Bad Old Days at TSR

So, a while back I was interviewed for a piece by Ben Riggs of GEEK AND SUNDRY, an rpg website  whose focus seems to range from the era of Gygax days through Third Edition. They were putting together a piece on the TSR buyout and contacting various people who'd been there at the time. My perspective is a slightly unusual one, given that I was there before and after but not during. However, I gave them my uncensored opinion and waited to see the results. And here it is: an article that ranges from the creation of D&D through the collapse of TSR, the buyout by WotC, the 'Open Gaming' license, and the rise of Paizo. I'm not directly quoted but it's nice to see my name among the acknowledgments at the end.

Here are the links to the three parts that make up the piece:


https://geekandsundry.com/the-story-of-dd-part-one-the-birth-death-and-resurrection-of-dungeons-dragons/

https://geekandsundry.com/the-story-of-dd-part-two-how-wizards-of-the-coast-saved-dungeons-dragons/

https://geekandsundry.com/the-story-of-dd-part-three-how-3rd-edition-became-the-mother-of-many-rpgs/

--John R.
current reading: a life of A. A. Milne by Ann Thwaite (1990)

Elemental Evil, 5th edition style (D&D)

So, Tuesday (the seventh) was the official release date for the second* mega-adventure for the new Fifth Edition D&D: LORDS OF THE APOCALYPSE, by Rich Baker. I've been looking forward to this since I first learned it was on the way, having (a) been a fan of Rich's work for years** and (b) learned that it was a fifth edition successor/sequel to T1-4. TEMPLE OF ELEMENTAL EVIL, an adventure with a long and illustrious history. There are some (myself among them) who wd give this the nod as the single greatest D&D adventure of all time. It's certainly Menzter's masterpiece, *** his own 'personal best'. Even a decade after its release it was still selling 5k copies a year, simply by word of mouth, before it was deliberately taken out of print. And of course it had superb cover art by the inimitable Keith Parkinson.

That's a hard act to follow, especially when there's already been a 'Return to' back in Third Edition, wherein Monte Cook created a sequel to the original that's also highly regarded, if not quite the legend of the First Edition original.**** I played through T1-4 as a solo adventure, creating an entire party of PCs and running them through as DM, all through what wd otherwise have been a cold, lonely Christmas break  (I know I was fair because I lost a lot of PCs slogging through all the menaces in that Temple). But for RETURN I got to play in a playtest run by Monte himself. Unfortunately, deadlines being what they are, we didn't have time to play through the whole adventure: just the early parts (those set in the updated Hommlet), and in the mines, before the playtest had to wrap up so editing cd begin. I confess to this day I've never read the rest beyond Hommlet and Nulb, in the hopes that someday I might be able to play through the whole thing as a player. The publication of this new version has me finally admitting to myself that that's never going to happen, or at least that the chances of it are vanishingly slim.

So, given that background I was excited to hear that Rich and his team were going to tackle an old classic and give it a new Fifth Edition twist. I admit to being a bit disappointed when I heard it wasn't going to be an update nor a sequel per se but a new adventure addressing the same theme: Elemental Evil. Now that I've got a copy I need to read through this before I can give it any kind of evaluation about how well they pulled it off. The only things that stand out immediately are

(1) unlike the original, which was set against a backdrop that was officially somewhere in the vague world of Greyhawk but was genericized enough to easily drop into your own campaign world, this new adventure is firmly set in the FORGOTTEN REALMS. And I have to confess that, only three support products into the new edition arc (the Introductory adventure, the Tiamat adventure, and now the Elemental Evil adventure), I'm already tired of the FORGOTTEN REALMS, which I think has overstayed its welcome.  I come from the old tradition where each DM (or all the DMs belonging to the same player group) has his or her own campaign world, either creating his or her own adventures or adapting published modules into it with little regard for which TSR world they officially came from. So while I greatly enjoy some of the TSR/WotC game worlds (Ravenloft, Mystara, al-Qadim, and Eberron being particular favorites), I've never been one to ascribe much of a campaign's success to the world it was set in: the adventure itself has always been more important to me.

