Dawn Of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

 

A couple or so years ago I wrote a series of articles on RPG related things for an online pop culture website. This site was created mostly by talkbackers on Aint It CoolS New who jumped ship from there when AICN creator Harry Knowles got sucked into the #metoo morass. Below is one of the first items I wrote for them. 

The website asked for content featuring fairly raw humor, so I accommodated as best I could. Also a certain amount of artistic license was used here where salient details were somewhat lacking. Please excuse the formatting as this was copied directly from the for mentioned website.

At first Mary Jo Gygax had no reason to believe her young husband Gary was anything but a hard-working family man, who committed much of his spare time to his kids and political volunteerism.

But mysterious late nights with sketchy friends and missed family dinners led her to believe her hubby just might be slipping some Wisconsin salami to some Lake Geneva hussy.

Creeping down the basement steps of one of Gary’s best pals, she steeled herself for the sight of a sexual liaison, but instead found something potentially more terrifying; Gaz and his pals stooped over a table laden with maps and miniatures, recreating some Napoleonic combat or other.

Gary wasn’t a cheating bastard; he was a wargame god.

“this will get me sooooo laid one day”

The Fresh Prince of Lake Geneva

Gary spent his earliest years on the mean streets of Chicago, but when he started showing a childhood proclivity towards gang warfare, the family up and moved Fresh Prince style, but instead of hightailing for Belle Aire, they went for rural Wisconsin.

A high school drop-out, and an uninspired sometimes-college student, Gygax built his strong, professor-like vocabulary by indulging in science fiction and pulp fantasy while working a variety of low-end office jobs. Conan The Barbarian, Lovecraft heroes, and John Carter of Mars were his muses.

Continuing his interest in table top gaming as years rolled by, Gary remained active in the wargaming community, and wrote many articles for wargaming magazines and coming up with his own games. Always yearning for new ways to approach his games, Gary was an early adopter of multi-sided dice, discovered in math teacher supply catalogues. In 1967 he founded GenCon, a yearly meeting of wargame wonks in Wisconsin. Not long after he would produce Chainmail, a warfare simulation with fantasy elements, which would become an early template for Dungeons and Dragons.

A Dork Named Dave

“Me? Not so much”

Along came Dave Arneson, a Minnesota University history student who also loved wargames. Dave had, for the time, unique ideas about his wargame sessions. Not satisfied with merely simulating exact history, Dave liked to explore alternate histories and outcomes. He was also a proponent of “Braunsteins,” an unpublished wargame notion were non-combat goals were introduced into the rigid wargame rules.

This quickly evolved into the idea of players actually taking on the roles of individuals in the game (commanders, town mayors, community leaders and businessmen) and making non-military decisions outside of game task resolution, almost entirely based on whim. Role-playing, to put it simply.

You might remember playing Monopoly as a kid, and your friends or older siblings wheeling and dealing and negotiating outside the rules. Yep, we were all role-playing landlords and train barons. We were Braunsteining.

Dave expanded upon these games by inventing his game world,  Blackmoor (widely recognized as the first true fantasy role-playing setting), and his sessions deviated heavily from the stodgy, popular wargames of the time. He injected fantasy elements, quests for gold and monster killing, and scenarios lifted from fantasy literature.

You Got Your Dave In My Gary Butter

Dave and Gary came together like chocolate and peanut butter at GenCon 2, bonding over a mutual love of naval-based games.

Not long after, Arneson would adopt Gygax’s Chainmail rules for his games for his personal home campaigns, but also addended it with what would later be recognized as the Dungeons and Dragons tropes that game is known for, including the improving hit points concept, character development from session to session, and most importantly dungeon crawling.

His players tiring of simple castle sieges, Dave filled the basement levels with traps, magic, and monsters, and had them delve beneath rather than breech the upper walls.

