Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Polyhedron: Issue #18

Serendipity is a funny thing. No sooner did I mention my childhood affection for Spider-Man than I find that issue #18 of Polyhedron (July 1984) features everyone's favorite web-slinger facing off against the Scorpion on its cover. This only makes sense, of course, since TSR's Marvel Super Heroes debuted around this time and was a big hit for the company. In fairly short order, it seemed as if there were nearly as many adventures being released for MSH as there were for Dungeons & Dragons, though my memory might well be faulty.

Spidey and the Scorpion form the basis for this issue's "Encounters" article, written by none other than Jeff Grubb, the designer of Marvel Super Heroes. Like all previous "Encounters" articles, this one is brief, but Grubb nevertheless makes the most of the limited space, presenting a scenario in which Spider-Man must rescue J. Jonah Jameson from a subway car that's been commandeered by Scorpion. It's straightforward and simple but does a good job, I think, of presenting the kind of situation in which the Web-head often found himself.

James M. Ward's "Cryptic Alliance of the Bi-Month" focuses on the mutant mirror image of the Knights of Genetic Purity, the Iron Society. Also known as the Mutationists, the Iron Society seeks to rid the post-apocalyptic Earth of all non-mutated life, with pure strain humans being the primary target of their ire. Needless to say, this makes the Society an object of fear in Gamma World and I always felt that they'd be used primarily as antagonists in most campaigns. Compared to the Knights, who might excellent villains in my opinion, the Iron Society somehow feels a bit more one-note and the article does little to change my mind on this, alas.

"Remarkable, Incredible, Amazing" by Steve Winter. As you might guess from its title, it's an overview of the then-newly released Marvel Super Heroes RPG. It's basically an advertisement intended to entice gamers into buying TSR's latest product and, in that respect, it does a fair job. Much more interesting is Roger E. Moore's "Kobolds and Robots and Mutants with Wings." Over the course of three pages. Moore talks first about the joys of "hybrid" games that mix and match rules and setting elements, something that even the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide discusses briefly. He then moves on to talk about various hybrid games he's run, such as when AD&D adventurers made use of a well of many worlds to travel to the universe of Bunnies & Burrows to fight rats in thrall with agents of the Cthulhu Mythos. Finally, he presents a lengthy discussion of kobalts – kobolds who traveled to Gamma World's setting, were mutated by radiation, and then bred true as a distinct species. Moore stats them up for both GW and AD&D and presents lots of information on how they could be used in both games. As I said, it's a very interesting article and a reminder of just how imaginative a writer Moore was.

"The Magic-User" by James M. Ward presents yet another "archetypical" [sic] example of a Dungeons & Dragons class, including her personality, skills, possessions, and holdings. In this case, that's Delsenora, an older woman who uses potions of longevity to retain her youth, who has a particular hatred for powerful undead, like vampires and liches. She also has a passion for flying through the use of magic. Consequently, she's built her castle high in the mountains, in a place otherwise inaccessible to those without flight. Appended to the end of Delsenora's description are two more magic-users, one by Ward (named Lidabmob – Bombadil spelled backwards) and another by Susan Lawson, presumably a RPGA member.

"Two Cents" by Joseph Wichman is a rambling opinion piece in which the author, another RPGA member, covers a number of vaguely related topics under the header of "roleplaying." He begins by arguing, contra the "Two Cents" column in issue #14, that roleplaying is not the same as acting and that any referee who expects his players to immerse themselves deeply in their roles is being unreasonable. He also touches on "troublesome" players, evil characters, and player vs character knowledge – all perennial topics in the gaming magazines of my youth. While I don't disagree with anything the author writes here, the article is somewhat frustrating to read, since it bounces around from one subject to the next.

"Layover at Lossend" by Russ Horn, yet another RPGA member, is a short Star Frontiers scenario set on the titular planet of Lossend. The format of the single-page scenario reminds me a bit of the "Encounters" feature, in that it includes of player characters to be used in conjunction with it. The adventure itself isn't particularly worthy of comment, since it's very short and sketchy, leaving most details to the referee to work out. What is interesting is that Horn refers to the referee – the official term for the Game Master in the game – as "the DM."  This is obviously just a small slip-up, both on the part of the writer and the Polyhedron editorial staff. However, I think points to the extent to which the terminology of Dungeons & Dragons had become the defaults in RPG discussions, even discussions about other games.

