The Articles of Dragon: "Update from the Chief"

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that, for all the fanfare that accompanied the publication of issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985), it nevertheless felt like the end of an era – at least to me. At the time, I couldn't have meaningfully articulated precisely why it felt this way, but I felt it nonetheless. Something intangible had shifted and I don't think I was alone in sensing it, even if its ultimate source remained nebulous.

I was reminded of this fact as I cracked open issue #101 (September 1985) and read it for the first time in decades. The very first article in the issue is "Update from the Chief" by Gary Gygax himself. Subtitled "About the past, the present, and a bit of the future," it's a very interesting snapshot of the state of TSR during the period between Gygax's return from California in late 1984 and his loss of control of the company in late October 1985. 

Take note of those dates, particularly the second one. This article appeared less than two months before Lorraine Williams snatched TSR from Gygax's grasp, doing so just as he had begun to right the company's finances after years of mismanagement by the Blume brothers. TSR wasn't out of the woods yet. There were still plenty of problems to be addressed and it's far from a certainty that, had Gygax remained in charge of TSR, they would have been. That's precisely why I find this article so notable: it's the last gasp of the pre-Lorraine Williams TSR, for good and for bad, and, in retrospect, I find it fascinating that it somehow aligns with my own adolescent sense that the wheels were indeed coming off the wagon in 1985, even though there is no way I had any inkling of what was happening in the boardroom at Lake Geneva.

The article begins with Gygax continuing to report on the possibility of a D&D movie, something he'd been pursuing while during his exile in California. From what he says here, the project was, by this time, still not very far along. He mentions that there is still no finished script, nor any actors or director attached to it. I've never really understood the point of a D&D movie. However, it's clear that getting one made was personally important to Gygax and he beat that particular drum right up until he departed TSR for good before the end of the next year.

Next up, Gygax crows about how well Unearthed Arcana sold – and rightly so. For all my grousing about the book's shortcomings, I know it was very popular at the time of its release. For many months, it was indeed a very hot property and often difficult to find. Gygax mentions that it outsold TSR's expectations. Those purchases, along with the release of Oriental Adventures no doubt played a big role in helping to fill the company's coffers. Say what you will but Gygax understood well what would appeal to the AD&D audience at the time. He also announces the upcoming release of Temple of Elemental Evil. While I don't personally think much of this "supermodule," like UA, it sold well. After all, AD&D fans had been waiting for the conclusion to The Village of Hommlet for more than five years by this point. Pent-up demand probably served it well. 

Though focused more on matters at TSR Hobbies itself, Gygax was still shepherding other D&D-related entertainment projects beyond the aforementioned movie. He notes that the D&D cartoon had been renewed for another season and expressed hope that it would be renewed again after that. Obviously, that didn't come to pass. Beyond that, there is talk of Amazing Stories and his own Greyhawk novels featuring Gord and Chert. 

More interesting to me is mention of "a game and companion book series based on modern-day action adventures." The game, about which few details are given, was to be written by Gygax and his son, Ernie, with assistance from Jim Ward, and Paul Yih (whoever that is). He calls the game "different" and "family-oriented." If anyone has any idea what this game might have been or if any work on it had ever begun, I'd love to know more. Could it, perhaps, have been an early version of Cyborg Commando or something in that general vein? 

Finally, Gygax takes a moment to once again excoriate "unscrupulous attacks and baseless accusations pertaining to role-playing games in general and D&D in particular." I certainly can't blame him for his distemper. There was a lot of nonsense circulating about Dungeons & Dragons in the mid-1980s and, while I personally never ran afoul of it, I've met enough people over the years who have that I can understand why Gygax was so angry about it all. The mendacity of these attacks is galling. I'm all the more grateful that my introduction to the hobby, just a few years prior, was free of this sort of thing.

"Update from the Chief" isn't really an article in the usual sense. Rather, it's just a collection of news items and musings from the time right before Gygax was booted from his own company. It's thus a remarkable historical document in its own small way. It's also a window on a period in my own personal involvement with the hobby when I began to sense a change in the wind.

The Articles of Dragon: "The City Beyond the Gate"

Though I haven't devoted many posts to the subject, Dragon magazine published quite a few adventures in its pages over the years. Most of these were, of course, for Dungeons & Dragons or its "big brother," AD&D, though there were also a handful for other RPGs, like Gamma World, Traveller, and Top Secret. I used some of them from time to time, but, if I'm honest, almost none of them made much of a lasting impression on me, hence why I've never (so far as I can recall) had much to say about them on this blog. That's not necessarily a comment on their quality, since, as I said, I remember using a few of them, but simply a statement on how little I remember them.

Perhaps the only exception to this is Robert Schroeck's "The City Beyond the Gate," which appeared in issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985). There are a number of reasons why this is the case, as I'll explain, but I suspect the most likely is the image accompanying this post (by Roger Raupp). Take a good look at it and you'll immediately understand what I mean. Yes, that's a bunch of AD&D fighters tussling with a punch of punks and Bobbies, including several in riot gear. Just what the heck is going on?

The adventure, intended for use with high-level characters, is, at base, an elaborate fetch quest, with the characters tasked to find and bring back the legendary relic, the Mace of St. Cuthbert. What sets it apart – and why I still remember this adventure at all – is a bit of cleverness on Schroeck's part. Rather than, as one might expect, state that the relic is hidden away in the treasury of some powerful villain from whom it must be rescued, he instead places it on 20th-century Earth. More specifically, he places it in a historical display within the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England!

The characters still have to locate and abscond with the Mace, of course, but now they must do so while contending with the realities of the real world – or at least a RPG facsimile of it. Most obviously, they must contend with the fact that, for the most part, the real world is not a magical one, which means many of their spells and items will have limited utility. Just as importantly, their appearance – wearing armor and strange robes, not to say anything of the presence of demihumans – will raise more than a few eyebrows. To even begin to succeed in their mission, they'll need to keep a low profile or find a way to blend in with the locals, whose customs and technological society will be utterly alien to them.

It's a great set-up for an adventure and one I enjoyed greatly in my youth. Morgan Just, a character about whom I've written in the past, was among the characters who stepped through the gate into 1985 London and he did a very poor job of disguising himself to my amusement (and that of the other players). Most of the fun comes not from fighting deadly foes but from contending with the completely bizarre (to an AD&D character) nature of the real world. Nearly everything will be unfamiliar to them and even interacting with potentially helpful NPCs becomes fraught, since the characters' ability to explain who they are and what they want will raise lots of questions, not to mention opposition.

