Retrospective: Sabre River

Despite my generally negative feelings toward Frank Mentzer's 1983–1986 revision of the Dungeons & Dragons rules, I have a special place in my heart for the Companion Rules. Indeed, I still consider it one of the best things ever produced for any edition of D&D, largely because it made a serious attempt to provide answers to the question of just what characters do when they reach the lofty heights of level 15 and beyond. While the Companion Rules themselves were only partially successful in this regard, TSR also intended to provide additional ideas and guidance for campaigns at this level of play in the form of the CM-series of adventure modules, of which there were ultimately nine.

Of course, as I mentioned in my Retrospective post about one of the modules in this series, this intention wasn't as easy to fulfill as TSR might have wished. Nearly all of the CM modules were flawed in one way or another, especially when it comes to providing a model for campaigns in which many, if not all, of the player characters have risen to rule their own domains. Despite that, many of them nevertheless include clever ideas and interesting concepts that could, if reworked, be useful to the harried Dungeon Master of a Companion-level campaign.

Take, for example, Sabre River, co-written by Douglas Niles and Bruce Nesmith and released in 1984. The module begins with the following:

Have all of your characters settled down and started dominions? Have you wondered if they'll ever get the chance to fight their way through an old-fashioned dungeon again? Yes, they will! 

The premise of Sabre River is that a group of four to six characters of levels 18–22 must venture into the Tower of Terror, a dungeon within a volcano, in order to deal with a curse that's been laid upon the land. The land in question is the domain of either an NPC ruler or – preferably – that of one of the player characters. In this respect at least, Sabre River is already an improvement over its immediate predecessor, Death's Ride, which more or less rejected the very idea that a player character's domain should be subjected to the undead invasion depicted in that module. 

The idea of a dungeon capable of challenging a party of 18th–22nd-level characters is intriguing. In the D&D circles with which I was familiar at the time, it was generally assumed that, as a character achieved double-digit levels, he would find his challenges in domain rulership and all that that entailed, like mass combats, power politics, and faction play. I suspect that explain why I so rarely saw anyone continue to play a D&D character at such exalted levels: the implied style of play wasn't very appealing to most players and indeed seemed to be a break from what Dungeons & Dragons was assumed to be about. What most players of my acquaintance wanted instead was more of the same, albeit at a great degree of challenge and, in principle, that's what Sabre River provided.

The Tower of Terror is indeed challenging. It's populated by powerful and deadly monsters, like a red dragon, elementals of various types, a beholder, and swarms or flocks of lesser creatures. There's also a commensurate level of treasure, some of it truly staggering, like a roomful of gold ingots worth 800,000gp in total. That only makes sense, of course, since high-level characters need huge amounts of experience points to advance and treasure is the surest source of such XP. Still, I was quite shocked to see these numbers as I re-read the module. For me, these astronomical sums have long been an impediment to my enjoyment of a D&D campaign of this level. Others may feel differently, of course.

Sabre River's challenges also include a handful of tricks, traps, and unusual tactical situations intended to test the players' skills in combat. There's also the central mystery of the curse, how it can be lifted, and what the characters must do to achieve that. It's all very serviceable but far from outstanding – certainly nothing on par with adventures like White Plume Mountain or The Ghost Tower of Inverness when it comes to imagination (and frustration). Mostly, Sabre River is about everything being BIG, from monsters (and their hit point totals) to treasures, which is a little disappointing, especially because I know that Doug Niles is a good designer who's penned some enjoyable stuff over the years.

Sabre River is not a terrible module; it simply doesn't stand out as anything special. Its worst sin, in my opinion, is that it doesn't deviate too much from the mediocre track record of the CM-series, almost none of which take full advantage of the new opportunities and vistas that the Companion Rules opened up to player characters of levels 15 to 25. A shame!

Retrospective: The Throne of Bloodstone

While I unqualifiedly count myself as a fan of the articles Ed Greenwood wrote about his home campaign, the Forgotten Realms, in the pages of Dragon, my feelings about TSR's version of it are decidedly more mixed. For the most part, the original boxed campaign setting developed by Jeff Grubb and published in 1987 is quite good, retaining most of the elements that, I think, made the Realms unique, or at least distinct from previous TSR AD&D settings, like The World of Greyhawk or Krynn. However, a lot of the products later released under the Forgotten Realms banner did not, in my opinion, jibe well with Greenwood's vision for his setting, no doubt because TSR saw the Realms as a "kitchen sink" setting where anything that was possible under the AD&D could be found somewhere. 

This desire to reshape the Forgotten Realms into something more generic (or perhaps utilitarian) was obvious from the very beginning, even in the '87 boxed set. In his introduction from that set, Jeff Grubb points out the various ways Greenwood's Realms were changed to accommodate the ideas of others, such as the fact that "the land that is now Vaasa and Damara was only recently (in game design terms) covered by an unnatural glacier." Vaasa and Damara, you may recall, made their first appearance before the publication of the Forgotten Realms boxed set, in 1985's Bloodstone Pass. That module, written by Douglas Niles and Michael Dobson, was itself intended to support the Battle System miniatures rules, as were its two immediate sequels, The Mines of Bloodstone (1986) and The Bloodstone Wars (1987). 

By design, the setting presented in Bloodstone Pass is vanilla fantasy that could easily be dropped into any campaign setting. That's not a criticism and, from a sales point of view, was probably a point in its favor, broadening its pool of potential customers. With the publication of the Forgotten Realms in 1987, though, TSR found a way to cram a lot of stuff into it, in the process diluting its uniqueness. That's why the campaign box set pushes back the Great Glacier and plops Vaasa and Damara into the ice-free real estate so revealed. This change struck me then, as it does now, as utterly unnecessary, since there was nothing about the Bloodstone Lands that felt as if they could be part of the Realms. But commerce pays no heed to esthetics and I doubt anyone at TSR at the time worried about such trivial concerns.

Which brings us to the fourth and final module in the H-series: The Throne of Bloodstone. Written, like all its predecessors, by Niles and Dobson, and published in 1988, module H4 was, then and now, notorious among AD&D fans, for its stated level range – 18–100. You read that correctly; this adventure was explicitly presented as a challenge for 100th-level characters. There are even sample characters of this level provided at the end of the book, in addition to a few pages of advice to the Dungeon Master on running characters of such stratospheric levels of experience.

Why, you might ask, did the module do this? What sort of challenge could possibly justify the need for such potent characters? To start, the characters are tasked with defeating the Witch-King Zhengyi of Vaasa, a 30th-level magic-using lich who, it is revealed, is a devotee of the demon lord Orcus. In the course of this task, the characters discover a gate that leads to the Abyss, the outer planar home not only of the Lord of the Undead but of all the demon lords and princes. Traveling there to do battle with the forces of Chaotic Evil might well be a task worthy of 100th-level characters, but why go there at all, especially if the threat of Zhengyi were already eliminated?

That's where Throne of Bloodstone takes a very odd turn. Not long after discovering the gate, "a short, stocky little man with huge angel's wings wearing white robes" appears. Did I mention he also "calmly puffs on a cigar?" This is St. Sollars, a minor deity introduced all the way back in Bloodstone Pass. He speaks to the characters – in a strange Bugs Bunny-style Brooklyn accent – and explains that "the big boss, ol' Bahamut, don't much like Orcus," whom he calls "the meanest dude this side o' the Pecos." The Platinum Dragon would like the characters to help him deal with Orcus by "corral[ing] that big skull stick o' his," which is to say, he wants them to steal the wand of Orcus. 

The whole thing is beyond bizarre – especially St. Sollars, who feels like he's walked in from a completely different roleplaying game (or maybe Dave Trampier's Wormy). I honestly have no idea how to take all of this. Is it meant tongue in cheek, a kind of verbal winking at the players and the DM, since the very idea of 100th-level adventure is already somewhat absurd? Is this some sort of cryptic allusion that simply escapes me? I just don't know, but then my sense of humor is notoriously lacking. Whatever it means, the task St. Sollars offers the characters sets up the remainder of the module, which is vast in its scope.

