Oh the good old days...

Doesn't a part of you still yearn for...

...A5(ish) rule books in tiny print with folded card covers? Well, to be honest, at my age I'm not so keen on the tiny print, but the rest? Hell yes!

Nowadays of course, these old rule books look very amateurish. Indeed that's because a lot of them were in fact published by amateurs, or at least semi-professionals. The lovely original Dungeons and Dragons three little brown books, and the first supplements were done this way. Printed professionally but boxed up etc in Mr Gygax's basement. And this was the model for those first role players. Guidon Games and then TSR put their wargames rules books together like this. And there were maybe a dozen or so wargame rules publishers in the UK before that churning out these booklets.

But the spirit isn't dead yet. The do it yourself vibe shifted into 'zines and smaller publishers. Some like Olde House Rules and EMDT positively revel in the nostalgia. Great stuff all of it.

So, next time you have a fabulous idea for your RPG heartbreaker... how are you going to go about it?

Repairing old gaming books

Minor restoration process.

I recently got hold of some Starguard books from 1975(?)ish. Typical of the period they are made from fairly cheap paper with coloured light card as covers. So after nearly fifty years they'd both got a bit dirty with some damage caused by light and they are all a bit loose around the staples. There's not a lot to be done with light damage but on the upside, the dirt doesn't look like grease and the staples haven't rusted too badly

Here is a closer look .  

Here's what I did in order:  

1. Popped them in freezer bags and frozen them for a while. Later I was told my freezer isn't cold enough to kill all the bacteria which was the point of the freezing so, mah.  

2. Brushed the book down with a soft paint brush to remove surface crud.  

3. Carefully removed the staples with a palette knife. I couldn't find my small one so ended up using a cake making one- worked fine!  

4. I took all of the pages out and brushed them down too, especially near the staple fold.  

5. Using a putty rubber (eraser) I carefully and slowly, began removing the dirt on the cover. A putty rubber is good because you can mould it into different shapes to get at difficult areas. I found a stipple action worked well. I had to be very careful along the spine fold as the card was deteriorating.  

6. I reversed the cover and used document repair tape (sometimes sold as Librarian's Tape) to reinforce the spine. This tape is acid free and doesn't go brittle with age and the light. It's got a thin strip down the middle so that when you have removed the backing, you can see through the tape and place it very accurately. Once that's done you remove the backing from each side (one at a time) and press down with the palette knife to get rid of wrinkles or bubbles.  

7. I did the same with the centre pages of the booklet because it was here where the staples had caused small tears.  

8. I then used a WHITE plastic eraser (not a cheapo one nor a coloured one) to clean the larger areas of the cover.  

9. Finally I reassembled the booklet and restapled it with my long arm stapler.

It's not perfect. Some discolouration is impossible to fix. However, they are much better than before and I'm not longer worried about the covers coming off during use.

News from Tekumel

Victor Raymond of the Tekumel Foundation, those trusty guardians of the Empire of the Petal recently announced a major release for the venerable RPG:

"The Tékumel Foundation is pleased to announce the release of the first Blue Room Anthology - Tékumel: Temples & Gods!

The Blue Room Anthologies are reproductions of the "netbook" articles once available through The Blue Room discussion forum, dedicated to the World of Tékumel. Grouped by theme, the Blue Room Anthologies provide easy access to print copies of important sources of information about Tékumel.

Tékumel: Temples & Gods is the first Blue Room Anthology; it is a facsimile reproduction of the netbook articles written about the temples, gods, and theologies of the Empire of the Petal Throne.

Tékumel: Temples & Gods is not intended as a replacement for Mitlanyal, the compendium of all of the temples of Pavar's Pantheon. Rather, it is a precursor to Mitlanyal, and should assist anyone interested in understanding the roles of the gods in the world of Tékumel".

The Universal Fantasy Supplement

Calling All Grogs, especially those from San Francisco!

I'd like some info about The Universal Fantasy Supplement by Clint Bigglestone, friend to the gaming stars of 1970s California. It's not so well known, I'm guessing because actually it's a wargaming supplement. I think it was designed to add a generic Chainmail Fantasy Appendix to other ancient and medieval wargames rules around at the time. It's not a big book, about 32 pages. As far as I can tell there are twenty or so monster types with statistics which use general wargaming tropes (eg. treat as Light Infantry) as well as a tabletop magic system and several different kinds of Magic-User. I'm trying to find a copy and when (if) I do, I'm going to expand this post.

The Palace of the Vampire Queen, Part 4

The Palace of the Vampire Queen lives on...  

There are versions of this classic adventure available from Precis Intermedia Games and from Pacesetter Games.

Pacesetter Games have expanded the original dungeon and have just released Level Four and are calling it *Wicked Whispers*.. The pdf only version is £8. I'm not endorsing it as I haven't read it, but I think it's great that there are legs in this old game left.

The Book of Elder Magic

The Book of Elder Magic by Daniel Boggs. 

If you're into the original game or WBFMAG or any other ODnD clone, the Book of Elder Magic is certainly something you should look at.  

It's an expanded spell book for Clerics and Magic-Users based on the author's extensive research into OD&D.... 0ed ie how DnD might have turned out if Gary Gygax hadn't been in such a hurry to publish and had added in Dave Arneson's ideas and play test corrections instead. The full set of rules Daniel has come up with is called Champions of ZED (zero edition) and also the game engine which powers the Lost Dungeons of Tanisborg.  

This book consists of all of the spells from ODnD plus the extra ones gleaned from Arneson's notes and other early play testers. They are completely compatible with ODnD, Champions of ZED, and in fact, any other clone based on ODnD, B/X, Holmes or BECMI.  

