B/X Notebook- Let's Go to Hell!

[This was written for TSR's Known World/Mystara setting using the B/X ruleset. It incorporates elements of Wrath of the Immortals, the Known World Gazetteer series, Greyhawk, Fiend Folio and Bard Games' Atlantean Trilogy (specifically The Bestiary.) Mitra/Mithras is the stand-in for Jehova/God and is in most respects, the same deity.]

[[Special thanks to Ettin of Hexen for his assistance in tightening this up.]]

I had this idea that Hell, by whatever name, could be represented by the three alignments of D&D, that those alignments could define, in a way, how each realm would operate. These are separate realms (or planes or dimensions) each with its own character, personified by whoever rules there. Orcus and Demogorgon are most likely familiar to long time D&D players, but Veischax is my own creation, based heavily on medieval ideas of Satan and the angelic host as presented in books like the Dictionnaire Infernal, The Magus, and the Lesser and Greater Keys of Solomon. 

Infernus is the creation of Mithras, who has sole dominion over it, despite what Orcus might think. The other two realms were created under very different circumstances, as you'll see. They belong to no particular god or religion, but only to those that inhabit them.

All three planes of Hell have these things in common- they are inhabited by entities commonly known as demons (and less often as devils) and they are places of punishment for the spirits of the dead (typically human) who have in some way displeased their deity or deities. Each realm can be entered, with varying degrees of difficulty and through various means, by mortals. Whether they can make it out again is up to fate and the DM to decide. 

The following undead spirits are found anywhere in the three Hells- spectres, wraiths, shadows & wights. These are the spirits of especially evil people that have been "promoted" above the common undead spirit status. They are not, however, part of any demonic hierarchy.

Infernus

Orcus is both the ruler and a prisoner of Infernus. Condemned there by Mithras, Orcus and his minions were the first occupants. As a realm of Punishment (Law,) Infernus also serves as prison for those souls who break the Sacred Laws of Mithras.

In the center of Infernus stands a cyclopean mountain of basalt and iron, and atop that mountain sits a grand palace, where resides Orcus, the Black Prince of Infernus. The mountain itself is rife with twisting tunnels and foul dungeons where Orcus' slaves mete out punishment to the spirits of the damned. The mountain is, in effect, one big, nasty dungeon.

Beyond the mountain is a blasted wasteland of broken earth, acidic lakes, cutting winds, and boiling rain. Sulfurous fire pits are everywhere, spewing flames and belching noxious clouds into the air. 

As Mithras is not a cruel deity, all souls that enter the Infernal Realm may eventually leave there and enter into Paradise- all save for Orcus and his horde, who are damned to see those they are forced to punish gain freedom and go on to the one place they, themselves, may never again enter.

Legions of Orcus

• Gremlin
• Undead Spirit
• Hell Hound
• Nightmare
• Greater Undead
• Nether Demon
• Broo (Lesser Common Demon)
• Ostegos (Death Demon)
• Winged Demon
• Bargda (Greater Common Demon)
• Empusa
• Cataboligne
• Nightshade (all three types freely roam the land, but none are found in the mountain)

Noth

Veischax rules the realm of the dead called Noth- a grey, cold, impossibly vast city with impassably high walls and barred gates wrought from evil iron. It is a city built by the evil of Man, not the labor of demons. What the souls of sinful men have created, left to their own devices, is a strangling bureaucracy that dominates every aspect of existence in Noth. 

The damned spend most of their existence here standing in endless lines, slaving away in mines, and building or repairing sections of the city. It is a realm of crushing tedium, periodically shattered by attacks from Veischax's minions, thus creating a constant, oppressive aura of Fear (Neutral).

Known to some as the Infinite City it is in fact surrounded by a variety of terrain consisting primarily of a cold, trackless desert and the wilderness. Those that manage to escape the city find themselves hunted by beasts of every stripe. Among the demons there exists a hierarchy, with imps in the lowest positions all the way up to the monstrous kalkydri who have claimed certain districts in Noth as their own. It is Veischax the Dethroned Emperor, however, who is the undisputed master.

