Rogue Games Tabbloid -- September 19, 2009 Edition

19 September 2009

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

GROGNARDIA: THE INTERVIEWS

Not for everyone, but it’s what OUR group collectively wanted. Players could always DEMAND we apply rules in a particular combat or encounter or situation, and I would comply, but we tended to find doing so ate up so much time that we could have more fun “ham acting” in, that we kept such occurrences very rare and for very important situations.

Interview: Ed Greenwood (Part II) SEP 17, 2009 11:01P.M.

8. It’s interesting that your home games are so rules light given the number of spells, magic items, monsters, and character classes you’ve designed over the years. Do you see any contradiction in this?

7. Does that mean then that your own Realms campaign was very “light” on the use of rules of any sort? I ask because I’m fascinated by the different ways gamers incorporate random elements into their games — things beyond the ability of either the players or referee to anticipate beforehand.

No. Few “newer” gamers realize how things were in the early D&D hobby; how EVERYONE read DRAGON and memorized or nearmemorized every word of most articles therein, plus every word of the published rulebooks.

Yes, it was rules-light from the viewpoint of, say, someone who plays D&D tournaments at GenCon, and expects everything to proceed “by the book.” (And I speak as the guy who won the Best Player award in the AD&D Open at GenCon in 1984, which won me a nice trophy that came wrapped in . . . yup, diapers.)

I wanted to encourage good roleplaying by having players whose characters were faced with a spherical monster with eyestalks NOT say, “well, it’s either a beholder or a gas spore, so . . .” and NOT pick up a horn in a dungeon treasure hoard and say, “Horn of bubbles or Horn of Valhalla?” Or “That enemy wizard just cast a fireball, so he’s gotta be X level or higher! Right, we’ll—“

A DM’s job is to entertain their players (because the play sessions are eating time out of their lives), and the DM should tailor style of play and content (HOW the game is played, from casual chatter or footballquarterbacking to ham acting with funny voices and Shakespearean vocabulary or even costumes, and WHAT happens: hack and slash or intrigue and solving mysteries, urban or wilderness, subterranean or undersea, pirates or paladins, etc.).

Likewise, this NPC stranger your character is facing could have all sorts of abilities and powers your PC has never seen before (because, yes, players back them memorized things right down to monk and bard level abilities, too, so they could right away shout “Aha! This guy’s a monk of X level!”).

Well, MY players loved to roleplay (acting), and so do I, so I played the NPCs to the hilt, and prepared for hours beforehand and afterwards, knowing my players wanted to find out which NPC was related to which other NPC, what scandals had gone on in this village thirty years back, and so on and on and on . . . so I gave it to them. They always wanted to TALK to everyone, and there were nights (six or seven hours of play, with a tea-and-chips-and-chip-dip break in the middle) when no player character even drew a weapon; it was ALL intrigue and roleplaying conversations, confrontations, investigations, trade dickering, and so on. Hack and slash seldom interested us (though when battle did come, all the frustrations were let loose!), and as DM I wasn’t trying to “win” any fights against PCs, so I tended to always give them initiative unless they walked into a trap or bowmen with arrows ready at, say, a city gate, but during battle I kept the pace up by demanding swift answers (like a rapid-fire auctioneer) to “What’re you doing this round? Ten-nine-eightseven-six . . .” and they’d better blurt out something, or I’d move on. So it was almost all acting, and almost no rules. Which was great for newcomers to the game enjoying the play sessions; they were never intimidated by the thick rulebooks. If someone jumped in to defend themselves with a rule, I automatically “gave in,” and so was never seen as an adversarial DM, so we settled into a playing style that suited us.

