Hmmm

According to my hit trackers, my recent Dwimmermount post is getting lots of hits from the Wizards Community site. Unfortunately, I can't tell precisely where on that site all these hits are coming from or why that particular blog entry has been linked. Given how rarely I talk about the WotC editions -- I don't think I have in months -- it's a strange thing, but no stranger, I suppose, than getting hits from US government agencies or the Canadian prime minister's office, which have both happened in the past.

Brandification in Action

Take a good, long look at this image. That's the Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Woodburning Set, released in 1983. Tim Hutchings recently reminded me of its existence. Goodness knows how I forgot it. Apparently, it is true that the human mind protects itself against memories so traumatic that they might permanently do it damage.

Really, what can you say when confronted with a horror like this? I frequently catch flak, particularly from players who entered the hobby during the Silver Age, about my negative feelings toward things like the D&D action figures, which some claim "opened up" the hobby to a wider audience. I think that's patently ridiculous, but I understand the sentiment and at least a rational argument could be constructed that playing with action figures is a form of roleplaying and thus could lead younger kids to seek out the "real thing" later on. But a woodburning set that lets me make jewelery boxes and notecard holders? What the devil does that have to do with roleplaying or Dungeons & Dragons?

No matter how charitable I try to be, I can conceive of no logical explanation for how anyone at TSR could have imagined a woodburning set would contribute to the growth of the hobby -- the growth of D&D as a brand perhaps but not the hobby. Products like this are the ones that remind us that "lifestyle gaming," to use an unfortunate recent coinage, didn't start in the 21st century. TSR was trying to cultivate such a thing way back at the dawn of the Silver Age. And the woodburning set wasn't the only abomination from those days either. I distinctly recall there being D&D Colorforms, D&D puffy stickers, D&D flashlights, even D&D candy. I'm sure there were many other similarly bizarre D&D licensed products of which I am thankfully unaware.

Never having created a powerful intellectual property of my own, I suppose I don't understand the drive to exploit it ruthlessly through all manner of merchandising. D&D isn't the only IP guilty of this by any means, so I don't want to give the impression I consider it the worst offender. It's simply difficult for me to fathom how those three little brown books, the bastard child of miniatures wargaming and pulp fantasy, could in turn give birth to a line of rub-down transfers and beach towels. I have a similarly difficult time fathoming why anyone in charge of the IP thought that promoting the brand rather than the game would prove successful in the long run, but, as I said, I've never created a world-renowned IP of my own and there's probably something vital I'm missing.

Alan Moore on Hodgson (and Others)

The player of Pike in my Dwimmermount campaign passed along something interesting to me: Richard Corben did a graphic novel adaptation of William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland. I don't (yet) own this, but, having now read its introduction by Alan Moore, I plan to do so. Here's a particularly piquant part of it:

This book, along with its author and some of his equally illustrious contemporaries or near-contemporaries, represents a buried treasure-seam of literature which might immeasurably enrich our currently moribund cultural landscape, if only it were not buried, had not been ruthlessly buried alive in the first instance.

For "buried," read forgotten, marginalized, disqualified. It seems as if, with the arrival of Jane Austen on the literary map, there was a sudden and unanimous consensus reached within the critical fraternity to the effect that socially realistic parlor-dramas and sparkling comedies of manners were not merely the most lofty point to which all writings might aspire, they were the only form of writing that could be considered genuine, serious literature. Thus, at a sweep, all genre fiction and all fantasy were ruled unclean, consigned to the outlying slums and ghettos past the ivory battlements of literary respectability.

There are a few names, it is true, that have somehow survived the purge: Poe. Lovecraft (just). Maybe Bram Stoker, simply based on Dracula's enduring success. Possibly another one or two whose names evade the memory at present, which, if anything, just serves to underline the basic point: Buried. Disqualified. Forgotten.

What about Lord Dunsany, with his perfect little one- or two-page fables? What about Clark Ashton Smith, his opulent prose style, his retirement partly spent in carving pebbles into leering and fantastic demon-heads then throwing them away, perhaps to be found decades later by some stranger, who would surely marvel all their lives? What about Arthur Machen, with The Three Impostors or The Great God Pan, who joined the legendary magic brotherhood, the Golden Dawn; who saw visions of Sion rise above the wind-scoured squares and terraces of Holborn? What of M.P. Shiel, "the gem-encrusted magus," overweight and running from his health through London's twilight streets, wearing a vest of battery-driven lights to alert coachmen and pedestrians to his approaching presence? What about William Hope Hodgson?

