Simplicity Himself

I discovered Warhammer in high school. Some friends I met in art class were into the miniatures, and brought a catalog with them to school one day. Needless to say, I was impressed. I'd never been into miniatures before that, and the old Warhammer stuff was pretty cool. That led to me playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle and buying, though never actually playing, WFRP and Rogue Trader. I didn't keep up with Warhammer, but the old stuff definitely certainly fired my imagination.

Which brings me to Simplicius Simplicissimus, Warhammer's great-grandfather (or maybe closer than that). Written in 1668 by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, it is a picaresque novel set in Germany during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). It is the story of a simple country boy who gets whisked into the big events of the day, and I would say definitely an influence on the grim world of perilous adventure presented in Warhammer ... except I don't actually know that this is true. I suppose if you're making a game/setting inspired by the Thirty Years' War in Germany, you're going to end up with something akin to a book about those same events.

The main thing that makes me think there's a link is the progression of Simplicius from career to career over the course of the book. He begins as a simple farm laborer, and then becomes a religious hermit, a fool, an outlaw and sneak thief, a dragoon, a charlatan, etc.

No trollslayers, but still ...

The book is a fun read, and the Alfred Thomas Scrope Goodrick translation I read (from Project Gutenberg) was easier going than you might expect for something written a few hundred years ago. I'll also note that the book moves along at a pretty good pace - old books are sometimes slow (because they didn't need to compete with TV), but I never had the temptation to skip ahead in Simplicius. The book isn't entirely "safe for work", but it doesn't delve too far into sex and bloody brutality. I definitely give it my recommendation as a book to read on par with most modern adventure fiction.

Literary merits aside, the book presents good fodder for fantasy gaming, Warhammer-style gaming especially. The supernatural shows up a couple times, but isn't prevalent, so it's mostly about normal people trying to make their way in a rough time and place. Here are a few passages from the book that I found particularly interesting:

This is the introduction to the hermit who takes him in. This guy is about as Lawful as the book gets:

So I plucked up heart to come out of my hollow tree and to draw nigh to the voice I had heard, where I was ware of a tall man with long greyish hair which fell in confusion over his shoulders: a tangled beard he had shapen like to a Swiss cheese; his face yellow and thin yet kindly enough, and his long gown made up of more than a thousand pieces of cloth of all sorts sewn together one upon another. Round his neck and body he had wound a heavy iron chain like St. William, and in other ways seemed in mine eyes so grisly and terrible that I began to shake like a wet dog.

A description of the soldier's life. This would apply to most old school fantasy adventurers as well:

For gluttony and drunkenness, hunger and thirst, wenching and dicing and playing, riot and roaring, murdering and being murdered, slaying and being slain, torturing and being tortured, hunting and being hunted, harrying and being harried, robbing and being robbed, frighting and being frighted, causing trouble and suffering trouble, beating and being beaten: in a word, hurting and harming, and in turn being hurt and harmed--this was their whole life.

The goings on of the aristocracy at a party - I thought it might make a good random table for behavior in inns and taverns:

'Twas indeed a wonderful pantomime to see how they did fool, and yet none wondered but I. One sang: one wept: one laughed: another moaned: one cursed: another prayed: one shouted "Courage!" another could not even speak. One was quiet and peaceable: another would drive the devil out by swaggering: one slept and was silent, another talked so fast that none could stand up against him. One told stories of tender love adventures, another of his dreadful deeds in war. Some talked of church and clergy, some of the constitution, of politics, of the affairs of the empire and of the world. Some ran hither and thither and could not keep still: some lay where they were and could not stir a finger, much less stand up or walk. Some were still eating like ploughmen, and as if they had been a week without food, while others were vomiting up what they had eaten that very day.

A list of hangover cures:

There wormwood, sage wine, elecampane, quince and lemon drinks, with hippocras, were to clear the heads and stomachs of the drinkers;

A strange spell from the book:

And no sooner had the rogue mumbled some words than there sprang out of each man's breeches, sleeves, boots and pockets, and all other openings in their clothes, one, two, three, or more young puppies. And these sniffed round and round in the tent, and pretty beasts they were, of all manner of colours, and each with some special ornament, so that 'twas a right merry sight.

If you like gore, the book has some gore. This could also work as a description of a fantasy battlefield:

The earth, whose custom it is to cover the dead was there itself covered with them, and those variously distinguished: for here lay heads that had lost their natural owners, and there bodies that lacked their heads: some had their bowels hanging out in most ghastly and pitiful fashion, and others had their heads cleft and their brains scattered: there one could see how lifeless bodies were deprived of their blood while the living were covered with the blood of others; here lay arms shot off, on which the fingers still moved, as if they would yet be fighting; and elsewhere rascals were in full flight that had shed no drop of blood: there lay severed legs, which though delivered from the burden of the body, yet were far heavier than they had been before: there could one see crippled soldiers begging for death, and on the contrary others beseeching quarter and the sparing of their lives. In a word, 'twas naught but a miserable and pitiful sight.

The effect of gunpowder on the world (i.e. look out high level fighters):

But 'twas this cause made me so great a man, that nowadays the veriest horse-boy can shoot the greatest hero in the world; and had not gunpowder been invented I must have put my pride in my pocket.

On the glories of gold (and some supernatural associations with gemstones):

Yea, I could even take upon me to prove that this same money possesses all virtues and powers more than any precious stones; for it can drive away all melancholia like the diamond: it causeth love and inclination to study, like the emerald (for so comes it that commonly students have more money than poor folk's children): it taketh away fear and maketh man joyful and happy like unto the ruby: 'tis often an hindrance to sleep, like the garnet: on the other hand, it hath great power to produce repose of mind and so sleep, like the jacinth: it strengtheneth the heart and maketh a man jolly and companionable, lively and kind, like the sapphire and amethyst: it driveth away bad dreams, giveth joy, sharpeneth the understanding, and if one have a plaint against another it gaineth him the victory, like the sardius (and in especial if the judge's palm be first well oiled therewith): it quencheth unchaste desire, for by means of gold one can possess fair women: and in a word, 'tis not to be exprest what gold can do, as I have before set forth in my book intituled "Black and White," if any man know how rightly to use and employ this information.

