REVIEW: Knave (Second Edition)

By the mid-1990s, I'd had regular access to the Internet for a number of years and it was great. Forums and websites dedicated to RPGs of every kind were available at the click of a mouse button, offering all manner of interesting and useful content. While most of this content was dedicated to existing roleplaying games, some of it offered up new roleplaying games – the original creations of enthusiastic designers who recognized that they could use the Internet to get their own games to a vastly larger audience than would have ever been possible in the pre-digital age.

While Marcus Rowland's scientific romance RPG, Forgotten Futures is, for me, one of the best examples of these 1990s Internet-distributed games, I think it's fair to say that Steffan O'Sullivan's FUDGE is the most well-known and influential. I first became aware of FUDGE through a dear friend of mine, who felt that its loose, freeform mechanics provided would-be game designers the tools they needed to achieve their goals. At the time, he and I were hoping to put together our own science fiction RPG and so we took a lot of interest in FUDGE, whose "legal notice" was an early example of an open gaming license of the sort that would later propel the d20 System to prominence.

I found myself thinking about FUDGE recently as I read through the second edition of Ben Milton's Knave. Billed as "an exploration-driven fantasy RPG and worldbuilding toolkit, inspired by the best elements of the Old-School D&D movement.," Knave seemed, to my aged eyes, to have a lot in common with FUDGE. Whether one views that comparison as a good thing or a bad thing will, I think, determine your opinion of Knave. Before delving more deeply into this, though, I should explain that, prior to reading this new edition of the game, I wasn't all that familiar with Knave. Aside from Mörk Borg and Electric Bastionland, my knowledge of "ultra-light" RPGs was fairly limited and that no doubt colors what I have to say in this review.

The second edition of Knave is an 80-page digest-sized hardcover book available in both standard and premium formats, the main difference between the two (aside from price) being the cover design. Speaking of presentation, I should note that all of the book's artwork comes courtesy of Peter Mullen, whose artwork is well known (and loved) in the old school community. Their presence is quite welcome, since Knave's layout is otherwise simple and unpretentious, which, while a boon to clarity, tends toward the monotonous, especially in the many sections devoted to random tables. The book also includes a couple of two-page maps by Kyle Latino, which don't connect directly to anything in the text, so they serve more or less as artwork, too. 

As a set of rules, Knave is short and quite simple – so short that summaries of nearly everything needed to play fit on the four "pages" inside the front and back covers. I've seen plenty of other RPGs attempt to do this, but Knave is the first I can recall that succeeds. Indeed, I'm pretty sure it'd be possible to run the game using just these four pages and nothing else. That's no small feat, though, as I've already stated, it's only possible because the rules are short and simple. Most actions in Knave – called checks – are handled by a d20 roll modified by a character's appropriate ability score and any relevant modifiers and then compared against a target number (usually 16). Understand this basic mechanic and you understand Knave, with nearly everything else being an embellishment.

In his designer's commentary at the back of the book, Milton explains that he created Knave as "a hack of Basic D&D that [he] created for an after-school gaming club for 5th graders" and his "goal was to streamline and rationalize the rules so that players could learn the rules and create characters in just a few minutes and jump right into playing." Consequently, Knave's rules, while similar to those of D&D, differ from them in a number of respects. For example, there are still the usual six ability score, but they range in score 0–10 rather than 3–18. Further, the use of some of the abilities differs from their usual D&D association, such as Wisdom being used to modify ranged attacks and Constitution playing a role in encumbrance.

Combined with the lack of character classes, Knave thus occupies an odd middle ground for longtime D&D players between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Fortunately, the rules are so uncomplicated that I don't imagine any of the game's deviations from "standard" old school conventions should prove an impediment to a veteran's ability to pick them up. Meanwhile, a complete neophyte, who knows little or nothing about D&D, would probably find them fairly intuitive, which seems to have been the goal. In the aforementioned designer's commentary – one of my favorite sections of the book – Milton regularly uses words like "straightforward," "quick," and "easy" to explain the thought process behind Knave's rules. 

This philosophy suffuses the game, where everything associated with dungeon delving and wilderness travel – the core activities of old school Dungeons & Dragons – is pared down to quick, reasonably easy to use and understand procedures, with lots of room for individual expansion and experimentation. Combat, for instance, includes the possibility of initiating "maneuvers," like disarming or stunning, that is self-admittedly inspired by the "mighty deeds of arms" from Dungeon Crawl Classics, but without the same mechanical complexity. Magic, whether in the form of spells or relics, is similarly open-ended, with plenty of scope for creativity in their execution. This approach holds for most of the activities associated with classic play, like leveling up, encounters, and even equipment.

This open-ended toolkit approach might be off-putting to some, especially those looking for a more "full bodied" fantasy roleplaying game – but that's not what Knave is or was intended to be. Certainly, you could play Knave "straight" and have a satisfying experience with it. However, it's pretty clear from the way the game is written and presented that Milton expects that the rules of Knave will mutate and change with regular play, as each group adds to and subtracts from what he has put on offer in the rulebook. "Altering rules and writing your own is a time-honored part of the hobby," as he explains in Knave's introduction.

An important key to understanding Knave, I think, is that, in addition to its simple, concise mechanics, the rulebook also contains numerous random tables throughout its pages, all of them with 100 results. These tables cover careers to wizard names to disasters and more. Like everything else in Knave, they're laconic and intended to serve as jumping off points for one's imagination rather than the final word. More than that, they're clearly intended to be used in play, when the player or referee needs to come up something quickly. As a big fan of random tables and the effect they can have on play, I applaud the inclusion of these tables, as I know firsthand just how useful they can be. 

In the end, Knave is a pleasant surprise. Reading it made me think more seriously about the relationship between the complexities of rules and play, as well as my own preferences with regard to each of them. While I'm not completely sold on some of Knave's mechanical deviations from classic play, like the lack of classes, I nevertheless appreciate the way Milton's own choices made me ponder what I like and why, which I think will strengthen my own design work in the future. I also appreciate that, while Knave made think about such matters, its primary purpose is not philosophy but rather presenting "a framework that makes playing old-school RPGs straightforward, intuitive, easy to prep, and easy to run" – a laudable goal at which I believe it succeeded.

Retrospective: The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album

Over the years, I've made occasional posts in which I've shared an image from The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album, but I've never written a full Retrospective post about this curious – and amazing – product. Today, I intend to correct that oversight.

Released in 1979 just a few months prior to the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III, the Coloring Album is a remarkable relic of the time just before Dungeons & Dragons ascended to the heights of name recognition that it's continued to enjoy ever since. Consequently, this 32-page, oversized book is something of a rarity nowadays. I knew nothing of its existence until I started writing this blog, despite the fact that it appeared shortly before I began playing D&D. I've likewise never seen a physical copy of thing, though one can easily find electronic versions online with only a little effort.

One might well imagine that, aside from the simple oddity of an AD&D coloring book, there's not much to say about this product, but that would be mistaken. Let's start with the obvious – the illustrations. In addition to the beholder battle I included earlier this week, there's this one, featuring a bulette:

And this one in which the adventurers discover a vault filled with treasure:

These only scratch the surface of the universally intricate and evocative art found throughout the Coloring Album. I may share some additional pages from the book in subsequent posts, because they're very much worthy of further comment. 

