Galloway vs. Gaming Gonzo...

Devotees of D&D in the early 1980s were lucky to encounter Bruce Galloway's master treatise: The Highest Level of All Fantasy Wargaming. The title was a bold claim, clickbait in the days before clickbait, intriguing to those of us with a bottomless appetite for whatever gaming we could get our hands on. And it was certainly ubiquitous. As I recall, my 14-year-old self found his copy on Winn-Dixie's magazine rack. Mom didn't approve of its occult artwork, but knowing her offspring, she acquiesced with little argument... 

Between the casual, unexamined sexism (obvious even to a teenage boy) and overly dense rules keen on subverting the players' agency, a fine collection of essays spanning fantasy literature's greatest themes got the reader thinking, and its medieval reference materials may have been its ultimate triumph. And in all fairness to Galloway, his obvious distaste for Gor tempered some of its generational misogyny. His remains a seminal offering, but my younger self rejected what was clearly his leading argument, summarized below: 

"In many ways, however, D&D is unsatisfactory...The party of adventurers will usually be an oddball assortment of warriors wearing armor and bearing weapons from a wide variety of cultures and historical periods; Black and White magicians; thieves, clerics...Apart from the sheer unlikelihood of such a motley crew being able to agree on any course of action without coming to blows, why should they associate together in the first place...Motive is the key word. D&D scenarios exist in a vacuum, and that is why we call them unsatisfactory...a fantasy scenario must contain its own consistent and intrinsic logic."

This was doubtless a marketing ploy. Why buy the book? Here's why. Galloway must have understood that the rules weren't imposing a setting so much as providing raw materials, drawn from history's abundant source, to fashion the campaign. Want history? Referees can make it happen. But most campaigns don't even occupy our universe, redrawing the lines beyond all reproach. Dwarves invented Renaissance plate armor, elves the English longbow to their specifications and on their timeline. This, alone, negates any argument...    

But there's more. There's gonzo. Take the game as offered and you do get a collection of armor and weaponry. You absolutely achieve that motley assemblage. Chaotic wizards, respectable, law-abiding heroes. And so what? There's this thing called fun, and an eldritch logic can still prevail in this environment. The introduction of dragons and wizards, alone, violates realism, and the same logic which allows this can exert its own consequences when some rule gets broken. In Wonderland, this intrinsic logic can be different.

These objections percolated within my adolescent brain, and to his substantial credit, Galloway appeared to anticipate as much, beseeching his D&D-oriented readers to see the power of his point despite such disagreements. Galloway's greatest achievement was a medieval reference manual complete with essays on everything from fantasy literature to the art (indeed, the necessity) of world building. And it taught this 14-year-old the value of his personal intuitions and how best to turn disagreements into something worthwhile...

Note: I still disagree on many counts, but find things to praise in this historic publication, including, most especially, its astrology, angels, demons, and solid essays.