Baleful Beasts

HAVE FUN, KID

Rod Ruth, illustrator of children's books like Album of Dinosaurs and Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures -- which I compulsively checked and re-checked out of any number of childhood libraries and public school media centers as a child -- is an unsung master. Everything he painted was filled with mad, vibrant energy and color (and often, terror).

If I could commission RPG artwork from anyone who has passed beyond the veil, this man would be near the top of the list.

(Yes, this post is laughably low on content. It's been an extremely busy week for me.)

Toward a Rifts "Appendix N"

The AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide rather famously included a list of inspirational reading for the game, called Appendix N. In recent years it's become fairly common to see people make "Appendix N" lists for their campaigns, often branching out beyond prose media into films, comics, TV series, etc. that are supposed to give insight into the game's setting and mood.

Rifts is a difficult property for which to create such a list, partially because the feel of the game can vary so radically depending on the region of the world in which one's campaign is set, not to mention which elements are emphasized and which are downplayed. I've said this before, and it might sound a little trite, but Rifts is very much what you make it. One could say that about almost any long-running RPG -- Dungeons & Dragons is a blend of practically every conceivable flavor of fantasy at this point, for example -- but as a huge conglomeration of assorted science fiction and fantasy concepts that explicitly encourages the importation of elements from other popular genres, Rifts is particularly mutable. To put it another way, if you're using all of the books, Rifts is like dumping an appetizer sampler, a plastic jack-o-lantern full of Halloween candy, and a pu-pu platter into D&D's Chex mix.

With that having been said, the Rifts campaign in which I participated for years as a teenager had a distinct feel of its own. It was set primarily in the game's original backdrop, North America, which at that point was very much a "points of light" setting. Magic was largely downplayed, even though there were several spellcasting characters (one of which was my longest-running PC). The focus was on high-tech, post-apocalyptic action and heroism. As I've mentioned before, our characters were essentially soldiers of fortune that wandered a dangerous world, tackling powerful foes for money; initially similar to the "runners" of Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020, but increasingly more like a giant superhero team or (even GI Joe) as the campaign went on.

Though I've recently begun to reapproach Rifts as an adult, the fact remains that for most of my experience with the world, I and my friends were adolescents in the 1990s playing a game that was arguably targeted directly at us. The media that makes me say "that's Rifts" is almost always a product of that era. So, unlike Gygax's list, the "Appendix N" for my take on Rifts doesn't include much prose fiction (something in which I still don't partake much, considering my background in English and librarianship). It's mostly comics and animation, particularly the Japanese stuff that had so captured my imagination twenty-plus years ago, when playing Rifts was my favorite pastime. For me, at least, Rifts was basically an "anime RPG" before that came to mean something very un-Rifts-like in style, and that interpretation still colors the way I envision it.

Comics and Manga
Claremont, Chris. Uncanny X-Men series, particularly the Asgardian Wars paperback.
Kishiro, Yukito. Battle Angel Alita.
Macan, Darko. Grendel Tales: Devils and Deaths.
Otomo, Katsuhiro. Akira.
Shirow, Masamune. Appleseed; Orion; et al.
Takada, Yuzo. 3X3 Eyes.
Warren, Adam. Dirty Pair series.

Film & TV
ARTMIC Studio. Genesis Climber MOSPEADA; Genesis Survivor Gaiarth; Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01; Riding Bean; Bubblegum Crisis; M.A.S.K.; et al.
Kawajiri, Yoshiaki. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust; Cyber City Oedo 808; et al.
Kitakubo, Hiroyuki. Black Magic M-66; A Tale of Two Robots.
Oshii, Mamoru. Patlabor series; et al.

Video Games
Gearbox Studios. Borderlands; Borderlands 2.

There are tons of things I've forgotten to include. I should probably come back and add to this as I think of them. (See the comments below for some excellent suggestions for additional material.)

The Gygaxian Dollar Store Menagerie

Even though I'm currently in the midst of one of my periodic episodes of Dungeons & Dragons fantasy burnout, I found this recent blog post by Tony DiTerlizzi (one of the best artists of the latter TSR era of the game) very interesting.

It's fairly common knowledge at this point that several of the iconic D&D monsters were inspired by cheap Chinese "prehistoric animal" toys. (I have clear memories of having a plastic rust monster when I was a kid, for example.) But I was completely unaware that the owlbear, a creature that is near and dear to my heart, also had its origin in these dollar-store specials. The figurine that inspired the owlbear looks identical to its depiction in the original Monster Manual, which goes a long way towards explaining why it looks very little like either an owl or a bear. (Still doesn't explain why it was given that name by Gary Gygax, though.)

