Designing Martian Adventures In The Warriors of the Red Planet Rpg - Edgar Rice Burroughs The Mastermind of Mars

 So I've been reviewing my notes on Edgar Rice Burrough's The Mastermind of Mars & you can read about my experiences using this ERB classic with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons resources on the blog here. 

The Mastermind of Mars does several interesting things one of which is describing in some detail the country of Thool & deep details on the city-state of Phundahl. Which is interesting because we almost but not quite get a deeper look into some of the underside of this city state. While there isn't anything unseemly about it the citystate is a bit sleazy. Which makes a perfect location for adventurers on Barsoom or Mars. Ras Thavas is an incredible resource or super science for a party of adventurers. 
 Martian royalty are dynastic jerks because of the very system that Barsoom employs. Because of royal commitments, treaties, and dwidling resources warfare and cloak and dagger operations are only a prelude to war. And as we've seen with a Mastermind of Mars assassins are the norm not the exception to the rule of removing royal or mundane problems. The Warriors of the Red Planet Rpg also plugs into this sanctioned assassination and duelist culture that infects Mars. Behind the scenes murders,poisoning, etc have to be rampant throughout Mars. And this probably leads to social instability. Could some of the abandoned cities on Mars actually be a result of cultural madness as citystate resources and issues dry up?! This is something we've seen throughout the series and there are illusions to it throughout the Barsoom books.  
Could there be a more desparate and edgy reason for the dungeon crawling on Barsoom to stop the decline of the planet?! And is the decline artificial in nature. Hear me out here. Are the Therns  responsible for the planetary decline?! If they can keep the races of Mars dependent upon them then their continued control is assured. Or is it? Adventurers are definitely a destabilizing element in the plans of the Therns or at least they are within our games. 

Using More Old School Resources For Designing Martian Adventures In The Warriors of the Red Planet Rpg

So I've been looking at some of Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom literature especially the Amazon entry on the Master Mind of Mars which has a great summery of the book; "In The Master Mind of Mars, Ulysses Paxton (late of the U.S. Army and long an admirer of John Carter) finds himself in the hands of that extraordinary scientist-surgeon Ras Thavas of Barsoorn. Renamed Vad Varo, the former U.S Army Captain is trained by Ras Thavas as an assistant in the 'transfer of life' operations for which the master mind is famous. Vad Varo witnesses one such transfer-the wicked old mind Xaxa, Jeddara of Phuundahl, into the young and lovely body of a nameless victim, while the mind of victim number 4296-E-263-H is now housed in the body of an ancient crone. When Vad Varo brings 4296-E-263-H to life he discovers she is Valla Dia and falls in love with the spirit and mind of the girl imprisoned in the 1000-year-old body that had been Xaxa's Incredible dangers and adventures follow as Vad Varo, determined to restore Val la Dia to her proper form, battles his way through weird countries and savage peoples until at last he meets with John Carter, Warlord of Mars, and brings Valla Dia safely to her home in Duhor." 

 When it comes too the Mastermind of Mars we have a real grab back of locations from the swamps of Duhar to the streets of Lower Helium. This all ties into what I've said before on this blog.  It was actually Curst Saden 2010 review that could my attention;"In the sixth installment of the Martian Tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs, it focusses on a new man from Earth named Ulysses Paxton, who after dying in World War One finds himself in a strange facility on Barsoom run by a crazy old man that is master of modifying bodies. There Ulysses is apprenticed by this old man and he assists him in various surgeries. He meets the love of his life, a beautiful woman, only to discover the man he works for has stolen her body and now houses the brain of the wicked Jeddara (queen) Xaxa. Thus Ulysses goes on a quest to find Xaxa and recover the body of the woman he loves. To accomplish this he recruits a religious zealot, an atheist and a Great White Ape that has had it's brain spliced with that of a man's and thus can talk.

This story is a little slow at first but it's very interesting. It contains action and suspense. For once this is not a tale about rescuing the damsel in distress, which is a nice break (unless you count the quest for the body Xaxa stole, so it's like the body in distress.....)