As they say on the Internet, quoted for truth.

Links

Distracted as I am, I must confess that I haven't done a very good job in keeping up with what new old school blogs, forums, and sites might have sprung up in recent months. So, if you know of any that I haven't included in my "Links of Interest," make a comment here and let me know. I can't guarantee I'll put all the suggestions people make on my list, but I'll pit as many as I think appropriate. For good or ill, lots of people use this page to find other old school sites, so I feel a certain obligation to ensure its links are kept reasonably up to date. I've just been so busy lately -- and likely will be for some time -- that, like my correspondence, I've let this slip more than I ought to have.

Thanks in advance for your help.

REVIEW: World of Arkara

World of Arkara: Gazetteer of the Known World is a 25-page PDF written by Charles Rice, which outlines an original fantasy setting for use with OSRIC, along with setting-specific rules variants. Its brevity recalls Gary Gygax's original The World of Greyhawk folio, but its presentation is frustratingly different. The product is divided into three sections, of which the shortest is the actual gazetteer. The other two sections detail the gods of the setting and character options and each is lengthier than the four and a half pages devoted to the physical and socio-cultural aspects of the world.

World of Arkara's layout is simple and readable, which I find a virtue in a hobby whose products frequently have unnecessarily "busy" layouts. There are only a handful of illustrations -- four, to be precise -- and all are quite serviceable, if not particularly interesting. There is a single map of the setting included, which is unfortunately lacking a scale, making it hard to tell just how far apart its continents and islands are from one another. Similarly, nothing on the map is labeled except for various kingdoms and regions, not even the mountains, forests, and occasional river that are detailed. This makes the map next to useless except in giving a very vague sense of things: "The Battlegrounds are north of the Shadow Realm" and so on. The text itself is reasonably clear and I noticed no significant editorial issues that affected my ability to read the product.

The first section of the book runs seven pages and details the three pantheons of Arkara: the Pantheon of Light, the Pantheon of Darkness, and the Gray Pantheon, each associated with a particular ethical alignment grouping, namely good, evil, and neutrality respectively. Each deity write-up includes useful details, such as sacred animals, holy days, clerical vestments, and so on. In addition, clerics of each god have access to certain additional spells normally usable only by another spellcasting class, such as charm person in the case of clerics of Asteria, the goddess of love, beauty, and marriage. The Pantheon of Light is the largest of the three, but none of its deities are described beyond the little details I noted earlier. Meanwhile, the gods of the Pantheon of Darkness are fewer in number and each gets a paragraph or more discussing their religion and role in the world. The Gray Pantheon is the smallest of the three and is treated similarly to the Pantheon of Light in terms of detail.

The second section of the book runs four and a half pages and presents an overview of the realms and regions of Arkara. Each realm or region is given a description that runs for at least one paragraph, but most get several more. This presents the most basic information about each locale, along with some snippets of history, and who (if anyone) rules the area in question. This section is something of a mixed bag. Some areas struck me as too thinly detailed about which to gain any impression, while others inspired ideas in me. Most of them suffer, in my opinion, from having fairly banal names -- Chariot Highlands, Fire Island, Realm of the Sun King -- which made it hard to get a feel for Arkara. Creating good names is difficult and there's no consensus on what constitutes a good name, but I found myself wishing there was a bit more "punch" to Arkara's naming conventions, which came across to me as rather bland.

The third section of the book is devoted to characters and includes one new character class, the Crusader, and options for "tweaking" existing classes. The Crusader is a bit like a weaker paladin without alignment restrictions. The class lacks spells but can heal, turn undead, and gains bonus damage against Crusaders of opposing orders. While I see nothing wrong with the class, it seemed somewhat superfluous to me, at least without more setting-based context. Class variants include the Anti-Paladin (Paladin), Bounty Hunter (Ranger), Hunter (Ranger), and Poacher (Ranger). Each of these drops or alters existing abilities so as to offer a slightly different take on the original archetype. There's also a section on "Character Class Flavor" that provides some setting-based context for the standard classes. This was welcomed, although, again, it's a mixed bag, with some classes, like the magic-user, getting many paragraphs of detail, and others, like assassins or druids, receiving very little. Concluding the section is a social class and advancement system and a discussion of crime and punishment. An appendix provides some details for players wishing to use OSRIC Unearthed in Arkara.