Probably not the best name for a game (bolded text):

And though I did no deed evil enough to forfeit my life, yet was I so reckless that, save for sorcerers and sodomites, no worse man could be found.

On random encounters in the Black Forest:

... that I should not escape from the peasants of the Black Forest, which were then famous for the knocking of soldiers on the head.

A melee:

... when we did least expect it, came six musqueteers with a corporal to our hut with their pieces ready and their matches burning, who burst in the door and cried to us to surrender. But Oliver (that, like me, had ever his loaded piece lying by him and his sharp sword also, and then sat behind the table, and I by the stove behind the door) answered them with a couple of musquet-balls, wherewith he brought two to the ground, while I with a like shot slew one and wounded the fourth. Then Oliver whipped out his terrible sword (that could cut hairs asunder and might well be compared to Caliburn, the sword of King Arthur of England) and therewith he clove the fifth man from the shoulder to the belly, so that his bowels gushed out and he himself fell down beside them in gruesome fashion. And meanwhile I knocked the sixth man on the head with the butt-end of my piece, so that he fell lifeless: but Oliver got even such a blow from the seventh, and that with such force that his brains flew out, and I in turn dealt him that did that such a crack that he must needs join his comrades on the dead muster-roll. So when the one that I had shot at and wounded was ware of such cuffs and saw that I made for him with the butt of my piece also, he threw away his gun and began to run as if the devil was at his heels. Yet all this fight lasted no longer than one could say a paternoster, in which brief space seven brave soldiers did bite the dust.

A spell to force thieves to give back their stolen goods, worth 10 sp (or more or less, depending on your system):

And since 'tis as grievous to lose such things as 'tis hard to get them, therefore the said Switzer would move heaven and earth to come by them again, and did even send for the famous devil-driver of the Goatskin, which did so plague the thief by his charms that he must needs restore the stolen goods to their proper place: for which the wizard earned ten rix-dollars.

I hope this motivates you to give the book a read, especially if you're a WFRP player or game master. Well worth the time!

Dragon by Dragon - November 1981 (55)

Getting back on the blogging track means getting back into the Dragon by Dragon articles.

This week, I'm going to take a look at Dragon #55, from November 1981. This one has a really good beginning - a cover by Erol Otus. The best thing about the cover - I have no idea what that monstrous thing is. This, to me, lies at the heart of old school games - the freedom to invent something new every game, or to add all sorts of fun details to things old and well-known without the need to invent new mechanics.

I think one of the downfalls of 3rd edition D&D was the attempt to standardize fantasy. Standardization may be important for "branding", but it's terrible for creativity. I think many corporations these days are cutting their own throats by pushing "branding" over creativity.

On to the review ...

First, a moment of righteous anger from the letters page:

"A lot of people seem to have a warped view of how to create a character. Some think you start off at 20th level with all the magic you can carry. Others have the strange notion that you get experience from taking damage. (A character in my world was nearly cut in half by a weapon hit and demanded he get experience for it: Why didn’t he just beat his head against a wall until he achieved godhood?)"

I enjoyed that bit - well said Greg Fox of Scotia, New York

Second, a note of the beginning of the end of Old School in Ed Greenwood's review of the Fiend Folio ...

"The beauty of the AD&D rule system is its careful attention to detail, “serious” (i.e., treating monsters as creatures in a fantasy world, not as constructs in a fantasy game) tone, and consistency. The FIEND FOLIO Tome mars this beauty. In its pages this DM finds too much lack of detail, too many shifts in tone, and too many breaches of consistency."

Here we see the cleaving of the playership - one side needing a "serious" imaginary world and the other just needing a fun place to play for a few hours. I'm in the latter group, and of course love the Fiend Folio. It's probably not a surprise that I don't much are for Mr. Greenwood's Forgotten Realms setting - though I mean no disrespect to Mr. Greenwood. He's a hell of a creator, and deserves great respect in the gaming world. It just sounds like we're looking for different things from our gaming.

I'll note one more line from the review:

"Perhaps it should have been a D&D® book, not one for the AD&D™ game."

Guess that's why I always liked the D&D rules better than the AD&D rules.

I will indulge my sense of humor for reviews one last time here, with this peach from a second review of the Fiend Folio.

"First, the names of the dragons are given in the wrong order. If you look in the Monster Manual under the entry indexed as “Dragon: White” you would see at the top of the description, “White Dragon (Draco Rigidus Frigidus).” The Latin name of the dragon is put in parentheses after the English name. But in the FIEND FOLIO under “Dragon, Oriental” a subtitle will read, “Li Lung (Earth Dragon),” with the Chinese name first and the English name in parentheses. Now, who is going to call this dragon “Li Lung” when “Earth Dragon” is much easier to remember? The names should have been given in reverse form (Oriental name last) for the sake of convenience, if nothing more."

The joy of writing for nerds. At least the reviewer was focusing on the big picture, and not nitpicking.

Now to the feature articles:

Dinosaurs: New Theories for Old Monsters by Lawrence Schick raises the problem we still face with these creatures that we don't face with fantasy monsters - we don't know enough. We know more now than we did then, of course, which means we could well be revising monster stats for these beasts forever. This is why I prefer using dinosaurs in my games as though they were fantasy monsters based on what you got in old movies ... with just a dash of what we now know (the potential for brilliant plummage, for example) to make them weird.