It's weird but it's fun. I recommend it." Jeddara  Xaxa is in my opinion only the start of the wicked Barsoomian royalty. Stay with me for a moment, there's a huge hierachry of royals each vying to out do each other to get ahead to the thrones of Barsoom. Backstabbing, asassination, and worse are the operating rules for Barsoomian royalty. How do I know any of this?! Because of the fact that assassins are legally employed & used throughout Mars.  This ties directly into the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition Assassin rules found in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeonmaster's Guide. 

Again totally stealing this photo from Wayne's Books. 

The Warriors of the Red Planet Rpg also plugs into this sancitioned asssassination and duelist culture that infects Mars. Behind the scenes murders,poisoning, etc have to be rampant throughout Mars. Only this style of murder is going to be ritualized and prettied up with warrrior codes. This ties into many of the tribal elements that Leigh Brackett wrote about. So in other words the alignment of Lawful Evil certainly fits the assassins of Mars. 
This brings up Dragon magazine issue #64 with it's Assassins Guild article which goes into traditional assasins guilds. These secretive organizations could easily be applied to Mars. 

Using Old School Resources For Designing Martian Adventures In The Warriors of the Red Planet Rpg & Beyond

  Tonight has seen me working on a Warriors of the Red Planet Rpg Martian urban campaign leg. This has led me down some twisted old school paths. This includes Edgar Rice Burroughs literature. 

One of the first books that I busted out was my 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide. This includes some additional urban encounter tables & a city generator. Also the random dungeon generator helps a ton for sketching out the underworld especially if your players are familar with the Warriors of the Red Planet rpg rule book.
Again totally stealing this photo from Wayne's Books. 

+

 There's something very primal about designing your own urban encounters imagining in your mind's eye strolling down city streets while against the radium glow of a street light bandits await in a nearby alleyway. The thing about Martian cities is the fact that these are melting pots for many different tribes of Red Men ala Lee Brackett's Martian literature. 

This brings up the treasure which is going to be a 'special hoard' this is going to be designed using James Ward's article in Dragon magazine issue #9 'Tombs & Crypts'. Because Martian cities are built one on top of another as the centuries roll on. 

This aspect of Martian cities can be seen in Burroughs 'A Fighting Man of Mars' in which we get our only example of Martian dungeon crawling. Speaking of 'The Dragon' magazine there's also Dragon Magazine issue #31 which has two articles on jungles. Mars has extensive jungle environments that everyone seems to forget about. These are essential to the design of old school Martian adventures. There's also 'the Anatomy of The Lich' By Len Lakofka from The Dragon issue #26 because we can see an ancient Martian wishing to preserve themselves as an immortal one way or another. 
The idea of an urban lich operating behind the shadows of some Martian city has lots of appeal too me as a dungeon master. I've been reaching deeply into my bag of old school tricks on this one. 

Michael Whelan artwork used without permission. 

More 'Old Earth' Campaign Inspirations & C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan by Harold Johnson & Jeff R. Leason

 

I'm being squeezed by a giant East Coast snow storm & a head cold but I've got to get my 'Old Earth' hybrid game off the ground. I need to fill out the Western Wastelands of Old Earth quickly & somewhat quietly. So once again I turn to 'an old friend' of Appendix N aficionados namely the 1920's master of dark fantasy A. Merritt.
Namely I'm looking at his 1932 book Dwellers in the Mirage specifically for adapting to use as a hidden ruined landscape for one of the Hyperborean style races in a lost valley in the former location of Alaska.



The book's details are straight on the nose for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition. The time lost hero with past incarnation syndrome, the two love interests, the ancient lost technologies of another age, the traditional Lovecraftian foes of the various peoples of the valley. The plot as explained by Wiki is pretty spot on for almost all of the themes of AS&SH;

"The novel concerns American Leif Langdon who discovers a warm valley in Alaska. Two races inhabit the valley, the Little People and a branch of an ancient Mongolian race; they worship the evil Kraken named Khalk'ru which they summon from another dimension to offer human sacrifice. The inhabitants recognize Langdon as the reincarnation of their long dead hero, Dwayanu. Dwayanu's spirit possesses Langdon and starts a war with the Little People. Langdon eventually fights off the presence of Dwayanu and destroys the Kraken."