(2) I'm glad this is a campaign-adventure, a form I particularly like and think brings out the best in D&D:***** starting with low-level characters (1st level is best) and working them all the way up to 10th level or so by the end of the mega-adventure. The game is at its most challenging, and hence for me its most enjoyable, at 1st level, while it's good for those who persevere to receive the award of seeing that character come into his or her own by the end.

(3) My biggest complaint, and it's a biggie: the absence of author's name from the front cover. Or the back cover. Or the title page. The general impression WotC seems to be trying to convey is that all their products are produced by committee. I think it's an impression that serves them ill. The best adventures, and rules sets, et al, bear the distinct impression of an author's personality. Accurately crediting who wrote what is one of the most important things a publisher wants to convey to its audience. It's simple, it's useful, and it's the right thing to do.

--John R.

current reading: this and that
current audiobook: A History of Ancient Egypt
current viewing: RWBY, Howard Zinn documentary (YOU CAN'T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN)

*we started at TSR the same month (Oct 1991) and I've long considered him one of the best TSR/WotC had to offer: one of the Great Underrated.

**the first having been the HOARD OF THE DRAGON QUEEN/RISE OF TIAMAT two-part mega-adventure by Wolf Baur, Steve Winter, and Alex Winter, which I have but have as yet only skimmed.

***although Gygax's name appears first on the cover, his contribution seems to have been limited to the already-published T1. Village of Hommlet and some notes regarding the subsequent adventure which he turned over to his amanuensis, Mentzer.

****it also ranked in the top ten in the Thirty Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time list, a few steps behind the original, at #4 and # 8 respectively [DUNGEON MAGAZINE #116, November 2004]. The only other 'Return to' adventure that made the top ten was Bruce Cordell's superlative RETURN TO THE TOMB OF HORRORS, at #10, which I think far superior to its original S1. (which came in at #3).

*****other exceptional examples of the campaign-adventure model being NIGHT BELOW by Carl Sargent and RETURN TO THE TOMB OF HORROR by Bruce Cordell, plus (non-D&D) SHADOWS OF YOG-SOTHOTH by Sandy Petersen (et al).

Relics of GenCon II -- ADandD FIFTH EDITION preview

So, as mentioned in my previous post, the other spectacular bit of loot I got from this year's GenCon was the huge ADandD FIFTH EDITION preview, thanks to friend Luis (thanks Luis!). Called GHOSTS OF DRAGONSPHERE CASTLE, this is actually a 140-page adventure*  (which formed the basis of this year's DandD Open at GenCon), followed by 140-odd pages of rules for the new edition.

I've been in a playtest for 5th edition for quite a while now (actually, a sequence of several playtests over two years covering varying adventures with three different DMs), but not written about it here because of the NDA signed by all playtesters. But since WotC has now published a large fraction of said rules, there doesn't seem to be any harm in weighing in on some of the new rules thus made public: expect more posts from time to time on gaming topics arising out of this iteration of the rules-in-progress.

So, what's in this ruleset? Obviously, the rules needed to play the accompanying adventure. This explains the ability scores and bonuses derived therefrom, combat, equipment, healing, and the like. The two largest sections are spells (24 pages) and monsters (almost 50). Of these, the spells given are those for Clerics and Mages from 1st thr 5th level. Probably not the full spell lists even for those levels, but plenty to run all the adventures you want, and enough to see that this initial list, at least, is heavily dominated by the traditional ADandD spells: most of these appeared in the 1st edition PLAYER'S HANDBOOK (though with rather different effects), and even at the same levels.

The largest section of the playtest rules covers some ninety monsters , including such cult classics as carrion crawlers, the behir, giant frogs, stirges, trapper, lurker above, shrieker, and the one I'm most impressed with, green slime -- this last being a kind of touchstone between those who embrace Old School and those who disdain it. No piercer, rust monster, or roper, but then you can't have everything in a limited set like this one, which presumably features only those monsters encountered in the accompanying adventure.  The monster entries are on the long side, in keeping with the tradition of 2nd and subsequent editions rather than the admirable laconity of the old MONSTER MANUAL, but to their credit they don't devote a full page to each monster (2nd edition's worst mistake).