Occasionally, various demonic factions will come into conflict and openly wage war on each other. Some wars have been endured for decades and some even centuries and the damned are powerless to stop them. A spirit who has been destroyed in Noth simply disperses into nothingness, only to reform later. 

Legions of Veischax

• Red Imp
• Undead Spirit
• Devil Dog
• Alastor
• Grimalkin
• Bat Horin
• Diabolus
• Demon Locust
• Asura (Pit Devil)
• Nephilim
• Kalkydri

Pandemonium 

Demogorgon rules Pandemonium, a terrifying realm of the damned. It is a patchwork landscape, with areas tailored to suit the tastes of each local demonic lord. Beyond the never ending parade of unimaginable horrors, Pandemonium consists of mounds of smoldering filth and piles of flyblown rotting corpses, broken by an occasional area of shocking beauty and serenity, there to remind the damned of what they can no longer have.

While most enduring domains in Pandemonium are ruled by type V and VI demons, it is Demogorgon's lieutenants, those few exalted demons rewarded with names, that hold the most sway beyond their master's immediate influence. None, however come close to the terrifying might of the Grand Master, himself.
Pandemonium is a place where not only the souls of the damned go beyond death, but those of other evil humanoids (orcs, ogres, etc) as well, where they are subject to horrific physical and mental brutality at the hand of demons. It is a realm of Torment (Chaos).

Legions of Demogorgon

• Goblin
• Undead Spirit
• Hobgoblin
• Bugbear (Nightjack)
• Death Knight
• Retriever
• Hag
• Type I-VI Demon
• Exalted Demon Lords

*Archon = angel.

Fuck Yeah DragonQuest! Part 2

I've decided my dude's name will be Burgos. I don't know what a burgos is, but I like the sound of it.

The next step in the process should probably be selection of your College of Magic and all the spells and whatnot, since that's the next chapter, but I'm going to save that for last. So, we're jumping over that into equipment, followed by skills.

I'll get my weapons and armor first, which are found on pages 24 and 25. As you recall from last time (heh heh) I have a paltry 45 silver pennies (the common currency in DQ) to spend. Since he's an adept (DQ's word for someone who uses magic,) he's not gonna spend much. Cold iron really jacks with magic in DragonQuest, so if I wanted to use a sword, for example, I would probably want to use weapons made of bronze or bone (which will lessen their effectiveness.)

However, since Burgos's Strength is so low, that bars him from using most weapons. No surprises here. I kinda planned on that. Adding all the various factors, I decide on a hand axe and rock (yes, just a regular dumb ol' rock) as my weapons, and decide no armor at all will do, partly because it really annoys GMs. Now, to the equipment list on page 144.

Here's what I bought-

Hand Axe- 15sp
"Clothing"- 22sp
Leather Shoulder Pouch- 2sp
Quart Wine Skin- 2sp
Sleeping Sack- 3sp

TOTAL- 44sp

I'm going to dispense with the household items and sundries for this outing, so that leaves me with 46sp to spend on future expenses. Hopefully his skills and his magic will help get him through times of no dope. An itemized list will appear on the character sheet*, just in case you wondered what constituted "clothing." Rocks, in case you were wondering, are free.

As you may recall from part 1, I have 200xp to spend on skills and magic. Since I picked my weapons, it's now time to spend some experience points on them and for that we go way in the back to page 145 and table [87.8] the Experience Point Cost Chart.

Since Hand Axe weighs it at a hefty 100xp for Rank 0 (all skills start at rank 0) it looks like I'll be skipping that in favor of Magic, and maybe rank in a skill, depending on cost. I can probably swing Rock at Rank 0, however, since it's just 25xp. So, just to make it official:

Rock: Rank 0. This means I have a 30% chance to hit a target for D-1 damage.