The little people sounds like one of the degenerate little men races of Athuer Machen's novels & Robert E. Howard's Cthulhu mythos entries: 

The Great God Pan, Arthur Machen.
The Shining Pyramid, Arthur Machen.
The Three Impostors, Arthur Machen.
The Little People,Robert E. Howard.
Worms of the Earth, Robert E. Howard. 

People of the Dark, Robert E. Howard.
The Children of the Night, Robert E. Howard
The Shadow Kingdom, Robert E. Howard.

We see even more about the origin of the 'little people' of Robert Howard & HP Lovecraft from their letter in July of 1930. The hidden valley's people smack of the same sort of culture as A.Merritt's Moon Pool but there are echoes of H.P. Lovecraft's subterranean civilization  the realm of K'n-yan from "The Mound" by H. P. Lovecraft (ghostwriter) and Zealia Bishop (original idea). The necromancer tyrants of these lands are long passed on but their legacies & subjects remain especially on 'Old Earth'.

This hidden valley routine reminds me of one of my favorite Advanced Dungeons & Dragons modules C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan by Harold Johnson &  Jeff R. Leason. 

The hidden valley of Tamoachan could be another hold over the necromancer tyrants on 'Old Earth'. A locked away gem in the depths of some new volcanic crater of  Earth created when Hyperborea was ripped into space.


The place is a seething location of sacrifice & corruption by a people who have been brain washed by the technologies of the valley long ago. These peoples believe themselves to be the Olman culture of the World of Greyhawk, but are not simply another lost group of refugees who have been manipulated by a far older and more dangerous elder being (more on this puppet master villain later on). The cults & tales of the Hidden Shrine fuel many of the outside world cults who see the lost valley as a type of religious 'Heaven' while the reality is very different.
I'd be adding even more mythos elements and keep the various A.Merritt story & novel locations as adventure locations for the Western Wastelands. There are several adventure elements already in play that I've got to flesh out. I've used the brainwashed
Olman culture bit before and its worked like a charm. Fantastic Novels v03n03 (1949 09) has a version of the  Dwellers in the Mirage  for download but its the one with the tragic ending. "There are variant endings of the work. In the original, Leif's love dies, but the publisher inartistically has her survive. The original tragic ending has been reinstated in some/many recent reprint"

The Lovecraftian Connections Of The Free Issue Of Fantastic Story Quarterly 1951 Winter v02n01 To The 'Old Solar System' Campaign Setting

This was one of the successor reprint pulp magazines to the original runs. There were a number of these magazines after the original pulps houses closed down or evolved into animals on the wilds of the news stands. Many of these issues had a bit of the HP Lovecraft circle of writers in the background of the magazine. Perfect Appendix N fodder. What's this got to do with Dungeons & Dragons? Quite  a bit folks, the science fantasy aspect was hot as many stories were inspired by the various Fantastic Story Quarterly's stable of writers including Gordon R. Dickson's first sale, "Trespass", and stories by Walter M. Miller & Richard Matheson"  




