02
Nov
25

Glantri Reunion III: Timeskip Tables After-Action Report

By Eric Minton 1 Comment
Categories: Campaign Methodology
Tags: , , , , , , ,

We had our first Glantri reunion session, and it was largely successful! After 10 years of war and political shenanigans, the Company of Crossed Swords (our PC party) got back together to take another crack at the Chateau d’Ambreville (our tentpole megadungeon). Many dice were rolled, a devil and a lich were parlayed with, and several minor monsters on the first dungeon level were magically blasted to itty bitty pieces. The players expressed interest in continued adventures, which is about as good a sign as a DM can receive!

In retrospect, however, I’m not entirely satisfied with how my PC timeskip tables worked out in actual play. Reaction seemed positive overall, but I think there was room for improvement in several areas.

Albrecht Dürer's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
  1. Benefits felt unbalanced. It made sense at the time that the higher-level characters should get more benefits, but they’re also the characters who needed them the least. In retrospect, given the XP boost to all characters (which felt fine at the table), it would have been better for everyone to get the same level of benefits.
  2. Detriments felt too balanced. On the flip side, giving everyone exactly the same detriment options felt a little off, as it was more punishing for the characters with fewer cool things to lose. Instead of simply, say, removing one magic item or hireling, perhaps a small chance for each magic item or hireling to be lost. (Probably with some sort of cap so that a bad string of rolls doesn’t completely wreck a PC’s assets.)
  3. Players had control in the wrong places. Allowing higher-level PCs the ability to modify rolls up or down gave additional advantages to the PCs who needed it the least (see point 1 above), and also narrowed the meaningful results of the tables. We had a disproportionate number of miscellaneous magic items, for instance. Meanwhile, there was no overall sense of story control to provide context.
  4. The strongest benefits may be unsatisfying. It’s awesome to earn a displacer cloak or a girdle of giant strength in the dungeon through cleverness and tactical skill. I’m not sure how satisfying it is to pick them up by random roll. I think that part of what made my campaign satisfying was how hard-won the PC’s treasures were, and the timeskip table benefits may have undermined that.
  5. Results might have been too random. Rolling on tables can be fun! But with the stakes this high, it might have been better not to have so many results dependent purely on the luck of the dice. This ties in with the previous two points; things might have been more satisfying with less die rolling.

Were I to do this over again, I think I’d try some sort of lifepath system — an idea I’d discarded early in development as too complicated, but which can actually be greatly simplified in the process of addressing the points above. Instead of simply rolling for purely random results, each player would pick what sort of endeavors their character focused on for the past 10 years, with the results focused on that particular path. This would give players more control over what they gain and lose. And making those choices with clear knowledge of the various paths’ results would hopefully make benefits feel more earned.

For instance, choosing a high-stakes War path might offer specific benefits like earning a knighthood, recruiting men-at-arms, garnering gold from loot and ransoms, gaining extra experience, and obtaining a magic weapon or armor. On the downside, they would suffer specific penalties like losing permanent stat points from war wounds, and losing an extant retainer or magic item to death and misadventure.

Other paths might include:

  • Politics, which can earn a noble title and high-ranking contacts, while also garnering enemies among major NPC characters and factions.
  • Commerce, which can offer money, land, or business ownership while also earning a business rival’s enmity, or give the PC significant experience in exchange for sizable debts or putting a magic item in hock.
  • Specific class-associated paths — church duties for clerics, arcane studies for magic-users, martial training for fighters, and criminal activities for thieves, with demihumans picking whichever seems most appropriate. Each could provide benefits and detriments appropriate to that class. For instance, a magic-user might gain a point of intelligence, learn a spell or two, and/or scribe a few scrolls, but would lose a point from a couple of other stats due to atrophy.

If the impulse strikes and I’m not too busy with dungeon restocking, I may write up lifepaths for use by any of my old players who missed this reunion session but turn up for a future one. If so, I’ll post them here. Any feedback is welcome! Especially from my players who participated in the reunion session. Let me know what you think!

26
Oct
25

Red Box Workshop: the Alchemist

By Eric Minton 1 Comment
Categories: Red Box Workshop
Tags: , ,

This new class was originally inspired by the alchemy system in His Majesty the Worm, but drifted back toward a more typical spell-slot system. That was, frankly, much easier to try and balance in the context of D&D play.

The focus on concoctions was intended to make this more of a PC class, rather than an NPC who you purchase potions from but never bring on an expedition. The volatility rules were similarly intended to prevent the alchemist’s player from handing off a bunch of concoctions to another PC, then staying home and playing a different character. I’m not sure it really makes sense without also including a risk of an unexpected result from falling damage or other involuntary mishandling, though.

As always, comments and feedback are welcome!

ALCHEMISTS

These scholarly brewers of potions and elixirs rarely enter the dungeon personally, preferring to remain in the safety of their laboratories. But one can occasionally be persuaded to endanger themselves in order to harvest the freshest ingredients from monsters and other sources.

The alchemist’s prime requisites are Intelligence and Wisdom. An alchemist character whose Intelligence or Wisdom score is 13 or higher will receive a 5% bonus to earned experience. Alchemists whose Intelligence and Wisdom scores are 13 or greater will receive a bonus of 10% to earned experience.

RESTRICTIONS: Alchemists use four-sided dice (d4) to determine their hit points. They may not wear armor or use shields, and the only weapons they can use are daggers. Alchemists must have a minimum score of 9 in Intelligence.

