The Articles of Dragon: Ares

I'm going to cheat for today's installment of this series. Rather than focusing on a single article from issue #84 of Dragon (April 1984), I'm instead going to talk about Ares, the magazine's new science fiction gaming section. First, a bit of background. Between 1980 and 1982, SPI published a gaming magazine entitled Ares. The magazine included a complete game in every issue (as was once typical of wargaming magazines), along with articles and reviews. Though not limited to sci-fi by any means, Ares did have a slightly science fictional bent to its content. There were eleven issues of Ares before TSR acquired SPI in 1982, followed by five more issues after the acquisition. The last stand-alone issue of Ares was published in "Winter 1983." TSR never really knew what to do with SPI's properties and wound up frittering them away over the course of the next few years, in the process alienating the company's considerable fanbase, many of whom (quite rightly) felt that TSR had handled the situation very badly. Though TSR tried to make some use of SPI's name and products, only the Ares name survived for long -- and even then, "long" is a relative term.

From issue #84 to issue #111 (July 1986), Ares was one of my favorite sections of Dragon, since I've always been more of a SF fan than a fantasy one. The section featured articles on games like Traveller and Star Trek and Space Opera, as well as Gamma World, Star Frontiers, and a host of superhero games, especially Marvel Super Heroes. Because sci-fi has always played second (or third) banana to fantasy, you'd have expected that the pool of articles would have been pretty shallow in Ares but that wasn't the case. In my opinion, the quality of the articles in this section was consistently high, higher even than that of the rest of Dragon (which is saying something). However, its appeal was definitely more limited, which is why I suspect it was eventually killed. Why devote some many pages of each issue to genres that are also-rans compared to fantasy, especially D&D's brand of fantasy?

To this day, though, when I look back on the years when I subscribed to Dragon, the Ares articles are among those that stick out most prominently in my mind. Its coverage of Gamma World, for example, was truly excellent and I used a number of its Traveller rules variants over the years. And of course Jeff Grubb's regular "The Marvel-Phile" column was invaluable if you were running a Marvel Super Heroes campaign (or even if you weren't and were just a fan of the comics). I've always thought it a pity that a non-fantasy-centric gaming mag never really gained any degree of prominence. GDW's Challenge, where my first published writings appeared, was a decent stab at such a thing, but it eventually folded, too, much to my disappointment. Like Ares, Challenge filled a hole in the hobby that needed filling. In my opinion, it still does.

Old Hobbit Cartoon

No, not the Rankin-Bass version -- the Gene Deitch version from the 1950s. Apparently, the video below is a test for a proposed full-length version of The Hobbit. The video's been making the rounds at a number of sites, so my apologies if you've seen it before. I hadn't and I honestly can say that, after having watched it, I find myself with newfound respect for the fidelity of the Peter Jackson movies. Seriously, "taking liberties with the text" is too kind a way to describe what this cartoon does.

If you've got 12 minutes to spare and a strong stomach, take a look:

Rebound

I don't have any deep insights into the upcoming new edition of Dungeons & Dragons or why Wizards of the Coast is going ahead with it. Truth be told, I don't care all that much about D&D any more, insofar as "D&D" means whatever game is currently available on store shelves and carries that name. I was a very enthusiastic player and referee of D&D III for about six years before I had enough and got off that particular merry-go-round. I flirted briefly with Castles & Crusades before diving into OD&D, which eventually led me to the crazy world of the old school renaissance and the retro-clones. By and large, I'm happy here and have been since 2007, before WotC announced the previous new edition of D&D.

But I think a lot of the gamers who decided to take a walk on the old school side of things did so out of frustration with D&D IV. They were disappointed in and angry with WotC, a company that, for many gamers, "saved" D&D back in 2000. They felt betrayed and, in feeling that, they looked for someplace, anyplace with which to align themselves. The bulk of them went to Paizo, I expect, and with good reason. Paizo not only makes great products; those products used a rules set very similar to D&D III. Indeed, Pathfinder's whole raison d'être is backward compatibility with the previous iteration of D&D, preserved for all time thanks to the SRD and OGL. 