"Money Makes the World Go Round" by Art Dutra – again, an RPGA member – is a thoughtful little piece about the role of money and treasure in an ongoing D&D campaign. Dutra's focus is primarily from the side of the referee, highlighting the ways that money can be used to both motivate and impede player characters. He points out all the costs that PCs can incur during a campaign, especially those that are overlooked, like training and converting gems into coins, among many others. Dutra is absolutely correct, in my opinion, that referees often fail to take into account the, if you'll forgive the pun, value of money as a driver of a campaign. My only criticism is that focusing on taxes, exchanges rates, hidden costs, and other expenses can very quickly become tedious, or at least that's been my experience. Finding a way to keep money in mind without degenerating into an exercise in bookkeeping would be truly worthwhile topic for an article or essay.

Speaking of tedious, this issue's "Dispel Confusion" is largely filled with very persnickety rules questions of the sort that bore to tears. Whether because of laziness or a lack of intelligence, I've always been much more of a rulings guy rather than a rules guy, so this stuff frequently baffles me. I'm especially baffled by questions that begin "Can I ...?" as if the sender felt he needed TSR's permission to introduce something into his own campaign. I suppose these are the inevitable fruits of the company's attempts to maintain tight control over all of its games and to discourage its customers from buying or making use of "inferior" supplementary materials.

Issue #18 of Polyhedron shows the continued evolution of the 'zine. Perhaps the biggest change is the inclusion of many more articles submitted by RPGA members. That's a welcome change, though the quality of those submissions seems to vary quite a bit. Over time, I suspect that, too, will change, but, for the moment, it gives the issue a much more uneven feel than some of its immediate predecessors. Nevertheless, I look forward to seeing what future issues have in store. 

Monday, March 18, 2024

The Waydreland Mermaid

One of the things about this blog that continues to give me joy are the people I meet through it. Recently, I was contacted by artist Alan Howcroft as a result of my blog post about issue #31 of White Dwarf. Alan provided the issue with its evocative cover painting. Forty years after the cover first appeared, he put together an animated sequence featuring it, which you can see below.

Alan also told me that the animation shows more of the painting than was possible on the original White Dwarf cover. In addition, the animation corrects some color inaccuracies found in the print version, so, if you watch the video above, you're seeing the painting in its entirety, just as the artist intended it. 

The Problem with Appendix N

Since its start sixteen(!) years ago this month, an overriding concern of this blog has been the literary inspirations of Dungeons & Dragons, particularly those stories and books belonging to what I call "pulp fantasy."  Though there are several reasons why this topic has been of such interest to me, the primary one remains my sense that, in the decades since its initial publication in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons has moved conceptually ever farther away from its origins in the minds of Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax – and the works that inspired them.

The argument can be made, of course, that this movement was, in fact, a good thing, as it broadened the appeal of both D&D and, by extension, roleplaying games as a hobby, thereby leading to their continued success half a century later. I have no interest in disputing this point of view at the present time, not least of all because it contains quite a bit of truth. My concern has rarely been about the merits of the shift, but rather about establishing that it occurred. To do that, one needs to recognize and understand the authors and books that inspired the game in the first place.

It's fortunate, then, that Gary Gygax was quite forthcoming about his literary inspirations, providing us with several different lists of the writers and literature that he considered to have been the most immediate influences upon him in his creation of the game. The most well-known of these lists is Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. While I was not the first person to draw attention to the importance of Appendix N – Erik Mona, publisher of Paizo, springs immediately to mind as a noteworthy early advocate – it's no mere boast to suggest that Grognardia played a huge role in promoting Appendix N and its contents during the early days of the Old School Renaissance.

So successful was that promotion that discussions of Appendix N proliferated well beyond this blog, to the point where, a decade and a half later, "Appendix N fantasy" has become almost a brand unto itself. One need only look at the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG from Goodman Games to see a high-profile example of what I mean, though I could cite many others. If nothing else, it's a testament to just how inspiring others found the authors and books that had earlier inspired Gygax. There was clearly a hunger for a different kind of fantasy beyond the endless parade of Tolkien knock-offs Terry Brooks inaugurated (and that Dragonlance formally introduced into D&D).

