TOTAL PARTY KILL!!!

Total Party Kill. Just the words together like that harkens to late 80’s/early 90’s sci fi movie techno-thrillers with phrases like MDK - Murder Death Kill or TNP - Take No Prisoners. Cold and scary.

When I was kid, the concept of an entire party of adventurers getting destroyed seemed a bit like an urban legend, and usually a slaughter at the breath weapon of some dragon that was too strong to kill. Back then we didn’t have a term for it.

I personally cannot remember one instance when I witnessed it, but I’m sure I did at some hobby shop or convention game room at some point. But maybe not - I didn’t spend much time at those places once I had my own regular groups and also started getting laid on a regular basis. Having seen it and remembering it would have meant the deaths had meaning, and in my personal games death always had big meaning. Hell, it almost never happens so when it does happen to a player in my game it is bigger than shit.

Am I just too easy-going as a DM? I’m not sure my players would describe me that way, but I’m sure they would say I am a player-friendly DM. In my AD&D games, I have a general rule that no player character will die in their first game – at least by my hand. If they end up into the negatives (as almost always happens in the first game to somebody), I just hold them up at around -5, and when they are healed they have some appropriate set-back (a few games ago a first level fighter got the shit stung out of her by a giant spider. When she got back to the positives in hit points, she had a nice little poison susceptibility). I also tend to molly coddle characters a bit until they hit 3rd level or so, trying to let them expand a bit as a character before they risk true deadly danger.

But we aren’t talking about being a nice guy DM here, we are talking about TPK, which has a tendency to occur at mid to high levels. They don’t always seem to necessarily happen at the climax of an adventure, unless that was the DM’s aim all along.

Columnist Roe Adams described it like this:

"A full TPK (total party kill) is an appalling abandonment of the players to the whims of gaming fate. It is a failure to be worthy of that trust they offered you when they sat down."(Adams III, Roe R. (2003-08-25). "First Night" (in English). RPGA Feature Article - Wizards of the Coast).

Wow. Well, it kind of is on the DM’s head, unless the party makes some foolish mistakes. I imagine it just cannot be helped in some cases. Poor strategy, bad roll, good DM rolls, all kinds of things enter into it. I decided to do a bit of research by starting a thread about it over at rpg.net. It got a big response, with lots of great stories of TPK. Here are a few excerpts from some responses:

… Most more often, one or two characters gets disabled, and the others keep on fighting in an attempt to turn the tide, and one by one they all drop as well…

… the characters completely misread a situation and blunder wildly, causing them all to be taken out of the game. Something like a pit of lava, but the characters somehow get the idea that the pit of lava is a gateway, so they all jump in (and they all die)…

…D&D 3.5 party beset wolves. the players wanted a 'straight up' fight, no DM fudging. nothing behind the screen, all rolls on the table. they lost…

… DnD 2e: Party of 1st-2nd level characters vs. one ghoul. Paralyzed all but the elf due to poor saves and mauled the elf to death. Party assumed to be eaten at leisure…

… Tomb of Horrors front entrance; party vs. a small flock of cocktrice. Failed saves aplenty and ended up with the mage up a tree trying to fend them off with a dagger….

… As GM: 3rd D+D. 5 players (2 totally new). 2nd level PCs, standard orc-ambush turns horribly bad. The scout goes ahead, gets caught in a trap (one he knew was there but wanted to see what happened anyway?). Others rush forward to save him, everybody dies no matter how much I fudge. The longest series of bad rolls ever…

… Cyberpunk 2020: With the smart players dead due to a variety of mishaps (including a headshot from a sniper) the remaining characters smart off to the cops after they get stopped for a traffic violation. After a couple of dead cops and a freeway chase SWAT gets mobilized and toasts the party van with the minigun from a AV-4…

… He wiped out the party at the climax of each of them. Sadly not because of anything the players did wrong but because he liked the whole "you think you've succeeded but you haven't" schtick and was loath to let our characters survive his campaigns. I think he was trying to teach us players something about life. The only lession we learned was how much arbitrary TPKs by a GM piss us off…



In looking at these and many other responses, I’d say the three most common reasons for the phenomenon of TPK are:

3) a miserable, asshole manchild GM with delusions of power who delights in making games shit for players. How do these guys get players coming back?

