4 July 2010

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PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net

ROGUE FEED
DCS Art in Holmes
JUL 03, 2010 07:30P.M.
Another thing I really love about the Holmes rulebook is the art, which is
mix of Dave Trampier, Dave Sutherland, and Tom Wham. It’s little
surprise, I guess, that those three, even moreso than the great artists who
came later, formed my sense of what D&D looked like. Take these two
pieces by Dave Sutherland, for example:
fever dream fantasy illustrations as much as the next guy, but there’s also
something to be said for the kind of “meat and potatoes” pieces that
Sutherland produced. They’re one of the foundations on which my
conception of Dungeons & Dragons is built — much like the Holmes
rulebook in which they appear.
ROGUE FEED
Michelangelo was Old School
JUL 03, 2010 05:03P.M.

There are probably few representations of Renaissance art more iconic

than Michelangelo’s sculpture of the Biblical hero David. In the minds of
many, David clearly demonstrates the way that the Renaissance revived
the subject matter and techniques of classical art after centuries of its
having been forgotten.

And there’s no denying that David is a masterpiece of Western art, one

Whatever flaws they may have — and I am regularly told what a terrible
with far more in common with classical art than with the medieval art
artist Sutherland was — there’s a strange kind of groundedness to these
that immediately preceded it, thus lending support to the notion that the
illustrations. Look at the fighting men in these pictures. They’re all
Renaissance was merely a continuation of the classical era after the
wearing historical armor rather than some fantastical concoction without
thousand year hiccup of the Middle Ages, at least as far as art is
any basis in reality. All the fighters you see in Holmes look like this and it
concerned. In this popular view, artists like Michelangelo were just
made a powerful impression upon me.
picking up where Phidias and Agesander left off, using the same
techniques to produce works about the same subject matter their
I’m sure military historians will be able to point out multiple problems
predecessors had done so long ago.
with Sutherland’s depictions here, but that’s rather to miss the point. It’s
not about strict realism or accuracy; it’s about verisimilitude.
Several years ago, I remember reading some articles about art historians
Sutherland’s artwork conveys a sense that the combatants in them could
who’d been using modern technology, such as ultraviolet lights and high-
have existed, even if their opponents make it clear that they didn’t. I like
intensity lamps, to demonstrate what classical sculpture really looked

