Before the OSR

I must confess it still baffles me that, even after all these years, the nature of the Old School Renaissance remains a matter of contention in some quarters. Given that, I suppose it should be no surprise that there's no universally accepted start date for the OSR, though I think a good case can be made for 2007 or 2008. I favor 2007 myself, though 2008 is also a good choice, since it's the year in which Gary Gygax died, as well as the year in which old school blogs really exploded in number and influence. 2008 is also, not insignificantly, the year in which the Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons was published and I think we'd be remiss in overlooking 4e as a symbolic Bright Red Line. The OSR owed much of its early energy to the shudders of revulsion many felt at the marketing campaign that presaged Fourth Edition's arrival.

One of the reasons a start date is difficult to pin down is that, prior to both the dates I mention above, no less than three significant rules sets inspired by old school Dungeons & Dragons appeared. To varying degrees, each one exists outside the OSR ecosystem, despite the fact that the OSR owes huge debts of thanks to all three. Without their trailblazing examples, I'm not sure retro-clones would have existed, or, if they had, they might well have appeared later or taken different forms than they did. 

The first of these was Castles & Crusades, first published by Troll Lord Games in 2004. Though I do not play it, I have a personal affection for C&C, since it was my gateway to old school gaming. Like a lot of people, I'd returned to playing D&D in 2000, with the publication of Third Edition. Also like a lot of people, I grew tired of 3e and was looking for an alternative to its ponderousness. C&C was the very first game I checked out in my quest, having been drawn there due to Gary Gygax's association with Troll Lords. The designers of C&C were, I think, among the first people to recognize that Wizards of the Coast's Open Game License (OGL) and System Reference Document (SRD) gave publishers the raw materials from which to rebuild something akin to AD&D. 

While one can quibble about the final result, C&C was close enough for my tastes at the time that I readily embraced it. More importantly, the game eschewed all the skills, feats, prestige classes, and other cruft that made Third Edition such cumbersome mess. Better still, C&C built up an active, enthusiastic, and imaginative community around itself. Reading the C&C forums was joyous: every other thread wasn't devoted to dissecting the rules or arguing over the best way to "build" a character. People were just playing the game and having fun doing it. As a new refugee from WotC D&D, this was revelatory and I'll always be grateful for it.

Around the same time, I also came across the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game (BFRPG), which was first published in 2006. Basic Fantasy takes a similar tack to C&C, in that it leverages the OGL and SRD to recreate a defunct edition of Dungeons & Dragons, in this case, as its name suggests, the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh Basic and Expert rules. BFRPG went farther, in my opinion, than C&C in using WotC's resources to present a game that played like its inspirations. This was important, because it demonstrated just how much could be done with the OGL and SRD if you were determined to do so.

BFRPG is significant in another way. Castles & Crusades was the invention of Troll Lord Games and some aspects of its design, such as the Siege Engine core mechanic, remained proprietary, which limited the ability of third parties to support it. By contrast, everything about BFRPG is completely "open," allowing anyone and everyone to add to it as they wished. Even more, the game's site actively promotes supplements and adventures produced by others, which is the same spirit I associate strongly with the earliest days of the OSR, when ideas flew fast and furious and everyone involved was sharing and promoting one another's wacky ideas. 

Also released in 2006 was the Old School Reference and Index Compilation, better known as OSRIC. The original purpose of OSRIC was to provide a legal framework for the creation of adventures and supplements to support Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. However, because, at the time, AD&D was no longer readily available, except through the second hand market, some gamers began to use OSRIC as its own ruleset, playing it rather than using it for its original purpose. In doing so, OSRIC effectively became the first retro-clone.

OSRIC went far beyond C&C and BFRPG in terms of its willingness to make use of the content of the SRD to recreate an earlier edition of D&D. Indeed, at the time it was first released, there was some concern that Wizards of the Coast might object and take legal action to suppress it. OSRIC was thus the veritable canary in the coalmine. Because no legal action occurred, it emboldened others to follow suit and, within a couple of years, there were many retro-clones released. Without the boldness of OSRIC, that might never have happened.

Nowadays, I don't see as much talk about Castles & Crusades, Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, or OSRIC as I once did, but the fact remains that the contemporary OSR owes a great debt to each of these pioneering games. Without them, I doubt we'd where we are today.

Castle Keepers Guide Released At Last

I've had several people point me toward this thread over at the Troll Lord Games forums, where there would appear to be visual proof that the Castle Keepers Guide for Castles & Crusades actually exists. I know that's hard to believe, since the book has been delayed repeatedly since the middle of the last decade. I haven't seen a copy myself, so I can't provide any details about its length, contents, or quality, but I'm glad for C&C players that it's finally finished and available.

