18 August 2009
Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
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Howard Thompson Letter
AUG 17, 2009 11:24A.M.
Al over at Beyond the Black Gate has posted a link to a very interesting
letter written by Howard Thompson of Metagaming. I’ve reproduced it
below:
The letter is interesting for numerous reasons, chief among them being
Thompson’s comments about the rules of The Fantasy Trip and, by
extension, his thoughts about rules complexity generally. Unsurprisingly,
I rather agree with Thompson’s points and it’s telling that, as early as
1980, the date of this letter, there was already a growing sense that RPGs
were getting needlessly complex — “longer instead of better” in
Thompson’s words. That’s a problem that continues to this day and
about which I’ll have more to say in an upcoming post.
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Pulp Fantasy Library: Pirates of
Venus
AUG 17, 2009 10:09A.M.
Although better known for his stories of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs
returned to the sword-and-planet genre he helped to establish with the
1934 novel Pirates of Venus. This novel is the first of five in a series
following the adventures of Carson Napier who accidentally winds up on
Venus when his rocket ship is thrown off-course — its original
destination was Mars, ironically — by failing to take into account the
effect of the Moon’s gravitation pull. Once on Venus (or Amtor, as its
inhabitants call it), Napier discovers the planet to be inhabited by a wide
variety of humanoid cultures, the most important of which is Vepaja,
from which Princess Duare, the protagonist’s love interest, hails.
Readers familiar with the Barsoom novels will find a lot of similarities
between them and Pirates of Venus and its sequels, especially in the
personality of Carson Napier, who is every bit as courageous and
resourceful as John Carter, often using his Earthling ingenuity to invent
devices or stratagems that the benighted Amtorians never considered
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 18 August 2009

before. Moreso than Barsoom, Amtor’s cultures are generally quite

hostile and belligerent, with Napier frequently in danger of death at the
hands of one or the other of its factions. Likewise, local technology is a
strange mish-mash, with longevity drugs and atomic-powered ray guns
existing side by side with swords and long-distance communication by
semaphore. Until Napier builds an airplane, the Amtorians had never
conceived of one, despite having other vehicles and devices equal to or
more advanced than those of Earth.

Pirates of Venus is a fun read, but it feels a bit more cartoonish than the
Barsoom novels, almost a caricature of Burroughs’s earlier work. There’s
a definite “Flash Gordon” vibe to the whole thing that, while not
unenjoyable, somehow seems out of place compared to the slightly more
sober John Carter novels. This feeling is made even more clear when
contrasted with the social commentary and real world allusions that
Burroughs makes throughout the novel. The villaninous Thorists, for
example, are clearly Communists. There are also references to fascists,
Alien Savage
the Ku Klux Klan, eugenics, and other contemporary socio-political
topics of the 1930s. The end result is an uneven goulash of ideas wrapped
Requirements: STR 9, CON 9
around a pulp adventure tale. It’s not Burroughs’s best work, by any
Prime Requisite: STR and CON
means, but it still has a lot to offer anyone interested in the sword-and-
Hit Dice: 1d8+1
planet genre. Plus, even when he’s not at his best, Burroughs is still a
Maximum Level: 12
remarkably compelling writer and that’s very much in evidence here,
despite its flaws.
The Alien Savage is a barbaric native of another world/time/dimension.
Hailing from harsh and unforgiving environments Alien Savages are
tough, even brutish, often with little regard for the social niceties
“civilized” beings deem important. Consequently, they value strength,
personal honor, and, above all, loyalty. Their friendship, once gained, is
unswerving, granting them a +1 bonus to attack and damage when
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defending those who have earned it.
Grognard’s Grimoire: Alien
Alien Savages eschew most armor, considering anything more protective
Savage than leather (and possibly a shield) an insult to their fighting prowess.
They may use any weapon, but rarely employ ranged weapons other than
AUG 15, 2009 11:01P.M.
throwing axes, javelins, or nets. Large and hulking, Alien Savages require
Unlike yesterday’s Stranger, which is a lot more usable in a variety of only one hand to wield even two-handed weapons. Whether due to
natural advantages or their martial culture, they may also attack with
settings, today’s Alien Savage racial class — originally called “Green
two weapons at once, although the second weapon incurs a -3 penalty to
Savage” — is a bit more specific to planetary romance/sword-and-planet
hit. This penalty decreases to -2 at 4th level, -1 at 8th level, and
settings. I still tried to make the class as broad an archetype as I could.
disappears entirely at 12th level. Alien Savages are also skilled night
Nevertheless, the Alien Savage is probably a bit more of a Tars Tarkas
fighters, being able to see 60’ in the dark without difficulty. They speak
class than the Stranger was a John Carter class, so I’d appreciate any
their own language and may learn to speak others, albeit haltingly, if
recommendations to make it more generic in future iterations.
they possess sufficient INT to do so.

The entirety of this class is hereby designated as Open Game Content via
Alien Savages save and fight as Fighters of equal level. They must have at
the Open Game License.
least 13 in one or the other prime requisite in order to get the +5% bonus
to experience. They must also have a STR and CON of 13 to get the +10%
bonus.

Alien Savage Level Progression

Experience

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 18 August 2009

Level 9+9

Hit Dice (1d8+1) 560,001

0 10

1 +3 hp only*

1+1 780,001

2,235 11

2 +6 hp only*

2+2 1,000,001

4,765 12

3 +9 hp only*

3+3
*Hit point modifiers from Constitution are ignored.
10,025

4+4
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20,251
Grognard’s Grimoire: Stranger
5 AUG 14, 2009 11:01P.M.

5+5 Given the prominence given to Barsoom in the LBBs and how much of
Appendix N is taken up by books in which 20th century Earthmen find
42,501 themselves transported to fantasy worlds, it’s amazing to me that it’s
never been formally included into any edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
6
Here’s my initial pass at a Labyrinth Lord-style character class based on
6+6 this premise. The entirety of this class is hereby designated as Open
Game Content via the Open Game License.
90,001

7+7

170,001

8+8

340,001

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 18 August 2009

Experience

Level

Hit Dice (1d8)

2,187

4,375

Stranger 3

Requirements: CON 9 8,751

Prime Requisite: CHA
Hit Dice: 1d8 4
Maximum Level: None
4
As their name implies, Strangers are human beings from another
world/time/dimension, who are trying to make a life for themselves as 17,501
best they can in their new homes. Despite their otherworldly origins,
Strangers possess preternatural adaptability, being able to learn local 5
customs and languages with surprising ease. Consequently, Strangers
may learn the local equivalent of Common within hours of first hearing 5
it, regardless of their INT score. Similarly, they suffer no reaction
penalties when dealing with alien species/cultures. Indeed, many 35,001
Strangers find themselves looked upon as long-sought heroes and
liberators, whose mysterious arrival portends revolutionary changes in 6
the status quo. Unsurprisingly, Strangers find allies and enemies in
equal number. 6

Perhaps because journeys between worlds/times/dimensions are 70,001

inherently hazardous, only the most resilient — and fortunate —
Strangers survive. Members of this class use the same saving throw 7
charts as Fighters but gain a +4 bonus. Owing to the unusual nature of
their fighting styles, Strangers gain a +1 bonus either to Armor Class or 7
to hit and damage when fighting opponents unfamiliar with their ways.
Which bonus the Stranger wishes to use must be declared before each 140,001
combat begins and, should the opponent survive to face the character
again, the bonus is nullified thereafter in the case of that particular foe. 8

8
Stranger Level Progression
280,001

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 18 August 2009

9 +18 hp only*

9 2,000,001

400,001 19

10 +20 hp only*

+2 hp only* 2,200,001

540,001 20

11 +22 hp only*

+4 hp only* *Hit point modifiers from Constitution are ignored.

