"Up from The OSR" - Grognardia

 

(Please note: much of what I will be writing about here comes from memories dating back at 10 years or more. Please feel free to correct me if anything is false or at least misunderstood)

In March of 2008, James Maliszewski, long time rpg enthusiast and sometimes writer in the genre, started his gaming blog Grognardia. His first ever post is here. 

This was around the time I had gotten back into regular running of games after a few years mostly off, and started a group in Santa Monica that went on for almost 10 years. One of the first things I discovered while poking around game stuff online was the Grognardia blog, where James was talking about old gaming stuff. Products, modules, mags, systems. I remember thinking "I am an aging gamer who has played since childhood. I can write stuff!" And I did. I started this blog, for good or ill, a few months after the Grognardia premier. 

If I recall JM is a Canadian who was living in Baltimore during the heyday of his blog. Wife and kids. A job maybe. He did some amount of writing for potentially some kind of money. I think in the late 90's he was freelancing for Wizard Magazine. I was an avid reader of Wizard back then. I had not regularly collected comics for years by then, but I followed a lot of what was going on in comics. And Wizard evolved to cover card games and even rpg's to a degree. Just a little tangent here; Wizard had tremendous art within, sometimes full-page posters, but the covers were the big draw. Impulse buy bait to be sure.

I was still going into Hi Di Ho comics in Santa Monica and reading comics for an hour every couple weeks though I wasn't really collecting anymore. I would justify my browsing by buying a copy of Wizard or Toyfare. Another great mag to look at. Mostly due to all the lovely images of the amazing action figure market of the day. I was also a bit of a speculator back then. When Ebay started up I made a small fortune over a couple years selling comics and figures until that bubble burst.

To continue this aside, Toyfare had features where they would pose figures with word balloons and panels and do little skits with them. I am certain Seth Green read these and years later came up with Robot Chicken.

Anyway, I don't know what other pro of semi-pro writing  James did, White Wolf I think, but his blog was bursting at the seams. Sometimes three posts in a day. And the old school goodness really took me back. 

In the early to mid 2010's, James was plugging away creating things to sell on his blog. One item eventually was a Traveller inspired spacegame he called "Thousand Suns." Not to be confused (I think) with a previous Traveller homage from years back called "Fading Suns." JM will tell you all about it in a recent substack post Even seems he is doing a new edition and even adventures for it? OK. The market is fairly flooded with lots of product, but god speed with that, sir. 

But the most well know attempt at product sales was his personal dungeon, Dwimmermount. 

early...ahem..inspiring art from
it. Hee made a whole post about.
I do not think there was any info
about fighters delving into dungeons
with Grandma in tow.  

JM had been posting about his home game Dwimmermount from early on. A very basic dungeon setting with some homebrew elements (dwarves don't procreate through sex, there are aliens or some such, etc). He ran for friends and family. My takeaway over many posts was there was not a lot of investment in the game play by the folks. He openly admitted that there were distractions (I think the TV was on sometimes) and derailing conversations.  This was not the first time I recall James admitted a probably annoying issue with folk in his live games, but putting a brave and understanding face on it. At something called OSRcon James ran a game, and Ken St. Andre of Tunnels and Trolls fame played and proceeded to destroy the session with antics that included cutting orcs face off and wearing it and going "ooga booga" at everybody. In his post about it James was clearly annoyed but took an "aw well" attitude about it. The right thing to do I guess. But I can tell you James does not like being annoyed. More on that later. 

Ken at some convention or another trying to 
impress the chicks. Or something. 

James posted around 2009 that he wanted a few players to join him in some play by posts on the OD&D Discussion Boards. I guess this was the beginning of his playtesting to market the dungeon. I was back then still a commentor in good standing on Grognardia, and I threw my hat in the ring. It was a low commitment thing so why not (also low commitment by JM, but into that in a moment). 

We rolled 3d6 in order. Got a 15 to put in INT Enough to be a low caliber MU for me, so I created Thurston "Thirsty" Brewer, a pub owners' son. He had like a 6 CON so I made him a skinny alcoholic and decided he looked like bedraggled actor Steve Buscemi. 

Amazingly, there are plenty of images of
Steve wearing robes if you google it.

I found an old post by me talking about it, among other things. 

Over a couple of weeks our characters entered the dungeon and explored a handful of rooms and passages. I really do not recall there being any combat. I mostly remember something about a magical pool and some baby giant spiders running along the ceiling towards some destination. More or less nothing of note. Anyway, James just stopped posting. After a couple of days we were like "Um, James? After over a week we just assumed he "went out for a pack of smokes and never came back."

It was weird. I mean, we committed to him and this little campaign. What was weirder, he was still posting on Grognardia daily. Sometimes twice a day. But he fucking left us hanging. Not a big deal, but disrespectful was certainly a fair way to feel about it. Just a quick post "sorry guys, I just got real busy and cannot finish up right now. I will keep in touch about this if we can get back to it." But nope. It remains a mystery to this day. I may have been miffed a bit about the lack of a single word to that little pbp crew. In the link a couple paragraphs up you can check a bit how I felt about my impressions of Dwimmermount from my experiences, and James own play reports over the previous couple years. This was around 2012 when the kickstarter was kicking ass to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. 

Below are a couple paragraphs I wrote on it then. Certainly, one can tell I had grown my own little attitude about my experiences in the OSR, which whether by my own sometimes behavior or the behavior of others, I was getting fairly negative sometimes. 

As anybody reading this probably knows, Grognardia James’ Dwimmermount dungeon, a recent surprise hit on Kickstarter (close to 50 grand in profit), has been getting some gameplay and a few early reviews (the entire dungeon has yet to be finished). A lot of reviews from fairly moderate sources have not been good. A lot of the dislike seems to be in the presentation of those classic old dungeon tropes that James has been so enamored of and blogging about for years. Empty, dusty rooms with no real function having to be explored and searched. Minimalist room occupant description such as the orcs n’ gold combo mentioned above. Dungeon dressing with no interaction or function. Not exactly inspiring.

