Seven Voyages of Zylarthen/The Haunted Tower Play Report, Part 1

So this is the first game of Zylarthen/OD&D that my kids have played.

I didn't impose it on them. They asked to play after becoming fascinated with the Fiend Folio and Monster Manual. They don't even really know its name--"Seven Voyages of Zylarthen" or "Dungeons & Dragons" They simply call it "Daddy's game" or "the game with the figures."

Oliver and Lydia are almost five.

The module is The Haunted Tower by multiple authors, edited by Chris Gonnerman of Basic Fantasy fame. It's designed as an introductory adventure for children. There are all sorts of neat treasures, some fun "kid" monsters such as a Candy Cane Golem, and it is not very lethal--although it is certainly possible to die (and as we'll see, my son almost did). It's designed as a solo module, though one can play with two or three characters and just multiply the monsters (or not).

I like the module a lot and I had played it before, five or so years ago, with my nephew. It is available for free download here. If I am occasionally flippant about it, no criticism is intended.

The game system is Seven Voyages of Zylarthen, my OD&D neo-clone.

The figures are unpainted Ral Parthas from thirty years ago, plus some odds and ends such as some painted and unpainted Call of Cthulhu figures and a few printable paper minis from Arion Games. My daughter said the paper minis looked "really valuable."

In Seven Voyages of Zylarthen, you roll 3d6 in order with no mulligans, but ability scores are themselves less determinative or restrictive. If you want to play a Fighting-Man with a strength score of 5, you easily can. So, in a sense, it works for kids who have their own ideas of what might be fun to play.

But it's uncanny how often high scores seem to come up by rolling 3d6s. I knew my son wanted to play a "knight." On his very first roll (strength) he got an 18. And no, he didn't cheat.

They all rolled up characters. Here's what resulted:

Player: Oliver (Ollie)
Character Name: Ollie
Class: Fighting-Man
Level: 1st (Fighter)
Distinguishing Characteristics: Very strong, wears leather armor, uses a sword and shield and carries a mace for backup, speaks Bugbear (determined randomly) as an additional language.

Player: Lydia
Character Name: Zinda
Class: Hobbit (Thief)
Level: 1st (Borrower)
Distinguishing Characteristics: Very dexterous (17--again, rolled with 3d6), wears leather armor, uses a sword and buckler and carries a sling, also carries paint & brushes.

Now we also had a third character. Lydia asked whether her doll Betsy could have one. I said, why not?

Player: Betsy (Lydia's doll)
Character Name: Linda
Class: Magic-User
Level: 1st (Famulus)
Distinguishing Characteristics: Has a dexterity of 4 and a constitution of 6, knows Read Magic, Pyrotechnics and Speak with Animals, speaks Hill Giant (again, determined randomly).

Buying equipment went quickly--much more quickly than it usually does with adults. 

Without prompting, Lydia drew a picture of her character on her character sheet. Ollie followed. And Lydia drew Linda with a Wizard's hat containing a star. I'm not saying my kids are necessarily any cleverer than the average. But there's an intuitive aspect to the play of the game that children seem to pick up on.

They were ready to go. The Haunted Tower has a backstory--something about an alchemist being attacked by a werewolf and thus abandoning (?) his tower. But I found the backstory somewhat confusing (no offense to Chris--I often think that of backstories) and so I ditched it.

They were ready to go explore The Haunted Tower, for no other reason than the sheer adventure of it.

In Part Two, Ollie is hit by a planet...  

The Zylarthen Drow

Actual Size

This is a follow-up to yesterday's post, showing what I came up with.

Most obviously, I call them "Dark Elves" not "Drow." If I thought I could do it without offending too many people, I would consider calling them "Black Elves" to make them slightly stranger sounding and to further distinguish them from the AD&D version.

