James Maliszewski's Blog, page 37

REVIEW: Wulfwald

A common early complaint about Dungeons & Dragons was that the game's three little brown books failed to provide much in the way of a cultural or social context for its "fantastic medieval wargames campaigns." Correcting this perceived shortcoming was part of the impetus behind the creation and publication of several early RPGs that appeared in OD&D's wake, most notably Empire of the Petal Throne, Chivalry & Sorcery, and even RuneQuest to some extent. All of these games (and others) place much greater emphasis on the ways that culture and society not only intersect with but can offer a justification for adventuring than Dungeons & Dragons did at the time or, in fact, has ever done. 

I was reminded of this when I started reading Wulfwald, Lee Reynoldson's superb roleplaying game set in a world inspired by the folklore and legends of pagan Anglo-Saxon England. I say "inspired by," because, as Reynoldson explains, "Wulfwald is not set on our Earth," but rather is set on "another world," where "the myth and magic that was superstition in Earth's history is a real, if rare, force." As a game, Wulfwald should be almost immediately familiar to anyone who's played D&D or one of its descendants – not merely in terms of its rules but also in terms of its play. All the usual activities you expect in Dungeons & Dragons, whether they be delving in the dark, fighting monsters, or looting treasure, are supported in Wulfwald, but are given a new and compelling context.

Before proceeding further, I'd like to elaborate briefly on Wulfwald's relationship with D&D and its rules. Wulfwald is not "complete" game in the sense of including all the rules you need to play yet another retro-clone of Dungeons & Dragons. Reynoldson assumes you already know what hit points, armor class, and saving throws are, for example. When these and other familiar concepts come up in the text, there's no explanation of them or how they work, except when Wulfwald offers a new take on them that deviates from the way anyone who's played D&D generally understands them. I don't see this as a problem, but it might be surprising or even off-putting to those used to the approach adopted by most other old school D&D-derived games. 

With that out of the way, let's move on to Wulfwald itself. The game comes in a thin, sturdy box, inside of which are five staplebound A5 booklets and a cloth(!) map depicting the land of Wulfwald, as drawn by the late, great Russ Nicholson. The booklets have a clean, simple layout that's easy on the eyes. The covers of each booklet features artwork by Alison Killilea, while the interior art is done by Stefano Accordi. I like the cover art much better than the interior art, but all the illustrations evoke the dark, early medieval period in which the game is rooted. Nicholson's cartography, of course, is gorgeous and a joy simply to look at and wonder at its details.

The premise of Wulfwald is that all the characters are "wolfsheads," who are outsiders and outlaws who exist outside the law's protection. Their status means that anyone can harm or kill them without fear of retribution. To avoid this fate, the game assumes the characters have banded together in the service of a Thegn or warrior-lord and act as his service. In exchange for such service, the wolfsheads can expect gifts of beauty and value that reflect their newfound honor and status within the setting. This set-up is a clever way to recontextualize adventurers, making them simultaneously rough outsiders but also having a place, albeit an unusual one, in society. 

Unlike "normal" D&D, Wulfwald has only three levels, corresponding (more or less) to the veteran, hero, and superhero levels from Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign. However, there is a rules appendix that provides for a greater number of levels for those referees and players who prefer them. Characters belong to one of four kindreds: Eorðwerod (Men), Ælfcynn (Elves), Dweorgas (Dwarves), and Réðealingas (Outlanders). Each kindred has three unique classes, each belonging to one of three archetypes: warrior, skirmisher, and wizard. For example, Men have the Scildmægden (warrior), Sperebróga (skirmisher), and Scinnlæca (wizard), while Elves have the Wuduheald (warrior), Scytta (skirmisher), and Gealdor Sangere (wizard). All classes have their own advancement tables, as well as unique results for criticals and fumbles. Warriors also have an ability called "heroic effort," an unusual feat of arms that can be employed once an adventure.

An aspect of Wulfwald that could, I imagine, discourage some potential buyers is its regular use of Old English, complete with odd letters like æ or ð. Speaking as an old Tékumel hand, I know that a lot of people don't like words that require the use of a pronunciation guide to say properly. I can only say that Old English, once you know the rules, isn't all that difficult to pronounce. Moreover, its use in Wulfwald goes a long way toward investing the setting with a distinct flavor. In many cases, the text does provide alternate, contemporary words to use instead of the Old English ones for those who find the others a bit too flavorful, but I much prefer the Old English ones. Your mileage may vary.

