Retrospective: The Complete Book of Elves

By the early 1990s, AD&D 2nd Edition was in full swing, and one of its defining features was the proliferation of entries in the Player's Handbook Rules Supplement (PHBR) series, commonly called the Complete books. These were player-focused supplements initially aimed at expanding the options for various classes that were eventually expanded to other topics, including races. The series is mixed bag, with most volumes following in the footsteps of The Complete Fighter’s Handbook – solid and unremarkable. However, a few stand out for how bad they were, The Complete Book of Elves, published in 1993, being my candidate for the worst (feel free to nominate your own in the comments).

Written by Colin McComb, The Complete Book of Elves is, at its core, an expansion of the already-powerful elf race in AD&D. But whereas earlier material presented elves as skilled but balanced adventurers with unique strengths and weaknesses, this book instead leans hard into the idea that elves are just better –smarter, faster, more artistic, more magical, more attuned to nature, and, of course, longer-lived – than virtually every other playable race in the game.

This emphasis is the start of where the book runs into trouble. It doesn’t just provide players with more options for elven characters; it actively reinforces an attitude of elven superiority, sometimes to an absurd degree. Take, for example, this passage:

No elf will ever simply perform a function when he can do it with flair and style. If a human forges a sword, he creates a piece of metal that cuts and slashes. If an elf forges a sword, he creates a masterpiece of balance, beauty, and power.

That's more or less the tone of the entire book. Elves are naturally superior to humans and other races in virtually every way that matters. Their weapons are better, their magic is more refined, their civilization more enlightened, their senses sharper, their emotions deeper. Even their music is better! 

If it were merely a matter of tone, The Complete Book of Elves would simply be remembered as insufferable. However, the book follows suit with its rules expansions as well and this, in my opinion, is where it reaches a new level of egregiousness. The new elven kits, which are supposed to offer distinct roleplaying options, tend to be overloaded with benefits and underweighted on drawbacks. The bladesinger, for instance, is a combat-ready spellcaster with virtually no downside beyond its limitation to one weapon. The wilderness runner is an elf so in tune with nature that he can literally run faster than a horse. Even some of the purported elven disadvantages, like the elves' reluctance to use heavy armor, are framed as virtues rather than limitations.

It’s not as if the book is poorly written. McComb has a decent grasp of language and some of the information he presents, particularly concerning elven philosophy and their approach to magic, is interesting. However, it is so unbalanced in its portrayal of elves that it feels almost like a work of in-game propaganda rather than a neutral sourcebook. I don't think that was McComb's intention, but, even if it were, I think he went a bit overboard in his approach. I distinctly recall that, during the '90s, The Complete Book of Elves was the butt of frequent jokes by all but the most dedicated elf fanboys. In my local group, we referred to it as "The Complete Book of Gods," because of its overpowered kits and supercilious prose.

Despite this, The Complete Book of Elves still holds some interest today, if only from a historical perspective. It's an artifact of a time when AD&D was leaning much more heavily into the "story" or "narrative" approach that was pioneered almost a decade earlier in Dragonlance. The book has less concern for mechanical balance than it does for presenting a nonhuman race in sufficient detail for maximum player immersion. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing – I'm a longtime fan of Roger E. Moore's "Point of View" series in Dragon, for example – but I can't help but feel as the racial Complete books, especially this one, go too far in this direction. 

Ultimately, I think The Complete Book of Elves serves as an object lesson in the dangers of overindulging a single race or concept in a game. I prefer it when a supplement expands options, not elevates one choice as obviously better than all the others. Based on my undoubtedly biased experience, this book simply exacerbated an existing problem: players already drawn to elves didn’t need more reasons to see them as superior. It's a flawed and indulgent book, worth a read only if you want a window into some of the worst tendencies of TSR and AD&D during the early to mid-1990s. 

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: The Inner Planes

I've commented before that, while I'm no fan of Unearthed Arcana as eventually published, I was conversely a big fan of much of the material Gygax was creating in preparation for his never-written second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This material appeared in the pages of Dragon over the course of several years, presenting new classes (like the barbarian, cavalier, and thief-acrobat), weapons and armor, spells, and monsters, along with expanded conceptions of other aspects of the game. At the time, I liked these articles simply because they provided me with more stuff to use in my AD&D campaign (and use them I did). Now, though, what I like about them is the way they seem to represent a maturing of Gygax's fantasy conceptions, the fruit of years of thought and play, not to mention the need for AD&D to find new frontiers of adventure.

His article, "The Inner Planes," which appeared in issue #73 of Dragon (May 1983), demonstrates this maturation process quite clearly, I think. In it, Gygax offers "a new way to look at the AD&D world." This new way was necessary because, as the game's cosmology evolved, there was a need to reconcile new conceptions to earlier presentations. The para-elemental planes, for example, arose out of wondering about what happens at the point where two elemental planes met. Gygax obviously liked the idea, but soon realized that the thought process that led to them was incomplete. After all, there were other Inner Planes, like the Positive and Negative Material Planes, the Ethereal Plane, and the Plane of Shadow (the latter itself a recent addition to the cosmology). How did they interact with the Elemental Planes and what was the effect of all this interaction?

The result is a cubic representation of the Inner Planes, as depicted in this cut-out included on page 13 of this issue:

"What a mess!" you might reasonably say and it is a mess – an ugly, convoluted, and probably unnecessary one at that, but I love it all the same. There are a couple of things I like about this, starting with the fact that it's clearly an attempt by Gygax to think about AD&D's cosmology in rational way. If para-elemental planes arise due to the meeting of two elemental planes, what happens when an elemental plane meets the Positive or Negative Material Plane? What about a para-elemental plane? The result is baroque, almost to the point of absurdity, but it makes sense. One might argue that this is little different than debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and I'm somewhat sympathetic to that point of view. At the same time, given what Gygax had already established about the game's metaphysics and the interactions of those metaphysical forces, this oddly colored cube is a natural, even inevitable, evolution of it all.

That's the second thing I like about this new presentation of the Inner Planes: it's evolutionary. What I mean by that is that it demonstrates that AD&D and the fantasy world it presented was growing and changing, not in a way that, strictly speaking, repudiated anything about its earlier self but rather in a way that added to and expanded upon what had come before. None of this was needed by players or referees solely interested in dungeon crawls or wilderness exploration or all the usual activities of fantasy roleplaying. However, players and referees interested in going beyond that would find it invaluable. Gygax was taking a lot more interest in the other planes of existence, seeing them as the next logical step in exploring the possibilities implied by AD&D's setting. To do that properly, he'd need to think about them more carefully, teasing out the implications and taking stock of all they could offer. Whether one likes the direction he was headed or not, I hope one can nevertheless appreciate the effort.

Retrospective: Monster Manuscript

The very first AD&D book I bought was the Monster Manual, which I acquired through a Sears catalog store using money my grandmother had given me for Christmas. This would have been in early 1980, probably January or February, not long after I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons. I absolutely adored that book and spent untold hours poring over its pages. Even now, I still consider the original Monster Manual one of the best books ever published for the game, if only for the way it expanded the implicit setting of AD&D, never mind the range of opponents available to the referee.

