Retrospective: Earthshaker!

I mentioned in yesterday's "The Articles of Dragon" post that, by 1985, I had begun to sense a nebulous but nevertheless real shift in TSR Hobbies and its games, though I could not then have really articulated what precisely it was that I was sensing. Even now, with the benefit of hindsight, I'm still not entirely sure I can pinpoint what my younger self was picking up on – but I don't think I was mistaken in my hunch. That's why I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at some of TSR's releases around this time to see what they were like and what, if anything, they might reveal about the early years of the Silver Age of Dungeons & Dragons.

That's where the subject of today's Retrospective post comes in. David Cook's Earthshaker!, written for use with 1984's D&D Companion Rules, is a very unusual adventure module, containing many of the elements that mark this transitional period for TSR and its games. It's very clearly an attempt to try something different, both in terms of subject matter and tone. For example, Cook, in the "How to Run This Adventure" section, notes that "this is not an entirely serious adventure." That's not to say it's a "joke" module, but neither is it self-serious in its presentation. Like I said, it's an attempt to try something different and, on that front at least, it succeeds.

The module takes its name from a massive, magically powered war machine that trundles across the landscape, leaving destruction in its wake. At once a fortress, a vehicle, and an engine of conquest, the Earthshaker is a mobile threat that cannot simply be ignored or bypassed. In some ways, it's also an interesting inversion of the traditional dungeon. Rather than the character venturing into a static, well established locale, the "dungeon" comes to them in the form of an Empire State Building-sized steam-powered robot. Most of the adventure takes the form of the characters have to infiltrate this immense machine and stop its relentless march across the domain of a local lord (who can either be an NPC or, if the Companion rules are being fully used, one of the player characters). 

The adventure begins with the arrival of traveling impresario, Formiesias of Thyatis, who has made his way to the Kingdom of Norwold with his Exhibition of Wonders. Chief among these wonders is Earthshaker. Formiesias does not know the origin of the device, though he recounts several legends about it, one of which claims that it was once an evil giant who, upon having the gem that contained his soul stolen, he turned to iron. A clan of gnomes dwells within Earthshaker and they're responsible for its operation. In fact, Formiesias doesn't really understand its operation himself, though he does command a unique spell that enables him to transport the giant machine from place to place without its having to walk across – and destroy – the countryside.

Enter a group of villains who've managed to obtain the soul gem Formiesias mentioned. Turns out that it's not merely a legend but real and the key to seizing control of Earthshaker. The main action of the adventure, therefore, is the characters attempting to stop them from reaching the Brain Deck of the machine and, with it, command of the ancient device. It's a pretty straightforward premise for a scenario, all things considered, even conventional. What sets it apart is the locale in which it takes place.

A map is provided of the Earthshaker’s interior, divided into a series of decks stacked on top of each other. Unlike a more traditional dungeon, most of these decks aren't keyed with encounters or treasure. Instead, they're simply described as environments in which battles against the villains can take place, as the characters try to foil their plan. There's also some information on the inner working of the Earthshaker, too, but it's limited in scope. The Earthshaker is supposed to be this mysterious, ancient thing rather than something explicable.

Despite Cook's suggestion that Earthshaker! is not entirely serious, I don't detect too much in the way of humor. Certainly the gnomes who inhabit it possess a degree of whimsy that's reminiscent (probably intentionally) of the tinker gnomes of Dragonlance, but their presence here does not overwhelm the overall situation the module describes. Likewise, some of the NPCs, like Formiesias and even the villains, have a flamboyance that borders on comical, yet I don't feel they cross the line into parody. It wouldn't be wrong to call Earthshaker! "light hearted" in its overall tone, though. The Tomb of Horrors this is not!

I’d even go so far as to say there’s a certain exuberance to Earthshaker! There’s a sense that Cook was exploring the outer limits of what D&D could encompass. The presence of a gigantic, walking war machine in a fantasy setting harkens back to a time when the game’s identity was still fluid and the boundaries between genres were porous. I find that aspect of the module appealing now, though I recall being somewhat irked by it at the time. Even so, the environment Cook presents is sufficiently intriguing that I was willing to overlook any reservations I had about its blending of fantasy and quasi-technological elements.

That said, I never actually ran Earthshaker! Like many modules of this period, it offered compelling ideas but never quite rose to the level of a “must play” scenario for me. Re-reading it forty years later, I’m no longer certain whether that judgment reflects a shortcoming of the adventure itself or simply my own preferences, both then and now. Indeed, I can’t help but wonder whether some of the shift I perceived in TSR during the mid-1980s was, in fact, a shift in me. I turned sixteen in 1985 and had already been playing Dungeons & Dragons for nearly six years. It’s possible I was simply growing restless and, without quite realizing it, projected that restlessness onto the game.

Viewed in that light, Earthshaker! might be less a misstep than a sign of a game stretching beyond its earlier boundaries, sometimes awkwardly, but not without imagination. It may never have compelled me to play it, but its central idea was clever nonetheless, a testament to the power of a strong conceit even when its execution is uneven. If nothing else, it serves as a reminder that D&D has always been at its most interesting when it dares to be a little strange.

REPOST: Retrospective: Dwellers of the Forbidden City

Despite the fact that David Cook's 1981 adventure, Dwellers of the Forbidden City, is one of my favorite D&D modules of all time, if not my actual favorite, I've never done a retrospective post on it. I did use the module previously as the centerpiece for my early ruminations of location-based adventures, but I don't think that post did the module full justice. Today's post is thus a partial attempt to make up for that fact.

Though parts of what would become Dwellers of the Forbidden City were used in the official AD&D tournament at Origins 1980, module I1 doesn't include a scoring sheet and referees are halfheartedly encouraged to design their own if they choose to use it in a tournament fashion. The module also conspicuously lacks the tournament "vibe" of other early modules, lacking both a precise, straightforward goal or a high density of combat/trap encounters intended to test the mettle of the players, instead opting for a more open-ended, exploratory style. In that respect, I1 might be an exemplar of the "Electrum Age" that marked a shift in the style and content of adventures from the earlier Golden Age, a shift some cheer and others decry.

Ostensibly, Dwellers of the Forbidden City is about the characters, in the employ of merchant leaders, seeking to put an end to raids on caravans passing through a remote jungle locale. However, once pointed in the right direction, the characters soon discover that there's more going on in the jungle than mere caravan raids, as they stumble across the mysterious Forbidden City, a lost city that recalls Robert E. Howard's Conan yarns – no surprise given David Cook has admitted that the City was inspired by "Red Nails." Though getting to the Forbidden City is an adventure in itself, with multiple means to enter it and lots of potential allies and enemies along the way, it is within the City (a version of whose map is reproduced below) that the real adventure begins.

As can see from the map, the Forbidden City is large and located within a canyon and thus isolated from the rest of the jungle. It is a world unto itself, one that operates according to the whims of its inhabitants, chief of whom are the yuan-ti snake men, who make their debut appearance in this module. In my younger days, I used this module innumerable times with several different groups of people, including some I barely knew. What's interesting is how similar the experience was right up until the point where the characters enter the Forbidden City. From that point on, nearly every group did something different, with quite a few completely forgetting their original mission and focusing instead on exploring the Forbidden City and its strange inhabitants.

