Early TSR Modules: A Study in Style

1978

B1 In Search of the Unknown -- Classic dungeon crawl which was designed to train DMs in stocking and to some extent designing dungeons

D1 Descent into the Depths of the Earth -- Classic dungeon crawl, loose continuing storyline if DM chooses to enhance

D2 The Shrine of the Kuo-Toa -- Classic dungeon crawl, loose continuing storyline if DM chooses to enhance

D3 Vault of the Drow -- Classic dungeon crawl, loose continuing storyline if DM chooses to enhance

G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief -- Storm/infiltrate the castle crawl, intro to storyline developed in subsequent modules if DM chooses

G2 The Glacial Rift of the Front Giant Jarl -- Classic dungeon crawl, loose continuing storyline if DM chooses to enhance

G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King -- Classic dungeon crawl, loose continuing storyline if DM chooses to enhance.

S1 Tomb of Horrors  -- Classic dungeon crawl (fun-house) representative of "killer dungeon", Tournament Module

1979

S2 White Plume Mountain -- Funhouse dungeon crawl, tournament module

T1 Village of Hommlet -- First village based sandbox w/ small dungeon crawl, designed to lead into Temple of Elemental Evil which was never published in its original form. 

1980

A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity -- Town exploration and dungeon crawl, tournament module, storyline leading into subsequent modules, tournament module

B2 Keep on the Borderlands D&D -- Classic dungeoncrawl with some internal dynamics which require DM elaboration

C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan -- Short Wilderness crawl with classic dungeon crawl, tournament module

C2 Ghost Tower of Inverness -- town intro to haunted house dungeon crawl, storyline background, tournament module

Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits -- Planar crawl/dungeoncrawl with culminating storyline from previous modules

S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks -- spaceship dungeoncrawl, tournament module, funhouse to a degree

1981

A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade -- Island hop to stockade assualt/dungeoncrawl, storyline continuing on from previous tournament module

A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords -- City/dungeoncrawl continuing storyline from previous  tournament modules.

A4 In the Dungeon of the Slave Lords -- Dungeoncrawl/escape, finishing storyline from previous tournament modules, some have continued this storyline into T series and then G and D series. 

B3 Palace of the Silver Princess D&D -- Classic dungeon crawl, story background

D1-2 Descent into the Depths of the Earth -- Classic dungeoncrawl, with storyline continuing from G series.

G1-2-3 Against the Giants -- combine G1, G2 and G3.

I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City -- wilderness crawl with internal dynamics that players can develop with DM enhancement

L1 The Secret of Bone Hill -- Mini setting with wilderness and dungeon exploration available.

U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh -- Town/Haunted house crawl with storyline that continues in later modules

X1 The Isle of Dread D&D -- Mini setting wilderness crawl with island dynamics

1982

B4 The Lost City D&D -- wilderness crawl dungeon crawl with internal dynamics and potential for DM storyline enhancement

I2 Tomb of the Lizard King -- wilderness hexcrawl, dungeoncrawl, internal story elements that DM can choose to enhance

I3 Pharoah -- Classic trap filled dungeon/crawl, internal story elements if DM chooses to enhance

N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God -- Village mini setting with some wilderness exploration and dungeon/crawl, storyline internally with a mystery element

S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth -- Classic wilderness/dungeoncrawl, internal story elements that DM can choose to enhance, tournament module

U2 Danger at Dunwater -- Sea crawl/dungeoncrawl, continuing storyline from previous module.

WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun -- A hasty production designed to be tied to previous storylines, generally a wilderness/dungeoncrawl

X2 Castle Amber D&D -- Planar castlecrawl, funhouse with internal story dynamics and a bit of mystery

X3 Curse of Xanathon D&D -- Town mystery adventuer

Subsequent Adventures that might be included:

EX1 Dungeonland

EX2 The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror

For their fun-house atmosphere.

Modules in blue have elements that presage later storydrive focus, but still retain elements of old school design.

Modules in yellow depart significantly from the norm in style or settling, either because they were rushed to press  (WG4), or made different assumptions than old school design.

While it is somewhat arbitrary, adventures after this period are increasingly story driven, mystery oriented and not what I would call "traditional" AD&D adventures. This does not mean they weren't good or well written. There are some award winning modules after this period such as Ravenloft, Assassin's Knot and others. However, with the advent of Tracy Hickman and others D&D began to be seen differently. The effort seems at delivering a preformed storyline, instead of background story elements that could be used to focus or expand upon. There was a mystery element with a central purpose of solving the mystery. Others, such as the UK series focus on not using violence to solve problems, and we begin to get large campaign style mega-modules that are de facto designed to carry PCs through an overarching storyline. 

While series such as A, G, D/Q did have a storyline connection and internal dynamics that could be utilized by PCs and DM alike, it was not the focus of the dungeon. One could get through the series and not have a strong sense of the unfolding story or dynamics. Many of the adventures were designed with the idea that the DMN would expand upon, flesh out, or focus on certain elements, effectively making the adventure their own. 