A big part of the genius of D&D is that it's built from modular elements, like character classes, spells, magic items, and, yes, monsters. Simply adding a new one here or there can change the game in all sorts of ways, keeping it fresh and opening up new avenues for exploration and development. As a kid, I was especially fond of seeing new monsters in the pages of Dragon, in adventure modules, and in expansion books such as the Fiend Folio and Monster Manual II. My motto then was "you can never have too many monsters."

Consequently, I was always on the lookout for sources of new monsters to add to my AD&D campaign – and I wasn't very picky. Recently, a comment on my post about piercer miniatures unintentionally reminded me that Grenadier Models published a 32-page monster book in 1986, called the Monster Manuscript. According to multiple online sources, the book was given away for free to purchasers of a particular set of miniature figures produced by Grenadier. However, I'm fairly certain I got my copy in the mail simply because I was on the mailing list for the Grenadier Bulletin newsletter. On the other hand, this was nearly forty years ago, so it's quite possible I'm mistaken about that. 

Regardless, I owned a copy of the Monster Manuscript, which features a striking cover by Ray Rubin, depicting a night hag riding a helsteed, two of the monsters included in the book (more on that shortly). Rubin was the cofounder of Grenadier, along with Andrew Chernak, but he's probably best known for having painted most of the color box covers for Grenadier figures, going all the way back to its licensed AD&D sets, if not before. The Manuscript's text is attributed to Don Wellman, who was apparently a sculptor at the company, much like John Dennett, who did all the interior black and white art. 

Grenadier, you may recall, once held the license to produce official AD&D miniatures, a license they lost in 1982. In the aftermath of that loss, Grenadier rebranded their fantasy figures under the name Dragon Lords, many of which were identical to their old AD&D sculpts under new names. However, after a few years, the company wanted to create new sculpts of their monsters and, to promote that endeavor, they released the Monster Manuscript, which also became the name of the Dragon Lords sub-line devoted to fantasy creatures. All of the monsters included in the book thus had corresponding figures released for them over the course of 1986 and '87.

The introduction to the book (by Wellman) is mostly self-promotion about the game line, but it does include a section that I think is interesting from a historical point of view:

The creature descriptions and gaming stats included in the MONSTER MANUSCRIPT are my perspectives. They are provided as merely food for thought. If you like them the way I've presented them – great! If not, feel free to change them however you see fit; adapt them to your own fantasy world. I tend to believe that the word, "Official", is one which has been used too much in the gaming industry over the years. Imagination is what fantasy is a li about, so why place unnecessary restrictions on it? Fantasy and science fiction fans have to be some of the most creative and intelligent people anywhere, so utilize your abilities, don't be afraid to try something a little different just because it's not labeled "Official". If you've got a yearning for Lawful Good troll warriors, go for it!

It's hard not to look at this section as a dig at Gary Gygax/TSR and their emphasis on only using "official" products at the gaming table. Grenadier had probably suffered financially as a result of their having the AD&D license pulled, so I can hardly blame Wellman for a little bit of snark on the subject in his introduction.

Judging by their stats, the monsters included in the Monster Manuscript are clearly intended for use with Dungeons & Dragons, specifically AD&D. Here's an example of one of the entries. It's for a floating eye, a beholder knock-off:

As you can see, the entry is similar to what you'd find in the Monster Manual, but abbreviated in such a way as to avoid being too similar. To the best of my knowledge, TSR never objected to the content of the Monster Manuscript, so I assume Grenadier's change to the format was sufficient to avoid legal challenges. 

There are over 100 monsters in the book, many of them being what you'd expect – creatures from folklore and mythology. Others are, like the floating eye, non-union equivalents to AD&D monsters, often with names that are surprisingly close to their predecessors, like the "blinc dog," "ruster beast," and "owlbeast," to name a few. Likewise, Dennett's accompanying illustrations are frequently reminiscent of those found in the Monster Manual and elsewhere, leaving no question of what they're supposed to be in the minds of knowledgeable gamers. 

Where the Monster Manuscript differed, though, was in its descriptions. Many included little details that gave the monster an origin or context that I found imaginative or that included bits of world building. For example, many weird or hybrid animals are noted as having been tainted by Chaos, while others reference other planes and dimensions. None of it is exceptional stuff, but some of it's flavorful enough that I can still remember it. That's more than I can say of many other monster books I've read over the years and why I think back fondly on the Monster Manuscript even now.

Piercer Miniatures?

Today's post about "The Ecology of the Piercer" article got me wondering: have there ever been any miniatures of piercers? Though I've never been a big user of minis, I did own a fair number of Grenadier AD&D figures in my youth, some of which featured a goodly selection of the game's weirder monsters – and make no mistake: the pierce is weird. However, I can't recall any piercers among Grenadier's offerings, at least not those that I owned in the 1980s. Nor can I find any evidence online of any other manufacturers, official or otherwise, that produced a pierce model in those days. 

Apparently, WizKids produces one nowadays (pictured to the left). Looking at it, I suppose I've inadvertently explained why there haven't been any such miniatures before: what purpose would they serve? The intent behind piercers, assuming I can fathom the mind of Gary Gygax (or whoever it was that originally created it), is that its appearance is a surprise. Looking like an ordinary stalactite, no one is supposed to notice it until it attacks. Placing a miniature of it on the table would be a dead giveaway of its presence, thereby negating its one and only purpose. 

On the other hand, there have been a lot of odd Dungeons & Dragons miniatures over the years. I doubt the piercer would have been the oddest. 

The Art of the Cavalier

The first appearance of the cavalier character class in issue #72 of Dragon (April 1983) is something I remember very acutely, in large part because I loved the idea of a knightly AD&D character class. For that reason, I can also remember the three illustrations, all by Keith Parkinson, that accompanied it. Here's the first one, which has a blue background for some reason. Perhaps Dragon was experimenting with color interiors at the time?  

Though I've never been the biggest fan of Parkinson's art, I do like this piece, especially the weird combination of a barbute helmet with the brush like that worn by a Roman legate or military tribune. I also appreciate that the horse looks sturdy enough to carry a man in that kit.

Here's the second illustration, featuring what appears to be the same cavalier, possibly fighting kobolds. I say "appears," because the cavalier in this piece holds his sword in his right hand, whereas the one above holds it in his left. At first, I thought that maybe one or the other images had been reversed by accident – this happens a lot in publications – but Parkinson's signature looks correct in both of them, so I'm not sure what's going on. Maybe the cavalier is ambidextrous?

Finally, we get this depiction of a female elven cavalier astride a unicorn. One of the cavalier's abilities is horsemanship. As he levels, the cavalier gains greater skill with his mount, as well as a wider range of possible beasts he can ride. In the case of female elves, unicorns become a mount option for them starting at 4th level, which is cool, I suppose. On the other hand, I'm an obnoxious purist about unicorns. To my mind, they're not just white horse with horns but hybrid creatures with aspects of horses, deer, goats, and lions, so I'm not especially keen about this particular unicorn, but whatever. I still remember this piece more than four decades later, so I guess that's what counts.
 