You can read the whole history of Fantastic Story Magazine here. 
What made Fantastic Story different was Ned Pines who was in many ways a visionary behind the scenes comic book & science fiction magazine publisher. If your into public domain comic books & super heroes then the name Ned Pines comes up frequently.
"Fantastic Story Quarterly was a pulp science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1955 by Best Books, a subsidiary imprint of Standard Magazines. The name was changed with the Summer 1951 issue to Fantastic Story Magazine. It was launched to reprint stories from the early years of the science fiction pulp magazines, and was initially intended to carry no new fiction, though in the end every issue contained at least one new story. It was sufficiently successful for Standard to launch Wonder Story Annual as a vehicle for more science fiction reprints, but the success did not last. In 1955 it was merged with Standard's Startling Stories. Original fiction in Fantastic Story included Gordon R. Dickson's first sale, "Trespass", and stories by Walter M. Miller and Richard Matheson" 
Ned Pines connection to Fantastic Story magazine is interesting because of the direction he pushed the publication  in;" In 1936, Ned Pines of Beacon Publications bought Wonder Stories from Gernsback.^[3] Pines changed the title to Thrilling Wonder Stories,^[4] and in 1939 and 1940 added two more sf titles: Startling Stories and Captain Future.^[5][6] Pines had acquired reprint rights to the fiction published in Wonder Stories as part of the transaction, and he instituted a "Hall of Fame" department in Startling Stories to carry some of this material. Captain Future also carried reprint material, but neither Startling nor Captain Future had room for some of the longer stories in the backfile. At the end of the 1940s a boom in science fiction magazines encouraged Pines to issue a new magazine, titled Fantastic Story Quarterly, as a vehicle for reprinting this older material. The original plan was for the magazine to carry no new fiction, but this policy was changed shortly before publication, and at least one new story was included in every issue." 

That brings me to our issue for free download

Fantastic Story Quarterly v02n01 (1951 Winter)

 

  This issue is pivotal to my campaign because it contains not one but three of the H.P. Lovecraft circle of writers. Endo Binder has his novel 'The Enslaved Brains' in this issue in the far future of an alternative 1973, this novel smacks of Great Race of Yith technology gone awry. 


Clark Ashton Smith details his "Captain Volmar"novel A Captivity in Serpens (1931, also known as The Amazing Planet) which has some awesome action as Captain Volmar leads a crew of space explorers  on the ether-powered ship Alcyone.  I've already talked about the connections between The Great Race of Yith, Forbidden Planet, and Captain Volmar here.But 'The Museum' by Frank Belknap Long is a whole other matter. This story services a perfect bridge gap between the Mythos and traditional science fantasy adventures. The concept is about a museum which alters its visitors and staff into alien life forms shapes ala polymorph spell technologies.  Perhaps your adventurers might work for the staff on a few expeditions across time & space. Again this sounds very similar to Great Race of Yith technologies. HP Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time contains many of the technologies described in these stories implied or within the background of the novella.  

 "Stephen Marlowe (born Milton Lesser, August 7, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York, died February 22, 2008 (aged 79), in Williamsburg, Virginia) was an American author of science fiction, mystery novels, and fictional autobiographies of Christopher Columbus, Miguel de Cervantes, and Edgar Allan Poe. He is best known for his detective character Chester Drum, whom he created in the 1955 novel The Second Longest Night. Lesser also wrote under the pseudonyms Adam Chase, Andrew Frazer, C.H. Thames, Jason Ridgway, Stephen Wilder andEllery Queen.

Lesser attended the College of William & Mary, earning his degree in philosophy, marrying Leigh Lang shortly after graduating. The couple divorced in 1962. He was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War"  

Stephen Marlowe wrote under his given name of Milton Lesser and is better known today for his detective fiction then his science fiction creations. In this issue his work on 'When Flame Globes Dance' is perfect fodder for an alien menace on one of the asteroid belt in the 'Old Solar System'. Perhaps these were artificial life form creations left behind by Hyperboreans many thousands of years before. Explorers should be very wary of them. Reign of the Reptiles by A.Connell is again exactly the sort of prehistoric weirdness that one could be finding when messing with time travel and alternative time lines. This novella first appeared in Wonder Stories v7 03. So what does all of this mean? Well  Fantastic Story Quarterly v02n01 (1951 Winter) could be used as a back Appendix S for my 'Old Solar' system campaign in which the PC's begin to suspect that there's far more to the background of the Great Race's time travel & alternative time line efforts. We really have no idea who created the time gateway from the classic original Star Trek Episode City On The Edge of Forever.  But the technology seems eerrily similar to the technologies used by Gary Seven including the Beta 5 computer hidden in his office in Apartment 12B at 811 East 68th Street in New York City. 

And some of the dimensional  travel, alien life forms,etc. described in the 'The Museum' by Frank Belknap Long. Are we really looking at the remains and door stops of the Great Race of Yith as it continues to poke and prod the little ape life forms that the Elder Things accidentally created so many centuries ago? Why? What does this all mean? It means that the war 'The Great Race of Yith' started  continues across many branches of alternative time and space.

