The Articles of Dragon: "Ay pronunseeAYshun gyd"

I am nothing if not a horrible nerd about too many of the things that matter to me. And one of the things that matters a great deal to me is language. 

When I was in school, I enjoyed diagramming sentences and making proper use of the subjunctive mood. Spelling was one of my favorite subjects and I used to proudly tell anyone who would listen that I only ever spelled one word wrong on a spelling test during my entire elementary school career (Tuesday, if you can believe it). I was (am?) that annoying kid who corrected other people's grammar – and pronunciation.

Consequently, I absolutely adored Frank Mentzer's article, "Ay pronunseeAYshun gyd," which appeared in issue #93 of Dragon (January 1985). Over the course of five pages, Mentzer sets out to present the correct pronunciations for some of the weirder and more obscure words and names found in Dungeons & Dragons and AD&D materials. Of course, Mentzer is quick to note that he personally doesn't believe there is such a thing as a "right" or a "wrong" pronunciation (or spelling). Thus, the pronunciations he offers in the article are simply the "preferred" or even "most common" rather than the correct ones. Such descriptivist nonsense didn't hold any water with me when I was fifteen and it holds even less now, but I feel it's important to mention Mentzer's comment nonetheless, since I'm sure someone will bring it up in the comments in order to defend the rectitude of his idiosyncratic pronunciation of lich or drow or whatever.

As I said, I really enjoyed this article, since it gave me a weapon with which to bludgeon my less verbally adept friends. Thus equipped, I was ready to defend “proper” pronunciation with the zeal of a paladin guarding a sacred relic. My friends humored me (mostly). After all, I'd been doing this sort of thing for years before this article ever appeared. Fortunately, I’ve mellowed somewhat over the years – at least, that’s what I tell myself – but the truth is that I still sometimes look at Mentzer's article just to be sure that I wasn't mistaken in how to say certain words and names. 

Apropos of nothing, I assure you.

Retrospective: Lost Tomb of Martek

Despite my well known gripes about the lasting impact of Tracy Hickman on the development of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (and, by extension, all roleplaying games), I nevertheless have a genuine affection for his "Desert of Desolation" trilogy. To some extent, it's probably a consequence of a childhood fascination with all things ancient Egyptian. The Egyptians competed with the Romans in my young imagination for the most thoroughly compelling ancient civilization, a place they still hold to this day. 

For that reason, I purchased Pharaoh as soon as I could a copy back in 1982 and still consider module I3 a pretty good adventure even today. Its immediate sequel, Oasis of the White Palm, is nowhere near as good, even if it does contain a number of memorable – and imaginative – elements. Lost Tomb of Martek, the final module in the series, carries forward many of the virtues and vices of its predecessors, while also magnifying them to such a degree that module I5 almost feels like it belongs to a different series entirely. It is grandiose, whimsical, and often overwrought, an adventure that stretches AD&D into forms it had not explored at the time.

Lost Tomb of Martek appeared near the end of D&D’s Golden Age, a period when TSR was openly experimenting with what its adventures could be. The company had not yet settled into the strongly narrative, almost novel-like structure that would crystallize in Dragonlance, but the trajectory was already visible. In this sense, Lost Tomb of Martek occupies a fascinating middle ground. It gestures toward the story-driven design that was soon to dominate TSR’s output, yet it avoids the worst excesses of that approach. Like the other installments in the “Desert of Desolation” trilogy, this one is still very much a transitional work.

Lost Tomb of Martek brings together the threads laid down in Pharaoh and Oasis of the White Palm, both of which seeded the legend of Martek, the wizard who foresaw the release of a powerful efreeti and prepared the means for its defeat. With the three Star Gems already in hand, the characters must cross the Skysea, an expanse of fused glass requiring a cloudskate, to reach Martek’s tomb and his Sphere of Power. Once they arrive, however, the adventure’s focus shifts unevenly. The first portion features the quarrelsome descendants of trapped paladins and thieves, a tonal misstep at odds with the overall self-seriousness of the module. Worse still, the scenario introduces three NPC thieves who can steal the Star Gems and force the party into a prolonged (and tedious) chase.

The adventure’s structural weaknesses become most evident once the adventure segues into a scavenger hunt across three disparate magical locales. Each site is imaginative, but only the Mobius Tower translates that imagination into compelling play. The other two are rich in concept yet mechanically thin, offering little beyond random encounters or single-solution puzzles. The result is an adventure overflowing with inventive imagery but frustratingly light on satisfying gameplay, especially when measured against the modules that preceded it. Even the polished presentation, including Martek’s climactic resurrection and the excellent maps and art, cannot fully mask an ambition that consistently outstrips its execution.

That same ambition is also responsible for many of the module’s deeper flaws. The adventure is so tightly scripted that player action routinely suffers. Characters are expected to follow a predetermined sequence of events, activating artifacts and triggering scenes exactly on cue. Inevitably, the players become spectators to a story already decided rather than adventurers shaping their own course. Even the most imaginative settings lose some of their wonder when the only viable path forward is the one Hickman has laid out in advance.

Yet, for all these shortcomings, Lost Tomb of Martek remains strangely compelling. It stands as an artifact of a transitional moment in RPG design, just before a more rigid orthodoxy narrowed expectations about what a published module should be. Its flaws are the flaws of exuberance, not cynicism. Hickman’s heavy-handed guidance stems from a genuine desire to present something like a fantasy epic in RPG form. However flawed the execution, his sincerity is unmistakable.

Perhaps age has softened me, but I cannot bring myself to dislike the module. I would not choose to run it today, yet it contains ideas worth salvaging. Its locations, artifacts, and encounters could all reward a referee willing to reshape them into a more open-ended framework. Even the plot, for all its railroading, could be retooled into a looser, more player-driven experience with modest effort. One could, of course, invent entirely new material instead but, in the interest of being constructive, I think Lost Tomb of Martek offers just enough to make it worth the effort.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Clerics Live by Other Rules"

Over the years, I've given the thief a lot of flak, but it's actually the cleric who fits in least well with the literary origins of D&D. The cleric looks not to pulp fantasies for its inspiration but to medieval Catholicism by way of Hammer horror films and, while I have a great fondness for the class, there's no question that it isn't a perfect fit for the world D&D implicitly describes. I'm not alone in thinking this, which is why the cleric is probably the class that gets reinvented the most (though the thief might be a close second).

Every edition of D&D has put its own stamp on the cleric, in the process rendering the class more incoherent than it was to start. Gary Gygax contributed further to this mess in his article "Clerics Live by Other Rules," which appeared in issue #92 (December 1984) of Dragon. To be fair, Gary's article is actually pretty good, but it laid the seeds for much mischief later. His intention was to suggest that individual referees, for the purposes of fleshing out their campaign settings, could change the rules under which clerics (and, by extension, druids) operate, either restricting their opportunities or expanding them (or, preferably, both).

In the article, Gygax gives an example of a sect worshiping the woodland deity Ehlonna, from his Greyhawk campaign setting. Owing to tragic events in the past, this sect operates differently than others of its kind, having a unique selection of spells, armor, and weapons, in addition to having certain ritual taboos placed upon them. Thus, for example, they're not allowed to use fire-based spells of any kind, but clerics, after proving themselves – gaining levels – can wield broadswords and druids can wear elfin chain.

Normally, I loathe this kind of stuff, in large part because I think it contributes further to the dilution of what the cleric class is – and it's already pretty diluted as it is. What makes Gygax's approach work, though, is that a) it's solidly grounded in the setting and b) he's limiting these changes to a particular sect, not establishing it as a baseline. That's how I think things like this ought to be done. Unfortunately, players (and later designers) didn't care for these nuances, instead using them as a template for "fixing" the cleric class. This led, in my opinion, to a variety of changes over the years that have rendered the cleric one of the least coherent classes, both mechanically and as an archetype. But I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority in feeling this way.