2) An encounter that is just too much for the groups power level (usually they have the option to run away, but do not.). A creature, like a ghoul or carrion crawler, that can paralyze multiple times, are common things I have heard killed low level parties.

1) A fair encounter, but the players roll terrible and the GM rolls great. Seems to be the single most common thing. More often than not, the players also have a chance to escape things, but often don’t realize how bad things are until too late. Things just happen too fast for them.

Is it best for the GM to fudge and save them? Very often I have heard of the GM just saying “ok, instead of killed you are all captured.” Or, amazingly and it happens more often than you think, the GM starts the entire scenario from scratch and let’s the party have another go at it.

Yeah, I have fudged once or twice, but in very minor ways, and never to save a character. Having said that, a side of me is a die roll purist. If you fudge things too much, you take away a lot of the chance aspect of the game, and as part of that you lose some of the life simulation aspect.

I thought about the whole Total Party Kill concept a lot in the last week, because the party in my AD&D game may be facing the possibility. A first in my games.

You see, in The Rainbow Mounds cavern, a PC hobbit cleric is tied up in a cave with a couple of old enemies, an orc troop leader, and a half elf enchantress, have her at their mercy. The enchantress (a high level illusionist) goes into her private room to freshen her make-up so she will look nice for the nasty things she is going to do to the hobbit. When she and her two charmed fighting men step away, the Orcs offer to let the hobbit go if she helps them “kill the bitch.” She is untied, gets her gear on, and the enchantress steps out with her men. The fight is on! Well, I stopped it there, because things were not going quite how I planned, and wanted to get back to it next time.

You see, the hobbit and the orcs are not much of a match for the Enchantress. As a high level illusionist, she is capable of some powerful things. Luckily, the hobbits friends are charging through the cavern system, knowing of her trouble and coming to save her. I have a certain time-frame, and the party has wasted a bit of time, including doing things like stopping to body search the few orcs they kill on the way, just for handfuls of silver. They know this hobbit chick is in need of help, but they will get there at best around 8 or 9 rounds after the fight has started, when my original “run like hell to help her” timeframe would have had them show up a round or two into the fight.

So what do I do? Fudge? Let them just show up on time, or delay them to show them the consequences of picking up chump change when a friend is in trouble. They will have a chance against the enchantress, but not as good if the hobbit and the orcs are dead when they get there and can’t assist them in the fight.

I think I’m going to let the chips fall where they may. And doing that, I may just be looking at the first TPK in my games.

GM Responsibilities

(Somebody talked about what are the duties of a DM on a chat today, and I thought this might be a good place to post my answer as well)


Fun for All

It may not be the GM's job to make sure everyone has a good time, but he should do his best to tweak things if somebody who normally would be having fun is suddenly bored or frustrated. Sometimes there is nothing you can do because of their mood or the circumstances of the scenario or task resolution, but you do your best. For everyone’s enjoyment, looking at the DM like the head chef, and the players as assistant chefs, is a good way to look at it. It’s all on the GM’s head, but everyone should be involved in making it fun. This is why a regular, tight knit group is best in my humble opinion.

Commitment

The poor beleaguered GM, who is not only coming up with all the world/scenario prep, and maybe even doing all the scheduling footwork, must also be committed more than anyone else. It won't happen without him (unless it is one of those groups where people take turns as GM). School, work, and non-game related life-things are stuff the GM has to take more time from than anyone else in order to have any kind of regular play (even once a month). From 30 years of personal experience, I have found that the DM (at least in my case) has more going on in their life than the typical player who complains about the time commitment to gaming. I have found this particularly frustrating, because I probability put about 2 hours work into every one hour of session (and that is low-balling it).