The characters pass through the gate and arrive in Pazunia, the first layer of the Abyss. From there, they must make their way – somehow – to the layer ruled by Orcus. Doing so is, naturally, a very dangerous endeavor, since they must pass through many, many other layers to reach their final destination. The result is a kind of tour of the Abyss, with stops at the realms of Demogorgon, Yeenoghu, Lolth, Juiblex, Baphomet, Graz'zt, and so many more. What's interesting is that, while the characters can do battle with many of these fiendish AD&D luminaries, they can also parley with some of them, perhaps even ally with them, since they, too, have bones to pick with Orcus. 

As I said, Throne of Bloodstone is vast in scope. The characters, even 100th-level ones, could spend an immense amount of time traveling, exploring, fighting, and negotiating on the various levels of the Abyss that are lightly detailed in this module. It's practically a campaign in itself – and it all happens before the characters even reach the plane of Orcus. Once there, the challenges are immense, with undead beings everywhere, in addition to the requisite demons and, of course, Orcus himself. It's genuinely awe-inspiring, the kind of thing that many an AD&D no doubt dreamed of one day doing with his high-level character. 

The problems with Throne of Bloodstone are many, starting most obviously with whether it's even possible to run a game at this level. I'm not saying it isn't, only that I do not know and I suspect that neither do Douglas Niles or Michael Dobson – or indeed anyone else. That's one of the other problems: was this ever playtested? Does that even matter? Sometimes, the strength of a module's ideas are what matter and there's certainly a lot of interesting, or at least inspiring, ideas in this one. Of course, most of those ideas are barely detailed. Throne of Bloodstone is more of a sketch of a lengthy, high-level mini-campaign than an adventure module in the traditional sense.

That's why it's well nigh impossible to judge this thing. I have never played it and, for years, I scoffed at it, citing it as an example of just how much AD&D had lost its way by the late '80s. Nowadays, I am not so sure. Throne of Bloodstone is such a strange, wonderful, contradictory mess. Everything about it, from its premise to its contents is, on first blush, quite laughable and yet, having re-read it in preparation for this post, I can't simply dismiss it out of hand. Certainly, it'd require a lot work on the part of the DM to use effectively and, even then, I am not sure it could ever work in practice as well as I imagine it could – but it might be worth a try ... ?

Retrospective: Curse of Xanathon

I have strangely fond memories of the Dungeons & Dragons adventure module, Curse of Xanathon. I say "strangely fond," because it's not a very good module, even if one grades it on a curve, many people do. My personal fondness stems not from the adventure itself, but from the fact that it's the first D&D module a member of my extended family purchased for me. 

Though my love of D&D and other RPGs was well known to my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, none of them really understand this new obsession of mine. Even my favorite aunt, who'd introduced me to Star Trek, taken me to see Star Wars, and got me Darren McGavin's autograph, took a while to fathom what roleplaying games were all about. That's why her gift of Curse of Xanathon to me on my birthday still sticks with me decades later.

Published in 1982 and written by Douglas Niles, Curse of Xanathon – or The Curse of Xanathon, since the interior text is inconsistent on this point – is the third module written for use with the D&D Expert Set. The suggested level range is 5–7,  which I consider a mechanical sweet spot for D&D. The module opens with "Notes for the Dungeon Master" that are well worth examining, since they shed some light on its shortcomings:

The Curse of Xanathon is an unusual module, in that much of the players’ actions will be in the form of detective work, as they try to discover clues to the problem plaguing the town. Once they have located these clues, they will have to decide on a proper course of action. If they make wrong decisions, they could conceivably waste much time and obtain no results. You, as the DM, will need a careful touch to keep the players on the right track without making solutions and objectives too obvious.

I find it remarkable that, even as late as 1982, the conflation of "player" and "player character" is still occurring. That aside, you should already be able to see the source of the module's problems. Niles explicitly presents Curse of Xanathon as an investigative scenario, in which the characters' actions depend on the discovery of clues. Because scenarios of this sort are prone to going awry, he counsels the DM to "keep the players on the right track," even he warns against "making solutions and objectives too obvious."

Niles goes on:

Much information is included in the various scenarios, and astute players will no doubt be able to determine the proper course of action at each stage of the adventure. If a group of players is unfamiliar with this type of detective game, they may become frustrated or disinterested. The DM is encouraged to offer additional clues whenever these would seem to be necessary. This can be handled in a number of ways. For example, the High Priest of Forsetta, who moves around in a beggar’s disguise, is introduced in Scenario 1. The DM should feel free to use this character whenever necessary as a source of information and guidance to the party. He will never join in any adventuring, however!

Hard as I might wish to do so, I find this paragraph difficult to defend. While I suspect that all but the most intransigent referees have occasionally thrown a metaphorical bone in the direction of hapless players from time to time, the use of an non-player character as suggested here is a very bad practice to encourage, despite his final admonition. Curse of Xanathon isn't quite a railroad, as the term is traditionally used, but the High Priest is a railroad conductor who regularly pops up throughout the scenario to nudge the characters in the "right" direction.

The mystery the characters must investigate is the strange behavior of Duke Steven Rhoona, a previously good and just ruler, who has lately been issuing nonsensical decrees, such as that all taxes must be paid in beer rather than gold and that all horses must be ridden backwards, with the rider facing the horse's tail. His subjects fear the duke has gone mad, but the truth is he's fallen under the titular curse of the Chaotic priest, Xanathon. Xanathon is an agent of a nearby nation; he's been sent to foment rebellion in the duchy as a prelude to invasion. 

As a premise, it's a perfectly fine one for an adventure focusing on investigation and intrigue and Niles does provide a number of useful tools for the referee to aid in this. For example, there are  tables of rumors and tavern names, as well as an overview of the businesses and NPCs of the duchy's capital, not to mention a map. Likewise, there are five distinct sections of the adventure, each of which deals with finding or follow up on certain clues. These sections each take place in a different locale, with their own unique elements and denizens, like the Chaotic shrine and the ducal palace. The guts of Curse of Xanathon are solid, evocative of earlier location-based adventures.

However, it's clear that a sea change has overcome module design at TSR by this point. A stronger sense of "plot" has begun to creep in, along with narrative crutches like the aforementioned High Priest NPC, who pops in and out of the adventure as needed to ensure the characters keep heading toward the inevitable resolution of their tasks. This isn't full-blown Dragonlance-style "story," but it's certainly heading in that direction. At the time I was given Curse of Xanathon, none of this was at all obvious to me. Re-reading now, though, it's impossible not to see the signs of the impending Hickman Revolution and all that it would eventually entail.

Retrospective: Lankhmar: City of Adventure

I'm a sucker for fantasy cities. I'm not entirely sure of the precise origin of my fascination with them, but I have little doubt that Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar played a role in cultivating it. I was – and am – a huge fan of the tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Consequently, their home base, the City of the Black Toga, the City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes, is forever lodged in my imagination as the fantasy city par excellence.  

When TSR published Lankhmar: City of Adventure in 1985, there was no question about whether I'd buy it. Though I'd already seen both The Free City of Haven and Thieves' World (and likely a few other similar products), neither of them had the same kind of immediate appeal for me as did Lankhmar. I remember first seriously thinking about the possibilities of playing D&D in Nehwon after I got my copy of Deities & Demigods, but I never actually did so. With the release of this 96-page softcover book, however, I thought the time might have come to take the plunge at last.

Written by the trio of Bruce Nesmith, Douglas Niles, and Ken Rolston, Lankhmar: City of Adventure aims to do two things: describe the titular city as a roleplaying locale and provide rules and guidelines for playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in Nehwon. Of these two goals, the least interesting is the former, in large part because the implied setting of Gygaxian D&D is already very similar to that of Leiber's fiction. Most of what's needed is a different selection of monsters and deities – both of which this book provides in their own chapters – and a reduction in the prevalence of magic and you're most of the way there. With regard to magic, Lankhmar reduces it to two kinds, black and white, with most magic in Nehwon being black and, therefore, out of the hands of player characters. While perhaps a bit simplistic, it's not a terrible approach and I'm sympathetic to the designers who opted for it rather than creating an entirely unique magic system for Nehwon.

The description of the city is quite good and generally hews quite closely to Leiber's stories (all of which get summaries at the start of the book). The city is divided up into "districts," each of which has its own section where their most important locations are described. Each district has its own map, which fits onto the larger map of the entire city. Because even these district maps encompass a large amount of real estate, it'd be impossible to detail them entirely. To deal with this, there are portions of each map that are left blank and that are intended to be filled through the use of geomorphs presented in a little booklet found inside the back cover of Lankhmar. The referee can then fill in these blanks as he sees fit, in the process creating his own version of Lankhmar.