SPECIAL ABILITIES: The alchemist can create concoctions, or temporary potions, which last for one day before their volatile compounds deteriorate and their efficacy is lost. This takes 1 turn and can be done in a laboratory or with a portable alchemy kit, which is a fragile item weighing 200gp. The alchemist’s level affects both the number of concoctions they produce per day and the range of concoction formulas they know.

Starting at level 2, the alchemist learns how to stabilize these volatile concoctions to brew permanent potions. This requires a permanent laboratory and ingredients costing 100 gp per level of the potion. (Suitable ingredients may be harvested from monsters at the DM’s discretion.) The number of potions an alchemist can produce per month and the number of concoction formulas that they can make permanent in this way are equal to the number of concoctions produced and formulas known by an alchemist of half their level, rounded down. (For example, a level 6 alchemist can stabilize two of her first-level formulas and can make two first-level potions per month, and can stabilize one second-level formula and make one second-level potion per month.)

CONCOCTIONS: Alchemists begin play knowing a single concoction formula. Much like a magic-user’s spellbook, an alchemist’s recipe book will contain formulas equal to the number and level of concoctions that they can use per day.

Concoctions come in various forms. Those described as elixirs must be consumed to have an effect. Oils take effect when applied to the surface of an object or creature. Dusts burst into a vaporous cloud when exposed to air, and affect all those within the cloud.

Treat thrown concoctions as thrown weapons with the same range increments as oil or holy water. Where a concoction is described as having the effects of a spell, this range increment rule always overrides the spell’s listed range. Where relevant (eg, dusts), a missed throw lands 10’ away from the target in a random direction.

Concoctions are so volatile that any non-alchemist who administers, applies, or throws one has a 10% chance of an unexpected result, and a non-alchemist carrying one has a 10% chance per hour that mishandling the concoction has a similar unexpected result. The concoction may affect the user or another undesired target, may act strangely, or may have no effect at all, at the DM’s discretion. The alchemist may safely administer an elixir to an ally in combat, but consuming the potion also uses up the ally’s action for the turn.

  Concoctions
LevelTitle123456
1Herbalist1–––––
2Brewer2–––––
3Distiller21––––
4Apothecary22––––
5Spagyrist221–––
6Natural Philosopher222–––
7Transmuter3221––
8Hermeticist3322––
9Alchemist33321–
10Master Alchemist33332–
1111th Level Master Alchemist433321
1212th Level Master Alchemist443332
1313th Level Master Alchemist444333
1414th Level Master Alchemist444433

FIRST LEVEL FORMULAS:

  1. Dust of Cause Fear (as the level 1 Expert cleric spell)
  2. Dust of Detect Magic (as the level 1 magic-user spell)
  3. Elixir of Cold Resistance (as the level 1 cleric spell)
  4. Elixir of Fire Resistance (as the potion)
  5. Elixir of Healing (as the potion)
  6. Elixir of Read Languages (as the level 1 magic-user spell)
  7. Elixir of Ventriloquism (as the level 1 magic-user spell)
  8. Elixir of Protection from Evil (as the level 1 magic-user spell)
  9. Oil of Hold Portal (as the level 1 magic-user spell)
  10. Oil of Light (as the level 1 cleric spell)
  11. Oil of Purify Food and Water (as the level 1 cleric spell)
  12. Oil of Silent Stride (as elven boots, duration 6 turns)

SECOND LEVEL FORMULAS:

  1. Dust of Blight (as the level 2 cleric spell)
  2. Dust of Detect Invisible (as the level 2 magic-user spell Detect Evil, but reveals invisible creatures and objects)
  3. Dust of Invisibility 10’ Radius (as the level 2 magic-user spell)
  4. Dust of Silence 15’ Radius (as the level 2 cleric spell)
  5. Dust of Sleep (as the level 1 magic-user spell)
  6. Elixir of Diminution (as the potion)
  7. Elixir of ESP (as the potion)
  8. Elixir of Invisibility (as the level 2 magic-user spell)
  9. Elixir of Levitation (as the level 2 magic-user spell)
  10. Elixir of Speak with Animals (as the level 2 cleric spell)
  11. Oil of Continual Light (as the level 1 cleric spell)
  12. Oil of Knock (as the level 2 magic-user spell)

THIRD LEVEL FORMULAS:

  1. Dust of Dispel Magic (as the level 3 magic-user spell, 10’ radius)
  2. Dust of Invisibility 10’ Radius (as the level 3 magic-user spell)
  3. Dust of Web (as the level 2 magic-user spell, 5’ radius)
  4. Elixir of Charm Monster (as the level 4 magic-user spell, but the target must consume the elixir)
  5. Elixir of Clairaudience (as the potion)
  6. Elixir of Clairvoyance (as the potion)
  7. Elixir of Flying (as the level 3 magic-user spell)
  8. Elixir of Gaseous Form (as the potion)
  9. Elixir of Infravision (as the potion)
  10. Elixir of Speed (as the potion)
  11. Elixir of Water Breathing (as the level 3 magic-user spell)
  12. Oil of Striking (as the level 3 cleric spell)

FOURTH LEVEL FORMULAS:

