The Ads of Dragons: Broadsides & Boarding Parties

Though I was never much of a real wargamer, I did enjoy simulation games of various sorts -- "light" wargames intended for a mass audience, like the one advertised in issue #91 (November 1984):

Broadsides & Boarding Parties was one of several games released by Milton Bradley as part of their "Gamemaster Series," which featured simple, wargame-like games that had some really high production values. My personal favorite was not the one pictured here but the Roman era game called Conquest of the Empire. Conquest had some issues in terms of gameplay, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless. And of course Axis & Allies was -- and is -- a classic game that's still available today. It's just a pity that it takes nearly as long to set it up as it does to play it ...

American Gothic

Reader Ronald Copley pointed me toward an old post over at Yog-Sothoth, where you can download a PDF copy of the original manuscript pages of the RPG, American Gothic, typed up by Steve Marsh. American Gothic is of interest, because it is, in the words of Sandy Petersen, "the alpha version" of Call of Cthulhu, one of the classics of our hobby.

According to Sandy Petersen:

Steve is an old friend of mine, and he did in fact help germinate the American Gothic idea (the name was his idea, for instance). Another pal of mine, Marc Hutchison, was involved from the start. Steve wrote up a treatment basing it largely on D&D...

The PDF document, which you can download here, is short but fascinating, particularly since it was written in May 1977 and uses OD&D/Chainmail terminology in places (such as the fighting capability of the "Mycenean Thought Crafters" class). Reading through it, you can see a number of things that call to mind the lost version of psionics that Steve Marsh created that was later reworked for inclusion into Eldritch Wizardry. It's well worth taking a look at this if you have any interest in the development of the games and ideas of the hobby.

Open Friday: Megadungeon Formats

To date, not a lot of true megadungeons -- as opposed to just really big dungeons -- have been published. I'm starting to wonder if the reason for that is that it's difficult to present a megadungeon in a format that's both comprehensive enough to do justice to such a campaign tent pole and yet easy to use in play. Then there's the additional factor of how much detail a megadungeon product needs to be usable and whether too much detail undercuts the very essence of a megadungeon.

So, today's question is this: assuming you're interested in megadungeons -- if you're not, please don't use the comments section to express your disinterest -- what would be your preferred format? Feel free and assume that there are no limits and go with what you would consider to be the ideal format for presenting a true old school megadungeon.

I'll admit I'm very curious to hear what people have to say, since it's a topic I've thought about myself at some length and that I'll share in an upcoming post.

What Happened?

My post earlier today about the Elmore D&D poster available through Sears in 1984 reminded again of the fact that, once upon a time, you could buy RPGs through major department stores. And by "RPGs," I don't just mean D&D but even some obscure games like FGU's Space Opera. I often find myself wishing I had easy access to old Christmas catalogs from places like Sears, JC Penny, and Montgomery Ward, because it'd be a lot of fun going through them to plot just what was available in their pages and when. So, I'm left with looking at sites like this one, which includes scans of some catalogs from the past, including the late 70s and early 80s.

Anyway, what I noticed today is that the 1983 Sears catalog has a fairly extensive collection of RPG products in it, while the 1985 catalog seems to have none. The site has no scans of the 1984 catalog, which I presume must have at some RPG products, given the ad from Dragon for the poster. What happened? 1984 marked the return of Gary Gygax to Wisconsin after his "exile" in California, when he attempted to wrest control of the company away from the Blume brothers. Despite appearances to the contrary, with lots of high profile products, like Dragonlance and various licensed properties (Marvel Superheroes, Indiana Jones, etc.), TSR was in turmoil throughout 1984 and into 1985, as Gygax, the Blumes, and, eventually, Lorraine Williams fought to determine the fate of the company. By the end of 1985, Gary was gone.

The Gygax version of history would have it that TSR was in financial trouble solely because of mismanagement by the Blumes. I have no reason to doubt that the Blumes made a number of mistakes that cost company dearly, but I can't help but wonder now, in light of the admittedly circumstantial evidence provide by the Sears catalogs, if maybe it wasn't solely bad decisions by the Blumes that hobbled TSR. Perhaps it was more that those bad decisions came at a time when the bottom had begun to fall out of the RPG fad. Whereas a couple of years previously, licensing a D&D woodburning set might not have had dire consequences, similar kinds of bizarre decisions now would. So, while I don't wish to exonerate the Blumes on very flimsy evidence, I nevertheless wonder if the overall decline in the faddishness of RPGs played an unacknowledged role in the decline in TSR's fortunes.