Patience

At my game last week, a couple players were into rolling minor skill stuff (musical instruments, "noticing" type rolls) without asking or declaring it. I’m trying to role play NPC’s and describe things, and all this rolling is going on. Just "roll" then, "Oh I got a good roll on my mandolin." No big deal, but a pet peeve of mine. Don't roll unless I ask or I am at least watching. So when other players were rattling dice in their hand waiting on their turn in combat, I would snap "Don't roll unless I tell you!" then I had to apologize when I saw they were cowed a bit by it. So even after 30 years, a hard day at work can take away some of my game session patience later (I am still not used to running games on a weeknight). For me, this is important and I have to keep it in mind. It's easy to offend when you are in charge. And maybe doing a little drinking…

Control

GM is boss (one reason GM's should try to have the game at their place). What he says goes. Fuck you, rules lawyer - this is my world! I think most players want a game where everyone gets fairly even time to do their thing, and that all the other players are kept in check the same way they are. And if the session is getting “sloppy,” it is the GM’s duty to tighten things up and get on with solid gameplay.

Last week a guy posted (at RPG.net) that he was having trouble because of people playing on laptops during his game (a seven hour game with kids running around the place - ugh). He wondered the best way to go about getting them to stop. What a weak GM! You put the work into it, and it should be as close to your vision as possible. So stick to how you want it, even if it isn't your house. "Hey man, I really put a lot of work into this, and the laptops bug me and are taking away from my enjoyment. Please, let's put them away during sessions, or this just isn't going to work for me".

GM must be strong, like bull! So be committed, be patient, be in control, and be strong!

"My favorite D&D module was a Runequest adventure” - Apple Lane

As a kid hanging out at the local game shop Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica, I played a lot of Runequest. I maybe ran a handful of games for friends outside the shop, but I never really got a campaign going. As an adventure pack, Apple Lane (by Greg Stafford, first printed in 1978) provided some outstanding encounters, NPC’s, and situations. In the sleepy orchard town of Apple Lane, Your first encounter may just be getting mugged by a Trollkin (as humorously portrayed on the cover). Trollkin haunt the area outside of town, but small raids have been made in the last few weeks on homes around the town fringes. Lead by a big Trollkin named White Eye, the little pests have been a nuisance, even going so far as to kill a little old lady. The Tin Inn is the focal center of town, and here is where you are likely to meet Gringle, a Rune Lord who has settled down to run a pawnshop in town. Gringle will hire you to guard his shop while he and his assistant, Duck John, are out of town for the night. A tribe of Baboons (who can speak in Runequest) have threatened to attack the shop, and a harrowing night fighting them off will be the first real adventure scenario in town. Included are schematics for the three levels of the shop, and entrance points for the Baboons to break in are indicated. The major adventure is to go to an area called The Rainbow Mounds and get a bounty on White Eye offered by the sheriff. In addition to the Trollkin, a once great race have devolved into The Newtlings, froglike beings who live in the waterways of the Mounds. These creatures worship an idol in their main cave, and if the party finds the missing piece of the idol (hidden amongst the warrens of the large rock lizards who also inhabit the caverns), the person who places the piece upon the idol will be crowned King of the Newtlings. This kingship comes with little in the way of power or treasure, but it is a cool way to cap off an adventure. The Rainbow Mounds is really a great dungeon setting. In addition to the main water cavern and some underground rushing rapids and waterfalls, special rooms include a classic D&D style mushroom chamber, and an alter to the Dark Gods of the Trollkin. It’s just a series of caves, but they are set-up really well, and provide multiple pathways for the players to choose. I liked the setting so much, that after getting the book I almost immediately modified things to use it for D&D. I changed some names, such as Lemon Tree instead of Apple Lane, and turned the Trollkins and Baboons into orcs, but most other things I kept the same. Gringle, however, became a high level wizard, and his assistant Duck John became Hobbit John. Over the decades I used the setting several times. White Eye having been killed several times, and the Newtling idol found and a king crowned again and again, was a bit of a stretch. But the problem got solved when I decided that the Newtlings had a curse on them that kept the idol pieces and White Eye in a constant loop. No matter what happened, an idol piece would eventually be lost and found, and no matter how many times White Eye was killed he would return to menace anyone who came to the Mounds. A group of characters are in the Rainbow Mounds right now during my current AD&D campaign (continuing tonight!), and the party includes Kayla, a hobbit who has been there before, and personally killed White Eye in that past adventure. In a game in the late 90’s she came to Lemon Tree, adventured in the Rainbow Mounds, killed the orcs, and eventually married Hobbit John. She has recently returned to find White Eye alive, the Newtlings again waiting for a new ruler, and a disturbing fact: having been to the Mounds multiple times, she risks become part of the curse cycle of the Mounds herself! So, I very much recommending getting a copy of Apple Lane and modify it for use in your D&D games. It is really a fairly simple but elegant setting, and it can be adjusted for various character levels. It actually is a great place to start new characters in, and if you poke around online you can find fan-support for it, including great alternate maps (even a 3D one) for the areas included in the module.