A few of those disaffected gamers, though, sought out the old school renaissance and picked up games like OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry and Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Suddenly, "old school" was a buzzword to be found on many a gaming forum and blog. While there's no question that the ranks of our little community remained small, they did swell in size. Moreover, old school gaming punched way above its weight class when it came to influence over the hobby, with lots of designers, including those at WotC, suddenly touting their old school credentials and expressing admiration for the designs of yore. In 2008, it was "this ain't your father's D&D," but, by 2011, it was suddenly cool to be old school. In short, "old school" had become a fad (much like gaming itself).

Which brings us to 2012 and WotC's announcement of a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Unlike the 4e roll-out, which was condescending and tone deaf, this time around WotC is saying all the right things. They're talking about "uniting" fans of every edition and going back to the "core" elements of D&D. I'm glad to hear that, if only because it means they've learned from their mistakes. What's more interesting, though, is the reaction in our little corner of the Net. From what I have seen, a lot of old school gamers have expressed enthusiasm and even hope that WotC will "get it right" this time. I have to admit I've been taken aback by this love-in -- not because I want a repeat of the acrimony that greeted D&D IV, but because I'm surprised that, after all this time, old school fans give a damn about "D&D." But they do.

That's the truth of it. For a lot of gamers, OSRIC or Labyrinth Lord or Swords & Wizardry will never be D&D. They'll play it, sure; they'll even have fun doing so. In their heart of hearts, however, saying "I'm playing Swords & Wizardry" will never make them as happy as saying "I'm playing Dungeons & Dragons." I understand this mentality very well, because it's one I've shared at various times (mostly about Traveller). There's something about "D&D" that cannot be replaced. The ardor for that game, which was, let's face it, likely the first most of us ever played, is intense and not easily forgotten. There's thus an emotional attachment to D&D that there isn't for any of the retro-clones, no matter how much more true any of them are to the intent and spirit of the original games.

So, there are some interesting times ahead. If WotC does their job right -- doesn't alienate anyone by their marketing, produces a game that truly draws on the best of the past, etc. -- I suspect we'll see the old school community contract once more. As I said, I suspect a goodly portion of the gamers who've latched on to this particular bandwagon did so out of frustration and anger, but they weren't really ready to give up their true love for a simulacrum, no matter how good a simulacrum it is. Now that WotC is saying the right things and even obliquely admitting to their errors, all will be forgiven. That's not to say that there aren't potential speed bumps on the road ahead, but my gut tells me that a great many disaffected D&D players, many old schoolers chief among them, are ready to love again.

Me, I'm just a bitter old prune.

Retrospective: Lost Worlds

When I look back on the history of the hobby, it's hard not to feel that it came to be and flourished during an Indian Summer. For those of you unfamiliar with this American term, it refers to a period of abnormally high temperatures after the first frost -- generally occurring sometime between late September and early November. During an Indian Summer, the expected cold weather is abated for a time and, for all intents and purposes, it feels not like Fall but like Summer has returned. Of course, the leaves are still turning colors and falling and there's a strange haziness in the air at times, so you know, deep down, that this isn't truly Summer returned at all but something else entirely. Indian Summers are brief, too, lasting no more than a month, often much less, but, when they do come, you're grateful for them nonetheless.

When I remember things like Alfred Leonardi's Lost World game books, first published by Nova Game Designs in 1983, I'm reminded of Indian Summers. Lost Worlds was descended from an earlier game, Ace of Aces (also by Leonardi) and published a few years earlier. Ace of Aces was a wargame about aerial combat during World War I. What made the game so memorable was that it included a couple of flip books filled with illustrations depicting what the pilot of a fighter plane saw as he was dogfighting. Each player flipped back and forth based on the maneuvers of his opponent and the books helped to adjudicate combat. It was really a brilliant little game and I wish I owned a copy.

Lost Worlds applied the same basic design to fantasy combat. Each book included a single opponent, so two books were needed to play. The ones I remember most vividly were "Man in Chainmail with Sword and Shield" and "Skeleton with Scimitar and Shield," since these were the ones Nova Game Design included in their advertisements most often. There were other entries in the series, though, including "Giant Goblin with Mace and Shield," "Woman in Scale with Sword and Shield," and "Dwarf in Chainmail with Two-Handed Ax." Over time, many, many were added to the line, often by later publishers. As I understand it, Lost Worlds has been through an extremely large number of publishers over the years and, while largely compatible, each new publisher added wrinkles to the original system that make books by earlier publishers less usable than one might wish.

