John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 99

A Year Ago Today

So, it was a year ago today -- the Friday night and Saturday morning of the Medieval Congress here at Kalamazoo -- that I lost the lucky coin I always, always carry around with me, only to have it rescued and restored to me the next day by Vaughn Howland (cf. my post at the time, 'Vaughn is my hero')


http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2016/05/vaughn-is-my-hero.html


 Vaughn died a few months ago, but he's in my thoughts today. For one thing, he knew about, and thoroughly approved of, the festschrift project.


He was one of the Good Guys, and he will be missed.


--John R.
--most recent book purchase at Kalamazoo: Neidorf's THE TRANSMISSION OF BEOWULF.

festschrift flyer (Flieger)

So, I'm happy to announce that A WILDERNESS OF DRAGONS: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF VERLYN FLIEGER now has a publisher, Gabbro Head Press. Primary editing has now been all but completed. The book still needs a second editorial pass, plus an introduction and index. We're hoping for a publication date before the end of the year. Here's the flyer I'm distributing here at Kalamazoo, where several of our contributors are in attendance.
--John R.



Here's the Table of Contents for the Flieger festschrift

An Old Character Sheet

So, looking through my file of the original version I played, the one current in Fayetteville Arkansas in 1980-81, I found a bunch of character sheets. Characters tended to die very quickly in this game: no one ever advanced beyond third level because that'd make the DM have to go to a different random encounter chart, so he just killed anybody who was near leveling up (it's pretty obvious when all the monsters bypass the front-line fighters and unerringly focus all their attacks on that one character among the dozen or so in the group).

Two important stats were Reaction Time and Death Level:

--to determine Reaction Time, divided Dexterityby 3, with the result subtracted from 8

--to determine Death Level, multiply Constitution by .03 and add 1, then multiply the result by your hits (=hit points).  That this is such a needlessly complicated process says a lot about this iteration of the game in a nutshell -- but I did take away from it a strong belief in some sort of negative hit points system so that there was a brief window during which characters who'd fallen to zero hp or below cd still be brought back.

I'm off tomorrow for Kalamazoo but will try to post some of the character generation material when I get back.

For now, dere's the character sheet:






--JDR

Echoes of Eowyn

So, recently I came across a passage I'd found years ago and never been able to re-locate. I had been reading the first (and, so far as I knew at that time, only) volume of Ursula Dronke's edition, with extensive commentary, of THE POETIC EDDA, Volume I: HEROIC POEMS, a 250-page edition of four relatively brief Old Norse texts. In the commentary on the first such poem, Atlakvida ('The Lay of Atli', better known as Attila the Hun) I found a fascinating brief discussion in which Dronke cites the appearance of shieldmaidens in legend, like Hervor in THE SAGA OF KING HEIDRIEKS THE WISE, and goes on to say that such women existed in real life as well, however rarely:

'That in the Viking Age women occasionally became warriors would give vitality to the fiction; cf. . . . the skeleton of a woman aged about 25 in a grave at Asnes, Norway, from the tenth century, surrounded by sword, shield, spears, axe, whetstone, bridle, with the skeleton of a horse at her feet' (Dronke p. 58)
 Dronke follows up by citing a historical source dating from 1900 for this find.
Was this something Tolkien knew about? I suspect he did -- after all, we do know that Tolkien knew the history of his period extremely well (just cf. Finn & Hengest).  
So, not conclusive but highly suggestive.

THE WIFE SAYS: Eowyn - wyn - wyn . . .Eowyn - wyn - wyn . . .

my first edition PLAYER'S HANDBOOK

So, yesterday I happened to notice that I'd bought my copy of the 1st edition AD&D PLAYER'S HANDBOOK on May 2nd, 1980: exactly thirty-seven years earlier.

I'd started playing the game in February of that year, and remember that while I was fascinated by the game from the very start, I hesitated a while trying to decide which version to buy. There was the D&D boxed set, which seemed the reasonable place to start. But the guys I played with at the local Hobby Store urged me to ignore the word 'advanced' on the cover of the hardcover rulebooks buy this instead. I'm glad I did. Even though it was expensive for a poor grad student ($12.00) I've never regretted it. I still pull it down and create characters from time to time.

Just to make things more difficult, this was not the rules set by which the games were actually being run: that was a binder of xeroxed pages that I have since come to know were what's generally called 'the Cal-Tech rules'. I still have a copy of that as well, but I'm not nostalgic about it; it was superseded for me as soon as I got the hardcover PH. Eventually I managed to get all three books that made up the core AD&D rules set (at $12.00 for the MONSTER MANUAL and $15.00 for the DMG), but I don't seem to have written the date in my copy of either though I remember reading through the entire DMG over a Christmas break, which must have been December 1980.

