Summer of Sword and Sorcery: Week 1

This week's book report....

"The Slithering Shadow" by Robert E. Howard.  Well, Fritz Leiber no less rated this the worst Conan tale Howard ever writ, and he may well be right. From the turn-off opening, with Conan grumpily ignoring his clinging and annoying dishrag of a companion, Natala, a slave girl he's rescued in his latest military disaster, this reads like Howard almost parodying himself (one more reference to "iron thews" and such and I'm gonna hurl).  A certain amount of suspense does arrive as Conan and his whiner explore the Marie Celeste-like setting of the shunned city of Xuthal, and there's a kinky bondage and whipping scene for those with an appreciation of such things (and Natala deserves it!).  The Beastie in the Cellar this time out is Thog, an improvement on the nondescript menace of "A Witch Shall Be Born", but only by a bit.  Definitely lesser stuff.  "Shadow" was adapted a couple times, once in the 70's (Savage Sword of Conan #20) with some very nice Alfredo Alcala art over John Buscema roughs, and less memorably a few years ago in Conan the Avenger.  Neither of them made it a better story, alas.  An inauspicious start.

"The Jewels of Gwahlur" by Robert E. Howard.  Another tale considered one of Howard's prize turkeys.  Actually its an improvement over "Slithering Shadow"; which it rather resembles (abandoned city, helpless slave-girl)  Howard's more on here, and leans less on Conan Cliches to describe his hero.  Conan uses his wits a fair bit, and his plan to turn the tables on the evil priesthood is Leiber-worthy.  But this is still a lesser adventure tale, albeit with some good action and characterization.  I'd classify it as a good enough read but not remotely an essential Conan tale. "Jewels" got the comics treatment in Savage Sword of Conan #25 and Dark Horse's Jewels of Gwahlur miniseries.  Neither of them terribly inspired (much as I like P. Craig Russell)

"The Scarlet Citadel" by Robert E. Howard. This is more like it.  King Conan captured by rival kings and a particularly nasty wizard, held prisoner in a castle full of creepies, then leading an epic counterattack against his would-be usurpers.  Only the big battle scene didn't engage me, and, as in the best Conan stories, its outside characters and forces - in this case, the imprisoned wizard Pelias - that make the tale.  PS Marvel took this one on in Savage Sword of Conan #30, poorly, but Dark Horse did an awesome version entitled King Conan: The Scarlet Citadel which I highly recommend.

"The Dreaming City" by Michael Moorcock.  Now this one was a pleasant surprise!   While I thoroughly enjoyed "Kings in Darkness", I found the writing a bit comic-bookish, and feared the Elric stories would not be as impressive this time around.  Not so! The prose of "The Dreaming City" is perfect, cool and modern with just a touch of flower in its tone, appropriate to the tale.  Not only that, its cinematic - the opening scene is not only vivid enough to conjure up a clear mind-movie, it also manages to give the reader a full understanding of what's going on in about four paragraphs of expository dialog that doesn't even sound expository.   Moving on, it manages to perfectly set up the whole Elric scenario and setting in the course of the tale - important, since this was the first published Elric story, and introduced the world to the albino sorceror-prince and his milieu.  After reading, its easy to see why Elric caught on; "The Dreaming City" definitely leaves one wanting more.  Its also groundbreaking - in 1961, the story inverted practically every sword-and-sorcery trope there is.  What's more, without giving too much away, the story ends not so much is triumph; perhaps more like one of the biggest "be careful what you wish for" endings ever presented.  We have winner, folks.  Might I add, Marvel adapted this into a very fine graphic novel in the 80's with fine artwork by P. Craig Russell.   

"While the Gods Laugh" by Michael Moorcock.  While this doesn't have the punch that "Dreaming City" had, being as much a metaphysical exercise as it is an adventure story, Moorcock's writing is still vivid and imagination is still impressive.  This time out, Elric isn't even an anti-hero; loser supreme might fit him just as well.  An impressively non-derivative fantasy tale.

"The Singing Citadel" by Michael Moorcock.  Very much like "While the Gods Laugh" in that its as much philosophical as it is adventure-ish; "Citadel" comes off as something of a transitional tale, meant to introduce certain ideas and characters and set up future events.  Nevertheless, Elric's rendevous with Yishana is another piece of fine, cinematic writing, and Moorcock's imagination is as vivid as ever.  There's a hint of the pulp tone creeping in, but not enough to overwhelm the otherwise strong storytelling.  

Summer of Sword and Sorcery: the Prologue

The summer of 1980.  It was a hot one, as I recall.  I spent a lot of weekends playing D&D and the weekdays mostly reading and listening to rock and roll a whole lot.  There wasn't much else going on.  And mostly I was reading fantasy.

Ah, Appendix N, Gary Gygax's list of influences buried in the back of the Dungeon Master's

Guide.  It gets a lot of attention these days, much of it centered around trying to figure out where EGG's head was at (don't get me started) and what it was he drew from the listed authors/titles.  What gets left out and forgotten in this day and age, when the shelves groan with thick-as-a-brick fantasy fiction, is that its a pretty comprehensive list of all there was in the way of fantasy back in them thar days.  

