How Tolkien is my D&D world?

I thought I would throw my hat into the ring (hold the applause) regarding the “Tolkien’s influence in D&D debate”, inspired by very recent posts at The Cimmerian and Grognardia.

Both posters are greater wordsmiths than I, and much more knowledgeable about the classic works that Gygax and his peers cited as influences for their game. I can merely speak upon my own humble experiences on this matter. I don’t know art, but I know what I like.

I mostly agree with James at Grognardia that many of Tolkien’s influence on the game as originally published at least seem superficial. The inclusion of Orcs and Hobbits and such surely were not what the game was meant to be about. The “feel” of original D&D for sure felt more like Lieber and Vance. You could picture The Gray Mouser or Conan creeping through a classic dungeon much more than you could picture Frodo in there. So in terms of gameplay, it didn’t feel much like Tolkien.

I think the Tolkien influence had more to do with a certain ground work, a laying of stone foundations sort of thing. I think it is safe to say that most fans of fantasy in the 60’s and 70’s started out with the Hobbit before moving on to LOTR and finally to darker, more adult oriented tales by less “romantic” authors. Just like in my case, there was a certain “growing up” happening.

As a kid on his way to a life of loving fantasy settings, I picked up a copy of The Hobbit left behind by one of my older brothers had discarded, and was on my way. It of course led to the Ring Trilogy (and multiple readings thereof). That love affair lasted for years until Jr. High, when I discovered Fritz and Howard (turned on to them now that I had met people of my own age who loved fantasy and showed me what they were reading). By the time I read fantasy other than Tolkien, I had already been playing/running D&D for a couple of years.

As I read more boldly adult, flesh and blood lusty adventuring, my game world got just a shade darker and sleazier. Finally, adventuring wasn’t just about ideals of chivalry and destroying dark lords. My games started becoming more about the characters getting glory, gold, and laid, just like Conan, Mouser, and other greats of darker fantasy. I think this, more than anything, is what Sir Gary and the others meant the game to be. A kid wants to be a noble hero like Aragorn. A young adult and older wants to be a badass horndog like Conan.

So Tolkien put down the foundation for me, and I think it was a lot like that for Gygax. You start out with the Tolk, then you will always treasure the Tolk. But you will inevitably “grow up”.

And the one thing that truly lets me know Gary had Tolkien in his heart and on his mind? Look at Gary’s writing in any of the gamebooks. A very old Victorian style. It sure sounds more like what Tolkien would write in the forwards for those books than any other fantasy author outside of Dunsany.

Free Porn!!!

Pretty grabby post title, eh? Only yelling “free beer!!!” at a Ren Faire will get you more attention (believe me, I’ve done it). Here’s Zack S. of Playing D&D With Porn Stars title description:
ZAK S - HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
I play D&D. Nearly everybody in my game is a stripper, or a porn star, or both*, so everybody's very busy, but when we do get to play, we like to do it up right. (*Yes, I'm serious.)

If you want subscribers to your game blog fast fast fast, then one great way to do it is to use the word “porn” in the title. Calling your blog page “Playing D&D with porn stars” seems to be a home run. So much more so than “Temple of Demogorgon.”

You want to not believe it at first. I mean, in geeky circles that would be your first reaction. You WANT to believe it, but some groups have trouble getting a female in the mix period, much less one who will play for pay. When I tell people that in the 90’s most or all of my 4-6 players per session were usually female (I only boinked a couple of them), they don’t believe that. Getting one girl there is hard enough for most gamer guys.

Personally I tend to believe it. I mean, I am an LA native and have lived in Venice Beach my entire life, and I have seen a lot of what this city has to offer. And although I have not had porn stars or strippers in my games (although I have had actors, screenwriters, and priests), some of the gals could have been if they wanted to. And actual sex has occurred before, during, and after games I’ve run. Yeah, some of that included me (but not always, unfortunately).

Girls in my games over the last 30 years have varied wildly in the looks department (I’d say the late 80’s was my heyday of great looking gals in my campaigns), but regardless of the physical description, I was usually pretty grateful to not just have a bunch of guys sitting around playing make-believe.

