"Imagine the Hell Out of It!"

"No. Giant Ants are diurnal."

I hope I don't embarrass Matt Finch by calling him one of the "fathers" of the old school gaming movement. He created Swords & Wizardry and I called Swords & Wizardry White Box (co-authored by Marvin Breig) the "gold standard" of OD&D clones. But if he's only remembered in the community for one thing, I propose it should be a slogan:

Imagine the hell out of it!

What could better express the OSR, and thus the original promise of paper and pencil adventure games, in a sentence?

The idea is that minimalism in rules presentation and design has a purpose (beyond just saving the author and reader time). If paper and pencil fantasy adventure games are about anything, they're about imagination. But too much descriptive prose, or even too many fussy mechanics can often kill imagination or at least suppress it. Here is a great passage from White Box that makes this point:

There’s not a lot of detail given about the monsters, because the more detail given, the more your own mental image of the fantasy world is going to be locked into a single track. We’re not going to say that giant ants are red, nocturnal, three feet long, and fond of eating Elves. Because in your mind, they might be blue, diurnal, five feet long, and eat only plants unless they’re attacked. Details about monsters toss roadblocks in front of your imagination. Yes, details can also inspire the imagination, but we’re making the assumption that if you’re interested in fantasy gaming in the first place, you’ve got a good imagination that doesn’t need details about the size of a giant ant.

In my view, this is the key to the brilliance of the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the "three little brown books," published in 1974. For example, for each of the monsters in Monsters & Treasure, their actual appearance is rarely described, and when they are described they are never described in much detail beyond the general. Goblins are merely "small monsters," Wights are "nasty critters" and so on. There are a few exceptions, whose rarity, as Finch might agree, in and of itself stimulates the imagination--"Thin and rubbery, loathsome Trolls" being one of the best examples.

Interestingly, much of the implicit description comes in the form of rules mechanics. For example, Goblins, "when they are subjected to full daylight they subtract -1 from their attack and morale dice." In play, this penalty is negligible, costing Goblins a mere 5% on their to-hit probabilities. But what the mechanic is in fact doing is telling you that Goblins don't like sunlight.

Each edition of Dungeons & Dragons introduced progressively more description, which is one of the reasons for the progressively expanding rules bloat. So, for example, the Monster Manual (1977) not only greatly increased the number of monsters, but also expanded each of their descriptions by (I would guess) a factor of ten. And of course most of them also had illustrations.

Now this is not a criticism per se. I like the minimalism of the three little brown books, but there's no question that the original Monster Manual was a brilliant and now iconic product. My point is that a perfectly reasonable sounding desire--why shouldn't we know a bit more about these monsters and have pictures of them?--can in the end, especially by the time you get to even later editions, have unintended consequences. Consequences that are bad.

But there were other, not so innocent reasons why imagination was gradually leeched out of things. One of them was the tendency to increasingly treat the reader as if she were a stupid child. Consider these two explanations of Fighters from 0e and 2e D&D:

0e (1974):

Fighting-Men: All magical weaponry is usable by fighters, and this in itself is a big advantage. In addition, they gain the advantage of more "hit dice" (the score of which determines how many points of damage can be taken before a character is killed). They can use only a very limited number of magical items of the non weaponry variety, however, and they can use no spells. Top-level fighters (Lords and above) who build castles are considered "Barons", and as such they may invest in their holdings in order to increase their income (see the INVESTMENTS section of Volume III). Base income for a Baron is a tax rate of 10 Gold Pieces/ inhabitant of the barony/game year. 

2e AD&D (1989): 

There are many famous fighters from legend: Hercules, Perseus, Hiawatha, Beowulf, Siegfried, Cuchulain, Little John, Tristan, and Sinbad. History is crowded with great generals and warriors: El Cid, Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Spartacus, Richard the Lionheart, and Belisarius. Your fighter could be modeled after any of these, or he could be unique. A visit to your local library can uncover many heroic fighters.

(By the way, the 1989 segment on Fighters is eight times longer than the 1974 segment. The above is just a partial excerpt.)

