What Lovecraft Really Meant

   Plato had a theory. To help our understanding of it, he invented a Cave. We soon dismissed that Cave, but understood the theory itself.

   Lovecraft also had a theory. To help us understand, he created a Mythos. We loved that Mythos, but somewhat failed to understand the core message.

   Plato’s point was this: what is discernible with our five senses may not be the whole truth. If someone was to be chained in a cave since early childhood, and only ever saw shadows on a rock cliff, he / she would be unable of even imagining the world outside the Cave – the world that actually makes those shadows. So, now, how do we know this isn’t the case for us too, in this world?

   Lovecraft’s message was this:

   “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

   Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s first and foremost intention was not to craft an elaborate horror mythos, but simply to tell a cautionary tale about science. Science is very useful, yes; it saves lives and provides us with clean drinking water, comfortable shelter, and the like. But at one point, science is gonna fail us. Lovecraft was absolutely spot-on about that. The higher “up” we go towards the extremely vast (e.g. Dark Matter), science fails us. The further “down” we go towards the extremely small (e.g. Higgs boson), science fails us. And yet maybe Higgs boson and Dark Matter are one and the same...

   Yep – now that would certainly be the Elder Gods’ cruelest joke.

Hommlet: New Developments

   Village of Hommlet. CY 599, developers moved in and bought most of the land, building luxury mansions and two hotels. Then the Temple of Elemental Evil merged with a larger evil corporation, and after a few short years these new guys decided to outsource all the “eviling” in and around the Temple to India.

   Evil Hindu goddess Kali dispatched a whole lot of her eight armed minions to the Temple and the moathouse, but she didn’t want to go herself and manage operations; she subcontracted that gig to the Chinese demigod Chih-Chiang Fyu-Ya.

    In hindsight, this move wasn’t smart, because many disgruntled Caucasian adventurers went away and never returned to Hommlet, seeking “whiter” dungeons south of the Kron Hills.

  

Batman V Superman: The Dark Knight Doesn't Return

   I have stated before that Hollywood is like a wood chipper – throw any source material in there, good or bad, and it’s instantly turned to crap. Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, you’re up.

   Haven’t seen Batman V Superman yet, but I will. I just wanted to post something about it right away, and maybe I’ll write a second post on that same topic after I have actually seen the movie. For now, here are my preliminary impressions.

   They seem to have rubbed out my favorite character: Carrie. Why? It makes no sense. Look at all the Millennial stuff out there: The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Shannara Chronicles – new trend now is to have strong female heroines. You even have Cinderella in Space, a.k.a. Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I’ve got nothing against Girl Power, but why scrap the one strong female character that’s already present in the source material? Carrie is right there, DC, she’s right under your nose!!!

   Good God almighty, this is painful.

   I loved Carrie since I first read that book. She is awesome, and the only “hopeful” character in an otherwise grim and depressed world. Come to think of it, The Dark Knight Returns is kind of her story. Parts 1 and 2 make up her origin story. In parts 3 and 4, you sometimes get the impression that Bruce keeps going simply because Carrie is looking up to him and he’s the only decent father figure she’s ever had in her life. And that’s beautiful.

   They’re deleting all that, and throwing Wonder Woman in the mix just to be able to check that “strong female” box.

   When there is no strong female character in the source material, they go ahead and invent one, like Tauriel in The Hobbit. And when there is a strong female character in the source material – well, they ignore it. What a damn shame.

   The second thing I love in The Dark Knight Returns is the passage of time, as Alan Moore put it in the Foreword. Ten years have gone by since Batman retired. Bruce is fifty-five. Jim Gordon is seventy. Alfred is eighty-something. Clark haven’t aged a bit, but he’s the only one.

   Having seen the trailers, I can say that the “passage of time” is not an element here. We are suddenly back in the heyday of superheroes: Wonder Woman, Lex Luthor, in “the perpetual limbo of their mid-to-late twenties”, to quote Alan Moore again. In one of the trailers, Affleck says he is “old”, but he’s not fifty-five, no way. More like forty. And Alfred is certainly not eighty.

   The “big blue boy scout” ain’t big enough or blue enough for my taste. And where are Two-Face and the Joker? And what the hell is Zuckerberg doing in there?

   It is NOT really The Dark Knight Returns, anyway. I can see that now. They just borrowed the book’s main premise – two heroes squaring off against each other in quite a dramatic way – and threw out the rest. Superman might still intercept a nuclear missile, yes. Batman and Superman might fight for a while, sure. But they’ll become friends soon enough and unite their efforts to rid the world of a greater evil: Facebook.