So, what's not here? Obviously, the biggest omission is character creation -- arguably the most important part of any roleplaying game. The pregenerated characters are (1) human cleric, (2) dwarf fighter, (3) human fighter, (4) elf mage, (5) human mage, and (6) halfling rogue. So just from this you can see that the four most popular character races (human, dwarf, elf, halfling) and four traditional core classes (fighter, cleric, rogue, mage) are in place. Too bad they didn't revert from the abomination that is "rogue" back to the simpler and more straightforward Thief, but at least 2nd edition's faux pas shift from cleric to "priest", undone by 3e, has stayed undone. As for the mage, I'm neutral whether character class (a favorite of mine) is called Magic-User (1st ed), Wizard (2nd, 3rd), or Mage (5th): it's all good. Wish I cd say the absence of gnomes here means they'll be dropped like the fifth wheel they are (one of the things the much-maligned 4th edition got right. sort of.), but it's probably only due to streamlining in the specific context of this adventure.

I'm a bit surprised they're planning to keep THE FORGOTTEN REALMS as the default setting; I'd have thought it'd have run its course. Apparently not: like a comic book company's continuity (DC, Marvel) apparently it can reset and carry on; its fans are that invested in their favorite game world.**


THE THING I LIKE MOST ABOUT THIS PRODUCT: old art. They've reproduced a wonderful mix of art from all different eras of the game, including a lot from the three classic 1st edition rulebooks. This is particularly satisfying to me because in my time at TSR, then WotC, and finally Hasbro I from time to time would put into an art order as pick-up to reproduce one of these old pieces, only to invariably have the art director veto it. She felt that the game had come too far and that the work of Trampier, Diesel, and Sutherland wasn't up to her own high standards. I thought the best of the old art matched anything the then-current lot of black-and-white illustrators were turning out. Some of the new ones were very, very good, but then some of the old art had also been very good, as well as evocative of a classic era.  Having lost those fights, it's good to see that old art making a reappearance here and now.

THE THING I DON'T LIKE: it's not a biggie, but I question the inclusion of snarky post-it notes. Some of them are funny, but they have a tendency to Mystery-Science-Theatre the proceedings.  Call it a personal quirk, but it's my belief that MST treatment shd be reserved for dreck -- and GHOSTS OF DRAGONSPEAR CASTLE is anything but.

Now, if only I cd find time to read the adventure itself.

--John R.
current reading: this and that
current audiobook: THE CANON, continued
today's song: "Surfin' Frog" from A TOWN CALLED PANIC
yesterday's game: MYTHOS (thanks Luis, Anne, Sig, and Steve M. for indulging me)
tonight's game: DandD 5th edition.

 *written by the amazing Chris Perkins, long the mainstay of that department and averter of many a disaster, being not only fast but good.

**I've always preferred homebrew when it came to campaign worlds, despite having worked at one time or another on most of TSR/WotC's ADandD worlds: the Known World (Mystara), the Realms, Eberron, Ravenloft, al-Qadim, SpellJammer, bits of Greyhawk, even a brief Planescape adventure. I think DarkSun and BirthRight might be the only ones I never worked on. Of all these, the ones I like best are the ones that offer a really different play experience from the default ADandD world: Bruce Nesmith's Ravenloft, Jeff Grubb's al-Qadim, and Keith Baker's Eberron. ***

***note that both Ravenloft and al-Qadim were edited by Andria Hayday, TSR's editor extraordinaire.

Fifth Edition

So, today Wizards announced that work has now officially begun on Dungeon & Dragon's Fifth Edition.* Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/arts/video-games/dungeons-dragons-remake-uses-players-input.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Observation #1: Never thought I'd see the day when D&D news was reported in the NEW YORK TIMES, or FORBES (see below), or like venues. Like Tolkien's having become ubiquitous in our culture, it's a sign that D&D is now mainstream: so many millions of people grew up playing it that it's lost that weird scary outsider tinge that caused us all so much trouble back in the '80s.