660,001

12

+6 hp only* ROGUE FEED

800,001 S&W; Wins Silver ENnie

AUG 14, 2009 10:47P.M.
13
Swords & Wizardry won a Silver ENnie Award for Best Free Product at
+8 hp only* GenCon tonight. If nothing else, it shows that retro-clones are starting to
get some recognition outside the old school renaissance. I can’t deny that
1,000,001 I’d have much rather seen S&W walk away with the gold award, but
second place is nothing to sneer at and Matt Finch deserves a round of
14 applause for having produced a game that’s received a lot of positive
attention in the hobby. Bravo!
+10 hp only*

1,200,001

15
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+12 hp only*
Pandora’s Box
1,400,001 AUG 14, 2009 03:51P.M.

16 RuneQuest begins with the following words:

+14 hp only* This book is dedicated to Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, who
first opened Pandora’s box, and to Ken St. Andre, who found
1,600,001 it could be opened again.

17 I regularly hear gamers make the claim that one can never go home
again. That is, there will never again be a game like your first; you can’t
+16 hp only* experience the thrill of discovery more than once. Once the Red Box has
been opened, it’s a lifetime of cynicism thereafter.
1,800,001
I find that attitude odd, because it doesn’t at all reflect my experience in
18 this hobby. It is possible to go home again. I know this to be true, as I’ve

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
experienced it many times throughout my time roleplaying. D&D may
have been my first game, but it wasn’t the only game to fill me with awe.
Traveller and Call of Cthulhu had as profound an impact on me as did
D&D. Likewise, rediscovering old school D&D after years of not having
played it — or, in the case of OD&D, never having played it at all — has
been like a homecoming. And, as my recent reading of Stormbringer has
shown me, there are always new-old horizons to explore, many of which
bring me as much pleasure as the first time I cracked open the Holmes
rulebook at Christmas 1979.
Here’s to opening Pandora’s Box many more times.
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Dark Sun for D&D; IV
AUG 14, 2009 01:17P.M.
Never let it be said that I don’t occasionally have kind words for Wizards
of the Coast. According to this press release, the next campaign setting
for D&D IV will be Dark Sun, one of my favorites from the 2e era. Of all
the settings WotC could have chosen to revisit for the current edition, I
think Dark Sun is probably the best choice. Indeed, it’s, as they say, a
gimme, since Athas is a world perfectly suited for the style of play D&D
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18 August 2009
IV is supposed to provide: over-the-top action by larger-than-life heroes
amidst “points of light.”
I will confess this announcement is the first thing I’ve heard from WotC
that makes me even the slightest bit interested in buying it. Of course,
looking over at the nearly-complete set of 2e Dark Sun materials I have,
I quickly come to my senses again. If ever I wanted to play a campaign in
Athas, I already have more than enough materials to make that happen.
Nevertheless, I’ll be keeping an eye on developments regarding the new
Dark Sun, which I hope will, at the very least, be better than the half-
baked treatment it was given during the reign of D&D III.
Part of me does wonder, though, why no genuinely new settings have yet
been released for the current edition. Perhaps it’s just a matter of time
and costs: why develop something original when WotC has 30+ years of
other people’s ideas to mine. Or perhaps even the latest edition is not
immune to the siren song of nostalgia ...
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Gelatinous Cubes
AUG 13, 2009 03:15P.M.
The evil geniuses at Otherworld Miniatures will soon be releasing
miniatures of everyone’s favorite “cleaning crew” monsters: the
gelatinous cube.
The cube comes in a “standard” and “deluxe” format, the deluxe version
having an undigested skeleton floating in the middle of it. I have to admit
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
that I’m very tempted to get one of these, but, given the pace at which my
previous Otherworld minis have been painted, I’m not sure I can justify
the expense at this time. Still, it does look terrific, doesn’t it?
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A Surfeit of Spiders
AUG 13, 2009 01:49P.M.
Maybe it’s the unseasonably cold and wet spring and summer we’ve been
having this year, but, whatever it is, there have been a lot of spider about
my house and I hate spiders. More precisely, I am terrified of spiders.
There are lots of creepy crawlies I don’t much care for and that I’d rather
not have wandering around my home, but spiders are the only ones that
induce fear in me. It’s silly, of course, because most — most — of the
spiders I’ve been finding in and around my house this year are quite
small and harmless. Despite that, the very sight of them sends a shiver
down my spine.
It’s completely irrational, I know, but there it is. Perhaps that’s why I’ve
regularly used spiders as baddies in my games. Dwimmermount, for
example, is infested with giant poisonous spiders and I’ve been
contemplating the creation of a new, spidery race to serve as antagonists
later in the campaign. My fear of spiders certainly explains why, unlike
so many other gamers, I’ve never found the drow or Lolth to be the least
bit appealing. Beings who live with and emulate the habits of spiders are
nothing to admire in my book.
They say that the best way to scare other people is to be able to scare
yourself. There’s definitely some truth to this, which is why arachnids
hold a strange fascination for me, despite my fear of them. I regularly
find myself reading about these nasty things and their habits, cringing all
the way, but still never stopping. Heck, I’m cringing now as I write this,
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18 August 2009
merely thinking about spiders. That’s just how much I hate the beasts.
It’s not for nothing I heartily approved of Gygax’s having made giant
spiders Chaotic Evil in the Monster Manual, something subsequent
iterations of D&D did not continue, treating them as mere animals
without the malevolence I know they possess.
Ugh.
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Dwimmermount, Session 17
AUG 13, 2009 01:14P.M.
Session 17 of the Dwimmermount campaign was remarkably uneventful,
mostly because it was a session where we kept finding the flow of play
interrupted by off-topic banter. That’s a common occurrence when either
we’ve missed a session or two and so spend a lot of time catching up with
one another or when a player who’s not been around in a while shows up
and the same pattern repeats itself. I find it hard to get upset about this,
since gaming remains for me a social occasion primarily. Likewise, the
Dwimmermount campaign is structured in such a way that nothing is
lost if we spend a session or two goofing off rather than “getting down to
business.” I don’t consider time spent talking with friends while we’re
ostensibly supposed to be gaming to be a waste of time and, sometimes, I
actually find it a much-needed break for me. Even though refereeing an
old school dungeon crawl is incredibly relaxing, I nevertheless appreciate
having stretches of time when I don’t have to be “on,” if you know what I
mean.
That said, the party and their henchmen and hirelings did make some
progress deeper into the dungeon. First they overcame a room whose
floor was trapped by means of Brother Candor’s boots of levitation. The
cleric of Tyche was the first across the floor, using the walls as a means of
pushing himself to the other side. He had a rope tied around him and,
once at his destination, he set up a pulley system to pass the boots back
and forth to the other party members, each of whom in turn used them
to float across the floor without actually touching it and setting off the
magical trap they guessed would lead to unhappy results.
The players’ ingenuity in overcoming my traps is something at which I
regularly marvel. Whenever they open up their packs and MacGyver a
means of avoiding death, I’m generally more amused than frustrated, so
much so that I suspect I often let them get away with more than I ought
to. For example, I probably should have had Brother Candor attacked by
some nearby hobgoblins while he was in the midst of setting up the
pulley system for his comrades. But I didn’t, mostly because the thoughts
of a pair of magical boots being passed back and forth across a trapped
room was priceless and I never considered the possibility of disupting it.
Though I hate to admit it, if my players amuse me, I tend to be far more
lenient on them than when they don’t. I realize this makes me a bad
person.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 18 August 2009