  1. Dust of Confusion (as the level 4 magic-user spell; affects all creatures in a 20’ radius)
  2. Dust of Fire Ball (as the level 3 magic-user spell)
  3. Dust of Growth of Plants (as the level 4 magic-user spell, 30’ radius)
  4. Dust of Massmorph (as the level 4 magic-user spell; 60’ radius)
  5. Elixir vs Crystal Balls & ESP (as the amulet, duration 1 day)
  6. Elixir of Cure Disease (as the level 3 cleric spell)
  7. Elixir of Extra-Healing (as the level 4 cleric spell Cure Serious Wounds)
  8. Elixir of Giant Strength (as the potion)
  9. Elixir of Growth (as the potion)
  10. Elixir of Invulnerability (as the potion)
  11. Elixir of Neutralize Poison (as the level 4 cleric spell)
  12. Elixir of Polymorph Self (as the level 4 magic-user spell)

FIFTH LEVEL FORMULAS:

  1. Dust of Transmute Rock to Mud (as the level 5 magic-user spell)
  2. Elixir of Control Animal (as the potion)
  3. Elixir of Control Plant (as the potion)
  4. Elixir of Heroism (as the potion)
  5. Elixir of Giant Sttength (as the potion)
  6. Elixir of Nourishment (as the level 5 cleric spell Create Food, but nourishes recipients directly)
  7. Elixir of Speak with Plants (as the level 5 cleric spell)
  8. Oil of Pass-Wall (as the level 5 magic-user spell)

SIXTH LEVEL FORMULAS:

  1. Dust of Dispel Evil (as the level 5 cleric spell)
  2. Elixir of Control Dragon (as the potion)
  3. Elixir of Control Giant (as the potion)
  4. Elixir of Control Human (as the potion)
  5. Elixir of Control Undead (as the potion)
  6. Oil of Stone to Flesh (as the level 6 magic-user spell)

SAVING THROWS: As magic-users.

ATTACK PROGRESSION: As magic-users.

ADVANCEMENT: As per the magic-user advancement table.

22
Oct
25

Glantri Reunion II: Random Tables for a 10-year Timeskip

By Eric Minton 1 Comment
Categories: Campaign Methodology and Weird Tables
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

In order to keep track of time in-game, my Glantri campaign’s timeline was synced up with real time. As our first session was held on May 28, 2008, the party’s first adventure transpired on May 28 in the Glantrian year 208.

Logically, the upshot of this is that a reunion session that takes place a decade of real time after the campaign dissolved would also take place a decade later in game time. That’s a long time! A lot can happen to a D&D character in 10 years, especially when you consider how fast-paced their lifestyle can be during actual play.

So from my perspective, it only makes sense to write up some random tables to determine what’s happened to each character. Right now I’m focused on mechanical changes that would be reflected on a character sheet. The specifics of what everyone was up to can be determined at the table as needed.

I threw these together in a couple of hours, as is the old-school way. Hopefully they’re not too off-base! I’ve got a week till the scheduled first reunion session, which should give me more than enough time to second-guess myself.

* * * * *

Timeskip checklist

Every player character gains 5,000 xp. This applies to all extant characters; each player may also apply this bonus to one newly rolled character.

Every extant hireling gains 2,500 xp.

Every extant player character rolls once on the bonus table. One additional roll is gained at level 4 and another at level 8.

Every extant player character rolls once on the detriment table.

Bonus table

Roll d6; a level 6+ PC may add or subtract 1 if desired.

1: New contact
2: New hireling
3: Status
4: Wealth
5: Consumable magic
6: Permanent magic

New contact

Roll d12; a level 4+ PC may roll twice and take their preferred result.

1: Alchemist / Herbalist
2: Aristocrat / High-ranking Official
3: Artist / Minstrel
4: Artisan / Engineer
5: Bureaucrat / Minor Official
6: Cleric
7: Demi-human
8: Guard / Mercenary
9: Magic-user
10: Merchant / Trader
11: Sage / Scholar
12: Spy / Well-placed servant

New hireling: Class

Roll d6; a level 6+ PC may add or subtract 1 if desired.

Afterward, roll on the new hireling experience points table.

1-3: Fighter
4-5: Same class as PC
6: Class of PC’s choice
7: Special class (max. 1 per PC)

New hireling: Special class

Roll d6, then cross-reference with the PC’s alignment.

Lawful / Neutral / Chaotic
1: Alchemist / Centaur / Berserker
2: Blink dog / Goblin / Doppelganger
3: Gnome / Living statue / Ghoul
4: Goblin / Lizard man / Goblin
5: Mentalist / Pixie / Kobold
6: Trader / Thief-dabbler / Ogre

New hireling experience points

Roll d6; a level 6+ PC adds 1 to the roll.

1: 0 xp
2-3: 2,000 xp
4-5: 4,000 xp
6: 7,500 xp
7: 10,000 xp

Status

Roll d6; a level 6+ PC may add or subtract 1 if desired.

1-3: Owed a favor from an important NPC or organization
4-6: Gain rank or status in an organization appropriate to your class or background
7: Gain a minor noble title

Wealth

Roll d6; a level 4+ PC may add or subtract 1 if desired.

1-4: Windfall — gain 1,000 gp
5: Land/tenement ownership — now and at the start of each real-world month, gain 200gp
6: Share in a business — now and at the start of each real-world month, gain 100-600 gp;  5% chance that the business collapses unless you invest 1,000 gp

Temporary magic

Roll d6; a level 4+ PC may add or subtract 1 if desired.

1-2: 3 healing potions
3-4: 3 random potions
5-6: 20 enchanted missiles or scroll of 3 spells (1 spell each of levels 1, 2, and 3)

Permanent magic

Roll d6; a level 6+ PC may add or subtract 1 if desired.