Gary Gygax has a nice article covering some of the peoples of Oerth. This was reprinted in the old Greyhawk boxed set, and I remember reading it there and thinking "Wow, I didn't realize you could make this kind of thing up." It was one of those "unknown unknowns" to me as a kid. I mean, the world is full of people, so I guess people in a D&D world will look like people in our own world, so you don't really need to describe them. I had a lot to learn about the joys of fantasy.

Katherine Kerr has a nice piece on Robin Hood (he has a price of 200 gp on his head, you know). She makes him a 12th level fighter, Chaotic Good, with some pretty high ability scores. This brings up a thought - that D&D is actually better at depicting cruel reality than heroic fantasy in some ways. After all, when we try to model heroes of fantasy literature in D&D, we have to make them very high level and usually give them very high ability scores. Much of the "evolution" of D&D over the years seems to have been an effort to make it more amenable to fantasy heroes than the original game. Sounds funny to say this, given the presence of "heroes" and "super-heroes" in OD&D.

Oh - I should add that Will Scarlet is an 8th level thief, Little John a 10th level fighter, Friar Tuck a 7th level cleric and the evil Sheriff (lawful evil, to be precise) a 6th level fighter.

"It has been recorded, in the lost scrolls of Caractos the Scribe, of which only fragments now exist, that... from the ice-world of Northumbria, many ages ago, there came a youth named Niall, son of Thorkon the Mighty, who was destined to roam the world as he knew it, and to whom was to be given the appellation, the Far-Traveler..."

So begins another tale of Niall by Gardner Fox.This is good, old-fashioned pulp barbarian stuff, so worth a read for old school sorts like myself.

Speaking of old school, this issue has a Basic D&D adventure called The Creature of Rhyl by Kevin Knuth (could this be him?).

The adventure scores one old school point with reversed names - King Namreh (Herman) and Prince Laechim (Michael). It involves treking into the wilderness to hunt a giant monster and rescue the prince from an evil magician.

My only quibble with this dungeon is the presence of some pretty decent magic items on the upper level without too much guarding it. This may be because there are a couple tough monsters lurking in the lower levels that have to be dealt with. There is a nice puzzle room here, and overall it seems like a good rescue mission sort of adventure.

Pat Reinken (perhaps this fellow?) has a nice article on the tactics of escaping danger, mostly covering magic items that help you get away from danger in one piece.

The Dragon's Bestiary features the Devil Spider with awesome Erol Otus artwork, which makes sense since Otus invented the monster. The monster is predicated on trying to escape from sticky webs, in such a manner as to make for an exciting fight. It's a tough monster, so don't play with it unless you're high enough level not to end up spider food.

Jeff Brandt introduces the Surchur, which is quite a horrifying thing, humanoid with a mass of tentacles in place of a head. It's a mid-level monster that doesn't have many tricks up its sleeve, but which could still give a party lots of problems. Kind of a good Lovecraftian thug.

Ed Greenwood presents the dyll in this issue, essentially a swarm of flying leeches.

The final monster is Craig Stenseth's poltergeist, the spirit of chaotic gnomes from Limbo and Gladsheim sent to the Material Plane to spread chaos. Nice origin idea for them.

Speaking of monsters - the magazine reviews a cool miniature called the "gorillasaurus", which is actually a hybrid of gorilla and rhinoceros (so maybe gorillaceros would have been a better name). The image is terrible in the magazine, but I found a good shot at the AD&D 2nd Edition Holdout blog that tells a good story about using it in-game.

For comic fans, this issue has an early Snarfquest, a nice Wormy entry and a What's New?.

As always, I'll leave you with some Tramp and his wonderful little tree trolls ...

 God bless - be kind to one another - and have some fun for crying out loud!

Dragon by Dragon - October 1981 (54)

Has it been that long since the last Dragon by Dragon? Time flies and time is tight, but there should always be time to travel down through that great gaming oak to the roots and ferment in the brew of our elders.

What the hell am I talking about? The bourbon is doing its job. Let's get started on issue 54 of the venerable Dragon and see what inspiration we can pull from this issue. Yeah, this will be less review and more "what's cool that we can use today".

Cool Cover

How about those angry trees on the cover by Jack Crane. How about a high level druid illusion spell:

Maddening Wood
Level: Druid 7
Area of Effect: One 6-mile hex of woodland per druid level
Duration: One season

The druid enchants a woodland with terrible phantasms. When one approaches the woods proper, the trees loom over them and seem to animate, with grotesque faces and bony claws. Creatures with fewer than 3 HD must pass a saving throw vs. fear or be frightened away. Those who are not afraid initially may plunge into the woods, but things grow worse before they get better. With each step, a save is required for creatures one additional HD higher (i.e. one step in and creatures with 4 HD must save, the next requires creatures with 5 HD to save, and so on). If a creature becomes frightened, all creatures with fewer HD must save again. As one moves deeper into the woods, the wind whips up, the owls hoot, the foliage closes in and becomes more noisome ... until one has gone 10 paces in, when the illusory magic ceases and the woods become normal once again.

Eternal Complaint Dept.

"My “lack of realism” argument is very well supported in all of the AD&D entries. By taking a close look you will find an incredibly large amount of monsters in a relatively small area, which, in most cases, has not the means to support even a few of the creatures presented."

Ruins: Rotted and Risky - but Rewarding by Arn Ashleigh Parker (R.I.P.)

Here's the first article I dug in this issue, covering ruins - the much neglected cousin to dungeons in D&D. The article contains ideas on designing ruined cities (and thus non-ruined cities), and I love the asumptions made in the article. These are fantasy cities from the mind of Mr. Parker, and they're awesome. Here's a few thoughts I enjoyed:

1. Give the players a map showing the perimeter of the ruins, with credit going to the party thief. This saves time, and doesn't give too much away.

2. Go through the map and decide which buildings are monster lairs; don't determine what the building actually is until the players investigate.