Looks like I'm s.o.l. on skills, too, as the cheapest one is 200xp at Rank 0. This is true for all starting characters, so it's nothing to worry about. Now that that's out of the way we can finally move on to magic. I chose the College of Earth Magic for its abundance of outdoorsy spells. These are what I can afford with my remaining experience points-

Spell of Converse with Animals with a 45-50 percent chance of success- 50xp
Spell of Converse with Plants with a 25% chance- 50xp
Spell of Herbal Lore also with a 25% chance- 75xp

Add 25 points for the Rock and that comes to exactly 200 experience points.

As a starting character, he's kind of a pussy, but that's to be expected. A 1st level D&D MU probably has 2 or 3 hp, a dagger, and one spell he can use per day, probably Magic Missile or Sleep. Alone in the woods for a night, he wouldn't stand a chance.

At least Burgos can ask a deer for a good escape route or try to talk a wolverine out of eating his fingertips. Not too shabby. And these aren't just one-shot spells, either. He can cast as long as he has Fatigue points left. I'll explain that when I go into detail about the DQ magic system another time.

Oh, yeah- he also has a 1-in-3 chance of hitting some punk with a rock.

And that, my friends, is how a DragonQuest character is made. Not at all complicated or difficult, especially when compared to, well, a ton of other games, including some versions of D&D.

*Turns out the Excel sheet was giving me a little trouble in Open Office, so I'll have to leave it out this time.

Fuck Yeah DragonQuest! Part 1

Today I'm going to create a character for SPI's amazing rpg DragonQuest (2nd ed.) Why? Well, because DQ died a young and truly tragic death and I for one would rather not see it fade from existence. Hopefully, this example of chargen may turn some people on to the game.

So I'm gonna go through it step-by-step and also by-the-book. Since characteristics are arrived at though point-buy, we get to avoid the liberal chargen augmentation typical D&D, i.e. roll 4d6, drop the lowest; place where you want, etc.

Since we're living in the Space Age, I'm gonna use a nifty Excel character sheet that's supposed to do all the math for me. You can find it here. Hopefully it works in Open Office as I don't have MS Office.


5. Character Generation

One of the neat things about DQ chargen is that it's both randomly rolled and point-buy. How is this possible, you ask? Please, let me demonstrate for you. First, roll 2d10 (in DragonQuest, the only die used is a d10, which is expressed in the game as simply "D," so in this case I would use "2D" to describe the roll. This'll come up again later) and consult the handy Point Generation Table (not shown.) The number I roll will provide for me the amount of points I can spend on characteristics and the maximum number I can place in any one of those scores. For example, a roll of 4 gives me 83 points to distribute among the six main characteristics, but with a maximum of 24 in one

Characteristics in DragonQuest range from a minimum of 5 to a normal maximum of 25. Some races (like giants) can surpass that number in certain characteristics.

Okay, my roll is 5+9=14 which gives me...93 points to divide among six attributes with a maximum of 21 in one slot. As per rule 5.2 this also means that I can have two attributes of 20 points and three attributes of 19, should I choose to do so. I don't know quite yet. As I love DQ's magic system, I think I'll pursue that path. But I have twelve colleges of magic to choose from (15 if you include Arcane Wisdom,) so I have some cogitating to do. But first, my scores-

Physical Strength: 11
Manual Dexterity: 13
Agility: 12
Endurance: 20
Magical Aptitude: 21 (I chose this first and maxed it for obvious reasons)
Willpower: 16
Fatigue: 22 (this is a figured characteristic based on Endurance)
Perception: 8 (all characters start with an 8 in Perception.)

I decided I want him to be a robust dude that can live off the land, thus the high Endurance, but he's no John Rambo- he has to rely on his magic skills to cover the areas where he comes up short physically.

6. Birthrights

I see this guy being human, but just for the hell of it I'm going to see if I can successfully roll on percentiles for a different race. Out of the ones available, I'm gonna shoot for Elf, Giant, and Shape-Changer (lycanthrope.) According to the rules, if the roll succeeds, I have to take the race, so whichever one I get first is the one I'm stuck with. Here we go-

Elf (30%)- I rolled a 95. Fail.
Giant (06%)- I rolled a 15. Close, but still fail.
Shape-changer (04%)- a 70. Looks like I'm human after all.