1-2: +1 weapon appropriate to your class
3-4: Random miscellaneous magic item
5: Random ring or random rod/staff/wand
6: +2 weapon appropriate to your class
7: Special item chosen for you by the DM

Detriment table

Roll d6. If you would lose something you don’t actually have, roll again.

1: Permanent -1 to a random attribute due to aging/wounds
2: Lose a random hireling (1-4: quit, 5-6: dead)
3: Lose a friendly NPC ally or contact (1-4: acrimony, 5-6: dead)
4: Lose a random title or piece of real estate
5: Lose a random magic item (1-4: stolen, 5-6: destroyed)
6: Alignment change and roll again, ignoring this result if rerolled
19
Oct
25

One-Way Ticket to Glantri: Getting the Gang Back Together

By Eric Minton 2 Comments
Categories: Campaign Methodology
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

He fell silent. For several moments they all did, and the quiet had the feel of a deliberate thing. Then Eddie said, “All right, we’re back together again. What the hell do we do next?”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

RPGs have been A Thing for half a century now. That’s more than enough time for any number of campaigns and gaming groups to have flared to life, burned bright, and then sputtered out. As gamers, we move on, establishing new groups and constructing new campaigns.

But sometimes you want to go back. And why not, if the will is there to try? Whether or not you can recapture the original magic of a scattered group or a fallen campaign, it’s worthwhile to bring back old memories and reunite old friends.

Still, I’m finding that making the reunion happen is more involved than I anticipated. There’s quite a number of steps I need to go through before we can get to the table. The following order is loosely appropriate but has significant room for variation.

  1. Invite. Depending on the scale of your campaign, getting everyone together might be as simple as texting three or four close friends, or as complex as going through several years’ worth of correspondence to track down dozens of players from your open-table sandbox, some of whom may have strayed to other continents, and others for whom you have no contact information whatsoever.
  2. Schedule. Do you want a single reunion session? A full weekend of gaming? An ongoing campaign? Whichever you choose, you’ll need to get a sense from everyone involved of when they might be able to play. And for reunion games, your players are going to be older and thus, on average, more tied up with familial or other obligations. You may need to twist some arms to get things narrowed down to a date or schedule that’ll fill your table.
  3. Recollect. What actually happened during that campaign? Part of what drives an ongoing game is the sense of continuity from session to session, the accumulation of stories and lore that you and your players build up. You’ve probably forgotten a bunch of those stories. If anyone wrote up session summaries, it’s time to reread them. You can also get some of your campaign’s regulars together for dinner or drinks and get them talking about their favorite moments from the game.
  4. Rummage. Where did you put those campaign notes from ten years ago? It’ll be hard to play again without them. Did you keep them all in one place? Paper notes and maps can get misplaced, whether stashed in the basement or boxed up during a move. Digital material may be archived on an external drive or a half-forgotten wiki. And some of your notes may never turn up at all.
  5. Reacquaint. Those campaign notes you dug up? You’ll need to read through them and familiarize yourself with material that you’ve lost since forgotten. Dungeons, towns, major NPCs, ongoing events, custom monsters, house rules — you’ll need to relearn much of the information you used to keep in your head.
  6. Reassess. How good were your ideas from back then? You and your players have had years of actual play since then, and stuff that may have seemed clever at the time may now feel trite. Culture has also shifted; original-flavor D&D and its inspirations have all manner of prejudices baked in that you and your players might have been blind to at the time. You may realize that a character, monster, culture, or other setting element is insensitive. Time to make the necessary adjustments.
  7. Restock. If you were running a megadungeon or similar environment, odds are that a decent chunk of the dungeon had been cleared out by the PCs and hadn’t yet been restocked. You could leave it that way, but it will probably be more fun for the players if you replenish those areas with monsters and treasure. They’re not going to remember what areas they cleared out, and a reunion game that starts off by wandering through empty room after empty room may feel like a disappointment.
  8. Extend. This may not apply to more organized or diligent DMs. For my part, I often flew by the seat of my pants and stayed just ahead of the PCs in building out new levels and sub-levels of my megadungeon. Now I’m rusty and I no longer have any idea where the PCs will go next. So I’ll need to find the blank spots on the map and fill in a few more rooms around the edges in case the PCs go there.
  9. Resurrect. You’ll want to check with everyone in advance to make sure they’ve found their character sheets, and figure out what to do for players whose sheets can’t be found. Online backups are often out of date. Stats may need to be rerolled, unless you feel comfortable guesstimating. Or it might be time for a new character, though that’s a last resort; much of the charm of a campaign reunion comes from bringing back everyone’s old characters for a last hurrah.
  10. Inform. Now that you’ve got the campaign sorted out in your mind, you need to get everyone else on the same page. Refresh everyone’s memory by summarizing what’s happening in the setting as of now. Fill them in on what’s lined up for the reunion session(s). Be sure to get their input on what they want to do, as this will heavily inform your session prep.
  11. Advance. You may want to start the reunion game exactly where the original campaign left off. But there are advantages to doing a timeskip. Your players won’t have clear memories of the old status quo, and pushing the timeline forward a few years means their characters can be equally fuzzy on the details. And using a timeskip to tweak characters’ stats and add a bit of history helps get the players re-engaged.
  12. Play. Self-explanatory!

I’ll be putting together some random tables for the timeskip. Letting the players roll to see whether their characters have picked up stat-reducing battle scars or cool magic items, and whether they’ve gained new hirelings or lost hard-won noble titles! Letting them tell the story of how these things came about should help everyone immerse themselves in our Glantri setting again. Once my tables have been assembled, I’ll post them here. See you then!

