Monthly Archives: October 2011

Short Guide to OSR Periodicals

Leave a reply

As I don’t pretend to impartiality, I’ll go ahead and say that my favorites are probably Fight On! and Knockspell, in terms of content that I find immediately useful.

(This list has grown to the point that it probably deserves better organization or subcategorization.)

Active:

Fight On!
Associated with the OD&D Discussion board (“odd74”, focusing on the game from the 3 original “little brown books”). Creation is coordinated here.
Footprints
This pub is free, and comes from volunteer work done my members of the Dragonsfoot board. There is a useful download all link.
Knockspell
This zine is associated with Swords & Wizardry, and edited by Matt Finch.
Loviatar
A unique zine, print-only, and the work of a single author, Christian. Also includes content for some games that are not usually considered old school, such as White Wolf’s Vampire. Waiting for my first three issues to arrive in the mail, so I don’t have more to say yet.
NOD
Another single author pub. NOD focuses on the author’s setting, but has lots of content that is generally useful. There are free samples. Decorated with lots of old public domain art that is very tastefully chosen.
Oubliette
I haven’t had a chance to read my copies of this yet, but it looks promising. I love the visual style. Also has an associated blog. Interestingly, the author’s story seems similar to my own: “After a 15 year break from gaming two of my old friends met up with me last summer and we decided to start playing again”. For me, it was closer to 11 years.
Encounter
Byline: “A fanzine dedicated to the Classic D&D Game!”. Issues are free, and look professionally produced.
Green Devil Face
Associated with Lamentations of the Flame Princess. In the words of James Raggi: “a print traditional gaming zine under the Green Devil Face name. It will have a more narrow focus than Fight On! or Knockspell, in that it will be specifically about individual dungeon rooms that feature obvious traps/hazards/puzzles that require players to experiment and reason through them instead of making a traps roll to detect/disarm them”.
Scribe of Orcus
Associated with Goblinoid Games. Ashamed to say that I haven’t actually had time to check this out yet, despite the face that Labyrinth Lord is one of my favorite retro-clones. You can buy issues on RPGNow. I’m not sure if this is still active, as the most recent issue seems to be Vol. 1 Issue 5, from 2009.
OD&DITIES
Byline: “The Original Dungeons & Dragons Fanzine”. Appears to be semi-defunct (I say semi- because on the blog, the author says he is working on a new zine, to be called Unknown Sagas, and which will focus on Swords & Wizardry). You can download issues 1 – 12 from Dragonsfoot, but newer issues seem to no longer be free.
Alarums & Excursions
A&E is probably the oldest continuously published RPG periodical. It was started in 1975, and has been maintained by Lee Gold. I just learned about this in Fight On! 6, which also features a very interesting article by and interview with Lee Gold.

Inactive:

The Dragon/Dragon Magazine
The house magazine of TSR. Probably needs no introduction. Some reprints and PDFs are available from Paizo. There is also an online index, the Dragondex.
Dungeon Adventures
The other house magazine of TSR, focusing on scenarios rather than rules and commentary. Like Dragon, some reprints and PDFs are available from Paizo.
Pegasus Magazine / Dungeoneer / Judges Guild Journal
Original Judges Guild pub from the 70s. Pegasus is available from RPGNow. There is also a bundle of all 12 issues. I haven’t read very much of this yet, so not much more to say. Associated nouns: City State of the Invincible Overlord, Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Bob Bledsaw, Bill Owen, Tegel Manor. Clearly important in the context of the game’s history. Also see this thread on odd74 about the JG magazines.
Strategic Review
The TSR mag before dragon. Only had 7 issues, and also focused on wargaming. Unfortunately not legally available anywhere right now, as far as I can see.

Completeness is not a quality that I aspire to in this post, as I want this to be an edited collection of resources I find useful. That being said, if you notice that I am egregiously ignoring something, please let me know so that I can investigate it. I don’t want to end up with a laundry list, however. Also, I know that this collection is biased towards the present. But then, isn’t everything? It is, after all, where we always live.

The Changing Face of Initiative

Leave a reply

So, I was thinking of doing a series on the “changing face” of various common aspects of the game, comparing how different versions do the same thing. For example, initiative. But it turns out someone else has just already done such a post, and they did it really well. This is a good thing! Less work for me to do. Monsters & Manuals also discusses.