Interestingly, Gygax himself warns against taking what he wrote in this article as an official, universal change. In his concluding paragraph, he says some very sensible things:

Now when you hear someone, DM or player, mentioning something about "unknown" cleric spells or similar difficulties, don't panic. It could well be a cleverly planned campaign where difference and the unexpected are desirable -- and who can fault that?! Perhaps you might wish to try it in your own campaign, too. A cautionary word is necessary, however, for there is a problem with such variations. Unless the full and complete details of the differences are known to other DMs, they might well not wish to have clerics or druids of such nature participating in their games. This is their right, and skepticism on their part is justified. Players of these clerics and druids must be forewarned that such characters might be "one-campaign-only" adventurers who are not welcome elsewhere

It's good advice, but it's also, I think, advice rooted in an older style of play that was already on its way to dying out by the time this article was published. Campaign hopping of the sort Gary envisions was already rare in the early '80s when I was most deeply immersed in the hobby and I have a hard time imagining that it was any more widespread on the cusp of 1985. Ironically, the advent of the Net and online play make well lead to a resurgence of the Old Ways in this regard, in which case Gary's advice might well prove useful again.

Retrospective: The Complete Priest's Handbook

When the second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons appeared in 1989, one of its implicit goals was to make the game’s classes more flexible and setting-driven. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the treatment of clerics. First Edition AD&D more or less followed the template laid down by OD&D, where the cleric was an odd hybrid of Templar, exorcist, and battlefield medic. This was a pragmatic invention designed to plug holes in early play (someone had to turn undead and heal wounds). The cleric class was thus foundational to the game, but rarely inspiring. If my experience is anything to go by, few players aspired to be a cleric and would only acquiesce to doing so because the party needed healing.

The Complete Priest’s Handbook, published in 1990, represents TSR’s most serious attempt to rethink the cleric, building on what had already been established in the 2e Player's Handbook. Written by Aaron Allston, it stands as one of the most conceptually ambitious entries in the “Complete” series, as well as one I really liked at the time of its release. The supplement's title is significant. Second Edition, you may recall, replaced the term "cleric" with "priest" as the name of the broad class category. “Cleric” became only one example within that category – a type of priest, much as the druid was another. This terminological shift heralded a new approach to divine spellcasters. Where 1e’s cleric was monolithic, 2e’s priest was varied. There could be hundreds of priestly archetypes, each distinct to its faith and overall ethos. Allston’s book took that conceptual flexibility and attempted to make it practical.

At the heart of The Complete Priest’s Handbook lies 2e’s concept of specialty priests as a flexible framework for portraying the servants of specific gods or cosmic powers. Rather than treating every priest as a lightly re-skinned version of the same armored miracle-worker, Allston provided Dungeon Masters with clear guidelines for customizing spell access, weapons, armor, granted powers, and restrictions to reflect each deity’s nature. A priest of a war god might wield swords and command battle magic, while one devoted to a god of secrets could be forbidden to fight openly but gifted with divinations and hidden knowledge. The idea had its roots in Dragonlance Adventures (1987) and the 2e Player’s Handbook, of course, but Allston expanded and refined it in meaningful ways. He demonstrated that the faiths of a campaign world should shape the rules of divine magic, not the other way around.

Much of the supplement reads less like a player’s guide than a campaign design manual. Allston encouraged DMs to think about pantheons, from who the gods are, what their worshippers are like, and how their clergy interact with worldly institutions. He presented religions as social, political, and metaphysical forces, not merely sources of spells. From here, he moves on to designing priesthoods, walking the reader through the process of defining a faith’s beliefs, organization, duties, and other details, with each choice shaping both flavor and play. Allston even made space for philosophical or non-theistic priests, who draw power from devotion to an ideal or cosmic principle. That idea was barely hinted at previously, but, in this supplement, it's offered as an unambiguous possibility (one that I embraced wholeheartedly in my Emaindor campaign from high school).

In many ways, The Complete Priest’s Handbook was TSR’s first real attempt to treat religion as a serious worldbuilding concern rather than an afterthought. The gods and their faiths were no longer just color for the background; they became engines of conflict, patronage, and adventure. The priest was not simply a healer or support character but a representative of a larger belief structure and institution. One can argue that this was always true in AD&D and perhaps it was, but, for many of us, it took books like this to make us think seriously about what that actually meant in play.

Like all entries in the “Complete” line, The Complete Priest’s Handbook included a selection of kits, optional templates meant to add flavor and specialization. Ironically, I never found most of them especially interesting. Too many represented vague social roles, like the Nobleman Priest, the Peasant Priest, and so on, rather than more distinctive archetypes like the Crusader or the Missionary. Arguably, 2e priests didn’t need kits at all. Between their spheres of magic and granted powers, the class already had plenty of built-in flexibility. However, compared to what other classes received in their "Complete" books, this section felt oddly underbaked.

What truly stands out, though, is how The Complete Priest’s Handbook reflects a broader shift in TSR’s design philosophy. Second Edition was increasingly interested in building distinct, coherent settings for AD&D. One could reasonably argue this was motivated by a desire to sell more products, but, even so, it had an intriguing creative side effect: it pushed the rules toward flexibility and world-specific interpretation. Instead of assuming a single “cleric” archetype for every world, 2e encouraged Dungeon Masters to make each campaign’s religions – and thus its priests – unique.

Of course, the book is not without its flaws. Balancing specialty priests was left largely to the DM’s discretion and the examples varied widely in quality. Allston’s approach assumed a polytheistic setting where divine diversity was the norm, leaving monotheistic or dualistic campaigns to do some extra work. Yet, these are minor quibbles compared to the book’s larger accomplishment. The Complete Priest’s Handbook encouraged DMs to shape faith to fit their worlds and, just as importantly, to let their worlds shape faith in return. For a game as rule-bound as AD&D sometimes was, that felt genuinely liberating.

For all my reservations about the "Complete" series as a whole, I still regard The Complete Priest’s Handbook as one of its true high points, a book that took a neglected class and made it central not just to the mechanics of the game but to the presentation of the setting in which it was played.

The Articles of Dragon: "The Nine Hells Revisited"

As a kid, I was endlessly fascinated by AD&D's Gygaxian cosmology of the planes of existence, especially the so-called Lower Planes, populated as they were by the baroque categories and hierarchies of devils, daemons, and demons (not to mention demodands and hordlings). For that reason, I adored Ed Greenwood's two-part series on the Nine Hells, which appeared in issues #75 and #76 of Dragon. They were, in my opinion, one of the best explorations of the Outer Planes in First Edition, not merely for the new information they presented, but also for the way Greenwood succeeded in making the Hells locales where characters might have adventures. Then and now, that's very important to me. Much as I enjoy imaginative "lore dumps," background information is always improved when it supports play. That's why, more four decades later, I still look back with affection on "The Nine Hells," Part I and II.

Apparently, I wasn't the only reader of Dragon who enjoyed those articles, because, a year later, in issue #91 (November 1984), we got "The Nine Hells Revisited." Ay 16 pages long, this article wasn't as long as Part II of the original series, but it was slightly longer than Part I, meaning it was a substantial addition of new material about the Nine Hells. I was overjoyed to see its appearance in the issue and even happier when I'd finally read it. Greenwood had once again written the kind of article I wanted more of and, while it's not quite as groundbreaking as his previous work, it was still quite memorable.

Whereas "The Nine Hells" had been a systematic presentation of the plane of ultimate Lawful Evil, focusing on each layer, its notable features, and denizens, "The Nine Hells Revisited" was more of a grab bag. For example, the article begins with a brief discussion of how mortal can "safely" deal with devils through magic, followed by the proper pronunciation of certain devils' names (important if you want to ensure your summoning rituals work properly). Then, Greenwood gives us six pages of "outcast" devils – greater devils whose offenses against one of Hell's archdevils resulted in their being removed from the plane's hierarchy and left to wander. These devils are quite interesting, because their independent status makes them great antagonists for AD&D characters of mid to high-level without necessarily involving all the legions of Hell in their schemes.

