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Lord Dunsany, Philip José Farmer, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

Lord Dunsany, Philip José Farmer, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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Over the Hills and Far Away-smallI’m still enjoying the Appendix N surveys by Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode at Tor.com, as they read through every author Gary Gygax cited as an influence on Dungeons and Dragons, even though I’ve found lots to disagree with in their recent columns.

So I’m happy to continue with these re-caps here. Especially since I don’t have a lot emotionally invested in their next two subjects: Lord Dunsany and Philip José Farmer.

I have a lot of respect for Lord Dunsany, but that chiefly stems from the many fine writers who have cited him as an influence. I’ve read only a handful of his shorter works and, while I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read, he’s mostly an untapped natural resource for me.

It’s much the opposite with Philip José Farmer. I was a huge fan of his Riverworld books when I first read them decades ago. But they didn’t really hold up on re-reading 15 years later, for me.

So Farmer is a writer I largely lost interest in years ago, although I have to admit I haven’t really given fair attention to his many fantasy novels. I know his work is highly regarded, and in fact both Cynthia Ward and Christopher Paul Carey made excellent cases here for why I should pay a lot more attention to his Gods of Opar and Tales of the Wold Newton Universe series, for example.

So let’s say I have more of an open mind with both Lord Dunsany and Philip José Farmer, and I’m willing to be influenced.

With that out of the way, let’s see what Tim and Mordicai have to say.

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The Weird of Oz Wraps Up Christmas Shopping

The Weird of Oz Wraps Up Christmas Shopping

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12d9_dungeons_and_dragons_clue_boxSince geek culture has pretty much overtaken popular culture these days, any visit to the local shopping mall comes inundated with looming dragons, flashing robots and space vehicles, menacing creatures from myth and legend, superheroes of every stripe, and a certain familiar blue police callbox. Now that I have kids of my own, Christmas shopping is really interesting…

Okay, I’ll confess: my gift purchases sometimes tend to be of the “Oh man when I was that age I would’ve loved this!” variety. My wife chides me about how my daughter’s tastes are starting to slant away from superheroes and monsters and toward Barbie and Polly Pocket.

I have a son, too, but he’s still just two, so some of the coolest toys just aren’t age appropriate for him yet. My daughter, on the other hand…

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Last Minute Gift Ideas for your Game Geek or Webcomics Lover

Last Minute Gift Ideas for your Game Geek or Webcomics Lover

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It is the time of year for presents. If you celebrate Hanukkah, I’m late on giving you any gift ideas, but for people rushing to get gifts for friends in the next few days, here are a few last minute gift ideas. Do you know someone who loves interactive fiction? Someone who digs webcomics? If you’re shopping for someone who would rather have a digital gift than a package to open, you might encounter some gifting hurdles — but it can be done!

Happy holidays! Play a game!
Happy holidays! Play a game!

Games

I’ve already mentioned some games I like in this column, so anything I’ve already spotlighted is something I recommend. Here are a few games I’m planning to cover in upcoming posts:

  • Today’s just released Choice of Deathless by fantasy author Max Gladstone is an awesome mix of corporate espionage and demon fighting. I got to playtest this one (disclosure: Max is in my fiction critique group, Substrate) and I’ve already played it probably five times. I can’t wait to play it again. (Max is also the author of two amazing fantasy novels, Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise, which you can pick up at your local bookstore or use the expedited shipping option from your favorite online bookseller to get them in time for Christmas.
  • Choice of Ninja is exactly what you’d expect: lots of martial arts, magic, and stealth, and your choices help decide the fate of two warring shoguns. I’m still playing this one (so author Katherine Buffington may have some surprises!), but I’m really enjoying it so far.
  • I had so much fun playing a real-estate agent for a haunted house in Gavin Inglis‘s short game Eerie Estate Agent that I bought his novel Crap Ghosts. The book is downloadable without DRM via Kobo, which means if your friend is local, you can buy it and load it to your friend’s device (or send it via e-mail) rather than muck about with online gifting.
  • Failbetter Games (of Fallen London) is releasing a tie-in 2D adventure game, Sunless Sea, available now for pre-order. Best thing about this one is it comes with a “gift” option right from the order page.

