High Adventure and Low Humor

But if serious purpose is integral to a successfully ongoing campaign, there must be moments of relief as well. Such counterplots can be lesser and different themes within the whole whether some side dungeon or quest, a minor altercation between petty nobles, or whatever. Occasional "pure fun: scenarios can be conducted also. That is, moments of silliness and humor help to contrast with the grinding seriousness of a titanic struggle and relieve participants at the same time. After all, ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is first and foremost a game, a pastime for fun and enjoyment. At times the fun aspect must be stressed.

The above quote appears in Gary Gygax's magnum opus, the Dungeon Masters Guide, immediately before sections in which are offered rules conversions between AD&D, Boot Hill, and Gamma World. As a younger person, this section was one of my favorites, precisely because I could still find enjoyment in flinging the PCs, via a cursed scroll, to Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881 or having them face off against a band of Knights of Genetic Purity, armed to the teeth with blasters and photon grenades. I'd not yet taken the game too seriously, which was a common malady afflicting some of my older contemporaries in the hobby and one to which I eventually succumbed in turn.

It's a very common story in my experience. Nearly everyone I've ever met in this hobby started off with an expansive understanding of "fantasy," one that could accommodate literally anything their mind could conceive, no matter how outlandish or "silly" it might seem. Then, bit by bit, that understanding contracts, becoming more rigid and codified, with clear boundaries distinguishing what is acceptable and what is not. Gone is the genuine open-mindedness of childhood, replaced by the feigned seriousness of adolescence. Banished along with that open-mindedness are the infinite possibilities that first drew us into the hobby in the first place.

If we're lucky, we eventually grow out of this serious phase and recognize the wisdom in the paragraph quoted above. No, not everything in one's play must be silly or nonsenical, but then neither must everything be deadly serious. As with so many things in life, balance is key. Knowing when to introduce a little levity is one of those skills all good referees acquire, just as all good players learn to enjoy it and introduce some of their own.

My friends and I long ago realized that the most satisfying fantasy campaigns were those that freely mixed high adventure with low humor. Many of the situations that arise in a long-standing fantasy campaign are genuinely absurd, if looked at with a dispassionate eye, and there's absolutely nothing wrong in occasionally allowing that absurdity to step into the foreground. Indeed, we would argue that it's essential that this happen every now and again, to ensure both the freshness of the campaign and to maintain interest in it. Nothing is surer to kill an ongoing campaign than unrelenting seriousness, which is why, even now, I try very hard to remember how I originally approached the game and to use that knowledge to keep the game fun for everyone, most especially myself.

Mood in the Original Campaign: An Essay Into the Mind and Imagination of E. Gary Gygax

Extracted from the upcoming book, Lord of the Green Dragons™
Copyright 2009. Robert J. Kuntz


... Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder such as I have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified elemental forces of this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had stirred the powers of the place into activity. It was we who were the cause of the disturbance, and my brain filled to bursting with stories and legends of the spirits and deities of places that have been acknowledged and worshipped by men in all ages of the world's history. But, before I could arrive at any possible explanation, something impelled me to go farther out, and I crept forward on the sand and stood upright. I felt the ground still warm under my bare feet; the wind tore at my hair and face; and the sound of the river burst upon my ears with a sudden roar. These things, I knew, were real, and proved that my senses were acting normally. Yet the figures still rose from earth to heaven, silent, majestically, in a great spiral of grace and strength that overwhelmed me at length with a genuine deep emotion of worship. I felt that I must fall down and worship--absolutely worship. ...
--The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood


...In regarding HPL's influence. Without a doubt such mood pieces (one of EGG's favorites was the non-Mythos story "Rats in the Walls" and another "Pickman's Model") had substantial impact on the campaign. Compare this to his love for Algernon Blackwood ("The Willows") which he insisted I read, and EGG's many "real-life" stories he himself told me about, especially hauntings he'd experienced (and one which, me being a very impressionable and imaginative lad then, kept me from sleeping on my stomach for months while guarding my back), well it was then all too apparent later, and in my reflective moments, that this heady stuff got transferred into the campaign's structure.

Was EGG a master of mood during play? Yes, but mostly when he wanted to achieve reactions at specific moments from his players. He could certainly paint the pictures in your mind when he wanted to. Here again I found, as one of the earliest participants in the Greyhawk Campaign, an amalgmanation of fantastic moods working on different levels in play and no doubt, by relation, just as these had been inpressed upon his mind in earlier years. When these mood changes occurred (such as when Robilar was trapped at 2nd level near abandonned cells by two wights), EGG had you foxed if you were not attentive to them, as I had not been at that instant. One can also call it "fore-shadowing," and in a sense that is true, but we were participating in the story on a primary level (interaction) and not gauging the story from a distance, as readers do, so "mood" stands as a more definite descriptor.