Observation #2: My reservations about 4th edition -- which I tried to like but never cd warm to** -- turn out to have been pretty much universal. Having been given to understand from various quarters that I was a troglodyte if I didn't embrace 4e, it's surprising now to see in report after report that mine was the near-universal reaction, not the exception.

As for who'll be writing it, Wizards not only confirmed months of rumors that Monte Cook will be in charge of the project (a good choice!) but went ahead and announced the entire design team:

http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/blog/2012/01/09/welcome_to_the_group

So it's Monte Cook as lead designer, with Bruce Cordell (yay, Bruce!***) and Rob Schwab (whose work I don't really know, having postdated my time at Wizards). Also glad to hear Miranda Horner is the editor: I don't think they cd have made a better choice.

As for what the game will be like, Mike Mearls (who replaced Bill Slavicsek as head of the rpg group) is saying that it'll be a universal system that's adaptable to any previous edition -- something that sounds good in a pie-in-the-sky sense as a goal but which it's difficult to see how it'd work in practice. I think rather than saying it'll taste like Coke and New Coke and Classic Coke all at the same time, he's suggesting it'll be bottles of carbonated caramel-colored water wh you add yr preferred favorings to. That's not too far off from what 1st edition AD&D (the most popular version of the game ever published) was: a core rule set which people heavily adapted with their own 'house rules'. Seeing how they try to actualize that will make for a fascinating next six months.

Now I need to get signed up for one of those playtests . . .

And keep an eye out for Ewalt's book.

--John R.

*actually ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS' 5th edition, the fifth edition of D&D, by Troy Denning (the Black Box/Rules Cyclopedia set), having come out some twenty years ago.

**to the extent that I found myself giving up playing what'd been my favorite game for a quarter-century rather than play "4e", which just didn't feel like D&D. Compare similar reservations reported in the Forbes article about the 5 e announcement:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2012/01/09/wizards-announce-new-dungeons-and-dragons-an-inside-look-at-the-game/2/

***one thing I'm particularly proud of in my twenty-year off & on again rpg editing career is that I edited Bruce's first published adventure, THE GATES OF FIRESTORM PEAK. His work was outstanding, even then.

Have to say though I'm sorry to see from this that Wizards still has a Development Team, since it's long been the greatest impediment to their releasing top-quality product. Perhaps its role has evolved since I was there

ADDENDUM:

For more on the big news, cf. the following links. Thanks to Janice, who passed them along to me (along with the ones above), their having originally had been gathered by Miranda Horner:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/9329-Speak-Your-Mind-in-the-Next-Version-of-Dungeons-Dragons

http://geekout.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/09/wizards-of-the-coasts-announces-new-edition-of-dungeons-and-dragons/

http://critical-hits.com/2012/01/09/new-edition-of-dungeons-dragons-announced/

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd%2F4ll%2F20120109

http://www.baldmangames.com/ddxpnews/2012/1/9/huge-ddxp-2012-updates.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/316069-wizards-coast-seeks-unity-new-edition.html

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today . . .

So, I thought of naming this post something like "TSR (New Fish, Twenty Years On)", but in the end had to go with the Sgt. Pepper reference.

Today marks exactly twenty years since I started work at TSR, back in the Lake Geneva days. I was one of four new hires that month, so we all had the 'New Fish' lecture together from Jim Ward, the head of our department; my immediate bosses were Steve Winter (AD&D core group) and Bruce Heard (D&D group).

Of the four of us, I started first (Monday October 7th, 1991). Rich Baker and Thomas

Reid started together a week later (Monday October 14th) and Wolfgang Baur started the week after that (Monday October 21st). I suspect I started a week before Rich and Thomas because when the nice lady at TSR called and offered me the job and asked when I could start work I answered, well, that afternoon and the next day are pretty busy; would the day after tomorrow (a Wednesday) be okay? They assured me that the next Monday (the 7th) wd be fine, which gave me the rest of that week to finish up my paper on Charles Williams' best play (TERROR OF LIGHT) for the Huttar-Sckakel collection (THE RHETORIC OF VISION, eventually published in 1996). I was living in Milwaukee at the time, so I cd commute from where we lived on the Lower East Side; I suspect the others got hired on the same day and were given two (or, in Wolf's case, three) weeks to move into the area.

