Monstrous reflections

To kill time, I thought I would just throw out some views on random monsters from the Monster Manual.  Right now, my campaign is on hiatus as I reign them in and send them packing back to the monastery.  They were in Ravenloft (or a rewritten version of), which is great for Halloween season D&D.  Once it passes Thanksgiving though, I begin getting a bit more nostalgic for those early days and years of my meager experiences with the game.  And that brings me back to the ruins of the monastery from the first DMG.  The location of my first actual experience with playing D&D in 1983, and the original main goal of the party.

Not only seasonally does it feel better to depart the Gothic nature of Ravenloft, but simple practicalities are worth considering. Basically, my boys are getting older, and soon our oldest, and perhaps next oldest, will be departing the homestead for the big, wide world after all.  So best to regroup and do what I normally don't: pick them up and drop them where I want them.

Since it will take a little calculating and updating, my oldest son will be running his first game, using the classic Keep on the Borderlands.  So in the meantime, unless something juicy comes from that adventure, I'll just throw our random thoughts on this or that monster or whatever catches my eye with the minuscule amount of time I have to spare.

In this case, first up, Gray Ooze.

 

One of the many amoeba like creatures from the 1st Edition.  I always liked the artwork.  I notice that in every case, the slimes and jellies are portrayed in a dungeon-like setting.  No simple portraits.  They are put against something or another: a stair, a cave, a doorway.  I guess that's because it's easier to visualize than just a picture of a blob.  And, of course, "blob" is what I always imagined fueled at least some of the inspiration for these creatures. 

I also like the setting in this particular pic.  It evokes.  Much of the early artwork did.  Where is it coming from?  Where is it going?  What else is in the room that the viewer is standing in?  Whenever I design a dungeon, I try to have at least one stair descending next to a wall just to pay this homage.

Speaking of Monster Manual Art

One of my favorite monster pics - ever.  Not least being because of the revisions of the Fire Giant in other, later versions of D&D.  Here, he is brute.  Just brute.  Not only brute strength, but brute.  And of course, a fine quality piece of work by Trampier.  One of the best. 

The Art of the early D&D

Was racier and, at times, more brutal than all we achieve with the most advanced CGI graphics today.  Much has been said about the tendency toward nudity and eroticism in the crude days of early D&D's artwork. 

But have you ever looked at some of the action pics?  Check them out some time.  The original Monster Manual alone has some pretty rough pictures when it comes to violence and death. Sure, it's pen and ink - at best.  Sometimes the drawings are cartoon-like, and that helps diminish the punch. But if you let your mind wrap around some of them, you'd be hard pressed to find a proportional level of graphic death and suffering in a modern SAW reboot.

Here are a couple to illustrate the point:

 

I've only used Rot Grubs a couple times.  And I think our party only reached into an infested area once.  It was pretty fun as encounters go.  But the thought.  If you stop and think of this pic, imagining it in modern, graphic imagery, this is pretty bad stuff.  Given what my party went through with only a couple grub, this poor fellow isn't long for the world.

 



 

This is a case where the medium of the day diminishes what would be a graphic death scene if it was with today's production standards.  That's a lot of blood.  He's gone, and soon to be nothing but bones and rags once the jackalwere is through dining on him.  

 



This is a case where the humor undercuts the graphic nature of this fellow's potential demise.  Yes, he might make it.  It looks like he's certainly not giving up.  But half of him is already in the pike's maw, and that can't be good.  Despite the goofy expression in the cartoonish presentation, that's nothing less than Quint meeting his demise in the jaws of another famous giant fish.

 

This one is also rough.  In some ways, rougher than modern treatments.  He's in agony and it's obvious why.  Being eaten by a scorpion is never a good thing no matter how you slice and dice it.  The flashy scorpion battles in the reboot of Clash of the Titans didn't come close to this level of horror, though the original Harryhausan version was much more atmospheric, and hence more terrifying in its own right.  But in terms of intensity and violence, you don't get much better for old black and white drawing.



 

 

File this one alongside the Jackalwere picture above in the 'moderated by medium'.  If this was modern art and graphics, that would be one serious demise.  Far more graphic than most of the artwork in recent editions of D&D.  Compare it to those, and this is nothing less than death, brutal and painful.  