27
May
25

Getting Back in the (Worm’s) Saddle

By Eric Minton 4 Comments
Categories: Crass Hucksterism, His Majesty the Worm and Indie Filth
Tags: , ,

Wow! So, it’s been… (checks notes) …12 years since I last posted here? That’s as many as four threes. And that’s terrible.

During that time I was heavily invested in writing and development in Exalted Third Edition, a game that is vastly different from the OSR play space. I found that I didn’t have the energy to devote to both game development and my D&D campaign, and ultimately my Glantri campaign collapsed.

Over the past couple of years I’ve been pulling back from my Exalted work. During that time, I found myself missing the camaraderie of my old group, and after putting out feelers I discovered that most of them were still in (or had returned to) New York and were interested in a new game!

Image

So after reading a tantalizing review of His Majesty the Worm on RPGnet, I decided to pick it up and give it a try. It’s been going well. Session 6 of our new campaign is scheduled for tonight, and as usual I feel somewhat underprepared, which is the nature of the beast. So far I’ve been having a great time! And the old camaraderie is back in spades.

While my life is currently pretty busy, I hope to start occasionally blogging again to address OSR-related topics that arise in the course of the campaign. (I will also be shilling Wares from the Curio Curia, the magic item collection that I wrote for His Majesty the Worm, because that’s what you do when you have a blog.)

See you next time, and may the dice cards be ever in your favor!

24
Jan
25

Prependix N

By Charlatan 1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: ,

A mere 10 months ago (hot off the presses by what James refers to as our shambolic standards), “The Problem with Appendix N” over at Grognardia lamented:

Yet, for all that, Appendix N suffers from a very clear problem, one that has limited its utility as a guide for understanding Dungeons & Dragons as Gary Gygax understood it: it’s just a list. Gygax, unfortunately, provides no commentary on any of the authors or works included in the list, stating only that those he included “were of particular inspiration” He later emphasizes that certain authors, like Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft, among others, played a stronger role in “help[ing] to shape the form of the game.” Beyond these brief remarks, Gygax says nothing else about what he found inspirational in these books and authors or why he selected them over others he chose not to include.

Great news! When Gygax was promoting a scrappy young game called Dungeons & Dragons to science fiction & fantasy faans in “SWORDS & SORCERY IS A GAME TOO!”, published in the SF & F Journal (#87, 22 February 1976), he included some brief annotations for context:

In no particular order, I mention some of the authors who most strongly influenced its creation: A. Merritt (fantasy and super­ science), Lovecraft (horrible alien gods), Howard (the super-hero), Leiber (the adventure on parallel earths), de Camp & Pratt (treating myths and mythos as ad­venture), Poul Anderson (the heroic quest), Tolkien (the complete epic), Vance (magic and imagination), Burroughs (the pit adventure), as well as Brackett, Farmer, St. Clair, Fox, Haggard, Petaja, and Saberhagen.

The astute reader will pick up on some genre drift in this list; Gygax will go on to clarify:

It is also worth noting that the very flexible guidelines of D&D allow it to be mixed with virtually any historical period or created history. Thus games can be moved backwards to the ancient, integrated with modern technology, placed upon a post-atomic war Earth peopled by mutants, or sprinkled with true science fic­tion. In this regard it is a true fantasy game rather than a strict swords & sorcery one.

I am tempted to go into why someone in ’76 would have a caveat regarding “strict swords & sorcery”, but I think that’s another post.

To refresh our memories, the hoary Appendix N says that the “most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merritt.” If we can assume that D&D and AD&D were influenced in similar ways, looking outside gaming to fiction fandom provides some interesting context for those authors (and a couple besides, hello again to Poul Anderson and to John Ronald Reuel Tolkien).

20
Jan
25

kirbsday: reprise

By James Nostack Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,
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By Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, published December 20, 1940.

This is the official position of the Mule.

19
Jan
25

Everything’s Going Great in Siddim! plus a game jam

By James Nostack 2 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

So, the thing is, I kinda forgot that we had this blog.

Once a year or so I would remember it, and sigh, thinking of happier (or at least more dice-filled) times, and get too overwrought to post anything.

Image

But thankfully, Charlatan’s commitment to exploring the by-ways of gaming history (here and here) momentarily roused me from the sleep of ages–to tell you about a game jam! It expires on January 31, 2025! Details are here:

https://itch.io/jam/tiny-world-ttrpg-jam

The short version is, make up a tiny li’l setting, no more than 8 pages (I’m guessing foldy-zine pages, not 8.5 x 11, but what do I know)! Not a full game! Not a big complicated thing! Describe only a room if you want! No previously published material, no AI-generated stuff!

(I did not create this game jam and literally know nothing else about it! Do not ask me questions about it! I forgot how to log onto WordPress and spent forever trying to figure out my password!)

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I’d been looking for away to get around some writers block and this seemed like a fun, painless way to do it. My entry is based on two posts from like 14 years ago. Keep your rough drafts, my friends! You’ll never know when they might come in handy!

Anyway, here’s my system-neutral micro-setting for anyone who wants to tangle with horrible slime-monsters, Cormac-McCarthy-influenced Slime Priests, demons, and gibbering LLMs intruding into the caverns where all life began! I was going to include the PDF here directly but I can’t remember how to do so! Go to the link! Also, submit your own little micro-thing and tell us about it in comments!