“It’s about bunnies!”

I had never read Watership Down, nor seen the movie by the time I first saw a copy of Bunnies and Burrows over 30 years ago. There it was on the stands at Aero Hobbies. All the older pricks were geeking out about it at the game table, like they did with most unique new games that came out. I don’t remember anyone actually running it at the shop, but I was somewhat smitten by it’s strange nature.

I had of course heard of Watership Down in the school yards over the year. It would usually be one of the timid, shy girls reading it at lunchtime (this was before Goth kids came into their own and started to be recognized), or one of the seemingly speechless boys from the “special” class. It’s not exactly a “feel good” story. As Sawyer on the TV show Lost once sarcastically said, in a gleeful singsong voice as he was caught reading it “It’s about bunnies!”

I saw no sad little sick rabbits on the run from all kinds of scary things as I read the B&B rules. Only herbalists, fighters, and the incredibly appealing Maverick character class. The rules were fairly light, as were a lot of the new games coming out. It left a lot open to interpretation, which as any Grognard knows is the salt of the earth in a fun-to-GM game.

B&B came out in 1976, only two years after D&D, and it is recognized as the first game to have all non-human characters, and also as the first game with a detailed martial arts system. Your skills and abilities varied depending on your character class, and task resolution was on percentiles. There were great little “simple life” rules in the game that gave it a very quaint flavor. Your rabbit could only count up to 5, and I don’t think you were allowed much more than that in the way of objects in your backpack. Yeah, that’s right. These rabbits weren’t exactly humanoid, but it was obvious that they were more intelligent than animals, and could stand upright and manipulate things with fingers. This was not specific in the book – only some of the skills, and some of the drawings (a maverick holding playing cards, the soldier rabbits of the book cover, etc.) lead you to believe that they were more than plain old bunnies. Well, that and the fact that somebody had to have made the backpacks.

Seeing as you are a rabbit and one of the weakest creatures on the planet, role play was key over combat encounters. All forms of animals are listed as enemies, but only human beings with their “alien minds” were true monsters. Snares, poison, and natural hazards filled the daily lives of the little fellas as well.

The rules book itself was pretty poor quality. It looked typewritten (as were a lot of my favorite gaming material of the time), and the “artwork” can only be describes as “scribbles.” I drew better looking artwork of cops beating up hippies on my high school Pee Chee folder.

A couple of editions came out in the following years. There was a GURPS version with a cover that could only be described as hilarious. It had two small rabbits furiously attacking a guard dog, like the two raptors attacking the T Rex in Jurassic Park. That seemed to kind of miss the point of the original game right there, but newer gamers probably would not want to play a game were you mostly just forage for truffles all day, Before heading down to the Doe cave to hammer out babies all night.

I finally saw the Watership Down movie and read the book in the 80’s, and the game reflected a lot of that inspiration

Figuring I would probably never run it, I sold it on Ebay several years ago for about 50 bucks. Now that I’m going through my own retro gaming fad, I wish I had kept that one. I even created my own little gameworld for it about 10 years ago. Called “Rabbit Valley Days,” I was hoping to evoke those original rules using another system eventually, but I doubt I can sell my current players on it now. The game is about bunnies, after all.

