Oldies but Goodies!

One of the most vexing aspects of middle age is looking back on the past with hindsight and thinking, "If only I knew then what I know now." That's precisely the thought that entered my head when I saw this advertisement from the Armory in issue #69 (January 1983). 

Marvel at how inexpensive all these early TSR products were! Had I but known and been interested in this stuff, I could have really cleaned up, since the prices, even adjusted for inflation, are all quite reasonable, especially for the OD&D supplements. Now, as it turns out, I would eventually acquire a complete set of everything produced for OD&D for similarly low prices at the end of the '80s, so I can't complain too much. Still, ads like this make me wish I had access to a time machine.

The Articles of Dragon: "A Split Class for Nimble Characters: the Thief-Acrobat"

Issue #69 of Dragon (January 1983) is another one about whose articles I have very strong memories. The strength of my memories is bolstered, no doubt, by the issue's remarkable cover by Clyde Caldwell. Caldwell's an artist about whom my feelings are generally mixed, but I've nevertheless got a fondness for this particular piece, which, in some ways, encapsulates the vibe of the dying days of D&D's Golden Age. Consequently, I'll be returning to this issue several times in the coming weeks. 

This week, though, I want to look at Gary Gygax's "From the Sorceror's [sic] Scroll" column, in which he provides full details on the thief-acrobat "split class" that he first mentioned in a previous column. A split class is a specialization path for an existing class, in this case the thief. Provided he has the appropriate ability scores requirements (STR 15, DEX 16), a thief can, upon attaining 6th level, choose to devote himself to acrobatics as an outgrowth of his thievery – in effect, becoming a cat burglar or second story man in criminal parlance.

At the time of this article's publication, this was a comparatively unique concept, one that Gygax claims "has not been expressed before" and for which there is "nothing similar" in AD&D. I'm not entirely sure this is true. As I mentioned previously, the thief-acrobat reminds me a bit of the original concept for the paladin class, as found in Supplement I to OD&D. Likewise, the AD&D version of the bard, in which a character must first attain levels in fighter and thief before becoming a bard, is in the same ballpark in my opinion. Even so, the precise arrangement Gygax presents for the thief-acrobat isn't one we'd seen before.

I liked the idea of the thief-acrobat more in principle than in fact and my friends held similar views. Only one of them ever chose to pursue this split class and the player soon grew bored of playing him. That was probably the biggest problem with the thief-acrobat: it was very specialized and thus of limited utility. This is the kind of class that I could see thriving in, say, an urban, all thief campaign, where each character needs to distinguish himself from his fellow thieves. In a more traditional dungeon-based campaign, I think the thief-acrobat hold much less or appeal – or at least that's how my friends and I viewed it.

When it comes to the question of designing character classes, there are a couple of common approaches, neither of which is without its problems. Dungeons & Dragons began with only a few broad, archetypal classes, like the cleric, fighting man, and magic-user, but soon added many more, each one devoted to a narrower but nevertheless real archetype. AD&D opted for a larger list of available classes, while the D&D line kept to something closer to the original, narrower list. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages and I can easily defend them both.

Had Gygax remained at the helm of AD&D, we would certainly have seen more classes added to its roster, some of which, like the thief-acrobat, would have been quite narrow in their utility. That's not necessarily a problem, but it can add a lot of unnecessary complexity to the game, not to mention diluting the game's flavor. On the other hand, a goodly selection of classes can, if presented properly, increase the game's flavor, with each one revealing more about its explicit or implied setting and the sorts of activities characters are expected to undertake within it.

Whether the thief-acrobat succeeds in doing any of these things is an open question, hence my own ambivalence toward it. Even so, this article sticks in my mind, because, like others written by Gygax at the time, it offered a sneak peek into his evolving vision of AD&D. It was a really interesting time to be a fan of the game and I'm glad to have been around for it.

What the @!¢%*# is GURPS?

Though I was a fan of Ogre and Car Wars, both designed by the American Steve Jackson (not the British one), I didn't pay close attention to the other games his company was publishing. Consequently, when GURPS arrived on the scene in 1986, I largely paid it no heed, aside from the very peculiar advertisements I remember seeing in the pages of Dragon and elsewhere, like this one.