The reason Lost Worlds reminds me of Indian Summer is that I have a hard time imagining books like this being written, let alone selling well, in an age of cheap and reliable computer games. Back in 1983, video games existed, certainly, but they were primitive and expensive and most people into fantasy gaming I knew scoffed at the notion of playing them as anything other curiosities. At the very least, no one seriously felt that computer gaming was the mass market future of the hobby. For us, there was nothing at all odd about sitting down with a couple of books and calling out page numbers to one another as we simulated a combat between a dwarf and a goblin. Flipping back and forth to look at illustrations and making our decisions based on what we saw was the most natural thing in the world back then. Nowadays? I don't know.

Regardless, for their time, Lost Worlds were pretty impressive products. They gave some of us a sense that combat could be more than rolling dice and tallying the results. More importantly, they reminded us of how important visualizing combat can be. Unfortunately, in doing so, I fear that they may have also readied a lot of gamers for the notion that aids to visualization are essential to the hobby, a road that would eventually lead to its increasing ghettoization as the preserve of old weirdos like me. As a friend of mine once said, "Why would I play D&D when [video game X] has better graphics than my imagination?" He regrets that comment now, of course, and rightly so, but I suspect a lot of gamers think similarly, at least some of the time.

The Articles of Dragon: "How to Finish Fights Faster"

Along with falling damage, psionics, and alignment, articles about unarmed combat were a commonplace in the pages of Dragon during the years when I subscribed to that venerable gaming magazine. There's probably a reason for that: unarmed combat in AD&D was, in my experience, pretty much universally admitted to be unusable as written, a fact even Gary Gygax acknowledged on more than one occasion. Despite that, no single alternative system ever really took root, with most referees employing a welter of different approaches, some based on the official system, some based on earlier articles from Dragon, and some created whole cloth. That's what playing D&D was like during my formative years in the hobby -- a crazy mix of stuff all drawing inspiration from the same base and then running off in whatever direction one deemed most fun. Consequently, I can't help but chuckle at all the folks decrying the existence of "so many retro-clones," since, to my way of thinking, what we have now is pretty much what we've always had. The only difference is that, nowadays, it's easy to print up, prettify, and sell your interpretation of D&D to others, whereas, in the past, each referee had a photocopies and stapled collection of house rules he shared with anyone willing to listen.

Perhaps because no single alternative to AD&D's execrable rules emerged, it was inevitable that the redoubtable Roger E. Moore would eventually offer his own unarmed combat system. His article, "How to Finish Fights Faster," appeared in issue #83 (March 1984) and takes up only four pages, one of them being a humorous illustration of four rotund halflings attempting to bring down an eyepatch-wearing humanoid, who looks more annoyed than inconvenienced by his diminutive opponents. Moore divides unarmed combat up into three modes: pummeling, kicking, and grappling. Pummeling is straight up fisticuffs, with or without the use of aids, like dagger pommels or metal gauntlets. Kicking is, well, kicking and grappling is attacking to subdue. All three modes are fairly simple to use, working more or less like the normal AD&D combat system but with certain modifiers and special cases unique to them. This is particularly true of grappling, which has a number of different moves detailed, each of which has further modifiers and effects.

I never used Moore's system, so I can't comment on how well it plays in practice. I suspect it probably works better than AD&D's official system, but not as well as others. I say that, because it includes a lot of specificity in certain areas (grappling, for example) that necessitates either a good memory or referring to the article to adjudicate. That's not a bad thing in itself; there are lots of rules in D&D that require reference to a rulebook to handle. However, I'll admit that I find it baffling that unarmed combat rules so often wind up being much more complicated than armed combat. Why is it that we can accept that all it takes to adjudicate an armored fighting man's attack against an opponent is a 1D20 roll compared to a chart, followed by a damage roll if successful but we demand saving throws and percentage chances and so forth if he wants to throw a punch or wrestle someone to the ground?