As impressive as the rest of Lankhmar: City of Adventure was – and it genuinely was well done – I soon found that all thoughts of running a campaign set in Leiber's world faded once I realized just how broadly useful that booklet of geomorphs was. I saw that TSR had given me the tools I needed to create my own large fantasy cities with relative ease. All I needed to do was photocopy the geomorphs I wanted from among the large selection Lankhmar provided and then fit them together as I wished. I must tell you I spent a lot of time at my local public library, making use of the Xerox machine to produce enough maps so that I could piece together a larger map of the cities of Emaindor. What fun!

In the end, it's difficult for me to disentangle my positive feelings toward Lankhmar from my memories of making use of those geomorphs. Though I do think the book does what it sets out to do quite well, what sticks with me now, decades later, is the way it inspired me to make my own cities in my own setting rather than using those that someone else had made. That's probably the highest compliment I can pay to any RPG product: it sparked my own creativity. By that measure, Lankhmar: City of Adventure is a very fine product indeed. 

Retrospective: Bloodstone Pass

When Dungeons & Dragons first appeared in 1974, it bore the subtitle "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures." Nowhere in the game's three little brown books does the word "roleplaying" appear, though, as Gary Gygax pointed out, it was quite common for miniatures wargamers to roleplay the leaders and other important figures of their tabletop armies. And, of course, many roleplayers have, in the course of their adventures and campaigns, turned to miniatures rules to aid them in adjudicating mass battles. These two hobbies are forever intertwined with one another, to the point where it's often difficult to determine with any ease where one begins and the other ends.

I've long had a fascination with miniatures wargaming, though I've never really delved too deeply into it. In my campaigns of old, there were occasional mass combats, but I rarely made use of actual miniatures wargame rules to handle them. Instead, I simply extrapolated – not always felicitously – from the base rules of whatever RPG I was playing (usually some flavor of D&D). That's why I welcomed the appearance of TSR's Battle System boxed set in 1985: I hoped they might save me the trouble of having to figure out a relatively painless way to handle large engagements of men and monsters in AD&D.

For a while in my early teens, I used Battle System often and had a lot of fun with it. Though my affection for it eventually waned, that wasn't before I had the chance to make use of the first module published to support it, Bloodstone Pass. Written by Douglas Niles and Michael Dobson, module H1 is called a "supermodule" and intended for use with characters of level 15 and above. I presume it was called a supermodule because it came in a thin box and was filled with more than 100 cardboard counters and a dozen fold-up buildings, in addition to the expected 32-page scenario (and Battle System unit roster book). It's a fairly impressive package overall, since it provides the referee with everything he needs to run not just the adventure itself but all the mass battles that occur during its events.

That was certainly the appeal to me at the time. Though I owned quite a few miniatures (mostly Grenadier's AD&D line), I didn't have anywhere close to enough of them to field a proper army on the tabletop. Between the original Battle System box and Bloodstone Pass, though, I now had more than enough cardboard counters to handle the hordes of evil humanoids I'd always imagined as the enemies in any fantasy battle. Likewise, though the fold-up buildings weren't as impressive looking as the sorts of models I sometimes saw in hobby stores or at local games days, they nevertheless served their purpose. More to the point, I was able to build them myself without too much trouble, which was their true value. Whatever else Bloodstone Pass was, it was a godsend to a kid like myself, who lacked the skills, patience, and funds to put together a large and attractive collection of miniatures and terrain.

As for the adventure itself, Bloodstone Pass is nothing special. It's yet another riff on the well worn tale of the Seven Samurai, with the player characters being enlisted to protect the mostly defenseless village of Bloodstone against an Evil Army of Evil. It's all very straightforward and clichéd – primarily a backdrop against which to play out some fun miniatures battles. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I remember enjoying myself greatly back in the day; the relative lack of anything more deep probably didn't even occur to me at the time. Even now, I almost feel as if it's a cheap shot to criticize Bloodstone Pass for working as intended. The module was, after all, meant to support the newly-released Battle System and encourage AD&D players to make use of it in their own campaigns. Mission accomplished! 

Retrospective: Dragons of Glory

My overall opinion of Dragonlance is, I think, well known and, in the thirteen (!) years since I first publicly expressed it, I haven't much mellowed. I remain convinced that, while Dragonlance may well have "saved" Dungeons & Dragons in some sense, the hobby is still paying the price of that salvation nearly four decades later. This does not mean, however, that the entire Dragonlance project was wholly devoid of worth. Indeed, in the course of changing the course of D&D and, by extension, the entire hobby, a number of genuinely interesting things were produced.

A case in point is 1985's Dragons of Glory, written by Douglas Niles and Tracy Hickman (though I suspect that it was Niles who was responsible for the bulk of the product). Ostensibly the eleventh module in the original Dragonlance series, Dragons of Glory is, in fact, not an adventure scenario at all but rather a stand-alone wargame set in the world of Krynn, complete with rules, maps, and hundreds of cardboard counters.

I dutifully purchased module DL11 upon its release, as I had all the previous modules in the series. As I've explained before, I was never a fan of Krynn as a setting or even of the specifics of Dragonlance – particularly its pre-generated characters – but I was quite taken with the idea of a lengthy series of connected scenarios that chronicled a war against a high fantasy Dark Lord. Thus, I cannibalized the DL modules to use in a campaign setting of my own devising (about which the less said the better) and rarely regretted that decision. Dragons of Glory was one such occasion. 

You see, the module presented a strategic-level simulation of the War of the Lance, with rules for movement, combat, and reinforcements, among other such details. The rules are simple, probably laughably so for anyone with much experience in the hobby of hex-and-chit wargaming. Not having such experience myself, I wasn't at all bothered by this. In fact, I considered it something of a plus, since, as a neophyte, I wasn't in a position to handle a more sophisticated wargame. 

Dragons of Glory was supposed to serve two purposes. As already mentioned, it was intended as a stand-alone wargame that could be played again and again, much in the way one might play Third Reich or Kingmaker. More interesting is the second purpose of the game: integrating the wargame with the module series. The idea here is that the referee (and another player) could take note of their play of the wargame and then use it to influence the play of the module-based campaign. For example, if a battle takes place in the wargame in a particular place, when the player characters make their way through that same place, the referee could use that fact to affect what those characters see and encounter there. Now, to be clear, there are no actual rules to govern this. Even the guidelines offered amount to little more than vague advice, but I cannot tell you how much the idea of using the results of a wargame to affect the play of a RPG inspired me at the time.

There's another unspoken angle here, namely that Dragons of Glory points the way – tentatively, to be sure – toward "alternate universe" versions of Krynn, where things don't necessarily play out exactly the way the adventure modules intend them to. That's always been one of my biggest beefs with the whole Dragonlance project: its expectation that certain events would happen in certain ways and that certain characters would be involved in them. I hated this approach then and I hate it even more now. If the project had been more flexible in allowing events to unfold differently in each campaign, I might have fewer objections. As it is, Dragonlance is a vast railroad with a pre-determined beginning, middle, and end. 

Dragons of Glory hints at the possibility of other approaches and that's probably why I still retain a certain fondness for it, despite its design shortcomings. DL11 is probably the first and only time that a module in this series toys with the idea of the War of the Lance having different trajectories than those presented in official TSR products, trajectories unique to each campaign. Again, I feel I should reiterate that Dragons of Glory itself does little to support this idea and I am likely being more charitable toward it than it deserves. Even so, I was so positively impacted by what little it does offer that I felt it deserved a second look. 

Interview: Douglas Niles (Part II)

Part I of this interview can be found here.

5. You're also associated with the Dragonlance series, having written several adventure modules for it. What role did you play in creating and developing the setting and course of the series? 

Dragonlance! I can say that I was there at the beginning! I wish I could claim I was a believer from the get go, but that would be exaggerating; I had my doubts initially. And I can honestly say that without Tracy Hickman's vision, and as very quickly became apparent, Margaret Weis's creativity and professionalism, DL never would have gotten off the ground to become the groundbreaking fantasy experience that it was and is.

