52

I am old but not (quite) old enough to have been born before men landed on the surface of the Moon. Consequently, I grew up in the afterglow of the Apollo program, whose last mission occurred when I was three years old. So momentous were the actions of Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, and the oft-forgotten Michael Collins that I scarcely knew a child who didn't dream of being an astronaut one day. While I no longer have such dreams for myself, I nevertheless still dream that Armstrong's "giant leap for Mankind" might one day become a reality.  

Ad astra.

White Dwarf: Issue #1

I've talked about my experiences with White Dwarf before. It's a RPG magazine that I only read intermittently back in the day and so my memories of it are not as vivid as those of Dragon. Likewise, when I did read it more regularly, it wasn't until late 1982, long after White Dwarf was well established and had settled into a comfortable run. Consequently, I have no direct knowledge of the magazine's early days, which I imagine were pretty wild and woolly. That's why, after the cessation of my examination of Different Worlds, I knew that my next series would be dedicated to White Dwarf.

Issue #1 is listed as June/July 1977, which is one year after the first issue of TSR's Dragon appeared. I think that's significant, because it's a useful reminder of just how early it appeared in the history of the hobby. Remember, too, that the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide explicitly references White Dwarf in a section entitled "Aids to Playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons," mentioned by side by side with Dragon. The only other third party publications mentioned in that section are those by Judges Guild. This is telling and should be borne in mind as this series goes forward.

The very first article to appear is entitled "Metamorphosis Alpha," written by Ian Livingstone, the magazine's editor and co-founder of Games Workshop. For the most part, the article is simply an overview of the TSR RPG of the same name. However, the article is more than that, offering new rules for gravitation, as well as discussions of stories like Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky and Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss that influenced the game's creation. More interestingly, Livingstone offers some criticisms and suggestions for improvement.

Back to the rules themselves and criticisms. There are not many but just enough to irritate. The initial task of designing the starship and its contents is lengthy – unless your players want to play for the next four years solid, I suggest a smaller starship (same number of decks). 

Don Turnbull's "Monstermark System" presents a complex mathematical system for assessing the relative challenge of a D&D monsters relative to others (and to the level of player characters). Honestly, I have little basis for evaluating the the utility of the system, since I've never used it. Truth be told, I've never seen much use for this kind of evaluation, but I readily concede that I'm probably unusual in not caring about such matters. I know that the Monstermark System has a solid reputation among fans of D&D, so I have little doubt that Turnbull had come up something worthy of consideration.

"Open Box" is a collection of reviews, focusing on two wargames: SPI's Sorcerer and Avalon Hill's Starship Troopers. Meanwhile, "Competitive D&D" by Fred Hemmings tells the tale of one referee's desire to "score" a dungeon expedition, as two competing parties attempt to make their way through it. I've long been curious about this sort of set-up, so I read the article with some interest. "D&D Campaigns" by Lewis Pulsipher is the first part of a series dedicated to exploring how to establish a D&D campaign and adapt the game's rules to particular styles of play. The article is fine as far as it goes, very similar to other articles Pulsipher was publishing in other magazine's at the time. 

"The Warlord" by Steve Jackson – co-founder of Games Workshop, not (confusingly) Steve Jackson Games – is a discussion of the self-published boardgame The Warlord by Mike Hayes. I'd never heard of the game before, which is apparently quite similar to Risk but with nuclear missiles. "What's Wrong with D&D" by Andrew D. Holt offers complaints and suggestions for "fixing" the game's combat and magic systems. Ho-hum. Alan Youde's "Poison" adopts the poison rules in Metamorphosis Alpha for use with D&D. Shrug. There's also a new magic item (helm of vision) by Steven Littlechild.

All in all, the first issue of White Dwarf feels very amateurish – as it should. It's an uneven mix of material, none of which is bad, but very little of which stands out as noteworthy, with the possible exception of "Monstermark System." Nevertheless, it shows clear promise and I know from personal experience that it does improve with time. Much like Different Worlds (or Dragon, for that matter), it takes a while before a roleplaying magazine finds its footing and I have little doubt the same will be true of White Dwarf.  