PS. I’ve basically been fine this whole time. It was honestly a shock to realize my life has barely changed at all in the last ten years. Then again, part of my lifecycle involves gorging myself on nectar then regurgitating it to form a life-preserving chrysalis.

07
Jan
25

The Illustrator Jane Sala

By Charlatan 1 Comment
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In “The First Female Gamers” (2014), Jon Peterson identifies three “decidedly female names” in the of the December 1959 subscriber list of Jack Scruby’s War Game Digest before considering the trajectory of women in war gaming and the early fantasy role-playing games of the 70s: “Virginia Esten of Hammond, Indiana; a Jane Sala of Bolton, Massachusetts; and a Jean Murray of Chicago.” Peterson goes on to discuss Jean Murray’s brief subsequent presence in War Game Digest; a previous post here on the Mule compiles some information about the wargaming adventures of Virginia Esten.

Perhaps, if you are like me, a tiny voice is whispering to you even now: “What about Jane Sala?”

“Of Bolton, Massachusetts?” you ask, trying to buy enough time to find a distraction in your household obligations, or your real job, or the refrigerator. “Obviously, yes,” the voice says, undeterred.

The June 20, 1958 edition of the Lowell Sun reports two relevant changes to the personnel plan of the Littleton School System (Littleton is just about a 13 minute drive from Bolton), and they’re both about Mrs. Jane Sala. She is a departing fourth grade teacher, after one year of service, and the incoming Art Supervisor for the Littleton School System. This position merits a brief curriculum vitae:

Art Supervisor — Mrs. Jane Sala of Bolton. Mrs. Sala has attended the University of California, University of Texas, University of Southern California, Choinards art school in Los Angeles [this is probably the Chouinard Art Institute], and Art Center school in Los Angeles. She is presently enrolled at the Boston University Art School. Mrs. Sala has spent four years as a fashion illustrator in Seattle, Washington, has had sketches published in Atlantic Monthly, and has illustrated children’s books. Mrs. Sala has had five years of teaching experience, four in California, and one in Littleton.

It’s no surprise to see that about a year earlier the August 14, 1957 edition of the Lowell Sun reports that a Mrs. Sala (of Harvard) was starting as a grade 4 teacher in Littleton (so, for what it’s worth, does the Acton Beacon on August 22. Scooped again, Beacon!). Right now you are probably in one of two camps: Those who note that, fine, Virginia Esten was also an educator but this is a lot of words to get there, or those who think this is a lot of words and has gone nowhere at all. Bad news! I’m just getting started.

What was Mrs. Jane Sala doing before she started teaching in Littleton? Her CV says that at some point prior, she had spent four years teaching in California.

On July 13, 1957 The Morning Union of Springfield, Massachusetts (about an hour from Littleton and Bolton) reports that “Mrs. Jane Sala and her son, Jimmy, of San Mateo, Cal.” visited “with Mrs. Sala’s cousins, Mr. and Mrs. A. R. Goodlatte.” Wait! Don’t leave! Mrs. Sala and Jimmy weren’t traveling alone! They “motored from California” (a long haul!) with a guest: “her niece, Miss Judith Scruby of Visalia, Cal.” It’s possible that there’s more than one Mrs. Jane Sala getting started in a teaching career outside Boston in 1957, and it’s possible that there’s more than one Miss Judith Scruby of Visalia. There is one Judith Scruby from Visalia, however, who was the daughter of John Edwin “Jack” Scruby, miniatures legend and editor of the War Game Digest. And Jack Scruby had a sister, Jane Elizabeth Scruby.

I thought about arranging this differently to play that thread out longer, but because of the esteem in which I hold you, dear reader, and because there are some other surprises, I’ll just say that there’s a pretty strong hypothesis that the Jane Sala of Bolton, Massachusetts who was subscribing to Jack Scruby’s War Game Digest is Jack Scruby’s sister.

Back in 1957! Merle Montgomery, who might not have a decidedly female name but appears to have nonetheless fallen victim to Wikipedia’s gender bias, published Sight & Sound, a sight-reading instruction book illustrated by Jane Sala. Is this, in the view of the Littleton School System, a children’s book? We may never know, but at the end of 1956 Jane Sala illustrated a piece in The Atlantic describing the Arab shadow play, a genre whose archtypical characters, international pastiche, general ribaldry and magical personae will be familiar to D&D players:

The plots of the shadow plays are flexible and freely improvised … Usually they pit Karagöz, archetype of the rogue, against his foil, the pseudo-aristocratic Hajivad. … The Arab shadow play is truly international in spirit. Some of its grotesque and ribald elements go back to the tradition of Greek mimicry which the Turkish conquerors preserved from the days of the Byzantine Empire. There are also traces of influence from the Chinese shadow play which was brought to the borders of the Arab World by the Mongols. … Scenery is suggested by set pieces such as a ship, a bathhouse, or a brothel. … [The puppets] can mimic the mannerisms of foreigners, the lurching walk of a drunkard. Opium-smokers are favorite subjects of amusement, while miraculous jinn and bellowing dragons especially delight the children in the audience.

ArabLit tells us that in one of these plays, ‘Elegy for Satan’, “philandering bums stand around the pyres of burning hashish, shedding tears to try to put out of the flames.” Gandalf is on his way over.

Image

Sala’s line drawings depict the articulated leather puppets of the genre, but looking back now it is easy to imagine them as an editorial approach to fantasy illustration – the disarticulated pieces, overlapping in the drawings, are very evocative.