This means that the Great Race or its agents could appear anywhere. The fact is that the giant machine from Forbidden Planet is only one of a vast array of mechanisms that have been designed for a slow war that has been fought for billions of years. The danger of the Great Race of Yith & its various branches of the Pnakotic brotherhood become evident. In the 'Old Solar system 'campaign setting there are literally thousands of Great Race mega dungeons scattered across the universe waiting for adventurers to find them. Those players who have played through Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea's Taken From Dunwichknow just how dangerous these bastards can be. 

The Errol Otus depiction of the Great Race of Yith from

the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition

Deities & Demigods remains a personal favorite of mine.

The fact is that there are literally thousands of agents, facilities, & bases belonging to the Great Race scattered across time & space. They continue this horrid 'slow war' across a wide variety of alternative timelines and Earth with little regard for the safety and well being of anyone. 

  They're agents & the cult of the the Pnakotic brotherhood know the truth about the Flying Polyps & why the Mi Go have only the least warriors tending their hives in the Old Solar System. They know what waits in the darkness between the asteroids and its dire horrors only hinted about in this issue of Fantastic Stories. We'll get into that soon kids. Till next time keep those dice rolling!  Stay away from the nippers of the Great Race of Yith!

This post is not an attempt to violate the trade mark or copy right of the film  Forbidden Planet or Star Trek & its attendant properties.  The contents of this post are for entertainment & educational purposes only all writings are the copyright and trade mark of Dark Corner productions

Retro Old School Campaign Set Up With Ray Harryhausen's Clash of the Titans

There's something to be said for going back to the source material when your looking for ideas. In this case we went back to 1981's Clash of the Titans which stars  Harry Hamlin, Judi Bowker, Burgess Meredith, Maggie Smith and Laurence Olivier. "The film features the final work of stop motion visual effects artist Ray Harryhausen. It was released on June 12, 1981 and grossed $41 million at the North American box office."




Sneaking into the Warner Theater on a Saturday afternoon through the side back entrance enabled me and my crew of miscreants to see this film. It was hugely influential on a generation of film goers in the Eighties. Especially gamers, for a time it seemed that you couldn't throw a rock and not hit ten different old school  campaigns all centered around Greek mythology.
The basic plot centers around Argos the land  that Perseus lands in after Zeus's jealous wife Hera sets him down in but there was far more going on around the plot of the film;
"King Acrisius of Argos imprisons his daughter Danaë, jealous of her attracting suitors. When the god Zeus impregnates her, Acrisius banishes his daughter and his newborn grandson Perseus to sea in a wooden chest. In retribution, Zeus kills Acrisius and orders Poseidon to release the last of the Titans, a gigantic sea monster called the Kraken, to destroy Argos. Meanwhile, Danaë and Perseus safely float to the island of Seriphos where Perseus grows to adulthood.
Calibos was always a favorite villain of mine warped by the curse of Zeus into something far more and far less then a man. Calibos has been and continues to be my primer for playing divine curses on NPC's. Even
in this film there is something of the fickle & the undercurrent of the chaotic nature of the Greek Harryhausen gods.


" Calibos, son of the sea goddess Thetis, is a young man engaged to marry Princess Andromeda, the daughter of Queen Cassiopeia and heir to the rich city of Joppa; but for committing several atrocities against Zeus, including hunting and destroying Zeus's sacred flying horses (excepting only Pegasus), Zeus transforms Calibos into a monstrous deformed creature with one hoof, goat-like horns, and a long tail. This left Calibos an outcast where he lived in the swamp. In revenge, Thetis transports an adult Perseus from Seriphos to an abandoned amphitheatre in Joppa, where he is befriended by an elderly poet named Ammon and learns that Andromeda is under a curse and cannot marry unless her suitor successfully answers a riddle whose failures are burned at the stake. In order to aid his son, Zeus sends Perseus a god-crafted helmet from Athena which makes its wearer invisible, a magical sword from Aphrodite, and a shield from Hera. Perseus, wearing the helmet, captures Pegasus and follows Calibos' giant vulture that is carrying Andromeda to learn the next riddle. Perseus is nearly killed by Calibos but manages to sever one of Calibos' hands, losing his helmet in the process."

