Michael Grasso / August 4, 2020

Ecotopia (The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston)
By Ernest Callenbach
Banyan Tree Books, 1975

Visualizing a better world has never been more important, or more difficult. The promise of utopia—or at least a world that places its values on health, happiness, and lovingkindness—has been an object of pursuit for philosophers, theologians, and regular folks since the dawn of human civilization. In the early 1970s, thinkers in the West faced the same existential problems that are tearing the world apart in 2020: environmental calamity, geopolitical chaos, racists and reactionaries in power tearing their societies asunder. While the revolutionary counterculture of the 1960s was in a position of retreat against the revanchist forces of reaction during much of the 1970s, plenty of thinkers, writers, and activists were still hard at work imagining a society that would resist and reject the mechanized death-impulse of the West, one that would try to thoroughly reimagine Western lives and lifestyles in the face of energy crises and rampant pollution.

In 1975, writer, film scholar, and University of California Berkeley Press editor Ernest Callenbach envisioned a new nation, born of separatist revolution on America’s West Coast, called Ecotopia. Synthesizing the many threads of cutting-edge ecological and social reformist discourse around him in his time and place—sustainability and recycling, re-wilding and re-forestation, anti-consumerism, educational reform, the elimination of the automobile, and countless other seemingly “pie-in-the-sky” reforms and revolutions—Callenbach created a believable imaginary society born of the contradictory Western (in both senses of the word) cross-currents of self-reliance and community living, all motivated by a societally-fundamental goal of doing the least harm to the Earth possible. Callenbach’s modest book—originally self-published under the aegis of “Banyan Tree Books”—would become an underground classic and end up influencing multiple generations of environmentalists and futurists. Ecotopia also offers to readers in 2020 a world that is simultaneously intimately familiar and deeply alien, one where social, ecological, and technological advances that the West now takes for granted (widespread recycling, renewable energy, video-telephony alleviating the need for travel) jostle shoulders with ones that are only dreamed of in our late capitalist dystopia (a twenty-hour work week, universally socialized necessities of life like food, housing, and health care, and an end to consumerist capitalism).

Like many other explorations of utopias, from Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626) to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), the conceit behind Ecotopia is that the book presents a record of an outsider encountering and being bewildered by an alien society for which they have very few bases of comparison. Our protagonist in Ecotopia, William Weston, is an American journalist (and apparent agent of American geopolitical interests) who is one of the first Americans to visit the breakaway nation of Ecotopia since its secession from the U.S. nearly twenty years previous. The narrative cannily switches between Weston’s private diary and his published pieces for the “Times-Post,” charting his initially-sober exploration of Ecotopia as he delves deeper into how the revolution has changed Ecotopians on a personal level.

Ecotopia seems to exist, even before its titular revolution, in a slightly alternate history that allows the stage to be set for the breaking away of most of three American states. France is seemingly a Communist republic (perhaps after the convulsions of 1968?) and the tendency towards devolution and the ethnically-based collapse of the nation state that occurred at the end of the Cold War has seemingly happened a decade or two early (Callenbach mentions that the success of Quebec separatism was an inspiration to the Ecotopians). Weston is clearly primarily on a diplomatic/espionage mission, despite his journalistic bona fides—his visit was in the planning stages for over a year at the highest levels of the U.S. government, including meetings with the American president himself. There is unrest in the remaining United States, thanks to rampant pollution, further separatist movements “in the Great Lakes region and the Southeast,” and, probably most direly for the American regime, “Ecotopian ideas are seeping over the border more dangerously” and there is “unrest… generated by Ecotopian ideas among our youth.”

Weston begins his journey through Ecotopia as a chauvinistic American, dubious about Ecotopian progress as compared to America’s industrial might and even a bit credulous of bizarre rumors of human sacrifice and sexual license. But ultimately Weston is a journalist; Callenbach’s canny decision to split the book between Weston’s dispatches for publication and his private diary allows the reader to watch Weston’s reactions to the alienness of Ecotopia change over time. And Callenbach has a real eye for the kinds of things that would immediate hit an American visitor’s own eyes: the alien details of everyday Ecotopian life. On the high-speed maglev train from the border town of Reno to the Ecotopian capital of San Francisco, Weston first notices the differences in material culture in Ecotopia: cushions and beanbags instead of hard-surfaced chairs and benches on Ecotopian transport and in homes; the patchwork motley assemblage of Ecotopian clothes, most of which are homemade; the eerily prescient vision of separate recycling bins for metal, glass, and paper.

Callenbach cares deeply about the minutiae of how such a society would work (one of his primary inspirations to create Ecotopia was an article he’d researched on the failures of contemporary sewage processing), and he treats us to paragraph upon paragraph on the dirty details how Ecotopia actually works: treatises on steady-state sewage processing, Ecotopian forestry and logging, the breakdown of industrialized agriculture into a localized and organic food-cultivation, and the science-fiction advances of Ecotopian biodegradable plastics and extruded structures, all made from plant matter. And it’s not just tangible material goods that get this unceasingly detailed treatment: Callenbach also has Weston observe the minutiae of Ecotopian tax policy and localized politics, the Ecotopian legal system’s focus on punishing citizens who burden the community with poisonous externalities, and Ecotopian economic policy (the inheritance of private—not personal—property is prohibited).

It’s only when Weston sinks a little deeper in Ecotopian society that we the readers begin to grasp the even more stunning social and philosophical revolution that’s taken place in this new world. The citizenry is united in professing to Weston how much better their quality of life is; one of the revolution’s very first proclamations was the establishment of a twenty-hour work week. The American obsession with production and economic growth was deemed anti-social. In one of Weston’s early dispatches to America, the psycho-emotional motivation behind the Ecotopian revolution is clear:

What was at stake [in the revolution], informed Ecotopians insist, was nothing less than the revision of the Protestant work ethic upon which America has been built. The consequences were plainly severe… But the profoundest implications of the decreased work week were philosophical and ecological: mankind, the Ecotopians assumed, was not meant for production, as the 19th and early 20th centuries had believed. Instead, humans were meant to take their place in a seamless, stable-state web of living organisms, disturbing that web as little as possible. This would mean sacrifice of present consumption, but it would ensure future survival—which became an almost religious objective, perhaps akin to earlier doctrines of “salvation.” People were to be happy not to the extent they dominated their fellow creatures on the earth, but to the extent they lived in balance with them.

The Ecotopians are much more cagey about whether their society is “socialist” or not; certainly, the seizure of corporate capital in the first months of the Ecotopian revolution qualifies as classically socialist (“the forced consolidation of the basic retail network constituted by Sears, Penneys, Safeway, and a few other chains,” Weston notes), but Ecotopia is more properly classified as a mixed economy, as a private market and currency backed by a central bank does still exist. But it’s clear that at its base, Ecotopia is an essentially syndicalist-socialist state, with self-determination regarding labor being its organizing principle. Small groups of people numbering in the few dozens spontaneously form communes, farms, factories, educational foundations, and research facilities based on their common interests and goals. In addition, work assignments change depending on need and demand; students spend more time in university trying out different occupations, and every Ecotopian inevitably ends up owing service to their society outside their own job. The nuclear family has been largely upended by the Ecotopian revolution, with Ecotopian children raised by their “village.” On the larger scale, Ecotopian living communities are smaller and more self-contained. Along with the nuclear family, the commuter suburb has been destroyed in favor of self-sufficient “ring towns” surrounding larger urban conurbations, all linked by low-pollution high-speed trains. These basic changes in living structures have, within a generation, altered the Ecotopian psyche deeply. There is a greater openness to experience and to emotion, a greater sense of the interconnectedness of all Ecotopians.

Weston’s biggest culture shock during his first few days is just how publicly Ecotopians laugh, love, cry, fight, and criticize each other, all while presenting very little of the simmering resentments and lingering neuroses seen in America. American consumer culture has been completely rejected, and that is clear in the changes to Ecotopian mass media: small newspapers and news organizations of all political stripes flourish, and television (brought to Ecotopian households via hard-wired cable and not over-the-air broadcasting, another of Callenbach’s startling predictions come true) is profoundly participatory, with advertising heavily regulated and consumer products made without the needless variety (and deleterious environmental effects) seen in the States. There is also a profound instilled sense of social responsibility among the Ecotopians. In Weston’s examination of logging and forestry policy, he notes that any individual wanting a large amount of lumber (for building a home, for example) must undertake a couple of months of forest service, cutting down the trees needed and replanting new ones. Weston grudgingly accepts that “it may make people have a better attitude toward lumber resources.”

In his examination of the politics of Ecotopia, Weston, as an individualistic American, notes this tension between responsibility, individual desire, and group dynamics, which rears its head everywhere in Ecotopia from economic policy to psychosocial roles. Even while Ecotopian society is profoundly localized and quasi-libertarian, a definite state exists, with clear economic and military responsibilities. And yet it’s clear that this state would not exist but for the clear consent of the governed and their mutual defense of the Ecotopian way of life. In its early years as a breakaway republic, Ecotopia fought a secret “Helicopter War” against the United States that Ecotopia handily won. How did this tiny nation manage to fight off the largest military in the world? The same way the Viet Cong did in Southeast Asia (and, startlingly, in much the way that the Afghan people would repel the later Soviet invasion a few years after the publication of Ecotopia): with individual members of Ecotopian guerrilla militias destroying high-tech American weapons of war with well-placed rockets, sabotage, and other innovative strategies targeting American weaknesses. Granted, not all of these technologically-advanced weapons were developed in Ecotopia; it’s clear that the material support of both Russia and France helped the new nation achieve this victory. Callenbach also describes a slightly more unrealistic nuclear gambit exercised by Ecotopia, telling America that they had secreted nuclear devices in major American cities and would detonate them upon any further attempt at invasion. But the lesson of Ecotopia is the same as anti-American revolutions in Cuba and Vietnam in the 20th century: with a little societal solidarity, outside support, and innovative methods of waging war, David can beat Goliath.

Over the course of Ecotopia, Callenbach shows us Weston’s slow acceptance of even the most alien aspects of Ecotopian culture. In gender relations, Weston demonstrates a quiet chauvinism about the ruling revolutionary party of Ecotopia, the Survivalists, which originally grew out of pre-revolutionary West Coast feminist-environmentalist politics. It’s clear that Callenbach invests the Ecotopian revolution at its foundation with a distinctly 1970s second-wave feminist flavor. Weston, a roving reporter used to participating in exotic conquests on his various overseas trips, finds himself disarmed by the sexual autonomy and confidence of liberated Ecotopian women. Weston falls in love with a forester, Marissa Brightcloud, who comes to represent to Weston everything about Ecotopia that he finds initially alien and even detestable (after one of their first encounters, Weston sees Marissa giving a word of thanks to a tree and remarks, “this incredible woman is a goddamn druid or something—a tree-worshipper!”), but eventually profoundly liberating. As their affair matures, Weston “realize[s] the relation (sic) with Marissa is changing my whole idea of what men and women are like together.” As Weston tries to comprehend these shifted gender relations, he observes (and eventually participates in and is wounded in) Ecotopia’s ritual war games, its anthropologist-designed method of channeling and diffusing the violent testosterone-fueled impulses of young men into a small-scale series of formalized (and ritual-drug-aided) skirmishes.