That said, the adventure is not without certain flaws, chief among them being its treatment of the "real world." As depicted in the adventure, London is something of a cartoon version of itself. For example, its encounter charts include street urchins out of Dickens, as well as beer wagons and the aforementioned punks. Tom Baker's Doctor also makes an appearance too, but I'm more than willing to forgive that, since it actually seems much more plausible than the Artful Dodger. I'm probably being unfair about this, since the spirit of the scenario is already somewhat campy and I doubt most players, even London natives, will care too much about how realistically it depicts the city.

That's why I still look back fondly on "The City Beyond the Gate." The situation it depicts has a lot of potential for great gaming. There's an overall "rollicking" quality to the thing that's charming, even with its off-kilter version of London. Plenty of fantasy stories were about people from our world crossing over into a fantasy world, but comparatively fewer are about the opposite. That alone makes the adventure unique and memorable, but I also find the overall concept to be quite compelling in its own right. I'm a big fan of the adventure, warts and all.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Dragonchess"

Issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985) was a milestone for the periodical, as well as for me. For the magazine, it was a portentous number to use as an occasion for celebration. For me, though I didn't know it at the time, it represented the end of an era. The same month that this was released was the last time I attended a "games day" hosted by a public library. It may have even been the last such gathering my local public libraries sponsored, since I don't ever recall hearing of others. Even if it wasn't, I remember well that my last one was a rather underwhelming affair, with far fewer participants than previous ones and most of those who did attend were much younger than I. There weren't nearly as many teenagers, let alone college students or adults, and that disappointed me.

From my perspective, it seemed as if the demographics of the hobby had changed over night and I didn't like the change, especially now that I was one of the "older kids" I looked up to when I was younger. In retrospect, it's obvious to me how hypocritical I was back then, wanting to distance myself from the 10 year-olds clutching their Elmore-covered Basic Sets the way I had done with Sutherland-covered one a mere six years before. But six years is a long time in the life of a child and, as a teenager, I wanted no reminders of my younger self. Thanks goodness that the teenagers of my younger years did not feel the same way!

There was more to it than adolescent snobbery, though. The hobby really did seem to be changing by late 1985 and, while I was still as keenly interested in it as ever, it became much harder to find people with whom to play and, for the most part, the new RPGs coming out held much less appeal to me than those published in the years before. Issue #100 wasn't my last issue of Dragon, but I did let me subscription lapse not long thereafter; it would never again play as central a role in my connection to and understanding of the hobby after that.

The funny thing is that, for all the fanfare surrounding issue #100, it wasn't a particularly memorable issue. The only things I still remember about it are the adventure set in 20th century London and Gary Gygax's article (and accompanying Greyhawk short story) about a chess variant called "dragonchess." Dragonchess is a three-dimensional version of chess, with boards representing the sky, the land, and the underworld. I'd known about 3D chess variants ever since I'd watched Star Trek in reruns in the mid-70s, but this was, I think, the first time I'd ever seen the rules for such a game – and by Gary Gygax no less! Needless to say I fell completely in love with the idea of playing dragonchess.

There were, of course, two problems with this. First, and perhaps most importantly, I am a terrible chess player. I can barely hold my own in a regular game; learning and mastering a variant that uses three boards at once was almost certainly going to be beyond me. Second, to play dragonchess, one must assemble the boards for oneself and that, too, requires skills I did not possess. This didn't stop me from trying, of course, but I utterly failed to do so. Ultimately, I gave up the idea of having three boards stacked on top of one another and instead opted for having three boards placed side by side. This required me – and the poor souls I goaded into playing with me – to keep track of which squares on one board were "over" or "under" others. That was hardly insurmountable but it was nevertheless trying, particularly when one considers how many other aspects of standard chess Gygax changed in his variant.

Dragonchess had a much larger number of pieces – 42 per side, consisting of 15 different types. Likewise, many of these pieces had unique moves unlike those in standard chess. Furthermore, some pieces behaved differently depending on which board they were currently situated, while others were bound to a single board. The object of dragonchess is the same as regular chess, so that is at least familiar. However, the larger number of pieces and types, not to mention the presence of three dimensions, made it much more difficult to grasp. That's not a criticism of the game itself, which looked like it'd be a lot of fun when played by two opponents who are both skilled at standard chess and well acquainted with the unusual aspects of dragonchess.

Alas, I was neither of those things and, while enthusiastic for the game, I was not very good at teaching its rules to others. Add to it that I didn't have a "proper" board and it's little wonder I never got the chance to play many games of dragonchess. Nowadays, I look back on my efforts with more than a little embarrassment – the follies of youth! One of several that this issue of Dragon brings to memory.

The Articles of Dragon: "Pysbots and Battle Mechs"

For good or for ill, my interest in the history of the hobby of roleplaying is intertwined with my interest in the history of the industry to which it gave birth. In particular, I find the history of The House That D&D Built – TSR Hobbies – to be endlessly fascinating, especially how dysfunctional it seems to have been as a business for most of its existence. To be fair, very few RPG companies have much to crow about in this regard, but TSR seems to be a prime example of a company succeeding in spite of itself. The more I learn about TSR's history, the more surprised I am that it managed to survive for nearly a quarter of a century.

I was reminded of this as I looked through the Ares Section of issue #99 of Dragon magazine (July 1985) and came across Mike Breault's article "Psybots and Battle Mechs." The article in question was intended as a preview of a then-upcoming science fiction roleplaying game, entitled Proton Fire. By "preview," I don't mean of the game's rules but mostly of its background, though there are a few snippets about the mechanics (characters can be warriors, rangers, or engineers and there are "talents"). 

Background-wise, it's pretty thin gruel. The humans of the Matri system descend from colonists who long ago arrived from Earth and settled on Coreworld, the fourth planet of the system. In the colony’s early centuries, power gradually fell into the hands of the Corporation and its ruling council, the Quintad. Originally five elected officials, over time they became increasingly authoritarian. Their corruption deepened after the developments in cybernetics allowed them to transform themselves into immortal cyborgs and rule indefinitely through violence and intimidation. 

The dominance of the Quintad collapsed when a laboratory accident released a devastating virus that killed 90% of Coreworld’s population and shattered the Corporation’s control. In the aftermath, the University, an academic colony hidden within a moon of the fifth planet, declared independence and began searching for a new home for the surviving humans of Matri. The central conflict of Proton Fire now pits the University and its agents, who explore and defend humanity’s future, against the Corporation and the immortal Quintad, who seek to restore their former domination using ruthless operatives known as Eliminators.