Mind you, this news doesn't mean a lot to me personally. My brief flirtation with Castles & Crusades was back in 2006, when I abandoned D&D III and started looking for an alternative. I still have fond feelings for C&C, since it was what helped me realize that what I really wanted was not a simplified 3e with some old school chrome but the real McCoy. That's why, in 2007, I turned to OD&D and wound up where I am today and I owe that to Castles & Crusades.

That probably doesn't sound like a compliment, but I sincerely mean it as such. C&C, even moreso than Third Edition, made me realize what I actually like about and want out of Dungeons & Dragons. Without it, I probably would have given up on D&D altogether.

REVIEW: A Trick on the Tain

I'm not, as most of you probably know, a player of Troll Lord Games's Castles & Crusades, but I retain a fondness for it, as it was the vehicle through which I began my return to old school gaming back in 2007. My issues with C&C, though, haven't blinded me to the fact that there have been a number of excellent adventures and support products published for it, most of which are easily translatable to other old school rules systems.

A good case in point is Keith Hackwood's adventure, A Trick on the Tain, released by Brave Halfling Publishing. Retailing for $9.95 in print, this module is 22 pages in length and includes art by Andy Taylor. It's a wilderness-based adventure written for 4-6 characters of levels 1-3 (a Challenge Level of 1-5 for those familiar with C&C's jargon), which I think makes it unusual. Most wilderness adventures are geared toward much higher-level characters, including Jim Raggi's Weird New World (which I'll review shortly). The practice of treating adventures of this sort as primarily the domain of higher-level PCs goes back to at least the days of the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh edition of D&D, but I don't think it was ever intended to have been treated as firm a "rule" as it has been over the years.

I was naturally well disposed to like A Trick on the Tain before I'd even had a chance to read it, as I don't think low-level characters should be dissuaded from undertaking wilderness adventures, even if they do tend to be potentially more risky than dungeon adventures. This module takes place in a northern tundra known as the Tain, a sparsely settled region that's home to two human kingdoms, slowly declining Rigerland and brutal Doggerland. Also present in the Tain are the nomadic, tribal Shum people. I can't say that I am too fond of the naming conventions adopted in this module. They're certainly not the worst I've ever seen, but they seemed both uninspired and likely to elicit chuckles at the gaming table. That's not a substantive criticism by any means, but I do think it might hamper some gamers from taking the module seriously and that'd be a shame, because it's a good one.

Though there is an overarching frame for the entire module, A Trick on the Tain is, in most respects, a location-based adventure that provides the referee with a map of the Tain region, random encounters, keyed locales, new monsters and magic items, as well as rules for cold weather effects. Taken together, it's a solid collection of ideas, some of them quite clever (such as the magical chaos arrow whose effects are random). There's nothing revolutionary about A Trick on the Tain; no one is going to be blown away by anything within its pages. It is, however, well written and engaging and, as I noted earlier, unusual in being a wilderness adventure aimed at low-level parties, thus making it helpful to referees interested in that sort of adventure for their campaigns.

It's also a good example of the old school design philosophy, leaving many aspects of the adventure open to referee interpretation rather than providing a definitive answer to every question that's likely to arise. I appreciate that and think it only adds to the module's utility, although some will no doubt disagree, expecting a published module to be completely self-explanatory. Consequently, I don't think A Trick on the Tain will have wide appeal, even to those who play Castles & Crusades. That shouldn't be seen a a knock against the module; if anything, it means that its author had a clear idea how he wanted to present this adventure and he followed it through. That's exactly what I'd like to see more of from old school products.

Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 7 out of 10
Utility: 5 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a low-level location-based wilderness adventure and don't mind doing a little work to flesh out the details.
Don't Buy This If: You don't like wilderness adventures or would rather that adventure modules come completely ready-to-play.

REVIEW: 100 Street Vendors of the City State

This is probably one of my more melancholy reviews, given that James Mishler, writer of 100 Street Vendors of the City State and owner of Adventure Games Publishing has announced that this would be his last product for sale and that AGP would be closing. This is unfortunate news on numerous levels but particularly so because 100 Street Vendors is a very good and, above all, useful product, even if one is not using Castles & Crusades or the Wilderlands settings. Indeed, this is one of the most useful -- and meaty -- offerings Mishler has produced to date. That it is the last of its kind contributes greatly to my sense that one only really appreciates what one has after it is gone.