In 1956 Sala was exhibiting art (“Annual Art Show Scheduled” San Mateo Times 1/13/1956) and teaching (“San Mateo Times Public Schools Week Edition” 4/23/1956) in San Mateo, but she had not been there long: She had been teaching in Modesto, CA since 1953 prior (four years in California, for those keeping score at home – and fourth grade specifically in 1955) and exhibiting in regional art shows a bit earlier still (“Modesto Artists Display Work at Regional Event” 10/13/1952 Modesto Bee), but in December of 1954 Jane divorced from her husband of just over ten years, George H. Sala.

She knew George Sala because they had worked together – they were both stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. A wedding announcement in the Oct 25, 1944 Los Angeles Times alerts us that: “Pvt. Jane Elizabeth Scruby, Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, daughter of Mrs. Horace Scruby of Beverly Hills, and the late Mr. Scruby, to Sgt. George Herbert Sala, Marine Corps of Denver.” The announcement further notes that the “bride attended the University of Texas, and S.C.”, which checks off two more CV entries of the Mrs. Sala supervising the Littleton art program. It’s unclear when Scruby had enlisted, but she’s on July 1944 muster rolls. Of the Reserves generally, the Marine Corps Commandant, General Thomas Holcomb, would observe: “Like most Marines, when the matter first came up I didn’t believe women could serve any useful purpose in the Marine Corps … Since then I’ve changed my mind,” and that “there’s hardly any work at our Marine stations that women can’t do as well as men. They do some work far better than men. … What is more, they’re real Marines.” Wikipedia has more; it’s a great read.

I don’t know whether Scruby (or maybe now I can say “how to document that Scruby”) worked as a fashion illustrator in Seattle for four years, though we can say with certainty that between graduating from Beverly Hills High and her debut in 1936, she spent time in Seattle visiting Seattle and another branch of the Scrubys, Wilbur William Scruby and family. Jane Scruby might easily have spent some time there between her time in Texas and her enlistment.

What’s that? Yes, the reason there is so much information about Jane E Scruby’s perambulations is that she was an actual debutante. She made her “formal bow” at the Assembly Ball in Fort Worth in 1936.

I can’t say whether Jane Scruby Sala ever considered herself a wargamer — but she arrives on the subscriber list of War Game Digest as a teacher, an artist, a single mother, a veteran, and a former debutante. It’s a rich life story that manages to combine what we might have expected from the story of Virginia Esten with the experiences, if not the demographics, of a mid-century miniatures wargamer. By those lights, it’s not too hard to imagine her subscribing regardless of the family connection.

03
Jan
25

The Wargamer Virginia Esten

By Charlatan 6 Comments
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In 2014, Jon Peterson published an essay, The First Female Gamers, describing the gender dynamics around early D&D, how those fit into a longer trajectory of wargaming history, and how they began to change after D&D’s publication. On the one hand, this essay is now quite old, and it seems ridiculous to comment on or around it now. On the other hand, The First Female Gamers was published just 3 months before the most recent post on this blog before this one, so we can all just pretend that this has been in Drafts for 11 years.

In “The First Female Gamers”, Peterson writes:

Jack Scruby first advertised the War Game Digest in the pages of the Bulletin of the British Model Soldier Society late in 1956. It would be no exaggeration to call that Society of toy soldier fanciers an “old boys’ club,” as its membership was near-universally male and contained far more retired soldiers than teenagers. Scruby solicited there for “war game generals” interested in a periodical focused on gaming in the tradition of Wells rather than merely collecting miniatures; in the foreword to the first issue of the Digest, he prominently characterizes such an enthusiast as a “war gamer.” Of the forty-five names in the subscriber list published in the second issue of the Digest, no recognizably female names appear. By December 1959, the magazine’s circulation had risen to 141, and three decidedly female names are present: there is a Virginia Esten of Hammond, Indiana; a Jane Sala of Bolton, Massachusetts; and a Jean Murray of Chicago.

But would these women identify themselves as wargamers? The mere presence of a name on the War Game Digest subscriber’s list might not reflect that level of interest. For example, R. W. Dickeson of Chicago recorded at the time that Jean Murray was a “prospective wargamer” who owned “a fine collection” of wargaming figurines and “is now considering entry into war games.” Later lists of Chicago-area wargamers compiled by Dickeson do not contain her name, however, so perhaps her subscription to the Digest was only exploratory.

Like Jean Murray’s subscription to War Game Digest, I too have been exploratory, and I’d like to collect some information about one of the other three “decidedly female names”: Virginia Esten (October 7, 1924 — August 27, 2012), who I am pretty confident would have identified herself as a wargamer.

In July of 1967, Don Featherstone’s editorial in the Wargamer’s Newsletter complained that the “response to my request for articles concerning the use of infantry in wargames for the June issue of the Newsletter has, so far, been rather disappointing” but that he was “hopeful that such belligerents as Fred Vietmeyer, Pat Condray, Peter Gouldesbrough, Charlie Grant, and others will rush, foaming at the mouth, to their pens or typewriters and fire off a furious barrage to fill the pages of this magazine.”