See, none of that gives me those kiddy thrills anymore, and apparently others who actually paid for that dungeon agree. I read Grognardia for a couple of years faithfully, and the recounting of Dwimmermount game sessions was probably part of why I was no longer reading every day. No knock at James; I only started this blog, my first and only, when I heard him on some podcast I listened to through dumb luck, and checked out his blog and saw old modules I loved being talked about. But man, the later old school gameplay presented in session reports did not exactly draw me in like I guess it has some others. The Gygaxian mandates and strict adherence to them became a turn off. I actually had a chance to briefly explore the early Dwimmermount in the ill fated thread sessions James started on OD&D Discussion, but that didn’t get far. James dropped that like a hot potato around week two, with no explanation or apology. But hey, those forum play by post sessions tend to be kind of a clusterfuck anyway. Maybe that’s why James jumped out the bathroom window and never looked back.

So am I the only one who has tired (again) of this classic D&D dungeon play? Is the whole mythic maze-underworld something that has popped up as some sort of delayed nostalgia? On forums such as Dragonsfoot, the humanoids are still constantly bleeping and durping about this or that aspect of classic dungeons with childlike glee. Minimalist description dungeon locations the size of Disneyland still seems to be the wheelhouse of the so called “OSR.”

He ran another play by post around 2012 for backers of the thing. I have no idea how that went. It was on G+ I think, which I had zero experience with.

James was raking in around 50 grand so far before he noped out again. But in a much larger, far more important situation. Much like that play by post, he just was not communicating. With backers, his partners, nobody. James had the money, the delivery date passed, and artists who worked on it were not paid. For at least several months, nothing. Then I guess, as best as I remember, he made a statement. His father was sick or some such. I remember some blurb somewhere about how he had been estranged for years from his dad, but I can't of course be sure. It was his dad and that is enough. My own dad passed away a couple of years earlier, almost blissfully because he had real bad dementia for a couple of years and I had helped take care of him despite having a demanding high end professional job. When he passed away it hit hard, but I was back at work in 3 days. I just wanted to be busy. James just dropped all responsibilities. I don't want to judge, but a word about his trouble a few months earlier would have gone a long way to get folk to understand. Folk in the OSR were aging, and many of us had lost our dads, moms, or whoever. People put hard earned money on the barrelhead to support his art. And he did not seem to give a fuck. Perhaps the most baffling and complained about thing was, during his ghosting of his project over those months he was still making multiple posts a day on his blog as if nothing had happened.  

This was around the time I stopped posting on my blog. I was super busy with career, an active dating life (getting in the gym every day after years of recovering from an auto wreck and making great money and dropping tens of lbs can do wonders), still doing Ren Faire to a large degree, and running multiple campaigns was taking up so much of my time. Also there seemed to be a lot of toxicity in the OSR at the time. I remember one gamers statement on some forum saying, "the old schoolers keep bayonetting their own wounded."  And sometimes my own behavior was less than laudable. I was coming off years of Howard Stern fandom, and I naturally have a bit of a dry and sarcastic wit and I often peppered my humor with that level of boyishness (still kind of do but I think to a much lesser extent these days). I said a few things I regret back then. 

Even in the Grognardia comments sections. I had long disagreed with some of the things James posted on. He hated the 80's Ah-Nuld Conan. And man, I loved it. Saw it with friends like 5 times in theaters as a kid. I scoffed at his "Conan should have blue eyes and not be that big!" sort of statements.  Or that Dejah Thoris in the John Carter movie was not hot enough (I retrospect I agree with that one now). Disagree on some things enough and its "why don't you go your own way and leave us to our delusions?" So I did eventually. 

This is my last post of that time period. 

So I only watched from afar from time to time. James eventually handed over the reins to others to finish Dwimmermount. It eventually fulfilled. Reactions were mixed. Ten Foot Pole reviewed a draft copy, and it is more or less similar to other mixed reaction reviews. Including my own opinions. Here is an excerpt. 

Adventure Time! This is a Maliszewski dungeon. If you’re familiar with his other work them you’ll be mostly familiar with this. It doesn’t deviate much from his usual style. The best parts are when it does. He’s got a kind of bog-standard D&D vibe going on that I don’t really get in to. Knights, brave paladins, holy clerics, etc. Not quite the nonsense I equate with 2E, but more of a non-weird 1E style. IE: Boring. This feel is exacerbated by the O M G LAME room descriptions. He’s got this style where he describes meaningless detail. Something like “This room was once a vestibule” followed by several sentences of what it was once used for and what it once contained. That’s then followed by something like “but it’s now filled with just some wooden scraps and debris.” WTF dude? What’s the point of the description provided? It did nothing to help me run the room or inspire me, the DM, to greatness. There is A LOT of space wasted on this kind of thing. Here’s an example from the text: “6. Trophy Room This large room once contained trophies commemorating Thulian military victories. There were plaques, statues, and other similar ornaments all long since looted and removed to other parts of the fortress. There are indentations in the walls, shelves, and brackets that all give evidence to their former presence. Also in the room are the bodies of two dwarves, both quite fresh though cold to the touch. They wear chain mail and carry axes, but the rest of their belongings (if any) are no longer present.” That’s once of the most useless room descriptions I’ve ever seen. It’s long, boring, and does nothing to help the DM with the room. The vast majority of the rooms have this problem. It’s almost like …. idk, the fluff text that appears in those fluff supplements. I loved the “Eye, Tyrant” book, but its not a dungeon supplement. In a dungeon description I need to be able to find information quickly and I need the information convey general ideas about the room. Things to spark my own creativity. That trophy room description does none of that. It’s just text that has to be slogged through, for fear of missing something, in order to run a boring room. That room did not make my job as a DM easier. It did the opposite. Most of the rooms have this problem. I don’t usually comment on layout/etc, all I generally care about is content. I’m going to make an exception here because the style chosen makes the problem worse. I’m not sure if James or Autarch are doing the layout, but it stinks. It takes these long, boring, meaningless text blocks and turns them in to giant text blocks. I believe the style is called Full Justification. ANY soul in the rooms descriptions are completely killed off by this style. You can’t quickly pick out anything important. It’s just a mass of fully justified text. If you’re lucky there’s a second paragraph. HATE.