Flavor is a big part of what separates Wulfwald from "standard" D&D, even if it makes use of all the expected elements of the game, like magic, monsters, and treasure. I've already noted that each of the character classes is distinctive. The same holds for the systems of magic some of them use. Wulfwald includes four different systems, from runic fateweaving and spell singing to the Forbidden Path and wicce cræft. Likewise, magic items are all unique items, each with its own history and powers. Monsters, too, include a fair number of unique beings, like the draca (dragons) and eotenas (giants).

"Unique" is a word I've used a lot in this review and with good reason. What sets Wulfwald apart from many old school fantasy products is that it's very specific in not just its inspirations but also in the way it's chosen to make use of them. While I'm on record for saying there's nothing wrong with vanilla fantasy, there's also, in my opinion, a distinct pleasure that comes from roleplaying according to the culture, customs, and beliefs of a particular society, whether real or imaginary. That's why my House of Worms campaign has been so enjoyable: the players get to be, if only for a little while, people who inhabit another world with its own rules and ways of looking at things. This is something Wulfwald does very well, too.

The game's five books cover character generation, magic (including magic items and religion), the setting of Wulfwald (including a sample scenario and skirmish battles), monsters, NPCs, and more. Taken together, they provide enough for the referee to kick off a campaign while still leaving lots of room for individual creativity. Wulfwald isn't Tékumel or Glorantha; there isn't an encyclopedia's worth of information to digest. Rather, the game's five books do a good job of painting a compelling big picture with plenty of room to add detail here or a splash of color there. It strikes a nice balance between too much and too little. In short, it inspires, which is exactly what I want out of a product like this.

If you're looking for a well presented new setting for your favorite D&D-alike that draws on real world folklore and history in a fun way, I'd highly recommend yout take a look at Wulfwald. It's one of the best things I've bought this year.

"Don't Be Another Statistic!"

Since my Retrospective on the video game Pitfall! was so well received, I found myself delving a bit deeper into the history of the game. In doing so, I was reminded of several things related to it that I had long forgotten, starting with this advertisement that appeared in various magazines around the time of the game's release.

As advertisements go, this one is pretty well done. I especially like the depictions of Pitfall Harry submerged in a tar pit and being eaten by a crocodile. 
Speaking of advertisements, the television ads for the game famously feature a young Jack Black in his first acting role:Pitfall! was successful enough that Pitfall Harry (along with his niece, Rhonda, and pet mountain lion) made an appearance as part of the CBS cartoon, Saturday Supercade, in 1983, alongside other video game celebrities like Mario, Donkey Kong, and Q*bert. Yes, the 1980s were a weird time.

Order versus Chaos

As I mentioned previously, one of the highlights of this year's Gamehole Con was attending Marc Miller's panels, where he talked about Game Designers' Workshop and the many games it published, including my beloved Traveller. During one of these panels, the subject of Twilight: 2000 came up. Given that I've been refereeing an ongoing T2K campaign for just shy of three years now (albeit using the current Free League edition of the game rather than either of the GDW ones), this immediately caught my attention. I was especially interested to hear what Marc had to say about the origin of the game, as well as the path its development took.

According to Marc, GDW had long wanted to produce a roleplaying game in which the players would take on the roles of active duty military personnel. GDW was, after all, a wargames company first and foremost and many of its employees, including Miller himself, had served in the military, so it seemed like a natural fit. However, there was some concern that playing in a military environment, with a strict hierarchy of ranks and a chain of command, might prove, if not stifling, then at least unduly restrictive to the actions of most players. Anyone who's played RPGs for any period of time knows all too well how much players dislike being told what to do.

That's where the idea of setting the game amidst of World War III came in. The designers reckoned that, in such a tumultuous environment, some of the normal strictures of active duty military life could be plausibly loosened, thereby affording players a bit more freedom of action than they might otherwise be given in the armed services. To ensure this further, GDW contrived the starting situation of the game so that the player characters were survivors of a larger unit that had been defeated and its forces scattered to the four winds. Trapped behind enemy lines and severed from both their supply lines and superiors, they'd have no choice but to make decisions for themselves. 

Furthermore, Marc explained that he (and, I assume, many of the other designers at GDW) felt that chaos made for a better gaming environment than did order. His reasoning is pretty straightforward. In periods of chaos, there's much greater scope for individual action and fewer limitations on what the characters can and cannot do. That's not to say there are none, only that there are fewer, which they expected players would find liberating. This perspective runs parallel to what he said above about the restrictiveness of an active duty military. GDW felt that the chaos of the Cold War gone hot was a great way to have their cake and eat it too: military roleplaying but freed of many of its limitations.