I also realized that, while not essential, I still benefit greatly from the use
of miniatures and dungeon models. I have a very poor spatial sense and,
without models, I tend to lose sight of melees. For example, the
characters entered a room in which there were a number of trained
mountain lions and, although the room had only a single door, I allowed
all of the mountain lions to attack on their initiative. Brother Candor’s
player rightly objected to this and I corrected my error in the next round,
but I flubbed it initially, something I wouldn’t have done if I’d have had
miniatures to look at for the fight. So, next session, I’m not going to
attempt to run combats without minis, lest I make the same mistake
again. It’s a small thing — the players didn’t really care after I corrected
myself — but I prefer to do whatever I can to avoid making mistakes like
that and, if miniatures are what I need, so be it.

Short though the session was, we continued to have fun. The characters
discovered a section of their current sub-level that was seemingly walled-
off from the inside, which has piqued their interest. They were originally
gearing up to descend into Level 4, but, now that they’ve discovered this
hidden section, I imagine they’ll be spending some time exploring it and
trying to determine why it was walled off in the first place.

I never got into Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay during its heyday, but
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it’s a game I’ve always admired for its clever design and unique esthetics.

WFRP News I own a copy of the rulebook and consider it evidence that Games
Workshop (and, later, Hogshead Publishing) stayed true to the Old Ways
AUG 13, 2009 11:44A.M.
well after TSR and most other RPG companies had abandoned them.
Consequently, it’s a bit disheartening to read this press release from
Fantasy Flight Games, WFRP’s current publisher, which announces the
release of a third edition of the game this Fall. All the usual buzzwords
are there — “re-introduce,” “revolutionary approach,” “flavor,” “positive
paradigm shift” — and, were I a fan of WFRP, I’d be deeply worried that
my favorite RPG was being turned into something quite different, both
mechanically and stylistically, from its hallowed predecessors.

According FFG’s website, the new edition will include:

• 4 comprehensive rule books provide all the knowledge you will

need on the Old World

• Over 30 Custom Dice give you unprecedented options for story-

telling

• Party sheets provide new skills and abilities to keep everyone

engaged

• 40 different careers and 4 different races offer a multitude of

character options

• More than 300 cards keep you in the game, no need to look up
skills or abilities

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 18 August 2009

• Three character keepers designed to hold everything your hero will

need each session

This “core set” — implying there will be expansions of various sorts —

will also retail for $99.95. Maybe I’m just out of touch, but that strikes
me as ridiculously expensive for a RPG, more in line with those deluxe
boardgames that FFG and other companies have been producing lately.
Of course, that may be exactly the point. FFG may very well be modeling
the new edition on its boardgames. If so, I don’t see that as a positive
turn of events, but then I’m not a WFRP player, so maybe I’m letting my
grognardly D&D ways cloud my judgment about what truly is a
“revolutionary approach” for an old school classic.

Regardless, I do think this announcement is important and not just for

WFRP fans. I suspect it’s the canary in the coal mine for a major shift in
the way “RPGs” will be designed, produced, and marketed in the future.
Years from now we may be looking back on this as the day everything
changed in the hobby and, from my narrow perspective anyway, not in a
good way.

ROGUE FEED

Retrospctive: Stormbringer,
Part II In a break with tradition, I’m going to use this week’s Retrospective as an
opportunity to go back and talk about a game I just recently talked
AUG 12, 2009 08:57A.M.
about: Chaosium’s Stormbringer. I’m doing this because I just recently
laid my hands on a copy of the original boxed set and, having read
through the rulebook, it’s eating at my brain. Normally, when I write a
Retrospective, I’m working mostly on my memories of the game or
gaming product in question. That’s in fact part of the point of this regular
feature. I’m reflecting on things from my gaming past and (generally)
talking about them without having spent a lot of time reading and
thinking about them. They’re thus not really reviews in any formal sense
so much as occasions to talk about whatever thoughts my memories of
these products inspire in me.

Stormbringer has proven quite different, though, perhaps because I

never had a chance to play this game the first time around, unlike most
of the products to which I devote a Retrospective entry. Or perhaps it’s
just refreshing to spend some time with a Chaosium game, whose style
and approach, although quite different from OD&D, are nevertheless
thoroughly old school. For me, Chaosium games have a distinctly
“literary” quality to them, something that, Appendix N to the contrary,
TSR games never had. That’s certainly why Chaosium games held such
interest for me even when I was playing D&D — they provided me with
things I found utterly lacking in most other games from the same time
period.

What most stands out about Stormbringer is its authorial voice. Unlike
most RPGs, Stormbringer is not written like a technical manual. There

