The OD&D Planes

Serendipity seems to strike a lot in the blogging world, with lots of people riffing off the same basic themes and making many similar posts. Over at Demons & Dragons, Jarl Frå Oslo posted an image I'd just seen yesterday as I was re-reading early issues of The Strategic Review. It's from an article by Gary Gygax in issue 6 called "The Meaning of Law and Chaos in Dungeons & Dragons and their Relationships to Good and Evil." It's a very fascinating article, because it's a glimpse into Gary's mind as he's expanding the threefold alignment structure of OD&D into the fivefold structure we see in Holmes.

Even more interesting, from a historical point of view if no other, is the aforementioned image, which doubles as an alignment graph and a map of the planes as Gary then conceived of them.

Notice the names: Heaven (not "Seven Heavens"), Paradise (not "Twin Paradises"), Elysium, Limbo, the Abyss, Hades, Hell (not "Nine Hells"), and Nirvana. There is also no plane associated with Neutrality, which is telling, I think. Notice too the beings listed as exemplars of the four cardinal alignments: Saint, Godling, Demon, and Devil. (What exactly a "godling" is I do not know, but I have some guesses)

I hope I'm not alone in thinking that this simplified structure, reminiscent of the more convoluted version we get in AD&D, is just keen. Like many aspects of OD&D + Supplements, I find that the end result is a kind of proto-AD&D or "AD&D Lite," and that's exactly the vibe I want in my games. In looking at this illustration, I was reminded of the planar structure Paizo adopted for its Golarion setting, which is eerily similar. Knowing Erik Mona's love for the old school, I'd not be the least bit surprised if this article was an inspiration when he and his crew were designing Golarion, but I have no proof of that. Even if it wasn't, I'm tickled to see some commonality between a 30 year-old article and contemporary game design. That doesn't happen everyday, alas.

The Implicit Christianity of Early Gaming

One of the many interesting ways that Dungeons & Dragons differs from its literary forebears is in the matter of religion. Pulp fantasy, by and large, is unconcerned with the subject. Priests are generally portrayed as hypocrites at best and outright villains at worst. Likewise, the actions of the gods, if they occur at all, are mysterious and easily written off by the skeptical as mere chance. This clearly isn't the case in D&D, where, thanks to the inclusion of the cleric, religion has always played a role in the game.

Granted, the cleric owes the better part of its existence to Hammer horror films, but, if you read OD&D, you can see that the class quickly evolved beyond its origins as a mere vampire hunter-cum-medic. The influence of historical medieval wargaming on the game shouldn't be overlooked. Everyone remembers Chainmail because of its Fantasy Supplement, but Jeff Perren and Gary Gygax didn't write these rules in order to facilitate miniatures battles between dragons and elves but instead to recreate the warfare and technology of the European Middle Ages. Gygax, by his own account, was very keen on medieval history, at least on the military side of things (no doubt the source of his pole arm-philia). Given this, is it any wonder that the armored, mace-wielding cleric bears a strong resemblance to the religious knights of the Crusades?

If you read OD&D carefully, you soon notice that a lot of the paraphernalia associated with clerics has Christian origins. The equipment list, for example, includes wooden and silver crosses, not the "holy symbols" of AD&D and later editions (Interestingly, there are no crucifixes, which I think is significant). The cleric's level titles include a number of specifically Christian terms (vicar, curate, and bishop). The illustrations of clerics in OD&D -- and even early AD&D -- always show them dressed in obviously Christian priestly garb. And of course many of the cleric's spells draw on Christian (and Jewish) religious writings and folklore. Indeed, the cleric's focus on defense and protection spells is, I think, more evidence of the Christian origins of the class. What's even more telling is the fact, even as late as Eldritch Wizardry, there are few (if any) explicit references to gods in OD&D. There's much talk of demons, devils,and, tellingly, saints, but gods aren't much talked about until Supplement IV's release in 1976.

I once asked Gary Gygax directly about the question of why this was so and he explained that he felt it unseemly to include anything too explicitly Christian in a mere game, even if he assumed a kind of quasi-Christian or crypto-Christian underpinning for the whole thing. This is also why his demons and devils used somewhat obscure names rather than very familiar ones. All the old school love for statting up Satan/Lucifer was something Gary didn't feel was proper. It's the same reason why, even in late AD&D, we get planetars, solars, and devas but never "angels." Interestingly, the original Blackmoor campaign, as I understand it, had a Church, complete with a hierarchy, but no named gods. Again -- and someone can correct me if I'm mistaken on this -- there's an assumption of a quasi-Christianity lurking in the background.