In the end, I'm left with very mixed feelings about World of Arkara. There's definitely potential here, but that potential hasn't yet been fulfilled. For a product calling itself a gazetteer, there was too little information on the world itself. I know that Rice plans to do a series of follow-up products that focus on each of the realms/regions -- one is already available and will be reviewed here soon -- but I nevertheless think the initial product should provide more information than it does on this score. As it is, there's not enough to grab me and make me want to use this setting, particularly given the weakness of the map, which is simply too undetailed to be usable.

Similarly, I think there are too many new rules and rules tweaks presented here. While I do like the clerical spell options, which reminds me of The World of Greyhawk, the additional character class and variant classes are unnecessary and took up space better spent on fleshing out the setting. It's here, I think, where Rice's background as a D20 writer shows most clearly. The D20 market was very "crunch-heavy" and its fans demanded new rules and rules variants. That's not (generally) the old school approach, where new rules and rules variants are introduced sparingly and as needed rather than according to some a priori plan.

World of Arkara sells at $3.00, which is a fair price for what you get. For an additional dollar, you can purchase a bundle that includes this product, a regional description of the Canterbury Isles, and an adventure. That's a very good deal, even considering my qualms about the initial release. For my part, I'll reiterate that I think the Arkara setting has potential and it will be interesting to see if Rice can fulfill it. I nevertheless do think this product could have been stronger than it is and hope there will be a revised and expanded edition in the future.

Presentation: 6 out of 10
Creativity: 6 out of 10
Utility: 5 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a sketch of a setting you can loot for ideas.
Don't Buy This If: You're looking for a latter day World of Greyhawk-style folio product.

Retrospective: Ghost Tower of Inverness

It's becoming accepted wisdom in old school circles that what we think of as an "adventure module" says more about the exigencies of tournament play than the way referees constructed scenarios for use in their home campaigns at that time. That is, the module format is largely artificial and gives a somewhat false impression about early adventure design. There's definitely a lot of truth to this perspective, but we should all bear in mind that a great many TSR modules were in fact clearly identified as having their origins in tournament play and indeed made no effort to disguise this fact.

1980's The Ghost Tower of Inverness is a good example of a tournament adventure turned into a published module. Written by Allan Hammack, it's a very difficult adventure, one that my players came to loathe when I ran it back in the day. That's because it's filled with a wide variety of ingenious -- and deadly -- tricks and traps, in addition to more than a few monsters. But it's the tricks and traps that really stand out nearly 30 years later. There's the chess room, the reverse gravity area, the temporal stasis room, and many more. And of course the module's MacGuffin, the Soul Gem, is itself a death trap for the unwary -- a classic move that many players of a certain vintage will remember all too well.

The Ghost Tower itself is something of a "funhouse" dungeon. There's very little rhyme or reason to the way the place is constructed except that the challenges it presents were deemed "fun." I have to admit that they are fun. The Ghost Tower is a big puzzle, a brain teaser that tests the quick thinking and logic of the players. As I noted yesterday, this style of play appeals to me a great deal more now than it did when I was younger, although, even then, my qualms about it had more to do with my own mental inadequacies than with any absolute dislike of the format. Indeed, I always felt that dungeons should include lots of really fiendish traps; I simply wished I was better at overcoming them myself!

The Ghost Tower of Inverness might be fun to run as a tournament-style module someday, since it includes both pregenerated characters but also a scoring sheet. Never having participated in tournaments back in the day -- and, even now, the whole concept of it strikes me as odd -- I will admit to some curiosity about the entire undertaking. I will also admit to some trepidation, since, much as I love the very focused approach these modules possess, it's probably a lot more focused than my games ever were (or are). Still, as a historical exercise, it might be worth a try. If I take this up at some point, I'll be sure to make some posts about it.

Dwimmermount Session 20

The Dwimmermount campaign resumed once again after too long a hiatus (my recent birthday festivities having preempted it last weekend), with the characters picking up where they left off, in a cabin in a vale near Dwimmermount. Said cabin had a history of association with Thulian necromancers in the not-so-distant past and the PCs, particularly Dordagdonar, wanted to learn more about them and their dubious activities. In the previous session, the characters had explored the entirety of the cabin and assumed there had to be a secret or trapdoor somewhere in the place. After thoroughly searching, they found one that took them some distance underground and into a large subterranean complex that they took to have been the true lair of the necromancers.