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
are many places in the text where the author(s) offer explanations of and
insights into the rules, sometimes with examples from their own games.
Even more intriguing is that there’s no ban on the use of the pronoun “I”
in these sections. This gives the rulebook a not-quite-conversational tone
that’s refreshing without being cloying. I never got the sense that Ken St
Andre and Steve Perrin were using the rulebook as an excuse to show off
or share their dimestore philosophies of life with me. Rather, the
author(s) come off as fellow gamers giving some context to the new ideas
they’re sharing across the table. That they do this without sacrificing
intelligibility is very impressive and has made me reconsider my notions
of what constitute good writing in RPG rulebooks.
Stormbringer is 144 pages long, including charts, tables, character
sheets, and a sample adventure (with maps). That’s probably about as
long as it needs to be and, despite my completist mania, I feel no urge to
seek out its one supplement or those written for later editions of the
game. The game feels quite complete in 144 pages and I can easily
imagine running a lengthy campaign without any need for additional
material. Indeed, I’m not even sure what form additional material would
take, since, as presented, Stormbringer is both self-contained and
evocative. Any expansions I might feel the need for can be easily
extrapolated from what’s in the rulebook, which is the mark of a well-
made RPG.
The game’s not flawless by any means. There are a number of house
rules I’d probably implement almost immediately, chief being a
simplification of the ability bonuses, which I’ve found needlessly fiddly
for too little benefit, either mechanically or flavor-wise. But, all in all, I
continue to be very impressed by Stormbringer and regret even more
that I never had the chance to play it back in the day. Had I done so, I
have little doubt that my subsequent development as a roleplayer might
have been very different indeed.
ROGUE FEED
Ken St Andre Explains It All
AUG 11, 2009 09:18P.M.
For a variety of reasons, both good and bad, gamers and — worse yet —
game designers often get tongue-tied when it comes to explaining just
what a roleplaying game is. Most of the definitions I see in game books
nowadays are inadequate in my opinion, because they’re incomplete,
stressing the essential roleplaying part of the equation while
shortchanging the equally essential game part.
In section 1.1 of Stormbringer (“What is Roleplaying?”), Ken St Andre
includes a very succinct explanation of what a RPG (or FRP game, in his
usage) is and what its play consists of, part of which follows:
The FRP game’s use of dice makes them partially a game of
chance, unlike chess or other mathematically-based games
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18 August 2009
that are purely games of skill. However, skill is definitely
involved in the play of an FRP. Players need to develop skill
in problem-solving, communication with others, and the
ability to make rapid decisions, and when those skills are
combined with luck and vicarious adventure, FRP games
become far more interesting than any amusement based on
only one of these factors.
The italics are mine, because I consider them pretty important and key
facets of the style of play I most enjoy. These are topics I’ll be returning
to at a later date, but I was trying to remember this quote earlier today
when I wrote my piece on random character generation. Now it’s here
and I can refer to it later, as needed.
ROGUE FEED
Lament for Solomon Kane
AUG 11, 2009 08:37P.M.
Leo Grin of The Cimmerian weighs in on the trailer to the upcoming
Solomon Kane movie and his opinion is much the same as my own. His
agreement with my own feelings doesn’t, of course, mean either of us is
right in any absolute sense, but I nevertheless take some solace in
knowing that, if I am a curmudgeonly pessimist, I am at least in august
company.
ROGUE FEED
Character Generation Thoughts
AUG 11, 2009 08:16A.M.
In reading Stormbringer — as I said, I plan to talk about it a lot in the
coming days — one of the things that really struck me was how random
character generation is. Until fairly late in the process, the player has
comparatively little say about who his character will be. The unstated
assumption of the game seems to be that part of the challenge — and fun
— of the game comes from finding a way to succeed with a character
most of whose characteristics are outside the control of the player. This
assumption is made a little more explicit in the section I quoted
yesterday about beggars.
As I thought about it, I realized that random character generation is an
important pillar of old school play, the formal crumbling of which led to
its demise. I say “formal crumbling,” because we all know there have
always been gamers who fudged the dice to get the results they wanted
when generating a character. “I want to play a fighter” is the first step
toward point-buy systems and it’s probably as old as roleplaying games.
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I’m not condemning it or the people who prefer it by any means, but I
can’t deny that we’ve lost something by shifting away from character
generation and moving toward character creation as the norm in RPGs
as written.
Anyone who’s played D&D with a referee who insisted on 3D6 in order is
bound to remember a character or three with utterly mediocre stats, the
guy with 9, 10, or 11 for all his ability scores. Nowadays, we’d probably
consider such a character unplayably boring, but, back in my youth, we
often had to make do with such characters. Most of them proved as dull
as their ability score spread; some, however, rose above their mediocrity
and proved that, even in old school games, the dice are not destiny. This
was a pattern I saw often enough as a kid — an unimpressive collection
of randomly generated stats who survived long enough to become a
character — that, after a while, many of us felt it was more interesting to
play the hand we’d been dealt rather than re-rolling endlessly until we
got the “right” result.
Lots of people took the comment “In RPGs, there are no winners or
losers” a little too much to heart, I think. Certainly there are no clearly
(and universally) defined victory conditions, as in a board or wargame,
but it is possible to play a roleplaying game well. One of the ways we used
to recognized such a thing was the ability to succeed with truly randomly
generated characters. That was how we used to separate the men from
the boys, so to speak. One demonstrated one’s mettle as a gamer by
rolling all your dice out in the open for everyone to see and then not only
accepting the character you got but showing up everyone else over the
course of the campaign. That wasn’t the norm in practice, admittedly,
but it was certainly the norm in theory and I knew enough people who
played that way that it wasn’t just a theory without any practical
application.
I don’t think there are many contemporary games that work on the
assumption that one’s character is generated through random dice rolls
rather than created by player choice. Nowadays, the expectation is that
one’s character is something one creates beforehand and then uses the
rules in order to bring him into being as best as possible. Again, there’s
nothing wrong with this and goodness knows, for many games, it’s really
the only way to go. That doesn’t change the fact that it can be a lot of fun
to have to grapple with mediocre or sub-par characters and find a way to
succeed in spite of their mechanical handicaps.
I think that’s why I still consider the classic Traveller character
generation system the most interesting one ever created for any RPG: it
regularly forces you to play a character other than you might otherwise
choose to play. Speaking only for myself, that’s a good thing. I tend to fall
into ruts when I create characters, re-using the same basic character
concept over and over again. That’s just not possible when you’re
working with a robust random generation system or, at the very least, it
ensures you have to be much more clever in finding a way to turn your 15
STR 9 INT character into the archmage-in-training you regularly play.
I’m a big fan of randomness, I’ll admit, so perhaps this blinds me to the
flaws in random character generation. All I can say, though, is that it was
once an accepted part of how one played a RPG and its loss is something
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18 August 2009
I see as unfortunate. Re-reading Stormbringer has reminded of this fact
rather powerfully and it’s one I’ll likely be meditating upon a lot in the
days to come.
ROGUE FEED
More Stormbringer
Awesomeness
AUG 10, 2009 07:33P.M.
The literary genre of swords & sorcery fiction is a particularly
gory branch of heroic fantasy, and that is what this game
simulates. Inevitably, this means that some players are going
to get into situations that they can’t get out of, and their
characters will have to die. It is important that they realize
this before the game ever starts, and that they know that you
bear them no personal animosity. Then, when the character’s
number comes up, kill him without regret. As a GM it is poor
form to become so fond of some character that you let him
cheat death when his luck finally runs out.
Generally speaking, a character’s death should always be
traceable to some decision or action that he made. A
character who chooses to fight a bear and then gets killed by
that bear has no gripe coming. A character who refuses to
wear armor and then gets killed by an arrow when all his
armored companions are advancing safely deserves his fate.
A character who walks into a dragon’s den to avoid a certain
death outside it really can’t complain if the dragon eats him
anyway.
On the other hand, if the players comes up with a plausible
way to survive a situation, and makes the required skill or
POW saving rolls, then you really should let him survive. I
once had a character who killed a monster — a giant
combination armadillo-wolf — and then burrowed into its
innards and hid inside the dead monster for hours to avoid
innumerable others that were wandering around. It worked,
too, and that character survived that particular trap, only to
die later when caught out in the open by an aerial attack. He
was happy to survive the first time, and I had no gripes when
he died later because the GM was absolutely fair about it. If
he had been smart enough, he wouldn’t have been caught in
the open.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
ROGUE FEED
Reckless Adventure
AUG 10, 2009 04:12P.M.
My Stormbringer boxed set — yes, I’m going to be talking about it a lot
this week — included a Chaosium Games Summer 1982 catalog. Except
for reminding me that, yes, even Chaosium used to publish wargames,
it’s actually not all that interesting. There is, however, a mention of an
RPG that never came to pass, with a supposed release date of Fall 1982.
Call Reckless Adventure, it’s described as “A role-playing game where
the players explore the pulp adventures of the 1930s. It will include a
sourcebook for the era, referees handbook, and many scenarios.”
If Call of Cthulhu hadn’t already been released by this point, I might
suspect that this project was eventually folded into that game, whose
original boxed set did include a 1920s sourcebook. However, it was
scheduled to appear after CoC had already debuted, so I’m not quite sure
what to make of it. Intriguingly, the perpetually-delayed Pulp Cthulhu is
subtitled “Reckless Adventures in the 1930s,” so who knows?
ROGUE FEED
Beggars Can’t Be Choosers
AUG 10, 2009 03:47P.M.
Stormbringer, at least in its first edition, which I’m now reading
voraciously, is a hard core old school game, in some ways more hard core
than OD&D where you at least get to pick your race and/or class. In
Stormbringer, both race (i.e. nationality) and class (i.e. profession) are
determined by random roll. One of the classes you might roll (4% chance
on D100) is “beggar.” Aside from social penalties, beggars also suffer
from 1D6 afflictions, which can range from tooth decay/bad breath to
leprosy or hemophilia (again, determined randomly).
The rulebook includes a section — 2.3.10.3, if you’re interested in its
wargames-style organization — entitled “Difficulty of Being a Beggar.” It
reads in part:
Because of their handicaps and very low status in the Young
Kingdoms’ society, it is not recommended that beginning
players attempt to use Beggars for their adventurer
characters. If you have randomly determined that your
adventurer character is a Beggar, you may roll again on table
[2.3.1.1] Class Background if you wish.
However, those players who enjoy a challenge may get a
special kick out of attempting to beat the system and win with
a character who is blind, deaf, or partially crippled. Any
triumphs won with such a character would be
correspondingly greater than those won by normal
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18 August 2009
characters. If you do choose to play a Beggar, you have my
condolences and best wishes.
Maybe it’s final, definitive proof that I’m as mentally deranged as some
have claimed, but I think that’s one of the more awesome bits of text I’ve
read in any gaming rulebook lately. Makes me want to run an all-beggar
mini-campaign set in Nadsokor.
ROGUE FEED
Introducing the new site
AUG 10, 2009 01:02P.M.
As of today James and I have kicked off a new website. This site works in
partnership with the main Rogue Games site. The new site?
12-degrees.net
This new site is now the home for all information dealing with the games
put out by Rogue Games. In addition, you will find the blog moved
over here as well.
Why the change?
Well, traffic on the Rogue Games website has gotten out of hand. This
is a good thing, but it has cost us due to the site going over the monthly
bandwidth the web host allows. This is a good thing, because it means
more and more gamers are finding our games, and enjoying what we are
doing.
This site, deals with all the games that we have put out, as well as plan to
put out. This site will grow as our games grow, and will work in
conjunction with the main Rogue Games site. All the content you are
use to seeing is still here, just in new sections. We have a lot of things
planed, and this site will be the place to get all that information.
When we started Rogue Games back in 2007 we never expected to still
be here. In the two years we opened the doors we have grown from one
book, to now six. We never thought we would be working on a third
game. We never thought we would have a growing network of sites
devoted to the games we love to play and design.
Once GenCon is over next week, we will be moving into our third year of
doing what we love — designing games. 12-degrees.net will be your
home for all information on our games. Megadunegon.net will be
kicked into gear. The Rogue Games site links these two sites together
to bring you the information you want. The site also will contain
information on a few other projects James and I have been planning for
two years. What project is this? Ask me at GenCon, or wait until next
week.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 18 August 2009