Perhaps one of the most graphic pictures in all of D&D - ever.  Think about it.  That poor fellow is one hapless and unfortunate man.  His fingers are splayed, so he's still alive.  Perhaps even struggling.  But there isn't much struggle left.  His chest on up is firmly engulfed in the mouth of the giant toad.  Unless he has some buddies nearby, it's not going to be a pretty ending.  Nothing in any recent D&D product art I've seen comes close. 

Again,  I realize that it is different, and in some ways, subdued by the limitations of the art form of the day. I know it's possible to have more blood and gore and shock in modern graphics.  I know there are places where you can find much, much worse.  But given the day, given that it was when audiences ran screaming out of the movie JAWS because of its blood and violence, and how restrictive things still were, you must admit that was some pretty graphic artwork for its genre.

Why I like AD&D

Apart from the nostalgia of it being the version I was brought into D&D with back in the day, I find it has more, shall we say, atmosphere. Decades later, I tried getting into D&D for my boys back about ten years ago or so at the height of Potter/LoTR mania.  I purchased the version 3, then the version 3.5.  While at first the crisp, professional artwork, graphic design and elaborated rules (complete with monster stats) impressed me, I soon lost interest in much of what it contained.

To be brief, I found it was all about expanding the game as broadly as possible in order to sell more products. I found the quality lacking. The books I bought began falling apart with only scant usage, while the old PHB and DMG and MM I had from the early 80s are still in top condition.  Though, to be honest, I could make that complaint about most things today, but we won't go there.

Anyway, another thing I noticed was how 'antiseptic' the game was.  The rules were just that, rules.  They were ABC/123.  They explained everything confined to a game function.  There was little to any 'fluff', or any real attempt to inject the literary inspiration of this or that component into its game concept.

Take a little movie we watched last night, that I try to watch every year: The Exorcist. Still, after all these years, a pretty intense movie.  When my boys first saw it, that's what they said.  Not necessarily scary, but at parts disturbing and certainly intense.  Imagine what it was for audiences way back in the day, when Nixon was still president and 8-Track Tapes were all the rage.

So in AD&D, you have the Exorcism spell, no doubt fresh on the minds of the D&D audience (the PHB being released in 1978, a mere 5 years after the movie The Exorcist).   Though society was beginning to splinter already, there was still a sense of 'common narrative' that everyone understood.  People knew about the movie, even if they didn't see it (and before VCRs, that was pretty much everyone who didn't see it when it first came out).  You knew that the exorcism was no walk in the park.  In the movie, in fact, we're told that the awesomely named Lankester Merrin took part in an exorcism that lasted months!

So in AD&D, the Exorcism spell is one of the longest potential spells, in some cases able to last upwards of 100 Turns!  For a game based on minute rounds and 10 X 10 rooms, that's a lot. But it makes sense.  After all, this is where the game is: evil vs. good.  Try to argue all you want about the game being open for evil PCs, the fact remains the basic assumption of the early years of D&D was that you were the good guys fighting against the baddies.

And Exorcism is one of the most potent spells in that arsenal.  Just as most Cleric spells are longer to cast than MU spells, there must have been something about the Exorcism spell that said 'be prepared to hunker down on this one.' 

But for the 3rd edition versions?  How long does this spell of spells, this ultimate weapon against the powers of Hell take?  That would be a Full Round Action.  Wow.  My thimble runneth over.  That must be some diary of a whimpy ghost that's being cast out with that. No appeal to a source, no attempt to bring color to a bare legalistic schematic.  Just a spell that takes a full round. 

See what I mean?  One of the things I noticed was that the original D&D games (including the AD&D incarnation) were based on literary, mythical, media or any other sources that the creators were inspired by.  Later editions of D&D were based simply on D&D. And nowhere does that show more than in the magical realms, particular spells and items.  This will be one of my ongoing observations, FWIW.   

Bubble, Bubble

So the party is reunited and all is right with the world.  We lost our gnomish thief and our Paladin (strange company that), to the elaborate mechanized trap in the Larders of Ill Omen.  That separated them from the rest of the party.  They immediately fell victim to the hypnotic gaze of the strange portrait in the Spires of Ravenloft, and were captured by the witches and held along with a villager. The purpose?  Yet to be determined. 