One of the best ways of doing this was to increase the number of lookalikes and magic item and spell choices so NO ONE could keep track of them all. This dumped players out of min-maxing, using-theiromniscient-rules-knowledge mode back into playing their character in the world, as their characters face the unknown. Makes the game more gripping, forces better roleplaying, and makes it all more fun for those already in the habit of roleplaying. As I said earlier, I didn’t think doing this was quite “fair” to my players unless my creations (monsters, magic items, or spells) had been published (vetted by other designers AND giving the players a chance of having read them), so I sent them off to DRAGON. I seemed to have a knack for crafting these things, so they wanted more. LOTS more. So I wrote more. :} It was all great fun, I was having a ball (and so just kept going), and from time to time editors were giving me assignments to write more of this or that (they still are; I just sent off a batch of new monsters yesterday).

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

19 September 2009

As for the home campaign - - well, a DM’s job is to entertain his/her players, and my players loved detail, really immersing themselves in the Realms, and all the plots and subplots adventurers will uncover if they settle into a large town, wayside dale on a major trade route, or city. So that’s what our play sessions were filled with, and why it’s really hard to try to convey the “feel” of the “home” Realms campaign to other gamers - unless they “sit in” with my original players.

GROGNARDIA: THE INTERVIEWS

Ken St Andre Interview SEP 17, 2009 05:54P.M. My latest column for “Days of High Adventure” in The Escapist is an interview with Tunnels & Trolls creator, Ken St Andre. Ken answers some questions about the origins of T&T, game design, and related topics. It’s one of my better interviews, I think, and there’s more of it to come, since Ken provided — and is still providing — me with more material than I could use for the article. Expect to see more here at

I make no apologies at all for the layer upon layer of exhaustive detailed Realmslore (which I still provide in answer to gamer queries in my thread in the Chamber of Sages at forum.candlekeep.com) that’s built up in over thirty years of play, because that’s what my players wanted. Others can take or leave just as much of it as they want; I’ve always thought that if you’re paying me or any other freelancer for providing something you as DM could do for yourself, given time, that we should give you MORE than you need, so you get your money’s worth and more. If we go too far, ignore what doesn’t suit you - - but we never want to shortchange you.

Grognardia in the days to come.

GROGNARDIA: THE INTERVIEWS

Interview: Ed Greenwood (Part I)

9. How much of the material you produced in Dragon had its origin in your personal campaign? I ask because, as a younger man, I always appreciated the “lived in” feeling that articles like “Pages from the Mages,” “Seven Swords,” and “Six Very Special Shields” evoked.

SEP 17, 2009 06:35A.M. As I mentioned in my retrospective yesterday, I’ve been a fan of Ed Greenwood for a long time, having enjoyed his many articles in the pages of Dragon. It was here that I first heard of the Forgotten Realms, long before anyone at TSR had the bright idea to turn into an official AD&D campaign setting. I was therefore very gratified when Ed agreed to be interviewed here, resulting in what is probably the longest interview I’ve yet conducted, the first part of which appears below.

My “home” Realms campaign generated a lot of what became articles, because I had SUPERB roleplayers who always wanted to find out more about the world around their characters (so when playing the characters, they frequently talked to old folks or librarians or sages to find out old lore, and even asked questions like detectives to try to piece together “the truth” when they thought clergies, rulers, or guilds weren’t telling them what was actually happened), and because ethically I felt it was only fair to hit my players with new monsters, spells, magic items, poisons, and so on AFTER I’d published them in DRAGON. For one thing, EVERYONE who played D&D read or tried to read DRAGON in those days (even if only by standing in a hobby shop, paging through issues), so whatever a player could remember of what they’d read helped to simulate what their character “might have heard” in life, and so “felt fairer” to me (and of course the editors had examined my writing and could “fix” anything way out of balance or misworded; I don’t recall them ever doing so, but I felt they had the “stamp of approval.” The Featured Creature (later Dragon’s Bestiary) columns even carried a little note at the bottom saying the monsters published in them were “as official” as anything in the rulebooks, so I got to contribute to the game!