The softback is about $8 on Drivethru.

Starfaring, by Ken StAndre

 Starfaring, by Ken StAndre, Flying Buffalo, 1976.

"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine. It is stranger than we can imagine"  JBS Haldane

Ken StAndre..."Oh yeah?"

Ken StAndre not only holds the position of writing the world's second Fantasy Role Playing Game, he also wrote the world's second ever Science Fiction rpg. And this is it... the one and only Starfaring. A space odditity if ever there was one, but one definitely worth looking at.  

From the preface:  

"Flying Buffalo published Starfaring for me in August 1976. Only Metamorphosis Alpha by James Ward has an earlier copyright date for a science fiction rpg. Being second at things seems to be my fate in life. The two games have nothing in common, and I didn't know Metamorphosis Alpha even existed when I was creating my sci-fi game.  This game is early and crude and not much like anything else that has ever been published in roleplaying, but it is an rpg. I still think it has ideas that are light years ahead of any other sf rpg out there".  Ken St. Andre, 3/13/21

Starfaring, as Ken says in his blurb, is not like any rpg ever published. It was written at a time when the hobby was in it's infancy and the general format of what an rpg should look like, or even play like, had yet to settle. Ken was finding his way, just like all of the other early adopter/creators. And yet this is definitely, a Ken St Andre game. And that's not just because of the whacky artwork. Because he wasn't coming out of a wargaming or simulationist background, the point of this game isn't to create a realistic, hard sci-fi, but to have a bit of fun.

So, how is it different? Well, for a start, the Player 'Characters' are complete starships and crew and the player takes on the name 'Ship Master'. And here we come to one of the main differences between this game and other rpgs... the Ship Master plays alone with the GM (no, not Games Master... Galaxy Master). There may be other players in the game but they play singly and serially. Starships are designed very much like they are in Traveller and nearly all other sci fi games (except this came first). There are rules for bank loans, buying second hand ships. There are starships, warships, transports, scout ships etc and various types of drives and instrumentation. All you'd expect. Crew can be humans, androids, robots, androgenes (think emotionless Vulcan types) and my favourite: Shells. These are disembodied entities who occupy biological or mechanical shells just to get on better with everyone else. Even though your PC is actually a whole ship and crew, individual people also have characteristics such as Health, Physique, Psi-Rating and Mentality. There are a few special rules for androids and robots and suggestions for playing even more alien types. Space and individual combat are quite abstract and also obviously StAndrean... comparative rolls and doubles rolling over etc all very T&T. What is different, and quite detailed, is the hit location and effect table, which is much more fun (and exciting) than the equivalent in Traveller or Starships and Spacemen.  

There is a pretty detailed psionics system too with eight different psionic powers. These act much like spells in a fantasy game but potentially over vastly longer distances. This system is partially worked using percentages. Elsewhere the players use standard d6 and sometimes (and optionally) playing cards.  

There are following: random tables for star creation, planetary types and the life forms which the Ship's crew might come across. Within the book are suggestions of scenarios but a good deal of the adventuring will come from the use of the Space and Subspace hazard generation systems. These range from attacks by enemies (including the deadly 'Slish'), meteor strikes, wierd radiation or accidentally triggering a supernova... run away, run away!

All in all, referees and players would have quite a bit to do to make this into a game which was a true roleplaying game in our current sense of it. This rpg is more of a procedural random adventure for two. But there is a great deal of charm here and the more you read the book, the more you see what you could do with it.  

There is a pdf version available on drivethru. I printed mine and had it saddle-stitched into a booklet because I like having things on shelves, but for the little it costs, you should have a digital copy just for the history of the thing.

Melee and Wizard: RPG or not?

Steve Jackson's first version of what later became The Fantasy Trip were Micro Games numbers 3 and 6 published in 1977 and 1978 respectively. Both are boardgames based on hexes and are designed to be played independently or joined together. They were complemented by Micro Quests– programmed adventures much like those produced for Tunnels & Trolls. One other intention for these two games was possibly to be a replacement for existing combat and magic systems in your other frpg of choice. Bearing in mind that this was 1977 and there were only a handful roleplaying games out there at the time, this wasn't an entirely fanciful idea. There were quite a few such add-on or replacement products around at the time.  

So...  

...I'm not doing a review here, I'm asking a question: Would you consider Melee and Wizard together, a roleplaying game system or not?  

I mean at the time they came out.  

The 'Advanced' versions of both games, together with 'In The Labyrinth', were published in 1980 and are definitely an rpg, but can we count the micro games as such?  

I would say yes. Mainly because my friends and I did so for a while. But of course we had the benefit of having played OD&D, Traveller, Metamorphosis Alpha etc first so we could (and did) add in  missing rules to flesh out the bare bones of the combat and magic system as presented in the pair of games. We moved on to other games pretty quickly I have to say, but it was a whole lot of fun and gave rise to some very long gaming sessions indeed at the time (we played solidly for 48 hours once, fuelled by white rum and cold pizza... ah, those were the days!)  

Anyway, I'm rambling. So I've asked and answered my own question. What do you guys think?

The new Talislanta.

  Talislanta has risen again.

We've discussed Talislanta and it's precursers and off-shoots before. I'd heard rumours about the relaunch but not looked into it until today. Boy have these guys gone for it! This is huge project and full credit to them for producing two versions: one with update original mechanics and one with 5e mechanics. They've been on this for two years and have exceeded their pledge goals. They must have been pretty worried for a couple of weeks during the OGL crisis though!  