Equally of note is the artist responsible for all these illustrations: Greg Irons. Irons, who died in 1984 at the age of only 37, was well known in the underground comics scene of the 1970s. Prior to that, he worked as a painter of animation cels for the 1968 Beatles movie, Yellow Submarine. He'd also work in the burgeoning field of original poster art and tattooing. In short, Irons was deeply connected to the artistic counterculture of the period – a counterculture that was at the forefront of promoting fantasy images and themes from The Lord of the Rings to metal and prog rock albums to airbrushed "wizard vans."

The involvement of Irons shouldn't really be a surprise, given that the Coloring Album was published by Troubador Press of San Francisco. Though most of Troubador's titles were activity or coloring books, their audience wasn't just children. They frequently highlighted weird and offbeat interests, especially science fiction, fantasy, and the occult, which attracted many adults to them as well. Troubador treated these subjects seriously. Just as importantly, the company hired some of the best outsider artists to illustrate them with strange, compelling, and often psychedelic artwork that stood out from other similar books of the same time. The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album was, therefore, very much a product of the same counterculture that made the 1970s such a chaotic cauldron of creativity. 

The Album is also notable for being more than just a coloring book: it's also a game, albeit a very primitive one. The book presents itself as illustrating the various rooms and encounters found within "the depths of the vile dungeon" that holds a mystic talisman to be used "against the hordes of Evil threatening to overwhelm the Kingdom of Good." Included within is a map of the dungeon with simple rules using two six-sided dice to adjudicate battles, as the reader tries to guide his party of adventurers through the dungeon. The scenario and its accompanying text were apparently designed by Gary Gygax himself (who held copyright over the text). 

Though not one of Gygax's better adventure scenarios, the text accompanying the illustrations is surprisingly good, filled with lots of details and allusions to elements of D&D, as well as some from his World of Greyhawk setting. References are made to the Lake of Unknown Depths, the Green Dragon Inn, and St. Cuthbert, among a couple of others. It's quite fascinating to look at it now with an eye toward finding things you might have overlooked when you first saw it.

The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album is one of those early gaming products that might well qualify as a genuine "treasure." It's certainly one I wish were still readily available, because I think it's not only a fun book in its own right, but also an amazing reminder that D&D and, by extension, all roleplaying games grew up with and were influenced by the underground art scene of the '60s and '70s. It's a reminder of what D&D was like – and perhaps could have become – had it not eventually been seized by a corporatized desire to become a safe consumer product for the masses. 

REVIEW: The Lair of the Brain Eaters

The first few years of the Old School Renaissance were marked by a renewed appreciation not just of early roleplaying games but also of the pulp fantasy stories that inspired them. This was the time when Appendix N of Gary Gygax's AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide became a frequent topic of discussion on blogs and forums, much to the satisfaction of those of us who felt a strong injection of sword-and-sorcery was the perfect antidote to what we felt was an increasingly video-gamified hobby (remember: this coincided with the release of D&D Fourth Edition) that had lost sight of its literary roots.

This is the backdrop against which many of the earliest D&D retro-clones – emulations of earlier editions – appeared, including Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Calling itself a "weird fantasy role-playing game," LotFP took seriously the goal of bringing more pulp fantasy-inspired content into fantasy gaming, especially in its adventures, which quickly gained a reputation for being, by turns, imaginative, grotesque, challenging, deadly, and prurient – among many other extravagant adjectives. 

However, as LotFP's creator, James Raggi, found his strange Muse, its adventures moved away from generic pulp fantasy scenarios of the sort one might have found in Weird Tales during the Golden Age of the pulps and toward a weirder, even more brutal version of Earth's 17th century. This new focus on historical fantasy helped LotFP distinguish itself from its fellow retro-clones, but it also, I think, narrowed its appeal somewhat, since most fantasy gamers, old school or otherwise, are looking for adventures they can easily drop into campaign settings other than Earth during the 1600s.

While I am a big fan of LotFP's pivot to historical fantasy, I miss the ahistorical strangeness of stuff like Death Frost Doom, Hammers of the God, or The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time. Consequently, when I learned about D.M. Ritzlin's The Lair of the Brain Eaters, I was intrigued. Unlike most recent LotFP releases, this adventure didn't seem to be set in the 17th century. Rather, it seemed more like something from Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age or perhaps Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea – a lurid, necromantic pulp fantasy scenario of the kind we haven't seen for LotFP in a while.

That should come as no surprise. Ritzlin is the proprietor of DMR Books, a small press dedicated "fantasy, horror, and adventure fiction in the traditions Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and other classic writers of the pulp era." Indeed, The Lair of the Brain Eaters shares its title with a short story Ritzlin wrote for the collection, Necromancy in Nilztiria. According to the author, some of the story's details have been changed (and "a great many more have been added"), so this adventure is less directly adapted and more inspired by its source. Even so, it's quite unusual by the standards of contemporary Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

The adventure concerns a cult dedicated to the consumption of human brains. Called the Yoinog – supposedly an ancient term meaning "knowledge seekers" – the cult serves the necromancer Obb Nyreb, furnishing him with a fresh supply of corpses as he attempts to unravel the mysteries of Veshakul-a, the goddess of death. Nyreb and the Yoinog have established themselves in a network of caves beneath a graveyard of the city of Desazu. Unfortunately, in their zeal for graverobbing, the cult has drawn attention to their master's activities, thereby providing an opening for the player characters to involve themselves in the adventure.

The Lair of the Brain Eaters is short and to the point. The cult's cave network consists of only twenty keyed areas, with Nyreb's chambers occupying an additional nine. Most of them are described briefly, with little in the way of extraneous detail. Do not, however, mistake its comparatively spartan descriptions for a sparseness of ideas – quite the contrary. The florid prose of many adventures is often chalked up to the designer's desire to be a writer of fiction. Here, the opposite is the case: the text's concision signals that its designer is already a skilled fictioneer and understands well that less can be more.

For example, this is part of the description of a "bottomless pit": "This pit is not really bottomless, but it amused Obb Nyreb to tell the Yoinog it was, and they never doubt him." Elsewhere, a kitchen is described thusly: "Grimy pots, pans, and plates litter the floor. A cauldron large enough to contain a man sits in the center of the room, while smaller ones dangle from the ceiling." Speaking as someone whose personal style tends toward the aureate, I admire Ritzlin's ability to convey description, vital information, and mood through so few words. This approach also makes the descriptions easy to use at a glance, which is very helpful in play.

Designed for character levels 1–3, The Lair of the Brain Eaters is challenging. There are a lot of Yoinog within the caves, as well as other creatures, such as the apelike Skullfaces and mutant rats (some of which breathe fire – yes, it's a bit silly, but so what?). Fortunately, the caves contain lots of opportunities for the characters to act stealthily or otherwise use the environment to their advantage. In addition, there's a captive within who, if freed, can aid the characters in navigating the place. These factors, combined with some clever tricks and obstacles, creates a memorable locale for both exploration and combat. 