Ultimately James partners took over and finished up the Kickstarter product, and it seems JM's hands were washed of it. Searching for Dwimmermount on Grognardia it looks like the last time he made a post that referenced it was in 2011.

This is completely accidental on my part, but James restarted his blog in 2020 about the same time I did with mine (I had moved to the Pacific North, and was now involved in 5th edition and online DMing so it seemed a good time) . I was not aware at first but saw his video interview on Wandering DMs. Gaming pods are not my jam, but I listened to the whole thing. Most of what I remember was them amazed at his number of posts on a weekly or even daily basis. I also recall that as best I can remember, James smiled exactly once for about 20 seconds. They used that as an image of him in their ad for the episode.

James has been posting pretty much daily like the old days, and in seems that over these five years he has a lot of irons in the fire. He has been running Empire of the Petal Throne for over 10 years for the same group online. Looking just recently he has Patreon's and Substack's and all. He seems to be doing a new version of Thousand Suns. He also is doing his own version of Empire of the Petal Throne (some years ago it came out that the original creator was a nazi or something). Other projects likely looming. 

I do want to sadly say that when I saw James was doing his blog again I made comments for awhile, and we interacted cordially. He read and commented on some of my posts. Suddenly, my comments on Grognardia were not being posted. Though a lot of the posts I made back in the day that contained any kind of toxicity or anger were deleted by me just to get a fresher start. Not that I was planning to beef with anybody like in those days that seem so long ago, though my wit would stay dry (these days I would say my sense of humor would be more in line with the Red Letter Media guys than Howard Stern).

That's 2012 me on the far left.

I checked out the comments of my final posts in 2012, and I found a couple with me and some other chucklehead goofing on something or other about James and or Dwimmermount. I cannot recall if or how mean the comments were, but I do not think they were deeply hurtful. To most folk anyway. But I deleted them, and it was over 3 or 4 years ago or so and really don't remember the specifics.

Since getting into 5th edition to run on Roll20 almost 6 years ago, I have had little desire to be a part of discussions online. I am on Tenkar's Discord and have made a comment here and there. A couple of private messages with the good constable a couple of times. Other than that little else. But something about the return of Grognardia around the same time I decided to get back on it sort of drew me back in. On the Wandering DM's podcast JM appeared on, one of the guys mentioned something about blogging for yourself as sort of a journal or diary, and that was exactly my newer attitude about it. I just like writing (if you can call it that - I hardly ever use the word "indeed" in my posts) about my gaming experiences and thoughts. I do not try to get the word out about the blog or comment in a ton of places. Most of my posts barely get a couple hundred views (though some occasionally get way more. A recent post about James Raggi has way over 1500 and my one about my alcoholic monk got over 2000). But there was something nostalgia about doing it again, especially since leaving old editions behind. 

And it was double nostalgia commenting on Grognardia again after over a decade. But it is what it is. A case of sins of the past coming back to bite you. And I'm not trying to stick it to him. Lately I just feel like talking about some of the personages of the OSR, and maybe some scandals from back then.  I don't know that the Dwimmermount thing is as big as scandal as Satine Phoenix's Battle of the Bards thing (that seemed a literal take the money and run...to Bali). But it is an interesting part of the OSR history. 

I hope the Dwimmermount thing is something James can laugh about now. I am sure he meant no harm. There were probably a ton of reasons that lead to the eventual outcome. All of us from the OSR heyday have plenty about us to goof on.  On me for certain. And I hope his variety of endeavors pay off for him, and that he keeps posting about stuff my players these days have not even heard of (average age 25-35). Plenty of people are like me and are old enough and old school enough to know about it all. James just ended a 10-year campaign. I just ended a year and a half one and boy, am I a bit burnt out.  

So he is doing what he loves, gaming and writing about old game gew gaws. And if he can make a few bucks off it then good on him.

You should have no trouble finding the Grognardia blog if you have never been there.  His Patreon is here.  And he has a Substack here.

Cheers

Downfall of the classic dungeon?

As a kid back in the day, the classic dungeon environment as presented in OD&D (specifically the LBB’s  plus Greyhawk and Blackmoor in my case) was just enticing and drool inducing in it’s morbidity and weirdness to a young boy. All that stuff designated modernly by Philotomy as part and parcel of “The Mythic Underworld” was attractive to somebody who grew up with at least a sprinkling of Tolkien and RE Howard in their lives. Playing characters going down into those bafflingly magical and active deathtrap monster lairs just seemed to hit a fanboy nerve, and especially early on these eerie locations gave a genuine thrill of the possibilities of mystery. Non-TSR takes on dungeons, like those by Judges Guild, added to that simplistic yet inspiring concept. Just the thought of these things existing in the game world seemed so cool.

The mystery unwove fairly quickly as the teen years moved on, and the new real life mysteries of older social interaction, with girls or sports involvement or whatever, became what was exciting. Sure, D&D stayed in my life as I headed into adulthood, but the unreality of classic underworld gameplay gave way to a more romanticized notion of high fantasy. I had no idea newer editions of the game were doing this as well; I attribute it in my case to mid teens when we started having girls in our games, and our female players seemed to only have so much acclimation to weird and brutal underworlds. They weren’t as down with “fantasy underground Vietnam” gameplay as the guys.

NPC interactions and more epic gameplay seemed to be the evolution in all the genres I ran, and I sure went along with that. Characters in my games became more involved with the NPC’s of the big cities, such as royalty and the military and their intrigues, and when they went into a dungeon it was usually the catacombs beneath the city. My love of locations (city or ruin) set in the midst of howling wildernesses, Judges Guild style, was fading. My love of comic books and movies sort of took over, and the interactions of characters and other thinking beings became more dynamic. Slaying slimes and oozes in the lonely and dark corners of the world would become more infrequent.