Dwellers of the Forbidden City is only 28 pages long, so it's necessarily brief when it comes to describing its titular locale. Yet, that never bothered me. Indeed, I think it's probably one of the great strengths of the module and the reason I was able to use it so often: it was easy to make and remake the City to suit my present needs, whatever they were. My personal preference for modules these days are ones that fire my imagination; they give me the bare bones details I need to get started but they don't weigh me down with extraneous details that either get in the way or easily forget in the heat of play. Far from needing, in the words of James Wyatt, "more detail, more fleshed-out quests, and another hundred pages or so," module I1 is almost exactly the right length. Anything more than what it includes would, I think, have lessened its spartan appeal for me.

Re-reading Dwellers of the Forbidden City in preparation for this post brought back a lot of memories, all happy ones. I could recount many tales of adventures past, but those in the Forbidden City are among the most vibrant nearly 30 years after the fact. I remember well when Morgan Just and his stalwart companions braved this place, doing battle with the yuan-ti, the tasloi, and the bullywugs united under King Groak. I remember too my expansions of the City, using the adventure seeds Cook includes at the end – the under-city warrens filled with ghouls and demons, the vampire orchid-men, the Black Brotherhood, and time travel to the days when the City was at its decadent height. This was a module I literally played to pieces; my original copy of the booklet fell apart from so much use and its maps were smudged and stained from similar service. With the possible exception of The Isle of Dread – another David Cook module – I'm hard pressed to think of a module that more powerfully engaged my imagination and showed me what a powerful game D&D could be.

Retrospective: Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega

Since I recently started refereeing Metamorphosis Alpha, I've been thinking a lot about the game and its history. This inevitably led me back to the only version of MA I actually owned before the 21st century – 1994's Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, released as part of TSR's Amazing Engine series of games. Like the original version of Metamorphosis Alpha. this version of the game is fairly obscure, with comparatively few people even remembering its existence, let alone having played it. Indeed, I think it's possible that it's even more obscure than its predecessor, perhaps by being one of the last Amazing Engine products published during the tumultuous final years of TSR.

For those who don't recall, Amazing Engine was TSR's attempt to produce a set of generic rules that could be easily ported to a variety of different genres and settings. Designed by David Cook, the Amazing Engine rules were very "light," based on four ability scores, skills, and percentile resolution. Each setting book for the game built on this foundation, adding specific rules as needed. In Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, for example, specific rules additions primarily concerned mutations and high-tech equipment. 

Never having actually played any Amazing Engine game – a distinction I doubt is unique – I can’t speak to how well it worked in practice. Nor do I know whether the line’s cancellation less than two years after its launch reflects problems with the system itself or simply TSR’s dire financial state at the time, when no new product line likely stood much chance. The sad thing is that Amazing Engine did produce several genuinely interesting settings. I was particularly fond of For Faerie, Queen & Country, a Victorian fantasy setting, and Kromosome, a “biopunk” setting. Several of the other eight published settings were, by most accounts, also quite well done, though few people seemed to notice. Amazing Engine was very much a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it product line from the last days of TSR.

Designer Slade Henson, in his preface to Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, explains that the game began its life as a supplement to the 4th edition of Gamma World. That does not surprise me, since Jim Ward had been promising an MA supplement/expansion to Gamma World since at least 1981. The game's third edition very much seemed to be building toward it as well, making it one of the few things that captured my attention about that particular version of the game. However, it was never to be, nor, as Henson recounts, was it to happen for 4th edition. Once GW 4e was cancelled, the planned Metamorphosis Alpha boxed set – complete "a couple billion cards, a few trillion maps, and a googolplex of creative tidbits for the Game Master" – was to be converted into a stand-alone 144-page book. "I think I sobbed that day," Henson says, and I can't really blame him.

That said, the resulting book, truncated though it is from its original form, is not bad. I won't go so far as to call it good, because it has numerous flaws. However, it was, as I said, the first time I'd seen Metamorphosis Alpha in print in any form and so I liked it well enough. Furthermore, in many ways, it's an improvement on its legendary predecessor, most notably its organization and its relative completeness. It's perfectly possible to run an MA campaign with Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega and not be constantly beset with questions like, "What exactly does this mutation do?" or "Where did I see the rules for surprise?" Speaking as a referee in the midst of trying to make sense of the 1976 MA rulebook and occasionally failing, these improvements are no small things.

Likewise, Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega gives a much clearer and more well defined sense of not only what happened on the starship Warden in the past but also in the present. The book provides referees with a history of the ship, from its launch to its encounter with the radiation cloud to its fall. There's also a post-sized map of all nine decks of the Warden, along with its various city and agricultural domes. These, in turn, are each described, giving the referee some sense of their inhabitants and current state. The end result is a much more cohesive presentations of the Warden and plenty of possible starting points for new campaigns and adventures.

None of these features are bad in themselves and, arguably, they're boons. One of the flaws of the original Metamorphosis Alpha is its sketchiness. As I mentioned in a previous post, MA 1976 is more of an outline toward an RPG than a fully playable game. In that respect, it's a bit like OD&D. On the other hand, one could reasonably argue that that very sketchiness is a virtue, giving individual referees a very free hand to make the Warden – and the game itself – his own, since he's left with no choice but to fill in the game's innumerable blank spaces and lacunae himself. 

By contrast, Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega does a lot more of the heavy lifting for you – not all of it by any means, but enough that there's a much stronger and more well defined foundation on which to build. That can be a great thing, provided you like the foundation. Otherwise, it can actually be harder to use, since the referee now has to work against the overall content and tone on offer rather than simply making it all up from scratch. I think it's here that Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega is more of a mixed bag. Many of the descriptions of the Warden's current state are, in my opinion, strange and silly – like a tribe of Amazons who worship deactivated robots and mutant cows engaged in a range war against cowboy hat-wearing ranchers, to cite just two examples. 

Your mileage may vary, of course, which is why I can't say Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega is unqualifiedly bad. It's not and, by many definitions, it does a really good job, given the constraints under which it was produced and published. I also have some affection for it, since it was the first version of MA I owned and it has probably subtly informed my sense of what the game and setting is without my even realizing it. But a replacement to the original 1976 game it is not, which, for all its many flaws, strikes me as much more filled with possibility than its would-be successor. 

Retrospective: Vikings Campaign Sourcebook

Perhaps it's simply a facet of my getting older that I can now look back on AD&D Second Edition with a lot more equanimity than I once did. Mind you, I've been traveling this particular road for some time now, but, lately, I've found myself thinking ever more fondly of 2e, which I know is heresy in certain old school circles. Earlier in this blog's existence, I accepted without question the received wisdom that Second Edition heralded AD&D's decline. After all, it was the edition that promoted railroad-y adventure design, unnecessary rules complexity, and an endless parade of splatbooks. There’s some truth to those criticisms, but, as is often the case, the reality is more complicated. As I mellow in my old age, I’ve been struck by just how many interesting, even innovative, things TSR attempted under the 2e banner, even if not all of them succeeded.

