'Mythic Evil In Old School Campaigns' - Another OSR Commentary

Why would any of the planar elements & powers care about some lowly PC on some backwater world? Because the lowly adventurer does not stay in the lower ranking tier of the adventurer if they survive long. From the very beginning in Original Dungeons & Dragons the fate of the player character is writ in blood & violence. As the player characters make their way up the levels of their careers the cosmic game plays itself out in the mythology & adventures of the campaign.

The wargaming aspect of Dungeons & Dragons was built in right from the beginning & as well as this came into a more sharper focus & use of

	Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren's  Chainmail.

"Dave Arneson used Chainmail in his Blackmoor campaign, and many elements of Chainmail were carried over wholesale into Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 1974. In fact, the original edition of D&D required that the reader own a copy of Chainmail (as well as the Avalon Hill game Outdoor Survival). The first edition of Dungeons & Dragons frequently defers to Chainmail, for example in the rules for elves and hobbits, in the "Invisibility" and "Conjure Elemental" spells, for the special abilities of monsters, specifically for the text of many monsters including goblins and ghouls, in the magic items descriptions (e.g. "Horn of Blasting") and in the naval combat rules."

But another gaming is playing itself out at the same time as the game plays on. The players might not be aware at all that the battle of power plays out as they assume their place as the movers & shakers of the world. Demons, gods, and other far worse things are watching them from the shadows.

All of this echoes through Dungeons & Dragons right from the beginning with its role springing from the Chainmail rules.

"Shortly before the publication of Chainmail, Gygax wrote to Wargamer's Newsletter describing his intention to add "rules for Tolkien fantasy games" to his medieval miniatures rules, including rules for balrogs, hobbits, trolls, giants and the aforementioned dragons.^[17] In a 2001 interview, Gygax recalled that

...as the members began to get tired of medieval games, and I wasn't, I decided to add fantasy elements to the mix, such as a dragon that had a fire-breath weapon, a hero that was worth four normal warriors, a wizard who could cast fireballs, [which had] the range and hit diameter of a large catapult, and lightning bolts, [which had] the range and hit area of a cannon, and so forth. I converted a plastic stegosaurus into a pretty fair dragon, as there were no models of them around in those days. A 70 mm Elastolin Viking figure, with doll's hair glued to its head, and a club made from a kitchen match and auto body putty, and painted in shades of blue for skin color made a fearsome giant figure. I haunted the dime stores looking for potential additions and eventually found figures to represent ogres, elementals, etc. The players loved the new game, and soon we had twenty or more players showing up for every session.^[18]

The first edition Chainmail Fantasy Supplement added such concepts as elementals, magic swords, and archetypal spells such as "Fireball", "Lightning Bolt" and six other spells"

So right from the beginning mythological elements have been a part of the Original Dungeons & Dragons product set up. Psionics, Demons, Druids, Artifacts & Wandering Monster Tables were all part of the "Eldritch Wizardry" from 1976. This set up the PC's as heroes in the mold of Conan & other Sword & Sorcery characters who were always encountering demons in the wastelands of various novels. The height of war gaming in the 60's & 70's paralleled the rise of Original Dungeons & Dragons.

This means that the dungeon master's campaign world & player's PC's go from being nobodies adventuring on a back water world to suddenly appearing on the multi dimensional stage the second their PC's encounter their first demon or devil. Because waiting right in the wings are the minions of the gods who be more then happy to claim a soul for the armies of the gods. This goes back to mythologies the world over.

This all ties back with the rise from lowly adventurer to king or wizard along the steady levels of the game. "Eldritch Wizardry" gets a Hell of a lot of undeserved heat almost literally. Check out the B.S. in this Amazon review from a verified purchaser songe ; "This book contains sections on the five areas mentioned in the title of the review. Half of the book dealt with psionics.

The only real problem with this book is the decision the writers made to jump into the world of Satanism and demonism in it. I don't believe anyone on the team were believers in it. I've heard that Gary Gygax himself was a Jehovah's Witness. I think it was just an exploration of a type of fantasy that existed more prevalently in those days. One example I am aware of is the movie "The Black Cat" starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi (1934). In that movie, Boris Karloff's character was a Satanist. After saying the word "Satanist" though, no further mention is made of the concept.