Next up is a discussion of the treasures of Hell and the unique metals to be found there. Though not especially interesting in their own right, these topics are eminently practical for adventures that take place in Hell or involve their inhabitants. Much more fascinating to me was Greenwood's discussion of mortal devil worshipers and agents and "The Lord Who Watches," Gargoth. Gargoth is another unique devil, but, unlike the ones described earlier, he is of immense power, being an exiled archdevil, who was once second only to Asmodeus in power. Exiled to the Prime Material Plane, he now pursues his own goals. Gargoth makes for a great high-level enemy and longtime readers of Dragon will appreciate Greenwood's subtle incorporation of elements of Alex Von Thorn's "The Politics of Hell," which appeared in issue #28 of the magazine (August 1979), reprinted in The Best of Dragon, Volume II.

(As an aside, Alex Von Thorn was the co-owner of a game store here in Toronto that Ed Greenwood would occasionally visit. I got to know Alex, too, and even gamed with him a few times.)

The article wraps up with discussions of the nature of devils, which is to say, how their society operates, traveling the River Styx, and a "note to the DM." The latter is interesting, because Greenwood makes it very clear that devils are very powerful beings and the Dungeon Master should take pains not to overuse them or otherwise diminish them in the minds of players. Even the weakest named devils are dangerous foes and should offer a challenge. The DM needs to keep this in mind when employing them in adventures. This is a fair point, I think, but I wonder what occasioned its inclusion in the article.

 

"The Nine Hells Revisited" was, as I said, nowhere near as revelatory to me as its two predecessor articles. Nevertheless, I found it both enjoyable and information, not to mention practical. This wasn't just background information without any utility in play. Instead, it provided the Dungeon Master with a collection of details and foes he could use to inject a little bit of the infernal into his ongoing campaign. Being a devotee of the Outer Planes in my AD&D campaign at the time, I liked this one a lot. Even now, I think it's one of the more memorable Dragon articles of its era.

REPOST: Retrospective: Ravenloft

I give Dragonlance a lot of grief – deservedly so, I think – for the role it played in forever changing both Dungeons & Dragons and the way it's been sold, but Dragonlance was merely expanding on ideas first put forward in earlier modules penned by Tracy Hickman, particularly 1983's Ravenloft. Unlike the Dragonlance modules, which, even at the time, I liked more in theory than in practice, I used to love Ravenloft. It's easy to understand why. Module I6 is a very "moody" piece of work, unlike most previous AD&D modules, which achieved their moods much more haphazardly or at least less self-consciously. Ravenloft's evocation of Gothic horror was also unlike most other modules at the time and, given my relative unfamiliarity with that genre of fiction – I'd not yet read Dracula in 1983 – I found it all very compelling.

There are other factors too in why my youthful self loved Ravenloft. Strahd von Zarovich, while sporting one of the most ridiculous faux Eastern European names in gaming, seems tailor-made for referees looking for a pet NPC. He's immensely powerful, well nigh indestructible, and fun to roleplay – an angst-ridden anti-hero before White Wolf made such things a staple of the hobby. That he's the central figure in a story that provides a backdrop to the PCs' actions only made him more attractive. Moreso than most modules published before or at that time, Ravenloft is about its villain. The actions of the PCs are, in many ways, beside the point, because their sole purpose is to help to facilitate a melodrama of lust, betrayal, despair, and love beyond the grave in which NPCs are the primary actors.

And then there were the maps. Dave Sutherland's three-dimensional maps of Castle Ravenloft were amazingly innovative for the time, providing a superb sense of how all the pieces of this vast dungeon – for dungeon is it was – fit together. I know I drooled over these maps for many hours as a younger man and, even now, looking at them, I find it hard not to be won over by them. The problem, of course, is that, in play, they're quite unwieldy and sometimes even a little confusing. I'd go so far as to say that they're emblematic of Ravenloft itself: attractive, innovative, and a clear break from the past.

Now, I think it's all too easy to emphasize how much Ravenloft differed from its predecessors. At the same time, as I just noted, this is still, at base, a dungeon crawl and an occasionally non-sensical one at that. For all its Gothic horror trappings, we sometimes find monsters not at all in keeping with that style of writing. Likewise, there's plenty of low humor, especially puns, to be found in the module. The names on many of the tombs in the castle crypt – "The Lady Isolde Yunk (Isolde the Incredible). Purveyor of Antiques and Imports," for example – are outrageously bad and make Gary Gygax's own efforts seem subtle by comparison. These puns wrench one back from the Gothic atmosphere other parts of the module are trying desperately to evoke. 

The module also uses a method of placing important NPCs and magic items based on "fortune telling" with a deck of playing cards. It's actually a very clever idea and, from my memory of playing the module long ago, it's effective and lends something to the atmosphere. Plus, my icy old school heart melts when random generation is involved in such a significant way. Effective though it was, the card reading system made me wonder at the time if it was introduced partly to give the module re-playability. That is, because certain important NPCs and items were placed in Castle Ravenloft randomly, the system could, in theory, ensure that each playing of Ravenloft would be different. Brilliant! The problem is that no one is going to Ravenloft more than once, because, as it is written, you can't. Dungeon crawl it may be in many ways, but there's no overlooking the fact that Ravenloft tells a story and a heavy-handed one at that. Not only does it have a prescribed conclusion, complete with Harlequin romance level dewy-eyed sentimentality, but, ultimately, what the PCs do just doesn't matter, since everything in the module is designed to support a predetermined conclusion.

Ravenloft is, like the "Desert of Desolation" series (also by Hickman – I see a pattern here), a transitional module. There's still a great deal of old school design in its pages. There are lots of tricks and traps, for example, and Castle Ravenloft itself is a monstrous labyrinth of rooms, corridors, and crypts, making for a very non-linear portion of the game. It's also a very unforgiving module, with death around every corner, particularly if the players are foolhardy enough to try and take on Strahd without adequate preparation. Of course, unlike the later Dragonlance modules, Ravenloft can afford to be a death trap, because – and I hate to keep harping on this – the PCs' actions don't really matter. Strahd and his story are the main attraction here and it makes little difference whether a player loses a dozen characters along the way so long as he eventually has some character who's able to be present to witness the melodramatic conclusion the Hickmans have in store for them. That's a pretty big crime in my book and, while new and innovative at the time, it laid the foundation for much mischief later.

I still have a fondness for Ravenloft despite it all, but that fondness is born mostly out of nostalgia and that's fine. I don't think Tracy Hickman is the Devil any more than I think L. Sprague De Camp was. Nevertheless, I don't think it's possible to deny that, in both cases, these men planted seeds that would eventually bear bitter fruit. We're still wrestling with the consequences of design decisions Tracy Hickman made in 1983. The adventure path style of play, for example, is a direct descendant of modules like "The Desert of Desolation" series, Ravenloft, and Dragonlance, which represent an about-face from the more open-ended, sandbox play of the old school. The fetishizing of "super NPCs," whose actions overshadowed those of the PCs, got a nice boost too with the creation of Strahd von Zarovich. Neither of these things necessarily had to become the abominations they would one day be, but the immense popularity of Ravenloft made it hard for them to avoid this destiny. I think, with some work, Ravenloft could be remade into a perfectly acceptable and throughly old school module. That's more than can be said of the Dragonlance modules, so, in the final analysis, I'd have to say that module I6 isn't wholly without virtues, even if they are buried beneath even greater vices.

The Articles of Dragon: "Aesirhamar"

Over the years I've written this blog, I don't think I've devoted much space to the adventures that have appeared in the pages of Dragon. I'm not quite sure why that is. In retrospect, it seems to me that this would be an obvious source of commentary, particularly as I often made use of these scenarios in whole or in part. Perhaps one day I'll go back and correct this omission in a more systematic way. Today, though, I want to focus on a single specific Dragon magazine adventure that I think is genuinely worthy of attention – for a couple of reasons.