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth

Were I to be so bold as to enumerate the commonest elements of fantasy literature, magic swords would almost certainly appear near the top of the list. Whether it be Excalibur, Hrunting, Tizona, or Durendal from myth or Orcrist, Graywand, Stormbringer, or Terminus Est from literature, fantasy tales, particularly those of the sort that most strongly influenced the creation of D&D and other roleplaying games, are replete with named and enchanted weapons. 

I thought about their prevalence the other day as I re-read "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" (hereafter "Sacnoth") by Lord Dunsany. Originally published in the 1908 collection entitled The Sword of Welleran, "Sacnoth" presents the reader with a rural village called Allathurion, whose people lived in peace with "all the folk who walked in the dark ways of the wood," as well as "among themselves and between them and their lord, Lorendiac." Despite this,

there was trouble in Allathurion, for of an evening fell dreams were wont to come slipping through the tree trunks and into the peaceful village; and they assumed dominion of men's minds and led them in watches of the night through the cindery plains of Hell. 

The village magician "made spells against those fell dreams; yet still the dreams came flitting through the trees." Consequently, "men grew afraid of sleep … And they grew worn and pale, some through the want of rest, and others from fear of the things they saw on the cindery plains of Hell." Deeply concerned by this, the magician retired to his tower to cast spells to uncover the source of the nightmares that held Allathurion and its people in its grip.

In time, he came to know that

the dreams were from Gaznak … the greatest magician among the spaces of the stars. And he read to the people out of the Book of Magicians, which tells the comings of the comet and foretells his coming again. And he told them how Gaznak rides upon the comet, and how he visits Earth once in every two hundred and thirty years, and makes for himself a vast, invincible fortress and sends out dreams to feed on the minds of men, and may never be vanquished but by the sword Sacnoth.

 This is the first mention of the titular sword in the story, which we soon learn has not yet been wrought, "for it lies as yet in the hide of Tharagavverug, protecting his spine." Tharagvverug is 

the dragon-crocodile who haunts the Northern marshes and ravages the homesteads by their marge. And the hide of his back is of steel, and his under parts are of iron; but along the midst of his back, over his spine, there lies a narrow strip of unearthly steel. The strip of steel is Sacnoth, and it may be neither cleft nor molten, and there is nothing in the world that may avail to break it, not even leave a scratch upon its surface. It is of the length of a good sword, and of the breadth thereof. 

Leothric, son of the villagers' lord, offers to slay Tharagvverug so that he might acquire Sacnoth and use it to defeat Gaznak and end his depredations upon the village of Allathurion.

One could be forgiven for assuming that the slaying of the dragon-crocodile would take up the bulk of the story. In point of fact, Leothric's quest to defeat Tharagvverug and obtain the sword Sacnoth goes entirely according to plan and therefore ends quite quickly. This certainly surprised me, because the slaying of a dragon – or a similarly dangerous monster – is the basis for a great many classical fantasy stories. That Dunsany reduced the slaying of Tharagvverug to the prolog of the larger story of defeating Gaznak is a bold move and is part of why it stands out, even within Dunsany's larger body of work.

"Sacnoth" is also beautifully written and a joy to read. Dunsany's command of language is remarkable, drawing on both Greek poetry and the Bible in its lyricism. Unlike, for example, Lovecraft, who admired and was influenced by his work, Dunsany somehow manages to evoke a mythic past without recourse to archaism or pedantry. For that reason, it's a story that practically demands to be read aloud and I think one's enjoyment of it would be increased if it were. Regardless, I highly recommend "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth." It's readily available online and not very long. Like me, I suspect you'll not only enjoy it, you'll want to read more of Dunsany's tales.  

(And, as a largely unrelated aside, Sacnoth is the name for an important world within GDW's Third Imperium setting for Traveller. I think I encountered the name through this game long before I ever read the story from which it comes.)

Random Roll: DMG, p. 65

"Spell Casting During Melee" appears on page 65 of the Dungeon Masters Guide and is a surprisingly eye-opening read, both in terms of understanding how magic works in AD&D and how Gary Gygax viewed its place in the game he created. His brief introduction to this section concludes with the statement "Being struck by something during casting will spoil the spell," which I think pretty well sums up his overall feelings on the matter. As we shall see, Gygax strongly felt that magic, particularly as wielded by player characters, needed to be reined in and one would not be wrong in seeing this section as a buttress to that thesis.