The 50s and 60s were pretty innocent. Evil stuff like we see today didn't much exist back then. The words were merely just mentioned for the basic thrill it gave everyone and then nothing much deeper was ever explored. The same goes for this book. Except for the mention of the word "Demon" and the idiot who chose to put a painting of a naked woman on a sacrificial altar on the cover, the book is pretty innocent. Honestly speaking, the only reason why there are statistics for demon and devils in this book, is so that players can go and find them and kill them.

It was really too bad though. The cover of this book and the mentioning of Satan and other devils in Dragon magazine really put a bad and undeserved stink on this game."



By the way its diabolism oh reviewer, the real reason that the demons are in the game is to act as adventure set pieces & vile villains in the vein of mythology & pop culture for adventures. PC knights, paladins, clerics, etc. are their to battle these evils there by pulling their respective worlds from back water to chess piece on the board of the multiverse. This is the actual function of alignment in the game & clerics are one of the prime agents of the gods in the game. Once again this great reviewer of Basic D&D spells this out the form and function of alignment in his review in part one of Basic D&D. I highly recommend you take a look.




Player characters are subject to forces beyond their ken the moment they step into their first dungeon. The gods are watching them.
All of this is pretty much spelled out in the Original Dungeons & Dragons Gods, Demi Gods, & Heroes By James Ward & Robert Kuntz & even pushes on the Arthurian legends of King Arthur & his knights. The struggle between the otherworld, the worldly, & the quests of the divine is intertwined throughout that mythological & literary tradition.

So let me push this who commentary into a modern OSR context for you oh dear reader. With retroclone games such as Swords & Wizardry, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, & even Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition it would at first seem that these struggles & tussles with the divine & demonic might not have any place within them. This isn't true at all. These forces are at the center of the struggle of these games. There are vast alien & demonic forces right at the heart of Lamentations of the Flame Princess where a first level wizard can use the Summon spell to get themselves into a world of trouble. I've actually used a summoning spell going wrong to be the center of a beginning adventure for an LoFP game. In Swords & Wizardry there are numerous adventures where the demonic plays a central role.
The forces of chaos are front & center in the 'Weird Tales' source material of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea with its alignment system which states that the forces of chaos wish to tear apart civilization. The forces of law wish to save it & guess whose there to save it all!?

A favorite art piece from AS&SH second edition.


Last night I mentioned a Near East occult text with ties to the blog post woven through out and tonight will be no different with me using the Abu Maʿshar to tie things together.
"Abu Maʿshar, Latinized as Albumasar (also Albusar, Albuxar; full name Abū Maʿshar Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Balkhī أبو معشر جعفر بن محمد بن عمر البلخي ; 10 Aug 787 – 9 Mar 886, AH 171–272),^[3] was an early Persian^[4][5][6] Muslim astrologer, thought to be the greatest astrologer of the Abbasid court in Baghdad.^[2] While he was not a major innovator, his practical manuals for training astrologers profoundly influenced Muslim intellectual history and, through translations, that of western Europe and Byzantium.^[3]

Abu Ma'shar was a Persian nationalist"

So not only is the Abu Ma'shar a corner stone of Western occult tradition but its great real world occult resource that not only touches on the celestial, the demonic, etc, etc. But the 'Kitāb al‐milal wa‐ʾl‐duwal ("Book on religions and dynasties"), probably his most important work, commented on in the major works of Roger Bacon, Pierre d'Ailly, and Pico della Mirandola' 

Also hints at the greater workings of heroes, knights, etc. in their struggles against the evils of the universe against a cosmic background.  Its just the type of real world resource that could make a perfect resource or capstone for an OD&D or Lamentations of the Flame Princess game.

In the end the only thing that stands between the weirdly dangerous & demonic forces of the other dimensions is your PC's. The may succeed in their struggles or fail utterly but in the end the clock keeps on ticking invisible against the patterns of the campaign. This is part of the essence of old school play. For now keep those dice rolling.

OSR Commentary - High Level Play, AD&D Deities & Demi Gods, & Operatic Old School Campaigns With 'Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)'

So another GenCon is on us & social media is a buzz with the latest Con news, numerous pictures, etc. All my best to my young friends & family that are there.The amount of buzz coming out this year's GenCon reminds me of  Eighty Four & the year I learned about some important lessons on campaign management.