The Lair of the Brain Eaters is an inventive, evocative, and unpretentious "meat and potatoes" adventure that I'd like to see more of – from Lamentations of the Flame Princess or any other publisher. I think it'd be an especially great fit for anyone playing North Wind's Hyperborea RPG, but it'd work just as well with any other fantasy game that draws inspiration from the pulps. I really enjoyed this one.

Mesmerized by Sirens

Though I've now been blogging for almost as long (if not as prolifically) as I had prior to my break, I still can't help but think of the period between 2008 and 2012 or thereabouts as something of a Golden Age for the Old School Renaissance. While the seeds of what would become the OSR were planted on forums like Dragonsfoot and ODD74, its true flowering occurred on blogs. By the time I started Grognardia in March 2008, there were already many blogs devoted to old school RPGs, particularly Dungeons & Dragons. Over the course of the next couple years, their numbers were swelled by many, many more, leading to a remarkable intellectual ecosystem where the history of our hobby was remembered, celebrated, and debated with incredible vibrancy. It truly was an incredible time and I often find myself nostalgic for those days.

An important aspect of those days was how often bloggers would refer their readers to posts on other blogs, whether to comment upon or even criticize them. Despite the claims by some that the OSR was an "echo chamber," anyone who was deeply immersed in the scene at the time can easily refute that. Far from being a hivemind, the early Old School Renaissance was a fractious, cantankerous place, filled with big ideas and big personalities, not all of whom saw eye to eye on every issue. Back then, it seemed as if there were a new "controversy" every week and, while that could be vexing, these squabbles regularly provided an opportunity to hash out questions of wider interest. 

I used to read lots of other blogs, because I felt it was important that I keep abreast of what others were writing. Sometimes, that was a lot of work and I won't deny that the first iteration of this blog eventually wore me out to the point of disaster. Consequently, when I returned to blogging in 2020, I vowed I wouldn't exhaust myself in the way I had previously. I'd write less often and only when I felt I had something of interest to say. Grognardia was an avocation, not an occupation and I should treat it as such. For the most part, that's worked out well enough, but there's still a part of me who misses the roiling, chaotic ferment of the old days. They burned me out, yes, but they also produced a lot of great stuff.

That's why I was cheered to discover that a blog I've long enjoyed, Mesmerized by Sirens, has a new post for the first time in three years. Subtitled "the Sanctuary of Old Fantasy Role Playing Games," Mesmerized by Sirens is a great resource for information about not merely old RPGs but obscure ones – games like Bifrost, Melanda, Phantasy Conclave, Castle Perilous, and more. If you're at all interested in the dark corners of the hobby's history, I recommend you take a look. I hope that, if enough people do so, it might encourage its author to keep writing.

Do you have any defunct blogs you'd like to see return to life?

Shrine of the Sword

A regular reader asked for assistance in finding more information about an obscure, self-published fantasy adventure scenario entitled Shrine of the Sword, written by Paul Mercer and Kevin Conklin, with illustrations by the latter. Here's its cover:

Not much is known about the adventure, not even its date of publication. It's so obscure that there's not even an entry on RPGGeek for it, though there is a very limited one at, of all place, PuzzleGeek. The interior of the adventure is similarly primitive:

Aside from the fact that it's for "higher level characters," Shrine of the Sword is interesting, because it includes eight illustrations intended to be shown to players as an aid to visualizing items and locations within the scenario, much like the illustration booklets included with Tomb of Horrors and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Here's an example of one of them:

It's a long shot that anyone reading this post knows anything more about it, but I know quite a few of you have been in the hobby for far longer than I and have good memories for historical curiosities like this, so I thought it worth a try. Please share your wisdom in the comments. Thanks!

Yet More Thoughts about Skills

Last month, I presented a draft of a proposed new character class for inclusion in Secrets of sha-Arthan, the tomb robber. A common question about the class, both in the comments and in separate emails, concerned my inclusion of skills among the tomb robber's abilities. Long-time readers will no doubt remember that, in the early days of this blog, I was a fairly strong opponent of the inclusion of a skill system into class-based RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons. I was likewise an opponent of the thief class introduced in Greyhawk, viewing it as a self-justifying class for which there is no real need.

In the early days of the Old School Renaissance, such positions were pretty common, maybe even normative. This was, after all, the beginning of the re-evaluation of the virtues of Original D&D (1974), when a lot of us who'd either never played OD&D (raises hand) or who had long ago abandoned it in favor of later elaborations upon it, embraced it with zeal. Remember, too, that the OSR grew up amid the wreckage of Third Edition, whose mechanical excesses served as negative examples of what could happen when D&D's design "strays" too far from the foundations laid down by Arneson and Gygax in 1974. And one of 3e innovations was the addition of a skill system separate from class abilities.

Looking back on it now, I can see that my desire to avoid what I perceived as the flaws of Third Edition often led me to rhetorical intemperance. That's certainly the case with regards to skills, though, in my defense, I started to moderate my stance relatively early. That moderation was the result of play, particularly in my Dwimmermount megadungeon campaign, where I came to recognize just why the thief class and skill systems had organically evolved. Even so, I retained a certain wariness about both, since I continued to feel, as I still do, that character skills should never become a crutch for lazy play, which is to say, interacting with the game world solely through the game mechanic of skill rolls. 

That said, what ultimately changed my opinion for good was my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign (take a drink). EPT, as many of you probably know, includes a skill system – the first, I believe, to appear in any roleplaying game. The skill system is certainly primitive by comparison to those in later RPGs, like Traveller or RuneQuest, of course. Indeed, the skill mechanic is vague and not very well integrated into EPT's overall play, but it's there. Consequently, when refereeing House of Worms, I made regular use of it.

What I discovered is that none of my earlier, hyperbolic concerns proved true at all. Skills never dominated play, nor did they encourage lazy play. The players rarely initiated skill rolls as a means to avoid having to think in-character or grapple with a problem presented to them. Instead, they might ask, "Does my character's Scholar skill give him any idea about the architectural style of this ruin?" or "Might my Jeweler-Goldsmith skill give me some idea of the value of this gemstone?" Sometimes, I'll call for an actual percentile roll to determine whether the skill grants the character the requested knowledge or not, but many times I'll simply make a judgment as to whether or not the skill is sufficiently expansive to grant it. Ultimately, the decision of how to adjudicate skills rested with me, the referee.

For me, that's the key. I dislike skill systems that demand a referee do something in response to a player-initiated successful roll. I much prefer those where skill use is a negotiation between player and referee and the final decision of whether a skill is relevant – or whether a roll is even needed – lies with the referee. Maybe that's common sense, but it's not the way I've often seen skill rolls used. Instead, they're more likely to be something a player employs to ensure a referee does (or does not) do a given thing within the context of the game. "I made a successful Stealth roll, so my character can sneak across the room without being seen by the guards" or "I got a success on my Persuasion roll and convince him not to report this to his superiors."

Skills – or perhaps competencies might be a better term – can be a good way for players and referees to cooperate in interacting with the setting and events within it. That's how I've been handling skills in House of Worms and I've taken that experience into Secrets of sha-Arthan as well – or at least I hope to do so.