ROGUE FEED

Repairing Game Books

AUG 10, 2009 10:34A.M.

As I mentioned, I recently acquired a very nice copy of the 1st edition

Stormbringer boxed set. I’d like to run a one-shot adventure with my
players at some point, but Dwimmermount is still going strong (we had
another session yesterday, although one that proved shorter than I’d
intended) and I don’t want to ruin the flow of that campaign. In addition,
nice though the copy I received was, it has a flaw: some pages at the
center of the rulebook are falling out. That was inevitable, given that it’s
28 years old and was not of the highest quality binding even when new.

I would like to repair the book in some way that prevents further
deterioration, since it’s the only copy we’d have at the table. In general, I
take very good care of my games and rulebooks, but I still use them, so I
don’t care about some sort of museum-style “restoration” of the book. I
simply don’t want it to fall to pieces and I want to be able to hand it to
players who can use it while generating their characters.

Does anyone out there have any good suggestions?

Although Abraham Merritt’s 1928 novel (serialized the previous year in

Argosy) is technically set in the “real world,” namely modern New York
City, much of its action takes place within the labyrinthine mansion of
the crime lord known only as Satan, where the laws of reality seem, if not
ROGUE FEED
wholly in abeyance, at least more flexible than they are outside its walls.
Pulp Fantasy Library: Seven Seven Foot Prints to Satan tells the story of James Kirkham, an explorer
who is kidnapped by thugs in the employ of the aforementioned crime
Foot Prints to Satan lord. Taken back to his lair — a D&D-style dungeon before the fact,
AUG 10, 2009 09:21A.M. complete with death traps — Kirkham is forced to undergo a test at
Satan’s hands, where he must walk upon seven glowing footprints.
Depending on which ones he walks upon, Kirkham will either be
rewarded, executed, or bound to servitude to Satan for one year.

Our hero avoids death but he does not escape servitude and so must
spend the next year engaged in a series of spectacular crimes at the
behest of Satan, during which time he meets — and falls in love with —
Eve, a young woman who shares his predicament. The crime lord is a
disfigured man of astounding intellect and it’s initially not clear whether
his moniker is merely a nom de guerre or an indication of his true
identity. Regardless, he’s actually a fascinating character, in many ways
far more interesting than either Kirkham or Eve, both of whom possess
conventional pulp heroic personalities.

Gygax doesn’t list this book by name in Appendix N, perhaps

understandably since it’s set in the 20th century and doesn’t have any
overt supernaturalism to it. Still, Satan would make a fine villain in a
fantasy story and his mansion reminds me of the maze-like dungeons of