By no means its is a complete list of every fantasy of the swords or epic variety (the Earthsea, Narnia and Prydain books are notable omissions) - nor, after all, did it claim to be.  Rather it was EGGhead listing his major favorites and influences.  A highly personal list.  And yet for all its selectiveness, it really was pretty comprehensive.  There aren't a lot of holes, and I'd say it was a nigh-unbeatable starting point - most of what was worth reading was there, and, once immersed, the missing items would soon reveal themselves to the dedicated geek.

Having grown up in a house with fantasy/sci-fi loving parent and sibling, there wasn't much on the fabled list I hadn't heard of (hardly anything, really).  But at that point, I hadn't read much of it, yet.  That summer was when I dug in.  

It was an important summer.  I was 14.  In the fall I would begin high school.  I was looking forward to big adventures.  I was full of hormones, imagination, and curiosity.  I was home, alone, without much to do, all summer long.  So with the radio blasting its early 80's uneasy mix of old rock, "new wave" and dinosaurs, and in between bouts of intense study with my treasured Playboy collection, I was off in the lands of swords and monsters....

Forty years later, I'm a working stiff.  Home alone in the midst of our pandemic lockdown.  Every day at 11 I break from work or at least 90 minutes and have some lunch and a read.  My library is finally unpacked.  And the lands of swords and monsters beckon...

I actually started in May, with a week-long selection of long-unvisited texts.  My choices

being Michael Moorcock's "Kings in Darkness" (Elric and his sidekick Moonglum, a castle in a shunned forest kingdom, and the revenant of an ancestral king raised from the dead via blood sacrifice - c'mon how can you go wrong?);  Fritz Leiber's "Lean Times in Lankhmar" (religion and chicanery in the fabled city of the Black Toga) and "Thieve's House" an earlier Lankhmarian tale involving some sinister treasures and something potentially nasty in the basement of the Lankhmarian thieve's HQ; Robert E. Howard's "A Witch Shall Be Born", the infamous tale that includes Conan's crucifixion and vulture-chomping; Jack Vance's "Turjan of Miir" and "Mazirian the Magician", two odd little tales from the odd little Dying Earth; "Raven's Eyrie", one of Karl Edward Wagner's dark, knotty ditties of Kane, the immortal and amoral sorcerer/warrior/all-around S.O.B.; and lastly but not leastly pornographer and narcissist Andrew J. Offut's "Shadowspawn", his contribution to Thieve's World, the first of the Sanctuary books.  The attraction of these particular tales was that I had little memory of these stories other than certain details and that I had liked them.



So what did I (re)discover?  Well, I'll tell ya...

Mr. Moorcock.  I was a latecomer to Moorcock-mania; most of my fantasy friends pretty much started there.  But at around 16 I took the dive and it was easy for me to see why my buds were so taken with Moorcock's colorful, sorcerous S&S.  "Kings in Darkness" was one of the first Moorcock's I read - I remember getting a copy of The Dreaming City at the library near my beloved grandmother's apartment, and I went for "Kings" for the very logical reason that it was the shortest tale in the book!  "Kings" gives us Elric and his loyal sidekick Moonglum, fleeing trouble in the kingdom of Nadsokor, and finding themselves making their way through the dank forests of Org, a place with a relatively well-earned bad rep, since its the home of some decadent, dying aristocrats and their morlock-ish, lesser relatives who serve as slaves and foot soldiers.  Along with Elric's new squeeze Zarozinia, whom they meet along the way, they end up first guests, then prisoners, of some of those decadent aristos.   It all leads to a fiery climax in a dungeon full of ghouls, crazed, decadent aristos, human sacrifice, and towering undead king's skeletal remains slugging it out with Elric. While the details had slipped my mind, I retained a general impression in my memory of an isolated forest castle, dungeons, undead, the king's skeletal revenant. In truth I remembered the gist of it pretty well, since those are the outstanding features. 

The biggest surprise, honestly, was Moorcock's writing.  Not that its bad, per se, but its slightly comic book-ish; pulpy, purple, it reminded me of something Stan Lee might have penned in a classic Marvel comic issue.  Moorcock's writing, here at least, doesn't have the resonance of Leiber or even Howard, the ornate charm of Vance or C.A. Smith, or even the plainspoken contemporary solidity of Karl Wagner.  Again, it's not that it's bad, but of all these pieces, Moorcock required the most shifting of my headspace from sophisticated and well-read middle-ager to wide-eyed high schooler.    


Now Leiber - that's s a very different story altogether.  For one thing, the Fafhrd/Mouser

books were the major component of that summer `80 reading binge.  I loved them.  I got all the way through Swords of Lankhmar before taking a break before diving into Swords and Ice Magic.  Leiber also goes way back for me.  The first serious adult SF I ever read was Gather Darkness, back in 7th grade.  

"Lean Times in Lankhmar" was one of the most memorable of the Fafhrd/Mouser stories - most of which are pretty memorable.  In part because its a departure - it splits the two heroes apart for the first time.  The second reason is that I remembered it as one of the funniest - and most of the stories are pretty funny.  