Reading Chivalry & Sorcery as I have been, there's a bit more explicit assumption of Christianity there, but it's still stated in a somewhat circuitous fashion -- an oddity given the great detail given to things like ecclesiastical structures, beliefs, relics, and so on, not to mention the lengthy bestiaries of demons (including Lucifer himself). In the case of C&S, the impression I get is that its authors simply assumed that their readers wanted their games to include lots of quasi-Christianity, since it was more "realistic" than the henotheism of most fantasy RPGs. I know that, in my early days of gaming, my friends and I all tacitly assumed that clerics were Christian priests -- heck, I thought monks were as well -- and that, somewhere, behind all the monsters and magic, the Lord of Hosts was lurking.

We never really talked about this assumption or dealt with it in any direct way, but we neither did we question it. It was an odd kind of Christ-less Christianity, more concerned with laying the smackdown on evil than with turning the other cheek or taking up one's cross, except in the most vague of senses. The paladin was an unambiguously Christian knight for us and indeed Lawful Goodness we associated with this unspoken religion that had bishops and cathedrals and holy water and everything else a young boy saw as being "essential" to medieval Christendom.

As time went on and our sense of D&D changed, this implicit Christianity became less important, but it never fully faded away, because it just seemed to us that there was just no other way to look at the cleric and the paladin except in the context of quasi-Christianity. Nowadays, I'm probably too immersed in swords-and-sorcery to fall into this perspective again, but I am now more firmly convinced than ever that early gaming, far from being "pagan," was in fact shot through with Christian belief, practice, and lore. It was always a kind of "fairytale Christianity" broadly consonant with American generic Protestantism rather than anything more muscular, but it was there and it's never really died, even if all the post-1e editions of D&D have tried to varying degrees to remove all evidence of it. I find it fascinating to remember this, if only because, as I spin off in flights of pulp fantasy fancy, it's good to be reminded that D&D owes its origins to more than just that style of fantasy and is in fact a goulash of unspoken and contradictory inspirations.

The Disenchantment of the World

Robert Fisher recently made a nice little post that reminded me of a thought I'd been having as well. In it, Robert quotes someone -- from ENWorld of all places! -- who notes that, "how versatile and multi-functional so many of the magic items [of AD&D] were. They were powerful, and they were odd, and fascinating, and most important of all a lot of them could do all kinds of things." The commenter adds that "By comparison so many of the magic items of more recent editions are bland, plain, uninspired, and uninspiring. It’s like using a piece of technology from the eighties or something. The items are overly specialized, technical, usually limited to one specific function, top-heavy in design and capabilities."

I definitely think there's something to this. Whenever I read my little brown books, I'm constantly struck by how much more, well, magical the magic items seem to be. One of the reasons is because, more often than not, the descriptions of the item contains almost nothing in the way of explicit mechanics. They're suggestive of mechanics but they provide no unambiguous way to handle their use in play. They're mostly flavor text that doubles as game mechanics and so, as I read these entries, I find myself thinking, "What does that mean?" and "How would that work in play?" My answers to these questions almost always result in items that aren't just pieces of magical technology but something much more intriguing.

Take, for example, the old standby -- and something even I will admit is a rip-off from Tolkien -- the elven cloak. This is what OD&D has to say about it: "Wearing the Cloak makes a person next to invisible." Next to invisible? What does that mean? Contrast this to AD&D, whose description of the item, now dubbed the cloak of elvenkind, is much more specific:

A cloak of elvenkind is of a plain neutral gray which is indistinguishable from any sort of ordinary cloak of the same color. However, when it is worn, with the hood drawn up around he head, it enables the wearer to be nearly invisible, for the cloak has chameleon-like powers. In the outdoors, the wearer of a cloak of elvenkind is almost totally invisible in natural surroundings, nearly so in other settings. Note that the wearer is easily seen if violently or hastily moving, regardless of the surroundings.