When I started the current group (almost exactly 4 years ago), my intention was to eventually get them to a classic dungeon I was working on (I had yet to hear the term “megadungeon”), but eventually I aimed the campaign at The Night Below module, which is not exactly classic. Yeah, I forced things in an epic direction.  But with the group, and a couple of times outside it, I did some classic dungeon runs with the LBB’s for some players, and they went really well. Though my regular group seemed to find it quaint and fun, I think they really wanted meatier game play, such as my 1^st edition games, provided.

At this point, though it seems to still have rabid admirers, I have more or less fallen out of love with that weird, gonzo classic dungeon concept. I perk up when I read about somebody liking the modern OSR influenced dungeons such as Anomolous Subsurface Environment or Barrowmaze, but when I actually see snippets of these megadungeons (not necessarily those two mentioned, but in general) I am usually less than impressed. Minimalistic descriptions (6 orcs; 200 GP) for rooms, and dungeon dressing that does not inspire seem to be the order of the day. But hey, that is what a classic dungeon is all about, right?

As anybody reading this probably knows, Grognardia James’ Dwimmermount dungeon, a recent surprise hit on Kickstarter (close to 50 grand in profit), has been getting some gameplay and a few early reviews (the entire dungeon has yet to be finished). A lot of reviews from fairly moderate sources have not been good. A lot of the dislike seems to be in the presentation of those classic old dungeon tropes that James has been so enamored of and blogging about for years. Empty, dusty rooms with no real function having to be explored and searched. Minimalist room occupant description such as the orcs n’ gold combo mentioned above. Dungeon dressing with no interaction or function. Not exactly inspiring.

See, none of that gives me those kiddy thrills anymore, and apparently others who actually paid for that dungeon agree. I read Grognardia for a couple of years faithfully, and the recounting of Dwimmermount game sessions was probably part of why I was no longer reading every day. No knock at James; I only started this blog, my first and only, when I heard him on some podcast I listened to through dumb luck, and checked out his blog and saw old modules I loved being talked about. But man, the later old school gameplay presented in session reports did not exactly draw me in like I guess it has some others. The Gygaxian mandates and strict adherence to them became a turn off. I actually had a chance to briefly explore the early Dwimmermount in the ill fated thread sessions James started on OD&D Discussion, but that didn’t get far. James dropped that like a hot potato around week two, with no explanation or apology. But hey, those forum play by post sessions tend to be kind of a clusterfuck anyway. Maybe that’s why James jumped out the bathroom window and never looked back.

So am I the only one who has tired (again) of this classic D&D dungeon play? Is the whole mythic maze-underworld something that has popped up as some sort of delayed nostalgia? On forums such as Dragonsfoot, the humanoids are still constantly bleeping and durping about this or that aspect of classic dungeons with childlike glee. Minimalist description dungeon locations the size of Disneyland still seems to be the wheelhouse of the so called “OSR.”

But I got bored of it twice in my life. I doubt there is going to be a third. When I get back on 1^st Ed AD&D (been focusing on other genres for years now), probably next year, it’ll be back to epic adventure and high fantasy, not counting up copper pieces found in rat nests and searching every square foot of the walls in empty rooms.

Do I even want to be considered “Old School” anymore?

That is what I have been thinking this week after seeing reactions to the Dwimmermount project over at Grognardia the last few months (and a wide variety of other old school blogs and web pages), and especially this week.

I did not seek out much in the way of online info about gaming until recent years. In the 90’s during a heavy gaming period, I checked-out some forums briefly on AOL, but by around 1999 or so I had gone into a retirement period from gaming that would last several years. I was getting so involved in the world music community in California, and was spending much more time with people to whom gaming was not even on the radar of, I pretty much quit (I always had a busy life outside games, but at that point I knew nobody who gamed or wanted to. And when I would be dating a girl around then I certainly never brought up gaming to them). It was getting hard to get people together on a weekend (then the preferred time to play) for several hours on a Saturday or Sunday, and it did not seem worth it anymore. I for sure was not going to start gaming as an adult at game shops and cons. I was done. I thought for good.

Then three years ago I got contacted by current group host Andy off of Meetup.com where I had sort of off-handedly started a profile, and *bam!* we had a group together and have been gaming regularly since. On a weeknight actually, because regular weekend gaming again was still a pipe dream and would probably always be so with rare exceptions. So this OSR thing was at full steam as I discovered. I saw an advert for some D&D podcast that appealed to me so I listened and James from Grognardia was the guest (they described him as a blogger who did not always have the most fascinating posts, but by sheer virtue of the amount of posts he had a big following). After that I checked out James blog, and was ultimately inspired to start my own, as I had my own old school stories to tell.

After three years of checking out the OSR, I’m getting pretty tired of old school-style artwork when it had previously been nice and nostalgic (, I will always revere Trampier and others from the past for pure nostalgia value) currently being produced. Same-old same-old adventurers cautiously approaching a dungeon doorway. So little of it inspires me now. Case in point, James and his proudly displayed art samples for Dwimmermount.

The artist is excellent, but I’m sorry, the standard knight dude and the old broad who runs the leather mug booth at the Ren Faire somehow schlepping into a mountain top dungeon in the wilderness not only is uninspiring to me, but seems to me not to be very far from the realm of a parody drawing of old school D&D. I’m fine with people liking it, but Jesus Christ, words like “Outstanding” and “amazing” on the comment thread is giving me a serious douche-chill. Most of James readers are at the point where they are pre-sold on anything he does, it seems.

Now, James as usual is a little touchy when it comes to his work and fan club. Differing opinions on his work is often met with a “you can go read other blogs” type of stuff. Fair enough. But although I have rarely kissed his ass (I think James feels mostly burned by me in the past for my hearty defending of the 80's Conan film that he bashes constantly and obssesively), I feel I have chimed in with plenty of thumbs-up on ideas and reviews over the years, and try to offer my own experiences of the old school that is perhaps a bit more visceral and from the viewpoint of an outgoing personality (i.e. I was on the football team in high school as opposed to the chess club).

