What are these strange...urges?

First off, hello to all the new readers! I can't believe I'm coming up on eighty now. Unexpected, but very welcome.

Anyway, as those of you who've read the older posts around here already know, I started gaming with the chance find of a badly-scuffed but fondly-remembered copy of Moldvay's Basic D&D rulebook that I chanced upon at a thrift store in 1990 when I was twelve years old (no box, though, so I missed out on the Keep, dice, and crayon).

My first point of contact with "the hobby" (as opposed to the few friends I played with in my small mountain hometown of Big Bear, CA) was when I began reading Dragon Magazine in 1991.

So why reiterate all this now? Because just the other day I pulled issue Dragon #175 (my first!) off the shelf for a nostalgic re-reading and I found myself paying more attention to the ads than to anything else. Specifically: The ads for play-by-mail games.

I've never actually played a PBM, and I suspect that their popularity was very much on the decline even back in 1991. Case in point: Personal computers and email were apparently becoming widespread enough that these very same Dragon issues also had ads for the earliest large online RPG games, like the original Neverwinter Nights.

Still, one ad for Flying Buffalo's Heroic Fantasy in particular brought back cool memories. A group of adventurers charging what looked to be a giant cat-bear monster erupting from a pile of skulls. One of the adventurers, amusingly, was a tiny topless (!) female pixie creature wielding a pencil-sized spear. The text promised "...a play-by-mail game of magic and mayhem; where you control a party of humans, elves, dwarves, fairies, leprecons, ogres, or even a troll or giant." Younger me was intrigued, but sadly also cash-strapped.

So I decided that I was going to Google Heroic Fantasy, just for the fun of it. Maybe I'd find some message board or blog posts from old players reminiscing about the game and I could get some idea of just what I'd missed.

Turns out Heroic Fantasy (now in it's 28th year) is still around! At least if Flying Buffalo's website is to be believed. I've finally got a chance to read the rules and the concept is one that's really tough for modern me to wrap my brain around. It's sort of like a multi-player computer game, except you don't own the computer. Instead, you mail the guy who does a listing of what characters you want to run and what you want them to do and then he plays the game and mails you back to tell you how it went. That's just...bizarre.

Bizarre, but still somehow intriguing. Like a time portal to a bygone era of gaming.

Long story short, I'm considering giving it a try. One turn a month. Hand written. Stuffed in a real paper envelope, affixed with real stamps, and dropped through an honest-to-goodness mail slot.

Now that's old-school!

Interesting Tracy Hickman quote.

Courtesy of former TSR/WotC fiction editor Phil Athans.

"It is true that the story was the foundation of Dragonlance and came out of the personal desire of both my wife [Laura Hickman] and myself to use role playing games as a medium of storytelling. You have to remember that at the time adventure games were largely of the ‘kill the monster, take its treasure, buy more weapons to kill bigger monsters’ variety. We wanted to introduce meaning into gaming through story."

Which got me thinking:

How sad that they probably meant well but simply couldn't understand that "meaning" in gaming can only be collaboratively constructed from the bottom (individual players and GMs) up, never simply decreed from the top down. Indeed, the fact that Hickman was apparently unaware that campaigning not of the "kill the monster, take its treasure" mold had been alive and thriving at countless gaming tables across the world for years before he made this statement evinces a startling degree of myopia that went on to handicap his subsequent designs severely.

It's really a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire nature of the medium. A tabletop RPG writer can, at best, hand the players a solid set of tools and a bit of good advice. If you try to build the whole house for them, it will only ever be your home. And they'll sense as much.

That's just the sad part. When you throw millions of dollars behind a misunderstanding this basic, that's where things get tragic. TSR finally learned this lesson when they found themselves forced to sell all their assets to Wizards of the Coast in the late 1990s.

After the sting of the tragedy fades, you move onto the bittersweet ironic amusement phase. In this case, that means the ability to do just what this post is doing now: Look back on how a simple bit of mistaken but well-meant idealism gone out-of-control toppled a once invulnerable titan of the fantasy gaming hobby after little more than one decade in earnest practice.