His tone is adversarial from the start: "Spell-casters will always insist that they are able to use their powers during combat melee." To prevent the players of spellcasters from getting away with anything, he reminds referees of the following:

Consider this: The somatic (movement) portions of a spell must be begun and completed without interruption in a clean, smooth motion. The spell as a whole must be continuous and uninterrupted from beginning to end. Once interrupted, for any reason whatsoever, the spell is spoiled and lost (just as if used). Spells cannot be cast while violently moving – such as running, dodging a blow, or even walking normally. They are interrupted by a successful hit – be it a blow, missile, or appropriate spell (not saved against or saveable against). 

Those are quite a few limitations on the successful use of spells in AD&D! I freely admit that I have never played AD&D completely by the book, but, if the above is any indication, I don't believe I've ever encountered anyone who did so either. Common sense judgment would certainly suggest that spells could be interrupted, especially those with somatic components, but I'm not sure I'd ever be as stringent as Gygax suggests above.

Thus, casting a spell requires that a figure be relatively motionless and concentrating on the effort during the entire course of uninterrupted casting. For example, a magic-user casting a fireball must be in sight of the intended area of effect during the course of the spell (although an associate could be there to open a door intervening between caster and target area at an appropriate time – provided the timing was correct, of course).

Gygax's use of "figure" for "character" is an interesting atavism. More interesting, though, is his insistence that a spellcatser must be "relatively motionless." That's a huge impediment to casting during most combats.

The caster cannot begin a spell, interrupt it just prior to completion, run to a different area, and then complete the spell; interruption instantly cancels it. Unless a spell has no somatic components, the caster cannot be crouching, let alone prone, during casting. 

The scenario presented in the first sentence makes sense to me. The second sentence does too, though it serves to highlight just how restrictive spellcasting is in AD&D as written. (It's worth noting too that there are very few spells in AD&D that have no somatic components, at least when compared to those that do.)

It can thus be understood that spell casting during a melee can be a tricky business, for a mere shove at any time can spoil the dweomer!  

Again, I'm not sure I've ever played the game this way, nor have I encountered anyone who does (cue a deluge of comments suggesting otherwise). Still, it's a consistent point of view, even if it's not one I share or indeed that I think contributes much enjoyment to the playing of the game. 

Gygax then elucidates the procedure a referee should use during melee in determining whether a spell is successfully cast. It's a five-step process that stacks the deck, in my opinion, heavily against the successful casting of a spell. Gygax emphasizes the slowness of casting, as well as the fact that intelligent monsters are "able to recognize the dangers of spells" and will therefore "direct attacks against spell casters." Furthermore, spellcasters cannot use their Dexterity bonus to armor class, since that represents active dodging and would interrupt the spell. In the end, he states that "any successful attack, or non-saved-against attack upon the spell caster interrupts the spell."

His last word on the matter is a doozy, one that makes sense within the context he's just established but that runs counter to most of my experience playing any form of Dungeons & Dragons:

Because spell casting will be so difficult, most magic-users and clerics will opt to use magical devices whenever possible in melee, if they are wise. 

I think that pretty well clinches it: Gary Gygax hated spellcasters (he said, tongue firmly planted in cheek). At the very least, he saw them as potentially overpowered if firm boundaries were not placed on their ability to use magic in combat. I can certainly see the logic of his position and am even sympathetic to certain elements of what he says. However, as presented in this section, I think he was being unnecessarily restrictive, to the point that I'm not sure I'd want to play a spellcaster at his table. But perhaps that was the point.

Retrospective: Temple of the Frog

By most measures, Dave Arneson's "The Temple of the Frog" is the first published Dungeons & Dragons adventure. Originally appearing in the second supplement to OD&D, Blackmoor, it's a very strange scenario – or so I thought when I first read it. As presented in its initial form, the eponymous temple is home to a weird religious order whose members have "delved into the forbidden areas of study and determined that animals have more potential to populate the world than man, who was, after all, a biological abomination which would ultimately threaten the existence of all life." To that end, the Brothers of the Temple "began developing a strain of amphibian that would combine the ferocity and killer instincts of larger mammals with the ability to move through swamps with great swiftness to strike and avoid retaliation." Weird indeed!