By mid 1983, I think it was, TSR had a staff of 12 full time game designers. We had also hired a lot of professional editors both for the game and the start-up book departments, which mainly published Endless Quest books in a "Choose your own Adventure" format. Finally, the company gathered an astonishingly talented collection of excellent artists, including Larry Elmore, Jeff Easely, Clyde Caldwell, Tim Truman, Keith Parkinson, and others. Tracy Hickman, came up with the idea of writing 12 connected AD&D modules, one for each of the colors of the game's dragons. (He astutely pointed out that, for a game called Dungeons & Dragons, we had never really included a dragon in one of our adventures.) But Tracy was (and remains!) a Big Thinker; he wasn't going to stop at a module series. He talked to many of our staff artists who quickly shared his enthusiasm, and took his idea of an epic story to the book department, suggesting potential for a novel or two that could accompany the game. As I recall, some of the iconic art that later covered game modules and books was created even before DL was approved by TSR management – no doubt those paintings helped to convince the company brass that this idea had promise.

My initial reservations were based on the fact that I didn't think players would want to have their characters tied into playing out a story that someone else had written. Um, I was wrong. I did join the original design team, assigned to write DL2 Dragons of Flame; I think the company wanted a plan so they could kill the module line after four adventures if it fizzled out. (It did not fizzle.) I eventually did 4-5 DL modules over the next few years, and I came to recognize and cherish Dragonlance for the phenomenon it became. At first the company contracted a freelance novelist to write the books, but when the initial drafts were not up to the standard the book department wanted, our managers decided to give Tracy and Margaret a shot at writing the novels. That worked out pretty well.

In addition to game modules, I went on to design a military boardgame for DL, and a sourcebook for the dwarven realms. I also wrote many DL novels – I think about 18 or 20 of them, as well as numerous short stories. It is fair to say that Dragonlance became the main pillar of my freelance writing career from 1990 to 2008. During that time, Wizards of the Coast bought TSR and then Hasbro bought WotC. In about 2008, Hasbro decided to stop publishing Dragonlance novels, even though the books were selling something like 40,000 copies for each title. No one has ever explained to me (or to anyone that I've talked to) why the company made that decision.

6. You were the designer of Battlesystem, which appeared in 1985. What was the origin of this product? Was TSR consciously trying to return to the roots of D&D or was there some other impetus behind it? For that matter, what was your own history with miniatures gaming?

I think that the idea of Battlesystem, the rules for conducting large scale combat with AD&D characters and NPCs was driven by two factors: one was certainly a desire to get back to the roots of D&D, which of course was the Chainmail game system created by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren for medieval era miniatures combat; and two, with the growing prevalence of large AD&D campaigns, and player characters of high level becoming increasingly common, these characters were able to command companies or even larger units of subordinate troops. When a lord with 30 knights encountered a raiding party of 100 orcs, obviously the individual combat rules of the AD&D game became unworkably cumbersome.

At the time I started work on Battlesystem, I did not have much personal history with miniatures gaming, but I had been working with the AD&D rules almost full time for several years. I was honored to be assigned to the project. The biggest requirement (and challenge!) was to translate the basic character attributes of AD&D, such as armor class, hit points, and hit probability (THAC0 – "to hit armor class 0"– in many players' shorthand) into ratings that could apply to military units and allow results to be calculated that would affect multiple NPCs. Certain AD&D rules that rarely came up in dungeoncrawl-type adventures assumed significantly more importance on a battlefield, such as the benefits of charging, or the defensive usefulness of setting the butt of a pike on the ground to meet a charge.

Even more than most design projects, Battlesystem was a collaboration; and I welcomed the assistance, advice, and playtesting of many staff designers, developers, and editors. The editor assigned to the project was Michael Dobson, and the game system was the beginning of a partnership in which the two of us designed a series of game adventures (the Bloodstone Pass series) and eventually led us to become a novel-writing team for several alternate military history novels. 

In fact, Bloodstone Pass was a set of four modules, all adventures for the highest level player characters that, I think, TSR ever published. We began with a premise we shameless adapted ("stole" is such an ugly word) from Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, one that had already been copied by the American film, The Magnificent Seven. It is the story of seven legendary heroes who are sought out by a group of peasant villagers who are under assault from a brutal enemy host. (It's like the story was tailor-made for D&D!) We presented a mix of battlefield encounters and roleplaying encounters that eventually led the characters into the heart of the Underworld, climaxing in the 4th module with a showdown against mighty Orcus himself. I understand that it is still quite a popular adventure series.

7. I have a great fondness for the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, which is a landmark book in the AD&D line for a number of reasons. For example, I believe it's the first book to use the term "Underdark" to describe the subterranean spaces beneath the world. Was this a book you whose topics were of particular interest to you? 

The Dungeoneer's Survival Guide was a really special project that I was delighted to have the opportunity to write. It may surprise some  (or it may not!) to learn that the official AD&D rules system grew rather chaotically with the input and creativity of a number of individuals, rather than through any kind of rigid "master plan." Gary Gygax was the leader of this development, and his old friend Frank Mentzer had a lot to do with the process as well. But the staff designers in the TSR offices also made suggestions, and some of these led to really successful projects. One of the veteran staff designers, Zeb Cook, had always been an aficionado of many Asian-oriented adventure genres. (He had, in fact, the most impressive collection of giant robot models in his office that I have ever seen.) And he effectively advocated for an AD&D expansion that embraced these elements of Eastern culture. His Oriental Adventures rules, a hard cover book that considerably expanded the scope of the game, was hugely successful both for its enjoyable game content and its commercial value to TSR. This led to the company wanting to offer more location-specific rules expansions.

Dungeoneer's Survival Guide was the next new official rulebook, intended to specifically lay out procedures for adventures, environments, and even cultures and civilizations that were based beyond the reach of sunlight. The rules included details about spelunking, existing and surviving in darkness, and the kinds of environments, allies, and adversaries player characters might encounter under the ground. Building off of Zeb's work, DSG also introduced more rules for specific proficiencies than existed in the original game and led to the commonly used game mechanic of a character's "ability check". As I recall there were several other of these hardbound books written subsequently, and they were popular products.  By the late '80s, though, the trajectory of the AD&D rules system had begun to evolve into what would become AD&D Second Edition, which was ably designed by Zeb Cook, of course with input from Gary Gygax.

8. Top Secret/S.I. was a major revamp of TSR's venerable espionage RPG. Had you been a fan of the original before you started work on this version of the game? What were your goals when creating it?

I was not familiar with Merle Rasmussen's excellent and popular Top Secret game until I was hired by TSR as a game designer, and one of my first official assignments on staff was to read the game and learn the rules. I was very impressed by the level of detail in the game systems, the precision of the equipment descriptions, and the variability allowed by the highly detailed systems for all things espionage – most notably, combat. It was a very lethal combat system, reflecting its "true to real life" approach. The game books made for a fascinating read, and I enjoyed some playing sessions with co-workers and some of my friends from outside the company.

In a sense I got kind of a crash course in the state of the RPG industry circa 1982 in my first months on the job. My focus was on TSR products of course, including the Boot Hill, Star Frontiers, and newly released Gangbusters games. I was also exposed to Marc Miller's legendary Traveller science fiction game from GDW, Chaosium's RuneQuest, and many other products in what was still a fledgling industry.

With my primary focus remaining on D&D and AD&D, I never had the chance to work on any products for Merle's Top Secret game, which was admittedly rather under-served in the accessory department by TSR. I was surprised when the idea for Top Secret/S.I. was presented, but delighted when I was assigned to create a new espionage RPG system. (A key aspect of the project assignment was that the company desired a completely new game, not a "second edition" type modification of Merle's game.) During this project I worked very closely with our recently hired, but very experienced editor, Warren Spector, who had been the editor-in-chief at Steve Jackson Games in Texas. Warren's contribution to the writing and, especially, playability of the TS/S.I rules cannot be understated.

 In fact, playability was one of the key requirements of the game. Inevitably that meant sacrificing quite a bit of the original game's meticulous realism. It was as if Merle's rules emphasized the careful realism of the style of a John le Carré novel, while the new version was to be much more representative of the James Bond style that the films presented during the Roger Moore years. And I believe we did come up with an exciting, fast playing game. The game mechanic I was most proud of, I recall, was that a player rolled two 10-sided dice to make an attack. The result would first be read as a percentage, which would determine whether or not the attack was successful; and if the shot hit, the two dice would be consulted individually to determine how many points of damage was inflicted (by the die in the "1" column) and (by the die in the "10" column) what part of the target's body was injured. 