I'm personally not diving in. Its too expensive for me and, as you know, I like the original versions of things (my collection of which I've nearly completed). But it does look great and show the gaming world that there's plenty of opportunity out there for these old games yet!  

https://gamefound.com/projects/cbatarlis/talisla

nta

The Dragons of Underearth.

 Dragons of Underearth, 1981.

 Metagaming? Yes, but who on Earth were "Games Research Group Inc"?

Dragons of Underearth is an odd beast. Published by Metagaming but copyright Games Research Group. It is 100% compatible with (ok, almost identical to...) Melee and Wizard and yet the designer is credited as Keith Gross not Steve Jackson. Gross was a Metagaming staffer at the time who produced Ice War, Invasion of the Aireaters and Lords of Underearth.  

The game originally came in a box and is very hard to find. However, the booklet from the game, entitled Dragons of Underearth, Character Creation Module can still be found for sale on it's own (that's how I got mine) and there are probably pdf's or facsimiles of the gameboard and character counters out there somewhere.  

The obvious question is why did Metagaming bother to develop the game? They'd published the Advanced Melee and Wizard, together with In The Labyrinth, the year before and still sold the original microgames! The box blurb suggests that more of the system will be published but it wasn't to be. Part three of the system was provisionally titled Conquerors of Underearth but was never published. No doubt the reasons lie in Steve Jackson's departure from Metagaming. He and CEO, Howard Thompson didn't see eye to eye on how to develop the Fantasy Trip. According to Jackson, the thin magazine like production of the Advanced version wasn't at all how he had imagined the game. And according to Thompson, he wasn't happy because he'd never wanted a big all singing and dancing fantasy RPG in the first place. The excellent Narmer of the Dynasty Zero blog has shown me a letter written by Thompson to a fan at the time, explaining the situation as he saw it.

It turns out, that Games Research Group Inc. was another imprint belonging to Thompson although I don't know what, if anything was ever published under that name.

As it is, Dragons of Underearth is pieces of an RPG, a cut down version of the Advanced Melee and Wizard rules and bits of In The Labyrinth and a linked but stand alone wargame in the Lords of Underearth microgame.  

The front cover painting is stylish and I like it a lot (others don't), the counters and playing board are the same artwork as The Fantasy Trip. The graphic design and layout is, to my eyes, bloody awful. Tiny, hard to read print and poorly drafted rules. On the other hand ... it's Melee and Wizard plus a simple skill system, treasure and magic items.  

Has anyone ever tried to play it?

A skill system for OD&D?

Many OD&D players and DMs like the fact there there isn't a full blown skill system in the game. Although such systems and mechanics developed in rpgs pretty quickly after OD&D's appearance, in games such as Traveller and Runequest. But TSR resisted the urge to add such things into D&D relying instead on the class system to provide the talents and skills available to the various professions and races. I, for one, am glad they did this. I find very few games have skill systems which really work seamlessly and all too easily clog up game play (or provide pedants and rules lawyers with ammunition to 'game' the system).

But, there are always those situations where the rules don't cover all of the possibilities and sometimes, the DM prefers a less dictatorial approach than simply ruling that this or that PC has or hasn't succeeded in, for instance, lighting a fire in a rainstorm. Most DMs eventually seem to have settled on 'The Ability Roll' as a method for judging such things. This most often takes the form of a 'roll under' your Str/Dex/Int or whatever using either 3d6 or 1d20 (both have advantages and disadvantages). In this mechanic, the DM judges which Ability Score is most appropriate to test for the task in hand, eg. Strength when testing if the PC manages to pull up his friend who is hanging over that precipice or Intelligence when trying to decode an ancient script. The problem with this is, that there is only one degree of difficulty, one target number the character must make. DMs can get round this by adding penalties or bonuses to rolls or target number, or by allowing more or fewer dice to be rolled etc. to simulate presumed levels of difficulty.

There is however, a pre-existing "skill vs difficulty level" system already at the core of the game. That is, the character class+level vs armour class to hit mechanism.

So, here is my (as yet un-tested) idea for using the to hit table as a skill resolution system for OD&D. It uses my philosophy of keeping the existing mechanics of OD&D to create new rules.

We use the OD&D Attack Matrix 1 and replace "Armor Class" with "Difficulty Level": 9 being relatively easy tasks and 2 being exceedingly difficult. You don't need to write out new tables, it's a concept shift only. "The 20 Sided Die Score to Hit by Level" becomes "D20 Score to succeed" and Bob's your uncle. But there's more. Unlike with the common "Make an Ability Check" hack, here, Ability Scores can make a real difference because the DM can add or subtract any bonuses and penalties the PC might have for high or low Ability scores. Here, you have two choices: you could use the -2 to +4 range given for Charisma and apply this to all of the PCs' Ability Scores or the more conservative -1 to +1 for above average (12) or below average (9)  Dexterity scores. So now if a task requires say, Strength, the player can use his Strength Abilty Score modifiers when he rolls vs Difficulty Level on our new Task Resolution table.

Furthermore, as the Attack Matrix is really three tables all in one, a DM could even judge that different classes might be better or less likely to be good at certain types of task by using a different one of the three matrices (Fighting-Man, Magic-User and Cleric). For example, a party must hastily erect a barricade before they are besieged by Orcs. The Fighter is best trained to organise this and so uses the Fighting-man Matrix. But later, our hero is required to write a letter to the Orc Prince asking for the return of prisoners. The DM might judge that his literacy skills might not be up to this, so he has to use the Magic-User Matrix to see if he is successful. Similarly, let's say a Magic-User is required to pull off some highly cerebral task. In this case the DM might consult the Fighting-Man Matrix because (as we are using a combat table) this might give an easier score to hit/succeed. Using this extra level of detail is really just replacing the different levels steps with a statement about the appropriateness of professional skills to the task in hand:

 °Skills very appropriate- use level advances like a Fighting man (steps of 3 levels),

 °Skills relatively appropriate, use the Cleric progression (steps of 4 levels), 

°Skills not at all appropriate: use the magic user level progression of steps of 5.

