Scope: More than a mouthwash, it's the underlying premise of an RPG

In Dungeons and Dragons, Book One: Men & Magic by Gygax and Arneson, on page 5, SCOPE:

"...DUNGEONS and DRAGONS will provide a basically complete, nearly endless campaign of all levels of fantastic-medieval wargame play.  Actually, the scope need not be restricted to the medieval; it can stretch from the prehistoric to the imagined future, but such expansion is recommended only at such time as the possibilities in the medieval aspect have been thoroughly explored."

NOTE: Need Not Be Restricted To The Medieval.

The above section was penned by Gygax in 1973.  More than three decades have passed and the overwhelming majority of paper-and-pencil RPGs are still modeled upon a 'fantastic' Medieval Western Europe.  Yawn.  Haven't we pretty-much mined-out the medieval end of things?  Didn't Chivalry & Sorcery drive a period-correct / SCA-approved black iron nail through that particular coffin back in the day?  Or what about Ars Magica? 

Now don't get me wrong; I am still a fan of those two systems, at least in terms of the first edition of both.  I've never bothered to upgrade to the newer versions because the old versions worked fine as far as I was concerned.  But the world really doesn't need yet another 'fantastic medieval' setting/rules-set.  Not really.  I mean, it certainly could be done and done very well...say if the fine folks over at Expeditious Retreat Press were to suddenly take leave of their collective senses and publish a Fantastic Medieval RPG that was anchored, based and evolved from their incredible and amazingly well-researched Magical Society line of sourcebooks...well...I'd probably buy it.  But that's an exception that pretty much proves the rule.  We're drowning, or at least we're up to our knees in 'fantasy medieval' stuff.  Aside from several other failings, the tendency of the so-called Old School Renaissance to crank out more and more generic/uninspired  'fantasy medieval' crap isn't so much getting old, as it was reaching the point of extreme fatigue a long time ago before there even was an OSR movement.  Now it just seems futile and silly, as though people can't stretch their imaginations any farther or maybe it just feels more comfortable to recapitulate, revise and regurgitate the same old stuff that Gygax and Arneson peddled to kids in the Seventies like literary dope. 

Honestly, we have dozens of Gygax-wannabees, Arneson-impersonators and numerous Close Personal Friends of the Great Guy Himself (whichever one you prefer)...but where are the new Barkers, that's what I want to know.  Is Prof. M. A. R. Barker forever doomed to be all on his own out there sipping his tea and watching over the slaves waving the richly embroidered banner of an imaginary realm that transcends the half-digested stereotypes, entrenched complacency and stale ennui of mindlessly repetitive trotting out of the tropes of colonialism and quasi-Victorian complacency?  Whither Arduin?  Sky Realms of Jorune languishes in obscurity, Talislanta may yet rejoin the marketplace of competing ideas, but even so, each of these examples are old settings, old games, mostly defunct, derelict and derailed from various causes both mundane and often unfortunate, despite the incredible work of their respective creators and the conservators who have nursed them through their dark and dismal period off along the margins.  Where are the new exotic, unusual, challenging and exciting settings, games and just plain weird ideas that are fun to explore?

Gabor Lux's Fomalhaut is much lauded and highly praised, however I cannot read Hungarian and Google only translates some of the stuff on the website, and not the booklets, etc.  His recent work that I was able to read was fun, heavily influenced by Barker's Tekumel, but still quite original and his City of Vultures in Knockspell #3 was simply a joy to read for its own weird sake.  I would definitely like to see more of this authors' highly intriguing work getting translated into English.

James Raggi is hard at work on his Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy RPG, but despite having a more ferocious and idisyncratic horror-informed edge to it, his system will still be Elves, Dwarves, (Halflings...) etc.  Not that that is a bad thing, but not that it's terribly new, either.  But it should prove to be fun and who knows where it will go once he gets past the obligatory stuff required in order to keep the game backwards-compatible with his previously published adventures.  The guy is a fellow curmudgeon and since he derives some serious inspiration from Clive Barker's earlier works...I am very interested in seeing how this system turns out.

Carcosa stirred up a right frightful storm of controversy when it appeared, and has since settled into being the touchstone for anyone wishing to provide some semblance of decadence, or to evoke some vestige of gnarly-weird-creepy pseudo-avant garde credibility.  Interesting, depraved, somewhat bent and definitely far more Lovecraftian than most of HPL's own tales...it was a fabulous start and a very real catalyst for several lesser spin-offs and homages and pastiches.  But aside from riffing off of A Voyage to Arcturus, and re-mixing Gamma World apocalyptic fantasy back into the OD&D genepool, and now that the hue and cry has died down over the unexpurgated version...where has this groundbreaking work taken us?  What comes next?