It's mainly a simplified AD&D Drow--but in miniature, like the Seven Voyages of Zylarthen Gnome (which I have included for comparison). Their spells are Zylarthen Witch spells, which I thought would be appropriate:

GNOMES: Hit Dice: ½. Armor Class: 5. Move: 6/3. Alignment: 50% chance of Law, 50% chance of Neutrality. Languages: Type E. Number Appearing: 40-400. % In Lair: 60%. Treasure: Class 1. Description: Gnomes are barely over 1 foot in height and can move through solid earth (though not necessarily stone) as easily as men move through air. They will only be encountered far beneath “the sunlit lands” in deep dungeons or caverns. Missiles: die 1 = none, die 2-4 = spear, die 5 = sling, die 6 = bow.

DARK ELVES: Hit Dice: ½. Attacks: 1-6 - poisoned bolts - spells. Armor Class: 4. Move: 12. Alignment: Chaos. Languages: Type E. Number Appearing: 5-50. % In Lair: 0%. Treasure: Class 10, plus 5-30 G.P. and 50%: 2-12 gems ea. Description: Dark Elves are the counterparts to Gnomes but unfortunately are much more dangerous. Like Gnomes they are barely over one foot in height. Also like Gnomes, they will only be encountered far beneath “the sunlit lands.” Dark Elves do not have the ability to burrow through the earth, but they may move silently and near-invisibly so as to suddenly appear virtually anywhere (surprising on a 1-4). Due to their small size and use of enchanted weapons and armors, Dark Elves always have a +4 bonus to hit and impose a -4 penalty on those trying to hit them. They fight with a variety of weapons but most also carry a small crossbow that can be operated with one hand—the bolts being envenomed and causing sleep (save at -4). All Dark Elves may use these spells once per day: Clairvoyance, Dancing Lights, Darkness, 5’ Radius, Detect Lie, Detect Magic, Dispel Magic, Faerie Fire, Levitate and Suggestion. In addition, for every 10 Dark Elves, there will be a Diabolist. For every 20 Dark Elves there will be an Haruspex. And for every 50 Dark Elves there will be a Prince or Sorceress (each equivalent to a 12th level Wizard). Dark Elf Magic-Users use the same spell lists as Witches. All Dark Elves are 50% resistant to spells.

New Spells:

Dancing Lights: At a range of up to 100’ the caster may create either: a) 1-4 lights that look in the darkness like bobbing torches or lanterns, b) glowing or blinking “will-o-wisp” like spheres or c) a faintly glowing man-like shape. These shapes may move as desired within the range of the spell. Duration: 10 melee turns. 

Faerie Fire: This spell allows the caster to draw an outline of blue “Faerie Fire” around one or more objects or creatures. The Faerie Fire will be visible for 80’ in the dark and 40’ in bright light and may even make invisible creatures visible. An outline of to 60’ length may be drawn—equivalent to four man-sized creatures, spaced fairly closely together. Being outlined in such a way is not in and of itself harmful but it will give opponents a +2 bonus to hit. Duration: 20 melee turns, Range: 80’.

Top Ten Reasons Why I Hate Drow

Boring

One of my current projects is rewriting or reimagining most of the monsters in the Fiend Folio, in among other things a more minimalist OD&D or Seven Voyages of Zylarthen style. As I implied in a previous post, it was my four-year-old son who inspired me to give the Fiend Folio another look.. And if I ever publish the damn thing, it will be dedicated to him.

Zak S made a fine start on it here, which I intentionally stopped reading so as not to bias myself and unintentionally steal stuff. Also, of course, some of Zak's ideas aren't exactly kid friendly.

The project is fun but it's also annoying. There are a number of monsters I don't want to rewrite or reimagine--either because I think they are silly or pointless and I can't quickly think of an alternative, or because their descriptions are lengthy and complicated and I'm too lazy to adequately understand or parse them.

So I follow the same strategy I followed when I took the SATs. When I come to a monster that I don't want or know how to deal with, I skip over it, intending to come back later.

I've skipped over Drow three times.

On Saturday, I drew the line. I would deal with Drow once and for all. And so I spent most of the day thinking about what to do with them.

