Tintin and Me

Since childhood my folks would buy stacks of comics for me at various garage sales and swap meets. One day, sometime in the mid-80’s, they came home with a pile of large format Tintin books, and therein I discovered the Zen joy of the adventures of this diminutive French reporter and his rum-chugging sailor buddy Captain Haddock (Haddock actually didn’t come along until the later, best stories. He started out as a sort of villain). They were great adventure stories, spanning the globe and even going to the moon (while most of the stories were firmly grounded in a certain realism, the moon adventure was far more a flight of fancy).

A sort of sly, winking Euro-humor within the stories really added to the subtle flavor of the tales. The antics of the heroes were always rousing adventure, with the occasional violence sudden and brief. The very feel of the stories lent themselves very well to a Call of Cthulhu vibe. I mined ideas for my COC games pretty heavily in the 90’s. For example, there was a scene where Tintin and Haddock were trapped on a train in the Mountains (a footnote at the bottom of the page let you know it was the highest rail in the world at that time) of Peru that was out of control and rolling back down the mountain at increasing speeds to eventually end up careening off a bride hundreds of feet up. My ripping off of that entire sequence (and also later the attempted sacrifice of the heroes by cultists and their being saved by knowing an eclipse was coming) made for one of the most exciting Cthulhu games I had ever ran.

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have produced a 3D animated movie of Tintin for Fall of this year, with an all star cast of voices including Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (of Shaun of the Dead fame). Although an animated version has the best chance of being true to the source material, I am a bit sad this will preclude a live action version any time real soon. The film will for sure be huge in Europe where Tintin is still beloved, but who knows how it will pan out in the states. I actually think there is a big fan base out there in the USA, plus references to Tintin are all over pop culture here for decades. The popular 80’s cheese band Thompson Twins are named after Tintin’s policeman pals, and every now and again you see the little dude and his dog “Snowy” on T-shirts. So we’ll see. A big hit or not, I’ll be seeing the film. If for nothing else, Tintin inspired some great gaming from me, and just all around gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Blistering barnacles!

Runequest: Why a duck?

If Glorantha-based Runequest was as big as D&D these days, you for sure would be having the guys at Dragonsfoot and other forums smack talking each other about the idea of anthropomorphic ducks in the game.

I don’t recall my exact reaction as a young teen towards intelligent ducks in a role playing game. But I do know that the second character I rolled up and ran in the old games at Aero Hobbies was a duck (my first and most beloved was a Dragonewt with a name so retarded I won’t mention it here). I might have been inspired by having a duck mini that was playing bagpipes. I think I only got to play him in maybe one or two games though. It wasn’t long into the first game before store owner Gary’s character took a dagger and deflated the pipes. Not that I didn’t deserve that; my duck was playing them as we explored the dungeon.

Back then, I guess ducks in Glorantha didn’t strike me as especially awkward. It was already a land that held great mystery and unknowns for me (that I am only getting the backstory on now, decades later), so ducks, dragon-men who came back stronger when they died, Trolls that didn’t automatically attack people nor get automatically attacked, and rapacious, diseased goat-men seemed as worthy as anything else in games. Plus I loved Judges Guild D&D adventure packs, especially those by Paul Jaquays, and those products got you used to lots of cheese and weirdness.

As to why they got included as a race, we may never know. I can’t find any info on specifics. I do know that Howard the Duck was very popular for a brief period in the late 70’s. On the cover of his first issue he was wearing Conan gear. This sounds as good of an inspiration as any, it being a part of the zeitgeist of the times. And they seemed a good replacements for hobbits in the way trolls and broos took the place of orcs and goblins from more standard fantasy settings.

I just know that in my eventual RQ games, Ducks will be a part of it (despite a serious lack of duck mini’s these days). Since I’ve got copies of Duck Pond and Duck Tower, that’s a given.

The Runequest Obsession

Runequest was the second game I ever played after D&D. When I started hanging out at the local hobby shop as a kid, I had only around a year’s worth of experience with D&D. But the older crowd there were sort of past D&D, and heavily into other games. Traveller and Runequest was what were getting the most play at that time. Owner Gary had campaigns of RQ going on, and he had one big wall of the play area covered in situational maps for his games. Gary loved that game so much. Gary died a few years ago, but you can still find some writings of his online outlining various Runequest themes. He had obviously continued on with the Runequest love from the late 70’s and onward through the following decades.