   How come the source material never seems to be good enough for the big screen? Hollywood cut out the huge “alien” monster from The Watchmen. Hollywood replaced Galactus with a big black space-smudge in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. That is like those big studios saying to comic books in general, “You’re no good. You’re not screen-worthy. We will use you as raw material – but you need some fine-tuning.”

   Fuck the source material. That seems to be Hollywood’s Prime Directive these days.

   No Boy Wonder because it’s kinda gay. No Carrie alongside a hunk like Affleck, because that would be creepy. Let’s stick Wonder Woman in between Batman and Superman – between the bad boy and the clean-cut dude –, just like Bella, you know: will she choose Edward or Jacob? Mainstream. Recipes. They work.

   What do Katniss, Tris, Princess Amberle and the other “Millennial” heroines have in common? They’re all ass-kicking teenage girls. But now, you get a VINTAGE ass-kicking teenage girl from way back in ’86 – and you just pass on that?

   Bummer.

   I’m still gonna do something I didn’t do for any of the Hobbit movies or the new Star Trek movies or Indy 4 or The Force Awakens – I’m going to actually walk into a theater and see Batman V Superman. Then (maybe) I’ll come back here and blog a bit more about all the hoohah, whether I liked or hated the film.

Arneson & Saint Paul (not the city)

   There is bad blood between Team Arneson and Team Gygax, that’s no secret. The sad thing is: it didn’t have to come to that. Not at all.

   You and I are partners and we write a game called Cobbles & Creeps – and we make a lot of dough. Then I go my separate way and write Advanced Cobbles & Creeps and keep making a lot of dough without you because, if you’ll understand, Advanced Cobbles & Creeps is “an entirely different product”, so I don’t need to share its profits with you, buddy.

   What does it mean?

   Anyone could start a company and call it “Advanced Apple” or “Advanced Google” and that would be legal.

   Absurd, right?

   Still, that’s what happened back in ’77. So yes, there is bad blood between Team Arneson and Team Gygax. But then again, Gygax lived by the sword and died by the sword: ten years after he’d screwed Dave Arneson, the Blume brothers and especially Lorraine Williams screwed him over and booted him out of his own company. You know what they say about karma––

   These two guys created Dungeons & Dragons together. Role-playing games wouldn’t exist without both of them. The analogy I’d like to make is this: Arneson is Jesus, and Gygax is Saint Paul. Bear with me here...

   Jesus didn’t write anything down. Jesus just spoke to the people – and he was good at it. He was spontaneous. After Jesus’ death, a man named Saul, who would later be known as Saint Paul, decided to jot down some things and “organize” the new faith. He worked tirelessly, he traveled a lot, and founded many early Christian churches. He gave that newborn religion a fighting chance against the Roman gods and against Zoroastrianism. Without his texts and his energy and his travels, who knows what would have become of the unofficial, unpopular, underground “sect” of Christ?

   It seems there’s always a Jesus and a Saint Paul. There was Tesla and there was Edison. There was Einstein and Oppenheimer. There was Wozniak and Jobs. There was Bob Hunter and Patrick Moore...

   One man is not enough to “give birth” to any grandiose thing. It takes two – sometimes even more – to do it.

   Dave was spontaneous. Gary was an organized writer and worker. Without Dave, Gary couldn’t have written Dungeons & Dragons, or any role-playing game for that matter. Without Gary, Dave’s clever invention couldn’t have made it out of his circle of friends. Both geniuses were needed to really accomplish what was accomplished.

   That unofficial / unpopular “sect” can be equated to Arneson’s original Blackmoor campaign. Publication of the OD&D White Box can be equated to Saint Paul’s Epistles. What came after can be equated to the four Gospels.

   But then the “Advanced” thing happened.

   It’s like if Saint Paul had somewhat managed to modify Christianity just enough to call it his own – and not have to pay Jesus any royalties. But royalties didn’t exist back then. And Jesus was already dead, anyway. And Jesus had no heirs or widow (sorry folks, it’s not The Da Vinci Code).

   Gary Gygax once said: “Dave Arneson was running a game up there, using my Chainmail rules, and I believe he called it Blackmoor.”

   Seriously, Gary?

   You “believe” he called it Blackmoor? You played that game yourself in November of 1972 when Arneson and Megarry drove down to Lake Geneva and showed you both their games – Blackmoor and Dungeon! It was your first RPG session ever. Your son Ernie was there with you, and both Rob and Terry Kuntz. Everybody saw how this new game was NOT Chainmail.