The Articles of Dragon: "The Chivalrous Cavalier"

From the moment Gary Gygax first announced that his upcoming revision to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons would include, among other additions, a collection of new character classes, my younger self was waiting with eager anticipation for any news about what these classes might be or what abilities they might possess. By the time issue #72 of Dragon (April 1983) had come out, Gygax had already presented previews of two of these new classes, the barbarian and the thief-acrobat, neither of which thrilled me. I didn't hate either of them, but I didn't see much scope for their use in my ongoing AD&D campaign at the time – and neither did my players, who largely ignored them a brief flurry of interest.

This issue offered readers a third proposed class: the cavalier. Described as a "sub-class of fighter ... in service to some deity, noble, order, or special cause," the cavalier was basically a knight, drawing on both historical orders of knighthood and those from legend and literature. Much like the paladin, with whom it shares many similarities (more on that soon), the cavalier has hefty ability score requirements for entrance (STR, DEX, and CON 15+, INT and WIS 10+), as well as belonging to the right social class. A cavalier must initially be good in alignment, whether lawful, chaotic, or neutral, though he may shift away from goodness before 4th level without penalty, which I always thought was an odd detail.

Unlike the paladin, which is a human-only class, the cavalier admits humans, elves, and half-elves, all of whom have the potential for unlimited advancement. The class is focused on mounted combat, which, while appropriate based on its inspirations, would seem to limit its utility in dungeon-focused adventures. No matter: cavalier get numerous other useful abilities, such as combat parries, improved saves against fear, impressive starting equipment (a consequence of their high station), weapon specialization, and, perhaps most remarkable of all, ability improvement. Every time a cavalier gains a level, he rolls 2d10 and adds the result as a note after his Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution scores. When the total from these rolls reaches 100 for any ability, it increases by 1 point. 

Needless to say, the cavalier was quite a popular class among my friends and I at the time issue #72 appeared. I'd long been seeking an "official" AD&D knight class, so the cavalier scratched a longstanding itch of mine. That the class Gygax presented was also incredibly potent, possessing multiple powerful abilities, was just icing on the cake. Compared to the fighter, of which it was a sub-class, the cavalier was just better in almost every way, especially, if as was usually the case, one were not too strict about the rolling of ability scores for new characters. Consequently, I saw a lot of cavalier characters for a while, both in my own games and in those of friends. I can't say I really blamed anyone for this, in light of the class's power. Plus, it had the imprimatur of Gary Gygax, so who could argue against its inclusion?

Over time, quite a lot of us fell out of love with the cavalier. The truth was that, as presented here – and, later, in Unearthed Arcana – the class was simply out of whack with those in the Players Handbook. Perhaps, I thought, once Gygax completed his full revision of AD&D, it might be more in line with the overall power level of the game, but, until then, it was simply too much. This was doubly true of cavalier-paladins, which combined the abilities of both classes – what was Gygax thinking? Yes, it's true that there were various social restrictions placed on cavaliers through their code of honor that might, in principle, keep them in line, but, as kids, that was rarely sufficient to rein them in. I soon forbade cavaliers from my games and hardly anyone complained about it.

Looking back on this article now, it's pretty clear that, by 1983, Gygax's conception of AD&D was in the process of shifting considerably from his original vision. On some level, I can't really blame him. By this time, he'd been playing some version of D&D for over a decade, so it was probably inevitable that he'd want to do something different than he'd done before. Everything he was writing around this time suggests that he was becoming increasingly interested in a more high-powered kind of fantasy, one whose characters were personally powerful and whose adventures involved high stakes and equally powerful foes. Again, I cannot blame him for this. Having refereed my House of Worms campaign for a similar length of time, I know only too well the temptations of going Big, sometimes to the detriment of the game itself.

That's more or less how I look at the cavalier and most of the Gygax-penned material that first appeared in Dragon and later in Unearthed Arcana: experiments gone wrong. Many of them seemed like better ideas than they turned out to be. "Even Homer nods," as the saying goes, and so it was with Gygax and the cavalier.

When Greatness By Right Is Thrust Upon You ...

Whenever TSR released a new campaign setting for AD&D during the Second Edition era, Dragon magazine would include a special section advertising it. Issue #219 (July 1995) included one for Birthright, which featured the following pages:

Retrospective: Birthright Campaign Setting

By now, it's pretty widely recognized that Dungeons & Dragons and, by extension, all roleplaying games ultimately descend from miniatures wargaming. After all, the subtitle of OD&D is "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniatures Figures." Yet, fairly quickly, this descent had become obscured, if not outright forgotten. The first version of D&D I owned, Holmes Basic, was first published in 1977, just three years after the release of OD&D and, by that point the game's subtitle had already been changed to "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Role Playing Adventure Game campaigns" (italics mine). The explicit connection to miniatures wargaming had been severed.

However, many implicit connections remained, most importantly in the way that most character classes, as they advanced in level, gained followers – sometimes a lot of them. High-level characters can also establish strongholds and rules over a territory, collecting taxes from the inhabitants. These and similar aspects of the game reveal, I think, that D&D never completely broke free of the bonds of miniatures wargaming, where free-wheeling campaigns driven by the machinations of players were common. D&D is very much an outgrowth of that style of play, even if most of the new generation of gamers, like myself, had little or no understanding of this fact. And, to be fair, TSR itself did very little to promote this style of play, aside from half-measures like the D&D Companion Set in 1984. 

TSR tried again a little more than a decade later with the release of the Birthright Campaign Setting in 1995. Created by Rich Baker and Colin McComb, Birthright was another example of the many impressive boxed sets released during the Bronze Age of D&D. The set consisted of three softcover books (a 32-page Atlas of Cerilia, describing the game's history and geography; a 96-page Rulebook that detailed changes to the AD&D 2e rules; and a 96-page Ruins of Empire book that detailed all the kingdoms of the setting), a couple of large poster maps, a battle mat, 112 cards with the stats for various military units, a DM screen, and a collection of reference sheets. It was, as I said, a very impressive package. The box was filled to the top with lots of stuff – a hallmark of the era.

One of the central features of Birthright that distinguished it from other D&D settings at the time was that it focused on rulership, whether of a kingdom (or smaller governmental unit) or an organization, like a guild, merchant company, or temple. Most player characters are assumed to be scions, possessors of ancient divine bloodlines that grant them a variety of supernatural abilities. These bloodlines stretch back to the gods themselves, who sacrificed their very essences in order to save the mortal races of Cerilia from the evil god Azrai. When a character is generated, the strength and type of his bloodline is determined randomly. However, through play, the bloodline can be strengthed or weakened, depending on his success or failures in defeating other scions. 

Bloodlines and their powers play a significant role in Birthright. Scions are, by their nature, no ordinary mortals. Their powers enable them to rise to prominent positions in Cerilian society, such as great military commanders, merchant princes, high priests, and, of course, the rulers of domains. Success in Birthright's domain management system depends, to a great degree, on the ruler's use of his bloodline strength and powers, though luck and good judgment play a role as well. It's an interesting conceit and, in my opinion, a rather clever one for a leveled game like AD&D. Since even 1st-level Birthright characters possess bloodline powers, albeit weak ones, they can jump right into the action by governing small territories or organizations, with the hope that, as they advance in influence and power, they can expand the holdings they govern as well.