Roger E. Moore's "Aesirhamar" appeared in issue #90 (October 1984) and is a companion piece to "Plane Facts on Gladsheim" from the same issue. I'd actually go farther and say that "Aesirhamar" is just as important as the article it accompanies, because it shows how the information in the article is supposed to be used in play. I think that's important in this case. As I stated in my earlier post, "Plane Facts on Gladsheim" is rather dull, focusing primarily on the way that the normal rules of AD&D must be modified to account for the home of the Norse gods. The result is, in my opinion, quite tedious rather than exciting, which is why I never regarded "Plane Facts on Gladsheim" as highly as I did Moore's "The Astral Plane."

With the addition of "Aesirhamar," though, Moore's approach in the accompanying article makes more sense. Now that the Dungeon Master has a scenario set on Gladsheim, he has the opportunity to make use of all those rules changes and exceptions that Moore has laid out. Rather than being abstract ideas, they're very important, tied to an adventure in which high-level characters journey to Jotunheim and must contend not only with its hostile inhabitants but also with the way magic and other abilities are warped by the very nature of this Outer Plane. 

Like a lot of older AD&D adventures, "Aesirhamar" doesn't really have a plot. Instead, it presents a situation and several locales connected to that situation through which the characters journey. In brief, the characters are summoned by some of the Aesir of the Norse pantheon to locate and stop an evil dwarf who is in league with the giant Hargnar Left-Hand. The dwarf is in possession of a mighty magical weapon, the titular Aesirhamar, which was forged in order to kill the gods in revenge of Thor's killing of Hargnar's brothers. It's a pretty straightforward situation, one that's easy to understand and appropriately Norse in its focus.

For the most part, the adventure consists of a series of keyed encounters in Jotunheim while the characters travel there in search of the hammer. Given the nature of the place, these encounters are quite challenging – there are lots of giants here, as well as associated creatures, like trolls – and each one of them will likely test the mettle of the characters. Moore doesn't include any maps of these encounters. Instead, the DM is left to his own devices, tailoring them to his own tastes. This approach was pretty typical of the era in which "Aesirhamar" was published and I don't mean that as a criticism. There was an understanding in those days that the referee could easily whip up his own maps if they were needed.

Of course, the real meat of the adventure is not these encounters per se, challenging though they are, but the overall context in which they occur. The characters are acting as agents of the Norse gods, charged with defeating (or at least neutralizing) a threat to their rule. That's a pretty compelling adventure hook and one I remember being quite effective in my own campaign. One of the player characters, Morgan Just, was an admirer (though not worshiper) of Thor and considered it a great honor to have been chosen to aid him against the giants, whom he already hated. His fellow player characters, though, were a lot more venal, and saw the recovery of Aesirhamar as an opportunity to gain, if not the upper hand, at least some mighty rewards for the gods. Needless to say, this difference of opinion led to some interesting conflicts that helped spur on subsequent adventures.

Ultimately, that's why I have an affection for "Aesirhamar" – it provided me with what I needed to kick off some fun, Norse-inspired AD&D mayhem. It also provided an opportunity for me to make use of "Plane Facts on Gladsheim," which was a plus. In combination, that was enough. Whether that makes "Aesirhamar" good in some objective sense, I can't say. For my friends and I, that was enough.

The Articles of Dragon: "Plane Facts on Gladsheim"

Judging by the fact that this is the third post in a row about Dragon issue #90 (October 1984), I think it’s safe to say it was a good one. The funny thing is, before rereading it for these posts, I don’t think I’d have singled it out as anything special. I have a pretty good visual memory, especially for the covers of books and magazines I read as a kid or teenager, and recalling a cover usually brings the contents rushing back. I certainly remembered the cover of issue #90, but, until I revisited it, I doubt I could have told you much about what was inside, let alone why it might be worth talking about all these years later. Go figure!

In the case of the other two articles from this issue I've already discussed, that makes some sense. However, in the case of Roger E. Moore's "Plane Facts on Gladsheim," I'm a bit surprised. I was always a huge fan of Moore's articles, many of which are among the best ever to appear in the pages of Dragon. Likewise, I was fascinated by AD&D's planar cosmology from the moment I first saw it in Appendix IV of the Players Handbook. I wanted to know more about all these strange otherworlds that Gary Gygax mentioned there. Consequently, Moore's article on the Astral Plane was like catnip to me. Even now, I'd easily list it as one of my Top 10 Favorite Articles – probably even Top 5. 

That's why I'm surprised I didn't remember that issue #90 included Moore's attempt to do for Gladsheim what he had done earlier for the Astral Plane. Rereading it, though, I begin to remember why. But before I get to that, I'd like to talk briefly about the article itself. At over a dozen pages in length, there can be no question that Moore has been thorough in describing the realm of the Norse gods and other "chaotic good neutrals," to use Gygax's gloriously baroque terminology. He presents the overall "geography" of the plane, with its various realms associated with gods, giants, and other beings, as well as how they relate to one another. It's useful stuff but, if you're already well versed in Norse mythology, none of it is new information.

What is new are his notes on how various AD&D spells and magic items operate on Gladsheim. Indeed, the bulk of the article is taken up by these notes, as Moore describes a wide range of changes, tweaks, and restrictions in how these things work here. On the one hand, this is very much to be expected. Starting with Queen of the Demonweb Pits, AD&D largely took a game mechanical approach to describing the planes. The planes were places where the rules of the game worked differently than they did on the Prime Material Plane of your home campaign setting. That is what set them apart (along with some new random encounter charts). Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with that approach and I think, in the case of both Lolth's layer of the Abyss and the Astral Plane, it works reasonably well. In the case of Gladsheim, though, I don't think it does – or at least, it's not enough to do so.

For me, the problem – then and now – is that Gladsheim is boring. As described, it's a realm that's not too dissimilar to most vanilla fantasy worlds. That's not Gladsheim's fault really; it's more a consequence of the fact that Norse mythology is so rich with cool monsters and magic and gods and so forth that fantasy writers, including the writers of Dungeons & Dragons, have been looting them for decades. Unlike, say, the bizarre void of the Astral Plane or the malevolent chaos of the Abyss, Gladsheim is just like northern Europe – which is what a lot of fantasy settings are already like. What really sets it apart?

Moreover, as a realm populated by lots of gods who are worshiped on the Prime Material Plane, the scope of what characters can do in Gladsheim is necessarily limited. Cause too much mayhem and they'll draw the attention of Odin or Thor and that's not likely to end well for them. I get the sense that Moore might have recognized this on some level, because he also wrote an accompanying adventure, "Aesirhamar," that's set on Gladsheim as an example of the kinds of things he expected characters could do here. I appreciate that, even if I'm not convinced his answer is an especially good one. However, I'll save my comments about the adventure till next week, because I think it's worthy of a separate post. For now, I'll simply say that I can now see why Planescape opted for such a strange and idiosyncratic approach to the planes. Like it or hate, at least it's different.

The Articles of Dragon: "Playing the Political Game"

Sometimes, an article, adventure, or even an entire game can exert a peculiar kind of influence over you, even though, viewed objectively, it’s not especially remarkable. I don’t mean that it’s bad, only that what it offers is, on the surface, mostly common sense. Most readers would nod in agreement, turn the page, and quickly forget about it – but you’re not most readers. For whatever reason, the author’s words reach you at exactly the right time and something clicks. The ideas linger. They grow. They shape how you see the hobby and, in some small but lasting way, how you play.

That’s what happened to me with “Playing the Political Game” by Mike Beeman, published in issue #90 of Dragon (October 1984). Beeman isn’t a name I associate with any other major contributions to the magazine and, by most measures, this article isn’t a landmark. Yet, when I first read it, just shy of my fifteenth birthday, it was nothing short of a revelation. It was the first time anyone had suggested to me that politics could be the central focus of adventures or even entire campaigns.