When I stopped hanging out in the store after the early 80’s, Runequest pretty much left my life. The gaming side of my life would carry on for many years with only three favorites; AD&D, Call of Cthulhu, and Champions (games like Toon, Bunnies & Burrows, and Empire of The Petal Throne never got on my playlist, unfortunately). But I left my RQ at Aero Hobbies and never really looked back. I think my preference for AD&D, besides true “Sorcery” magic, was that I had a game world I loved and the rules of RQ would never have translated into it. By the late 80’s, RQ would have been just another game that my regular players were unfamiliar with, and would have taken up precious Champs and Call of Cthulhu time if I introduced it to them.

But man, those early games at the shop. They were this huge mystery to me. The world of Glorantha was based on historical places that were very much unlike what Tolkien, Terry Brooks, and other “classic fantasy” writers were presenting in their worlds. It seemed alien to me. Of course, I had yet to have any interest in ancient Mesopotamia, so I didn’t grok that influence. Adventures took my guys (my favorite was a Dragonnewt and second favorite was a duck. I called him “Scotty MacQuack” because I found a duck figure playing a bagpipe!) from the rough plains and temples of Prax, all the way to the greener hills and grasslands of Lunar Tarsh and Dragon Pass (I think I have that right). This was a patchwork world that was being put together and expanded, in-game, by the game designers at a time when I was having my earliest adventures with it. Cheapo modules like Apple Lane and Barristor’s Barracks gave me the medium to eventually start running some Runequest adventures for my friends. But those games soon got swept away by other things we wanted to play.

Well, I got my hands on a copy of second edition, 1970’s Runequest, and some other items on PDF like Cults of Prax, Pavis & Big Rubble, and Snakepipe Hollow. I never had these before, and my imagination is being fired up again by reading more about Glorantha than I ever did back in the day. Then I was just confusedly being a character running around in these modules and sourcebooks being run by the older pricks at Aero. Now, with all this reading I’m doing, I finally am starting to feel like and “insider” in regards to Runequest. I’m unlocking it’s mysteries for myself, man!

So I guess you could say I am a bit obsessed by old RQ right now. With a (probably short) Knights of The Old Republic campaign in full swing right now, I won’t be running any Runequest any time real soon, but when I do get to introduce its mysteries to my regular players I’ll be ready. It’s a long road to Rune Lords status. Better to get on that road sooner rather than later!

El Dorado

I don't spend a lot of time watching westerns, but this 1967 film starring John Wayne, Robert Mitchem, and James Caan is such a modest, funny little charmer I always stop and watch for awhile, or have it on while cleaning up around the house or sipping coffee on a Saturday morning. Problem is. AMC seems to play it on a monthly basis, so I'm watching it a lot. Watching it right now.

The film starts with a lonesome cowboy song, and images of western vistas. Kinda ironic, cause the film is very small scale and personal. It's the chemistry among the characters that set it apart from much bigger old west epics.

John Wayne is a good guy gunfighter for hire who only chooses the righteous side. Robert Mitchem is the sherrif of the Texas town, who has let himself sink into the bottle over a girl who "ran off with a drummer." The unlikely James Caan is the young and pragmatic Eastern gamblers apprentice.

It's all the little touches that make this little film stand out. Some of my favorite throwaway bits that I keep watching this for include:

*Wayne taking a bullet in his spine early in the film from a ranchers misguided daughter. He spends the rest of the film holding his side and having random seizures.

*Caan can't use a gun for shit, so Wayne gets him a sawed off shottie.

*Mitchem, stinking like hell, tries to take a bath at a time half the town seems to be dropping by. And they all bring soap for him. I guess they are trying to tell him something.

*Caan, chasing some baddies at night, is spoken to by a super hot and sultry, ciggy smoking Mexican gal through a darkened window. She tells him where the bad guys hid because "she does not like these men." She is not seen again after that scene, sadly.

