A Twisted Tale of the Tongue...

nce upon a time, when yours truly was a much younger DM, I planned what was supposed to be your standard town-next-to-the-dungeon affair. Problem was, real-world time was running out. We were kids with curfews, after all, with less than an hour before the world froze in place until our next session. They’d gotten to the town in question, when someone decided to ask about the place. Fair enough, and it was just the sort of thing to fill half an hour. I put on my improv hat and got to work spinning a tale off the top of my head into the party's receptive ears...

_____________________________________

There was a country fair. With tents. Peddlers. And a menagerie of exotic monsters for the amusement of the townsfolk. Out front, there was a firedrake tied to a wooden stake, secured with a length of rope. Now understand, all of this was window dressing. Flavor text for the coming adventure. I didn’t expect the players to actually engage, which was a mistake of epic proportions from the perspective of my plans. Someone had the Untie cantrip, and the rope was history. I’d retroactively declare the latter as being enchanted to keep the monster docile, but the result was the same. Said firedrake ran riot in the town.

______________________________

Tents burned. People died. The menagerie was released upon the unsuspecting villagers. And the party? They quietly departed with their best it-wasn’t me nonchalance. What was supposed to be a bit of fluff to make the setting more interesting had become something all too real. My cause wasn’t lost, however. I recycled the dungeon, miraculously relocated to another village, and we all had a good laugh about it. But it was an object lesson in how anything said about the setting becomes a material reality, and ones your players will absolutely exploit. So ends my little tale of the tongue. 

______________________________

What was supposed to be some throwaway lines to describe a village was too tempting for its own good. My tongue led me astray, and I followed because it was fun spinning such a colorful yarn on a weekday night. I mean, what could possibly go wrong in 30 minutes? Apparently, the destruction of an entire town for starters. In a spoken-word theater of the mind, words are divinely empowered. But was it really so wrong? We had fun. And we got one of those memories that sort of pays for itself. If gaming isn’t about that, I can’t imagine what it’s possibly for. Anyway, end of story. See everyone next month...

__________________________________________________________________________

Excavating My First Fantasy...

I've been a fantasy buff going way back; but my introduction to the genre came by way of a non-fantastical source: dinosaurs and prehistory. Not surprising. Kids gravitate towards dinosaurs because they're truly the stuff of wonder, the same reason they like superheroes and Saturday morning cartoons. But dinosaurs were actual things described by dry facts appealing only to those adults who research them. That said, while today's youngsters enjoy access to better information, a child of the 70s got something different...

We got fantasy dinosaurs. Humans and dinosaurs living together. Pteranodons with bat-like wings and iguanas masquerading as the real thing. We got men in obvious suits stalking astronauts on prehistoric planets and bikini-clad cavewomen, inexplicably shaven (talk about fantasy), sleeping in monstrous eggshells. It was the stuff of 1950s drive-ins and late-night screenings on black-and-white TV. In other words, a fantasized version of reality channeling all the excitement dinosaurs, in their terrifying glory, had coming.

Comic books reinforced the illusion, and the Aurora Prehistoric Scenes model kits popular at the time implied an intersection of fantasy and reality that resonates even now. And if you appreciated dinosaurs, you might also enjoy the dragons of mythology and radioactive kaiju, dragons by another name, threatening (and sometimes saving) humanity from calamities both alien and earthborn. In short, those dinosaurs were a gateway drug to an endless buffet of the fantastic. And there was no shortage of the stuff, as the following shows...   

The Lost World (movie, 1925). An early Willis O'Brien masterpiece.

King Kong (movie, 1933). More stop-motion by the incomparable O'Brien. 

One Million B.C. (movie, 1940). I don't approve of the animal cruelty.

King Dinosaur (movie, 1955). Iguanas and a surprisingly good wooly mammoth.

One Million Years B.C. (a sequel, 1966). Harryhausen's stop-motion ruled.

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (movie, 1970). Excellent stop-motion here.

Aurora Prehistoric Scenes (model kits, 1971-1978). A great implied world.

Land of the Lost (television show, 1974-1976). The smartest children's show ever.

Tor (comic book, 1975 reissued from 1955). A caveman epic by Joe Kubert.

An incomplete list, but one that shows the variety. The lizards break immersion, and I can't approve the animal cruelty involved. Thankfully, stop-motion animation and the magic of comic-book cleverness brought these worlds to reputable life. And seriously, how much of a leap is it from dinosaurs to Sokurah's fire-breather to Tolkien's Smaug? Or from primitive cavemen to talking apes ruling a post-apocalyptic world? Without a doubt, dinosaurs were my first fantasy, and the creative liberties of media a gateway to endless adventures...