Beeman argues that politics isn’t an intrusion into fantasy roleplaying but its natural evolution. After all, nearly everything adventurers do already has political consequences, whether toppling tyrants, slaying monsters that guard vital resources, or flooding a town’s economy with treasure. At low levels, these effects remain background noise. But as heroes rise in power by claiming fiefs, leading troops, and  attracting followers, they inevitably become political actors. So why not embrace that reality deliberately and make politics a conscious part of the game’s action?

He goes further, contending that political play adds depth, realism, and moral challenge to a campaign. Where the dungeon tests courage and cunning, the court tests judgment and restraint. Ruling a realm or maneuvering among rival nobles requires players to think beyond combat rolls and saving throws, to weigh alliances, read motives, and face the consequences of their decisions. Politics, in Beeman’s hands, becomes not a dry digression but a stage for high-stakes, character-driven adventure.

What made the article truly stand out to me, though, was how practical it was. Beeman treats political scenarios as a kind of “social dungeon,” where familiar design principles still apply but in subtler ways. The setting might be a player’s own domain or a foreign court; the plot a brewing war, a trade dispute, or a palace intrigue; and the monsters a web of scheming nobles, rival factions, and hidden traitors. Clues replace traps, words replace weapons, and mystery, not combat, drives the scenario.

Even more memorably, Beeman classifies political adventures into distinct types – military, economic, commercial, internal security, and revolt – each offering a different framework for turning governance and intrigue into adventure. In doing so, he sketches a vision of AD&D that extends far beyond treasure maps and monster lairs. It's a world that feels alive and reactive, where power comes with responsibility and every decision has weight.

I won’t claim that “Playing the Political Game” is a forgotten masterpiece. Most of its ideas are, in hindsight, obvious. But for me, as a teenager discovering what roleplaying could be, it was transformative. It suggested that fantasy worlds could be more than stages for combat. They could be societies, with all the peril and promise that entails. Decades later, politics and intrigue have become my stock in trade as a referee and I can still trace that fascination back to Beeman’s unassuming article. It's a reminder that sometimes, the right words at the right time can change the way you play forever.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Hold That Person!"

Issue #90 (October 1984) of Dragon contained a short installment of Gary Gygax's increasingly irregular "From the Sorceror's [sic] Scroll" column entitled "Hold That Person!" The article's subtitle explains its purpose. According to Gygax, "the vast array of new monsters" found in books like the Fiend Folio and Monster Manual II have left players and DMs alike wondering which humanoids are affected by the spells charm person and hold person. Was that the case?

I ask because I distinctly recall that my feeling upon reading the article nearly 30 years ago was one of bemusement. I mean, I was, back then, very much enthralled by nearly everything Gary wrote. He was, after all, the creator of AD&D and his word on the subject was Law. But a list -- a definitive list, no less -- of what creatures qualified as "persons" for the purposes of certain spells? Why was this necessary? Did anyone really wonder whether a swanmay could be charmed or an ogrillon held? Was this even an issue at all? Maybe it was needed in tournaments, I don't know, but it was never an issue that came up in my gaming groups.

Just as interesting as the list Gygax provides are his closing comments in this article. He says the following:

If you, as a player, are grateful to have this expanded list, your gratitude is certainly appreciated but keep in mind that it is a mixed blessing. Players must attempt to remember the list of creatures affected by charm person and hold person, for when it comes time to cast a spell, the DM must never allow them to consult their reference works except for the Players Handbook. On the other hand, the DM can use any reference source at his disposal (including articles like this one) to check for desired information.

Now, there's nothing beyond the pale in what Gygax says here. In my experience, it was pretty much standard operating procedure amongst the groups with which I had contact. However, this is the first time I can recall its ever being stated outright as the Gospel of Gary. Again, I don't disagree with it, as it's identical to my own practice, but it is nonetheless interesting to see it stated so plainly.

Retrospective: Vikings Campaign Sourcebook

Perhaps it's simply a facet of my getting older that I can now look back on AD&D Second Edition with a lot more equanimity than I once did. Mind you, I've been traveling this particular road for some time now, but, lately, I've found myself thinking ever more fondly of 2e, which I know is heresy in certain old school circles. Earlier in this blog's existence, I accepted without question the received wisdom that Second Edition heralded AD&D's decline. After all, it was the edition that promoted railroad-y adventure design, unnecessary rules complexity, and an endless parade of splatbooks. There’s some truth to those criticisms, but, as is often the case, the reality is more complicated. As I mellow in my old age, I’ve been struck by just how many interesting, even innovative, things TSR attempted under the 2e banner, even if not all of them succeeded.

One of the best examples of this spirit of experimentation is the Historical Reference (HR) series, the so-called “green books” published between 1991 and 1994. These seven volumes attempted to show that AD&D 2e could serve as a kind of universal fantasy engine, capable of handling settings well outside the game’s usual mold. Importantly, they weren’t intended as dry exercises in historical simulation. Instead, they leaned into a blend of history, legend, and myth, presenting material grounded in real cultures but always leavened with enough fantastical elements to remain recognizably D&D.

The first entry, the Vikings Campaign Sourcebook (1991), written by 2e’s chief architect, David “Zeb” Cook, set the tone for what followed. Vikings had been part of D&D’s DNA from the beginning. Deities & Demigods included Odin, Thor, and Loki, while Gygax’s Appendix N highlighted Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword, a novel steeped in Norse myth and heroic fatalism. Cook was tapping into a deep well already familiar to most players and the Vikings Campaign Sourcebook offers Dungeon Masters and players alike a toolkit for adventures inspired by the Viking Age.

The book begins with a broad overview of Norse society (law, honor, family, and daily life) along with a timeline of major events between the years 800 and 1100. Cook wisely avoids the caricature of Vikings as nothing more than berserk raiders, instead presenting them also as explorers, traders, and settlers. This emphasis on cultural breadth is, in fact, one of the book’s strengths and I find I appreciate that aspect of it even more now than I did when I first read it.

Character options include modifications to the standard AD&D classes, along with two entirely new ones, the berserker and the runecaster. It’s an odd choice to present these as separate classes rather than kits, especially since The Complete Fighter’s Handbook (released a couple of years previously) had already popularized kits as the preferred method for customizing characters. Whether this was simply Cook experimenting with format or an editorial decision from TSR is unclear, but it does highlight how much the HR series was still finding its footing. Additional rules cover equipment, magic items, and monsters, many of the latter being existing AD&D creatures modified to fit Norse myth more closely.

One of the book’s most enjoyable sections is its gazetteer of the Viking world, which is simply medieval Europe as seen through the eyes of the Norse. This is accompanied by a full-color foldout map, a TSR flourish I’ve always appreciated. In fact, I find this gazetteer and map more immediately inspiring than some of the book’s rules material, though that says as much about my own tastes as it does about Cook’s writing.

It must be said, though, that the Vikings Campaign Sourcebook is not an in-depth exploration of Norse history or culture. It was never meant to be. At 96 pages, it can only sketch the outlines of the period, leaving the DM and players to fill in the gaps with their own research or imagination. In that sense, it succeeds more as a primer or springboard than as a comprehensive treatment of its subject.

Despite this, the book plays well to AD&D’s inherent strengths. Heroism, exploration, and myth were already central to the game’s ethos and Cook’s presentation provides just enough historical texture to make a Viking campaign feel distinctive without drowning it in pedantry. For all its limitations, the result is a supplement that feels genuinely usable at the table.

Re-reading it now, I’m struck by how emblematic it is of TSR’s adventurousness during the 2e era. This was the same period that produced not only the Complete Handbook series and the later Option books, but also settings as varied as Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Al-Qadim. The HR series was part of this broader impulse to push beyond “generic fantasy” and explore what else AD&D could do. The Vikings Campaign Sourcebook may not have been perfect, but it was ambitious and I think that matters.