It’s in moments like the war games where the dated elements of Callenbach’s novel begin to be seen. For Ecotopia (much as with a good deal of the white counterculture of the ’60s and ’70s), ham-handedly emulating what is perceived as a monolithic “Native American culture” is considered a key to creating a more ecologically just society (Marissa’s surname is an example of this tendency, which Weston coolly appraises as “a self-adopted, Indian-inspired name—many Ecotopians use them”). Weston also notes that the Ecotopian’s respect for their tools, food, and inanimate objects also has an animistic tinge to it. But it’s not just in these broad white stereotypes of the diversity of various indigenous American histories and cultures where Callenbach fails to imagine a non-white ecology. He also shows Weston slightly shocked at the racial segregation and nationalism present in the Bay Area’s various ethnic communities. Black and Chinese urban populations have largely rejected working within Ecotopian systems, taking advantage of Ecotopian community-based social organization to create their own enclaves, which white Ecotopians believe may eventually break away completely to form their own sovereign nations. (Even more cringeworthy is Callenbach’s decision to use the section on the “Soul City” enclave as a method to expound upon Ecotopian crime and punishment.) Weston, in a high-handed “egalitarian” American manner, calls this system “apartheid,” although it’s really more akin to Black separatist and nationalist traditions long-represented and respected in our own timeline’s history. But this treatment of race is a rare but striking sour note in Callenbach’s imagination of a better world. One sees the author struggling to untie the Gordian knot of the legacy of American racism to visualize a better, more peaceful and unified ecological utopia; given the miraculous social revolutions that are taken as a given throughout the novel, this elision of race is odd and off-putting to contemporary eyes.

As mentioned, Weston falls in love with Marissa and then eventually Ecotopia itself. His dispatches about Ecotopia sent back home grow less snide and judgmental and more accepting and fascinated. In the final chapters of the book, Weston gets his long-awaited interview (and diplomatic mission) with Survivalist Party leader and Ecotopian president Vera Allwen. During the meeting,  Weston finds his skills of persuasion leaving him; in Allwen he has met a towering personality with whom he is “mysteriously outclassed.” “She is powerful as a person, not as a bureaucrat or the head of an institution. Difficult to express. (Have heard that some of the old-time communist leaders, Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse-tung, had this quality too.)” Allwen outright rejects any overture at reunification with the United States. “You cannot be serious,” she says in response to this proposal, firmly, twice in a row. Weston leaves the meeting dejected and soon develops a strange illness that seems at least half-psychosomatic (perhaps triggered by Allwen’s relentless psychological probing).

Trying to decide whether to stay in Ecotopia longer to tarry with Marissa or return home to his sometime wife and children, Weston is soon confronted with a group of mysterious Ecotopians who essentially abduct him. All throughout the novel there have been hints that Weston is being followed by the secret police; a meeting with a group of Ecotopian capitalist dissidents early in the novel leads to an explicit warning from some presumed members of state security. But these Ecotopian agents do not take him to some dungeon or black site; instead, they lead him to a mountain retreat full of regular foreign guests enjoying the hot springs. It’s very reminiscent of Esalen, and even more so as Weston’s captors begin to lovingly interrogate him, subjecting him to long soaks in hot-tubs, sweat lodges, and, it seems from the description of his continuing physical ailments, psychedelic drugs. Weston says to himself that he’ll leave for the border city of Los Angeles (still in the U.S. proper), and dons his American “uniform” of suit and tie, but as he looks in the mirror, he says, “The ugly American me was almost sickening—I really thought I might have to throw up.” In the midst of what sounds like a sensory deprivation tank within one of the deep hot tubs, Weston has a sudden “conversion” moment. “I am going to stay in Ecotopia!” he shouts. He has won the victory over his American self. His captors embrace him, love-bombing him as Marissa suddenly appears from where she was hidden on the grounds, ready to accept the newest liberated Ecotopian citizen to their society.

During this final chapter I couldn’t help but think of all the strains of the human potential movement abroad in California at the time of the writing of Ecotopia and how many of them ended up being used for sinister purposes by the rising technocratic consensus, unscrupulous cultic charlatans, and even by the U.S. government and military. What may have seemed to the 1970s readers of Ecotopia as a liberatory experience rife with self-actualization and a rejection of American “squareness” looks, with the benefit of hindsight, like a training manual for social control in our current age of a hippie-derived technocratic power structure that seems to have systematically quantified and manipulated all our emotional responses for the purposes of further solidifying capitalism. One could argue that the Ecotopians’ weapons of defense and war—cobbled together as a mix of both primitive ecologically-friendly defenses as well as innovative biological and social systems of control—are their way of defending their hard-won state and that these reservations are merely around means instead of ends. If the CIA and U.S. military relentlessly used psychological warfare both at home and abroad to solidify American hegemony, what is wrong with turning those same weapons back against them for the benefit of a new republic dedicated to opposing American and corporate imperialism?

But to our contemporary eyes, it’s this slightly ambiguous ending and all the other profoundly ironic moments within the narrative that make Ecotopia so interesting a document. As mentioned earlier, Ecotopia in some small way successfully predicts what the future will look like, for both good and ill. Ironically, after reading it, I find myself interested in a sequel that would take Ecotopia twenty years into the future, to match up with our own year 2020. Would Ecotopian ideals conquer America and lead to a worldwide acceptance of Ecotopian steady-state living? Or would America decide again to try to take back its breakaway republic by force, this time using more brute force than in the Helicopter War? Or would America, facing the implicit rebuke of Ecotopia’s success, fall apart into a series of squabbling balkanized republics? The world of Ecotopia in a lot of ways is an achievable paradise, but one wonders if, given two or three decades, it would end up looking more like our own timeline’s collapsing America than an egalitarian ecological paradise.

Michael Grasso is a Senior Editor at We Are the Mutants. He is a Bostonian, a museum professional, and a podcaster. Follow him on Twitter at @MutantsMichael.

"I was raised by witches boy, I see with more than eyes and you know that."- Frigga to Thor in 2013, Avengers Endgame
Call me biased, but I have always liked the idea that witches see things that other character types don't.  Not just in terms of "infravision" or "dark vision" but in just "other vision."
A couple of house rules that I always use are witches can see ghosts, spirits, and other sorts of magical creatures that are typically invisible to others.  They can see magical auras which they can tell something about the person they are looking at.  Most importantly they can recognize other witches on sight.

Mechanically it really doesn't add much to D&D.  I argue the kinds of ghosts and things the witch can see are harmless to everyone.  But if you can see them, then they can see you.  So they are not always harmless to the witch herself.
In Ghosts of Albion, this type of vision is known as "Lesser Sensing" and it is something all magical creatures, including magicians and witches, have.   
Witches and Warlocks in NIGHT SHIFT do this as part of their class.
I have extended it to my fantasy games where it is just called "The Sight."
In D&D3-5 or Pathfinder1-2, it could easily be a Feat.  For my Basic-era witches an Occult Power.
The SightUsing the Sight requires a moment of concentration but then the witch can See.  She can see magical auras that will give her some basic information on what she is looking at.She can See:- magical effects such as active spells, charms, curses or compulsions on a person- magical lines of force (ley lines)- whether or not a person is a spell-caster* (she can always detect another witch)- undead
With more concentration (1 round) she can See:- Invisible creatures- alignment - polymorphed, shape-changed or lycanthropes
The subject of the witch's Sight knows they are being Seen. They get an uncomfortable feeling and know it is coming from the witch, even if they do not know what it means.
That's the rough version, it would need to be tweaked for the respective games.  For example it would work with D&D 5's perception skill. 

If you are feeling tired, lethargic, or otherwise drained then you could have been attacked by an Astral Spider.  

As their name suggests these demonic creatures are native to the astral plane, but they are attracted to people with psychic or empathic abilities.  The spider, which is normally invisible, attaches itself to a victim and drains Wisdom at the rate of 1 point per day. The Astral Spider stays attached and draining until it's victim reaches 0 Wisdom. Magic that can detect a curse or detect evil creatures can let you know that an Astral Spider is attached to someone or attacking. 
The Astral Spider is immune to physical attacks, including magical and blessed weapons.  They can only be affected by magic.  A specially worded Remove Curse spell will remove an Astral Spider.  A banishment or exorcism will also remove the spider and force it back into the Astral.
Astral Spiders only move in the Astral plane. The only time they are manifest in the real world when attached to a victim and then they do not move. 
Astral SpiderVermin (Demonic)Frequency: Very RareNumber Appearing: 1 (1)Alignment: Chaotic (Chaotic Evil)Movement:  SpecialArmor Class: 9 [10]Hit Dice: 3d6+3* (10)Attacks: 1 special Damage: 1 point Widom per daySpecial: Immune to physical attacks, affected only by magicSize: SmallSave: Fighter 3Morale: 12Treasure Hoard Class: NoneXP: 125
Astral SpiderNIGHT SHIFTNo. Appearing: 1AC: 9Move: Special (Astral only)Hit Dice: 3Special: Wisdom drain. 1 point/dayXP VALUE: 120

August started in North Texas with its usual aplomb: hot and sunny, and so much hot and sunny that the only thing that keeps most of us sane through the month is the promise of Halloween decorations at the local … Continue reading →

Over the weekend two game-related thoughts kept going through my head.  Frist Gen Con and how we were all missing it and the adventures I was going to run for my family and the theme of Thread.
Since D&D 5 had come out I have been running my family through the "Gygaxian Classics." while we technically started with B1 In Search of the Unknown with AD&D 1st ed, we quickly moved to D&D 5.  From here we did B2 Keep on the Borderlands and moved through the Great Greyhawk Campaign.  We have been calling the group The Order of the Platinum Dragon. 