The description then goes on to give specific percentage chances of how invisible the wearer is, from 100% in heavy growth in natural surroundings to 50% while underground and illuminated by the continual light spell. I'm not keen on this degree of specificity, but, even with it, there's still some wiggle room for the referee -- and players! -- because what constitutes "heavy growth" as opposed to "light growth" is a matter of opinion. You can see, though, that, even with all the expansive physical/metaphysical description of the cloak, its functioning ultimately comes down to a D100 roll.

Third Edition, as it so often does, pares down Gygaxian flavor text and reduces AD&D's baroque mechanics to banality: "This cloak of neutral gray cloth is indistinguishable from an ordinary cloak of the same color. However, when worn with the hood drawn up around the head, it gives the wearer a +5 competence bonus on Hide checks." Fourth Edition is even more laconic: "Gain an item bonus to Stealth checks equal to the cloak’s enhancement bonus." There's not even a nod to flavor text.

I fully understand why D&D's descriptions of magic items have developed the way that they have, but that doesn't mean I have to approve of it. In my opinion, the so-called "Christmas tree effect" is not a consequence of there being too many magic items in D&D (though I have no objection to making them rarer). Rather, it's the result of reducing magic items to being a collection game mechanics that always and everywhere work in the same way. If an elven cloak is always a flat +X bonus to skill check Y, then of course the item becomes problematic when combined with other bonuses gleaned from other sources, thereby lending credence to the absurd notion that magic items need to be "reined in."

I grow ever more convinced that the quest for "objectivity" and "balance" in roleplaying games is the surest way to bleed all the magic out of them, as well as to create an audience that then perceives any "imbalance" as a flaw requiring yet more corrections and re-tunings to overcome. Certainly this approach sells more books and helps give further justification to "Sage Advice" columns and the like, but at what cost? "Game balance" is a chimera and not the cool three-headed variety. To embrace this is one of the keys to appreciating and enjoying old school play. It's something I embraced with great joy and I've never looked back.

Pulp Fantasy Gallery: Lest Darkness Fall

My distaste for the harm L. Sprague De Camp wrought to the reputations of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft notwithstanding, there's no denying that he was an important figure in the early days of fantasy and science fiction and that his writings greatly influenced Dungeons & Dragons. De Camp is almost unique among the writers Gary Gygax listed in Appendix N in that his name appears not once but twice -- once alone and a second time linked to that of his writing partner Fletcher Pratt, with whom he co-wrote the Harold Shea stories. (Pratt, of course, is the only other author whose name appears twice)

Consequently, it'd be a grave mistake to overlook the De Camp books listed in the back of the Dungeon Masters Guide. Among them is 1941's Lest Darkness Fall, originally published in 1939 as a short story in Unknown magazine. Like many of the books that influenced D&D, Lest Darkness Fall is the story of a modern person transported to another world -- in this case, 6th century Italy -- who, through a combination of modern know-how and determination, changes this other world forever.

The modern person of De Camp's tale is Martin Padway, an American archeologist, who, after using his knowledge to introduce unheard of inventions (brandy, printing press, newspapers, telegraph) and thereby make himself wealthy, becomes involved in the politics of Ostrogothic Italy. Over the course of the novel, Padway's actions change history by stabilizing the Ostrogothic kingdom, beating back the Byzantines, and even preventing the foundation of Islam. What's interesting is that Padway never once considers the consequences of his actions in the past, even though they will undoubtedly destroy the future from which he came. I confess that De Camp tells the story with such good humor and verve that I didn't much care about such things, preferring instead to enjoy the novel for what it is: an amusing tale well-told. Harry Turtledove, contemporary master of alternate history, agrees and credits Lest Darkness Fall for igniting his interest in history and, by extension, alternate history.

Alternate histories and parallel worlds are a significant part of the pulp fantasy heritage of Dungeons & Dragons. They've largely been lost in the game's modern incarnations. Indeed, I can't recall any specific connection between a D&D world and our own in anything published in over 20 years. Once upon a time, that wasn't the norm: adventurers regularly encountered dimensional castaways from 20th century Earth or raided the British Museum in search of the Mace of St. Cuthbert. I miss things more than I realized, which is why I plan to do my part to restore this aspect of D&D's heritage in my own campaigns.