D&D is Coming Together

Gary must have loved the Blackmoor games, because he quickly invented his own setting, Greyhawk. Gary and Dave began to collaborate on a unique game combining their games and rules, and Gary wanted to hustle on it as there were other wargamers with similar publishing aspirations.

Unable to find publishers, Gary and pal Don Kaye tapped friend Brian Blume (one of two brothers who would eventually lead to the downfall of Gary’s version of the company) for the moolah, and they were off and running with a first run of 1000 copies. Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) and Dungeons and Dragons were born. It was 1974.

Arneson was not a partner, and most of his rules were not incorporated into that first version of D&D (though the tropes he invented would be), but he contributed a supplement, Blackmoor, and would briefly work for TSR. But he would soon leave to pursue a separate career in game design.

Dave would receive co-writer credit for a brief time, but that was removed with the publication of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, a somewhat different game. Still, it’s main concepts were all Arneson, and he filed several lawsuits, breaking up the friendship. In 1981 they settled, and Dave received co-creator credit and a royalty sum. This soothed the seething tensions between Gary and Dave, and the old school dorks were friends once more.

The Band is Breaking Up

Dave moved on anyway, and eventually landed a prestigious position at Full Sail University, teaching game design for many years. But he continued his home Blackmoor games, sessions that for decades gamers would beg to participate in. At conventions they often got the chance.

Before long, due to the death of TSR partner Kaye, and a buying of more shares by Brian Blume and his brother, Gary found himself the minority shareholder of the company, effectively more an employee than partner in the company that was fast becoming a huge success despite a variety of negatives.

For one thing, stories both true and false about the game in the media (gamers gone missing and suicides) caused a certain amount of eyebrow-raising scrutiny for the hobby, along with religious tongue clicking (Gygax and his wife actually left the Jehovah’s Witnesses due to pressure within their local chapter).

Also, Gary had become obsessed with playing D&D, and it occupied all of his free time. His longtime love of marijuana, the lure of young snizz his new celebrity afforded him, as well as a growing cocaine devotion, helped finish off that marriage, and Gary and Mary Jo divorced in 1983.

“I can’t believe you’re taking half the dungeon!”

Gary continued to be the face of the popular game. While the Blume family continued to run the game aspect of TSR, Gaz was sent off to Hollywood to get the entertainment division off the ground. In gamer circles, tales of Gary doing copious amounts of blow off of young gals’ tatas while cavorting in hot tubs were legendary. He co-produced the popular D&D cartoon, and worked hard (as hard as you can work while playing D&D 15 hours a day with a coke straw glued to your schnozz) to get a D&D movie off the ground.

Villainy Most Foul

The Blumes were back in Lake Geneva having their own party, buying up a fleet of company cars, overstocking the supply cabinets, overstaffing the offices, and believe it or not using company funds to hunt real treasure at the bottom of the sea. Before long, under the leadership of Tweedledumb Blume and Tweedledumber Blume, the three hundy million dollar a year company was several million in debt. Gary, who was close to locking in Orson Wells and John Boorman into his D&D film project, was informed of the Blume’s intention to sell off his beloved company to nix their debt. Spitting out his doobie, and knocking Traci Lords off his junk, Gary boogie-nighted out of his rented Hollywood mansion and hightailed back to the hearth fire in Wisconsin for a little aggressive TCB.

Captain Gygax: Civil War

His tussles with the Blumes and attempts to restructure the company could fill a library’s worth of books, but the long and short of it is Gary got things back on track. He helped hire a Hollywood friend’s sister as a business manager for TSR in 1984, perhaps the greatest mistake of his career. Her name was Lorraine Williams, and that name may as well be “Hitler” to many old school D&D fans.

Gary soon learned that Lorraine, though an excellent manager, held D&D players in low regard, and actually belittled Gary about it. Gary tried a Machiavellian move or two, but it was to no avail. The Blumes sold their shares to Williams, and with a cackle and flash of brimstone, she became the true power behind TSR.