Urutsk sounds very interesting and I have only recently downloaded the public beta manual(s), and from a cursory examination, this setting looks like a lot of fun.  It feels like Tekumel meets Gamma World meets OD&D in all the right ways and I am looking forward to how this setting and rules-set develop.  It is wonderful to see a NON-OGL / Non-Clone Fresh New RPG-system coming out from the Old School Renaissance and I wish the author all the best in making this happen.  I believe that there are novels already out there derived from this setting and hopefully I'll be able to track one down shortly.

Quantique feels odd in all the right ways, and may prove, in time to be a truly unique setting that goes beyond the all too pervasive tendency of lesser creators to cobble-together three obscure pulp references or simply ripping off someone elses' non-open source intellectual properties and calling it your own.  There is something special and unique in this setting, it reeks with originality in the most wonderfully noisome manner, and I hope that the author continues to let it evolve, grow and assume frightening proportions and potentially become another touchstone radiating a malevolent green radiance that exerts as malign and weird an influence upon others as Carcosa, Lovecraft or Borges all do.

Planet Algol is fun, free-wheeling and far more troubling in oh so very many ways.  The personal creativity of the author/creator/mix-master supreme is ferocious, eclectic and inspiring...but...and there is a huge reservation on my part in respect to this setting...there is a lot of derivative stuff caught-up in the giddy mix, bits and pieces that are just fine to throw into your home-brew game...stuff that it is fine to mess around with as long as it remains a personal, non-commercial project.  I have no idea where Planet Algol is headed, and I intend to keep an eye on its wild and preternatural progress...but it makes me uneasy for the same reason I tend to not care for most rap music: too much re-mixing of other peoples' stuff detracts from the creativity that I admire and tends to get in the way of my enjoyment of the work.  Planet Algol deftly avoids this particular pitfall, but it does skirt the edge just a little too close for comfort, from my perspective.

Generally, I dislike and discount re-mixers and patchwork hacks who lift from others and repackage it as though it were their own work.  Sure, it can be fun, and everyone does something like that when they are starting out...I've heard all the rationalizations about Gygax including Barsoominan Apes and other such things lifted from various authors...remember Dungeonland anyone?...but I still feel that it is a childish sort of thing and not true creativity.  Or at least it is not nearly equivalent to the sort of creativity that I admire.  Mixing the Dukes of Hazard with Gammaworld and basing your characters on old WWE superstars is not in the same league as Arduin, Talislanta or Tekumel.  And that is one more point where I diverge drastically from the majority, I think.  Gamers are notorious for their flaunting of copyright, thumbing their noses at trademark law, and generally another more piratically-inclined group of consumers you would be hard-pressed to point out.  But I'm not interested in piracy, and all that goes with it right now.  I'm focusing on creativity, imagination and bringing something unique and fresh and new to the table, not just re-hashing what has gone before.  There has been too much Cloning and not enough Retro-ing in the whole Retro-clone and simulacrum-gaming movement.

I could give a crap what Gygax did, or what Arneson said, or what all they put into their games, or who they ripped-off or imitated--aside from wanting to read the source materials from which they derived inspiration perhaps.  I'm not interested in hand-me-down / second-hand imagination, nor in being restricted to the well-worn paths of consciousness set down by those who came before.  I prefer to see what has gone before as preliminaries, rehearsals, and a body of expectations and context that is there to be played with, not thoughtlessly aped or imitated, but twisted back upon itself, modified, re-interpreted, much like how Moorcock spun Howard's base assumptions regarding Conan head over heels to come up with Elric.  But Elric has been done.  It is time for something new, some Fresh Fever to sieze upon, some new approach that reveals a hitherto unforeseen twist, or offers up a new perspective that manages to respect what has gone before but not rip it off. 

To me placing Barker's Hlyss (for example) in an OD&D dungeon level isn't all that interesting nor particularly clever in and of itself. Out of context, the Ssu, Hlyss, even the mighty and noble Shen become just another silly monster for the players to terrorize, maim, rob or kill--acts that could potentially be unthinkable or that would carry serious consequences (and opportunities) within their native setting. But by taking these critters out of their setting, they loose a lot of what makes them so special in the first place. If you like the critters enough to use them, consider the setting from which they came, or at least develop your own version that has the serial numbers filed-off, especially if you're going to use stuff that is not open-source. Or better yet invent your own monsters. But that's a whole other issue.

