibilities and pitfalls that lay before the old school gaming community in general and the retro-clone movement in particular. Produced under the auspices of the First Edition Society, Monsters of Myth is an anthology edited by Stuart Marshall and Matt Finch. Those names are significant, as they are the two principals behind the creation of OSRIC, a restatement of the underlying rules of a certain old school fantasy game from the 1970s and 80s. The involvement of Marshall and Finch thus makes Monsters of Myth as close to an "official" OSRIC product as any currently available and thus gives some insight into exactly how they intended OSRIC to be used.
But let's first look at the book itself. The copy I purchased is the hardcover edition, which cost $27.50. A softcover edition is also available for $14.99. I am quite pleased with the quality of the book's binding and printing; it is sturdy and should hold up to regular use, much like the AD&D books I purchased nearly 30 years ago and that were almost certainly models for the design of Monsters of Myth. There is a very brief foreword by Matt Finch, which explains the history of the project and thanks those who had a hand in its development. Following this is a brief overview of the format used for the monster entries of the book itself. Anyone already familiar with the format from D&D's Monster Manual will have no trouble understanding the format used here, even though it is not identical. My main gripe is that the overview is often unduly terse or else refers the reader to the OSRIC rules or some "other compatible ruleset." It's a small gripe but one that has wider implications that I shall discuss in due course.
The meat of the book is a series of alphabetical entries of monsters, from the antlerins, a race of stag-headed evil fey to the extraplanar undead beings known as the zuul-koar. Besides the game statistics you would expect, each entry also includes a description, typically 2-4 paragraphs, although some entries, particularly of new humanoid species are twice that length or more. Though short, I can honestly say that most of the entries are nonetheless evocative, exemplifying the "less is more" approach that characterizes the best of old school products. Likewise, the sheer variety of creatures on offer in Monsters of Myth is equally impressive and equally representative of old school sensibilities.
This is a truly catholic work, presenting creatures from many possible environments and climes, as well as from a wide number of "ecological" niches. By this I mean that the authors were not fixated on undead or demons or any of the usual hang-ups you expect to see in third party monster books. Instead, we are treated to the whole panoply of monstrous adversaries, from giant animals to nuisances and vermin to clever re-imaginings of mythical creatures to, yes, new examples of undead and demonic beings. I could not help but be favorably reminded of Gary Gygax's Monster Manual II, a particular favorite of mine and, in my opinion, the last Dungeons & Dragons book to have remained almost wholly in line with the game's origins.
Many -- though not all -- of the monster descriptions include black and white illustrations as well. These illustrations vary in quality from the excellent to the amateurish. Those by Peter Mullen and Matt Steward stand out at the excellent end of the spectrum and have done much to push me to re-evaluate my oft-criticized stance toward old school art. My feeling remains that too much "neo-old school" art is effectively a parody rather than an homage to the originals. That's because the original artists, such as Dave Trampier and David Sutherland, never set out to draw "old school art;" they simply drew in their own styles. That's not to say that there isn't such a thing as old school art, but I think the reason why, for example, Peter Mullen's work in Monsters of Myth (such as the shadowcat on page 26, which struck me as a tip of the coif to Wormy) appealed to me is because it was, first and foremost, Mullen's own work rather than a deliberate imitation or aping of another artist's style. One of the things that really distinguishes genuinely old school products is the lack of a "house style." Instead, you get a jumble of different styles that simultaneously complement one another even as they also jar. For me, it's that quality that's most absent from modern RPGs and most self-proclaimed old school products. Monsters of Myth doesn't quite produce the same effect in me, but it comes close -- and I am grateful for it.
Eleven pages near the back of the book are given over to Steve Marsh, a one-time collaborator with Gary Gygax and perhaps best known for his work on 1981 D&D Expert Rules. This section presents many new monsters derived from Mr Marsh's own campaign. They're by and large an eccentric collection of creatures, many of which owe their strange character to an otherworldly "chaos" that plays an important -- and Lovecraftian -- role in that campaign. Also included is a random table for determining which "chaos taints" a creature possesses. This calls to mind similar mechanics in RuneQuest, which is not a bad thing. I've long been a proponent of injecting more Lovecraft into D&D as an antidote to the high fantasy that's infected the game since the release of Dragonlance.
Simply taken as a book of monsters for old school fantasy games, Monsters of Myth is superb, by far and away one of the best I have ever read; it really is that good. The book both exemplifies what "old school" means and serves as a model for how to carry on that lost tradition in the 21st century. Reading through the book, I not only found many of the creature descriptions sparked ideas in my head for adventures and situations, but I was also occasionally transported back to 1979, when I first held the original Monster Manual in my hands and attempted to make sense of the smörgåsbord before me. The authors of Monsters of Myth should be proud of what they have accomplished here and thanked profusely for having given us a solid example of just what the old school community is capable of.