No, not all adventures after this period eschew dungecrawl, wildernesscrawl or old school sensibilities. It is a spectrum of course. But my point here is to illustrate that there was a distinct break in style of module creation pre Gary (which I mark at 1982/3) and post Gary. Again, this is not to say subsequent playstyles were bad. Long term story driven campaigns were represented all over old school gaming, but the principle design ethos was that DMs did that work, not game designers. This of course would change too.

And I should acknowledge that pre AD&D, adventure and world design was the particular province of the DMs as well, not designers. It said as much at the end of the 3rd little brown book. But with the huge success of the Original D&D Greyhawk and Blackmoor supplements it was clear that people wanted it. So the designers at TSR, led by Gary, set out the types of dungeons they were running. Those are the modules represented here.

A more thorough analysis remains to be done, but I am satisfied with this preliminary list, which I believe represents an old school design ethos that changed as the game and some of its gamers changed. 

The Inevitable AD&D Division That is 1985

 

The Products Published by TSR in 1985

It really started in 1982. That was when they shipped Gary out to Hollywood to pioneer D&D entertainment. But the culture of the company and it's creators continued, I feel, through at least 1983. It was by 1984 that the Blume's had allowed the company to almost go bankrupt; and also when Gary wrote to TSR's Board and recommended Firing Blume as CEO and initiating several immediate financial expediencies to get the company solvent again. Among other things the immediate printing of new hardbacks was encouraged. Which is what gave us Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures in '85. the last hardback had been Monster Manual II and then back in 1981 with Fiend Folio. To have churned out two in less than a year had to have been a rushed job. A fact witnessed by many of the poor print runs of UA, which were famous for simply falling apart when you opened them. That, and the content.

Whatever you thought about OA, which was best played as a separate game in itself, set in an oriental type setting. The only reason we were excited by it, was that all my group were sort of oriental martial arts enthusiasts. We never actually played OA, and preferred the Dragon Ninja NPC class to the one presented in OA. UA, however, stirred up all kinds of controversy. Cantrips were a bit of a joke. The spellbook mechanics associated with them seemed almost designed so that PCs would never use them. And the classes? Clearly overpowered, and again, very stilted in play. Barbarians couldn't travel with Magic-Users and rarely use magic. Cavaliers had a very strict code and would probably chafe if they couldn't take their horse everywhere and were always rushing into combat to take out the big baddie. 

They were clearly classes for a very narrow band of play, as was, truthfully, OA as a whole. Not "bad" but not really what you might call "main" or "standard" or "traditional" additions to the game. Alot like some of the creatures in FF and MMII. And in later interviews it was made revealed that UA was really a collection of old material from Dragon that was "officialized". This broke AD&D. Not only did these additions break the game, it literally broke the community in half again. 

This was the second such break. The first had occurred when Original D&D morphed into Classic D&D. This healing, the eventual settling of Original players into the Basic and Expert crowd was somewhat of a slow phenomenon. Lots of favored material was cut out of Classic rules and, worse, it was labeled "basic". But those who favored the more open original version of the game at least had rules that could be bent and shaped easily. This group also included tons of people who came into the game through Holmes or even Moldvay/Cook, and never saw any real reason to "advance" to First Edition. Some even tried AD&D, may have played it for years in their youth, but have returned to the game through their earlier introduction via Basic, better called Classic in my opinion--as it was the  truly Classic way to play the game--the original way. 

Despite the name of this blog, I was not introduced to the game via Basic, or any of the Classic editions. I owned the Basic and Expert Moldvay/Cook masterpiece, and played both Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread, but I never quite understood why their were rules variations between those sets and the "true game" AD&D. I had started played AD&D with a bunch of slightly older Original D&D gamers who had recently made the switch. I even recall being shown the original pamphlets by these guys and thinking that this was a strange sort of way to have begun the game--and they also made little sense to me. 

And that's how I began to feel in about 1985. Truly the first rumblings came along with the release of  The Dragon Lance modules. I just couldn't fathom why anyone would want to play a module based on a novel, let alone a series of novels. I had read the novel. It wasn't bad, and I enjoyed the clear D&D connections, but for Kinders--never a fan. Anywho, that and MMII, which had crap interior art (which would be largely reminiscent of art to come in second edition), which did little to evoke the spirit of the monsters for me. Even if the cover was cool, the inside had been a bit of a disappointment. Unlike Fiend Folio, which I loved. Largely due to the art style. I loved the horror feel of the book, and the pictures were evocative in the extreme. Even if some of the monsters ended up being a bit weird. The art had sold me. But I could live with MMII. It was just a critter book after all. 