Ed has agreed to answer any questions readers might have as a result of something he said in this interview. Feel free to post them in the comments and I’ll collect them all at the end of the series and pass them along to him for reply. When he gets round to doing so, I’ll make another post or two in which I’ll share his answers. 1. How did you become involved in the hobby of roleplaying? From my very earliest memories, the house I grew up in, and those of grandparents and uncles and aunts I visited, were full of books, music, adult converse, and games. From cribbage to chess, various NATO strategy games to euchre to checkers, we played games constantly. Back in DRAGON #218, in the First Quest column, I told the story of how a remarkable young woman named September, who soon died of cancer, introduced my group of school friends to Dungeons & Dragons, then in its fledgling stages (1975, also when I attended my first GenCon, Gencon 8, in Lake Geneva). I started running and playing in campaigns a little later, in 1978 (and my next GenCon was number 13; after that, I missed a few years, then attended GenCon 17 and every one since).

By the way, the titles of almost all DRAGON articles were chosen by the editors, not article writers.

I first started reading DRAGON regularly, devouring its contents each month, with issue 19. An incomplete rule and a mismatch between the number of armies for one kingdom between the counter sheet and the rules in the TSR fantasy boardgame DIVINE RIGHT spurred me to write my first article for DRAGON, a short suggested errata piece for the game,

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

19 September 2009

but the editor held onto that piece for a later (issue 34) “theme” issue on the game. In the meantime, I had started creating monsters for the game (I’m still designing them, and did so many that for a time, I was known at TSR as “the Monster Man”), and the monster known as the Curst was my first publication in DRAGON, in issue 30. It was closely followed by the Crawling Claw in 32, and by then I was flooding the magazine with articles, which soon led to my being named Contributing Editor (an unsalaried title) and starting to write not just what struck me as interesting, but assignments from the editors (like the Ecologies articles).

print (and probably won’t, now, with the “time jump” between the 3e Realms and the 4e Realms), though my Moonshae Isles were replaced by an existing “Celtic/matter of Britain” campaign Doug Niles, a TSR staff designer of the time, had been working on, and there have been many additions (such as Kara-Tur) or recastings of my largely-offstage kingdoms like Unther and Mulhorand to more closely resemble realworld historical (or “Hollywood historical”) settings. The great majority of the Realms map, cities, countries, and characters you read about are my creations, and a fair amount of them predate the D&D game.

2.. You mentioned Divine Right, does that mean you’re a fan of military/political simulation games?

5. Do the Realms have any literary antecedents? That is, are there are any particular books or authors who strongly influenced you in the creation of the setting?

I’m a fan of all sorts of games, military/political simulation and otherwise, from DIPLOMACY to WINTER WAR. I’m not fond of games that take days or weeks to play, or that have rules so complicated that actual lawyers have to spend hours puzzling them out, or games where knowing Arcane Rule 336(b) will result in a guaranteed win for one side, always. I’m also not fond of games that experts can enjoy but a novice feels lost or bullied or unhappy when playing with experts (from contract bridge on up through various board, strategy, and card games - - and yes, I include the later editions of MAGIC: THE GATHERING in this, wherein all the instants and interrupts and mutable lands and all the rest resulted in a game great for tournament enthusiasts but no longer fun for your Mom and Dad to try to learn).

Yes and no. No, no authors strongly influenced me in the creation of the setting. However, the setting was born out of my love of all sorts of fiction, particularly fantasy fiction, that I read voraciously in my youth. Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd & Gray Mouser tales influenced me in that when reading the new ones as they first appeared in the pages of FANTASTIC, I noticed they were stand-alone episodes but took place in the same setting, and that by reading a bunch of them, one learned more and more about the setting without the stories ever stopping to really turn and impart information about the world. I borrowed that idea in my fledgling Realms stories, which concerned the aging, wheezing, sly old crook of a merchant, Mirt the Moneylender (based on Falstaff, Poul Anderson’s Nicholas van Rijn, and Guy Gilpatrick’s Glencannon), traveling along the Sword Coast from port city to port city - - usually a step ahead of creditors and foes who wanted to put swords through him!