In "Lean Times", the Mouser and Fahrd go their separate ways; the Mouser becomes a sneaky enforcer for a low-level protections racket, while Fafhrd becomes acolyte to a martyr-based religion centered around a very minor god called Issek of the Jug.  The story, a long-ish one, tells what happens and how our heroes are somewhat unintentionally brought together once more, and ends with a side-splitting climax involving an avatar of Issek (how that comes about I won't give away) and one of the Mouser's failed Big Plans.  This may come in just behind Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings as the funniest fantasy I've ever read.  "Theive's House", one of the earliest F/GM stories, involves a raid on a ring of thieves who have an unsettling secret even they don't quite understand in their basement.  Its an exciting, witty and at times outright spooky (Leiber was a fine horror author as well) tale.
 
Now Howard is no surprise.  I've been a staunch defender of Howard for many years.  Every time I revisit a favorite Howard story, I'm impressed by the sheer power of his writing.  His best writing practically burns with dark and sorcerous energy.  I couldn't remember a damn thing about "A Witch Shall Be Born" except Conan getting crucified and chomping the vulture that tries to peck his eyes out.  Unfortunately, even though Howard was a fine writer, not all of his stories were classics.  The reason I couldn't remember anything else about "Witch" is that the crucifixion is the only really memorable part of the story, though it does feature an impressive villainess (the witch of the title); by and large the story is a bit of a throwaway, with an anticlimactic ending and a tacked-on monster that's a real letdown given some of the memorable horrors of Howard's best stories.  

"Turjan of Miir" and "Mazirian the Magician" are the opening volleys of Vance's classic The Dying Earth.  These are odd little stories, clearly heavily influenced by Lord Dunsany with a strong touch of Clark Ashton Smith in the elegant prose style, which is Smith-like but distinctly Vance's own - less spicy and dripping with acidic decadence.  Quite lovely stories that deal more with love and yearning than typical S&S adventure.  These didn't quite hit me as hard as they did when I last read them, at 17, only because I've read many of Vance's influences and antecedents, but their peculiar charm is still there.

I was a jaded 20 y.o. when I read Wagner's "Kane" books - all of `em.  And loved them.  I haven't revisited Kane much for a long time either, but the couple times I did I was always re-impressed.  

After the light-hearted Leiber story, "Raven's" was a bit like a sudden cold wind on a warm day.  Kane and some pals have been terrorizing a mountain community, raiding, raping and pillaging, for years.  Now with a heavy price on their heads, they're fleeing a battle with some mercenary vigilantes.  Kane is mortally wounded but, being Kane (he is immortal after all) is struggling towards recovery.  The bandit band is moving through hostile territory with their leader barely conscious and tied to his horse, with a mercenary crew on their tails, and its the Moon of the Demonlord, an annual event in which the Lord of Hell is said to roam the woods, hunting for souls with his great black hound.  Kane tells them to stop at Raven's Eyrie, a roadhouse in the area.  But it turns out Kane has some history with its owner … and not good history.  

Things get darker still as the story unfolds, as Raven's Eyrie turns out to be a full-on gothic nest, complete with secret passages and dungeons; mercenaries stalk and torture bandits, while Kane stalks them, and The Demonlord stalks the woods, black hound in tow.  Kane even experiences a bizarre vision of hell as he goes to his confrontation with The Demonlord.

This was a great ride.  Wagner was a fine writer, with a plain and straightforward style that suits the story perfectly.  The tale drips with dark, supernatural atmosphere.  Kane is easily the most complex sword`n'sorcery "hero" - Wagner uses Stanley Kubrick's trick of making his hero a despicable human being, but one we root for simply because the characters around him are even more loathsome.

Saving the most recent title for last, though this 1979 tale could hardly be called "new" (hard to believe, when I first read it in 1982, it most assuredly was on the new side).  "Shadowspawn" is an entry in the Thieve's World series, what would now be called a shared-world fantasy series set in and around a Lankhmar-ian town currently under occupation by the Roman-like Rankan empire.  Shadowspawn is the nickname of a young fellow named Hanse, a young thief with a little skill and a lot of chutzpah, who finds himself way over his head when he's employed to pull off a particularly nervy theft - only to find he's part of a subversive plan to humiliate the Ranken regent Prince Kadakithis - and then finds himself even further over his head when double-crosses and court intrigue come into play.  Offut's writing is plain and solid, with a touch of wit.  I started out not so sure, but the cleverness of the plot and the way Hanse goes from hero to chump is almost Leiber-worthy.

My takeaway: Leiber is the clear leader here, the wittiest and best writer.  Howard remains pretty much definitive sword`n'sorcery, Wagner comes in behind him, having taken the lessons of all the above (and below); Vance is so unique in his odd way as to be difficult to pin down - more like a treat than a meal but a pretty nice treat; still I think there might be more to it when I dig deeper into the book; Offutt is probably worth reading more by, and my interest in Thieve's World is re-piqued; Moorcock comes in the last, writing-wise, but is still fun to read.