Gary eventually said “screw it” and went on to try his hand at new gaming ventures, but like a modern Moriarty, Lorraine stymied him at every turn, eventually owning (through lawsuits most foul) and shelving his promising Dangerous Journeys game system.  Though he would always have his name linked to D&D, Gary would never replicate his original game’s success.

“I rolled a natural 20!”

Moving On

TSR sallied forth without it’s founders. To quell outspoken media critics, new editions of D&D purged Christian and demonic elements, and each such edition grew further towards glossy mainstream fantasy and away from the beloved old pulp novels beloved by Gary. Dungeon crawls became passé. Video games would have a bigger influence on D&D gameplay than dusty old fantasy tales.

Through the late 80’s and into the 90’s, and to Lorraine’s credit, TSR actually thrived despite many poor ideas, such as a Rocky and Bullwinkle RPG that included the use of hand puppets (can you imagine?). D&D remained strong, and expansions into comic books and novels were a success. But it would not last.

TSR over extended itself, and poor sales of things such as an attempt to enter the collectable card market doomed the company.

In short, Lorraine eventually sold out to Wizards of the Coast, makers of Magic: The Gathering, who themselves soon sold out to Hasbro. Dungeons and Dragons, once an underground playground for overgrown Conan fans, was in the hands of the owners of Transformers and My Little Pony. For good or bad.

Wrapping Up

Both Gary and Dave never lost their love of gaming, and the hobby continued to be the major force in their lives. Dave continued running his coveted weekly home games all the way up to when he died. Over the years many fans would live their dreams of getting to play at the tables of Gary and Dave at various gaming conventions. Gary passed away in 2008, and his old pal Dave died in 2009.

Lorraine Williams still stalks the Earth, laughing her last laughs at Gary, Dave, and their gamer ilk.

"...and your little dog Toto too!"

Weeee! Me and OD&D!

Before it gets later in the week and into a possible Mutant Future session, I wanted to post about the OD&D game I did for the group last week as a little alternative. My eyes are a bit bleary, as I sat through three full length movies over the weekend in addition to the usual tons of TV, reading, and video games. The Sci Fi Academy happened to have three screenings scheduled, including a 3D screening in a Beverly Hills Rodeo Drive office building Sunday afternoon. So I saw Eclipse (lame as hell with a moment or two of cool, but my +one was a fan so she thought it was the best movie ever – Team Edward, no doubt), Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (out on DVD right now actually, the Academy gets foreign films months after they are out, and even if you aren’t a suspense/mystery fan YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE. Rent it next time you’re at Blockbuster), and Air Bender in 3D, which despite the 3D adding nothing of value, was actually a pretty good time at the movies. Lots of actions and wild visuals. The setting would make a great game.

Anyhoo, so I popped OD&D on the group. Dan, a total dice-aphobe when it comes to stat rolling, was beside himself at the thought of 3D6 in order. The others took it in stride, and with a slight bit of generosity (I let them roll two sets in order, with the option of a third set rolled, or a best 3 of 4 elimination roll on one of the stats of the first two). Nobody came out a total Elmer Fudd, and a couple of them had some decent above average stuff.

So, I’m doing White Box plus Greyhawk, but even so there are few options. Andy was the only one who did a single class, a human cleric. Desperate Dan worked up a nice little fighter/thief dwarf. Both Paul and Terry did up elvish fighter/mu’s. With Greyhawk involved, I let them operate simultaneously in both classes.

Only took a half hour or so to get rolled up, named, and supplied, and off they went. Now, in my 1st edition games I usually put a ton of stuff into character set-up. I want to know as much as possible about the character before we begin. But for this it was “OK, off we go” without really worrying about where anybody comes from.

The setting is 200 years prior to my current 1st ed games, and that puts it about 70 years before my very first game in that world as a kid. So this is well within my world’s “Age of Dungeons.” I thought it appropriate, because I pretty much started on White Box with Greyhawk, so I set it closer to that retro time when all we did was dungeon crawl in my world. Sort of a full circle via going back in time.