That said, there are a couple of some notes I must mention. Firstly, though released under the Open Game License, Monsters of Myth has adopted a "crippleware" approach to Open Game Content. Thus, "the statistics of all monsters are open game content. The names and descriptions of all monsters are Product Identity." What this means is that, if I were to publish an old school adventure that included the wonderfully villainous jackal-headed Kheph, I could freely use their game stats, but I could not call them Kheph nor could include the description of them from Monsters of Myth at the end of my adventure. Certainly, I could make up my own name and description for them, but, at that point, I might as well make up my own creature.
One of the many virtues of old school gaming is the relative ease with which you can create new game mechanics or statistics. Given that, the real value of books like Monsters of Myth isn't primarily in their game mechanics (though they are valuable) but in their creative descriptions. By closing them off as Product Identity, the First Edition Society has given us a terrific book brimming with great ideas and then encased it in Plexiglas so that no one else might benefit from them. I find this deeply disappointing. A book of this quality ought to have served as an inspiration to others interested in the old school revival. Had the book's contents been fully, or at least more fully, open, other publishers might borrow elements from it in their own products, which would not only have pointed people back to Monsters of Myth itself, but also would have helped spark the organic evolution of old school fantasy games and concepts.
This leads me to two other concerns I have, neither of which negatively impact Monsters of Myth directly, but which do, I fear, make it less successful a volume than it could have been. Firstly, OSRIC remains solely a publishers tool. It is not a commercially available game in its own right. I cannot go into a game store and buy OSRIC. Granted, that's because OSRIC is primarily a restatement of an out-of-print rules system rather than a game in its own right. Unfortunately, this means that retailers will never carry Monsters of Myth and very few gamers, even old school ones, will ever see the book. And many who do will be unclear for what system the book was written.
It's a pity, because, as I hope I've made clear, this is a really good book. This brings me to my third and final concern and it's probably the least of them. The back cover promises "more new releases by the First Edition Society in 2007!" Unless I missed them, Monsters of Myth is the sole release by the First Edition Society and here we are nearly halfway through 2008. Now, I understand well that producing new RPG books can be difficult and time-consuming. Delays are common. Likewise, I also know that old school gaming rightly eschews the supplement treadmill that characterizes modern RPGs. I'm not expecting -- or desiring -- there to be an ever-flowing stream of new books from the First Edition Society. Still, one gets the impression from the back cover text that there were supposed to be more and yet they never materialized. Why?
Perhaps it's an impertinent question. Perhaps it's even an unimportant question. After all, Monsters of Myth can clearly stand on its own considerable merits. I can't shake the feeling, though, that this book is, to use a metaphor, fighting with one hand tied behind its back. It's a metaphor that seems to describe a lot of the old school gaming community. There's no lack of passion, good ideas, and talent. We have all of those things in spades. And it's true that things are better now than they have been in many a year. I keep saying that I feel a change in the air and I still do. There's an old school revival waiting to be born. Products like Monsters of Myth should help get that revival off the ground. They still could, if they could overcome a few difficulties that, in my opinion, stand in the way of reclaiming the patrimony left to us by Gygax and Arneson.
Final Score: 4½ out of 5 polearms
Friday, May 23, 2008
RIP: Robert Asprin (1946-2008)
Robert Asprin, creator of the humorous MythAdventures and co-creator of the Thieves' World shared world anthologies (with his ex-wife Lynn Abbey) has died at the age of 61. Asprin will be remembered by a lot of gamers of a certain age, both because of his involvement with the Society of Creative Anachronism (where he co-founded the Great Dark Horde household) and because the fact that former Dragon magazine cartoonist Phil Foglio illustrated many of his MythAdventures books. But it was Thieves' World for which I will remember him most. I greatly enjoyed those anthologies in the early days, which brought together some of the biggest names in science fiction and fantasy to tell stories about the cutthroats and rogues of the city of Sanctuary. Anyone who loves swords and sorcery tales owes Asprin a debt of thanks for helping to create this series.
Asprin will be missed.
Asprin will be missed.
Good Stories
So, the fourth Indiana Jones movie is apparently out, seventeen years after the release of the last one. I haven't seen it yet, but I'll probably try to do so over the weekend. Despite my misgivings, I am cautiously optimistic that I won't hate it. I've read quite a few reviews by geek friends and colleagues and they all seemed to have enjoyed it, for the most part, and many of them are guys who still haven't gotten over The Phantom Menace (a film I don't think is nearly as bad as people say it is, but I digress), so that's actually a pretty good indication that I'll enjoy myself, though far from an ironclad one. I am nothing if not eccentric in my tastes.
This got me to thinking about a comment I read somewhere recently, one that I think applies equally well to RPGs as it does to movies or TV shows. The comment was about the difference between the original Star Trek series and its modern descendants, namely that the writers of the original series were simply trying to tell good science fiction stories, whereas the writers of the modern series are trying to tell good Star Trek stories. This struck me as a very keen insight.
