Collect All the D&D

 “We like lists because we don’t want to die.”

– Umberto Eco

For many the yuletide holiday season involves lists: lists of ingredients for traditional meals; lists of things to do in preparation for whatever winter holiday we celebrate; and lists of gifts, both that we hope to receive and that we’ve accumulated to give to our friends and loved ones. In the weekly hometown newspaper I use to work for we’d run a story every December about the various letters to Santa the local post office received, getting some idea what kids were asking from Santa that year. Kids send their lists of desired toys to Santa, while St. Nick himself keeps a list of who’s been naughty and nice. During this season of list-keeping I look back to my own idyllic youth to a list, of sorts, I kept: the 1981 TSR Hobbies, Inc., “Gateway to Adventure” catalog that came in the Basic Dungeons & Dragons boxed set I got as an Easter gift in 1982.

Artifacts from the Vault of Schweig

I’m culling some of my roleplaying game library and reorganizing the shelves to put more relevant material in more central areas. In doing so I uncovered a few intriguing artifacts I often forget about yet keep for various reasons. Some come from an appreciation of the designers, others for the significance of the games in the overall context of adventure gaming’s history. They offer an interesting window into what engaged me as a gamer over more than 35 year in the hobby and the diversity of publishing efforts from a variety of sources.

Cthulhu for President Pack: I ordered this by mail way back in 1992, possibly the first year Chaosium offered it. Despite leaning in one particular political direction thanks to my wife’s enlightening influence, I still staunchly believe in the Elder Party ticket. This packet came with a button, posters, leaflets, Elder Party membership card, and other goodies. I’m resisting the temptation to print a slew of flyers to leave around town, but I’m afraid they’d figure the guy with several Cthulhu-themed t-shirts and the Cthulhu “fish” on the back of his car was stirring up trouble....

Used Game Win: Red Storm Rising

I recently picked up a copy of TSR’s old Red Storm Rising wargame -- based on the Tom Clancy novel of the same name -- at a local thrift store for a whopping $2. Granted, the side of the box top was somewhat torn and crunched in one place, but it seems it still contained the pieces, stands, dice, rulebooks, and the enormous 36 x 22-inch mounted board depicting West Germany and a bit of East Germany.

Published in 1989, the Red Storm Rising game appeared at a time when TSR was dabbling in low-complexity wargames intended to introduce wargaming to a new audience (while maintaining a huge publication schedule across many different roleplaying game lines). The company somehow managed to a license with Tom Clancy through “Jack Ryan Enterprises” to publish two games based on his novels, Red Storm Rising and The Hunt for Red October (1988). Games like Sirocco, simulating World War II action in North Africa, also come from this period and design philosophy. Douglas Niles -- a prolific TSR author, novelist, and game designer -- designed both Clancy games and co-designed Sirocco. The Red Storm Rising game won the 1989 Origins Awards for Best Modern-Day Boardgame and Best Graphic Presentation of a Boardgame. Whether or not the philosophy of low-complexity wargames brought anyone new to the hobby or increased interest in board wargames, TSR’s efforts produced some fine games that still hold up over time, especially to those like me who enjoy dabbling in both board and miniature wargames.

I remember seeing ads for both Clancy-based games in the late, lamented Dragon Magazine; back then I had no experience with wargames and found the concept interesting, though the period and theme didn’t resonate with me. I’m not a huge fan of modern boardgames depicting speculative scenarios of Soviet Bloc countries invading NATO countries through West Germany. I’m an American of German descent who, when allowed, takes pride in his cultural heritage. I also came of age during the 1980s amid the Cold War fear of total nuclear war that coalesced in the popular media around such apocalyptic television events as The Day After. While I’ve seen many of the Jack Ryan movies based on Clancy’s novel, I still only really enjoy The Hunt for Red October for its tight storyline and brilliant performances, primarily from Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin (the quintessential Jack Ryan in my book). The only Tom Clancy book I’ve read was his non-fiction Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier (1999), well-written and extremely informative.

Game Design Points

Despite my thematic reservations about the game, I found the Red Storm Rising rules incorporate a number of low-complexity wargame concepts that appeal to me. Frequent readers know I’m an advocate of introducing newcomers to various adventure gaming pursuits through games that balance basic rules with a potential for additional complexity and engaging gameplay. The rules concepts in Red Storm Rising cover all these bases, offering a taste of board wargaming that includes many essential elements.