Our order of games has been:
T1 Village of Hommlet (forgotten by the characters, played as a flashback after I6)B1 In Search of the Unknown (Gen Con Game)B2 Keep on the BorderlandsL1 The Secret of Bone Hill  (Gen Con Game)X2 Castle AmberI6 Ravenloft (Gen Con Game)C2 Ghost Tower of InvernessA1-5 Slave LordsC1 The Hidden Shrine of TamoachanG123, G4 Against the Giants  (Gen Con Game)D12, 3 Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Vault of the DrowQ1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits (Gen Con Game)
I wanted my family to have the "Classic D&D Experience) with this.  Communities are often defined by the stories they share. These are the stories we all share.  How did you defeat Strahd? Did you shout 'Bree Yark'? What did you do in the Hill Giant's dining room?   Did you survive the Demonweb?
One of the things I have been doing differently than the original narrative is thread everything together with a massive conspiracy.  Someone, or something, killed all the Gods of the Sun.  The characters (and the players) have come to the conclusion that this something is the Elder Elemental Eye.  But they don't know who or what that is.They have learned that Eclavdra betrayed her Goddess, Lolth, and has incited a civil war within the city of Erelhei-Cinlu.  The followers of Lolth vs the followers of the Elder Elemental Eye.
What they don't know yet is who has been manipulating these threads.  Behind the scenes, the Demon Lord Graz'zt has been scheming.  In my world Graz'zt has always coveted the Drow. He wants their devotion and is jealous of the iron hold Lolth has on them.  So he has been stirring her up into more and more desperate attacks on the Prime Material.  He is using Eclavdra and her devotion to the EEE to get to Lolth.  Eclavdra thinks Graz'zt can free the EEE from his prison in the Temple of Elemental Evil.  To this end Elcavdra has been using what is left of the EEE former followers, or rather their descendants, the Giants.  Titans and Primordials followed the EEE back in the Dawn War.  Graz'zt thinks he can control the EEE once he has the worship of the Drow.
What Elcavdra doesn't know is Graz'zt has no intention of releasing the EEE from the Temple of Elemental Evil, save as far as he wants that power too.  Graz'zt is not a demon at all, but rather a devil sent by Asmodeus to infiltrate the demon hierarchy and discover the source of pure evil for Asmodeus.  Graz'zt has gone too deep into the cold though and now he thinks like a demon lord. Asmodeus suspects this of course.  Both of these powerful evil creatures will betray each other on the first chance.
Graz'zt has long suspected that the Temple of Elemental Evil is the key.  Centuries ago he sent the Demon Lady Zuggtmoy into the Temple. He discovered she was essentially absorbed by the power of the EEE. Now her cults worship it. 
What none of the evil lords and ladies know though is that the EEE is really Tharizdûn. He is manipulating Graz'zt and Asmodeus to free him.  He tried with Graz'zt before and Graz'zt sent in Zuggtmoy.  Tharizdûn quickly overwhelmed, overpowered, and destroyed Zuggtmoy's form and spirit.  This gave Tharizdûn enough power though to put his final plans into action.  He needs the Temple of Elemental Evil open. Only Lolth has the keys to unlock the Temple.
And in my next adventure with the family, Graz'zt is going to get them.
That was supposed to happen this last weekend, but Gen Con shut down due to Covid-19 we did not get to do this.
One thing that never sat well with me, and many others, is that after this epic adventure of Giants and Drow and going to the Abyss the end antagonist is Lolth and her Spider-ship?  It seems a little anti-climatic. 
Instead of that my last layer of the Lolth Demonweb will be Skein of the Death Mother.  


The spider-ship will still be used in my ill-defined Q2 adventure, likely piloted by Eclavdra to invade the surface world, but starting with the houses still loyal to Lolth in Erelhei-Cinlu.
I am going to pull all these threads, and more, together with the grand finale, The Temple of Elemental Evil. 
Then I am looking forward to running my War of the Witch Queens.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—


What is it?
Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd presents an odd, even whimsical creature for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a thirteen-page, full colour, 1.49 MB PDF.

Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd is well presented and decently written.

Where is it set?
Dolorous Edd, the subject of Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd,  can be encountered anywhere in Dragon Pass, or even in Glorantha.

Who do you play?
Anyone can encounter Dolorous Edd. Hunters might want to track him, Lhankor Mhy might want to clarify know facts about him, and a Shaman might want to dedicate a cult to him!

What do you need?
Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, but RuneQuest – Glorantha Bestiary might be useful. 

What do you get?
Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd details ‘Dolorous Edd’, a singularly strange creature who wanders Dragon Pass seemingly at random and is known to a multitude of different people across the region. He is a tall and looming  beast, long, but with skin wrinkled into folds, tiny feet, and constantly weeping eyes. He is seen watching folk and tends to run—or leap—away if encountered. There are lots of rumours and tales about him, the likelihood being that the Player Characters will know something about him, such that if they do encounter him, they will not be completely unaware of his existence.

As well as providing the full stats and personality of this beast, Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd a rumours table suggesting what both Player Characters and NPCs might know about him (there is much to be learned over a pint), three scenario seeds, a complete description of the cult dedicated to Dolorous Edd, and the folklore about him. Actually, there is no cult devoted to Dolorous Edd—at least not yet. Instead it is up to the Player Characters to do so, especially if one of them is a Shaman. Full details of such a cult is given should a Player Character decide to establish one, including appropriate Rune spells. A good third of Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd is devoted to the folklore surrounding his appearances and activities. If there is an issue with this, it is that it is not really designed to be read by the players, so the Game Master may want to adapt it so should the Player Characters want to do a little more research into Dolorous Edd. That said, the folklore will instead work as inspiration for the Game Master in presenting the rumours related to him and perhaps in creating further encounters with this great, fantastically quaint creature.

Is it worth your time?
Yes—Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd epitomises ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’ in presenting a “Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie” who may be simply encountered, hunted, be made friends with, a mystery to be uncovered, or even worshiped!
No—Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd is perhaps ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’ a step too far, a silly creature more Douglas Addams than Greg Stafford.
Maybe—Monster of the Month #7: Dolorous Edd is strange and whimsical, but its weirdness is easy enough to bring to your Glorantha with relatively little preparation.

Artwork found at Archive.org

Change, they tell us, is good. 
It is good in life and in games.  I feel in order to be good at running or playing any RPG you need to change your style of playing every so often and the best way to do this is to change your games.
It is no secret I really enjoy D&D.  But it is also not the only game I play, not by any stretch.
Mark Twain once said "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness."  The same can be said of "travelling" to other worlds.   
Want to make your D&D games scarier? Play Call of Cthulhu.  Want to give it more of a historical feel? Play Pendragon. Want to give your games a more magical feel? Play Ars Magica or it's half-sister Mage.  Occult conspiracies? Play WitchCraft and Conspiracy X. 
I honestly get confused when people tell me they only play D&D. Or even, just one version of D&D. That's like only ever reading one book your entire life (and yes I know those people too).

My interests in RPGs are horror, magic, Celtic-myths and legends, and Victorian-era gaming.  I bring these into my games when and where I can.  Ok, so Victorian era not so much in D&D, but there are ideas I like to bring over. 
My games are better because I have had these other experiences.  My game writing is better because I have had these other experiences.
So maybe when you need to improve your own games, try changing it out for a little bit. 

The format of One-on-One roleplaying—one Investigator and one Keeper—is not new to Lovecraftian investigative horror. It goes all the way back to the scenario, ‘Paper Chase’, originally published in the Cthulhu Companion from 1983 and most recently included in the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, and more recently explored in Cthulhu Confidential, published by Pelgrane Press for clue-orientated roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, Trail of Cthulhu. Chaosium, Inc. returns to the format for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, with Does Love Forgive? One-to-One Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, its special release for the ‘Virtual’ Gen Con of 2020. Originally published for the Polish version of Call of Cthulhu by Black Monk Games as Miłość ci wszystko wybaczy? for Valentine’s Day 2020, the two scenarios in Does Love Forgive? are set in the USA, one in 1929 and one in 1932, one in Chicago and one in New York, and both can be played through in a single session or so. Does Love Forgive? is also notable for its all-women writing team and for being one of the few non-English language titles for Call of Cthulhu to be translated and developed for the English market.

From the outset, Does Love Forgive? addresses two difficulty factors related to the format and the subject matter. The first is the difficulty of playing the two scenarios and here it introduces a pair of indicators to show the Difficulty Level and the estimated number of gaming sessions necessary to complete the two scenarios in the anthology. These range from ‘Very Easy’ to ‘Very Hard’ for the Difficulty Level and one, two, three, or four sessions for the play length. The first scenario, ‘Love You to Death’, has a Difficulty Level of ‘Very Easy’ and a play length of one session, whilst the second, ‘Mask of Desire’, has a Difficulty Level of ‘Easy’ and a play length of one session. Both are clearly marked at the beginning of each scenario. Overall, this is a useful addition to Call of Cthulhu, and hopefully it will be used in more scenarios. Both scenarios though, can be played using the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set or the full Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition rules.

The difficulty is with the subject at the heart of Does Love Forgive?—and that is love. Being focused on the one player and the one Keeper, the format of one-on-one roleplaying is potentially more intense and potentially more intimate, which when combined with as emotional a subject matter as ‘love’, means that the some of the situations in the two scenarios have the capacity to make player, Keeper, or both uncomfortable when roleplaying their romantic or highly emotionally-charged scenes. The authors suggest both player and Keeper discuss any potentially problematic plot elements that they might be uncomfortable with and set the parameters for themselves, and that certainly the Keeper should take care in handling the emotional scenes throughout both scenarios. Overall this is good advice and definitely worth reading as part of preparing both. Other advice for the Keeper covers the use of NPCs to provide support to the protagonist and the use of Luck to modify most rolls during play.

The first scenario is ‘Love You to Death’. This takes place in Chicago on Friday, February 15th, 1929—the day after the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The Investigator is a Private Eye—either one of the player’s own creation or taken from the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set—who grew up in an orphanage where he was very good friends with two girls, Hattie and Ellen. It has been years since he has seen either, one being now married and the other having been adopted years before. Then on the morning following the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Hattie knocks on his office door. Her faithful dog has been picked up by the police and is due to be put down. Fortunately, the Investigator has a friend at the police station and not only will he be able to learn how the dog came to be picked up, but also more about the terrible events of the day before. However, by the time the Investigator returns the dog to Hattie, she has disappeared… Could this be related to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre?

‘Love You to Death’ is of course a love triangle, but one coloured by both other emotions and the Mythos. Being the simpler of the two scenarios, ‘Love You to Death’ should be a relatively easy mystery to solve, and in fact, experienced players of Call of Cthulhu may find it a little too easy. This is unlikely though if the player is new to Call of Cthulhu or he has played through the scenarios in Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. At times it does feel as the player and his Investigator is being dragged around—in some cases literally—a little. There are suggestions if the Keeper wants to add a complication or two and these are probably best used if the player has plenty of experience with Call of Cthulhu. This is a nice little investigation, adroitly framed around the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, but without miring it unnecessarily in the Mythos.