A lot of water under those bridges since then. Rich quickly became one of TSR (& later WotC)'s best designers, as well as at one point a brand manager (of the Forgotten Realms) and novelist in the TSR book line (I recommend his Ravens' Bluff novel, although my favorite of his novels, the BIRTHRIGHT one, never got published in its original form, alas). And now Rich has just completed the unprecedented achievement of spending twenty consecutive years working in the rpg department at TSR/WotC. No one else has ever done that in TSR/WotC's thirty-eight year history,* and there can't be many at any rpg company who can boast a similar record.** Well done, Rich!

Thomas*** went from editing (with the occasional freelance design) to eventually brand manager of the core AD&D line (wh. throughout the early nineties was overseen by Steve Winter, one of the unsung heroes of TSR days), before eventually leaving to work in the computer game industry, like so many others who got their start in rpgs (cf. Jeff Grubb as an outstanding example). Last I heard, he was back in Austin, still working on novels and computer games.

Wolf I see the most of, since we're in the same gaming group (though with the newborn his attendance is mostly in abeyance right now). He became consecutively the editor of DUNGEON and then DRAGON, as well as building up quite a reputation as a freelance designer, particularly of al-QADIM. He was also the first of us to leave TSR, making the move to Wizards well before TSR went on the rocks and eventually leaving WotC in turn before the layoffs started there a few years later. These days he manages his own little rpg empire, Open Design (for which I've freelanced several times), with his own magazine KOBOLD QUARTERLY.

And I, through three distinct stints at TSR (1991-1996), WotC (1997-2001), and WotC/Hasbro (2003-2005), got to work with a lot of great people, many of whom I still consider close friends, and got to work on a lot of great projects, most of which I'm proud to have my name on. And through it all, in what little bit of "free time" I cd manage, I kept plugging away at MR. BAGGINS, which I'd started in earnest just about the time TSR hired me (Taum having died in August, less than six weeks earlier), though in the end I was only able to finish it by working full-time on the thing in the year and a half after I left WotC for the final time. And since then it's been the Independent Scholar route, buttressed by the occasional freelance.

...................................

*Kim Mohan, their managing editor (the final set of eyes who proofreads every rpg product before it goes out the door) has been there longer overall -- I remember he got his twenty year pin not long before I left for the last time in December 2005 -- but he'd had a hiatus, having worked at TSR (where he was the second editor of DRAGON MAGAZINE), left to follow Gygax to New Infinities, and then came back after Gygax's new company collapsed.

**Lynn Willis of Chaosium, perhaps?

***historical trivia fact: Thomas's grandmother is one of the two people who could testify that Lee Harvey Oswald had been in the Texas Book Repository at the time Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza, having run into him at the soft drink machine as he was making his way downstairs a minute or so after the shooting (the other being Robin MacNeil, later of the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, who had a brief exchange with Oswald as the later was leaving the building).

Update: having half-drafted this piece, I fell into one of my not-posting spells that strike every now and then, and so am only now (Fr. 10/14) resuming. In the meantime I've been able to see a few more old friends from TSR days of yore: Miranda Horner, Bruce Cordell, and Monte Cook. Been good to reminisce and catch up a bit on what they're doing now. Many the best thing about working in the rpg industry is the number of really interesting, really nice people you get to meet along the way. --JDR

Collectable Dinosaur Minis Game

So, one thing I did not include in my write-up of our visit to the Burpee involved their museum store, since it's a side-note.

As I said, the gift shop turned out not to have more than a few general books, to my disappointment (if anybody does come across a good book on the discoveries in Niger, let me know). But I did pick up something called DINOMANIA, which is basically a little pack which you buy that has a random little dinosaur figure in it. Although, as is traditionally the case, they define 'dinosaur' rather loosely (this set even includes a brightly colored trilobite, wh. was actually the one I wanted).

