9 April 2010

Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net

ROGUE FEED prevent Terhali’s resurrection. Meanwhile, Xiombarg, Queen of the

Chaos Swords, takes an interest in the goings on and sends her minion
Conan Meets Elric Prince Gaynor the Damned and his riders to stop Conan and Zephra.
APR 09, 2010 12:01A.M.

Along the way, the Cimmerian sees a pale rider traveling the same path
as he and mistakes him for an enemy. As it turns out, this is Elric and,
after a brief struggle, in which Conan marvels at Elric’s inexplicable
strength, the two agree to talk. Elric explains that he is seeking Terhali’s
What If ...? wasn’t the only Marvel comic series where the Cimmerian tomb in order to increase his sorcerous power. Once Gaynor and his
found himself encountering the inhabitants of another world. Several Chaos Pack show up, Conan and Elric join forces to stave them off,
years prior, in the Spring of 1972, Conan encountered and eventually although, ultimately, it is Zephra, who summons a “cleansing rain” by
joined forces with Elric of Melniboné, in a two-part story plotted by magic, that destroys them.
Michael Moorcock and James Cawthorn. I have to admit that, in some
ways, I find this team-up even more bizarre than the issues of What If ...?
I talked about yesterday. That’s probably because, by many accounts,
Moorcock created Elric as a kind of “anti-Conan,” a deliberate inversion
of most of the qualities with which Howard imbued his greatest literary
character. Having the two of them fight side by side — and fairly
amicably at that — strikes me as wrong on so many levels, but perhaps
I’m just being my typically narrow-minded self.

In any case, issue 14 of Conan the Barbarian (“A Sword Called

Stormbringer”) begins with the titular barbarian rescuing a young
woman named Zephra, daughter of the wizard Zukala, from a band of
hooded men riding on the backs of weird beasts. Zukala was apparently
an enemy of Conan from a previous tale, but he is now largely powerless
and bears Conan no ill will. Indeed, he thanks Conan for saving his
daughter and asks his aid in defeating another wizard named Kulan-
Gath, a Stygian rival of Thoth-Amon who seeks to make himself master Issue 15 (“The Green Empress of Melniboné”) continues the tale. The trio
of the world by resurrecting Terhali the Green Empress, a being from “a fight off some demons before arriving at Yagala, where they encounter
world called Melniboné.” Kulan-Gath. The wizard believes that they have been sent by Thoth-
Amon to stop him and as he mocks them for their failure, Prince Gaynor
Zukala explains that Terhali’s tomb is located in a city called Yagala, reappears with more minions. A massive melee ensues, during which
which has been transported to Conan’s world by means of dark magic. Kulan-Gath completes his resurrection of Terhali, who demonstrates her
The wizard asks Conan to travel to Yagala with his daughter in order to