“Zak S,” a resident of Hollywood, has already achieved a fairly big following to his blog in a very short period of time. As of today, he has just over 40 followers. About as much as me. But I started my blog in January. Zak started his last month. I’m guessing most of the followers are awaiting tales of post game orgies and bukkakes, but those do not seem to be forthcoming. Zak actually puts together typical gaming posts, fairly lacking in the salacious details of the porny connection. Actually, they are very decent posts about the typical gaming subjects we gamers want to read/write about.

So. Zack S. knows some strippers and porn stars, and he gets them to play D&D. OK, we aren’t talking dolled-up blond airheads here, such as big names like Jenna Jameson and Katie Morgan. The girls Zack shows some pics of are more tattooed goth/rocker chick than glamour-puss. The seem very much like girls I know in LA, except in my case I would know them more for the folk music and hippy scenes (hey man, there are demonstrative chicks in those scenes like you would not believe) than from strip bars. But most of those girls don’t have a lot of interest in gaming unless their boyfriends get them into it.

So how does Zack do it? Well, that is probably a tale we would like to hear more about. It just so happens he isn’t up front with that information, much less where we can find out more about the girls he puts up pics of (they seem to have twitter and facebook accounts, but that doesn’t necessarily tell me where I can see them “work”).

Maybe Grognardia James needs to seek out an interview? Zack isn’t exactly the old school interview James wants, but what the hell, Zack probably has a tale or two to tell. Who cares if it doesn’t involve Gygax?

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

(Over the weekend I noticed a reader comment on Grognardia asking James to blog at some point about this module, and it got me thinking about it again a bit. Although I really only post about more personal aspects of gaming now, I thought I'd rehash this one from last January. It was a pretty interesting module)


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.

“A simple Sleep spell stopped them!” – crappiest D&D ad part three

This entry in the engrossing series of D&D comic book ads from the early 80’s is a masterpiece of minimalism. You blink and it’s over.

In our last chapter, Indel, formerly with the Keebler Company, fell through a secret door and ended up in a deeper level of the dungeon. So his pals the wizard Grimslade, the unflappable fighter Valerius, and blond cleric chick Saren are busy trying to attract wandering monsters by yelling out the ambiguously gay elf’s moniker. They get more than they bargained for! A vicious band of three goblins!

Tired of facing Shambling Mounds and Green Slime, the warrior Valerius licks his chops and pulls out his new magic sword in preparation for the battle he has long awaited, and…what the fuck!!! What happened? Well, as in most low level games, the goddamn MU ruins the fighters chance for a rousing combat by wasting his most powerful spell on a triad of 3 hit point mooks. “Phew! OK, now we have to take an 8-hour break so I can rest and get the spell back.”

With his big chance at wowing Saren with his manly might now gone, Valerius feigns interest in the welfare of the lost cookie elf. “Um, er, c’mon! We gotta find Brucie!”

Meanwhile, Indel, after proving his elvish secret door finding powers ain’t shit, also proves his dexterity is less than to be desired as he lands on his perfectly coiffed head. You can tell, because he goes “”Oh, my head!” Either that, or it’s New Years day and he’s just waking up. Been there a few times m’self.
Uh oh, looks like the mortal worm is in trouble (mortal? Don’t elves live 5000 years or something?).

OK, how many levels exactly did Indel fall down that chute? You fall down a trap door on a level that only has Green Slime and three Goblins to offer as monsters, and then you fall right down to a dragon’s lair? What kind of shithole dungeon is this! Right about now, Indel’s player is wishing they hadn’t agreed to let Bob’s asshole older brother run the session.

Next: “Gavin’s Inn has a warm fire to relax by!”

“Look out! It’s dripping!” – crappiest D&D ad part 2

The most important thing here is that the artwork gets better (don’t ask me his name – Grognardia James is the archeologist around here. I’m just the village idiot). I’m sure Indel the elf personally appreciates leaving his Keebler background behind and becoming more of an action-looking type guy. Although you only see him covered in slime or falling down a trapdoor, the new artist obviously wants these characters to look like ones you would actually want to play in a game.