Characters can be humans, cyborgs, or psybots. Humans are similar to their ancestors on Earth and protect themselves through the use of armored battle suits called mechs. Cyborgs are more or less what you'd expect. Psybots, meanwhile, are advanced robots that possess emotions and experience pain, but lack the empathy and insight of human beings. The article suggests that the characters devote themselves to exploration of new star systems and foiling the plans of the Quintad, though they never really explain what those plans are now that most of humanity is dead.

Despite all this, I was very intrigued by Proton Fire and looked forward to its release. I was and am a science fiction guy at heart and was genuinely curious to see if the actual game was more fully realized and expansive than this article suggested. Alas, that was not to be. A couple of issues later, TSR posted a retraction, in which they explained that there "wasn't a big market for a stand-alone robot game," so it would be repackaged as a supplement to Star Frontiers. That never happened either and all we have to go on regarding the game's final fate is what Steve Winter posted in a comment to this blog back in 2011.

I suspect this kind of thing happens more often than we realize. Goodness knows that my own track record when it comes to unfinished projects is far from stellar, so I shouldn't point fingers. Still, I'm just one guy, not a multi-million dollar game publisher like TSR was at the time. One day, I'd love to know more about Proton Fire and its origins. I suspect, though, it'll probably be one of those mysteries that I'll never see solved to my satisfaction. Oh, well.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "History of a Game That Failed"

Issue #99 of Dragon (July 1985) featured an article by David F. Godwin entitled "History of a Game That Failed." I don't ever recall reading it, though I'm sure I must have, when I first got the issue in the mail if not at some time later. Re-reading it in preparation for this post was an enlightening experience, both for what the article might have said about gaming culture at the time of its publication and how I react to its contents now.

The article contains Godwin's reflections on being "soft-hearted enough to want to see the PCs survive and do well" to the point that he "was no longer playing the AD&D game. [He] was shooting fish in a barrel." I must confess that I was very surprised to see an article like this appear in an issue of Dragon published in 1985, since my recollection of that time was of an era when being "soft-hearted enough to want to see the PCs survive and do well" was not just increasingly commonplace but de rigeur.

Intriguingly, the first "tip" Godwin passes along as a result of his past failure is "Feel free to fudge." Though he introduces this tip with a story of how he pretended to roll low on an attack that would have killed a PC, he is quick to point out that fudging rolls "doesn't have to be in favor of the players." He adds that it is the referee who is the final arbiter of what is and is not true in his own campaign. Never let an errant dice roll or players quoting chapter and verse from a rulebook lead you to think otherwise.

Tip two is "Just because it's in a module doesn't mean it's so." In particular, he's talking about the strength of opponents and the amount of treasure and magic items. I must admit I find this tip odd, because, even in my worst letter-of-the-law days of gaming, I never felt that the contents of a module was sacrosanct. However, Godwin claims that he did think they were and it took him some time to realize that it was acceptable to alter what was written in adventure to suit his own campaign.

Tip three is "Be exceedingly stingy in handing out magic items." This tip is apparently near and dear to Godwin's heart, because he discusses it at length, providing lots of examples of magic items he feels are exceedingly powerful, or at least problematic if the referee is not careful. To be fair, he's not opposed to placing powerful magic items in the hands of PCs; he simply thinks the referee needs to conscious of the potential for mischief such items bring with them. This is a fair point and many an inexperienced referee commits this mistake.

Tip four is "Don't let your players have a continuous commune spell." By this he means that the players should be kept in the dark as often as possible, since knowledge is what gives the referee his edge -- including the properties of magic items. Godwin stresses the limits even of spells like identify and encourages the referee to take full advantage of it.

Tip five is "Do not allow a character to become more powerful than a chugging locomotive." Here he's talking specifically about ability score inflation, both through magic items and spells.

Tip six is "If they wish for the moon, don't let them have it." I'm actually surprised that, in 1985, there was still a need to talk about all the delightful ways wishes can be used to turn the tables on the players, but apparently there was.

Tip seven is "No, you can polymorph your henchman into Odin." You know, I had no idea until very recently that polymorph was apparently such a troublesome spell for a lot of D&D gamers. I honestly don't recall a single time it's ever given me grief as a referee, since the spell description I remember is pretty clear about its limitations.

Tip eight is "Be careful playing with fireballs." Sure.

Tip nine is "Be reasonable in awarding experience points." Godwin here encourages referees to use the "equivalent hit dice" system from the Dungeon Masters Guide, which is an oft-forgotten element of AD&D. It basically compares the value of the characters' levels against the hit dice of the monsters they defeat and then adjusts the value of the XP gained up or down accordingly. The system is intended, like its rough equivalent in OD&D, to put the breaks on gaining easy experience points through killing much weaker foes in large numbers. Again, this has never been a problem for me personally, but I fully support slowing the rate of character advancement.

Tip ten is "Go easy on the poor deities." That this needed to be said at all is sad.

Tip eleven is "Beware the many-headed hydra." Here Godwin is discouraging allowing one player to play more than one character in an adventure at the same time. That's just common sense.

Tip twelve is "Avoid an adversary relationship with your players." Godwin notes that it's inevitable that referees and players will be at odds, since players are always trying to pull fast ones on their referees:

It would be a wonderful world if players were so conscientious and so willing to risk their characters for the sake of a good time that they never looked at the Dungeon Masters Guide, the modules, or even "Dungeon Master advice" articles (such as this one) in magazines. It would even be nicer if they did not look up monsters in the Monster Manual, FIEND FOLIO Tome, and Monster Manual II whenever they confronted them. Maybe you can forbid this sort of activity during the playing of an adventure, but you can't control what players do on their own time. And never underestimate the ingenuity of players. I once had a player justify looking in the Monster Manual during play by saying that his character carried around a bestiary in his backpack!

Despite this, try and make it clear to your players that your iron-fisted rule is all in the name of fun, to ensure that the game remains challenging for all.

That's a lot to digest, but I think it provides a fascinating snapshot into at least one slice of the hobby back in 1985. Some of it comports well with my own recollections, while other parts of it feel like the author is describing a game in an alternate reality. I suspect this reaction will be true for a lot of my readers as well.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Mutant Manual"

Since this blog could hardly be accused of intellectual rigor, I trust no one will object to my choosing the "Mutant Manual" as the "article" I wish to highlight from issue #98 (June 1985) of Dragon. Written by Randy Johns, Douglas A. Lent, John M. Maxstadt, William Tracy, and James M. Ward, the "Mutant Manual" was a 12-page insert that detailed 17 new mutants for use with Gamma World.