There are a couple of things to keep in mind for an old school dungeon master looking at Clash of the Titans:

1. The hero & his party of adventurers & hirelings go on a few side quests before achieving their goals. 
2. Scattered all throughout Clash of the Titans are the remains of the world before the gods. This is something that echoes throughout the film. The feeling that there was 'a world before'. The Kraken itself can be considered a part of this.
3. The prison of Medusa at the edge of the Underworld is pure dungeon crawl & has many classic elements of an old school adventure including a guardian monster in the form of the two headed dog Dioskilos.
4. There are other echoes of earlier Greek mythology films such as Jason and the Argonauts from 1963. 
5. Burgess Meredith as Ammon is a perfect pure bard, sage, and councilor NPC & his performance makes an excellent reference for old school DM's 
6. The interaction between the gods and humans in '81's Clash of the Titans is fickle at best and downright dangerous at worst. This sort of interaction might be typical for human and god interactions. 
7. There is treasure just sitting around several of the picture's adventure locations and this could lead a party of adventurers to follow the trails blazed by Perseus and co.   
8. The Kraken isn't the only monster that the gods have imprisoned. There's a bunch of horrors implied by the film but never seen. 
9. There isn't much back story given to the Stygian Witches but its clear that their very dangerous. Could a relative of  the PC's have been one of their victims? This might make for a good side quest. 
10. The gods make several references to the moves of other humans on their chess board. Could these be the PC's interfering in the plans of the gods? 

"Perseus seeks a way to defeat the Kraken, while Pegasus is captured by Calibos and his men. Zeus commands Athena to give Perseus her owl Bubo; but she orders Hephaestus to build a golden replica of Bubo instead, who leads Perseus to the Stygian Witches. By taking their magic eye Perseus forces them to reveal that the only way to defeat the Kraken is by using the head of Medusa, who lives on an island in the River Styx at the edge of the Underworld. The next day, the group continues on their journey without Andromeda and Ammon, who return to Joppa."

The Kraken comes to claim Andromeda.

"On the Gorgon's island with three soldiers by his side, Perseus fights Medusa's guardian, a two-headed dog named Dioskilos, who kills one of his companions but Perseus intervenes in the nick of time and kills the beast. Perseus leads his two remaining allies into the Gorgon's lair. His two other companions die on encounter with Medusa herself; she shoots one of the soldiers with an arrow and turns the other to stone. Perseus uses the reflective underside of his shield to deceive Medusa, decapitates her, and collects her head; but the shield is dissolved by her caustic blood. As Perseus and his party set to return, Calibos enters their camp, forces Bubo into the water, scares the horses away, and punctures the cloak carrying Medusa's head, causing her blood to spill and produce three giant scorpions called Scorpiochs. The scorpions attack and Thallo is able to kill one of them, but he and his fighting companion are both killed by Calibos himself. Perseus slays the other two scorpions and thereafter kills Calibos and grieves Thallo's death."

The scorpion scene still creeps me out but its indicative of the fact that the mortals are playing with the materials, items, & events of the Greek gods. This is one big entertainment for those same gods something again implied in '63's 'Jason & the Argonauts' film. In fact there's always been deep connections between Clash of the Titans & Jason & The Argonauts.
Is the whole set up with the Kraken simply another entertainment in a long line of such events of the gods? Both pictures imply this very thing.

There's this feeling to both pictures that there's far more going on then we the audience are seeing. There have been other heroes & adventures that we are not even aware of. These films imply a history and deep backstory that one gets from a Harryhausen film. I'm not waxing lyrical here or clouded by nostalgia. These were films with weight to them and mythological backgrounds to them for old school campaigns. An early look into Clash of the Titans can be found in Starlog issue #38 which has a really solid article on the film.