   It’s almost tragic – this great man trying to fool himself and everybody else, again and again, by changing the story. Such awkward denial, and for what? Is E. Gary Gygax less of a giant for not actually inventing RPGs?

   I hear that John Kentner’s documentary, Dragons in the Basement, is delayed still because of Gygax legal issues. We don’t get to hear what Dave Arneson and Professor Barker have to say about the origins of RPGs... because of legal issues?

   Kentner must obtain a permit in order to use the name “Gygax” in his film – but I’m also told that Mrs. Gygax was very pleased when she discovered she didn’t need any permit to erect a Gary Gygax monument in Lake Geneva. Isn’t that a little bit twisted, or is it just me?

   Solution #1. Every time Gygax appears on-screen, call him Mordenkainen. When someone else says his name out loud, bleep it over and put a little “Mordenkainen” sign on that person’s mouth. Even in the end credits, just put: Mordenkainen. Everybody will understand perfectly – and Mrs. Gygax doesn’t own the name Mordenkainen, does she?

   Solution #2. Cut Gygax out of the doc completely. Gamers of the world still want to hear what Professor Barker and the three Daves have to say. Gygax is not our only “founding father”. I’d rather see and hear Washington + Franklin + Adams + Madison, without Jefferson, than not see or hear any of them.

   Pick Solution #1, John. It’ll work. But I digress.

   If Jesus himself had written a Gospel, it would probably confuse today’s religious scholars just as much as The First Fantasy Campaign confuses most of today’s efficient / practical DMs. Dave Wesely said, “Arneson had favored a wide-open system that put a lot of burden on the ingenuity and style of the ref.” Strangely, that is also what Jesus had favored: he replaced all the complicated rules with one simple, overriding rule. But that proved, well, too simple. So Saint Paul stepped in shortly after Christ’s death and created a bunch of new, sharper rules.

   Role-playing games wouldn’t exist today without both Arneson and Gygax – just as Christianity wouldn’t exist as we know it without both Jesus and Saint Paul. Jesus alone is not enough.

   And by the way, I am not a religious nut. Again, this was just an analogy.

   Amen.

  

Next Gen

   We were fourteen years old. Our hair was long but not yet too long. Each of us drank half a can of beer and nothing else, because we couldn’t risk stealing more than 2 cans from the fridge without some parent taking notice. And we played AD&D while listening to Iron Maiden and Dio (in my opinion, Sacred Heart remains the best dungeoneering song ever). Good times – hell yeah!

   But hang on. What’s gonna be the Millennials’ mind-blowing good memories? Instead of that D&D / metal combo, Millennials had a Masquerade / grunge deal. And what about those kids who just turned fourteen this year? What’s it gonna be for them?

   This post is a collection of tidbits, thoughts and observations about the younger players, typed in no particular order, because winter is making me lazy.

*

   Twenty-year-old gamers have bizarre misconceptions about 1E. Two of them recently said to me: “You play with THAC0? Are you crazy? It’s complicated! You have to calculate Armor Classes in the negatives???” What did they mean by that? There is no calculating involved. You’re a fighter, level 7, monster is AC -2, you need 16. Do they think it works like the To Hit roll in Ashardalon?

   They probably didn’t give AD&D a single browse, that’s what I think.

*

   Everybody also seemed to freak out because they didn’t get a list of all the monsters from the new Monster Manual “by challenge level”. What’s the big fuss? You just look at the monster’s stats, like we did. Beholder: that’s strong. Kobold: that’s weak. Wight: that’s in between. Easy enough. What do you need lists for? I never used any “lists” of monsters in any of my campaigns; I went in prepared, always, and regularly play-tested my shit beforehand, with copies of the PCs record sheets, to adjust things.

*

   The old Retreat & Recharge strategy was already in use back in the day, before Fallout and Halo and the rest of it, but I don’t remember players ever abusing it, retreating & recharging after every single room / encounter, systematically. It’s annoying and it feels fake. In a novel, that would be completely unpalatable: you’d tear out a whole bunch of pages from the book while yelling at Elric or Caramon or Fafhrd, “Come on, dammit! COME ON! Storm the place already!!! Quit doing this!!!!!!!” But Elric never retreats & recharges, thank the gods. Neither does Caramon, or Fafhrd. They’re heroes. Now, why can’t most modern players do the same? There is an evil sorcerer in the cave ahead – get him, or die trying. Don’t come back 6 times over a period of 48 hours!?