To say that I adored the "Mutant Manual" is a bit of an understatement. Along with only a handful of other articles, it became a permanent addition to my "referee's binder" in which I kept maps, notes, and photocopies of useful articles from Dragon, White Dwarf, and elsewhere. In the case of the "Mutant Manual," though, it wasn't a photocopy, but the original itself, which I carefully removed from the center of my copy of issue #98. Since I generally preferred to keep my copies of Dragon "pristine" – a shock, I know – the fact that I removed the "Mutant Manual" was a high tribute.

I'm not sure I can really convey why I liked it so much. Were I to describe any of its constituent mutants, like the flying squids, armor-plated rhinos, or post-apocalyptic sasquatches, I doubt most readers would find them particularly interesting and perhaps rightly so. Back in '85, though, I appreciated having a source of new mutants to throw at my players when we played Gamma World. Creating good monsters takes time and imagination, as many entries in the Monster Manual prove. You need more than a name and some game statistics to create a worthy monster – an indescribable something that makes it more than the sum of its parts.

In my opinion, this is particularly the case with regards to Gamma World, where it's all too easy to take some normal animal, roll a few times on the mutations tables, and think you're done. More often than not, this led to some utterly ridiculous creatures that I could barely take seriously myself, let alone my players. So, having some ready-made mutants that weren't immediately laughable was invaluable to me. Whether others might deem the "Mutant Manual" a success in this regard is a matter of opinion, of course, but I loved it and still strongly associate it with my fondest memories of Gamma World.

The Articles of Dragon: "Deities and Their Faithful"

I'm on record as disliking the general approach to religion and gods Dungeons & Dragons has taken since the beginning. I've always found it weirdly reductive and, for lack of a better word, "game-y." Certainly, I can understand that a more nuanced and complex approach probably wouldn't have sold many books, but I still can't help but think D&D deserved better than what we got in Deities & Demigods. I suspect this is a minority opinion, but it's not one without precedent in the annals of the hobby.

With this as background, I think you can easily guess my reaction to Gary Gygax's "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column from issue #97 of Dragon (March 1985). Entitled "Deities and Their Faithful," it's very close to the Platonic ideal of what I don't want in a discussion of the gods in the context of fantasy roleplaying games. In it, Gygax introduces a new set of game mechanics intended to quantify a deity's power on a particular plane of existence, as well as provide some (very rough) guidelines on divine favor and disfavor. Even taken as an example of Gygax "thinking out loud," the article is a mess.

Gygax begins by stating gods' power "comes from those who believe in them." He suggests this idea is not a new one, having been "put forth often by others, whether seriously or as a device for literature." I cannot be certain this is the first time this idea appears in connection with D&D, but, even if it's not, having Gygax's name associated with it lends it a great deal of weight. I do know that, by the time the Planescape campaign setting was released almost a decade later, this line of thinking was uncontroversial, even commonplace. I think it's fine in certain contexts, though it's still a weirdly rationalist approach to the subject of belief.

In any case, Gygax proposes that a god's hit points derive from the number of his believers at a ratio of 1:1000. That is, for every 1000 believers, the god has 1hp on a certain plane. Thus, a god with 400hp must have 400,000 believers. Further, a god's "power points" – a new concept for "the stuff from which all deities of the same alignment draw to use their spell-like powers, issue and enforce commands, and perform other abilities they may have" – has the same ratio but only for believers of the same alignment. Thus, a Lawful Neutral believer of a Lawful Good god contributes only to the god's hit points, not his power points. Gygax adds that level/hit dice also plays a role here. A believer of 2nd level is worth twice as much as one of only 1st level, while one of 3rd level is worth three times as much, and so on. Clerics (and only clerics) are worth twice as much on top of everything else, so, for example, a 15th-level cleric is worth 30 points.

The article doesn't go into any detail about the nature of power points, so it's a very abstract way of quantifying a given deity's power. However, Gygax does note that, since gods derive power from believers of the same alignment, this is the reason alignment is so important – and why the gods look with disfavor on those who change alignment, since it literally takes power away from them. I can see how this sort of metaphysical set-up might have interesting consequences in certain kinds of settings, but I'm not sure it's a good model for most, where the relationship between gods and mortals isn't so nakedly mechanistic.

Speaking of disfavor, Gygax also offers, at the end of the article, some ideas for minor and major banes and boons that might be conferred by the gods to those especially devoted to them. These range from extra hit points to bonuses to attacks/saving throws to magic resistance. He provides no clear thresholds or conditions for when a believer earns favor/disfavor, but that's not surprising. The whole article feels very much like Gygax is tossing some ideas out there to see what people think about them. 

As I said earlier, I think "Deities and Their Faithful" isn't my favorite article. I can see what Gygax was probably intending to do with it, but I'm not sure I see the point. Mind you, I treat religion and the gods differently in most of my RPG campaigns, so perhaps this approach was always going to be a hard sell for me. If you liked this article/approach, I'd love to know more about why and what, if anything, you did with it in your campaigns.

The Articles of Dragon: "These are the Voyages of the Ginny's Delight ..."

Allow me to mention – once again – that, while fantasy is without question the genre of RPG I've spent the most time refereeing and playing, science fiction is where my heart truly lies. I sometimes think I was a fan of sci-fi from birth, because so many of my earliest memories revolve around rocket ships, aliens, and space exploration. Given that I can still vividly recall watching the handshake in space during the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Even so, I think it's important to put what follows in some context, if only to paint a better picture of the kinds of Dragon articles that captured my imagination as a young man.

"These are the voyages of the Ginny's Delight ..." by Dale L. Kemper appeared in the Areas Section of issue #96 (April 1985). A short article, consisting of probably less than a single page of text, a technical diagram, and a set of deckplans, I nevertheless got a great deal of use out of it. There are a number of reasons why this was the case, the most obvious being that the article provided new material for use with FASA's licensed Star Trek roleplaying game, a favorite of mine at the time. I was always happy to see new content for that game, especially content that was immediately useable.

That's very important to me. Then as now, I loved reading about new ideas and rules for any RPGs I enjoyed, but what really fired me up were articles whose ideas and rules filled an obvious void or otherwise gave me stuff that I needed (or felt I needed). Speculative articles or "think pieces," as we might call them today, were fun, of course, but too often they felt unmoored from play, as if the author spent more time thinking about playing than actually doing so. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, but useable material will always win out over the theoretical.