If you're following me on G+  then you probably know that I've twisted my ankle pretty bad & I've been flat on my rear for the last day or so. I'm alright. Nothing broken, or hurt except my pride. But I've been flat on my back for a day, icing the ankle, losing time with work, & actually using this time productively. Mediating on the seminal year of '84, there were two very important things that happened, issue one of  Secret Wars was released from Marvel in the Summer of '84 & The Marvel Super Heroes rpg came out.


Suddenly every geek, nerd, etc. was rushing down to the comic shop & grabbing the comics. They also dropped Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons like bad habits. Eighty Four was a very different time period in table top role playing games, things were a bit more fickle on a local level. The comic book craze was in full swing, there were two or three comic shops in my home town. The local war gaming club split into two clubs & there were four D&D after school groups. Players & DM's had their pick of campaigns from Gamma World to AD&D first edition with numerous options. That was alright but folks were suddenly looking for something different & with numerous DM's there was a bit of a cut throat atmosphere. That Summer I found myself without players or a campaign due to circumstances & one of my co dungeon masters moving away. What the Hell was I going to do? This was also the year I had to get a job & that Summer my adopted Uncle John took me on to his spread up in Goshen,Ct. John was a retired RAF pilot who married an American, he was very good friends with my dad. He came down to Ct to be with his wife's family after being in New York state back in the Seventies where he & my dad had first hooked up as friends. His children were sort of my child hood friends but we didn't see as much of each other as we'd like. So he had agreed to take me on & get me out of my parents hair for that Summer. Also to avoid getting the crap kicked out of me by the bullies in the neighborhood where I lived.
He was an avid OD&D & AD&D player & dungeon master so it was a natural that I was talking non stop about Marvel's Secret Wars. Well, Uncle John got a wee bit pissed at me for not taking the situation in hand & pulling myself up by my boot straps. Many of the local DM's at that time were using Lord of the Rings as the basis for their own home games & I mean like every other one! Conan was a part of Appendix 'N' sure but I needed something different. I needed an edge. It was John's wife Betty that came to the rescaue suggesting Richard Wagner's 'Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)'
"Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied. The composer termed the cycle a "Bühnenfestspiel" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a Vorabend ("preliminary evening"). It is often referred to as the Ring Cycle, Wagner's Ring, or simply The Ring."
Out came Deities & Demi Gods & we were suddenly minor demi gods playing parts in the opera's events.This became an epic long Summer campaign with numerous high level events, love affairs, betrayals, etc. and our PC's were right in the middle of it!

Uncle John used TSR's Saga & his sons were my co players & I was co dungeon master, this was as much to help me through some of the depression that I had as it was to get the campaign events moving. The events followed the opera:

• Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold) - There were bits & pieces taken from The Against The Giants series to spice things up & some Drow interference with the Rhinegold.
• Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) there were other subplots of betrayal, love, and backstabbing
• Siegfried -
• The PC's were in the background from the time of the hero's birth to death watching and guarding.
• Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) - Our PC's died so that events could continue on! There was some epic battles and this leg of the campaign owed more to Jack Kirby's Thor then to bits of the opera, this wasn't until I was older and looked at some of the campaign notes.

My friends began to drift into the game & gods died as well as PC's we were amazed. The whole campaign went down very smoothly as clockwork. It was a magical time to be playing in an old school campaign & we knew that gods could die. TSR's mini game  Saga was incredibly in pulling off this campaign. The maps, artwork, etc. all set the tone & Uncle John photo copied up a DM's screen.  At its height we had nine players and three DM's over a night where the Twilight of the Gods was played out. We had a sleep over & it was epic!



As for Secret Wars, the events came & went but the real shocker came when Crisis on Infinite Earth's hit & that brought home another opera and another campaign of adventure, tears, and legends but that kids is another blog post!

 

'Mythic Evil In Old School Campaigns' - Another OSR Commentary

Happy Thanksgiving everyone from Casa De Fabiaschi, I wrote about 'The Cosmic Struggle In Old School Campaigns'.  So why would any of the planar elements & powers care about some lowly PC on some backwater world? Because the lowly adventurer does not stay in the lower ranking tier of the adventurer if they survive long. From the very beginning in Original Dungeons & Dragons the fate of the player character is writ in blood & violence. As the player characters make their way up the levels of their careers the cosmic game plays itself out in the mythology & adventures of the campaign.