Anyway, my dipping my toe in the sword`n'sorcery water was enough to lead to a decision; which is to make this my second summer of sword`n'sorcery.  Remember summer reading lists?  I made myself one, and here it is:

Robert E. Howard - "The Slithering Shadow", "The Jewels of Gwahlur", "The Scarlet Citadel", "Black Colossus", "Drums of Tombalku", "Shadows in the Moonlight"
Michael Moorcock - "The Dreaming City", "While the Gods Laugh" The Sailor on the Seas of Fate
Karl Edward Wagner - Darkness Weaves, Dark Crusade 
Jack Vance - The Dying Earth
Fritz Leiber - Swords Against Death
Anthology - Thieve's World
Gardner Fox - Kothar - Barbarian Swordsman
Andre Norton - Web of the Witch World
Lin Carter - The Enchantress of World's End
Leigh Brackett - The Sword of Rhiannon

So, it's going to be a summer full of swords, lusty broads, monsters and magic.  And a lot of fun, I imagine.  It'll keep me from thinking about the pandemic or the election anyhoo.  I'll post more thoughts here as I read along.

Special mention to the guys who do the Appendix N Book Club podcast, who got me interested in the Carter and Kothar books I would otherwise have likely passed on.

I Love BRP

I want to say something.  Because it needs to be said.

I love BRP.

I flat-out LOVE it.

It is the simplest, most logical, most straightforward, most elegant RPG system I have ever come across.  Period. 

If BRP was a dancer, it would amaze me with its moves every time I saw it dance.  If BRP was a musician, it would make my jaw drop every time I heard it play.

I’m being a little bit facetious and hyperbolic there, but really that does describe how I feel about it.

I love the big gold book.  One cover.  300+ pages and its got 99% of everything I need to run any kind of campaign I could want.  Say it’s too long, or too overwhelming.  Sorry.  I don’t agree.

And, by the way – I love the Resistance Table, and Strike Ranks.  Yes – I mean it.

A year or two ago, I acquired a huge cache of D&D books – from original to 3.5.  Oh, and Pathfinder stuff, too.  I got kind of intrigued.  And I decided to not only check them out thoroughly, but, for fun, to convert my favorite old AD&D characters, long ago mothballed,  to 3.5/Pathfinder.  And also to BRP.  It was an enlightening experience.

Certainly, 3.5 improves on a lot of things from clunky old AD&D.  It’s a lot more streamlined, quite a bit more logical and flexible, and it flows much more nicely.  

But as I began to adapt these characters, I found myself getting irritable.  It’s a lot of work.  All the tables, the feats, the skill system, the levels.  Why don’t the experience levels and the spell levels of magic-using characters sync up?  Wouldn’t it make more sense if a being 10^th level meant you could cast 10^th level spells?  Why is the combat system so damn complicated?  It still looks like miniature warfare rules.  In fact, it looks more like miniature warfare rules than the AD&D combat system!  I would never want to play it.

And then I converted them to BRP.  And it took mere moments.  Because there’s so much I don’t have to think about.  Break down the characteristics, calculate derived stuff, assign the skills and – boom – you’re done.  Nothing is lost – it’s all there – just a hell of a lot simpler.

A few years back I got GURPS Cabal, an interesting occult RPG setting, and looked at with an eye to doing a BRP adaptation.  The biggest revelation was the magic system. 

See, the Cabal magic system is built on occult arcana, and there’s a host of modifiers that will affect the outcome of any spell.  It takes a whole (lengthy) chapter to detail it all. 

And yet, looking at it, I realized that the entire thing could be boiled down to a single, simple table of modifiers.  One table. One page. 

Why do people like to complicate things?

That’s another thing I love about BRP.  It’s ridiculously simple to add to or subtract from.

If you must.

Still, I keep seeing posts about adding things, like “feats”. 

I can’t see the purpose – when I converted those old characters to 3.5 and then BRP, there was nothing in “feats” that couldn’t be covered by skills and skill levels.

Oh, “advantages/disadvantages” – I see that one come up a lot.  I once gave someone great offense on yog-sothoth.com when I said I couldn’t see any real benefit to adding them to the game.  And I can’t.

Hey don’t get me wrong – if you really like “feats” or “advantages/disadvantages” – by all means – add them.  But you’ll never convince me they’re necessary, or make the game better somehow.

Okay, I admit, I’m feeling a little bit like, well, let’s put it this way…

Lately I’ve been reading my way through the run of The Dragon magazine.  It’s sometimes hilarious to see Gary Gygax’s infamous rants about players monkeying with his game, foaming at the mouth over things like critical hits, hit locations, point-based magic systems, weapon proficiencies, monsters as player-characters, etc etc etc.  And how the game was perfect and you would screw it up royally if you changed or added any little thing (of course, strictly speaking Gygax wasn’t totally wrong – AD&D didn’t have a lot of flexibility and any changes always seemed to feel bolted-on) (I should also note that many rules-variants that appeared in The Dragon were pretty awful). 

Well, I won’t say BRP is perfect.  I don’t believe in perfect.  But its perfect for me.  It’s the closest thing to perfection I’ve seen.  I won’t say you can’t or shouldn’t mess with it – actually, it’s a lot easier to mess with than many (most? all?) other systems.  But I will say I don’t feel the need.