But when UA and OA came out. Ugh. I was excited. Here were new, apparently groundbreaking books. Which D&D fan wouldn't be excited? But once I" dove in, I was a little disappointed. I hid it well. I mean, they had Gary's name right there on the cover. Turns out that Zeb Cook had a lot to do with OA, but I didn't know that at the time. And again, they weren't "bad" books. They just seemed like a slightly different direction than what I considered to be the game. 

We were largely ignorant to the inner politics occurring inside TSR at that time. We had no idea Gary had been dismissed. I don't even remember if we knew that by the time 2E was released. It was just clear to me that late 1E had begun changing so much about the game, The Survival Guides, which I never really read. Manual of the Planes which was cool, but we had read a lot of that in Dragon magazine. By '87 I was out of the loop. I knew the game contained all these later books, but I felt like the game had outgrown me, had moved on and left me holding my three core books and maybe a couple of other critter books and I was no longer in the in crowd. 

I remember a good friend of mine showing me "cool" stuff about 2e. I was jaded. I DID know they had removed demons and devils, and softened the supposedly "dark" elements of the game in the wake of the Satanic Panic, which had affected me deeply and badly. 2e was a sell-out in my opinion. I incorrectly assumed Gary was still at the helm at that time, and figured he had buckled under political pressure to keep the game alive and keep making money. Where was the strong Gary of 60 minutes? Even though they had smeared him, he had stood strong. He was the defender of the game! 

Little did I know the Adamantine Paladin had fallen. Killed by the turncoat Assassins the Blumes in their fake cowboy hats and shiny boots. Having been seduced by the Dark needlepoint Sorceress Lorraine they buried the final poisoned dagger in our hero's heart. I would come to weep years later, when the final truth of the evil deed would come to light. But that would take two decades and the resurgence of the Old School for me to realize. 

Even today die hard AD&D fans will often quibble over the line at '85. Do you play with UA or not is often the question levelled against full AD&D players. Here's where I reveal why this is salient for me now. I haven't been playing for a year or so, other than a session or two here and there. I do however, pour over my old books, new books, OSR and New Wave, other games and magazines. Seek to complete my gaming collection, when I'm not trying to do the same with my long lost Comic collection. And I write. I write a lot. Too much actually. It's a bit of a mania. One of the seemingly crazy things I do is completely transcribe rule books. I retype them again and again, rearranging them, tweaking them, trying to combine them. 

I have had a pet project for some time, bits and pieces hearkening back to 2006 or so, to completely recopy the full AD&D rules, including optional Dragon Magazine rules into one massive ruleset that will include everything AD&D from it's start with the Dragon articles and Monster Manual to it's demise and the production of Second Edition. I have played at it for years. And I've gotten quite far. But, here's the problem. It doesn't work. By the time we get to '84 AD&D had begin to shift. Now, to be fair occasional Dragon articles would break the game too. But they were there as optional, in almost all cases. Gary and Tim Kask made that clear in the magazine several times. AD&D was a rather structured rule set. And trying to fit classes like the Barbarian and the Cavalier into them let alone proficiency related skills etc. just doesn't work. 

Now, I'm not saying people shouldn't mix rules from later years, or pick Dragon article suggestions as houserules. Lots of people do, and have tons of fun, and game doesn't fall apart. AD&D is a robust system, and as long as you hand wave some things or accept certain inconsistencies, the game chugs along just fine. I know few DMs who enforced all the requirements of Barbarians or Cavaliers, but they still strode across our game worlds dominating their lesser powered peers. Of course they had powered up Druids, Fighters, MUs etc. as well. A whole other reason the game can be said to have shifted. The assumed power level had crept upwards considerably. 

What I'm saying is that when you take all these pieces and try and make a coherent set of rules--it doesn't work. Or you end up typing "optional" so much, you begin to wonder about the usefulness of the project at all. So, I've stopped trying. I've also realized something else. All these alter rules just aren't that much to my liking anyway. Through the years I've considered a shift to Classic D&D. It would create a certain verisimilitude between this blog's title and my actual gameplay.  I have even written to that affect once or twice. But the reason I never have is that it's just not me. I'm an early AD&D guy. A First Edition player of the early 80's still wreathed in the strange eldritch glow of Original D&D of the late 70's. Fighters, Magic-Users, Clerics and Thieves, and if we were lucky a Ranger or Druid, Sallying forth from Hommlet into the Borderlands, towards Expeditions Against Giants in White Plumed Mountains and Tombs of Horror, filled with dark spidered elves in our Descent into the Depths. The only story was the story woven by our adventures. And yes, few of us returned. But some did. Some lived to tell the tales of adventures drawn primarily from three principal tomes, the Canon of Power. The Monster Manual, The Players' Handbook, and The Dungeon Masters' Guide, and that was all we required.

An Ethnographic Observation on Adversarial Gaming

The year was 1979, June to be exact, or early July when your issue came in the mail. The Dragon magazine Volume III, No. 12, Issue 26. A small design article penned by Michael Crane, "Notes from a Very Successful D&D Moderator", page 27. A short piece, but in retrospect highly relevant to discussions of play style in role-playing games. 