‘Mask of Desire’ shifts to New York and 1932. This is a much less tightly plotted scenario, requiring a slightly more complex set-up. The Investigator lives with two close friends, Anna, a wouldbe singer, and Lucas, a reluctant lawyer. The player is free to decide the nature of the relationship between his Investigator and Anna and Lucas and also what his actual Occupation is, both of which needs to be done before play begins as it will very much influence the interaction between the Investigator and his housemates throughout the scenario. The three have been invited to a party hosted by Madame de Tisson at her swanky apartment on the Upper West Side. The wealthy, and notoriously louche socialite is known for her libertine attitudes and her interest in objects d’art, so it seems odd that Lucas is seen talking to her discreetly, especially since he is concerned about Anna and her worries about her audition the following day with Nancy Turner, the famous jazz orchestra conductor. 

The scenario very much revolves around a nasty MacGuffin which promises a lot, but at a price—and who has it and what they are doing with it. Like any good MacGuffin it quickly falls into the trio of friends’ hands and as the friends learn more about it and what it can do, it is likely to drive a wedge between them. They are not the only ones with an interest in the object—an interest which could turn deadly. The scenario is again quite linear, but being more complex, there are more options to take into consideration, there being quite a lot of ‘If this happens, then this happens’, ‘If the Investigator does this, then this happens’, and so on. In many ways, not that different from any scenario for Call of Cthulhu, but it is more obvious in its format. ‘Mask of Desire’ is, though, far more of a character piece than many Call of Cthulhu scenarios, focusing on the friendships which the player will have helped build during the set-up phase prior to play. That does bring the MacGuffin’s malign influence and what it drives men to do much closer to home than in many Call of Cthulhu scenarios and mean its impact will be all the stronger and more emotional.

Physically, Does Love Forgive? is well presented and well-written. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is decent. If the anthology is missing anything, then perhaps a few more NPC portraits would not have gone amiss, though the Keeper can remedy that with some images taken from the Internet, and perhaps for ease of play, a ready-made Investigator, at least for ‘Love You to Death’.

The presence of the Mythos in Does Love Forgive? is quite mild by comparison, but it need not be overly Eldritch given that the two scenarios in the anthology are for a single player and his Investigator. Which makes the anthology more than suitable for play following the Cthulhu Starter Set, not necessarily using the same Investigator, of course. Of the two scenarios, ‘Mask of Desire’ is the more sophisticated and will thus be appreciated by a wider audience—‘Love You to Death’ possibly being a bit too straightforward for experienced players. Then there is the question of the title’s anthology, to which the answer is with some Luck and good roleplaying upon the part of the player, then certainly, otherwise the last thing the Mythos will do is forgive. Overall, as the first release in English for Black Monk Games, Does Love Forgive? One-to-One Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, is a very welcome addition to the way in which Call of Cthulhu can be played and hopefully the format will be supported with further scenarios, if not a campaign!

It is August.  Where did the Summer go? Plus I should be at Gen Con now getting my kids to breakfast for a day of gaming. 
It is an August tradition for David F. Chapman of AUTOCRATIK to host the month-long #RPGaDAY. Like last year, this year we are given one-word prompts for our reflections.

Here are this year's prompts.

1. Beginning
2. Change
3. Thread   
4. Vision
5. Tribute
6. Forest
7. Couple
8. Shade
9. Light
10. Want
11. Stack
12. Message
13. Rest
14. Banner
15. Frame
16. Dramatic
17. Comfort   
18. Meet
19. Tower
20. Investigate    
21. Push    
22. Rare
23. Edge
24. Humour
25. Lever
26. Strange
27. Favor
28. Close
29. Ride
30. Portal
31. Experience

Some jumped right out at me with ideas.  Others might take a me a bit more to come up with a good idea.
So let's go with today's word Beginning.
I have told the story here of my beginning in D&D and RPG many times. So no need to go over that.
Instead, I want to talk about the beginning of my blogging.


Back in 2007 I had no real intention of starting a blog, let alone one based around old-school games.  My website, The Other Side, was dead and I was working on my 2nd Ph.D. and working full time.
I started the blog after reading online about some old-school games and thought it might be fun to try. There were not a lot of blogs in the old-school scene yet. I started in 2007 but did not get going till 2008.  Grognardia didn't get started till about a year after I did, but built up more steam.  Most of the blogs from then, like Grognardia, are gone. Tenkar's started soon after Grognardia and is still around and has become the hub of the Old-School and OSR movements. 
I did not really plan to get into the OSR even as it was rising up around me.  I just wanted a place I could talk about D&D one day, WitchCraft the next, maybe talk about some horror movies or comics and then go on a little about Mage or other World of Darkness books.
Well...that was over 4331 posts and 13 years ago.
Since then I have spilled a lot of words here. I would like to think this writing has made my games better or at least my own books better. Will I be doing this for the next 13 years? No idea. But it has been a great ride so far!
Make sure you check out all the #RPGaDAY posts at https://twitter.com/autocratik.

Since 2013, Goodman Games, the publisher of  Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic has released a book especially for Gen Con, the largest tabletop hobby gaming event in the world. That book is the Goodman Games Gen Con Program Book, a look back at the previous year, a preview of the year to come, staff biographies, and a whole lot more, including adventures and lots tidbits and silliness. The first was the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book, but not being able to pick up a copy from Goodman Games when they first attended UK Games Expo  in 2019, it was actually the second to be reviewed after the Goodman Games Gen Con 2014 Program Book. Fortunately, Reviews from R’lyeh manages to return to the correct order for Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book.

The Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Guide is a vastly bigger book than either the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book or Goodman Games Gen Con 2014 Program Book. In fact, it almost double the size of the first two volumes in the series combined! Its pages contain a mix of interviews, art, scenarios, game support, fiction, and randomness, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book starting off with some of the latter with a series of dice-themed articles. The first of these—and the first of the articles in Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book—is Dieter Zimmerman’s ‘Tables For Thieves’, a set of tables for things such as places to meet in secret and buy on the black market. Its companion piece is themed not along one subject matter, but the type of die rolled, ‘Twenty Funky Dice Tables’ by Ken St. Andre offering up tables such as ‘D2: Random Monster Encounters’ and ‘ D7: Random Dungeon Name Generator’. All of which use the various shapes of dice also used in Dungeon Crawl Classics. Of course, even if the Game Master is not going to roll the dice on these tables, they are will at least serve as inspiration. The various non-standard dice used in Dungeon Crawl Classics come under the spotlight in Terry Olson’s ‘Cranking Up the Funk in DCC Dice Rolling’ which examines the probabilities and mathematics of the Dungeon Crawl Classics—and now Mutant Crawl Classics—dice. It is unfortunately the driest article in Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book, but doubtless it will appeal to some gamers who like both dice and the numbers behind them.

The highlight of the dice section though is ‘An Interview with Colonel Lou Zocchi’. As the title suggests, this is with an interview with Lou Zocchi, best known for his dice—in particular, his one-hundred-sided Zocchihedron—and his long involvement with the gaming industry. The lengthy interview goes into this and his development of dice for the industry, how to roll dice, and more. It is an absolutely fascinating piece, but only hints at some of the stories which the interviewee could tell. It would certainly be fascinating to read more of his tales from the industry and have them in print.

The Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book includes not one, but four scenarios. All four have in common the danger of using big magical items—all the more so because two of the four scenarios are for Zero Level characters. The first scenario, ‘The Black Feather Blade’ by Daniel J. Bishop is for First Level characters who are sent to recover the Black Feather Blade of the title, the famed sword of the infamous Bran Corvidu, Feast-Lord of Crows, who was devoted to the Crow God Malotoch and ravaged the Northern Kingdoms a century ago. They may be doing this for greed, or because they are devoted agents of Law or Chaos. The ‘dungeon’ consists of a number of barrow tombs, the Player Characters needing to determine which one belongs to the infamous warlord is buried and giving the dungeon a slightly dispersed feeling. Another difference is that the scenario includes two rival factions also after the Black Feather Blade, which adds some roleplaying opportunities and a bit of friction to the scenario.

Jon Hook’s ‘Evil Reborn’ is for Fourth Level characters. Although this is a standalone adventure, it can also be run as a sequel to Dungeon Crawl Classics #13: Crypt of the Devil Lich. Since the events of that scenario, the devil-lich Chalychia has been trapped for centuries, but that has given the time to devise a means to escape. The Player Characters will have come to the town of Cillamar which has recently been beset by a series of raids that have seen the town’s children stolen. The Player Characters are asked to both rescue them and stop it from happening again, which will take them into frozen stygian wastelands and Chalychia’s tower refuge. This is a good mini-scenario with some fun twists on classic monsters.

The other two scenarios in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book are definitely its highlight, presenting as they do variations upon the classic Zero-Level Character Funnel which is a feature of the Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game. In the classic Character Funnel, each player roleplays not one character, but four! Each is Zero Level, hoping to survive an adventure and acquire the ten Experience Points necessary to go up to First Level and gain a Class. Both ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’ and ‘The Hypercube of Myt’ are different in that they are Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Funnel Tournaments. In these, each player is given a single Zero-Level character and when the character dies, they are out of the tournament and another player takes his place with his own newly created Zero-Level character. Success in the tournament is measured in the number of encounters a Player Character survives. Advice is given on running such tournaments.

Harley Stroh’s ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’ presents just three of the pits and can be run as intended or be played using Third Level Player Characters. The Player Characters are unwitting agents of the warlock Sezrekan who seeks to avert his doom by bringing an end to the multiverse. For this he requires three artefacts—the Crown of the Seraphim, Tyrving, the cursed foebrand, and Tarnhelm, the dragon-helm. Anyone brave enough to wield them gains access to great power, capable of defeating the enemies and servants of Sezrekan, but courts disaster in doing so, for the weapons are terribly dangerous. In terms of traditional fantasy roleplaying adventures, ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’ lacks a conclusion, the point of it being survival rather achieving a particular objective. This makes it difficult to run, even if using Third Level Player Characters, and then there is the logistics of setting up and running a Funnel Tournament—the playing space, the number of players, and so on. Yet there is something amazing in the scope and scale of ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’, supported by a wealth of detail and grim sub-hellish atmosphere, which just makes you go, “Woah!” Sadly, what is included in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is just a snapshot of ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’. It would be brilliant to see the complete version.

