AD&D Appendix N: Poul Anderson "Three Hearts and Three Lions"

 

I didn't read this gem until much later in my Dungeons & Dragons life, but I was simply amazed at how clearly the book shaped Gary Gygax's formation of D&D. It is actually one of my favorite genres of fantasy called "gate fantasy". It features the hero Holger who is fighting in World War II and gets transported to the legendary world of medieval France. At first, of course, I just assumed it as an early gate fantasy, the book was published in the early 60's. However, as I read on how found that the mixture of legend, myth and inner longing to be so powerfully evocative of my own feelings about what AD&D did for me so many years ago. 

For early D&D players Three Heart and Three Lions reads like a textbook of inspiration. Herein we have a world caught in the grip of the struggle between Law and Chaos. Chaos includes the realms of faery as well and the struggle of it's better creatures such as elves and dwarves who lie between the realms of men and the other. The portrayal of the doughty dwarf Hugi, Holger's companion, is so much more accurate to my view of dwarves than the four feet wide musclebound cubes presented in modern fantasy games.

Race Comparison 1e PHB

Dwarf in 1e Monster Manual

Today's Dwarf

Also included in the tale are numerous monsters that would become iconic within the AD&D monster manual such as nixies and trolls. In fact I dare say I never used nixies in my games, nor was familiar with them. But here they are with a clear idea for their use. Magic swords, polymorphing maidens, and the like were all here on fantastic display. The tale reads as a strange and lovely mix of fantasy and fairy tale, much like my own initial experiences with the game as a youth. 

Moreover, we have in Three Hearts and Three Lions a world that is steeped in legend and myth. The Cycle of Charlemagne, the Wild Hunt, Morgan le Fay and the Arthurian Cycle permeate the book as principal sources of dynamic action and drama. Some might have been puzzled by the inclusion of the Arthurian Mythos in the Deities and Demigods and fewer still used them that I knew of. But I now understood that Gary saw them as ripe pickings for fantastic adventures that could be had within then D&D. 

As the plot plays out we find Holger intimately interwoven with the deeds of the past. His role revealed as an ancient hero of yore, and that his defeat of the forces of chaos mirroring his defeat of the forces of the Nazis. The tale kept me spellbound in this regard. And played out for me the desire to be a part of such adventures, just like Holger. Indeed it was my strongest dream as a young man growing up in central Texas, to do so. AD&D gave me that opportunity. Cause such cravings within me to return to just such a fantasy world, who like Holger longed to return himself. 

Anderson clearly wove potential messages in his fanciful tale that give us pause today. Holger's return to Catholicism as a flight of fancy or an identification with the beyond is but one. However, what it gave Gary Gygax was clearly much fruit with which to offer to the world a chance to play at Holger's game and become Ogier the Dane ourselves. 

"Swords & sorcery best describes what this game is all about..."

This short phrase is from the first pages of the AD&D Players Handbook, first edition. It comes strategically as the first phrase in the portion of the book describing what the game is about. It would be over a year later that the Dungeon Masters Guide would offer Appendix N to DMs for "Inspirational Reading". It was a different age when Gary Gygax, and frankly all of the early tabletop gamers, developed their love for the speculative & weird. The paragraph above the list of recommended authors describes the age in which many of these men had grown up.

"my father ... spent many hours telling me stories he made up as he went along, tales of cloaked old men -who could grant wishes, of magic rings and enchanted swords, or wicked sorcerors and dauntless  swordsmen." I readily identify with this experience as my mother did much the same for me. I was her first child, and she admits to raising me on a steady diet of fantastic tales, legends and quaint childhood fantasies. This was a common experience for many raised long ago, and I would dare so there are still those who do so. Lucky is the child raised by an adult with an open storybook and a fertile imagination. 

And Gygax goes on to mentioned several of the very books we may have been read. The Brothers Grimm, Andrew Lang and the like. And then he cites comic books, which were in his age a mélange of fantasy and science fiction and horror, all three genres he cites as being big inspirations for the game. Such things that lead a child onward to mythology, medieval bestiaries, and the rich and deeply archetypal stories within. 

I think this alone can do much for giving an idea of what sorts of things were imagined as fodder for an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign. The list he offers here is less a prescription than it is a phantasmagoric garden from which "you will be able to pluck kernels from which grow the fruits of exciting campaigns." And he urges even more to expand beyond this mere list from "any other imaginative writing or screenplay," more ideas that may not be captured here. 