Light Bulb

Over at Greyhawk Grognard, Joseph has written a terrific post on megadungeons as "campaign tent poles," by which he means that a megadungeon serves admirably as the thing that "holds the rough up" of a campaign, even if there are -- and should be -- other things under that rough. That is, a megadungeon is a terrific foundation on which to build a campaign, but, being the foundation, it pretty much demands that you build something else on top of it in order to use it to its fullest. Clearly, both the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns operated in this fashion, being focused on the exploration and looting of a megadungeon, but expanding beyond it as the demands of campaign events and player desire demanded it.

I've become ever more convinced that a "tent pole" megadungeon is pretty much a sine qua non for an old school campaign. Dungeons & Dragons was written, after all, with megadungeons in mind and I don't think you can really get the most out of the game if you avoid the whole concept. In thinking about this, I realized two things. First, there's never really been a properly presented old school campaign setting, because none that I know of have ever given us the megadungeons around which they revolved. It seems to me that, if I were an old school publisher looking for a "killer app," it'd be a well-done megadungeon and surrounding wilderness, done in a way that fosters sandbox/hexcrawl play. Second, I've now realized that my growing dissatisfaction with AD&D 2e stems in part from the fact that few of its many and much loved campaign settings had much scope for a tent pole megadungeon. Or rather, megadungeons are possible in them, but they weren't generally aspects of the setting that official support encouraged. Consider:

• Al-Qadim: A megadungeon might work in this setting with some work. It'd be a bit odd, given the socio-cultural nature of the setting, but there are enough ruined cities around in the desert that I could imagine it.
  
• Birthright: A megadungeon in Cerillia would really shift the focus of the campaign away from the power politics for which it was created.
  
• Dark Sun: Actually, this setting probably could have handled a megadungeon. Indeed, there was even a boxed set, City by the Silt Sea, that featured the ruined city of Giustenal that could have been presented as a megadungeon. Alas, it was instead used as a springboard for advancing a execrable metaplot. More's the pity.
• Dragonlance: I have a hard time imagining a megadungeon on Krynn, but perhaps I'm too biased to consider the possibilities.
• Planescape: I can't even begin to imagine what a megadungeon campaign in the Planes would be like.
• Ravenloft: The megadungeon would probably work least well in this setting of all those I've listed.
• Spelljammer: Interestingly, the Spelljammer itself was effectively a megadungeon and even got its own boxed set detailing it. Unfortunately, it was as bland as white bread and it was clear that TSR wasn't all that keen on doing much more with the concept.

On second reflection, it's more apparent to me that most of the 2e settings could be retooled to support a tent pole megadungeon, but the reality is that none were presented that way back in the day. That makes it appear in my memory as if they were much less amenable to D&D's origins than they actually were. That said, I never encountered anyway who attempted to run a megadungeon game in Cerillia or Athas and fans of these settings never mention their utility as the backdrop for megadungeon exploration in their paeans to them. So, while I'll concede that I've been more unfair to them than I ought to have been, the fact remains that 2e was an era that moved away from tent pole megadungeons as a principle of setting design and that still irks me even years later.

In any case, I think the tent pole megadungeon is, despite its antiquity, something we've never really seen on the publishing side of things. That may be because it's inherently un-publishable, but I'm not convinced of that. Indeed, I'm starting to think that a tent pole megadungeon might in fact be a rare example of an old idea that could catch fire again. The difficulty, of course, is in how its presented and in resisting the urge to over-detail and brandify the megadungeon to the point of uselessness. Some ideas are swirling in my head and I'll chat about them later, probably after I've reviewd Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works. Having now read through the entirety of that module, I have some very clear ideas on what works and what doesn't and where the approach taken in that product went awry and why. They're lessons I've taken to heart while working on Dwimmermount and I'll elaborate on them soon.

The Plot Thickens

I'm not a regular visitor to the Gygax Games website, in part because the recent announcements regarding the disposition of Gary's unfinished gaming projects left me ill at ease. From the looks of it, the whole thing smacked of a money grab on the part of Mrs Gygax, perhaps egged on by third parties who felt they could take better financial advantage of her late husband's legacy. Nevertheless, I paid a visit to the site yesterday and noticed that a Holiday Greeting, signed by Mrs Gygax, appeared on its front page. Reading through it, I noticed a number of interesting things that, while far from making everything plain, do cast a slightly different light on recent events.