Here is the opening paragraph,

In recent issues of The Dragon we moderators have had to listen to

the cute tricks of various D&D players who were apparently successful.

This is all fine, but I think that it’s about time that we moderators share

some of our good tricks with one another. Determined to right this

wrong (if this is published, that is) I have decided to divulge some of my

dark moderating secrets to all of you deprived moderators out there.

 

Though I am not sure how the issue arose, though I'm guessing it was in the letters section, it is clear How Crane is responding. He gives suggestion after suggestion of foiling players at their own game. He advises DMs to "Never underestimate your players!" and writes of counter-measures he took as his players ever schemed to outwit him as their DM. Ending the article with a hearty and good willed, "Here's wishing your players -8 on their next saving throw."

I thoroughly loved this little gem, but I share it here to highlight something that comes up from time to time. Adversarial DMing. Some take such an approach as a bad thing, or question if such a playstyle was ever encouraged by the game. Indeed it was! D&D was born out of wargames, and wargames had winners and losers. The difference between a referee in a war game and a D&D game is obvious to most. Referee's in a wargame arbitrate fairly between two opposing forces. But in D&D the DM IS the opposing force. However, he also wears a referee hat. There is a balance in all things, but this clear back and forth jousting between DMs and players is a part of the game I love. 

Having said that, I know there were those who had much different experiences of this style of gaming. And I will say that just being a "Killer DM" is not Adversarial Gaming. DMs can wantonly kill PCs if they wish, but that doesn't make much of a game. True Adversarial DMing is, at least in part, just what Crane captured in his little piece. 

Dungeons & Beavers: Was I wrong, or was Gary wrong?

The Gaming Culture essay I opined on yesterday led me in a couple of interesting directions. One was a post by Grognardia, in reference to a Dungeons and Beavers comment Gary made long ago. The origin of the quite was a reference to an early D&D gaming group at CalTech in which they had introduced some new ideas into the game. Gary was talking about how the game could be taken in any direction a GM, its players, or the group as a whole desired to take it. Incidentally the CalTech mascot is the Beavers, which someone in Grognardia's comments pointed out. But Gary's point was there were no boundaries or defined direction of the game. The sky wasn't even the limit. Granted, at that point, Gary could afford to be creatively magnanimous--after all is was just wargaming supplement of sorts, right? 

My point in bringing it up is whether my general "Gary says" approach and my "AD&D is the pinnacle of what the game was supposed to be" opinion seem at odds here. But I've covered this before. The Zero edition crowd were a wild and wooly bunch. There was no limit to the genie that had ben let out of the bottle with those three little brown books. This Gary readily admitted. I don't argue with that, nor decry those in the Old School Renaissance (as opposed to revival, now that I'm informed enough to make that distinction) who love still playing in that sandbox. 

What I do say is that AD&D was created for many very compelling reasons, only a few of which were expedients. Sure 1e allowed a differentiation in rights between Gygax and Arneson. But that was not the only reason. I posit here several as, if not more, important reasons for the creations of the system:

1. People were clamoring for more created content, especially in the vein of the Greyhawk and Blackmoor supplements.
2. There was a need for a common understanding if groups were to intermingle. This was mentioned in Grognadia's above mentioned essay as well.
1. "... some degree of standardization is probably necessary, if only to ensure a "common language" for communication between players. If everything is open to individual interpretation, "Dungeons & Dragons" will quickly cease to be meaningful."
3. In the vein of number two there needed to be hard and fast rules in order to facilitate tournament play.
4. And in the vein of number one a solid game base enables production of more material in a cohesive fashion.

It's been reported that in the Fantasy Hobby Shop, which served as the outlet for early TSR HQ, it was AD&D that was generally played and abided by. Listen to Luke Gygax or his brother Ernie and they'll tell you the same thing--AD&D was the thing, it was those rules everyone played with, including their Dad. Having said that, sure, Gary didn't always use all the rules. This too is well attested, but the system he was playing from was First Edition. 

As in many things D&D, there are seldom absolute truths about gaming opinions. I am not a historian, nor a professional game designer. But clearly the Beaver reference, and Gary's assertion that D&D has no borders was very true in it's time, and in a way is still true today. That is part of its endurance. However, there was also a clearly defined D&D game that the majority of the D&D world adhered to. This doesn't mean that people didn't play Holmes Basic, B/X, BECMI or RC. They did all those things, and in great numbers. But the flagship of the game was always AD&D, and Gary asserted as well that fact many times. The One True Faith and all that. Even though we know the truth was a lot murkier than neat analytical dimensions. So, was I wrong, no. And Neither was Gary ;-)

The Classic Culture of D&D Play

An essay I found via Questing Beast on Youtube, covered an article by The Retired  Adventurer, called "Six Cultures of Play". This little gem added a coherent and elucidating discussion to what Jeff Maliszewski once called gaming philosophy. In a nutshell the the article outlined six different "gaming cultures" that each have a different approach to and expectations from the game. I found the article intriguing for a number of reasons, but what I want to do here is reflect on what he termed the Classic culture of play.