The 1974 version has no description at all, though the thing about baronies sets a certain tone.

The 1989 version, while on its face encourages a sort of imaginative diversity, almost implies that the person reading the rules has little familiarity with the standard archetypes, or at least needs to be reminded of them.

But if that were the case, why would they be reading the rules or playing the game in the first place?

As should be obvious, I find the whole trend annoying. And it's one of the reasons I wrote the quasi-minimalist clone, Seven Voyages of Zylarthen. It's a game intended in part for children, but I like to think it treats them as adults.

And yes, Zylarthen does itself have a kind of tone, just as OD&D has a kind of tone. And yes, there are pictures--pretty good ones, if I may say. But I would like to think that the tone is not oppressive. The goal is to spark your imagination but also to give it room, so to speak.

From a design point of view, the goal is to be minimalist without being bland--partly because bland is boring, but also because blandness itself can be a kind of imaginative straightjacket.

Finding the right "balance" (if that is even the right word) is not easy. But who ever said it would be?

---------------------------------------------

Follow Save Versus All Wands on Twitter at the Twitter home of its author: @OakesSpalding

Lulu 30% Off Sale Ends Tonight...

Lulu's three day 30% off sale on print books ends at midnight tonight. I'm not sure what time zone it is, so to be safe I would assume it is East Coast. Use the code FLASH30. It's a great opportunity to buy those OSR products you've perhaps been flirting with buying for so long. (I'm describing me. I often make at least five visits to a book page before I get up the courage to buy). And if any potential customers are feeling guilty about it, the 30% discount only cuts into Lulu's profits, not those of the authors. Thus, the authors love these offers.

For the fun of it, I put together some price comparisons of the original TSR offerings (plus 5e) with some of the the current Lulu offerings (with the discount, of course). The inflation adjustment was taken from here. Though, a few things are left out (such as shipping) and one could debate issues involving the relative quality levels of the bindings and paper, etc.,overall the comparison is obviously quite favorable. Indeed, one could buy the complete set of all six of the clones described below (in their hardcover editions, where available) for only half the price of the three "core" 5e rulebooks.

Back in the Day (plus 5e)	Original Price	Inflation Adj. Price
Dungeons & Dragons (1 box, 1974)	$10.00	$48.16
Holmes (1 box, 1977)	$9.95	$39.18
AD&D (3 books, 1977-79)	$29.85	$107.75
B/X Dungeons & Dragons (2 boxes, 1981)	$19.90	$51.98
5e (3 books, 2014)	$149.85	$149.85
	Original	With 30%
Right Here Right Now	Price	Discount
OSRIC (paperback)	$15.50	$10.85
Basic Fantasy (hardcover)	$15.76	$11.03
Basic Fantasy (paperback)	$6.37	$4.46
Labyrinth Lord (hardcover)	$31.95	$22.37
Labyrinth Lord (paperback)	$21.95	$15.37
Sword & Wizardry WhiteBox (hardcover)	$18.99	$13.29
Sword & Wizardry WhiteBox (paperback)	$9.95	$6.97
Seven Voyages of Zylarthen (4 booklets)	$23.80	$16.67
Delving Deeper (paperback)	$4.95	$3.47

Come on guys, what would you rather have, Delving Deeper or a cheap pint of beer? Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox or a good pint of beer? Seven Voyages of Zylarthen or a martini at the Ritz? Er, okay, don't think about that for too long. Just go to the Lulu page...

OSR Art Friday: Cover of The Fane of Poisoned Prophecies

The above piece was created by Pete Mullen for the Chaotic Henchmen Productions module The Fane of Poisoned Prophecies, authored in 2009 by Guy Fullerton.

This blog post is about the work of Pete Mullen.

There are many talented artists associated with the current OSR movement. But Mullen is at the head of the pack. If anyone deserves the title of The OSR artist, he does.

Part of this is due to the variety and diversity of products he has done illustrations for. A partial list would include Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Swords & Wizardry (he provided the cover illustrations for both the WhiteBox and Core editions) and Dungeon Crawl Classics as well as various smaller games and companies such as Ruins & Ronin and of course Chaotic Henchmen.