More than anything, for me, this list and this idea captures what the imaginative ground from which D&D grows. We all too often find ourselves constrained by the predominant fantasy of the day. We are indeed richly blessed with so much to choose from in a publishing world that daily offers up new wonders for us to select from, and an entertainment industry that makes such awe inspiring series of fantasy epics that we should stop and consider how lucky we are. And, might I add, with which Gary Gygax had a large part to do. However, the danger in having such wonderful selection is that we become overly influence on a certain kind of fantasy. JRR Tolkien for example, only one of famous Inklings, has come to exert such a strong influence over the genre that it can become near impossible to escape his shadow. I would dare say over half of today's fantasy offerings are hugely indebted to his vision, or what has become interpreted as his vision. For instance. As much as I love what Peter Jackson has done with the franchise, that was decidedly not my vision of the Lord of the Rings when I first read There and Back again or The Fellowship. In my mind's eye it had a much weirder and more dark fairytale quality than what is today called "High Fantasy". The movie Excalibur, is instructive for those who might wonder what sorts of visions arose from the 70's, or even the original animated movies which sought to capture Tolkien's epic. They have more in common with the infamous Wizards or Fire and Ice animated movies than they do with more modern offerings. 

Now, this is not to say "better" or that the late 70's and early 80's did not also have their "standard fare" or interpretation of what fantasy is. Only that it did not loom so large as some do today. So, I today recommend broadening our visions, stepping out of our proverbial fantastic comfort zones to enliven our fantasies. Much of the OSR creative field has captured some of this, and expanded the vision of what swords and sorcery can be, and I heartily encourage continued exploration in this vein. 

My TTRPG ADHD -- Why do we Quit Games?

So, my last post was a bit personal and perhaps a bit sad. It was hard to write truthfully. I am coming to grips with myself as much as my gaming, so it's bound to hurt a little bit. To summarize in a nutshell, I developed my gaming preferences pretty early in life, say age 12 to about age 17. I gamed past this date, but my "experience" of gaming during this age has always been a touchstone for what ideal gaming is like for me. I stopped gaming about 1994 or so, and came back to it in the early 2000's. When I did I wanted to game like I did back in the day. I've been chasing that dream ever since. Never quite achieved it, but came close a few times. 

In this journey I've wondered if it is the game I'm missing, since I haven't truthfully played AD&D with the rulebooks since I restarted. No other game quite offered me the same magic. But OSRIC came the closest and I really hoped HackMaster might fit the bill. But they didn't. So I began to wonder if what I was missing was good guy friends to game with. But I also had a chance at that and that didn't do it either. 

That brings me to today's post. Something that I haven't talked a lot about is my fascination with shiny new things. I am drawn to things I find new and intriguing. The mystery and chance to experience something new is a big part of who I am. And the flip side of that is my quickly waning lack of interest after a short time. I even recall buying several other games back in the day desperately trying to get my friends to try them as something new and fresh. Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Space Opera, Call of Cthulhu just to name a few. No one else was really interested though. I would even "stop gaming for a few weeks altogether, telling my friends I was done with gaming and wanted to focus on other things. Of course that never lasted more than a month or so. 

Now, on this last point, the Satanic Panic had screwed me up and cause me no end of confusion and doubt about my past times, but I've went into all that before. Now is not the time for a re-hash of that. But it certainly contributed to my occasional rejections of gaming. 

But my point here is, perhaps my vacillations in gaming recorded in the last post have more to do with my own ADHD like wishy washiness than it does about games or gaming friends. I mean this could certainly be the case. And it doesn't help. I mean let's face it, we all have enough challenges holding a gaming group together and committing to regular games. You add in some kind of flakiness like my indecision and low boredom tolerance and it becomes near impossible. 

So, is that a contributing factor? Well, sure it is ... but ... 

Gaming is so appealing to me partly because it is unpredictable. I love not knowing how things will turn out. Love seeing the story unfold in real time before me. There is nothing like it that I've found. Maybe LARPing, but that's just live action gaming after all. It is perfectly designed for people who love constant new experiences and the unexpected. I feel like I'm discovering non-stop when I play the game. So here we have a high return activity for somebody like me, I don't think it's just boredom that makes me give up on things. 

Now, I also have a rather low tolerance for certain kinds of stress. And as I've returned to gaming at a very different time in my life it has presented new challenges. I mentioned in yesterday's post, responsibilities and children, not to mention a marriage. All these high value things, and the responsibilities that come with them are certainly more valuable than a past time. But personal interests, past times, passions, and hobbies are valuable. So valuable we should strive to make them a part of our lives to be fully healthy. They are at least as critical as physical exercise. So what causes us to set aside those things that mean so much to us?