EGG came into grand form with extracted fictional pieces that he held in high regard, and then by transference of his delight in these pastiches, so to speak, their full weight and mood was felt, such as in his transferences of Vance's Dirdir Hunting Grounds, Kong (Isle of the Ape) or of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. He bacame very animated with these fictional transferences to a degree that one actually felt what he had naturally felt reading those stories. This is hardly mentioned to reinforce that the same was not true when he applied similar reactions to his own ideas and creations (and there were many that he did do this for and with equal fervor), it is just to note that his animation regarding such matter was so obviously inspired at those times; and thus his animation was immediately compelled and compelling at once.

Mood had a pace in the game. Certainly there were the highs and lows, or hills and valleys, associated with the rising and falling story line. But that is where the mood became very important, and that is where EGG got you caught up in it. It wasn't even as close to when someone looks at the cover of TOEE and then took their first step into said temple. What we have there is only a picture and an action. But when EGG emphasized where you had been (outside in "normalville") by setting that mood, that HPLish lurking oppression, with carefully chosen words spread amidst the changing scenery, then you knew you weren't in Kansas any longer. Further, that party pause due to this change, that telling time in space, was enough to inform EGG that he had achieved his purpose, that the players were thinking and perhaps, just slightly, leaning on the edge of doubt.

That is the respect the man commanded; and we must always recall that his players for the most part consisted of grown men, and that he had achieved instilling this doubt by tapping into similar real moods that they too had experienced in the past, be these real or imagined. The conditioning afforded the participants therein merged with their own straining perceptions, and thereby created that brooding expectation. There is no wonder, also, that this worked to inform the players of the inherent dangers which could lie ahead, made them prepare, as well, as EGG was no softy DM, quite the opposite. It was as much, in his way, of saying, "Yep. Get ready. And don't say later that I didn't warn you." And all this with but a few chosen words of description at the right moment...

Next: Humor in the Original Campaign

Return From GaryCon1

That's what the badge said: #1. Folks, Eric and I had a supremely good time at GC#1. My intent was to meet with the Gygax family and talk, and I did so with Luke, Ernie, Heidi and Elise and her husband. Also with Flint Dille, Paul Stormberg, Rhuvein, Jim Ward, Mike Carr, Tom Wham, Greg Timm, and so many others that it was in a word delightful. I met with Ed Kann and dined with him at the Next Door Pub, a well known and liked place for pizza which was always the spot back then for TSR folk to hang out at. Ed not only is slated to produce more great art pieces for PPP, but he is re-rendering the Original Castle levels in color from my originals (they will retain all the nuances and forms of the originals) and he will be doing increasing design work for us as well, so look for more from him down the pike. Also caught up with "two shades" of the past in the form of their sons, but I will let Eric recount that story. Life is ever amazing. In all a great time. I especially appreciated spending time with my old adopted family the Gygax's, who with the usual tenacity and verve have held up well and continue to do their father's name and memory justice.

Origin of the Black Pudding? Roots in CA Smith Conceptions?

One might wonder where EGG came up with all the puddings, slimes and oozes apparent in OD&D and later expanded (pun intended) into so many forms.

I have thought about the pulp story connections, especially those aligned to Clark Ashton Smith's mythos contributions. Strangely, Smith was never recognized as a primary influence in EGG's DMG Recommended Reading list, which I later, and gently, took him to task for while pushing a copy of Timescape's City of the Singing Flame into his hand, which he indeed read, thereafter complimenting the stories therein [1980, while he was visiting with me at my house]. How could Smith, being part of the great triumvirate of REH>HPL>CAS which was so recognized in the pulp community of the 30's & 40's on through the Arkham House reprints, and into the present, have been missed by him?

But I digress. I have tracked many influences for the "puddings" over the years, and I could even extrapolate (and have) from Star Trek's "The Devil in the Dark" episode's "monster" that bored tunnels and was very "pudding-like" in appearance. Of course there is also the "Blob," and perhaps even more to think about, no doubt. We shall never know, unless EGG recounted the influence somewhere I am not aware of.