SUPERHERO 2044:My first non-D&D campaign

Hell yeah it was over 30 years ago that I first ran Superhero 2044. I had discovered D&D sometime around 1976 or 77 (maybe even a little earlier), and was in the process of building my little fantasy world “Ardor,” my AD&D game world that I use to this very day. I loved comics, and being able to have superhero types running around instead of fantasy arch-types sounded like a no-brainer to my young no-brain.

I think within a year or so of discovering Superhero 2044, Villains & Vigilantes came out, and I’m pretty sure I ran consecutive campaigns at some point: 2044 was set in the future, and V&V was the current real world, with my players playing themselves as heroes (like that book suggested you do). It would be a few years before I had a disastrous session with a blatant 2044 rip-off called Supergame, an RPG I would actually help playtest for the creators not long after my little 2044 campaign. I didn’t start a Champions campaign until the early 80’s, so besides the aforementioned Villains and Vigilantes, 2044 was my comic book RPG.

A rather cheaply put-together product, it was the cover, front and back, that was the main eye-catcher of 2044. The sheer number of gaudy costumes, especially the few that were obviously inspired by classic Marvel characters, just made my young gamer heart soar with the gaming possibilities.

I used the setting as presented in the book. It was an independent democratic island nation, Shanter Island (we mispronounced it “Shatner” on purpose), but with all the trappings (language, customs, race) of the U.S. A world wide nuclear war had previously devastated much of society, creating the need for The Science Police. Sci Pol existed to put the brakes on nuclear power and other technology that could be used for evil – or another World War. The futuristic independent island nation concept, and the Science Police, were two things that I would carry over to my long running Champions campaign setting.

Your main island map of Shanter shows the city, the air and space port, and industrial locations. A large part of that map is made up of the “Outback,” miles and miles of forest and mountain areas. This area is not uninhabited – thanks to the pro-superhero government of Shanter Island, a law has been passed letting hero-types make “land grabs” for caves and hilltops to build secret HQ’s on. Nice! This combined with the 1970’s “futurisms” (moving sidewalks downtown, monorails in the city, aliens walking amongst us, etc.) gave the proceedings a really nice cheesy feel, even back then.

I had three or four players for those first few games, but I only really remember two characters from the game that were played – both of them “Doc” Winslow’s. One was a man in super strong, super invincible power armor, based on a figure from the old Gamma World line. Seeing as the rules didn’t give you much information on what kind of powers you could have, or even what those powers might do, the players were pretty much free to get whatever they wanted outside of points assigned to stats. You could probably read about how the rules worked in more detail in some online review, but suffice it to say that the rules on superpowers were obscure enough that a player could totally take advantage. This power armored guy was just devastating to most of his surroundings, and he would smash his way down the street, crushing bank robbers and costumed villains in droves.

Although a lot of the world’s framework is left up to the GM, some background is provided in the way of descriptions of previous superhero events, and a couple of characters. The Freedom League, a former superhero team, was mostly destroyed in recent years by Dr. Ruby, the premier super villain. The only hero to survive was “Mr. Banta,” but only his brain lives on housed in a cyborg shell. Mr. B runs a major superhero equipment/costume shop. This shop is made up of all the leftover gear from the deceased League members and their personal trophies from defeated enemies, so this is one of the things in the book that makes your imagination go wild. This is pretty much the place the character can buy anything that he wasn’t able to put together with points or choice of super powers. The GM can use this shop as the source of all kinds of plot devices and McGuffins. Although assumed by the general public to be dead, there are a series of somewhat humorous drawings in the margins of the book detailing various ways that Doc Ruby might have survived.

Probably the most interesting (and frustrating) feature of the rules was the strict patrolling procedures that each character had to follow. Sheets were given so the player and GM could plot out the characters movements throughout the city, his hours spent patrolling and what part of the island he did the patrolling in. The GM would then suss-out how many crimes were stopped, and how many criminals apprehended. The GM would also have to “handicap” the characters performance parameters occasionally, so as to be able to figure out how many points to give for the time spent patrolling. That meant at least running an actual encounter and fighting on the game table, rather than working out the statistics of this police department style patrolling system. It even included rules for all the lawsuits that get filed against the hero for damage caused during patrol. These rules only really worked for solo play, and although we used the patrolling rules for awhile, we soon abandoned them in order to get some actual role play and important encounters going on more consistently.