The wargaming aspect of Dungeons & Dragons was built in right from the beginning & as well as this came into a more sharper focus & use of

	Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren's  Chainmail.

"Dave Arneson used Chainmail in his Blackmoor campaign, and many elements of Chainmail were carried over wholesale into Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 1974. In fact, the original edition of D&D required that the reader own a copy of Chainmail (as well as the Avalon Hill game Outdoor Survival). The first edition of Dungeons & Dragons frequently defers to Chainmail, for example in the rules for elves and hobbits, in the "Invisibility" and "Conjure Elemental" spells, for the special abilities of monsters, specifically for the text of many monsters including goblins and ghouls, in the magic items descriptions (e.g. "Horn of Blasting") and in the naval combat rules."

But another gaming is playing itself out at the same time as the game plays on. The players might not be aware at all that the battle of power plays out as they assume their place as the movers & shakers of the world. Demons, gods, and other far worse things are watching them from the shadows.

All of this echoes through Dungeons & Dragons right from the beginning with its role springing from the Chainmail rules.

"Shortly before the publication of Chainmail, Gygax wrote to Wargamer's Newsletter describing his intention to add "rules for Tolkien fantasy games" to his medieval miniatures rules, including rules for balrogs, hobbits, trolls, giants and the aforementioned dragons.^[17] In a 2001 interview, Gygax recalled that

...as the members began to get tired of medieval games, and I wasn't, I decided to add fantasy elements to the mix, such as a dragon that had a fire-breath weapon, a hero that was worth four normal warriors, a wizard who could cast fireballs, [which had] the range and hit diameter of a large catapult, and lightning bolts, [which had] the range and hit area of a cannon, and so forth. I converted a plastic stegosaurus into a pretty fair dragon, as there were no models of them around in those days. A 70 mm Elastolin Viking figure, with doll's hair glued to its head, and a club made from a kitchen match and auto body putty, and painted in shades of blue for skin color made a fearsome giant figure. I haunted the dime stores looking for potential additions and eventually found figures to represent ogres, elementals, etc. The players loved the new game, and soon we had twenty or more players showing up for every session.^[18]

The first edition Chainmail Fantasy Supplement added such concepts as elementals, magic swords, and archetypal spells such as "Fireball", "Lightning Bolt" and six other spells"

So right from the beginning mythological elements have been a part of the Original Dungeons & Dragons product set up. Psionics, Demons, Druids, Artifacts & Wandering Monster Tables were all part of the "Eldritch Wizardry" from 1976. This set up the PC's as heroes in the mold of Conan & other Sword & Sorcery characters who were always encountering demons in the wastelands of various novels. The height of war gaming in the 60's & 70's paralleled the rise of Original Dungeons & Dragons.

This means that the dungeon master's campaign world & player's PC's go from being nobodies adventuring on a back water world to suddenly appearing on the multi dimensional stage the second their PC's encounter their first demon or devil. Because waiting right in the wings are the minions of the gods who be more then happy to claim a soul for the armies of the gods. This goes back to mythologies the world over.

This all ties back with the rise from lowly adventurer to king or wizard along the steady levels of the game. "Eldritch Wizardry" gets a Hell of a lot of undeserved heat almost literally. Check out the B.S. in this Amazon review from a verified purchaser songe ; "This book contains sections on the five areas mentioned in the title of the review. Half of the book dealt with psionics.

The only real problem with this book is the decision the writers made to jump into the world of Satanism and demonism in it. I don't believe anyone on the team were believers in it. I've heard that Gary Gygax himself was a Jehovah's Witness. I think it was just an exploration of a type of fantasy that existed more prevalently in those days. One example I am aware of is the movie "The Black Cat" starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi (1934). In that movie, Boris Karloff's character was a Satanist. After saying the word "Satanist" though, no further mention is made of the concept.

The 50s and 60s were pretty innocent. Evil stuff like we see today didn't much exist back then. The words were merely just mentioned for the basic thrill it gave everyone and then nothing much deeper was ever explored. The same goes for this book. Except for the mention of the word "Demon" and the idiot who chose to put a painting of a naked woman on a sacrificial altar on the cover, the book is pretty innocent. Honestly speaking, the only reason why there are statistics for demon and devils in this book, is so that players can go and find them and kill them.