Classic D&D used to be the term some in the Old School Revival called the basic line of D&D. Zero edition was "Original", basic was "Classic" and advanced was, well, "Advanced". However, this new nomenclature defines Classic as the "progressive development of challenges and PC power, with the rules existing to help keep those in rough proportion to one another and adjudicate the interactions of the two "fairly"." There's a lot to break down here, and I'll admit, as I first tackled the idea I must say I didn't agree. 

I understand the premise that the concept of "levels" roughly outlined a progressive challenge, but this misses a strong current running through Advanced D&D of adversarial play that struggled against the concept of "game balance". Not to mention that Original D&D was allowed to "go gonzo" as affirmed by the subsequent reference to "dungeons and beavers". This gonzo play was still a strong tone running through AD&D. 

However, when one sticks with the author's point, he isn't saying that such "cultures" are distinct and separate, but much more anthropological or sociological in texture. When one is "in the midst" as it were the culture is fairly clear, but it doesn't mean other influences are still evident. It's more a matter of degree and overall emphasis that "purity". And if you follow the logic into what he subsequently calls "Traditional" play. 

You see, as one can see from my blog that I'm sorta an AD&D purist, at least in theory--not so much in play. This puts me pretty squarely in the Classic camp as defined by the recreation of OSRIC and the desire to revive the style of play of the late 70's and early 80's TSR. However, I started in 1981, with the bulk of my play between then and about 1987. I played in the 90's but not nearly as much and I had a strong reaction against second edition. Nonetheless, I grokked the change he refers to in Traditional play. I read the Dragonlance series, and enjoyed it, but particularly disliked the idea of the modules, never bought them. Nor did I read or play Ravenloft, although I played during a period as Traditional play was on the rise.

What this meant for me was that Traditional play did affect my approach somewhat. I'll admit, I never really played that way pre-2000. But it did cause me to enter an endless cycle of world  building and campaign creation that never seemed quite good enough, complete enough or well designed enough. That whole concept of the DM should be in an endless state of campaign preparation, and many of my efforts were judged against the increasing production of Forgotten Realms publications--even though I preferred Greyhawk. To be honest the late 80's and 90's were the first period I was unhappy with the direction of the game. 

Things in the essay started to make sense to me. Though I do think he could have made a clearer connection between the Original edition and the Old School Renaissance culture. And the OSR is the other culture that slightly appeals to me, but primarily for it's gonzo and weird elements. That's because I was introduced to D&D by a group of Original D&D players who still had a lot of Strange otherworldliness to their games, in the veins of the S series of modules that appealed to this kind of play more than some others. 

However, the one component that we never really took advantage of was the building of keeps, wizard towers or "little wars" that might have resulted. Here the author has it right. The best kind of campaigns are long term play where characters increase in levels over years to reach this stage. However, death in these games is not a once in awhile occurrence. My experience is that death occurs quite frequently severely curtailing most character's ability to achieve such heights. But then again, I can't say we had the chance to play "campaign" style play. We played a more common episodic play of individual module or "adventures", not necessarily connected. And, of course, these modules were generally designed and balanced (albeit not carefully) for a specific level range -- again, "Classic".

In the end, I really appreciated this essay and the thinking which it developed from. It helped to quantify something I've struggled to put my finger on for some time now. I am indeed a "Classic" game player, with a bit of the Original OSR gonzo and hint of Traditionalist to my thinking. And this explains why I am not happy with the OC Modern play which is so prevalent today. Even though I knew it was linked to a style that had roots in the 90's (Traditional) but was actually something else (Neo-Traditional), often drifting into a decidedly Nordic LARP style of immersion. Sometimes we don't "know" a thing until it is labeled. Not that such categories explain everything or are the final word, but they certainly helped me feel more confident with where I am. 

Coming soon: HackMaster Culture -- A Breakdown

Authentic Thaumaturgy: Ponderations

 

I got this little gem on digital media, a bit unusual for me, but nonetheless one of my better PDF purchases. If you haven't had the pleasure of digesting this bit if gaming magic, I summarize. It is an attempt to put real world magic into game terms. Yep, you read that right. And I'm not talking about David Copperfield/Kris Angel Illusion magic. I'm talking about real life, shamanic, witchcraft, Voodoo, Solomonic Ceremonial summoning and binding magic. Magick with a K courtesy Aleister Crowley. 

And the author was no stranger to such esoteric subjects, nor gaming. Isaac Bonewits was a practising "magician" and a college educated scholar of magic. 

He knew of what he wrote. Bonewits' degree was from UC Berkley in, you guessed it, Magic Studies. Albeit a B.A.. he was still one of the first degree holding individuals to be able to claim he studied magic at university. The Book itself was based in solid scientific study of what forces may be behind magic. In short, parapsychology. And Isaac wrote a book that actually makes Authentic Thaumaturgy much more understandable. 