I think the fighter Valerius and our boy Indel may have had some problems getting along with each other in the past (it actually becomes all too clear after the chick shows up). While “Gray 'stache” the wizard seems worried about the 80 pounds of green shit that has just fallen on the luckless lad of elfland, Valerius is busy worrying about his plus-nothing sword being eaten by the goo. Well, he is a fighter, and his priorities are clear. Please don’t tell us you tried to stab the stuff, Valerius.

“Forget the fucking sword, dude, we’ve got to save Indel!”

Poor Indel. Not only has the green slime apparently gone “Code Yellow,” but it’s also eaten his legs, ‘nads, and even his Robin Hood hat.

“Swoosh!” Burning Hands spell, right? Damn skippy. I’d like to talk about how when I was a kid I loved that spell when nobody else was wasting a slot on it, but I’m too busy talking about this lame adventure. On we go…

Suddenly, a figure steps out from the shadows, and immediately two hundred thousand Spider-Man readers (including yours truly) actually starts paying attention to this advert. Nothing like a hot blond chick to step out from the shadows and make things not gay anymore – am I right? Just like finally getting a girl to play in your game. They actually managed to capture that aspect of D&D perfectly. I guess the powers at TSR were like “what else can we put in here to appeal to the geeks besides slime and trap doors?” You have to wonder what she would have looked like if she appeared in the last ad. The horror.

Saren the Cleric seems really worried about Indel. If that little elvish hairdresser tapped that, I swear to God I’m gonna kill myself. Best not to think about it. Anyway, her powers of whatever heal the little dude, and in the next panel he’s posing like a 70’s porno dude about to do his thang. Valerius finds a sword to replace his eaten one. What a coinkydink!

Our hero and star of the show Indel next gets back down to D&D business. When asked to use his elvish powers of secret door finding, he immediately on cue falls through a trap door. Right now the guy running this characters is like “after tonight I am so done with this fucking asshole DM.”

And Saren, she looks so worried about him. Look at her face. She’s crushed. Oh God, they really did do it, didn’t they? There is no justice in this world, man. There is no God. Valerius doesn’t look too broken up though, does he? As he looks at Saren with a satisfied smirk, you can almost hear him thinking to himself “Finally. Tonight is your night, bro.”

Next: Deeper baby, deeper!

D&D's crappiest ad:part 1

In the early 80’s, D&D advertisements where all over the back pages of comics. There were several of them in this particular series, and they appeared every two or three months. I imagine the time lags may have represented the folk at TSR scrambling to find a better artist for the most recent ad compared to the piece of crap hack who hammered out this first uninspired strip.

Is this how they sold the game? I mean, they wanted to make money, didn’t they? Why phone it in like this? These were appearing in comics that were drawn by greats like John Romita Jr. and Frank Miller. Drooling mongoloids might have liked the goofy adventuring represented here, but did they have the brain power to understand how to play if they bought it? I guess just making the sale was important. Whatever – D&D became more and more popular, despite these terrible comic craptacular adventures.

As I was an avid comic book guy since around the age of 6, they were pretty much preaching to the choir in my case. I already had a few years of D&D under my belt when these came out. More importantly, even at around 15 years old I was running games that were cooler than what was happening to these low-rent, cookie cutter adventurers (if you want to read about somebody who preferred their D&D to pan out like these adventures, check out some old posts at Grognardia).

Speaking of cookies, one of the adventurer’s is a damn Keebler elf. No joke, look at the guy. Disney characters laugh at this pathetic excuse for a Legolas. You ain’t going to see this guy swinging around on elephants shooting three arrows at a time. Gimli probably would not have much trouble beating his orc-killing score. Better yet. Look at panel 5. WTF is he doing? Levitating? Or is that a jump? I’m getting a headache just looking at it.

I know the Shambling Mound looks like its Monster Manual counterpart, but seeing as this ad appeared in Marvel Comics, weren’t they worried about a lawsuit or something? I mean, that’s the damn Man-Things nose, man! I guess the Marvel Bullpen didn’t take D&D all that seriously, true believer.