7. Aspects

This tells me what my character's place in the universe is, more or less, and is probably the closest thing to D&D's alignment. It's essentially astrology. Percentiles are used again here and I rolled a 66, which section 7.1 tells me means I'm Autumn Stars aspected. What this means is that during certain days of the year (and certain times of those respective days,) my dude will either be affected or afflicted by the Cosmos. This can suggest all kinds of things about my character (looks, style of dress, personality) or I can ignore that and go with whatever mental image I started with.

8. Heritage

Now we find out which side of the tracks my boy comes from. Everything from "poor trash" to "greater nobility" and a bunch of stuff in between. Another percentile roll and I get 17 which makes nature boy Impoverished Gentlefolk. Works for me.
Now let's find out if he's a bastard. Another percentile roll will tell me if he's a bastard, legit, or a first born child. This will affect his starting money and experience. I rolled a 68, which means he's legitimate- not as much fun as the other two possibilities, but I can live with it. No changes here.

But we're not done here quite yet. Now we find out how many siblings he has, if any, and what his place in line is. A D10 roll of 1, the loneliest number, reveals that he is second in line to the Throne of Mud and Hay. Huzzah!

We're almost done for today. The final step is to find out what his starting money and experience points are. This calls for two percentile rolls. The experience point roll: 92! That starts me off with 200 xp to spend. Nice.

The money roll: 40. That's okay, I guess. This gives me 45 silver pennies. Now, I refer back to the Social Status table (8.1) for my money multiplier- impoverished gentlefolk get a 2x to their starting dosh, so I get 90 sp to blow on gear and sundries. All in all I can't complain.

I think that's enough for now. Next time I'll buy his gear, do his skills, and settle on a college of magic.

B/X Notebook- Thieves & Scrolls & Gods & Everyone

One change I forgot to list before is removing the Thief's ability to read magic scrolls, which begins at 10th level. If there was one good reason for a thief to be able to do that, I'd probably let it slide.

However, a couple of years back I posited the (paraphrased) question "Why can thieves cast spells from scrolls when no other non-magical class can't?" on Dragonsfoot and for the most part got either bullshit answer ("Thieves figure stuff out. It's what they do.") or the typical assholery you find online ("Because it says so in the rules.")

To my mind, either everyone can cast spells from scrolls (which is supported in tons of film and literature) or just Magic Users and Elves (and any similar class) can. As I tend to enjoy a low-magic setting, I choose to go with the latter, but it would be interesting to see how the former would work out. Maybe limit spell level to 4th or something.

Okay, onto the next subject which is just to clarify a point I'd made before about everyone having a god. That probably sounds a little neo-Conservative, but what I was trying to say was that, in days of yore when knights were bold and all that, the unsophisticated peoples of the day needed to have all things unnatural explained to them and so they turned to gods to do that.

In terms of my game, that just means that everyone believes in gods. It's just a part of life, like tiraphegs and swords that are smarter than you are. I didn't mean to imply that players have to pay tithings or attend services or whatever. The fact is that gods actually exist in this world- they're right there! Makes it a little tough to deny their existence.

So, are we all clear on this point? Good. :)

B/X Notebook: The Daveing of D&D Continues

I don't know if these are the kinds of things Arneson would have done in his game, but I decided to keep it positive and use "Daveing" to describe the alterations I made to D&D instead of "de-gygaxing."

I've already discussed a number of changes, but today I want to talk about Daveing the orc family tree. By that I mean that kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, gnolls, and bugbears are essentially just orcs with lesser or greater amounts of hit dice- .5, 1-1, 1+1, 2, and 3+1 respectively. I realize, of course, that gnolls are not related to orcs, but for the sake of this article, I'll include them as well as a couple of other orc variants (in the meta sense.)

The idea here is to make the motivations of each race unique and give them more of a visual identifier than "orc with dog-head" or "orc with hyena-head," etc. For now I'll just lay on the flayva and skip the nuts & bolts. Some of these guys deserve an entry all their own due to changes in powers and the like.