Domains are governed according to a three-month "domain turn" during which a ruling scion (or regent) makes decisions about how he wishes to govern. These decisions involve taxation, maintenance, warfare, diplomacy, and more. There are also tables for handling random events that might occur during a turn. Of course, characters can also – and indeed are expected to – engage in adventuring during these turns, too, since defeating other scions and stealing their divine power is an important way to increase their own. Birthright regents don't just sit on their thrones and let others do the dirty work for them! It's probably not "realistic," but it's fun, in much the same way that a Star Trek captain's leaving his bridge to beam down to a hostile planet is. After, Birthright is still D&D.

Speaking of its being "still D&D," the Birthright campaign setting doesn't deviate too much from the defaults of Second Edition. All the expected character classes are there and any changes to them are minor at best. The same is true of the standard demihuman races, though elves have a slightly more sinister, or at least distrusted, character to them. The setting does make a distinction between wizards, who cast both "true magic" and realm magic, and magicians, who are specialists in illusion and enchantment. Only scions can become wizards, since both true and realm magic require the divine power of a bloodline to operate. Other than this, Birthright doesn't differ all that much, rules-wise, from AD&D 2e as it existed in 1995.

Though the setting assumes that most player characters will be scions, it's not mandatory. Characters lacking a bloodline are possible, though I'm honestly not sure why anyone would play one. They lack both the extra abilities that bloodlines provided and the hit point boost (+10) that comes with them. Non-scion characters get a +10% XP bonus on top of any other bonus they might qualify for, but that's the only benefit to not having a bloodline. I suppose another perk is that you're not as likely to be a target for ambitious scions hoping to empower themselves by killing you.

Like a lot of AD&D 2e settings, Birthright was very well supported by TSR, with a large number of supplements and adventures being published for it over a very short period of time. I never owned anything more than the original boxed set, so I can't really comment on how useful these were. I get the impression that, as one might expect, they were a mixed bag – some were excellent and added a lot to the setting, while others were less so. For myself, I felt that Birthright was complex enough as it was and can't imagine wanting to add more complexity. The domain management system, while compelling, required a lot of bookkeeping, for example, and the mass combat rules, though simpler than a full-on miniatures wargame, nevertheless required a lot of attention.

The Birthright campaign setting is one that greatly interested me at the time of its release. Unfortunately, that time also corresponded to when my interest in Dungeons & Dragons was rapidly fading. As I said, I bought the initial boxed set and read it with enjoyment. However, that never translated into making use of it. Instead, it languished on a shelf for years, until I finally sold it to someone who'd better appreciate it. Now, I regret that a tiny bit, since I think I now have a better handle on the kind of "movers and shakers" political campaign that the rules were designed to handle. Were I to referee such a campaign, though, I doubt I'd use AD&D, so it's a moot point anyway. 

If anyone reading this made good use of Birthright to run a campaign, I'd love to hear how it went.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Who Get the First Swing?"

There's that word again -- "realism." As I've noted before, it (and variations on it) were a commonplace of Dragon articles after 1983 or thereabouts. This instance of it appears as part of the subtitle to the article "Who Gets the First Swing?" which appeared in issue #71 (March 1983). The article, by Ronald Hall, is an attempt to produce a "simple yet realistic" alternative to the convoluted and much misunderstood initiative system presented in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. I think almost anyone who ever attempted to run combat in AD&D by the book would have been sympathetic to Hall's intention.

Initiative in AD&D, particularly when combined with the equally obscure rules regarding surprise, was one of those areas where, in my experience, most players back in the day simply ignored the official rules and adopted a variety of house rules. I know I did. My system was a variation on rolling 1d6 per side with modifiers and a dash of common sense. D&D's combat has always been pretty abstract, so it never made much sense to me to fixate on making one of its aspects more "realistic." Unfortunately, in this period of D&D's history, that opinion wasn't held by all, least of all those who wrote articles for Dragon. "Realism" was all the rage.

Hall introduces an attack priority system that makes good use of weapon speed factors -- another aspect of AD&D many gamers dropped -- in order to model advantage such "faster" weapons have in combat. His system is an individual initiative system rather than a group initiative one, which, right there, means it's going to be much more complex than the commonest house rules used at the time. Add to this that there many, many modifiers to a character's attack priority, such as weapon length, dexterity, size, hit dice, among others, and you have a recipe for a system that, despite its claims does require "more work." The other issue is that, like many such systems, Hall distinguishes between manufactured and natural weapons, which necessitates that there be seven pages of supplementary stats to cover the modifiers for all the creatures in the Monster Manual. What one is to do with the Fiend Folio monsters is never addressed.

Articles like this were no doubt extremely well-intentioned, but, even at my most obsessive, I never felt the desire to use them. I understood the logic that leads to creating an individualized initiative system with lots of modifiers and special cases, but, at the end of the day, the result always seems like more work than is necessary for a combat system as abstract as D&D's. I'll readily grant that AD&D is a mess when it comes to initiative and the other complexities it bolted on to OD&D's "alternative combat system." However, articles like this strike me as cures worse than the disease.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Falling Damage"

And so it begins.

Issue #70 of Dragon (February 1983) saw the appearance of "Falling Damage" by Frank Mentzer, the first of what would turn into several articles discussing this strangely contentious subject. I say strangely contentious because, until this article appeared, I don't think the "right" way to adjudicate falling damage was ever a topic of serious conversation, at least not among the gamers I knew. The LBBs provide rules for falling damage hidden away in the section on aerial combat in Volume 3, where it's stated simply that

for every 1" of height a rider must throw one six-sided die for damage occurring from the crash, i.e. a crash from 12" means twelve dice must be rolled and their total scored as points of damage

That passage is the basis for what was the standard interpretation of falling damage in every form of D&D -- 1d6 damage per 10' fallen. That is, until this article, where Mentzer claims that the rules in AD&D were hastily written by Gary Gygax and were, as such, unclear as to his actual intent. Instead of 1d6 damage per 10' fallen, the claim is advanced that Gary actually meant 1d6 damage per 10', with the dice being cumulative in effect. That is,

1d6 for the first 10' feet, 2d6 for the second 10' (total 3d6 for a 20' fall), 3d6 for the third 10', and so on, cumulative. The falling body reaches that 20d6 maximum shortly before passing the 60' mark.

According to Mentzer, this new system -- which in fact Gygax had "always used" -- is "definitely more realistic." (emphasis mine) There's that dreaded word, the hallmark of the Silver Age. It's something that, at the time, meant a lot to me, but that, as the years have worn on, I find myself caring less and less about. In a game where people can throw balls of fire from their hands and adventurers become tougher to kill as the result of slaying monsters and looting treasure, fretting over whether a 60' fall or a 200' fall deals 20d6 damage seems bizarre. More to the point, after nearly a decade of "doing it wrong" (Mentzer's words), did the difference matter enough to make the change?

Regardless, the claim that Gygax had "always used a geometrically increasing system for damage in AD&D games" strikes me as somewhat suspect. I suppose it's possible that, sometime after the LBBs were published, Gary changed the way he dealt with falling damage in his home campaign. But, if so, I find it surprising that he never noticed that in every other D&D product published after 1974, the 1d6 per 10' rule is the norm. Indeed, I'd hazard a guess that, if one were to look through the various modules and articles Gygax penned between 1974 and 1983, we'd find instances where the 1d6 damage per 10' rule was in fact used. There's a fun project for an enterprising soul out there!