The distinction between what is okay in a homebrew campaign and what a project that might ultimately go commercial needs to be paid attention to, and respected by creators.  Plagiarism is not just a crime, it is a testament to the laziness, ignorance, disrespect and lack of imagination on the part of the person who is ripping off dead (or still-living) authors and passing it off as their own work.  Personally, I prefer music -- and fiction, games, settings ---  that are original, the actual work of the person involved, something new and exciting and unique that could only come into being by the agency of that specific creator or artist.  To me, that is at the very heart and soul of what it means to play in an Old School mode, and it is the path towards a Renaissance and not just a lot of mindlessly repetitive repackaging and regurgitation.

Questioning Assumptions and Where We're Headed

I recently finished re-re-reading those three Little Brown Books from the Original D&D set with a pen and paper close at hand to take notes as I read along.  My stack of notes is now quick a bit thicker and has more of an overall word/page-count than the books being commented upon.  I suspect that this is not in and of itself unique by any means.  In fact I know of one other person who has done the very same thing and posted his efforts on his blog--Sham's Grog and Blog and the Cover to Cover series of posts which you can find here.  In the next few days, schedule permitting, I will attempt to go over Shams' Cover To Cover posts and compare his insights with my own, if in fact I can find something worth sharing and that isn't a load of Me-Too crap or pointless nit-picking.  The real point to my own analysis of the LBBs has not been to uncover the thinking or intent of the masters, but rather to go back to the very roots of this game and to challenge those underlying assumptions I have identified and to build my own system up from the very bedrock of where it all began.  I do not feel that we should be restricted or constrained to hold the original system to be a religious icon of perfection--it is far from perfect, nor should we slavishy become custodians of a museum-piece that preserves the genius of some dead guy who wrote about a game he once played back in the old days.  Screw that.  It is the very imperfections of the OD&D system that I think give it relevance and meaning and power--acting out against these flaws, rejecting and replacing those sections we detest the most, tweaking the core rules with our own 'House Rules' is intrinsically part of the very heart and soul of the game and an intrinsic part of the over-all D&D gaming Weltanschauung.

The glorious mess presented in those three LBBs remains a persistent, insistent center of pestilence and inspiration that continues to infect peoples' imaginations with all manner of notions for how to tinker with this rule, revise that section, rework how these things get handled, etc., etc.  It is almost as much a game in and of itself to re-edit the rules and to revamp them to suit your own unique vision and ingenium.  And that is a major reason why the OD&D booklets continue to exert such an influence upon peoples' psyches. 

It is the very vagueness and incompleteness, the broken and irritating parts of those rules that inspire and drive otherwise sane and sensible individuals to spend hours upon hours ranting and raving and researching and writing about ways to model the effect of antique gunpowder weapons on various forms of armor, how much of a load can a typical peasant/footman carry on their back, how much actual coins from Byzantine times (or other time periods) weigh or what the limitations on spell-casters ought to be based upon whether they are using a runic approach, classical grimoiric-style conjurations, upper-class Hermetic magick or something more shamanic in character.  Everything was wide open and available for personal interpretation.  Back in the earliest days of the game literally anything could happen.  Wellesian Martian war machines could pop up just as easily as Barsoomian White Apes or something completely new and just whipped-up by the DM only moments before.  Imagination was king and spontaneous improvisation was the rule, aided and abetted with tons of random tables, a DIY ethic that gleefully ripped-off appropriately and respectfully made use of Copyrighted and Trademarked properties, and so on.  So much was left to the imagination, unlike now.

My favorite supplement of all time is The Fantasy Gamer's Compendium from Gamescience (1983).  It combined the previous smaller booklets of Mystery, Monsters, Demons, Sorcery, Shamans and Treasures into one collected supplement.  The cover art is still cheesier than all get out, the type is tiny, there are hardly any interior illustrations but you could use the thing with any edition of any fantastic/medieval RPG out there with a minimum of fiddling around with it. 