A copy of Dungeon Geomorphs, and of Judge's Guild's DARK TOWER (the first module I ever bought, which still holds up well), and some dice, and I was off and running -- solo games mostly, until I found a group at Marquette circa the spring of 1982. And despite some periods when I cdn't find a group (the longest one corresponding to the first few years of Fourth Edition) I've been gaming ever since.

John R.
--who's too busy on the festschrift to roll up any characters right now, but knows it's just a matter of time.

A Certain Resemblance (a Tolkienesque cover)

So,  after trips and scheduling conflicts and illness, we finally managed to get the Monday night D&D group together for another session of Ravenloft last week and again this week.* During the first of these we explored a place we'd been chased out of once and now got chased out of all over again; during the latter we actually snuck into (and back out of) Castle Ravenloft itself, getting just  enough experience for several of us to go up a level; from here on we'll be focusing our attention on Strahd's stronghold.

 And at the unofficial show and tell that often proceeds our getting down to business, last week Jeff G. brought several recent releases of 'old-school revival' rpgs (thanks Jeff).

One of them had a cover that looked strikingly familiar: THE HERO'S JOURNEY by James Spahn, from Barrel Rider Games:

http://halflingsluck.blogspot.com/2016/02/update-change-to-cover-for-heros-journey.html **


This is pretty clearly a deliberate recreation of Tolkien's original 1937 cover for THE HOBBIT:

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/2016/07/facsimile-first-edition-of-the-hobbit-to-be-published-on-22-september/


The artist's name is Michael Herrmann. I'm not otherwise acquainted with his work, but it's pretty clear that his brief was to imitate Tolkien's art as closely as possible.  Does this constitute a homage or a rip-off? Your individual answer probably closely correlates to how you feel about Tolk-clones like Terry Brooks and Dennis McKiernan, or indeed fan fiction in general.

For me, it's telling that this game's title is taken directly from Joseph Campbell, its cover art from J. R. R. Tolkien, and most of its contents from Gary Gygax. Its lack of originality is a feature, not a bug: the author wants to re-create first edition AD&D but skewed to his own preferences. This is nothing new: in fact, it's been a steady feature of rpgs since a few months after Gygax & Arneson's first D&D release.

As for the game itself, it's clearly a derivative labor of love.  It's primarily based on 1st edition AD&D up through UNEARTHED ARCANA, the last book to have Gygax's stamp on it. But it also goes off on tangents of its own, dropping some of the classic AD&D PH classes and including new ones of the author's own invention.***  This is pretty much the case with most of the book. It's as if, rather than restoring a classic Model A, someone has instead built a hot rod out of pieces of various old cars. Given my druthers I'd rather stick to the classic.

After all, if you want to play an oldschool D&D-style game, why not play the real thing? The 1st ed. PH, MM, & DMG are all readily available at places like Half Price Books, not to mention the internet. After all, who wants to play a chess-like game when they cd just play chess?

--John R.
today's song: 'Classical Gas' by Mason Wms.

*and in-between we managed to get in the first session of our new CALL OF CTHULHU campaign, Chaosium's first organized-play event; no one died and no one went mad, so it's so far so good.

**check here for a little more information on the game
http://www.lulu.com/shop/james-spahn/the-heros-journey-fantasy-roleplaying/hardcover/product-22875076.html

***hence it includes the seventh stat, Comeliness (under the name 'Appearance'), which debued in UNEARTHED ARCANA, and all three of the U.A. character classes: Cavalier, Barbarian, and (Thief-)Acrobat, but lacks two of the old PH classes (Illusionist and Assassin). Its bard is non-Gygaxian, closer to the nerfed 3e bard than Gygax's uberclass, and it adds two new non-AD&D classes, the Duelist and the Jester.

A Certain Resemblance

So,  after trips and scheduling conflicts and illness, we finally managed to get the Monday night D&D group together for another session of Ravenloft last week and again this week.* During the first of these we explored a place we'd been chased out of once and now got chased out of all over again; during the latter we actually snuck into (and back out of) Castle Ravenloft itself, getting just  enough experience for several of us to go up a level; from here on we'll be focusing our attention on Strahd's stronghold.

 And at the unofficial show and tell that often proceeds our getting down to business, last week Jeff G. brought several recent releases of 'old-school revival' rpgs (thanks Jeff).

One of them had a cover that looked strikingly familiar: THE HERO'S JOURNEY by James Spahn, from Barrel Rider Games:

http://halflingsluck.blogspot.com/2016/02/update-change-to-cover-for-heros-journey.html **


This is pretty clearly a deliberate recreation of Tolkien's original 1937 cover for THE HOBBIT:

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/2016/07/facsimile-first-edition-of-the-hobbit-to-be-published-on-22-september/


The artist's name is Michael Herrmann. I'm not otherwise acquainted with his work, but it's pretty clear that his brief was to imitate Tolkien's art as closely as possible.  Does this constitute a homage or a rip-off? Your individual answer probably closely correlates to how you feel about Tolk-clones like Terry Brooks and Dennis McKiernan, or indeed fan fiction in general.