And in the process I realized I hated their guts.

Why?

Here are ten reasons.

I did eventually reimagine the Drow in a way that I found satisfactory, but this post will take me a much shorter time to write. I will never get back those three hours.

Ten Reasons Why I Hate Drow:

1. Ideally, all elves should be dangerous, mysterious and somewhat creepy. Creating a new category of elves that are almost defined as such, effectively means that elves in general (all the other elves) will not be dangerous, mysterious and somewhat creepy.
2. Drow did not appear in the three little brown books or the supplements. They were introduced in AD&D. For this OD&D curmudgeon, that makes then prima facie suspect.
3. Teenage girls like them. Or at least they're the sort of thing that I imagine teenage girls liking.
4. Some of the very worst "new school" art depicts Drow. Indeed, the "Drow vibe" almost defines new school art.
5. In 4e, everyone looked like Drow.
6. They're too complicated in terms of text length. No monster should have multi-page descriptions. If you cannot grasp a monster in a few minutes or a paragraph, it's too complicated.
7. They're too complicated in terms of...complexity. Drow are Fighter/Magic-Users and Fighter/Clerics. The males may progress to X level as a Fighter and possibly Z level as a Magic-User. The females may progress to Y level as a fighter and Z level as a Magic-User. Only females may be Clerics and they may only progress to X level, while still being Fighters who progress to Y level. But only on Wednesday. And only if you have a double Fizbin.
8. Drow encourage an annoying faux engagement with the occult.
9. Drow exemplify social ecology bloat par excellence. I don't know and I don't care about the rivalries and intrigue  between "House Focker" and "House Flying Focker."
10. Ed Greenwood called Drow "Gary Gygax's greatest, most influential fantasy creation."

I rest my case with 10.

Drow should all be enveloped, flumphed or tirapheged to death.

Or overwhelmed by hordes of Men & Magic Goblins, Kobolds or anyone else with two sentence descriptors.

Ooh, they're so dark!

No, actually. Just boring.


Blog post picture is by Helmuttt.      

Tabletop Library: Now You Can Keep Your Shirtless Heroes Where Your Husband Can't See Them

The post title is my unsolicited attempt to create fake banner ad text for the new Tabletop Library. It was inspired by this real banner ad:

Tabletop Library: Digital games that won't stack up where your wife can see them.

This ad ran on what I assume is a gaming discussion board or at least was grabbed by someone from somewhere and put up on the board. The screenshot is from RPG Pundit:

The Pundit also captured Christopher Helton's silly attempt to show off his feminist, or anti-genderist or anti-whateverist cred.

I'm sure this is an extremely minor tempest and that Tabletop Library wasn't trying to be ideological or political or anything else. I'm not saying that Tabletop Library has any particular agenda or would even necessarily agree with what I'm saying here.

But that's sort of the point. It's just an ad.

On RPG Pundit's post, Tenkar* commented that it's simply a fact that 85% of all RPG gamers are men--a proportion that's probably even higher in the OSR.

That of course is absolutely true, even though it's a general fact and not true in every particular case (as most general facts are not true in every particular case).

But even to the extent (15%) that it's not always true, the ad is still, well, funny. To lift my own comment from the Pundit's post:

You should be able to joke in a friendly way about silly differences between the sexes even when they're only general differences. And the joke is partly self-deprecating. It's just as much about men being silly hoarders of stupid stuff. It's also a silly joke about the minor "strains" (which of course aren't really strains) of marriage. That anyone would have a problem with this sort of thing is insane.

That 14 people (or whatever) would "like" Helton's dumb comment--"yeah, you tell those sexist bastards what's what, Chris!" is just another example of how busybodies with nothing else to do love spoiling things.

On a brighter note, it looks like the new Tabletop Library is doing quite well. Now I just have to figure out how to hide all those $3.99 digital gaming purchases from my wife when she looks at the credit card bill.

*At Tenkar's Tavern, there is also a funny self-referential riff on this.