The corridor they first entered was covered with thousands of small human faces carved from stone. They expected the faces to come to life or to be a trap but neither proved to be the case. Likewise, when they came to a locked bronze door with the key still in the lock, they assumed the worst. Again, they were proven wrong and I think these events filled them with more apprehension about what lay ahead of them than real traps would have done. Exploring beyond the bronze door led them to a room filled with small tables on which rested skeletal human hands -- all left hands. They also found another set of bronze doors, this time engraved with a sigil they assumed was of some significance to Thulian -- or possibly Termaxian -- alchemy, though they have no proof of that as yet.

Beyond the second bronze door was a large temple, filled with stalls, an altar, and a non-functional organ made from bones. The ceiling was also festooned with bones, skulls specifically, which hung from metal chains in large numbers above their heads. On top the altar rested a large bowl in which there was a jeweled dagger and a necklace, both of which they determined to be magical. However, Brother Candor wanted nothing to do with them, assuming they were probably cursed. Dordagdonar also worried about their status, but eventually took possession of them, taking care never to actually touch them with his skin. He used a thick cloth to pick them both up and then placed them in his pack.

Leaving the temple behind, the characters came across first an embalming chamber, where Dordagdonar, thanks to his helm of comprehend languages, came across a book called the Grimoire of Walking Flesh, which looked to be a manual on the construction of a flesh golem from dead bodies. Dordagdonar was unclear about exactly why he wanted the book -- "Research." -- but he took it anyway. Exploring further, the party came across room after room filled with the mummified remains of human beings whom they presume to have been associated with the cult that once thrived here. The rooms were all large (30-foot ceilings) and packed with niches into which bodies were resting. After briefly musing about the prospect of starting a mummia powder business, they moved on.

I should note here that one of the interesting things about this session is that there was no combat and indeed very little dice rolling beyond searches for traps and secret doors. And yet it still very much felt like D&D to me. I think that's because, then and now, I associate the game very strongly with exploration. There was careful mapping of everything, a cataloging of room contents, and the sorts of precautions you'd expect when entering dangerous terra incognita. The session had more in common with Carter and Carnarvon than with action movies and yet it felt right. Indeed, as I noted above, there was a great deal more tension present than in more combat-heavy sessions, probably because each new empty room without any obvious traps suggested that the next room must be the one that had one or the other -- or both. It was very interesting to watch this and it hit home the value of emphasizing the exploratory aspect of dungeon crawling.

The characters continued to explore the place, finding many more intriguing and suggestive items but no sign of any life -- or unlife -- amidst the dusty rooms. I'm not yet certain what they think is going on here or if they think anything is going on at all, as their approach to date has been a methodical one, filling in the map, checking out every corridor, and carefully seeing if there might have been some significant detail they missed. I don't doubt that some gamers would find our sessions a bit dull, even tedious at times, but, so far, it's managed to hold everyone's attention.

I suspect it's because our approach is to treat the dungeon as a big "puzzle" that needs to be unraveled rather than as simply a backdrop against which combat takes place. Now, there is plenty of combat, as my earlier session recaps have made clear, but combat is (in general) just another obstacle in the way of the party's coming to unravel the mystery of the dungeon. And by "mystery," I don't mean that there is some Secret Truth at the heart of Dwimmermount that explains it all, because there isn't. Rather, I mean that Dwimmermount is a locale filled with unknowns and my players seem to take pleasure in bringing those unknowns to light. That's what drives them and holds their attention and I have to confess I get a big kick out of watching them grapple with the little hints and clues I've placed throughout the dungeon. Sometimes they figure things out and sometimes they don't, but, even when they don't, it's led to some great fun, which is why we're doing this in the first place.

Ed Answers

In going through my immense backlog of unanswered emails, I found a question that one of my readers asked to pass along to Ed Greenwood. His question was:

One of the most notable things I saw in your products was a thank you to Gary Gygax for creating the Drow in your supplement Drow of the Underdark in 1991. That thank you is notable since there wasn't a lot of mention of Gary's name after his departure, and I know EGG and Lorraine Williams didn't get along. Because of that, did you encounter any resistance to placing that thank you?

So I passed the question on to Ed, who rather quickly replied as follows:

No resistance at all. I'm not sure upper management ever actually read any of the products unless some complaint or controversy brought something to their attention.