Basic & Advanced Rules: Like many TSR “easy to learn” wargames of this period, the game comes with two booklets containing basic and advanced rules. The basic game covers the essentials to play out the Cold War invasion of West Germany scenario, while the advanced rules adds extra levels of complexity players can add all at once or in bits and pieces.

Award-Winning Presentation: While by today’s standards one might wonder why the game won the Origins award for Best Graphic Presentation of a Boardgame, for its time Red Storm Rising’s board and components stood out. Having the creative force of TSR’s stable of artists helped; names like Dave LaForce and David C. Sutherland, III, appear in the game’s credits. The board is huge and nicely rendered, though nothing beats masses of pieces, each on its own plastic stand to enable the game’s secret deployment mechanics.

Secret Deployment: Counters don’t sit flat on the board for everyone to see…they sit vertically in stands with one side containing unit information for the controlling player and the other showing a colored NATO or Warsaw Pact logo to the opponent. Although players reveal combat values for pieces during engagements, they don’t always know if they’re facing infantry or armored units (which can break through to take territory from retreating units).

Area Movement: The huge map doesn’t use hexes or squares to regulate movement like many other wargames, but divides the terrain into various-sized sections covering far more distance than hexes might, essential for dealing with the extensive border between West Germany and Warsaw Pact countries.

Simple Combat Resolution: The game uses a basic system to resolve combat between two adjacdent pieces. To hit a player must roll equal to or lower than the attacking unit’s combat value on a d10 (with most pieces at 3, 4, or 5); rolling the number exactly forces the target unit to retreat (or take one hit if it can’t retreat), rolling below causes one hit, and rolling a one destroys units if their combat value is less than or equal to the attacker’s. The single roll determines both hit and damage results.

Many low-complexity wargame concepts in Red Storm Rising could easily find their way into “easy to learn” board wargames covering other periods. After reading the basic rules and bits of the advanced my restless brain started working out how one might use similar mechanics to simulate other divisional-level action in modern wargames, particularly for World War II (one of my period interests). Overall it’s a solid rules set for simulating modern, strategic action across a broad front.

Used Game Win

I’ve added Red Storm Rising to my “trophy wall” of used-yet-classic gaming treasures I’ve found through the years:

* As a kid I acquired two treasures from neighborhood yard sales: a worn paperback copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Savage Pellucidar which fueled my nascent interest in fantasy fiction; and a rare boxed board game version of The Royal Game of Ur.

* Occasional sweeps through the local “junk” store over the years uncovered a spare copy of the amazing, Mensa-award-winning Pirateer board game, and a second edition AD&D Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting boxed set (into which the proprietors had tossed other gaming modules and supplements cluttering up the shelves).

* I found a still-shrink-wrapped copy of TSR’s Sirocco (mentioned above) at a local religious school’s children’s consignment sale fundraiser (don’t ask me how it ended up there amid all the toddler toys and baby outfits).

* At a local Democratic party tag sale fundraiser I recently bought a circular Celtic chess game called Noble Celts, still in the shrink wrap and complete with large faux leather board and resin pieces cast like Norse warriors.

I still suppress the urge to pull over every time I see a sign for a yard sale. I constantly debate whether checking the local thrift stores for gaming treasures is a waste of time and an invitation to disappointment. I’m encouraged -- and sometimes inspired -- when I find something that appeals to me as much as Red Storm Rising.

Exponential Game Growth (Part I)

The emergence of the “Internet Age” has brought about explosive growth in all fields of gaming, even those like roleplaying and board games that have traditionally been published as analog games with physical rulebooks and game components. Today the choices available to gamers seem infinite compared with those available way back in the “Dawn of Roleplaying” (otherwise known as “The Early Eighties”).
   
I’m starting to read R.C. Bell’s Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations (1969) -- one of a few choice gaming-oriented birthday goodies I recently received -- and it helps illustrate the vast number of games that have existed across time and world cultures. Unlike today’s games, these primarily consist of non-proprietary diversions many people in a society would have played with some degree of familiarity in their rare moments of leisure time. While many were produced and sold or given as choice gifts, some simply required a board drawn on sand or some other surface, a handful of pieces, and some randomizing element (the latter two scrounged and crafted from readily available materials). Only in the 19th and 20th centuries did games become the purview of professional enterprises producing and selling them to a broader market (usually a growing middle class with more leisure time and some disposable income for entertainment). R.C. Bell’s comprehensive catalog of games and rules -- as well as other works, like Medieval Games by Salaamallah the Corpulent, a.k.a. Jeffrey A. DeLuca (1995) -- pales in comparison to the specialty games available today, particularly roleplaying games and high-end board games.
    