Image from One Million B.C., Hal Roach Studios/United Artists

Tripping the Death-Cult OSR...

So last month (I don't remember when) I read a bog post (I don't remember which, except that it wasn't previously familiar) explaining old-school D&D in terms of its lethality and general indifference to the fate of its protagonists. Inevitably, this led one reader to suggest that old-school gaming was (apparently) a grimdark country populated by psychopathic juveniles in service to a death-cult hobby. Their sentiment, my words. And while I took the time to reassure them (and will again), this reputation is somewhat earned...

Maybe. Stay with me. But first, the reassurances. I started playing in 1978; and while character death was absolutely a feature of the landscape, it was never the point and never emphasized or marketed that way. Bad luck (and/or poor decisions) had consequences, which counseled good strategy and motivated our actions. But mortality was never the point so much as a potential, if unwelcomed, outcome. No, the sales pitch, and core experience being offered, was fantastic adventures we'd (probably) live to see.

Never mind the Satanic Panic (which would have had a field day with Mork Borg); early D&D, however combat-oriented, wasn't marketed as some futile experience because, seriously, who would buy such a thing? I can fail in real life, thank you very much. Sure, this happened despite every precaution sometimes; but it wasn't the product's defining objective. And the campaigns which resulted were upbeat affairs and heroic. We laughed, joked, and generally lived to tell of our experiences, and never because we were doing it wrong...

Alright, so why the bad reputation? First off, because certain modern games are objectively more forgiving, being made for detailed backstories and cherished characters who return unscathed through continuing adventures. The mere fact that professional character portraits, some quite good, are even a thing suggests this implied longevity. Those only drawn to the pastime because of this aren't likely to enjoy dying at the hands of capricious fate because to them, the alternative is a senseless grind they'd never willingly choose.

In short, modern survivability makes it a different game. And modern OSR publishers, ever eager to differentiate their products, play up these distinctions, which is how we get the bloodied mascot of Lamentations and the Die! Die! Die! aesthetic of the aforementioned Mork Borg. Add a (not insignificant) network of grognards waxing nostalgic about TPKs, and it's obvious from whence this reputation proceeds. If you're a young person who would only ever play the modern interpretation, all of this can seem off-putting in the extreme...

Basic Fantasy isn't doing this. And while, in fairness to Lamentations and Mork Borg, these products are tapping a certain niche, they're nonetheless a sharp deviation from OD&D's self-image even in its most wargamish moods. Sadly, the internet's bred a certain type of moral philosopher convinced (I'm not sure this isn't hyperbole) that one's choice in games indicates their character as a person. Danger is the only acceptable way to play, the only experience capable of delivering fun, and the only choice of any right-minded person.

Again, this is (I hope) hyperbolic. But it reinforces the notion that old-school gaming (name the system) was a death-worshipping cult. All jokes aside, the heightened probability of death inherent to old-school games feels like masochism to those who only began playing for the collaborative storytelling approach on offer. But the extreme element of the OSR is marketing to a (totally legitimate) subgenre, while the earliest hobby wasn't grimdark, but heroic, with danger and the threat of death punctuating fun adventures we lived to experience...

A Surprising Look at Murderhobos...

So I asked a question on Facebook this week. What did people do with the humanoid women and children in the Caves of Chaos, among similar adventures, persumably? This was a controversial question, given that killing non-combatants is genocide and a war crime in the civilized world, and that (hopefully) players have a functioning moral compass precluding even simulated atrocities, at least not without certain disclaimers...

The answers ran the gamut, although some were obviously tongue-in-cheek: 

40% chose to treat such non-combatants humanely in various ways.

30% modified the encounter(s) to remove the very presence of said innocents.

20% chose slaughter, some citing variations of the Nuremberg Defense.

10% enslaved these helpless survivors, marching them to the Keep in chains. 

This data is current as of this morning, and I filtered out the nonsense replies and Full Metal Jacket references (humerous as they might otherwise be) to get the meat...

And the meat, consistent with my own experience (starting in 1978), is that most players choose a humane response, likely in deference to their personal morality, opting for Lawful or Good characters for similar reasons. Those who chose attrocities were generally younger, meaning less mature, or older and able to skillfully roleplay. Regardless, it's a compelling look into old-schoolers, proving that people are still people, age or edition be damned.