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Art of the Genre: The Art of D&D is Not Right for Lankhmar [and Most Other Fiction Settings]

Art of the Genre: The Art of D&D is Not Right for Lankhmar [and Most Other Fiction Settings]

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Lankhmar Cover CompressI, like many folk of my age, category, and interest set, have many fond memories of Waldenbooks. I mean, as a kid there were basically two things you could be guaranteed were fun at any U.S. mall: Kay-Bee Toys and Waldenbooks. They were two oases in a desert of clothes outlets and anchor stores that your mother dragged you to on far too many occasions. Still, being able to go to those two stores somehow made it all worthwhile and I weep for the youth of today (and myself for that matter) that malls have now become all clothing & eateries, as both those wonderful chains are gone forever.

Yet I digress, as I’m writing today to speak a bit about a book I well remember purchasing at Waldenbooks back in probably 1987 (although the book’s production date is 1985). This gaming campaign setting, Lankhmar: City of Adventure, was produced by TSR after it acquired the license to Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd & Gray Mouser universe and it does an admirable job detailing the base game mechanics for driving a square peg (Swords & Sorcery) into a round hole (Dungeons & Dragons).

I was too young at the time to properly see this problem and simply enjoyed the game for what it was, another cool setting to have my characters visit (and more importantly steal Nehwon Throwing Daggers, which did 1D6 damage instead of the 1D4 of normal D&D daggers). This was also one of the more interesting cities designed by TSR, in that it is not only huge, but it has a series of square ‘blocks’ that are empty in the map and can be filled in by the DM to customize the city to your personal campaign.

Still, as I look at this large 95-page supplement today, I’m saddened by the thought of what could have been if this kind of development and money had been focused in the right direction. To me, Lankhmar falls well short of the mark because the world of Leiber is inherently NOT D&D, and therefore trying to statistically recreate Fafhrd & Mouser, or anyone or anything else in that universe, is going to fall dramatically short. It is for the same reason that Pete Fenlon developed Rolemaster, and thereafter Middle-Earth Role-playing, because he couldn’t play the world of Tolkien using the table-top mechanics of Gygax’s gaming opus, D&D.

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Thanks, Dad

Thanks, Dad

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HolmesboxI’ve mentioned before – probably too often – that the first copy of Dungeons & Dragons I ever owned was the 1977 Basic Set edited by J. Eric Holmes, featuring a cover illustration by the late, great David C. Sutherland III. The contents of that boxed set are pictured to the right, though the particular version I owned did not come with the dice shown there, but rather laminated cardboard chits. I had to purchase those dice separately through a local toy store.

I loved that Basic Set to bits – literally. I carried it with me everywhere: to school, to the library, to my grandparents’ place, but most often to my friends’ homes, where we’d gather round a table to play this incredible new game we discovered over Christmas break. Consequently, the box eventually fell apart, just as the rulebook and adventure module started losing pages. Before too long, all that remained were the chits, which I still own to this day. I still own the dice, too, but they’re so battered and beaten that the twenty-sider is barely recognizable, never mind usable.

I think about that Basic Set often, because it was my introduction to a hobby I still enjoy to this day, but I found myself thinking about it this past Sunday – Father’s Day – for another reason. By the time I first encountered D&D in 1979, it was well on its way to becoming a genuine fad, helped in no small part by the notoriety it achieved due to its supposed connection to the disappearance of a Michigan State University student earlier that year. The Basic Set I first owned was originally purchased for my father. My mother bought it in the belief that he’d want to see what this game was all about, since he’d been reading all the newspaper and magazine articles he could find about the Michigan State disappearance.

As it turned out, Dad had no interest in learning to play Dungeons & Dragons whatsoever, which is why he readily turned it over to me when I expressed an interest in learning more. It’s for that reason that I’ve always considered him to be the person who first introduced me to roleplaying, even though he was not (and never would be) a roleplayer himself.

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Gygax Magazine #4 Now Available

Gygax Magazine #4 Now Available

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Gygax Magazine 4-smallIt’s been terrific to see Gygax Magazine maintain a regular quarterly schedule, especially after an occasionally bumpy start last year. 2014 has been much better — two issues so far, and we’re not even halfway through the year.