Anyone out there have any insights into this, particularly ones that, unlike mine, might be based on something more than the merest of speculation?

Stars Without Number, the Mongoose Edition

As some of you are no doubt aware, Kevin Crawford's terrific old school SF RPG, Stars Without Number (which I reviewed early this year), is about to be released in a new edition through Mongoose Publishing. Thanks to the kindness of reader Brian Blakely, who snagged me a copy at GenCon, I was able to get a look at it before it started turning up in most game shops on this side of the Atlantic.

The new edition is a hardcover, just like the one currently available through RPGNow and Drivethrurpg, using the exact same layout. The main differences appear to be a new cover (that I frankly don't like as much as the original), some typo fixes, and the inclusion of two new chapters comprising about 40 pages of material. These chapters cover rules for robots, including robot PCs, mechs, and the creation of planetary societies. None of this information is essential, but, as with nearly everything Crawford has produced to date, it's excellent and, if you're a player -- or even just an admirer -- of Stars Without Number, you'll want to get a copy of the new edition, especially since this new material is not available anywhere else (though Crawford has hinted it might appear in future products for the game).

The Ads of Dragon: D&D Poster

If you ever need a concrete reminder that the days of Dungeons & Dragons as a mainstream pop cultural phenomenon are long past, you need only look at this advertisement from issue #90 (October 1984) of Dragon:

Back in 1984, you could buy a D&D poster, featuring art by Larry Elmore, from Sears stores or from the Sears Christmas catalog. When was the last time that you saw a D&D poster at all, let alone available through a major department store chain? It's little things like this that remind us how big a fad D&D was once upon a time.

Lovecraftian Pedantry

In a letter to the amateur writer Duane W. Rimel, dated July 23, 1934, H.P. Lovecraft addresses the issue of how to pronounce the name "Cthulhu."

The name of the hellish entity was invented by beings whose vocal organs were not like man's, hence it has no relation to the human speech equipment. The syllables were determined by a physiological equipment wholly unlike ours, hence could never be uttered perfectly by human throats ... The actual sound -- as nearly as any human organs could imitate it or human letters record it -- may be taken as something like Khlûl'-hloo, with the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The u is about like that in full; and the first syllable is not unlike klul in sound, hence the h represents the guttural thickness.

Chaosium thus has a lot to answer for on this score, as a great many people now believe, thanks to their RPG, that the name is correctly pronounced "Ka-thul-hoo" or some variation thereof. Maybe that's close enough for government work, I don't know, but S.T. Joshi records that Donald Wandrei once pronounced the name as Chaosium does in HPL's presence "and received nothing but a blank stare in return." Personally, I think mispronouncing Cthulhu is more forgivable than mispronouncing Conan or Tarzan, given Lovecraft's own statement that the name was never meant to be spoken by human tongues, but it's a mistake nonetheless.

In Praise of Geomorphs -- and Dave's Mapper

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it here before, but, in case I haven't, let me say now that I absolutely adore Dave's Mapper. Look at this terrific dungeon level I created from several of the geomorph sets available through the site:

I like dungeon geomorphs. In fact, I think they're a nigh-essential tool in running a megadungeon-centered campaign. Like all such tools, they're no substitute for individual creativity or hard work, but they definitely have their place. Goodness knows I wish Dave's Mapper had been online when I started my Dwimmermount campaign two years ago; it certainly would have made my life easier at times.

Retrospective: Monster Manual II

The Monster Manual II is the first AD&D hardcover volume that I waited in great anticipation for. Though both Deities & Demigods and the Fiend Folio were released after I entered the hobby, I wasn't yet sufficiently aware of things like TSR's publication schedule to take notice of their imminent arrival. By 1983, when the Monster Manual II was released, though, I'd been a subscriber of Dragon for some time and paid close attention to Gary Gygax's columns, where he'd talk about upcoming releases for my favorite game. So, when the time came, I was phoning every hobby and book store in Baltimore County to find one that held a copy of this long awaited volume.

Why long awaited? In retrospect, it seems silly to admit this, but the fact that the Monster Manual II carried Gary Gygax's byline meant a lot to me back then. For me, he was the final authority on all things D&D and if he was putting out a new book of monsters -- or anything else really -- then of course I had to own it. There was also the fact that I've always had decidedly mixed feelings about the Fiend Folio. There are some excellent monsters in its pages, some of D&D's best, but there's also a lot of dross in there as well, some of it embarrassingly bad. So, the prospect of a new book of monsters wholly from the pen of EGG was utterly enthralling to me.