The other Funnel Tournament in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is a group effort from ‘The DCCabal’ and unlike ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’, complete. It also has a Science Fiction element. ‘The Hypercube of Myt’ takes place in an artefact of the same name, a tesseract—or hypercube—which is the last remnant of the Keep of Myt, once the estate of grand vizier of the Kingdom of Morr, the chaotic mage Mytus the Mad. The door to the Hypercube opens once a year at the annual Festival of the Fatted Calf. The festival is famous for drawing the curious, the foolhardy, and the incautious from far and wide to ponder the mysteries of the Cube. Inside is a vast space of a limited number of highly detailed locations and there is plenty to be found and interacted with throughout. The rooms and artefacts are weird and wacky and the Judge should have a lot of fun both describing them and what happens as the Player Characters interact with them, as well as portraying some of the actions of the NPCs—including a religious schism between the Player Characters! Unlike ‘The Seven Pits of Serzrekan’, there is definite way of concluding ‘The Hypercube of Myt’ and of getting out of it—there is a definite exit—but perhaps getting to it may well not be quite as obvious as it should be, leading to frustration upon the part of the players and their characters.

Goodman Games’ ‘World Tour’ is a staple of the Gen Con Program series and the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is no exception. Since it covers the previous year, this is ‘DCC RPG Worlds Tour 2014’ which has been upgraded into a full colour insert of photographs taken at Gen Con and other events throughout the year, showcasing not just Goodman Games’ Road Crew, but the players and winners of various sessions and tournaments. It is a nice snapshot of the year past and from one year to the next, tracks the doings of the team at Goodman Games. The last few pages of the colour insert showcases the art of both Doug Kovacs and William McAusland. Both of their portfolios are given full space later in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book, but in black and white rather than in colour. Both ‘Classic Dungeon Crawl Art Folio: Doug Kovacs’ and ‘Classic Dungeon Crawl Art Folio: William McAusland’ are accompanied by interviews with both artists. Doug Kovacs in ‘D20 Questions: Doug Kovac’ (which originally appeared in Level Up #2, September 2009) and ‘An Interview with Dungeon Crawl Classics Cover Artist Doug Kovacs’ (which originally appeared in Meeple Monthly, July 2014), and William McAusland in an interview new to the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book.

Naturally, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book focuses upon the Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game, but it pays plenty of attention to other titles published by Goodman Games as well. This begins with Brendan Lasalle’s Xcrawl, the roleplaying game of gladiatorial and tournament dungeoneering campaign setting receives attention with a couple of pieces. First with ‘Xcrawl Apocalypse: The Athlete’, a preview of a Class for the post-apocalyptic version of the setting. This is a very physical Class, all about their Strength, Agility, or Stamina, getting in close and grappling—the latter supported by a full table of critical results for grappling attacks and holds. More entertaining is ‘Best Possible Combination’, Lasalle’s short story set in the standard setting for Xcrawl which captures some of the perils and worries of being a participant in the Xcrawl games. This is not only his only piece of fiction in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book, the other being ‘Journey to the Hole in the Sky’, which captures the flavour and feel of a Character Funnel in a story rather than in play.

‘Appendix F: The Ythoth Raider’ is ‘An expansion of the Purple Planet Author’s Edition Glossography’ by Harley Stroh for his Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jules Verne inspired Perils on the Purple Planet setting. It describes what is essentially a Prestige Class for the Player Character who succumbs to the power of ythoth mushrooms and becomes a gaunt, blue-skinned raider who searches the multiverse for more of the mushroom. He is an addicted Thrall to the Bloom—and so this piece is more William S. Burroughs than Edgar Rice Burroughs—and will gain mental powers skin to the Magic-User’s spells, though if the powers fail there is the chance that the user’s head will explode!

The post-apocalyptic genre receives a fair degree of coverage in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book. This includes two articles for Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game of Science Fiction Adventures on a Lost Starship, the post-apocalyptic captive world set aboard a massive colony starship, both of which do what their titles say. So Robert Payne’s ‘New Devices for the Starship Warden’, which adds lots of mundane objects like adhesive, musical instruments, and utility belts, whilst ‘Even More Mutations’ by Dieter Zimmerman gives new mutations such as Omniphage which gives the mutant the teeth and digestive tract needed to eat almost anything and Apportation, which enables the Mutant to teleport objects he wants or needs from anywhere within a mile. Both articles are useful additions to Metamorphosis Alpha as more objects and more mutations are always welcome. The coverage of the genre in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is accompanied by a lengthy preview of the forthcoming Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic. Of course, a bit redundant in 2020, but in 2015, this would have really effectively showcased the then forthcoming roleplaying game.

2020 has seen the publication of The Cthulhu Alphabet, but in 2015 it was merely a suggestion. Bradley McDevitt’s ‘The Mythos Alphabet’ was its forerunner, a series of tables such as ‘D is for Deep Ones’ and ‘M is for Madness’, along with ‘A Dozen Demonic Deep One Plots’, ‘Six Fearsome Fanes’, and ‘Six Grisly Decorat ions for a Temple’. This is not the normal sort of thing you see for Lovecraftian investigative horror, but it works as list after list of ideas and suggestions, which a Keeper (or Judge) can grab and add to her game. Again, fun and something to pull off the shelf and consult for inspiration.

Of course, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is not without its silliness and its fripperies. The silliness includes the advice column, ‘Dear Archmage Abby’, in which the eponymous agony aunt gives guidance on life, love, and the d20 mechanics in an entertaining fashion, whilst the fripperies includes artwork for the ‘2015 Mailing Labels’, which capture a bit more of Goodman Games in 2014. The last thing in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is both a frippery and bit of history. This is ‘Judges Guild 1977 Fantasy Catalog’, a complete facsimile of the publisher’s mail order catalogue from 1977. This is a lovely addition to the volume, providing a snapshot of gaming as it was forty years ago, a bit history that nicely bookends the interview with Lou Zocchi at the start of the book.

Physically, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is a thick softback book, which due to the colour inserts in the centre, does feel a bit stiff in the hand. Apart from that, the book is clean and tidily presented, lavishly illustrated throughout, and a good-looking book both in black and white, and in colour.

On one level, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is an anthology of magazine articles, but in this day and age of course—as well as 2015—there is no such thing as the roleplaying magazine. So what you have instead is the equivalent of comic book’s Christmas annual—but published in the summer rather than in the winter—for fans of Goodman Games’ roleplaying games. There is though, something for everyone in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book, whether that is lovers of history of the hobby, fantasy roleplayers, devotees of Lovecraftian investigative horror, and more. Some of it is gonzo, perhaps bonkers—the two Tournament Funnels in particular, but overall, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Book is a bumper book of gaming goodness.

Copies of NIGHT SHIFT: VETERANS OF THE SUPERNATURAL WARS have ALL been delivered to the Kickstarter backers and people are also getting the Kickstarter special Player's Guide.

You can order your own hardcover version at the publisher's website, at https://www.elflair.com/nightshift.html.
You can also buy the PDF at DriveThruRPG.

One of the things that really motivated Jason and me while working on this is music.  Spend any time here and you know I am a big music fan.  

So I thought it might be great to share some of the music that reminded us of the stories we were telling with NIGHT SHIFT and the games we have run.
Up this Friday Night Videoes are songs from my playlist.  Tonight, songs from The Ordinary World!

Thanks to a shoutout from Dallasites 101, i welcome all of the new folks coming across the Triffid Ranch for the first time, and welcome you all to the Porch Sales running every Sunday from 7:00 am to noon. And … Continue reading →

It's #FollowFriday and I thought some online Trolls would be good to follow.
Not the typical online trolls, but the people that have given us the products I have enjoyed all week!
ChaosiumThe publisher of TrollPak (and RuneQuest, and Call of Cthulhu)@Chaosium_Inc, https://twitter.com/Chaosium_Inc
Tunnels & Trolls
Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls Team @DeluxeTnT, https://twitter.com/DeluxeTnTKen St. Andre @Trollgodfather, https://twitter.com/Trollgodfather Liz Danforth @LizDanforth, https://twitter.com/LizDanforthSteven S. Crompton @StevenSCrompton, https://twitter.com/StevenSCrompton
Troll LordsI didn't talk about them, but they were always on my mind this week.
Troll Lord Games @trolllordgames, https://twitter.com/trolllordgamesStephen Chenault,TLG @TrollLordSteve, https://twitter.com/TrollLordSteve Chuck "BABOONSKI" Cumbow @BABOONSKI_, https://twitter.com/BABOONSKI_Jason Vey @ElfLairJasonTLG, https://twitter.com/ElfLairJasonTLG
ImagesAnd here are the resources for the images of my Trolla Witch Grýlka.Overhead Games @OverheadGames, https://twitter.com/OverheadGamesHero Forge Minis @HeroForgeMinis, https://twitter.com/HeroForgeMinis 

It is an undeniable truth that the Witch gets a lot of bad press. Not necessarily within the roleplaying hobby, but from without, for the Witch is seen as a figure of evil, often—though not necessarily—a female figure of evil, and a figure to be feared and persecuted. Much of this stems from the historical witch-hunts of the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeen, and eighteenth centuries, along with the associated imagery, that is, the crone with the broom, pointy hat, black cat, cauldron, and more. When a Witch does appear in roleplaying, whether it is a historical or a fantasy setting, it is typically as the villain, as the perpetrator of some vile crime or mystery for the player characters to solve and stop. Publisher The Other Side has published a number of supplements written not only as a counter to the clichés of the witch figure, but to bring the Witch as a character Class to roleplaying after being disappointed at the lack of the Witch in the Player’s Handbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. Each of these supplements draws upon more historical interpretations of the Witch—sometimes to counter the clichés, sometimes to enforce them—and presents her as a playable character Class. Each book is published under the label of ‘Basic Era Games’, and whilst the exact Retroclone each book is written to be used with may vary, essentially, they are all compatible. Which means that the Game Master can mix and match traditions, have player characters from matching traditions, and so on.
The first book in the series, Daughters of Darkness: The Mara Witch for Basic Era Games is designed for use with Goblinoid Games’ Labyrinth Lord and presents the Witch as dedicated to the Mara Tradition, that of the Dark Mother—Lilith, the First Woman, the First Witch, and the Mother of Demons. The second book in the series is The Children of the Gods: The Classical Witch for Basic Era Games, which was written for use with Dreamscape Design’s Blueholme Rules, the retroclone based on the 1977 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set designed by J. Eric Holmes, and which focused on not so much as ‘Evil’ or Chaotic witches, but upon the Classical traditions of Egypt, Greece, Phoenicia, Rome, and Sumeria. Again, Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch for Basic Era Games, the next and third entry in the line presents a different take upon the Witch, whilst the fourth, The Basic Witch: The Pumpkin Spice Witch Tradition, presents another different and very modern—if slightly silly—take upon the Witch. The fifth entry, The Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch Tradition, is written for use with Old School Essentials: Classic Fantasy, Necrotic Gnome’s interpretation and redesign of the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Steve Marsh. It focuses on believers in ‘The Old Ways’, of ancient gods and practices with a strong belief in the supernatural and a strong connection to the natural world and the cycle of its passing seasons.

