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Modular: A Brand New Column! And About T1 – The Village of Hommlet

Modular: A Brand New Column! And About T1 – The Village of Hommlet

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hommlet_moduleYou might have noticed the name ‘Modular’ being tagged onto the front of some gaming-related posts over the past several months. Well, being the savvy folks we are we here at Black Gate, we know that Role Playing Games (RPGs), whether tabletop or electronic (Pc/video game/MMO) are immensely popular. And we periodically post about RPGs, in addition to other types of games: such as this one I did on the Dungeons and Dragons Board Game line. And because we’re an on-the-ball kind of website, we’ve noticed that those posts do pretty well.

So, beginning in January, we’re kicking off a regular gaming column called…. you guessed it, ‘Modular.’ The primary focus will be on Role Playing Games, but we want to write about all kinds of fun games and gaming-related topics such as movies, television shows, books, etc. Posts will be written by various Black Gate contributors, and we’re also going to invite some industry folks to come visit, like we did with our popular ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series.

I’m really excited about ‘Modular,’ as I think we’re going to be presenting you with some great stuff – both contemporary and nostalgic. From pen and paper Kickstarters to Dungeons and Dragons history. To give you a taste of what’s coming, the following was intended to be one of the first posts in the series next year. It’s a look at just about my favorite module, T1 – The Village of Hommlet. And as I mention at the end, there’s going to be a follow up post with my thoughts on why The Temple of Elemental Evil was delayed for several years.  If you’ve got a topic you’d like us to cover, or even something you’d like to write a post about, email me at upabob@yahoo.com. The latter is how I ended up with my own column, ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes,’ here at Black Gate. So….

The golden era of my RPG life is Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D).  To prepare for this post, I sat down and read my favorite AD&D module. Now, there are quite a few which I’m still fond of and would like to play again. But T1 – The Village of Hommlet is the leader of the pack. Surprisingly, I’m not particularly crazy about T1-4, The Temple of Elemental Evil (ToEE), the much-delayed sequel, which is usually listed near the top of every “All-Time Greats” list. For me, Hommlet is a completely self-contained adventure in and of itself.

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Modular: Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerors of Hyperborea — 2nd Edition!

Modular: Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerors of Hyperborea — 2nd Edition!

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astonishing-swordsmen-and-sorcerers-of-hyperborea-smallBack in December of 2012, Black Gate head honcho John O’Neill wrote a glowing post about Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerors of Hyperborea (for ease of typing, we’ll go with AS&SH from here on in). AS&SH was created by Jeffrey Talanian, who co-authored Castle Zagyg with Gary Gygax (The Zagyg saga is worthy of a post in itself).

AS&SH came out of Original Dungeons & Dragons (0E), created by Gygax and Dave Arneson. That is the version that my retroclone of choice, Swords & Wizardry, is based on. Talanian cited Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft as his influences. So, we’re talking Pulp: weird pulp!

Fast forward to 2016 and Talanian has launched an already successful Kickstarter for a 2nd Edition of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerors of Hyperboria. As I type this, with 22 days remaining, it is at 318% funding and is tearing through stretch goals like the Cimmerians at Venarium.

The book will be somewhere around five hundred pages and will include a 32” x “40 color map, as well as an introductory adventure. Ian Baggley’s popular art from the 1st Edition will be supplemented with illustrations from about a dozen new artists. If you like this style of art, AS&SH is absolutely worth backing. Check out the new cover!

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Modular: Eye of the Beholder – The Art of Dungeons & Dragons

Modular: Eye of the Beholder – The Art of Dungeons & Dragons

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Art is a HUGE part of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). In fact, you can’t separate the amazing illustrations, (from black and white sketches to glorious color panoramas) from the actual playing of D&D. Of course, this applies to other role playing games. Wayne Reynolds’ illustrations were a big draw for me in trying Pathfinder. But there’s a reason I mentioned D&D.

Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons, a documentary by X-Ray Films and Cavegirl Productions, is due out next year. And what a BRILLIANT idea! In addition to featuring artists and their work, it will also include interviews with game designers, authors, insiders and fans.