And that brings me to the point of this particular enterprise.  Like many another kid ensnared in Gygax and Arneson's literary snare at an early age (it was the Seventies), I became enamoured with the notion of developing my own rules for my own settings and running my own games and I've been doing so, off and on, more or less for most of my life, in-between brief periods of lucidity, social activity, and so forth.  I've been Old School as far as D&D goes for quite some time, and after re-locating my set of the OD&D booklets,  re-reading them and realizing that no matter which books I bought or what setting I wrote, I was still using a variation on the rules I first learned way back when.  Tinkering with the rules, developing settings, cobbling together Sandbox campaigns, intertwining my fiction and home-brewed mythos into the game and distilling it back out again...those things are very much part and parcel of the Old School Renaissance and my goal with this blog is to map out my personal efforts in peeling back the accreted gunk and get down to the roots of the system, challenge the lingering assumptions and maybe sacrifice up a few sacred cows to the process of developing a stripped-down core system that might or might not go anyplace or ever get used...but the process will be fun and in the course of things I expect to develop a few spin-offs such as Settings, mini-settings, alternative magic systems, new spells, new monsters (we most definitely DO plan to create a stand-alone S&W/LL/OSRIC compatible Bestiary!), and more.

This blog will focus on the mechanics, the discussions surrounding things like the role of alignment and how to convert it into a numbered attribute and/or stuff like that.  The companion blog will flesh out a setting, be more fiction-oriented, and deliver on the new spells, new monsters, new items, etc.  It will also flesh-out the notes on how to incorporate attributes to chakras, ley-lines and planes, alternative demonologies (driven by alternative cosmologies), the spectrum of consciousness as it applies to spirits/elementals/constructs, and more. (Yes, 101 Homunculi, Hybrids and Horrors will be among the things offered)  Anyone who has participated in our old Italbar/Talibarr, Bazra, Xembor games--either from the old groups or from our various events at the local Cons--can tell you that what we are bringing to the table is definitely not more of the same old crap, not by a long shot.  The companion blog will be ready to go in another couple of days, as we're in the midst of some other projects that are demanding a lot of attention.

So, hang on, things are about to get crazy-fun and you haven't seen anything yet.

Something of a Beginning

Let me begin with a couple of quotes:

“Gary Gygax never played AD&D as published, so why the hell should we care so much about that system? Or why should we give a rat’s ass about cleaving unto the systems offered by the lesser lights that followed him? Furthermore, I reject as ridiculous any argument that the original Gygax campaign ever played OD&D as published. Have you read OD&D lately? I can’t believe that anybody can play it as it appears on the page. It’s a goddamn mess. A glorious one, full of wonder and mystery, but a mess nonetheless.”
Jeff Rients, Jeffs' Gameblog, Tuesday, August 11, 2009 

“To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It's about going back to the roots of our hobby and see what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.”
Rob Conley, Bat In The Attic

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I'm not used to agreeing with very many people, but I find myself agreeing with these two gentlemen above, at least in respect to these two quotes.  The game that Gygax and Arneson both ran as DMs bore only a superficial resemblance to the game that they passed on to us, and for good reason: they were creating a framework for people who did not necessarily have an exhaustively encyclopedic grasp of the fine details of medieval pole-arms, military history, or deep immersion in pulp fiction that they brought to the table.  It is, was and always will be a jumping-off point, not an end-point destination.  I believe I read somewhere that Tim Kask once stated "D&D was meant to be a free-wheeling game, only loosely bound by the parameters of the rules."  That sums things up very nicely.

It's all about imagination.  The first iteration/edition of D&D was definitely a glorious mess full of wonder, whimsy and mystery that still sparks imagination and spurs creativity while providing a great deal of entertainment and enjoyment.  That's a very cool thing.

After taking some time off from gaming, I was boxing-up some dusty D20 books and stuff in order to make more room for other things that were more pertinent to my work, and in the course of packing-up a bunch of glossy-covered manuals I re-discovered my copies of the Little Brown Books and the first few OD&D Supplements.  I glanced through them, then set them on a shelf and finished clearing-away the debris and got on with other things.  A few months later I took them down off of the shelf and started to re-read them from front to back.  Something was nagging at me.  It was the quote from the Foreword from Men & Magic that I have placed on the upper-righthand of this blog.  Silly, innocuous, even obvious...those words have proven to have been extremely influential upon me ever since I first laid eyes on them back around 1978-79.  (Thanks Tim!)

Editions and editors have come and gone, Gygax himself reversed himself later on, but none of that mattered: the cat was out of the bag and having started-out with the Little Brown Books, I will always approach Role Playing Games as tools and means for the exploration and expression of my own worlds, not the slavish recreation of settings mandated by corporations seeking to dominate their customers' brain space even more perniciously than anything IBM or Microsoft ever dared attempt.

Old School, in terms of D&D, has always been about doing your own thing, building your own worlds, running your own setting, and cobbling together your own rules.  Over at Eiglophian Press they're calling it Imaginative Anarchy.  I like that.  You can almost hear the Sex Pistols in the background...at least I can...what a glorious mess!