Purchasing

So how do you send someone a digital game as a gift? It depends on the device, but here are a few tips:

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Prologomenon to Fantasy

Prologomenon to Fantasy

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bullfinchOne of the things that I frequently blather about is that, when I was growing up in the 1970s, “fantasy,” as it’s understood today didn’t really exist, at least not as a mainstream, popular genre.

Don’t get me wrong: the ’70s were a decade of fantasy par excellence, especially literary fantasy, from reprintings of earlier works, such as the Lancer Books Conan series (begun in 1966) and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series (begun in 1969), to the Tolkien imitators, like Terry Brooks’s The Sword of Shannara (1977) and Stephen R. Donaldson’s Lord Foul’s Bane (1977) – not to mention Tolkien’s own The Silmarillion (1977 once again!) – to modern classics like Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness (guess what year?). The ’70s also saw fantasy rise to prominence in other media, like comic books, where Roy Thomas’s Savage Sword of Conan cultivated an entire generation of artists, and movies, where special effects artists continued to acquire the skills and technology to bring fantasy to life on the silver screen. And, of course, the decade also saw the appearance and flourishing of fantasy roleplaying games, beginning with Dungeons & Dragons in 1974.

Despite these strides, spearheaded by the faddish popularity of D&D and its imitators, I’d argue that fantasy didn’t really come into its own as a pop cultural phenomenon until much later. Consequently, when I first encountered Dungeons & Dragons very late in 1979, I had almost no direct experience of what we’d nowadays call fantasy. Indeed, I wouldn’t read a word of The Lord of the Rings or the tales of Conan until after I’d begun rolling polyhedral dice. For that matter, I don’t think I’d even heard of J.R.R. Tolkien or Robert E. Howard until I encountered both their names in the pages of the J. Eric Holmes-edited D&D rulebook that was my introduction to the game. The same goes for Lovecraft, come to think of it, and most of the other authors whom we typically regard as the “founders” of fantasy. In that respect, my youth is very different than that of 21st century fantasy aficionados, almost all of whom I’d bet didn’t make it to the age of 10 without at least being familiar with the characters and ideas these authors birthed.

However, this isn’t to say I had no experience with fantasy before I discovered Dungeons & Dragons, only that my introduction to it was of a different sort, one I expect I shared with many kids of my generation.

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New Treasures: The House of R’lyeh: Five Scenarios Based on Tales by H.P. Lovecraft

New Treasures: The House of R’lyeh: Five Scenarios Based on Tales by H.P. Lovecraft

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The House of R'lyeh-smallI feel like I’m in the middle of H.P. Lovecraft week.

On Sunday I talked extensively about Lovecraft, a propos of his inclusion in the latest round of Advanced Readings in D&D. This morning I invoked his name while discussing Robert Bloch’s Nightmares collection. Now here we are again, with the latest collection on adventures for one of my favorite role-playing games, Call of Cthulhu, based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft.

I bought my first CoC adventure — the classic Shadows of Yog-Sothoth — over 30 years ago (yes, I’m aware that’s longer than most of you have been alive. Shut up), and the most recent, Cthulhu By Gaslight, last April. I haven’t played CoC in years (decades, probably), but the adventures are marvelously inventive and always a pleasure to read for a veteran game master like me. But The House of R’lyeh has extra appeal for Lovecraft fans of all kinds, not just CoC players, I think: it draws directly from five of the Master’s short stories. I’m looking forward to digging in and seeing how successful it is.

The House of R’lyeh contains five Call of Cthulhu scenarios that follow or expand upon events in five of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories: “Pickman’s Model,” “The Haunter of the Dark,” “The Hound,” “Arthur Jermyn,” and “The Nameless City.” Set in Boston, Providence, the British Isles, continental Europe, and the Middle East, none of the scenarios need be played at set dates or in a set order, but they could be run in the order presented to form a loose campaign using optional link between scenarios to draw investigators from one to the other.

Alternatively, the scenarios may be used to supplement classic Call of Cthulhu campaigns such as The Shadows of Yog-Sothoth which suggests that its component scenarios should be interspersed with others.