*Mitchum having revenge on a saloon full of evil doers who "laughed at him," including bashing Ed Asners face in with his rifle.

Yeah, a great little Boot Hill game could be based on this.

The film is based on a novel called "The Stars in Their Courses," written by Harry Brown who also wrote the screenplay. The movie is on all the time. Kick back and watch it some one Saturday morning before you go out and actually get something done. Ride Boolie, ride!

DM’s Jollies

Here ChicagoWiz discusses more or less standing his ground on doing in his game what is appealing to him, and not giving in to player demands for what they find fun.

Although I think I am philosophically with him in that, historically I have tried to present things in my games towards player enjoyment. I’ve never really been a “killer DM” or gotten my jollies from “threatening” characters with my bag of DM tricks as is often prevalent among our kind . I think my focus has been on giving players the means to have a good time within the game context, because player’s enjoying my games is probably most of the fun for me. If they feel generally challenged by things, and are also feeling their character is “doing what he does best” and moving towards some as-yet formed destiny, it tends to be fun for them.

The game just sort of happens without a lot of conscious thought during the process of “I’m really enjoying myself!” (Although there have been exceptional in-game moments where I have allowed myself to savor some true bliss). It’s after the game, and during prep for the next one, that I let my mind wander to what I really enjoyed about it. But I can’t expect players to get that same feel. Players need to be palpably enjoying the experience during the game more than any other time. Otherwise it seems like a long time to be sitting at a table together.

Over the decades I have not experienced a lot of player complaints about not getting enough of some thing or another in games. I very rarely hear “we are in the wilderness too much” or “we are in the city too much” or things like that. I present what I am going to present, and players interact with whatever it is. Not necessarily because I “am that good,” but maybe because I am comfortable with any type of location or situation that might pop up in games. I’ve run entire campaigns in the wilderness (ranger and druid focused parties) and in civilization (thieves’ guilds). It’s all good.

Also, because I don’t often enjoy being a player myself, I try not to include things in my own game that I find a turn-off in others. Killer DMing, excruciating and fun-sapping overlong initiative and declaration rounds, and challenges beyond the group’s level are all peeves as a player that I keep in mind as a DM.

But as far as my own enjoyment as DM, it has been tested a bit here and there in my current gaming incarnation. My balls-up with an established Star Wars Saga group the other year is a perfect example of players expecting that the GM is “working for them,” to the point that they even patiently waited for me to leave at the end of a session so they could discuss my performance as a group (can you imagine?).

And in my regular group I have “Power Game Dan” and “Gimmi Gimmi Andy” (great foes of a player-friendly GM) to tussle with on a regular basis. But I get a lot of laughs out of these guys as well, so I don’t feel fully tested as far as an “overworked game master” for the most part. It’s become part of the game dynamic to successfully deal with sharks who go after a fairly easy DM. One hand has “hate” tattooed on the knuckles, and the other has “love” on it.

But bottom line, a GM/DM needs to look to what is fun for him. And if he has no fun whatsoever with games set in towns or whatever, it’s his prerogative to avoid those settings in his games. For the better part of the 90’s I barely had any true dungeons in my games because I had become so tired of them in the 80’s. And this freaking game is called “Dungeons and Dragons.”

Bows VS. Muskets

(above art by Slug Signorino)



I'm a The Straight Dope fan going on over 20 years, since the column regularly appeared in local free press newspapers in LA. Now that the mysterious Cecil has long since had a website, I pop in from time to time to read up on the brilliant answers to often stupid questions.

But this one interested me greatly, seeing as I have seen a lot of online forums approaching the subject of firearms in D&D lately (usually dominated by brainiacs who tell you that your campaign would be ruined by such extravagances). For sure an interesting subject for all gamers, since many do have primative firearms show up from time to time, including me.

The smartest researcher/shut-in in all creation gives you the low down below.