This all took me back to the latter days at WotC/Hasbro. At one point when WotC announced a call for New Ideas for Games I tried in vain to convince somebody, anybody, that a collectable dinosaur minis game wd be a good idea. We were already doing gangbusters with the D&D minis line (wh. was actually doing far better than the rpg itself), which actually included dinosaurs among the monsters (for the Eberron setting). I argued that such a game would have an instant built-in market and the potential to reach new outlets, such as museum stores. And I completely failed to get anybody to express even the mildest interest.

Glad to see somebody else has succeeded, at least in the collectable dinosaur minis part (the person at the counter said they were v. popular with herself and her fellow employees at the museum store); suspect they'd have done even better w. a simple dino-to-dino combat game attached. Ah well; the good thing about missed opportunities is that sometimes someone else down the line takes advantage of them.

--JDR

--home again from the Midwest

WotC's Tolkien RPG

So, while I was away, Janice continued working on our long-term project to get everything in the Box Room sorted out and organized.* And among the boxes she opened and sorted through was one with a cluster of roleplaying material most centered around 2001 (give or take a bit) that had long been lost.

Among the goodies unearthed are

--a program book for MonteCon 2001 (the last MonteCon, I think), where I ran BIERCE SPOTS, a 1916 Call-of-Cthulhu scenario in which the Investigators travel to Mexico on the trail of Ambrose Bierce, and a Scooby Doo Cthulhu scenario in which Scooby and the gang come across a spooky old castle called Castle Ravenloft. Now I'll have to look for the notes re. the Bierce scenario, which I thought went really well.

--a program guide for GenCon 2002, the last GenCon in Milwaukee and the last one I went to.

--some early working notes regarding d20 Call of Cthulhu, which I'll put with the rest

--some campaign notes from Shaun Horner's MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP campaign which he ran the first few months I was in Seattle ("The Friday Night Game"),** the other players being Miranda, Steve Brown ("Stan"), Robert Wiese, and myself; I recall we only got through the first two scenarios (The JuJu Shop and Cairo) and that my private-eye character died spectacularly twice (first by jumping from a train to avoid A Fate Worse Than Death and then, after being sinisterly re-animated, being blown to bits in the Bent Pyramid).

--a page of much older notes from one of the favorite D&D campaigns I ran back in Milwaukee, where at the end of a session I jotted down just what kind of fix the PCs had gotten themselves into and the various ways in which they might get out of it.

But the real prize is a folder containing pretty much all the material generated circa April through October 2000 by those of us in WotC's RPG R&D department for the Tolkien Game we hoped to publish. I've written about this before in connection with my speech at MERP-Con last year ("A Brief Sad History of Tolkien RPGs") but at that time couldn't locate this folder, which has been buried since around 2002. Now it goes on the shelf with the files re. the (similarly abortive) 1992 TSR Tolkien Game. Having now skimmed its contents, I'll be making a new post about that fordoomed project soon, though I won't be able to post the material since it doesn't belong to me.

More soon.

--JDR

*why yes, the river did rise some today, after yesterday's rain. not that I'm obsessively monitoring it, you understand.

**those first three months, before Janice came out and joined me, I was in three weekly games: the Monday Night Game (which I ran), the Wednesday Night Game (Monte's brave new world campaign), and the Friday Night Game (run by the Horners).

Layoffs at Wizards of the Coast

Day before yesterday I had lunch with one of my friends who was caught up in what has become one of the holiday season's worst traditions: Christmastime layoffs at WotC. Having been there myself, I wish everybody who was part of this one good fortune in job-hunting and the smoothest possible transition to life on the outside, as part of what I've come to call the Great Majority: ex-TSR, ex-WotC.

And I really don't know what else to add. I didn't hear word about what'd happened until late the day after, and was so upset I couldn't draft a coherent response for a week. And when I did, it was so strongly worded that I was advised not to post it. For a more moderate response, see Jeff's posting at Grubbstreet (http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2008/12/layoff-thoughts.html)

I guess all I'd add is that I'm sad to see folks let go who have put in five, ten, fifteen or more years working there. And I'm sad that, so far as I can figure, they're now down to between eight to twelve people left from among those I worked with at the old TSR in Lake Geneva, auld lang syne.

--John R.