Now there are individual differences to be sure, but I believe that the most common reason is investment vs reward. When we are tired, overworked, stressed, or just wasted from dealing with life, taking the time to put on our jogging shorts at the end of the day, go the gym, write on our novel, or drive over to our friends house to game can all seem like just too much some times. The investment in energy to make it happen can just be a hill too far. Even though, most of us would admit that after doing so we always feel better. 

For me this has happened most recently with my Fifth edition D&D game. I play with my kids and one or two family friends. They have all really become gamers through fifth edition. I played some with my kids when they were younger, but 5th edition for them is like 1st edition is for me. And for that reason I will always be thankful to Wizards of the Coast, Peter Adkinson for his preservation and resurrection of the IP and those who continue to hold the banner of D&D and TTRPGs high--even when we disagree. My kids are the beneficiaries. And now they have some of the same memories I do of the best game on earth. 

Despite all this, though, I still quit GMing 5e for our group first and then let the campaign fizzle out. The investment for reward for me in terms of 5e was simply not high enough. I don't hate the game, but I also don't love it. I will occasionally get the itch so strong that we'll do a 5e one shot. Why 5e? Because that is what everyone else loves and expects. They would play a different game with me, but they'd be humoring me. And that's not a good feeling.

I have read numerous posts about trying to get people to try old school games, and it always includes some injunction like, once you get them to agree to play now you need to run a really good game so they learn to love your game too. I do not like the idea of putting my game on trial. I mean I'll fight for it, try and persuade people to play and advocate to my dying day. But I want to know you want it. I am not going to force it down your throat. 

AD&D, HackMaster & Nostalgia

I am struggling to write this post. Truthfully, I struggle with this blog. I was never truly sure what this blog was about--beyond gaming that is. Anyone who has been with me on and off over the years knows I have changed focus several times. Whether I wanted it to be or not, the blog turned out to be a very personal odyssey. Less and less useful, perhaps, to the general gamer. More and more relevant to the lost gamer of old, and possibly to the middle aged man that as Lovecraft so eloquently put it has "lost the key to the gate of dreams". 

Some time ago, I blogged heavily about the fact that perhaps the answer to my feeling of gaming loss, was that I needed a gaming group. A new group of adult friends that I could connect with over gaming. Especially over games that I wanted to play. And then, lo and behold, they reached out to me. I had a great guy, super nice, who wondered if we wanted to get together and game. He had a friend or two and asked if I knew anybody else we could game with then maybe we could start a game. It seemed as if exactly what I wanted was coming to pass. 

What happened you ask? Well, I was a dad. Getting time away when you have three kids at home wasn't exactly easy. So I took my two oldest kids. Not exactly what I pictured, but we work with the tools we have, right? And don't get me wrong. I have since gamed with my kids as much if not more than anyone else. Then, as I emailed back and forth and talked over email and phone with these new gaming contacts, they asked me what I wanted to play. I chanced it and said I would really like to try HackMaster 4e. 

A brief divergence is in order here to explain the significance of this. As I've written about before, in the deep of the OSR, around 2007 or so I re-encountered Knights of the Dinner Table. I can't quite describe the feelings I had as I read more and more of this perfectly captured gestalt of the gaming world I recall. I felt like I was coming home. It was soon after that I found out that HackMaster 4e. was an actual game! My excitement was overwhelming. All of the hopes and of the OSR seemed like they were being realized. Here was a company that had written a game that seemed to carry on the proud AD&D tradition. But then, everything changed. 

KenzerCo, the company that had created HackMaster revealed plans that WoTC was shifting gears and their agreement to use the license they had been granted was coming to an end. As a result they were going to create a new version of HackMaster, Fifth Edition. My stomach dropped. Would that change things? What would the new edition be like? How much could it be like AD&D? I would just have to wait and see. I did, and was disappointed. While HackMaster 5e is a fine, beautifully produced game, it was not AD&D. 

It was awhile later that these new guys had reached out to me, but I was still enchanted with HackMaster 4e as the potential true heir to 1e. So I told them I wanted to try HackMaster 4e. And believe it or not, they agreed! It was decided I would GM, since I was most familiar with the game, though I had never actually played it. Within days the new guys had created new characters. They were fully embracing the idea, but ... they had a different idea than I did. I can't blame them though. They saw HackMaster as the parody it was presented as. As a made-up satire of a game played in a made-up satirical universe. They laughed about their characters taking so many quirks and flaws their characters were practically unplayable. I didn't handle it well. They did not see what I saw. That HackMaster was a brilliant game, that it could be played as a real game, not as a joke. I still recall the awkwardness on this phone call, and how I struggled to not appear offended, and failed to do so. But these were good guys. They backed off the idea, and I gave up pushing HackMaster. It was a short time later I gave up the GM role, even before we started, and another guy agreed to GM what he was comfortable with, 3.5. 