For me, it's telling that this game's title is taken directly from Joseph Campbell, its cover art from J. R. R. Tolkien, and most of its contents from Gary Gygax. Its lack of originality is a feature, not a bug: the author wants to re-create first edition AD&D but skewed to his own preferences. This is nothing new: in fact, it's been a steady feature of rpgs since a few months after Gygax & Arneson's first D&D release.

As for the game itself, it's clearly a derivative labor of love.  It's primarily based on 1st edition AD&D up through UNEARTHED ARCANA, the last book to have Gygax's stamp on it. But it also goes off on tangents of its own, dropping some of the classic AD&D PH classes and including new ones of the author's own invention.***  This is pretty much the case with most of the book. It's as if, rather than restoring a classic Model A, someone has instead built a hot rod out of pieces of various old cars. Given my druthers I'd rather stick to the classic.

After all, if you want to play an oldschool D&D-style game, why not play the real thing? The 1st ed. PH, MM, & DMG are all readily available at places like Half Price Books, not to mention the internet. After all, who wants to play a chess-like game when they cd just play chess?

--John R.
today's song: 'Classical Gas' by Mason Wms.

*and in-between we managed to get in the first session of our new CALL OF CTHULHU campaign, Chaosium's first organized-play event; no one died and no one went mad, so it's so far so good.

**check here for a little more information on the game
http://www.lulu.com/shop/james-spahn/the-heros-journey-fantasy-roleplaying/hardcover/product-22875076.html

***hence it includes the seventh stat, Comeliness (under the name 'Appearance'), which debued in UNEARTHED ARCANA, and all three of the U.A. character classes: Cavalier, Barbarian, and (Thief-)Acrobat, but lacks two of the old PH classes (Illusionist and Assassin). Its bard is non-Gygaxian, closer to the nerfed 3e bard than Gygax's uberclass, and it adds two new non-AD&D classes, the Duelist and the Jester.

So,

So, a while back a got a query in a comment on another post (
The answer is simple; the explanation a little less so.

Basically, I fell into the habit of doing so in the early days of this blog (right at ten years ago now) and decided to retain it as distinctive, a part of my 'voice'. I'm also under the impression that I use it a fair amount in my daily speech.

The reason why I'm in the habit of using it is that I like the effect it gives of joining a conversation. Technically 'so' is a co-ordinating conjunction (like and, but, or, for, nor, and sometimes so and yet) yet I use it more like a conjunctive adverb (like however, nevertheless, on the other hand, &c). A sign of this is that when two sentences are joined with a co-ordinating conjunction, the conjunction is preceded with a comma.* But when two sentences are joined by a conjunctive adverb, the conjunctive adverb is preceded by a semicolon and followed by a comma.** Thus I'm using one part of speech but presenting it like another part of speech.

There's also the consideration that picky prescriptive grammarians disapprove of starting a sentence with a co-ordinating conjunction, despite the fact that the practice goes back a long way  (it's endemic in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). So it's a small example of doing my part to reclaim a usage -- like ending a sentence with a preposition when that's the most natural word order.

Thanks to Clive S. for the query. And by the way, Clive, you're right in that well would be a very close parallel to my usage of so).

So, hope this helps.

Yrs,
John R.




*"He reads a lot of Tolkien, and also enjoys Dunsany."
**"He reads a lot of Tolkien; also, he enjoys Dunsany.

New Arrivals

So, times when I visit Marquette, I almost always find out about new books on Tolkien that have come out since I was last there. And this time was no exception. Having ordered some of said books while I was there, I found some of them waiting for me when I returned home, and others came in one by one over the following days. Haven't had time to read these yet, but here's a quick listing, in case there are others out there who might be interested if they'd come across them.

TOLKIEN AND SANSKRIT by Mark Hooker (cf. the review of same that had just been published on the online JOURNAL OF TOLKIEN RESEARCH).

DEEP ROOTS IN A TIME OF FROST: ESSAYS ON TOLKIEN by Patrick Curry. I've read Curry's first book but hadn't seen this collection, put out by Walking Tree Press in line with their earlier Shippey collection.

Renee Vink's WAGNER AND TOLKIEN: MYTHMAKERS. This one came a few days before its companion volume, Christopher MacLachlan's TOLKIEN AND WAGNER: THE RING AND DER RING. I've started reading the Vink, which is even-handed and helpful so far.