3. The table of buildings that might be in a ruin (and thus also useful for randomly determining building use in a city)

4. Random bank vault contents! (also useful in modern games, I would think)

5. "The chance for a given thief to open the lock on a bank vault is computed by multiplying the height of the vault (in stories) by 20, and subtracting that number from the thief’s normal percentage chance to open a lock. Thus, a 17th level dwarven thief with a dextereity of 17, who would have an adjusted open-locks chance of 119% for normal locks, has only a 49% chance of cracking a third-story vault, and no chance to open a vault on the sixth story, because the adjustment for the vault’s height (6x20=120) is greater than 119."

This is what made AD&D great.

6. Private residences are 1d4 stories high. 10% are unusual and were owned by ...

7. How long does it take to find a particular building:

The Righteous Robbers of Liang Shan P'o by Joseph Ravitts

Cool article with NPC stats for some bad boys of the Water Margin. They include Kung Sun Sheng ("Dragon in the Clouds"), Tai Chung ("The Magic Messenger"), Chang Shun ("White Stripe in the Waves"), Li K'uei ("The Black Whirlwind") and Shih Hsiu ("The One Who Heeds Not His Life").

This is followed up by a Giants in the Earth covering E. R. Eddison's Four Lords of Demonland.

I Want One of These

Would also be a great game - Wizard Dragon Dwarf Assassin

Beware the Jabberwock by Mark Nuiver

This one presents stats for the Jabberwock, along with a stunning piece of art. The B&T stats are:

Jabberwock

Type: Monster
Size: Huge
Hit Dice: 10 to 12
Armor Class:
Attack: 2 claws (4d4), bite (3d12 + swallow) and tail (2d12)
Movement: 20 ft.
Save: 12
Intelligence: Average
Alignment: Chaotic (NE) or Neutral (N)
No. Appearing: 1
XP/CL:

SQ-Surprised (1 in 6), darkvision 90 feet, detect vorpal blade (1 mile range)

Notes: Jabberwocks mature as do dragons. They have a fearsome gaze (creatures less than 4+1 HD; frightens; frightened creatures must pass a second save or be paralyzed with fear for 2d4 rounds). Tail attacks anyone behind the creature, with a -2 penalty to attack.

Cavern Quest by Bill Fawcett

Worth mentioning this module for AD&D, which is also a sort of quiz with a system for scoring. It's strange, but probably worth checking out, especially if you want to prove you're better at AD&D than a friend ... or foe! Each room gives you a number of options, usually preparations and actions. Based on your choices, you score points and prove your superiority over other dungeoneers. Cavern Quest could be a fun thing to run on G+ using the polling function, but it is probably too long to make it work.

Cash and Carry for Cowboys by Glenn Rahman

If you need some price lists for an Old West game, this is worth checking out. I wish I'd seen it before writing GRIT & VIGOR.

Bottle of Undead by Bruce Sears

A magic item in the Bazaar of the Bizarre. It is basically an efreet bottle that spews [01-20] a ghost, [21-35] banshee, [36-55] 1d3 spectres, [56-70] 1d2 vampires or [71-00] 1d6 wraiths.

This Makes Me Happy ...

 

As always, I leave you with Tramp ...

Shadowlord! - A Timely Review

Once upon a time, a young me and my best friend Josh played a wondrous game of universal conquest. I have no idea where Josh got the game - maybe a gift, maybe stole it from his brother's room. No idea. But it was awesome. There was this board with all these circles on it, and cards with cool pictures of people, including this one really hot chick that Josh and I both wanted on our team, and you did stuff in it and ... stuff.

That was around about 1985, and years later I had no freaking idea what game I had played and enjoyed so much, and a few searches based on my scanty memories yielded nothing.

And then, one day in 2017, I was searching games on Etsy for some inspiration and found it. Shadowlord!! There are two exclamation points there because the game has a name ending with an exclamation point. I bought the game on Etsy, it was delivered a couple weeks ago, and last night, I finally played it again, this time with wife and daughter.

So how did it go?

Still awesome. Shadowlord! is a cool strategy game, with some nice random events and a requirement to think things through. This, of course, is why I was out on my second turn after going all in on a silly gambit. I was stupid, and the rules rightfully destroyed me.

The game involves playing one of four factions led by the Fire Lord (actually a lady), Air Lord, Water Lord and Earth Lord. The board is divided into numerous "galaxies", including the "Lost Fortress" at the center of the board where resides the Shadowlord. The Shadowlord has many minions, who pop up in the galaxies and who can be used to mess with the other players. On your turn, you roll a random event (usually good for you), build spaceships, move around the board finding new allies in the galaxies to add to your faction and maneuvering to fight. I won't go deep into the mechanics - the rules take a little while to learn, but they seem sound to me and after a few goes the game is pretty easy to play. The art is cool - the game was published in 1983, and the graphics show it in a good way. The game also has a time tracker - eventually, the Shadowlord takes control of the whole universe and beats everyone if the players take too long to win the game.

The game we played ultimately came down to wife vs. daughter, and really to my daughter's quest to rescue one of her captured merchants, Svein, from one of my wife's warriors. Svein, you see, is an anthropomorphic pig, and my daughter loves pigs. Yes, it all boiled down to a galactic Pig War, which my daughter ultimately lost. It was getting late, so we didn't play things out completely to have my wife take on the Shadow Lord for control of the universe, but we had a good time.

Dragon by Dragon - September 1981 (53)

Glory be - I finally have enough time this weekend to do another Dragon by Dragon, this one on issue #53 from September 1981.

The first thing I noticed about this issue was the cover. This was not an issue I had as a young nerd, but the cover painting by Clyde Cauldwell, which makes it seem very familiar.