One of the best examples of this spirit of experimentation is the Historical Reference (HR) series, the so-called “green books” published between 1991 and 1994. These seven volumes attempted to show that AD&D 2e could serve as a kind of universal fantasy engine, capable of handling settings well outside the game’s usual mold. Importantly, they weren’t intended as dry exercises in historical simulation. Instead, they leaned into a blend of history, legend, and myth, presenting material grounded in real cultures but always leavened with enough fantastical elements to remain recognizably D&D.

The first entry, the Vikings Campaign Sourcebook (1991), written by 2e’s chief architect, David “Zeb” Cook, set the tone for what followed. Vikings had been part of D&D’s DNA from the beginning. Deities & Demigods included Odin, Thor, and Loki, while Gygax’s Appendix N highlighted Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword, a novel steeped in Norse myth and heroic fatalism. Cook was tapping into a deep well already familiar to most players and the Vikings Campaign Sourcebook offers Dungeon Masters and players alike a toolkit for adventures inspired by the Viking Age.

The book begins with a broad overview of Norse society (law, honor, family, and daily life) along with a timeline of major events between the years 800 and 1100. Cook wisely avoids the caricature of Vikings as nothing more than berserk raiders, instead presenting them also as explorers, traders, and settlers. This emphasis on cultural breadth is, in fact, one of the book’s strengths and I find I appreciate that aspect of it even more now than I did when I first read it.

Character options include modifications to the standard AD&D classes, along with two entirely new ones, the berserker and the runecaster. It’s an odd choice to present these as separate classes rather than kits, especially since The Complete Fighter’s Handbook (released a couple of years previously) had already popularized kits as the preferred method for customizing characters. Whether this was simply Cook experimenting with format or an editorial decision from TSR is unclear, but it does highlight how much the HR series was still finding its footing. Additional rules cover equipment, magic items, and monsters, many of the latter being existing AD&D creatures modified to fit Norse myth more closely.

One of the book’s most enjoyable sections is its gazetteer of the Viking world, which is simply medieval Europe as seen through the eyes of the Norse. This is accompanied by a full-color foldout map, a TSR flourish I’ve always appreciated. In fact, I find this gazetteer and map more immediately inspiring than some of the book’s rules material, though that says as much about my own tastes as it does about Cook’s writing.

It must be said, though, that the Vikings Campaign Sourcebook is not an in-depth exploration of Norse history or culture. It was never meant to be. At 96 pages, it can only sketch the outlines of the period, leaving the DM and players to fill in the gaps with their own research or imagination. In that sense, it succeeds more as a primer or springboard than as a comprehensive treatment of its subject.

Despite this, the book plays well to AD&D’s inherent strengths. Heroism, exploration, and myth were already central to the game’s ethos and Cook’s presentation provides just enough historical texture to make a Viking campaign feel distinctive without drowning it in pedantry. For all its limitations, the result is a supplement that feels genuinely usable at the table.

Re-reading it now, I’m struck by how emblematic it is of TSR’s adventurousness during the 2e era. This was the same period that produced not only the Complete Handbook series and the later Option books, but also settings as varied as Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Al-Qadim. The HR series was part of this broader impulse to push beyond “generic fantasy” and explore what else AD&D could do. The Vikings Campaign Sourcebook may not have been perfect, but it was ambitious and I think that matters.

More than three decades later, the Vikings Campaign Sourcebook deserves to be remembered not just as a curiosity but as evidence that AD&D Second Edition was more interesting and more daring than its detractors usually allow. Mechanically, it has many flaws, but it also captures something essential about both D&D and the Norse material it adapts, namely, the thrill of stepping into a world where myth and history intertwine and where characters stand larger than life. For Dungeon Masters curious about running Viking adventures (or simply looking to mine inspiration) Cook’s book still has much to recommend it, as do all the books in the HR-series.

Retrospective: Planescape Campaign Setting

When I first acquired the AD&D Players Handbook – this was sometime in early 1980 – one of my favorite sections was Apprendix IV: The Known Planes of Existence. Taking up only a couple of pages, this appendix was the first time I'd ever encountered Gary Gygax's bizarre, mysterious, and wonderfully baroque ideas about the multiverse of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. What made Gygax's vision so weird compelling was its obsessive orderliness, which didn't simply tie the Outer Planes to each of the game's nine alignments, but to every conceivable shade in between. That's why, for example, the Seven Heavens are described as being "of absolute lawful good," while the planes of Elysium are "of neutral good lawfuls." 

Objectively, this is bonkers stuff, but I adored it and spent a lot of time thinking about the Outer (and other) Planes, aided no doubt by my fascination with the demons and devils of the Monster Manual. Despite Gygax's precise distinctions between the alignments of the Planes, AD&D didn't have a lot to say about them for a long time, aside from the occasional article in Dragon, like the ones about the Astral Plane (by Roger E. Moore) and the Nine Hells (by Ed Greenwood). And, of course, we later got Gygax's own developed thoughts about the Inner Planes, which were every bit as eccentric and persnickety as what he wrote in Appendix IV of the PHB all those years ago.

What I always wanted was a better sense of the Planes as a place and, more than that, as an adventuring locale. What sorts of adventures could AD&D characters have among the Planes? What made the Outer Planes different from the Prime Material Plane and how would this impact the kinds of adventures to be had there? The better Dragon articles, like those of Greenwood, did this well, or at least better than did Gygax, whose own ideas, while fascinating, remained largely in the realm of the theoretical. I wanted something more "down to earth," if you'll forgive the phrase. Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes was a good first step in that direction, but I wanted more.

As it turned out, I'd have to wait until 1994 to get that, in the form of the Planescape Campaign Setting – and it was not at all what I had expected. As imagined by David "Zeb" Cook and brought to visual life by Tony DiTerlizzi, the Outer Planes were indeed weird, though quite different from how they'd been previously portrayed. Instead of being presented as primarily the dwelling places of gods and demons, the Planes were instead a battleground between various factions of "philosophers with clubs," each of which hopes to remake reality according to their own idiosyncratic perspective. These factions, each associated (in some cases loosely) with an alignment or Outer Plane, were the driving force behind Cook's vision for Planescape. More than that, they provided an easy buy-in for player characters looking to involve themselves in the cosmic struggles of the setting.

"The setting." That's important. One of the clever things Cook did with Planescape was that he made the Planes a setting. They weren't just a place you could visit for a brief time; they were a place you could stay. Further, they were a place where even novice characters could stay, not merely high-level ones with access to potent magic. Further still, they were a place with its own native inhabitants and players could easily take up the role of one of them. Planescape gave AD&D's Planes a life of their own, divorced from the Prime Material Plane where most campaigns were set. Planescape made it possible to play entire campaigns where characters never once set foot on the World of Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, or any other "normal" campaign world. 

This was a bold approach and not at all what I or, I imagine, most AD&D players at the time were expecting. Not everyone warmed to Planescape's vision of the Planes. Indeed, I recall quite a few old hands who scoffed at it as taking too many cues from White Wolf's World of Darkness RPGs, which were very popular at the time. I can certainly appreciate the shock and surprise they probably felt upon reading Planescape and seeing DiTerlizzi's Dr Seuss-like depictions of the denizens of the Planes. This was not Gygax's Planes; it wasn't even Grubb's. It was something quite unique, filled with the strange, the odd, and the occasionally silly, and suffused with a punkish vibe that came through most strongly in its use of Planar Cant drawn from the criminal slang of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Many people, even fans of the setting, loathed the Cant, but there's no denying that it helped give Planescape a distinct flavor of its own.