13
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
the early days. There’s thus a lot in its pages to inspire referees looking
for a slightly different approach to dungeon design than is common
nowadays. Seven Foot Prints to Satan was adapted into a film in 1929. I
have never seen it, but my understanding is that it’s a fairly loose
adaptation. Just goes to show that Hollywood has been doing what
Hollywood does for a lot longer than any of us have been alive to curse
them for it.
ROGUE FEED
GenCon Plans
AUG 10, 2009 06:25A.M.
Rogue Games is once again attending GenCon. Here are a few things
you need to know.
Booth Number: 2038
New Products: Colonial Gothic Revised($24.99) andThousand
Suns: Foundation Transmissions($12.99).
Cool Things for GenCon Only: Colonial Gothic eBook CD ($2.50)
and 12 Degrees Dice Pack ($6.00).
Other Products: The complete line for both games.
Demos: Colonial Gothic demos in the booth starting Friday. Why not
Thursday? Graeme Davis will not be in town early enough. Three cool
demos are planned, and if you want to play, stop by the booth.
There you go. Plan accordingly.
If you are not going to be at GenCon, have no fears. Like we did last
year, anything new being released at the show will be ready to buy and
download from Drivethrurpg.com on Thursday. So if you
want Thousand Suns: Foundation Transmissions before your
friends, you will be able to buy it and download it Thursday morning. In
addition, the PDF Guarantee is in effect forGenConas well. How? That
is for me to know, and you to find out. Ok, that is not nice. Simply put,
you buy any of the Rogue Games games at the show, after the show you
will get the PDF.
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18 August 2009
ROGUE FEED
Cursed Chateau Art Show
AUG 10, 2009 06:24A.M.
Artist/curator Timothy Hutchings has collected a disparate band of
contemporary artmakers, including performance artists, digital artists,
sculptors, painters, musicians and various in-betweens, all united by a
direct or indirect relationship to role playing games such as Dungeons
and Dragons. Hutchings has shoved these artists into the unaccustomed
role of illustrators for the role playing game adventure book “The Cursed
Chateau”, written by James Maliszewski.
The participating artists include Chris Bors, Olaf Breuning, Jeffrey
Brown, Kitty Clark, Alex DeMaria, Don Doe, Giovanni Fenech, Andrew
Guenther, Ketta Ioannidou, Josh Jordan, Matt Lock, Fiona Macneil,
Chris Patch, Jason Phillips, Owen Rundquist, Rebecca Schiffman,
Siebren Versteeg, Todd White, Sherry Wong, and Steve Zeiser. Also
contributing are the old school game illustrators Pixie Bledsaw and the
renowned Erol Otus.
Concurrent with the exhibition at theIndianapolis Museum of
Contemporary Artwill be a related booth at GenCon, a yearly gaming
convention hosted in Indianapolis. GenCon is the most important game
event in the world, attracting tens of thousands of visitors and acting as a
platform for major industry releases and premieres. This year, GenCon
runs August 13 – 16, more information on the convention is available
atwww.gencon.com.
iMOCA is free to the public and open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. every Thursday
through Saturday and is located in the Emelie Building at340 North
Senate Avenue.
Opening August 14
6-9PM
Exhibit runs August 14 – September 26th
ROGUE FEED
Coming December 2009
AUG 10, 2009 06:21A.M.
Are you brave enough?
For decades, stories have circulated about the Cursed Chateau: the
debauched entertainments and depraved experiments that took place
within its walls while its master, Lord Jourdain, yet lived and the terrible
hauntings that followed in the wake of his mysterious death.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 18 August 2009

Now you find yourself trapped inside the Chateau, cut off from the sanity
of the world outside. Only by braving its terrors can you hope to find the
key to your escape — if you survive.

The Cursed Chateauis a fantasy roleplaying adventure for 4-8

characters of levels 4-6 that includes referee information, maps,
exploration keys, and everything else needed to play.

ComingDecember 2009.

Details

The Cursed Chateau

RGG 6000
6×9 96 Pages BW Softcover

Thieves’ World: Based on the series of books edited by Robert Asprin,

the boxed set included many short books detailing the city of Sanctuary
and its inhabitants as well as maps. This product was for use with
multiple game systems, including D&D, RuneQuest, Chivalry & Sorcery,
ROGUE FEED
and, if you can believe it, Traveller. This was a really excellent resource
Chaosium Boxed Sets and I wish I still had a copy.

AUG 09, 2009 08:05A.M.

I know that boxed sets simply aren’t economically viable in this day and
age — or so I’m regularly told anyway — but I can’t help but wish RPGs
were still produced that way. Back in the day, most new games were
released in a boxed format, while it was supplements that came in book
form. In my more cynical moments, I think that the death of the boxed
set was a symptom not of their expense to produce but of the fact that
RPGs were no longer played but simply read. Likewise, boxed sets
placed a physical limit on how big their integral components could be,
which meant reasonably sized rulebooks, adventures, and source
material. Is it any wonder I miss these things?

Chaosium produced a lot of truly excellent boxed sets. Having recently

acquired two such sets in excellent shape (Stormbringer and Ringworld
for those interested), I was reminded of that company’s glorious past and
the fun I had playing their games. Besides Stormbringer, Ringworld and
of course Call of Cthulhu, there were quite a few stand-outs from the Era
of the Boxed Set:

RuneQuest: The second edition of RQ was available in a boxed format

that included the rulebook, Basic Roleplaying pamphlet, Apple Lane
adventure, a collection of pregenerated characters and monsters,
character sheets, referee sheets, and dice. The blurb on the cover proudly
declares, “Everything Needed to Play! A $26 value.”