I started playing D&D in 1984, introduced by a friend, Josh Tooley, in 6th grade. He watched his older brother play with some friends, and so with a hand-drawn map on notebook paper, a d6 and a vague recollection of what went on, he ran me through a dungeon during recess. I was hooked, and convinced my parents to get me the game - in this case Moldvay Basic purchased at Toys 'r' Us - for Christmas. Good times.

So, let's see what TSR had to offer 35 years ago.

One of the best things about these magazines in the old days were the advertisements. All these games - and God knew what they were - with all this art. It was all so new to me when I was a kid. Take this ad from I.C.E.

I never had any of their games, but I always admired the art in the adverts - and can you have a cooler name for a company than Iron Crown Enterprises?

Jake Jaquet's editorial this issue was just the tip of the iceberg ...

"There is a bit of a new trend in gaming that I find a bit disturbing, and perhaps it should be food for thought for all of us. I refer to the recent interest in so-called “live” games, especially of the “assassin” or “killer” varieties."

I remember back in 7th grade some kids running T.A.G. - The Assassinatiom Game. All who participated had to draw the name of another player and kill them - which meant pointing at them and saying "bang". The victim would then hand his slip over to his assassin, and so it would go until the game was over. Alas, but 2nd period it was all over - a couple morons tried to assassinate their victims in class, and the administration called the game off. I suppose now we would have all been expelled.

Enough of this memory lane stuff, let's get on to the offerings:

"Why Isn't This Monk Smiling?" by Philip Meyers brings up the shortcomings of the monk class, and tries to improve on it. The point is actually well made - the idea of suffering through many very weak levels to be powerful at high levels may appear balanced, but it doesn't work well in practice. To fix things, Philip introduces a new level advancement chart, plays with the rate at which the monk improves its abilities, and adds some new special abilities, some of them psychic. He also makes it easier for the monk to hit those higher levels, without always having to fight another monk.

The monk isn't out of the fire yet. Steven D. Howard writes in "Defining and Realigning the Monk" a few questions and answers about the monk, mostly to cover why they can't do some things (answer - I guess it wouldn't be lawful) and how to once again handle the whole limited number of monks over 7th level. This issue's Sage Advice keeps the hits coming, with more discussion of the good old monk.

Dude - I had those. Still have some of them, as a matter of fact. Love that packaging, and I always dug that logo.

Next up is Andrew Dewar's "The Oracle". This character class always seems like a obvious choice for gaming, but because it deals with the future (which turns out, it is not possible to predict), pulling it off is always tough, both in terms of the abilities, and making it a playable class. Of course, the oracle here is an "NPC class", meaning not meant for players, but we all played them anyways.

The oracle can cast divination spells, and can use some other divination abilities. It must have an Int and Wis of 14 or higher. Oracles can be human, elf or half-elf. Advancing beyond 11th level requires the oracle to challenge a higher level oracle to a game of riddles (which makes no sense if this is an NPC class ... and there is actually half a page spent discussing advancing in level over 11th level).

The innate abilities are various forms of divination - rhabdomancy, arithomancy, etc. - which the class has a percentage chance of using successfully at different levels.

Lewis Pulsipher has a nice introduction to heraldry in "Understanding Armory". It's a great primer for those interested in the subject.

Roger E. Moore has the lowdown on "Some Universal Rules - Making Your Own Campaign - and Making It Work", which covers exactly what he says. He gives a step-by-step on how he designed an original campaign world, based on nothing but his imagination. He also gives a nice set of ways from getting from one universe to another:

1. Cross-universal caves - always go from one world to another.
2. Teleport chains - a length chain of a weird metal that, when surrounding a group and the ends joined pops them into another world.
3. Rings or amulets - like the fabled Ring of Gaxx
4. Rooms and corridors at the bottom of a dungeon
5. Cursed scrolls
6. Angry wizard with a new spell
7. Wish
8. Magical items causing etherealness
9. Psionic probability travel
10. Magic spells (astral spell, plane shift)
11. Mutational planar travel (i.e. Gamma World)
12. Artifacts
13. Advanced technology
14. Acts of the gods

He also notes Dorothy's ruby slippers

Judith Sampson has a really interesting article called "Adventuring With Shaky Hands", in which she describes playing the game with choreo-athetoid cerebral palsy. Worth a read.

In "Larger than Life", David Nalle covers "The Bogatyrs of Old Kiev". Here are a few highlights:

Prince Vladimir I, The Saint, is a LG 13th level fighter in +5 chainmail with a +3/+4 broad sword. Ilya Muromets is  a LG 20th level fighter - a Cossack with long blond hair - with a mace that scores 2d10 damage.

He also has stats for Baba Yaga, though I don't know how they compare to the later version in the famous Dancing Hut adventure.

Speaking of adventures, this issue has "The Garden of Nefaron" by Howard de Wied. This adventure won first place in the Advanced Division IDDC II, so it has that going for it, which is nice. This puppy includes some wilderness and a dungeon, and is meant for a large group of relatively high level characters. It also includes some nice Jim Holloway art, one of my faves.

The dungeon has a ki-rin as its caretaker, there are corridors and rooms filled with magic mists, illusions and a really great map (with Dyson-esque cross-hatching).

#53 also has some Top Secret material by Merle M. Rasmussen, with scads of spy equipment.

The Dragon's Bestiary covers Argas (by James Hopkins II), lawful good reptilian humanoids that gain powers from devouring magic, Oculons (by Roger E. Moore), which are enchanted monsters created by magic-users as guardians (and which look super cool) and Narra (by Jeff Goetz), which are lawful human-headed bulls.

Len Lakofka has some extensive info on doors in his Tiny Hut and Matt Thomas does some work on the AD&D disease rules in "Give Disease a Fighting Chance".

