From the Original Campaign: Citadel of the Fire Lord

In between breaks from writing Castle El Raja Key and attending to other matters with the blog, research, etc. I actually get to organize various projects.  There are several in the works that keep me at the grindstone for the most part in various stages of completion and development. Andy Taylor is drawing some illustrations from items and monsters I had created back in the day for a high level adventure, "Citadel of the Fire Lord."

Here's an item--rough draft--from that upcoming adventure (sometime year 2010).  I also mocked up the cover from Andy's superb art.  Reference for this adventure can be found here.

The actual adventure maps were sold at auction many years ago but still exist as color, electronic files that will be re-rendered for the project.  Enjoy!

Hrugash's Familiar Brand (minor artifact)

This appears as a normal brand of some length (varying at first sight from 3-5 feet).  For all intents and purposes it is a largish torch, which when grasped, alights, and seemingly has no end to its flame.

Its primary magical power is to adopt the properties of other flames that it is touched to.  Thus, if it is wielded when a fireball strikes the user, the wielder is transfered the fireball's properties, in essence making him or her immune to that particular fire.  The immunity, once instituted, lasts 1-10 rounds and then dissipates.  During that time other fires can damage the wielder, for these cannot be assimilated into the magical matrix and transfered.  The immunity is useable indefinitely as long as the brand is held.

This item has some interesting nuances.  If touched to lava, for instance, this allows the wielder to walk across it unharmed, thus it confers a water-walking on lava ability as well.

If encountered by an Efreet, they will immediately attempt to bargain for the item, perhaps even granting a wish in trade (50% chance).  Failing this, they will always attack the wielder to secure it for themselves.

Red dragons become enraged in its presence and launch all of their attacks against the wielder until one or the other is slain.  Their chances to breath fire while so enraged are enhanced to 75% and such damage is always +20%.

Fire demons will "mark" the user, making him or her glow a fiery red for 1-24 days (no save).  This will alert other fire demons within sight of the wielder of his or her enmity with associated allies or clans; thereafter they will always pursue and attack the wielder to recover the item.

Salamanders flee from this item if it is brandished before them and will only fight if they are cornered and cannot retreat, and then at -1 to hit and -1 to damage.

Once a year the wielder can summon one of the aforementioned creatures if these were slain by use of the brand.  These spout forth as a fiery form and physically manifest in front of the wielder in 1-4 rounds.  They will obey the wielder, but will move no more than 300 feet from him or her, for turns equal to their total HP.  If forced out of the above range, they magically disappear in a gout of red flame.

The brand does 1-8 hp crushing damage plus a bonus of 1-6 fire damage when used as a melee weapon.

After 2 years of use the brand's flame will start to sputter and its immunity power will lessen to 50% thereafter until it is re-renergized in a volcano on the Plane of Elemental Fire (DMs must create this adventure).

All text and imagery content ©2010 Robert J. Kuntz

An Interesting Greyhawk Link

Here.

Sample & Updates to DS Line

We are excited about this new product line. This has been thought out carefully and Ramsey and I have discussed the possibilities of this line by phone and have traded many, many emails to get it down right and into production. Andy Taylor has been commissioned to draw all exterior and interior art. We may have other "spot" artists doing some add-ins here or there.

Future DUNGEON SETS™ will include 1,500+ word inserts on heavy card stock, three-hole drilled, entitled DUNGEON TRAPPINGS™ This matter will resemble in type what we will be including as separate DT set releases, which as discussed in the news release will be supplemental material of various kinds, such as new magic, spells, monsters, tricks, traps and special set pieces, etc. There will generally be a pleasing mix matching the range of each Dungeon Set. I will be contributing heavily to this material in their special DS forms and as separate releases (I am already 1,200 words into DUNGEON TRAPPINGS™ #1 and have contacted another crafty designer to help with future sets). For my design end this will also include primary matter gleaned from my Original Campaign files dating back to 1973, with salient art re-rendered from my illustrations done then. None of the information will be duplicated from one line (DS>DT) to the other, but each insert will be numbered for sequential ordering and different colors will be chosen for the stock as well. We are looking at no less than 65# color stock for this, and as noted, these will be three-hole drilled, making them easily organizable in a 3-ring binder for storage and reference/extraction.