But more importantly the tone and quality of his work practically screams OD&D*. Many of his illustrations center around an adventuring party doing what adventuring parties do--fighting of course, as in the above—but just as interestingly and evocatively, exploring, pausing, thinking (which way to go now?), plundering (after a battle) and so on. The text below will be interspersed with a few other works out of a great many that I could just as easily have featured tonight. My only bias in choosing them is that I tried to pick pieces that were perhaps not quite as well-known as his more famous covers.

  
A few years ago Mullen gave an interview to Stuart Robertson on his blog Strange Magic. I want to excerpt one of his answers here:

I think there are several key differences between these two generations of fantasy art (Old School versus standard contemporary]. In terms of subject matter, the fantasy art in the seventies and eighties had their fair share of super heroes and strange monsters but their work encouraged the viewer to use their imagination and ask the question of "What the heck is going on here?" To me, the fantasy art in this day's market has more of an instant gratification element to it. When I look at it, I say, "Cool!" But then I'm left with, "Now what?" I find that I don't pursue the, "What the heck is going on here?" questions beyond that initial "Cool!" When producing my art work, I try to get the viewer to ask the "What the heck is going on here?" questions.

The piece I featured above would seem to almost buck this. We know what's going on, don't we? The party is fighting a group of Giant Scorpions. Three party members are engaged in melee while the fourth—pretty clearly the Magic-User—is casting some sort of probably offensive spell. But even here in this more 'obvious' scene, the viewer finds himself asking questions which serve to more thoroughly engage him in the painting: What is the spell? It appears to involve some sort of bright globe. Is it a Light spell? Why would the Magic-User want to cast that? And the way those columns are spaced and drawn is sort of...stressful. Are there other Scorpions about to scuttle around from behind? Did the party attack them in their lair or are they being set upon by surprise? The piece is exciting not because everyone is flying through the air like Chinese martial-artists (as in a typical 4e illustration) but because we really don't know what's going to happen next.

And I think the center of it is the Magic-User's raised arms. I chose this illustration partly because out of all the Old School or OSR works that I have seen (a lot) this is the most evocative rendering of a spell cast in melee that I have ever come across.

Here is another non-combat painting titled The Dungeoneers (I don't know which product, if any, it is attached to):

Now, in previous posts I have disparaged the 'cartoony' aspect of contemporary 'New School' art. But it's clear that Mullen's work is cartoony in its way. We know that people or dungeon adventurers don't actually look like this. The representations are abstract or exaggerated in a certain sense. So what gives? I'm not an experienced or schooled art critic (obviously) so call me out if I make some howlers here. But to me the difference is that, say, 4e art looks video-gamey because it's almost saying, this is what your fantasy world looks like. Since (by assumption) you think video games are cool, we're going along with that by portraying your fantasy world as a video game. Isn't that cool? Or, see, we're cool too, or whatever. But Mullen is not treating us like we are babies or passive consumers. The shoulders on his Magic-Users are not pointy or angular because we think that's how they actually are, but to stress the point that they're thoughtful, logical Magic-Users. That's what grown-up art—art made for grown ups—does (or at least often does).

Great stuff.

Mullen has sometimes been portrayed as a sort of Erol Otus wannabe. This is a slur. Not because there's anything wrong with Otis. He's also brilliant, of course. But I think Mullen is up to something a bit different...and unique.

I don't know what he is doing now. I assume he is still available to provide illustrations for OSR games and modules. I certainly hope he is. His site—containing the above and many other neat illustrations—is here.

At the risk of sounding too much the OSR artist groupie (though I am one)...

Thank you.

* I owe the precisely appropriate 'screams' designation to a Google+ comment by Theodore Kabisios, referring to last Friday's OSR Art offering.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Those of you that who haven't voted on the Zylarthen name shortening thing (wait, I just prejudiced the vote there) have until 11:37 PM Pacific Standard time to get your vote in on the comments section of this post. Again, you might win hardcopies of Seven Voyages of Zylarthen, Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox, Stonehell Dungeon or Anomalous Subsurface Enviroment—all pinnacles of OSR genius and creativity (well, three out of four them, at least).