I called 100 Street Vendors "meaty" and so it is. Consisting of 60 pages of the densely packed text for which Mishler's products are well known, it presents, as its title suggests, 100 different NPCs, each one a vendor on the winding streets of the City State of the Invincible Overlord. Now, that probably sounds a lot less interesting than it is, for the real genius of this product is that it's far more than a mere rogues gallery of non-player character names and statistics (though it is that as well). Each entry is a kind of "mini-sourcebook," providing information about the City State and the Wilderlands in general, along with numerous plot hooks and rumors for the referee to use in creating his own adventures. For example, a fishmonger by the name of Ferka is described as being of the

Great Black Bass Clan, the most prominent fisher-folk of the western Roglaroon (though the Great Blue Bass Clan would deny that at the point of a dagger); he is one of several fishmongers of the clan, as he is more capable of interacting with the "land lubbers" than most of the clansfolk, which tend to be ornery, xenophobic, and inbred (after long ago absorbing a bit of Merfolk blood, to be sure.

Later, the same entry notes:

An ancient temple of the Sea God has been discovered in the fens of the Mermist Swamp; it is said to be overrun by trolls and giant toads that guard a gold-plated statue at the heart of the temple.

Between those two small sections of one entry, there are lots of ideas a clever referee can use in creating his own adventures and in fleshing out the Wilderlands setting -- and there are 99 more entries of similar or even greater detail. I don't use the Wilderlands for my OD&D campaign, but I've already found lots of inspiration in the pages of 100 Street Vendors. If one is running any kind of city-based campaign, it's even more inspiring, as it goes a long way toward making a seemingly ordinary trip to hire a locksmith or employ a sage into something memorable. If one is running a campaign that involves the City State, it's even more valuable, as Mishler has helpfully included several excellent indices of the vendors (by street, by market, and by quarter), along with discussions of local coinage.

If 100 Street Vendors of the City State has a flaw, it's that its bare bones, illustration-free presentation might be overwhelming. The information contained within its 60 pages is vast and the text uses a very small point size, which might by off-putting. These would be unfortunate but understandable reactions and I have to admit that, before I started reading the book, I wasn't all that enthusiastic about doing so. But I am glad I did and this book will now enjoy a place of honor in my collection, along with a very small number of other useful referee tools. I consider that very high praise and a fitting conclusion to the Wilderlands of High Fantasy line. Grab a copy while you still can.

Presentation: 5 out of 10
Creativity: 8 out of 10
Utility: 8 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a vast collection of idea fodder in the form of NPC descriptions, rumors, and setting details.
Don't Buy This If: You never use prepackaged NPC descriptions.

Sad News from AGP

James Mishler has announced on his blog that Adventure Games Publishing is closing its doors for good.

The decision to close AGP was neither easy nor quick; it has been brewing in my mind for a long time. It is the end result of far more mistakes being made than successess being earned. At one point a good friend, who knew of my work on Comics & Games Retailer, asked me point blank why I did not take the very good advice I dished out in that magazine. I still do not know why myself.

The closure is, essentially, the final result of ever fewer sales on each new product, both print and PDF, such that at this point, I'll end up paying people to take my next product. 100 Street Vendors of the City State, barring a handful of sales of Noble Knight Games, sold a grand total of three print copies. Yes, you read that right, three copies. The PDF sales were not much better, a grand total of 13 copies sold as compared to 15 copies being taken free by reviewers (and many, many thanks to the two of you who have actually posted reviews!)

As though the dreadful sales on what I considered to be my best, most tied-in work of the Wilderlands was not enough, this is also tax time, and looking over the results of the prior year was most educational. The end result, even after pinching every penny and keeping all expenses down to the bare minimum, was a grand total net income such that I earned a total of less than $2 per hour for all my work on AGP in 2009. Were this simply a sideline to a full-time job, that would truly be a nice result. As this is supposed to be my "day job," that result is, as we call it, a "reason to quit."

And so we are done.

While I cannot fault James for his decision, it's sad nonetheless. I've consistently enjoyed his work, some of which has been truly excellent, including his recent 100 Street Vendors of the City State, which is, ironically, the next item in the queue for review here. I regret now that I hadn't been able to review it sooner, although it sounds as if a single review, even a glowing one, wouldn't have made much difference in the end. James says that, sometime in the future, he plans to take up writing again, this time likely as a hobby, and I am glad of that at least.

Good luck, James, and thank you for all the hard work and creativity you've shared with us these last few years. I adore the copy of XXXI I bought from you two years ago and hope you'll share more of your marvelous imagination with us in the years to come.