What's most immediately striking to me about this ad – aside from the painful lack of a question mark – is that nowhere does it explain what GURPS actually stands for. That's probably intentional, since the oddity of the game's title is memorable and might serve to pique interest in it. By the time I first played GURPS in the early '90s, it was already common knowledge that this was the Generic Universal Role Playing System, so it never really bothered me. But to a contemporary reader of Dragon? I wonder what he'd have thought.

Fantasy Lives!

I've written about Powers & Perils before, so I won't repeat myself here. I will, however, share this advertisement for it that I remember seeing in several gaming magazines in the mid-80s.

Going Home

I've now been refereeing my Barrett's Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign for three years in real-world time, covering considerably less time within the game world – only about two and a half months. During that time, the character's unit, consisting primarily of American personnel trapped behind Warsaw Pact lines after the disastrous Battle of Kalisz, has attempted to find its way back to NATO-controlled territory. In the course of doing so, they've visited the Free City of Kraków, traveled partway down the Vistula by boat, tangled with marauders, the GRU, and rogue elements of the Red Army, not to mention Polish nationalist groups seeking to rebuild their country independent of both sides in the Cold-War-turned-hot. Consequently, the characters' journey hasn't always followed a straight line.

Recently, though, their travels took on an added level of urgency, thanks to their picking up a radio message announcing Operations Order OMEGA. This order, issued under the extraordinary authority of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  heralded the evacuation of all US personnel in Europe, civilian and military. The schedule of the withdrawal provides for the departure on November 15, 2000 of as many US personnel as possible from Bremerhaven, West Germany to Norfolk, Virginia, USA. Since departure is largely on a "first come, first served" basis, the characters have decided that they must make it to Bremerhaven well before November, since they have no desire to remain in Europe.

The last few weeks of the campaign have been devoted to the characters' determined efforts to head westward into Germany. This has proven difficult, as what remains of organized Warsaw Pact forces are still operating in that area and, needless to say, are vastly more powerful than themselves. Marauders of all kinds are another obstacle with which they must contend. To date, their efforts have been slow and careful, with the goal of avoiding contact with any enemy forces they can – as well as any remaining NATO forces that hope to enmesh them the final, failing stages of their own operations in Eastern Europe. In short, they simply want to go home.

While it'll likely still be many more weeks of play before they succeed in reaching secure NATO lines and make their way safely to Bremerhaven (assuming they do so, of course), I've nevertheless started thinking about what the characters will find once they cross the Atlantic and return to the USA. In the earlier GDW canon of the game, America is in chaos, with authority – where it exists at all – is divided between Joint Chiefs of Staff, who assumed control after the president, vice president, the cabinet, and a large portion of the Congress were killed, and a civilian government reconstituted under unusual and possibly illegal means. The conflict between "MilGov" and "CivGov," as they are colloquially known, plays a major role in the post-war history of the country.

In general, I like this conflict. I think it works well in a game in which the characters are active duty military personnel, who would be torn between their loyalty to the Army and their oaths to the Constitution. Unfortunately, I don't think the way GDW sketched out the conflict was very good, nor do I think they considered its impact on Twilight: 2000 campaigns set in America. So, I've been trying to give these matters a great deal more thought, with a goal of creating something that's both plausible and playable. In particular, I want to present a situation that's a genuine muddle without obvious good guys or bad guys, where the characters will have sort out the question of whom to support and why for themselves.

I'm actually looking forward to this next phase of the campaign a great deal. While in Poland, the characters never settled down for any length of time. Every time a situation arose that threatened to tie them down, they did the best they could to extricate themselves. As their commanding officer, Lt. Col. J.D. Orlowski, regularly reminds them, "We're US soldiers first and foremost." There was never much chance they'd abandon their duties to the Army, so it was only ever a question of when not if they'd make their way homeward. Now that they are, I can start thinking about the bigger picture and how the characters might make a lasting difference in the post-nuclear world. I'm quite excited by the prospect.

Retrospective: Nomads of the World-Ocean

I recently mentioned that I'd be devoting more space on this blog to coverage of Traveller. I thought a good way to start making good on that pledge is using my weekly Retrospective to draw attention to some of my favorite Traveller products, since Game Designers' Workshop published a large number of excellent adventures and supplements for the game. They're not all winners, of course, but I do think that Traveller had a higher ratio of good to bad support material than many of its contemporary RPGs.