REVIEW: Hyperborea

When I first read Astonishing Swords & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, two things about it greatly impressed me. Most significant was that this roleplaying game of "swords, sorcery, and weird fantasy" demonstrated an obvious love for the pulp fantasies of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith. Equally obvious was its love for Gygaxian AD&D. The latter should have come as no surprise, given designer Jeff Talanian's stint as Gygax's protégé and amanuensis for the uncompleted Castle Zagyg project. Still, both these qualities endeared AS&SH – an infelicitous acronym of there ever was one – to me. 

In the more than a decade since its initial release in 2012, the game has found a place for itself among fans of old school Dungeons & Dragons and its descendants, particularly among those, like myself, whose tastes tend toward the pulpy end of the fantasy spectrum. A second edition of the game was released in 2017 in the form of a single hardcover book. The new edition added some new material to the contents of its original boxed rulebooks, as well as new art and layout. Unfortunately, the second edition rulebook was over 600 pages in length and very unwieldy to use, either in play or as a reference volume. On the other hand, the many adventures published to support the new edition were both excellent and evocative of Weird Tales-inspired fantasy.

2022 saw the appearance of a third edition of the game, this time in the form of two, smaller hardcover volumes – a Player's Manual and a Referee's Manual, each around 300 pages long. In addition to their much more convenient size, these new volumes contain even more art than the two previous editions, as well as a cleaner layout and organization. The game also acquired a new title with this edition – Hyperborea. The combined effect of all these changes is, in my opinion, the best-looking and easiest-to-use edition of the game to date. 

As pleased and impressed as I am by the visual improvements of the third edition, its actual content is not significantly changed from second edition. Aside from combat, which is much simplified, most of the changes are quite small, small enough that I, as a casual player of the game over the last decade, had to dig around online to notice most of them. There are also new additions to the selections of monsters, spells, and magic items, not to mention playable human races. When combined with all aforementioned esthetic changes, I think this is more than sufficient justification for a new edition, but whether it's enough for any individual to replace their existing copy of second edition with it is for each person to decide himself. By design, none of the changes or additions make, say, adventures written with 3e in mind incompatible with previous ones, so there is no necessity in "upgrading."

Players of Gygaxian AD&D will immediately find Hyperborea familiar – six attributes, a plethora of classes and sub-classes (22 in all!), nine alignments, multiple lists of spells, etc. It's a big, baroque stew of often idiosyncratic but flavorful options, but it's never overwhelming. In large part that's because of Talanian's presentation of the material, but it helps, too, that Hyperborea is much more clearly a cohesive ruleset than a sometimes-contradictory hodgepodge built up over time, which only makes sense, given that Hyperborea came out decades after AD&D. Consequently, I consider Hyperborea the best modern restatement of AD&D. 

Of course, the real joy of Hyperborea is not its rules, however solid they are. Where it most stands out is setting. The titular Land Beyond the North Wind is a flat, hexagonal plane that was once a component of "Old Earth" and the source of many of its myths and legends. Inhabited by the peoples of many ancient cultures – Amazons, Atlanteans, Kelts, Kimmerians, Norse, Picts, and more – Hyperborea is a adventuresome, horror-tinged sandbox in which to set all manner of pulp fantasy adventures. If you read about it in story by REH, HPL, or CAS, you can easily set it in Hyperborea. The setting is sketched out with just enough detail that the referee isn't left entirely to his own devices, but neither is he hamstrung. Think of the original World of Greyhawk folio and you have a good idea of the level of detail I'm talking about.

If I have a complaint about Hyperborea compared to its predecessors, it's that the setting map is now presented in a softcover Atlas of Hyperborea, which is sold separately. Previous editions, including the second edition hardcover, included a very nice, fold-out map of the lost continent; the Atlas chops up that map into smaller (and much less usable, in my opinion) portions. It's a shame, because Glynn Seal's map of Hyperborea is lovely and deserves better.  

Hyperborea is a product of real passion and dedication, both to the legacy of Gary Gygax and to the imaginations of the greatest writers of Weird Tales. It's a good example of what can be accomplished by a designer with a singular vision and a dedication to seeing it realized. Certainly, Hyperborea is not a fantasy roleplaying for everyone. Its focus and authorial voice are distinctive, even a little out of step with what some may want. But if what you're looking for is a florid, flavorful take on pulp fantasy that nevertheless hews closely to the outlines of Gygaxian AD&D, you're in for a treat.

Retrospective: Oasis of the White Palm

Despite my somewhat negative assessment of the lasting impact of Tracy Hickman on the development of AD&D, I nevertheless respect Hickman's dungeon designs. Ravenloft, for all of its theater kid stylings, includes an immense and genuinely challenging dungeon in the form of Castle Ravenloft. Likewise, the Pyramid of Amun-Re from Pharaoh is a very clever, if small, dungeon for which I retain a great fondness even today. Indeed, I count Pharaoh and its sequels in the Desert of Desolation series among my guilty pleasures, in large part because of the ingenuity of their dungeons.

They're still guilty pleasures, though, since their flaws are as great as their virtues. This is especially true in the case of the second module of the Desert of Desolation series, Oasis of the White Palm. Originally published in 1983, it's co-written by Hickman and Philip Meyers. I know nothing of Meyers, whose RPG credits are few – two AD&D modules (including this one) and a handful of articles in Dragon. As with Pharaoh, Jim Holloway provides the cover illustration, while Keith Parkinson takes care of the interior artwork.

Oasis of the White Palm picks up after the conclusion of Pharaoh, with the characters trudging across the desert. A hex map to facilitate this is provided, along with keyed and random encounters/events. Emphasis is placed on both encumbrance and the need for water during the characters' trek. From the vantage point of the present day, I find this interesting, since it runs counter to the expectation that a Hickman-penned adventure module is somehow not "old school" simply because it includes lots of boxed text and amateur dramatics. As I've noted before, Hickman's 1982–1983 modules are transitional ones that bridge the gap between the early days of the hobby and what would soon come. The Desert of Desolation modules all possess this quality.

The adventure proper begins once the characters stumble across the titular Oasis of the White Palm. The oasis serves as the camp of a group of nomads led by their sheik, Hassan Arslan. The nomads are somewhat suspicious of outsiders in light of recent events. The intended bride of the sheik's firstborn son has been kidnapped by servants of the Evil One – an efreeti noble who was freed during the events of Pharaoh. If the characters offer to help the sheik resolve this matter, he in turn offers the friendship of his people and a portion of his wealth. He also offers the aid of his second-born son as a guide through the desert, as they follow up on clues to where the bride might have been taken.

The oasis is filled with NPCs, many of whom provide rumors, opinions, and insight into the current situation. There are multiple factions and intrigues afoot, which goes a long way, I think, toward involving the characters in what's going on. This is useful, too, for the referee, who's looking to expand upon the basic scenario that Meyers and Hickman set forth. There's also some silliness, in the form of Happy Hogan's Desert Igloo, a halfling-owned bar in the middle of this pseudo-Bedouin community. The halfling, Hogan, is of course a retired adventurer whose exploits were once renowned. Silly though it definitely is, I cannot completely condemn its inclusion, since this is simply what fantasy RPGs were like back in the day – a chaotic goulash of the ridiculous and the sublime.