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
World of Wonder: WoW was Chaosium’s attempt to show off the
flexibility of its Basic Roleplaying system. This product presented three
different, short games for use with those rules: Magic World (a non-
Gloranthan fantasy), Super World (superheroes, which eventually
became its own RPG), and Future World (a sci-fi game). This was a neat
product.
Pendragon: One of the few RPGs I’d consider “perfect,” I probably
played the original boxed edition of the game more than any other. Much
as I appreciate some of the improvements introduced in later editions,
none can hold a candle to the original for its exquisite combination of
brevity and creativity.
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18 August 2009
Ghostbusters: Speaking of perfect RPGs, I often think that that this
“co-production” between Chaosium and West End Games was not only
the best licensed RPG ever made but also the best iteration of the D6
system that eventually went on to great acclaim in the later Star Wars
RPG. I know it seems implausible, but Ghostbusters really was awesome.
Of course, what else would you expect from a collaboration between Greg
Costikyian and Sandy Peterson?
ROGUE FEED
John Carter of Mars Cast News
AUG 08, 2009 04:51P.M.
According to a link I discovered through Original Edition Fantasy,
Andrew Stanton’s live-action John Carter of Mars film begins shooting
next January, with a 2012 release date. Principal casting is now
complete, with two actors I’ve never heard of starring as John Carter and
Dejah Thoris, Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins respectively, with Willem
Dafoe as Tars Tarkas (presumably just his voice, since I suspect he’ll be a
CGI character).
I learned long ago not to make any determinations about a film based
solely on its casting, since, more times than I can recall, seemingly
bizarre cast choices worked brilliantly while seemingly perfect ones
proved less than ideal. Consequently, I continue to remain hopeful that
Stanton has what it takes to bring Barsoom to the big screen in a way
that’s true to the novels. He’s made a lot of the right noises in various
interviews I’ve read, but, of course, this is a Hollywood production, so
anything is possible, especially completely failing to miss the point of the
original Burroughs stories.
Fingers crossed.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
ROGUE FEED
Interview: Steve Winter
AUG 08, 2009 04:10P.M.
Steve Winter worked at TSR for nearly twenty years as an editor,
developer, and creative director. Along with David Cook, he was very
heavily involved in the production of the Second Edition of Advanced
Dungeons & Dragons, and remained with TSR throughout that edition’s
reign, shepherding many of its products to release. Mr Winter was kind
enough to answer some of my questions about his time at TSR,
particularly about the process of creating both Second Edition and other
D&D products from that era.
1. How did you become involved in the hobby of roleplaying?
Like pretty much everyone else at that time, I just stumbled into it.
I was always interested in games and puzzles, especially mazes. I started
playing Avalon Hill wargames in high school. The big strategic games
were fun as puzzles, but it was Tobruk that really hooked me. It’s an
ultra-tactical tank combat game. You roll dice to track every shot fired. I
hadn’t heard of roleplaying yet, but Tobruk was almost like roleplaying a
tank commander.
When I headed for Iowa State University as a journalism major, I landed
a gig as an editor on the college newspaper. One of my first jobs was
proofreading classified ads. That’s where I read about the Iowa State
Gamers club. It sounded like a good place to find wargamers, so I went to
a meeting. A few people were playing Avalon Hill and SPI games, but
most were gathered around a grad student who was maniacally sketching
rooms and corridors and monsters on a blackboard. That was my
introduction to D&D.
The DM at the blackboard was Corbin. Take away his glasses and shoes
and he looked exactly like the centaur from the cover of the original
Monster Manual. Corbin would stand in front of a blackboard like a
professor and run enormous dungeon crawls with 15 or 20 players at a
time. A few of the players had high-level characters (as in, level 5 or so).
The rest of us played 1st- and 2nd-level henchmen — NPCs, essentially —
and we died like flies. We didn’t even name our characters until they
reached 2nd level. It was nothing to burn through two or three
characters in an afternoon. Your goal was to live long enough to become
a real member of the adventuring party and not just another nameless
corpse on the heap. The only characters who got respect from the higher-
level PCs were clerics. As long as you had a healing spell, you were
useful. Otherwise, there was no pity in Corbin’s dungeons. Low-level
characters were there to open doors, peek around corners, and walk
down corridors ahead of the heroes, poking everything within reach with
a 10-foot pole.
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18 August 2009
2. You were a newspaper reporter before you became involved
in the RPG industry. Do you think your background in
journalism adequately prepared you for the crazy world of
game design?
Yes and no. Yes because the industry badly needed a dose of
professionalism in those days. I think that I was the first person hired at
TSR who had actual job experience in writing and editing. Several people
had English degrees, including a few who’d been teachers, and I’d never
minimize what a tough job that is. But as a reporter, you write every day,
and the deadline is king.
On top of that, journalists are trained to write for clarity and directness.
Flowery phrases and clever wordplay are things to avoid. The same is
true in games; the language needs to be direct and clear.
On the other hand, I don’t know what would adequately prepare
someone for working at a place like TSR in those early years. Those of us
in R&D complained a lot about people in other parts of the company who
had no qualifications for the jobs they were doing, but really, none of us
did. We were inventing the RPG hobby and industry on the fly; how do
you prepare for that? In R&D, our chief qualifications were that we knew
and loved AD&D, we had some gift for words or art, and we were
bursting with imagination. Beyond that, the biggest measure of whether
you had “what it takes” was whether you could keep up.
3. How did you become employed by TSR?
I was working as a city-desk reporter for the Journal Star newspaper in
Peoria , Illinois , playing D&D and The Fantasy Trip as much as
possible, and doing some writing for The Space Gamer magazine. One
day I spotted an ad in The Dragon (#47, the issue with Zeb’s
“Crimefighters” in it) — TSR was looking for editors. It seemed like a
golden opportunity, so I sent a resume. The interview process was an
adventure in itself, involving two separate car breakdowns, but at the
end of it, I got the job. Doug Blume, who was head of personnel at the
time, told me that they had hundreds of applicants, but I was the only
one with professional editing and publishing experience. So it was pretty
mundane, really. I saw an ad, I applied, I got the job.
4. One of your earliest credits is as an editor on module I1,
Dwellers of the Forbidden City, by David Cook, which is one of
my favorite modules of all time. Can you tell us a little about
the editing process at TSR back in those days? Where did
editing fit into the production process?
The process was less compartmentalized then than it would become.
People were labeled as designers and editors, but the job descriptions for
those titles were intentionally vague. Development as a separate,
dedicated step in the process was eliminated shortly after I was hired.
The designer wrote the original manuscript; a random assortment of
people gave input; then an editor took over and managed everything
about the manuscript from that point on (additional development,
editing, layout, ordering art and maps, proofreading, and typefitting). It
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
was utterly informal, though; there was tremendous crossover at every
stage. Manuscripts got passed back and forth and sideways between
editors and designers. Once the original design was done, anyone might
be asked to rewrite an encounter, to flesh out a section, to create sample
PCs … and anyone might pop by and say, “ooh, let me see that” and then
scribble some notes in the margin. That’s why the credits for those early
products, such as I1, list so many people doing so many jobs. Sometimes
the same person shows up in multiple categories. “Special Thanks” were
there to cover those people who’d contributed something, even if it was
just a suggestion offered up over beer and pizza.
The fact that none of the editors had much training in graphic design
should be obvious to anyone who looks at those early adventures.
Stephen Sullivan did double duty as both an editor and an illustrator, so
he had some artistic sense. I had training in newspaper layout and in
measuring and sizing type to fit it into a fixed space. We drove the
illustrators crazy with our requests for illos in ridiculous sizes to fill
holes.
It was a slow process, but eventually we created a system in what had
previously been a sort of medieval workshop where each item was
individually crafted and completely non-interchangeable with anything
else.
5. David Cook credits you with the organization of AD&D
Second Edition. What principles did you bring to bear when
undertaking the task of making such a complex game easier to
understand?
Rulebook organization was a regular subject for theological debate
among the editors, and I preached the Gospel of Steve to anyone who
would listen. Here’s the quick version.
A set of game rules needs to decide up front whether its job is teaching
the material to newcomers or serving as a reference manual for people
who already know the fundamentals. I don’t believe it can do both. All
through the ‘80s, we’d been producing D&D products aimed at teaching
the basics to newcomers. That’s not what AD&D was about. We assumed
that AD&D players already understood roleplaying and had at least a
rudimentary grasp on the rules. They didn’t need a training manual; they
needed a reference book that made information easy to find during play.
Reading the original hardcover books was like having a one-on-one
conversation with Gary . They were charming but not much help when a
question arose in the middle of a battle.
When we got the green light to start working on 2nd Edition, the first
thing I did was grab spare copies of the PHB and DMG, slice them into
pieces, and start taping them back together the way they belonged. (We
were working on word processors by then, of course, but the PHB and
DMG didn’t exist in electronic form.) It didn’t take long to fill a big, fat,
3-ring binder with clippings of rulebooks, all taped together like some
insane kidnapper’s ransom-note manifesto. Some material from both
books was combined into one section, some material that had been
joined was split between the books, some sections were torn apart
sentence by sentence and reassembled in more logical order. It was
18
18 August 2009
terribly tedious work, but it was also something I’d wanted to do for a
decade.
The point of this exercise wasn’t really to reorganize the books; that was
done (eventually) with a massive outline that stretched down the wall
and across the floor on about a dozen sheets of accordion-fold paper. The
giant cut-and-paste was done to demonstrate to those up the chain of
authority that the job was too big to be handled by a simple
reorganization, which is what some of them were hoping for at the time.
Through the whole 2nd Edition development process, the goal was to put
everything the players needed into the PHB and everything else into the
DMG. Players needed the rules on creating and equipping characters, on
magic, and on combat. The DM needed the rules on world building,
running adventures, and all the little things that crop up often enough to
need rules but not often enough to deserve space in the PHB.
Finally, I wanted both books to have comprehensive indexes. They were
created the old-fashioned way, by actually reading the final galleys of the
books and noting down every instance of a rule or a subject that should
be indexed, under every category where someone might search for it.
That job took several days, but the resulting indexes were well worth it.
6. You’re a fan of Victorian era miniatures. Is this a hobby
you’ve had for a long time or something you’ve only acquired
recently?
I’ve had this particular hobby for close to 30 years, and the yearning for
it was percolating in my brain for years before that. One of my earliest
memories is my dad reciting a line from a poem: “A soldier of the Legion
lay dying in Algiers ; There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was
dearth of woman’s tears.” It was a popular schoolyard rhyme when he
was a kid. That image of the French Foreign Legionnaire in a far-off
corner of the world got jammed in my imagination. It’s funny to think
that something so small can make such a dent in your psyche. Be careful
what you say around your kds!
So I’ve always been drawn to that sort of exotic, military romance:
anything written by Rudyard Kipling or G. A. Henty, and movies like
Gunga Din and Beau Geste. I didn’t realize there was a whole hobby
devoted to miniature colonial wargaming until I encountered a copy of
The Sword and the Flame in the Dungeon Hobby Shop in 1981. From the
moment that I started flipping through TS&TF, I knew that I was home.
Jim Ward and Tom Moldvay turned out to be big fans, too. I recall one
summer afternoon when Zeb Cook and I were returning to TSR after
lunch. We swung by my place to drop something off, and Zeb flipped on
the TV. The movie Zulu was just beginning … so instead of going back to
work, we plunked down on the couch, opened a couple of beers, and took
the afternoon off. Eventually I had my own armies of Zulus and red-
coated British that I hauled to every convention in the area, and I still do.
I was born about a century too late.
7. Do you still play RPGs these days and, if so, which ones?
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 18 August 2009