Which leaves one where? Sadder but wiser? I would hope so.

Hickman, continued: "In practice, however, it became a ‘chicken and egg’ sort of issue. The game was being developed ahead of the story—which actually adversely affected the story itself."

Ouch. Nevermind...

Oh, man! I haven't thought about these in ages!

I only ever saw one issue of this back 1992 at a chain bookstore in the Inland Center mall in San Bernadino. I'd completely forgotten about it until tonight. The Acaeum rules.

Now I wonder how I can find myself some copies. eBay seems to be no help at all.

Imagining D&D, courtesy of Grognardia.

James Maliszewski at Grognardia asks "When you think about Dungeons & Dragons, the cover of what product comes first to mind?"

For me, that's easy. It's the first D&D book I ever owned, read, and used. Although I'd argue this particular cover pretty much perfectly depicts the game under any circumstances.

Runner-up? It has to be the Player's Handbook. No contest. And if had to ask "Which one?", you're probably at the wrong blog.

Anyway, to make up for boring you all with the two most obvious choices ever, I'll close with some of my favorite Dragon Magazine covers from when I was first getting into the game. These are pretty much guaranteed to be unique choices, since most of the Dragon nostalgia is focused on its early years. I imagine a lot of old school players weren't even reading Dragon during the 90s.

For me, the best covers were more than just portraits. They had a great in media res quality that made you feel like you were looking through a window into a fantasy world where something marvelous was happening. And they practically forced you to ask questions. Who are these people (and/or creatures)? What are they doing? What do they want? What is this place I'm seeing and what would I find if I could visit it? Certainly, I've gone back and read many great Dragon issues that pre-date my early 90s start in the hobby, but these are some of the covers that I'll always remember best.

175
178
180
188
190

Defending psionics.

AD&D psionics. Everybody either hates the hell of them or never used them (or, paradoxically, both). But not me. I think AD&D's is a very solid, very usable psionics system and I'm here today to tell you why.

Could it be that I was a counsel for the defense at Nuremberg in a former life?

Anyway, psionics in Dungeons & Dragons certainly pre-date their most well-known appearance in the first appendix of 1978's AD&D Player's Handbook. I, however, do not. Therefore, I'll be focusing on AD&D in this post. That being said, if somebody out there has additional relevant insight into how these systems differed in TSR publications that predate the PHB, that's fine with me. Comments sections are there for a reason, after all.

Let's jump right into it, shall we?

1. Psionics "don't work."

I hear this one a lot. The psionics rules were somehow either incomprehensibly convoluted or completely illogical and simply didn't function if you attempted to run them as written.

Wrong. AD&D psionics are actually quite simple. Everything from calculating a character's chance to be psionic, to determining a psionic character's overall strength, to allocating psionic powers is as straightforward as any other aspect of character creation.

The effects of the various powers are as clearly explained as those of magic spells. No more so, but certainly no less.

Psionic combat is a simple matter of cross-referencing two values on a chart and applying the indicated results, the same as regular physical combat.

2. Psionics are "unbalanced."

This misunderstanding is a lot more understandable. The psionic character gets all these special powers for nothing, right?

So you might believe until I point you to a little thing called the psionic encounters section of Appendix C of the Dungeon Master's Guide. It turns out that each time a psionic power is used within one turn of a wandering monster check, that wandering monster has the potential to be a psionic one.

And psionic monsters? As per the Monster Manual, they're really, really damn nasty. And prone to target psionic PCs. As written, it's only a matter of time (the chance is a full 25% upon a positive wandering monster check) before some brain-eating nasty rolls up and pulls a Scanners on your psionic wunderkind PC, and quite possibly the rest of his party, too, considering that psionic encounters are rolled on a chart that includes arch-devils and demon princes and doesn't discriminate by PC or dungeon level.

Not so unbalanced now, it is? In fact, the check that the DMG encounters appendix places on psionic PCs is such an outright gruesome death lottery that I don't think I'd opt to run a psionic PC in AD&D even if I could.