A good example of what I'm talking about is 1983's Nomads of the World Ocean, written and illustrated by the incomparable Keith Brothers. I'd previously mentioned this adventure, the ninth published for Traveller, in my list of the Top 10 Classic Traveller Adventures, where it ranked as number 4. I still think that's a fair judgment, because, while very well-done, Nomads of the World-Ocean is also a very specific kind of scenario and, therefore, might not hold a wide appeal.

The adventure takes place on Bellerophon, a world in the Solomani Rim subsector. As its title suggests, Bellerophon is a water world whose only dry land are a few scattered islands and reef-flats exposed at low tide. Despite this, the planet boasts a population of over 2 billion humans, most of whom live on magnificent pylon cities that rise from the ocean shallows, thrusting two or three kilometers into the sky. There are also sea-bottom complexes and free-floating raft cities, as well as a considerable population of the titular nomads, who live aboard large ship-cities that follow herds of marine creatures called daghadasi that provide them with a livelihood.

Like many classic Traveller adventures, the characters come to Bellerophon as agents of an outside organization, sent to investigate the activities of a corporation that operates on the planet. In this case, the corporation, Seaharvester, is culling the population of daghadasi in order to obtain a chemical produced by the animals in their pre-reproductive phase. This chemical has proven to be the basis for an entirely new family of drugs that have the potential to wipe out bacteria, viruses, viroids, and even cancer cells. Unfortunately, a daghadasi carcass weighing a million tons yields only a few grams of the chemical. Worse, only about 10% of all slaughtered daghadasi produce more than trace amounts of it, necessitating massive, indiscriminate slaughter to procure this valuable new chemical.

When evidence of Seaharvester's actions became known, public opinion turned against them and its parent company, SuSAG, one of the Imperium's megacorporations, placed limits on their culling of the daghadasi. However, there's evidence that Seaharvester has been skirting these limits and it's now up to the characters to prove it. The adventure presents two options to involve the characters. One assumes they're working for an environmentalist group, the Pan-Galactic Friends of Life, while the other assumes they're employed by SuSAG itself, looking to save its reputation. 

What makes Nomads of the World-Ocean special isn't this set-up but the world of Bellerophon itself. Everything about it is described in loving detail, with plenty of hooks for interesting encounters, side adventures, and exploration. The Keith Brothers give us information on the pylon cities, Seaharvester's factory ships, the lifecycle and ecology of the daghadasi and, of course, the nomads themselves. As one might expect, the nomads receive the greatest amount of detail, since they hold the key to proving the continued malfeasance of Seaharvester. 

The nomads live on wandering ship-cities of 1000-5000 people. Their society and indeed livelihoods depend on the kilometers-long daghadasi, whom they sustainably hunt to provide not just food but also materials for the manufacture of other items that they trade. The nomads are a highly technological society. Their ship-cities, for example, make use of fusion power, as do the various smaller craft they use in the hunting of the daghadasi. Though they share a common language and culture, the nomads are divided into factions, based in part on their attitudes toward outsiders and the traditional ways of their people, which is now under threat from Seaharvester. A significant portion of the scenario involves the characters having to navigate nomad politics to achieve their own ends.

Nomads of the World-Ocean is a great example of something classic Traveller did very well: present a single world out of the 11,000 that make up the Third Imperium and showing that it alone is more than sufficient to occupy the characters' attention for weeks or even months of gameplay. One of the paradoxes at the heart of Traveller is that, as its name suggests, the characters are assumed to move around a lot from world to world and even sector to sector, never staying in one place for very long. Yet, each and every world they visit is – or can be – a setting in itself. Balancing the characters' ability to travel easily across Charted Space with giving each world its own unique appeal isn't always easy, which is why I so highly regard adventures like this one. Nomads of the World-Ocean is a terrific example of Traveller at its best.