By the way, there's a rumor going around (started by my own ambiguous wording more than anything else) that I want to rename my game. But it's only a question of finding an appropriate shortening of it. You guys know that right?

Seven Voyages of Zylarthen will always be Seven Voyages of Zylarthen. Unless you first pry it from my dead mailed fist...

OSR Art Friday: Omar?

The illustration above appeared on the cover of the first printing of Swords & Wizardry Complete (2010) and was created by Richard Sardinha in the same year. The title, 'Omar?', was, as far as I know, referred to in only one place--the artist's posting of it in his gallery on DeviantArt. (The S&W link takes you to a free version of the second edition with a different cover.)

An interesting and perhaps odd choice for OSR Friday, for at least three reasons:

1. Sardinha is well-known for his work on various 'New School' games and related products including 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, Magic: The Gathering and others.
2. Some Old Schoolers were a bit negative on the piece (see the blog post and especially the comments here), as it replaced a painting by an OSR stalwart, Pete Mullen, on the previous 'Core' edition of the game and was in turn replaced by a painting by the beloved Errol Otis for the second edition of the 'Complete' rules set.
3. Sardinha admits that the illustration was not painted but photoshopped (presumably not a very Old School method) from an original sketch.

So, why did I choose it?

Because it is associated with an OSR game. And I like it.

This is as good a place as any to spend a moment discussing what I'm up to with this series. The point is not to divide everything into immutable categories of Old School versus everything else, and thus to separate artistic works or artists into the good or approved versus the bad or ideologically-suspect. It's true that I have my aesthetic preferences, or rather--since I've given my opinion on the non-starter of relativism in previous posts--my opinions on aesthetic value. I do think role-playing games have devolved from what they once were (though with a bump in the positive direction from the contemporary OSR movement) and the artistic choices have certainly been a part of that. But it's not all--if you'll pardon the metaphor in a discussion of illustration--black and white. I'll leave that attitude to the other guys--you know, the ones who insist on always looking at things in terms of bad people versus good people. The misogynists, homophobes, Eurocentrists, Frazetta-ites, philatelists, or whomever else they want to focus their Two Minutes Hate against on any particular day of the week versus, well, themselves.

Also, I think it's interesting to consider as great a diversity of good art as possible--both in terms of era and style--especially if it will provoke useful thought or discussion.

Which doesn't of course mean that we can't occasionally have a bit of fun snarking at some of the bad art or the small and petty little orthodoxies that often tend to encourage or support it.

But let's look at the painting:

Who's Omar? He's the guy who was just picked off by the underwater snake, or whatever it is. His body (living? dead?) is entwined in that tentacle. I missed that at first. Just as the party missed it and perhaps will never discover it. Omar went home. You know how he was. He just wanted to return to the surface and bank his copper pieces. Coward.

Speaking of the surface, I thought originally that the illustration depicted an Asian sort of scene--a valley with those beautiful Chinese-like vertical hills. But of course it's a huge underground cavern with perhaps a shaft of light at the top. The artist describes the central city as a 'subterranean goblin ghost town'. I guess the remaining adventurers are about to find out what that means.

The color scheme and overall tone reminds me of some of the drawings for Call of Cthulhu. The guy in the forefront holding a torch almost looks like he's wearing an early 20th century pith helmet. Indeed, we learn that Sardinha has done a number of pieces with that sort of motif. Fittingly, he lives in Providence. Here's his interpretation of a rather thoughtful Great Old One:

Sardinha has diverse talents. He's also a sculptor and puppet maker, as well as having an interest in drawing dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. His website is fascinating--and intimidating, especially for a non-talented artist groupie like me.

I think the original illustration wonderfully captures the spirit of Swords & Wizardry, which is about as Old School, OSR or just plain cool as you can get.

We'll have more to show and say about Mullin and Otis in later posts... 

Game Review: Swords & Wizardry White Box

This is the first in a series of reviews of some of the so-called 'clones' of old school editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Let me first define some terms:

A clone is a game that adheres closely to the mechanics, substance and/or presentation of a particular edition or editions of Dungeons & Dragons such that without the legal protections of the Open Game License and the Systems Reference Document it would clearly be violating copyright law.