That’s not all that’s terrific about Gygax. Under Art Director R. Scott Taylor (author, editor, and BG blogger extraordinaire), the art in the magazine has really blossomed. The cover for issue 4 is by none other than my fellow Ottawa native Denis Beauvais, another entry in the famous chess series he did for Dragon magazine in the early 80s. And a fabulous piece it is, too (click on the image at left for a mega-sized version).

The interior art is just as lush, and it’s produced by folks who should be familiar to Black Gate readers, including the talented Chuck Lukacs, who illustrated every one of James Enge’s Morlock the Maker stories for us (including his now iconic portrait for “Turn up This Crooked Way.”) Other artists you may recognize include Russ Nicholson (Fiend Folio, Fighting Fantasy), Chris White, Michael Wilson, and many others.

The non-fiction is just as captivating as the art. It includes a new Top Secret adventure by the game’s creator, Merle Rasmussen, an intriguing article on Vancian verbalizations for 13th Age by Ed Greenwood, Leomund’s Secure Shelter by Lenard Lakofka, The Necromancer’s Cookbook by Dave Olson, an article on Djinn by RuneQuest 6 Lawrence Whitaker & Pete Nash, and much more. There’s also comics from Aaron Williams (Full Frontal Nerdity) and Rich Burlew (The Order of the Stick.)

Gygax Magazine #4 is edited by Jayson Elliot and published by TSR.  It is 70 pages (including a gatefold map), priced at $8.95. It’s currently available in PDF format, and in print format before the end of the month. Order directly from the website. We last covered Gygax Magazine with Issue #3.

New Treasures: Trail of Cthulhu: Eternal Lies

New Treasures: Trail of Cthulhu: Eternal Lies

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Eternal Lies-smallI haven’t played Call of Cthulhu or its sister game Trail of Cthulhu in a long, long time. But that’s okay, because I still enjoy reading the fabulously creative adventures.

One of the best — and certainly one of the most elaborate and ambitious — I’ve come across in some years is Eternal Lies from Pelgrane Press. A massive new campaign for Trail of Cthulhu, Eternal Lies is packed full of surprises and adventure.

I originally covered it here when it was first released last year (see my original post for more details), but this week I finally got my hands on a copy. I was not disappointed, even after the lengthy wait.

Trail of Cthulhu is a standalone game of Lovecraftian horror, and one of Pelgrane Press’s most successful and acclaimed products. Set in the 1930s, it uses  Robin D. Laws’s GUMSHOE system, which is also the basis for several other successful games, including The Esoterrorists, Fear Itself, and Mutant City Blues. Now in its third print run, Trail of Cthulhu won two Ennie awards for Best Rules and Best Writing, as well as an honorable mention for Product of the Year.

It is superbly supported, with some of my favorite recent RPG releases, including Rough Magicks, Bookhounds of London, Arkham Detective Tales, The Armitage Files, and two omnibus adventure collections: Out of Space and Out of Time.

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Scenic Dunnsmouth

Scenic Dunnsmouth

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dunnsmouth1I have a complicated relationship with adventure modules.

As a someone introduced to Dungeons & Dragons during the Fad Years of the late ’70s to early ’80s, TSR Hobbies was only too glad to satiate my appetite for all things D&D with a steady diet of ready-made scenarios to inflict upon my friends’ characters. I had a lot of fun doing so and, even now, more than three decades later, some of the fondest memories of my youth center around the adventures those modules engendered. Having spoken to lots of roleplayers over the years, I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that one of the most important functions of TSR’s modules was creating common experiences that gamers across the world could share. To this day, I can mention the minotaur in the Caves of Chaos or the juggernaut from Acererak’s tomb and players of a certain vintage know exactly what I mean, because they, too, have had to deal with these threats.

At the same time, there’s a part of me – a snobbish part of me, I suppose – that looks down my nose at “pre-packaged” scenarios, seeing them as the adventure design equivalent of fast food. This elitist part of me prefers “home made meals,” created by the referee from hand-picked ingredients and prepared using original recipes. Anything less than that is a concession, whether it be to mere practicalities, such as time, or something far worse, such as a lack of imagination. Such pomposity wonders, “If you can’t be bothered to make up your own adventures, why would you dare to present yourself as a referee?”