This is nowhere near as complicated as my poor prose might make it sound and you don't need to use all of it. Simply swapping out Armor Class for Difficulty Level and everyone uses the basic Fighters' Matrix would still work.

I'm sure I can't be the first to have done this, so if you use a better version of this idea, I'd love to hear it.

Arneson and Gygax's first collaboration.

Cover of first edition

Most of us have heard the story of the collaboration between Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, which led to the birth of Dungeons and Dragons in 1974. But this was not the first time these two game innovators had worked together to produce and publish a game. Their first joint publication, together with Mike Carr, was for Guidon Games and it was a set of Napoleonic Naval wargame rules called: "Don't Give Up The Ship".

Early Naval wargames required clean floors.

The title is a reference to the dying words of the captain of the USS Chesapeake in 1812 during the American-English War of that year. 

Gygax had begun writing a set of Napoleonic Naval rules in 1968 but soon realised he was out of his depth (no pun intended!) Then, at Gen Con 2 in August 1969, Gary met a young Napoleonic wargamer by the name of Dave Arneson and gaming history began to happen.

The International Wargamer magazine.

When Gary heard that Dave and his group in Minneapolis were putting their own rules set together, they decided to co-operate and the first version of "Don't Give Up The Ship" was drafted. Mike Carr was brought in as an editor and by 1971 the trio were ready to publish. They tested the game out by publishing it as a partwork in the "International Wargamer" journal starting in issue 57 in June '71. The first, fifty page, edition of the game as a whole was with Don Lowry's Guidon Games in 1972. It sported a slightly reworked cover art also by Don Lowry, which was based on his drawing for the "International Wargamer". A second edition, with extra rules and scenarios by Carr, runs to fifty-eight pages and was published by TSR in 1975 (Gygax having previously begun the company because Lowry couldn't see the potential of "Dungeons & Dragons").

Early ship models for wargames by Joe Morschauser 

The Rules themselves were written for model ships of 1/1200 scale and clearly designed for gamers with lots of space! With ships engaging each other at ranges of up to 21" and ships becoming visible to one another at a range of 200"! Games involving even small fleets were not going to be possible on the dining room table. In fact the rules suggest an area of 100 square feet as a minimum. In this regard, Arneson's game rules reflect those he had been used to when playing WWII games using Fletcher Platt's "Naval War Game" rules across the floors of  local meeting rooms and ball room dancing halls. Platt's rules were first published in 1948 although they originated in 1929 and were themselves influenced by Fred Jane's naval warfare games beginning in 1906. Arneson's rules were for sailing ships however and required many more systems for dealing with movement and the wind, boarding actions, kedging, controlling fires on board and many more. There are essentially three sets of rules, of which the Advanced Rules add so much complexity that the game becomes almost a reconstruction of warfare down to the level each individual man on board ship. Almost a role playing game of sorts(?) Indeed, Jon Peterson in "Playing At The World", makes an argument for the play sheets for each Ship (which came with the first edition) as the precursors to what became the Character Sheets in rpgs later on.

An inspiration for Arneson's game.

From what I can see, the model of game development which Gygax, Arneson and Carr created when working on "Don't Give Up The Ship", was then used again when creating "Dungeons and Dragons" a few years later. Gygax had the motivation and vision to see the project through, with Arneson as the creative driver sending Gygax drafts which later got stitched together and shared around (although Carr edited Don't Give Up The Ship, Gygax didn't bring him on board with D&D until the second, Advanced version of the game needed an editor).

Mike Carr demonstrating Don't Give Up The Ship 

Although "Don't Give Up The Ship" has a long pedigree, it's complexity and space requirements soon made it less fashionable in wargaming circles. A planned follow up: "Ships of the Line" by Arneson, although completed and in use, was never edited and was dropped by TSR.

OD&D 30+ years on, as played by Gygax

Gygax's House Rules for OD&D.

Three years before his death 2008, Gary ran an OD&D campaign for his group. This is a compilation of notes about the rules for that campaign, with my comments following. This information was gained from answers given in Gary's Q&A threads on ENWorld as well as some tales of the campaign posted by Deogolf. They boil down to these: 

 Rules 

 • Only use the three little books- Gary didn't use anything from the supplements.

Character Generation and Advancement 

 • Ability scores rolled as best 3 out of 4d6. Scores are arranged to taste. 

• PCs started at 3rd level. 

• Fighters get +1 HP/die. All PCs get +1 HP/die if Con >14. 

• No training necessary to gain a level.

 Initiative and surprise 

• 1d6 for surprise: 1=1 round, 2=2 rounds. 3 or more= no surprise. 

• PCs must declare actions before initiative. Caster's must declare the specific spell being cast. 

 • 1d6 for initiative. A tie means simultaneous combat. 

• A casting spell caster who loses initiative will lose his spell if hit. 

 

Combat 

• All PCs get 1d6 hp/level. HP rolls are re-rolled on a 1. 

• Fighters do +1 damage if Strength> 14. 

• Dexterity does not affect AC. 

• Dexterity does affect missile attack "to hit" rolls. 

• PCs are unconscious at 0 hp. They can go as low as level +1 before death (e.g a 4th level fighter can be brought as low as -5 hp and just be unconscious). A healing potion or cure spell will restore them immediately. 