In principle, this line of thinking is sound. According to Marc, though, most Twilight: 2000 campaigns of which GDW became aware were very focused on order. Players and referees alike wanted to get the characters away from enemy lines so that they could rejoin NATO forces. Likewise, when characters were unable to do that, they would nevertheless find ways to bring about law and order in whatever locale they found themselves. Despite the game's reputation as being some post-apocalyptic power trip in which might makes right, that's not what GDW found that most people were interested in. Instead, they were interested in re-establishing order and fighting against chaos.

Marc explained that this was true no matter where the campaign was set, whether Poland or the United States. GDW kept doing its best to make the world of Twilight: 2000 chaotic – dividing the USA into three feuding factions, for example – but it didn't work out quite as they had hoped. Players wanted to rebuild and reunite the country, not war over its ashes. This was unexpected, since the whole idea behind T2K was giving players the opportunity to play in a world without central authority of any kind, giving them the ability to forge their own paths. Instead, the players discovered they wanted, if not the opposite of that, something that ran along a very different track.

Even more interesting is that Marc explained this pattern happened again and again in GDW's RPG products. MegaTraveller, for example, took place during an interstellar civil war/succession crisis in the Third Imperium. Shattering the Imperium was intended to open up more options for players, but most players reacted negatively to it, preferring the stable setting of classic Traveller (which, not coincidentally, I am sure, is when Mongoose's edition of the game is set). The same was true with MegaTraveller's follow-up, Traveller: The New Era (set during a dark age following the collapse of the Imperium entirely). It was also true with "the Game," the grand wargame/simulation run to establish the post-Twilight: 2000 future history background for 2300 AD. GDW found that players of "the Game" very quickly worked to put the world in some semblance of order rather than reveling in chaos.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of all this, except to say that I found it incredibly fascinating to hear from Marc Miller. I think most of us who've played RPGs for any length of time would intuitively agree with the assumption that players prefer, even love, chaos and yet Marc said GDW's experience was otherwise. He said that players actually preferred order and would work toward that end when presented with a chaotic situation. Is that true? I'll have to reflect a bit on my own recent gaming experiences before I can provide an answer and, even then, they'll just be anecdotes. What do you think? If you could share your experiences relating to this question in the comments, I'd be very interested in reading them.

Retrospective: Pitfall!

When my daughter was around eight or nine years old, she really enjoyed playing one of those rhythm games that made use of motion controllers. The game was about choreographed cheerleading routines and the player was scored based on how closely she mimicked the moves seen on screen. The more closely the player did so, the more experience points she earned for her cheerleader character, which, in turn, unlocked more difficult routines and other options.
While my daughter mostly cared about the cool new outfits she could earn with sufficient experience points, what held my attention was its use of experience points. Here was a video game about cheerleading, produced in Japan in the early 21st century, and an integral part of its gameplay was a game mechanic introduced to the world through Dungeons & Dragons. I found that incredibly fascinating, if only because it was a reminder of just how influential D&D (and, by extension, tabletop RPGs) have been over the course of the last half-century. 
The other side of the coin is a bit more contentious, namely, the extent to which video and computer games have influenced roleplaying games. With very few exceptions, I can't recall too many examples of tabletop designers who've outright said that their designs had taken inspiration from video games. My general feeling is that it's easier to turn a tabletop idea into a digital one than vice versa, hence why we've not seen many explicit examples of the reverse. Even so, video and computer games are very popular and have been for decades now. My guess is that much of the influence from the digital realm is subconscious, since I'd wager nearly everyone involved in tabletop RPG design has enjoyed playing video games.