More than three decades later, the Vikings Campaign Sourcebook deserves to be remembered not just as a curiosity but as evidence that AD&D Second Edition was more interesting and more daring than its detractors usually allow. Mechanically, it has many flaws, but it also captures something essential about both D&D and the Norse material it adapts, namely, the thrill of stepping into a world where myth and history intertwine and where characters stand larger than life. For Dungeon Masters curious about running Viking adventures (or simply looking to mine inspiration) Cook’s book still has much to recommend it, as do all the books in the HR-series.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: Physics and Falling Damage

And so we return to falling damage once again.

Issue #88 (August 1984) presents a lengthy article by Arn Ashleigh Parker that uses physics -- complete with equations! – to argue that neither the as-published AD&D rules nor the purportedly Gygaxian revisions to same from issue #70 adequately reflects "the real world." Here's a scan of some of the equations Mr Parker uses in his article:

I'm sure it says something about my intellectual sloth that my eyes just glaze over when I see stuff like this in a roleplaying game. The very idea of having to understand acceleration, terminal velocity, and the like to arrive at a "realistic" representation of falling damage is bizarre enough. To do so as part of an argument against earlier rules is even more baffling. D&D's hit point system doesn't really stand up to extensive scrutiny if "realism" is your watchword. In my opinion, devoting so much effort to "prove" that terminal velocity is reached not at 200 feet as in the Players Handbook system or at 60 feet as in the revision but at 260 feet is a waste of time better spent on making a new monster or a new magic items – things that actually contribute meaningfully to fun at the game table. But I'm weird that way.

Amusingly, issue #88 also includes a very short rebuttal to the above article by Steve Winter. Entitled "Kinetic Energy is the Key," Mr Winter argues that, if one considers the kinetic energy resulting from a fall, you'll find that its increase is linear, thus making the original system a surprisingly close fit to the "reality." He makes this argument in about half a page, using only a single table (albeit one that draws on the earlier equations). While I agree with Winter that the original system is just fine for my purposes, it's nevertheless interesting that the author also makes his case on the basis of physics, as if the important point is that AD&D's rules map to facts about our world. It's a point of view I briefly held as a teen and then soon abandoned, for all the obvious reasons. Back in 1984, though, this was the height of fashion and many a Dragon article proceeded from the premise that the real world has a lot to teach us about how rules for a fantasy roleplaying game ought to be constructed ...

Retrospective: The Gauntlet

Released in 1984, module UK4, The Gauntlet concludes the two-part series begun in The Sentinel. Like much of TSR UK’s output, it blends folklore, moral nuance, and grounded fantasy with a strong sense of pacing and player choice. Written by Graeme Morris, The Gauntlet stands out for its attempt to transform the traditional gameplay of Dungeons & Dragons into something more focused on infiltration, diplomacy, and layered conflict than on brute-force dungeon crawling. By and large, it's successful.

At the heart of the adventure is the conflict between two ancient magical gloves: the Sentinel and the Gauntlet. Both were created long ago during a struggle for control over the Keep of Adlerweg, a key fortress in the contested region. The evil Gauntlet was forged to destroy the keep, prompting its defenders to create the Sentinel in opposition. Over time, both artifacts were lost and forgotten.

Recently, the Gauntlet has resurfaced, discovered by an ogrillon – the Fiend Folio strikes again! – who becomes enslaved to its malevolent will. Under its influence, he has taken control of Adlerweg and begun building a base of power. As part of a larger plan, the Gauntlet seeks to transfer itself to a more powerful wielder and has kidnapped the daughter of a local fire giant to that end.

The player characters enter the adventure as the bearers of the Sentinel, obtained either in the previous module (or through an alternate means in the event The Sentinel was not played). Drawn to Adlerweg to oppose the growing evil, the characters begin their journey with a detour to a village recently destroyed by gnolls. Though unconnected to the main storyline, the encounter emphasizes the region’s growing instability. A wounded gnoll chieftain offers incomplete and possibly misleading information about events at the keep.

However, the core of the module is the infiltration of the keep itself. A frontal assault is nigh impossible, but the Sentinel reveals a forgotten passage inside, now inhabited by giant ants and laced with traps. This portion of the module is open-ended and rewards stealth, planning, and creativity. The upper levels are occupied by gnolls, an ogre, and the aforementioned ogrillon. Morris provides strong guidance on enemy behavior and the keep’s defenses, making this portion of the scenario quite compelling. It's a nice change of pace from the usual dungeon delving.

Eventually, the keep is besieged, not by the Gauntlet’s forces, but by the furious fire giant and his army, seeking vengeance for his kidnapped daughter. The ogrillon, meanwhile, has hidden himself and the Gauntlet within a magical prison. The players must organize the keep’s defenses, rally any surviving allies, and survive the assault long enough to broker an uneasy peace. Though the attackers number nearly 200, this isn’t a battle meant to be won through force of arms. Instead, it’s a test of timing, survival, and negotiation. The climax involves penetrating the magical prison to confront the ogrillon and release the fire giant’s daughter. It's good stuff, especially for a module written in 1984.

The module's illustrations, once again by Peter Young, are not very good. They're slightly better than those in The Sentinel, but still amateurish in my opinion. Paul Ruiz's maps, however, are attractive and quite usable. Because of its layered structure and multiple factions, the adventure demands a confident and experienced DM, capable of managing them all. This isn’t a flaw so much as a barrier to entry. Like many of TSR UK's modules, The Gauntlet favors subtlety over spectacle. It possesses a quiet confidence and clarity of vision that sets it apart. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's probably the best TSR UK adventure and a fine example of how AD&D can support narrative depth without sacrificing challenge or player freedom.

Retrospective: The Sentinel

Published in 1983, module UK2, The Sentinel, is the first part of a two-module series written by Graeme Morris for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Along with its sequel, which I’ll discuss in this space next week, it stands out as a distinctive offering in TSR’s early ’80s catalog. That’s due in large part to its origin in TSR UK, the British branch of the company, which operated with a surprising degree of independence and a sensibility very much its own.

TSR UK’s adventures have always provoked strong reactions. In my view, they’re a mixed bag, but a fascinating one. Where American modules of the time tended to emphasize dungeon-crawling and large-scale combat, the UK efforts often followed a more eccentric path. They leaned toward investigation over exploration, diplomacy over combat, and mood over spectacle. Instead of clearing rooms of monsters, players were expected to unravel plots, decipher motives, and navigate social situations. This approach didn’t always succeed, but even when it faltered, it offered something offbeat and refreshingly different from the norm.

The Sentinel is a low-level adventure for characters of levels 2–5, centered around the recovery of a magical artifact, the titular Sentinel, a sentient glove created to oppose its darker counterpart, the Gauntlet. The action unfolds around the village of Kusnir, nominally part of the World of Greyhawk, though it feels pretty generic to me. What begins as an investigation into a series of disturbances blamed on a skulk gradually reveals a more complex situation involving half-orcs, xvarts, and a ruined villa that hides a long-buried secret. Eventually, the player characters track down the skulk, who unexpectedly hands over the Sentinel and sets the stage for the events of the module's sequel, The Gauntlet (which I'll discuss in this space next week).

The inclusion of monsters from the Fiend Folio, like the aforementioned skulk and xvarts, deserves comment. TSR UK often seemed eager to showcase that volume’s more obscure entries, and The Sentinel is no exception. Whether these monsters enhance or detract from the module depends on taste, I suppose. For my part, I find many of the Fiend Folio humanoids underwhelming and nothing about the way they're used here really changes my mind. They serve their purpose, but they could easily have been swapped for more familiar creatures without much loss. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Even so, the module has its charms. Chief among them is the Sentinel itself, the magical glove that gives the module its title. Far from a simple item, it acts as a character in its own right, one with an agenda and a role to play in guiding the player characters. This combination of grounded, even mundane rural fantasy with sudden flashes of the mythic or uncanny was a hallmark of TSR UK’s best work. It’s a tricky balance, but when it works, as it sometimes does here, it gives the adventure a distinctive tone that distinguishes it from its contemporary American counterparts.