Yet, for all that, Appendix N suffers from a very clear problem, one that has limited its utility as a guide for understanding Dungeons & Dragons as Gary Gygax understood it: it's just a list. Gygax, unfortunately, provides no commentary on any of the authors or works included in the list, stating only that those he included "were of particular inspiration" He later emphasizes that certain authors, like Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft, among others, played a stronger role in "help[ing] to shape the form of the game." Beyond these brief remarks, Gygax says nothing else about what he found inspirational in these books and authors or why he selected them over others he chose not to include.

In addition, Appendix N is long, consisting of nearly thirty different authors and many more books. Drawing any firm conclusions about what Gygax saw in these works is not always easy, something that, in my opinion, might have been easier had the list been shorter and more focused. That's not to say it's impossible to get some sense of what Gygax liked and disliked in fantasy and how they impacted his vision for Dungeons & Dragons, but it's certainly harder than it needs to be. 

Compare Gygax's Appendix N to the one found in RuneQuest. The list is about half as long (if you exclude other RPGs cited) and every entry is annotated, albeit briefly. Reading the RQ version of Appendix N, one has a very strong sense of not only why the authors found a book inspirational, but what each book inspired in them (and, thus, in RuneQuest). As much as I love Gygax's selection of authors and works, I can't help but think that selection would have proven more useful if he'd taken the time to elaborate, if only a little, on what he liked about its entries.

I found myself thinking about this recently, because I've been pondering the possibility of including an analog to Appendix N in Secrets of sha-Arthan. Since the game has a somewhat exotic setting that deviates from the standards of vanilla fantasy, I feel it might be helpful to point to pre-existing works of fantasy and science fiction (not to mention other roleplayng games) that inspired me as I developed the setting. That's why, if I do include a list of inspirations, it'll likely be both fairly short and annotated – closer to RuneQuest's Appendix N than to Gygax's.

None of this should be taken as a repudiation of Appendix N or the works included in it as vital to understanding Dungeons & Dragons and Gary Gygax's initial vision for it. I still think there is insight to be gleaned by reading and re-reading the works of pulp fantasy included in the appendix and will continue to recommend them to anyone who asks for recommendations of fantasy worthy of their time. Nor should any of the foregoing discourage anyone from taking the time to read Howard or Leiber or Lovecraft, as doing so is time well spent and more than sufficient reward in its own right. However, with some time and perspective, I recognize that Appendix N has certain shortcomings that can make it less than adequate as a guide to "what Dungeons & Dragons is about."

Friday, January 26, 2024

Fifty Years Ago Today

I'm very interested in the history of Dungeons & Dragons, but I'm not a historian – especially when compared to someone like Jon Peterson. Consequently, if Jon opines that January 26, 1974 is the day on which D&D was released – and, therefore, the game's birthday – I'm inclined to trust his judgment. So, happy birthday Dungeons & Dragons! For the last half-century, you've entertained untold millions of people across the globe, providing them with a delightful means to exercise their imaginations together with their friends. 

Dungeons & Dragons played an outsize role in popularizing fantasy literature, ideas, and themes, as well as inspiring many of its devotees to create their own. Roleplaying, as a formal activity, owes nearly its entire existence to the phenomenal success of D&D. Even more remarkable is the extent to which the computer and video game industry, which is bigger and more profitable than the music and movie industries combined, owes a huge debt to the example set by D&D. If you play any game with classes or levels or experience or hit points today, that's because of Dungeons & Dragons.

It's slightly crazy if you think about it. Two wargamers from the American Midwest created an entirely new type of entertainment, one that, over the course of five decades, changed the world forever. That's no small accomplishment – and it's certainly worth celebrating. 

Monday, January 22, 2024

Conan and the Cup of Destiny

In the summers of my childhood, there were few delights more refreshing than 7-Eleven's Slurpee – the store's carbonated frozen ice beverage. During the 1970s, when I was growing up, it was not at all uncommon for Slurpees to come in a plastic cup festooned with images of professional athletes or folkloric monsters or Wild West historical figures. In a few cases, I'd hold on to the cup, wash it out, and then re-use it. For example, I held on to a cup featuring skeletal cowboys for quite some time, simply my younger self thought it looked cool.