But do read with care the following about C. A. Smith's "Formless Spawn," and then reference the monsters we described on page #63 of Greyhawk: Supplement #1 to D&D, particularly noting the second to last paragraph there. Could these manifestations have been influenced by such a source as well as used by EGG? At the time there was no connection to Smith's stories by myself (this would begin in 1976, as I had read almost all of the SF & F books that EGG had recommended from his shelves then, and Smith had been completely absent ). We contrived these Greyhawk monstrosities rather quickly then, especially the ogre jelly, as it had that double meaning that we both found humorous thinking future-wise about when its description would (gleefully, for us) elicit the suitable reactions of horror we foresaw from our players. But if Smith was the source, then why no mention of him at all? I have always found Smith's decidedly dark and fantastic stories very inspiring on a fantasy level and have always wondered of his omission from the earliest days of OD&D.

Formless spawn [as referenced from the Wikpedia article]

The basin ... was filled with a sort of viscous and semi-liquescent substance, quite opaque and of a sooty color.... [T]he center swelled as if with the action of some powerful yeast [and] an uncouth amorphous head with dull and bulging eyes arose gradually on an ever-lengthening neck ... Then two arms — if one could call them arms — likewise arose inch by inch, and we saw that the thing was not ... a creature immersed in the liquid, but that the liquid itself had put forth this hideous neck and head, and [it was now forming arms] that groped toward us with tentacle-like appendages in lieu of claws or hands! ... Then the whole mass of the dark fluid began to rise [and] poured over the rim of the basin like a torrent of black quicksilver, taking as it reached the floor an undulant ophidian form which immediately developed more than a dozen short legs.
—Clark Ashton Smith, "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros"
Tsathoggua's will is carried out by the formless spawn, polymorphic entities made of black goo. They are extremely resilient and very difficult to dispatch. Formless spawn can take any shape and can attack their targets in nearly every conceivable way. They are surprisingly flexible and plastic-like, and can quickly flow into a room through the tiniest of cracks. They attack by trampling their targets, biting them, or crushing them with their grasp. The Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game's entry on Formless Spawn also claims that they are powerfully acidic in substance and can dissolve human flesh with even a slight touch [bold emphasis points mine--RJK].

Formless spawn often rest in basins in Tsathoggua's temples and keep the sanctuary from being defiled by nonbelievers.

Mordenkainen Remembered

Mordenkainen the Great

by Rob Kuntz

Twice stricken and fallen so,
Mordenkainen the Great,
Shaper of Worlds,
Shaper of Souls.

Iron claws could not rend thee,
Neither did puddings black scare,
Join you now in feasts laid out,
A year's repast so fair.

Fire and ice you commanded,
Fantasy gouts all colored rare,
Your magical words cleaving high,
To change our earth, so bare.

Wither Murlynd in his 'pose?
And wither authors you did meet,
While walking paths of ancient times?
...Whom now in fondness you entreat.

The Sphere of Many Eyes

Though many of the monsters of Dungeons & Dragons have their origins in mythology and folklore, many more are wholly original creations. Perhaps one of the most iconic is the beholder, which first appeared in Supplement I to OD&D, Greyhawk, in 1976. As I recall, the beholder was not a Gygaxian creation, but instead the work of Terry Kuntz, player of Terik and the Monk with No Name.

I've often wondered about what might have inspired the beholder. Did it have any antecedents in pulp fantasy literature? Was it based on a piece of artwork, like the remorhaz in this earlier entry? A nightmare perhaps? The seeds from which great ideas spring can be found almost anywhere and that's certainly true in the case of D&D, whose monsters have origins as diverse as rubber "dinosaur" toys from Japan (like the rust monster and bulette) or fondness for a particular movie from one's youth (like the iron golem).

I personally find tales of the origins of D&D monsters fascinating and would love to know more of them. Do any of my fellow contributors have any insights to share on the beholder's genesis?

In Memoriam (1938-2008)

"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagh’nagl fhtagn."

I've spent a lot of time over the last year delving deeply into the literary origins of Dungeons & Dragons -- the books and authors that influenced its creators and its earliest players and referees. My "Bible" for this is the fabled Appendix N from the Advanced D&D Dungeon Masters Guide, where Gary Gygax laid out a list of "inspirational and educational reading." The books and authors Gygax noted as being most immediately influential on him were almost all fairly old -- some might even say "old fashioned" -- by the time the DMG was published in 1979: L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Abraham Merritt, and H.P. Lovecraft.