In this particular case, the useable material was the titular Ginny's Delight, a custom-built 48 meter-long, 8000-ton merchantman intended as an "adventure-class" vessel for use by up to four independent traders in the Star Trek universe. Being a fan of FASA's Trader Captains and Merchant Princes supplement, this was catnip to me. At the time, I had already had some success running short, parallel Star Trek campaigns focused on non-Starfleet characters and wanted more. Because FASA was slow to provide such material, I welcomed anything more I could find.

The Ginny's Delight is small and comparatively fast, completely lacking in deflector shields but packing a photon torpedo mount that is unusual in a vessel of this size. It's also been streamlined to make atmospheric landings possible, something that's rather uncommon among the starships of the Star Trek setting. However, it makes it ideal for a small group of freelance rogues and ne'er-do-wells hoping to turn a few credits in the rough and tumble corners of the galaxy. That the article also included deckplans suitable for use with cardboard counters or miniatures only made the article even more appealing to me.

Like so many things, I had lots of plans to make use of the material in this article, but barely did so. The independent characters of my campaign already had their own ship and were quite fond of it, so there was no way they'd "trade up" to the Ginny's Delight. I eventually created a Tellarite trader and his crew who were intended to be rivals to the characters. Their ship was a variant of the one described in the article, but they only appeared once before the campaign ceased. Alas! Rereading this article brought back many fond memories of the far-off days when Star Trek was something that still inspired me and that's not a bad thing at all.

The Articles of Dragon: "New Jobs for Demi-humans"

I'm just a few years shy of having played, in one form or another, Dungeons & Dragons for half a century (yes, I am old). In all the years that I've played the game, there have been certain constants, chief among them being complaints about aspects of their rules that some players have found ridiculous. A very well-known example of what I'm talking about is alignment, the vocal dislike of which has been commonplace since at least the mid-1980s and probably longer. Almost as common a target for criticism are class restrictions and level limits for demihuman characters. 

Personally, I've never had a problem with them and still don't, but there's no denying that no edition of the game has ever done a good job of explaining why they were included, let alone necessary. Consequently, like alignment – another poorly explained game concept – I've heard complaints about dwarves not being allowed to be paladins or elves being worse magic-users than humans for decades. I suspect Gary Gygax heard them a lot too, judging from how often these questions came up in his "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column in Dragon magazine. 

For the most part, Gary was pretty adamant in his belief that D&D's implied setting was humanocentric, thereby justifying demihuman class restrictions and level limits. However, as the years wore on, he started to soften his stance, especially in the years prior to the publication of Unearthed Arcana, as he was more seriously pondering the future direction of AD&D – and by "soften," I mean he more or less capitulated on the matter entirely. Unearthed Arcana (and the articles that preceded it) more or less opened the floodgates to demihumans being able to enter most classes and achieve much higher levels in them than had previously been allowed.

The prudence of that can be debated. However, Gygax goes further in his next article on the subject. “New Jobs for Demi-humans” appeared in issue #96 of Dragon (April 1985), in which he loosens level limits for non-humans yet again, this time by tying them to high ability scores. For example, after allowing all demihumans to become clerics, he connects their maximum attainable level to their Wisdom. The higher the score, the higher the level cap. He even provides a chart laying out the precise relationship between Wisdom and maximum level, with the highest score listed as 20.

It’s possible Gygax thought he was being clever here. By reserving the highest levels for characters with extraordinary ability scores, he may have imagined he was preventing the vast majority of demihumans from ever reaching parity with humans. However, if my own experience is anything to go by, all this actually did was subtly encourage ability score inflation, something to which AD&D was already prone, thanks in part to its methods of ability score generation and its profusion of sub-classes with steep ability score requirements.

To me, this is a much worse sin than merely allowing an elf to be a ranger or a halfling to be a druid. Doing so simply expands the range of character concepts. By contrast, tying level limits to high ability scores undermines the logic that supposedly motivated level limits in the first place while simultaneously pushing players toward the very sort of min-maxing behavior that AD&D’s design otherwise tries to discourage. If you tell a player that the only way for his dwarf cleric to reach 11th level is to have an 18 Wisdom, you are no longer meaningfully limiting demihumans so much as ensuring that all dwarf clerics will eventually 18 Wisdom, one way or another.

Players being what they are respond to game mechanical incentives. They seek out every legal method of getting the desired high scores, whether rolling and rerolling until they get what they want, using the aforementioned generous generation methods, using wish spells, magic tomes, or anything else the Dungeon Master permits. The result is not a world in which humans remain the assumed norm, with demihumans as colorful exceptions. Instead, you get a world in which ability scores creep upward across the board, because the game itself makes it clear that high scores are not merely beneficial but necessary to avoid being mechanically shortchanged.

In other words, this approach doesn’t preserve the humanocentric assumptions Gygax continued to claim were his rationale. Instead, it undermines it and encourages players of demihuman characters to look for every loophole possible to achieve their ends. Most importantly, it takes what had originally been a blunt piece of design – demihumans shouldn't outshine humans – and replaces it with something far more corrosive: a system that appears to be about setting and balance, but is instead about gaming the numbers.

Needless to say, I was not a fan of this article or this part of Unearthed Arcana when it was eventually published and I'm not a fan of it now. I understand why Gygax may have felt the need to write it, but that does little to affect my feelings in a positive direction. This wasn't the first time this had happened, of course, nor would it be the last, but, in retrospect, it seems clear that we were probably lucky never to have got a Gygaxian Second Edition. I suspect it might not have liked it as much as I imagined I would have at the time.

The Articles of Dragon: "Into the Forgotten Realms"

I may be mistaken in this, but I don't believe I've ever featured an adventure in any of my previous entries in The Articles of Dragon series. If I am correct, then that's unfortunate in a certain respect, as Ed Greenwood's "Into the Forgotten Realms," which first appeared in issue #95 of Dragon (March 1985), isn't a very good adventure – or, more charitably, it isn't a particularly notable adventure, except in one way: it's the very first published scenario set in the Realms. That alone is why I’ve chosen to write about it today and why I still remember it more than forty years later.

Now, I know that for many fans of old school Dungeons & Dragons, the Realms are every bit as anathema as Krynn and I can't completely fault them for that opinion, though I don't share it. I'm an unrepentant booster of the Realms or at least the Realms as they were in the pages of Dragon and in the days before the Time of Troubles did irreparable damage to Greenwood's original vision. (Yes, yes, I know TSR made lots of changes to the setting from the very beginning, but there's still a clear dividing line between the Realms before 1989 and after.)