In 1977. 7-Eleven produced a series of Slurpee cups that featured Marvel Comics characters. This was apparently the second such series, the first having come out two years prior, but I don't recall ever seeing the original run. In '77, I wasn't much of a comics reader, but I did like Spider-Man, thanks in large part to the 1967 show that I watched in reruns at an impressionable age. Consequently, I was quite keen to get a Spider-Man Slurpee cup and visited 7-Eleven multiple times during the summer in the hope of acquiring one.

Despite my best efforts, I was never successful in this endeavor, having to content myself instead with cups featuring characters I'd never heard of before, like Namor and Nova – and Conan the Barbarian. At that time – I would have been nearly eight years old – I'd never encountered the name Conan outside the middle name of the creator of Sherlock Holmes. He was completely unknown to me and I recall being very puzzled by his inclusion in a series of cups that seemed otherwise to include only illustrations of superheroes, such as my beloved Spider-Man. Because Conan meant nothing to me at the time, I didn't keep the cup and moved on to other things.

This being the summer of 1977, foremost among those other things was George Lucas's space opera, Star Wars. Like every other little boy (and quite a few little girls), I was obsessed with Star Wars, snatching up as many tie-in products with it as I could. Among those tie-in products was a Marvel comics series, initially written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Howard Chaykin. The series began by adapting the 1977 film over the course of six issues and then moved on to wholly original material whose quality varied, but which I generally liked enough that I kept reading it for several years, right up until the release of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980.

Most issues included an advertisement for subscriptions to Marvel comics. Though I never subscribed to any comics – I relied on the spinner rack at the local drug store – I nevertheless would glance over these ads to see what other titles Marvel had on offer. That's where I saw Conan the Barbarian once again, sometimes with an image of the mighty thewed warrior himself. Who was this guy? As before, I was baffled by his presence among so many superheroes. Mind you, I was equally baffled by the presence of Howard the Duck as well, so what did I know?

Some time later – I can't quite recall when but certainly before I was first introduced to Dungeons & Dragons in late 1979 – I stumbled across the name Conan again. This time, it was at my local library, which I visited regularly. Middle River Public Library had been my gateway to so many fantasy and science fiction books and writers, forming the basis for so many of my fondest childhood memories. One day, I took notice a spinner rack filled with white paperback books all of which bore the name CONAN in large, colorful letters. I still had no idea who Conan was or why he seemed to keep popping up, but there was he was once more. I wasn't yet ready to answer this question, as these paperbacks seemed a bit too "adult" for my tastes, judging by their moody painted covers.

My initial judgment over this Conan fellow eventually seemed confirmed when a friend of mine, on a visit to the drugstore to pick up the latest issue of Star Wars, pointed out that there were comic books for sale behind the counter, "behind the counter" being childish code, for the place where they kept those magazines. Sure enough, my friend was correct. I caught glimpse of a comic entitled Savage Sword of Conan, whose cover art reminded me quite a bit of those white paperbacks I'd seen at the library. I was now certain I'd never figure out the mystery of Conan and his connection to Marvel comics.

That's where things stood for some time. It wasn't until sometime in 1981 or thereabouts, by which point I was an older and more worldly twelve years-old that I took up any serious interest in Conan. The AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide mentions the "Conan series" in Appendix N, along with its author, Robert E. Howard. Holmes also includes a mention of Howard and Moldvay's bibliography cites Howard alongside many other authors whose books I had already read and enjoyed. Furthermore, many of the older guys I knew who played D&D seem to love Howard and Conan. Maybe, I decided, it was time to finally figure out who Conan was and why he seemed to be everywhere I went. So, I went off to the library and grabbed one of those paperbacks off the spinner rack and checked it out. The rest, as they say, is history.

I mention all of this because today is the birthday of Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan and many other characters who are now among the most famous and enduring literary creations of all time. It's funny to consider that I first became acquainted with both of them thanks to comic books published more than three decades after Howard's death by a company that didn't even exist at the time of his demise. I think that's a testament to just how remarkable was REH's imagination that a shy, nerdy, and prudish kid growing up in suburban Baltimore would one day come to love the products of it. So many other writers, who lived longer and wrote more, have been forgotten by history, but Howard – and Conan – live on.

Happy birthday, Bob.