In my earliest days of hanging out at the local game shop, I got the chance to help playtest a new superhero RPG called Supergame around the time I was still running 2044. It was created by friends of the shop owner, and that is the main reason it eventually saw a published form. Because I was there for some of the original playtesting of that system, and because of my own disastrous attempts to run a session of it at the shop, I think I’ll save that tale for another post. Suffice to say that, outside of the system itself, The creators of Supergame had blatantly drawn more than just inspiration from Superhero 2044, and I would go so far as to call many of it’s elements a rip-off. But then again, 2044 had a lot of unique qualities, especially the setting, that inspired me to eventually create a superhero game world of my own, strongly based on that little independent island nation called Shatner. Uh, I mean “Shanter.”

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.

Eldritch Wizardry was my first porno

Nowadays it is probably rare for a boy of 11 or 12 to get by without seeing nudity somewhere. With cable TV and the internets, it is damn hard to avoid it. But when I was a kid in puberty, I had yet to see my first depiction of a nipple. My folks were hard working lower-middle class catholic immigrants, and we didn’t exactly have a lot of fine art laying around. Most of my friends had older brothers who had treated them to magazines or lent them film reels, or that they had spied on them sneaking a girl into the house, but I had two older bros and there was not a nude woman to be found. They kept those National Geographic’s and underground comics well hidden.

I had seen some Frank Frazetta artwwork, probably on my brother’s Conan books that I would soon be reading, but those women being threatened on the covers were always a bit blurry, a mix of colors.

I think my first real memory of gazing at a monster’s boobs was a harpy somewhere in the first three books. Blackmoor? But it was 1976’s Eldritch Wizardry, D&D supplement III, that really got me going. I’m sure that cover made it so most boys under 18 had to keep it well hidden under the other books. I’m not sure my mom would have confiscated it, but it would have raised questions about this “game” I was getting into. Check out that blond on the cover, stretched out on some sort of altar. No high priest or monster is shown, but you know she is in some kind of trouble. OK, so maybe she is just a kinky elf chick giving a treat to her horny adventurer boyfriend, but I get the feeling something bad is going to happen to this naked wench. That mix of sex, fear, and violence may not be good for the development of a young man, but besides feeling of lust for her I knew she would be safe. If you count safe as being saved by Conan and then savagely ravished by him.

It is very interesting to note that this drawing of a sexy woman in such peril was created by a woman.

You look at that picture, and the filthy possibilities seem endless. It still turns me on. That body is so tight, that hair so perfect. Is she an elf, or just a gorgeous human? That fleshtone just shimmered in that brazier-light. I think I can remember the tactile sensation of the book, the roughness of that cover as I moved my hand across – um, OK, so this is getting weird. Calm down, Mac.

There are a few nice breasteses within the black and white pages as well. The Type V demon, the female with six arms and a snake lower body, is shown twice. Once under her entry, and again in an action piece where she and another demon fight a couple of adventurers. OK, she is a demon who would kill me just as soon as look at me, and the snake part of the body is a turn off. But man, those breasts, that face, that hair – at least that part is perfection. The six arms don’t bother me so much. Long before I DM’d, or even bought this book, I had a character killed in one of my first games by a type V that came out of a picture and attacked me. The sneering, cretinous DM (whom you can read a bit about in the first entry at mygaminghistory.blogspot.com) declared “she had some fun with you before you died.” Oh well, at least somebody had some fun in that game.

There’s a naked succubus within the pages as well. Cute face, but outside of the breasts her body looks a little mannish. Might be a tranny. Also, although she isn’t naked, there is a scantily clad young female cleric, very cute, summoning Orcus. Dave Sutherland’s art wasn’t tight, but his females were always hot, naked or not. A powerful woman is always sexy to a young boy.