There are, in fact, two separate dungeons included in Oasis of the White Palm. The first, the Temple of Set, is a single-level affair. Nevertheless, it has some excellent tricks and traps of the sort one might expect in a pulp fantasy Egyptian tomb, complete with Grimtooth-style diagrams of their workings. The second, the Crypt of Badr Al-Mosak, has two levels and numerous diagrams to aid the referee in understanding how its various parts relate to one another. Though not quite The Caverns of Thracia by any means, elevation and position play roles in the Crypt, which I appreciate. The Crypt also includes one of my favorite traps, the Pits of Everfall, which looks like this:

That's a trap of the kind I can easily imagine from the early days of the hobby. It's also another reminder of just why I can't help but admire Hickman's dungeon design chops. Say what you will about the rest of his output, but his dungeons were usually quite inventive!

That said, Oasis of the White Palm is a bit of a mess. There are lots of interesting ideas and NPCs, not to mention the compelling desert environment and Arabian/Egyptian lore, but I'm not certain that it hangs together satisfactorily. In part, I suspect that's because it's the middle adventure in a trilogy of scenarios. It spends a lot of time expanding upon things only hinted at in Pharaoh, while also introducing things that won't come to fruition until the final adventure in the Desert of Desolation series. The result is something that is a little underbaked but still worthy of a look, especially if you've never done so before.

REVIEW: Black Sword Hack

During the nearly eight years this blog was inactive, I wasn't paying nearly as much attention to the wider old school roleplaying scene as I previously had been. Consequently, quite a number of releases, trends, and fads within this sphere completely passed me by. One of these was The Black Hack, a streamlined class-and-level RPG by David Black, whose first edition appeared in 2016. For a time, I am given to understand, The Black Hack and its design principles were much favored, leading to a proliferation of "Hacks" – Bluehack (for Holmes D&D), The Rad-Hack (Gamma World, etc.), Cthulhu Hack (Call of Cthulhu), even The Petal Hack (Empire of the Petal Throne), among many, many more.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of this. Gamers are as prone to enthusiasms as the next person and I try not to begrudge anyone else their preferences, even if I don't share them. Still, I can't deny that the intensity of the ardor for The Black Hack put me off looking into it for some time. What can I say: I'm prone to contrariness. When I finally did read The Black Hack for myself, I found it more agreeable than I expected, despite my dislike of certain aspects of its design. That's not knock against it, of course; I generally dislike certain aspects of most games' designs. That's more or less the nature of the beast.

That's why Black Sword Hack took me by surprise. I didn't even know it existed until it showed up in my mailbox one day as a complimentary copy sent to me by its publisher, The Merry Mushmen (best known for Knock!). Written by Alexandre "Kobayashi" Jeanette, Black Sword Hack is, in his words, "a dark fantasy roleplaying game inspired (but not limited to) the works of R.E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner's Kane series, Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar and Jack Vance's Dying Earth books." Being a fan of all those writers and their pulp fantasies, that description certainly got my attention, as did the eye-catching artwork by Goran Gligović, which can be found throughout the full-color, 112-page, A5-sized, hardcover book.

The core rules of Black Sword Hack are simple. A turn is an abstract measure of time, during which time a player character may act. During a time, a character can typically take two actions, such as movement and combat. All actions are resolved by making an attribute test. The goal of a test is to roll under a character's appropriate attribute score with a d20. A roll of 1 is always a critical success, while a roll of 20 is always a critical failure. I must admit that the lower-is-better d20 roll takes some getting used to, since it runs counter to decades of experience as a player of roleplaying games, but otherwise the rules of Black Sword Hack are straightforward.

The game retains the "Usage die" from The Black Hack, but with a twist. For those unfamiliar with it, the Usage die is a way to keep track of resources that have limited quantities, like rations or arrows. Whenever a resource is used, the die is rolled and, if the result is 1 or 2, the die "degrades" to the next die type (e.g. d8 becomes d6) until d4 is reached and 1 or 2 is rolled, at which point the resource is completely depleted. Black Sword Hack does not employ the Usage die for concrete resources, but only for abstract ones, like influence, debts, etc. Further, there is the Doom die, a type of Usage die that represents "the attention of Law and Chaos" on the characters. It's rolled whenever the character critically fails and under certain other specific conditions. Once the Doom die is depleted, the character makes all his tests and damage rolls with Disadvantage (i.e. rolling two dice and taking the lowest result).

While the D&D pedigree of Black Sword Hack (and The Black Hack on which it is based) is readily apparent (STR, DEX, CON, etc.), the game is class-less, placing greater emphasis on a character's origin (barbarian, civilized, or decadent) and background (berserker, diplomat, assassin, etc.). This provides a looser mechanical framework for characters, in keeping with the wide range of possible dark fantasy settings the referee might create (more on this in a bit). Characters can also acquire "gifts" – powers of Balance, Chaos, or Law – in addition to sorcery, faerie ties, twisted science, and runic weapons. As characters gain experience, they accrue more abilities and hit points, but a high-level Black Sword Hack character is much less robust than a D&D character of similar level. Consequently, combat is much more fraught with danger, which makes sense, given its literary inspirations.

Where Black Sword Hack really shines, though, is its world building tools. Approximately half the book is devoted to the referee – more if you include its sample bestiary. The game assumes the referee will create his own setting, one dominated by the struggle between Law and Chaos, as in Moorcock and Anderson's fantasies. There are tables and examples to aid him in deciding on the nature of the struggle and how it manifests in the setting, along numerous adventure seeds, two adventure, and the sketch of an entire city. There's even a sketch of a setting, complete with a map, to show one way to make use of the world building tools.

A conceit of the referee section is that any setting the referee designs will inevitably include certain stock locales – Forbidden City, Amber Enclave, Merchant League, Northern Raiders, etc. These are not just tropes from dark fantasy fiction but perhaps also eternal archetypes that reappear throughout the multiverse. Creating a setting for Black Sword Hack involves drawing a map and placing all these locales onto it somewhere and then fleshing out the details through play and the judicious use of random tables provided in the book. It's a clever approach and one that genuinely helps guide the referee in a useful way. The same goes, I think, with the bestiary, which includes plenty of archetypal enemies – demons, cannibals, serpent people – to spark the imagination, while still providing the tools needed to create unique and original antagonists.

If Black Sword Hack has a flaw, it's its looseness. Some players and referees may find its relative lack of concern for considering every possibility, whether in the rules or its myriad settings, disappointing. If you prefer something more defined, even concrete, you're better off with other options. Black Sword Hack revels in its light, almost freeform, rules and malleable setting elements and that won't be to everyone's taste. But as someone who's come to realize that my own preferences tend toward simple, flexible rules with lots of room for filling in the details as I go, this is right up my alley. When I get around to running that Stormbringer campaign of my dreams, there's no question in my mind that I'll be using Black Sword Hack. Perhaps others will like it too.

Black Sword Hack is available directly from the Merry Mushmen website in either print or PDF form.

Retrospective: Monstrous Compendium

Though it's not an absolute rule, one of the guiding principles behind my selection of a gaming product for discussion in a Retrospective post is that it was originally published during the first decade of the hobby, which is to say, between 1974 and 1984. Obviously, if you scour the more than 300 entries in this series, you'll find plenty of examples of things published outside that time period, particularly when it comes to companies like TSR, GDW, and Chaosium, all of which published games I continue to hold dear. Nevertheless, I still try to stick to that ten-year period, if only to narrow my range of options.