As it turned out, not all of the book's monsters were the work of Gary Gygax. At least some of them were created by Frank Mentzer and the (in)famous modrons were the work (at least in part) of Jeff Grubb, who's credited as a "design consultant" for the book. At the time, I didn't know any of this and I'm not sure I'd have believed it, since so much of the content of the Monster Manual II had previously appeared under Gary's byline, whether in the pages of his "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column or in modules like The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. Consequently, I attributed to this book a degree of authority I didn't to books like the Fiend Folio or the DDG.

It helped, too, that I actually liked a great many of the monsters included in the Monster Manual II. I was especially fond of the expanded treatment of Outer Planar creatures -- demons, devils, daemons, demodands, devas, planetars, solars, and, yes, modrons. All of these creatures expanded the scope of what a Dungeons & Dragons adventure could be about. These weren't (generally) the kinds of creatures you'd encounter in some underground labyrinth guarding some treasure. No, these were the kinds of creatures around which whole scenarios -- indeed, mini-campaigns -- could be constructed. They were epic and I loved them for that quality.

It's funny how distance makes things apparent that weren't at the time. In the case of the Monster Manual II, what I see now is that Gary Gygax, who'd been playing the game in one form or another for over a decade, was looking to move the game beyond the dungeon and even the wilderness and out into the Planes. So many of the monsters in this book were extraplanar in origin and geared toward higher-level play that I can't help but think that Gary had moved on and wanted something more, or at least something different, out of the game he co-created.

Many people who read his later game, Mythus, are perplexed by what they see as a "change" in Gygax's conception, as if it were wholly unprecedented. I don't think that's the case at all, especially if you look at books like the Monster Manual II and Unearthed Arcana, two volumes that frequently get taken to task by AD&D aficionados for their deviations from earlier Gygaxian works. I think the critics are right to note that these later works are quite different in content and tone from earlier ones, but I'm starting to feel that their deviations were organic ones, at least from Gygax's perspective. The represent a genuine shift in his own perspective and approach to AD&D. Taken in that light, I think they make a great deal more sense, regardless of whether one ultimately has any use for them or not.

A Wasted Opportunity

I've finally had the chance to see the new Conan the Barbarian movie in the theater. I caught a matinee yesterday, more out of a sense of duty than any real desire to see it for itself, since I had every reason to believe I wouldn't enjoy it. That makes writing a review of the film very difficult for me, since nothing less than a full recantation of my earlier doubts about it will appear objective, while any confirmation of them will simply prove that I did not view it with an open mind. I have no one to blame for this state of affairs but myself, so I don't begrudge anyone who summarily discounts what follows. Nevertheless, I did give the movie a fair shake, perhaps fairer than I might have had I not read so many reviews and commentaries beforehand, because I went into it with such low expectations that it would have been hard for the movie to have disappointed me any more than it already had.

On that front, I can say without hesitation that Conan the Barbarian is not as bad as I had expected. If I had to pick a single word to describe it, though, it would almost certainly be "mediocre." I knew going into it that I was not going to be getting Robert E. Howard's Conan, but I held out hope, particularly in light of some of the reviews that I'd read, that I might still be getting a solid sword-and-sorcery film whose protagonist just happened to share a name with a certain famous Cimmerian. Unfortunately, that's not what I got. What I saw today was, frankly, a mess and not of the glorious kind.

As a movie, Conan the Barbarian is all over the place, with only occasional flashes of cleverness, never mind brilliance. It felt as if it had been hastily -- or at least confusedly -- put together without any overarching vision of what it supposed to be. Was this an attempt to bring a more Howardian version of Conan to the screen, a remake (or "re-imagining") of the 1982 Milius version, a live-action version of a filler story from the latter days of Savage Sword of Conan, or just a B-movie sword-and-sorcery flick? This lack of a clear vision hobbled Conan the Barbarian, making it hard to know how to take the film. You see, I had hoped that, at the bare minimum, this movie would do two things: 1) Sever the connection in the general public's mind between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Conan and 2) Be an enjoyable movie in its own right.