The larger, underlying plot of the module only emerges through observation, deduction, and careful play. There's a sense that the players are uncovering something hidden rather than being dragged from one set-piece to the next, even though there are several times when UK2 verges on becoming a railroad. Many of the module's encounters hint at something older, deeper, and just a little uncanny. The overall effect borders on folk horror of the kind where the land remembers and the past never quite stays buried. I like that.

Of course, The Sentinel is only half the story. Its sequel, The Gauntlet, continues and ultimately resolves the conflict introduced here. That’s perhaps The Sentinel’s biggest shortcoming as a standalone module: it presents an intriguing premise but offers little in the way of resolution. Earlier AD&D module series, like Against the Giants or the Slavelords series, generally made more of an effort to make each installment satisfying on its own. The Sentinel, by contrast, feels deliberately unfinished, a prolog more than a full scenario. I'll have more to say about this in next week's Retrospective post.

Worthy of mention is the module's presentation. The artwork, by Peter Young, is not particularly strong. The cover and interior art are weirdly stylized and, in my opinion, amateurish. It may not be literally he worst art to ever appear in a Dungeons & Dragons product, but it's a strong contender. By contrast, the cartography by Paul Ruiz is clean, readable, and highly functional. I’ve praised Ruiz’s maps before and those in The Sentinel are up to his usually standard. His maps are among my favorite things in the TSR UK modules.

Looking back on The Sentinel now, I find myself appreciating it more for what it tries to be than for what it actually is. It’s a thoughtful module that respects the intelligence of its players and the subtlety of its world. Compared to more "traditional" approaches to adventure design at the time, The Sentinel hinted at something different – not quite "story"-driven but certainly more consciously aware of a narrative or plot. That has its advantages and disadvantages, of course, which is why I don't like it unreservedly. Instead, I look on it as an experiment with mixed results, especially when taken on its own rather than as the first part of a two-part scenario.

Retrospective: Hall of the Fire Giant King

Like its predecessors, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief and The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, Hall of the Fire Giant King (AD&D module G3) casts the player characters in the role of elite agents tasked with stopping a wave of giant-led attacks against civilized lands. At first glance, G3 seems to follow the familiar pattern established by the earlier modules: a dangerous foray into the stronghold of a powerful giant chieftain, bristling with guards, traps, and treasure. However, Hall of the Fire Giant King subtly but significantly shifts the tone and scope of the series. In the volcanic fortress of King Snurre Ironbelly, the stakes begin to change. The fire giants are stronger, more disciplined, and clearly part of a larger, more organized force. Most crucially, they are not acting alone. Hidden deep within their halls are strange and powerful allies – the drow.

The appearance of the drow, mysterious and only briefly described here, marks a pivotal moment not just in the G-series but in the history of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons itself. This is their first true introduction into the game, beyond a cursory reference in the Monster Manual, and it opens the door to something far more expansive. In retrospect, the drow are the most significant legacy of this module and G3 is the seed from which they (and the subterranean realm from which they come) would grow. The drow would, of course, go on to take center stage in the celebrated D-series (Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, and Vault of the Drow) and in Queen of the Demonweb Pits. While those later adventures are better known and more ambitious, it is here, in Hall of the Fire Giant King, that the broader arc first begins to unfold. Gary Gygax’s decision to place these enigmatic figures behind the scenes of the giants’ uprising was a masterstroke, one that quietly expanded the narrative scope of what a D&D adventure could be.

In terms of presentation, Hall of the Fire Giant King also reflects the transitional state of adventure design in 1978. Like its predecessors, it was originally created for tournament play, which explains both its high level of difficulty and its emphasis on tactical combat. There is little in the way of exposition or character development. The fire giants certainly have motivations, but Gygax rarely dwells on them. Instead, they exist primarily as obstacles to be overcome. Much of the module consists of populated chambers, heavily guarded halls, and defensible choke points, all spaces presented for intense, deadly conflict. Success demands planning, coordination, and no small amount of caution. This is adventure design in its raw, uncompromising form, rewarding player skill and punishing incaution.

Yet even within this sparse and utilitarian framework, there are hints of something more. Secret doors lead to hidden levels. Mysterious altars and magical portals suggest the influence of otherworldly forces. Cryptic symbols and strange alliances point to deeper mysteries. Gygax may not linger on these details, but their presence invites speculation and discovery, encouraging referees to build upon them. In this way, G3 foreshadows the more expansive and narrative-driven modules to come, not only the D-series, but later experiments in long-form storytelling such as Dragonlance in the 1980s and the “adventure path” format popularized by Dungeon magazine in the early 2000s. Hall of the Fire Giant King doesn't tell a story in that modern sense, but it gestures toward one and that gesture proved enormously influential.

From the vantage point of the present, G3 may seem narrower in scope or rougher in execution than the adventures it leads into. I actually think that's part of its importance. As both the climax of the "Against the Giants" trilogy and the prelude to the D-series, it bridges two different modes of adventure design: the brutal, self-contained dungeon crawl and the broader, interconnected campaign. Without Hall of the Fire Giant King, the drow might never have become one of the game’s signature antagonists. More broadly, the ambition and structure of later adventures might have taken a very different form without this model to follow.

In the end, I feel Hall of the Fire Giant King is best appreciated not just as the finale of the G-series but as a threshold. It marks a turning point where the possibilities of adventure design began to expand, where dungeon crawls started evolving into epics. With its hidden depths, emergent story, and quiet worldbuilding, Gygax showed that even a tournament module could hint at vast, subterranean empires and the demon-goddess who ruled them. Its influence is subtle but foundational and its legacy lives on in the continuity it helped establish across TSR’s early adventures and the ambitions it inspired in generations of designers to follow.

Retrospective: The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl

In the early days of this blog, I wrote a Retrospective post about Against the Giants, the 1981 compilation module that first introduced me to Gary Gygax’s famed G-series. That post focused less on the individual modules themselves than on my memories of discovering, playing, and refereeing them. There’s nothing wrong with that – Grognardia has always been as much about reminiscence as analysis – but it did mean that the constituent adventures never quite received the attention I think they deserve.

That’s why, in February 2023, I set out to remedy this oversight by writing a series of posts dedicated to each module in turn. I managed to complete only the first installment before the effort fell by the wayside, for reasons I can no longer recall. With this post, I hope to resume that series and finally give The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl an individual consideration it merits, followed by Hall of the Fire Giant King next week.

First published in 1978, module G2, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, occupies the middle position in Gygax's Giants Trilogy, itself the lead-in to the even more celebrated D-series. Consequently, G2 has long been overshadowed by both its position within its own series and the looming presence of what follows. Taken on its own terms as a discrete module rather than simply as a bridge between modules G1 and G3, G2 deserves more recognition than it typically receives. It is, if nothing else, a terrific expression of Gygaxian adventure design, offering a tightly focused, environmentally distinctive, and surprisingly open-ended scenario for high-level (9th–10th) play.

The module’s premise is simple: following the defeat of the hill giants in the previous scenario, the player characters are tasked with continuing the investigation into the source of recent giant-led raids. Their next destination is the icy domain of the frost giants, located high in a forbidding mountain range. What they find there is an immense rift in a glacial plateau, honeycombed with caves and tunnels, and populated by the violent and hierarchical society of the frost giants.

From the outset, Glacial Rift sets itself apart with its setting. The rift is not merely another dungeon, but a semi-natural, hostile environment that actively contributes to the module’s sense of danger. The cold is not just flavor text; it informs the monsters encountered (remorhaz, winter wolves, yetis), the terrain, and the general tone of the place. There’s a starkness to the rift that evokes the unforgiving nature of the mythic North, a realm of elemental cruelty, barbaric strength, and ancient, unknowable powers. There's also something almost mythic in the Jarl’s domain: a vision of primitive kingship, drawn more from Norse sagas than from the usual pulp fantasy tropes, where authority is measured by might and the feasting hall rings with the howls of dire wolves.