Dear Cecil:
I watched a rerun of The Patriot over the weekend and was once again reminded of how absurd the "volley trading" European style of warfare was (at least to me). From what I understand, even the best-trained troops of the era could squeeze off only three or four inaccurate shots a minute. Given that the opposing armies were standing within 100 yards of each other and wore no protective armor, why didn't they use archers? I'd think even a novice archer could fire off 10 to 15 arrows for every one gunshot from the enemy. Am I oversimplifying this?
— Ted C., Richmond, Virginia

Cecil replies:

This question teeters on that fine line, familiar to us here at the Straight Dope, between intriguing and ludicrous. Before anyone rushes to judgment, be aware that at least one other person had the same brainstorm as Ted. His name? Ben Franklin. So you might want to hear this one out.

In February 1776, concerned about a shortage of gunpowder, Franklin proposed in a letter to General Charles Lee that the colonists arm themselves with bows and arrows, calling them "good weapons, not wisely laid aside." The idea didn't fly, obviously. Let's look at Franklin's reasoning to get a handle on why.

1. "[An archer] can discharge four arrows in the time of charging and discharging one bullet." True. A skilled English archer could loose 15 shots a minute, with ten the minimum acceptable rate. A newly-recruited musketeer, in contrast, would be lucky to get off two shots per minute, while the best a veteran could manage was five. The key phrase here, as we’ll see below, is “skilled English archer.”

2. "His object is not taken from his view by the smoke of his own side." Also true — prior to innovations of the 19th century, visibility was a major issue for armies exchanging gunfire.

3. "A flight of arrows, seen coming upon them, terrifies and disturbs the enemies' attention to their business." This falls into the true-but-so-what category. A storm of incoming arrows let fly by massed archers was undoubtedly terrifying. On the other hand, the din of musketry and cannon fire, the sight of a line of men cut down like weeds and strewn maimed on the ground … that was also pretty distracting. Guns may not have been too accurate in the late 18th century, but they delivered plenty of shock and awe.

4. "An arrow striking in any part of a man puts him hors de combat till it is extracted." Maybe so, but close-range musket wounds reportedly were much more devastating than arrow wounds.

5. "Bows and arrows are more easily provided everywhere than muskets and ammunition." Here's where Franklin starts to go astray, although it's easy to see why he might think this. At the time he wrote, the colonies had few gunsmiths and little gunpowder. In the war's early days George Washington estimated there was only enough powder for his troops to fire nine shots each. Meanwhile, Native Americans seemed to have no difficulty making bows and arrows, so how tough could it be? Answer: tougher than you'd think.

6. "[A] man may shoot as truly with a bow as with a common musket." Here's Franklin's fatal error. He was thinking of the longbow, which had been used to deadly effect during the Hundred Years' War at the battles of Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt (1415). The longbow was an English specialty — armies on the continent used the crossbow, which generally had less range and was much slower to reload. An archer with a crossbow didn't stand a chance against one with a longbow.

Not surprisingly, crossbows were soon replaced by guns.

The longbow might have lasted longer, except for one thing: using it effectively required extraordinary strength and skill. The bow, made of tough yew wood, had a draw weight of 80 to well over 100 pounds, something only the strongest modern archers can manage. Training took years — English law long mandated that boys take archery practice starting as early as age seven.

Fearsome as it was, the longbow didn't automatically trump the musket the way it had the crossbow. English armies in the 16th century were sometimes defeated despite their longbows, and by the time of the Spanish Armada the weapon had largely been eclipsed. Other ancient arms still had their uses — the knight's sword evolved into the cavalryman's saber and the infantryman's bayonet, handy in close combat. Not so the longbow. Once the English concluded it wasn't worth their while to train large numbers of archers, the bow's usefulness in large-scale combat ceased.

By Franklin's day it's doubtful anyone in the colonies knew how to make a longbow or could have used it. The Native American version hadn't proven especially effective in combat, and Franklin's evident belief that it could be made otherwise probably had his correspondent rolling his eyes. Guns had the advantage of simplicity: a kid could pick one up and kill somebody with it, a fact that remains apparent to this day.

— Cecil Adams

"Danger! Danger!"

(photo above: Dr. Smith proving that it’s not only little boys he likes to hang out with)

After a long period of being able to post about an ongoing campaign, I find that now it is over with I can go back to making some posts about pop culture things that appeal to me. Comic books, childhood TV favorites, films, books, etc. all had some influence on me and my gaming. Its one reason having a variety of gaming genres to experience has always been appealing to me.