So the Kraken is defeated & all ends well for Joppa. Well not exactly you've still got the gods plotting their next move on the city state & then there are the families of the poor bastards that went with Perseus.  This is where the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition Deities & Demigods book comes in. Almost but not quite everything is stated up in this book except the Kraken.



I know that your thinking that surely you can't plug this into Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea? Can you? Well actually you can. The heroes & some background elements were placed in the constellations by Zeus himself. What if there's shadows of these NPC's in the stellar namesakes. Could there be a quest in the making between the Outer Darkness of the night between the stars? I have a feeling of something along those lines. 

For now keep em rolling!  Clash of the Titans remains an old favorite of mine and millions out there.  A perfect game night film and perhaps set up for your old school campaigns?

The Lovecraftian Connections Of The Free Issue Of Fantastic Story Quarterly 1951 Winter v02n01 To The 'Old Solar System' Campaign Setting

Its eleven thirty  in the morning & over the weekend the latest OSR stuff is now dying as people get back to work.This was one of the successor reprint pulp magazines to the original runs. There were a number of these magazines after the original pulps houses closed down or evolved into animals on the wilds of the news stands. Many of these issues had a bit of the HP Lovecraft circle of writers in the background of the magazine. Perfect Appendix N fodder. What's this got to do with Dungeons & Dragons? Quite  a bit folks, the science fantasy aspect was hot as many stories were inspired by the various Fantastic Story Quarterly's stable of writers including Gordon R. Dickson's first sale, "Trespass", and stories by Walter M. Miller & Richard Matheson"  




You can read the whole history of Fantastic Story Magazine here. 
What made Fantastic Story different was Ned Pines who was in many ways a visionary behind the scenes comic book & science fiction magazine publisher. If your into public domain comic books & super heroes then the name Ned Pines comes up frequently.
"Fantastic Story Quarterly was a pulp science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1955 by Best Books, a subsidiary imprint of Standard Magazines. The name was changed with the Summer 1951 issue to Fantastic Story Magazine. It was launched to reprint stories from the early years of the science fiction pulp magazines, and was initially intended to carry no new fiction, though in the end every issue contained at least one new story. It was sufficiently successful for Standard to launch Wonder Story Annual as a vehicle for more science fiction reprints, but the success did not last. In 1955 it was merged with Standard's Startling Stories. Original fiction in Fantastic Story included Gordon R. Dickson's first sale, "Trespass", and stories by Walter M. Miller and Richard Matheson" 
Ned Pines connection to Fantastic Story magazine is interesting because of the direction he pushed the publication  in;" In 1936, Ned Pines of Beacon Publications bought Wonder Stories from Gernsback.^[3] Pines changed the title to Thrilling Wonder Stories,^[4] and in 1939 and 1940 added two more sf titles: Startling Stories and Captain Future.^[5][6] Pines had acquired reprint rights to the fiction published in Wonder Stories as part of the transaction, and he instituted a "Hall of Fame" department in Startling Stories to carry some of this material. Captain Future also carried reprint material, but neither Startling nor Captain Future had room for some of the longer stories in the backfile. At the end of the 1940s a boom in science fiction magazines encouraged Pines to issue a new magazine, titled Fantastic Story Quarterly, as a vehicle for reprinting this older material. The original plan was for the magazine to carry no new fiction, but this policy was changed shortly before publication, and at least one new story was included in every issue." 

That brings me to our issue for free download

Fantastic Story Quarterly v02n01 (1951 Winter)

 

  This issue is pivotal to my campaign because it contains not one but three of the H.P. Lovecraft circle of writers. Endo Binder has his novel 'The Enslaved Brains' in this issue in the far future of an alternative 1973, this novel smacks of Great Race of Yith technology gone awry. 