If you like triffids, you'll like "The Way of the Triffids" by Mark Nuiver. Let's do a triffid in Blood & Treasure stats:

Triffid

Type: Small to Large
Size: Plant
Hit Dice: 6
Armor Class: 7
Attack: Stinger (10′/1d3 + poison)
Move: 10′
Save: 14
Intelligence: Low
Alignment: Neutral (N) with evil tendencies
No. Appearing: 1
XP/CL: 600/7

They can hide in foliage with 94% chance of success, and they attack with a stinger. The stinger requires two saves vs. poison. If the first is saved, it means instant death. If the second is failed it means blindness and 2d4 additional points of damage.

For the Traveller fans, Dennis Matheson presents "Merchants Deserve More, Too", which covers character creation for merchants.

Another great ad. I'd dig one of these shirts.

Besides reviews and such, that's it for September 1981 ... except for the comics.Here's a dandy from Will McLean ...

And though no Wormy this month, here's one of the nifty D&D comics by Willingham ...

Khellek shouldn't be confused with Kellek

"That's the pepper - right down the middle!"

Or Kelek, Evil Sorcerer

Apparently a popular name among magic-users.

Have fun, guys and gals!

Dragon by Dragon - August 1981 (52)

With the 2nd edition of Blood & Treasure essentially done (well, almost done), I can get back on track with these Dragon reviews. Number 52 is from August of 1981, and features a Boris Vallejo cover of a butterfly-winged dragon and beautiful naked woman ... which of course is a rarity for a Boris painting. Boris gets a little full article inside the magazine as well.

So - I've got Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the television and a gin gimlet in my belly, and I'm ready to show off the bits and pieces that I found useful and/or inspirational in #52 ...

First and foremost, a nice piece of comic/advertising work by Bill Willingham, one of my favorites from the olden days.

This involves the adventurers Auric, Tirra and the wizard Khellek (who does not appear to be this guy - scroll down a bit). Auric is an ill-armored fighter, Tirra could be a thief or fighter and Khellek is a wizard. They tangle briefly with a jackalwere and then ... to be continued.

The first real article is dedicated to the much maligned cleric class. "The Role of the Cleric - Warriors with Wisdom" is by Robert Plamondon, and it does a nice job of explaining the class, some of its inspirations and ways to play it well. If the image below, by Jim Holloway, doesn't make you want to play the class, I don't know what will ...

The article has a few nice bits that might stir the creative juices of players and GM's out there, such as a list of acts of worship, in order of potency:

1. Thinking religious thoughts.
2. Formal prayer.
3. Attending rites or church services.
4. Feasts, festivals, fasts, self-punishment, vigils- as part of religious rites.
5. Sacrifice of valuables.
6. Dying in a holy conflict.
7. Killing an enemy in a holy conflict.
8. Sacrifice of an unbeliever.
9. Sacrifice of an unwilling believer.
10. Sacrifice of a willing believer.

#10 seems like a dicey prospect for Lawful clerics.

Douglas Loss adds a bit more with his article "The Land is My Land ...", including this bit about clerics and swords, including this from The Song of Roland ...

Turpin of Rheims, finding himself o’erset,
With four sharp lance-heads stuck fast within his breast,
Quickly leaps up, brave lord, and stands erect.
He looks on Roland and runs to him and says
Only one word: “I am not beaten yet!
True man never failed while life was in him left!”
He draws Almace, his steel-bright brand keen-edged;
A thousand strokes he strikes into the press.
Soon Charles shall see he spared no foe he met,
For all about him he’ll find four hundred men,
Some wounded, some clean through the body cleft,
And some of them made shorter by a head.
    — The Song of Roland, Laisse 155

So Turpin got to swing a sword, why doesn't your cleric? Well, to start off with, Turpin also doesn't get to cast spells or turn undead. Douglas thinks the rule should be thrown out, because its not "realistic" and because in AD&D the mace is as good as sword. I disagree - swords are more than just a damage range, but the "no sharp weapons" rule also takes many magic weapons out of a cleric's hands, thus helping the old fighter stay relevant.

Douglas Loss is back with "The Sense of Sacrifices", and this is a neat one about the chances of deities granting clerics spells they aren't high enough in level to cast. It all hinges on sacrifices of inanimate objects (valuable or symbolic, of course), animals and sentient creatures of a wildly different alignment than the cleric. To boil it down - 2% per 100 gp value of inanimate objects, symbol items 5%, animals 2% (or 3% if it is favored by the deity) and 5% for sentient beings. The chance shouldn't be higher than 50%, and each subsequent miracle should have a 5% penalty applied if the cleric tries this too often.

Sage Advice is cleric-centered as well. I enjoyed how this answer began:

Q: What happens when a Resurrection or a Raise Dead is cast on an undead?

A: Hmmm. It stands to reason ...

In other words - crap, we hadn't thought of that.

For lovers of the old school, the cleric stuff is followed by two articles concerning the new Basic D&D set. The first is written by J. Eric Holmes, author of the first edition, and the second by Tom Moldvay himself. Holmes has the longer article, and it explains the hows and whys of Basic D&D. Holmes fans have probably already read it, but if they haven't, I would highly suggest it.

For modern gamers, Paul Montgomery Crabaugh's "The Undercover Job Guide" can be useful ... especially if they're setting a game in 1981. Written for TOP SECRET, it covers a number of jobs and gives you some ideas on their access to travel and their salaries. Here are a couple of items:

Home Economics: travel potential moderate to high; starting salary $20,000/year (variable); almost no connection with what the field is normally thought of to include: agents in this field will very likely be chefs, or connected with the creation of fashion or decoration: female agents have a good chance of being models (salary quite variable).

Physical Education: travel potential high; starting salary quite variable; almost certainly an agent will be an athlete in this AOK: by preference, one in a sport played throughout much of the world. Tennis is an excellent choice; golf, soccer and track & field are also good.

Yeah, a pair of spies who work in a high school would be pretty fun.