After reminding everyone that it's been nine months since Gary died, Mrs Gygax adds that "I want you all to know, Gary and I discussed his wishes for his works prior to his passing and I am following the road map he left for me. Many of you are unaware how close we were, I was devoted to him." This is intriguing. Firstly, I think it's good to see Mrs Gygax laying claim to this message. Whether or not she actually wrote it, the fact remains that, by speaking directly to the point that what is happening is happening because her husband wanted it to be so, she helps to dispel rumors that she has no idea what is going on and is being manipulated by others. Gail Gygax is now a known quantity rather than some abstraction in the background. Secondly, her mention of a "road map" implies that she's acting on the wishes of Gary himself and it's vital she get people to believe this.

Now, I personally have no difficulty at all in believing that Gary, in the months leading up to his death last March, got all his affairs in order and discussed with his wife what he wanted to be done with his various properties and projects. I recall Gary's frequent allusions to his eventual demise on various message boards as early as the summer of 2007, if not before. I think it highly likely that he did in fact produce some kind of a "road map" for his wife to follow. What is unclear and probably always will be is the actual content of this road map and the extent to which Mrs Gygax is following what is laid out in it. By that I mean that I can believe Gary might have laid out what he wanted to see done with the Castle Zagyg project after his death, but I'm not certain that he specified, for example, that the license be revoked from Troll Lords and given to someone else. I'm not saying it's impossible (and I'll expand my thoughts on this shortly), but I'd like to see more evidence.

Mrs Gygax further explains her role: "To that end, after Gary passed, I asked Spencer Wright and Jon Creffield to help me. They have given freely of their time, we should all thank them. I am grateful for their help. They are not advising me what to do, but helping to maintain the integrity of the IP and continue its development." I've italicized the key bit there. Again, Mrs Gygax says the buck stops with her and, by implication, that it stops with the road map that Gary laid out before his death. She then concludes with these words:

Gary would want us all to be kind to each other during this time of transition and especially kind to each other during this holiday season. After all, that’s what his life was all about – creating environments for the enjoyment of others –

I plan to continue his mission.

That conclusion rings very true. I didn't know Gary Gygax personally -- we were, at best, infrequent email correspondents -- but I like to think I understood him. In recent years, he was a much more pacific and less cantankerous personality. He remained strong-willed, even opinionated, on many topics, but he was also much more giving and indeed forgiving than popular caricatures would have us believe. He had a keen sense of his role in the hobby and he was genuinely -- and regularly -- touched by the outpouring of affections he engendered. Consequently, toward the end, he seemed to me to be very interested in fostering fun and enjoyment and ensuring that it was those things that were his legacies.

What is now very clear to me is that Mrs Gygax has decided to step out from the shadows a bit and boldly state that what is happening now is happening in accordance to a plan she is following, a plan laid down by Gary before his death. I think it was important that she do this, but stating it does come with some risks, not least being the likelihood that many might not believe her. After all, while he was alive, Gary spoke highly of Troll Lords and, so far as anyone knows, never considered pulling the Castle Zagyg license out from under them, despite all the delays and missteps that were undoubtedly their fault and not his own. As I'll explain in my upcoming review of Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works, late as it was, the product shows many signs of having been rushed and less well produced than it ought to have been and surely Gary knew this would be the case. Yet, he continued to work with the Trolls without any public hint of displeasure or unhappiness. So why would Mrs Gygax now revoke the license when Gary never did so during his lifetime?

I have no answer to that question. I suppose it's possible that Gary was simply unwilling to pull the trigger on such a move because of his personal affection for the Trolls. On the other hand, why set up his wife to look like the bad guy after his death? Whatever else he was, Gary was no coward and I find it hard to imagine he'd planned to go to the grave without voicing his dissatisfaction like that. This is the part of the whole affair that still rankles me, not because I think it impossible that someone else might do a better job with Castle Zagyg -- depending on what approach is taken, it's quite possible, in my opinion -- but because it seems somehow "un-Gygaxian." As I say, I didn't know the man personally, so I could be wrong; I hope, though, that, if he had genuine problems with the Trolls, he'd have made them plain while still alive. Indeed, it's also possible that he did and it was because of this that he instructed his wife to pursue other avenues for the project after his death.

We may never know the truth, but there's now more evidence to sift through that might get us closer to it. I'll be paying careful attention to what happens next and will have some additional thoughts relating to this when I complete my own review of The Upper Works.