I'd been reading about the Forgotten Realms through Greenwood's many articles since "Pages from the Mages" appeared in the very first issue of Dragon I ever owned. I enjoyed them for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest was their feigned depth. Greenwood sprinkled all his articles with the names of rulers and battles, references to gods and monsters, and allusions to historical events without ever explaining them in depth. He gave the impression that his setting was both broad and deep, filled with detail on which he could draw for his engaging articles. Greenwood's occasional references to his home campaign were similarly intriguing and I often found myself wanting to know more about it.

This is why "Into the Forgotten Realms," for all its flaws as an adventure, was so compelling to me. Here, at last. Greenwood was showing us something a bit more practical, if that's the word, something that showed off how he used all this lore he'd accumulated over the years. We got to see a little bit of the ruined School of Wizardry within haunted Myth Drannor, not to mention a glimpse of the politics of the Dalelands. It wasn't a lot, to be sure, but it was enough of a taste that I felt like I'd been given some additional insight into the Realms as an AD&D setting rather than as fodder for magazine articles. This was the Forgotten Realms as she was played, so to speak, and that was no small thing to my fifteen year-old self.

As I said, the adventure itself is nothing amazing. It's basically just a dungeon crawl through a magical ruin filled with monsters and traps – pretty basic stuff, all things considered. Furthermore, the adventure was originally written for an AD&D tournament held at GenCon XVII (August 1984) and so suffers from some of the same sins as many tournament modules, such as limited scope and a contrived starting situation. None of these bothered me at the time, since a great many of TSR's official modules had the same problems and I'd learned how to adapt them easily enough. 

In truth, the appeal of "Into the Forgotten Realms" wasn't its potential use as a scenario anyway; it was what more it told me about Ed Greenwood's setting. In that, it did not disappoint. Though the focus was on room descriptions, there were enough tidbits scattered throughout that I was satisfied. In addition to historical information about Myth Drannor, there are other fascinating details, such as the suggestion, for example, that spells named for characters associated with the Greyhawk setting (e.g. Bigby, Tenser, etc.) don't exist in the Realms. In the grand scheme of things, that's not a huge difference, to be sure, but it's enough of one that I took note of it.

That's why "Into the Forgotten Realms" made an impression on me: it gave some concrete examples of how Ed Greenwood used the setting he created and how he tried to make it feel just a little bit unique. Whether anyone else enjoyed it as much as I did, I can't say for certain. However, TSR did reprint it in the 1987 boxed set under the title "Lashan's Fall," so I can only assume I'm not alone in liking it. Regardless, by the criteria established when I relaunched this series a year and a half ago, it definitely qualifies as worthy of discussion.

REPOST: The Sorcerer of Xiccarph

In light of a recent Pulp Fantasy Library entry, I thought readers might enjoy this write-up of Clark Ashton Smith's sorcerer, Maal Dweb. The description originally appeared in the "Giants in the Earth" column appearing in issue #30 of Dragon (October 1979), written by Lawrence Schick and Tom Moldvay (though I suspect, given his love of Smith, that Moldvay was likely the author of this particular character).

RIP Tim Kask (1949—2025)

Multiple sources report that Tim Kask, TSR’s first full-time employee, died on December 30 at the age of 76 after a short illness. 

Although I conducted a three-part interview with Mr Kask in the early days of this blog, I would not claim to have known him personally, much less well. Our direct interactions were limited to a handful of online exchanges and one particularly memorable encounter at GameholeCon several years ago, during a late-night session of Béthorm, the Tékumel RPG, refereed by its designer and artist, Jeff Dee. For the most part, I knew Tim Kask, as so many of us did, through his work and that work was substantial. As editor of The Strategic Review and, later, the first editor of Dragon magazine, he played a crucial role in shaping the early voice and direction of the roleplaying hobby.

Kask’s passing is another reminder that time continues its steady advance and that we are increasingly losing those who helped create and sustain the hobby we enjoy today. It is for this reason that I encourage anyone who has ever loved a roleplaying game to reach out to its creators and let them know what their work has meant to you. I have done so on several occasions and those messages have invariably been met with kindness and gratitude. With the loss of yet another figure from the hobby’s formative years, it feels more important than ever to make that effort while we still can.

The Articles of Dragon: "How Taxes Take Their Toll"

I've written before about my affection for Arthur Collins, who wrote a couple dozen or so articles in the pages of Dragon during the period when I was regularly reading the magazine. Collins was, in my opinion, a perfect writer for the Silver Age of D&D, because he understood the burgeoning desire on the part of many players and (especially) referees for increased setting detail while never losing sight of the fact that the game is supposed to be fun. That is, he wasn't interested in detail for detail's sake but in using it to create a richer and more immersive setting for playing fantasy adventures – at least that's how I read his articles back in the mid-80s.

An example of what I'm talking about is his article, "How Taxes Take Their Toll," which appeared in issue #95 (March 1985). Taking the form of a mock interview between Collins and His Excellency, Algoras Stanheort, Chancellor of the Exchequer, serving his Royal Majesty, Cynefyr, Bretwalda of Feldren, the purpose of the article is to discuss taxes in the context of a fantasy RPG campaign. Collins had already briefly touched upon this in his "The Making of a Mileu" article to which I linked above. There, he briefly enumerated some of the taxes characters might encounter and how they might be used in play, but that was just a passing discussion rather than the article's focus.

Here, though, he devotes the entirety of the article to the topic of taxes and does so in a way that's both practical and humorous. The humor comes from the responses of the character of Algoras Stanheort to the questions Collins puts to him in his "interview." Stanheort comes across as a high-handed aristocrat who clearly loves his job as chief collector of revenue. Consider, for example, this exchange:

DM: That's an awful lot of taxes to load on the people's backs, is it not Your Excellency?

AS: If Providence had not intended for the people to bear such expenses upon their backs, then they should not have had such broad backs upon which to bear them, think you not? (At this point His Excellency permitted himself a chuckle.)

There are many more examples of this sort of thing throughout the interview, such as Stanheort's use of a variety of increasingly ridiculous names for Collins in his capacity as representative of Dragon – "Sir Broadsheet," "Master Must-ask-about-all," "My Lord of Many Questions," etc. If nothing else, it makes for an enjoyable read.

The real meat of the article – and the reason I remember it – consists of insight into all the little taxes, tolls, and tariffs applied to goods, services, and privileges within the Kingdom of Feldren. There are consumption taxes, market taxes, alien taxes, hearth taxes, land taxes, church tithes, and many more. Stanheort talks about them all, providing both their cost and the in-setting justification for them, much to Collins's dismay, as all these fees pile up. It's almost like a Monty Python skit or perhaps something out of Yes, Minister and I still find it amusing today.