 

If this preview doesn’t grab you, I’m not sure you’re a D&D fan. If you read Part One of my history of Necromancer and Frog God Games (you did, didn’t you?), you saw those awesome Necromancer covers. I’ve loved D&D art since I started playing and I even had a puzzle with Larry Elmore’s drawing from the cover of the Red Box.

There’s a very short article about it in Format Magazine that has a bunch of wonderful D&D art from several of the greats. Makes me think of those great Dragon Magazine covers.

You can read Bob Byrne’s ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column here at Black Gate every Monday morning.

He founded www.SolarPons.com, the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’ and blogs about Holmes and other mystery matters at Almost Holmes.

He is an ongoing contributor to The MX Book of New Sherlock Stories series of anthologies, with stories in Volumes III, IV and the upcoming V. 

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: RPGing is Story Telling

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: RPGing is Story Telling

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inspiration_tomblizardAs I recall, I began playing Dungeons and Dragons at the very end of 1st Edition. Most of my early memories are of playing AD&D and that’s still my favorite Role Playing Game (RPG) system. My buddy Chris and I used to ride our bikes to Hobbyland and he would get a shiny new TSR module, while I grabbed a color-bled, paper-bound supplement from Judges Guild.

I had read Moorcock and Lieber by then (though I didn’t get to Tolkien until early high school). I had acquired a love of Greek mythology (and to a lesser extent, Norse) earlier, and The Trojan War was probably my favorite subject matter (I rooted for Troy: that was disappointing: I mean, c’mon, tear apart the walls to drag in a giant horse your enemy left you???).

You know, The Iliad is like a game of Chainmail: a mass combat wargame with the fantasy supplement for individual heroes. Then  you’ve got The Odyssey, which is an overland (over-the-sea, mostly) D&D campaign. After you’ve played that one a time or two, you could switch to The Aeneid and you’ve got an overland campaign with a kingdom building mechanic. Huh – there’s fodder for another post…

My earliest fantasy gaming memories are of playing Adventure on an Atari 2600. That led to Temple of Apshai on an Atari 1200XL computer. I mapped out every room of that game (and The Upper Reaches sequel) on graph paper. Eventually I got an IBM-compatible PC and tore through the gold box games from SSI. I made the graphical leap to Dungeon Master from FTL (this preceded the more successful but derivative Eye of the Beholder by a few years). Even when I stopped playing pen and paper D&D, I continued on through Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Morrowwind and right up to Age of Conan.

Though I stopped playing, I still read a lot of 3rd Edition D&D stuff and began playing once again with Pathfinder. And as I wrote here at Black Gate just a few weeks ago, I’ve begun running a Swords & Wizardry game for some non-pen and paper fantasy players (it’s a good post. Really. You should go read it!).

And from Dungeon! to Wrath of Ashardalon to the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, I’ve played fantasy board games for decades.

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Why I Went Old School — or Swords & Wizardry vs. Pathfinder

Why I Went Old School — or Swords & Wizardry vs. Pathfinder

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Swords&Wizardry_CoverWhen I got back into playing RPGs, I chose Pathfinder over 4th Edition D&D (as a whole lot of people seemed to do). I was familiar with 3rd Edition and the plethora of rules, skill checks, etc… I’m still pretty well versed in Pathfinder, which is a great product, and I’m a big fan both of Golarion, the campaign world, and of the company, Paizo.

Two members of my gaming group have never played an actual pen and paper RPG. One (she) is a hardcore World of Warcraft player, and the other (he) is a veteran PC gamer, with a lot of hours on Baldur’s Gate and Oblivion (among others). Both have also played the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords (which I LOVE!) with me. So, they get the skill check concept.

I decided to run them through a dice-rolling, paper mapping, minis on said paper, character-sheet adventure.

I initially considered Pathfinder. I have a lot of resources available, and I definitely know the system well enough to teach it to them. I even have a Beginner’s Box, still in the plastic (how about that, John O’Neill!).  But I quickly discarded that system.

Pathfinder is extremely rules heavy. I’ve seen it grow over the years and, as seems inevitable for any ongoing, lively edition, suffer from rules bloat and options bloat. The last game I ran, I limited players to the core rulebook just because I didn’t want to deal with so much “stuff.” Also, I’m not particularly interested in half-angel, half-goblin mammoth-riding gunslingers.