So far on that thread the only other dissenting opinion is of young gamer grrrl Rachel of Rach’s Reflections (the only girl on the thread agrees with me. A win is a win), who is for sure a smart cookie. She had some very contemplative comments on how changes to the old, silly styles can be cool and keep what was good while having a bit more umph!:



“... It may just be my late entry into the hobby, but the whole "ren-faire" look that seems to be in vogue to the old-school community just looks... silly to me, particularly in conjunction with the idea that old-school play is a little grittier and more mercenary. A certain amount of stylization to make adventurers look cool is a good thing. I'm not saying full dungeonpunk, but...

“…Well... look at Johnny Weismuller in a pair of brown trunks, Errol Flynn in a green unitard and felt jerkin, or Burt Ward in elf booties and green underwear.
Now look at Tarzan as drawn by Disney, Jonas Armstrong with a cowl and leather armor, or Robin as drawn throughout the 90s and oughts.
Which one looks more like a reject from a panto, and which one looks like someone that knows how to throw down? Keep in mind I'm not asking what's more accurate to the text (Tarzan) or the period (Robin Hood), I'm just saying that they look more like they might be taken seriously, without being excessive at that…”

I like this lass. Smart is so sexy. Anyway, there is bad updating (dungeonpunk with bald heads, tattoos, and giant hoop earrings; black leather in X-Men film costumes, Spider-Man in a costume that would cost 100 times his freelance salary, etc), then there is good updating like the stuff Rachel mentioned. Truly, Disney Tarzan (I think the best Tarzan so far, and the closest to the books outside of DC comics 1970’s series) and 90's Robin looked like they could realistically kick ass, but were still Tarzan and still Robin.

But going too far into the past to search out fuzzy feelings really only goes so far to me (anymore). I think you can tap into that past without same-old same-old. Not that I'm the guy to do it (real job, interests besides gaming, mid-life crisis, etc etc etc), but I will tell you this; I was not immediately taken with James R’s LOTFP, or Goeff’s Carcosa, but the more I see of what old school Grog’s who are trying to maintain the old school look and feel are doing, the more I am attracted to those truly unique works that actually think outside the box while still being basically, at heart, old school fantasy gaming. Shit, they certainly are not boring.

Bottom line, and please excuse my French, but how the fuck many more basic, old school dungeons and drawings of knights at the dungeon doorway do we still need to see at this point? Is there a bottomless need and desire for this stuff out there?

When it comes to me and “old school,” I think I am at a crossroads, folks. While I think I will still run me some ol’ school D&D here and there, I think I’m done looking at new scenarios, settings, art, and writing for it unless it has something new to say and something that inspires me more than just looking like art from back in the day (or looking like a parody of it).

What say you?

How to make your session report more interesting

Simple. Talk about how you really feel. Game session descriptions, even those about Dwimmermount, are far more interesting when the blogger includes their mental and emotional states than just the mechanics of what happened in a game. Sure, James M. or Zak at D&D with Porn Stars are going to get people reading their session logs whether they are truly spectacular or not (not a knock, but few of them are ever more extraordinary than anyone else’s), but if you know they are tired or have a splitting headache it gives the proceedings some flesh and blood substance, and therefore I relate to them more.

Your group power gamer is in true “gimmie gimmie gimmie” form tonight. Another player is telling jokes you think are kind of inappropriate. Somebody ate the last piece of pizza you should have gotten. You’re tired because you are hung over or your kid cried all night. You’re hosts wife/girlfriend has decided to clean the kitchen oven with powerful chemicals 10 feet away from you. You are badly constipated and are afraid it’s going hit Normandy during the frantic last moments of a big combat game. This is the type of stuff that makes it all the more real. OK, maybe I’m too brainwashed by the serio-comic semi-real life antics on reality television shows, but to me the emotion and passion (or lack thereof) are just as important as the rules and situation on the game table. And how you feel, good or bad, has an influence on all that.

OK, you don’t have to go overboard with your passions like I have in the past, but blogging about your life should include a large part of how you feel. You’re not a robot, Mr. DM. Tell us how you really feel. Every time.

Crappy Stats

When it comes to random rolls for stats, it doesn’t matter how generous you are as a DM, somebody may always end up with an 8 or lower in something. Two such stats and you got a real stinker on your hands.

Grognardia James is doing a play-by-post Dwimmermount campaign through the OD&D discussion boards, and of course he is using the oldest, most basic of D&D. That means, among other things, rolling 3d6 for each stat. No substitutions or eliminations. For any of us who were kids getting into D&D in the 70’s, we know that pain. You really had to make your rolls before envisioning what kind of class you would want. Who wants a fighter with a 7 Str or a wizard with a 9 Int? A lot of stumblebums and numbnuts are being created there. My own guy came up with an 8 Wis and 6 Con! Yeesh. Don’t wanna complain too hard, because one dude got a couple of 5’s. Ow. I was one of the lucky ones to get a decent number in one stat; a 15 in my Intelligence. So of course I came up with an MU (see below to get a gander at my stats, and the history I came up with to explain his shortcomings).

I’m not much of an old school “adventurers are just average/below average tomb robbers” kind of guy. Growing up on comics and heroic literature, I preferred haughty champions for myself and my players from an early age. I think we threw out the 3D6-can’t choose the stat type roll-up pretty quick. I went for the best 3 of 4, put on the stat you want methods. I usually allowed an elimination roll of anything under 9. For a long time I allowed a stat or two to be moved around to be able to allow a ranger or paladin or whatever for somebody, and that was cool. I mean, my games are important enough to me that I wanted my players to have the type of character they were envisioning before the rolls were made. This didn’t create supermen, and 18’s were still pretty rare. It just allowed a half-way heroic group of characters, the type who went adventuring, and had a chance to survive it.

Oh, and the other couple of generous things I do is allow max hit points at first level, and also to not let characters die (for the most part) in their first game. I don’t really know how much of an affect this has had on the mortality rate, but it’s probably telling that characters rarely die in my games unless they do something very stupid or very suicidal. I think more characters have died because of other characters and not because of my challenges.

Back to James’ game, it’s pretty funny that all these stat-deficient characters are getting into a life of adventure. Maybe it really is a mental thing in that world. All these buff, healthy farmer lads tilling the fields and enjoying a peaceful life, and these weak, sub-par types marching by on their way to Dwimmermount, a place more than likely to kill you pretty quick. I mean, what did you expect? You’ve only got two hit points! It’s like the Special Olympics – to the death!