"A Relaxation of the Rule"

There was an editor's note inserted into "Thrills and Chills: Ice Age Adventures" that I thought worthy of its own separate post. The article's author, Arthur Collins, describes the rules tweaks he recommends for each of the standard AD&D races in order to better reflect the Pleistocene Epoch. When he gets to elves, he says the following:

Elves would be +1 with spear and sling (instead of bow and sword, neither having been invented). While all races would have discovered ritual fermented or narcotic potations, to the elves would belong the specialty of making wine from wild grapes. Also, only wood elves would be around in Ice Age times.

Take special note of that last sentence: "Also, only wood elves would be around in Ice Age times." Appearing in italics immediately after it is the editor's note I mentioned above. It reads:

Since the Players Handbook says all player character elves are considered to be high elves, abiding by this stipulation would make it impossible for player-character elves to exist in this environment. If the issue must be resolved, DMs will have to either ignore the author’s recommendation or choose to allow a relaxation of the rule.

What a bizarre editor's note. Dragon was regularly filled with rules options and variants that ran counter to what was written in the Players Handbook and elsewhere and I can't recall seeing a note like this. Why here in particular? More to the point, it's a relatively minor detail in an article that is explicitly intended to alter the standard rules of AD&D to accommodate an unusual time period. I'm genuinely baffled that anyone would care that, yes, technically, by the book, wood elves are not allowed for use as player characters in 1982 (a rule that would be overturned in Unearthed Arcana just a few years later). 

There's a reason TSR and AD&D were viewed negatively in a lot of gaming circles back then. 

The Articles of Dragon: "Thrills and Chills: Ice Age Adventures"

 

Quite often, the articles from Dragon magazine that I most remember are not those I ever made use of in my own games, but those that I didn't. There are probably many reasons why this is the case, but a big one is that, even in my youth, when I led a life relatively free of responsibility, I still had limited time. There were only so many games I could play at any given time and, inevitably, there'd be lots of ideas I'd have loved to make use of but didn't simply because I lacked the time to do so. To be fair, that's still a problem for me, even today. Consequently, these articles occupy by the same space as "the one that got away" does in the minds of fishermen – a might have been that continues to play on the imagination even years later.

That's certainly how I feel about "Thrills and Chills: Ice Age Adventures," which appeared in issue #68 (December 1982). Written by Arthur Collins, whom I consider one of the great unsung contributors to Dragon during the early to mid-1980s, this lengthy article offers ideas and rules modifications for playing AD&D during the Pleistocene era. Collins explains that he was inspired by Jean M. Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear, but, for me, the touchstone for Ice Age tales will always be Manly Wade Wellman's Hok the Mighty, which I first encountered in old copies of Fantastic my local library kept alongside issues of other SF and fantasy magazines.

For years, I'm not certain I could have explained exactly why I found the idea of Ice Age adventuring so compelling. Rereading the article in preparation for writing this post, though, I now think I understand it. For lack of a better word, the Ice Age is post-apocalyptic setting – not in the sense as it's usually meant, of course, but it's nevertheless a setting in which humanity (and other intelligent races) must struggle to survive in a very hostile world. Perhaps because I've never really lacked for anything in my life, I have a powerful fascination for settings in which characters have to worry about where their next meal is coming from or how they'll shelter themselves against merciless Mother Nature.

Collins spends a lot of time discussing the challenges of living during the Pleistocene, particularly when it comes to food. For example, he offers calculations on just how much game and grains a small tribe of Ice Age would need to gather during the course of a single year to stave off malnutrition. He even goes so far as to translate the meat into hit dice in order to quantify it in a way that makes sense within the context of AD&D. I have no idea how well his calculations would hold up to rigorous scrutiny, but they serve a very useful, practical purpose for referees and players alike, which is honestly what I want in an article like this. 

Collins also includes information on braving the weather of this period of history, though he doesn't go into quite as much detail as did David Axler in his "Weather in the World of Greyhawk." He devotes far more space to imagining what the standard AD&D races and monsters would be like in the Pleistocene world, which makes sense, I think. The key to articles like this is in providing enough new and variant rules to make the setting/time period feel distinct but not so many that employing them in play seems daunting. I feel Collins struck the right balance overall, though I do wish he'd take the opportunity to write a bit more about just what Ice Age adventures and campaigns might be like rather than just how they differ from more conventional AD&D play.