BTW – Gary Gygax had some very specific thoughts related to the expansion of the game (presumably through options), in his book, Role Playing Mastery:

Too often, new material purporting to add to a game system is nothing more than a veiled attempt to dominate the game milieu through power, not skill. Such creativity, if it can be called that, amounts to a perversion of the game. It is much like cheating at solitaire. Understanding the scope of opportunity offered to PCs by the game system will certainly discourage the intelligent player  from such useless activity.

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Heavy Metal Lyrics, Sword & Sorcery Fantasy and Video Games: A Cultural Synergy by Dr. Fred Adams

Heavy Metal Lyrics, Sword & Sorcery Fantasy and Video Games: A Cultural Synergy by Dr. Fred Adams

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Fred_SpaceInvadersLast year, Dr Fred C. Adams, Ph.D., joined our parade of writers in the Discovering Robert E. Howard series with an entry on Esau Cairn, REH’s classic science fiction character. Dr. Adams is back for another guest post here at Black Gate. Put on your headphones and go!

The parallel (and almost simultaneous) ascensions of heavy metal music, video game technology (which later migrated to personal computers), and sword and sorcery fantasy to mass popularity from the early 1970s forward are not coincidental. Rather, they are synergistic. All three draw from the late 20th century youth culture’s fatalism and nihilism, honed to a fine edge in the fin de siècle era of the 1990s.

Consider the aesthetic of the Ur-arcade-video game of the 1980s, Space Invaders: ranks of grotesque aliens march across the screen as space ships fly overhead firing missiles. You, represented by a screen icon, scuttle back and forth, trapped in a small area firing and dodging missiles while trying to destroy the oncoming ranks of invaders before they reach you and symbolically stomp you into the earth.

The more you destroy, the more ranks appear, starting closer and advancing more quickly. You can forestall death for a time, but the denouement is inevitable. You will lose; the programming foreordains that you will die no matter how well or how long you fight. Other games of the era, like Missile Command, and Asteroids followed suit.

An occasional arcade game like Dragonquest allowed victory, but most reduced play to a life-and-death struggle the player will never win. The kill tally represents the only satisfaction—how many of them do I take with me? As the Time Traveler of Wells’ famous novel says of fighting an impossible number of Morlocks in the darkened forest, “I will make them pay for their meat.”

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Steve Russell of Rite Publishing – RIP

Steve Russell of Rite Publishing – RIP

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SteveRussell2Steve Russell was the CEO and man behind Rite Publishing, a third party RPG publisher that was quite active with Pathfinder, including the very cool magazine, Adventure Quarterly. Pathways, Rite’s free e-zine, is one of the best Pathfinder periodicals you’ll find.

Steve and his pregnant wife, Miranda, had just moved back to his hometown of Dayton, OH, in late June. They were embarking on a new phase in their life when, sadly, Steve was killed in an auto accident.

I backed his Adventure Quarterly kickstarter. We exchanged a few emails about it, but I don’t claim to know him. But he was friendly to me and he was very earnest about Rite’s deliverables.

You can read Steve’s obituary here (with almost two dozen comments from friends and fans) and also tributes from Matt McElroy and Boric Glanduum.

We here at Black Gate send our prayers and condolences to Steve’s family.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Dungeon! – A New Kind of Board Game

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Dungeon! – A New Kind of Board Game

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Dungeon_boardTSR’s Dungeon! came out in 1975, just one year after Gary Gygax revolutionized gaming with Dungeons and Dragons.

The ground-breaking board game is still an excellent introduction to fantasy gaming over forty years later. The board represents a dungeon, divided into six areas (representing levels) of varying difficulty, differentiated by color.  There are monster and treasure cards for level and the harder the level, the tougher the monsters and of course, the greater the treasures.

The character classes have been changed over the years, but the player chooses from a Rogue, Cleric, Fighter and Wizard and each class needs to collect a certain amount of gold pieces (earned from treasure cards), ranging from 10,000 to 30,000. Also, each hero class performs at its best in certain levels. So you don’t want to take a Cleric to level six, but your Wizard is never going to win by traipsing around level one.

When a hero enters a room or a chamber, they draw a monster card (which might also be a trap). Every monster has a value assigned to each hero (as well as two spell values for the Wizard). The player rolls two six-sided dice and wins on a tie or greater. The monster is dead and the player gets a treasure card. If the Hero loses the fight, one of five things happens, ranging from nothing to dying and losing all of their treasure. The monster and any treasures remain in the room, waiting for another hero to enter.