Koboldes*
In various editions of the game, it's mentioned that gnomes and kobolds hate each other. That was my starting point for this version. In the distant past, a group of gnome miners found themselves trapped in a mine containing an ore that gave off a queer elemental force that poisoned and bent the gnomes, turning them into angry little blue bastards.

The gnomes that arrived to free them were forced back by the deadly ore, eventually leaving those trapped inside for dead. As a result, the koboldes (as they eventually referred to themselves) blamed and came to hate their brethren for their condition.

*I'm using a variant spelling of kobold here so as to differentiate them from the standard D&D monster. I am not adding the "e" to fancify the name the way some dorks do with "Lich." The word "lich" is English. It means "corpse" and it is pronounced "bitch." Not "leech" or "leek" or "like" or whatever other ghey hyperforeignisms get ascribed to it. This is why there's no fucking "e" on the end of it, understand?

He didn't get out of the cock-a-doodie CAR!

Goblins
The idea here is that goblins are the lowest ranking, most numerous, inhabitants of Hell. They exist primarily to torment the souls of the damned. On occasion, a few of these mini-fiends make their way (or were they released?) to the mortal realm where they gleefully terrorize the living.

The idea for this came from two sources, the movie Legend and the works of Heironymus Bosch. Each goblin is a random mix of man, animal, and junk. So, you could have a bird with a pig's head wearing a pair of big boots or a giant pair of scissors with legs. Whatever I think would make for an unsettling bogie. Ideally, no two are the same, but all have the same stats.

Hobgoblins
The inspiration for these fellows comes from Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. These are probably the closest to what is described in the game. They make up the bulk of their demonic masters' military forces, acting primarily as cannon fodder. In their downtime, they crack whips at goblins, bend, fold, spindle and mutilate the damned, and otherwise sit and stare at stuff. Like the goblins, they get to visit the world of the living, where they likewise terrorize mortals, albeit less gleefully.

Visually, they are hulking humanoids in a variety of earth tone colors. They glowing red eyes, large pointed ears, a mouthful of sharp teeth, and clawed hands. Some of them share traits more common to demons (horns, wings, tails, etc.) but those are just for show.

Gnolls
These are completely useless to me. If I was gonna use them at all, I'd just build them from the ground up and call the Gnoles, the creatures that Dunsany created and that were made stupid by Gygax. A cross between a gnome and a troll, Gary? Really?

Bugbears
These guys are completely unrelated to goblins. They are wicked forest monsters that only come out at night to abuse those foolish enough to get caught in the wilderness alone. They are creatures of Chaos that exist to sow fear and will sometimes be in the company of ghouls, bats, snakes, gargoyles and other night creepers.

These are full-on representations of the image Greg "More Cow" Bell gave the world in Dungeons & Dragons Supplement 1: Greyhawk, which means they're big, naked, dark, hairy and have motherfuckin' pumpkins for heads. Way scarier than the plus-sized goblins that Gygax wanted. Sorry, Gary. This time you lose.

Ogres
Ogres are essentially simple folk that don't like to be messed with. So, basically a less cartoony, larger version of Shrek. In this case, though, they could almost pass for human if you squint, looking more like oversized cavemen, but with a better wardrobe. Ogres being French, both resemble and sound like Andre the Giant. They also speak French. This all makes more sense if you're familiar with the Mystara setting.

These guys enjoy the same things in life as humans do, but if you cross them, they'll be happy to eat you. And your family and all your pets. And your horse. Having said that, if you really want something that big, but more stupid and violent, there's always the perfectly good Hill Giant to make use of.

Trolls
When drawn properly, they look like Meg Knucklebones from the aforementioned movie Legend, which is a good thing in my opinion. I, however, prefer Russ Nicholson's take on them in the Fiend Folio (the giant troll, anyway.) Like ogres, I prefer my trolls to be at least somewhat intelligent, to wear clothes, to be able to communicate, etc. Unlike ogres, though, trolls are complete assholes that just want to eat you, regardless of whether or not you actually walked across their lawn.

I like the different flavors of troll that Dave Trampier had in his Wormy comic and ultimately will probably base my trolls on them. I think they should have horns, though.