More than this, what caught my attention all those years ago was the mysterious individual who acted as the temple's high priest, Stephen the Rock. According to Blackmoor, Stephen not only "possessed some very unusual powers," he "is not from the world of Blackmoor at all, but rather he is an intelligent humanoid from another world/dimension." We later learn that he was the member of some kind of scientific expedition to study Blackmoor and became stranded there. Owing to his origins, he brought with him advanced technological devices – the "very unusual powers" mentioned above – and used them to cow the locals and establish himself as leader of the frog-breeding Brothers, accelerating their work through the application of otherworldly science.

Now, at the time, I was already quite familiar with the idea of mixing fantasy and science fiction. I'd refereed Expedition to the Barrier Peaks several times and, while I had many misgivings about it, I largely enjoyed it. Barrier Peaks is basically a dungeon filled with alien monsters and high tech "magic items." It's quite self-contained and, at least as presented, there's only minimal suggestion that the presence of an extraterrestrial starship in a fantasy world will have any long-term consequences. That's not the case with "The Temple of the Frog," where it's very explicit that Stephen the Rock and the Brothers of the Frog are involving themselves in the politics of Blackmoor, hence the need to oppose them. That probably explains why I found the scenario in Blackmoor so compelling.

So, when TSR announced that they were releasing a revised and expanded version of the original scenario in 1986 as part of its new series of Blackmoor modules for D&D, I was enthusiastic. I dutifully bought Temple of the Frog and devoured it, tearing through its 48 pages in a single sitting. Developed by David J. Ritchie from the original by Arneson, I found the module is solid, if somewhat overelaborated. Like so many D&D modules at the time, it's filled with lots of boxed text, most of which, to be fair, is simply descriptive, but it does pad out the text more than I think is necessary. Less forgivable, though, are the initial dozen or so pages that sets up the adventure scenario through NPC dialog and exposition (again, presented in boxed text). 

The main portion of Temple of the Frog consists of detailing the temple itself, as well as its denizens and treasures. Being familiar with the 1975 version, I saw lots of similarities; it's clear that Ritchie hewed as closely to the original as possible and I appreciated that. That said – and despite what the great cover by Denis Beauvais implies – the 1986 module somehow feels much less "science fiction-y" than does the original. All the elements are still there. In fact, there are a few new high tech elements, like a cyborg, for instance, but somehow that I can't quite articulate the end result feels much less wild and transgressive than the Blackmoor version. Whether that's an actual function of the module itself or simply that, by the time I read this, I was already familiar with the concept, is hard to say. Regardless, the end result is, in my opinion, lackluster and full of unrealized potential.

Even so, I retain a great fondness for Temple of the Frog. Much like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, it played an important role in helping me to become more comfortable with mixing science fiction and fantasy. Given how much of a stick in the mud I am about such things, that's not nothing.

Different Worlds

Sadly, it looks like my retrospective of Chaosium's Different Worlds magazine has come to an end, at least for the time being. Some years ago, I acquired a large collection of DW issues – most of the magazine's run, I thought. Turns out that that wasn't not the case and I only had the first twenty-two issues. Until recently, I'd only ever skimmed most of them. I had hoped that, through this weekly series, I'd finally get the chance to read them all and by "all," I meant every issue of Different Worlds. 

When I first noticed that my issues were running low, I thought it'd be relatively easy to acquire the remaining issues in PDF. No such luck! Printed back issues can be bought through various only venues, like eBay and even from editor Tadashi Ehara himself. However, there's no guarantee you'll be able to find the specific issues you want at a reasonable price. The next issue I would have reviewed, issue #23, is particularly hard to obtain inexpensively, for example. 

It's disappointing, to be sure, but such is life. It's a reminder of how ephemeral many aspects of roleplaying history are. There is no way to legally obtain copies of many older gaming periodicals, including TSR's Dragon, except through the secondary market, where prices and availability are both erratic and frequently nonsensical. This is why, despite my inclinations to whittle down my gaming collection to something smaller, I have lately been reticent to divest myself of many things: you never know whether you'll be able to find copies of some material again.