This issue's Giants in the Earth by Katharine Brahtin Kerr covers Prospero (Lawful Good 14th level magic-user), his pals Ariel (a neutral "high-grade" air elemental - I would have gone sylph, mostly because Ariel is a sylph) and Caliban the chaotic evil half-orc, and Circe (chaotic neutral 18th level magic-user). Here's a nice bit ...

The best way to get the upper hand over Circe is to possess the strange herb known as moly. The god Hermes gave Ulysses some of this herb, said to grow only in Olympus. With it, Ulysses mastered Circe’s magic and made her turn his crew back into men from swine. If the DM wants moly available in the campaign, it should either be fantastically expensive or else a gift to a cleric from his or her god.

If a character wears moly, all of Circe’s polymorph spells will fail against that character, and the power of her other spells against that character will be weakened considerably; the character should get a +2 on all saving throws against her magic. Circe cannot touch this herb to steal it away, nor can her maidservants.

For more information on moly, click HERE.

We also learn Circe's spell list: 1st-charm person, comprehend languages, friends, read magic, sleep; 2nd-detect invisibility, ESP, forget, ray of enfeeblement, web; 3rd-fly, hold person, dispel magic, slow, suggestion; 4th-charm monster, confusion, fear, polymorph other, massmorph; 5th-animal growth, feeblemind, hold monster, passwall, transmute rock to mud; 6th-control weather, enchant an item, legend lore; 7th-charm plants, mass invisibility, vanish; 8th-mass charm, polymorph any object; 9th-imprisonment.

Dragon #52 also has a groovy little Gamma World adventure by Gary Jaquet called "Cavern of the Sub-Train". This might sound like a subway romp in the ruins of New York, but it's actually a romp through something more like Elon Musk's hyperloop. This network spanned the entire North American continent.

The adventure is left open-ended, so should come in handy to folks playing post-apoc games.

Victor Selby and Ed Greenwood introduce the Rhaumbusun in Dragon's Bestiary. Here's a quick B&T-style statblock:

Rhaumbusun, Small Monster: HD 1+2; AC 13; ATK 1 bite (1d3); MV 20'; SV 16; Int Low; AL Neutral (N); NA 1d2; XP/CL 100/2; Special-Gaze attack (40' range; paralyze for 3d4 turns)

Lewis Pulsipher has some interesting, peaceful gas-filled beasts called pelins. Not much for a fight, but they're semi-intelligent, so maybe they could be helpful in completing a quest if the players are smart enough to be nice to them and attempt communication.

Michael Kluever gives a nice history of siege warfare in "Knock, Knock!". Worth a read for people new to the subject.

Up next are three - count 'em three - takes on the bounty hunter class by Scott Bennie, Tom Armstrong, and Robert L Tussey and Kenneth Strunk. Lets judge them by the most relevant part of the class - the class titles!

The use of revenger, head hunter and manhunter are nice, but the inclusion of esquire by Armstrong wins the competition. Anything that can bring Bill & Ted into the conversation can only be good for a D&D game.

Hey - what the heck is this?

A Google search brings up a computer game designed for use with the Fantasy Trip. Pretty cool!

There are reviews of some cool miniatures from Ral Partha (hill giant, storm giant, cold drake), Heritage USA (hill giant and beholder and superheroes and supervillains), Castle Creations (condor and skull splitter giant), Penn-Hurst/Greenfield (a plastic castle), Citadel (ogre, giant spider) and Grenadier (the dragon's lair), as well as Basic Role-Playing, TIMELAG and Dungeon Tiles.

Not a bad issue - more advice-centric than number-y, but you get bounty hunters and a paralyzing lizard, so what the hey!

I leave you as always with Tramp ...

Remember - never trust gamers discovered in the wild!!!

Lords of Light? Not Quite

I finished reading Thundar, Man of Two Worlds, last night and this is my promised book report. As always, I will keep it short and try to avoid spoiling it for folks who want to read the book themselves.

First and foremost, the book is an homage to the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was published in 1971, but reads more like something written in the 1930s (for good and ill). The author, John Bloodstone, is really writer Stuart J. Byrne. Byrne wrote pulp sci-fi back in the 1950s and 1960s, wrote a couple episodes of Men into Space (which I kind of dig) and a couple movies in the 1970s, and later wrote translations of Perry Rhodan stories.

The book concerns the adventures of Michael Storm, who is a mountain climber and swordsman (all such characters need to have a knowledge of sword fighting before they wind up in a swords and sorcery setting) who winds up in the far future through his reckless daring. Once in the far future, he gets into all sorts of trouble - again, I don't want to get into specifics, because blabbing about them would ruin all the good (which is little) this book has to offer.

Unfortunately, the book lacks ERB's creativity, or his pace reminiscent of old movie serials, with each chapter ending with the protagonists in a terrible situation, and the next beginning with how they escaped it ... only to fall into another by the chapter's end. You get a little of this in Thundar, but not enough, and like most fan fiction it doesn't completely gel. The book was clearly intended to be followed by others which, to my knowledge, did not materialize.

Now, as to whether this book could have influenced the Thundarr the Barbarian cartoon (1980-1982) ... maybe, but only in very small ways. If it had any influence, I would guess it was a matter of the creators of the cartoon having a hazy remembrance of the book. Cartoon Thundarr looks a little like the guy on the cover, but the resemblance ends there. There is no Ookla the Mok (and the Mogg in the book can only have influenced the word "mok", and nothing else about old Ookla), though there is a "dawn man" called Koom (and he's pretty cool - more Koom would have made for a better book in my opinion). There is no Princess Ariel (though there is a Princess Cylayne, who does help Thundar and mostly serves as a Dejah Thoris stand-in to motivate our hero). There is some super science, but no sorcery. There is no sun sword, though there is a blade of Damascus steel. There was a catastrophic cosmic event that screwed up the Earth, but the story is set a million years in the future, so there are no remnants of the 1980s. In short ... very little influence. There is suggestion that this world was the origin of the advanced peoples of South America, but the people we meet in this future earth don't apparently resemble them at all - I kept expecting this and was disappointed.

