Steve Perrin, RIP

 

Influential game designer Steve Perrin passed away recently at the age of seventy-five.

In addition to RuneQuest, Perrin authored or contributed to numerous other role-playing games, including two of my all-time favourites: Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu. And RQ's system, of course, informed all subsequent Basic Roleplaying (BRP, or “d100”) games. He also authored the influential AD&D module, Under Ilefarn, which was the first original adventure for TSR’s Forgotten Realms setting. 

Arguably, Perrin’s influence on RPG design was second only to that of the genre’s creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.

Shannon Appelcline provides a nice overview of Perrin’s work here.

I cast magic missile

I was walking along Queen Street East in my neighbourhood this morning when I came upon a television or movie crew working outside of a coffee shop. This is not an uncommon occurrence in Toronto (at least once a month I encounter some filming happening during my various urban ramblings). It was not clear to me, though, whether I should cross the street to avoid them, and so I hesitated.

I was wearing a dark t-shirt that had “I cast magic missile!” emblazoned upon it. The guy in charge (who had been telling people to move things hither and thither) noticed me and said: “You can pass, no worries –- so long as you don’t cast any second-level spells!”

I had a good laugh at that. Nerds: we’re everywhere.

P.S. This is the shirt (but not me modelling it): 

 

Mythic Babylon unleashed

I’ve been part of a Mythic Babylon campaign as a play-tester for about a year now (meeting roughly twice a month). The campaign is being run by one of the book’s co-authors (Chris Gilmore). It took me a while to get myself oriented in the setting. Bronze Age Mesopotamia is far less familiar to me than, say, Dark Ages Britain or Imperial Rome. And while I certainly would not claim to have a clear grasp of the setting even now, a year later, it does not feel quite as alien as it did at first. It’s an interesting place, and I’ve been enjoying the campaign enormously in recent months. 

Now everyone can enjoy this excellent setting for themselves: Mythic Babylon has been on sale to the public for over a week now.

Here is the description of the setting from the Design Mechanism site:

What is Mythic Babylon?

Mythic Babylon is a role-playing supplement for the Mythras game system. It provides everything you need to take your Mythras game back to the 18th century BC and enter a world of cut-throat diplomacy, Machiavellian politics, and ecstatic prophets. Within these covers you'll find information on the society, culture, religion, trade, laws, and beliefs of Old Babylon and the surrounding lands. The setting is presented as a sand-box with a wide-ranging gazetteer of places to explore, each loaded with plot hooks. For those who like to play against the backdrop of history, we provide a timeline of past and near future events. A bestiary and a chapter for game masters rounds out the end of the book.

This book contains everything you need to create adventures in the lands of Sumer, Akkad, and Subartu from the low lying Eden to the Cedar Mountains and even into the Underworld. Follow in the steps of kings like Gilgameš, Kubaba, or Hammurabi in this mythological and historical setting that was nearly 4000 years in the making.

Where is Mythic Babylon?

Mythic Babylon is set in what will later be called Mesopotamia by the Greeks, which means 'The Land Between the Rivers', referring to the Tigris and Euphrates. At the time our book is set, there is no one name for the whole region. Instead, the southern plain is called Sumer and the central plain is called Akkad. Together, these will one day be called Babylonia after the city of Babylon. The northern plain is called Subartu, but will one day come to be called Assyria after the city of Aššur.

This book focuses on Sumer, Akkad, and Subartu. Peripheral regions such as ancient Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Bahrain are given a more cursory treatment.

Mythic Babylon is expertly illustrated by James Turpin, and is an exceptional addition to the Mythic Earth range for Mythras. It comes as a hardcover book, 322 pages, and the PDF price is included in the hardcover price, along with an additional PDF file containing additional maps.

Initial reviews are very positive. This is no surprise to me. I can confirm that it’s a great setting and that a lot of serious research went into it. My only quibble is that there is no sample scenario included. I generally think such scenarios are helpful so that players can “test out” a setting or game without too much difficulty. This especially is the case for settings that likely will be unfamiliar to many players. But this, obviously, is a very minor thing. 

What impresses me the most about this book, like the others for Mythras with which I am familiar, is how successful it is in translating a difficult setting into something suitable for a game, that is, in rendering the world playable. Hats off to Chris Gilmore and Paul Mitchner on producing such a fine work.

For an interesting discussion of the importance of lists in ancient Mesopotamia, and their application to world-building in role-playing games, check out this post by Chris at The Many Coloured House. 

After years of waiting Mythic Babylon is finally available to the masses. Praise Marduk!

[A Mušhuššu (Babylonian dragon) – my character beheaded one of these pests!]

Mythras Bundle of Holding

I thought that I would mention that there are four days left to pick up the Mythras Settings Bundles (PDFs): the “Starter Collection” (which includes the Mythras core rulebook, the Mythras Companion, two combat adventures, the Monster Island setting, and the Monster Island Companion) and the “Bonus Collection” (which includes the excellent Lyonesse role-playing game and setting, two Lyonesse adventures, the Luther Arkwright setting book, and Parallel Lines, a book of adventures for Luther Arkwright).