However, give me something NOT entirely governed by the luck of the cards or draw or whatever, and that has a cool terrain board with strategic roads, bridges, or other areas, and I’m in. Everything from MYTHOS (the card game) to BATTLE OF BRITAIN (the West End games one-player game) to AWFUL GREEN THINGS FROM OUTER SPACE or ELEFANT HUNT. What I lack is time and opportunity, not enthusiasm.

However, I drew on everything fictional I loved (Dunsany, Zelazny, and many, many more) to imagine the sort of fantastic world I’d like to visit, and then wrote about it.

3. What do you recall most about the early days of the hobby?

6. In those early days, what would you say was the relationship between the D&D rules and the Forgotten Realms? That is, did the nature of the rules dictate how you developed the setting or did you bend the rules where they were incompatible with your own ideas?

Mimeographed and photocopied “homemade” adventures, APA-zines like ALARUMS & EXCURSIONS, and because I lived in Toronto, the stores Mr. Gameway’s Ark and later The Battered Dwarf. More than all of these, however, it was the general sense of community, despite poor communications and lack of money on the part of most local gamers. We drove long distances for get-togethers in strangers’ basements and public libraries we’d never heard of or seen before, just to get together with other gamers. There were no local conventions for roleplaying. Wargames, yes, but roleplaying, no.

I didn’t worry about rules at all; I was concerned about presenting the world (which predated the game, and most of the time was already detailed in, say, a city or the lineage of a ruling family or local legends, before the game rules came along) in full detail, so it could “seem real.” In many instances, describing the world for a TSR printed Realms product pointed out where there were gaps in the game rules (oops, we have nothing to help DMs with, say, poisonous gases blown by winds across a battlefield), but when you see “hard” rules in a Realms game product, they were almost always written by a staff designer from my detailed notes of the situation. I developed the 2nd Edition character stats “shorthand” for the game, purely to save wordcount when cowriting the FR ADVENTURES hardcover, but my “development” of the setting predated the game, so game rules couldn’t dictate it. What DID influence the development of the published Realms was TSR’s wants and

4. As I understand it, you first conceived of the fantasy setting that would become the Forgotten Realms when you were still a child. How of that original creation survived as the Realms was developed in later years? Yes, I was six when I first thought of the Realms and started writing (short stories) about it. Almost all of my original creation and concepts survived as the Realms was published, although a lot of it still hasn’t seen

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

19 September 2009

needs for specific elements (“We need a pirate ship setting; where in the Realms would we find one? Where would Conan-like barbarians come from? Do you have a larger city we could publish?”) for the unfolding game line. I have designed, including writing rules, for the first three editions of the game, but have always been a freelancer rather than an

schedule, but Dave “Zeb” Cook came to Chicago or Milwaukee to pick me up. I went to work with Zeb on Tuesday after Memorial Day weekend and moved into an office with Kevin Hendryx. We play tested his new version of The Awful Green Things from Outer Space for hours or maybe even days. It was an auspicious beginning.

employee of the game’s publisher.

3. Most of your credits while at TSR are as a “developer” or “editor.” What were your responsibilities while employed there?

GROGNARDIA: THE INTERVIEWS

Dan Proctor Interview SEP 08, 2009 09:33A.M.

As a “developer” (we referred to ourselves as “Devo Units”) I was responsible for taking game systems and documents from designers and testing them, finding holes in them, and making sure the language, spelling, and grammar were correct. I was also responsible for reviewing “bluebirds,” or unsolicited manuscripts/games from outside the company. On occasion, everyone in the building was put to work reviewing galleys or comps as well.

There’s an interview with Dan Proctor, creator of Labyrinth Lord, over at RPG Blog II. There aren’t any surprises in it, but there is some explanations and insights that might be useful for anyone who’s curious about LL and its future. I was glad to see it.