Real Magic was a layman's exposition of the psychic abilities that are likely related to many of the paranormal effects that some people claim are magic. By the way, such a study is not just a part of the wild and wooly 60's and 70's. 

No less a professional PhD that Dean Radin, lead scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences wrote a very similar book. Radin, a long time academic parapsychological researcher lays out in his Real Magic the hypotheses of psychic phenomena and how what most call "magic" can tap into them and allow "normal" muggles to harness what is a very "Real" magic.

And if you're the skeptical sort, just take some time with Radin. He has several well written books that cover the foundational scientific research behind these apparently magical laws. This phenomenon has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt and replicated countless times. In fact in a recent interview Radin pointed out that most parapsychologists today no longer perform replication studies to prove the phenomena, that has been done to death. What they are interested in now is how these abilities and "powers" can be pushed in the service of humanity.

It may sound all a little too X-Files for some, too Professor X to others. But I find it delightful that a book like Authentic Thaumaturgy sought to bring reality back into fantasy with what is, for all intents and purposes, real fantasy. It's not alone in this endeavor now. Some far stranger things have been done in this name. And I'm sure it is all enough to have given the Satanic Panickers of the past fits of possession. And I also am not surprised it was Steve Jackson games that published it. They were always pressing the boundaries of reality and fiction--as the FBI raid on their studios when they published the cyberpunk source material.

Any intersection of the real and the imagination fascinates me. For the two are not nearly as far apart as we might think.

Creating a Movement About Gaming

 

I have felt a little down for the past year or so. My regular gaming group was family based. We had a friend who gamed with us, but the rest were me and my three kids. However, kids grow up, get jobs and significant others. Life changes. Seems the story of my gaming life. 

I grew up gaming with the same core group of three or five friends. I had been the first to find AD&D, and I sort of did exactly what Derek Sivers talks about in the video. I stood up at our junior high bus stop and did the crazy gamer dance, and I had them hooked before we were driving out of my block to school. That first group of friends carried me through almost a decade of gaming. 

Of course those were tempestuous times. I was not the most level headed teenager, nor common sense young adult. Things changed. We got lives, jobs, significant others, and things change. Which for me meant a hiatus from gaming from about 1995 to 2005. Oh, I missed it, believe you me. But things happen when the time was right, and enter 2004 or so and I realized the kids I was teaching at my new junior high were playing third edition. I didn't know much about it, but I knew how to start a movement!

I put up flyers, did my crazy gamer dance, and thus entered into the second best gaming time of my life: running the junior high school gaming club. We ran through 2012. I had as many as 30 students in the club at one time, many of them first time gamers. I would say the club introduced gaming to literally hundreds of kids, many of which I still see today as adults who still game, or remember it fondly and wish they could start again. 

In 2012 I took a job as a school principal and the sheer investment in time was too much to try and run a game club. So my gaming was seriously curtailed. However my kids brought me the 5e books the Christmas after its release. Thus was born our home game which continued for some years afterwards. We gamed more or less through until 2018 or so when my oldest went off to college. We didn't stop entirely, gaming a lot with her over Roll 20 or the like. But as she graduated and job a full time job, and also her own gaming group closer to her home, things slowed down. My other kids grew up, got jobs, and the gaming slowed to a trickle. So our family friend found other gamers to play more regularly with. 

And here I am today. The last year seeing very little in the way of gaming. I have reached out to a few online, but I just can't get into a full online game. Maybe I'll resign myself to that one day, but not yet. Thing is I do remember how to start a movement. It's really not the hard. I just have to have the courage to get up and risk being seen as silly until I find some friends who want to be silly with me. 

KODT, HackMaster 4e and the TSR Ethos

 

If you haven't read Knights of the Dinner Table, or HackMaster 4e/1e (and to a lesser extent HackMaster 5e/2e), you likely aren't familiar with the over the top, tough as nails, unapologetic Gary-Speak that is at least a part of it's success. And if you weren't gaming during the AD&D first edition hey day of the 80's  era, you are less likely to realize how much KenzerCo got it right.

Back in 1996 when KODT first appeared in Dragon Magazine I was taking a break from gaming, had been for about two years. I never ran into the strip in the intervening years between then and 2004. It was about then that I got back into gaming and discovered first KODT and then HackMaster. At that time, I was deep in the throes of nostalgia for the lost age of TSR. I was aware of 3rd edition and even tried to play it for awhile, but everything seemed to have changed, and for the worse (at least in my opinion at the time). 