Heroes explore until they gain the required amount of treasure for their class. The first Hero to make it back to the starting chamber with the requisite treasure wins the game. Bad things can happen on the way back to the starting chamber and the Hero may no longer have enough treasure. And once in awhile, it becomes a race to the finish.

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Need Some Cthulhu?

Need Some Cthulhu?

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AP_Sanity1Way back in 2003, The Shackled City began appearing in the pages of Dungeon magazine. Spread over twelve installments, it let characters adventure in a connected storyline from first to twentieth level and really, it was the first incarnation of the modern Adventure Path. Paizo followed this up with two others, Age of Worms and Savage Tide. A post about the real evolution of the Adventure Path, going back to the ‘Giants’ modules from TSR, would be a pretty interesting read. But that’s not this post.

Paizo lost Dungeon when Wizards of the Coast brought it back in-house. As we all know, Paizo went from developing 3.5 materials to the massively successful Pathfinder RPG. And at the heart of Pathfinder has been the Adventure Path: a six module, linked storyline, written by multiple authors, covering levels 1 to 20. Rise of the Runelords kicked things off in 2007-2008 (I highly recommend the Anniversary Edition ) and later this month, Paizo’s nineteenth Adventure Path comes out.

That’s 114 modules of adventuring. Wow. They range all over the Pathfinder world of Golarion and really showcase what a fantastic campaign world it is. I put it up there with the Forgotten Realms as my favorite (I’m not a big Greyhawk guy, myself).

Bet you wondered if I was ever gonna pay off the post’s title, didn’t you? Well, I am. Here’s a description of Strange Aeons:

In a distant land polluted by an alien menace from beyond the stars, a great cancer grows within the earth. As its tendrils reach out through the dreams of those who learn and study its existence, a sinister cult grows more active in preparing the way for a devastation that will destroy more than the minds of would-be heroes. Can the adventures reclaim lost memories in time to stop the advance of a cataclysmic contagion that could threaten all of Golarion? Can they resist the mind-shattering truths revealed by the Yellow Sign, and the monstrous force it symbolizes? The Strange Aeons Adventure Path pits the heroes against the cosmic horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos, with new monsters, mind-shattering terrors, and explorations far beyond the known lands of Golarion.

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Of Necromancers and Frog Gods: Part Two (The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes)

Of Necromancers and Frog Gods: Part Two (The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes)

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FROG GOD GAMES

Last November, I did a post on the history of Necromancer Games. I wrapped up with, “And there, our saga of Necromancer Games draws to a close. But our story has most certainly not come to an end.” That’s because Slumbering Tsar would rise from the ashes and a new RPG company would be built on its foundations. Welcome to Part Two: Of Necromancers & Frog Gods.

Waking the Tsar

FGG_DesolationShortly after Necromancer hung it up, co-founder Bill Webb established Frog God Games just to publish Greg Vaughan’s The Slumbering Tsar as a fourteen-part subscription saga, to be issued as one massive book at the end of the project.

Starting at 7th level, Tsar is divided into three books. If you want to start from 1st level, I suggest using The Wizard’s Amulet and/or The Crucible of Freya, then part of Tomb of Abysthor as a 1st through 6th level lead-in. The Lost City of Barakus is another excellent option, though not as thematically linked. Though it wouldn’t take much to give the villainous Devron a tie-in to Tsar.

Book one, The Desolation, is three installments (parts) dealing with a small settlement in the barren plains. It totals about 125 pages and gives the party a staging area for adventuring towards Tsar. Think of a Necromancer version of The Village of Hommlet – but way nastier. The story of The Army of Light at the very end of part one is worth it alone for me.

Part two includes the Ashen Waste: with such highlights as The Tomb of the Sleeping Knight (not a lot of sleeping going on here) and the burial mound of the barbarian warriors led by Tark. The Chaos Rift, featuring The Sepulcher of the Last Justicar, is even more deadly.

Part Three gets the party to the walls of Tsar, though it might well perish in The Boiling Land or The Dead Fields first. And a sticky situation waits outside the walls…

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