Count me among them. I was an enthusiastic early adopter of video games, getting an Atari Video Game System in 1980, with which I played fun games like Adventure and Raiders of the Lost Ark , among many, many more. While there would soon be other, arguably better video game systems on the market, I was quite satisfied with my Atari, in large part because of the excellent games produced by companies like Activision. As I recall, the company was founded by disgruntled former Atari programmers who felt ill-used and underappreciated by their former employer. Their "revenge" was to produce innovative, original game cartridges that outsold Atari's own.
I owned and enjoyed numerous Activision cartridges, but, hands down, my favorite was Pitfall! released in 1982. Pitfall! is an early example of what today we'd call a platformer, in that the player controls a character who must navigate various obstacles and hazards found on various levels (or platforms) on the screen. Nintendo's Donkey Kong is a good example of a well-known platformer. What made Pitfall! so innovative was that, while it did feature multiple levels on each screen, it also featured multiple screens. The player could maneuver his character, called Pitfall Harry, horizontally across the screen and a new screen, with different obstacles and platforms would reveal itself. This might not seem like much, but in 1982, it was revolutionary.
Pitfall! was noteworthy in several other ways. The game's premise was that Harry, a treasure hunter on the model of Indiana Jones, is seeking gold and silver bars, bags of money, and diamond rings that are hidden throughout a dangerous jungle. He has only 20 minutes to collect as many of these valuables as he can, all the while avoiding scorpions, crocodiles, snakes, quicksand, and other hazards. Pitfall! is thus a race against time, as well as a test of skill and ingenuity. Many of the aforementioned treasures can only be reached by the imaginative use of the environment, like swinging on vines, climbing ladders, and moving back and forth between screens to reach areas that might otherwise be unreachable.
Like most video games of its era, Pitfall! was difficult. The player had only three lives and there were numerous ways for the unwary – or just clumsy – to lose them. Rather than being simply frustrating, though, that was a big part of the game's appeal to me. I loved being challenged, even if it meant frequently dying by falling into a hole or being snapped by a crocodile due to a poorly timed swing on a vine. I almost always knew exactly what I'd done wrong and reckoned that I could do better next time (or the time after that or ...). 
This kind of gameplay, this emphasis on challenging the player , is something I directly ported into my D&D games at the time – as well as specific challenges I lifted directly from Pitfall!, like swinging vines and quicksand, to name just a couple. Looking back on it now, I can't help but feel that many early video and computer games included these challenging obstacles and hazardous as an homage to what their designers encountered in playing tabletop RPGs. In the case of Pitfall! I certainly can't prove it, but I'd nevertheless be amazed if its creators hadn't played D&D or some other dungeon crawling game refereed by a Killer DM. 
I'm old and slow now. I no longer have the reflexes or hand-eye coordination necessary to play games like Pitfall! quite as successfully as I did in my youth. That's one (of many) ways that tabletop roleplaying games remain superior to their digital descendants: even geezers like me still have a chance, through our characters, to dodge rolling logs or leap over a giant scorpion, in a way we'd never be able to accomplish if we had only our real world physical skills and abilities to rely upon. The joy of tabletop RPGs is that, even in your mid-50s, you can still grab a vine and swing across a crocodile-infested pool and steal away with an ancient treasure with as much ease as you did when you were a kid. Not a bad form of entertainment, eh?

The Articles of Dragon: "The Deities & Demigods of the World of Greyhawk"

Issue #67 of Dragon (November 1982) is another one featuring more than one article that made a lasting impression on me. The first of these is Gary Gygax's "The Deities & Demigods of the World of Greyhawk." Now, given my rather mixed to negative feelings about Deities & Demigods itself, you'd think I'd feel similarly about this article (and its follow-ups in subsequent issues) as well. However, you'd be mistaken in that assumption and the reason why is, I think, worth discussing.
I have a lot of criticisms of Deities & Demigods, but one I haven't talked about as often as I should is how dull it is. The book presents more than a dozen pantheons for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, but the bulk of that presentation is given over to game statistics of the gods rather than information about the beliefs, practices, and role of those gods' worship. That's the kind of thing I wanted out of the book, not Monster Manual-style write-ups of Zeus or Odin. Making the Greek and Norse gods boring is quite the feat, especially for someone like myself, who adored their myths and legends and yet, somehow, Deities & Demigods managed to do it.
"The Deities & Demigods of the World of Greyhawk," unfortunately, still devotes too much space to game statistics. On the other hand, Gygax provides more than that, peppering his descriptions of the four featured gods – Heironeous, Hextor, Iuz, and St. Cuthbert – with information on their worshipers, temples, and place in society, not to mention tidbits of Greyhawk-specific mythology in which they appear. In these descriptions, he's fleshing out the World of Greyhawk setting in a way he never did in its original folio release. That was a big part of the appeal of this article for me: learning more about the details of what had previously been a very bare bones setting, including its myths and folklore. 
It didn't hurt that the gods Gygax chose to highlight in this first article were genuinely interesting ones. In the case of St. Cuthbert, he had finally answered questions I'd had ever since I first opened my copy of the Dungeon Masters Guide and read the artifacts section where he discusses the Mace of St. Cuthbert. Likewise, Iuz was one of the few divine (or demonic) beings mentioned by name in The World of Greyhawk, where he is simply called "Lord of Evil." Nothing else is said about him, so I was largely left to imagine who Iuz might be until this article appeared. Heironeous and Hextor, on the other hand, were completely new to me, having never come across any references to them beforehand. These quarreling half-brothers, one good and one evil, made quite the pair and the divine rivalry had consequences for Greyhawk and its inhabitants.