Clark Ashton Smith details his "Captain Volmar"novel A Captivity in Serpens (1931, also known as The Amazing Planet) which has some awesome action as Captain Volmar leads a crew of space explorers  on the ether-powered ship Alcyone.  I've already talked about the connections between The Great Race of Yith, Forbidden Planet, and Captain Volmar here.But 'The Museum' by Frank Belknap Long is a whole other matter. This story services a perfect bridge gap between the Mythos and traditional science fantasy adventures. The concept is about a museum which alters its visitors and staff into alien life forms shapes ala polymorph spell technologies.  Perhaps your adventurers might work for the staff on a few expeditions across time & space. Again this sounds very similar to Great Race of Yith technologies. HP Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time contains many of the technologies described in these stories implied or within the background of the novella.  

 "Stephen Marlowe (born Milton Lesser, August 7, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York, died February 22, 2008 (aged 79), in Williamsburg, Virginia) was an American author of science fiction, mystery novels, and fictional autobiographies of Christopher Columbus, Miguel de Cervantes, and Edgar Allan Poe. He is best known for his detective character Chester Drum, whom he created in the 1955 novel The Second Longest Night. Lesser also wrote under the pseudonyms Adam Chase, Andrew Frazer, C.H. Thames, Jason Ridgway, Stephen Wilder andEllery Queen.

Lesser attended the College of William & Mary, earning his degree in philosophy, marrying Leigh Lang shortly after graduating. The couple divorced in 1962. He was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War"  

Stephen Marlowe wrote under his given name of Milton Lesser and is better known today for his detective fiction then his science fiction creations. In this issue his work on 'When Flame Globes Dance' is perfect fodder for an alien menace on one of the asteroid belt in the 'Old Solar System'. Perhaps these were artificial life form creations left behind by Hyperboreans many thousands of years before. Explorers should be very wary of them. Reign of the Reptiles by A.Connell is again exactly the sort of prehistoric weirdness that one could be finding when messing with time travel and alternative time lines. This novella first appeared in Wonder Stories v7 03. So what does all of this mean? Well  Fantastic Story Quarterly v02n01 (1951 Winter) could be used as a back Appendix S for my 'Old Solar' system campaign in which the PC's begin to suspect that there's far more to the background of the Great Race's time travel & alternative time line efforts. We really have no idea who created the time gateway from the classic original Star Trek Episode City On The Edge of Forever.  But the technology seems eerrily similar to the technologies used by Gary Seven including the Beta 5 computer hidden in his office in Apartment 12B at 811 East 68th Street in New York City. 

And some of the dimensional  travel, alien life forms,etc. described in the 'The Museum' by Frank Belknap Long. Are we really looking at the remains and door stops of the Great Race of Yith as it continues to poke and prod the little ape life forms that the Elder Things accidentally created so many centuries ago? Why? What does this all mean? It means that the war 'The Great Race of Yith' started  continues across many branches of alternative time and space.

This means that the Great Race or its agents could appear anywhere. The fact is that the giant machine from Forbidden Planet is only one of a vast array of mechanisms that have been designed for a slow war that has been fought for billions of years. The danger of the Great Race of Yith & its various branches of the Pnakotic brotherhood become evident. In the 'Old Solar system 'campaign setting there are literally thousands of Great Race mega dungeons scattered across the universe waiting for adventurers to find them. Those players who have played through Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea's Taken From Dunwichknow just how dangerous these bastards can be. 

The Errol Otus depiction of the Great Race of Yith from

the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition

Deities & Demigods remains a personal favorite of mine.

The fact is that there are literally thousands of agents, facilities, & bases belonging to the Great Race scattered across time & space. They continue this horrid 'slow war' across a wide variety of alternative timelines and Earth with little regard for the safety and well being of anyone. 

  They're agents & the cult of the the Pnakotic brotherhood know the truth about the Flying Polyps & why the Mi Go have only the least warriors tending their hives in the Old Solar System. They know what waits in the darkness between the asteroids and its dire horrors only hinted about in this issue of Fantastic Stories. We'll get into that soon kids. Till next time keep those dice rolling!  Stay away from the nippers of the Great Race of Yith!

This post is not an attempt to violate the trade mark or copy right of the film  Forbidden Planet or Star Trek & its attendant properties.  The contents of this post are for entertainment & educational purposes only all writings are the copyright and trade mark of Dark Corner productions