Dragon Mag 226, First KODT strip

Knights of the Dinner Table spoke directly to my soul. It's funny that this was the case, as I always took my gaming so seriously. What was in essence a cartoon (at least initially) had managed to speak directly to what I so longed for in my gaming. It as as if it spoke out of the past to my gaming heart. The adversarial approach between GMs and players, the hard nosed competition to outdo each other, out think each other. The high stakes, the danger, the strategic maneuvering in the game to get what you wanted. The death trap dungeons, let the dice fall where they may, and the sweet scent of player death on the air. I can't even really capture the essence of what it was, but Gary Speak had a lot to do with it.

This was what it felt like back in the day. All of these things--it was a very real ethos. Hard Eight and their cut throat tactics and from on high pronouncements. KODT captured it perfectly. I mean it was clear it was satire. The jokes were all the more funny because they were true! Yeah, they were occasionally amped up to eleven, as Spinal Tap would say, but they were soundly based in real gaming truth of the time. 

I was so excited to learn about HackMaster I nearly wet my gamer smock. It was an amazing effort to not only capture the game that the Knights played, but to also create a homage and natural successor to first edition, that should have, in truth been the 3rd edition we all wanted. Second edition AD&D had been so sanitized and made pretty for the BADD moms and Satanic Panic mongers that it had strayed from the original soul of the game. Though truthfully, that era of TSR as emperor of the gaming world persisted through at least the mid 90's. 

What we really needed was a return to the glory days of hardcore rules and hardcore play. We needed HackMaster to be the next iteration of the game. an innovative return to the glory of yesteryear. But the IP passed onto WoTC and other things were to be. In fact we owe a huge debt of gratitude to WoTC (preHasbro) to allowing KCo to produce the game in the first place. It could have never happened otherwise. 

But my point today is just this. If you really want to get a taste of what a certain phase of D&D, and gaming generally, was all about pick up an issue of Knights of the Dinner Table. Or give HackMaster a read. -- preferably the 4th edition as it is a real attempt to recapture what AD&D was. 5th edition still has lots of classic GarySpeak, but so innovative rules developments that it steps a bit further away from a strictly AD&D chassis. 

Dungeons & Dragons: Changing Views

 Long ago in the saga that is this blog, a fellow gamer once told me that D&D is whatever the owners of the IP say it is. I heartily disagreed, and did so with numerous self assured reasons why. I have also been a staunch defender of Gygaxianism in seeking to know what the spirit of the game truly is. I am as guilty as any for taking Gary's words as scripture, and quoting them as definitive pronouncements. Even when they appeared contradictory, I was the first apologist to point out that apparent contradictions were just that apparent.

 I wouldn't say I totally disagree with my previous positions. I still hold to them by and large. But I have come to the point where certain personal interpretations should be admitted as such, personal. As well as make admission that much of what I confounded with the idea of the game was a gestalt of a certain confluence of events that simply can't be replicated. No matter how hard I may try 1981 aint coming back. The folly of men to replicate past ages is always shot through with anachronisms and perspectives that didn't exist in those same past ages. Hindsight is, as they don't say, faulty--not 20/20.

So I now recognize a few things. 

1. AD&D is not the game I played back in the day. I mean it was, but it really wasn't. I have written about this before but it bears repetition. We didn't use all the rules, or even most of them actually. While we rested assured that the Golden Trinity could answer any question that might come up, we didn't resort to them all that often. The hindsight of years poring over the rules make it clear that there is almost too much to play with here. Watching groups try and play RAW AD&D is at times laborious--especially for those who have not mastered the intricacies. We played a rough approximation of something resembling Original D&D (0e) with rules add ons (that were actually material from the Greyhawk and other supplements) but more codified in AD&D. And that made sense as I was taught to play by guys who had started with 0e, and I taught most of my friends to play. 

2. AD&D was not the game Gary played. Though I have been loathe to admit it, evidence and personal testimony make clear the unmistakable fact that Gary was running a very "loose" game, and rarely referred to rules details in the books. 

3. AD&D was the official version of D&D for going on 10 years (circa '80 to '89). Which meant that it became increasingly so, and in official pronouncements the pinnacle of "how the game should be played." It was set up as the final pronouncement on what D&D was in as much as it covered a topic. Gary himself admitted this much in his foreword. It was also the game most played at the Dungeon Hobby Shop and TSR as well, at least in name--interview evidence has also born this out. However, in practice something very different occurred. The real spirit of D&D couldn't be confined to the bottle and most AD&D games ran wild with untied shoelaces for most 1e groups everywhere. 

4. The spirit of D&D was elusively pointed at by those three little brown books back in 1974. The resulting creative explosion can not be underestimated. Those at the starting gate realized that something magical was happening, Rob Kuntz spoke to this in an interview I had with him. The potentiality of what roleplaying games could bring to the world seemed absolutely revolutionary. However, TSR was a business after all. And the shift from "imagine the hell out of it", to only buy original TSR products was pretty quick. The hunger for product and the need to defined what was what as well as exert final ownership all resulted in the game that was AD&D first edition. It wasn't the pinnacle, so much as it was an expression of of what could be at the time. 