DiTerlizzi's post includes some high-quality images of the toys that became the owlbear, bulette, and rust monster, along with some that don't appear to have ended up in the Monster Manual. The time has come to correct that, I think. Get to work!

Unearthed

Over Grognardia way, James Maliszewski reminded us of the existence of a line of AD&D-branded stationery and binders produced by a company called St. Regis in the early 1980s.

It turns out these were illustrated by a man named Alex Nuckols. It's beautiful, classically rendered, and downright classy work that gives my beloved Greg Irons-illustrated AD&D Coloring Album a run for its money. I know many gripe about the merchandising of D&D in the early 80s, but in my opinion, some of the best (if not the best) D&D-themed artwork of the era wasn't being produced by TSR at all. Nuckols' work for St. Regis is a perfect example.

There's a gallery of several Nuckols-illustrated St. Regis products at the Tome of Treasures forum. A lot of the scans and photos are frustratingly blurry, but even this limited glimpse is well worth your time if you're into D&D fantasy art in the least.

(By the way, I'd be more than willing to bet that some of these images - including the one posted above - were originally intended to depict scenes from J.R.R. Tolkien's work. That looks like Bard of Laketown slaying Smaug to me, and I'd be shocked if the "Death Rider" art wasn't supposed to be one of the Ring-Wraiths seeking out Frodo and company.)

Fifteen Games

There's a thingy going around where bloggers list the fifteen games that have meant the most to them, all in fifteen minutes. In my case, "meant the most" means "played a lot, or had a big impact". Since the goal is do this quickly, there are probably tons of games that belong on a "top 15" list that I've overlooked.

Anyway, here are mine, in no particular order:

1. Rifts

2. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

3. Marvel Super Heroes

4. Earthdawn

5. Cyberpunk 2020

6. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

7. Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game

8. Dragon Warriors

9. The Palladium Role-Playing Game

10. Talisman

11. Final Fantasy Tactics

12. Final Fight

13. Wrestlemania 2000

14. Ultima: Exodus

15. Cadash

I play few of these games today. Practically all of them speak to my gaming heyday in the late 80s to mid-90s. A few are scorned, or regarded as guilty pleasures at best. I think that sums my tastes up pretty well.

The Answer

To the question:

The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album, expertly colored by my older siblings, was the first D&D book I can remember looking through. Later I picked up the Monster Manual and Monster Manual II, purchased at a WH Smith bookshop in Edinburgh, and later still the AD&D 2nd edition Player's Handbook, but it's this cover image that pops into my head when I hear "Dungeons & Dragons".

To Valhalla

I would tell you to rest in peace, Frank, but something tells me you'd prefer to kick some ass.

Xvart-Art

I was flipping through my copy of UK2: The Sentinel the other day and found a post-it note (complete with workplace logo) stuck on the inside back cover.

I only dimly remember drawing this guy.

I always thought the drawing of the xvart in the Fiend Folio was kind of cruddy. Looks like I took it upon myself to reinterpret it.

He's got kind of a bat thing going on, which I guess works okay, and it looks like he's having a pretty good day. Not sure about that earring, though.

(For comparison, I've also posted the original Fiend Folio version. It's not the worst piece of art in the book, but up against the Russ Nicholson illustrations it definitely suffers... I don't know if mine's any better, mind you. You can see I did try to incorporate some of the more notable features, though.)

Folio Imbroglio

I think that a lot of the illustrations in the original Fiend Folio are begging for New Yorker-style captions.

"Have you heard the good news?"

Now, I love me some gorbel, but that picture's hardly the only one worthy of captioning. Anybody else want to try?

WTF, D&D!?

This is kind of a cop-out as far as real posts go, but I wanted to point everybody towards the WTF, D&D!? series of articles at Something Awful. Zack Parsons and Steve "Malak" Sumner offer hilarious commentary on classic D&D releases (oh, and the original Rifts rulebook, too).

Check them out here.

(Sorry for the scarcity of posts recently. I'm about to start a new job, and beyond that, have been too busy actually playing games to write about them much. I hope you'll forgive me.)

Death, Destruction, Or Worse

Recently, I rid myself of some games that were either never going to be played (Lords of Creation) or actively stinking up the place (DragonRaid). I don't feel bad about unloading any of it, but now, for some reason, I feel that I must tell you what I purchased with that credit:

D&D 4th Edition: Eberron Campaign Guide
D&D 4th Edition: Divine Power
Rifts Ultimate Edition
Rifts Book of Magic
Rifts Game Master Guide
Rifts Adventure Guide

Those first two will be the last D&D 4e books I get for a while, I think. I'm a little bit burned out on the game, since I've been playing it every week since it was released, but more to the point, I have an annual subscription to D&D Insider, so I have digital access to all the crunchy bits from the 4e books anyway.