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like in situ. What these historians found was confirmation of something
that had been suspected for some time, namely that classical sculpture
was not lily white but pigmented, sometimes garishly so (at least to
contemporary eyes).
Because of these historians’ work, it’s now fairly common to see
photographs of colored classical sculpture in many art museums. There’s
of course some debate about precisely how the sculpture was pigmented
and whether it was indeed as bright and gaudy as some suggest, but
you’ll be hard pressed to find an art historian who denies that classical
sculpture was painted and that such painting was a common practice
throughout the Ancient World rather than an aberration.
In Michelangelo’s day, no one had any idea that classical sculpture had
been painted. The unearthed ancient statues used as models during the
Renaissance, such as Laocoön and His Sons, were devoid of any pigment.
Consequently, bare white stone was taken to be part of the classical
esthetic, with some artists going so far as to provide justifications for
why this esthetic was superior to the medieval practice of painting
statuary. As we’ve learned, though, the Renaissance understanding was
mistaken, based upon a misapprehension, albeit a blameless one, for
there was no way that someone in the 16th century could have known
otherwise.
The Renaissance esthetic, formed from a faulty understanding of
classical art history, was a self-conscious one. Many artists were
specifically imitating what they believed to be the classical esthetic, using
the surviving ancient art that was available to them as exemplars and
basing their own works on them. It didn’t matter that they had often
employed techniques different than those of their classical forebears or
that, in addition to Greco-Roman divinities, they also sculpted people
and events from Christian lore totally alien to the classical worldview.
What mattered was that they were looking back on a distant past and
drawing inspiration from it.
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4 July 2010
Of course, Renaissance artists, no matter how closely they hewed to the
past, were not creating “Classical art,” because “Classical art” is only
something one can categorize after the fact. When Phidias was sculpting
the statues for the Parthenon, he was not creating “Classical art.” He was
simply sculpting. It’s only in retrospect that we can see in his techniques
and subject matter things that we can later point out as defining Classical
art and that later artists can then self-consciously imitate, in the process
exaggerating and even ossifying our conception of what is and is not
“Classical art.”
There’s nothing wrong with this process; indeed it’s inevitable and very
human. Moreover, I doubt many people would claim that David is
somehow any less a masterpiece of art because Michelangelo was trying
to imitate Classical sculpture in his composition. David‘s appeal rests not
in its faithfulness to a rigid esthetic standard but because it’s a
remarkable work of art. That it deviates in many ways from “true”
Classical art or that Michelangelo was mistaken about the ancient art
that inspired him makes no difference whatsoever to one’s enjoyment of
what he produced — or at least it doesn’t to me.
At the same time, it’s good to remember that the moment one categorizes
something from the past, one is inevitably simplifying, exaggerating
some of its characteristics in order to stress its genuine distinctiveness
and downplaying other characteristics that evince continuity with what
came before and what came afterward. As I said above, there’s nothing
wrong with this; it’s how human beings think. We like to categorize and
divide and put things in boxes marked X, Y, and Z. But, on some level, to
name something, whether it be “Classical art” or “old school gaming,” is
to lie, because, sometimes, hindsight isn’t 20/20. Sometimes we view the
past through a funhouse mirror.
But you know what? I don’t care.
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ROGUE FEED
Holmes Nostalgia
JUL 03, 2010 07:10A.M.
One of the funny things about the Holmes-edited D&D rulebook is that
expressing a strong preference for it is as likely to get elicit a cry of
“Nostalgia!” from AD&D partisans as it is from devotees of more recent
editions of the game. I can only assume that this viewpoint has
something to do with the belief that Holmes is nothing more than an
introduction to AD&D and that seeing it as a unique game in its own
right is somehow mistaken.
It’s certainly true that the text of the Holmes rulebook frequently directs
readers “who desire to to go beyond the basic game” to AD&D, but, as
Holmes’s preface also makes clear, this version of the rules is strongly
based “upon the original work published in 1974 and three
supplementary booklets,” but re-written with the aim of “introducing the
reader to the concepts of fantasy role playing and the basic play of this
game.” A close reading of Holmes quickly reveals that the game is deeply
rooted in OD&D, deviating from it only in a few places, only some of
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4 July 2010
which have any connections to the then-far-from-finished AD&D. I
haven’t done a formal survey, but I’d guess that most of its deviations
(such as its interpretation of magic missile and DEX-based Initiative to
cite but two examples) are purely Holmes’s invention (or that of others
in the gaming circles in which he moved at the time). Taken together,
this gives Holmes a unique flavor of its own, one that was compelling
enough that I was forever hooked on D&D.
Another thing about Holmes that can’t be underestimated is the way that
it presented itself. Though basic in its scope, it didn’t talk down to its
assumed readers, whom the box cover proclaimed to be “adults.” Much
as I love Moldvay, its presentation is less sophisticated to my eyes and,
more specifically, less hobbyist, by which I mean that there are fewer
rules lacunae for referees to adjudicate according to their own lights.
This difference in tone matters and, especially nowadays, I find myself
drawn more and more to Holmes, which occupies a nice middle ground
between the glorious mess of OD&D and the glorious fastidiousness of
AD&D. It really does have its own unique voice and feel and it’s a pity
that, even in this time of the old school renaissance, its virtues are not
more widely recognized.
ROGUE FEED
The Lowly Magic Missile
JUL 03, 2010 07:01A.M.
Nowadays, magic missile is, along with fireball, taken to be one of the
iconic offensive spells of the D&D magic-user, which is interesting as it
didn’t exist in OD&D until the release of Greyhawk in 1975. That august
tome describes the spell thusly:
Magic Missile: This is a conjured missile equivalent to a
magic arrow, and it does full damage (2-7 points) to any
creature it strikes. For every five levels the magic-user has
attained he may add an additional two missiles when
employing this spell, so a 6th level magic-user may cast three
magic missiles at his target, an 11th level magic-user casts
five, and so on. Range 15”.
The Holmes rulebook generally follows this description but offers a
particular clarification to it:
Magic Missile — Level 1; Range: 150 feet
A conjured missile equal to a magic arrow, and it does 1 die
roll plus 1 point (2-7) to any creature it strikes. Roll the
missile fire like a long bow arrow (Missile Fire Table). Higher
level magic-users fire more than one missile.
As I understand it, the question of whether a magic missile hit its target
automatically or whether it required a to-hit roll to do so was a
contentious topic in the early days of D&D, one that was definitively
answers with the release of the Players Handbook in 1978:
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Use of the magic missile spell creates one or more magical

missiles which dart forth from the magic-user’s fingertip and
unerringly strike their target. Each missile does 2 to 5 hit
points (d4+1) of damage. If the magic-user has multiple
missile capability, he or she can have them strike a single
target creature or several creatures, as desired. For each level
of experience, the range of his or her magic missile extends 1”
beyond the 6” base range. For every 2 levels of experience,
the magic-user gains an additional missile, i.e. 2 at 3rd level,
3 at 5th level, 4 at 7th level, etc.

Moldvay reiterated that magic missile required no to-hit roll to deal

damage but otherwise hewed to OD&D and Holmes for his version of the
spell:

A magic missile is a glowing arrow, created and shot by

magic, which does 2-7 (1d6+1) points of damage to any
creature it strikes. It will automatically hit any visible target.
For every 5 levels the caster has gained, he or she may shoot
two more missiles when casting the spell. EXAMPLE: a 6th
level magic-user may cast three missiles. These may be shot
at one target, or the caster may choose to cast the missiles at
multiple targets.

In the Dwimmermount game, I use the OD&D version of the spell and
have found it to be extraordinarily useful — and deadly — in combat. A
trio of 6th-level Termaxian magic-users dealt a lot of damage to the party
through the use of magic missile and Iriadessa’s wand of magic missiles
has proven essential to defeating opponents on more than one occasion.
I don’t think it’d be as potent if a to-hit roll were required, especially if
such a roll depended on the magic-user’s combat table and Dexterity
modifier.

I like the fact that a 1st-level spell packs a lot of punch even against level
4-6 characters; it helps ensure that magic-users of any level can make a
huge difference to a combat if they choose their spells wisely and know
the right time to use them. Of course, this is balanced by the limited
number of spell slots available to MUs, but then even magic must come
with a cost, shouldn’t it?