UP ON A TREE STUMP #2: Humor in the Original Campaign

Up on a Tree Stump™
(or) All I Know about D&D™ I Learned From Life

©2009 Robert J. Kuntz

#2: Humor in the Original Campaign

Alastair Clarke explains: "The theory is an evolutionary and cognitive explanation of how and why any individual finds anything funny. Effectively, it explains that humour occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it, and that recognition of this sort is rewarded with the experience of the humorous response, an element of which is broadcast as laughter." The theory further identifies the importance of pattern recognition in human evolution: "An ability to recognize patterns instantly and unconsciously has proved a fundamental weapon in the cognitive arsenal of human beings. The humorous reward has encouraged the development of such faculties, leading to the unique perceptual and intellectual abilities of our species."

Humor in the Original Campaign was rife; and quite honestly if it hadn't been, the experiences would not have been as rich as they were, and thus not as memorable as they now truly are. Gary did not pretend that he was not humorous, quite the contrary. Very early on in our friendship he pushed book after book into my hands, urging me to "read them." One such gem was Jack Vance's The Eyes of the Overworld. I will forgo describing it and let those who have not graced themselves with Vance's penetrating wit, and indeed, biting sense of irony and drama that interweaves throughout it all, partake of it, and I do highly recommend doing so.

What is revealed here might seem a dichotomy. Humor, however, never equated as some may assume, to actual ridiculousness. Gary's approach was simply wherever he found humor, he expressed it. This is only indicative of his quick mind, as a quick wit does not otherwise rise above that potential but only equals it. There were too many instances of humor in the Original Campaign to really conclude that all was non-serious, for the stories and other data available point to the contrary even if we side with a "fun and games" view as EGG might have himself expressed. He has been quoted many times as expressing such an ideal, but ultimately this becomes his distilled afterthought and his poignant sense of it all, for the adventuring milieu he spawned so early on was a mix of terror, high adventure, horror; and within that he sprinkled, just as the very best dramas have done, slices of humor.

But, one may then ask, what was the purpose of all this humor? We can go many directions with this and even adopt the point that Mr. Clarke exposes above, that "An ability to recognize patterns instantly and unconsciously has proved a fundamental weapon in the cognitive arsenal of human beings."

Facet One, Disarming the Opponent: One must remember that EGG's grounding was in table-top and miniature wargames. Imagine a gathering of us nere-do-wells in his basement, squared off against each other on separate sides of a 6 x 10 sand table. Now imagine the interchanges as we, the generals of one side of the table, quipped with the other side's commanders. Provocation? Most definitely! It may well have been the same thing that the Scots and Edwardian Englishmen could have traded squared off as they were, awaiting the outcome of an upcoming battle. A summoning of courage? Most certainly! The superior force responds on all levels of emotional output, and this was no different in our games, whether staged or instinctual, or where-ever such "harmless" chiding bore from. As the battle wore on, as the field changed hands, and as the final victory was in view, the other side crushed and in rout, well, you can imagine that we didn't just sit there wringing our hands and noting it in a perfunctory manner. And although some were calmer in their expressions, EGG was most expressive in victory (especially if it had been a very hard-fought battle hinging on last minute shifts and on the fly changes), so it is not to say that he didn't sound like a Confederate soldier on occasion, perhaps imagining himself pursuing the blue-bellies amidst howls and hoots after the Union's rout at the First Battle of Bull Run!

Now transfer this particular part of his mindset into the D&D game with him as DM. His opponents were the players, we all knew that, and he did too. There wasn't an ordering of political correctness and a false cloud of pretentiousness which I've seen portrayed in modern RPGs. This was a game of strategy and tactics, and that meant, on both sides, that outwitting the opponents involved was now at hand...