The last name in that list is quite interesting, since Lovecraft is the only author among them that's generally considered a "horror" rather than "fantasy" writer. Leaving aside for the moment that such a fine distinction is of fairly recent vintage (and not completely accurate even in this case), HPL does rather stand out as an anomaly. Lovecraft's protagonists are scholars rather than swordsmen and are often "rewarded" for their efforts with the insanity that comes from the knowledge of humanity's ultimate insignificance within the cosmic scheme -- hardly the stuff from which D&D adventures are made!

Or is it? Certainly Lovecraft's worldview was very different than that of his friend and correspondent, Robert E. Howard, for example, but it was by no means devoid of heroism. For Lovecraft, humanity and all its works are as nothing compared to the Great Old Ones and their servants. Despite the inconsequential nature of human existence, some few soldier on, braving the dark and sacrificing their lives and minds to preserve all that they've known and loved for just one more day. There may be no stopping the inevitable time when the stars shall again be right and dread Cthulhu and his minions arise once more, but a heroic few will nevertheless attempt to stave it off for as long as they can and their struggles to do so make great fodder for D&D.

The earliest players of the game recognized this, which is why issue 12 of The Dragon included an article on "The Lovecraftian Mythos in Dungeons & Dragons," much as early printings of 1980's Deities & Demigods did as well. The Original Campaign was no stranger to such horrors either. The Temple of the Elder Gods was one of its early adventures and it drew heavily upon Lovecraftian themes, as did its "sequel," Fomalhaut and even parts of the Bottle City. And of course, the faction of drow attempting to establish an alliance with the giants in the classic G-series modules worshipped a tentacular deity known as the Elder Elemental God, a being of writhing, amorphous appearance. Likewise, the evil deity Tharizdun -- whose name was derived from the earlier Tharzduun -- has decidedly Lovecraftian overtones, being imprisoned to prevent his destruction of the world and served only by madmen.

Like so much in D&D, even Lovecraftian ideas are imported to serve the game, not vice versa. Consequently, a HPL purist would probably balk at the somewhat humanistic spin given to many of the Old Gent's ideas, never mind the treatment of the Great Old Ones and their servants as mere monsters, albeit very powerful ones. In D&D, victory against the dark isn't necessarily eking out just one more day of respite before the final, mind-shattering End comes. That approach, so powerful and poignant in Lovecraft's own writings, is a poor fit for the pulp fantasy superstructure of D&D. The earliest creators of the game understood this, but it didn't stop them from drinking deeply from the works of Lovecraft and his imitators, all of whom left an indelible mark upon the game that's visible, however faintly, even today.

Beginnings

“Know, sir, that we are a company of righteous fellows, most evilly disposed in one way or another by the false-knight, Baron Teric whose castlewick at Edgewood on Wild Road is the bane of freemen and a nest of caitiffs.

--The Gnome Cache (Chapter Two) by Garrison Ernst, The Dragon #2 (August 1976)

Garrison Ernst was, of course, a pseudonym of the late Gary Gygax and the fantasy serial The Gnome Cache is one of his earliest published works of fantasy fiction. Whatever its defects as literature, it's an invaluable record of the early days of the Original Campaign. The serial introduces us to Oerth, a parallel world "very similar to this earth in many ways, but ... also quite different." Over the course of its six chapters, we learn of places whose names are immediately recognizable, such as Blackmoor, as well as those whose names are close to ones we already know, such as the Great Kingdom of Thalland, and those that are more unfamiliar, such as Nehronland. We also hear of personages great and small whose names are similarly familiar, like Saint Cuthburt [sic] of the Cudgel and the villainous Baron Teric mentioned above.

It's important to bear in mind how much the Original Campaign evolved significantly over time, from its origins in the Castle & Crusade Society of the International Federation of Wargamers to the more well-known form under which it was published by TSR in 1980. As The Gnome Cache attests, even the names of places and characters evolved over time, making it sometimes difficult to determine correlations between earlier versions and those that came later. Likewise, alterations were sometimes made for publication, further muddying the waters by creating the false impression that "official" publications were fully accurate representations of characters, places, and events in the Original Campaign.

One of the things I've most enjoyed over the past year is unearthing the "secret history" of the Original Campaign. Discovering, for example, that the earliest map of the setting was based on the geography of North America, with the Free City in roughly the same position as Chicago (with whom it shares a historical penchant for political corruption), made me feel as if I were an archeologist of gaming antiquity. In a sense, I was, since much of this information had lain hidden from view for decades. For that reason, I am especially grateful to this blog's host, the Lord of Green Dragons himself, for the work he's done in contributing to not only my understanding of the Original Campaign's history, but the understanding of interested gamers everywhere. Here's hoping that the next year will bring even more of this hidden knowledge to light.