Anyway, I don’t want to give away too many details of the actual gameplay because of the event I’m doing it at next month, but things went by much faster than it in my usual game. Everything just so nice and simplified. Few adjustments, just raw “up and at ‘em.”

After an hour or two I was like “Ok, I could just ditch 1st ed. All together, stop over thinking things, and go simple from now on,” but that wasn’t what I really was trying to do. In the long run, I think I would pine for nice, complicated AD&D. But this was a nice, hassle free change. Talk about phoning it in!

And I even went with a more traditional combat set-up, rather than my going in Dex order method. I basically did a spell-missile-move-melee thing that actually worked better than I thought. It is very possible I will go with that for my AD&D in the future. There ended up being several combats in the actual three or so hours of play, and they all went fast and furious. The party made out ok, getting a few hundred gold, a couple of magic items, and they all survived despite a couple of bites from poisonous foes. What surprised me most of all what the party taking stairs down to the next level as soon as they came across it. They fought a foe or two of higher level, and still came out only mildly scathed. At games end, they did what any old school party should do – they left the dungeon to camp for the night.

It was a lot of fun for me, and I think the gang liked the change of pace from my usual high adventure crap. Dungeon delving for its own sake. Nice. I think things will go well at the event next month, although it will be as many as twice the four players I had for it this time (Ben was out of town, hence the reason for the alternate game). But I have a good feeling about it.

I want to mention that I leaned heavily on the dungeon as mythic underworld stuff to get my player in the right mood, so a big tip o' the old school hat to Philotomy

And wow, the last several months I have gotten to do a lot of alternatives to the usual 1st edition campaign. A year ago I was only dreaming of a chance to do my old Champions game world a bit, and a bit of Mutant Future. I’ve been getting that. Now a bit of OD&D for grins and giggles. Damn, the sky is the limit. Maybe I’ll get to inject some Call of Cthulhu into the group before too long after all! Dream big.

Defining an age: “The Age of Dungeons”

When I first began my long running game world (that is, came up with a name for the land my first dungeon and nearby tavern were located in) that I still use for my ongoing AD&D campaigns, I was around 13 or 14. At that time I was still using White Box, plus had only recently acquired Greyhawk and Blackmoor. Dungeon crawling was still the focus of my games, just like everybody else.

Fast forward around 30 years or so, and I’m still running games in that world, “Acheron” (Yeah, Acheron is the type of name for a world that a kid would come up with alright). But the “time of dungeons” has long past. Some 120 years or so had passed in my game world since those first “tavern n’ a dungeon” games, and the types of adventures had changed.

As my main city, Tanmoor, become more detailed and more adventures took place there, it became the place where most things happened. The city was about to enter a time of Renaissance. Characters went up in level and became famous, hobnobbing with the royalty and other famous personages and NPC’s that were around. There were quests, errands, and sometimes even wars that characters took part in, almost all of it in one way or another connected to Tanmoor and the crown. I didn’t really mean to go the “high adventure” route that newer editions of D&D was shooting for. It’s just that characters being more heroic and epic in scope, beyond dungeon crawls, had become more appealing to me.

In many ways I was running these campaigns like superhero games, with characters swiftly going from 1st level noobs to major, world altering adventurers. As I’ve said before, I think that a combination of girls being in my games in the past, plus my comic book collecting background and love of superhero level antics, led away from the maiming and crippling death dungeons and into a world or more derring-do.

So, as it turns out I’m going to be running a bit of OD&D soon. Not just at the “Minicon” event next month, but it looks like I’ll be getting some practice with it tomorrow night. We need an alternate with Ben still out of town (and the 1st ed. game right now needs it’s resident MU), and Mutant Future is supposed to be for when Terry can’t make it on game night. At the last game Terry and Paul were interested in my tales of good ol’ White Box D&D, so I’m going to try out a session of nice simple “Elmer Fuddist” D&D on them.