But in a rare twist of good fortune, the rest of the party made it up the larger tower, came through the rain across the old, dilapidated bridge, and down to the lair of the witches.  Not that they accomplished much.  The witches hit them with a Dark spell, but the party was able to dispel that swiftly enough.  Seeing themselves outgunned, the witches retreated to their conjuring room and hit the door with a Hold Portal. 

The party found the three captives in the old components room, and are in the process of catching one another up on the latest.  So it is.  After that we had to break, owing to science labs and pre-calc assignments due for our resident high school Junior. 

So there we are.  The Ravneloft module has been adjusted for gameplay. Strahd is more a legend, albeit a potential opponent.  I've reduced him to dust, shall we say, ala Hammer's Dracula, Prince of Darkness.  Still, you never know when enterprising witches just might conspire to bring him back.  The goal of the party was fudged a little for the Fortunes of Ravenloft section.  They are looking for an enchanted medallion that, when worn, will suppress the Magic User's delicate situation (that is, his lycanthrope).  Then they need to return it to Mordenshire (which, in my Greyhawk World, occupies the northern shores of Furyondy).  They've traveled far and through many adventures for this medallion, and have lost many of their companions along the way.

So we'll wait and see.  Just some travel notes for myself.  Nothing that glared out at me, except a brief discussion about whether or not Dancing Lights could illumine a Darkness Spell.  It was determined they wouldn't. 

Comebacks and come back again

It just seems as though as soon as I try to get back into this blog, a healthy dose of life interferes.  I've not really had a chance to get it off the ground.  Hard to believe it's been about two years since I thought of doing it. And yet, I've not made it out of the hanger.  Much has happened since then.   The whole fantasy RPG world has changed quite a bit.  The release of edition 5, the continued changing of the digital world, the social and cultural changes that seem to happen on a daily bases - all of these make it feel as though it was a different world when I started.

All of that is to say I'll try to get back onto things.  My family and I are still going through my makeshift Greyhawk campaign.  My oldest is now 20, however, and getting together regularly is difficult. Right now, they've turned away from the original goal of exploring the monastic ruins, featuring the classic dungeon example from the original AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.  They're going through Ravenloft.  I threw that in, as I had always wanted to do, to play off the Halloween feel.  Since ghost stories and winter go hand in hand, they can durp around there for a while.

But hopefully, come spring when my next oldest will be wrapping up his Junior year, we'll get back to basics and finally crack that original goal.  First, we'll have to bring back the original party (which was rolled up under 3.5 rules).  They disbanded when the wizard (original: Magic User) was slain by  a random encounter with Hobgoblins.  Fortunately, he's also a wererat (from their original adventure in the Haunted Keep), and in my world, if lycanthropes aren't killed with silver they come back the next full moon.

Anyway, the goal is to bring them back and finish that before life and growing finally send them on their ways.  As we do, I'll post what happens, or what I notice, or what I think about.  The fabled 'Old School Renaissance' seems to have faded, so the topics that only a few years ago were ripe for the picking appear to have dwindled.  Nonetheless, whatever tickles my fancy will be posted.  And who knows?  I might actually be able to pick up a few readers by getting my blog's name out there.  We'll see. 

PC Class sizes

Ever try to visualize just how big a Hobbit Halfling is? Or just how large a Giant is compared to a man?  I know, in later editions you had some descent enough size charts with select representatives of various size categories.  But how did a Goblin and a Halfling compare?  Or a Gnome and an Orc?  So using the classic 1st Edition Monster Manual art, I took snippets of different PC classes and set them against various baddies (and each other).  

It's not scientific, and I don't claim to have the definitive say on the issue.  But I used a scale, aligned the pictures to the scale, tried to adjust for overall body size (not just height), and compared.  I found it very interesting.  Especially when thinking on other things, like just how Hobbits really compared to Goblins in Tolkien's works?  True, he never gives actual size scales in his works, but just for fun, thinking of how a Goblin compares to a Halfling, or a Hobgoblin to a Human.  So here is the first one I came up with:

Halfling and Goblin.  Given even a slight amount of room for error, I found it interesting.  Look at the size difference! Halfings are tiny, about the size of a 5 year old or so.  Goblins are quite large compared to a Halfling.  About like a seven foot tall basketball player compared to an average person.  But with bulk.  Goblins might be canon fodder for most PCs over a couple levels in advancement, but you can see why they would be intimidating to your average Halfling.