Every now and then, though, events suggest a subject for a post that is very much beyond the scope of this blog. That happened the other day, as I was re-arranging some shelves and set my eyes upon the oversized white binder of the Monstrous Compendium for AD&D Second Edition. Unlike my copies of the 2e Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, which are within easy reach, the Monstrous Compendium binder is placed up high, buried under a number of other books and boxes. I put it up there a few months ago, after briefly looking at its entry on giant centipedes, which was probably the first time I'd done so in years. 

As I pondered this fact, I started to think that I ought to write a post about the MC, even though it appeared in 1989 and was published for an edition of Dungeons & Dragons that I usually don't cover (usually). 2e occupies a strange place in the pantheon of D&D editions. A TSR edition bearing the unmistakable DNA of its more celebrated predecessors, it's rarely mentioned in most discussions of "old school D&D." The reasons for that are many and probably worthy of a separate post (or posts). Suffice it to say that I don't presently have any plans to expand Grognardia's ambit to include much 2e content. However, I do reserve the right to talk about it from time to time, as I have already done, when I think the edition touches on a topic worth discussing.

In the case of the Monstrous Compendium, there are at least a couple of topics worthy of examination. The MC was conceived as a successor to not just the original 1977 Monster Manual but to all the monster books previously published, as well as the sections at the back of many adventure modules that detailed new foes. The Big Idea of the Compendium was that it was tedious, not to mention unwieldy, for the referee to be forced to consult multiple books and supplements in the course of a game session. Wouldn't it be better, went the logic of 2e's designers, if the Dungeon Master only needed to look at the handful of pages containing the game statistics of the monsters he needed for the session?

That's why the Monstrous Compendium consisted of a large binder, complete with cardstock dividers festooned with D&D art. Monster descriptions appeared on loose, three-hole punched sheets that could then be added to the binder. The idea was that, before playing, a referee could simply remove those sheets he needed and leave the rest in the binder, thereby lessening the burden of carrying multiple reference works. As expansions of the MC appeared, each with its own set new loose sheets, they could be added to the binder, too, slotted in alphabetically so that the end result was, if you'll pardon the expression, a truly monstrous compendium of all the game's foes.  

It's frankly a great concept and one that sold me on the Monstrous Compendium sight unseen. Unfortunately, the actual design of the loose sheets left much to be desired. First and foremost, very few monsters have descriptions lengthy enough to occupy both the front and back of a single sheet. This means that, for example, "goblin" is on one side of a sheet and "golem, general" – the first part of a three-page spread – is on the other. While there are a few monsters that do have entries that cover both the front and the back of the same sheet, this is uncommon. This arrangement makes it impossible to add new monsters from expansions into the alphabetical order of the initial release, not to mention undermines the notion that the loose sheets give the referee the ability to choose only those monsters he wishes to use.

Being a lover of order, I can't tell you how much this drove me up a wall. As I said, I was completely sold on the idea of the Monstrous Compendium. Truth be told, I still am. However, as released, it simply did not live up to that promise and indeed worked against it. The situation was only made worse with each new expansion, since my binder grew ever more full with more loose sheets, each of which had to go in its own separate section segregated by one of those cardstock dividers. Eventually, I had to buy additional binders, since I believe TSR only ever released one more of them (with Dragonlance monsters). In the end, I had just as many "books" to lug around as before and these were nowhere near as sturdy as the older AD&D volumes.

This brings me to the second topic I briefly wanted to discuss in relation to this product: the ever-greater commodification of D&D (and RPGs more generally). One of the "problems" with roleplaying games, from the point of view of their publishers anyway, is that, once one owns the basic rules material, there's never any need to buy anything more. That's why, since fairly early on in the history of the hobby, publishers have contrived ways to extract more money from players. I suspect that the design of the Monstrous Compendium was at least partially intended as a way to get players to buy more stuff – regular updates and expansions, more binders, etc. 

That intention was hampered by the shortsighted design of the MC itself, resulting in TSR's eventual abandonment of it with the release of a hardcover volume called the Monstrous Manual in 1993, followed by a number of softcover appendices to it in the years that followed. I'm amazed that TSR didn't course correct sooner than this, but the management of AD&D in the '90s was haphazard at the best of times. It's a shame, because, as I noted earlier, I think a more "user friendly" approach to monsters has a certain appeal. Alas, the Monstrous Compendium did not provide that approach, which is why it remains, to this day, one of the most disappointing D&D products I've ever bought.

How Common Were Long Campaigns?

A topic that I think is worthy of further discussion is the extent to which the contemporary "old school" RPG scene is characterized by varying degrees of hyper-correction to the real and imagined excesses of the subsequent (post-1990 or thereabouts) hobby. For the moment, I want to focus on one area where this hyper-correction might exist: long campaigns. I say "might," because I honestly don't know the extent to which lengthy, multi-year campaigns were all that commonplace in the past, even among the founders of the hobby. Certainly, if you read things like the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, such campaigns were clearly the ideal, at least in some quarters, but what about the reality? Just how common were long campaigns of the sort that I've been extolling for the last few years on this blog?

By most accounts, the earliest version of what would come to be called the Blackmoor campaign appeared sometime in late 1970 or early 1971. Over the course of the next four to five years, Dave Arneson continued to referee adventures set in Blackmoor, with a rotating roster of players (and characters), though there seems to have been a significant amount of continuity during that time period. Gary Gygax's Greyhawk campaign began sometime in 1972 and continued to be played, off and on, throughout the remainder of the decade, again with a rotating roster of players. Then there's Greg Stafford's Dragon Pass campaign and Steve Perrin's one in Prax, not to mention whatever Marc Miller and the GDW crew were doing in the Spinward Marches.

How many of the foregoing were "long" campaigns in the way we've been talking about them lately? Much depends, I suppose, on how you define both terms. For myself, a "campaign" is a continuous series of adventures/sessions in a fictional setting with a regular, if not necessarily static, set of players. I'm sure people could quibble with almost every aspect of my definition, especially since many of the foundational campaigns of the hobby might not qualify under its terms. Likewise, my definition, for all its specificity, is silent on questions as basic as whether a campaign with multiple referees – like the Greyhawk campaign that was eventually co-refereed by Rob Kuntz – is one campaign or two. Then, there's the Ship of Theseus question of how many of the elements of a campaign's beginning must persist over time for it to qualify as the "same" campaign, to say nothing of what constitutes "long." Is length determined by the calendar, the number of sessions, or the time spent playing?

I think these are all important questions, even if we can't easily agree on the answers. Simply asking them is, in my opinion, a good way to fumble toward a better understanding of this hobby, its parameters, and its history. For example, M.A.R. Barker's Thursday night Tékumel campaign would seem to be a paradigmatic example of a long campaign, lasting as it did, with many of the same players, from the late '70s into the 21st century. Though there are no doubt other examples of similarly long-running campaigns, the "Thursday Night Group" is quite likely the highest profile one of which I know. Its longevity and degree of continuity surpasses that of anything Arneson, Gygax, Stafford, or any of the other founders have the hobby ever achieved. That's no small accomplishment, but is it in any way representative of what a long campaign is or should be?