That Chesterton Misquote: a Detective Story

Old School Renaissance

In a post a few days ago, I made a quasi-defense of allowing our four-year-old son to read the 1981 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Fiend Folio. In my Google+ and Facebook intro blurbs for the link, I paraphrased an alleged G.K. Chesterton quote. The paraphrase went like this:

Fairy tales do not tell children that monsters exist. Children already know that monsters exist. Fairy tales tell children that monsters can be killed.

Now my "paraphrase" was actually a direct word for word copy of an actually existing rectangular Chesterton quote thingy--the sort of picture people post and repost on Facebook and other social media (though note the wonky punctuation):

But I thought (though I honestly don't remember why I thought) that that itself was probably a paraphrase of something where Chesterton was actually referring to dragons not monsters. I used "monsters" (while acknowledging that it was probably a paraphrase) because it squared better with my post--I was talking about monsters in general, such as the monsters in the Fiend Folio, not dragons specifically. Here's one of the rectangular quote thingies on the Chesterton dragon version:

And here's another:

And here are three more:

I've posted five of these because they all differ. The major differences are the substitution of "Fairy tales are more than true-" for "Fairy tales do not tell children dragons exist," and "beaten" for "killed." But minor differences include "don't" for "do not," "that dragons" for "the dragons," "the children" for "children" and the insertion of "that" in-between "us" and "dragons."

This is, of course, annoying. If Chesterton really said it, you would think someone would simply look at exactly what he said in Collected Essays Volume XXVII or whatever and just quote it. Is it "don't" or "do not"? Well, what did he actually say?

Okay. Now it gets even more annoying. Hold onto your hats and wait for it . . .

The quote has also been ascribed to Neil Gaiman:

And now, instead of "killed" versus "beaten," we have "beaten" versus "defeated."

Enough.

What was the original quote and who actually said it?

In fact it was Neil Gaiman quoting Chesterton in the epigraph to his 2002 Coraline, p. 7:

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten. 

- G.K. Chesterton

But the story is not over. As Gaiman later admitted, he misquoted Chesterton--and this was in the epigraph!

How did he misquote Chesterton? Why did he misquote Chesterton?

Well, Gaiman may have had his memory filtered through an earlier misquotation from a third source. Hold onto your hats again. That source is . . . 

Terry Pratchett.

In When the Children Read Fantasy, published in SF2 Concatenation (1994), which obviously preceded Coraline, Pratchett wrote:

One of the great popular novelists of the early part of this century was G.K. Chesterton. Writing at a time when fairy tales were under attack for pretty much the same reason as books can now be covertly banned in some schools because they have the word ‘witch’ in the title, he said: “The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.” 

Now, do not misunderstand what I'm doing here. I'm not being critical of Gaiman. Indeed, we have Gaiman to thank for admitting his mistake.

Gaiman himself realized that he had misquoted Chesterton and attempted to unravel what had happened:

It’s my fault. When I started writing Coraline, I wrote my version of the quote [from Chesterton's] Tremendous Trifles, meaning to go back later and find the actual quote, as I didn’t own the book, and this was before the Internet. And then ten years went by before I finished the book, and in the meantime I had completely forgotten that the Chesterton quote was mine and not his.

(See this Tumblr post by "MJS.")

So what was the original quote? it's from "The Red Angel," Chapter XVII of Chesterton's Tremendous Trifles (1909):

The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it--because it is a fact. Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

Of course, in classic Chestertonian fashion, Chesterton restates essentially the same idea at least three more times in the chapter. Here's another version in the very next paragraph (warning: one of the terms used is now considered politically incorrect):

Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear. When I was a child I have stared at the darkness until the whole black bulk of it turned into one negro giant taller than heaven. If there was one star in the sky it only made him a Cyclops. But fairy tales restored my mental health, for next day I read an authentic account of how a negro giant with one eye, of quite equal dimensions, had been baffled by a little boy like myself (of similar inexperience and even lower social status) by means of a sword, some bad riddles, and a brave heart. Sometimes the sea at night seemed as dreadful as any dragon. But then I was acquainted with many youngest sons and little sailors to whom a dragon or two was as simple as the sea.