Spells & Spell Books

 • To acquire new spells, casters must find scrolls, spellbooks, or a friendly higher-level caster. 

• Clerics don't need spell books (The original books can be read to imply that they do). 

Magic items

• Gary identified most magic items immediately on return from the dungeon (by charging large sums of money for this service, when players rest and recouperate in town).

• Potions must be tasted to identify them however. 

• Unusual items require a trip to a very high level Magic-User.

I find these house rules interesting in several ways. The first thing that strikes me is how few of them there are. This is Gary playing more than 30 years after the game was first created and there isn't much he wants to change. Mostly, these notes are really clarifications rather than additional or changed rules. Such as the reminder that Clerics don't need spell books and that Magic-Users need to find new spells for themselves. 

Some of these house rules are actually really affirmations of "Old School" playing style such as Potions having to be tasted, high level magicians have to be sought out to identify some magic items and no need for special "training" when a PC has enough xp to go up a level.  Plus the fact that the referee can start PCs off at a level appropriate to the campaign.

The modified rules for surprise are quite fun and it's worth noting how much difference this simple tweak could make. Two rounds of surprise is enough for either the players or the monsters to prepare or inflict quite a lot of damage to their surprised and confused opponents. I think on the whole though, this rule benefits the players more than the monsters as they are more likely to be able to inflict missile or spell damage from a distance before the Melee proper starts.

The statement that players must declare intent before rolling for iniative is interesting too. Of course, many players and DMs may do it that way already, but Gary obviously felt it necessary to tell his players this. Making players make tactical choices before they know who is going to act first should make them think a little harder and possibly be more cautious.

The biggest rule changes Gary makes are around hit points and all are designed to make characters survive longer (a tacit agreement here from Gary with a lot of players, who deemed the game as written was a little too tough!) Fighting-Men get the best deal... an extra hit point per hit dice is a big boost! Interestingly, this brings the average score rolled per d6, up from 3 to 4. Which is roughly the same average per die as BX's d8 for Fighters' hit dice. Fighters (and Fighters only) also benefit from a change in the boundaries on the table for extra damage due to high(ish) Strength. The final house rule to affect survivability is also a big one for those players and DMs who play Rules As Written. In Gary's game, you ain't dead at 0 hit points- just unconscious. To be properly dead you need to lose extra hit points equal to one more than your level. Obviously, this benefits higher level characters and is more generous than some house rules such as using a character's Constitution score as a guide to exactly how dead you are.

These house rules of Gary's have been out in the wild for some years now but I've never heard anyone say that they have tried them out. Perhaps that's because people are either happy with their own house rules for these aspects of the game or they are playing OD&D RAW. So there's my challenge to myself I guess. Next time I crack open my White Box, I need a copy of Gary's House Rules nicely typed out in the right font an tucked in with my Reference Sheets.

Arduin Influences Part 2

Arduin Influences: A Triptych View—Part Two
 
By Gabriel A. Roark

Arduin, invented and re-invented

 
Publication No. 1b, Multiversalist Society of Sacramento
© 2021 Gabriel A. Roark
 
This essay concludes a two-part treatment of the influences on David A. Hargrave’s (DAH) most enduring work, the multivolume Arduin Grimoire Now we will look at DAH’s historical influences: the nonfictional works, mythologies, & religions of our own world. Personal influences consist of DAH’s experiences & relationships, such as those with other gamers.
 
DAH drew much material from historical sources: real-Earth chronicles & myths find representation in the Arduin corpus (e.g., Hargrave 1985a:25). The Arduin Grimoire (AG), Volume VIII, devotes nearly nine pages to summaries of Arduin’s best known or most prominent faiths. Of the 68 religions & cults summarized in those pages, eleven draw from our world’s mythologies. Some Arduinians worship the deities of the Celtic (the Emerald Star Cult), Christian (Khrysterios, League of Faiths of the Followers of Christ), Egyptian (the Aegyptian Pantheon), Greek (the Olympian Mysteries), Islamic (Falhaine, or The Confederacy of the Followers of Allah), Norse (The Temple of Iron), Roman (Pax Romana), Hindu (The Vedic Mysteries), & Zoroastrian (the Zoroastrian League) pantheons. Each is lifted straight from the pages of our holy texts, oral traditions, & scholarship, albeit with historical trajectories peculiar to their history since entering Khaas. (Hargrave 1985b:85, 1988:71–80, 2008:332–333.)

Arduin borrowed from many mythologies

 

Other, real-world religious borrowings include the Temple of Timat (Tiamat in AGII) & the Temple of the True Tarot (Hargrave 1985b:85, 1988:71–80, 2008:332–333). DAH’s Tiamat is also called The Destroyer & is supposedly destined to consume or destroy the multiverse (Hargarve 1988:78). A similar concept is contained in the Third Tablet of The Seven Tablets of Creation (Enûma Eliš), a Babylonian cuneiform epic. In this tradition, Tiamat gathers to herself an array of deities & created monsters (mainly dragons & serpents) to war against many younger gods, including her own offspring. Although the Enûma Eliš does not couch the conflict in terms of multiversal annihilation (as did DAH), the cosmic battle occurred before humanity existed & was on a grand scale. (King 1902.) Arduin’s Destroyer is clearly of the Babylonian ilk.
 
The Temple of the True Tarot is another borrowing or repurposing of real-world spiritual practice into the Arduinian mythos. Taroteers eschew the building of temples in favor of their personal tarot decks. Many adherents also take on a specific card as their patron or deity. The card motifs are identical to those of our world, though not always in their interpretations. (Hargrave 1988:78.)
 