I fear I may not have done the article justice. I would not be surprised if many of you, upon reading this, will be wondering, "What use is this to me? Why would I ever want to include so many taxes in my campaign?" The answer is that you probably wouldn't, nor do I think Collins would recommend you do so either, if his dialog with the Chancellor of the Exchequer is any indication. Rather, I see the purpose of the article as drawing attention to the various ways the referee can use taxes and fees both to describe a setting and, more importantly, to make things difficult for the characters – or, if you prefer, to use local laws and customs (pun intended) as springboards for adventures and roleplaying interactions.

When I read the article for the first time, I was quite taken with it and set about drawing up a list of taxes for my Emaindor setting. As was so often the case with that setting, I probably went overboard with the detail – I was fifteen at the time – but I had fun doing it. I suspect that, reluctantly, my players migh have said the same, since I can recall at least one incident, in the city of Zijwek, when the characters were found to have failed to pay an entrance tax to the capital, a tax they didn't even know existed, let alone that they were obligated to pay. The resulting legal negotiations, not to mention a chase through the back alleys of the city, served as the catalyst for a series of scenarios involving the local thieves' guild (and the characters' vow to never return to Zijwek).

Good times!

The Articles of Dragon: "The Influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D Games"

I strongly considered not writing a post about this particular article from issue #95 of Dragon (March 1985), since I know it’s likely to stir up strong feelings and perhaps understandably so. At the same time, the guiding principle behind my revival of the Articles of Dragon series has been to focus on pieces that had a particular impact on me when I first read them, and this one – “The Influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D Games” – most certainly did. Of course, if you’ve been a longtime reader of this blog, that should come as no surprise.

The question of Tolkien’s influence on the creation and later development of Dungeons & Dragons is a topic to which Gary Gygax regularly returned. From nearly the moment the game appeared, Gygax denied that Tolkien’s tales of Middle-earth, especially The Lord of the Rings, held any special place of honor among the many fantasy works that inspired him. He never denied having read and enjoyed The Hobbit, nor that he had borrowed certain monsters and creatures, such as orcs and halflings, from Tolkien. What he seems to have rejected was the idea that this borrowing meant D&D was primarily inspired by Tolkien, rather than being a mishmash of many different influences.

I say "seems," because I really don't know why this particular question so vexed Gygax. That he kept writing articles like this more than a decade after the first appearance of the game suggests that it somehow mattered to him. I suppose the easy explanation is ego – he simply couldn't countenance the idea that someone might think D&D's success was owed, in whole or in part, to the popularity of Tolkien's work rather than his own imagination and ingenuity. But is that what was going on? Honestly, I don't know and I'm not sure anyone else does either.

"The Influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D Games" is a strange article. For one, Gygax begins it by admitting – in the very first paragraph – that "the popularity of Professor Tolkien's fantasy works did encourage me to develop my own." This is undeniable, since the Fantasy Supplement to Chainmail directly references J.R.R. Tolkien and includes not just hobbits but orcs, balrogs, and ents among its bestiary (all of which appeared in OD&D, at least in its earliest printings). Gygax continues that "there are bits and pieces of his works reflected hazily in mine," before stating that "I believe his influence, as a whole, is minimal" [italics mine].

Gygax then recalls the many, many fantasy books and authors he read, beginning in childhood. He points particularly to Robert E. Howard's only Conan novel, Conan the Conqueror (more accurately The Hour of the Dragon) as being his first exposure to sword-and-sorcery literature. He then goes on to cite L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Abraham Merritt, and H.P. Lovecraft as also being important to developing his sense of fantasy. None of those names should come as surprise, since he highlights all of them in Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. (Of more interest to me is why Jack Vance is not mentioned at all, despite Gygax's regular praise of him and his works and his role in inspiring the D&D magic system.)

With that out of the way, Gygax says he "thoroughly enjoyed The Hobbit" but found The Lord of the Rings a "tedious ... allegory of the struggle of the little common working folk of England against the threat of Hitler's Nazi evil." Tolkien would, of course, object strenuously to that characterization of The Lord of the Rings, but we must take Gygax at his word. He claims to have found the novel's action to be slow, its magic unimpressive, and its resolution disappointing. Moreover, Tolkien drops his favorite character, Tom Bombadil, soon after introducing him, which contributed to the slowness with which he finished it (three weeks).

Gygax then goes on, rather unconvincingly in my view, to say that many of the common elements of Middle-earth and Dungeons & Dragons have common sources, like Norse mythology for dwarves, and that therefore no one should assume the game he created owed much to Tolkien. In fairness, he also admits once again that there were some things he borrowed with the intention of "capitalizing on the then-current 'craze' for Tolkien's literature." He did this in a "superficial manner," believing that, once he'd attracted these Tolkien fiends to D&D, they'd soon realize that there was only "a minute trace of the Professor's work" therein.

As I said, I really don't know what to make of all of this. On the one hand, I generally agree with Gygax that D&D's similarities to Tolkien's creations are skin-deep at best and probably included solely for the purposes of enticing Middle-earth aficionados to the game. On the other hand, the fact that Gygax kept beating this particular drum makes me wonder if he actually believed the lines he was saying. Furthermore, Gygax was never shy about admitting the debt he owed REH or Vance or Leiber, so why did the charge he was borrowed Tolkien rankle him so? It's frankly baffling to me.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Demi-humans Get a Lift"

For a lot of old school AD&D players, the appearance of Unearthed Arcana in 1985 marked the end of an era. Filled with a wide variety of new options for players, it fundamentally upped the power level of characters in a way that forever changed the game. What's interesting is that is that, at the time, some people were critical of UA because they felt it "didn't contain anything new." In a sense, that was true. The book consisted primarily of material reprinted from several years' worth of Gary Gygax's "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column in Dragon. Very little of the book's contents should have surprised anyone who was regularly reading Dragon, as I was.

And yet, somehow, by compiling all that material under one cover, it became more than the sum of its parts. I knew lots of gamers, myself included, who'd allowed this class or that spell from Gygax's columns into their AD&D campaigns without so much as a second thought. In aggregate, though, they all took on a different character. Things that never bothered me before suddenly did, when placed side by side with other options I hadn't allowed (or didn't like). The result was that Unearthed Arcana was the book that "broke" AD&D for me. It was a bridge too far and it contributed to my growing disillusionment with the game in the mid-80s.