Our plan is to wrap up the campaign we've been playing since last year, and do a few short adventures with new characters, so we can try some of the myriad new classes and races that have been released since we started. We're also hoping to alternate and get in some non-D&D gaming. A few games have been pitched with no decisions made as yet - my fingers are crossed that we'll avoid anything using the Storyteller system. I'm most excited by the prospect of (possibly) finally playing Call of Cthulhu.

But to get to the point, you can probably see that my love of Rifts, which has been in remission for at least a decade, has flared up again. I know the system, clunky as it often is, like the back of my hand. Many gamers my age started with Palladium games, for better or worse, and it's tough to shake the siren call of familiarity. Rifts was my game of choice throughout my adolescence, and despite the game's many warts, it's hard to be mad at it when it provided me with inspiration and enjoyment for over six years straight.

My good friend Kent is currently considering running a Rifts PBP, with (most of) our original gaming group. As soon as he mentioned he was thinking about it, I found myself bitching about power creep, Kevin Long's Dead Boy armor vs. Vince Martin's Dead Boy armor, the Siege on Tolkeen and the relative damage capabilities of plasma cannons and the Wilk's 457 laser rifle like nothing had ever changed. I hope Kent's PBP comes to fruition. Even if it doesn't, I might end up doing something like it myself.

So, I guess this is my "old-school renaissance".

Crabman Attack!

WARNING WARNING CRABMAN ATTACK

CRUSTACEAN CONTROL TECHNICIANS HAVE BEEN MOBILIZED

CITIZENS ARE ADVISED TO AVOID THE CRABCLAW CAVERNS AREA

ON AUTHORITY OF GALDOS CLAWCRUSHER

Jim Holloway Makes Me Smile

The first RPG books I ever bought were the AD&D Monster Manual and Monster Manual II. I had played AD&D a little with my older siblings, but I didn't buy the books because I thought was going to use the rules. I bought them for the pictures.

To this day, I'm fascinated by illustrated, encyclopedic books that list lots of creatures or character. If you looked at my bookshelf during my childhood you'd find things like Donald F. Glut's Dinosaur Dictionary, The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and any number of illustrated wildlife guides and encyclopedias. The Monster Manuals were a natural fit.

Monster Manual II was my favorite, for a variety of reasons. First of all, it contained a lot of really inventive creatures - though they crop up on "dumb monster" lists these days, I loved weird stuff like the executioner's hood or the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing. Secondly, it had the boggle, which was a favorite of mine, since my brother's long-running AD&D character had been reincarnated as one. Third, I just plain liked the artwork more.

Now, don't misunderstand me. These days I've found plenty to like in the original Monster Manual, not least of which is the fantastically cool artwork of Dave Trampier. But at the time, the guy whose art really appealed to me was Jim Holloway. His work was clean, clear, and it popped off the page. More to the point, I felt like his monsters had personality, and as they say in Pulp Fiction, "personality goes a long way". Holloway's grippli had a serene sort of smile on its face that, as an eight-year-old, instantly made me want to hang out with him. His tasloi stepped out of the shadows with a mischievous smirk. His stench kow looked downright displeased with itself. I loved it (and still do).

I also appreciate the art Holloway's done for various adventure modules. His characters look like D&D player characters should. They carry chipped swords, battered shields, and mismatched, scavenged armor. They drink, laugh, goof off, make rude gestures, shout battle cries, chop monsters down with bloodthirsty sneers, and flee in terror. It's fun stuff.

I recently found Jim Holloway's site and while it's a bit clunky, it's worth visiting. I'm especially impressed with some of the revamps he's done of his original monster illustrations (they're about halfway down the page). Check it out.

Revenge Of The Boxed Set

That staple of the 80s and early 90s RPGs, the boxed set, may be making a comeback.

Back in what some like to call "the day", a lot of the RPGs on the market came in boxes. You'd usually get a couple of pamphlets of rules, maybe a map or a cardstock character sheet, possibly some dice, and some ads for whatever company published the game. It was pretty awesome.