Since when did a Hold Monster spell light up the night? What other spells act as a light spell, other than a light spell that is? Well, it’s a good thing, because green slime was on the walls, and according to that douche Grimslade it is certain death. Not quite, but in our next adventure the Keebler elf finds out the hard way that you don’t mess with that emerald snot!

Oh, and a hot blond cleric and a much better artist shows up. See you then, Pilgrim!

Group Size - what's your pref?

In my last post I talked about digging on the full group of six players I currently have. Of course that might change before too long (in the last year I’ve had a total of four new players come and go, and three regulars who have not missed a game), but after many years of no gaming it’s kind of a treat to see six players at the table. In all honesty, six is about as many people as our current host can handle (and I stand up for the entire session) in the spot we have (his wife’s fabric workshop in the back studio).

OK, so I got some comments that mentioned the amount of players those particular GM’s preferred in their gaming sessions. Here’s what some of the had to say:

Barking Alien said: …”Its also funny what a full group consitutes for some GMs as opposed to others. I pretty much don't feel like gaming if there aren't at least 3 or 4 players. For me a full group is more like 7 or 8. My current Mutants & Masterminds campaigns averages 8-9. If everyone showed every time we'd have 11 people…”

Sir Larkins sez: …”Seven or eight players for me is way too many. I'm most comfortable with three to four…”

Felipe Budinich said: …”Heh the full group concept also strikes me as funny, usually I have two players, over 4 players and i feel that it gets too crowded…”

So like a lot of things it’s “to each his own.” Space restrictions probably have a lot to do with it. For instance, at this point I can phone in AD&D 1st ed. (30 damn years), so I’m pretty sure I can handle seven or 8 people without serious detriment to the amount of role-playing or amount of time combat takes in my game. But for now I think 6 is going to have to be the cap. The only exception I might make to that is if a girl comes along wanting in on the campaign, if only to keep poor Terry from being the only girl in the group (I actually think she likes that, but that may be a subject for another post).

So I like six for D&D, but what about my couple of other favorites that I had successful campaigns with over the years? Well, in the past I was usually able to get all my players into other alternate genres, specifically Call of Cthulhu and Champions. In the 90’s when I tried to turn the groups on to one of these games, half of them groaned about it (especially the girls), but once they got characters created and got a game in under their belts, they often preferred them to my D&D!

For Champions it was hard for me to handle upwards of six people. Just so much math and crunch. This one particular regular player of mine from the 90’s, “Planet” Janet, was so bad at math (and usually so stoned on tequila and pot) that I had to do it all for her. Champions actually helped my math – heaven forbid you should actually learn or grow in some way from gaming.

I really preferred 2-4 players for Champs. If I only had three players, I would usually do the “street level” type characters. Fighting gang members and serial Killers was usually pretty easy to adjudicate. Ironically, when I had five or six players, it made sense to do the “Super Group” type games, even though it would include tons of super-attacks and tons of crunchy stuff that was just so time-consuming. Those powerful superhero fights took forever. With our current sessions happening for just three hours on a Wednesday night, I doubt we could have Champions as an alternate.

Call of Cthulhu was also a game I think I would have preferred to have like three players for, but my players in the 90’s ended up liking it so much that when we played it as our D&D alternative everyone showed up.

There was one memorable CoC game I ran in the mid-90’s with just three players that was kind of a gas. On a Saturday afternoon my three female players were hanging out in Lisa’s pad above the Hollywood Bowl, and they called me (at home…dateless) to see if I felt like coming over there to run some Call of Cthulhu. That was a session that went late into the night, and there wasn’t even anything of a supernatural nature going on (although I added in a “bump in the night” or two). Basically it was around 5 hours of the girl’s characters hanging out in Arkham shopping, cruising for guys at the Speakeasy, and looking for fun at the nightclub (that one of the characters was a torch singer at). It was one of those games that just would not have worked that well with 5 or more players. I would have needed some beastie to show up to spice things up.

Preferences aside, different group sizes usually create different gaming experiences. But what is your preference?