Sunday, January 21, 2024

Thoughts on the Occasion of Merritt's Birthday

The fine gentlemen over at DMR Books generously lent me their online soapbox on the occasion of Abraham Grace Merritt's 140th birthday yesterday. 

You can read my thoughts on the subject there.

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Polyhedron: Issue #17

Issue #17 of Polyhedron (May 1984) is immediately notable for its cover, which features an uncredited 19th century engraving rather than an illustration by one of TSR's staff artists. Nevertheless, the engraving is being used to illustrate one of this issue's articles, a long "Encounters" piece by Kim Eastland about which I'll speak shortly. Because of hos different this cover looks compared to its predecessors, it's one that I remember well, even if I didn't recall anything about the article to which it's connected.

The issue kicks off with a long letter in which a reader comments that he is "not a member of the RPGA Network in order to get a second helping of articles every month. DRAGON does a good job monthly." Instead, the reader wants to hear the opinions and ideas of RPGA members rather than "professional writers." It's a fair criticism, I think, though, as I noted last week, it's not one I shared. Editor Mary Kirchoff explains that the preponderance of articles by TSR staff members is due to a lack of submissions by RPGA members. Reading this now, I must admit to some surprise at this. I would have imagined that members would have jumped at the chance of writing for Polyhedron, but apparently not. (Of course, given that I never submitted anything during the time I was a subscriber means that I have no room to criticize.)

Kim Eastland's "Encounters" concerns a ruined temple that the characters came across while traveling elsewhere. Outside the ruin is the servant of an adventurer whose employer left him outside while he ventured within to investigate. That was more than a day ago and the adventurer has not returned since. What then follows is a three-page description of the temple, its contents, and denizens, accompanied by illustrations that (mostly) are in the same style as the cover. Though lacking a map, the temple is quite fascinating, since it includes a number of tricks and traps within it, as well as some valuable treasure. I think it'd make an intriguing side encounter for an ongoing campaign.

The Knights of Genetic Purity are James M. Ward's "Cryptic Alliance of the Bi-Month" for use with Gamma World. Pure strain human supremacists, the Knights fall squarely on the side of villains, at least in most of the GW campaigns with which I am familiar. The article thus devotes most of its two pages to details of the alliance's personnel and weaponry, so as to aid the referee in using them as adversaries. We also get a couple of legends associated with the cryptic alliance, such as "Pul Banyon," a seven foot-tall mutant slayer and a king named "Art" who was betrayed by his "human-looking mutant" wife. I remember liking this article more than is probably deserved upon re-reading it. I don't think it's bad so much as uninspired, which is a shame, because I think the Knights of Genetic Purity make great adversaries for a Gamma World campaign.

"Variants, House Rules, and Hybrids" by Roger E. Moore, on the other hand, is a terrific article. Over the course of three pages, Moore looks at the merits and flaws of introducing variant rules into your ongoing RPG campaign, as well as presenting examples of such variants (critical hits, new classes, etc.). What's most remarkable about this piece is not Moore's advice, which is indeed good, but the fact that it appears in the pages of Polyhedron at all. Moore acknowledges, at the start of his article, that TSR's policy is that "it's better to game with the rules as they are," but he nevertheless feels that "everyone has different ideas on what makes a game fun." From the vantage point of 2024, this might seem non-controversial, but, at the time, for people like myself, who hung on every word that proceeded from the mouth of Gygax, it was a Very Big Deal and I am grateful for it.

"The Fighter" by James M. Ward is the start of a new feature, intended to present an "archetypical [sic]" example of a Dungeons & Dragons character class "to give a general idea of what characteristics and/or quirks a superior, balanced character in a particular character class would have." Ward presents Ian McPherson as his example of the archetypal fighter, detailing his personality, skills, equipment, and holdings. It's notable that the article is light on game mechanics, which surprised me. I would have thought we'd at least get game statistics for Ian, but we do not. Instead, the following article, "Two New NPCs," presents two brief write-ups of unique fighters, one a dwarf and one a half-orc, written by Ward and Roger E. Moore respectively. These write-ups do include stats and are thus more immediately usable.