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Charting the Classes"

One of the characteristics of what I call the Silver Age of D&D is an obsession with mathematics, using it for a wide variety of purposes, from determining the best way to model falling damage to proving if one's dice "be ill-wrought." In issue #69 (January 1983) of Dragon, Roger E. Moore offered up yet another new field for mathematical analysis: class "balance." Many old school gamers think worrying about such matters is a peculiarly modern notion, but it's not. For almost as long as I've played the game, I've known players who fretted over whether this class or that class was "overpowered" or "underpowered" compared to the others. It's a concern I've never really worried about myself, partially because I think all but the most egregious mechanical differences take a backseat to what actually happens at the table. Nitpicker and hair splitter I may be about many topics relating to D&D but this isn't one of them.

However, I'm hardly representative of anyone but myself and I expect that, when Moore wrote this article he was speaking on behalf a sizable number of gamers who had a sneaking suspicion that some AD&D character classes were better (or worse) than others -- and he was going to prove it. Moore's analysis hinges on comparing the classes according to accumulated experience points, not level. His thesis is that, by examining the relative strengths and weaknesses of each class at certain XP benchmarks, he might get a sense of which classes are more (or less) potent than others. In doing this, Moore discovers that, for the most part, AD&D's classes are reasonably balanced against one another, with two significant exceptions, along with a third point of discussion.

The first anomaly concerns druids, which Moore says are unusually tough compared to other classes. Compared to clerics, they advance very quickly and, more importantly, they continue to gain full hit dice all the way to 14th level, which also nets them more Constitution bonuses as well. Druids thus wind up being comparable to fighters at mid-levels and even surpassing them at higher levels. Consequently, he recommends increasing the druid's XP requirements to compensate. The second anomaly concerns monks, which Moore says are too weak in terms of hit points for a class that is supposed to fight hand-to-hand. He recommends that they have D6 hit points. Finally, Moore says -- along with nearly every AD&D player I knew back in the day -- that bard, as presented in the Players Handbook, needs to go. He recommends Jeff Goelz's bard as a replacement.

In the end, "Charting the Classes" is actually a very modest and limited analysis of AD&D's character classes and Moore's suggestions are all quite reasonable. I believe I even adopted his recommendation regarding druids, as I know from experience that they were more potent than they had any right to be. Still, I largely find the idea of "balance" between the classes a Quixotic obsession that's played a lot of mischief with D&D in its later incarnations. But it is, unfortunately, a long and deeply held concern of many gamers and I don't expect it to ever go away.

The Articles of Dragon: "A Split Class for Nimble Characters: the Thief-Acrobat"

Issue #69 of Dragon (January 1983) is another one about whose articles I have very strong memories. The strength of my memories is bolstered, no doubt, by the issue's remarkable cover by Clyde Caldwell. Caldwell's an artist about whom my feelings are generally mixed, but I've nevertheless got a fondness for this particular piece, which, in some ways, encapsulates the vibe of the dying days of D&D's Golden Age. Consequently, I'll be returning to this issue several times in the coming weeks. 

This week, though, I want to look at Gary Gygax's "From the Sorceror's [sic] Scroll" column, in which he provides full details on the thief-acrobat "split class" that he first mentioned in a previous column. A split class is a specialization path for an existing class, in this case the thief. Provided he has the appropriate ability scores requirements (STR 15, DEX 16), a thief can, upon attaining 6th level, choose to devote himself to acrobatics as an outgrowth of his thievery – in effect, becoming a cat burglar or second story man in criminal parlance.

At the time of this article's publication, this was a comparatively unique concept, one that Gygax claims "has not been expressed before" and for which there is "nothing similar" in AD&D. I'm not entirely sure this is true. As I mentioned previously, the thief-acrobat reminds me a bit of the original concept for the paladin class, as found in Supplement I to OD&D. Likewise, the AD&D version of the bard, in which a character must first attain levels in fighter and thief before becoming a bard, is in the same ballpark in my opinion. Even so, the precise arrangement Gygax presents for the thief-acrobat isn't one we'd seen before.

I liked the idea of the thief-acrobat more in principle than in fact and my friends held similar views. Only one of them ever chose to pursue this split class and the player soon grew bored of playing him. That was probably the biggest problem with the thief-acrobat: it was very specialized and thus of limited utility. This is the kind of class that I could see thriving in, say, an urban, all thief campaign, where each character needs to distinguish himself from his fellow thieves. In a more traditional dungeon-based campaign, I think the thief-acrobat hold much less or appeal – or at least that's how my friends and I viewed it.

When it comes to the question of designing character classes, there are a couple of common approaches, neither of which is without its problems. Dungeons & Dragons began with only a few broad, archetypal classes, like the cleric, fighting man, and magic-user, but soon added many more, each one devoted to a narrower but nevertheless real archetype. AD&D opted for a larger list of available classes, while the D&D line kept to something closer to the original, narrower list. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages and I can easily defend them both.

Had Gygax remained at the helm of AD&D, we would certainly have seen more classes added to its roster, some of which, like the thief-acrobat, would have been quite narrow in their utility. That's not necessarily a problem, but it can add a lot of unnecessary complexity to the game, not to mention diluting the game's flavor. On the other hand, a goodly selection of classes can, if presented properly, increase the game's flavor, with each one revealing more about its explicit or implied setting and the sorts of activities characters are expected to undertake within it.

Whether the thief-acrobat succeeds in doing any of these things is an open question, hence my own ambivalence toward it. Even so, this article sticks in my mind, because, like others written by Gygax at the time, it offered a sneak peek into his evolving vision of AD&D. It was a really interesting time to be a fan of the game and I'm glad to have been around for it.

"A Relaxation of the Rule"

There was an editor's note inserted into "Thrills and Chills: Ice Age Adventures" that I thought worthy of its own separate post. The article's author, Arthur Collins, describes the rules tweaks he recommends for each of the standard AD&D races in order to better reflect the Pleistocene Epoch. When he gets to elves, he says the following:

Elves would be +1 with spear and sling (instead of bow and sword, neither having been invented). While all races would have discovered ritual fermented or narcotic potations, to the elves would belong the specialty of making wine from wild grapes. Also, only wood elves would be around in Ice Age times.

Take special note of that last sentence: "Also, only wood elves would be around in Ice Age times." Appearing in italics immediately after it is the editor's note I mentioned above. It reads:

Since the Players Handbook says all player character elves are considered to be high elves, abiding by this stipulation would make it impossible for player-character elves to exist in this environment. If the issue must be resolved, DMs will have to either ignore the author’s recommendation or choose to allow a relaxation of the rule.

What a bizarre editor's note. Dragon was regularly filled with rules options and variants that ran counter to what was written in the Players Handbook and elsewhere and I can't recall seeing a note like this. Why here in particular? More to the point, it's a relatively minor detail in an article that is explicitly intended to alter the standard rules of AD&D to accommodate an unusual time period. I'm genuinely baffled that anyone would care that, yes, technically, by the book, wood elves are not allowed for use as player characters in 1982 (a rule that would be overturned in Unearthed Arcana just a few years later). 

There's a reason TSR and AD&D were viewed negatively in a lot of gaming circles back then. 