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H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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The Lurking Fear HP Lovecraft-smallWe’re drawing closer to the end of Gygax’s famous Appendix N, the list of influences and recommended reading he included at the back of the D&D Dungeon Masters Guide.

Over at Tor.com, Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode continue their tireless trek through the entire list, sampling a little bit of each writer and generously sharing their impressions with us, while here at Black Gate we continue to appreciate and critique their columns. Since that’s a heck of a lot easier than actually trying to read along with such a massive project. Makes me tired just to think about it. Seriously, I need a bit of a lie down.

In the last few weeks they covered one of the most popular fantasy writers of the 20th Century — indeed, one of the most popular writers to pick up a pen, period — and a relatively obscure short story writer who was ignored for virtually his entire life, until a tiny press in Sauk City, Wisconsin, decided to make it their mission to return all of his works to print shortly after his death. Yes, we’re here today to discuss A. Merritt and H.P. Lovecraft, respectively.

Let’s start with Lovecraft. Mordicai kicks things off in fine fashion:

The guy basically invented contemporary horror — besides splatter and slasher, I suppose — and you can’t really talk about him without a sort of gleeful enthusiasm. Or at least, I can’t.

Uncaring alien godthings and cults of fishpeople get all the attention, but the stories that stick with me are the ones that get a little more surreal. Don’t get me wrong: At the Mountains of Madness, Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innsmouth… there are a reason that these stories are at the forefront, as the juxtaposition of modern man with truly unknowable forces is a ripe category…the ensuing cosmic creepfest and insanity in response to a nihilistic and uncaring universe might be seen as Lovecraft’s thesis.

That said, for me it is the odder tales, like The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, that kick it up a notch. Hordes of cats, friendly conversations with cannibal ghouls, trips to the moon, evil ticklers, and terrifying plateaus that only exist in dreams? Yes please! I’m going to go on a limb and say that I see a little Randolph Carter in some of my favorite protagonists. Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks, I’m looking at you…

While I’m a devoted fan of Lovecraft’s longer and most famous works — I consider “The Shadow out of Time” to be one of the finest pieces of fantastic fiction ever written — there’s no question that his Dream-Quest tales are equally worthy of attention. A tip of the hat to Mordicai for not taking the easy route.

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The Rebirth of Ares Magazine

The Rebirth of Ares Magazine

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Ares Magazine 2014-smallIn the early ’80’s, Simulation Publications, Inc. (aka SPI) published a magazine named Ares. It included science fiction and fantasy along with articles and a complete game in every issue. It was short-lived, lasting only 19 issues, and Dragon revived it briefly within its own pages as an Ares section (see our review of issue #3 of the original magazine, featuring the game Barbarian Kings). And so it remained as an intriguing concept that simply ceased publication.

But that wasn’t the last hope for Ares. As Yoda would say, “No, there is another.” One Small Step Games, under Michael Anderson, decided to venture into remaking the old magazine. “The big idea is to fill a void,” says Anderson, “a new magazine that combines a standalone, unique, playable board game in every issue with a collection of spectacular, new fiction.”

With pay rates of five cents per word, Ares is serious about finding great fiction. Their preferred genres include fantasy, science fiction, horror, and pulp adventure.

They plan on publishing bi-monthly, and each issue will include 80 pages of fiction and other content, wrapped around the playable game. The first game will be War of the Worlds by independent game designer Bill Banks.

On January 1, Ares will launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise funding for this endeavor. If successful, the target delivery date for the first issue is May 1, 2014.

A magazine of speculative fiction AND a playable game? That sounds like a great combination to me.

Check out their website for more information: Ares Magazine.

Vintage Bits: BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception

Vintage Bits: BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception

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Battletech The Crescent Hawk's Inception-smallInfocom is one of the most revered names in computer gaming history. In fact, for serious collectors of PC games, there’s probably no other company that commands the respect of (or is as collectible as) Infocom.

Their heyday was the early 80s, when they released the most famous text adventure ever written, Zork (1980), alongside other classics like Enchanter (1983), Steve Meretzky’s Planetfall (1983), Brian Moriarty’s Wishbringer (1985), and Dave Lebling’s fabulously creepy Lovecraftian scarefest The Lurking Horror (1987).