I was right back where I had been many other times. We gamed for about six sessions and I called it quits. So what was wrong here? Was it me? Was it the other guys? Was it the game? 

I don't blame the other guys. They were good guys. I don't blame my kids--I'm the one who invited them and the guys were more than glad to have them join. The game was maybe partially to blame. I mean the guys had seen the aspect of the game that was implicitly a part of the game. The game is a parody, of a sort. So I can't really blame the game, it is what it is. So, the fact is, I am the only one left to blame. And that's not new. I blamed myself then and I do so now.

So why did I quit? It wasn't the kids, it wasn't the guys, it wasn't my other responsibilities, it wasn't even that we were playing 3.5. But in some strange way it was all those things. 

As I ran the game club at the school where I taught, we had lots of fun playing lots of different editions of the game. 3.5, Pathfinder, Castles & Crusades, 4e, Call of Cthulhu, and OSRIC. I definitely had the most fun playing OSRIC. I sort of had to exert myself to tell all the club members that I was only going to GM OSRIC. And the club members jumped in with both feet. Our campaign in OSRIC was some of the most fun I had playing in the club. I actually had told the members that we were playing AD&D and that I would be using the AD&D rules, but OSRIC was a near exact clone so they could use those rules and we would be just fine. But the fact was, we weren't. I mean the games were great, but what began to come up again and again, were the little niggling differences between OSRIC and AD&D. Club members would come up and ask questions about rules, make declarations based on OSRIC that did not jive with AD&D. Granted the differences were small, but somehow they loomed very large in my mind. It was some months later that I cancelled the OSRIC game and we switched back to Pathfinder, by popular vote. I didn't vote, I let the students do it.

Who's to blame here? The kids? The game?  Me? Yeah. Me again. Sure there are plenty of reasons, but we were having a great time gaming first edition. I mean no one can not call OSRIC first edition.  It's as close of a clone that has been written. But I wanted my 1e books at the table. I wanted them to be the ultimate recourse. I was still looking for something else.

And what happened with HackMaster? Well, I may have my timelines messed up in the re-telling, but when HackMaster 5e was released in 2009, and actually when Basic was released, I could tell right away that this was not the same game. But I jumped in, tried to embrace it, but it never took. It was so different from 4e that I just couldn't stay excited about it. And the company that created it would of course shift to 5e. I had some hope that KODT wouldn't be affected, but it was. Now, don't get me wrong, I still love KODT. I just try and look past the little differences they've added in that refer to 5e instead of 4e. I mean, heck, back in the day when I played AD&D I probably wouldn't have liked KODT. I would have seen it as a crass parody, making fun of the game I loved. And I would have seen all the variances from AD&D as proof that they weren't really talking about my game anyway. 

But time is a funny thing, and memory even funnier. I re-encountered KODT at a time when I was desperately longing for some connection to the world of old school gaming. In the satire that was KODT, I recognized the truth of what it was trying to represent. I saw in it and the game a chance to return to the past. The same thing the OSR had promised. But time travel is not possible. No one gets to go back. We just go forward with the experiences of the past to shape us. 

I could say I misjudged OSRIC, I misjudged the OSR, I misjudged KODT and I misjudged HackMaster. Maybe it was because I didn't know what I was looking for. Maybe because I didn't know myself. Maybe in the end I misjudged myself. 

Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. I don't even know whether to call it an emotion. I've studied it alot since the OSR grew wings some 20 years ago now. Truthfully, psychologists aren't agreed about what it is, and what purpose it serves. I've read lots of theories, but nothing quite rings true. What I have heard is that nostalgia is stronger for some than for others. I certainly admit it is a powerful force in my life. So I have to admit how much nostalgia has played a role in my gaming life, especially since I picked it up again back in early 2000. 

How do I separate the strong feelings I have about the game as it was for me and the current reality of the gaming world? I've tried so many times to game other editions. I always end up quitting; disillusioned by the current game and the lack of what I'm looking for in the experience. For awhile I thought it was the lack of friends to game with. Friends that were more than just my students or even my own children--since the relation between a teacher and his students, or kids and their dad will never quite be like gaming buddies. That is, after all, what KODT seemed to capture. BA, Sara, Brian, Dave and Bob. Gaming buddies. I wanted something like that. But the guys who had reached out to me certainly gave me that opportunity. But I walked away from that too.