FYI – this is the first player character I have created to play in almost 20 years. I mostly GM.

Thurston “Thirsty” BrewerHuman

MU1 H.P.2 AC10STR 11INT 15WIS 8CON 6DEX 12 CHA 12Languages: Common, Elvish, Dwarf, GnomeSpells: Read Magic, Shield, Sleep (probably)

Thurston, or “Thirsty” to his friends is a 25 year old human and looks like Steve Buscemi. Thirsty grew up in Adamas, where his father and mother own a middle-class tavern called “The Drunken Dragon.” Thirsty grew up there and knows his way around tavern work (including stable). He also knows his way around booze. Like most of the men in his family he is a “working drunk,” but in Thurston’s case he had way too much access to hedonistic materials at too young an age. Although he will imbibe almost anything through mouth, lung, or ear, alcohol is his fave as it is the easiest to get, and quickly satisfies his raging oral fixation.

With a liver and his wits quickly getting shot at a young age, Thurston will be lucky to make it into his mid-30’s unless he changes his happily hedonistic lifestyle. As he is not the first in line to inherit the tavern (has older brother who actually works hard), Thurston decided he wanted to learn the magic arts and enrolled in Wizard School a couple of years ago. Needless to say, he was the party animal on campus. One night recently, sauced with friends at the tavern, Thirsty heard some adventurers talking about an exploration of the famous Dwimmermount area he had heard about for years, and inquired about lending his spells to the expedition.

Thirsty stands out due to the 4 wineskins he tends to have hanging off him under his light cloak. But he doesn’t get smashed “on the job.” In dungeon he just sips whiskey during the day to keep the shakes away. The wine is for sharing to celebrate milestones (clearing that room of giant spiders, finding a new level to explore, etc.). It is all good booze so he double-costed it. Back safely in town or village, all bets are off as far as being professional, and Thurston’s party cry can be heard echoing out of the inn or tavern “It’s slobberin’ time!”

Time Passages

Over at Grognardia this week, James M. blogged about keeping track of time in his classic D&D games for Dwimmermount. As James is trying to evoke the earliest form of play, he goes with all the big tropes, from 10 foot poles to hirelings and henchmen. The very much wargame inspired methods of time tracking in OD&D include specific periods of time that it takes to explore a hex in the wilderness, or explore a dungeon level.

I scratch my head when I think about why anyone would need anything but their own perceptions. OK, maybe I am in tune with my long-time gameworld more than many others, but I think anyone can figure out that “OK, it has been a couple of hours so it’s midnight now”. You know, if a thief picks a lock then it probably took just a minute. If he fails and needs a second roll, then have an hour go by. I think that everyone should be able to judge the time passages no sweat, and the only major consideration is how long the players want to set up camp for the night.

Dungeon exploring may be more difficult than land travel. I mean, everyone pretty much knows a man can walk 20-30 miles in a day, and a horse at a steady pace might take you 50-60. But those original editions, again, go the wargame inspired route of things taking specific periods of time. The book might tell you that it takes a half hour to search a 10’ section of wall for a secret door, or that searching a large chamber takes so many hours. But why the need for such precision? I know we ultimately have to know a day goes by so Joe Fighter can get a hit point back (give me a break, most PC’s have fairly cheap access to clerics and potions, so what fighter lays around for two weeks trying to heal those 14 points?). Yawn. Let’s face it, precision is not always fun (why I was not a big wargame fan).

Take it from me, 120 years of player continuity has gone by in my game world. Tracking time is no big deal. Have a calendar, have a few holidays, and you are set. Do it all in your head. Make a slightly imprecise decision. You’ll have more time for the stuff that is really fun!

Let me admit now that I do take time seriously in the game. Having a little bit of perception of it goes a long way in bringing color to your world. You don’t need a chart or a table, you can figure out the basics of “little time,” the day to day activities of the players in your head. If a player complains because it suddenly matters, then retcon things slightly to make up for it. No biggie.

Much to the chagrin of some of my players over the years, I love to have time go by. It seems more real, and it adds a lot of gravitas to your world. In between campaigns, I like characters to be doing something else for a few months here and there. Settle down a bit, open a business. No end game there though, when the call of adventure goes down, they get sucked back in.

I’m notorious for having years go by in my games when a group ends. Whether some of the same people or almost all new, I’ve had maybe 6 or 7 major gaming groups since around 1990. If it has been a year or so since I ran a campaign, I like to have anywhere from 1-3 years go by in the game world. Gives me a sense of cosmic motion. In this new campaign of mine, started several years since my last active gaming period, I went ahead and had five solid years go by. Yep, my game world is getting old (hence, 120 years of character continuity). It just feels like the world has more weight if I do it this way. Hopefully this new group will last a year or two though. I’m not in a hurry to have another fiver go by.

“15 minute adventuring day”

Grognardia James blogged this week about the “15 minute adventuring day.” In a nutshell, it’s a term that refers to a party of dungeon delvers who leave the confines of the labyrinth very regularly (every day it seems in Dwimmermount) to purchase supplies, heal, and regain used spells.

James is running an old school style game, with a megadungeon as the focus, and a town and city somewhat close by for said supply runs. Dungeon, supply shop, temple, and tavern. There you have it. You don’t need much more than that for the characters world in this type of O.G. game. Not a knock at Grognardia, of course (my occasional attempts at humorous pokes at James usually fall flat). James is an important blogger of the old school, and he should be involved in running something similar to the ideas he writes about.

Personally, I abandoned frequent dungeon crawls in my decades-old game world sometime in the 80’s. Growing up on comics probably had a lot to do with my coming up with lots of outdoor and city situations. A fight in a crowded city street, or back alley of temple row, or even a rooftop just seems so much more fun and cool than a claw-sword-shield slugfest in a corridor underground.

I started my current campaign planning for the party to travel with a merchant caravan for awhile, until they reached a certain dungeon. I do want that old school dungeon experience again. But the players have found so much to do on the trip, and I had so many ideas for outdoor encounters and events, it has been around 16 games and they are still a couple of sesson away from the dungeon. I originally planned to have them at the dungeon doors in 3 or 4 games.