Retrospective: Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures

I'm a sucker for historical fantasy – or even just fantasy that's heavily inspired by a particular historical period, society, or culture. That's one of the reasons I so eagerly awaited the release of Oriental Adventures in 1985: I saw it as an opportunity for Dungeons & Dragons (or AD&D) to finally present monks and ninjas and samurai within a more suitable context than the riotous goulash in which the game has existed since its inception. In my experience, most (A)D&D players never cared about this as much as I did, even back in the day, but such concerns grew increasingly important to me, especially during my teen years.

Consequently, when TSR announced that it'd be giving the Oriental Adventures treatment to the myths, legends, and folklore of the Middle East, I was pretty excited. Though Bulfinch's Mythology didn't include a section on these tales, I was nevertheless quite familiar with the stories of A Thousand and One Nights, not to mention the charming films featuring Sinbad the Sailor I'd seen as a child. And course D&D had long included monsters like the djinn, efreet, ghoul, and roc, in addition to the flying carpet and ring of wishes, all of which have their origin in Middle Eastern mythology.

Entitled Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures, this 158-page softcover was written by Jeff Grubb with the assistance of Andria Hayday. Grubb was a powerhouse designer at TSR at this time, having previously created Marvel Super Heroes, shepherded the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set to publication, and conceived Spelljammer, among many other influential projects. He brings the same imagination and enthusiasm for Al-Qadim that he did for its predecessors, resulting in a book of which I remain very fond, despite certain shortcomings. 

In the book's introduction, Grubb acknowledges that Arabian Adventures takes inspirations from three different versions of Arabia. The first is the Arabia of history, whose people, culture, and history spread from the Atlantic Ocean to India as a result of the Islamic conquests starting in the 7th century. The second is the Arabia of myth and legend. Finally, there is the Arabia of Hollywood, like the aforementioned Sinbad movies. Of the three, the second and third are the most important to Al-Qadim, which is not intended to be historically or culturally accurate but is, echoing the foreword to OD&D, "strictly fantasy."

Like Oriental Adventures before it, Arabian Adventures is not a stand-alone game but rather a supplement to AD&D, then in its second edition. Its purpose is to provide new and alternative rules for use with 2e rather than being complete in itself. Thus, for example, we get a variety of new character kits, as well as new equipment, nonweapon proficiencies, and spells. All of these are intended to differentiate the inhabitants of Zakhara, the Land of Fate, from those coming from more Western European-inspired locales, just as OA had done for the peoples of Kara-Tur. Al-Qadim is decidedly not generic in its presentation, but instead places everything within a very specific cultural and social context derived from the three sources Grubb mentioned in his introduction.

By and large, the end result is excellent, better in some ways than Oriental Adventures in my opinion. The character kits – a concept that didn't exist at the time OA was published – do a very good job of tailoring AD&D's existing character classes for an Arabian-inspired setting. While most of them are interesting and flavorful, the ones I most liked were those that covered roles uncommon or unknown in other settings, like the barber, beggar-thief, and merchant-rogue. Likewise, the new spells and proficiencies went a long way toward making a Zakharan character feel distinct from his counterparts in other realms.

Where Al-Qadim falls down is its being branded with and tied to the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. This is not the fault of Grubb or Hayday, nor does it strongly weaken the quality of their work. In the early 1990s, TSR was very keen on tying all of its AD&D products to one or more of its existing settings. Since the Realms were TSR's "go-to" AD&D setting, the company plugged almost everything into it, including Zakhara (just as had previously been done with Kara-Tur). It's a pity, because I think Zakhara would have been much more interesting had it simply been its own thing, divorced from the rest of TSR's AD&D settings of the time.

One way that this impacts Arabian Adventures in a negative way is that we don't get any unique demihuman or nonhuman playable races. All the standard AD&D races, like dwarves, elves, and halflings, are present in Zakhara and, aside from the usual game mechanics associated with them (ability bonuses, special abilities, etc.), they're really little different from Zakharan humans, sharing the same customs, beliefs, and so on. There's nothing strictly wrong with this approach, but Oriental Adventures gave us several new nonhuman races to play and I think doing so went a long way toward making Kara-Tur feel distinct. I would have liked to have seen the same for Al-Qadim.

The other "flaw" in Al-Qadim is that it's pretty clearly meant to be an alternate Players Handbook. Unlike Oriental Adventures, there's not much in the way of referee material included in this book. There are no new monsters or magic items, for example, and while both those omissions would eventually be dealt with in follow-up products – several, in fact! – their lack in this book was something I felt pretty keenly at the time. I would have preferred something a bit more expansive in its content, but, as I said at the beginning of this post, Arabian Adventures isn't a stand-alone product and, given TSR's approach to publishing AD&D at the time, there was probably little to no chance it would have included such material when it could more profitably be sold in later releases.

All that said, I really like Al-Qadim and regret that, like so many other AD&D products with which TSR flooded the market in the '90s, I never got the chance to make much use of it. One of my friends was a big fan of the line and purchased a lot of the later material, including the Land of Fate boxed set. From what I could tell, all of the setting's support material was of a very high quality – imaginative and fun, with plenty of great ideas to aid the Dungeon Master in refereeing his very own version of A Thousand and One Nights. It's one Second Edition's better supplements and deserves more love than it generally gets.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "The Astral Plane"

A Dragon article written by Roger E. Moore and with an introduction by E. Gary Gygax, where he states that "[this] is about as 'official' as is possible at this time?" For my 13 year-old self, this was as good as an article could get. Appearing in issue #67 (November 1982), "The Astral Plane" was a massive effort on the part of Moore to provide comprehensive rules for adventuring on the Astral Plane. It included discussions of astral encounters, astral travel, the Psychic Wind, movement, combat, and alterations to spells and magic items. There was also an accompanying adventure called "Fedifensor" (written by Allen Rogers) intended to be used in conjunction with Moore's rules. Taken together, it was very impressive package that solidified my sense that, aside from Gary Gygax, Roger E. Moore was one of a handful of Dragon writers whose stuff I could safely assume would be good.

We didn't do a lot of plane hopping in my old AD&D campaigns. I do recall a few visits to the Nine Hells and the Abyss and I suspect the characters did so by means of the Astral Plane on at least one occasion, but, if so, these trips weren't particularly memorable. Ultimately, that's the main problem with "The Astral Plane" – even with all the clever rules modifications that Moore came up with, the place is still deadly dull. That's not Moore's fault, because he was trying to work within the parameters laid down by AD&D up till that point and those parameters paint a rather uninspiring picture. Sure, the Githyanki hang out on the Astral Plane, but, other than that, what else makes this place cool? Why would anyone want to go there for any length of time? "The Astral Plane" doesn't answer that question and nothing in the AD&D books at the time provided a better answer.

That said, I did like the fact that Moore postulates that other planes will operate according to different laws than those of the Prime Material. That's something I strong advocate and think is essential to the feeling of "We're not in Kansas anymore" other planes should evoke. I also think, as was true in Queen of the Demonweb Pits, that "The Astral Plane" goes overboard in the level of specificity about how character abilities, spells, and magic items operate differently, but that's a criticism of implementation not of concept. So, in retrospect, I still like this article a great deal, even if I wouldn't use it as written in any game I am running now. It's still a great idea mine and a useful foundation for an approach to handling weird otherworlds in your D&D campaign.