To that end, I'll start a new series next week, in which I look at a magazine of which I do have a larger run of issues, White Dwarf. Like Different Worlds, it's a magazine I saw, let alone read, only intermittently in my youth, so the series will give me the chance to take a look at many of the issues for the first time. It'll also be a chance to delve into the UK gaming scene of the '70s and '80s, something I touched upon in my previous series on Imagine. And who knows? I might one day manage to snag copies of later issues of Different Worlds and, if so, I'll pick up where I left off. 

The First Appendix N

Long ago, I posted very briefly on this blog about the strange serendipity between the bibliographies of 1978's RuneQuest and 1979's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide. Both bibliographies are the fourteenth appendix in their respective volumes, which is quite a coincidence – and a coincidence I am sure it is (for logistical reasons, if nothing else). Even if it weren't, the writers of RQ make it quite clear that, despite superficial similarities, their Appendix N is actually very different in both its content and intention than Gygax's own list. This becomes even clearer as you take a closer look at it.

The first section of the RuneQuest bibliography is an interesting mix of books, equal parts fiction and non-fiction. Unless my memory fails me, there isn't a single non-fiction work on Gygax's Appendix N. The non-fiction books consist largely of books about the the ancient world, arms, and armor, while the fiction books include authors you'd probably expect. Here's a scan of the selections:

I appreciate the comments after each entry. Unlike those in Gygax's Appendix N, those here give the reader a sense of why they were included and that's helpful. For example, we see that illustrations factored into whether many non-fiction books appeared. In the case of fiction, the phrase "basic source of modern fantasy" appears several times. Note, too, how often the west coast term "FRP" is employed, a term that pops up regularly in the pages of Different Worlds magazine. The inclusion of Clark Ashton Smith – in particularly his stories of Hyperborea – makes me smile, since Gygax inexplicably did not include him in his Appendix N.

The second section highlights "other fantasy role-playing games," along with the addresses of their publishers.

This is an odd list, most because it's not especially selective. Most of the RPGs available in print at the time are included, the vast majority of which, I'd wager, exercised no influence whatsoever over the design and development of RuneQuest. I draw your attention to the inclusion of the game Legacy by David A. Feldt; it's a good example of a RPG with zero influence on RQ (or any subsequent roleplaying game, for that matter), yet here it is listed alongside Dungeons & Dragons and Tunnels & Trolls. 

My suspicion is that the authors were trying to be exhaustive in an effort to promote the hobby more generally, not just their own contributions to it. That's one way that Chaosium – or the Chaosium, as it was still known at the time – was quite different than, say, TSR of the same era: the company was always trying to promote roleplaying in general and not just their own products. I still find that quite an admirable stance.

Appendix N continues with two more sections. The first is entitled "For Living in the Period" and includes the address of the Society for Creative Anachronism. The role the SCA played in the development of the hobby of roleplaying is, I think, under-appreciated. Many early gamers and game designers, especially on the west coast, were either directly or peripherally involved with the SCA. For example, Basic Role-Playing owes a lot to Steve Perrin's experiences in that organization, especially its combat system. The SCA was, in those days, a meeting place for science fiction and fantasy writers, fans, and elements of the late '60s counter-culture, so it's little surprise that it served as a crucible for the burgeoning fantasy gaming scene. 

The final section is entitled "For Multi-Sided Dice" and lists only Lou Zocchi & Associates, along with its address. At the time RuneQuest was first published, there were, of course, other manufacturers of polyhedral dice but Zocchi's dice had the reputation for being the best. Most RPGs at the time, if they  included dice at all, included Zocchi dice. I remain very fond of them myself to this day, largely for esthetic reasons: I simply prefer the sharp edges of precision dice over rounded ones.

RuneQuest's Appendix N offers a fascinating contrast to Gygax's own. Both speak, I think, to the fundamentally literary origins of early RPGs, even as they reveal their authors' different literary preferences. Reading them side by side, one is immediately struck by the different cultures that produced each game – as anyone who has played them can attest. It's precisely those differences that enabled them to exist side by side, appealing as they did to different tastes, sensibilities, and interests. There has never been a one-size-fits-all fantasy roleplaying game, despite the claims of overly zealous partisans; there's more than enough room for many. Indeed, given the wide variability of the fantasy genre, I would even go so far as to say there's a need for many fantasy roleplaying games.