Can gamers get any inspiration from the book? Maybe, but I doubt it. The world building is pretty simplistic. You have mountains and a jungle and an inland sea and two rival cities on its shores, and not much else. I would expect that every DM's first stab at making up a campaign world was as good as anything you would get in this book. There's almost a cool hook involving technology's influence over the world, but it remains vague, perhaps to be dealt with in more detail in the later books that didn't happen. Even if technology had been more fully explained, it mostly shows up as a deus ex machina, which wouldn't be too handy to a DM writing a campaign world. The way Michael Storm ends up in the far future could be copied for a game - it was pretty fun,  but not revolutionary.

Final grade: C-

Dragon by Dragon - July 1981 (51)

If I hadn't been so busy with writing 2nd editions, I could have done this review in the same month it was published, just 35 years later. Oh well - can't always get things done as quickly as you would like. On with the review ...

Let us begin with one of my favorite bits of old D&D lore - the definitive statement regarding make believe:

"First, an AD&D magic-user is not a fighting class. He or she resorts to a dagger, dart or quarter staff as a last resort. His or her main interest (read, only interest) is magic."

And now you know!

In "Make Your Own Aliens" by Roger E. Moore we have a nice set of table for making random alien species for Traveller. You don't see too many "modern" issues of Dragon kicking off with articles for a non-TSR game, and there are more to come. As to the article's utility, let's make a random alien:

Our new species lives primarily on land. They have bilateral symmetry and one brain, so they probably won't be too alien to us. Their brain is in a head, they have no tail and they have 2 feet (I'm starting to think I'm randomly creating human beings). They have 2 arms ... but only three fingers and toes on each hand/foot. They also have plantigrade feet which are more like paws than human feet. These aliens are omnivorous hunters, so they are communal, cooperative and aggressive. They weight 50 kg (or 110 lb.) on average. They have no natural weaponry or armor and are covered with feathers or down. They are warm-blooded creatures, give live birth and have two sexes. Their primary sense is auditory, and unlike humans they have light-enhancing vision and heat-tolerant tactile sense.Their auditory organs on on their body rather than head. The roll of the dice say they don't have any special abilities, but I'm going to roll one anyways and come up with a chameleon-like body covering.

Not too bad - quite a few rolls, but not too many. I'm deciding they are mostly covered with down that can change color to blend in with woodland settings. They have a mane of longer feathers around their neck, and this is what they hear through. I'll assume they are a primitive people - something like bad-ass barbarians - who are hired as mercenaries by criminal types as body guards.

This article is followed by four more Traveller articles, including one by Marc Miller. Since I've never played the game, I can't really tell you if they're great or not, but if you play the game, checking out this issue may be worth your while.

At this point, it's worth noting a couple ads of interest. The first is a sign that the big boys were getting interested in this weird D&D thing that was all the rage ... Mattel's Dungeons & Dragons game! It looks like a real hoot - just a wee bit before I was aware of the game, so I don't remember seeing any. Alas.

Our next ad of interest comes from Mr. Arneson and Mr. Snyder - Adventures in Fantasy, a complete and consistent system of fantasy rpgs (no shot intended there, I'm sure). This is the second edition of the game, produced after Arneson bought back the rights from Excalibur Games using his settlement money from TSR. Ah - the drama of the rpg industry!

Up next we get back into D&D territory with William Lenox's Winged Folk, a new monster. They look like humans with wings, and they are essentially humans with wings with slightly better Hit Dice and AC. Great art with the article, though, and I like the bit about females have 1d4+1 carvings made from wood, gems, etc. Of course, there will only ever be one group of winged folk for me.

Hell yeah! These guys also get some info on being used as playable race, and honestly, the art by Todd Lockwood is pretty great.

Lakofka has an article about what it takes for a character to become 1st level. It gives some XP requirements to become 1st level, after going through a couple pre-1st level stages. Fighters, for example, can begin as 0-level recruits, then move on to becoming 0-level men-at-arms before finally becoming 1st level veterans. I think I like the level titles best (of course I would). It has a bit more about running 0-level characters - good stuff.

If you're into RuneQuest, or just dig their rules for cults you should check out Eric Robinson's "The Worshippers of Ratar" for an example of one

I know nothing of Metagaming's MicroGame #2: Chitin, so I can't comment much on the article "A New Breed of Bug" by Ben Crowell, but I do like the art by Paul Jaquays.

Up next are two articles addressing the Lawful Good alignment, and specifically how it impact paladins. This was always a popular topic in the old days - much argued over, much lamented. The prolific Roger E. Moore wrote "It's Not Easy Being Good" and Robert J. Bezold added "Thou Shalt Play This Way: Ten Commandments for Paladins". I can only imagine how many letters in subsequent issues of Dragon will address these articles.

If you like mini-games, you'll like this issue, for it includes "Search for the Emperor's Treasure". It has a map and counters and looks like it's lots of fun.

How about this questionaire in this issue's The Electronic Eye?

How many big disks do you have? Paddles?

Also, special mention for the most tortured spelling of "Basics" ever ...

About the only reference I found was on the Internet Archive.

The winged folk were a bonus in this issue, because we still get a "Dragon's Bestiary" by Mark Cummings. He created a fun monster called the Dark Dweller, close kin to trolls, but 1000 times better because of this ...

Yep, they ride the Antrodemus dinosaur! Underground!! This issue also has stats for Pirahna Bats!!! Good for the DM, bad for the players.

All in all, I declare this a groovy issue, mostly for the monsters, all of which would have a place in my campaigns.

As always, I leave you with Tramp.

That Wormy will never be a theatrical animated film is really sad. Sometimes, stories don't have happy endings.