5. The original Wizards of the Coast, KenzerCo, and 3e showed us first what could become of AD&D. The OSR showed us what could become if we went back to our 3 little brown roots. But even then, AD&D made us lose something as well. I do think some avenues of the OSR have explored a bit of space of that original untapped magic Rob and others alluded to, but I believe it is still a largely untapped gold mine. Not even a gold mine really, but an endless energy source available if we only had the eyes to see. But TSR and AD&D actually shut that valve off by the clear definition of AD&D--what the game was and who owned it. The players no longer owned it, the corporation did. 

What this means for me, and my changing views? Well, AD&D will always be my sweet spot. It is my D&D home as it were. But the fact is, I'm not sure how I would even run a BTB AD&D game, or how I would like it. And it would be wrong for me to continue to weight everything against the AD&D rulebooks. Gary's motives were as complex and varied as any human's when he created 1e. I just really wish he had been around to create a second edition and "fix" all the issues that arose with 1e. 

Warning: Political Post Ahead or The OSR has Political Parties?

 

So, color me ignorant, but I was cruising through posts on an OSR group, when I ran across one blasting three names I wasn't familiar with. It was a short, sweet blast to the effect of F this guy, that guy and this guy too. Reading through the comments failed to bring forth any real explanation, though some were asking for one. I did notice in the comments that others decried other individuals names, and it became clear as I read that some of the names they were vilifying were people I know and respect in what I would call the OSR community. There were some comments shared from conversations on other platforms as proof, reason, or evidence of these later mentioned names and their alleged crimes. The evidence was largely of the nature of political disagreements, pro Trump support, anti-socialist statements, etc. 

Now, I am an avowed political moderate, at least I consider myself moderate. I am not affiliated with either party and vote as an independent. I have voted on both sides of the aisle. I am also not super politically active. I try to stay relatively well informed (hard to do in today's age) listen to NPR, BBC, read the Times, the Wall Street Journal (mostly online) and the Salt Lake Tribune (I'm from Utah). I am religious, but what those in my faith might call liberal in my theology--which is why I stay quiet most Sundays :-). I am pro gun rights, but support more restrictions to gun ownership. I support actions to preserve, balance and restore the environment, but am supportive of well managed land use involving hunting, recreation and farming. I believe in climate change and feel we need to take strong action to reverse human induced warming trends. I tend to be fairly libertarian in regards to social issues, and believe most personal choices should be left with the person making the choice. I'll admit I struggle with how to handle termination of pregnancies, but do not claim to know the right/best decision on if/how the government should be involved on that count. For that reason I leave that choice in the hands of the woman making the decision. 

But ... and this is a big but, it is mine after all. I think the system is really, really big. We individually have very little pull anymore. I believe in voting, and think it is critical. I wish I had more time and motivation to get out there and be politically active. I have friends who have, some ardently so. And in almost all cases it leads to heart break and disappointment. I know one who ended up in therapy and medicated because of it. Politics, or the dynamics of power, is an ugly, messy business. Some call it a necessary evil. Most of the time it just seems evil. And admittedly, with the quote ringing in my ears “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” I tend to busy myself with other matters. I certainly don't risk friendships over such things.

But the sad fact is that in this huge megalithic system we live in, we feel so powerless to change things that we often resort to yelling louder than everybody else. The whole squeaky wheel phenomenon I suppose. If we can get enough people mad about something then change will occur. And this isn't  always wrong. Just sure can be toxic. But then I suppose some people feel that war is justified when the currently existing circumstances are too toxic to put up with.

However, I'm not going to choose or not choose something based on the politics of someone who made it. From Mists of Avalon to Judges Guild, I buy products because I like them, not necessarily the people who create them. Most of the time I barely know them, let alone their politics or personal proclivities. 

Now, some argue that their creations are unavoidably contaminated by their creator's sins or contrary views. I suppose this could be true. But isn't this just human. Whatever you say about Lovecraft, his works weren't a political tract on pro-racism stances. Marion Zimmer Bradley wasn't writing a how-to book on pedophilia or BDSM in Mists. And Gygax was writing a mysoginistic treatise. And I personally never read them as such. Now, was Lovecraft racist, seems likely. Was Gygax mysoginistic--I don't really think so, but he certainly was a product of his time; as was Lovecraft. And was Bradley complicit in some heinous activities on the part of her husband--the evidence isn't greatly in her favor. But let's go back some more ... was Lincoln a racist? Given the views of his day I am sure he was very progressive, but he was still a product of his time. What about Ghandi? Who happens to sleep with young girls to test his chastity? Or was Jesus perhaps a little too Jewish in who refusing to teach those outside of his religion? How many stones do we want to throw? 

I personally believe we can grow personally and as a people. And yes, there are certainly bigots out there who defend racism, mysogyny and other forms of prejudice and deserve to be rightly called out for it. But I personally refuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We are all human, and we are not any one view we express at a certain time. We are more than that. And where judgment is leveled, judgment is sure to come.