The Warlock is part of the series of books published by The Other Side exploring the place and role of the witch in the Old School Renaissance, but is in many ways different to those explorations. What it is not, is the presentation of the ‘male’ counterpoint to the witch, since that is not what a warlock is. Nor is it the exploration of an archetypal figure from history and its adaptation to gaming. Instead, it presents a wholly different Class, very much more of fantasy figure, somewhere between the Cleric, the Magic-User, and the Witch. In some cases hated figure—hated because they are believed to have dealings with the infernal, hated because they are believed to be evil, and hated because they steal spells. There is truth in all of that, but there is much more to this figure, as detailed in The Warlock, a companion to The Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch Tradition and also written for use with Old School Essentials: Classic Fantasy.

As a Class, the Warlock is a spell-caster who like the Witch has a patron. Now whilst the Witch worships her patron and her relationship with her patron is more divine in nature, the Warlock has more of an equal relationship with his Patron or is the student to the Patron’s teacher. A witch will typically worship a goddess and whilst a warlock may have a deity as a patron, he may also have a lost god, a demon, a devil, a dragon, a lord of the fae, or even with the cosmos, death, or chaos itself. The magic and spells of the Witch are primarily divine in nature, but for the Warlock, they are arcane in nature. The fundamental difference between the spell-casting Classes is that Clerics pray for their power and spells, Magic-Users study for their powers and spells, and the Warlock takes it.

In mechanical terms, the Warlock starts with the ability to unleash an Arcane Blast at will and a familiar. Unlike the Witch, this familiar is not a spirit in animal guise, but an actual spirit, so immaterial and unable to attack or be attacked. The Warlock player is free to describe what form the familiar takes, though ideally it should be something associated with his Patron. So if a Warlock’s Patron is the cosmos, it could be miniature star; death itself or a god of death, a floating skull; the devil, a miniature imp; and so on. Fundamental to the Warlock is the Pact he enters with his Patron. The Warlock presents four types of Pacts. These are Chaos, Cosmic, Death, and Dragon. There is some flexibility in how a Pact can be interpreted, so a Cosmic Pact could be with the stars, something beyond the stars, celestial beings, or something chthonic.

Not only will the Warlock learn his spells from his Patron, he will gain Invocations, spell-like powers that enable to do great magical deeds, but without the need for the study that that the Magic-User would require or the need for the Cleric to pray. Arcane Blast is an Invocation, but The Warlock lists some fifty or so further Invocations. They include a mix of those which can be selected by any Warlock and then those tied to a particular Patron. So, Armour of Shadows, which lets a Warlock cast Mage Armour at-will, and Eldritch Sight, which allows him to cast Detect Magic just as freely, are both general Invocations. Whereas Claws of the Ghoul is a Third Level Invocation which gives a Warlock clawed unarmed attacks and a chance to paralyse an opponent and requires a Death Pact, whilst Form of the Dragon requires a Dragon Pact and allows a Warlock to change into a dragon-like creature once per day.

Liang Yun
Second Level Warlock
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Pact: Draconic (Green Dragons: Dziban)

STR 12 (Open Doors 2-in-6)
INT 14 (+1 Language, Literate)
WIS 10 
DEX 17 (+2 AC, Missile, +1 Initiative)
CON 13 (+1 Hit Points)
CHR 15 (+1 NPC reaction, Max. 5 Retainers, Loyalty 8)

Armour Class: 13 (Leather)
Hit Points: 7
Weapons: Dagger, Staff
THAC0 20

Languages: Draconic, Mandarin

Invocations
Arcane Blast, Claws of the Dragon

Spells: (Cantrips) – Aura Reading, Guiding Star, Message, Object Reading; (First Level) – Read Magic, Spirit Servant, Taint

Familiar: Mingyu

In terms of spells, The Warlock lists almost eighty. A very few, like Augury, will be familiar, but most feel new and different. For example, Wailing Lament causes the target to wail and sob uncontrollably for an hour, Moon Touched is a plea to the Moon to silver and make magical a weapon which will now glow faintly of moonlight, and Poisonous Stare with which a Warlock can poison a target, forcing them to lose both Hit Points and Constitution! Now none of the spells are keyed to a particular Pact, which would perhaps have made designing or creating a particular type or themed Warlock easier by both Game Master or player. This then is perhaps a missed opportunity, so a player or Game Master creating a Warlock will need to pick and choose with care what spells suit their Warlock.

In addition to the Warlock’s own spells, the Class has two other types of spells. First, the Class can learn Magic-User spells—something which annoys Magic-Users and gives the Warlock the reputation for stealing spells. Second, The Warlock also adds Cantrips, or Zero-Level spells. Some thirteen of the spells in the supplement are Cantrips. For example, Aura Reading enables a Warlock to read the auras of those around them, determining their Alignment, health, magical nature (or not), and whether or not they have been cursed; Guiding Star enables a Warlock to guide himself in complete darkness or if blind; and Quick Sleeping makes a willing victim fall asleep. Lastly, the spells are listed by the other spellcasting Classes for Old School Essentials—Clerics, Druids, Illusionists, and Magic-Users—so that the contents of The Warlock can be used with the wider rules.

Unlike other titles devoted to the Witch by The Other Side, The Warlock does not include any new monsters, or monsters at all. It does however, add twenty or magical items. A few are keyed to particular Pacts, such as the Astrolabe of Fate, which grants a Warlock with a Cosmic Pact or an astrologer a +1 bonus to a single roll three times a day, but most are simply valued by Warlocks. A Dragontooth Charm provides a +1 saving throw versus the dragon breath of one type of dragon; a Hat of Spell Storing is valued by Illusionists, Magic-Users, and Warlocks for its capacity to store multiple levels of spells; and the Witch Whistle summons an army of rats, giant rats, or even wererats, depending on the songs known. Some are quite fun, such as the Rod of the Fire Mountain Warlock, which increases the die type of fire type spells and is surely a nod to The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the Fighting Fantasy solo adventure book, whilst every Warlock will want to obtain the Staff of the Warlock, the equivalent of the Magic-User’s Staff of Wizardry.

Lastly, where the Witch Class has the Coven, a gathering of witches, typically to worship their patron goddess, the Warlock Class has the Lodge. These are secret orders where Warlocks can meet and study, typically belong to one type of Pact, or allied Pacts. The Warlock details four such lodges, of which only the one is not essentially ‘evil’. This is problematic, for although the Warlock as a Class can create his own Lodge, the lack of wider examples means a lack of choice, a lack of roleplaying opportunities, and a lack of something for the Player Character Warlock to aspire to.

Physically, The Warlock comes as a digest-sized book as opposed to the standard size for the other titles in the series. This is intentional, since it keeps it keeps it the same size as the rest of the Old School Essentials line. The book is generally well written and the artwork is decent, but some elements could have been better organised. In particular the Invocations are listed alphabetically and not by Pact type or Level, so it makes choosing them that little bit more of an effort. Further, an appendix lists both spells and cantrips alphabetically and by Level and gives page numbers, but for the Invocation there is just a simple alphabetical listing.

The Class presented in The Warlock may be slightly too powerful in comparison to other Classes for Old School Essentials because the Warlock has a lot of powers that he can freely use, whereas all of the other spellcasting Classes have to work at their magic and so their players have to work at playing their magic. Further, although there are a lot of ideas and options in The Warlock, they could have been better organised and better developed to give a player a wider choice in how he builds and plays his Warlock character. Work around these issues though and The Warlock present a Class which looks to be fantastic and fun to play.