A retro-clone is a clone that on the main strives to emulate a particular edition as precisely as possible.

A neo-clone is a clone that uses an edition or editions as a template but is designed to differ substantially from the original.

The original is the edition the clone is, well, cloning.

Now on to the review.

Game: Swords & Wizardry White Box (2009).

Availability: Softcover: $9.99. Hardcover: $18.99. Boxed Set: currently unavailable. PDF: Free.

Status: Neo-clone.

Original: The Three Little Brown Books (1974), or more accurately, the first two of the three--Men & Magic and Monsters & Treasure.

Introduction: Swords & Wizardry (2008) was the third major retro-clone to be published after Labyrinth Lord (2007) and OSRIC (2006). A year later in 2009, Swords & Wizardry White Box was released, authored by Matt Finch and Marv Breig. Unlike other clones, Swords & Wizardry never tried to emulate one particular edition of OD&D. Rather the intention was to emulate a style of play over a particular time period. If Swords & Wizardry as a whole embraced a sort of average of the original 1974 edition + the supplements + Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, White Box was an attempt to dial things back to the minimalist mechanics and presentation of the 1974 version. So, although it's not specifically designed to be a clone of the three little brown books, we'll use those as a point of comparison.

Comparisons with the Original:

1. The first thing the reader notices is that, unlike the original, Swords & Wizardry White Box is extremely well organized and presented. Now, don't misunderstand. I never thought that that was a major fault of the three little brown books. But some do. White Box has an attractive and readable contemporary font and layout. There's a full table of contents for the entire game, and so on.

2. White Box adheres to the minimalist mechanics and substance of the original. There are approximately the same number of items of equipment for purchase, spells, monsters and the rest. However White Box comes in at only about 70% of the word count of the original. This is primarily because most of the material in the third of the three little brown books--The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures--is absent from White Box.

3. White Box maintains the six classes of the original, including preserving the idea of race as class, jettisoned in the later editions. Ability Score adjustments and bonuses are slight, as in the original, but altered somewhat. The confusing 'point swapping' mechanic for the purpose of upping one's experience point bonus, is dropped in favor of giving a +5% adjustment to high wisdom and charisma scores. And an optional adjustments for high or low strength scores is added.

4. Unlike in the original, weapons are given variable damage rolls, though this is done in a simple and elegant way, more like the Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert set than the proliferation of possibilities offered in Greyhawk and even more so in AD&D.

5. Spell lists are very similar to the original with only a few small differences. The number of monsters is approximately the same but includes a greater diversity than the three little brown books. About half are from the original with the rest coming from the supplements or even the Monster Manual. This is a good example of where, to frame it positively, Swords & Wizardry White Box is less interested in historical purity than, well, fun.

Minor Annoyances:

(I will include this section in all reviews, no matter how much I like the game overall.)

1. In a number of places White Box goes out of its way to, in its own words, present 'options for your consideration'. For example, you can give Fighters with a 15+ strength a +1 bonus on attacks. Or not. Or make the requirement slightly easier at 14 or even 13. I used to like this. Now I don't. Do not misunderstand. That White Box, like the original, stresses that the referee and players can and should modify the rules according to taste is absolutely correct and laudable. But, before I do that I want to know what the authors think. After all, presumably they know much more about the mechanic than I do. They thought about it, wrote it and playtested it. They're the authors after all. So while I reserve the right to change things, I have a rational interest in knowing what they prefer.

2. White Box 'rationalizes' certain mechanics of the original, such as the saving throw system. As opposed to the five categories of the original--Save Versus Death Ray or Poison, Save Versus All Wands - Including Polymorph and 'Paralization', Save Versus Rusting, Magical Vibration Attacks or Coughing Fits (okay I made up that last one) and so on--there is only one saving throw number that increases (or decreases) by 1 per level. Different classes get small bonuses on some kinds of saving throws. Parallel to this is a general smoothing out of the attack bonus increases per level. Personally I find chunky and discontinuous increases preferable (for a variety of reasons) and I would rather, say, save versus Dragon Breath than, well, just make a saving throw. It's increases the fairy tale otherworldly vibe for me. But I admit that I might be in a minority on this. I could mention 'descending armor class' but I won't. I don't want to seem too much a curmudgeon.