So, yeah, I love BRP.  And I’m going to play BRP.  And nothing else, really.  Because as I said – it can handle any setting or genre I care to throw at it.

I hope that Chaosium will continue to support it.  But if they don’t – well – for years before the big gold book came out, there was a community out there – well not really a community, just a bunch of us out there in the wilderness -  who basically adapted our own versions of it, cobbled together from RQ and COC and Stormbringer, et al.  We played BRP even though it was barely on the market. 

And so, I’ve done it before.  I’ll do it again if I must.

I love BRP (said it again) and I have great, great affection for Chaosium. 

But I’ve got what I need if they decide to shut the taps off.

And by the way, Chaosium – with all due respect, CoC didn't need "fixing". 

Empire of the Imagination

I'm probably the wrong person to review this book.  But I'm going to.

See, I've been very intrigued by books like Of Dice and Men, books that talked about the history of the games and peoples' personal experiences.  What they remember.  What their campaigns were like.  Similarly, I was a big fan of James Maliszewski's Grognardia blog, for much the same reason.

So, when I saw Empire of the Imagination by Michael Witwer staring at me from the new book shelf of my local library, I took it home.  And polished it off - because its a quick read - not because its that much of a page-turner.

So review it I shall.  But be warned... I come not to praise but to bury. Just so you know.

As a book, its pretty lightweight.  It is not so much a biography as a series of (to quote GoodReads) "fictionalized vignettes" built around key moments in Gygax's life, or to illustrate his character.  Some of it seems to be drawn from actual research ... and some of it doesn't.  No matter how you slice it, this isn't exactly biography as we know it.

A bigger problem is that, frankly, Gygax's life wasn't exactly the stuff of great thrills.  We're talking about Gary Gygax, here, not T.E. Lawrence.  Gygax's personal flaws or mistakes aren't nearly as interesting as, say,  H.P. Lovecraft's appalling racial beliefs.  Even his "wild years" in Hollywood are pretty tame compared to, say, Iggy Pop.

The biggest problem though is, I must confess, I don't buy the adulation of the old EGG-head.  This is not to say he was a bad person (he sounds like a decent enough man, with some admitted failings), or that he wasn't, really a (the) seminal figure in the story of role-playing games.  But some big claims are made for him here and elsewhere, by those gamers out there who still idolize the guy (and Witwer is clearly one of those).  So let's try putting a little perspective here.

Gygax's story is hardly the tale of a great success in any field or function.  He was a high-school dropout, had a brief and undistinguished stint in the military, was a mediocre insurance salesman before getting laid off/terminated (Witwer puts this down in part to a ruthless co-worker, but also admits Gygax was prone to using company time and materials to work on wargame-related projects).  His only real passion seems to have been gaming - and it was enough of a passion that it actually helped crumble his marriage.  Yeah - Dungeons and Dragons was an enormous, and lasting, commercial success.  But it was his only one.

Nothing else from his company even came close (though some wargames were commercially successful - by wargames standards).  Once he got wealthy the money got squandered.  Aand while Gygax loved to declaim about how the folks back in Lake Geneva were blowing money left and right, he was living high on the hog in Hollywood, in a mansion, stuffing coke up his nose and rubbing elbows with celebrities. In other words, he squandered plenty of that money himself.  His attempts at mounting a high-quality D&D movie to compete with Star Wars et al went nowhere (we got a cheap-ass Saturday morning cartoon out of it instead).  He was forced out of the company he founded.  In response, he tried some new business ventures.  They went nowhere.  He wrote a stack of undistinguished fantasy novels that even his staunchest admirers admit are, at best guilty pleasures.  He wrote some new game systems that never caught on (one of which quickly gained a rep as a laughable disaster).

This is hardly the bio of a successful guy.  Its more the story of a guy who caught lightning in a bottle.  I'm not even sure how much of D&D's success is based on anything Gygax actually did as far as marketing it or anything else (though selling the books in toy stores was definitely a good idea).  It seems to have been simply the right thing at the right time.

He's supposed to be a brilliant game designer.  In truth, even back in the day, us D&D players could see the rules were clunky and weird.  If his design for D&D was so remarkable, why are his rules long out-of-print, while the later editions (3 and on) remain the gold standard?  Yes, I know there are hold-outs who love his system, though most often it seems to be the original three books, not the later AD&D, that they cling to - or, more often one of the later homages such as Labyrinth Lord, etc. 

all due credit to whoever created this one and others

Witwer claims Gygax was a "genius", "off-the-charts in terms of [not only] his intellectual capacity" actually, while undeniably an intelligent man, he seems to have had a painfully narrow field of vision. 

Reading through the AD&D books now, I'm struck by the sense of expectation; the assumption that, of course, players and DMs are not only going to play the game the way Gygax envisions it (and them), but that they would, naturally, want to. 