Boxed sets were shrinkwrapped. I think I bought a lot of boxed sets specifically because I couldn't see what was inside them. I flipped through plenty of rulebooks for perfectly good games as a youngster, but didn't get them because they looked boring. (I passed over getting the "deluxe" RuneQuest book multiple times for this very reason.) With a boxed set, I was never sure what I was getting into. That element of not knowing was maddening, and I often ended up buying something just for that reason. Sometimes they led to hours of play (TSR's Marvel Super Heroes, for example), and other times they led nowhere, but to this day, I still pick up old boxed sets just on the principle that they look cool.

Anyway, for whatever reason - most RPG companies cite manufacturing costs - boxed sets have more or less fallen by the wayside. I think that's a shame, as there was something about them that made first-timers want to try them out. A couple of smaller publishers, like Troll Lord or Fiery Dragon, still do them from time to time, but the "big" guys almost never did... until recently.

Wizards of the Coast have a boxed module called Revenge of the Giants due later this year, which is a change from their previous policy of only using the boxed set format for their sorta half-assed D&D Basic Sets. White Wolf recently published Dreams of the First Age, a big boxed expansion for Exalted (though apparently it didn't do as well as they'd hoped). Green Ronin's recently announced Dragon Age: Origins tabletop game is going to be a boxed set aimed at new gamers and distributed in book and video game stores. Cubicle 7's Doctor Who RPG is going for the same demographic and distribution pattern.

It obviously remains to be seen if any of these boxed sets will be met with any enthusiasm or success, but one can hope, right?

Spoke Too Soon

All right, I took a closer look at the 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide last night, and I will revise my opinion accordingly: the book's only half useless to me. The appendices are pretty handy - in addition to being able to roll up a dungeon layout or a wilderness region (with settlements!), you can randomly generate the physical appearance of a monster or the type of prostitute a character picks up. Oh, and there's an awesome Dave Trampier illustration of a dead displacer beast being eaten by wild dogs. This is the sort of thing I can get behind.

As a side note, I was telling my wife - who has never played a tabletop RPG - that I got more comments yesterday than for any previous post. She asked what it was about, so I told her. Her response:

"Wait, wasn't that a 1st edition book? So... you were talking shit about 1st edition? Even I know you don't talk shit about 1st edition!"

I still don't think I was "talking shit", but point taken.

Old School Newbie

I received my 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide yesterday. I should note that I have never previously owned the book, but have heard for years that it is a must-own for any real RPG aficionado. I'd probably flipped through a copy at some point in the past, but it didn't leave much of a lasting impression on me, so it was with some excitement that I cracked it open and began to read.

I think I hate it.

I've read Gygax before, but his writing style here is pedantic to the point of incomprehensibility. This is no Monster Manual - the artwork consists primarily of cartoons and Sutherland stuff, which is not to my taste. The DMing advice, as far as I can tell, is almost exclusively negative. The author tells you not to change the rules, not to allow monster player characters, not to alter the tone of the game... well, not to do lots of things. I didn't see much in the way of telling a DM what he or she should do, but plenty of reflexive "if you do this, you're playing my game wrong" admonishments.

What you do get are exhaustive sections on subjects as esoteric as casting spells underwater, footnotes telling you that a roll of "mastodon" on the Pleistocene marsh encounter table actually indicates a shovel-toothed relative of the mastodon, and charts telling you how much damage a wereboar takes if he changes into boar form while wearing plate mail. There's a certain insane appeal to the bewildering degree of attention paid to the pointless minutiae of situations that will probably never occur in the typical D&D game, but I'm afraid that for me, it's not enough. Except for the sections on generating wilderness environments, settlements, and dungeons, this thing is almost completely useless to me. Still, I know a lot of people love this book, and that's great. Maybe one of them will want to buy my copy.

(To be clear, I'm not taking a dump on AD&D 1st edition or Gary Gygax. I own plenty of AD&D stuff, much of it written by Gygax, and have enjoyed reading it. I just strongly dislike this particular book.)

In happier news, I like the fun, freewheeling attitude of the D&D Basic and Expert Rulebooks a lot. So, what I've learned is that if I'm going to go for "old school" D&D, I should probably stay away from AD&D and stick to Basic.

Okay... now that I have probably enraged or alienated most of my readers, I am going to prepare for the onslaught.

You Will Come Out No More

Maybe this isn't a revelation to everybody, but it just hit me the other day: Big Trouble In Little China is an old-school dungeon crawl.

You've got a couple of fighting types, a magic-user, and a bunch of nameless cannon fodder making repeated trips into a bizarre subterranean complex with the eventual goal of saving the girl(s) and slaying an evil wizard. Don't even get me started on the beholder-thingy, the "black blood of the earth", and the big centipede-creature that pops out and instantly wastes a bunch of the henchmen. I could go on and on - it's all there.