3. Why oh why do most old school games list all spells alphabetically, as opposed to listing them alphabetically only within the spell levels? Since almost all do it, many must like this approach. I don't.

4. White Box also rationalizes the way magic items are 'assigned' to treasure hordes. Again, when I first read the rules, I thought they were an improvement. Now I think the Swords & Wizardry system is a needless and confusing complication. And without being too ideological about it, scaling the power of magic items found (as part of the official mechanic) is too rational and new school for me.

5. White Box is somewhat schizophrenic as to its audience. In some ways it purports to be an introductory game--with its explanations of what role-playing is, the kind of dice used, and so on. But I can't imagine anyone unfamiliar with these sorts of games simply picking it up and playing it. Again, there is very little material--short of a view general paragraphs--on dungeon design, wilderness adventures or campaign creation. By contrast, the original game had all of that and more (though some would say it was frustratingly ambiguous or incomplete), going as far as presenting detailed rules for aerial combat and sea combat, among other things. Now, in regards to the last two features, I think it fair to say that few actually used those rules. So, from one point of view it makes sense to ditch them. But even if they weren't used, they still (in my view) served to spark the imagination of the reader. This is the sort of world we are in (Gygax and Arneson seem to be saying): the wilderness is dotted with castles where Lords challenge intruders to jousts, Viking longships cruise the coasts, and sieges often feature Balrogs hurling fire over parapets. Leaving that consideration aside and stepping back to the issue of game mechanics, how would novice players be in any position to make informed decisions on the options White Box puts up for for their 'consideration'? White Box is a great system for, say, an experienced referee to use with novice players. But that's different.

Major Triumphs:

1. For a few years, White Box was the only major game in town that emulated the really minimalist approach of the three little brown books. That there is now more competition is not a fault of White Box. It did it first.

2. In places, Finch and Breig precisely and evocatively describe the old school approach in words that have never been equaled:

The rules are extremely short, compared to the multi-paged rule-libraries required to play most modern roleplaying games. Yet this game contains within itself all the seeds and soul of mythic fantasy, the building blocks of vast complexity, the kindling of wonder. The game is so powerful because it’s encapsulated in a small formula, like a genie kept imprisoned in the small compass of an unremarkable lamp.

There’s not a lot of detail given about the monsters, because the more detail given, the more your own mental image of the fantasy world is going to be locked into a single track. We’re not going to say that giant ants are red, nocturnal, three feet long, and fond of eating Elves. Because in your mind, they might be blue, diurnal, five feet long, and eat only plants unless they’re attacked. Details about monsters toss roadblocks in front of your imagination. Yes, details can also inspire the imagination, but we’re making the assumption that if you’re interested in fantasy gaming in the first place, you’ve got a good imagination that doesn’t need details about the size of a giant ant.

I didn't include much of that sort of thing in my own 'minimalist' old school game, partly because I knew I couldn't possibly improve on the above.

3. The writing is punchy, crisp and fluent. And no, that's not a feature of all old school games--even of otherwise laudable ones. And yes, it matters.

4. The PDF is free. It sounds almost condescending to mention that, but it shouldn't be. Finch and Breig don't want to bilk you. They just want you to have as much fun playing it as they (I'm guessing) had writing it. I have no doubt it made a number of old school converts. I know that because I was one of them.

Overall Assessment:

That there are more Minor Annoyances than Major Triumphs is a feature of my review template more than anything else. Swords & Wizardry White Box is one of the best products the OSR has produced. Any clone of the three little brown books must take the measure of it, and will in some ways be measured by it. There are now other options out there that may appeal to slightly different audiences--Delving Deeper for historical purists (believe me, there's nothing wrong with that!) and my own humble effort, among others--but White Box is still the gold standard.