Facet Two, Never Reveal Your Hand: EGG was constantly bluffing and had a poker face. I reminded Eric Shook the other day of a tactic EGG and I both used when DMing, in this instance when parties hit a down slant, elevator room or transporter, which secretly moved their PCs (without their in/out-of-game knowledge) to another dungeon level. Well, inevitably at those times EGG and I would create an out-of-game distraction, and I indeed learned this from him while Co-DMing with him on so many occasions, such as: getting up to go to the restroom. Well, this took the focus off of us as DMs, and the party usually took this opportunity to discuss matters of planning and approach and other details in game context. I'd return to such a scene and they'd still be at it, so as I sat down, that is when I'd turn the page to the level they'd been recently transported to, and without them noticing. This tactic merges with DM-craftiness and keeps the upper hand of information in proper control of course; and this was also accomplished through us telling a humorous aside (a joke)--to which the players responded by laughing--and during the uproarious interlude is when we effected our "changes", the level-shifts, etc. DMs have to be magicians, you know.

The poker face comes in handy especially when applying these types of nuanced forms, and certainly helps retain a balanced (neutral) side to the affair, which is indeed the DM's goal to begin with and thus, in our cases, were just part and parcel of the suggested outcome. Styles may differ in attaining these most singular points, of course.

Facet Three, Dispelling Tension: Humor was also used in dispelling tension and thus in informing players in a round-about manner, and thus intuitively, that we may have been in a good mood that day as the DMs. More often this tactic was used with newcomers who we were not going to handle too roughly... at first. This tactic merged with "Disarming the Opponent." When used up front on veteran players they often, if not always, took it as a warning sign instead, and with good reason, as it more often meant to them that we were about to test a new situation or thing upon them, the guinea pigs; and so the more intuitive of the bunch would react with a more guided approach and careful manner, especially if there were veterans mixed with newcomers, the latter having no idea of the "fun and games" ahead. The best players in this regard were Ernie Gygax and my brother, Terry. Ernie especially would pick up on this charade of ours, having for many years understood his father's humor and mind and thus, by transference, my own. Keenly perceptive and eyes rooted to ours, he was always searching for clues in our manner, but more often than not only got in return shrugs and a poker face, accentuated at times by wry smiles...

So, when you hear that humor has no place in a "serious" game, think back. Are the tales of Nehwon at a loss for it? Do L. Sprague DeCamp's or Fletcher Pratt's stories fall to the side and not embrace such? Does Jack Vance not include it in many of his tales? Then too, does the dark side of this in C. A. Smith's tales not rise time and time again to relish it? Where else can we find this form, this dramatic mixing which works so well in a game merged with the fantastic? If certainly within some tale as recounted by Shakespeare, then I have no qualms at all for being included in such company! Humor can thus be offset, and rightly so, from joking around. This is a serious business outwitting an opponent in a game; and this is made even more notable if you can do it with a smile...

"Grayland Fables"

Just for fun many years ago, I started writing short pensees, or fables, "derived" from the original campaign, which is to mean, I imagined them spawning from anonymous personages therein and becoming part and parcel of that backdrop consisting of folktales, legends and other trivia repeated about camp fires and at wayside attractions. Below are two of the many I've penned.

Fables of the “Graylands” Copyright 2009. Robert J. Kuntz. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts and famous quotes from anonymous to well-known historical figures.

On Subordination

An unruly knight being asked by a local baron on how he felt about being a subordinate, replied: "Have you a regular damsel that you see, Lord?"

"Well, no." replied the Baron, somewhat confused by the questioning response.

"Then have you a wife?" pressed the Knight.

"Why, yes." replied the Baron.

"How do you feel about it, Lord?"

The Baron made the Knight his closest personal adviser from that point forward.

--Anonymous


The King's Adviser

The King decided one day to test his adviser's knowledge, having not done this recently.