Me, I enjoyed Planescape. It was not at all what I expected, but I enjoyed it for what it was: a strange, whimsical, wondrous take on world-hopping fantasy, with "worlds" in this case being other Planes of Existence, each with its own individual rules and style. And then there's Sigil, the City of Doors, located at the very center of the multiverse – if a series of infinite planes can truly be said to have a center. Home to the various planar factions and serving as a crossroads of the Planes, Sigil could serve as the basis for an entire campaign in itself, but it was also the perfect "home base" for planar characters whose adventures took them across the realms of the Great Wheel and beyond. Like Planescape itself, I really enjoyed Sigil and had a lot of fun with it.

I have lots of thoughts I could share about Planescape, both positive and negative, but my overall feeling for it is one of affection. I first made use of the setting as an adjunct to an ongoing Forgotten Realms campaign I ran in the mid-1990s. Later, I ran a "native" campaign among the Planes in the early days of Third Edition. Both were very well received by my players. Indeed, we still occasionally talk about some of the adventures they had in the setting. That's my usual measure of whether a gaming product succeeds – did I have fun with it? – and by that standard, Planescape is one of the greats.  

The Articles of Dragon: "Call of Cthulhu is a Challenge"

"Dragon's Augury" was the name given to Dragon magazine's recurring review section. At the time I first encountered it, "Dragon's Augury" had no single, dedicated reviewer. A different contributor reviewed each featured gaming product, though there were often contributors whose names I'd see quite regularly, such as Tony Watson and Ken Rolston. 

Sometimes, though, there'd be a review from a notable figure within TSR, like Gary Gygax, and these naturally caught my attention. A good example of this occurred in issue #61 (May 1982), in which David Cook, author of one of my favorite AD&D modules, wrote a review of the newly released Chaosium RPG, Call of Cthulhu. By the time this review appeared, I already owned a copy and was a great fan of it. Nevertheless, I was very curious to hear what Cook might have to say about it.

Though Cook had a lot of positive things to say about Call of Cthulhu, the overall tenor of his review could probably be called "mixed." After providing a nice overview of both the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the intended playstyle of CoC, he launches into his dissection of the game's flaws. For example, he points out that, while short, Basic Role-Playing, is not very complete, with many ambiguous rules. The same is true of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook itself, which, in addition to ambiguity, includes editorial errors that further contribute to its lack of clarity. In particular, Cook notes that the game's combat system lacks, among other things, "rules for how to deal with cover, movement, surprise, or other situations" that might come up in a fight. 

Cook singles out A Sourcebook for the 1920's as "the weakest part" of the boxed set. Its contents, he believes, appear to be little more than "notes and unfinished design work." He finds the alternate character generation rules – one of my favorite parts of the book – to be "inadequately explained" and a source of confusion. Another bone of contention is the game's lack of rules for generating and handling human NPCs, whom Cook imagines will play important roles in any Lovecraft-inspired adventure. Speaking of which, Cook speaks highly of the sample scenarios included in the rulebook.

The review is fairly lengthy and detailed, but it generally goes on in this direction. I get the impression that Cook, as a fan of Lovecraft, may have had high, or at least very specific, hopes for what Call of Cthulhu should have been like and those hopes were not fully met. Even so, he acknowledges that "when played, it's fun." He does caution that, because of its rules gaps, it demands a lot of the referee. Consequently, Call of Cthulhu "is a good game for experienced role-playing gamers and ambitious judges, especially if they like Lovecraft's type of story." 

As I mentioned, I already owned a copy of Call of Cthulhu by the time I read this review and was slightly baffled by it. My friends and I had been enjoying it without noticing any of the problems Cook pointed out in his review. That's probably because, as young people – I would have been twelve at the time – our grasp of the rules as written was not always the best and so we frequently made things up when we needed to do so. By contrast, Cook was already an accomplished game designer with a lot of experience both as a writer and a player of both wargames and RPGs. This undoubtedly colored the way he wrote his review, something I didn't appreciate at the time.

I also couldn't fathom why Cook had so many critical things to say about the game, despite his admission that he had found Call of Cthulhu fun in play. If he enjoyed the game, I thought, why point out its flaws? For that matter, how had he even noticed them in the first place? I thought about these and other related questions for some time afterward, which is precisely why I still remember this review more than four decades later. David Cook challenged my own assumptions and blind spots. He'd dared to say critical things about a new game my friends and I had enjoyed. In retrospect, I realize I learned a lot from his approach, even if, in 1982, it made little sense to me. 

The Articles of Dragon: "It's That Time of Year Again ..."

I'm sure this will come as a great surprise to longtime readers of this blog that, as a young man, I was fairly serious and earnest. Shocking, I know! Of all the things about which I was serious – and there were many – Dungeons & Dragons was near the top of the list. It's no exaggeration to say that, in the first few years after I discovered the game, D&D was an important part not merely of my life but also of my self-conception. I was a D&D player and I was sincerely proud of this fact in a way that I doubt I've ever been since.

Consequently, when I first came across issue #60 of Dragon (April 1982) and read its contents, I was taken aback. Sure, the article contained a further installment of Roger E. Moore's magisterial demihuman "Point of View" series (focusing on elves this time), along with more cantrips from Gary Gygax and other interesting stuff, but what really caught my eye were a pair of articles that played off longstanding Dragon columns, specifically "Giants in the Earth" and "Dragon's Bestiary." I say "played off," because neither installment in this issue was quite right, as I'll explain.

"Giants in the Earth" was replaced by "Midgets in the Earth" and, rather than presenting D&D stats for characters from classic fantasy and science fiction literature, what we got instead were write-ups for goofy original characters, like the kobold dictator Idi "Little Daddy" Snitmin, Morc the Orc, and master halfling thief Eubeen Hadd. Written by Roger E. Moore and accompanied by artwork that looks like it could have been drawn by Jim Holloway, "Midgets in the Earth" was clearly intended as nothing more than silly fun in honor of April Fool's Day. Please bear in mind that I read this article long before I'd come across the regular April Fool's issues of Polyhedron, so the concept was still somewhat new to me at the time.

The issue's "Dragon's Bestiary" was in a similar vein. Instead of the usual assortment of dangerous and unusual new monsters for use with D&D, we were given entries inspired by various pop culture "monsters," like Donald Duck or Marvin the Martian or the Bad News Bugbears. Like "Midgets in the Earth," these were clearly intended to be silly, but I found them irritating – all the more so because they were written by designers like Tom Moldvay and David Cook, who could have been writing really useful stuff. Why were they wasting effort on such nonsense, I thought? I'd much rather have had more serious content that I could drop into my ongoing AD&D campaign.