"Disguised Weapons" by Nicholas Moschovakis presents six hidden weapons for use with Top Secret. This is a no-nonsense "meat and potatoes" gaming article of the sort that used to fill gaming magazines at the time. Likewise, Kim Mohan's "Wishes Have Their Limits" also belongs to a hoary gaming magazine genre, namely, articles about how to constrain and otherwise rein in the power of magic wishes in D&D. Mohan attempts to present, over the course of three pages, a series four "laws" for adjudicating wishes. His laws are all fine, if you feel the need for such things, but, these days, I'm generally quite lenient with wishes and reality warping magics, because I see in them the opportunity to inject a little chaos into the status quo of a campaign. Maybe I'm weird.

"DM Talk" by Carl Smith looks at the various approaches to refereeing D&D, offering thoughtful insights and advice. Though obviously geared more toward novice DMs, I think he still says things of potential interest to more experienced ones. In particular, I like his division of RPG players into one of three "levels," each of growing sophistication, with Level 1 being "roll playing" and Level 3 being a high degree of immersion. He then tailors his advice for the referee based on the current level of the campaign and the needs of its players. It's not a world changing article, but it's solid and looks at the subject from a slightly different perspective, which I appreciate.

"Dispel Confusion" presents the usual assortment of questions and answers related to TSR's various RPGs. The most notable questions this time around are one concerning the fact that the monster Zargon from The Lost City is stated to be "no god" and yet his clerics have spells. How is this possible? According to the answer, "there is in fact a greater evil force behind Zargon" and it is this mysterious being who is granting spells to his cleric. I have to admit that's quite intriguing! Another question concerns whether there are female dwarves, which the questioner apparently doubted. Obviously, the answer is in the affirmative. Did anyone seriously doubt this?

Issue #17 also includes another mini-module, "The Incants of Ishcabeble," by Bob Blake. It picks up from the mini-module included in the last issue and takes the characters to the abandoned tower of the ancient wizard, Ishcabeble. I have an affection for abandoned towers of all sorts, so I'm naturally inclined to like this one, too, which features a good mix of puzzles, tricks, traps, and combat. 

The transformation of Polyhedron continues, though, as I theorized previously, not all of its readers are entirely happy with its new direction as Dragon Jr. Of course, Polyhedron was, to my recollection, always in a state of flux, never quite knowing its niche within the larger constellation of TSR gaming periodicals. As a result, each issue was, to some degree, an experiment to determine what worked and what didn't. This one is no different in this regard and, as we shall see in weeks to come, quite a lot didn't work, hence the regular need to launch new columns and features that soon disappear, only to be replaced by others. 

Monday, January 15, 2024

Fountainhead

While it's still possible to argue in good conscience about the precise origins or start date of the Old School Renaissance, I don't think there can be any serious debate that the major intellectual impetus behind the early OSR was the reexamination of original (1974) Dungeons & Dragons. That's certainly how I first became aware of the growing network of forums and blogs that formed the nucleus of one the most imaginatively dynamic movements within the hobby in some time. 

Of particular importance in this regard is Finarvyn's OD&D Discussion forum, better known simply as ODD74. At the suggestion of Philotomy Jurament (of "Philotomy's OD&D Musings" fame), whom I met through the Troll Lord Games forums, I registered at ODD74 in early December 2007 and began my own personal journey into reexamining OD&D.

Or perhaps I should say examining OD&D, because, while I had owned copies of the Little Brown Books and supplements since the mid-1980s, I'd never really read them carefully, let alone used them at the table. They were, at best, historical curiosities that had value as collector's items and little else. To my way of thinking at the time, OD&D had long ago been superseded by several later editions of the game, most notably Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which I held in especially high esteem. Through my interactions with the many knowledgeable and thoughtful gamers who posted at ODD74, I began to see just who wrong I was in thinking this way.

Among the many lessons I learned over the course of the next several months, during which I read and posted to the forum with obsessive regularity, the first was this: old ≠ bad. That might seem like a small thing or even an obvious thing, but, sad to say, it wasn't, at least to me. I'd fallen prey to the consumerist myth that newer is better, buttressed, no doubt, by the desire of RPG companies to sell me new editions of games I already owned and enjoyed. That's why I'd dutifully bought both the second edition of AD&D in 1989 and Third Edition (of what?) in 2000 (not to mention v.3.5 just three short years later). I wanted to stay up-to-date in my gaming and the only way to do that was to buy more stuff.