The original motivation was to familiarize myself with how earlier versions of the game did things, as when I played before, I mostly used a heavily house-ruled version of 2nd Edition. There are still probably many other fruitful topics for such a series; if I can accomplish the whole project by merely redirecting myself to content elsewhere on the Internet, all the better.

Goblins as Corruption

3 Replies

Folkloric, mythical goblins are much more interesting than the “monster ecology” goblinkind that is standard in D&D. I think there is a lot to be gained from trying to access some aspect of the “bogeyman” tradition that originally led to the goblin, rather than the “evil stormtrooper” depiction that has become more common. However, when using goblins, there are a whole set of player assumptions that you have to deal with. If you say “you see 5 goblins”, that will produce a certain quantity of unavoidable meanings in your players’ heads that you probably wish were not there. The first step, I think, is to not mark them as goblins initially, and only later allow the players to identify them. But that still begs the question, what are a more fantastic form of goblinkind that would still work in the context of the game? I don’t think it works to say that they are “really scary” and leave it at that.

Well, who started this modern fantasy trope to begin with? Let’s go back to Tolkien and see what his example actually says, rather than the examples of his imitators. From Wikipedia, on Tolkien’s goblins:

In an essay on Elven languages, written in 1954, Tolkien gives meaning of “orc” as “evil spirit or bogey” and goes on to state that the origin of the Old English word is the Latin name Orcus — god of the underworld.

The article goes on to list 7 possible origins for goblinkind:

  1. Made from the earth
  2. East Elves (Avari)
  3. Sentient beasts
  4. Fallen Maiar
  5. Corrupted Men
  6. A mix of corrupted Elves and Men
  7. Some cross-bred with Men

As is often the case, the banal cliches that have come down to us from the followers of Tolkien are not much connected to the actual ideas behind Middle-earth. None of these examples are close to “just some other race that evolved (or was created by a rival god) and came to be opposed to the PC races”. They all focus on the idea of falling from grace, or corruption.

So let’s say that a goblin is a human that has been corrupted by arcane forces, perhaps to be the slave of some wicked magic-user, or demon. Having a savage, id-like, but still clever, servant would be more than a little useful to such a patron. In addition to creation through dark rituals, perhaps there are locations that are sources of arcane pollution which cause nearby residents to slowly become goblins.

Note that this conception does not preclude a dark lord like Sauron from actually raising a horde of goblins, but it does ensure that they are not “just another race”.

And what happens when the corruptor dies before the goblin? Does the goblin slowly revert to his past self? Or does the goblin start to regain his past mind, but remain corrupted in body?

It is also possible that this would still allow for the use of goblins as a PC race to replace halflings, though it would have to be handled carefully to preserve the desired style.

A Necromantic Miscellany

3 Replies
The necromancer is both one of my favorite fantasy tropes, and one of the hardest classes to get right. In 2nd Edition, when I began playing, the necromancer specialist wizard was one of the weakest of all the specialists, and the signature spell (animate dead) was 5th level, which meant that any decent necromancer had to be at least 9th level! The Complete Book of Necromancers (DMGR7 “blue book”) is not bad, but in general the archetype has not been very well supported by the TSR editions of D&D. I believe the classification of spells into schools began with AD&D (the 1E PHB has spells categorized by school), but specialists are not given much detail, with the large exception of the illusionist, which is almost a separate class (it has its own spell list separate from that of the magic-user). Dragon #76, from 1983, contains “The Death Master” (page 11), but it is a class intended for NPCs.

So I don’t think it is entirely unwarranted to begin discussion about the necromancer in 2E. The 2E Necromancer requirements are (from Table 22: WIZARD SPECIALIST REQUIREMENTS in the 2E PHB): human, 16 wisdom, opposed to the illusion and enchantment/charm schools.

2E spells in the Necromancy school: cantrip (1st), chill touch (1st), detect undead (1st), spectral hand (2nd), feign death (3rd), hold undead (3rd), vampiric touch (3rd), contagion (4th), enervation (4th), animate dead (5th), magic jar (5th), summon shadow (5th), death spell (6th), reincarnation (6th), control undead (7th), finger of death (7th), clone (8th), energy drain (9th).

That’s not very many.

Part of the problem is that central to my conception of the necromancer is the idea of an undead master, which could potentially result in a character with lots of minions (not a problem for an NPC, but potentially a problem for a PC). Though I understand the reasoning for designing a necromancer class only for antagonists, the optimal necromancer class (for me) is also playable as a PC.
It’s also surprisingly hard to find atmospheric necromancer art, but I’ve included a few links.