Yeah, I was a little tightly wound in those days. Go figure! In time, I came to be a bit more accepting of such silliness, but it took some time – and more April Fool's issues of Dragon to do it. I never fully embraced it, but I did become less uptight about it and the way I enjoyed my hobby. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself ...

The Articles of Dragon: "Giants in the Earth"

 As I pen more posts for this series, you'll notice that many of its entries are themselves about series of articles from the pages of Dragon. I could offer a lot of explanations for this, but the simplest, I suppose, is that, with series, you know what you're getting. In theory, if you like one entry in the series, you will probably enjoy those that follow. Series provide a foundation on which to build and a format to follow that makes them attractive to both writers and readers – that's the reason this blog has so many series of its own.

Issue #59 (March 1982) introduced me to a new series of Dragon articles. Entitled "Giants in the Earth," this was an irregular feature devoted to presenting famous characters from fantasy (and occasionally science fiction) literature in terms of Dungeons & Dragons game mechanics. This particular issue included write-ups for five different characters – Poul Anderson's Sir Roger de Tourneville (by Roger E. Moore), L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's Harold Shea (by David Cook), Alexei Panshin's Anthony Villiers (by Andrew Dewar), Clifford Simak's Mark Cornwall and Sniveley (both by Roger E. Moore). 

At the time I first saw this article, I think I was only familiar with Sir Roger de Tourneville, having already read The High Crusade. The others were completely unknown to me and, in the case of the Simak characters, I'm embarrassed to admit, still are. Nevertheless, I found the piece fascinating for several reasons. First, almost from the moment I started playing D&D, I began to think about how best to stat up characters from myth, legend, and books. Seeing how "professional" writers did so held my interest. Second, many of the entries – even the science fiction ones! – included suggestions on introducing these characters into an ongoing D&D campaign, an idea I'd never considered before. Finally, the entries served to introduce me to authors and books I might otherwise never have encountered, just as Appendix N and Moldvay's "Inspirational Source Material" section had done.

That last one is of particular importance to me, especially nowadays, as the inspirations for fantasy roleplaying shift away from books of all kinds and more toward movies and video games. With the benefit of hindsight, one of the things that's very obvious is how much more literary fantasy was in my youth. Arguably, that's because, until comparatively recently, fantasy hadn't much penetrated the mainstream and thus there were few other ready sources for the genre. If you were interested in wizards and dragons and magic swords, books were all you had, whereas today we have a greater number of options available to us. Perhaps – and maybe I'm just being an old man again – I detect a difference in kind between the literary fantasies I grew up reading (and that inspired the founders of the hobby) and the pop culture stuff we see today.

The irony of my being introduced to "Giants in the Earth" through this issue is that it's one of the last ones published in Dragon. Though I'd eventually see some of the earlier installments, the vast majority of them were long out of my reach, their having been published long before I started playing RPGs, let alone reading the magazine. Even so, the few that I did read served the useful purpose of broadening my knowledge of fantasy and science fiction, as well as acquainting me with characters and writers who would, in time, become lifelong companions. 

The Adventure is Yours

Throughout 1982 and into 1983, I regularly saw this full-page advertisement for the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh Dungeons & Dragons boxed sets in the pages of Dragon.

The ad is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First, the image at the bottom left, showing five people sitting at a table playing D&D (with the cover of Keep on the Borderlands clearly standing up in front of the DM) seems to depict the same group of people who appear in a TV commercial from around the same time. That suggests that this print ad was part of a larger, multi-prong effort to introduce "the world's most talked about role-playing adventure" to a wider potential audience. 

Second, the ad features artwork in a style quite distinct from that of any artist I associate with D&D of that era. Since there's no obvious artist's signature, identifying its origin is difficult. It's possible that this question has already been resolved. If so, I'd love to know the identity of the artist. Beyond that, it's also noteworthy, I think, that the illustration depicts three characters (who appear to be a thief, a magic-user, and perhaps an elf) walking/riding at night through the streets of a fantasy setting rather than something more obvious, like a party fighting a dragon or some other monster. Perhaps the marketing people felt this was redundant in light of the inset pictures of the two boxed sets, one of which shows that very scene.

I have no idea how effective this advertisement was in its intended purpose, but I've always liked it.

Retrospective: Greyhawk Wars

I've never been much of a wargamer (take a drink). Despite that, I've always been interested in wargaming, particularly the hex-and-chit variety epitomized by Avalon Hill. Over the years, I've dabbled in wargames, such as my recent flirtation with the COIN series published by GMT, but I've never really committed to them in the way that many of my friends have done. I thus have a minor inferiority complex about this, feeling that my gaming "education" is somehow deficient because I haven't played wargames as often or as widely as my peers.

So, when TSR released a board wargame set in Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk setting in 1991, I took immediate notice of it. This was my chance to get in some much needed wargaming experience. Alas, things didn't quite go as planned on this score, but I'll get to that soon enough. For the moment, let's focus on the matter of the game's title. According to the box cover, one could be forgiven for thinking it's called Greyhawk Adventures: Wars. However, the text of the rulebook repeatedly calls it simply Greyhawk Wars, which is how I've always referred to it, though some online spaces (like BoardGameGeek) favors the longer, more ponderous title.

In addition to the possible confusion over the title, it's also worth noting that, despite being a wargame, Greyhawk Wars was released under the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition banner. This is in spite of the fact that it contains no roleplaying content whatsoever, not even the thin gruel provided by Dragons of Glory, another TSR strategic-level wargame set within a D&D campaign world. Of course, TSR had long been notorious about slapping the (A)D&D logo on just about everything, in an effort to build and expand its "brand." Compared to, say, wind-up toys or sunglasses, this particular bit of brand building was pretty innocuous and indeed could be justified in that it was intended to be the lead-in to a relaunch of the World of Greyhawk setting.

Though Gygax departed TSR for good by 1986, the company retained control of Greyhawk. Throughout the late 1980s, there were a handful of Greyhawk products released, most notably Greyhawk Adventures, but none of them, in my opinion, did a good job of carrying on the flavor and tone set by Gygax's original. If anything, they blandified the setting, reducing it to the worst kind of vanilla fantasy. Unsurprisingly, the setting's popularity – and, therefore, sales – declined, especially when compared to TSR's other two AD&D settings: Krynn and the Forgotten Realms. 

TSR probably recognized this fact, which is why, starting in the early '90s, the company attempted to better differentiate the World of Greyhawk in the hopes that it'd be more appealing to AD&D players. The first step in doing so was Greyhawk Wars. The wargame, designed by David "Zeb" Cook, concerns a massive war that engulfs the peoples and kingdoms of the Flanaess, one whose results upend the status quo presented in previous World of Greyhawk products. Whatever my personal feelings about the end result, it's hard not to admire the boldness of this approach. For years beforehand, Gary Gygax, in periodic Greyhawk updates published in Dragon, had been hinting at the possibility of such a large-scale "world war," but he never pulled the trigger on the idea, probably because he intended Oerth to be an open-ended "steady state" setting each Dungeon Master could customize according to his own desires.