Pulp Fantasy Library: A Voyage to Sfanomoë

In addition to his more well-known tales of Hyperborea, Averoigne, and Zothique, Clark Ashton Smith also wrote a number of short stories set in the last vestige of Atlantis. Known as Poseidonis, Smith wrote only four tales set in this civilization teetering on the brink of (literal) collapse, the second of which, "A Voyage to Sfanomoë," appeared in the July 1931 issue of Weird Tales. I'll admit that neither Poseidonis nor this particular story are among my favorites in Smith's canon. However, I have a fondness for "A Voyage to Sfanomoë" in large part due to its mixing of fantasy and science fiction. That's a common enough element of many pulp fantasies, but it seems particularly appropriate to a story dealing with Atlantis, whose legend, going back to Plato at least, has included the suggestion that the Atlanteans had access to science and technology unlike that of any human civilization before or since.

Favorite of mine or not, "A Voyage to Sfanomoë" nevertheless opens in a typically Smithian fashion:

There are many marvellous tales, untold, unwritten, never to be recorded or remembered, lost beyond all divining and all imagining, that sleep in the double silence of far-recessive time and space. The chronicles of Saturn, the archives of the moon in its prime, the legends of Antillia and Moaria—these are full of an unsurmised or forgotten wonder. And strange are the multitudinous tales withheld by the light-years of Polaris and the Galaxy. But none is stranger, none more marvellous, than the tale of Hotar and Evidon and their voyage to the planet Sfanomoë, from the last isle of foundering Atlantis. Harken, for I alone shall tell the story, who came in a dream to the changeless center where the past and future are always contemporary with the present; and saw the veritable happening thereof; and, waking, gave it words:

Hotar and Evidon were brothers in science as well as by consanguinity. They were the last representatives of a long line of illustrious inventors and investigators, all of whom had contributed more or less to the knowledge, wisdom, and scientific resources of a lofty civilization matured through cycles. One by one they and their fellow-savants had learned the arcanic secrets of geology, of chemistry, of biology, of astronomy; they had subverted the elements, had constrained the sea, the sun, the air, and the force of gravitation, compelling them to serve the uses of man; and lastly they had found a way to release the typhonic power of the atom, to destroy, transmute, and reconstruct the molecules of matter at will.

However, by that irony which attends all the triumphs and achievements of man, the progress of this mastering of natural law was coincidental with the profound geologic changes and upheavals which caused the gradual sinking of Atlantis. Age by age, aeon by aeon, the process had gone on: huge peninsulas, whole sea-boards, high mountain-ranges, citied plains and plateaus, all went down in turn beneath the diluvial waves. With the advance of science, the time and location of future cataclysms was more accurately predictable; but nothing could be done to avert them.

These three paragraphs set the scene rather nicely, in addition to preparing readers for what is to come. Brothers Hotar and Evidon decide that neither magic nor science can ultimately save Poseidonis and so resolve that, rather than try, they will instead escape it by traveling to another world -- the Sfanomoë of the title. I don't think I'm giving anything away by revealing that, this being a Smith tale, there can be no escaping the inevitability of oblivion, though Hotar and Evidon's efforts to do so possess a charmingly melancholy appeal. Perhaps it speaks to my advancing age that I find stories such as this so attractive to me, I don't know, but I genuinely like "A Voyage to Sfanomoë" and recommend it if only for its science fantasy portrayal of Atlantis (though it holds other appeals as well).

Quelle Surprise

Looks like D&D V is now officially on the way.

I may have some thoughts about this later, but, for the moment, allow me a momentary guffaw at the notion that Humpty Dumpty can ever be put back together again. I don't doubt for a minute WotC's sincerity in wanting to hear what D&D fans have to say about the future of the game, but I also think it's a recipe for disaster, especially given how fragmented the fanbase is these days. But I've been wrong before, so who knows?

Open Friday: Christmas Gaming Gifts

Today is the feast of the Epiphany, marking the end of the Christmas season. I'm still busy and distracted by activities relating to Christmas, as you no doubt have noticed, so I'm going to make this week's Open Friday question a quick and somewhat vapid one: what gaming gifts did you receive for Christmas this year? For myself, I received only boardgames, as I've already discussed, the rest of my gifts having nothing to do with the hobby -- and that's fine by me. I already have way more games than I know what to do with.