Of course, and inevitably, inventive gamers soon found many different styles and ways to play the game -ways he hadn't anticipated.  And instead of going "Hey, wow - I'd never thought of that" or even "well, I wouldn't care to play that way, but what the heck - as long as they're having a good time," he ranted on and on in the pages of The Dragon and elsewhere about the heretical things players were doing with his game.(1) 

The alleged reason for Gygax's academic failure was that he just couldn't tolerate being forced to study subjects that didn't interest him (cue the violins, man).  He seems to have largely turned up his nose at any kind of learning or entertainment outside of his own field of enthusiasm or interest. (2)  These are all indicators of a limited outlook and a narrow mind.  Sorry - that precludes "genius."

In the epilogue, Witwer tries to make the case that Gygax is responsible for the popularity of fantasy in recent years - citing the enormous success of the Lord of the Rings films, and the Harry Potter phenom.  Nice try.  But Lord of the Rings has been hugely popular, since the 60's, and fans have been begging for a film from the day one (or, after the Bakshi and Rankin-Bass animations, begging for a good one).  As for Harry Potter - the bulk of the kids who make up the Potter audience probably never played D&D in their life.  Meanwhile, Terry Brooks and Stephen R. Donaldson's books and The Silmarillion were all on the best-seller lists at exactly the time the AD&D books hit the stores.  If you wanted to say that the success of D&D helped spread the appreciation and popularity of fantasy, you'd get no argument from me - it certainly did.  But it was part of a larger zeitgeist that was already happening - not the instigator of it.  Like I said - right place, right time.

So ... is Empire a good book?  Not especially.  Neither it is especially a bad one.  It's level of value, I suppose, comes down to how badly you want to read about the EGG.  If you're an loyal admirer, as Witwer clearly is, you might find this little love letter affecting.  If you're of a more critical bent, as I am, you'll probably find it a lot less enthralling.

(1) I'm making this a footnote because it's a major digression, but I also think its relevant and touches on several things I've stated above.  I'm thinking back on Gygax's "Drow" series of modules.  These modules were hot items when I was a kid, and, if you've ever read them, you may understand why I was genuinely shocked when I got my hands on them.  For those who haven't read them, here's the secret: there's not a lot of meat there.  "Descent Into the Depths of the Earth" gives us a vast labyrinth of potential adventure, then throws in a few wandering monsters and a couple detailed encounters and then ... leaves the rest for you to develop.  The third module presents a sinister Drow city (the horribly-named Erelhei-Cinlu - gawd EGG was bad at names [yes I know he based it on his kids' names.  How very sweet.  It's still a crappy name]), describes it (relatively evocatively) in a paragraph or two, and then, again, leaves the rest to you.  No details.  Not even a map of the city.

And this, depending on your perspective, is either its genius or its failing.  The modules are full of undeveloped, but tantalizing, ideas.  Essentially, Gygax gave the DM a big blank canvas, filled in a corner, dropped some cool suggestions and said "you do the rest."  

The "old school" crowd calls it great stuff.  Lots of cool ideas to develop and not a tiresome amount of needless detail.  The younger gen, raised on products of the last couple decades, considers it a rip-off, to put something so sketchy and incomplete out there.

I tend to lean to the "old school" view on this one.  There's a lot of seeds that good stuff could grow from here, and a creative, world-building GM could have hours/days/years of fun developing the Drow caverns and the city alone.

But there's the interesting conundrum.  Again, most AD&D players were young teenagers (or at best, college kids). At 14/15, we knew very little about life and the world.  We knew very little about fantasy literature (most of us were still working our way through the reading list at the back of the DMG - and making discoveries!).  Only the smartest, most creative of kids would have ever been able to develop anything really good out of these materials.

And so it seems, intentionally or not (I suspect not), Gygax - a smart, creative nerd, created something not only this module but really in the whole game itself, that essentially guaranteed that only the smartest, most creative, and most dedicated (in other words, nerdiest) kids would really get the most out of. Gygax once stated that the games he created were the kinds of games he himself wanted to play.  And that certainly seems to be a true statement.

(2) This leads me to another digression, which is that, as many have noted, Gygax was a very bad writer.  Overly verbose, florid, and turgid.  His love of arcane vocabulary suggests a guy very much in love with the florid and decadent styles of Clark Ashton Smith and Jack Vance (he was apparently particularly a fan of the latter).  Add to this an air of tiresome pomposity that seemed to color everything he wrote; Gygax's literary voice was that of a tiresome old poop, hectoring and lecturing from on high.  When he attempted to inject a little humor, it invariably fell flat.

This is no crime in and of itself.  Tastes are subjective, and some fans even like Gygax's style.  But it was a major detriment when trying to write game rules.  Case in point: while putting together some notes on using hex maps, I looked back to the original DM Guide for the entry on hex maps and hex mapping.  I remembered finding it hard to follow as a kid.  Damn!  Reading it today, I find it impenetrably obtuse - I still can't tell what he was trying to say.

My point here is: if you want to write, you have to read.  And you have to read everything - not just things you already know you like.  You have to sample the whole banquet.  You have to try out those great figures of literature and thought.  If you're like most, some will leave you cold, some you will hate - and some you will find thrilling and inspiring.  Beyond that, you have to learn editing: to be able to go back over your own precious words and ask yourself, "Did I make that clear?  Did I say that in a way that others will easily understand me?"  