Greyhawk Wars takes a very different approach. Instead of leaving the World of Greyhawk perpetually teetering on the edge of grand events, Cook opts to topple the whole structure, throwing long established peoples, places, and situations into chaos. At the end of the battles depicted in the wargame, a new order is established across the Flanaess, one where the forces of Good are battered, beaten, and on the defensive, while Evil, as represented by the Empire of Iuz, the Scarlet Brotherhood, and the successor states of the Great Kingdom is on the rise. The result is something that's definitely different from the original World of Greyhawk. Whether it's better is another matter.

As tabletop wargames go, Greyhawk Wars occupies a middle ground between being simple enough a newcomer can easily pick it up and so complex that only a hardened veteran of Third Reich could ever play it. The game rules are relatively short – only 8 pages – and straightforward. While there are lots of counters (representing military units), there are no hexes. Instead, the map of the Flanaess into movement "areas" of varying size, based to some extent on terrain. Also included in the game are a number of cards, some of which represent random events and treasures that can be used to augment the abilities of military units. Named NPCs (called "Heroes") play a role in the game, too, which lends it a slight roleplaying flair, though, for the most part, this is still very much a standard wargame. 

Greyhawk Wars is intended for 2 to 6 players, depending on the scenario, each with its own victory conditions. These conditions, though, are solely for gaming purposes and have no bearing on the canonical versions of these events, much in the way that a Confederate player in a wargame about the American Civil War can emerge victorious, contrary to history. The 32-page Adventurer's Book lays out the "true" conclusion of the Greyhawk Wars, the one I described above, with Evil ascendant and Good on the defensive. This is in contrast to the earlier Red Arrow, Black Shield module, which, while assuming a particular outcome for its world war, nevertheless considers the possibility of other outcomes and how they might affect ongoing campaigns. Greyhawk Wars allows for no such possibility and all subsequent Greyhawk products would follow the canonical version of history detailed in the Adventurer's Book.

As I alluded to at the start of this post, my own experiences with Greyhawk Wars weren't great. That's not a fault of the game, which is fine, if unexceptional. Rather, I had difficulty in finding others interested in taking the time to play any of its scenarios. Between setting up and playing, most took 3 hours or more – a short time compared to many wargames, I know – and that limited my pool of potential players. As a result, I don't think I ever played Greyhawk Wars more than a half-dozen times and rarely to conclusion. My perpetual quest for more wargaming knowledge and experience was thwarted once again.

All that said, I can't help but find Greyhawk Wars a fascinating window into the last decade of TSR's existence. The mere fact that the company published something approximating a classic hex-and-chit wargame set in Greyhawk is remarkable in its own right. That it was also the first part of a larger plan to reboot Gary Gygax's campaign setting into something they hoped would be more attractive to fantasy roleplayers in the 1990s is just as remarkable. I can't speak much about the success of the former, since, as I said, I didn't get the chance to play it much. As to the latter, that's the subject of next week's Retrospective post, so stay tuned.

50 years in the Dungeon

A very interesting interview with David "Zeb" Cook about his time at TSR Hobbies, in which he talks about the D&D Expert Set, Oriental Adventures, and Second Edition, among other topics. 

Now Under Construction

Because I did a Retrospective post on Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms last week, I was reminded of how excited I was by the announcement that the long-awaited Asian expansion to AD&D, Oriental Adventures. OA was a long percolating project about which Gary Gygax had talked for years beforehand, in part because he felt the monk class didn't belong in "standard" AD&D, given its inspiration in the legends of the Far East. Despite this, there didn't seem to be any evidence that such a project was likely to happen anytime soon and I largely put it out of mind.

Then, without warning, in issue #102 of Dragon (October 1985), this advertisement appeared:

Now, we'd finally get official game rules for samurai and ninja and martial arts and everything else we fans of Kurosawa and Kung Fu Theatre had long thought should be brought into AD&D. To say that Oriental Adventures was greatly anticipated, at least among my friends and myself, is something of an understatement and this ad, featuring a washed out, black and white version of Jeff Easley's cover painting, is a big part of the reason why. Though my feelings about OA are now a bit more mixed, I still have many fond memories of it – and the long October I spent waiting for November 1985 to roll around so that I could finally lay my hands on it.

Polyhedron: Issue #23

April Fool's issues were a staple of my youth, but they're very difficult to pull off. Partly, that's because humor can be very subjective and, partly, that's because most attempts at humor, especially in writing, are simply not very good. Consequently, I greeted the arrival of issue #23 of Polyhedron (April 1985) with some trepidation, despite its delightful cover by Tom Wham (take note of the bolotomus and snits in the bottom lefthand corner). However, I'm happy to say that this particular April Fool's Day issue is (mostly) pretty good. In fact, there are a couple of articles that I still find rather amusing even now – not laugh-out-loud funny, but intellectually droll, if that distinction means anything.

The issue begins with another installment of "News from HQ" that explains the nature of this issue: 

If this is your first issue of the POLYHEDRON Newszine, I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the RPGA Network, and let you in on the gag. Five out of the six issues you will receive with each year of membership will bring you club news, informative articles on your favorite game systems, and a chance to make a serious contribution to the hobby by sharing your ideas with other members. This is not one of those five.

That's the kind of humor I'm talking about. The editorial goes on to explain that this issue was "conceived in madness and dedicated to the proposition that there is room for levity in gaming." I wholeheartedly agree, as anyone who's ever played in one of my campaigns will tell you. Yes, even the ones occasionally featuring unpleasant stuff. Games are supposed to be fun, after all, and it's important not to lose sight of that.

Much less funny is "An Official Policy Statement," whose entire shtick is using $64 words to say silly things about, in this case, "the sex lives of monsters." As I said above, humor writing isn't easy.

Fortunately, Gary Gygax gifts us with "Ultimists," a new character class for AD&D. Described as "fighting wizard-priests," Ultimists combine the abilities of clerics, magic-users, and monks. While their ability scores are rolled using only 3d6, the result of that roll is made by recourse to a chart, with most rolls resulting in scores of 15 or higher. This section of the class description pokes fun, as Gygax makes clear, those "enthusiasts" who objected to his system for rolling up the abilities of the then-new barbarian class. Ultimists also make use of spell points, because "memorizing spells is tedious, and the selection requires reasoning and intelligence applied to the game." Ouch. I can't really blame Gygax for using the article as an opportunity to vent about critics of AD&D. I imagine he was quite fed up with them by this point in his life.

"Why Gargoyles Don't Have Wings (But Should) (An Alternative Viewpoint) by David Collins is an attempt to explain away Gary Gygax's concerns about the illustration of the gargoyle in the Monster Manual through a variety of vaguely humorous means. It's fine for what it is, but nothing special. A bit more interesting is Skip Williams's "The Lighter Side of Encounters" in which he presents a couple of humorous encounters from Frank Mentzer's Aquaria campaign as a way of demonstrating how humor sometimes finds its way into otherwise "serious" RPG campaigns. The encounters are all based on things that actually happened in Menzter's campaign, which is fascinating in its own right. Speaking of Mentzer – or, rather, Knarf Reztnem – his "Punishments to Fit the Crime" offer a pair of humorous stories whose conclusions depend on puns. They're basically Dad jokes in written form. Make of that what you will.