Another Old School Tradition

I know it's not fashionable to discuss such things, but I'd like to take a moment to talk about some of the prejudices I have retained about certain old school games and the gamers who played them. I've mentioned before that I had a double initiation into the hobby in late 1979/early 1980 through my friend Mike's metalhead older brother and the grognards who hung around the hobby shops I frequented. Besides teaching me the rules of D&D -- or at least their interpretation of those rules -- they also taught me a few "truths" about other games and the people who played them.

Some gamers mistakenly think that "edition wars" and "badwrongfun" are somehow unique to these modern times, but I'm here to tell you that's just not the case. Pretty much from the moment I entered the hobby, I learned that, even among gamers, there were "guys like us" and "weirdos." Weirdos were the ones who played games we didn't play and that no one we knew played or, if we did know them, we knew them to be somehow mentally and/or morally deficient and thus exactly the sort of sub-human who'd play "those games."

What were "those games?" As I said, they were any game we didn't play, but three in particular stick out in my mind:

• Chivalry & Sorcery: Playing C&S probably only counted as a venial sin, because most of us back then had succumbed to the temptation to try and make D&D "more realistic" or at least "truer to medieval history," whatever that meant. C&S -- or so we were told, as none of us ever actually played the game -- was a game for real geeks, the kinds of people even my friends and I would shun. They were the pocket protector and taped-up glasses crowd, as opposed to the "normal" guys we all perceived ourselves to be. Thanks to one of my readers, Richard, I've finally got my hands on a copy of C&S and will be reading it with great enthusiasm. My first impression, based only on a cursory scan of it, is that my old prejudice, while perhaps overly judgmental, wasn't that far off. C&S does appear to be too complicated by half, but then I didn't expect anything less from the company that brought us Space Opera.
• RuneQuest: Even my friend's metalhead brother thought RQ was too trippy. What I remember most were his rants about how it had anthropomorphic ducks -- "How can you take that seriously?" he would ask -- and that "everyone can use magic." I never actually played the game for any length of time myself until the star-crossed days when Avalon Hill published its third edition, but I remember reading about it in White Dwarf, which seemed obsessed with it. RQ gamers were generally considered "hippies" who had "done too many drugs" and so we didn't have anything to do with them. When I finally did play the game for myself, I found it hard to fathom what all the fuss was about back in those early days.
• Tunnels & Trolls: T&T was the game for guys who "couldn't hack D&D." It was widely considered a "joke game" and even more ludicrous than ones with duck men in it. I did get a chance to play T&T at the time and I'll admit that I hated it. Even now, I still bristle at the spell names and the tongue in cheek way a lot of it is presented. I have a greater appreciation fo some of its rules and presentation, but it's definitely not a game for me. I'm not sure it's a "joke," but it's nevertheless much more "jokey" than I like my RPGs to be.

It's very interesting looking back on those early days and remembering that there were cliques and camps and sects even back then. That seems to be the nature of fandoms of all sorts, particularly large and popular ones. In those bygone days, when roleplaying was a fad, pretty much everyone I knew gamed and the bulk of us all played D&D (or Traveller), so those who didn't do so were quickly branded as oddballs.

There's a rich irony there, given that gaming, even in its heyday, was never cool or treated with the same respect as being a good athlete or good student was (it's worth noting too that not every gamer I knew was a genius; many of them were downright dim academically). But dividing our fellow gamers up and putting them into categories we could exclude just seemed to be the natural thing to do. It's something that's unfortunately stuck with me all these years and, though I try to fight against it, the old prejudices do bubble up to the surface from time to time.

Now, I'm not advocating the notion that games, being mere entertainments, automatically defy meaningful criticism or that we ought to like them all without qualification, out of misplaced solidarity -- the "we're all gamers here" syndrome. As I stated above, I still think Tunnels & Trolls is more than a little silly and thus not worth my time and could argue at some length in defense of my opinion. That's not the same thing as saying that everyone ought to feel the same way about it or any other game. What I do advocate is reasoned discussion about the relative merits of many games, because I think such is possible. It's also the reason why I don't bow to the notion that "old school" is a phrase empty of meaning. Simply because there is disagreement about its meaning doesn't prove that it has no meaning. To my mind, it only proves that we need to discuss the phrase more in order to refine its meaning, but then that's my way with most things.

In any case, reflecting on my past prejudices is a valuable exercise and highlights some of my blind spots and misapprehensions. Not every negative opinion I have of certain games is based purely on prejudice, but some of them are and I'm working on overcoming those that are. I can't make any promise that I'll succeed in my efforts, but do know that I am working hard at it, which is really all I can do.