Retrospective: Planescape Campaign Setting

When I first acquired the AD&D Players Handbook – this was sometime in early 1980 – one of my favorite sections was Apprendix IV: The Known Planes of Existence. Taking up only a couple of pages, this appendix was the first time I'd ever encountered Gary Gygax's bizarre, mysterious, and wonderfully baroque ideas about the multiverse of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. What made Gygax's vision so weird compelling was its obsessive orderliness, which didn't simply tie the Outer Planes to each of the game's nine alignments, but to every conceivable shade in between. That's why, for example, the Seven Heavens are described as being "of absolute lawful good," while the planes of Elysium are "of neutral good lawfuls." 

Objectively, this is bonkers stuff, but I adored it and spent a lot of time thinking about the Outer (and other) Planes, aided no doubt by my fascination with the demons and devils of the Monster Manual. Despite Gygax's precise distinctions between the alignments of the Planes, AD&D didn't have a lot to say about them for a long time, aside from the occasional article in Dragon, like the ones about the Astral Plane (by Roger E. Moore) and the Nine Hells (by Ed Greenwood). And, of course, we later got Gygax's own developed thoughts about the Inner Planes, which were every bit as eccentric and persnickety as what he wrote in Appendix IV of the PHB all those years ago.

What I always wanted was a better sense of the Planes as a place and, more than that, as an adventuring locale. What sorts of adventures could AD&D characters have among the Planes? What made the Outer Planes different from the Prime Material Plane and how would this impact the kinds of adventures to be had there? The better Dragon articles, like those of Greenwood, did this well, or at least better than did Gygax, whose own ideas, while fascinating, remained largely in the realm of the theoretical. I wanted something more "down to earth," if you'll forgive the phrase. Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes was a good first step in that direction, but I wanted more.

As it turned out, I'd have to wait until 1994 to get that, in the form of the Planescape Campaign Setting – and it was not at all what I had expected. As imagined by David "Zeb" Cook and brought to visual life by Tony DiTerlizzi, the Outer Planes were indeed weird, though quite different from how they'd been previously portrayed. Instead of being presented as primarily the dwelling places of gods and demons, the Planes were instead a battleground between various factions of "philosophers with clubs," each of which hopes to remake reality according to their own idiosyncratic perspective. These factions, each associated (in some cases loosely) with an alignment or Outer Plane, were the driving force behind Cook's vision for Planescape. More than that, they provided an easy buy-in for player characters looking to involve themselves in the cosmic struggles of the setting.

"The setting." That's important. One of the clever things Cook did with Planescape was that he made the Planes a setting. They weren't just a place you could visit for a brief time; they were a place you could stay. Further, they were a place where even novice characters could stay, not merely high-level ones with access to potent magic. Further still, they were a place with its own native inhabitants and players could easily take up the role of one of them. Planescape gave AD&D's Planes a life of their own, divorced from the Prime Material Plane where most campaigns were set. Planescape made it possible to play entire campaigns where characters never once set foot on the World of Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, or any other "normal" campaign world. 

This was a bold approach and not at all what I or, I imagine, most AD&D players at the time were expecting. Not everyone warmed to Planescape's vision of the Planes. Indeed, I recall quite a few old hands who scoffed at it as taking too many cues from White Wolf's World of Darkness RPGs, which were very popular at the time. I can certainly appreciate the shock and surprise they probably felt upon reading Planescape and seeing DiTerlizzi's Dr Seuss-like depictions of the denizens of the Planes. This was not Gygax's Planes; it wasn't even Grubb's. It was something quite unique, filled with the strange, the odd, and the occasionally silly, and suffused with a punkish vibe that came through most strongly in its use of Planar Cant drawn from the criminal slang of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Many people, even fans of the setting, loathed the Cant, but there's no denying that it helped give Planescape a distinct flavor of its own.

Me, I enjoyed Planescape. It was not at all what I expected, but I enjoyed it for what it was: a strange, whimsical, wondrous take on world-hopping fantasy, with "worlds" in this case being other Planes of Existence, each with its own individual rules and style. And then there's Sigil, the City of Doors, located at the very center of the multiverse – if a series of infinite planes can truly be said to have a center. Home to the various planar factions and serving as a crossroads of the Planes, Sigil could serve as the basis for an entire campaign in itself, but it was also the perfect "home base" for planar characters whose adventures took them across the realms of the Great Wheel and beyond. Like Planescape itself, I really enjoyed Sigil and had a lot of fun with it.

I have lots of thoughts I could share about Planescape, both positive and negative, but my overall feeling for it is one of affection. I first made use of the setting as an adjunct to an ongoing Forgotten Realms campaign I ran in the mid-1990s. Later, I ran a "native" campaign among the Planes in the early days of Third Edition. Both were very well received by my players. Indeed, we still occasionally talk about some of the adventures they had in the setting. That's my usual measure of whether a gaming product succeeds – did I have fun with it? – and by that standard, Planescape is one of the greats.  

Gaming with Allen Hammack

I played in several RPG sessions while at Gamehole Con this year. Though I enjoyed them all – and will eventually discuss each in turn – the one I most immediately want to talk about is The Ghost Tower of Inverness, refereed by its original author, Allen Hammack. The AD&D module was published in 1980, having been used before that as a tournament scenario for Winter Con VIII in late 1979. Like many tournament scenarios, this one is rather contrived in its set-up and features a funhouse dungeon filled with all manner of puzzles, trick, and traps. 

For the purposes of this post, I don't have a lot to say about the scenario itself, since it's old and probably quite well-known to most readers of this blog. Instead, what most interests me and that I think is most worthy of attention is the way Mr Hammack ran it at the table during the con. Bear in mind that Hammack was employed by TSR Hobbies between 1978 and 1982, where he worked as a writer, designer, and editor, primarily on the AD&D. I mention this to provide some context to what follows.

The module is designed for five pre-generated characters, all human – a fighter, a cleric, a magic-user, a thief, and a monk. I played the cleric, Zinethar the Wise, who was 9th level and, oddly, had slightly more hit points than the fighter. The module assumes that all the characters with the exception of the monk are condemned criminals who are offered the opportunity to escape imprisonment by undertaking a dangerous mission for the Duke of Urnst (in the World of Greyhawk), namely, the recovery of the Soul Gem from the titular Ghost Tower. I knew none of the other four players prior to play, so we had to learn to work together to succeed.

Mr Hammack is an older gentleman. I have no idea his actual age, but I suspect he's probably in his late 60s or early 70s at least. Despite this, his mind is very sharp, especially when it comes to the AD&D rules. More than once during the four hours we were at his table, a player asked a question about how, say, a spell functioned. Before someone could find the appropriate page in the Players Handbook, Hammack recalled the relevant information – and correctly. After a while, we learned to trust his memory over our ability to flip pages quickly. I bring all this up, because it supports my long-held contention that hobbies like roleplaying are good for the health of your brain. 