So that covers the common humanoids. Keep in mind that I'm dealing strictly with B/X D&D and so don't know or care about all the swell variations in later editions. These work for me and my game just fine.

Next time I think I'll present my modified version of Arneson's dragon maker from Adventures in Fantasy.

B/X Notebook- How I do it.

Some of this was already discussed, but I thought I'd list all the changes I have in mind.

Clerics. Either leave them out all together and replace them with Paladins, or make them the "Christian soldiers" they were clearly intended with no other gods represented. I accomplished the latter by filing the name off of Jehova, renaming him "Mithras." If you know anything about Mithras/Mitra then you'll get my thinking behind this.

Priests. If clerics are out as a character class, simply have that area covered by Magic-Users with spells borrowed from the clerics list of spells. Simple enough, I think.

Paladins. Remove the spells, allow for any weapons, and make a few other minor tweaks to the cleric class and you get the paladin. In my mind, they'd still have to serve Mithras/Jehova or they wouldn't be paladins, they'd be... I dunno, some other dumbass class.

How these three changes will be implemented depends of the type of game I'm running. My current game, Atranta, technically has no clerics, but one of my players rolled one up while I wasn't looking and it's a really neat character, so he stays. All others are Magic-Users-as-priests. In my Savage Atvatabar/Hollow World game (not a Savage Worlds game) Mithraic clerics are in full force. So...just depends.

No Alignment. I'd resolved a long time ago that alignment did in no way dictate how a character behaved, it simply stated which team you were rooting for. So, really, I could keep it and it would have no effect on the game or I could get rid of it altogether. Either works fine for me.

Dragons. D&D dragons are pretty stupid. Color-coded and, worse, having some really idiotic "breath" weapons. Chlorine gas? Seriously? No, all dragons in my game breathe fire. All of them. And they're whatever color I want them to be. A guy I knew had an interesting way of handling dragon's breath. Instead of rolling for how many times a day they could use their breath weapon, he gave them a number of points of damage they could exhale. So, like 400 points per day and blow however much fire they wanted to until the points run out. I really like this idea and will probably use it if I ever have a dragon in my game.

Other than that I'll probably use Dave Arneson's dragon creation tables from his Adventures in Fantasy rpg or some variation of it.

The Orc Family Tree. I've made changes to Bugbears, Kobolds, Goblins, and Hobgoblins, but it's a lot of stuff and I'll save it for a later post. I will say this, though- bugbears have pumpkin heads. Because it's fucking awesome, that's why!

Rakes. Introduced in Dawn of the Emperors, the Rake is a variant on the Thief class. Either a skill-less Thief or a Fighter-lite, you decide. Someone tweaked the Rake a little bit, giving them a Fighter's hit die and attack table and retaining the loss of most Thief skills. The result is a pretty nifty Errol Flynn swashbuckler type class that really appeals to me (I usually play a Thief.)

Winning the game. One of the original members of the TRS crew mentioned to me that his group actually had a way to "win" D&D. The first person in the group to build and maintain a keep to level 15 (I assume they were playing AD&D) was the king of the hill. My memory may be slightly off on the particulars of that idea, but it doesn't matter since it fits in nicely with B/X. The first person to start a domain at 9th level and maintain it until 14th wins.
 Now, this is something that will probably never happen since I don't play D&D in a group nor do I run a regular game, but I still think it's an interesting way to play. The alternative that will most likely be put into use is the following.

Advancing past 14th level. This is something I just came up with recently and there are a lot of things to work out, but the gist of it is that the DM would award magic items of increasing power as the situation demands. This would mean that all new powers and abilities are "borrowed" and lost once the item is returned or destroyed or whatever. No more experience points or counting gold or whatever. Just play for the fun of it and try to achieve whatever the goal of the adventure or campaign is.
 If nothing else it's a way to keep playing your character without him becoming a ridiculous, bloated demi-god.

Everybody has a god. If a god is not chosen at character creation, one will be assigned to you. Quit yer bitchin', it's not like I'm making you go to fuckin' church. Everybody has a god. Get over it.