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
gratitude by killing him. She offers to allow Elric, Conan, and Zephra to
serve her as slaves, but, of course, they demur and attempt to defeat her.
The two warriors are defeated, leaving only Zephra to face the evil
empress. Calling on him, the Lord of Law Arkyn possesses the young
woman and uses his power to destroy Terhali but is herself killed in the
act. Yagala begins to sink into the lake on which it’s situated and Elric,
after sharing quips with Conan, heads back to his home plane.
All things considered, it’s a very strange story and I can’t shake the
feeling I mentioned above that, somehow, this story is odder than the
one presented in What If ...? On the other hand, it certainly doesn’t do
violence to the story of Elric, who’s traveled to places more exotic than
the Hyborian Age and interacted with people far more peculiar than
Conan. I suppose I’m looking at it purely from the perspective of Conan
and it’s here I find myself most uneasy. Marvel’s various Conan titles
tended to be much more “magical” than I liked and this story is yet
another example of that tendency. I’ll admit this is a prejudice of mine,
but I view Conan as what one might call “low fantasy” and all the
demons, gods, dimension-hopping, and deus ex machina magic here is
just too much for me. Even so, it’s an interesting read, especially given
the involvement of Moorcock himself.
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9 April 2010
ROGUE FEED
Remembering Jerry Mapes
APR 08, 2010 07:50P.M.
Today marks one year since Jerry Mapes, the founder of the Knights &
Knaves Alehouse, passed away.
Unlike many people, my interactions with Jerry were limited to a few
brief exchanges when I first started to become involved in the online old
school world in late 2007. I always found him a pleasant, helpful, level-
minded fellow and a man whose enthusiasm for old school D&D and —
especially — Traveller were both obvious and contagious. And while his
name is not probably well known outside of regular visitors to K&K,
there’s little doubt in my mind that his influence and his efforts behind
the scenes made OSRIC and, by extension, much of the current old
school renaissance possible.
Stuart Marshall recommends making a donation to an organization
supporting disabled veterans in memory of Jerry, as he was one
himself.
ROGUE FEED
Other Old School Renaissances
APR 08, 2010 01:25P.M.
It’s been regularly noted that the current old school renaissance would
not have been possible without two things: the Open Game License and
the Internet. I think this observation is dead-on and goes a long way
toward explaining why the OSR is so strongly focused on Dungeons &
Dragons rather than other old school games. Before I come back to that
point, though, let’s think back to the early 90s and the Dawn of the
Wired Age.
In those prehistoric times, not one but two different old school RPGs
experienced brief renaissances of their own, thanks to the increased
communication made possible by the Internet. These RPGs were
Traveller and RuneQuest. I was personally involved in the Traveller
Renaissance, writing my first professional gaming articles and products
during this time. I participated in online discussions on GEnie, joined
the then-new Traveller Mailing List, and signed up with an organization
of Traveller fans called the History of the Imperium Working Group,
with whom GDW sometimes consulted when creating new products and
from whom they drew when looking for new writers. Fanzines and third
party licensed support for Traveller flourished. It was, frankly, a great
time to be a Traveller player and an even better time to be a creator of
material for use with Traveller.
Alas, the Traveller Renaissance proved to be an Indian Summer rather
than a new Spring. A new creative team and a new direction from GDW
threw a wrench into most of the existing fan and third party support for
the game. HIWG and similar groups were sidelined or ignored entirely
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
and communication between GDW and players became much more one-
way. I don’t blame anyone at GDW for these changes and, in many cases,
I understand and even agree with the logic behind them. But, speaking
as a fan and budding creator, it was very disappointing to see how
quickly the winds had changed and how their doing so drove many of my
friends and I away from the game. Nowadays, rather than being the
premier SF RPG, Traveller is, at best, an also-ran.
In the 90s, RuneQuest (and its setting of Glorantha) lay in the hands of
Avalon Hill and, by most accounts, they’d been badly mismanaging the
property. Correcting course, RQ veteran writer Ken Rolston was made
line editor of the game (or “Rune Czar,” because, in the 90s, if you
wanted to show you were serious about something, you appointed a
“czar” to oversee it). Contemporaneously, the RuneQuest Digest, a
mailing list for discussion, saw an upsurge in interest, as more and more
RQ fans connected with one another through the Net. Under Rolston,
Avalon Hill produced a number of highly regarded supplements to
RuneQuest, often written by active and knowledgeable fans.
As with Traveller, there was a sense that RQ had turned a corner and
that a true renaissance for the game was under way. Again, as with
Traveller, this proved short-lived. Rolston left his position as line editor
in 1994 to work on computer games. A falling out between Greg Stafford,
creator of Glorantha, and Avalon Hill resulted in confusion for fans, as
Stafford talked of creating a new, non-RQ RPG for Glorantha and AH
talked of creating a new, non-Gloranthan RuneQuest. Another Indian
Summer ...
What happened? Why didn’t those earlier old school renaissances take