DAH seasoned Arduin with game mechanics & assumptions garnered from his personal connections & experiences as well. Among these is a pair of supplementary critical hit tables entitled, “Real Medicine and Fantasy Gaming.” Hargrave’s friend, doctor of internal medicine William Voorhees, wrote a set of crits to add a higher degree of realism to AGI’s crit tables. Voorhees levied his knowledge of human somatic capacities to augment both the effects of a crit & the rate of healing implied by the wound. DAH integrated Voorhees’ contributions more-or-less wholesale into AGII. (Hargrave 1985b:29–30, 2008:34–35.) In Mark Schynert’s revision of the Arduin rules toward DAH’s “Arduin, Bloody Arduin,” Voorhees revised the main critical hit table (Hargrave 1992:Table 43; Schynert 1992:iii). DAH sought a core realism to gird his fantastical world; his collaborators followed suit with the posthumous revision & release of The Compleat Arduin.
 

Arduin Compleat. Book 1

In these essays, we examined a fraction of DAH’s inspirations behind Arduin. We saw how the Dreamweaver pulled threads from science fiction, varied mythologies, & the expertise of personal contacts & friends. Still, one might wonder what is significant about knowing anything about DAH’s influences?” Leaving aside curiosity or sentimentality, I can think of two reasons why one might care. First, knowing the sources that informed a work enhances verisimilitude in the game. The culture of the game milieu & the game rules governing it are more apt to harmonize if referees & players understand the game setting & assumptions. Acquaintance with the designer’s sources is invaluable for roleplaying & refereeing alike; it allows one to tinker with the game mechanics or setting in an intelligent way. Too, studying a designer’s key texts & aesthetic can lead one to works that might otherwise go unplumbed. Be like Dave: sift the immense strand of real & imagined lives, keep what is useful, & implement it in your campaigns such that gems of memorable personae & plausible worlds inhabit your table.
 
REFERENCES CITED
 
Hargrave, David A. 1985a. The Arduin Grimoire: Volume 1. 4th print. San Francisco: Grimoire Games. 94 pp.
 
—. 1985b. Welcome to Skull Tower. The Arduin Grimoire, Volume II. San Francisco: Grimoire Games. 99 pp.
 
—. 1988. The Winds of Chance. The Arduin Grimoire, Volume VIII. October. 1st Ed. Boulder, CO: Dragon Tree Press.
 
—. 1992. The Compleat Arduin, Book One: The Rules. Revised & edited by Mark Schynert. San Diego, CA: Grimoire Games. 102 pp.
 
—. 2008. Arduin Trilogy. Edited by Becky Osiecki & Ben Pierce. Cheektowaga, NY: Emperors Choice Games & Miniatures Corp. PDF version, 564 pp.
 
King, Leonard W. (Translator). 1902. The Seven Tablets of Creation. Electronic document, http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/stc/stc06.htm, accessed July 11, 2019.
 
Schynert, Mark. 1992. Preface to Book One. In The Compleat Arduin, Book One: The Rules, by David A. Hargrave, p. iii. Edited & compiled by Mark Schynert. San Diego, CA: Grimoire Games.

Arduin Influences part 1

Arduin Influences: A Triptych View—Part One

By Gabriel A. Roark

Publication No. 1a, Multiversalist Society of Sacramento

© 2021 Gabriel A. Roark

David A. Hargrave’s (DAH) The Arduin Grimoire (1977) is among the early, unofficial Dungeons & Dragons (D&D, Gygax and Arneson 1974) variants commercially published outside of the Great Lakes fold. The first volume of The Arduin Grimoire (AGI) was an outgrowth of DAH’s home campaign; subsequent Arduin releases not only brought mechanical variations on D&D but also revealed more about Arduin’s setting and history. The world of Khaas, in which Arduin is a small kingdom, is a complex milieu. DAH and several of the players in his Arduin campaigns devised cultures, laws, spells, races, and so on. What were the influences from which DAH weaved the rich tapestry of the Arduin Grimoires? Arduin gaming products and DAH’s correspondence are forthright about many of these influences. This short essay examines a fraction of the grist to DAH’s mill and highlights some areas where his reading and personal experiences manifest as Arduin rules and setting. In all of this, the existence of a new type of gaming—the fantasy wargame or roleplaying game (RPG)—is treated as a given and not as an influence as such. Although we could speculate whether DAH might have published an RPG had Tactical Studies Rules not published D&D (see Spoor 2012 for a little-substantiated report that DAH had claimed to have invented the RPG), the fact is that D&D was the catalyst for all RPGs that came after it. D&D was, in effect, the “Let there be light,” moment for the hobby we all enjoy.

In discussing DAH’s source inspirations for Arduin, I find it convenient to group them into three categories: literary, historical, & personal. The literary category covers fiction—whether written or visual media—and is the subject of this part. The historical taxon and personal influences appear in part two of this article. 

Literary influences on Arduin are multitudinous. DAH wrote about his sources of inspiration and recommended reading in several places: Arduin gaming books, amateur press associations, and professional gaming journals (Hargrave 1980:63–64). A prime example of his literary borrowing is the deodanth.

In Arduin, the deodanth is a playable race (that is, allowable for player characters as well as non-player characters). It was among the exotic monster options in RPG books when AGI was first published, although probably instantly recognizable to fantasy and science fiction fans of the 1970s. The deodand’s creator (Vance 1977:73) paints the deodand as, “taller and heavier than himself [Cugel the Clever], black as midnight except for shining white eyes, white teeth and claws, wearing straps of leather to support a velvet green shirt.”