So there you have it.

REVIEW: Knockspell #3

With the recent announcement that Black Blade Publishing was to become the exclusive publisher of the Swords & Wizardry core rules and Knockspell magazine, I expected it to be some time before we'd see any new products released. Not so, as it turned out, for shortly thereafter Black Blade published the third issue of Knockspell. It's theoretically the "Summer 2009" issue, which suggests that it uses the same unique timekeeping system as many academic journals. More seriously, I suspect this means that issue 3 was likely ready to go during the past Summer, but its publication was delayed because of behind the scenes snags connected to the new relationship between Black Blade and Mythmere Games.

As with the previous two issues, number 3 is available in both print and PDF formats. The issue is slightly cheaper than both the previous ones, while its page count (68) is more than issue 1 but less than issue 2. The layout and interior art continue to be of the same high quality we saw in issue 2 and Peter Mullen's cover is nicely evocative. Knockspell is most definitely not an amateur periodical and, while it's still far from being as slick and "professional" as, say, Kobold Quarterly, it very favorably compares to Dragon at its height, both in terms of presentation and content.

And what content! I am consistently amazed at the old school community's ability to produce new material that excites my imagination, even after 30 years of gaming. Issue 3 contains a number of excellent pieces:

• Allan Grohe's "The Theory and Use of Gates in Campaign Dungeons" is superb, both in its own right and because of its solid grounding in the great literature on the subject to be found in the hobby's past.
• Akrasia's "Pulp Heroes and the Colors of Magic" offers up some swords-and-sorcery style magic and damage rules for use with Swords & Wizardry (or any other old school fantasy RPG).
• John Vogel gives us a fun little chariot racing mini-game compatible with S&W.
• Tim Kask writes another trenchant editorial, "Blame It on the Players," in which he diagnoses where the hobby/industry went off the tracks. I expect it to be every bit as controversial as his last piece on the subject.
• Scot Hoover's "Black Armor, Black Heart" presents an anti-paladin NPC class for use with OSRIC. As with his Necromancer class from the previous issue, Hoover has done a fine job in bringing an old school classic to life in a slightly new form.
• Gabor Lux presents "The City of Vultures," a city from his Fomalhaut campaign world.
• There are several fun random generators, including one devoted to ruins.
• Jon Hershberger gives us a look at "The Planes: Playgrounds of the Rich and Powerful," which provides the nuts and bolts of planar travel for use with S&W.
• There are also new monsters, including the jin, a collection of genie-like races.
• And there's not one but three new adventures, my favorite of which was "Labyrinth Tomb of the Minotaur Lord" by R. Lawrence Blake, but then I've always had a soft spot for labyrinths (and minotaurs).

All in all, issue 3 was every bit as good as its predecessors, perhaps even better, as I found nearly every article herein to be of obvious use to me. In addition, Knockspell continues to develop its unique editorial "voice," one that is strongly informed by Gygaxian fantasy. That's hardly surprising given the large number of contributors associated with OSRIC, whose raison d'être is the preservation and promotion of Gary's particular vision.

That's not to suggest that all -- or even most -- of its contents march in lockstep to a Gygaxian tune, but Knockspell's content is not as varied or as whimsical as that of Fight On! That's not a criticism, both because my own take on fantasy is Gygaxian in inspiration and because I think the old school community is strengthened by having different publications, each with its own perspective and style. That said, I think Knockspell has more to offer fans of "traditional" fantasy roleplaying than those who prefer wilder, more eccentric takes on the genre. Knockspell is much more conservative, even staid, in its approach and that's fine by me. The hobby needs an unyielding "anchor" that resists the currents of faddishness in fantasy and Knockspell looks to be assuming that role and I'm very glad of it.

Presentation: 9 out of 10
Creativity: 8 out of 10
Utility: 6 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for your fix of largely Gygaxian gaming goodness to inspire you.
Don't Buy This If: Your tastes run to more exotic styles of fantasy.

In Commemoratione Omnium Fidelium Defunctorum

Deus, veniae largitor, et humanae salutis amator: quaesumus clementiam tuam; ut animas famulorum, famularumque tuarum, quae ex hoc saeculo transierunt, beata Maria semper Virgine intercedente cum omnibus Sanctus tuis, ad perpetuae beatitudinis consortium pervenire concedas. Per Dominum.