So, what does this all mean? Well, obviously, quotes on the internet are often very unreliable, at least if one is a stickler for accuracy. Then again, I do not think anyone can deny that the basic spirit of what Chesterton originally said was preserved through the various permutations, even though technically he was misquoted again and again. And while I obviously like reading actual Chesterton, I think the best version of the quote is that first "monsters" one. It's simple, stark and clear. But I would have preferred that its origins hadn't been misdescribed.

[Crossposted at Mahound's Paradise]

My Son's Favorite Book is the Fiend Folio

Okay, he's four years old.

Before anyone calls Child Protective Services, at least let me explain.

First of all, I didn't exactly start it or encourage it. The proximate cause was that my kids get into everything. And at some point my son dragged my old AD&D books out from a partially concealed shelf. I don't think he understands that the books constitute a game. Nor do I think he's necessarily aware that they are linked to "my game" or "the game" that I spend time writing on the computer. And oddly, it's my four-year-old daughter who likes the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series. My son is scared to watch it.

He first discovered the 1977 Monster Manual. He actually wanted me to read it to him as a bedtime book. My daughter was also interested and followed along. Within a few days she could give a comprehensive discourse on how to best kill a vampire (and which methods were too gross). She thinks waiting for sunlight is the best idea.

My son was simply fascinated by all the different monsters and wanted to learn all about them. He has some speech pronunciation problems and so in a sort of rebellious style, enjoys pronouncing back weird monster names.

Then he discovered the Players Handbook.

Then he found the Fiend Folio.

As I implied, he is a somewhat sensitive child. Most live-action (as opposed to cartoon) science-fiction television shows frighten him. He'll want to watch Classic Star Trek but then run into the other room at the sight of the first monster. But for some reason he is not scared by the Fiend Folio. Or at least, he is not scared away. I think the fact that as horrifying as some of the monsters are, that they are not moving and thus are not real, is reassuring. 

"What's that, Daddy?"
"A Necrophidius."
"A Mekrabeelious!"
"What's that, Daddy?"
"A Needleman."
"A Deebledan!"
"Yes, it's pretty bad."

My daughter has a more clear-eyed attitude. During bedtime stories, I'll ask whether she wants to read a monster description or turn the page.

"No. No. No. No and No, Dad (that was for a page that contained five monsters). Turn the page."
"What about these?"
"No. No. And definitely No. Next page."

Last night my son lovingly placed the Monster Manual, Fiend Folio and Players Handbook in a sort of display on his bed.

I am actually not concerned by this. To me, it's the equivalent of fairy tales. But all three of those books have more extensive (and better) illustrations than their fairy tale books.

We are a traditionalist Catholic family. One of our primary goals as parents is to protect our children from what we see as certain dangerous secular or modern influences. And I wrote "my game" as something that would be potentially children friendly and Christian friendly (though it is certainly not a "Christian game" by any means).

But I do not think exposing my children (or letting them expose themselves) to "monsters" is bad, or at least bad per se, at least if it's not going to give them nightmares. I imagine some parents, including Catholic parents, will be disturbed by this. And I do want to reassure everyone. I take the general issue very seriously. I just think that being interested in monsters is actually healthy. My children don't want to be monsters (though they may sometimes act like them). Rather, they want to fight them.

That's okay. Perhaps more than okay.

Sorry, pacifist parents.

By the way, I don't believe my children ever dream about monsters, or at least they don't tell me that they do.

When I ask my son what he's going to dream about (a prelude to getting him to settle down in bed), he says, "Hot Wheels!"

When I ask my daughter what she's going to dream about, she says, "What a good day I'm going to have tomorrow. And how I love Mommy."

And again, hey, I didn't do it. They dragged the books down from a shelf . . .

"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?

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