Frank Mentzer reappears with "New Magic Items," which offers up some fun (and funny) magic items from his Aquaria campaign, like the canister of condiments and the sweet tooth. Then, he reappears yet again – the man was a machine back in the day – with "Excerpts from the Book of Mischievous Magic," a spoof of his The Book of Marvelous Magic. This second article many amusing magical items like the awl of the above, cool hand lute, stocking of elf summoning, and practical yoke. It's all very silly, of course, but done with some real cleverness and an understanding that a good joke magic item isn't just a joke, but should also have some potential utility in a game. Mentzer clearly understood this.

Part 2 of David Cook's "In the Black Hours" AD&D adventure (Part 1 appeared in the previous issue) is the sole piece of "serious" material in the entire issue and thus feels very much out of place. Like its predecessor, it looks fun, reminding me a bit of something in which Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Conan, while working as a thief, might have become involved. "Dungeonsongs" is back to form, with a trio of humorous, RPG-themed songs set to well-known tunes, like "I'll Be a Wererat in the Morning" and "Green Slime." "Dispel Confusion" answers numerous important questions for D&D, AD&D, and Top Secret, like this one:

Bruce Heard pens "Zee Chef," another new character class for use with AD&D. A chef is designed specifically for NPCs "devoted to the culinary arts and learning more about native delicacies." It's a spellcasting class, with a host of new spells, including my favorite, edible glamour. Concluding the issue is "The Male of the Species" by – you guessed it – Frank Mentzer, which describes "emezons," the male counterparts to the amazons presented by Gary Gygax in issue #22. Some emezons are members of the new chef NPC class, while others are "exceptionally skilled at child raising, interior decorating, and hair styling." Hey, it was a different time.

All in all, not bad. Even someone as humor-impaired as myself chuckled a couple of times, which is quite a feat in itself. I'd still rather have had a "normal" issue of Polyhedron, but I can't deny the staff did a good job with their assignment. Well done!

Polyhedron: Issue #22

Issue #22 of Polyhedron (March 1985) features an interesting piece of artwork by Joseph Pillsbury. I say "interesting" not solely for the subject matter of the piece – a downed spacecraft – but because Pillsbury is an artist I mostly remember for his humorous comics in the "Dragon Mirth" section of Dragon. I can't recall his having done any "serious" artwork before, but it's always possible I've overlooked his wider contributions to the hobby.

Penny Petticord's "News from HQ" has two items worthy of note. The first is an announcement that Polyhedron is actively seeking submissions from readers. Petticord states that "only a few members" have thus far been making submissions and she'd like to change that. I wish I'd paid more attention to this at the time, because I made several submissions to Dragon while I was in high school and all were rejected. I might have had a better shot with Polyhedron, given the dearth of submissions. Secondly, Petticord warns readers that the next issue will a "special April Fool" issue, so "don't believe anything you read" in its pages. Fair enough!

This issue also features a large letters page, with multiple letters written in response to Roger E. Moore's "Women in Role Playing" essay from issue #20, While not all of the letters were critical, many of them were, largely because the readers felt that Moore had "belittled" or otherwise failed to understand female gamers. Though Moore apologizes for any unintended offense, he nevertheless stands by what he wrote, noting that it's an important topic in need of more frank discussion. Some things never change, I guess. 

Gary Gygax returns to this issue, writing yet again about marlgoyles and their reproduction. He provides AD&D stats for every stage of the creature's growth from hatchling to mature. It's baffling to me, but it's definitely in keeping the naturalism that's a hallmark of his worldbuilding. He also provides stats for a "monster" that was somehow left out of Monster Manual II – amazons. Amazons, in Gygax's vision, are a female-dominated society of barbarians, with menfolk in secondary or support roles. Beyond that, he doesn't have much more to say about them, which I found a little disappointing, because they're a great fantasy concept worthy of inclusion in D&D.

Frank Mentzer's "Spelling Bee" focuses on druid spells and abilities. Interestingly, Mentzer concern this time seems more focused on reining in druid abilities (like shapechange) that he thinks can be easily abused rather than on finding new and creative ways to make use of them. "The RPGA Network Tournament Ranking System" article is not especially interesting in itself, at least to me. However, the accompanying ranked list of RPGA judges and players is. Gary Gygax, for example, is the only Level 10 Judge, just as Frank Mentzer is the only Level 9. There are no Level 8 or 7 Judges and only one Level 6 (Bob Blake). The names on both lists include quite a number of people who either were at the time or would later be associated with TSR or the wider RPG world. It's a fascinating window on a particular time in both the hobby and the industry.

"In the Black Hours" is an AD&D adventure for levels 6–9 by David Cook. The scenario is unusual in a couple of ways, starting with its lengthy backstory about a high-level mage who learned the true name of the demon lord Juiblex and, in order to protect himself, was eventually forced to imprison the demon with a magical crown. That crown has now come into the possession of a merchant who wishes to protect it from would-be thieves (employed by Juiblex's demonic underlings who wish to free him). The characters are hired by the crown's present owner to protect it over the course of the night when he believes the thieves will make their attempt. There's a lot going on here and the basic structure of the adventure – mounting a defense against waves of attackers – seems well suited to a tournament set-up. If anyone ever played this scenario (or one like it), I'd be very curious to hear how it went.

"Away with Words" by Frank Mentzer is a 26-word multiple choice quiz that challenges the reader's knowledge of High Gygaxian words. It's a fun enough little diversion, though less hard now, thanks to the ubiquity of online dictionaries. "Unofficial New Spells for Clerics" by Jon Pickens does exactly what it says: offers a dozen new spells for use by clerics. Most of these spells are connected in some way to existing magic items, like the staff of striking or necklace of adaptation, filling in gaps in the spell list that, logically, should exist. While that certainly makes sense, it's also boring and exactly the kind of magic-as-technology approach that I've come to feel kills any sense of wonder in a fantasy setting.

"Dispel Confusion" continues to narrow its scope. This issue we're treated only to questions pertaining to D&D, AD&D, and Star Frontiers. Most of them are the usual collection of nitpicks and niggling details. However, one stood out as noteworthy (and indeed unexpected):

I have to admit that this answer surprised me – not because I didn't already know what it would say, but because I didn't imagine I'd ever read such a thing in a TSR periodical. In the past, these magazines tended to advance a very strong "by the book" line when it came to the rules, as evidenced by the fact that there's an official column for questions and answers. I can't help but wonder if perhaps this represented a change in thinking during the final years of Gygax's time at the company (he'd leave for good October 1986 – about a year and a half into the future).

"Of Great Ships and Captains" by Roger E. Moore is the second part of his "big ships" article for Star Frontiers. Unlike part one from the previous issue, this second part focuses on the fine details of running a campaign aboard a large starship. Moore takes a look at deckplans, crew complement, shipboard positions, and the kinds of adversaries and adventures that work in such a campaign. It's all very good stuff and, as I mentioned in my write-up of issue #21, I found it very inspirational in my younger days. The only real criticism I can muster about the article is that it does not include a set of sample deckplans for a big ship, as promised. Production delays apparently prevented their inclusion and, while Moore states they would appear in a future issue of Polyhedron, I don't believe they ever did. If I'm mistaken about this, I'd love to know.