But my favorite Infocom game came late in their history — indeed, after the company very nearly collapsed following the failure of their ambitious DOS database, Cornerstone, in 1986. By that time, over half of the employees had been laid off and the remnants of the company sold to Activision in a fire sale. For the first time in their history, Infocom turned to outside developers to help fill their production schedule.

It was a desperate move. Infocom had a nearly flawless reputation in the gaming industry, even as late as 1988, and expecting an untested development shop to deliver product that would meet the public’s exceedingly high expectations for an Infocom title was an exceptionally risky bet.

Fortunately, the outside developer they chose was Westwood Studios, who would later go on to develop some of the most successful games of the 90s, including Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder (1990), Command & Conquer (1995), Blade Runner (1997) — and who virtually created the real-time strategy (RTS) genre with their groundbreaking Dune II (1992). Their first game for Infocom, and the one that really put them on the map, was one of the best titles Infocom ever released: BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception (1988).

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Christmas in the Dungeon

Christmas in the Dungeon

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dungeongame1975Whenever Christmas looms, my thoughts turn not to decorations, carols, and presents; but to dungeons. Actually, that’s not entirely true. My thoughts do turn to presents – or, rather, a single, very specific present, albeit one received not by myself, but by a good friend of mine in 1979.

Among my childhood friends, it was traditional that, during the Christmas break from school, we’d all take turns visiting one another’s homes to marvel at our respective holiday hauls. Together, we’d then play with whatever we deemed the most interesting presents. In the dying days of the 1970s, that typically meant Star Wars action figures (or perhaps Micronauts) and so it was that year. I believe that was the year that I received the much-coveted Imperial Troop Transport vehicle and so became the envy of my friends. But, cool as it was to be able to push a button on the Troop Transport and hear sound effects from my favorite movie, that wasn’t the Christmas gift that most interested me.

That honor fell instead to a strange little board game my friend Mike received. I say “strange,” because the “board” wasn’t really a board at all, but rather a folded up piece of thick paper that didn’t lay very flat on the table unless you held down the corners with books or other heavy objects. This board depicted a bunch of colored boxes connected by meandering yellow spaces, with a few larger spaces here and there. These larger spaces were all given rather evocative names like “King’s Library” and “Queen’s Treasure Room” and “Torture Chamber.” Flimsy though it might have been, the board nevertheless caught our attentions – and fired our imaginations.

The game, of course, was David R. Megarry’s Dungeon!, which was first published in 1975 by TSR Hobbies.

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Deck-Building Battles with Warmachine: High Command

Deck-Building Battles with Warmachine: High Command

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WM High Command_3DFor me, a good game is really a window into another world. It’s like a miniature story that is told with a set of pre-defined rules. The war games I play are rarely just games, like tic-tac-toe or chess, but instead a single battle in a larger war, which in turn is part of the story of the rise and fall of nations and the struggles of the people within them.

It was this perspective on gaming that first drew me to Privateer Press’s Warmachine line of miniature games. Though I loved the physical look of the figures, the fact is that I’m not an artist or a visually-compelled person as a rule, so it was really the setting that drew me in, the possibility to, in some small part, take part in the stories set in this world. And the giant warjacks didn’t hurt.

In fact, the first article I wrote for Black Gate was a review of Privateer Press’s Iron Kingdom roleplaying supplements, exploring their magically infused steampunk-style world of giant mechanical behemoths. Soon after, though, my involvement in Warmachine died off. I got married, became a father, and the disposable income to buy metal miniatures and disposable time to sit painting them went by the wayside (and there was a vast increase in anxiety, as little two-year-old fingers would inevitably seek to play with “Daddy’s dolls,” as they became known in my house).

Fast forward to the present, and it’s as if Privateer Press has found a solution to getting me back involved in one of my favorite gaming worlds. In addition to a whole new Iron Kingdoms line of RPG supplements (Amazon, Privateer Press) and digital fiction set in the Iron Kingdoms (Amazon), they have released a new deck-building game, Warmachine High Command (Amazon).

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