 

As I’ve mentioned before here, Mythras is an excellent role-playing game, my favourite of the past two decades, and has the best combat system ever designed. And Lyonesse is brilliant setting, certainly one that belongs in the collection of any fan of Jack Vance’s fiction.

 

More information here.

The Court of Ardor

One of my favourite campaign modules of all time is The Court of Ardor by Terry K. Amthor.

 

Ardor is set in southern Middle-earth. But the region – and especially the malevolent Court itself – does not fit well in that world. The background to the Court does refer to the roles of Morgoth and Ungoliant in poisoning the Two Trees of Valinor, Laurelin and Telperion, and the subsequent creation of the sun and moon by the Valar. These connections, though, fail to overcome the stark differences in tone between the module’s setting and Tolkien’s Middle-earth. The Court is a secret society of powerful magic-users (astrologers, sorcerers, mentalists, and the like); even the non-spell-casting members of the Court have access to powerful magic items. The magic system of Rolemaster simply does not work well for Middle-earth. Moreover, Amthor’s treatment of elves in this book is quite “un-Tolkien” in nature. (The themes of the setting, I think, anticipate Amthor’s later creation, Shadow World, with its secretive organizations of extremely powerful immortals.)

 

Its “non-Middle-earth” character aside, though, The Court of Ardor is a great fantasy setting. Indeed, it has been a wish of mine to use this module for a campaign for over three decades now. I would relocate it to a different world if I were to do so – specifically, I would embed it in a ‘homebrew’ fantasy setting inspired more by Michael Moorcock and Jack Vance than Tolkien. I probably also would change certain elements of the setting, in particular, the overarching aim of the Court, as well as aspects of some of the cultures and peoples.

 

The module focuses on the activities of the shadowy Court of Ardor, an organization of extremely powerful elves who are plotting something … both terrible and awesome. (I won’t say what here. What I’m about to write is mildly spoiler-ish, so skip down past the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want that.) The members of the Court all possess a magical deck of cards that portray their compatriots, and which enable them to communicate with each other. (Amthor confirmed in an interview decades later that this was inspired by the cards in Roger Zelazny’s “Amber” novels.) The deck of magical communication cards is quite cool – but, as I mentioned above, not exactly “Tolkien-esque” in nature.

 

Charles Peale’s illustrations of some of the members of the Court are – appropriately – in the style of cards:

 

There is only one illustration in the module that does not depict a member of the Court. It is of the bard “Klaen” – one of the few “good guys” in the region described in the module. It also is the only illustration not by Peale, but rather by Amthor:

 

Finally, like most of ICE’s Middle-earth modules, there is an amazing map by Peter Fenlon:

 

Hmmm… Perhaps I should use (a heavily modified version of) The Court of Ardor for a future Against the Darkmaster campaign…

 

(I had planned to write up this post weeks ago, shortly after my initial post on Peale’s artwork for ICE, but alas the end of the spring term overwhelmed me. Hopefully my blogging will pick up somewhat over the next few months.)

Charles Peale – the fantasy artist

This is a post about the artist Charles Peale – no, not this guy! Rather, the artist who did a lot of the early interior black-and-white illustrations for Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE).

 

During its heyday of the 1980s and early 1990s, ICE boasted some excellent art. I’ve praised the amazing maps by Peter Fenlon here before, as well as the inspiring colour covers by Angus McBride.

 

Reading through the new fantasy role-playing game (a kind-of-but-not-exactly-MERP-clone) Against the Darkmaster (VsD), I felt compelled to look through some of my old MERP campaign and adventure modules. (Yes, despite having loads of work to do, I wasted some time daydreaming about someday running a VsD campaign employing these classic works.)  

 

Looking through these old books I was reminded of my fondness for Peale’s work. I really loved his line work, the ‘clean’ aesthetics of his pictures, and always wondered why ICE stopped using his material. ICE eventually switched to Liz Danforth for most of their interior art. While I like Danforth’s work well enough, I prefer Peale’s overall – there is, in my view, something ‘artificial’ or ‘stiff’ about the poses of Dansforth’s figures.

 

Anyhow, since I suspect that many people who occasionally visit this blog might be unfamiliar with Peale’s work, I thought that I would post some of his pictures here. It would be great if his work could be appreciated by a wider audience.

 

Here are some pictures from the Middle-earth modules Mirkwood, Isengard, Bree, and Cirith Ungol:

 

[Astrith -- a.k.a. the "Green Asp" -- of Calenhardon]

 

[Treachery in Cirith Ungol]

 

[Beorn in Southern Mirkwood]  

 

[Caline Halfelven of Cirith Ungol]

[Dwarves hiding from a giant spider in Northern Mirkwood]

[An orc follower of the Necromancer in Southern Mirkwood]

[Townsfolk of Bree]

[Saruman and Wormtongue in Isengard]

I will post some art that Peale did for the amazing campaign module The Court of Ardor later this week.