The issue concludes with the return of "The Treasure Chest," the RPGA catalog of exclusive items that has not been seen in quite some time. The items available for sale are now mostly RPGA tournament modules that were otherwise unavailable at the time, along with some exclusive miniatures and back issues of Polyhedron. I wonder what occasioned the return of the catalog, since I can't imagine that it made enough money for that to have been a serious consideration. In any case, we're inching ever closer toward the end of my time as a subscriber to the newszine, meaning this series will likely conclude before we reach the summer months.

Retrospective: Time of the Dragon

When I first started writing these Retrospective posts, I set myself some broad historical parameters, in order to pare down the absolutely immense number of potential games and gaming products about which I could write. Those parameters were (very roughly) the first decade of the RPG hobby, meaning the years 1974–1984, which maps pretty closely to what I've previously called the Golden Age of Dungeons & Dragons. Like all such parameters, mine was somewhat (though not entirely) arbitrary and, over the years, I've deviated from it when I felt there was a worthy product whose publication date fell outside that range of years. 

For the most part, though, I've stuck to my original framework, if only out of habit and some degree of stubbornness. However, a conversation with a very old friend of mine reminded me that the early years of 1990s were more than thirty years ago. Likewise, the first non-TSR edition of D&D was released just shy of a quarter-century ago, making it almost as old today as OD&D was at the time 3e was published. Shocking though these reminders were to my increasingly aged self, the served a valuable purpose in giving me some additional perspective on the history of the hobby. 2024, after all, marks the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons and I'm still focusing very narrowly on a small sliver of that half-century. Perhaps it was time to expand Grognardia's gaze a little further into the future past – to the end of TSR's existence, at least.

And what better way to kick off the expanded coverage of the Retrospective series than a post about my favorite Dragonlance product, 1989's Time of the Dragon? Yes, you read that right: my favorite Dragonlance product. I know that I am well known as a Dragonlance hater, but the truth is that my feelings toward the setting and line of AD&D products is rather more nuanced than simple hatred. I don't actually hate Dragonlance itself so much as what its popularity and success did to the subsequent direction of Dungeons & Dragons, nudging it down the road toward whatever it is that it's become in recent decades. 

Time of the Dragon is the brainchild of none other than David "Zeb" Cook, which may explain why I've always had such an affection for it. It's also one of those glorious boxed sets that TSR produced in large numbers during the 2e era, something no one else in the hobby (with the possible exception of the Chaosium of old) has ever done as well. Consisting of two books – the 112-page Guide Book to Taladas and the 48-page Rule Book of Taladas, along with 24 full-color cardstock sheets and 4 poster maps – Time of the Dragon presents for the first time another continent of Krynn, the aforementioned Taladas. Like the more familiar Ansalon, Taladas suffered from the events of the Cataclysm, when a single huge meteor fell from the sky and nearly sundered the continent. However, Taladas has its own unique races, cultures, and history, not to mention relationship with the gods that set it apart from Ansalon.

That's a big part of why I retain an affection for Time of the Dragon. Whereas Ansalon and the modules focusing on the War of the Lance have a faux-Tolkien-meets-Ren-Faire vibe to them, Taladas is a darker, harsher place, owing in part to how it experienced the Cataclysm. The meteor strike caused massive terrain-altering earthquakes, resulting in lava flows and volcanic eruptions that blackened the skies. Survival in this environment required hard decisions by the peoples and societies of Taladas, making it a crueler, more pragmatic and occasionally xenophobic place. In some respects, Taladas anticipates many aspects of the later Dark Sun setting, though admittedly lacking in the more sword-and-planet feel of the latter.

Consequently, Taladas feels very different from Ansalon, almost to the point of feeling as if the continent were not located on Krynn. Its peoples and societies deviate from the standard assumptions of both AD&D and Dragonlance. For example, the majority of the elves of Taladas have a nomadic, horse-based culture quite unlike those of Ansalon, while a minority of the race are reclusive tricksters who steal human babies to replenish their own sickly stock. Similarly, the dwarves of Taladas do not dwell underground and, in fact, have a fear of subterranean locales. Kender – much disliked in many gaming circles – barely exist in Taladas and those who do lack the carefree attitudes of their Ansalon cousins. Taladas is also home to numerous new playable races, like goblins, ogres, lizard men, and minotaurs, the latter of which rule a Roman-inspired empire. Combined with several distinct human cultures, likewise inspired by historical antecedents, Taladas would never be mistaken for Ansalon.

Time of the Dragon is also notable for its various rules changes and alterations to 2e. The one I remember most are its kits, an innovation most AD&D players would probably associate with the interminable The Complete X Handbook series, but which, so far as I recall, debuted in this boxed set. At any rate, it's the first place I encountered the idea of kits and I was immediately taken with them. For those unfamiliar with them, a kit is a set of small tweaks to a standard character class to reflect the idiosyncrasies of a particular race and/or culture. For example, there's a kit for the horse-riding bowmen of the Uigan culture and another for the gnomish Companions of the Dead, an elite group of fighters. What I think works about these kits, as compared to those that appeared later, is that they're all very specific and serve to ground the character that possesses one in the setting, which is something I find very agreeable.

I don't get the impression that Taladas was very well received by Dragonlance fans in general, though, as I recall, there were a handful of supplements produced to support it during the 2e era. If my assessment is correct, I can understand why that might have been the case. Aside from a few high-level connections to standard Krynn, such as the influence of the three moons over magic, Taladas might as well be its own unique setting. Even the signature draw of Dragonlance – the dragons – are downplayed and re-contextualized so that, if it weren't for the DL logo on the box, one might be hard pressed to recognize it as taking place on Krynn. That might also explain why I was (and am) so fond of Time of the Dragon: it's a fascinating experiment in building a distinct and unusual AD&D setting that doesn't quite fit into the usual array of building blocks, which is itself a feature of the entire 2e era of AD&D.

Hidden Details

Because of my post about the limited pop cultural footprint of Dungeons & Dragons as a game, several readers pointed me toward the image below, which I've enlarged as much as I could. It's a still from the 1986 Jim Henson-directed, George Lucas-produced, and Terry Jones-penned fantasy movie, Labyrinth. 

In case it's not clear from the image above, there's a copy – seemingly still in shrinkwrap – of the 1981 David Cook/Steve Marsh Expert Set on a bookshelf in the film. I've admittedly not seen the movie recently, but I suspect this is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment rather than something that's given any prominence. Certainly, no one in the movie plays D&D or even references it in any way, so I'm not at all convinced that it's particularly relevant to the point of my earlier post. I imagine it's more likely a case that someone on Labyrinth's production team thought the box "looked cool" and then placed it on the set. I doubt anyone before the advent of high-resolution home video even noticed it; I certainly didn't.

I wouldn't be surprised to discover that there are other movies and TV shows from the 1980s that feature, as background details, Dungeons & Dragons and RPG-related paraphernalia. However, I don't believe their number would be very large, or else they'd be better known. I know that, when I was a kid, I made a big deal out of even the flimsiest connections to my beloved hobby. If there are more instances like this out there, they must be very well hidden indeed.