One of the last of Gygax's columns previewing material that would eventually appear in UA was "Demi-Humans Get a Lift," which appeared in issue #95 (March 1985). In his characteristic way, he explains the purpose of his article thusly:

 After long contemplation of the plight of dead-ended demi-human characters, and considerable badgering from players with same, it seemed a good plan to work up some new maximum levels for those demihumans with super-normal statistics -- and in a couple of cases just reward those with high stats across the board. Demi-humans were limited in the first place (in the original rules) because I conceived of a basically human-dominated world. Considering their other abilities, if most demi-humans were put on a par with humans in terms of levels they could attain, then there isn't much question who would be saying "Sir!" to whom. With that in mind, let's move along to the matter at hand.

Once again, Gary makes it clear that, in his mind, demi-humans were always supposed to play second fiddle to humans, which is why he included level limits. One may argue that such limits do a poor job of discouraging the play of demi-humans, but there can be no question that that was the intention behind it.

Despite that, Gygax decides here to give in to "considerable badgering" from players of demi-human PCs and provide the means for demi-humans to reach higher levels of experience. He does this in two ways. First, he allows single-classed demi-humans to exceed the standard level cap by two. Multiclassed demi-humans must abide by the usual limits. Second, he allows demi-humans with exceptional ability scores, whether single or multiclassed, to achieve even higher levels. While I think the first change is reasonable, if unnecessary, the second more or less ensured that every demi-human PC from then on would have absurdly high ability scores. In my opinion, AD&D already had a problem with ability score inflation; these changes only further encouraged such bad behavior. The article also opened up for play several new demi-human races, such as deep gnomes and drow, both of which, in my opinion, are too powerful for use in an "ordinary" campaign.

Throughout the article, Gary makes a couple of asides that suggests that he himself doesn't much care for these rules changes but is allowing them because "the gamers have spoken." It's very odd and makes one wonder why, if he really was so opposed to these changes, he nevertheless went ahead and presented in them. The tone throughout is strange and he ends the piece by not only saying that these are the final, ultimate, never-to-be-changed-again, for-real-this-time alterations to demi-human level limits but also by suggesting demands for further power escalation are inevitable:

To put a cap on things, let us get something straight. Any statistics beyond those shown, for levels and ability scores alike, are virtually impossible. Spells and magic, even artifacts and relics, will not increase statistics beyond what is shown, and no further word is necessary. If some deity likes a character so much as to grant a higher statistic, then that deity should also like the character sufficiently to carry him or her off to another plane. (Rules for quasideities will, I suppose, now be in demand . . . sigh!)

Even more than a quarter-century later, I find Gary's tone odd.

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.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "The Making of a Milieu"

When I think of under-appreciated writers from the hobby, one of the names that comes immediately to mind is Arthur Collins. Collins wrote a number of articles in Dragon that I adored, because they seemed to provide the kind of detail and immersion that the Silver Age craved while still being firmly rooted in Golden Age obsessions. They offered a kind of via media between the two eras of D&D and, as such, greatly appealed to me during my teen years, when I wasn't ready to abandon the kinds of games I played as a younger person, but still hoped for something "deeper" than "mere" dungeon crawls. Plus, Collins was a good writer: clear and easy to understand but not simplistic, either in style or content. He wasn't a hugely prolific author – perhaps two dozen articles or fewer – but his stuff was almost always of great interest to me.

Of all the articles Collins wrote, the one that most affected me was "The Making of a Milieu," which appeared in issue #93 (January 1985). Its subtitle was "How to start a world and keep it turning." The article is basically a lengthy discussion of how to build not just a campaign setting but a campaign itself, which is to say, how to kick things off in such a way as to ensure that play continues for months or years afterward. Nowadays, a lot of what Collins wrote might be considered old hat, but, back in 1985, it was nothing short of revelatory, at least to me.

Up until that point, I'd largely run my campaigns either in my beloved World of Greyhawk setting or else in some nebulous, vaguely defined setting. In neither case did I give much thought to "the Big Picture." And by "the Big Picture," I don't mean a plan or a script for the players to follow in their adventures. Rather, I mean only some notion of how all the various pieces of the setting interrelate and how they might be used to serve my purposes as a referee. Prior to reading this article, my campaigns were just random collections of "stuff that happened" somewhere and that was usually good enough.

By 1985, though, I started to think it wasn't good enough. I'd become so thoroughly immersed in fantasy literature, especially of the Interminable Series of Ponderous Tomes variety and I wanted my campaigns and settings to mirror that. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 1985 also marked the beginning of the period during which I actually played less and less. I went to a different high school than all my neighborhood friends and I became distracted by other things. But I was still as interested in D&D as ever and devoting my time to world building seemed an adequate substitute for actually playing the game.

Collins gave me lots of food for thought about how to build a setting, stuff that kept me thinking and creating for years to come. For example, he suggested creating several maps of the campaign area, each one depicting the area at a different point in history. In this way, names and settlements can be altered to reflect the rise and fall of empires, the migrations of people, and other such events. So I spent a lot of time at the library making photocopies of a blank map of my new, original campaign setting – the first I'd ever come up with – and then adding details to it, so that I eventually amassed a lot of information in pictorial form about how the setting evolved over the centuries. It was a fairly simple thing but quite effective and it gave me a lot of pleasure as a teenager.

These days, I'd never go to even the meager lengths Collins suggested in planning out a campaign or its setting. I'm much more of a seat-of-the-pants kind of guy; indeed, I embrace it as the best way to play the game. At the same time, I retain a great deal of fondness for this article, in large part because it broke me of certain other bad habits, namely my dependence on published material for ideas. As Collins so aptly put it at the conclusion of his article:

When I began playing the AD&D game six years ago, there were very few playing aids on the market of the type that are now so abundant. There was no WORLD OF GREYHAWK Fantasy Setting, no Hârn, and very few canned modules in print. Very nearly all of our adventuring had to come out of our own heads. And I still think that's fantasy gaming at its best. I now meet players, especially young ones, who think that, in order to play the AD&D game or some other such activity, they must invest megabucks in someone else's ideas. It shocks many of them when I suggest that it's more fun to make it up yourself.

Alas for them! No canned module, no playing aid, no set of rules, no list of NPCs can quite become your very own. As enjoyable and thought-provoking as all the published material may be, it is a poor substitute for creating your own campaign milieu, designing your own castles, and exercising your own brain. Creativity is what the game is about. It would be a shame if the success of fantasy gaming contributed to the stifling of creativity in its own enthusiastic adherents.

I was one of those young players about whom Collins speaks, at least to some degree, which is why I owe the man a debt of thanks. I may no longer build a campaign the way he suggests in this article. However, that I build my own at all is in large part a result of what he says in it.

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.

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.