Swords and Sorcery House Rules PDF available again

Many years ago I put together some 'swords and sorcery' house rules for Swords & Wizardry (also usable with older editions of D&D, such as '0e' and 'B/X'). 

They have been available at this blog for over a decade now, and many people seem to have found them useful, or at least interesting, over the years. 

Once upon a time the house rules also were available as a PDF (kindly assembled and hosted by Benoist). But that PDF disappeared from the internet at some point. This was unfortunate, but I never got around to putting together a new PDF and hosting it somewhere myself (I'm kind of lazy).

Fortunately, the old PDF is available here via the Wayback Machine. (Thanks to evangineer for locating it and bringing it to my attention! And my apologies for missing evangineer's comment -- which was posted way back in November 2020 -- until now.)

By Crom!

 

 [Conan versus the frost giants by Frank Frazetta] 

This blog is not dead

I know things have been rather quiet here recently, but this blog is not dead (yet). I've just been really, really busy at work over the past few months. 

Current mood:

"Real life" -- it keeps one away from the things that make life worth living.

Ravenloft 5e setting book coming soon

 

Like many who got into role-playing games, and especially Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, during the 1980s, I owned (and still own ... somewhere) a copy of the original Ravenloft adventure. At the time I thought it was unbelievably cool, with its evocative Clyde Caldwell cover, beautiful maps by David Sutherland III, use of randomly drawn tarot cards to determine the structure of the adventure, and so forth.

 

However, I have not read the original module in over three decades. And I never purchased any of the subsequent Ravenloft products—including the 2^nd edition and 3^rd edition settings—until the recent 5^th edition adventure, Curse of Strahd. And even that book I only skimmed. For the most part over the past few years it has been simply sitting on my bookshelf. (Nonetheless, a review of the 5e version, by my friend C. Robichaud, was posted here.) It’s not that I had anything against Ravenloft—indeed, it always struck me as rather intriguing, and I liked the way it was connected to other campaign settings, including the World of Greyhawk (I believe that a connection to Vecna was established in the 2^nd edition version of the setting).

 

Anyhow, a proper ‘setting book’ for Ravenloft is coming out: Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. I have to say that neither the standard cover nor the alternative cover blows me away. (I don’t think that they’re bad, certainly, but they’re not nearly appealing in my view as, say, the two Saltmarsh covers.) But covers aside, I plan to get a copy of the book when it becomes available in late May. I hope to return to my Greyhawk campaign sometime this spring, so perhaps there will be a way to connect Ravenoft to it. Or maybe not, and I’ll just use the book to mine for ideas. Or perhaps I’ll simply read it for pleasure. In any case, I’m interested enough in the setting now to look forward to it, unlike most of the setting books that have been published hitherto for 5^th edition D&D.

 

(But the real reason I’m looking forward to the end of May, is that it will be end of the “Domain of Dread” that is my current work situation…)

More Fantasy TV: Westeros and Middle-earth

It looks like there will be no shortage of fantasy television shows in the near future. In addition to the potential Dungeons and Dragons series that I mentioned in my previous post, The Witcher will be returning for certain, and rumblings of a possible Conan series are heard every so often.

Amazon’s Middle-earth series should be out later this year. This brief article confirms what I noted before: the series will be set during the Second Age. I would be thrilled—and not at all surprised—if the first season portrayed the rise of Sauron (as the comely “Annatar”) and his cooperation with—and eventual betrayal of—Celebrimbor in the creation of the Rings of Power. This should be followed with the great War of the Elves and Sauron, which would involve Númenor. The first season could end with the defeat of Sauron. The second season could portray Sauron’s return centuries later, his subsequent capture by and corruption of (a now decadent) Númenor, the destruction of Númenor and the founding of the “Realms in Exile” (Gondor and Arnor), and the end of the Second Age with the War of the Last Alliance. Perhaps more storylines could be added—e.g., the stories of Elrond, Galadriel, et al., during this time; the persecution of “the Faithful” by the “King’s Men” in Númenor; the establishment of Númenorean colonies in Middle-earth; and so forth. But I think that these two great conflicts—the mid-Age initial struggle with Sauron, and the late-Age defeat of Sauron—should be the overarching storylines. How could it be otherwise?

[Map of Númenor from the Atlas of Middle-earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad]

Also, HBO hasn’t given up on Westeros. In addition to the House of the Dragon (set about three centuries before the Game of Thrones), a series based on G.R.R. Martin’s “Dunk and Egg” stories is in development. I quite liked those stories. And given their modest, episodic nature, there is little risk that HBO will fumble the ending the way that they did with GoT. However, I don’t think that the stories provide material for more than one or maybe two seasons. That’s perfectly fine in my view—it worked for Watchmen. 

I actually don’t watch that much television normally, but I quite enjoyed GoT and The Witcher, and so will be happy if other fantasy series of comparable quality become available in the near-ish future.