When I first started immersing myself in gaming back in the “Dawn of Roleplaying” game-industry giant TSR produced a slick catalog that found its way into every boxed set of Dungeons & Dragons, a 16-page, full-color flyer entitled “Gateway to Adventure: 1981 TSR Hobbies, Inc.” The glossy pages provided images and descriptions of every available product at the time, everything from the “basic” D&D materials to the core Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks and all the then-current modules, plus other roleplaying and board games (remember Dungeon!, Snit’s Revenge! and Divine Right?). I wish I could find my copy, though I fear it was thrown out long ago; it’s the kind of gaming ephemera that reminds us of the hobby’s roots (like early copies of Dragon Magazine and their period advertisements). I will confess there was a part of my naïve, youthful self that hoped to someday collect all the D&D materials in the catalog.
     
Even back then a vast horde of roleplaying games crowded the market: TSR had D&D and AD&D, plus Top Secret, Boot Hill, and Gamma World; Judges Guild produced a plethora of supplements and modules compatible with D&D; Traveller dominated the science fiction roleplaying game genre; Aftermath! and Bushido from Fantasy Games Unlimited covered more genre-specific game settings; Metagaming’s The Fantasy Trip established the groundwork for GURPS; and I’m probably forgetting and inadvertently omitting several seminal works available at the time. The ranks of professionally published games would only grow exponentially.
   
In 1991 Lawrence Schick wrote Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games, an ambitious book cataloging all the roleplaying games, supplements, and scenarios available at the time, along with detailed bibliographical information, general commentary on most game lines, and short essays from notable game designers offering background on their contributions to the field. Amazingly it’s still offered through Amazon.com (new) and other online venues (used). Even in the early 1990s the vast catalog of existing roleplaying games could somehow fit into a 448-page printed tome.
     
Many factors aided the roleplaying game market’s explosive growth: an overall acceptance of roleplaying games after the stigma of the early 1980s; popular media producing more television shows, movies, and novels in the fantasy, science fiction, and horror (vampire) genres; an increase in publishing companies; and successes in related gaming fields, most notably the card game Magic: The Gathering. Before long roleplaying games appeared not only in specialty hobby stores but large chain bookstores and even general retail outlets. By the early 21st century, some of those early “D&D geeks” had good jobs in the technology sector, empowering them with larger disposable incomes to spend on their gaming hobby. Driven by business concerns, game companies more aggressively designed and published games to satisfy the growing market; in the latter years of the 20th century this exponential growth occurred primarily in the roleplaying game field, while in the early years of the 21st century this escalation has also spread to high-end board games (a term I’ll use to cover any board game with high-quality components often retailing above the $20 mark, including Euro- or German-style games, “battle games” with nice boards, cards, and pieces, designer games, and family strategy games).
    
When I worked as an editor, game designer, and editorial director at West End Games in the mid-90s, the company maintained an aggressive publication schedule of two or three Star Wars roleplaying game books per month, impressive not simply for the volume of material produced but for having to navigate the Byzantine labyrinth of the approvals process from Star Wars licensor Lucasfilm. These products shared the schedule with other items supporting the company’s other game lines. It fed a growing demand for Star Wars material at a point between a time when the license was considered “dead” and the release of new films.
     
The emergence of the Internet Age fostered a generation of gamers capable of employing new technologies like desktop publishing, graphic design programs, PDF files, and even program coding to share their creativity in the gaming field without the requirement of a publishing house to produce their ideas. Professional game publishers still exist, but they’re working to adapt to new technology; sure, they still produce books and high-quality board games, but they also port these materials to electronic formats, from PDF e-books to smart phone applications and online gaming sites. The Internet Age also provides a place where gamers can mingle and interact more easily than before. Where early gamers used to meet at the local hobby store and regional or national convention, they now congregate constantly online.
     
I’ll explore more about how the internet has affected game growth in an upcoming post; particularly how technology has empowered gamers and broadened the interaction among the gaming community.
   

(I regret this missive is little more than my own casual musings on the subject; it is in no way intended as a comprehensive or academic essay on the subject, though in time, I’m sure, we will see that in a retrospective analysis of our times.)