Artist Identification

The older I get, the more convinced I become that the British fantasy gaming scene of the 1970s and '80s produced vastly more imaginative and evocative art than almost anything on this side of the Atlantic. Witness this advertisement for White Dwarf magazine, which looks like an illustration to accompany a Clark Ashton Smith story. 

Unfortunately, I can't read the artist's signature in the bottom right and so have no idea who's responsible for this piece. Can anyone assist me? I am fairly certain the artist in question did other work for Games Workshop, whether in the pages of White Dwarf or elsewhere. (I am also fairly certain that, the moment the name is revealed to me, I'll realize what an idiot I was not to have immediately recognized his style).

Pulp Fantasy Library: Hydra

Like his friend, Robert Bloch, about one of whose stories I wrote last week, Henry Kuttner was one of the younger members of the so-called "Lovecraft Circle." Kuttner began a lengthy correspondence with HPL in 1936, an exchange that would inadvertently introduce him to C.L. Moore, whom he would marry in 1940. He and his wife formed a durable and prolific writing partnership that lasted almost two decades, until his untimely death at the age of 42 in 1958. Most of Kuttner's output during that time was science fiction, but he got his start as a writer of cosmic horror after the fashion of Lovecraft.

"Hydra," first published in the April 1939 issue of Weird Tales, is an example of Kuttner's early horror work. It's a solid effort, filled some genuinely clever ideas, hampered primarily by its somewhat pedestrian presentation, which relies heavily on a kind of faux journalistic style that, while not wholly ineffective, distances the reader from the events Kuttner describes, thereby lessening their impact. 

"Hyrdra" begins strongly.

Two men died; possibly three. So much is known. The tabloids ran flaming headlines of the mysterious mutilation of Kenneth Scott, noted Baltimore author and occultist, and later, they capitalized similarly on the disappearance of Robert Ludwig, whose correspondence with Scott was well known in literary circles. The equally strange and even more ghastly death of Paul Edmond, while separated from the scene of the Scott horror by the width of a continent, was clearly connected with it.

Among Edmond's effects was a diary that referenced a "privately printed pamphlet, On the Sending Out of the Soul," a pamphlet that "none of the local booksellers had heard of." Despite this, the diary states that it was this pamphlet that had caused Ludwig and Edmond "to undertake the disastrous experiment." The two men, we are told,

were deeply interested in the occult. They had dabbled in witchcraft and demonology as a result of their acquaintance with Scott, who possessed one of the best occult libraries in America.

We further learn that Scott "was a strange man" whose "knowledge of esoteric matters was little short of phenomenal." Together, Ludwig and Edmond hoped to use the knowledge contained in the aforementioned pamphlet to sneak into Scott's library through mystical means. 

The general process was familiar to both students. Their researches had informed them that the soul – or in modern occult language, "astral body" – is supposed to be an ethereal double or ghost, capable of projection to a distance. 

Making use of an odd "mixture of drugs and chemicals," including cannabis indica, the pair experiments with astral projection – to some success, it seems, for Edmond "seemed to be outside Scott's window," where he sees "the crumpled body of the man himself lying on the carpet … with his head doubled at an impossible angle out of sight beneath the torso, or else he was headless." Ludwig reveals that "his vision had been identical with Edmond's," which occasions him to admit that he had actually written to Kenneth Scott beforehand, asking his advice on how to perform the ritual properly. 

Not long thereafter, the pair receive a telegram from Scott, which reads:

ATTEMPT NO EXPERIEMENTS WITH PAMPHLET YOU MENTION STOP TREMENDOUSLY DANGEROUS AND MAY MEAN MY DEATH STOP AM WRITING YOU TODAY BY AIR MAIL FULL DETAILS STOP ADVISE YOU BURN PAMPHLET

A few days later, they read a story in the Los Angeles Times that reveals that Scott has been mysteriously murdered. According to the story, "there were no clues to indicate the identity of the assailant" and that "the victim's head had been severed from his body and was inexplicably missing. The remainder of "Hydra" sketchily details – remember that all this information is reported through the medium of pieced-together bits from diary entries and similar notes – what happens to Edmonds and Ludwig over the next few days, as the true consequences of their astral projection become clear. As the opening paragraph of the story makes clear, it does not end well. 