It was really too bad though. The cover of this book and the mentioning of Satan and other devils in Dragon magazine really put a bad and undeserved stink on this game."



By the way its diabolism oh reviewer, the real reason that the demons are in the game is to act as adventure set pieces & vile villains in the vein of mythology & pop culture for adventures. PC knights, paladins, clerics, etc. are their to battle these evils there by pulling their respective worlds from back water to chess piece on the board of the multiverse. This is the actual function of alignment in the game & clerics are one of the prime agents of the gods in the game. Once again this great reviewer of Basic D&D spells this out the form and function of alignment in his review in part one of Basic D&D. I highly recommend you take a look.




Player characters are subject to forces beyond their ken the moment they step into their first dungeon. The gods are watching them.
All of this is pretty much spelled out in the Original Dungeons & Dragons Gods, Demi Gods, & Heroes By James Ward & Robert Kuntz & even pushes on the Arthurian legends of King Arthur & his knights. The struggle between the otherworld, the worldly, & the quests of the divine is intertwined throughout that mythological & literary tradition.

So let me push this who commentary into a modern OSR context for you oh dear reader. With retroclone games such as Swords & Wizardry, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, & even Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition it would at first seem that these struggles & tussles with the divine & demonic might not have any place within them. This isn't true at all. These forces are at the center of the struggle of these games. There are vast alien & demonic forces right at the heart of Lamentations of the Flame Princess where a first level wizard can use the Summon spell to get themselves into a world of trouble. I've actually used a summoning spell going wrong to be the center of a beginning adventure for an LoFP game. In Swords & Wizardry there are numerous adventures where the demonic plays a central role.
The forces of chaos are front & center in the 'Weird Tales' source material of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea with its alignment system which states that the forces of chaos wish to tear apart civilization. The forces of law wish to save it & guess whose there to save it all!?

A favorite art piece from AS&SH second edition.


Last night I mentioned a Near East occult text with ties to the blog post woven through out and tonight will be no different with me using the Abu Maʿshar to tie things together.
"Abu Maʿshar, Latinized as Albumasar (also Albusar, Albuxar; full name Abū Maʿshar Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Balkhī أبو معشر جعفر بن محمد بن عمر البلخي ; 10 Aug 787 – 9 Mar 886, AH 171–272),^[3] was an early Persian^[4][5][6] Muslim astrologer, thought to be the greatest astrologer of the Abbasid court in Baghdad.^[2] While he was not a major innovator, his practical manuals for training astrologers profoundly influenced Muslim intellectual history and, through translations, that of western Europe and Byzantium.^[3]

Abu Ma'shar was a Persian nationalist"

So not only is the Abu Ma'shar a corner stone of Western occult tradition but its great real world occult resource that not only touches on the celestial, the demonic, etc, etc. But the 'Kitāb al‐milal wa‐ʾl‐duwal ("Book on religions and dynasties"), probably his most important work, commented on in the major works of Roger Bacon, Pierre d'Ailly, and Pico della Mirandola' 

Also hints at the greater workings of heroes, knights, etc. in their struggles against the evils of the universe against a cosmic background.  Its just the type of real world resource that could make a perfect resource or capstone for an OD&D or Lamentations of the Flame Princess game.

In the end the only thing that stands between the weirdly dangerous & demonic forces of the other dimensions is your PC's. The may succeed in their struggles or fail utterly but in the end the clock keeps on ticking invisible against the patterns of the campaign. This is part of the essence of old school play. For now keep those dice rolling.

'The Cosmic Struggle In Old School Campaigns' An OSR Commentary

So its been a Thanksgiving run around kinda day hence the lateness of this blog post but there's been something bothering me about B/X Dungeons & Dragons & its various retroclone bastard children for sometime. Campaign settings are planar backwater worlds, the struggles of adventurers,the epic fights, etc. all are very minor on the greater stage of occult circles & even the retroclone settings. This issue is something that I noticed going over Original Dungeons & Dragons, Holmes, Mentzer, and even the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia. Cosmically speaking in the terms of the greater backdrop of the occult universe your heroes struggles don't mean a whole lot or does it?