I’ve favored each of these positions, to varying degrees, at different times in my life. It should come as no surprise that the “adventure modules are for the unimaginative” position was something I adopted most strenuously in my later teen years, whereas the “Cool! Queen of the Demonweb Pits!” position was what I adopted earlier. Nowadays, I’m more fond of adventure modules than I have been in quite some time, in part, I think, because there are a lot of really good ones being produced these days. A good example of what I’m talking about is Zzarchov Kowolski‘s Scenic Dunnsmouth, published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess in Finland.

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A Shadow Falls Over Faerûn: Anauroch: The Empire of Shade

A Shadow Falls Over Faerûn: Anauroch: The Empire of Shade

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Anauroch The Empire of ShadeBack in April, I wrote a brief article on the Third Edition D&D supplement Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave, which I purchased for $7 at the Spring Games Plus Auction. While I was delighted with it, I soon discovered it was the first installment in an epic three-part mega-adventure known informally as The Forgotten Realms Trilogy. Bummer!

Fortunately, I also discovered the second installment buried in the second box of auction loot, apparently purchased during an episode of auction fever for just $6. I examined Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land in a blog post last month.

That just left chapter three: Anauroch: The Empire of Shade, published in November 2007. While copies of Cormyr and Shadowdale are both still available online at relatively reasonable prices, not so for Anauroch — new copies start at around $60 at Amazon and eBay, and there wasn’t one in the boxes I brought home from the auction (I checked). The first two volumes cost me just $13, but it looked like I was going to spend five times that to get the third one.

Luckily, my house rests on top of a Cave of Wonders, a labyrinthine game repository containing thousands of D&D artifacts dating back to antiquity. I mounted an expedition — with a flashlight, a map, and water for several days — and before too long I unearthed a brand new copy of Anauroch: The Empire of Shade, which I apparently purchased some time in 2009. (Alongside it, covered in a light layer of dust, were brand new copies of both Cormyr and Shadowdale, which I hastily replaced and pretended I hadn’t seen. The fewer duplicate purchases I have to confess to my wife, the better.)

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… and Miniature Figures

… and Miniature Figures

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grenadier1After its initial release in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons enjoyed several periods of mainstream popularity, even faddishness, the largest of which was undoubtedly between 1981 to 1984 or thereabouts, which coincided with the release of not one but two different Basic Sets aimed at younger players. I myself benefited from an earlier surge in interest in the game following the widely publicized disappearance of Michigan State University student James Dallas Egbert III in August 1979. Though the mystery surrounding the young man’s whereabouts was ultimately proven to have nothing to do with D&D, early speculation suggested otherwise, both because Egbert was a player of the game and because it was a game unlike any familiar to most Americans at that time. Playing up the role – no pun intended – supposedly played by this “weird” new game was a great journalistic hook that probably sold a lot of newspapers and magazines.

My father was one of those who, thanks to those newspapers and magazines, became fascinated by the Egbert disappearance and, by extension, Dungeons & Dragons. I also recall that, a couple of years later, he read two novels inspired by these real world events (Rona Jaffe’s Mazes & Monsters and John Coyne’s Hobgoblin), neither of which engendered any interest in me, unlike the news stories, which I followed almost as avidly as he did. It was this fascination on my father’s part that led to my mother’s purchase of a copy of the 1977 D&D Basic Set for him, a set I eventually inherited due to his disinterest in actually learning to play the game itself.

Thirty-five years on, what I remember most keenly about those sensationalist articles is how often they were accompanied by photos of college or high school kids sitting around a table in the center of which were painted miniature figures. In at least one case, I recall a very detailed photograph of an armored humanoid creature – an orc perhaps? – and seeing that image enchanted me. Like most children, I’d played lots of board games, but none of them had playing pieces that looked anything like that one. What kind of game was this Dungeons & Dragons that it had such terrific pieces?