I'll conclude by saying that another aspect of this article that likely appealed to me as a young man was that it dared to stray even a little from the default faux medieval setting of Dungeons & Dragons (and indeed of fantasy more generally). While I was and remain a fan of using the Middle Ages as inspiration, I do find myself wishing gamers would occasionally try something else occasionally, whether based on a real world historical period or something completely imaginary. Fantasy need not be so cramped in its vision.

"Roleplaying Games Aren't About Roleplaying"

Some of you are no doubt familiar with Ben Milton's Questing Beast YouTube channel, which is largely devoted to reviewing recent old school(ish) RPG products. Every now and then, though, Ben also posts videos in which he muses about an aspect of roleplaying games that interests him. His newest video belongs to this latter category and somewhat provocatively proposes that "roleplaying games aren't about roleplaying." Here's the video for those of you who haven't seen it. The video's not long and is well worth your time.

For the most part, I agree with Ben's position, in large part because I've observed what he's talking about in various campaigns I've refereed and played in over several decades. Broadly speaking, it's been my experience that there are two approaches to playing a character in an RPG campaign. 

1. The first approach is closest to what I suspect most of us instinctively imagine when we think of "roleplaying" – a kind of acting, in which the player speaks as his character and identifies with him by saying things like "I attack the orc" or "I check the wall for secret doors."
2. The second approach is much more distant, in which the player treats his characters almost as a token or playing piece, as in a boardgame. "My character attacks the orc" or "My character checks the wall for secret doors." 
3. There's also is a middle ground between these two, with the player vacillating between each extreme, depending on the circumstances.

What I find interesting is that, when I'm acting as the referee, I tend to switch between the two approaches as well. For example, in my House of Worms campaign, there are non-player characters I consider important and whom I fully roleplay, speaking in-character and giving them unique mannerisms. Less important NPCs, like Sákbe road guards or shopkeepers, don't warrant this sort of treatment and they're closer to the "token" approach. I switch back and forth between these two approaches freely, often within the same session, and it's never really been a problem. The players understand and accept what I'm doing without any difficulty.

That said, there are occasions when an NPC takes on a life of his own, almost completely against my will. I'll create this character, intending for him to be unimportant or insignificant, and then – somehow – he becomes more than that, right down to having his own unique voice. As a general rule, even when I've got a strong idea of what a non-player character is like, I don't do funny voices. I'm not an actor and, truth be told, I feel self-conscious about engaging in that kind of play. Despite this, sometimes an NPC will simply start speaking through me, funny voice and all. It's not common, but it happens often enough that I thought it worth mentioning.

 All of this is to say that, as a pastime and entertainment, roleplaying is pretty strange. There's no single right way to approach it. Moreover, it's quite possible, probably even, that not all of the people involved in an RPG campaign might be playing it the same way. Indeed, some people might even change how they play it from session to session or even within the same session, shifting between the two approaches I outlined above. For a game, that's downright unusual, since, as Ben points out in his video, most games require that the participants are engaging with it in the same or very similar ways. RPGs are not like that and I think that's fascinating.

(I suspect I'll have more to say about this topic, but I think this is a good starting point to begin the discussion.)

Retrospective: Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures

I'm a sucker for historical fantasy – or even just fantasy that's heavily inspired by a particular historical period, society, or culture. That's one of the reasons I so eagerly awaited the release of Oriental Adventures in 1985: I saw it as an opportunity for Dungeons & Dragons (or AD&D) to finally present monks and ninjas and samurai within a more suitable context than the riotous goulash in which the game has existed since its inception. In my experience, most (A)D&D players never cared about this as much as I did, even back in the day, but such concerns grew increasingly important to me, especially during my teen years.

Consequently, when TSR announced that it'd be giving the Oriental Adventures treatment to the myths, legends, and folklore of the Middle East, I was pretty excited. Though Bulfinch's Mythology didn't include a section on these tales, I was nevertheless quite familiar with the stories of A Thousand and One Nights, not to mention the charming films featuring Sinbad the Sailor I'd seen as a child. And course D&D had long included monsters like the djinn, efreet, ghoul, and roc, in addition to the flying carpet and ring of wishes, all of which have their origin in Middle Eastern mythology.