What really kicked this off was me looking through Holmes Dungeons & Dragons last night & then  reading about The Ghayat-al-Hakim or Picatrix posted by RpgPundit. 
The Picatrix could the lynch pin to an entire old school campaign because its a huge part of Arabic occult history. Wiki has a solid entry on it but the gist of it goes something like this;
" Picatrix is the name used today, for a 400-page book of magic and astrology originally written in Arabic under the title غاية الحكيم Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm, which most scholars assume was originally written in the middle of the 11th century,^[1] though an argument for composition in the first half of the 10th century has been made.^[2] The Arabic title translates as The Aim of the Sage or The Goal of The Wise."

Basically Picatrix is one of the corner stones of Near East Occultism but personally I prefer the writings of Albumasar for understanding more of the pillars of European occult tradition. We'll get back to the Picatrix in a moment.
When you begin to look into the monsters, treasures, & other adventure elements of the old school on thing becomes apparent, the PC's are the heroes. They're deeds are going to change the history of the campaign setting or their bones will molder & decay for others to find. This isn't the cosmicism of HP Lovecraft but very nature of Dungeons & Dragons style dungeon mastering & adventure playing  that happens to line up with this style of belief.  So let's turn the introductory aspect of Holmes on its pulpy ear.

Many times though out Dungeons & Dragons  the fact is that Earth, Greyhawk, Avalon, etc. are all cosmic back water settings in the wars,struggles,battles of the greater occult & planar universe. This means that the deities, monsters, etc. are all chess pieces in the larger context of the war between the forces of the universe. There isn't simply one front in this meta war but many.
This was something that was mirrored in  Original Dungeons & Dragons's Eldritch Wizardry & Gods, Demi Gods, & Heroes not to mention Paul Anderson's  Three Hearts & Three Lions which gets quoted so often about in certain OSR circles. So were the writers & designers of Dungeons & Dragons trying to promote the occult and lead our children to the infernal?


TSR 2005 Dungeons & Dragons D&D Original Supplement III 3 Eldritch Wizardry 8th
Printing
Umm no they were trying to use the trappings & ideas of mythology to create a viable set of tools for old school play so you could design campaign setting of your own. You can even see this evidenced in this video review of Holmes where the commentator brings up the point that Holmes was a transitional set of rules until Advanced Dungeons & Dragons hit the market.

This means that the mythology of 'Chaos vs Law' has always been a part of the equation of Dungeons & Dragons which in turn plays its own part in the mythologies of the cosmicism of HP Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith & the Lovecraft circle of writers. Its very operatic in its own terms. Now we come back to the Picatrix which according to Eugenio Garin," Astrology in the Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life" , Routledge, 1983, p. 49"The work's point of departure is the unity of reality divided into symmetrical and corresponding degrees, planes or worlds: a reality stretched between two poles: the original One, God the source of all existence, and man, the microcosm, who, with his science (scientia) brings the dispersion back to its origin, identifying and using their correspondences"


This is exactly the sort of thing that we see in Gods, Demi Gods, & Heroes by James Ward & Robert Kuntz. It taps into the types of influences that we've seen in popular  comic books for years especially those of Jack Kirby in both his Marvel & classic DC days.



On the more contemporary side of the OSR, Lamentations of the Flame Princess by James Raggi IV, Dark  Albion By RPGPundit,  & even The Midderlands Additions From  MonkeyBlood Design all take advantage of their settings as planar back waters.  There are far worse monsters, gods, and things out in the greater universe that can wreck the PC's.


But that's always been my point before the PC's are the heroes & in terms of adventures regardless of level their struggles define the frame work of the campaign. They may raise the bar from back water to stage presence. For Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition or any of the other retroclone systems that might not be a good thing. For many science fantasy authors the age of heroes has passed but the PC's have a chance to bring it back. Der Ring des Nibelungen is a fine example of the consequences of interfering in the workings of the gods & its repercussions for a campaign setting.


Recently Oakes Spalding on the Save Vs Wands blog did a quite interesting & expansive look into demons in Demons in Holmes,the Monster Manual and the Players Handbook. My conclusion is that demons are a fulcrum tool to kick a campaign into a higher gear or bring the PC's onto the larger stage of adventure. This is where I think that a campaign world goes from back water to player in the cosmic scheme of things. The PC's actions, struggles, deaths, and triumphs are what make the mythology & difference in the campaign.