Now we come to something different.   Confession time. A lot of what you have read this week was written a while back.  My plan was to have a bunch of "Troll" related posts ready to go so they could be autoposted during Gen Con.  I was going to include pictures of the Flying Buffalo booth and T&T games, and the same with Chaosium.  
Sadly that was not to be.  So I was going post these earlier, but the discovery of this old CD-Rom backup I found with the Trollbabes RPG changed my plans again.  So pull the posts from autopost, make some edits to reflect my new thinking and boom! Troll Week was born. 
Trollbabe was not part of my original plans, but now it is hard to think of Troll Week without it. 
Now I am going to freely admit this game still has some mystery for me.  For starters, the copyright date on the book says 2002.  The CD-Rom I pulled it from was labeled "2015 Backup" but many of the files seem to be from 2008.  There is a shortcut to the now-dead Adept Press website to the Print version.  The shortcut says "Print Ed - Buy Later".  Sadly, later was too late.
So I don't know if this is the First Edition or the Second Edition.  Nor do I know how to tell the difference.
The point might be moot anyway since I also can't find a place to buy the PDF or, more to my wants, the physical book.   Maybe Ron Edwards will re-release it at some point like he did Sorcerer (the Kickstarter Edition for that is on the same CD-Rom).
Trollbabe (2002)
Trollbabe by Ron Edwards. 47 page PDF. Color cover, black & white interior art.This game comes to us from Ron Edwards of The Forge, the one-time source of tons of interesting indie games.  It is a good example of his "Narrativism" part of his GNS Game Theory.   I am not going to get into GNS Theory here. I think it has some merit and as a theory, it does have value, but today is not the day to dig into that.  No today is about Trollbabes.  What is a Trollbabe? Well. That is sort of the question you get to answer with this game.  Trollbaabes are all women, there are no Trollbros, and she is half-human, half-troll.  How did that happen? You decide the game is not just agnostic on this issue, it flatly refuses to answer it.   In any case, your Trollbabe is tall and strong. She has troll horns and big "80s-style" hair. 
Since this is a narrativist, or what some would call Story-telling, game there is really only one stat. Your Number.  This is a number from 2 to 9.  Where do you get it?  You pick it. But before you do let us consider how it is used.  There are three types of interactions; Fighting, Magic, and Social.  To do Magic you need to roll OVER this number on a d10. To Fight roll UNDER this number.  To perform a Social interaction roll whichever is better (over or under) and include this number.Example. Let's go with my new troll witch, Grýlka the Trolla. Since I see her more of a magic-using character I want Magic to be her best.  So I choose 3 as my Number.  I don't see her as being much of a fighter really and an extreme number like this works well for magic and social.Number: 3 Magic: 4-10 Fighting: 1-2 Social 3-10If I have to get into a physical fight I am going to have some issues.Choosing a 5 or 6 gives you a balanced character that can do a little bit of everything, but for my Grýlka here I want a character that thinks all problems can be solved with a bit of talking or throwing some magic around.
You can specialties to your interactions.  They do not add much mechanically but can add to the narrative and can prompt some re-rolls or other situations.  There are some suggestions but I am going with what fits my character concept.  For Fighting, I am going with "Staff" or Handheld weapons. Grýlka has no training in weapons other than to pick up a large stick.  For Magic, I picked "Witchcraft" or Troll Magic. this is likely to cause problems in areas where witches are feared more than trolls are. For Social I picked "Inquizative", Grýlka is very curious about her world, her magic, and how they all fit together. 
Next, you are encouraged to describe your character.  So Grýlka is a very tall, 6'5" trollbabe. She has large sheep-like horns pushing out of a nest of white-tinged-with-green hair.  Here eyes are green and her skin is olive toned. She does have two small tusks on her lower jaw.  She looks very strong (17 STR in D&D).  Her clothing reminds you of druids' with well worn, but well cared for leathers of muted greens and browns. She wears a headdress made of sticks to keep her long hair out of her face. 
Once you have your character the Game Master will then describe a situation you are in.  If D&D always starts in an inn or bar, then Trollbabe always starts with your trollbabe walking down the road.  So a situation might be "you are walking along a well-trodden dirt road when you hear someone yelling 'help! fire!' you see smoke ahead and a barn on fire."  This is called a Scene. You are encouraged to interact with the GM on what happens.  So let us say that Grýlka comes into this scene.  Being Inquizative she wants to know what is going on. Seeing the fire she goes to the well and magically commands the water to come out and quench the fire.  I add that she speaks to the well in Trollspeak.I roll, lets say I get  6. That is greater than my number of 3 and in range of Magic.  The water leaps up out of the well and quenches the fire.  There is a pause of shock and then the villagers all cheer! Grýlka is invited to a feast in her honor.  Of course, if I had rolled poorly then there would have been other things to happen.Maybe there would have been a conflict.  If the player calling for the conflict is the GM and against my character than they can decide what type the conflict is.  Maybe it is a good old fashioned "villagers with pitchforks!" So the interaction is Fighting. Crap, Grýlka only has a 1 to 2 on that. Maybe it is time to run.You can also combine types for other effects. Maybe Fighting + Social if she is trying to scare off the villagers by looking mean and strong.  She is strong, but not really mean.  
Modifiers are also discussed, since Grýlka was talking to the well water nothing was added.  But if the water had been in a river, and thus "wilder" her Troll Magic or Witchcraft might have given me a +1 or +2 on the roll. 
I love the bit on Troll vs. Human magic.  I plan to use this as a guide when playing Grýlka in other games.Trollish magic is all about invoking and communing with the untrammeled wilderness, of any kind. It usually deals with “whole areas,” like a river, a lake, a mountain, the sky (ie immediately above), groups or types of animals nearby, and similar. It is especially effective or nifty when performed in groups.Human magic is an individual scholarly art, based mainly on altering body function or behaviors. It is performed mainly through hypnosis, potions, and other “stagey" methods; a typical spell is cast by opening a phial and spraying a fine mist about, or by lighting a special candle and intoning a mesmerizing chant.Grýlka is very much about trollish magic.
As this is a Narrativist game an important factor is Relationships.  If your Trollbabe forms a relationship with an NPC lets say you can control that NPC, though the Game Master has input.  So after saving the village an NPC falls madly in love with Grýlka.  We agree to let the NPC follow her around so he can prove himself worthy of her. This NPC then will try to do heroic, even stupid, actions to prove his worth and valor.  The Scale of this relationship starts out small, just this yet unnamed NPC and Grýlka.  This can change as the game goes on.  Maybe this NPC is really supposed to married to another village's daughter and now Grýlka has inadvertently caused an issue between these two villages. Details on Relationships between characters are also given.
There is a section on Adventures, some more details on Magic, and finally a discussion on the Narrativist style of Trollbabe and a glossary.
Trollbabe is a fun game that can be played by as few as two people. In fact the smaller the group the better.  This is not a bug, but a feature.  The aim here is not to kick in doors and kill monsters, but to have an adventure.  As the GM for this, I personally would work up some sort of Narrative arc similar to Joesph Campbell's Heroic Journey.  But that is my take, other GMs can do something else. 
What I like Trollbabe, and Narrativist/Story Games in general, is I can use them a layer on top of more crunchy games. Trollbabe does this particularly well with the type of troll I have been talking about all week. Something like Monster Hearts for example works well with games like Buffy.  Yes. I can do the same thing with role-playing, so think of this as guided, or better yet, scaffolded role-playing.


On its own merits, Trollbabe is a lot of fun. Great to play with a small group or even for a couple of one shots.
In any case I would love to see a Third Edition of this. 
EDITED TO ADD. I did find this link for the PDF, http://indie-rpgs.com/unstore/games/title/Trollbabe

Tunnels & Troll might be one of the first "clone" games ever, but it really is a proper game in its own right.  The story goes that creator Ken St. Andre was browsing through the original D&D rules and thought he could do better than that so he sat down and created the first Tunnels & Trolls game in 1975.  D&D was barely a thing on the wider scale, though very popular still, and here comes T&T.

Over the years T&T has been updated, re-released, and otherwise seen many ups and downs the game itself has continued and has a dedicated fanbase.  It is easy to see why. T&T is easy to learn, has some neat little quirks, and is just plain fun.  Plus if you ever get a chance to meet Ken St. Andre at Gen Con then PLEASE do it. He is a great guy.
The name, Tunnels & Trolls, almost wasn't. It was almost Tunnels & Troglodytes, but that name was shot down by his players.  Since then the troll has become a sort of synonymous with the game and St. Andre himself. His twitter handle is @Trollgodfather and he runs Trollhala Press.
Tunnels & Trolls now holds the distinction of not only being the oldest RPG still published by the same publisher, Flying Buffalo, but also still controlled by its original author/designer. 
The RuneQuest ConnectionYesterday in my review of RuneQuest's Trollpak I mentioned that in my earliest days I thought Trollpak was a supplement for Tunnels & Trolls. Indeed both games did feature a lot of troll iconography.  But I think two it may have come with one other obsession of mine. Elric. I was (still am) a HUGE Michael Moorcock fan and I loved the Elric books.  I saw the game Stormbinger and I knew it used a similar system to both RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu.  I also knew that Ken St. Andre had worked on Tunnels & Trolls and Stormbringer.  I guess in my young mind I conflated all of that.  While I might never see my goal of a full Tunnels & Trolls/Trollpak mashup, my dream of an epic Stormbringer/RuneQuest/Call of Cthulhu crossover might still happen!
Deluxe Tunnels & TrollsI have owned many different versions of T&T over the years. I have loaned some out, another is just gone (it is with my original AD&D books I think) and still at least one I resold in a game auction when I needed the cash.  I miss each and every one.Thankfully I now have the PDF of Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls the most recent version and the one that is easiest to get.  I will be focusing my review on this version, with recollections of previous editions when and where I can.
Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls. 2015 Ken St. Andre, published by Flying Buffalo.348 pages, color covers, black & white interior art (mostly) and a full color section.Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls (dT&T) is a massive volume at 348 pages.  The PDF is divided into Chapter sections, but more importantly, it is split into five larger sections; The Basic or Core Game, Elaboration, Trollworld Atlas, Adventures, and End Matter.
The Basic or Core GameThis covers the first 11 chapters and 160+ pages.  This most resembles the T&T game I remember playing sparingly in the 80s. This covers the basics of the game such as rolling up characters, equipping them, combat and magic.  T&T uses all six-sided dice for everything, so getting started is as easy as getting the rules and raiding your board games for dice.  Because we NEVER did that in the 80s.Character creation is a bit like D&D and other RPGs from the time (or more accurately other RPGs are like D&D and T&T).  There are a few quirks that make T&T stand out.Exploding Triples allow for some extraordinary characters. When rolling your 3d6 for stats (like D&D) if you get three of the same number, all "1s" or all "6s" for example, you re-roll and ADD the previous total.  In D&D rolling three "1s" is a disaster, but in T&T you then reroll and add that 3 (1+1+1) to your new roll.  Roll three "6s"? Reroll and add 18! T&T has eight abilities, Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Speed, Intelligence (IQ), Wizardry, Luck, and Charisma. They all map pretty close to D&D with the others Speed, Wizardry and Luck doing what they sound like. Kindreds, not Race. With all the discussion of the word "race" in D&D (yes, it is old and problematic and yes it should be replaced) T&T "solved" this issue by going with Kindred (and long before Vampire the Masquerade did).  This also leaves character creation open to all sorts of Kindreds. Personal Adds. For every point in a physical ability over 12 (the upper end of average), characters get +1 to their personal adds. Physical stats are Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, and Speed. These adds are combined and then used in combat.Saving Rolls. All skills and nearly everything else use a saving throw like mechanic for resolution. The most common is a Luck roll, but others can be used.
There are three basic and one extra character classes. Warriors, Wizards, Rogues and the Specialist.Kindreds include Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Fairies, Hobbs (Halflings), and Leprechauns. Each kindred then gets an ability multiplier. So if you are a dwarf and you rolled an 11 for Strength  your multiplier is 2 for a 22 strength! But your Luck multiplier is .75 so if your rolled a 12 it is now a 9.  Other attributes effected are height and weight. Fairies have multiples here of 0.1 and 0.01 respectively.
The equipment list is what you would expect with some odd improvised weapons (rocks) and even guns (gunnes) but these are still rather primitive in nature. 
Saving Rolls are covered in Chapter 5 and gave us what is essentially a dynamic Target Number mechanic YEARS before anyone else did.  You determine the level of the Saving Throw (difficulty) times that by 5 to get your target number. Players roll a 2d6 and yes doubles are re-rolled and added.It's a simple mechanic that works well. 
Chapter 6 gives us some talents. Or things you can do other than wack monsters. Chapter 7 cover enemies and monsters and is a whopping 3 pages!  But that is nature of T&T monsters can be abstracted from just a few simple numbers.Chapter 8 covers combat. If I remember correctly combat in T&T was a fast affair.  The rules support this idea. 
Chapter 9 is of course my favorite, Magic. There have been more than a few times I have wanted to adopt ideas from here for my D&D games.  In the end though I have kept them separate.  Spell levels go to 18 though you need some superhuman Intelligence and Dexterity scores to cast them (60 and 44 respectively).  Spells have a Wiz (Wizardry cost) so it works on a spell-point like system.  The spell names are something of a bit of contention with some people and my litmus test for whether or not someone will be a good player in T&T.  If they don't like the names, then I think they will not be good for the game.  Among the spell names are "Hocus Focus", "Oh Go Away", "Boom Bomb", "Freeze Please" and more.  I like them I would rather have a fun name than a boring one, but I am also the guy who made spells called "You Can't Sit With Us", "Live, Laugh, Love", "Oh My God, Becky!" and "Tripping the Light Fantastic".
Chapter 10 is Putting it All Together with general GM advice.  Chapter 11 covers the Appendices. This constitutes the bulk of what makes up the T&T game. 
ElaborationsThis section consists of rules additions and other topics.Of interest here is Chapter 13, Other Playable Kindreds.  This likely grew out of T&Ts sister game, Monsters! Monsters! In dT&T these stats for playing have been brought more inline with the M!M! book for more compatibility.   The attribute multipliers from character creation are repeated here for the main kindreds, and then expanded out for others of the Familiar (or most similar to the Good Kindred, like goblins, gnomes, and pixies) to the Less Common like lizard people, ratlings and trolls!  To the Extraordinary like ghouls and dragons.The means in which this is done is so simple and so elegant that other games should be shamed for not doing the same.Later on languages, more talents and accessories (minis, battle mats, virtual tabletops) are covered.