Vietmeyer responded for June with a piece on infantry terminology (the belligerents! the foam!), but in July he submitted a play report for the “Engagement at La Bloca,” a Peninsular War scenario for the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. In Vietmeyer’s report, the second brigade of the Anglo-Allied forces is directed by “Lady Esten”. Peter Gouldesbrough recognized the name Esten, writing in the January 1968 Newletter:

I was glad to see “Lady Esten” among the brigade commanders in Fred Vietmeyer’ s game described in the July Newsletter. That must have been Virginia Esten who was at the Waterloo Convention with her friend Mrs. Carol Lorenz. They came north to Edinburgh later on and I laid on a demonstration solo game for them. She said she was going back home to play on lab tables where “there would have to be hills over the Bunsen taps “.

Do I detect the influence of her Scottish visit in the fact that two of the battalions in her brigade were Highland ones?

Vietmeyer’s piece was also flagged by “Jeff Perren of Illinois” in the September 1968 Newsletter, who wrote: “Here in the Mid-west, we have what I believe to be the best “club” there is. It is called the Midwest Wargamers Confederation, and all devoted to 30mm Napoleonics. You had one of our battle reports about a year ago on La Bloca.” Jeff Perren of Illinois would, of course, later be Jeff Perren of CHAINMAIL. Rob Kuntz attested in a 2019 Facebook post of Perren:

So Jeff Perren introduced the LGTSA to Fred Vietmeyer’s Column Line and Square rules for Napoleonic miniature battles (as noted in Merlynd the Magician) and invited us down to Rockford to play in his dad’s basement (complete with a juke box!) Jeff literally ate and drank Napoleonics and got us started collecting Jack Scruby 30mm lead/tin figures, of which Jeff already had a tremendous collection thereof. So when you see the Nappy references (however Fantastical as I have made them, as in The Death Heads of Lord Huussarel (a Zombie Lord in Perren Land)) you’ll understand why…

And that’s the D&D connection. But this is a Virginia Esten post!

We know that Esten traveled to England for the Waterloo Convention at least twice, because in August of 1975 Don Featherstone’s Newsletter editorial exulted in the splendor of her array:

Among the many interesting people I met at this gathering was Virginia Esten, a colourful figure who can probably claim to be the outstanding woman wargamer in America & renowned for her leadership in the huge Napoleonic battles (with as many as 10,000 troops on the table) in the mid-West of America. As mentioned in one of my books, the commanders of the opposing forces in these large-scale weekend battles each have “command figures” representing themselves on the table. Virginia’s personal models are noted for the splendour of their garb – she has four separate models because, as she says, every woman needs an attractive change of clothing – and they are accompanied by her tame tiger on a leash!

Over at The Miniatures Page, Robert Piepenbrink recalls:

She lived in or around Indianapolis, and was generally acknowledged to be the best painter of her time in the old Midwest Napoleonic Wargaming Confederation, and I suspect the wargaming to some degree leant purpose to the painting, and gave her a chance to show her work. She was one of the senior British players down to the breakup of the “Old Confederation” at the end of Campaign Year 1814–Fall 1970 or thereabouts–and the unquestioned “Queen of Sweden.”

Pretty much everyone had a country of which they were the senior player, which helped prevent two of us from bringing the same unique regiment to a game. She’d done some primary research, on the Swedes–no Ospreys in those years–but the fact that she’d consulted with better tacticians than herself about optimum organization for CLS, that she discovered by some amazing coincidence that the Swedes exactly corresponded to that organization, and that she felt no one else should trouble her sources led to certain suspicions. (It didn’t help that she tripled the Swedish Army by listing each regiment by its name in Swedish, English and German.) People talk about Old School wargamers and the spirit of the game in the good old days, but a decent percentage of them would cut someone’s throat for 3″ of charge movement and a +1 melee bonus, and not all of them would have held out for the bonus.

But they weren’t always as skilled as they were ruthless, which led to a parting of the ways about fall 1970. The Allies–mostly very senior wargamers of the old school–lost a ton of artillery in a summer game, and artillery captures in “formal” games carried over so the Allied commanders would be staring down the muzzles of those same guns in the big fall game. Just at that time, almost all of the senior Allied players, including her, withdrew from the MNWC and formed a separate group with rules modified to be distinctly more favorable to the Allies.

Esten was a member of Zeta Tau Alpha at Butler University, initiated in March 1943, and went on to a zoology master’s degree from the University of Michigan. She would go on to teach biology at John Marshall High School in Indianapolis, where her interest in military history must have informed her sponsorship of the women’s military drill and rifle teams. The high school’s 1982 yearbook reports that Esten had “been collecting miniature lead soldiers since she was eight years old,” that “after school, she’s involved with war games in which students from John Marshall challenge each other with miniature figures,” and that “in the 1981 State Fair she won the Sweepstakes Best of Show for military hand-painted figures.”

I suppose that I still can’t answer Peterson’s rhetorical question in the narrowest sense — whether Esten would have called herself a wargamer in 1959, as she probably would have by 1968 — but she had a very long engagement with the wargaming hobby. She had been into miniatures since before Gygax was born! Now: Does anyone know anything about Jane Sala of Bolton, Massachusetts…

EDIT: A generous reply from Jon Peterson adds that Fred Vietmeyer’s “Battle of Leipzig” play report, printed in the New England Wargamers Association’s The Courier volume 1, numbers 9-11, describes Esten as a brigade commander in the 2-day event (October 18-19, 1969 in Claypool, Indiana). Unfortunately as far as I know scans of number 11 are not available. The writeup in number 10 is particularly satisfying in the context of this blogpost: It identifies (Lieutenant) Piepenbrink, (General) Perren and (Brigadier the Lady) Esten all as participants in the game!

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