"Hydra" is not a wholly successful story. On a purely surface level, it's unremarkable and some might deem it little more than pulp hack work of a rather pedestrian sort. I don't share that assessment of the tale, but I don't think it's wholly unfair. However, Kuttner's descriptions of nightmarish alien dimensions and their frightening inhabitants are genuinely imaginative and well worth reading. You can tell he's trying hard to convey in words "the Ultimate Chaos" that rests at the center of the universe and I enjoyed his efforts.

Random Roll: DMG, p. 110 (Part II)

 (Part I of this section can be found here)

In the middle of a long section on page 110 of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide entitled "Conducting the Game," Gary Gygax includes three paragraphs under the header "Handling Troublesome Players." This is a topic of some interest to me, as I've been very fortunate over the decades in almost never having to deal with players of the certain he describes here. Why that should be is probably worthy of another post, but, for now, let's turn to what's stated in the DMG. 

Some players will find more enjoyment in spoiling the game than in playing it, and this ruins the fun for the rest of the participants, so it must be prevented. 

The idea that "some players will find more enjoyment in spoiling the game than in playing it" is baffling to me. I don't doubt that such players existed in Gygax's time (and in ours), but I have never encountered one in the flesh. 

Those who enjoy being loud and argumentative, those who pout or act in a childish manner when things go against them, those who use books as a defense when you rule them out of line should be excluded from the campaign. Simply put, ask them to leave, or do not invite them to participate again.

If this is what Gygax means by "spoiling the game," I have occasionally encountered such players, particularly of the "loud and argumentative" sort. The same goes for those "who use books as a defense," but not so much the pouting and childishness. But then we have the Internet now, so it's probably not so difficult to find plenty of examples of the kind of behavior about which he's talking.

Peer pressure is another means which can be used to control players who are not totally obnoxious and who you deem worth saving.

"Deem worth saving" is a strange turn of phrase, but, again, I get what he's saying here.

These types typically attempt to give orders and instructions even when their characters are not present, tell other characters what to do even though the character role they have has nothing to do with that of the one being instructed, or continually attempt actions or activities their characters would no knowledge of. 

This is truly fascinating. I can certainly understand a certain displeasure at "back seat driving" in a roleplaying setting, though it's generally been my experience that this is meant helpfully by those who engage in it. Indeed, it's often welcomed by some players. Clearly, though, Gygax considered it disruptive. I even get the sense that he might have considered it "cheating" on some level.

When any such proposals or suggestions or orders are made, simply inform the group that is no longer possible under any circumstances because of the player in question. The group will then act to silence him or her and control undesirable outbursts. The other players will most certainly let such individuals know about undesirable activity when it begins to affect their characters and their enjoyment of the game.

 I will pass over this without comment, because I'm not quite sure what to say.

Strong steps short of expulsion can be an extra random monster die, obviously rolled, the attack of an ethereal mummy (which always strikes by surprise, naturally), points of damage from "blue bolts from the heavens" striking the offender's head, or the permanent loss of a point of charisma (appropriately) from the character belonging to the offender.

I suspect it's passages like this that contributed to the – largely false – perception that Gygax was a capricious, authoritarian referee. Leaving that aside, though, none of these suggestions strike me as the kind of thing that might positively reform the behavior of a troublesome player – quite the opposite, it seems to me. 

If they have to be enacted regularly, then they are not effective and stronger measures must be taken. Again, the ultimate answer to such a problem is simply to exclude the disruptive person from further gatherings.

This further clarification puts the foregoing into a better light, I think. Even so, I find myself wondering how common truly disruptive players were (or are). The fact that Gygax saw the need to include this section in the Dungeon Masters Guide implies that it was – or at least was seen to be – a genuine concern. As I said at the start of this post, that's not been my experience, but is it yours? Has your experience as a roleplayer included regular encounters with players so disruptive to your enjoyment that strong measures were needed to deal with them? I'm genuinely curious.