Even the attitudes of the characters, especially Jack Burton, are pretty gamer-ish:



"Hollow? Fuck it."

(I still have an overwhelming desire to play an Egg Shen-style adventuring alchemist.)

I doubt there are many people following this blog who haven't already seen the movie, but if you haven't, you owe it to yourself to check it out. And if you have seen it, try giving it another viewing through the lens of the dungeon crawl.

Keith Parkinson Was Awesome

Exhibit 1.

Exhibit 2.

Exhibit 3.

Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: I rest my case.

Children Of The d100

Like a lot of kids in the early 90s, I was obsessed with Marvel Comics. Since I was already playing RPGs (Robotech and AD&D at the time), picking up TSR's Marvel Super Heroes game was a no-brainer. These days I prefer the SAGA system-based version of the game that came out in the late 90s, but the original had many charms, and we played the hell out of it. In fact, it's probably my second most-played RPG, just behind that other mighty monolith of adolescent power-fantasy games, RIFTS.

One of the wackier things about MSH was its character creation system. You rolled stats randomly, which was normal for the time, but you also rolled your "hero type" (alien, mutant, robot, etc.) and even your powers randomly. If I remember correctly, the rulebook did say that you could pick them out with the Judge's permission, but all the example characters were random-rolled. It was kind of fun, but also kind of stupid. I mean, one of the sample pregens was LEOPARD, a guy in an Iron Man-style battlesuit that turned into a cat. (The battlesuit/animal transformation combo seemed disturbingly easy to roll up - I once randomly generated a power armor guy who could transform into a bear and control fire. Obviously, I named him "Smokey".)

Some of the characters my friends and I created and ran for a mutant-focused campaign included:

Flamestrike, a flying guy made of fire. With claws.
Flux, a telekinetic who could control time.
Unleash, a guy who could steal or nullify powers. He could also shoot force bolts. Oh, and he was slightly resistant to electricity.
Chrome, a guy who could transform into a liquid metal jaguar that shot razor-sharp chunks of itself at people.

Okay, so Flux wasn't too bad.

One of the supplements for MSH, the Ultimate Powers Book, featured even more vast and bizarre random character generation tables. My group lusted after that thing. I have a PDF of it now, but in those pre-internet days, we were never able to track it down. Based on the ridiculous stuff we made with just the old boxed set, I think that may have been a good thing.

Prismacolor D&D

I recently re-acquired a copy of The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album, something one of my older siblings owned when I was but a wee tyke. I bought it mostly for nostalgia purposes (well, that and the fact that the artwork is pretty great), but it's actually ended up being a worthwhile purchase for other reasons.

The Coloring Album (I guess "coloring book" sounded too kiddy) contains more than well-rendered images to fill in. There's a prose story written by Gary Gygax, linking all the pictures together, and while it's not great literature by any stretch of the imagination, it does grant some insight into Gygax's vision of the AD&D game, circa 1979.

Some of the elements of the book that I found interesting:

• The party of adventurers that heads into "the ruined castle keep" is big. At least a dozen people, probably more like twenty, including a magic-user, a cleric, a ton of dwarves, and more than one halfling thief. This is way beyond even the hireling-heavy, exploration-based adventures I've played in my (very limited) "old school" D&D experience.
• The motivation for their sortie into the keep is greed, plain and simple. There is no mention of stopping an evil overlord, rescuing a princess, or anything noble like that. They're just looking to get real paid. (In the end, it turns out that they've been manipulated by a ki-rin into removing a big nasty from the world, but that's beside the point.)
• The adventurers get their asses kicked a lot. Before they even get to the dungeon, a couple of people get killed by a bulette, and that's just for starters. There's a lot of screaming and dying in this coloring book, and it seems like the poor dwarves - like Ergwhi, pictured above - get the worst of it. Gary might have never used miniatures, but he sure hated miniature people.
• The party runs away a lot, or uses spells and magic items to avoid combat entirely. In fact, they don't really win a single encounter, if by "win" you mean "kill all the bad guys and take their stuff."
• Practically everybody has an awesome beard and/or mustache, elves and halflings excluded. Also, halflings don't look like hobbits here - they're skinny little guys with pointy noses, pointy ears, and pointy shoes.
• A female ranger is apparently called a "rangeress".

Oddly enough, I think the Coloring Album might be the best encapsulation of an "old school" D&D adventure ever made. It certainly gives a more accurate glimpse of the game than any of TSR's novels ever did.