"Why do women pretend to be pure when this is unattainable?" he asked.

The sage replied: "For they seek godliness but are confused by its limits."

Encouraged, the King continued: "Then why is man content with being impure?"

"For," replied the sage, "they have seen these limits and know them as unattainable and thus are reconciled with their dispositions."

Thinking to catch him unaware, the King blurted, "How is it that you answer all of my questions unflinchingly?"

Non-plussed, the sage replied, "For you are the King and I but your sage; thus it is your whim to ask and my duty to respond."

Slamming his fist upon the table between them, the King shouted, "How do you know these things!?"

Smiling, the sage said, "If I knew that, I would now be the one with the sore hand."

--Anonymous

The First "Living" Campaign

I have read with great interest several articles around the net describing the start of Living Campaigns. The idea is that these started with a certain edition of the D&D rules proceeding the original brown box version. I am now casting my two pennies into the mix, not just because I can, but because that's the only way to get rid of copper pieces these days. ;)

First, the term "Living" strikes me as a misnomer, really, but for clarity sake I'll use it here, as the idea of campaign play seems less understandable within its multi-tierd meaning.

When EGG created the one map for City of Greyhawk and the first Castle Greyhawk (12 levels), we had the start of the first campaign in Lake Geneva, 1972. As noted in EGG's introduction to my adventure, Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure (WG5), Gary played in a castle/area that I had designed, (N.B., but I had designed no supporting town or city as he had). That was about a month into him starting Greyhawk. So this is the second campaign created in Lake Geneva (late 1972 to early 1973). Both of us were using the Outdoor Survival game map for outdoor adventures then as there was no area map for either of our imagined locations. Gary in fact started in the "mists" when rolling his first PC, Yrag. Later, he was to adventure with other rolled PCs, Mordenkainen, etc., as EGG was very much taken with building his own clan based around what he later named the Circle of Eight in my mileu, which we located on the same OSMap. Note that EGG had two main PCs as I allowed for him to have an additional one as I was for the most part running him solo (but do read hereafter). Then there came a rash of his NPCs as noted in his Up on a Soapbox stories of his adventures within my "campaign" structure and as appearing in The Dragon magazine, a goodly run of 30 stories, in fact. Note an extract from one hereafter (bold emphasis mine):

...#11. Roleplaying for the Dungeon Master: Virtue brings more than its own reward.

Back in those early halcyon days of D&D, all of my time was not spent developing the Greyhawk campaign environment and then serving as Dungeon Master for the ever-growing throng of players. Indeed, after only a few weeks time there were plenty of others working to create campaign settings like that I was doing. So I was offered many opportunities to play, and I did so in about a dozen different settings with as many different DMs. Thus came into being my first PC, Yrag. Now it so happened that the most eager of these other fledgling DMs was Rob Kuntz. Because he took to the new game like the proverbial duck to water, playing in his campaign was a lot of fun, and I did that wherever I could, side by side with many of the regulars from my own campaign. It was in one such adventure that Rob introduced a new cursed magic item, the ring of contrariness. Likely because I was a very intense player myself, Rob made sure that Yrag ended up with the item. The doughty fighter being a risk taker, Yrag immediately put the ring on his ringer. At that point, I was taken aside, and the properties of the ring were explained to me. Laughing silently to myself, I returned to the group.

... someone asked. “What does the ring do?” To that Yrag replied, “None of your business!” As the adventure was just beginning, another player said the matter could be set aside until later, as his character said. “Let’s go” and moved away. The other PCs followed. Yrag sat down. “Come on,” someone urged him. “No, I am staying here.” Being a close-knit band, the others then came back, saying they too would stay. “In that case, I am leaving,” muttered Yrag, as he stalked off. ... After about 10 minutes of this it became apparent to the other players that I was roleplaying, that Yrag was under some malign magical influence that made him uncooperative. Of course I played it to the hilt. For example: “You can’t take the ring off, can you?” Terik tried, to which Yrag responded, “Yes I can, but that’s what you want, so I won’t.” Then, “Yrag, pummel yourself!” suggested Murlynd. “No, I won’t do that, but I’ll smite you!” roared the fighter now in a growing rage. ... Finally, they came up with a means of defeating the contrariness curse ...