Trollworld AtlasThis section covers the campaign world of Trollworld.  A history is provided and the major continents are covered as well as a few of the cities. This covers about 70 pages, but it is all well spent.This section also features some full-color interior art including some great maps.
AdventuresPretty much what is says on the tin.  This covers the two types of adventures one can have with T&T; a solo adventure and a GM run adventure.  Everyone reading this has experienced a GM run adventure.  But where T&T really sets itself apart are the solo adventures. This is a reason enough to grab this game just to see how this is done.
End MatterThis section contains the last bits.  Credits. Afterwords. Acknowledgments. A full index. Character sheets and a Post Card for the City of Khazan!

I am going to put this bluntly.
Every D&D player, no matter what edition, needs to play Tunnels & Trolls at least once.  They should also read over the rules.  I don't care if you walk away saying "I don't like it" that is fine, but so many of the things I see so-called seasoned D&D players and game masters complain about has a fix or has been addressed already in T&T. 
Like I mentioned with Trollpak who solved D&D's "evil race" problem back in 1982, Tunnels & Trolls fixed it in 1975.
Beyond all that T&T is an easily playable game with decades of material and support and thousands of fans online.  If you don't want to buy a copy to try out then find a game at a Con.  
Is T&T perfect?  No. It lacks the epic that is D&D.  If D&D is Wagner then T&T is Motzart. Easier to approach, but no less brilliant. 
For under $20 (currently) you get a complete game with enough material to keep you going for years. Plus there is such a wealth (45 years now) of material out there that you will never run out of things to do.

In many ways, 1982's Trollpak from Chaosium (and then later Avalon Hill, then Chaosium again) is the reason for my decades-long fascination with trolls in RPGs.
Like many gamers my age, it was the ads in Dragon magazine where I first came in contact with Trollpak. The ads were quite effective too.  Going back to Dragon #65 we get a dissected troll with it's guts all hanging out.  Nothing like that EVER appeared in D&D.
Back then for some reason, I thought this product was for Tunnels & Trolls and not the very obvious RuneQuest.   Even when I learned the difference I still wanted to combine Trollpak with Tunnels & Trolls, something I am attempting to try this week.
Sadly I never knew any groups that was playing RuneQuest so getting my hands on one to view was non-existent.  And my gaming dollar was stretched as it was back then, so buying it blind for my D&D games seemed a bit of a risk for me. 
Reading over the PDF now and some of the very few reviews I see that I certainly missed out and wonder what my trolls would be like today had I owned this back in the 80s.  These days I think I am fairly set in my ways, but is still there is so much here to use.  So let's get into it 


Trollpak (Chaosium, 1982)For this review, I am considering the PDF version of Trollpak that is currently being sold on DriveThruRPG.  This is a reprint of the original Trollpak from 1982.216 pages, color covers, black & white/monchrome interior art.By Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen for Runequest 2nd Edition.The original box set of Trollpak contained three books (the "pak" part); Uz Lore, Book of Uz, and Into Uzdom.  The PDF combines all three into a single file.  The PDF was released in 2019.The books correspond to the PDF sections, "Troll Legends and Natural History", "Creating and Playing Troll Characters", and "Adventures in Trolls Lands" respectively.

Uz is the name the trolls of Glorantha give themselves and how their creation is central to the lore of the world.  Already this set is going to be the sort of deep-dive into a topic that you know I love.
On the very first page, we get an "in-universe" side-bar about how trolls living near or amongst humans begin to become more human-like and how both groups eventually take on an equilibrium.  This sets the stage for this book in two very important ways.

1. This book is steeped in the lore and legends of Glorantha. So teasing out pieces to use in other games might be trickier than I first expected.
2. These trolls are NOT one-dimensional collections of hit points and potential XP and treasure.  If you prefer your monsters to be mindless evil races to just kill then this book will be wasted on you. 

Book 1: Uz Lore, Troll Legends and Natural HistoryWe get right into the myths and legends of the Uz people/trolls.  We get a feel right away since we get a listing of the Seven Sacred Ancestors of the Uz even before the Gods.  It is right before the Gods sure, but the importance of these ancestors is emphasized. We learn that "Uz" means "the folk" in the Uz language. So the Mistress Trolls (akin to the troll mother race) are the Uzuz.  Dark Trolls, the corrupted "evil" trolls are the Uzko. And so on. Speaking of the language we also learn that the mother tongue of the trolls is a debased form of the "Darktongue." So in D&D terms "Trollspeak" could be a corrupted form of "Abyssal" or something like that. I think in old forms of D&D anyone who spoke the Chaos alignment language could speak to trolls.  
Speaking of Chaos.  The Law - Chaos access is also present in RuneQuest, though not as an alignment as in D&D but as elemental forces.  Another clue that these are your D&D trolls comes up that trolls are often seen as agents of Chaos WHEN IN FACT they were really some of the first victims. Let that sink in for bit.  If that were published today there is a certain segment of the hobby that would be screaming that they don't want "social justice" politics in their games.  But this is from 1982, from two of the titans of the RPG industry.  
The section continues with more history and recounting of great troll battles. There is a quasi-academic feel to this and that is really fun.   An example is an experiment a troll researcher did on a troll and a trollkin (a smaller version of troll) in which they were locked in a room with various items and the researcher recorded what they ate.  The point here is that Uz trolls can eat and will eat almost anything. 
We learn there are many kinds of trolls (as to be expected). The Mistress Race is the mother race of all trolls. They are ancient and wise and claim to predate all other races and even the world itself.  The other races of trolls are the Dark Trolls (your stock evil trolls), great trolls, cave trolls, sea trolls, and the diminutive trollkin.

We even get details on troll senses and how they differ from humans. Differences in trolls from region to region. Even a troll evolutionary tree and "prehistoric" troll cave painting and idols, there is even a six-breasted "Venus of Willendorf" style troll idol of the troll mistress race.There is even details on the types of pets trolls keep. 
There is far more detail about trolls in this 64 page section than in all five editions of (A)D&D.Nearly everything in the section is system neutral.  While it is tied to the world mythology at a fundamental level, it can be used in any game.
Book 2: Book of Uz, Creating and Playing Troll CharactersThis section/book is all about creating a troll character to play in RuneQuest.  Before we delve into this let's have a look at this from "Playing Trolls," It is tempting to use trolls as monsters with weapons.However, they are intelligent creatures who have survived despite gods and men. Several traits set them apart from humans as well, and they naturally exploit those special traits to their advantage. You should do so as well.D&D players may have issues with playing races as evil or not, but RuneQuest had it figured out in 1982.
You can randomly roll which troll sub-species your character is from, with a 1% chance you are from the Mistress Troll race and 63% chance you are a miserable little trollkin.  Adjustments for all the types are given. Your troll can be wild, semi-civilized, or civilized. You can roll for social rank and equipment.  You can even see what starting spells you have since all trolls have some magic. You can even figure out what you were before you became an adventurer. 
Trolls are a matriarchal culture. So various home habits are focused around this.  For example, the more husbands a troll leader has, the higher her social standing. Looks like my troll character Grýlka gets to pick out a couple of husbands!BTW, I LOVE the troll greeting when offering you hospitality in their lair.  They cover your head with a blanket or hide and say "I extend my darkness to protect you."  I am totally going to use that in my next adventure. 
Some gods are covered next and their worship. They have goddesses and gods of spiders, darkness, insects (very important to troll life), and the hunt. There is even a goddess of healing.Coverage of domesticated giant insects is also covered since these creatures often serve the same function as domestic mammals in human life. 
Some new troll types are also covered.
This section by it's very nature is more rules-focused, but there is still so much here that is just good that it can, and should, be used in any other FRPG.
Book 3: Into Uzdom, Adventures in Trolls LandsThis section covers going on adventures in lands inhabited or controlled by the Uz. This section is very rules-focused as well with the first part covering random encounters in troll lands. There are also sample/small adventures like "The Caravans" which details a troll caravan of a heard of giant beetles.  Imagine this long train of trolls, some in wagons, others walking and in between hundreds of giant beetles being led like cattle in a long line.  Quite a sight really.  Another is traveling to a troll village and NOT treat everyone like a walking collection of HP.  This one is fantastic really for all the troll alcohol available and whether or not your human character can handle any of them in a drinking challenge. There are five larger adventures here and several smaller ideas for seeds.  The best thing though is the inclusion of a "mini-game" of Trollball.  This game is played like football and is supposed to be a reenactment of a battle from the dawn of time.  The "trollball" itself used to be a now extinct insect so other things have been used like badgers and in rare occurrences a bear, but most often it is a trollkin.   The teams each have seven players and one can be a great troll.  They are sponsored by a Rune Lord.The game is brutal and sometimes deadly, but since there is a religious element to the game anyone killed on the field is brought back to life by the gods whom the game honors. Full stats for the Sazdorf Wackers and Tacklers is included so players can try their own hand at Trollball, but warning, the troll gods might not raise a dead human. 
There is just so much to love about this product. It is jammed packed full of ideas.  Part of me wants to adapt my D&D trolls to use these rules and another part of me wants to insert the Uz as-is into D&D as their own race or something akin to High Trolls.  
Trolpak was updated in 1990 when RuneQuest was being published by Avalon Hill.  It was then split into the Trollpak and Troll Gods. 
The "new" pdf restores all the content back to the 1982 edition. 


Reading it now after so many years I am struck with a couple of thoughts. The first is what would have happened to my own games had I picked this up and used it in my games?  Would my trolls today have a decidedly Uz flavor about them?  What else would have changed?
Also, reviews in Dragon Magazine for this are glowing and heap high praise on this book and they called it a leap in game design.  It was, but it was not a leap everyone would take.  RuneQuest/Chaosium did this for trolls like Chill/Pacesetter had done for Vampires.  There are s few others I can think of.  Orkworld did it for Orcs for example.  But still, these sorts of deep explorations are rare. 
So if you are over one-dimensional monsters and are ready to expand your options then this is for you.If you are RuneQuest player of any edition then this is also something you should have.