Micromanaging supplies has not really come up. The party is travelling with a merchant caravan through mostly populated areas. I just tell the players to throw some coin at meals and drinks here and there. The closest we have come to equipment management was a player asking me at the last game if he should be keeping track of arrows or not. I just told him he had about half a dozen left, and to buy a new quiver at the next town. There’s yer supply management right there. It’s also good to remind players that it is no fun getting money if you don’t track it and spend it. Small potatoes should be in the players hand. I’ll do some of the financial analysis when they want to buy a ship or a house or something.

Now the issue of regaining spells has come up in the last few games. A player important to the main quest has been missing for three games, so I just did a bunch of little outdoor/abandoned mine combat and exploration encounters to eat up those games until she came back. By the end of the second game, the spellcaster had used up all her good spells. The player complained a lot about needing to rest and regain, but the party was in a mine under an unstable hill (with an earth elemental going berserk in a cavern there) and had to keep moving. It was nice to have a game where the spellcaster (also a fighter) could do something besides cast the same three spells as she does every fight.

Getting low on spells and resources should not be a bad thing. Parties running off every few hours of game time and travelling two or three days to get a bed to heal and pray in is just tedious and monotonous to me. I don’t want that for my precious game time.

If it is a “mega-dungeon,” why not have some resources in there? Empty rooms to rest in, a nearby water source (the most important of resources, but probably the least kept track of or worried about), and maybe a non-hostile mini-temple with a cleric for healing (for a modest fee, of course). Anything but this constant cycle of dungeon – town – dungeon – repeat. To me that just seems to either have a weird flow, or no flow at all.

In a campaign I ran years ago, I had the party shipwrecked on the Isle of Dread. Talk about supply management challenges! Sure, there were natives to trade with, but the guys with non-magical armor and weapons had to face the fact that arms maintenance was a no-go. A couple of fights with some unfriendly cat-people and the odd T. Rex, and the paladin had his plate mail hanging in parts. Chainmail and leather quickly got tore up, and in a matter of weeks characters were starting to look like they had “gone native.” I loved that so much I want to do it again.

I don’t want to say how somebody should run their game, but I just don’t think any game should rely too much on players constantly having to retreat to a safe zone. Some great games have players at the end of their resources, and at their wits end. That is one way dramatic, memorable adventures can be mademade.

What Color is your Orc?

Who would have thought the humble orc would have gone through so many changes since first used in D&D?

Created by Tolkien for his Middle Earth cannon fodder, their use in Dungeons and Dragons made them a household name. First mentioned in the “White Box,” they were described as savage tribal creatures that live in caves or villages.

In pre-AD&D days, my orcs pretty much looked like the figures I found. Those early figs, Ral Partha I think, pretty much were the pig-faced orcs as depicted in Hildebrandt Bros. LOTR calendars, where more often than not they also seemed to wear roman centurion armor. Tolkien did not describe them as pigs, but having mentioned broad noses may have lead to the pig thing. I never really liked the pig look. James at Grognardia seems to have gone “full hog” with this “orc as pig” philosophy, making the orcs in his Dwimmermount campaign actually be boars given humanoid form. Hmm. That’s all good, but for some reason to me it seems less orc, and more like something from the old 80’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. When I picture a “boar man” it’s hard not to see it in a badly animated cartoon image in my mind. Not to say James is wrong , but that image is my least favorite as far as “What color is your orc.” Never mind that people are going to start confusing orcs with wereboars during the full moon.

Some pretty shitty orc miniatures came out in conjunction with the Ralph Bakshi animated LOTR 70’s film. In that movie the orcs were just dudes with fake tusks and caveman fur singlets, made to look pitch black and poorly rotoscoped. Bakshi even just shaded old footage of Zulu warriors from old movies for some of the orc scenes. There was some creep factor to that look, but it really made for some craptacular miniatures based on the film.

During the 80’s, orc figures evolved into a more ape-like look, and by around 1990 Warhammer 40000 continued with the green caveman meets ape look. Orcs now were becoming more thuggish than pure snarling evil as Tolkien portrayed them.

In the last several years, we have seen two newly portrayed types of orcs. There are the Peter Jackson movie orcs, which I really like. In the film, they come in all kinds, which is how Tolkien described them. Although I have not seen orc miniatures based on those films (I was semi-retired from gaming for most of the new millennium), I’m sure the look would/did translate well to miniature form. Especially those badass Uruk Hai.

Now, with the World of Warcraft generation, orcs have become something much more than the original basic primitive savage good and evil concepts. Later editions of D&D let you play pure orcs as characters, and WOW followed suite, even going so far as to make them cunning, brave, muscular heroic warriors. Wow indeed.

So my preference is for the snarling, hateful orcs of Tolkien. Orc women and children? Characters will never delve deep enough to find them. They will only continue to contend with gangs and troops of the foul beasts in caverns and dungeons of the sub-surface world. And they will continue to put them to sword and axe with a clear conscience. In my game world, orcs were born to die. And I guess in my world, they look like whatever figures I happen to have on hand (including my one remaining “pig-face” orc from the old days).

No Grognard I?

My last most active gaming period was in the late 90’s. Though I was online then, I didn’t really look too deeply at the gaming community on the internet. Actually, I never spent a whole time in the gaming community period, even though I had game groups on and off for decades. I was so out of the loop around 1998 that I didn’t know what edition D&D was on, or what the D20 system was, or any of that shit. When I went into a store in the late 90’s all I bought was figures and paints (and there’s another out-of-the-looper – I never referred to them as “miniatures” until recently). As far as games and books, all I saw was GURPS and Vampire stuff all over the place. I was always very fortunate to be in my own little gaming world, with player who were pretty much willing to play whatever I ran.

As a kid I hung out for a few years at a local hobby shop in Santa Monica. But as I got into my older teens, I just started thinking in terms of life being too short to be around the generally negative (at least for younger people) vibe at Aero Hobbies. Most of the guys who hung out in that moldy dump were between 5-50 years older than the teenage dudes, and most of them were pretty much self-righteous pricks who should not have been spending a lot of time around kids.