9. Do you still get the chance to play RPGs? If so, what are you currently playing?

I rarely get the chance to play an RPG these days, but enjoy them when I can. In recent years I have had fun playing AD&D at a couple of southern Wisconsin conventions, playing with strangers and old friends. (Hopefully we will be able to have game conventions again one of these days!) Gamehole Con is a fixture in Madison, where I live. In normal years, it occurs over a four-day weekend in early November (always a date when no Badger home football game is scheduled, so that hotel space is available!). It draws a lot of local and regional gamers of all ages, and attracts a number of the old timers from around the area. I always get a chance to see my old boss, Jim Ward, from the TSR design department; he was a great man to work for, and remains a steady and wise presence in the gaming industry. I also try and make it down to Lake Geneva in March for GaryCon, a wonderful gathering of friends, old colleagues, and fans. That con is organized by Gary Gygax's kids. Among many other people, I always enjoy the chance to catch up with Margaret Weis at GaryCon. I also had the great pleasure to run into Heidi Gygax there, who (as I related in my answer to question 1) is the person who first introduced me to D&D!

I did design a D&D module for expert level players a couple of years ago. I was a guest of a fabulous game convention, in Italy, called the Lucca Comics and Game Convention. As part of my participation, I created an Expert-level module (for characters levels 5-8) and had a great deal of fun playtesting that here at home, and then playing it several times in Lucca. I was amazed to see how popular that level of D&D is in Italy, and in particular how many players enjoyed the modules that we were creating during the 1980s. At that con I also had the chance to run, for the first time, Gary Gygax's Tomb of Horrors.

For my hobby gaming, I generally favor board and counter wargaming, either strategy or tactics on a fairly grand scale. I still love SPI's Wellington's Victory, a four-map monster game about the battle of Waterloo. Decision Games has released a new version of that game, with a new rules system, and I spent a lot of time with another old friend and colleague, Mark Acres, trying (with limited success) to master the update. If I may be forgiven a small boast, I confess that my absolute favorite game to play is my own design, released by TSR /SPI in the late '80s: World War Two: European Theater of Operations. I was fortunate enough to be given the time and resources to polish the original game into a second edition. That product benefited tremendously from the talents of Steve Winter, the best editor –and one of the nicest people – I ever had the chance to work with. I understand from the blogosphere that WW2:ETO is still played regularly around the US and the world. I have always maintained that if I could only have a single book or game of mine displayed on my tombstone, that would be the one.

Interview: Doug Niles (Part I)

Douglas Niles worked at TSR between 1982 and 1990, during which time he worked on many different products and game lines, most notably D&D, AD&D, Star Frontiers, and Top Secret/S.I. He was also a member of the Dragonlance design team and the writer of many novels set in TSR's game settings (such as Darkwalker on Moonshae, the very first published novel set in the Forgotten Realms). Mr Niles was very kind the many questions I put to him. The first part of his answers appear below. The second part will appear in a future post.

1. How did you first become involved in the hobby of roleplaying?

In 1977, I started work as a young high school speech teacher in Clinton, Wisconsin, a small, rural farming community in the southern part of the state. I had enjoyed strategy boardgames, especially some Avalon Hill wargames and Risk, as a teenager and college student. I also enjoyed reading sci-fi and some fantasy, notably the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I was also involved in college and community theater and through some theater contacts had learned of this mysterious game called Dungeons & Dragons; I thought it sounded like fun but by 1979, as I started my third year of teaching, I had never seen it or talked to an actual player.

In autumn 1979, one of my sophomore speech students showed me a pass saying she was to be excused from class the following day for an "interview with People magazine." This being an unusual occurrence in our farm-centric corner of the state, I asked her what that was about. She said "My dad invented this game that's getting kind of popular." (Her name was Heidi Gygax.) She told me a little bit about it – her family had just moved from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to a larger home in the country – and I told her I'd heard about D&D and that it sounded like fun. When she returned to class two days later she gave me a copy, compliments of her dad, of the classic blue box game; what would later be called the Basic Set including character levels 1-3.

I got my copy on a Wednesday, as I recall, and by that Friday night I had read the rules, prepped the basic dungeon that was included in the game, and recruited my wife and 3-4 of our young adult friends. (I was 24 at the time; none of us had kids yet.) That started a campaign that lasted for several years, expanding into the expert rules set, and finally AD&D. I began designing my own dungeons, and fantasy realms. Also I discovered and became a regular customer of the Dungeon Hobby Shop in nearby Lake Geneva, which was owned by TSR.

2. How did you become employed by TSR?

I had always wanted to be a writer but early in college had chosen teaching as a more pragmatic career path. I wrote a lot of short stories for fun (and independent study credit) in high school but by college that hobby sort of dropped out of my life. Once I got enthused about D&D, however, I began reading lots of fantasy fiction and got motivated to write again. I spent most of 1981 writing a fantasy novel in my spare time – I finished it that summer. At the end of summer, I learned through a friend at the hobby shop that TSR wanted to hire more game designers. I decided to take a shot, and applied in September, 1981. I went through a total of 5 interviews that fall. I am proud to say that through those interviews I never once mentioned that I knew Gary Gygax and had taught his daughter in high school! Instead I showed them my novel, designed a strategy mini-game at the company's request, and submitted some of my home dungeons and campaign maps. In November, they offered me a job on the design staff. It actually meant a small pay cut from my teaching salary but I leaped at the chance. I resigned my teaching job at the end of that semester and started as a professional game designer in mid-January 1982. 

The company hired a number of designers in 1981 and the first half of 1982, drawing people from as far away as Iowa, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Utah. Many of these designers had had previous professional designs published, but others, like me, were hired "off the street." I think I was unique in that not only did I not have to move to take the job, but I actually had a shorter commute (15 minutes) to Lake Geneva than the 25 minutes I had been driving to Clinton High School!

3. Your first published credits at TSR were modules X3 for Expert D&D and N1 for Advanced D&D. I recall reading somewhere that Against the Cult of the Reptile God was based on a previously existing outline. Is that correct? Was X3 similar or was it wholly your own creation?

There was a strange situation regarding new D&D adventures designed in house by TSR during 1982. I mentioned that the company had hired a lot of designers (and editors) around then. But for many months there were no projects approved for us to work on! When the company was smaller, virtually all D&D and AD&D game adventures were either written by Gary Gygax, or written by one of the few staff designers after he approved a detailed concept and outline. But by '82 he was busy with a lot of other things in his fast growing company, and wasn't taking the time to approve any design concepts. Some designers worked on other lines, like Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, and Gangbusters. Meanwhile our mid-level managers tried to set up a process that could get us working on D&D products again, since that was the company's flagship (and bestselling, by far!) line. One of those potential products was a concept that Gary had heard about and liked.

So my first actual writing project was a chance to design that adventure, which was based on an idea submitted by a member of the company's TSR/UK affiliate. I believe their chief was a friend of Gary's who had submitted a concept (not an outline) that Gary liked. It was originally called The Cult of the Reptile God, but modified to become Against the Cult of the Reptile God because that was also the beginning of the period where bad PR was starting to concern the company – D&D was getting an unfair, but kind of bad rap, among some parents, clergy, etc. So they decided to make it clear in the title that the players were intended to stop, not join, an evil cult.

I threw myself whole hog into writing that adventure, which was broken into two parts: 1) an initial reconnaissance of a village, involving lots of roleplaying and detective work as the players figured out which villagers had been taken over by a vile cult; and 2) a dungeon crawl where they discover the cult's HQ, fight their way in, and destroy it. I wrote that on an electric typewriter by the way--the company didn't have enough HP computer terminals for the new employees! (Of course, the whole system was a mainframe computer that filled a room and no doubt had less processing power than your current phone does.) Anyway, the pages stacked up quickly and my manager was pleased. I felt rather proud of myself, too.

I ate a portion of humble pie when my editor, Jon Pickens, read the module and explained many nuances of the AD&D rules that had escaped me as a "civilian." ("Your fighter has a two-handed sword. That means he can't use that shield you gave him," is one "oops" I still recall. And there were a lot more.) But the module got cleaned up and published. And, incidentally, Jon and I became good friends over the years – a friendship that continued even after I began my free lance career in 1990. Every design of mine that Jon worked on was much improved by his tireless efforts.