As I said, Gygax still wastes far too much verbiage on game statistics – statistics that, in my experience, are almost never used in actual play. I don't really understand why AD&D went to the trouble of codifying the armor class, hit points, attacks, etc. of the gods. I can only assume that, by the time this article appeared, doing so was already well enough established that Gygax didn't consider another approach, one that focuses less on game stats and more on the role the gods played within the imaginary setting of Greyhawk. That's a shame, because I think it's a more fruitful approach – or at least one I would have enjoyed more.
Even so, "The Deities & Demigods of the World of Greyhawk" manages to pack a fair bit of setting-specific information in its entries, which I enjoyed. This article and the ones that followed were among my favorites in the pages of Dragon during the early 1980s. They gave the World of Greyhawk some much needed details about its gods and religions, a topic I've long enjoyed. But it was this first article that I remember most vividly, hence its inclusion in this series.

The Ship of Ishtar Centennial Edition

Long time readers of this blog will know that I consider Abraham Merritt a foundational author in the creation of the genre we now call "fantasy" – an opinion shared by none other than Gary Gygax, who listed him among the authors of Appendix N. In the past, I've called Merritt fantasy's "forgotten father" in the past and I stand by that assessment. His "poetic and imaginative prose," to borrow Clark Ashton Smith's description of it is unique, as is his wild and occasionally feverish creativity.

Sadly, many of Merritt's best stories are no longer in print. If they are available, they're in a cheap, unattractive format that doesn't do them justice. That's why I am so pleased that DMR Books, one of the best small press publishers of what I call "pulp fantasy" is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Ship of Ishtar with the publication of a new edition of the novel.

This new edition features Merritt's preferred version of the book's text, as well as an introduction by pulp expert Doug Ellis and an afterword by author and critic Deuce Richardson. Ellis has also assembled a collection of Ishtar-related ephemera in order to give a fuller picture of the novel and its significance. Just as important is the inclusion of nearly two dozen vintage illustrations by Virgil Finlay, one of the most celebrated illustrators of the Pulp Era. It's a terrific edition of an important early work of pulp fantasy and I couldn't be happier that it's being released by DMR Books, many of whose previous releases now sit proudly on my shelves. DMR has led the way in making the works of lesser-known authors like Clifford Ball, Nictzin Dyahlis, A.B. Higginson, and Arthur D. Howden Smith, among others. available once again. That's an invaluable service and one for which those of us who appreciate older works of fantasy should be grateful.
If you're at all interested in Merritt or the foundational works of fantasy, I urge to take a look at the Centennial Edition of The Ship of Ishtar or indeed any of DMR's catalog of pulp authors. I say this not as someone with any involvement with DMR Books beyond being an admirer and well wisher. Like Merritt himself, they ought to be better known and appreciated for all that they do.

REPOST: Pulp Fantasy Library: The Ship of Ishtar

(Pulp Fantasy Library was, for years, one of the signature features of this blog and, even though I haven't posted a new entry in it in more than a year, it nevertheless remains the largest series of posts I've written. Today marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Abraham Merritt's The Ship of Ishtar, which was serialized in the pages of Argosy All-Story Weekly. To mark the occasion of its centennial, I'm reposting and updating my original entry on it from nearly fifteen years ago.)

Nearly all of the authors whose works I highlight in this space each week are those whose fame was once greater than it is today. There are exceptions, of course -- Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft being two good examples -- but contemporary fame often brings with it misunderstanding, with the author's stories and ideas reduced to mere caricatures. For good or for ill, Abraham Merritt has avoided that fate, his works largely unknown today, despite the fact that he was arguably the most popular fantasy and science fiction writer before World War II.