So in high school my gaming life outside that shop really took off. I found that I could generally put together a group made out of friends and friends of friends. And because of my negative experiences at that game shop as a kid, and because conventions seem to ramp up the geek factor a thousand fold, I never went to many cons or game day events. I just wanted to GM for people I knew and liked – and I didn’t tend to like about half the people I met in the gaming community. I was into long campaigns and deep character development with people I was comfy with and was willing to have in my life for years at a stretch.

When 2nd edition AD&D came out, I was not impressed. Having skills and such didn’t really phase me – in my games we had always assumed skills and proficiencies for characters. But the very vibe seemed different. It just felt like a different game. When one of my players, Terry, decided she wanted to do some DMing, I was supportive. But when she whipped out the 2nd edition, I was outraged. What the hell?

But the fact is: I was changing. Terry’s 2nd edition games were one of the only experiences I had as a non-DM player in D&D as an adult. But still, my games were moving away a bit from the cheese, and dungeons for dungeons sake. As role-play and characterization became more important in my games, a certain realism was setting in. Sure, I still liked to whip out wacky Judges Guild adventure settings, or use Arduin’s wild tables for this and that, but for the most part, my scenarios more and more were involving more mature adventure in the open air. Dealings with powerful NPC’s in the cities, travel to foreign lands – the longer my game world was in existence, the more our sessions were about the characters lives and friends outside the labyrinth, I loved to have a magical underground garden pop up now and again (the Garden of Merlin from the Dungeoneer is a much-used fave), or send the PC’s on a long adventure in the Underworld, but the classic cheese of trapped corridors filled with slime and magical statues, and hex clearing in the forest to build a keep, was in steep decline in my world. It just sort of happened.

Little did I realize that AD&D in general had made many of the same moves I had. Howling wildernesses with dungeons and other areas that made little sense were no longer held in high regard. Focus on character and high adventure seemed to be more the norm. D&D had grown up too.

When I started reading blogs about gaming late last year, I was surprised to see this big debate over “old and new” gaming. There will always be debates, but I was tickled pink to see guys like James M. at Grognardia championing the old tropes I once loved: Cubes of jelly floating around corridors like some kind of fantasy Zamboni, rust monsters, piercers, hirelings, ten-foot poles, etc. etc. etc.

I love these old tropes and in thinking about them they give me a minor thrill in only the way as an adult seeing a vintage porn you loved as a teenager could give you. Just like the porn, the old D&D cheese is fun to revisit briefly, but really just not as good as you remember it being.

James at Grognardia, sort of a self-appointed museum curator of old D&D cheesy goodness, is describing his currently ongoing campaign Dwimmermount in his blog. James practices what he preaches – his setting is fairly light on the “outside the dungeon” stuff, but satisfyingly heavy on the cliches: traps, tricks, tribes of violent humanoids crammed into caves, hirelings (something I never really liked in D&D – to me they were just Star Trek “red shirts” and I always thought a good DM could run a survivable game without them), and the proverbial ten-foot poles that you need, because one of the other tropes in the dungeons are likely to take a hand off you (think of it as using a trope against a trope – we are beyond the cheesy looking glass here, people…). James is so into his clichés, that great role-playing opportunities are missed that I would snatch up – like one of the hirelings going back to town to get married.

Shit, if you are going to go to the trouble to flesh out the “red shirt” enough so that you know he’s getting married, how about a quick encounter at the wedding, with bandits or something attacking the proceedings. *Boing* your lands outside the dungeon have sprung to life! I have thought “outside the dungeon” for so long, I immediately grab onto something like that. But that is not Grognard thinking I guess. James not wanting to do something like that, taking the PC’s out of the dungeon for something that could be character developing, is TRUE Grognard.

For the last few months that I have been back into gaming, and blogging a bit about it, I have thought of the newer, 4th edition crowd as being the aggressors in the old/new debate. But in the last few weeks I have seen some old school folk get pretty upset over nothing. Look, old is good, new is good – as long as people are willing to sit down and pretend with books and dice, then shit, we are all in this together. I don’t think the new guys are right in poo-pooing old school thought; nor do I think the old school is right in thinking that because a lot of old tropes have been abandoned the game is no longer D&D. A rose is a rose by any other name. Sure, it isn’t my D&D. Mine exists in all these old copies of the DM guide, PH, and UE I still own. I ain’t buying new ones, goddamn it. I’m Scottish, so I’m a cheapo ( That explains a lot of shit in my life, not just to my hanging on to 1st ed. for dear life).

So what about Me? I have been at it on and off for about 30 years, but I guess I am not really Grognard. Truth be told, my games these days probably unfold like most2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition games do. James’ sort of unfold the way mine did when I was 15. I wonder; if James had a D&D world that he created as a kid and still used, with decades and decades of character continuity, would he still be holding on to all the old tropes? Might his game play have evolved? I know he still might prefer those old OD&D pamphlets, but after a hundred dungeons and a thousand gelatinous cubes, would it still be the same? I think a lot of the guys who prefer to play pure old school have just had giant gaps in their gaming pastimes, probably decades. If you haven’t watched football in 25 years, you would be surprised at how much the game has changed – and you would probably prefer the old, smash-mouth gameplay. I suspect this is true with James and others outlook on D&D, although I am just assuming in James M.’s case and would love to know more of his gaming history.

A weird ass dungeon that makes little sense (Gygax naturlism or not) still sounds cool, but in game terms I would rather not play in it. Look, I still mostly use my old 1st edition books for two reasons: one, I own at least two of each book. And secondly, my players never really cared. If my players in 1992 had said “Look, either we play the new edition or we don’t play” then hell, I’d be a second edition guy. I would buy the 4th ed. Stuff if I had too – but man, for me it would be like going in reverse evolutionarily speaking. I mean, I would probably start with high adventure, and in several years have players back in senseless dungeons trying to figure out the right spell to kill an Ochre Jelly.

So Grognard I? I guess not. At least not at a Grognardia level.