OSR Commentary - High Level Play, AD&D Dieties & Demi Gods, & Operatic Old School Campaigns With 'Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)'

So another GenCon is on us & social media is a buzz with the latest Con news, numerous pictures, etc. All my best to my young friends & family that are there.The amount of buzz coming out this year's GenCon reminds me of  Eighty Four & the year I learned about some important lessons on campaign management.

If you're following me on G+  then you probably know that I've twisted my ankle pretty bad & I've been flat on my rear for the last day or so. I'm alright. Nothing broken, or hurt except my pride. But I've been flat on my back for a day, icing the ankle, losing time with work, & actually using this time productively. Mediating on the seminal year of '84, there were two very important things that happened, issue one of  Secret Wars was released from Marvel in the Summer of '84 & The Marvel Super Heroes rpg came out.


Suddenly every geek, nerd, etc. was rushing down to the comic shop & grabbing the comics. They also dropped Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons like bad habits. Eighty Four was a very different time period in table top role playing games, things were a bit more fickle on a local level. The comic book craze was in full swing, there were two or three comic shops in my home town. The local war gaming club split into two clubs & there were four D&D after school groups. Players & DM's had their pick of campaigns from Gamma World to AD&D first edition with numerous options. That was alright but folks were suddenly looking for something different & with numerous DM's there was a bit of a cut throat atmosphere. That Summer I found myself without players or a campaign due to circumstances & one of my co dungeon masters moving away. What the Hell was I going to do? This was also the year I had to get a job & that Summer my adopted Uncle John took me on to his spread up in Goshen,Ct. John was a retired RAF pilot who married an American, he was very good friends with my dad. He came down to Ct to be with his wife's family after being in New York state back in the Seventies where he & my dad had first hooked up as friends. His children were sort of my child hood friends but we didn't see as much of each other as we'd like. So he had agreed to take me on & get me out of my parents hair for that Summer. Also to avoid getting the crap kicked out of me by the bullies in the neighborhood where I lived.
He was an avid OD&D & AD&D player & dungeon master so it was a natural that I was talking non stop about Marvel's Secret Wars. Well, Uncle John got a wee bit pissed at me for not taking the situation in hand & pulling myself up by my boot straps. Many of the local DM's at that time were using Lord of the Rings as the basis for their own home games & I mean like every other one! Conan was a part of Appendix 'N' sure but I needed something different. I needed an edge. It was John's wife Betty that came to the rescaue suggesting Richard Wagner's 'Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)'
"Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied. The composer termed the cycle a "Bühnenfestspiel" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a Vorabend ("preliminary evening"). It is often referred to as the Ring Cycle, Wagner's Ring, or simply The Ring."
Out came Deities & Demi Gods & we were suddenly minor demi gods playing parts in the opera's events.This became an epic long Summer campaign with numerous high level events, love affairs, betrayals, etc. and our PC's were right in the middle of it!

Uncle John used TSR's Saga & his sons were my co players & I was co dungeon master, this was as much to help me through some of the depression that I had as it was to get the campaign events moving. The events followed the opera:

• Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold) - There were bits & pieces taken from The Against The Giants series to spice things up & some Drow interference with the Rhinegold.
• Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) there were other subplots of betrayal, love, and backstabbing
• Siegfried -
• The PC's were in the background from the time of the hero's birth to death watching and guarding.
• Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) - Our PC's died so that events could continue on! There was some epic battles and this leg of the campaign owed more to Jack Kirby's Thor then to bits of the opera, this wasn't until I was older and looked at some of the campaign notes.

My friends began to drift into the game & gods died as well as PC's we were amazed. The whole campaign went down very smoothly as clockwork. It was a magical time to be playing in an old school campaign & we knew that gods could die. TSR's mini game  Saga was incredibly in pulling off this campaign. The maps, artwork, etc. all set the tone & Uncle John photo copied up a DM's screen.  At its height we had nine players and three DM's over a night where the Twilight of the Gods was played out. We had a sleep over & it was epic!



As for Secret Wars, the events came & went but the real shocker came when Crisis on Infinite Earth's hit & that brought home another opera and another campaign of adventure, tears, and legends but that kids is another blog post!