Dying suddenly of a heart attack in 1943 probably didn't help Merritt's career, but it's still almost inexplicable to imagine how the author of Seven Footprints to Satan, Dwellers in the Mirage, and The Moon Pool, never mind The Ship of Ishtar could be so obscure today. The Ship of Ishtar alone ought to merit (pun intended) its author more than throwaway mentions here and there, usually in reference to more well known authors whom he influenced, such as Jack Williamson, Walter Shaver, and H.P. Lovecraft. Clark Ashton Smith, whose birthday I commemorated just last week, was very taken with The Ship of Ishtar, explaining:

I enjoyed the rare and original fantasy of this tale, and have kept it longer than I should otherwise, for the sake of re-reading certain passages that were highly poetic and imaginative. Merritt has an authentic magic, as well as an inexhaustible imagination.

High praise indeed.

The Ship of Ishtar was originally released as a six-part serial novel over the course of November and December 1924 in Argosy All-Story Weekly. These parts were then collected into a hardcover in 1926, but in abridged form, excising some chapters and rearranging the text. It's this incomplete version of the story that's been reprinted again and again over the decades, with only (I believe) a single 1949 edition including the full text of the novel. The new centennial edition of DMR Books follows Merritt's preferred version of the text, as well as including vintage illustrations.

The Ship of Ishtar is the tale of Jack Kenton, a modern man who receives a package from an old archeologist friend. The package contains an ancient stone, inside of which Kenton finds a remarkable model of a ship. The ship is a magical creation and draws Kenton into it, pulling him backward in time to Babylonian times and into the midst of a struggle between the followers of the goddess Ishtar and followers of the god Nergal – the cursed inflicted because a priestess of Ishtar and a priest of Nergal dared fall in love with one another against the wishes of their respective deities. Now, the lieutenants of the priestess and priest, both of whom, for their own reasons, aided their superiors, are trapped on a ship divided between light and darkness and from which there can be no escape.

Kenton, not being a man of this time and not laboring under the curse of the gods, can move freely back and forth between the two sides of the ship. Having fallen in love with the beautiful Sharane, priestess of Ishtar, he offers to go to Klaneth, priest of Nergal, and attempt to find a means by which to end the conflict on the ship. In this respect, The Ship of Ishtar resembles many pulp fantasies of its time and after: a modern man, thrown into an unusual locale/time, finds himself able to go places and do things that those native to it cannot. What differentiates Merritt's novel, though, is its gorgeous prose and deep characterizations. Merritt is an author who takes his time in telling a story, presenting little details and nuances that other authors would rush past in an effort to get to the action.

This may be why Merritt fell out of favor in the years after the Second World War: he's not a "breezy" author. That's not to say his prose is slow going, because it's not. Indeed, I find Merritt much easier to read than, say, Lovecraft or even Smith, both of whose prose is every bit as adjective-laden and evocative. Yet, Merritt dwells on details, particularly the beauty or ugliness of characters, and it's possible that, for some, these details get in the way of their enjoyment. I think that's a pity, because, as I said, Merritt's text is not plodding and his descriptions and dialog are every bit as appealing as his action, but perhaps he is an acquired taste.

Regardless, Abraham Merritt is an important early fantasy author, one mentioned by Gygax in Appendix N, and The Ship of Ishtar may well be his masterpiece. Many thanks to DMR Books for making it available again. With luck, Merritt may soon gain the wider admiration he so richly deserves.

Tyo-tomat

Yet more glorious Secrets of sha-Arthan art from Zhu Bajiee, this time a Ga'andrin tyo-tomat (or "elixir master"), a kind of sorcerer who supplements his natural magic talents by the regular ingestion of mutagenic chemicals. 

Fantasy ... Taken to the Edge

One of the earliest advertisements for Planescape I remember seeing was this one, which appeared in issue #203 of Dragon (March 1994). Depicting the ruler(?) of Sigil, the Lady of Pain, it certainly piqued my interest. Even now, I think it's a pretty intriguing and evocative advertisement.

Retrospective: Planescape Campaign Setting

When I first acquired the AD&D Players Handbook – this was sometime in early 1980 – one of my favorite sections was Apprendix IV: The Known Planes of Existence. Taking up only a couple of pages, this appendix was the first time I'd ever encountered Gary Gygax's bizarre, mysterious, and wonderfully baroque ideas about the multiverse of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. What made Gygax's vision so weird compelling was its obsessive orderliness, which didn't simply tie the Outer Planes to each of the game's nine alignments, but to every conceivable shade in between. That's why, for example, the Seven Heavens are described as being "of absolute lawful good," while the planes of Elysium are "of neutral good lawfuls." 