Dwimmermount Takes Shape

The first session of Dwimmermount is scheduled for this Sunday and the PCs are starting to take shape. So far we have a cleric of Tyche, a gravedigger turned fighting-man -- he uses a pick axe as his weapon, naturally -- a dwarf, and an elf. It's a little more demihuman-heavy than I'd originally expected, but I'm willing to roll with the punches on this one. At this stage, the likelihood that any one of these characters will live to second level, let alone higher, is slim, so I'll worry about the long-term implications of so many non-humans later, if it should become an issue.

On the subject of elves, like all OD&D referees, I need to decide how to handle them. Swords & Wizardry takes a middle road, noting that elves "may choose, on any given day (perhaps when the moon rises) whether to use the capabilities of a magic-user, or of a fighting-man. As a result, the adventurer has two alternate class to-hit bonuses and saving throws, depending upon whether he donned steel that day or summoned up the power to cast spells." While this lends a quirky, fey quality to elves -- and that's a good thing! -- I prefer a different approach: Elves are multi-class characters and before each session, the player of an elf must decide whether he is acting primarily as a fighter or as a magic-user. Which che chooses governs his "to hit" rolls and saves and all experience earned goes toward that class. Regardless, an elf may use any weapon and may cast spells provided he's not wearing non-magical armor.

More on Dwimmermount later.

REVIEW: Forn Sidthr: The Old Custom

Forn Sidthr: The Old Custom is a 13-page PDF released by James Mishler's Adventure Games Publishing and selling for $3.00. Describing the worship of the Aesir (and Vanir) gods, this product is the first in the "Faiths of the City State" series for use with AGP's Wilderlands of High Adventure setting, but it's generic enough that it'd be useful in any setting that includes the Norse pantheon. Likewise, though Forn Sidthr written with Castles & Crusades in mind, makes no specific references to C&C's game mechanics, thereby making it easy to use with any fantasy RPG, old school or otherwise.

The product begins with a one-page overview of the religious life of the City State of the Invincible Overlord. The overview gives a good sense of the riotous polytheism of the City State and, by implication, the Wilderlands as a whole by introducing five ranks to measure one's devotion to a particular faith: irregular, regular, semi-exclusive, initiate, and priest. What's nice about these ranks is that, in addition to providing context for the setting, they also include practical guidelines about what level of religious devotion qualifies one for each. It's a small thing, admittedly, but I appreciated it, since, as we'll see shortly, there are consequences to whether one is devout or lax in his observances.

Five pages are devoted to Old Custom itself, with information on the religion's history, deities, symbols, hierarchy, and so forth. There's also a section detailing the Forn Sidthr's beliefs and dogma. Again, this information is presented very practically, with eye toward how it can be used in play. This is not an abstract flight of fancy into fantastical theology but rather a brief but specific discussion of how adherents to the Old Custom behave -- or are expected to, at any rate -- and what this means. I also appreciated the way that these five pages gave a sense of the Forn Sidthr as being a unified pantheon with a proper "church." All too often, fantasy games have no notion of ritual, hierarchy, or doctrine, treating religion as individualistic and atomized, with no regard for how its various pieces fit together. Forn Sidthr nicely avoids that error, but without committing the concomitant error of getting bogged down in pointless detail.

The last six pages of the PDF are devoted to a discussion of the afterlife and the disposition of the soul of a follower of the Old Custom. In it, we're introduced to a new system that tracks the virtues and sins of members of the faith, so that the referee can keep a running tallying that determines the fate of a character's soul after death. The section catalogs the major and minor acts that earn one approbation or condemnation in the eyes of the Aesir and gives a table that enables the referee to see what happens to your character should he die at any given point. Depending on his faithfulness, he could be rewarded with a seat at Odin's table in Valhalla or cursed to wander the earth as an undead draugr -- or anything in between. The table also shows how effective raise dead and similar spells will be on a character whose soul is in each category, which I found to be an excellent bit of forethought on Mishler's part.

