Monday, November 5, 2012

Tegel Manor and my Return to “Gonzo” D&D


As a kid and most of my teens my D&D was all kinds of Gonzo. I used City State of The Invincible Overlord, Tegel Manor, and a variety of early Judges Guild products as my D&D wheelhouse. In those early days I did not give a damn about verisimilitude, and didn’t even know what the hell it was. Right out of the gate I think we were doing weird fantasy in our games by default, long before James Raggi used the term for his games.


But that was not to last. Just growing up made the gaming group increase the realism a bit, and once again as usual I put the blame for my own game world becoming more “real” on girls entering our gaming circles. Pretty, pretty girlies. Endless dungeon gauntlets and constant killing, combined with apeshit occurrences in-game that made little sense seemed to turn girls off. Role-play became a bigger factor then. The gals wanted to develop relationships in the game world. They seemed to respond better to things that made some sense, not just the weirdo whims of adolescent fantasy-minded boys. So in my game world shopkeeps and bartenders stopped being 10 level wizards or retired 9th level paladins. Magic shops began to become scarce. Dungeons existing for no other reason than to massacre adventurers became rarer. I stopped using Thor, Zeus, and other gods of myth and injected my own that made sense for my setting. Verisimilitude reared its ugly head. Thus has it remained over the decades. I kept an eye on things making some kind of sense in my world.


Well, I’m sort of getting turned around on that. I've had a couple of years off from running a regular D&D campaign, focusing on Sci Fi and other types of fantasy. After all those years of making my game world sort of low on gonzo, I’m getting a desire to go silly once more when I get back on the campaign track. Not that everything in the game world is going to go apeshit all of a sudden. But I want to have my main city stop being so much like Gondor, and go back to being more like Lankhmar. Weirdo shit around every corner. And my first step is to utilize the full gonzo nature of Tegel Manor. That setting will be the focus of my next campaign I think. Gonna make it MY Ravenloft! On a trip out of town the other weekend I actually got to test the waters with it outside my regular group a bit. That taste has me ready to go full bore with the wacky, brutal mansion on the gang in the not too distant future. Oh, of course I will try to throw a little gravitas with it in the form of better explanations of why certain things are the way they are, but Tegel seems the perfect way to hit the group over the head with my new gonzo outlook.

Really, life is getting too short for obsessing on verisimilitude in a game of pretend.

7 comments:

  1. I enjoy verisimilitude...to a point. But in D&D in particular, there are times where I really like things to be 'funhouse' weird. White Plume Mountain, for instance, is a great adventure, even if the Dungeon makes no 'rational' sense. But then, in a world with magic, there are ways of rationalizing things.

    Another 'gonzo' adventure I love is the Classic "Castle Amber" adventure- in particular, the palace itself. It is a truly bizarre place that makes no rational sense- with ghosts in one room and in the next nomadic cat people are rummaging through a library. The last time I ran this adventure, I expanded upon it- throwing out the overall 'map' of the palace to make it a weird kind of extra-dimensional place, where rooms and corridors are constantly changing and where the outer dimensions of the house do NOT determine its inner dimensions. Afterall, the place is supposed to be the home of one of the most powerful archmages in that particular game world. I see his palace as an extra-dimensional place. This allows me to make it as large and non-sensical as I wish. And you know what? Throwing off those 'bonds' of verisimilitude from time to time is pretty fun.

    So in short (too late)- I agree!

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  2. I like all kinds of role gaming: gonzo, realistic/serious, realistic/tongue-in-cheek-humour, etc.

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  3. BTSword: I've always had low death counts in my game. This may be a chance to fix that bad habit. I want to have them arrive at Tegel at only 2nd or 3rd level - it's an adventure recommended for 4th and up.
    Rolo: I will actually try and go for a balance, of course. I probably won't be using the City State anytime soon. Just really going to be less worried about "making sense" all the time. A little nonesense can go a long way!

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  4. Tegel Manor is the bomb. Isn't that what the kids say today? Anyway, I've never had a negative experience within its walls -- as player or as gm. Gods speed sir! Go forth and go gonzo!

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  5. Tegel Manor is the bomb! Isn't that what the kids say these days? Anyway, I've never had a negative experience within its walls -- as player or gm. Go forth and go gonzo!

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  6. Jim: Thanks, I'm looking forward to it, especially winging-it on and expanding on the various bare bones entries in the Tegel book.

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