Lots! Contemporary Art will be a related booth at GenCon, a yearly gaming

I play D&D 4th Edition with a crew from Wizards of the Coast. If it
doesn’t make me sound too much like a corporate shill, I’d say that 4E is
the best D&D has been since the red-box, 1981 edition of D&D Basic (the
one with the cover painting by Erol Otus). That ‘81 edition is still my
favorite, so consider this high praise.
I also play an every-other-week game with some fellow codgers. All we
play is obsolete RPGs, starting with the original, three little books of
D&D. We didn’t even allow the Greyhawk or Blackmoor supplements.
Those were too progressive. Eventually we moved on to The Fantasy
Trip from Metagaming, with an interlude for some classic Traveller. I
believe that Metamorphosis Alpha is next on our list, when we wrap up
the current TFT campaign. As you might expect, that’s a very low-key
group. To keep the mood right, we use dice with the corners worn off and
lumpy miniatures made of real lead and badly painted with glossy
Testor’s paints.
convention hosted in Indianapolis. GenCon is the most important game
event in the world, attracting tens of thousands of visitors and acting as a
platform for major industry releases and premieres. This year, GenCon
runs August 13 - 16, more information on the convention is available at
www.gencon.com.
iMOCA is free to the public and open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. every Thursday
through Saturday and is located in the Emelie Building at 340 North
Senate Avenue.
Opening August 14
6-9PM
Exhibit runs August 14 - September 26th

There’s also a Call of Cthulhu group that meets irregularly about once a
month. ROGUE FEED

Finally, I play quite a bit of Savage Worlds these days. I run a lunchtime Going to be silent for about a
Savage World of Solomon Kane game at the office and joined a
homegrown campaign that meets a few times a month. That last group is week
the only one where none of the other players has any connection to the AUG 07, 2009 05:27P.M.
hobby games industry. It’s refreshing to game with people who don’t do
this for a living. GenCon is a less than a week away. I am going to be damn busy between
now, and until the end of the show. This weekend will be a busy one with
getting the last few things done I need to get done. So if I go silent, you
know why.

ROGUE FEED

Cursed Chateau Art Show Next week more than likely I will be Twittering a lot. Click the

AUG 08, 2009 11:16A.M.
Artist/curator Timothy Hutchings has collected a disparate band of
contemporary artmakers, including performance artists, digital artists,
sculptors, painters, musicians and various in-betweens, all united by a
direct or indirect relationship to role playing games such as Dungeons
and Dragons. Hutchings has shoved these artists into the unaccustomed
role of illustrators for the role playing game adventure book “The Cursed
Chateau”, written by James Maliszewski.
icon to the right to follow me and read my random thoughts about the
show, life and the like. Since I got the iPhone, I have been more active
with doing life bogging, so look for pictures and the like throughout the
week. If you plan on being at GenCon next week, please stop by the
Rogue Games booth and say hi. Our booth is 2038.
Posted in Life, Rogue Games, thoughts Tagged: gencon, thoughts

The participating artists include Chris Bors, Olaf Breuning, Jeffrey

Brown, Kitty Clark, Alex DeMaria, Don Doe, Giovanni Fenech, Andrew
Guenther, Ketta Ioannidou, Josh Jordan, Matt Lock, Fiona Macneil,
Chris Patch, Jason Phillips, Owen Rundquist, Rebecca Schiffman,
Siebren Versteeg, Todd White, Sherry Wong, and Steve Zeiser. Also
contributing are the old school game illustrators Pixie Bledsaw and the
renowned Erol Otus.

Concurrent with the exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 18 August 2009

ROGUE FEED Maybe I will someday.

An Evocative Map
AUG 07, 2009 07:17A.M.

While I maintain that Darlene’s World of Greyhawk maps are still, after
nearly 30 years, the most beautiful maps ever produced for any fantasy ROGUE FEED
roleplaying game, there are others that equal (or even surpass) it when it
comes to evoking the sense of wonder I seek in most RPGs. A good Busy
example is William Church’s map of Prax from the second edition of AUG 06, 2009 11:27A.M.
RuneQuest.
Substantive posts will be scarce today and possibly tomorrow. I’m
working on a few important projects that demand my attention.

ROGUE FEED

TSR Web Policy

AUG 06, 2009 10:08A.M.

Back in the last days of TSR, the company enacted a rather restrictive
Internet policy for fan-based websites that used TSR-copyrighted
information. Can anyone confirm if, as a result of this policy, any
websites were actually shut down or was this merely a threat that was
never acted upon?

Thanks.

For me, this map will always represent my vision of RQ, a game I rarely
played back in the day and whose direction over the years has made it
less and less like anything I’d want to play. At the time this map was
published (1979), though, RuneQuest was just a very imaginative fantasy
game rather a mere vehicle for Greg Stafford’s theo-sociological flights of
fancy. With its Bronze Age society and peculiar takes on many of the
standard tropes of fantasy, the game nicely distinguished itself from
Dungeons & Dragons without resorting to the “D&D but better” tack
that most other fantasy RPGs employed in their attempts to acquire
mindspace in an increasingly crowded market. RuneQuest was very
much its own thing, unique and confident, as I think the map shows.
Every time I see it, I wish I had played RQ more often and even briefly
consider giving it a whirl again, freed from the setting accretions dragged
it down and sucked much of the joy out of it.

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