N1 (The "N" stood for "novice") was written as a module for level 1-3 characters. It has one encounter that required the PCs to accept the help of an NPC magic user to overcome a monster, but I took that as a fair trade in order to allow the party to face a very challenging adversary. I like to think it ends with a dramatic, action-packed and satisfying climax.

X3, The Curse of Xanathon was the second product I wrote, and was an adventure completely of my own creation. I think it was the third D&D module in the Expert line. One fallout of the expanding TSR design team was that around then AD&D and D&D were broken into two distinct product lines. Gary continued to have some involvement in creating, guiding and approving the AD&D line. The D&D system, which in '82 consisted of the Basic and Expert rules, became more of a staff coordinated effort. We had a lot more freedom to invent realms and stories in the D&D line. Eventually, the fantasy world Mystara, masterfully organized by Bruce Heard, grew out of the various D&D adventures, but I don't think that in these early years there was any real plan to tie them all together. Such was the case with Xanathon. Oddly, I don't remember nearly as much about that adventure as I do about N1.

4. The first time I personally remember seeing your name on a TSR product was 1983's Knight Hawks boxed set for Star Frontiers. I loved that set and my battered copy is a prized possession. What do you recall about the process of creating it? 

As I started at TSR, I became acquainted with the new Star Frontiers game, and as I had always been an enthusiastic fan of science fiction that was a natural fit. SF was a planetary-based RPG that did not really address space travel or space ships; but those rules had always been intended for a sequel. After I had designed several roleplaying adventures at the company and had worked there for a little more than a year, I was very pleased to be selected to design an actual game system, including board-game elements – that is, the spaceship expansion rules to accompany Star Frontiers.

The game became Knight Hawks, though that actual title came late in the process after a lot of wrangling with the company's newly formed Legal Department. It seemed that every title we suggested had potential trademark infringement issues. (Another of my colleagues in the "class of '82" new game designers was Tracy Hickman; he actually wrote a satirical song called "Trademark Jail" that I wish I remember better!)

Anyway, the game design involved creating many classes of ships, and a movement system that allowed them to be used in an RPG. After a lot of wrestling with the issue, I decided to use a gravity-based system so that ships in orbit or adrift have no gravity, and ships under acceleration or deceleration simulate gravity by the change of the ship's speed. This meant that decks, cabins and other compartments are ordered perpendicular to the hull – like the floors in a skyscraper – rather than running the length of the hull like they do in a submarine or lots of fictional (like Star Wars) spaceships. I'm not sure I made the right decision, I have to admit.

But I am glad to hear that you liked the game James! And I did get lots of feedback from other players who had a lot of fun with it. And it did allow me to break into what would become my favorite area of game design: military simulations played out on hex grid maps with counters, preferably lots of counters, representing units, ships, and other playing pieces.

Retrospective: Against the Cult of the Reptile God

Despite the fact that I rarely get to use them, I have a great fondness for low-level adventures. Even moreso, I have a great fondness for "sleepy little village is menaced by something bad" adventures. The paradigmatic example of this is Gary Gygax's The Village of Hommlet, which I praise at every opportunity, but there are many other examples of this well-worn genre of RPG scenario – too many, in the opinions of some.

I politely disagree, which is why I think kindly about Advanced Dungeons & Dragons module N1, Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Written by Douglas Niles and first published in 1982, this is, I believe, the last AD&D module to use this specific iteration of TSR's trade dress (a new one being introduced with Pharaoh later this same year). It's also a late entry in the period I've termed D&D's Golden Age and, as such, is more of a location based scenario than those of the nascent Silver Age (though not wholly, as we shall see). 

The adventure is set in the village of Orlane in the Gran March of the World of Greyhawk setting. Orlane was already a community in decline when an evil cult led by a spirit naga infiltrated it. The naga installed himself as "the Reptile God" in a dungeon in the local wilderness and set his cultists on the village. They then set about kidnapping villagers, taking them to their god, who uses his charm person ability to add them to his throng of brainwashed minions.Those who resist are slain and animated as zombies to serve as guardians of the naga's lair. 

The module largely consists of a series of location maps and keys, starting with the village of Orlane itself. Within the village, there are details of two different inns and a temple. Outside it, there are the two levels of the dungeon occupied by the cult. As written, the characters come to Orlane by rumors that something is not right in the town. Once there, they can gain additional rumors and clues by poking around and speaking with the villagers. With some work (and maybe a little luck), the characters should learn enough to make their way toward the lair of the spirit naga and put an end to his depredations.

Against the Cult of the Reptile God provides no "scenes" or set pieces or much of anything in the way of a plot beyond the one the characters create by interfering with the activities of the Reptile Cult. The closest the modules comes to that is a section detailing the activities of the cult independent of their own. Orlane is not a static environment and the cult does not simply stand in place waiting for the characters to come looking for them. One activity in which they might engage is kidnapping the characters, should they stay at a certain inn within the village, in which case one or more of them might wind up imprisoned or enthralled by the naga. Even so, this is a far cry from the heavy-handed story-driven approach seen in later AD&D modules.

The approach Niles adopts throughout is one I've come to appreciate more as the years have worn on. He trusts the players to figure out what's happening in Orlane and to act accordingly, just as he trusts the DM to be able to handle the various moving parts of the local situation without the need for explicit instructions on how to do so. N1 may be a beginning level module but it nevertheless doesn't treat its readers like children. It's little wonder why it earned an entry on the list of the 30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time.

Retrospective: Horror on the Hill

Transitional periods in history are of particular interest to me, as one order slowly fades away and another arises to replace it. In the history of Dungeons & Dragons, one such transitional period is what I've called the Electrum Age, between 1981 and 1985, during which the game, the culture that surrounded it, and the company that produced all underwent some pretty radical changes. Released right smack in the middle of this putative Electrum Age was 1983's Horror on the Hill, written by Douglas Niles. The module is intended to be an introductory adventure à la Keep on the Borderlands, but it differs enough from its illustrious predecessor that I think it worth discussing in its own right.

The basic set-up of Horror on the Hill is familiar enough: a party of low-level adventurers comes to Guido's Fort, a lonely bastion of civilization not far from the eponymous Hill, in which dwell numerous monsters and, it is said, an evil witch. That's remarkably similar to the situation presented in Keep on the Borderlands, so much so that I used to be baffled as to why TSR bothered to publish this module at all. What did it offer that Gygax had not already provided in module B2?

I have no way of knowing what the good folks at TSR had in mind when they published this, but, as an outsider, a couple of things stand out about Horror on the Hill. First and foremost, it's new. That may not seem like much, but it is. I often here old schoolers complain when an OSR publisher releases "yet another version of Keep on the Borderlands." I've come to realize that such complaints miss an important point, namely, that there are always new campaigns starting and many of those campaigns will include people who've played B2 numerous times. After a while, referees need something different, even if only slightly, with which to kick things off. That's why I can no longer find fault in an introductory module simply because it follows the basic outline of Keep on the Borderlands and then goes its own way.

The second reason TSR likely released this module was to experiment with its new presentation. Horror on the Hill has slightly updated trade dress (new D&D and TSR logos, for example), more art, and uses a lot of boxed text to aid the novice referee. None of these elements is, in itself, without precedent; you can find other modules that also possess them to varying degrees. But, as a transitional module, they're notable as signposts for what TSR had in store for the D&D game line. Speaking for myself, I really like both the cover art (by the late Jim Roslof) and the interior art by Jim Holloway, both of which evince a strain of fantastic realism that I find much more congenial nowadays than that of other artists of the same period.

The final thing I'd say about Horror on the Hill is that it's a lot more cohesive than Keep on the Borderlands. That is, there are fewer types of monsters in the Hill and their relationships are elaborated upon much more than what we see in the Caves of Chaos. (Paradoxically, Guido's Fort is not given any detail at all -- not even a map -- unlike the Keep from B2). While this gives the Hill a stronger sense of "realism," perhaps even Gygaxian Naturalism, it also makes the place a lot less varied and thus less interesting to players, a great many of whom grow tired if they fight the same creatures over and over again for too long. On the other hand, the Hill does have a rather nifty "end boss" (I feel dirty typing those words) that compares more than favorably with the minotaur in B2.