3. Psionics "don't fit in a fantasy game."

Oy.

Seriously, this one has to piss me off the most. Go back and actually read the fiction that inspired D&D. Many of you reading this already have, but it bears emphasizing how the artificial and stifling separation of fantastic fiction into rigid genres is a Crappy Thing, as are its effects on RPG gaming (as exemplified in this sad stab at a criticism).

Grimoires: "Real" magic and what it can teach us.

I've been on a huge grimoire kick lately. Real grimoires, that is, like the Clavicula Salomonis (Key of Solomon) and others. Not originals, of course, but the many commonly available translated editions sold by booksellers and free online (see links throughout this post). Most of these (in)famous tomes first started circulating in the late medieval/early rennaissance period, despite their claims of ancient providence, and offer a fantastic insight into what constituted "real" wizardry in the Western world during the time periods that most fantasy RPG games are based on.

There's some wild and crazy stuff to be found here. The Grimorium Verum will tell you how to invoke the demons Mersilde, who "has the power to transport anyone in an instant, anywhere" and Frimost, who "has power over women and girls, and will help you obtain their use." Plus spells for curing rabies, turning invisible (good luck getting your hands on the human skull), obtaining gold and silver, and more.

The Goetia portion of the Lemegeton even specifies the proper time to summon and bind each demon by rank ("The chife [chief] kings may be bound from 9 to 12 of ye Clock at noone & from 3 [5] till sunset. Marquizes may be bound from 3 of ye Clock in ye after Noon till nine at night and from 9 at nt [night] till sunrising. Dukes may be bound from sunrising till Noonday in clear weather.").

Studying these works and other similar ones has given me quite a few pointers that I can see influencing future fantasy gaming sessions:

1. Magic can be ruthlessly low-down and practical. Perhaps the strongest recurring themes among the spells and rituals in these books are the garnering of sex, temporal power, and cold, hard cash.

2. Magic should really evocative. "Cure Light Wounds" is one thing, but using Key as an example, we can see offhand some most excellent chapter headings:

"Of the Blood of the Bat, Pigeon, And Other Animals."

"How Operations of Mockery, Invisibility, And Deceit Should Be Prepared."

"How To Make the Magic Carpet Proper For Interrogating the Intelligences, So As To Obtain An Answer Regarding Whatsoever Matter One May Wish To Learn."

And then there the spells themselves. Here's an incantation from the section entitled "Regarding Experiments To Be Made Regarding Hatred And Discord":

"Where are ye, SOMNIATOR, VSOR, DILAPIDATOR, TENTATOR, DIVORATOR, CONCISOR, SEDUCTOR, ye who sow discord, where are you? Ye who infuse hatred and propagate enmities,

I conjure you by him who hath created you for this ministry, to fulfill this work, in order that whenever N. shall eat of like things, or shall touch them, in whatsoever manner, never shall he go in peace."

Sure, it's almost certainly a bunch of superstitious hokum, but is it ever cool-sounding!

3. Magic can be really complicated. Some versions of D&D, particularly AD&D, already have certain spells with lengthy casting times, but these books really emphasize how much work being a wizard can be, with rituals that involve specially consecrated knives, swords, robes, parchment, water, seals, amulets, pentacles, etc. Sometimes all of the above and more for a single working! And that's even before you get past the generic stuff to things like exact astrological specifications and the need for a hare slain on the 25th of June or what have you.

4. Finally, they all have awesome magic seals that you'd be crazy to not want to rip off for your games if possible. For example:



So if you have the time, I definitely recommend you check these suckers out. Besides, if you don't, I might just have to whip out my virgin parchment, blessed stone and bat blood so I can call on Frutimiere to make you strip nude and "dance increasingly until death...with grimaces and contortions which will cause more pity than desire." And none of us want that. I hope.

This thing is godlike!

This thing being the Dizzy Dragon Games Adventure Generator.

Best random dungeon generator I've ever seen. If they can also program it to use AD&D encounter and treasure tables, I'll probably marry it.