Gareth Knight's THE MAGICAL WORLD OF J. R. R. TOLKIEN. I have Knight's book on JRRT, CSL, CW, & OB but hadn't read it, and hadn't known about this little Tolkien-focused spin-off (one of four, apparently) until I saw it on the Marquette shelves in the old Memorial Library. It's a quick read, and while I think the Golden-Dawnish magical ritual based on Tolkien's legendarium included in it might well have given Tolkien fits the author gets points from me by at one point saying that just because he sees a resemblance between something in Tolkien and something he's interested in doesn't mean Tolkien intended any such echo.

ON THE PERILOUS ROAD: AN UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY by Elizabeth Currie & Alex Lewis. Having already written one imaginary biography, Currie & Lewis (aka 'Elansea') now seem to be shifting their focus to presenting Tolkien's life against world political events of his time (like the Cuban Missile Crisis).

JOHN RONALD'S DRAGONS by Caroline McAlister (text) and Eliza Wheeler (art): a picture book children's biography of JRRT. There's been one of these before that came out a few years ago; this is a far better book. Not only does it accurately depict Tolkien's life without any errors that I noticed and has a certain elegance (e.g., in the picture of young JRRT standing in the church). The authors also know their stuff: I was impressed by the number of specific details the artist worked into the backgrounds; these people actually know their stuff. So far it's my favorite of this whole set of new books.

Three more books aren't focused on JRRT but have their Tolkienian connections:

BUILDING IMAGINARY WORLDS: THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF SUBCREATION by Mark J P. Wolf (a serious look at a subject that's getting more and more attention. This one isn't Tolkien focused or D&D focused but casts its net wide, everything from Yoknapatawpha County to computer gaming. Probably the most accessible part is an extensive (56p) Appendix listing subcreated worlds from Homer to 2011. This one will provide much food for thought when I eventually get around to reading it.

IRELAND'S IMMORTALS: A HISTORY OF THE GODS OF IRISH MYTH by Mark Williams. Someone had sent me a link to a highly favorable review of this* just as I was heading out to Marquette. It's just the kind of book I like, and I've been trying to locate something along these lines ever since I read Lady Gregory's retelling of the Tuatha de Danaan myths back in high school. The author describes his purpose as "to determine how the multitudinous medieval Tuatha De Danann slimmed down and came into focus as the pantheon of one of the world's great mythologies" (Preface, p. xvii). This will be one to read slowly and savor.

ROD OF IRON: THE ABSOLUTE RULERS OF ENGLAND, by Milton Waldman (1941). I've never known anything about Milton Waldman other than he was the recipient of Tolkien's Letter to Waldman and that he delayed our getting THE LORD OF THE RINGS by three or four years (and risked our getting it at all). Finding out that he was a historian, I tracked down his book on the three figures he considers the tyrants of England: Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Cromwell; he also devotes (less) space to less successful tyrants like Charles the first. I dipped into it while down and out with the pneumonia and discovered that it reads well: Waldman has the gift of holding a strong point of view which he is able to express memorably and unambiguously (e.g. his description of Charles' queen: "daughter of Henry IV of France and consequently of that House of Bourbon whose capacity for learning nothing and forgetting nothing was to shape its destiny along lines so curiously parallel to the Stuarts" [p. 109]).

In addition to all these, there were several more I'd have liked to pick up but didn't:
(1) TOLKIEN'S THEOLOGY OF BEAUTY: MAJESTY, SPLENDOUR, & TRANSCENDENCE IN MIDDLE-EARTH by Lisa Coutras (Palgrave, 2016), a beautiful-looking book (appropriately enough) that I'd somehow failed to hear anything about until I saw it on the Archives' shelves.

(2) TOLKIEN, SELF & OTHER: "THIS QUEER CREATION" by Jane Chance (Palgrave 2016); this looked like a collection of Chance's essays, which it'll be nice to have all in one place.

Both these I'm going to look for at the Palgrave booth at Kalamazoo: who knows, maybe they'll bring a few along for the show.

(3) CRITICAL INSIGHTS: THE HOBBIT, ed. Stephen W. Potts (GreyHouse 2016). This is a promising looking collection of essays on THE HOBBIT, w. contributors including figures like Jared Lobdell, Kris Swank, and Jason Fisher. Unfortunately this one is really expensive: $105 new and almost double that ($208) used. In fact, it's so expensive that in the end I decided I simply cdn't afford it. Alas. Consider this the one that got away.




--John R.

current reading: Wm Morris, THE WELL AT THE WORLD'S END (just finished)**
current audiobook: DOWAGER EMPRESS CIXI by Jung Chang (just finished)**



*which link I've misplaced, it now being buried among notes from the trip. Thanks to whoever sent it; sorry to have not acknowledged it properly at the time.

**both worth a post by themselves, if I have time to write them up.

thag you very buch, part two

So, it wasn't a cold: it's pneumonia.
Antibiotics are our friends.
--John R.

current reading: ROD OF IRON by Milton Waldman
current viewing: early DOCTOR WHO