I judge Horror on the Hill more favorably now than I did back in 1983, when I saw it as little more than a knock-off of Keep on the Borderlands. I think it is that, but I also think it's more than that. Whether its unique qualities are unique enough to appeal to any given referee or player is something only they can answer.

Retrospective: The Volturnus Trilogy

This week, I'm going to deviate from my usual practice of writing posts on each adventure module in a series, in part because I'm impatient and in part because I don't think it's fair to evaluate the 1982 Volturnus modules for TSR's Star Frontiers individually. Moreso than most modules in a series, Crash on Volturnus (by Mark Acres and Tom Moldvay, with Doug Niles), Volturnus, Planet of Mystery (Acres and Moldvay) and Starspawn of Volturnus (also Acres and Moldvay) don't stand up very well on their own. Taken together, they represent a single epic adventure that draws great inspiration from classic tales of pulp science fiction. To anyone familiar with Tom Moldvay's prior works, this should come as no surprise, as he clearly drank deeply from the well of pulp literature. It's precisely for this reason that I think the Volturnus trilogy has often been judge so harshly in some quarters. Acres and Moldvay weren't trying to present a plausible, hard SF scenario but rather a rollicking pulp romp -- and they succeeded brilliantly in my opinion.

The first module in the series, Crash on Volturnus, was included with the boxed set of Star Frontiers itself. I didn't post a cover image of it here, since it consisted of a two-sided map -- one a hex map of the titular planet and another the bridge of the Serena Dawn, a starliner on which the PCs are traveling to the newly-discovered world of Volturnus. The PCs are in the employ of a nearby planetary government to determine what happened to a prior expedition sent to the unexplored planet. Shortly after arriving in the Volturnus system, the starliner carrying the PCs is attacked by space pirates, forcing them to escape in a lifeboat and crash land on the planet below. They find the planet largely inhospitable, full of deadly creatures and hazardous terrain. Eventually, they make contact with intelligent beings -- the octopoid Ul-Mor -- who will aid them only if they complete a dangerous manhood ritual that will initiate them into their tribe.

The second module, Volturnus, Planet of Mystery, picks up where the previous one left off, with the PCs now members of the Ul-Mor tribe. The PCs learn from their hosts that others like themselves have been seen in the company of another intelligent race, a tree-dwelling one called the Kurabanda. The Ul-Mor guide the PCs to the Kurabanda lands and wish them luck in their quest. As they get closer, they discover a raging battle between the monkey-like Kurabanda and space pirates, perhaps the same space pirates who marooned them on this planet. If the PCs gain the Kurabandas trust, they learn that the prior expedition had been captured by the "demons from the sky" (i.e. space pirates) two weeks previously and were taken back to their base. A raid on the base reveals the existence of yet another intelligent race, the weird Edestekai, many of whom have been enslaved by the pirates as workers in their mines. In the process of rescuing the Edestekai, the PCs find the commander of the lost expedition, who was apparently saved by a "servant of the gods," according to the superstitious Edestekai. These servants live in an underground complex far away. Should the PCs investigate -- and why wouldn't they? -- they find a place with highly advanced technology, including robots. If successful, they learn that the place was built by one more intelligent species, the Eorna, who were the original inhabitants of Volturnus and are now nearly extinct. Unfortunately, their actions causes a signal to be transmitted that alerts the vilainous Sathar (who, it seems, warred with the Eorna in the past) of events on Volturnus, thereby setting up a final showdown in the next module.

That next module, Starspawn of Volturnus, concerns efforts by the PCs to unite the Ul-Mor, Kurabanda, and the Edestekai into an alliance to fight against the Sathar invasion fleet, which is determined to wipe out all intelligent life on Volturnus (Why? That's just what bad guys do). The PCs learn from some of the surviving Eorna that they raised these three races to sentience as a possible counter against the return of the Sathar. Unfortunately, the races proved mutually hostile to one another and slow to adopt the technology of their benefactors. Now that the Sathar are on their way -- far sooner than the Eorna expected -- Volturnus' doomsday is upon it. Each race has a test the PCs must undertake to win their assistance. Failure makes the final confrontation all the harder. Along the way, they also discover that some of the Eorna's robot servitors have attained sentience, too, and this fourth faction might also be swayed to fight against the Sathar.

What follows is a massive, multi-front melee brawl involving up to a dozen individuals and vehicles per side per combat. As you may recall, the Star Frontiers boxed set came with lots of cardboard counters and maps. Starspawn of Volturnus finally gives you the chance to not only use them (that was possible in prior modules, too), but to use a lot of them at once. It's hard to describe what joy this brought me as a younger person. Sure, "realists" can kvetch about the fact that there are so few units in each engagement and thus hardly reflective of a true planetary invasion, but I could have cared less. The battles were fun and they felt appropriately like snapshots in a much larger conflict.

Is the Volturnus trilogy silly? Perhaps -- but only if you're expecting something other than pulp sci-fi from these modules, which you shouldn't be. Star Frontiers was never a "serious" SF RPG, "serious" in this case meaning a deep and insightful exploration of, well, anything. It was, however, a very enjoyable game of space opera adventure that took a lot of cues from Saturday matinee serials of the '40s and '50s. That's not to say you couldn't do more with Star Frontiers than that, but I think it more than a little unfair to expect 2001: A Space Odyssey (insert obvious joke here) when the game wasn't written with "cerebral" SF in mind. Star Frontiers was inspired by the same books and movies as was Star Wars and ought to be judged on that basis rather than any other. To my mind, when Star Frontiers was good, it could be very good and the Volturnus trilogy is very good indeed.

Retrospective: Knight Hawks

I've made no secret of my love for Traveller. It was my go-to SF RPG when I was a kid and I retain a special place in my heart for it. Despite this -- or, perhaps, because of it -- I was always keenly aware of its shortcomings as a game and one was in the area of starship combat. Don't misunderstand me: Traveller's starship combat works just fine, but it's not particularly fun or exciting. Like many aspects of Traveller, it feels a bit like an exercise in double-column bookkeeping and it's decidedly lacking in the Big Explosions® department. That's probably due to the game's literary inspirations, none of which, to my recollection, has particularly memorable space battles in it.

Consequently, I very rarely ran space battle when I refereed Traveller, an omission that tended to limit the game's appeal among my friends, most of whom not unreasonably expected that there'd be lots of them in a science fiction RPG campaign. Enter Knight Hawks, the 1983 boxed expansion to TSR's Star Frontiers. Written and designed by Douglas Niles, Knight Hawks was produced to patch a glaring hole in the original Star Frontiers boxed set: no starship rules of any kind. This was a source of much annoyance among purchasers of the game, who'd mistakenly believed that any SF RPG would necessarily include starship rules in its initial release. Whatever virtues Star Frontiers had as a game were lost in the fact that it wasn't complete. Even my friends, who generally preferred the more wild and woolly approach of Star Frontiers to Traveller, were sufficiently displeased with its lack of starship rules that they never pressured me to run it very often.

All that changed with the release of Knight Hawks. It might be an exaggeration to say that this boxed set "saved" Star Frontiers in any absolute sense, but it certainly did amongst my friends and I. Consisting of a single 64-page campaign book, a 16-page rulebook, a 16-page adventure module, a double-sided map, a sheet of cardboard counters, and some percentile dice, Knight Hawks was a terrifically complete package. Better still, it was extremely well designed. Its starship rules, which were divided into basic and advanced versions, didn't even take up all 16 pages of the rulebook, some of which was filled with examples and short scenarios. What's more, the rules were scalable, allowing the referee to use them to handle anything from one-on-one dogfights to huge fleet engagements with a dozen or more ships per side.

This scalability was what really won me over to Knight Hawks. Traveller's starship rules weren't particularly complex, but they were just complex enough that I'd never have considered using them to run a battle involving more than a handful of ships at a time. Knight Hawks, on the other hand, seemed to revel in its ability to handle such large battles, with three different "levels" of action, corresponding to amount of rules detail employed. For large battles, only the basic rules were used. For smaller engagements, the advanced rules were suggested. And for small fights in which the PCs could reasonably play a significant part, the "extra-advanced" rules, where individual character skills come into play, were suggested. But of course all three levels were, by most standards, simple enough that an experienced referee could mix and match as he felt appropriate, such as the way I used to run big battles using only the basic rules but would "zoom in" when the ship on which the PCs served became involved in combat. It was a very clever design, all the more remarkable because it took up very few pages to present.