Although I really only need a village and a nearby dungeon, I gave some thought to the world this would take place in, and decided to make it Acheron, my long running game world, but set about 200 years in the past of the current time period in games. That would put the new OD&D setting at about 70 years prior to my first Acheron sessions as a kid when I first got D&D. As it turns out, this is pretty perfect. As a kid all we did were dungeons. Nice, nonsensical “mythic underworlds” that PC’s trudged through Fudd-style. So I started to think of a time period when there were more weird dungeons in Acheron. A time when the lands were strewn with them. Money grubbing wannabe adventurers in the lands had their choice of deathtrap dungeons to delve into. That was D&Ding to us when we were kids, so what better time period than the period of my first games?

The current decades are known as a time of great heroes and epic adventures, and I have often described to my players a time period 500-600 years ago that was another epic time, when many of the current gods of my world were still mortal warriors and magic-users. So I decided that the time about 200 years ago was sandwiched in between these more heroic times, and itself was known as “The Age of Dungeons.” Rather than heroic figures, adventurers were more born of a time of greed and lust, when tales of great treasures and glorious magic seeped out of the mythic underworld places. The sons and daughters of farmers, blacksmiths, and even scholars set out with dreams of schlepping out cartloads of gold from the underplaces. Not all of them returned, but enough did to inspire others to delve.

Don’t get me wrong, every now and again in my games there have been and still are weirdo dungeons. They are just rare. Hell, when I started my current group and the current 1st ed Campaign almost two years ago, the whole plan was to get them up a level or two and get them to a dungeon. But, typically, things went to a more epic, politically relevant direction and they ended up in The Night Below setting. Still there. But there are a couple of other dungeons I have that are a permanent fixture In the city of Tanmoor, and will be encountered again no doubt. Both of these city dungeons are based on old Flying Buffalo Tunnels and Trolls solo adventures; Mirror World (a mirror with a dungeon in it), and Naked Doom – not so much a magical dungeon like Mirror World, but a sort of dungeon obstacle course (that you of course start out naked in). But like I said, visits to these places were rare.

Regardless of recent and distant past, I seem to be going through a “dungeon phase” like I haven’t since I was pretty much a kid. I’m gonna ride this pony while I can.

Next: The Economy of the Dungeon Age

Joke Games/Joke Characters

I guess this is another concept I have a love/hate relationship in my gaming history. Mostly hate.

James M. over at Grognardia posted the other day regarding an old TSR module called Castle Greyhawk. Having little to do with Sir Gary’s original Greyhawk setting, it turns out (I had never read it) to be a “lighthearted send-up” of Hollywood – great, just what I wanted in a D&D setting.

OK, so Gygax was not exactly “Mr. Serious” when it came to his gaming. Despite being inspired by a lot of good, serious fiction, GG put a certain amount of goofiness into some of this stuff. Making a level out of Alice in Wonderland was just one example of his silly nature when it came to games. But for the most part, his stuff seemed timid compared to some of the jokey Judges Guild products (a lot of which I loved).

But for me in my adult life, the laughter in a game tended to come mostly from the pathos and irony that often pans out during gameplay, and players witty and intelligent verbiage that gets the whole group belting out guffaws. Like last year when I had a new player use my generous stat rolling rules (best 3 of 4 dice, move them around, switch a couple of points, etc.), and he still had shit rolls. Had him try another set, still shitty, Let him move some stats around, still shitty. By the time he said that this was the norm for him when rolling up a PC, the other players and I were ready to pass out from laughing. And not at him - his attitude was so great about being a stat sad sack. Now that’s humor, without injecting Star Trek and cartoon monsters into the mix.

But my serious nature about my fantasy was not always so! Like most people who start D&D as a kid, the characters and games were almost instantly stupid. I mean, what would you expect from 14 year olds? But when I got up in my teens a bit, and had a fantasy world that was starting to grow and flesh out, I wanted my games to be more like the stories I loved – high adventure, romance, and grim determination.