Defenders of Gygax's prose often note that he was largely self-educated.  Fair enough.  But there's the rub - he didn't throw the net far enough.  He didn't learn to edit himself.  He didn't expose himself to enough that was outside his interest and comfort zone.  He limited himself.  Again ... not genius.

Giants in the Girth #2

Figured it was about time for another one.  Once again,  Note this is presented without permission purely for fun.  If you're the copyright holder and have a gripe, drop me a message and I'll take the post down. 


HARRY DRESDEN


"Paranoid?  Probably.  But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there isn’t an invisible demon about to eat your face."  

Harry Dresden is a Chicago-based sad-sack private detective, and powerful wizard.  You can even find him in the phone book, listed under "Wizard."  He's noted as one of the most powerful wizards of his era, but also as one of the most unruly.  He maintains an uneasy relationship with The White Council, an ancient organization that monitors and regulates magicians (in later novels Dresden becomes a "Warden" of the Council, a kind of FBI agent of the magician world).  



Harry is a born wizard, the son of a wizard mother and a stage magician father (his full name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden).  Like another famous magician named Harry, both of his parents died while Dresden was quite young.  After bouncing around the foster care system, he was adopted by a wizard named Justin DuMorne, who gave him his early training, but also tried to lead him down a demonic path.  This ended in DuMorne's death, and began Harry's rocky relationship with the Council.

http://saintash.deviantart.com/art/Harry-Dresden-191452717

Harry is stubborn, a smartass, honest to a fault,  with a dangerous sense of honor and commitment.  This often leads him to pursue lost causes and go up against impossible odds in order to protect an innocent or a friend or ally.  He triumphs largely due to combination of blind luck, good allies, and a complete refusal to surrender.  Nevertheless he tends to emerge from these challenges much the worse for wear. Harry's cases invariably draw him into supernatural mysteries and confrontations with more powerful wizards, demons, and Creatures from the Beyond.  


Harry has a host of allies and friends, both mundane and supernatural, who aid him in his investigations.  He is also an avid fan of RPG's.




STR 17 CON 19 SIZ 18 INT 18 POW 25
DEX 14 CHA (APP) 14 EDU 20


Move:  10
Hit Points: 19
Damage Bonus: +1d6
Armor: 10 points AP  if wearing leather duster
Attacks:  Brawl (4) 87% 1d6+1d3
Heavy Revolver (5) 67% 1d6+2
Sword (6) 42% 1d8+1d6
Skills: Bargain 64%, Climb 69%, Command 64%, Dodge 75%, Drive 39%, Etiquette (Faerie) 59%, Etiquette (Vampire Courts) 59%, Fast Talk 69%, Fine Manipulation 62%, First Aid 136%, Grapple 77%, Hide 49%, Insight 65%, Jump 64%, Knowledge - Occult 85%, Listen 90%, Literacy 100%, Medicine 46%, Perform 64%, Persuade 74%, Research 85%, Ride 39%, Sense 70%, Spot 90%, Stealth 54%, Strategy 69%, Swim 67%, Teach 69%, Throw 69%


Powers: Soul Gaze (90%) - when looking directly into another person's eyes, Harry can perceive them at their deepest level - seeing into their soul and realizing their true nature, potential, abilities, motivations.


The Sight (100%) -  a true wizard can see the world as it truly is, on a magical and spiritual level, bypassing all veils and illusions and showing people and things as they truly are.   Using it, Dresden can, for example, see the true nature of a supernatural creature in disguise. Wizards are reluctant to use this skill as memories of whatever is seen as always indelible, and often painful.  


Perfect Healing (100%) - Harry heals at a normal rate, but normally permanent damage such as scars, burns, etc will heal over time and return tissues to normal - though it can take a long time.


Death Curse (100%) - A wizard's death curse is a devastating final act of magic they can unleash, usually in the seconds before their demise.  The existence of the death curse makes many reluctant to kill a true wizard.  The death curse requires all of the wizards POW, leaving him at 0 POW and, therefore, deceased.  The exact nature of the curse depends on the caster, it can be as simple as a blast of devastating force, or something more subtle, such as the death curse Harry himself received from another wizard - that he die alone.


Equipment:  Harry wears an assortment of rings charged with POW (assume 2d6 POW in each ring at a given time); a "blasting rod" which focuses his ability to send energy-based magical attacks (assume it adds +15%); he has a wizard's staff which serves a similar function, and conforms to the "Wizard's Staff" in the BRP rules.  He has a bracelet that doubles the effect of any Shield spell that he casts, and a necklace that also adds +10% to any spell casting (and +15% to any divination spells).  His leather duster is magically enchanted to serve as armor.


Spells: Fire, Perception, Protection, Tracking, Vision, Animate Skeleton, Ward - many others.


Harry's magic has a tendency to go slightly awry, and can be dangerous to innocent bystanders.  Assume his spells to be more powerful than expected.  


This depicts a rather early version of Harry Dresden.  Over the course of the several novels to date, his powers increase (and sometimes decrease) greatly.  Consider this a "generic" Dresden.