Back to Basic

In order to center my Chi, I've started work on a Basic (Moldvay) D&D game. Just something quick (I hope) to kinda clear out the plaque accumulated by XXVc. So, this whole thing is gonna be different than the usual Tolkien styled D&D. I think I'm even going to try to avoid Howardian trappings and go for a more dreamlike, Dunsany kinda thing.

BUT! If you know me (and I know you don't,) then you know I've got more than just that up my sleeve. What it is, however, is going to remain a secret to everyone except the people I told. Anyway, enough of that. There are a couple of things I've been considering for a while now. High time I wrote them down.

First of all, clerics are out. I've always felt they were too specifically Christian warrior monk/Templar types. Now, this is fine with me as I tend to tailor my setting to fit that model. In other words, it's a monotheistic setting and that mono-god just happen to be a Jehova facsimile.

If you want to play a priest, make a Magic-User with healing spells. This is actually something I came up with to mimic priests in Conan stories and whatnot. This only applies to a game that doesn't have the mono-god thing happening.

No alignment. Did I talk about this already? Anyway, alignment only barely serves a purpose in the game and causes more problems than it solves, so it's out.

Paladins replace clerics. I've always felt that they were too similar and redundant. Paladins (not the ridiculous Gygaxian AD&D version,) if you power them down, make pretty good replacements, in my opinion. I think the way they were presented in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia was pretty good and would probably be included in some form somewhere at some point.

Okay, so other than that, it's just minor tweaks and whatnot- trolls will probably change a lot; the Fey will have a bigger presence, but humans will still be in the majority. Demons are most likely out, but devils are very welcome. That sort of thing.

David A. Trampier Has Died Again

A couple of years ago I had a chance to interview someone who worked at TSR in the early days about Dave Trampier. The idea was to simply celebrate and give an analysis of the man's artwork, as I was and am such a huge fan. It's one of those things, y'know- the cassette got put in a drawer and forgotten; I moved on to other projects, etc.

So, now at the age of 59, the greatest artist to ever work for TSR, to work on AD&D, has died. His work resonated deeply with me for a number of reasons, the least of which was the connection to the game. I was so taken by his artwork on the original AD&D Dungeon Master's Screen that it kept me from playing the game- I'd just sit there and drink in the details, while the DM would yell at me to "pull my head out." For a long, long time, the artwork on that screen was infinitely more interesting to me than the game itself.

As has been noted ad nauseum on the various gaming message boards across the internet, he fled the industry and his art sometime in the late 80's and so I've had a long time to come to terms with the idea that he'd never return to it. So, having already made my peace, I can't say that I'm especially affected by his passing, especially after having already mourned the loss of Dave Brockie of the band GWAR, who I believe died on the same day.

And, once again, it's over. I still have that interview and I should probably transcribe it and post it, maybe even do that examination of his art.

I dunno. What would Dave do?

Fuck You, Gary Gygax!

I'm going to celebrate my birthday today (which just happens to be Gygax's birthday, as if I need any more reasons to be depressed) by honoring Mr. Dave Arneson, inventor of role-playing games and co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons.

While Arneson's contributions to the industry may be few, there is no doubt that his greatest contribution was giving that thieving scumbag Gary Gygax his career. You see, the one-time insurance salesman realized Arneson had captured lighting in a bottle with his Blackmoor campaign and quickly did everything in his power to wrest that bottle from Arneson's grasp, which, for a time, he successfully pulled off with the creation of AD&D.

Until the lawsuit, that is. Arneson won, but the public continues to think that Gygax created the game, thanks to him never mentioning Dave's name in regards to D&D. It's like he took a page or two out of Stan Lee's 'Fuck You, Jack Kirby' Playbook. When you run the company and edit the magazine you get to revise history as you see fit.

So, what we're left with now is the few remaining Gygax ass-kissers and coattail riders occasionally shitting on Arneson's name over at Dragonsfoot.org. Classy lot, they are.


Here's to you, Dave Arneson, sole inventor of role-playing games. Some of us know the truth and appreciate your fine work.