The Articles of Dragon: "Living in a Material World"

Issue #81 (January 1984) of Dragon included an article by Michael Dobson (whom I presume is the same Michael Dobson employed by TSR as an editor and writer between 1984 and 1987) entitled "Living in a Material World." As its subtitle makes clear, this article is intended to provide a system for dealing with the various material components spellcasters were expected to carry in order to work their magic. Likewise, Dobson notes that "material spell components add to the romance and realism of magic use, and somewhat restrict the power of spell casters." By my lights, this makes "Living in a Material World" about as paradigmatic an example of a Silver Age Dragon article as almost any I can imagine.

As to the content of the article itself, I can't deny that it's rather well done. Dobson is to be admired for his intestinal fortitude in providing a comprehensive accounting of all of AD&D's material spell components, including their costs, where they might be obtained, and their rarity. He then uses this information to provide the referee with the likelihood that various locales might have the components for which one is searching. There's a base chance, modified by rarity, the size of the locale in which one is searching, and other factors. It's actually a fairly easy system to use if you have the article handy, but one wonders why anyone would bother -- at least I do (and did).

I want to be clear here: I don't begrudge anyone who finds dealing with such minutiae to be fun in their campaigns. Everyone has a slightly different notion of how much detail is "too much" and how much is "not enough." There's no single path to Verisimilitude. And I think, ultimately, that's my biggest beef with articles like this. They're part of a trend that D&D -- and RPGs generally -- adopted in the mid-80s that equated more detail with "better gaming." I don't deny that I've often indulged in more detail when I happened to like the topic in question, but material components have never been one of those topics.

They still aren't.

Twelvety

I've often observed that the surest sign one has "made it" is not the fact that everyone is imitating you but rather that everyone is going out of their way to ostentatiously be different than you. By that standard, J.R.R. Tolkien, the 120th anniversary of whose birth is today, has most assuredly made it. This is somewhat ironic, given that 2012 also marks the year when another cinematic rendition of one of Tolkien's works will appear on movie screens across the world. Yet, if one looks around at the field of fantasy literature (or even fantasy RPGs), it's not at all uncommon to see authors being touted specifically for their un-Tolkienian traits, a practice that only confirms just how large a shadow the good professor still casts over the field nearly 40 years after his death.

Like teenagers desperate to prove their independence, rebelling against Tolkien seems to a rite of passage for many fantasy writers and it's not hard to see why. The odds that any work of fantasy is ever going to become as well known or influential decades after its publication is slim,  New York Times bestseller lists to the contrary. A far more attainable goal, therefore, is to generate controversy centered on Tolkien and then to bask in the fleeting notoriety. The simple fact is that most of the popular understanding of "fantasy" is Tolkien-derived: orcs and hobbits and elves and dwarves -- indeed the very fact that lots of people think "dwarves" is a proper English plural for the word "dwarf." Likewise, the idea that fantasy must involve an Epic Quest™ against a Dark Lord™ who can only be defeated by destroying the Ancient Maguffin™ is pervasive, thanks in no small part to the success of Tolkien's works. For a lot of people, that is what fantasy is all about.

Now, I can fully understand wanting to get out from under the influence of Tolkien, the desire to do something -- anything -- different in fantasy. Heck, that's been a constant refrain of this blog from the start. But I think there's a difference between wanting to do something different and denigrating one's forefathers in the genre. That is, one can be different without being anti-Tolkien. Gene Wolfe, to cite an example that comes immediately to mind, is very different from Tolkien but he's not anti-Tolkien. To put it somewhat more crudely: Gene Wolfe is pro-Wolfe. He holds no adolescent grudges against Tolkien; he is not vexed that Bilbo Baggins is orders of magnitude more well-known than Severian. In short, Wolfe isn't trying to knock Tolkien down a peg and his fantasies are better for that.

For myself, I plan to spend this 120th anniversary year of Tolkien's birth continuing to read The Lord of the Rings to my daughter. There's a reason this novel has proven so enduring, no matter how much some may wish otherwise.