*

   Something new appeared about the time Millennials really hit the gaming scene: the “exceptional” characters. You are a vampire, but the basic humans don’t know about it. You are a werewolf, or an exalted, and the “rest” of the population is just normal, dull people. Your power sets you apart. You’re a vampire: you’re glorious, you’re sublime, you’re beautiful, you are indeed a superior species!

   Of course, characters in Dungeons & Dragons, Tékumel and even Cthulhu sometimes got very, very powerful, but they were not “set apart” right from the get-go. Any level 1 D&D character who got struck by a wight still had to temporarily downgrade to level zero ordinary human.

   Millennials think very highly of themselves. Gen X, not as much: you had to become exceptional, but were not born exceptional. Two distinct philosophies. Games like Mage: The Ascension and Masquerade and Exalted came around in ’91 or ’93... it could be a simple coincidence, but I doubt it.

*

   I don’t like Elder Sign as much as I do Arkham Horror, with as many supplements as you want. But the younger generation – late twenties and early thirties – prefers Elder Sign because it’s “light” and “shorter” (those are the adjectives I’ve heard).

   There is absolutely no lovecraftian atmosphere in a game of Elder Sign. It’s just math. Players don’t even bother to read the flavor text on the various quests available; they just look at what you can gain if you succeed, how much Stamina or Sanity you lose if you fail, and what dice rolls you must make in order to nail it. Then it’s merely strategy. “This one’s too difficult for me – I’ll leave it to you, because you have the yellow die and your special re-roll ability. We get two more Elder Signs: it’s worth it.”

   It’s quicker all right, but you really can go through an entire game without “feeling” anything remotely Cthulhu, and that’s sad. The monsters themselves kind of disappear in that big equation: one more dice roll in Quest #3 (it got a bit more difficult). Monster tokens are thumbnails, nothing more. I’ve seen players draw them up from the cup and not even look at what they are. Ghoul? Dhole? There’s a huge difference! But no: it’s one more challenging dice roll, that’s all.

   If Arkham Horror is a blog, then Elder Sign is Twitter: everything’s tiny in there, every token, every card – and the texts on the quests are about 140 characters, yes, and you can play the game without reading them...

   Thirty-year-olds say they don’t have the time for a full game of Arkham Horror with Bokrug as the Ancient One. Too bad, guys. You are missing out on a really terrific thing.

*

   I played several games of The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow with my cousins and their boyfriends – Millennials again – and I made the effort to role-play just a bit because there is not much role-play going on in that game. For example when I got the Lord, I talked like some medieval count or baron: “Ah! My good subjects! my loyal villagers! Certainly you won’t suspect your beloved Lord and Master of being the werewolf, will you? That would qualify as peasant treason indeed...”

   One guy then told me I’d be an excellent LARPer. Well, I don’t know. I could have said, “I sat at tables and ran campaigns before you were even born, and long before LARP was ever a thing, so yes, I suppose I can role-play a baron off the top of my head.” But the guy didn’t know about RPGs at all. He knew the words Dungeons & Dragons of course, but he thought it was a board game – and seemed to think LARP had just appeared outta the blue one morning, without any previous base or mechanics. That’s like saying the iPad appeared on its own, and computers didn’t exist before: no VIC-20, no DOS, nada.

   Oh, and one of my cousins believed Star Wars first began as a series of books... and then was made into those first three movies. Her boyfriend added, “Like Harry Potter, y’know?”

   Anyway, I still love Next Gen. They’re OK – as long as you keep your list of Elder Sign monsters sorted out by challenge level, and LARP without THAC0.

Role-Playing Games are 45 Years Old

   Role-playing games were invented 45 years ago today!

   Depending on exactly when you’re reading this post, it could actually be the truth.

   Fact is, we simply don’t know the date. All we know is that the very first Blackmoor game session occurred sometime between December 1970 and April 1971. That’s the sweet spot, ladies and gentlemen – and we are right in the middle of it right now.

   We also know for a fact that this “first game” took place on a Saturday, because Arneson’s group always met on Saturdays for their Napoleonic kriegspiels. So just for the kick of it, I went and found a 1971 calendar. There are not that many Saturdays between January and April:

• January 9 – 16 – 23 – 30.
• February 6 – 13 – 20 – 27.
• March 6 – 13 – 20 – 27.
• April 3 – 10 – 17 – 24.

   Let’s add maybe December 12 and 19, 1970. (The guys couldn’t have pulled it off on either December 26 or January 2.)