Structurally, G2 is more interesting than it first appears. The rift is split into two levels: the upper level consisting of cave-like lairs and animal dens and the lower level home to the giants’ halls, guard posts, and meeting places. Unlike many early modules, G2 is decidedly not linear. Its design encourages infiltration, observation, and guerrilla tactics as much as direct confrontation. A cautious party could spend several sessions simply gathering intelligence, probing defenses, and slowly unraveling the nature of the giants’ organization. Conversely, a reckless party might find itself quickly overwhelmed. It’s a sandbox in miniature, where the players’ tactics genuinely matter. 

Like its predecessor, Gygax naturalism is on full display here. The frost giants are not simply bags of hit points awaiting extermination. They're part of a brutal but functioning society, with guards, servants, prisoners, and even non-combatants. Gygax includes giantesses, young giants, and slaves, all of which contribute to the sense of this being a "real" place that operates according to a certain logic. This forces players (and referees) to make choices. Do the characters kill everything they encounter? Do they parley? Do they seek allies among the captives? For a module that, when it's remembered at all, is remembered simply as “the one where you fight frost giants,” G2 contains a surprising amount of nuance.

Gygax’s authorial idiosyncrasies are on full display throughout the module. His monster choices, like the remorhaz or the white pudding, show a willingness to embrace the weird and unexpected. His treasure hoards are filled with oddities, while his trap placement is often arbitrary but memorable. His prose, full of abrupt capitalizations and florid phrasing, imparts even the most banal descriptions with contagious energy. Glacial Rift is thus unmistakably his work: unapologetically high-level, at times unfair, even cruel, but always imaginative.

That said, the module is not without its flaws. The maps, presumably drawn by Dave Sutherland (there are no credits), can be difficult to read, especially given the three-dimensionality implied by the rift’s vertical layout. Navigation can become a chore unless the referee is particularly adept at spatial description, which I must confess I struggle with. Some encounters do feel a bit like filler – yet another cave, yet another pair of frost giants – and the rationale for the party’s presence here (to follow up on the events of G1) does feel thinner than that of either of its brother modules.

Even so, The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl more than stands on its own as an effective and engaging high-level adventure. Its strength lies in its atmosphere, its open structure, and its presentation of a society of intelligent monsters bound by codes of strength and tradition. While Steading of the Hill Giant Chief is more immediately accessible and Hall of the Fire Giant King arguably more refined, I think Glacial Rift does something unique in presenting a wilderness-like dungeon. I think it's understandable that it's not often celebrated, but I nevertheless think it would be a mistake to overlook it, as it's a fine example of Gygaxian adventure design that rewards careful and clever play.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Special Skills, Special Thrills"

Of all the iconic classes of D&D, the cleric is the one that sticks out like a sore thumb. Whereas the fighting man, the magic-user, and even the thief are all pretty broad archetypes easily -- and non-mechanically -- re-imagined in a variety of different ways, the cleric is a very specific type of character. With his heavy armor, non-edged weapons, Biblical magic, and power over the undead, the cleric is not a generic class, recalling a crusading knight by way of Van Helsing. There's thus a distinctly Christian air to the cleric class, an air that increasingly seemed at odds with the game itself, which, as time went on, distanced itself from its earlier implicit Christianity and embraced an ahistorical form of polytheism instead.

For that reason, there were growing cries among some gamers to "fix" the cleric. In this context "fix" means change to make it less tied to a particular religion, in this case a particular religion the game itself had eschewed. The first time I recall seeing an "official" answer to these cries was in Deities & Demigods, where it's noted that the clerics of certain deities had different armor and/or weapon restrictions than "standard" clerics. A few even got special abilities reflective of their divine patron. This idea was later expanded upon by Gary Gygax himself in his "Deities & Demigods of The World of Greyhawk" series of articles, which I credit with giving widespread attention to this idea. I know that, after those articles appeared, lots of my fellow gamers wanted to follow Gary's lead and tailor their cleric characters to the deities they served, an idea that AD&D more formally adopted with 2e in 1989.

In issue #85 (May 1984) of Dragon, Roger E. Moore wrote an article entitled "Special Skills, Special Thrills" that also addressed this topic. Moore specifically cites Gary's articles as his inspiration and sets about providing unique abilities for clerics of several major pantheons. These pantheons are Egyptian, Elven, Norse, Ogrish, and Orcish – a rather strange mix! Of course, Moore intends these to be used only as examples to inspire individual referees. Likewise, he leaves open the question of just how to balance these additional abilities with a cleric's default ones. He notes that Gygax assessed a 5-15% XP penalty to such clerics, but does not wholeheartedly endorse that method himself, suggesting that other more roleplaying-oriented solutions (ritual demands, quests, etc.) might work just as well.

Like a lot of gamers at the time, I was very enamored of the idea of granting unique abilities to clerics based on their patron deity. Nowadays, I'm not so keen on the idea, in part because I think the desire for such only underlines the "odd man out" quality of the cleric class. Moreover, nearly every example of a "specialty cleric" (or priest, as D&D II called them) still retains too much of the baseline cleric to be coherent. Why, for example, would a god of war be able to turn the undead? Why should almost any cleric wear heavy armor and be the second-best combatant of all the classes? The cleric class, even with tweaks, is so tied to a medieval Christian society and worldview that it seems bizarre to me to use it as the basis for a "generic" priest class. Far better, I think, would be to have individual classes for priests of each religion or, in keeping with swords-and-sorcery, jettison the class entirely.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "How to Finish Fights Faster"

Along with falling damage, psionics, and alignment, articles about unarmed combat were a commonplace in the pages of Dragon during the years when I subscribed to that venerable gaming magazine. There's probably a reason for that: unarmed combat in AD&D was, in my experience, pretty much universally admitted to be unusable as written, a fact even Gary Gygax acknowledged on more than one occasion. Despite that, no single alternative system ever really took root, with most referees employing a welter of different approaches, some based on the official system, some based on earlier articles from Dragon, and some created whole cloth. That's what playing D&D was like during my formative years in the hobby -- a crazy mix of stuff all drawing inspiration from the same base and then running off in whatever direction one deemed most fun. Consequently, I can't help but chuckle at all the folks decrying the existence of "so many retro-clones," since, to my way of thinking, what we have now is pretty much what we've always had. The only difference is that, nowadays, it's easy to print up, prettify, and sell your interpretation of D&D to others, whereas, in the past, each referee had a photocopies and stapled collection of house rules he shared with anyone willing to listen.

Perhaps because no single alternative to AD&D's execrable rules emerged, it was inevitable that the redoubtable Roger E. Moore would eventually offer his own unarmed combat system. His article, "How to Finish Fights Faster," appeared in issue #83 (March 1984) and takes up only four pages, one of them being a humorous illustration of four rotund halflings attempting to bring down an eyepatch-wearing humanoid, who looks more annoyed than inconvenienced by his diminutive opponents. Moore divides unarmed combat up into three modes: pummeling, kicking, and grappling. Pummeling is straight up fisticuffs, with or without the use of aids, like dagger pommels or metal gauntlets. Kicking is, well, kicking and grappling is attacking to subdue. All three modes are fairly simple to use, working more or less like the normal AD&D combat system but with certain modifiers and special cases unique to them. This is particularly true of grappling, which has a number of different moves detailed, each of which has further modifiers and effects.

I never used Moore's system, so I can't comment on how well it plays in practice. I suspect it probably works better than AD&D's official system, but not as well as others. I say that, because it includes a lot of specificity in certain areas (grappling, for example) that necessitates either a good memory or referring to the article to adjudicate. That's not a bad thing in itself; there are lots of rules in D&D that require reference to a rulebook to handle. However, I'll admit that I find it baffling that unarmed combat rules so often wind up being much more complicated than armed combat. Why is it that we can accept that all it takes to adjudicate an armored fighting man's attack against an opponent is a 1D20 roll compared to a chart, followed by a damage roll if successful but we demand saving throws and percentage chances and so forth if he wants to throw a punch or wrestle someone to the ground?