DAH’s description is similar: “Deodanths are 6’ to 7’ tall ebon humanoids with flaming red eyes and silver claws and fangs. They wear military trappings, but no clothes.” (Hargrave 2008:208.)

As to the personality of deodands, Vance writes, “The Deodand, Mazirian knew, craved his body for meat” (Vance 2000:25). AGIII similarly characterizes deodanths: “They seldom take prisoners, and those they do capture, they have a tendency to eat (probably due to their totally omnivorous eating habits)!” (Hargrave 1985a:20, 2008:64)

Finally AGIII contains a thinly veiled reference to the creatures of Vance’s Dying Earth stories: “Thaumaturgical research confirmed the fact that they are an evolutionary hybrid of ‘undead’ Elven kind and some other dark and unknown thing. This supports the legend that they are lost time travellers from eons in the future, when the universe is old and the suns are dying.” (Hargrave 1985a:20, 2008:64; emphases added.)

 

An associate of Hargrave’s recently pointed out to me that Lin Carter’s deodand might also have influenced DAH’s conception of the race. Specifically, both DAH and Carter describe Deodanths as possessing cat-like qualities. Carter’s deodand was a six-legged felinoid creature—very different from Vance and DAH’s physical descriptions, but DAH describes the basic social unit (to the extent that this solitary creature socializes) of deodanths as a pride. Lore has it that DAH secured permission from Vance to use the deodanth in Arduin. (Hargrave 1992:12; CK, personal communication, June 23, 2019.)

 

~To be continued in Part Two~

REFERENCES CITED

Gygax, Gary, and Dave Arneson. 1974. Dungeons & Dragons. 3 vols. Lake Geneva, WI: Tactical Studies Rules.

Hargrave, David A. 1977. The Arduin Grimoire. 94 pp.

—. 1980. The Arduin Adventure. Berkeley, CA: Grimoire Games.

—. 1985a. The Runes of Doom. The Arduin Grimoire, Volume III. San Francisco: Grimoire Games. 95 pp.

—. 1992. The Compleat Arduin, Book One: The Rules. Revised and edited by Mark Schynert. San Diego, CA: Grimoire Games. 102 pp.

 

—. 2008. Arduin Trilogy. Edited by Becky Osiecki and Ben Pierce. Cheektowaga, NY: Emperors Choice Games & Miniatures Corp. PDF version, 564 pp.

 

Spoor, Ryk E. 2012. Under the Influence: The Arduin Grimoires. November 23. Electronic document, http://grandcentralarena.com/under-the-influence-the-arduin-grimoires/, accessed July 1, 2019.

Vance, Jack. 1977. Eyes of the Overworld. Gregg Press. Originally published in 1966, Ace Books. 189 pp.

—. 2000. Mazirian the Magician. Tom Doherty Associates. 186 pp. 

Vance-Gygax-Hargrave

 

The Anxiety of Influence*

(*Yes, I've read Harold Bloom)

We are often told that Jack Vance was a huge influence of Gygax's vision for D&D. And indeed, reading the three little brown books it's clear that Vance is there in the mix. But it seems to me that Dave Hargrave's creation, Arduin, is much more Dying Earth than D&D straight ever was. It's not just the borrowing of some Vancian creatures (Deodand/Deodanth for example) nor the way in Arduin, every spell is named after the wizard who created it (à la Vance), but more so in the spirit of the world which comes through the writing. Arduin is famously odd and full of humorous eccentricity and absolutely as deadly a place to live as The Dying Earth. Magic in both worlds can propel any character to fantastic heights and then dash him to smithereens in an instant. Both places generate a picaresque feeling of multiple incidents flowing ever onward, all within a slightly off centred world. A place where unless you have your wits about you, a viciously random death is always waiting around the corner.

Deodanths of Arduin

In Arduin as in Vance's world, the astonishing mixes with the mundane in almost equal measure. A casual conversation in the Dancing Termite Inn can easily lead to a sudden adventure in the be-trapped home of a tremendously powerful Rune Weaver magician for example. And everywhere in Arduin there is colour and variety- how many races can players choose from, thirty at least! In the Dying Earth, one might be transported by magic or the whim of a powerful sage to other dimensions (the Overworld and Underworlds) and in Arduin, portals and various meeting places of the dimensions exist to whisk a character off to almost anywhere in the Multiverse.

The Famous Dancing Termite Inn

I don't know if an Appendix N of reading matter and influences exists for Dave Hargrave. But I'll bet Vance would be high up on the list if it did.

Post Script:

One of the great things about blogging is that quite often, you find the answers to the questions you have posed. Thus, I now have been reminded about the bibliography in The Arduin Adventure... and there's no Vance! Mind you, there aren't any other works of fiction either. Hargrave's reading seems mainly of the non-fiction sort. There is a short note 'thanking' several fiction writers however, chief amongst whom is Clark Ashton Smith. I have been told by someone who played at Hargrave's table (thanks CK!) that Dave was indeed a big Dying Earth fan and that he was in contact with Vance and even got an enthusiastic blessing to use the Deodand in Arduin. So there you go.

Now, it's seems about time I read some Ashton-Smith...

Hit Points, Saving Throws and all that.

The origins of D&D 

An awful lot has been written about Hit Points over the years. Lots of questions have been asked: What are they really representing? Should a PC die at zero or be just unconscious? How can we make the distribution of them fair? Should PCs begin to lose them as they get old? And... whoever thought it was a good idea to re roll my total every time I level up? So I doubt I'll say anything much new today. However, I have been re-reading early wargame rules sets recently including, of course, Gygax and Perren's Chainmail rules (first published in 1971 by Guidon Games) and the follow-up wargame supplement to Original D&D, Swords & Spells (TSR, 1976) also by Gary Gygax. This got me thinking about Hit Points and Saving Throws.