   There you have it. Chances are, the real honest-to-goodness date of the first Blackmoor session is up there, right under your nose. Those 1970 / 1971 Saturdays match our 2015 / 2016 Saturdays perfectly, except for March and April. Because the March / April dates fall on Sundays this year. I just drink a shot every Saturday (starting on March 6, I’ll switch to every Sunday), so I’m absolutely sure to catch the right one. Before each shot I say, “Cheers, Dave!”

*

   Why don’t we know the exact day of that elusive first game? Beats me. For years I have looked all over the Internet and found zip. Arneson himself never said, “It was on that day.” Maybe it just didn’t seem important / groundbreaking at the time. Most of these players are still around, but none has ever given us a clear date. Why is that?

   I conducted this fun little experiment.

   Over the holidays I saw my dad and most of my uncles, and they are about the same age as the original Blackmoor players. I asked my dad about that big A-Frame Swiss Chalet they’d built with my grandfather way back when, in ’69. My dad was more than happy to talk about it, and my uncles too. But then I wanted to know about the bulldozer and when it came up to dig those foundations – what was the day, the exact date when work actually got underway. My dad couldn’t tell. None of my uncles could tell. They argued about it for a while. Was it on a weekend? “Yes it was; I never went up there during the week!” “No it wasn’t; that bulldozer guy didn’t work weekends – who was he, anyway?”

   I didn’t get anything. They just don’t remember, that’s all. It was around May, or possibly early June of 1969.

   My dad and my uncles are not senile, far from it. But they just can’t recall that specific day. The thing we know for sure is that my grandpa and his sons built a two-story Swiss Chalet up in the mountain, and that house still stands today, although it was sold in ’86.

   Megarry, Svenson and the others played lots of Blackmoor before Dave Arneson ever drove down to Wisconsin in November of ’72 – they simply can’t point out which Saturday was “The First One”. February 6? March 13?

   Take your pick, history buffs.

   And Happy Birthday, RPGs!!! Here’s to another forty-five years!

  

Urban Warfare

   Your home turf is being overrun by ferocious orc tribes? Who do you want to put in charge of the capital’s defenses and militia? Do you want an experienced general, or do you want, let’s say, Tom Waits & Willie Nelson? Me, I’d like Waits & Nelson, please! It’s gonna be a huge clusterfuk, crazy and fun, with defenders awaiting the arrival of the orcs in various bars and taverns, and comedians masquerading as orcs, and pike wielding beggars hidden in every trash pile of every side street.

   One of my friends ran a big game like that. Two guys played the orc tribes while me and three other players took charge of the city’s defenses. I wanted to sprinkle units and barricades all over the different neighborhoods and main avenues, but the other players all believed it would be suicidal. For sure, they were right. So we ended up cramming everything we had into that central, secure, walled part of the city, leaving almost no one outside except for a few skirmishers and a whole lot of pretty huge unmanned barricades.

   “Strategic” and “efficient” easily won over “crazy” and “fun”, and I’m not surprised – that’s a generation-old dilemma you come across in so many RPG situations. Like I said in a previous post, the real-life medieval battle of Calais was a terrible, utter mess; it’s a gripping read (especially in novel form, by Michel Peyramaure), but it would be boring as hell if the battle had been run by experienced EverQuest or Warcraft players.

   And that’s the paradox. Whenever you’re watching a movie or reading a book, you want crazy and fun, but when you are playing a battle simulation, you do not want crazy or fun – you want efficient.

   I had fun anyway. But my magic-user didn’t happen to be stranded in some back alley with the battered remnants of Citizens’ Brigade #3 and eleven feisty prostitutes and two dogs and only one leaking cask of wine while two hundred Uruk-hai waited at one end of that fateful alley, and sixty orc outriders advanced at the other end...

   Our DM had his computer generate exponential damage scores for the entire armies outside our own “personal” units. Hold on to your hats, here... In one single evening of gaming, this besieged city saw a staggering 26K+ Hit Points of damage!!!!!!!!!!!!

   It was a cool game. The map was insane. Those pics look great. But if I ever run such a large-scale thing myself, I won’t let the players decide. I’ll say: “This is what your dear old city’s defenses now look like; here are the various units / platoons / chokepoints. You guys just select which unit you want your character to personally take command of, and then let’s get this show on the road right away. Can’t let you waste 90 precious minutes debating initial placement. Sorry. It is not your fault if the head of the City Council is Lord Willie Nelson and the captain of the militia is Master Tom Waits!”