But up until my 20’s there was still a bit of jokey jack joke joke stuff in my games, and I thought I might brainstorm on some examples from the past:

*Something that really stands out is the point around 1982 when a couple friends and I made up the Three Stooges as our characters (I got to run Moe!). We included various attacks, like the “two-finger eye poke” and the “block two-finger eye poke.” Hmmm…forbears of Feats and talents?

*A friend and I ran the kitchen of his father’s pub in Santa Monica. There was a crotchety old guy that hung out there, and a flaming young gay dude, “Gay Bob” we called him, The old guy would get so mad at Bob, and chase him out onto Main Street. Yeah, me and my buddy made up characters for that, except that the crotchety old guy was made into the pseudo dragon familiar of wizard Gay Bob. And Yeah, I painted wizard Bob with flowers on his robes. Sigh. At least they didn’t last more than a game or two.

*A buddy had a character in my game called “Cadille,” a huge black eunuch (get it? Cadillac?). He sounded like a cross between a 70’s pimp and Uncle Remus. Needless to say, not very sensitive. Around this time we seemed to be in competition to come up with the most lame jokey PC’s and NPC’s.

Characters were one thing, but I rarely made entire game sessions a joke (not on purpose, anyway). Not for D&D. “Funhouse Dungeons” sounded interesting too me, but never ran one, and never played in one. I did have a short Champions campaign that I had set in a funny animal world, but even that had real world physics (as opposed to “Toon Heroes” or whatever).

I guess one exception was the first Tegal Manor setting I ran, in which I remember having placed Radium rifle-packing Green Martians from John Carter in the main ballroom for some reason (I think I had some great old figures for them, so I must have wanted to use them). I made up for that by running some great, mostly serious games in the manor years later.

I think the place I had the hardest time keeping things serious was City State of the Invincible Overlord. I ran it apart from my regular D&D world, and had characters start out at high level. I ran it as-is, winging it on anything that was not in the little book that came with the maps. It almost always devolved into the characters causing some major shit (somebody even killed the dolphin that appeared in the bath house) because they were high level and didn’t give a fuck, and running like hell from the city when the real badasses showed up to deal with them.

I remember a memorable Monsters! Monsters! Game I ran. Originally a Tunnels and Trolls game, I used the concepts for D&D. The characters were a hill giant, an intelligent gorilla, ogres, and such. Attacking a small town was big fun. Great images of the giant reaching into 2nd floor bedrooms of sleeping people to squash them, and the gorilla raping women in the barn. Sheesh. It all ended with the monsters attacking a walled city in the second game. Being only 2nd level, the young monster gang were quickly finished off by guardsmen arrows. T&T was sort of made to be a joke game, but that MM based game was just nuts.

By the late 80’s, I kept things fairly serious as far as characters and situations. I could come up with a pun like the next guy, but I’m not wired to find that super-entertaining. How about just having an adventure where the laughs come naturally, from gameplay involving smart and fun people? It never really works to force humor in real life, so why attempt it in a game, where most players enjoy a fairly serious adventure and prefer the humor to be natural – even if they are running a bit of a jokey character (many people don’t realize they are doing so!).

Almost always the “humor” probably sounded better on paper than it did in action.

So how about you? Especially as a youngster, did you indulge in a lot of the jokey stuff? Tell me about the embarrassing character ideas you and your friends came up with, or your experiences with some “Looney Manor” style dungeon. Do you still encounter a lot of this (if you go to lots of conventions, my guess is you will say “YES!”). Do you like it, even prefer it? What factors made a joke game fun for you?