The pages that started it all.

Hit Points and Saving Throws were a couple of the mainstays of rpgs for thirty or forty years and are still present in a great many games. The concept of hit points has travelled out of Tabletop rpgs and into video and computer gaming and has thereby become part of everyday language, but their origin is in wargaming. Grognards please forgive me if I go over old ground here. In the wargames rule sets of the 60s and 70s, very often when a unit of soldiers receives 'a hit', individual models were removed from the table. Very often, one model per hit. A very practical (visual) way of recording that your company or brigade or whatever, has suffered casualties and may not be as efficient as it was at the start of the battle. This meant that your armies consisted of many individual figures, each representing 10 or 20 or even 50 actual soldiers. Moving all these hundreds of models took ages and issues with scale (does one model elephant actually mean one or five ot ten real ones?) meant that by the mid to late 70s wargamers were beginning to base their figures in groups on bigger 'stands'. But this meant that individual models could no longer be as easily taken off the field of battle. How did you or your opponent now know how relatively strong your units were as the Battle progressed?

Models weren't based in Chainmail

Various systems to indicate casualties were (and still are) used: "roster" lists or cards are kept for each unit and adjusted to show casualties, small caps or coloured rings are physically placed over the heads of model soldiers to indicate they've been taken out, number counters or dice are placed beside the unit to indicate it's condition. There are no doubt more. It's interesting to note that in Chainmail, no basing requirements are suggested at all, but by 1976 when Swords & Spells came out, very precise base sizes (given in eighths of an inch) are provided but models are still individually based and so could be removed when killed.

A Tolkien themed game of Chainmail

So what's this got to do with hit points? When Gygax wrote his fantasy supplement for Chainmail, he needed his heroes and superheros to stand out from the ordinary warriors as they did in the fiction which inspired them. They were to be harder to kill. Each one of these guys could take as many hits as a whole unit of ordinary soldiers. So how to show this in the game? Either Gary didn't want or didn't consider, little plastic cups over his heroes heads, nor did he seem to want (at this point) some kind of roster sheet (or as it was for an individual- a 'character sheet'?). So the solution he came to was that these heroes and superheroes needed several 'hits to kill' BUT, these blows all needed to fall in the same turn. So if Conan needed four hits to kill but only received three this turn, he walked away as if unscathed. 

So when Chainmail morphed into Dungeons and Dragons, Gygax and co-creator Dave Arneson (a fanatical Napoleonic wargamer) this same system was intended to be in place. That is, characters in the dungeon needed to be clobbered by those orcs many times *in one turn* to see if they died.

Now we all know that in D&D, the 'alternative combat system' prevailed, and the core of that now ubiquitous mechanic was that you no longer stomped about the battlefield shugging off wounds until the terrible moment came when four of the buggers got you at once- but that now, damage was a resource. Cumulative wounds eventually finished you off unless you were unfortunate enough to get the full force of a Dragon's breath. Yes, it's true, there were no consequences, mechanically, for how well your character performed as their supply of hit points dwindled. You were just as alive on 1 hit point as you had been when you had 20. But good referees made up for that, descriptively, and with only one hit point left most PCs became mighty cautious! And Gary gave up on his resistance to rosters. As players needed to keep a record of other things, why not keep a record of how wounded they were too?

Hah! I still have one hit point!

But I wonder, how different the game is if you actually play the 'multiple hits at once to kill' or nothing, rule. Although perhaps less realistic, somehow, the concept of your hero battling through hordes of monsters until they pile up on top of him, is more in keeping with the literary source material than the blood accountants we ended up with.

The other thing wargamers did/do, if playing in a campaign (see the previous post) was to figure out exactly how many of the casualties of a battle we really dead and how many were wounded, captured or had just run off. One mechanism for doing this was the 'saving roll'. If the battle was part of a longer campaign, when the fighting was over, you literally gathered up your casualty models and rolled dice to see if this or that figure was really dead and gone. Or had he been 'saved' to fight another day? British wargamer Tony Bath (what, him again?) took this one stage further and used the idea actually during the game, rather than after the battle was over. But only in specific circumstances. That is, when magic had been used to cause casualties. Bath ran a famous and long running Hyborian Campaign based on the Conan stories. Being Sword and Sorcery tales rather than those of High Fantasy, magic wasn't common in Bath's Hyboria, but it did exist (much to the disgust of some of his historical wargaming contemporaries). And magic was a risky and unpredictable business for both the caster and the victim. Thus, the 'saving' roll. I don't think Gygax and Bath ever met but both Perren and Gygax knew and used Bath's wargame rules. Gary 'borrowed' the idea of saving throws and roleplaying games never looked back.

Marc Summerloft took a different approach

Afterthoughts.

It's a long time since I've played a wargame with Swords & Spells and even longer since I played Chainmail. So reading them both again side by side has been an interesting exercise. S&S was a complete redesign and is in many ways a much more sophisticated set of rules. But, strewth, it's complicated! So many factors go into each round of combat, I really cannot imagine how I got my teenage head round it. My maths teacher should have been proud! I couldn't do it now. Chainmail actually reads as more playable.

Judges Guild followed suit a few years later but it is interesting to note that City State Warfare is a wargame using cardboard counters on a hex graphed board/map rather than a game for minis (although it can be played that way). Their solution to the problem is that each 'chit' becomes it's own mini roster/character sheet. Much like in modern computer wargames, the characters and units run around the battlefield displaying their own little sets of data. Nothing is really new is it!