Rogue Games Tabbloid -- October 8, 2009 Edition

8 October 2009

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

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Necromancer Games Raises a Few Zombies

German Article on M.A.R. Barker

OCT 07, 2009 10:09A.M.

OCT 07, 2009 08:54A.M.

Two years after their last release — the excellent City of Brass — Necromancer Games has finally released new products, namely The Eamonvale Incursion, Demonheart, and the long-awaited Slumbering Tsar. I’m glad to see these products finally see the light of day, even if I am unlikely to buy them myself. At present, they’re only available as PDFs and very expensive ones at that. My own feeling is that PDFs shouldn’t be priced the same as printed books, but I doubt I’m going to get many game companies to agree to that idea. I’m fully aware of the costs involved in producing RPG books and I certainly don’t begrudge any company that wants to pay its writers and artists well. Still, I have a hard time justifying a $30 PDF, especially when it’s written for a rules set I don’t use.

Over at Dragonsfoot, member Galadrin has translated the text of an article about M.A.R. Barker and Tékumel from the online edition of the German magazine Der Spiegel. The article provides little new information for long-time Tékumel aficionados, but it’s still terrific to see an article about the Professor and his creation in a mainstream news magazine. Of far more interest to me was the gallery of accompanying images, which includes several of Barker himself (I’ve only rare seen photographs of him) at various conventions and with other figures of note to the old school community (such as Dave Arneson). Check it out.

Necromancer Games was definitely one of the bright lights of the 3e era of D&D and many of their products, particularly their Judges Guild ones, are classics I am proud to own. I also think Necromancer played a small role in my own return to the roots of my hobby by reminding me of the things I liked best about it. I hope I can be forgiven for imagining a world in which the company turned its sights to the retro-clones and supported one or more of them through its releases. I know that’s unlikely to happen for a variety of reasons, but I wish for it all the same. Necromancer did some awesome stuff over the course of its existence and I’d like to see more of it on game store shelves.

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Retrospective: The Horrible Secret of Monhegan Island OCT 07, 2009 08:04A.M.

Fortunately, there are lots of other publishers out there picking up the slack and giving us solid old school adventures.

Grenadier Models is remembered today for its various lines of licensed RPG miniatures, particularly for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, Grenadier was the first company to produce official AD&D miniatures, which placed it in a very advantageous position. Not having

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

8 October 2009

been a miniatures wargamer (or indeed any kind of wargamer), I didn’t feel a need to use minis when playing RPGs the way that some of my older contemporaries did. However, seeing those yellow Grenadier boxes with the AD&D logo on them was a powerful lure and I bought quite a few of them, despite the fact that we never used them as anything other than props for illustrating our marching order in a dungeon.

world to find the clues necessary to stop some black hatted cultist from Doing A Very Bad Thing. This approach seems to be one that’s struck a chord with a lot of gamers and I’ll admit it can be a great deal of fun. Still, I can’t deny that it’s disappointing that Call of Cthulhu so rarely does more than this. I’ve stated before that I find the central premise behind the game to be one of the more “adult” I’ve ever encountered in a RPG. Call of Cthulhu needn’t be a power-trip fantasy in order to be heroic. Indeed, I think it’s at its most heroic when it’s exactly the opposite of that: ordinary people sacrificing body, mind, and soul in order to stave off oblivion for just one more day. The Horrible Secret of Monhegan Island doesn’t even begin to approach that type of play in its two scenarios, but, seeing as Chaosium often does not either, this is no

Grenadier lost the AD&D license in 1982, as TSR wanted to maximize its profits by producing its own line of official miniatures. As I recall, this proved to be a poor decision, as the TSR-manufactured minis were fewer in number, more expensive, and less well sculpted. Given that Grenadier employed such notable sculptors as John Dennett, Julie Guthrie, and Sandra Garrity, among others, I guess that should come as no surprise. Presumably to make up for the loss in revenue from the AD&D line, Grenadier soon acquired numerous other licenses, including Traveller and Call of Cthulhu, two other games I adored and played regularly. So far as I can recall, there were only a couple of boxed sets and some blister packs released for either line, which suggests they didn’t prove very successful.

crime.

In a similar vein, Grenadier tried its hand at becoming a publisher of written RPG support materials. In 1984, they produced several 48-page adventure modules, including one for Call of Cthulhu entitled The Horrible Secret of Monhegan Island. Written by Gary Pilkington, the module is an interesting snapshot of the state of gaming at the time it was written. The product is an anthology consisting of two scenarios, the main one being the eponymous “The Horrible Secret of Monhegan Island” and the shorter one being “The House in the Woods.” Both are highly derivative of Lovecraft stories, with the first taking its cues from “The Shadow over Innsmouth” and the second from “The Whisperer in Darkness.” At the time I bought this, I remember being confused as to why these two adventures seemed so derivative. If you’d already read the two Lovecraft stories in question, why would you want to play out scenarios that are so similar to them? I suspect that it’s because, even then, the number of gamers who’d actually read Lovecraft was small. To them, these derivative scenarios would seem quite new and original. And I have to admit, for all their cribbing from HPL, they have the virtue of being “small” adventures, which is to say, localized and modest rather than globe-trotting Derlethian pulp adventures after the fashion of Shadows of Yog-Sothoth or Masks of Nyarlathotep. The “Horrible Secret” is about the restoration of an ancient Deep One-related ceremony in a remote fishing community in Maine and “The House in the Woods” is about an investigation revolving around the Fungi from Yuggoth. Consequently, they possess a “short story” quality to them that makes them easy to drop into an existing campaign — unsurprising, I suppose, given their literary antecedents. Re-reading this product reminded me of the strange place Call of Cthulhu has always occupied in the gaming world. Despite the centrality of the Sanity mechanic, the game has rarely supported the kind of cosmic horror on which H.P. Lovecraft’s best stories focused. Instead, the Investigators usually come off as crosses between Sherlock Holmes and Indian Jones, piecing together scraps of ancient texts from around the

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