Objectively, this is bonkers stuff, but I adored it and spent a lot of time thinking about the Outer (and other) Planes, aided no doubt by my fascination with the demons and devils of the Monster Manual. Despite Gygax's precise distinctions between the alignments of the Planes, AD&D didn't have a lot to say about them for a long time, aside from the occasional article in Dragon, like the ones about the Astral Plane (by Roger E. Moore) and the Nine Hells (by Ed Greenwood). And, of course, we later got Gygax's own developed thoughts about the Inner Planes, which were every bit as eccentric and persnickety as what he wrote in Appendix IV of the PHB all those years ago.

What I always wanted was a better sense of the Planes as a place and, more than that, as an adventuring locale. What sorts of adventures could AD&D characters have among the Planes? What made the Outer Planes different from the Prime Material Plane and how would this impact the kinds of adventures to be had there? The better Dragon articles, like those of Greenwood, did this well, or at least better than did Gygax, whose own ideas, while fascinating, remained largely in the realm of the theoretical. I wanted something more "down to earth," if you'll forgive the phrase. Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes was a good first step in that direction, but I wanted more.

As it turned out, I'd have to wait until 1994 to get that, in the form of the Planescape Campaign Setting – and it was not at all what I had expected. As imagined by David "Zeb" Cook and brought to visual life by Tony DiTerlizzi, the Outer Planes were indeed weird, though quite different from how they'd been previously portrayed. Instead of being presented as primarily the dwelling places of gods and demons, the Planes were instead a battleground between various factions of "philosophers with clubs," each of which hopes to remake reality according to their own idiosyncratic perspective. These factions, each associated (in some cases loosely) with an alignment or Outer Plane, were the driving force behind Cook's vision for Planescape. More than that, they provided an easy buy-in for player characters looking to involve themselves in the cosmic struggles of the setting.

"The setting." That's important. One of the clever things Cook did with Planescape was that he made the Planes a setting. They weren't just a place you could visit for a brief time; they were a place you could stay. Further, they were a place where even novice characters could stay, not merely high-level ones with access to potent magic. Further still, they were a place with its own native inhabitants and players could easily take up the role of one of them. Planescape gave AD&D's Planes a life of their own, divorced from the Prime Material Plane where most campaigns were set. Planescape made it possible to play entire campaigns where characters never once set foot on the World of Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, or any other "normal" campaign world. 

This was a bold approach and not at all what I or, I imagine, most AD&D players at the time were expecting. Not everyone warmed to Planescape's vision of the Planes. Indeed, I recall quite a few old hands who scoffed at it as taking too many cues from White Wolf's World of Darkness RPGs, which were very popular at the time. I can certainly appreciate the shock and surprise they probably felt upon reading Planescape and seeing DiTerlizzi's Dr Seuss-like depictions of the denizens of the Planes. This was not Gygax's Planes; it wasn't even Grubb's. It was something quite unique, filled with the strange, the odd, and the occasionally silly, and suffused with a punkish vibe that came through most strongly in its use of Planar Cant drawn from the criminal slang of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Many people, even fans of the setting, loathed the Cant, but there's no denying that it helped give Planescape a distinct flavor of its own.

Me, I enjoyed Planescape. It was not at all what I expected, but I enjoyed it for what it was: a strange, whimsical, wondrous take on world-hopping fantasy, with "worlds" in this case being other Planes of Existence, each with its own individual rules and style. And then there's Sigil, the City of Doors, located at the very center of the multiverse – if a series of infinite planes can truly be said to have a center. Home to the various planar factions and serving as a crossroads of the Planes, Sigil could serve as the basis for an entire campaign in itself, but it was also the perfect "home base" for planar characters whose adventures took them across the realms of the Great Wheel and beyond. Like Planescape itself, I really enjoyed Sigil and had a lot of fun with it.

I have lots of thoughts I could share about Planescape, both positive and negative, but my overall feeling for it is one of affection. I first made use of the setting as an adjunct to an ongoing Forgotten Realms campaign I ran in the mid-1990s. Later, I ran a "native" campaign among the Planes in the early days of Third Edition. Both were very well received by my players. Indeed, we still occasionally talk about some of the adventures they had in the setting. That's my usual measure of whether a gaming product succeeds – did I have fun with it? – and by that standard, Planescape is one of the greats.