Further Reference:  Harry Dresden has appeared in 13 novels and 1 short-story collection, so far, by author Jim Butcher.  So far all of them have been terrific, very reminiscent of the "Unknown" style of pulp fantasy/horror of the 40's, which brought ancient supernatural forces into contemporary setting with a lot of humor that never undercut the spookiness.  I highly recommend the whole series to date.  There have also been some graphic novels (which didn't do much for me) and a short-lived TV series which totally failed to capture the spirit of the books (of course it has its followers).  Evil Hat also has an official Dresden Files roleplaing game on the market.

Conan the Missed-Opportunarian

So I watched the new "Conan the Barbarian" film last night, prepared to really hate it.  I got a little surprise because I actually found it fairly entertaining and not the hopeless piece of shit I expected.  It's much better than the 1982 version (which I enjoyed when it came out but now find unwatchable).  And it actually does capture a certain amount of the spirit of the stories and even the character, though not perfectly.

Still, the thing that bugs me (or more specifically, the frustrated film-maker in me, I suppose), is that it would be possible to make a truly outstanding Conan-based film, if someone just cared enough to do it right.

Allow me to elaborate -  my requirements for doing a proper Conan movie:

I. Casting

1. Cast an Actor as Conan - do not cast a bodybuilder, a pro-wrestler or anyone else whose background isn't in acting.  You don't need Laurence Olivier here, but you do need someone with the ability to emote and deliver a few lines with conviction.  Cast for acting ability - not physique.  Jason Momoa actually wasn't bad - much better than ol' Arnie's leaden performance in the first film - but when he opens in his mouth I hear a 21st Century American Dude - not a Cimmerian from a prehistoric world.
2. Conan Does Not Need To Be Musclebound - he needs to be big, imposing, and muscular.  He does not need to be huge.  Actually, again, I thought Momoa was just about right on this score, too - muscular and fit but not enormous.  Again, cast an actor - bulk him up in the gym before filming if you have to!

II. The Character

1. Drop the "Origin Story" - Conan does not have an origin story.  Howard never wrote one.  It isn't necessary.  All you need to know about Conan is pretty well established the minute he walks onscreen.
2. Conan Is Not Seeking Revenge for His Parents Murder - used twice now and it was stupid the first time.  Conan is seeking adventure and a few niceties of life (very few).  He's not Batman.  He doesn't have Daddy issues.

3. Conan Is Not A Clod - so don't portray him as one.  He's a man of action.  He's not unintelligent.
4. Get His Name Right - Conan's last name is not "Barbarian," and his middle name is not "The."  It is not necessary to have every character he encounters point out his "barbarian-ness" or call him "barbarian" in case we forgot.


III. The Story

1. Read the Howard Stories - or re-read them if you haven't,
2. Now Read the Howard Stories Again - in case you didn't get it the first time
3. Ignore All Conan Stories Not Written By Howard and Howard Alone - if it says DeCamp, Carter, Nyberg, Roy Thomas or anyone else - forget about it.  Go back to the source.
4. Ignore all Comic Books, Cartoon Series, TV Series, and Especially the Schwarzenegger Films
5. Adapt One of the Best Stories (and Do So Respectfully) - look, "Beyond the Black River," "Red Nails," "Rogues in the House," "People of the Black Circle" and "Queen of the Black Coast" - any of those stories gives you all you need to shoot a feature film.  You could practically work without a script, needing little embellishment and no trimming.  There's five possible films right there! You've got your whole series!  (Sadly, an animated film of "Red Nails" was started but apparently never completed, and Karl Edward Wagner wrote a screen treatment for either the second or the unproduced third Schwarzenegger film which also went unproduced).

The thing that people keep missing, I think, is this: Conan is the least interesting aspect of the Howard stories.

There, I said it.  I mean it.
Oh don't get me wrong - he's a good enough character, obviously.  But there's not much to him.  He's big, he's tough, he's occasionally funny in his sarcasm and to-the-point approach.  But really, almost the only thing Conan himself ever does that I find memorable is the hilariously over-the-top machismo of biting off the vulture's head in "A Witch Shall Be Born."
What makes the Conan stories memorable is what happens around Conan.  He's the eye of the hurricane, so to speak, as this fantastic world and events swirl in circles around him, and he observes and reacts.  What sticks with me about the Conan stories ---

* The demon in the woods in "Beyond the Black River"
* The opening of "Conan the Conqueror" with the magicians performing their sinister rites
* Valeria terrorized by the skeletal figure that emerges from the catacombs of the underground city in "Red Nails"
* The broken and dying Yag-Kosha in "The Tower of the Elephant"
* Conan stalking (and being stalked by) Thak through the halls of the Red Priest's home ("Rogues in the House")

* The black, winged figure launching itself from the trees, the disturbing realization that the handholds of the altar were not meant for human hands, Conan's eerie black-lotus induced dream, and, finally, Conan waiting in the temple ruins for a final (for one of them - and the point is it might well be for Conan) confrontation with the degenerate, evil demon  - all in "Queen of the Black Coast."

These are what stays.  It was never Conan, but Howard's ability to evoke his primitive, ancient, sorcerous world so vividly, that made the stories so memorable.  And that's what the films so far have missed.  Maybe someday.  It took three tries to get Tolkein right, after all.