There's also the question of what RPG players in the wider world beyond were doing. How many of them were involved in long campaigns? Depending on how you want to look at it, I was part of either the second or third wave of roleplayers, entering the hobby at the very end of 1979 and beginning serious play of RPGs in early 1980. My friends and I were young – I would have been 10 years old at the time – and, while we knew older, more experienced gamers and were influenced by them, we mostly forged our own paths. For the most part, that path did not include long campaigns. Instead, we flitted from game to game, playing D&D intensely for a month or two, then doing the same with Gamma World or Traveller or Call of Cthulhu, before returning to D&D or whatever other game caught or fancy at the time.

I doubt we were alone in this sort of behavior and I suspect that, as the RPG industry grew, producing ever more games, our behavior was much more widespread than sticking with one game devotedly for years on end. That's not to say we never played a single game for long stretches of time and to the exclusion of others – we did – but these were exceptions rather than the rule, at least until I attended college. Indeed, it was only with adulthood that I succeeded in refereeing a multi-year campaign with the same players and their characters. All the long campaigns I can recall have occurred after I was in my 20s and I sometimes wonder if the level of attentiveness necessary to maintain campaigns of this sort is only possible after a certain age.

So, how common were long campaigns in the past? I wish I knew, if only because I think it's important to understand the history of the hobby as it was rather than as we wish it were. 

Patient Zero

With the publication of the Dungeon Masters Guide in August 1979, Gary Gygax's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons project was essentially complete (though we would nevertheless see the publication of not one but two more hardback AD&D volumes over the next couple of years). Consequently, 1980 was the start of a period in TSR's history when the company shifted its focus to supporting Dungeons & Dragons in both its Basic and Advanced formats. One of the most significant ways it did so was through the publication of numerous adventure modules. Indeed, by dint of the sheer number of them released, adventure modules would effectively become TSR's signature products.

Among the modules published in 1980 was Harold Johnson and Jeff R. Leason's The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. Designated module C1 (for "Competition"), the module is highly regarded for both its exotic Mesoamerican-inspired flavor and the cleverness of its many tricks and traps. Johnson and Leason originally wrote the module for use at the Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons tournament at Origins '79, hence its "competition" designation. For that reason, it includes an extensive scoring system for tournament use, as well as a strict real time limit of 2 hours to complete.

In addition, the module includes the following in its "Notes for the Dungeon Master:"

It will be noticed that encounter descriptions are divided into boxed and open sections. The boxed sections contain information which should be read to the players; the rest is information for the DM. In most cases, the same players' description is used no matter which direction the party enters from, but 2 cases require that special descriptions be read depending on the direction from which the party approaches the encounter area. The DM should be aware of this and be careful to read the proper players' description.

The players' descriptions are provided because many of the encounters require specific actions on the part of the group. Hints of what may be done are given in this text and the DM should only provide vague information if questioned. Plauers will be to see the exact contents of a room unless noted.

Unless I am mistaken – and please correct me if I am – this is the very first published appearance of the dreaded boxed text in any TSR module. 

Within the very specific context of a module written for tournament use, particularly one with a strict real time limit, the inclusion of boxed, descriptive text makes a great deal of sense. After all, it would be unfair to the players participating in the tournament if some referees were more loquacious than others in their descriptions, time being a valuable resource. Fairness would likewise demand that each group of players be given the exact same descriptions of the dungeon's rooms. Once again, I say this makes perfect sense within this very specific context.

The trouble, I think, arises when TSR, in an effort to publish a large number of modules over a short period of time, turned ever more often to those originally created for tournaments. In this way, the style and presentation of tournament modules, including read-aloud boxed text, came to be seen not as unique features of tournament modules as such but simply as features of D&D modules in general. This is especially notable in modules published for the Basic and Expert versions of D&D, but, over time, it comes to be standard even in AD&D modules.

The lasting impact of the D&D tournament scene cannot be overstated.

Thoroughly

From Dungeons & Dragons module B2, Keep on the Borderlands:

The use of this module requires a working familiarity with its layout and design. Therefore, the first step is to completely read through the module, referring to the maps provided to learn the locations of the various features. A second (and third!) reading will be helpful in learning the nature of the monsters, their methods of attack and defense, and the treasures provided.

From module B3, Palace of the Silver Princess:

Before beginning the adventure, the DM should read this module thoroughly to become familiar with its details.  

From module B4, The Lost City:

Before beginning the adventure, please read the module thoroughly to become familiar with the Lost City. 

From Advanced Dungeons & Dragons module A1, Slave Pits of the Undercity:

Before commencing play, it is recommended that the DM read the module thoroughly and become familiar with the information given. 

From module A2, Secret of the Slavers Stockade:

Before beginning play, the DM must read all parts of the module thoroughly. 

From module C1, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan:

It is recommended that the DM read the module thoroughly several times before play starts, making notes in the margins where useful.

From module C2, The Ghost Tower of Inverness:

It is necessary that the DM read the module thoroughly before play. It may be useful to make notes in the margins at some points. 

From module S1, Tomb of Horrors:

Please read and review all of the material herein, and become thoroughly familiar with it before beginning the module. 

From module S2, White Plume Mountain:

Please read the entire module through and thoroughly familiarize yourself with complex areas before beginning play. 

From module S3, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks:

Be certain that you are quite familiar with the entire module, and read each encounter section carefully.  

 etc. etc.

The Highest Level of All

One of the stranger games to have been released during the first decade of the hobby was Fantasy Wargaming. Though I've never played it (and unlikely to ever do so), the game nevertheless exercises a strange fascination over me. I still have a copy of it on my bookshelf and take it down a couple of times each year to browse. In a strange way, I find re-reading it oddly heartening, because it's quite clear that, for all its many oddities, Fantasy Wargaming was a true passion project by its authors.

Mike Monaco of the Swords & Dorkery blog is even more enamored of Fantasy Wargaming than I am. That's why he recently wrote a scholarly book on it, published by Carnegie Mellon University's ETC Press. Entitled The Highest Level of All: The Story of Fantasy Wargaming, the book presents the story of the game's creation, as well that of its creators. Because it's an academic work, I'm not sure how widely distributed it will be, but I'll definitely keep my eye out for a copy. This is a topic that greatly interests me and I suspect it will be a fascinating read.

What Price Glory?!

 Last week, I wrote about Sir Pellinore's Game, an obscure 1978 RPG, whose existence I'd been alerted to by a couple of my regular correspondents. Like many (most?) people, I'd never heard of Sir Pellinore's Game, let alone knew that it had three different editions over the course of its existence. Fortunately, Precis Intermedia has made the game available again, in both print and PDF form. I don't know how many people will actually play the game, but there's no question that it's an invaluable resource for learning about the history of the RPG hobby.

Now, I've been alerted to the fact that Precis Intermedia is preparing to make another obscure RPG from the 1970s available once: What Price Glory?! Written by John Dankert and James Lauffenberger, What Price Glory?! first appeared in the same year as Sir Pellinore's Game, 1978. Needless to say, this game is also unknown to me, so its imminent re-release is of great interest.

