Retrospective: Booty and the Beasts

1979 is an important year in the history of roleplaying. Not only did it mark the completion of Gary Gygax's AD&D system (with the publication of the long-awaited Dungeon Masters Guide), but it also saw the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III. Of the three, Egbert's disappearance is probably the most important, in the sense that it demonstrated the truth of the old adage that "there's no such thing as bad publicity." D&D soon became a household name across the USA and TSR's sales benefited immensely from this sensational news story. As I've recounted here many times before, my own involvement in the hobby is directly related to my father's taking an interest in stories of a "weird game" supposedly played in steam tunnels beneath Michigan State University.

From the vantage point of 2022, it's easy to forget just how new the hobby still was in 1979. Original Dungeons & Dragons had only been released five years previously. Depending on how you count them, there were only about thirty RPGs published by this time, only a handful of which would be remembered even five years later. This was a period of wild, reckless invention when any imaginative fantasy or science fiction fan with access to a typewriter and a photocopier could potentially create something that might potentially take the hobby by storm the way that OD&D did within not-to-distant memory.

Into this environment stepped three high school friends from California: Erol Otus, Mathias Genser, and Paul Reiche III. To anyone familiar with the early history of RPGs, the names of Otus and Reiche should be very familiar, if only for their all-too-brief stints at TSR Hobbies at the tail end of the Golden Age of D&D. Prior to their employment by TSR, Otus and Reiche both contributed to the creation of a couple of generic RPG supplements, the most substantial of which is entitled Booty and the Beasts – subtitled "Monsters and Treasures for Fantasy Role-Playing Games."

Of course, even in 1979, D&D was more or less synonymous with "fantasy roleplaying game" and, while Booty and the Beasts is not specifically written for it, a quick look at its monster descriptions makes it pretty clear the game for which it was written. They include "Hit Dice," "Armor Class," and movement ratings delineated in inches. There's also an entry for "Dexterity," expressed as a range, which might suggest the influence of the Holmes edition of D&D, which used Dexterity for handling initiative, though it could just as easily demonstrate the influence of either Warlock or Arduin, two D&D variants popular in California that used Dexterity in this fashion. (It's also worth noting that Otus had contributed illustrations to the Arduin Grimoire series.)

In any case, Booty and the Beasts definitely expresses the wild and reckless invention of this period of gaming history. Its monsters are completely unlike the rather staid and conventional ones found in the AD&D Monster Manual, for example. Rather than drawing on myth or folklore, the majority of them are whimsically original, such as Living Hills, who "feed upon unwary travelers who camp upon their seemingly benign summits;" the Malevolent Mana Muncher, whose "only desire is to steal the characters' magical items, as it eats them;" and Tortillas, which "look like large yellow gorillas with tortoise-like shells." This is in addition to monsters unashamedly drawn from the works of Jack Vance, such as the Deodand, Leucomorph, and Erb.

Looking over the nearly 90 new monsters included in its pages, what strikes me most about Booty and the Beasts is how many of its entries have a science fictional bent to them. There is, for instance, an entire section of the book devoted solely to robots and many of its creatures are noted as hailing from another planet, solar system, or even galaxy. The Xenomorph from Alien even makes an appearance under the "clever" name of the Neila – get it? Also among the monsters is the Fling Fern, a plant monster that would later make an appearance in the mini-adventure included with the Gamma World Referee's Screen, written not coincidentally by Reiche while he worked at TSR.

This science fictional and indeed post-apocalyptic bent carries over into the magic items section of Booty and the Beasts. There is an entire section devoted to technological items, like the United States Army Pulse Laser Rifle and the Universal Translator. As you might expect, a great many of these are inspired by SF literature, television, and movies, as was the style in gaming products at the time. There are, of course, more "traditional" magic items as well, like the Unpilferable Pouch and the Helm of the Heinous, but I can't help but feel these are overshadowed somewhat by the sci-fi items, perhaps because they're so obviously different from what you'd typically have found in a D&D product at the time (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks having not yet been published.)

I'm not completely sure what more to say about Booty and the Beasts, because it's such a quirky product with a very distinct vision that it defies easy categorization. I suppose that's ultimately why the book, long out of print and sadly unavailable today (except through used booksellers and auction sites), still fascinates me: it possesses a rough, even raw, quality that is clearly the work of individuals with their own notions of what "fantasy" can and should be. Because these notions don't completely comport with my own, I find them in equal parts repellent and alluring. Booty and the Beasts is, like so many products of the early hobby, a labor of mad love that gives us a glimpse of what the hobby was like before brandification and "lifestyle gaming" carried the day – what a time!