There's often a difference between, for example, the first movie in what becomes a series of films and the subsequent ones. The reason is simple: the first movie is written as a story in its own right (often but not always -- let's face it, since Star Wars at least, many films are written with the intention of being the first in a series), while the sequels are written as a continuation of the characters and situations presented in the first. That is, sequels are almost always about the series, which makes them more complex and self-referential. They're sometimes close to unintelligible without a close viewing of the originals, which, to me, is a textbook case of putting the cart before the horse.
I think one of the reasons why old school D&D feels so different than its modern successors is that, especially with OD&D (and to a much lesser extent pre-Unearthed Arcana AD&D), the guys who wrote and played it were simply trying to create fun fantasy situations. Anything that served that end was acceptable and indeed encouraged, which is why there's a lot less fretting about verisimilitude or whether something "fits" into D&D. Eventually, as D&D became a thing unto itself rather than a rules set for creating fun fantasy situations, it started to become increasingly about itself. D&D is now like Star Trek or Star Wars -- a genre unto itself rather than a vehicle for simply telling good stories.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Wrath of Khan is universally regarded as the best of the Star Trek movies, for example, and it's to varying degrees unintelligible, or at least less powerful, without a knowledge of the original Star Trek series. At the same time, I think the reason why D&D no longer resonates as powerfully with many people as it once did is because the game has become too self-referential, too wrapped up in its own mythology. Ironically, what makes the older versions more enjoyable for me is that they represent the "before the Fall" period of the game, which is to say, the time before D&D became a brand, when it was just a name given to creating fun fantasy situations and playing them out around a table with some dice and your friends.
I say this is ironic, because grognards are often accused of being obsessed with history; I think that misunderstands a key point. To be aware of one's history isn't necessarily to be obsessed with it. Likewise, I think a better understanding of our hobby's history might remind gamers that there was a time when D&D wasn't just a brand and those were heady times. I don't think it's mere nostalgia to want to see a return to the days when Dungeons & Dragons -- and gaming in general -- wasn't so introspective and self-referential or a seedbed for "IP," a concept that, frankly, is antithetical to wild and wacky sharing of ideas and concepts that used to be a hallmark of this hobby.
So, I'll likely enjoy Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but I hope I can be forgiven if I don't think it's anywhere near as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indiana Jones was just this guy with a fedora and a bull whip and not the standard bearer for a franchise.
This got me to thinking about a comment I read somewhere recently, one that I think applies equally well to RPGs as it does to movies or TV shows. The comment was about the difference between the original Star Trek series and its modern descendants, namely that the writers of the original series were simply trying to tell good science fiction stories, whereas the writers of the modern series are trying to tell good Star Trek stories. This struck me as a very keen insight.
There's often a difference between, for example, the first movie in what becomes a series of films and the subsequent ones. The reason is simple: the first movie is written as a story in its own right (often but not always -- let's face it, since Star Wars at least, many films are written with the intention of being the first in a series), while the sequels are written as a continuation of the characters and situations presented in the first. That is, sequels are almost always about the series, which makes them more complex and self-referential. They're sometimes close to unintelligible without a close viewing of the originals, which, to me, is a textbook case of putting the cart before the horse.
I think one of the reasons why old school D&D feels so different than its modern successors is that, especially with OD&D (and to a much lesser extent pre-Unearthed Arcana AD&D), the guys who wrote and played it were simply trying to create fun fantasy situations. Anything that served that end was acceptable and indeed encouraged, which is why there's a lot less fretting about verisimilitude or whether something "fits" into D&D. Eventually, as D&D became a thing unto itself rather than a rules set for creating fun fantasy situations, it started to become increasingly about itself. D&D is now like Star Trek or Star Wars -- a genre unto itself rather than a vehicle for simply telling good stories.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Wrath of Khan is universally regarded as the best of the Star Trek movies, for example, and it's to varying degrees unintelligible, or at least less powerful, without a knowledge of the original Star Trek series. At the same time, I think the reason why D&D no longer resonates as powerfully with many people as it once did is because the game has become too self-referential, too wrapped up in its own mythology. Ironically, what makes the older versions more enjoyable for me is that they represent the "before the Fall" period of the game, which is to say, the time before D&D became a brand, when it was just a name given to creating fun fantasy situations and playing them out around a table with some dice and your friends.
I say this is ironic, because grognards are often accused of being obsessed with history; I think that misunderstands a key point. To be aware of one's history isn't necessarily to be obsessed with it. Likewise, I think a better understanding of our hobby's history might remind gamers that there was a time when D&D wasn't just a brand and those were heady times. I don't think it's mere nostalgia to want to see a return to the days when Dungeons & Dragons -- and gaming in general -- wasn't so introspective and self-referential or a seedbed for "IP," a concept that, frankly, is antithetical to wild and wacky sharing of ideas and concepts that used to be a hallmark of this hobby.
So, I'll likely enjoy Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but I hope I can be forgiven if I don't think it's anywhere near as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indiana Jones was just this guy with a fedora and a bull whip and not the standard bearer for a franchise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)