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With Apologies to Dopey

With Apologies to Dopey

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DopeyAbout thirty-five years ago, I met Greg B., which is to say I also met his muscle-bound D&D character, Dopey. I owe both an apology, and since I am nearly thirty-five years late in doing so, it’s high time I got on with it. In public, no less.

Dopey was an amazing fighter. A real head-slamming, sword-wielding, take-no-prisoners dude. Not all that stupid, either. He was the first high-level character I’d ever bumped into, either as a player or as a ref, and so perhaps it was written in the stars that eventually, Greg and Dopey would join me gaming, and for an adventure in which I was the dungeon master.

And what did I do when that happened? I killed Dopey.

I did it deliberately, too, and I even know why, but I shouldn’t have done it. I even sensed I was in the wrong — call it a vague but unshakable apprehension — right in the very moment. That alone should have been enough to stay my hand. It wasn’t. So much for teenage maturity.

If I knew where Greg B. is today, I’d make the apology directly. Instead, and because it’s the best I can do at this point, I’ll post my story here, and perhaps one of you knows Greg and can direct him to this post.

Here’s how it happened.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Gary Gygax’s Role Playing Mastery

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Gary Gygax’s Role Playing Mastery

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Gygax_RPMcoverMy Dungeons and Dragons roots don’t go back to the very beginning, but I didn’t miss it by much. I remember going to our Friendly Local Gaming Store with my buddy. He would buy a shiny TSR module and I would get a cool Judges Guild supplement.

And I remember how D&D was the center of the RPG world in those pre-PC/video game playing days. And Gary Gygax was IT. It all centered around him. So, I’ve been reading with interest a book that he put out in 1987, less than twelve months after he had severed all ties with TSR.

Role Playing Mastery is his very serious look at RPGing. He included the 17 steps he identified to becoming a Role Playing Master.

If you’re reading this post, you probably know that Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson co-created Dungeons and Dragons circa 1973-1974. Unfortunately, it was not a long-lasting partnership and lawsuits would ensue. While both were instrumental in creating D&D, it is Gygax who is remembered as the Father of Role Playing.

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Going Home

Going Home

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PHBI’ve lived away from the house where I grew up since I went off to college at the age of 17. That was only a couple of years shy of three decades ago (yikes!). Since then, I’ve lived in three different cities, including one in another country. By any reasonable measure, I’ve spent more years living somewhere other than that house than I ever did under its roof. Yet, no matter how long it’s been since I last lived there, no matter how long it’s been since I last visited it, whenever I return, I’m home. Indeed, when I talk about my parents’ house and the city where it’s located, I reflexively use the term “home” for both, this despite the fact that I’ve now lived with my wife as long as I ever lived with my parents.

It’s a strange habit of mind, one I doubt is unique to me and that manifests itself in other ways. Since high school, for example, I’ve studied four different foreign languages. Just last week, I started learning a new one. Even though I attained a reasonable degree of literacy in all of them, I never gained significant verbal fluency, in large part because I never learned to think in another language. I am always thinking in English and mentally translating from it to whatever other language I am attempting to speak. In short, I continue to be an English speaker, even when I am trying to speak French or German.

Though Dungeons & Dragons was my first roleplaying game and a staple of my hobby for more than a decade, by the mid-90s, I’d largely stopped playing it. The reasons for my doing so are several and not very important. Shortly before Wizards of the Coast released its new edition – Third Edition or 3e – I was working as a writer at a games magazine and was given early access to the forthcoming rulebooks as background for an article I was tasked to write. I did not expect to like the new edition, let alone like it enough that I’d come back to D&D after a prolonged absence, but I did. I owe Wizards of the Coast a big debt of thanks for having helped me to fall in love with Dungeons & Dragons again.

Over the next six years or so, I played Third Edition intensely. I got to know the game and its rules very well, so well, in fact, that I started to find them ponderous to the point where they were getting in the way of the kind of tabletop experience I wanted. This led me to start to think seriously about what I liked in RPGs and how I could best get it. Ultimately, that thinking led me back, ironically, to the games I’d played in my youth, including the earliest editions of Dungeons & Dragons.

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