So Murlynd (Don Kaye) and Terik (Terry Kuntz) had started as PCs in Greyhawk and easily moved between that area and my own. Also note that EGG refers to that area as an "environment," which is indeed a better descriptive, as there was no defined area, per se, just a relative image in our minds due to the position that each castle and environment maintained on the Outdoor Survival map in relation to the City of Greyhawk.

And so here we note that, indeed, this is the start of the first true "Living Campaign," which was to go on to merge as one with me becoming the co-DM of Greyhawk and thereby transferring my creations, such as levels, gods, magic items and sundry ideas into that combined campaign structure. After that time there was only one campaign, really, as EGG and I had never thought otherwise about such divisions, and the process seemed a natural outgrowth of play. However, when we realized that this could ultimately mean an over abundance of sharing across many campaigns then starting (Ernie Gygax's, Terry Kuntz's, Don Kaye's, et al), then EGG & I instated a firm rule that PCs adventuring in our campaign would thereafter have to obtain permission to do so in others, and this was not usually forthcoming, especially if the DMs were known to be of the lax sort who gave away too much bounty.

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

1:20

Volume I of original Dungeons & Dragons (1974) includes this little tidbit that has long intrigued me:

Number of Players: At least one referee and from four to fifty players can be handled in any single campaign, but the referee to player ratio should be about 1:20 or thereabouts.

There are a lot of ways to read this. One is to assume that the 1:20 ratio is an atavism, a throwback to the way the wargames out of which D&D had grown were played. Another is to treat it as a guess based on how the authors believed the game would be played. Yet another is to see it simply as a reflection of the experiences of Gygax and Arneson, whose home campaigns included exceptionally large numbers of players by today's standards.

What I find interesting is that most interpretations of this passage take it as given that the 1:20 ratio is no longer tenable; it's at best an artifact from another time. There's a lot to support this notion. In my three decades (!) of playing this game, I never had more than 8-10 regular players at my table and the norm was usually 4-6. Back in the faddish days of the hobby, I participated in pick-up campaigns that were run at local game stores or at "game days" sponsored by public libraries. Those campaigns often had close to 20 people participating in them. I remember one rather fun campaign run at a library, which used this giant conference table to seat us, with the referee seated at one end -- the chairman's position -- and the bunch of us players on the other seats. It was a lot of fun and far less chaotic than one might expect, but that probably had a lot to do with the referee, who was a grognard of the original sort, well-known for his lengthy and well-organized wargames campaigns.

Reading that passage now, I don't think it's meant to be understood that there'd be 4-50 players participating in any single session at the same time. Rather, I suspect the idea is that a campaign, encompassing many sessions over many different days, might encompass that many players. The assumptions seems to have been that there'd be many different groups of players, all of whom shared a referee and whose adventures all took place within the same world. One of the reasons why the early megadungeons may have been so huge was to accommodate multiple groups of adventurers tramping through them on a regular basis. These places had to be big or else the referee would soon find himself without anything to occupy his many players.

I've long wanted to be able to run a campaign along similar lines, but I've never had enough players to make a serious go at it. I think it's a pity really, since this style of play had a big influence on the early development of the game. Understanding the dynamics of having several adventuring groups in the same campaign is knowledge many of us don't possess and I think it skews our understanding of the hobby's origins and subsequent growth. Unfortunately, I'm not sure this style could be recreated easily nowadays. The older campaigns drew heavily on already-existing game clubs, things that, in my experience anyway, are much rarer now than they used to be. The pool of available gamers is still quite large, but they seem to be more diffuse and insular than they were back in the day (again, at least in my experience).

Still, it's an intriguing thought.

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.

"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.