Having said that, I can’t say Lost in Space added anything to my gaming life, anymore than Adam West’s Batman added anything to my Champions games (unless you count it as an example of what not to do). Still, as a child I loved this show. It didn’t matter that it quickly went from decent and fairly hard Sci Fi to a Dr. Smith mince-fest in short order.

It was a big plus for me that when I was a very young child my dad worked on the show as a set painter. Right now I actually have a listing on Ebay of a beat up copy of a script dad nicked from the set. Not only that, but I visited the set and met both my heroes from the show; Billy Mumy and Jonathan “Dr. Smith” Harris. My memory of it is very sketchy, but according to mom Billy was really nice to me, and chased me around with a ray guy. And Harris actually commented on the sweater I was wearing; I loved the show so much that mom bought me (and my next oldest brother) these long sleeve sweater-like shirts with a plunging ‘V’ neckline like the crew of the Jupiter 2 wore.

As an adult of course I can now laugh at the idiocy of the last couple of seasons. Giant talking carrots, space pirates on motorcycles, space hippies, etc. All the things that Star Trek actually portrayed intelligently.

And after reading William Shatner’s autobiography a few years ago, I got a pretty bad attitude about Lost in Space. He talked about how Gene Rodenberry was trying to do a serious, philosophical Sci Fi show on a limited budget, and at the same time the producers of Lost in Space were stealing leftover props from Star Trek dumpsters to save money on their own big-budget show. It was a time when viewer much preferred to be pandered too than be made to do any hard thinking (reminds you of today a bit, eh?).

But finding the above photo, of Dr. Smith seeming to give a little girl an inappropriately sensual kiss (on first glance I actually thought it was Billy Mumy!), really made me think about the show a bit, and how much fun I had with it despite how horrible it quickly became.

About 20 years ago, backstage at the Southern California Ren Faire, a buddy and me were drinking and goofing around, and for some reason we were doing these very gay impressions of Charles Nelson Reily and Jonathan Harris, and it turned out that a mutual friends of ours there, a girl names Jessie, was the niece of Harris. It blew our mind and we grilled her hard on info about one of our favorite mincing actors of the 60’s and 70’s. she seemed to think of him as being somewhat gay (not that there is anything wrong with it if true), but the fact is that Harris was married for many many years and still was at the time of his death several years ago. I think he had kids too. Harris famously said "I'm not British, just affected". But even though straight, he played an obviously gay character so well and flamboyantly that I still love Doc Smith.

Smith started out as an evil secret agent who tried to sabotage the Jupiter 2 (in the process murdering women and children), but they quickly turned him into a swishing coward who would often hide behind young Will Robinson when there was trouble. Good thing they always sent the robot, probably more to protect the boy from Smith than from alien hippies and android go-go girls.

A Family Guy parody had Will Robinson’s dad telling his son “Why don’t you go for a long walk on this uncharted, hostile alien planet. And take this mincing, child-loving pedophile with you.” But it was actually Harris who created the newer, less evil Dr. Smith from whole cloth. The other actors apparently had great resentment because Harris, Mumy, and the robot were getting all the screen time by the second season.

Not long before his death, Harris appeared on Conan O’Brien around the time when the crappy Lost in Space film came out (Harris refused to do a cameo because he didn’t get to play Smith) in a hilarious bit where he makes fun of Conan’s “Pimpbot” like he had done with his old robot pal decades before. Conan was apparently a huge fan of the show growing up, and it meant the world to him for Harris to insult his Pimpbot. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jydgPW1buhc

If I’m not mistaken, that’s Cheech Marin next to Harris on the couch. Talk about pop culture clash!

Apparently working with Harris was a great experience for Bill Mumy, who stayed close friends right up to Harris’ death. I understand that Mumy was one of the only non-family members present when Harris passed away.

You see Harris pop up in the craziest places. He has done cameos on Sanford and Son, All in the Family, and all kinds of 70’s and 80’s sitcoms. He did a ton of voice work, including one of the Three Musketeers on The Banana Splits. His final role was the voice of the Mantis in A Bug’s Life.

“Danger! Danger! Dr. Smith, step away from the boy!”