Entitled Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures, this 158-page softcover was written by Jeff Grubb with the assistance of Andria Hayday. Grubb was a powerhouse designer at TSR at this time, having previously created Marvel Super Heroes, shepherded the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set to publication, and conceived Spelljammer, among many other influential projects. He brings the same imagination and enthusiasm for Al-Qadim that he did for its predecessors, resulting in a book of which I remain very fond, despite certain shortcomings. 

In the book's introduction, Grubb acknowledges that Arabian Adventures takes inspirations from three different versions of Arabia. The first is the Arabia of history, whose people, culture, and history spread from the Atlantic Ocean to India as a result of the Islamic conquests starting in the 7th century. The second is the Arabia of myth and legend. Finally, there is the Arabia of Hollywood, like the aforementioned Sinbad movies. Of the three, the second and third are the most important to Al-Qadim, which is not intended to be historically or culturally accurate but is, echoing the foreword to OD&D, "strictly fantasy."

Like Oriental Adventures before it, Arabian Adventures is not a stand-alone game but rather a supplement to AD&D, then in its second edition. Its purpose is to provide new and alternative rules for use with 2e rather than being complete in itself. Thus, for example, we get a variety of new character kits, as well as new equipment, nonweapon proficiencies, and spells. All of these are intended to differentiate the inhabitants of Zakhara, the Land of Fate, from those coming from more Western European-inspired locales, just as OA had done for the peoples of Kara-Tur. Al-Qadim is decidedly not generic in its presentation, but instead places everything within a very specific cultural and social context derived from the three sources Grubb mentioned in his introduction.

By and large, the end result is excellent, better in some ways than Oriental Adventures in my opinion. The character kits – a concept that didn't exist at the time OA was published – do a very good job of tailoring AD&D's existing character classes for an Arabian-inspired setting. While most of them are interesting and flavorful, the ones I most liked were those that covered roles uncommon or unknown in other settings, like the barber, beggar-thief, and merchant-rogue. Likewise, the new spells and proficiencies went a long way toward making a Zakharan character feel distinct from his counterparts in other realms.

Where Al-Qadim falls down is its being branded with and tied to the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. This is not the fault of Grubb or Hayday, nor does it strongly weaken the quality of their work. In the early 1990s, TSR was very keen on tying all of its AD&D products to one or more of its existing settings. Since the Realms were TSR's "go-to" AD&D setting, the company plugged almost everything into it, including Zakhara (just as had previously been done with Kara-Tur). It's a pity, because I think Zakhara would have been much more interesting had it simply been its own thing, divorced from the rest of TSR's AD&D settings of the time.

One way that this impacts Arabian Adventures in a negative way is that we don't get any unique demihuman or nonhuman playable races. All the standard AD&D races, like dwarves, elves, and halflings, are present in Zakhara and, aside from the usual game mechanics associated with them (ability bonuses, special abilities, etc.), they're really little different from Zakharan humans, sharing the same customs, beliefs, and so on. There's nothing strictly wrong with this approach, but Oriental Adventures gave us several new nonhuman races to play and I think doing so went a long way toward making Kara-Tur feel distinct. I would have liked to have seen the same for Al-Qadim.

The other "flaw" in Al-Qadim is that it's pretty clearly meant to be an alternate Players Handbook. Unlike Oriental Adventures, there's not much in the way of referee material included in this book. There are no new monsters or magic items, for example, and while both those omissions would eventually be dealt with in follow-up products – several, in fact! – their lack in this book was something I felt pretty keenly at the time. I would have preferred something a bit more expansive in its content, but, as I said at the beginning of this post, Arabian Adventures isn't a stand-alone product and, given TSR's approach to publishing AD&D at the time, there was probably little to no chance it would have included such material when it could more profitably be sold in later releases.

All that said, I really like Al-Qadim and regret that, like so many other AD&D products with which TSR flooded the market in the '90s, I never got the chance to make much use of it. One of my friends was a big fan of the line and purchased a lot of the later material, including the Land of Fate boxed set. From what I could tell, all of the setting's support material was of a very high quality – imaginative and fun, with plenty of great ideas to aid the Dungeon Master in refereeing his very own version of A Thousand and One Nights. It's one Second Edition's better supplements and deserves more love than it generally gets.