OD&D, even in its purest form – the three LBBs and nothing more – is a perfectly playable game. Certainly, it requires a goodly amount of interpretation by any would-be referee, but that's not the same thing as saying, as some do, that OD&D is incomplete, never mind unplayable. It's definitely not a "modern" RPG, lacking as it does definitions, explanations, and even occasionally consistency between its various sections. Instead, it's a glorious, extravagant mess, a veritable Pandora's box whose chaotic contents literally changed entertainment forever. There's an almost palpable power in those three slim, staple-bound booklets if you're willing to cast aside, if only briefly, the subsequent history of roleplaying. After all, this is where it all began.

I had initially come to study OD&D because I'd become dissatisfied with the direction of Dungeons & Dragons under the stewardship of Wizards of the Coast. I was driven by the paradoxical notion that the only way forward was backward, which is to say, that I felt D&D had become so changed that the only way I could conceive of fixing it was to try and turn the clock back, all the way to the very beginning. Anything less than that would be a half-measure, doomed to repeat the very same mistakes that had led Dungeons & Dragons to where it was in 2007 – overcomplicated and deracinated.

The second lesson I learned from examining OD&D was this: it contains multitudes. The same qualities that had led Gary Gygax famously to declare his first creation to be "a non-game" – its open-endedness, flexibility, and variability – were precisely those that I now found so appealing. Indeed, I saw in them an antidote to my dissatisfaction with the direction of contemporary D&D. What's more is that, as I interacted with others on the ODD74 forums (and, in time, OSR blogs), I discovered that, by design, OD&D could be played in a variety of different ways. The history of the early hobby attested to this and, in fact, proved to be the fertile seedbed out of which so many later roleplaying games would flower. 

I can't stress enough how emancipatory this was to me at the time. I'd grown up a TSR fanboy, hanging on the Word of God that descended from the heights of Lake Geneva. This meant that I tried to the best of my ability to play D&D in the "official" manner whenever possible. While this took a lot of the burden of rules interpretation off my shoulders, it also probably curtailed my creativity to some degree, prodding me to play the game in a particular fashion. I have no real complaints about this – I had a lot of fun playing RPGs in my youth, as evidenced by the fact that I still play them in middle age – but I have no doubt that I also closed myself off to other possibilities. Coming to OD&D with an open mind helped me to understand this.

This is why I think, even half a century later, that there is value in reading original Dungeons & Dragons. Indeed, I think there's value in playing OD&D. This the game that started it all, the one that first taught the world what a fantasy roleplaying game was. Much like the details of the early history of the OSR, it's possible for men of good conscience to argue about the merits and flaws of OD&D's design, but I hope we can all recognize just how literally vital the three Little Brown Books are. They presented the world not merely with rules but with a new form of entertainment – one limited only by the collective imaginations of those who participate in it.

How many other books – RPG or otherwise – can honestly make that claim?

Saturday, January 13, 2024

Revenant

Born this day in 1893

I am the spectre who returns
Unto some desolate world in ruin borne afar
On the black flowing of Lethean skies:
Ever I search, in cryptic galleries,
The void sarcophagi, the broken urns
Of many a vanished avatar;
Or haunt the gloom of crumbling pylons vast
In temples that enshrine the shadowy past.
Viewless, impalpable, and fleet,
I roam stupendous avenues, and greet
Familiar sphinxes carved from everlasting stone,
Or the fair, brittle gods of long ago,
Decayed and fallen low.
And there I mark the tail clepsammiae
That time has overthrown,
And empty clepsydrae,
And dials drowned in umbrage never-lifting;
And there, on rusty parapegms,
I read the ephemerides
Of antique stars and eider planets drifting
Oblivionward in night;
And there, with purples of the tomb bedlight
And crowned with funereal gems,
I bold awhile the throne
Whereon mine immemorial selves have sate,
Canopied by the triple-tinted glory
Of the three suns forever paled and flown.