I absolutely adored Knight Hawks. I think only the starship combat rules from FASA's Star Trek come close to eclipsing it in my affections and the FASA rules suffer from being a bit slow at times, whereas Knights Hawks was always fast and furious. Now, I don't think this style of combat is appropriate for every SF campaign. Knight Hawks, like Star Frontiers itself, has a decidedly "bubblegum space opera" feel to it rather than something more "serious." That's not a criticism, merely an observation, lest anyone get the false impression that its design is universally applicable to any science fiction game or setting.

That said, contemporary game designers would be well advised to take to heart its emphasis on simple, scalable rules presented succinctly. Knight Hawks is clear, concise, and easy-to-use, yet very flexible, making good use of a few tables and without resorting either to abstraction or a one-size-fits-all universal mechanic. Knight Hawks was very accessible and had a low buy-in, two factors that I'd love to see employed more widely in 21st century game design. This is a forgotten classic and one from which I personally derived a great deal of pleasure over the years. Maybe I need to give it a whirl again sometime ...

Retrospective: Dungeoneer's Survival Guide

If the Silver Age had a paradigmatic book, 1986's Dungeoneer's Survival Guide is a good candidate. Despite its name, the DSG wasn't really all that focused on "dungeons" in the traditional sense. Rather, its subject matter was subterranean locales, specifically caves and cave complexes -- the "wilderness" beneath the surface of the world. A better name would have been the Spelunker's Survival Guide, but I admit that it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. The DSG is also notable for having first introduced the term "Underdark" to D&D, which has proven remarkably resilient, surviving both as an appellation and as a concept virtually unchanged through multiple editions of the game, a feat even the Outer Planes have not managed.

Dungeoneer's Survival Guide covers a lot of ground, offering up an overview of the many obstacles adventurers might encounter underground, along with rules for adjudicating them. So, we're treated to discussions of cave-ins, subterranean waterways (and flooding), poisonous gas, vulcanism, oxygen deprivation, and more. These discussions all go a long way toward bringing the Underdark to life as a physical environment rather than as merely a backdrop against which to battle the drow or mind flayers. The Underdark itself is thus the biggest "monster" of them all and the DSG does an excellent job of making all these details seem integral to the creation of a challenging subterranean adventure.

When this was released, I was entranced by it. I very quickly became an advocate of the DSG and attempted to employ it in my home campaign. Being a fan of Verne and Burroughs, the visions author Doug Niles conjured up of the Underdark were difficult to resist -- a perfect antidote for a young man tired of "boring old dungeons" and looking for new and exciting ways to challenge his players in subterranean locales. In practice, all the detail and advice Niles provided was easily forgotten, however, because it (mostly) got in the way. Nice as it was to know, for example, how long a character could hold his breath or leap across a chasm, never mind the effects of underground lava flows, it was just too much for me and proved quite dispensable in play.

I still adored the book, which was fun to read and quite inspirational, but very little of its contents ever found a permanent home in my game. The exception, of course, was non-weapon proficiencies, which eventually became an integral part of AD&D. Though originally introduced in Oriental Adventures, it was in the DSG (and its 1986 twin, the Wilderness Survival Guide) that concept really took hold. Again, at the time, I thought non-weapon proficiencies were brilliant and added much needed depth to characters. In retrospect, I can see that they were a well-intentioned mistake that laid the groundwork for many of the worst excesses of 2e. But I wasn't alone in my love for them, which is why, despite their optional status in the Zeb Cook-edited Players Handbook, I never met a single player or referee who did not use them and lean increasingly on them for adjudicating almost any non-combat action in the game.

Dungeoneer's Survival Guide is also notable for popularizing another indulgence of the Silver Age: isometric maps. The DSG promoted this style of "3-D" mapping as the best way to represent the complexities of subterranean environments. And, again, I won't deny that I was much impressed with them. These maps really were beautiful to behold and did seem to make it easier to design "realistic" underworlds, with multiple elevations and the like. As with much of the Silver Age, though, functionality was sacrificed in the name of esthetics. Nice as isometric maps are to look at, they're much less useful in actual play, not to mention much more time consuming to produce than traditional orthographic maps. Nevertheless, TSR regularly used isometric maps in their products during this period.

In the final analysis, Dungeoneer's Survival Guide was a brilliant failure and emblematic of many of the trends I eventually came to dislike about the direction of AD&D in the later years of TSR. It was -- and is, I'd still contend -- an inspirational book, one whose text often conveys the beauty and wonder and horror of subterranean locales so well. As a rulebook, though, it's less than ideal, simultaneously being too nitpicky and too easily cast aside. And its intention of adding new depths (no pun intended) to both the physical environment of adventures and to adventurers themselves was another nail in the coffin of the Old Ways. It's a pity, because, despite it all, I still have a fondness for this book, even though its publication was another step down a path whose ultimate destination I strongly dislike these days.

Retrospective: Battle System

Having thought a lot about the miniatures wargaming heritage of Dungeons & Dragons lately, it was probably inevitable that I'd start to reminisce about 1985's Battle System supplement to AD&D. Designed by Douglas Niles, Battle System was an attempt to "go back to ... [the] roots" of D&D, according to the supplement's introduction. I vividly recall the appearance of this product, which I hoped would finally give me something I'd always wanted: a playable mass combat adjunct to D&D. In my opinion, this is something D&D hasn't had since the days of Chainmail and the continued lack of such a thing has played a big part in the loss of D&D's endgame by making it unnecessarily difficult for many referees to handle the large combats that are likely to occur once the PCs become rulers of their own domains.

I'm not sure that Battle System was written with these concerns in mind. Indeed, I'm not entirely sure why the product was released at all. My guess is that Douglas Niles, who was himself an avid wargamer, wanted to write it. Likewise, in 1985, D&D was in the midst of an identity crisis as it entered its Silver Age and was being buffeted by internal squabbles during Gygax's Cent-Jours (he was removed from TSR's board of directors in the fall of that year). Battle System thus comes across as a kind of schizophrenic love letter to the early days of the hobby, even as it embraces a lot of the esthetic shifts that would mark the post-Gygax era. Just take a look at that Jeff Easley cover art.

What I liked about Battle System was its seeming open-endedness. The rules were designed, according to editor Michael Dobson, to be "up to date with the full, current AD&D system ... [and] include all new magic spells, new character classes, and every monster in the entire system!" Likewise, the rules more or less required the use of a referee, since the sheer breadth of situations possible by integrating the entire AD&D system demanded that there be some living arbiter to handle unusual situations, particularly when magic was involved. This appealed to me greatly and reminded me of those guys I saw playing Napoleonics miniatures battles back in the 70s. Battle System made me feel as if I was "one of them" as I played it.

And play it I did. I've spoken before about my general lack of experience in miniatures wargaming. As intrigued by it as I've always been, I've never really had the fortitude to play any such games to any great extent. Battle System was the sole exception and I suspect it's because the rules were short (32 pages) yet comprehensive and because the boxed supplement gave me everything I need to play. There were close to 1000 cardboard counters included and this obviated the need for having huge numbers of metal minis. Granted, metal miniatures look so much better than counters, but I had neither the time nor the resources to assemble huge armies in lead, whereas it was a snap with all these counters. This enabled me to have the fantastic massed battles I expected of any battle system associated with D&D.

Over time, my enthusiasm for Battle System waned. I found the rules both too sketchy and too restrictive at times and, even as loose as they were, large battles still took many hours to play out and my friends and I simply had better ways to spend our time. I'm not at all certain that this is a flaw of Battle System itself so much as it is a statement about why miniatures gaming generally and why its connection to roleplaying have diminished over the years: time. Even in the late 80s when I was in high school, I simply wasn't willing to lavish the same attention to gaming as I once did. I wanted things to take less time and demand less of my attention than they had in the past and I suspect I wasn't the only one who felt this way.

I no longer own a copy of Battle System. I got rid of mine years ago and wish I hadn't. While I doubt I'd play it again, it'd be nice to reread it and see what memories it sparks in me. I think Douglas Niles is an underrated game designer in old school circles. His work on the Star Frontiers Knight Hawks starship combat rules was very innovative in many ways and his Against the Cult of the Reptile God is a cleverly done adventure module. Unlike a lot of more celebrated people in this hobby, Niles's work often gave me a lot of pleasure and that, in the end, is all that really matters.