and what does this mean for the current one? Well, from my perspective,
the big difference between those earlier renaissances and the one
happening right now is that they had the Internet but not the Open
Game License. That is, both Traveller and RuneQuest remained wholly
the property of their creators/publishers. When they decided to pull up
stakes and change direction, there was nothing the fans and amateur
creators could do but roll with the punches.
I’d also suggest that there’s another factor at work here. Although both
games could be treated as generic rulesets, they rarely were in practice,
being instead heavily bound up in the example settings associated with
them. Both the TML and RuneQuest Digest, for example, were generally
focused on discussions of setting rather than rules. This fact, I think,
colored the nature of those renaissances and made them more
dependent on their origin points, namely the “official” game and
whoever it was that currently held the rights to it.
Nowadays, the rules to both Traveller and RuneQuest are open game
content, with RQ having, depending on how one counts, at least three
different versions available for third parties to use in their own products.
So far as I can tell, though, neither game has yet managed to engender
another renaissance associated with it. There are probably several
reasons why this is the case, but I think there are two big ones.
First, as I just noted, both Traveller and RuneQuest are much more
strongly associated with their example settings than D&D ever has been.
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9 April 2010
As an experiment, grab a random player of either game and start
chatting with him about it; odds are very good that, before too long, the
discussion will turn to the intricacies of the example setting rather than
the game itself. That’s much less likely to happen with a random old
school D&D player. Second, despite being Open Game Content, there
remain official rulebooks for both games, something utterly lacking for
old school D&D. There’s thus, at present, not a lot of incentive for a third
party publisher to put out its own version of one of these games —
Voyager or SigilQuest, say — and that has, I think, kept the focus on the
official lines rather than a flowering of third party support as we’ve seen
in the D&D-focused OSR.
None of this is to suggest that there couldn’t be Traveller or RuneQuest
renaissances in the future — I hope there are! — but, right now, if they’re
happening, they’re happening very quietly and well off my radar. I’ll
grant I’m not as plugged into either of these games’ online communities
as I am with that of D&D, but neither am I unaware of what’s happening
in them. I keep hoping that I’ll learn of the launch of a new Traveller
fanzine or see some generic supplements to RuneQuest, but, so far, no
such luck. I think that’s a real pity, because, truth be told, I’d love to see a
fuller flowering of old school gaming than just the very D&D-centric
OSR. The fact that we don’t, however, isn’t the fault of the OSR; as Rob
Conley regularly points out, the OSR is what its participants make of it
and, right now, there’s not much interest in making it about anything
other than D&D and related games. If someone would prefer a wider
representation of old school gaming, it’s up to them to see that it
happens.
The tools are there but is there the interest? Only time will tell.
ROGUE FEED
New and Free Games of Interest
APR 08, 2010 08:58A.M.
Since I wanted yesterday to be devoted to commemorating Dave
Arneson’s life and accomplishments, I didn’t comment on several pieces
of news of potential interest to old school gamers, including one
pertaining to Arneson himself.
• Starter Traveller, a boxed set released by GDW in 1983 as an
introduction to their science fiction RPG, is now available as a free
PDF download at RPGNow. I owned this many moons ago and it’s
an excellent product. If you’ve never taken a look at Traveller, this
is a great way to take the plunge.
• Far Future Enterprises is offering reprints of all 36 issues of The
Journal of the Travellers Aid Society (in three softcover books) for
a mere $30. That’s a great price and, if it weren’t for the ungodly
shipping cost for non-US addresses, I’d have ordered a set already.
• FFE has also made old Paranoia Press licensed Traveller products
available in PDF form, including a $10 bundle that includes the
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 9 April 2010

entire series. Paranoia Press’s stuff was of uneven quality in my

opinion, but even its more bizarre products were nevertheless
thought-provoking and different than what GDW and other
licensees were publishing, so it’s well worth a look.

• Stephan Secchi, owner and creator of Talislanta, has released the

game for free as a PDF under the Creative Commons License. You
can download the 2001 rulebook, along with many other related
products here. I’ve never owned or played Talislanta, but I
remember ads for it in Dragon during the 80s (“No Elves!”). I’ve
also learned that Secchi was strongly influenced by Jack Vance’s
The Dying Earth in creating the game, so I may have to rectify this
gap in my education soon.

• D.H. Boggs has released a game called Dragons at Dawn, which is

apparently an attempt to recreate the rules Dave Arneson used in
his earliest Blackmoor adventures, based on the information Dave
and his players gave us over the years. I know nothing else about
the game and will admit to being intrigued, as I find these
“alternate universe” old school games quite fascinating. However,
I’m not yet sure I’m willing to plunk any money sight unseen, so I
may wait for reviews from others before making a decision one way
or the other.