Let's start with the first one. As is well known, I'm not a big fan of the first Schwarzenegger Conan movie (We needn't mention its sequel, since it's just awful). Despite that, I readily concede that the 1982 Conan the Barbarian possesses a certain something that gives it staying power. It's not REH by any means, but neither is it a joke, like so many of the fantasy action movies that followed in its considerable wake. This inexplicable gravitas, combined with a career-making performance by Arnie, has done much to secure its place in people's imaginations, especially those who don't know the real Cimmerian. To succeed, the 2011 film needed to establish itself as more than the ape of its predecessor, which it could have done in innumerable ways, though, to my mind, the simplest would have been to drink deeply from its literary wellspring.

Read almost any review and chances are you're going to see the new movie compared to the Schwarzenegger vehicle. Even when the comparison is a positive one, it only serves to emphasize the long shadow cast by the 1982 motion picture. This is why I find it bizarre that the current release focuses on Conan's quest for revenge against the warlord who slew his father and destroyed his village. Not only is this plot utterly alien to Howard's Conan but it ensures that viewers familiar with the Schwarzenegger version will have it in mind while viewing the new one. There are, of course, plenty of differences between the specifics of the two films' plots, but there are also enough surface similarities that even I, who knew better, found myself thinking of the 2011 film as some kind of remake. However you slice it, that's a failure, both of imagination and of any effort to give this movie its own identity apart from its predecessor.

This brings me to the second question: is Conan the Barbarian enjoyable in its own right? How one answers that question depends, I'd imagine, on the standards by which one measures enjoyment. There were definitely parts of the film I enjoyed. For one, the overall look of the movie wasn't bad and some of the special effects were well done. The same goes for many of the fight scenes, which were (mostly) nicely choreographed, though a few strayed into martial arts movie-inspired nonsense I do not want to see in a Conan film. The cast was solid, too, starting with Jason Momoa, who both looked the part and brought an appropriate intensity to most of his scenes. No one appeared to be sleepwalking through the film, which is more than could be said of me by the end of watching it. The script was mostly awful, laden with clichés and vapidity and largely lacking in the visceral power of Howard's best work. The plot, as I mentioned, is clearly inspired by that of the 1982 movie and does little to distinguish itself, other than the addition of comic book violence. Its characters, including Conan, sadly, are similarly two-dimensional, showing even less depth and development than the Milius version. In short, I was more bored by Conan the Barbarian than outraged.

That's the crux of it for me. Conan the Barbarian 2011 is just not a very interesting movie. The Milius film, for all its manifest faults, as both a motion picture and as a cinematic presentation of Robert E. Howard's most famous character, is memorable. Indeed, it's powerful in its own way and can serve as a discussion point amongst fans of both movies and Robert E. Howard. Its successor, though, is, at best, a way to blow two hours and then move on. It's a very forgettable movie and certainly not one that left me hungering for more. If it weren't for the fact that it laid claim to REH's legacy, it would be largely indistinguishable from any number of fantasy films that have come and gone and were never thought of again.  I doubt very much that, in 30 years time, many people will look back on this movie with great fondness.

I think that's a shame, because I remain convinced that Conan is a character who could do well on the silver screen. As conceived by Howard, he's eminently suitable to a series of episodic movies, each one presenting one of his adventures, even as the series advances the larger story of his life, culminating in his claiming of the throne of Aquilonia. To do that, though, Hollywood needs to do more than pay the briefest of lip service to Howard's conception of the character. Even assuming for a moment that a straight adaptation of any of Howard's stories were impractical -- something I don't believe -- why can't we at least move beyond the silly revenge quest origin story and get something different? And, while we're at it, is it too much to ask for stories whose plots actually make sense? I'm not looking for Tolstoy here. Heck, I'm almost to the point where I'm not looking for Howard anymore, but, surely, someone in Hollywood can find a way to tell an engaging, coherent story featuring Conan.

I almost feel bad for this review, because, truth be told, Conan the Barbarian 2011 isn't a terrible film so much as an example of bland, lowest common denominator entertainment, mostly devoid of anything that distinguishes it from dozens of other paint-by-numbers action films churned out each year. For some, that's probably enough and that's great; for me, though, it isn't. I kept hoping against hope that this movie might prove to be more than that, something that might kick off a series of movies about Conan, but, after the disaster this is proving to be at the box office, that seems increasingly unlikely. Indeed, it may have poisoned the well against any future Robert E. Howard-based movies for a long time to come and I am much more disappointed by that than I am by this halfhearted, forgettable movie.