Sir Pellinore's Advice to Referees

Here's what Sir Pellinore's Book has to say about how to referee, reproduced without any changes. I think it does a good job of showing the overall flavor of the book. 

To start the game you must at least make a town for the adventurers to start in. You can add the world outside the town, kingdoms, orc tribes, wandering monsters, elves, magic places, shrines, treasures, monsters, thieves and all kinds of other adventures for the other players to find. 

In your world don't make it impossible to survive. Since you must tell the other players what's happening and what effects their actions have you are their eyes and ears. Give them all the information you can.

Don't be too generous or it takes the fun of the struggle out of the game.

Don't be too stingy or no one will want to play.

Let the players do what they want unless it is impossible. After all, it's their neck.

Try to be realistic. Read up on the middle ages so you'll get a good idea of how things went then.

Don't make your world too civilized. If there's no monsters around to fight the players will take to robbery to make life interesting.

When you create your area, start by making a map of the area with graphpaper at a scale of 5–10 miles to a square. Then make maps of a larger scale of areas that should be more detailed, like castiles towns etc. Fill in all the smaller details with your imagination when a player comes to them.

Any rules for anything that is not here feel free to make them up. But, remember, because there are no winners or losers don't feel you have to destroy the other players. Everyone can be a winner! So be just and fair!

Sir Pellinore's Book

A few weeks ago, a regular correspondent of mine, who often sends me pointers toward forgotten bits of RPG history, alerted me to the existence of Sir Pellinore's Book of Rules for a Game of Magical Mideval [sic] Adventures, a 1978 amateur publication by Michael Brines of Prescott, Arizona. 

As you can probably tell just by looking at the cover to the left, I'm not kidding when I call this an "amateur publication." Sir Pellinore's Book is the raw, unpolished work of a fan, replete with misspellings, grammatical errors, occasionally unclear text, and little illustrations (presumably by Brines). It's also a charming window on the early days of the hobby and, for that reason alone, of great interest to me and anyone else who has an interest in such matters.

Consisting of twenty typewritten pages, Sir Pellinore's Book is quite clearly a variant of Original Dungeons & Dragons, though even a cursory examination of it reveals that it is quite variant in places. For instance, there are ostensibly three classes of characters, just as in OD&D. These classes are wizards, fighting men, and "others," the latter consisting of "priests, merchants, etc." Likewise, Wisdom is replaced with Luck, which is used to calculate most of a character's saving throws (25 – Luck score + level = target on "two dice," presumably 2d6, though it's never specified). At the referee's discretion, other ability scores might be substituted for Luck, such as Dexterity for falls and Constitution for resisting poison. 

Nearly every rule in OD&D is given some alteration or tweak, from combat to experience points to spells. The result is something that feels at once familiar and strange. It's difficult to tell whether Brines was inspired by other early RPGs – his use of Luck reminds me of Tunnels & Trolls and his percentile-based combat reminds me of RuneQuest, to cite two examples – or whether his ideas simply ran parallel to those of other games at the time. The early days of the hobby were one of reckless enthusiasm and cross-pollination, so this may not be an either/or situation. In any case, the end result is something that feels genuinely distinctive and reflects the sensibilities and tastes of its creator, something of which I've always been quite supportive.

I had intended to write a post about Sir Pellinore's Book when I was first told about it, but it slipped my mind, as too many things seem to do these days. Fortunately, another correspondent informed me that Precis Intermedia has made it available in electronic form both through its own site and through DriveThruRPG. There are apparently plans to make it available in print as well, in case that's your preference. If you're at all interested in the roots of the hobby, it's well worth a look. Plus, it has a spell called "Banana Peel;" you can't go wrong with that. 

Frontiers of Adventure

Thanks to Traveller Map

When Traveller first appeared in 1977, GDW's  game of science fiction adventure in the far future followed the model of Original Dungeons & Dragons in being a generic ruleset without an explicit setting. Of course, like OD&D, Traveller's rules included within them assumptions that laid for the groundwork for an implied setting. An illustrative example of what I'm talking about is the relative slowness of interstellar travel and the concomitant lack of a separate (and faster) form of interstellar communications. Thus, Traveller may not have included its own integral setting, at least initially, but its rules certainly pushed referees in certain directions as they created their own settings, much as OD&D had done before it.

This situation didn't last long, though. Starting with the appearance of Mercenary in 1978, GDW started including references to "the Imperium" in its products. Initially, the Imperium was just a stand-in for any remote interstellar government of the sort that Traveller's rules implied. By the time of the release of The Spinward Marches in 1979 (if not before), it had started down the path that would soon make it the explicit setting of the game. From my conversations with the late Loren Wiseman and others, this shift in emphasis was one that players of the game wanted, based on feedback that GDW received from them. I can hardly blame them for catering to their buying public.

More to the point, I've always loved the Imperium. By the time I began playing Traveller, there was very little sense that the game had ever been a generic ruleset without an explicit setting and I was quite content with this situation. That said, most of GDW's efforts in describing the Imperium were focused on its frontiers, sectors of space like the aforementioned Spinward Marches and the Solomani Rim. Likewise, the various third parties licensed by GDW to produce their own materials setting set in and around the Imperium tended to follow their lead, whether they were Judges Guild or Gamelords or FASA. By comparison, there was little or no material set in the core sectors of the Imperium.

I was reminded of all this recently because a good friend of mine offered to referee a Traveller campaign and he chose to set it in the Crucis Margin sector, in the region trailing the Imperium. The sector is in close proximity to the Imperium, as well as the Solomani Confederation, the Two Thousand Worlds, and the Hive Federation but none of these major interstellar powers has any presence here. Instead, there are multiple smaller governments, usually no more than a dozen worlds in size – the very same model I used in my Riphaeus Sector campaign. 

I think it's pretty obvious why this is such an attractive set-up for a RPG campaign setting: frontiers are where adventures happen. Sometimes this is quite explicit. For example, there are The Keep on the Borderlands for D&D and Borderlands for RuneQuest, to cite just two very obvious examples. Back in the realm of science fiction, there's Star Frontiers and Star Trek, whose televisual inspiration dubbed space the final frontier. I rather suspect that one of the reasons that RPGs set in the modern day generally do poorly is that most of them lack a clear frontier and thus the possibilities for adventure are more limited. The only exceptions I can think of are horror games like Call of Cthulhu or Vaesen, where I would argue that the supernatural (or at least extramundane) constitutes a frontier of sorts.

If we turn back to Traveller, it would seem that GDW learned this lesson as well. Most of the editions of the game after its initial one were explicitly set not just in the Imperium setting but during a time when there were lots more frontiers. MegaTraveller (1987) shattered the Imperium in a civil war that resulted in the foundation of antagonistic successor states, while Traveller: The New Era (1993) takes place when much of interstellar civilization is rebuilding in the aftermath of that same civil war. I suspect a big part of the appeal of post-apocalyptic games like Gamma World is the way they take a staid, familiar setting, like Earth, and fill it with frontiers again. 

None of this is to suggest that it's impossible to have a satisfying roleplaying game campaign set in the core areas of a stable society, but, as I scan my bookshelves, looking at the games I have played most often, I see few obvious examples of them. I don't think that's mere coincidence.