Beyond the Crystal Cave: Role-play and non-violence

Published by TSR’s UK division in 1983, UK1 seems to be inspired by “forest/garden levels” in dungeons. It is, of course, a dungeon-like adventure, in that you cannot fly nor float into the area due to an impenetrable force field. You can actually destroy the force field - If you are a 20th level wizard, that is. It is so funny when modules actually describe how you can affect something, even when there is no chance in hell of having what you need to affect it! This module is designed for levels 4-7, so it’s doubtful anyone involved would have the contacts to get a super-wizard to help out. Note that just like any other aggressive act in the module, destroying the force field has a consequence – the dispelling wizard will be sucked into a vortex, and spewed out in some random place and time. Why did they even bother to go into this? Sheesh.

Created on an island (in the World of Greyhawk) by a wizard and his elvish wife, the gardens still go on long after they had passed away. It is always summer in the garden, and it is full of various sylvan creatures, including leprechauns, pixies, centaurs, an Ent, dryads, and unicorns.

The local governor asks the party to enter the gardens and bring back a young couple. The official offers up 10,000 GP for their return, a hefty sum for any rescue mission. The party will eventually have to earn it, because all of the creatures in the gardens believe the young couple to be their old master and mistress reborn. Within that fact dwells the challenge of this adventure: there is no evil in the garden, but every living thing is your enemy. Many of them, as described in the module, will attack on site.

Like many TSR modules, many spells did not work as normal. In this case, many of the most common spells a druid might use did not work at all. This was a very strange thing, considering druids also were granted a level while they stayed in the garden, but things that did not make a lot of sense were often included in TSR products.

This adventure heavily stresses non-violent parlay, and role-play is more essential to this adventure than most others. In something like “Steading of the Hill Giant Chief,” you ultimately won’t have much choice but to barge and bash your way through it. But in UK1, every page is full of bad things that will happen to you if you are aggressive, steal anything, or harm anything in the garden. Even worse, the official who hired you has an amulet of ESP, so if you show up after a nasty act looking for the 10,000, he will deny you and have you thrown out of town. If the party really is evil, this would be a great time to show it. Kill the governor, take his amulet (easily worth over 50,000 in my game), steal a boat, and disappear for awhile.

There are two combat encounters in the caves leading into the garden. There are some Mudmen, a by product of the magic stream exiting the cave, and also an ochre jelly. But after these fights, don’t fight anything else or you not only forfeit the reward money, you’ll have the entire garden population after your head. The young couple is held up in a magical tower in the garden. This place pretty much would count as a mini-dungeon, but once again you have to walk on eggshells or face dire consequences.

The "boss monster" (forgive the video game lingo-lax) of the gardens is "The Green Man." The spirit of John Barleycorn is alive and well in the place. This meant nothing to me in the 80's when I got this module, but later on when I joined a group at the local Renaissance Faires based on Morris Dancing and folk music, I learned a lot about this old English country spirit. Morris dancing is about making the "ale crops," barley and hops, grow by doing worhipful dances and country dances in his honor. If I run the scenario again in the future, I will use him more than I did the first time.

There is a magical oracle force in the “Cave of Echoes” that lead into the garden that can be entertaining. As described in the module, it will pretty much grant any minor wish to a zero-level NPC who is in need. It has no respect for greedy players though – if they wish for something, it just gives mysterious gibberish. So great fun can be had with this, and you can really see who the greediest player character is judging by how they approach the oracle.

Most DM’s would find it a challenge to keep players entertained, seeing as most of the adventure is passive (or is designed to be). I actually altered things to make it easier: I had a powerful party of evil NPC’s enter the garden to loot it, and that way the players had somebody they could fight and not incur wrath.

As a player character, the most troubling aspect of the gardens is the time stream. For every hour spent within the garden, a month passes on the outside. When I ran the module for the first time, I think the party spent 8 or 9 hours in the garden, and that was after finding out about the time slowdown a couple of hours into it. They stepped it up a bit, but a party unaware (as the module hopes they will be) could easily spend a night or two in the garden, especially if they happen to befriend some creatures and hang out with them. So a typical scenario could have the party come out to find 2-4 years have passed. Yowtch. At this point, have the players put the character sheets away and start new ones. The world will catch up to the garden visitors eventually.