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

Vampirism Revamped

Vampires as we commonly imagine them are sourced from the folklore of 18^th century Southeastern Europe. Variations of the vampire-like demons and other manifestations trace back thousands of years, but our stereotypical perception of these undead is largely the result of popular fiction and cinema. There is little doubt that Bram Stoker's Dracula is the most readily conjured image when one considers vampires. Further cementing and popularizing this brand of vampire was the 1931 horror film, Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi.

In the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game, the accepted paradigm of vampirism was embraced and utilized by Gary Gygax, and David Trampier's illustration at once reminds us of Bela Lugosi peering over his cloak-wrapped arm bent at the elbow. Indeed, Gygax touches on many of the popularized attributes of the modern vampire when he states the following:

"...These creatures must rest in a coffin or similar receptacle during hours of sunlight..."

Gygax's AD&D vampire drinks blood, can shape change into a bat, and can charm with its gaze; it also recoils from garlic, the face of a mirror, or a cross (or other holy symbol). They can be killed by sunlight or if a wooden stake is driven through its heart, followed by a beheading. Of course, some AD&D-isms are included, such as the vampire being subject only to magical weapons, an 18/76 strength, and the fact that it can be turned by a high level cleric, but these gaming components are adroitly woven into the presentation.

Whilst the standardized representation of the vampire works perfectly well within the framework of the AD&D game, I must admit I have personally grown rather jaded by this take on vampires. Fiction and film have likewise reduced the vampire to one of triteness for me, perhaps in part due to the voluminous amount of vampire "chick-lit" crowding the shelves of local book store chains. Stephen King's Salem's Lot was a fresh deviation from the paradigm, and so I held it in high esteem as a young man, and to some degree I still do. There are, however, two 20^th century authors who portray some of the most thought provoking deviations to the popular notion of vampirism. They are HP Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

The Shunned House (written 1924, published 1937) by Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Genius Loci (1933) by Clark Ashton Smith challenge our modern notion of the vampire. Gone is the stereotypical image wrought by Bram Stoker, where the vampire has humanlike form and motivation. What Lovecraft and Smith respectively accomplish is the creation of a nonstandard form of vampirism. It is not my intention to summarize these stories point by point, for I feel that readers of this article would derive greater enjoyment by experiencing each tale for themselves. Notwithstanding, I would have to stop writing now were I to completely avoid any "spoiler" material.

In each tale the respective author takes the concept of vampirism and applies it to an a malign force or entity, a wraith-like manifestation that drains its human victims, evoking, in my opinion, greater fear and madness than any man with fangs and cloak could ever accomplish.Whilst Stoker's Dracula (and its many and sundry derivatives) has a palpable form and identity, Lovecraft and Smith present a vampire that can scarcely be quantified on such terms; indeed, what each author has accomplished is the manufacture of a nameless horror that depletes its victims and reduces them to shells of their former selves as they plunge into sheer insanity and, eventually, death.

In The Shunned House and Genius Loci, respectively, the vampire is presented as an incorporeal entity that feeds off its victims, distorts perceptions, and inspires aberrant behavior. Each vampiric entity is distinctive, as is the style and execution of each author. Of the two I feel that HPL more closely touches upon the sort of vampire popularized by Stoker, but only in the broadest of strokes. All who dwell in The Shunned House, generation after generation, suffer various forms of wasting diseases, anaemia, and mild forms of insanity. The closest Lovecraft comes to Stoker's vampirism (and the folklore from which Stoker derived his inspiration) is when he writes the following:

"...an appallingly grisly circumstance whose duplication was remarkable. It seems that in both instances the dying person...became transfigured in a horrible way; glaring glassily and attempting to bite the throat of the attending physician."

Smith, for his own part, explores what begins as a landscape artist's morbid fascination with a boggy meadow of disturbing quality. Fascination soon escalates to a species of mesmerization or enthrallment that can not be defied. Smith's vampire is perhaps more of a formless entity than Lovecraft's, but both are presented with a focus on a locale that suffers the manifestation of some preternatural malevolence. Notwithstanding, the semblance of a physical form is observed near the end of The Shunned House, particularly when the narrator notes the

"...unthinkable abnormality whose titan elbow I had seen."

But in Genius Loci we never actually see a physical form made manifest, and at length the horror is observed when the narrator relates the following:

"The true horror lay in that thing, which, from a little distance, I had taken for the coils of a slowly moving and rising mist. It was not vapor, nor anything else that could conceivably exist -- that malign, luminous, pallid emanation that enfolded the entire scene before me..."

Exploring vampirism as an environmental event, hazard, or location as opposed to a palpable enemy combatant is an intriguing option for a swords & sorcery role-playing game adventure, and as I type this article, I am inspired by its myriad possibilities. A location that drains its inhabitants of their vitality . . . Might it affect the family of a PC, or some notable villagers whom the local clergy seem unable to assist? Perhaps the PCs themselves are the afflicted by the manifestation. How can such an entity be exorcised? The PCs might have to engage upon some harrowing quest to obtain an artifact that might vanquish the vampiric haunting, or if not some artifact, the clandestine knowledge that might reveal some form of ritual that would banish the affliction. For a more combat oriented adventure, below the locale there might be vast catacombs where past victims dwell in various states of undeath. Perhaps the entity drains from its victims to give itself physical form, some underworld titan vampire as hinted at in The Shunned House.

Experimenting with alternative forms of vampirism could enrich your game, keep your players on their toes, and prevent them from the using meta-knowledge to combat an otherwise stereotypical enemy. I think I might start working on such an adventure soon . . .

(Jeffrey Talanian, 2009)

"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.