4. Were you one of the victims of the employee “purges” Kevin Hendryx mentioned as occurring at TSR and, if so, what was your sense of why they were occurring?

GROGNARDIA: THE INTERVIEWS

Interview: Evan Robinson SEP 07, 2009 09:25A.M.

I was.

Evan Robinson worked at TSR as an editor and developer form 1980-81. He was part of the second large wave of employees hired by the company in the wake of D&D‘s success in the late 70s. During his time there, he worked on a wide variety of products but is probably bets known for the development of the A-series “Slavelords” modules. I recently asked Mr Robinson a few brief questions; his responses follow.

Paul Reiche III and I had been blatant and obvious in our support for Dave Arneson during a TSR shareholders or board meeting (I can’t remember which, and I can’t remember exactly what we did, but I know that we thought Dave was getting a raw deal on something). We had been equally blatant and obvious, I think, in expressing our opinions as to the relative value (to the company and the world in general) of the Blumes, Gygaxes, and some other people. We were young and not subtle. I know from later experience that the Blumes and Gygaxes took no more (or not much more) advantage of the people working for them than do many corporate entities.

1. How did you become involved in the hobby of roleplaying? I was introduced to board wargaming by my best friend Jeff Mazo when I was in about 4th or 5th grade. I was visiting the local hobby store on a regular basis when I found the original three-volume D&D in, I think, 7th or 8th grade, but it might have been as late as 9th. It was one of the original 1000 or so printed because it had Ents in it, and I think something else that the Tolkien legal people objected to. We had a little group that met pretty regularly to play wargames and some of them transitioned to the D&D games. We played incessantly through high school and college with a variety of games and game masters.

The “purge” may have been that — I don’t know the motivation behind TSRs express plan to move to “Candy Land-style games”. But it may have been a run-of-the-mill corporate strategy change that just happened to hit all of our buttons about what we wanted to work on. I want to be clear — we were not fired — we were told that if we didn’t want to work on this new company direction we’d be happier if we left. I went first, then Paul Reiche III.

2. How did you become employed by TSR?

I don’t recall that anyone in management at TSR had any real business experience before they began to grow like mad. Certainly nothing like operating a start-up in a fast-moving rapidly growing new market like the initial paper games bubble of the early 80s. It seemed to us that nepotism was winning out over competence and that the rewards of company success weren’t being passed down to the people who were doing the work (us) that mattered. Whether or not that attitude had anything to do with our reassignment to children’s board games or not, it contributed mightily to our willingness to quit instead of sticking it out and doing some unpleasant work for a little while.

I came home for spring break my second year in college pretty well beat down and exhausted after a hard break up/make up/break up with my first serious girlfriend. I was driving my mother home from Coos Bay (we lived about an hour away) and she was looking at my latest Dragon magazine, found a 1/4 or 1/6 page ad for jobs at TSR and suggested that I apply. I did. I worked for weeks during the rest of the school year on an application and sent it off. They hired me, and I flew out Memorial Day weekend 1980 to start. Mt. St. Helens blew up and ruined my flight

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19 September 2009

5. After TSR, did you continue to work in the RPG industry? I never again worked in the paper RPG industry except to write a Top Secret module called Operation Seventh Seal, which TSR published later in 1981, which was the year I left. I did work on an unpublished computer version of Champions and on a published character creation program for the Hero System called HeroMaker. 6. Do you still roleplay and, if so, what games do you play? Before I returned to graduate school in 2005 I was playing Champions weekly with a group in the Lower Mainland, but I ended up with classes scheduled on game nights for the next two years. I haven’t returned to that group or any other since finishing school. I do have an iPhone app in review that does basic combat dice rolling for the Hero System.

GROGNARDIA: THE INTERVIEWS

Matt Finch Podcast SEP 01, 2009 10:56A.M. The Game’s The Thing has a nice interview with Swords & Wizardry creator Matt Finch. It’s well worth listening to.

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