I am the spectre who returns
And dwells content with his forlorn estate
In mansions lost and hoary
Where no lamp burns;
Who trysts within the sepulchre,
And finds the ancient shadows lovelier
Than gardens all emblazed with sevenfold noon,
Or topaz-builded towers
That throng below some iris-pouring moon.
Exiled and homeless in the younger stars,
Henceforth I shah inhabit that grey clime
Whose days belong to primal calendars;
Nor would I come again
Back to the garish terrene hours:
For I am free of vaults unfathomable
And treasures lost from time:
With bat and vampire there
I fit through sombre skies immeasurable
Or fly adown the unending subterranes;
Mummied and ceremented,
I sit in councils of the kingly dead,
And oftentimes for vestiture I wear
The granite of great idols looming darkly
In atlantean fanes;
Or closely now and starkly
I ding as dings the attenuating air
About the ruins bare.

Friday, January 12, 2024

Nothing New Under the Sun

The English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once famously remarked that the history of European philosophy consisted of a series of footnotes to Plato. By this, Whitehead did not mean that Plato had said everything that could ever be said about philosophy. Rather, he meant that Plato had set the terms for all subsequent discussions of European philosophy to such a degree that even those who disagreed with his conclusions were nonetheless thinking within a framework that he had created. I think something similar could be said of RPGs – to wit: the history of roleplaying games consists of a series of house rules to OD&D. 

We can debate the broader merits of this point of view another time. For the moment, my very specific point concerns the extent to which there's any point in creating "new" rules for a roleplaying game. At this point in history, a half-century after Arneson and Gygax forever changed the world, I feel very safe in saying that it's exceedingly unlikely that any game designer, no matter how clever, will come up with a rule/mechanic that hasn't already been conceived by many other designers before him. I'll go even further and state that it's exceedingly unlikely that any game designer, no matter how clever, will come up with a rule/mechanic that hadn't already been conceived within the first decade of the hobby. 

Given that, is there really any point, other than vanity, for a game designer to try and "innovate?" Hasn't nearly every possible configuration of rules been tried before? More to the point, haven't some configurations been found to be easier to learn and employ and thus more widely understood and accepted? Further, hasn't the configuration first introduced by Dungeons & Dragons fifty years ago – class + abstract experience-based advancement – been shown to be, by far, the clear winner in terms of widespread acceptance among players? One needs only to look at how commonplace D&D-derived systems are in computer and video games to see the truth of this.

Which brings me to Secrets of sha-Arthan, the exotic science fantasy roleplaying game I've been working on for the last two and a half years. While I've made a great deal of progress in developing its setting, its rules remain a moving target. Initially, I intended them to be a slight modification of those of Old School Essentials, which is itself simply a restatement of the 1981 Basic and Expert rules of Dungeons & Dragons. However, as I continued to tinker with it, I began to think, as no doubt many game designers before have, that I could reinvent the wheel. Slowly, my small changes to OSE started to become bigger and, with each change, the rules started to become more complicated and farther from the simplicity that has always attracted me to D&D and its descendants and clones.

Now I find myself wondering: should I just return to something closer to Old School Essentials? Certainly there will need to be some changes to accommodate the unique elements of the setting, but, by and large, Secrets of sha-Arthan is a game very much in the mold of Dungeons & Dragons and Empire of the Petal Throne (whose rules are themselves obviously derived from OD&D). Is there, aside from my own vanity, any need for the game's rules to deviate very much from the well-established template of D&D? Over the decades, I've played plenty of RPGs whose rules differed from those of D&D in ways both large and small, but how many of them, really, needed to differ so much?

I should add, by the way, that this critique applies even to many later iterations of Dungeons & Dragons itself, some of which make changes to the structure of OD&D that, to my mind, are unnecessary and even detrimental to play (I'm looking at you AD&D and your initiative system – among other things) but were likely introduced because someone believed he had a "great idea" to "improve" the rules. Yet, at least if my own experience is any guide, very few people ever used the AD&D initiative system as written, including Gary Gygax, preferring instead for the simpler roll-1d6-higher-goes-first of B/X. I don't think such people did so because they were stupid; rather, they did so, because they recognized that speed and intelligibility were more important than some abstract notion of a "better" rule. 

Nevertheless, the urge to tinker, to try and improve on a rules template that has stood the test of time is strong. It's a very difficult urge to resist, yet I am coming close to the perhaps inevitable conclusion that, aside from a few setting-specific tweaks, there's really no point in trying to one up D&D, because I will not be able to do so. Wouldn't my time be better spent in developing the setting and making it as compelling and accessible as possible?