I can find almost nothing to dislike in Forn Sidthr: The Old Custom, except perhaps its somewhat pedestrian three-column layout, but that's a small quibble, because, boring though it may be, the layout is nevertheless easy on the eyes and free from errors. This is an excellent product and a good example I think of how much Mishler has learned since he began publishing his Wilderlands products. Earlier products tended to be a bit too "heavy" on minutiae for my liking, whereas his more recent endeavors have been eminently "practical" in their approach. They don't skimp on details by any means, but the details are carefully chosen for maximum utility. That is, they're useful in play and not just as bits of trivia that gamers can swap while talking about playing rather than actually doing so. For me, this quality is exactly what old school gaming products should possess and Mishler has shown he understands it well. I continue to be very impressed with AGP's PDFs and look forward to future releases with great anticipation.

Final Score: 5 out of 5 polearms

Retrospective: Dungeonland

When you insert this module into your campaign, do so without alerting the players. That is, they will not see a white rabbit and a rabbit hole anywhere, nor will they discover a looking glass to pass through. I have tried these methods, and they put players on guard immediately. Conceal this module within the body of your game material. At a convenient point—for you, not for the party—have them fall into a pit or have a passageway suddenly become a perpendicular shaft. Then have them descend, ever so slowly, into the “front door” of Dungeonland.

Published in 1983, Dungeonland, like so many of the modules written by Gary Gygax in the last few years of his time at TSR, is a throwback, an atavism, a reminder of the early days of the hobby. I'm not sure one can necessarily draw any conclusions about Gary's opinions on the state of the game he helped created almost a decade earlier, but I think it's interesting to note that, just as the Hickman Revolution was building up a head of steam, the Dungeon Master was producing not one but several modules that ran counter to the adventure design principles in vogue at the time.

Dungeonland -- an obvious pun on "Wonderland" -- sits on the faultlines of a couple bugaboos of gaming and, like many similar modules, one's reaction to it is a good indication of how in tune one is with the pulse of the early hobby. First and foremost, module EX1 is a classic "funhouse" module. It has no rhyme or reason; there is no grand explanation for how or why Dungeonland exists, except that Gary Gygax felt, as have many other old school referees, that Lewis Carroll's imaginary world serves as a great inspiration for a whimsical, if deadly, adventure. Second, Dungeonland is clearly meant to challenge the player, not his character. Throughout the module, there are many places where the standard rules of D&D don't apply, leaving the characters without recourse to their usual bag of tricks. The only way to overcome such circumstances is for the player to be clever, using his wits and his knowledge of Carroll's tales to assist him. It's an adventure that actually invites players to engage in the heinous sin of "meta-gaming," because, many times, it's the best chance one's character has of surviving. In short, Dungeonland is a module that mocks "immersion" and adds a much-needed layer of nuance to one's understanding of what naturalism is and is not.

I've noted before that I have never been a huge fan of funhouse dungeons, but I've always liked Dungeonland (and its sequel, The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror). Perhaps it's because, as a child, I found the stories of Alice's adventures simultaneously awesome and terrifying. Wonderland truly is a wonder -- an alien landscape following its own bizarre "rules" and shot through with a darkness that, even as a kid, I found strangely compelling, even as I was horrified by it. I don't have to imagine why Gary Gygax found the idea of throwing his players into a D&D-ified version of the same to be such a grand jest. Likewise, fan of the Harold Shea stories that he was, I imagine it seemed perfectly reasonable to him that there existed a dimension parallel to Greyhawk that was based on a twisted version of Lewis Carroll's creations. Couple that with the opportunity to engage in painful punnery and gallow's humor and suddenly the whole venture seems to have been tailor-made for Gary's unique talents.

I have a hard time imagining a module like Dungeonland being written today, at least outside the old school movement. Indeed, even within the old school community, there are probably lots of people who would look askance at it. EX1 is a concatenation of opposites: at once light-hearted and deadly, literary and low-brow, and, above all, supremely challenging. Run in the spirit in which it was written, players will be hard pressed to come out of this adventure with their characters intact. An adventure like this was already a museum piece in 1983, at the close of the Golden Age. How much more of a curiosity would it be regarded 25 years later? There is no story to Dungeonland -- except the story of a book most gamers have probably never read -- and no attempt to provide anything more than a dangeous romp that players can, if they succeed, take pride in having beaten. I can still tell you many stories of my own players' adventures in Dungeonland, right down to how some of their characters died, which is a pretty good indication of how memorable Dungeonland is. How many modules published in its wake, no matter how finely crafted, can say the same?