Given how well he remembered the rules of AD&D, another question that came up was how strict Mr Hammack would be in applying them. He chuckled and said that he was generally quite flexible about doing so, with a couple of exceptions. Going back to spells, Hammack explained that he is often loose with spell durations but he was more rigid about areas of effect. Likewise, he noted that he was loose with encumbrance, unless he felt a player was trying to take advantage of a situation. He then told a terrific story about how he and other AD&D players of his acquaintance would use 3×5 index cards for character sheets, with stats being written on the front and equipment on the back. Anything you could fit on the back of an index card – in legible writing – would probably not bring encumbrance penalties into effect. 

Mr Hammack's overall approach to rules was governed by common sense. He clearly knew the rules and was prepared to apply them when he felt it necessary or appropriate, but he never felt bound by them. Indeed, he could be talked out of applying them by a good argument from a player, as he was on at least one occasion. At the same time, Hammack was also quite clear that his decision was final. Once he'd made a decision and considered any input from the players, there was no further arguing of the point. That he was fair and judicious probably explains why no one argued with his final decisions – that we were all middle-aged men, not children probably helped, too. I found the whole experience quite refreshing, to be honest.

I should note that, despite his extensive knowledge of AD&D rules, Mr Hammack was not above introducing house rules into play. For example, there were many occasions when he asked us to roll under a character's ability score to determine if our characters succeeded at some action or other. Likewise, he made use of a simple critical hit/fumble mechanic that's definitely not something Gary Gygax would ever have approved of. The mechanic worked fine in play and even contributed to a number of fun moments, which was exactly what we all hoped for.

In sum, I had a great time at Allen Hammack's table. He was a charming, knowledgeable, and imaginative Dungeon Master and he made me appreciate how good a module The Ghost Tower of Inverness actually is. I consider myself very lucky to have played with him at Gamehole Con this year.

Retrospective: Dark Sun

Having devoted last week's Retrospective post to The Complete Psionics Handbook, my thoughts inevitably turned to 1991's Dark Sun campaign setting – a setting specifically created to provide a place for Second Edition AD&D fans to make full use of the game's new psionics rules without having to worry about the potentially adverse effects these psychic powers might have on, say, the Forgotten Realms or the World of Greyhawk. 

Designed by Timothy B. Brown and Troy Denning, Dark Sun was presented as "a world ravaged by sorcery" and "the most challenging AD&D game world yet." This new setting took inspiration from both the post-apocalyptic and Dying Earth sub-genres, with a dash of Burroughsian sword-and-planet for good measure. Dark Sun was thus a significant departure from the vanilla fantasy of traditional D&D and AD&D. This departure wasn't just in terms of its content, but also its presentation, making ample use of the dark, edgy art of Gerald Brom and Thomas Baxa, two relative newcomers to TSR's stable of artists, who, together, created an esthetic for Dark Sun that clearly differentiated it from everything the company had previously done. 

Like all of TSR's settings for Second Edition, Dark Sun was released in a large, boxed set, filled to the brim with gaming materials. The two main components of the set were 96-page softcover books. The first of these, entitled simply "Rules Booklet," presented new and altered AD&D rules for use with the setting. The second, "The Wanderer's Journal," was an in-character presentation of the "arid and bleak" world of Athas, which is "beset by political strife and monstrous abominations, where life is grim and short." Also included was a 16-page booklet, "A Little Knowledge," which consists mostly of a short story but also includes details of an adventure. The adventure proper is presented in two small 24-page, spiralbound flip books, one of which has illustrations to show players, like those in Tomb of Horrors or Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Also included are poster maps of the city-state of Tyr and the region in which it's situated, known as the Tablelands.

Before getting on to the actual content of the boxed set, I'd like to say a little more about its presentation. Dark Sun is an impressive package. I remember when I got copy of it, being quite taken aback not only by how much was included in the set, but also by the unique format it took. This was particularly true in the case of the flipbooks, something I'd never seen previously in an AD&D product (or indeed any RPG product that I can recall). I suspect that they were intended as something of an experiment by TSR, one that carried over into most of the adventures subsequently published for the setting. I never really warmed to this format, which was in my experience quite unwieldy, which is one of the reasons I didn't buy any of those adventures. I'll get to the other reason shortly.

Athas itself is a very imaginative and engaging setting – sort of a cross between Barsoom and Zothique. As presented in "The Wanderer's Journal," the world's history is fragmentary at best. All that is certain is that present-day Athas is a shadow of its former self, its land ravaged by sorcery run amok and littered with the ruins of happier, more sophisticated times. Now, Athasian civilization is centered around scattered city-states, each ruled by an immortal sorcerer-king, who protects his subjects from the dangers of the wasteland in return for utter obedience. The sorcerer-kings also war amongst themselves, each attempting to expand his control of the Tablelands at the expense of his rivals, while various factions within and without attempt to take advantage of the situation. 

Though intended for use with AD&D 2e, Dark Sun makes many changes to the standard rules and assumptions of the game. Though all of the usual AD&D races are available, many are changed significantly, like the halflings, who are wild, feral beings reputed to engage in cannibalism. Joining them are new races, like muls (half-human/half-dwarf hybrids bred for their hardiness), half-giants, and thri-kreen. Character classes are similarly affected, with all being changed (or outright disallowed, like the paladin) in some way. Wizards, for example, must decide whether to increase their power by employing defiling magic that destroys the environment – the reason Athas is now barren – while clerics serve not gods, which don't exist in this setting, but the elemental forces of nature. 

Psionics also play a major role in Athas, with psionicists being common throughout the setting's population. Most intelligent beings – and many unintelligent ones, like monsters – are able to wield the powers of the mind. Psionics is, in many ways, more important in Dark Sun than is magic, though both have their place. In fact, magic and psionics can be employed together and it's explained that the sorcerer-kings owe their power and immortality to being able to wield both. "The Wanderer's Journal" suggests in various places that the relationship between magic and psionics played some sort of role in the ancient apocalypse that laid waste to Athas, thereby setting up a mystery that would be explored in later supplements and adventures.

This is where, in my opinion, Dark Sun faltered. The adventures produced for it all centered around major events within the setting, like the slave revolt that overthrows the sorcerer-king of Tyr and establishes it as a free city. Later adventures build upon these events, further changing and altering the setting as Big Things happen in accordance with a plan established by TSR. This isn't an inherently terrible way of developing a setting, though it's not my preference. However, what made it frustrating was that many of the setting's big events, like the aforementioned defeat of the sorcerer-king, are the result of actions by named NPCs, not the player characters. Furthermore, some of these events even happen in the pages of tie-in novels rather than adventures – a testament, I suppose, of just how popular and lucrative AD&D novels were in those days.

It's a pity, because Dark Sun is a genuinely imaginative and unique take on fantasy. Athas is a great setting, one with lots of possibilities for adventure, as well as a style and feel that differs from everything else that TSR was producing at the time. I was blown away by Dark Sun when I first bought it and really wanted to run a campaign with it. That never happened, for many reasons, but a big one was that I worried that TSR would, through its adventures or novels, derail whatever it was I had in mind with their event-driven releases. To be fair, the company did the same to the Forgotten Realms as well, but the Realms had the benefit of being standard fantasy and thus there was little need for any official guidance on how to use it. Athas, being new and different, would have benefited immensely from some better adventure material to aid referees looking to make use of the setting.

This is why Dark Sun will always be, for me, "the one that got away" – a fantasy setting that could have been fantastic and groundbreaking but instead never really achieved its full potential. A shame!