REVIEW: Tharbrian Horse-Lords

Tharbrian Horse-Lords is the first Player's Guide for Adventure Games Publishing's Castles & Crusades-based "Wilderlands of High Adventure" setting. The product is available in two formats: a 22-page PDF costing $5.00 or a 36-page digest-size booklet costing $7.00. This review is based on the PDF, so I cannot comment on any changes made to the print version, if any. Like most previous AGP Wilderlands products, Tharbrian Horse-Lords is text-dense and without any illustrations. The layout is a simple two-column one that's easy to read and the text is both clear and well edited.

Of course, it's the actual content of the product that matters most and Tharbrian Horse-Lords offers plenty of content, most of free of game mechanics. This makes it very easy to use with game systems other than C&C, although some sections of it are written as expansions to the variant barbarian class presented in Barbarians of the Wilderlands 1. The Horse-Lords of the title are a barbarian culture best described as "Celtic Mongols." That is, their culture reminded me of an amalgam between the continental European Celtic peoples (primarily the Gauls) and central Asian horse nomads. While ethnologists among us might balk at this, I found the mixture easy to grasp, which suggests that players would find it equally easy to portray a Tharbrian as a character.

The bulk of the product describes the history, society, and culture of the Tharbrians, sometimes in more detail than I felt necessary. However, since each section only adds to one's overall sense of what Horse-Lord culture is like, it can be argued that additional detail is never a bad thing. This is clearly a taste issue; for myself, I prefer broader strokes in my gaming products, with less specific information and more general ideas that I can use as a springboard. This is particularly true in the case of settings like the Wilderlands, which has always been a "big tent" setting, whose most detailed areas were still very sketchy compared to those of contemporary settings.

I worry somewhat that, given the amount of information provided in this product about one barbarian nation, the Wilderlands of High Adventure will soon find itself weighted down in canon, no matter how well written and interesting. And it is interesting. James Mishler has described the Tharbrians in sufficient detail that I can easily imagine playing an entire campaign within their roaming lands, making this product almost a mini-campaign setting within the larger Wilderlands. In that respect, it's quite remarkable and the level detail it provides is exactly right. Given that, perhaps I should clarify my worry somewhat: taken in itself, I think Tharbrian Horse-Lords strikes a good balance between too much and too little detail; taken as part of a larger whole, I see a trend toward fleshing out every nook and cranny of the Wilderlands and that remains worrisome to me. But, as I said, it's a matter of taste and many gamers will find eight paragraphs of information about the Tharbrian diet exactly the sort of information they need in their campaigns, while I find it a bit too much.

I can say, without hesitation, that Tharbrian Horse-Lords is an excellent product, well written and interesting and a good companion to the other Wilderlands product AGP has published to date. The key here in gauging one's own interest in it is whether you deem the approach Mishler has adopted in those other products as felicitous or not. I personally find them a little information-heavy at times, but I realize not everyone shares my preferences. For me, the glory of the "classical" Wilderlands is its lack of detail, which makes it easy to remake the setting in any way I choose as the situation demands. Mishler's Wilderlands of High Adventure variant presents a particular interpretation of that setting and then fleshes it out in increasing detail. That's not a bad approach and, as I feel compelled to reiterate, Mishler does so excellently; it's just not my preferred approach. Whether it is yours will determine how you feel about Tharbrian Horse-Lords.

Presentation: 5 out of 10
Creativity: 7 out of 10
Utility: 7 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a fully-fleshed out barbarian culture to use in your game.
Don't Buy This If: You're not interested in fantasy ethnography

Little Colored Books

James Mishler of Adventure Games Publishing has just produced 11 booklets that reproduce his PDF products in printed form, some of it for the first time ever. I have to admit I'm very fond of the smaller format of these booklets. Having spent the last nine months using the little OD&D books in my Dwimmermount game, I am completely convinced of the the superiority of this size, which is small enough to be able to keep at the table without cluttering it up. Plus, they're very handy for carrying around with me as I travel. I'd love to see more publishers adopt the format, so kudos to AGP for doing so.

REVIEW: Monstrous Menaces #1, #2, and #3

Lots of referees of fantasy roleplaying games hold to the axiom that you can never have too many monsters. James Mishler clearly agrees, as he has offered up three new PDFs of monsters designed for use with Castles & Crusades but easily adapted to most D&D-derived games.

These PDFs vary in length from 8 to 12 pages and each present three new monsters in the expanded format Mishler first used in Monsters & Treasures of the Wilderlands I, which should appeal to those of a Gygaxian naturalist bent. There are, unfortunately, no illustrations included with any of these PDFs; they're pure text. And while the text is well written, several of the monsters described are outré enough that an illustration would have been helpful. I also noticed that this series of PDFs, unlike the aforementioned Monsters & Treasures, is not explicitly associated with the Wilderlands of High Adventure setting, making the products more generic and a little less flavorful in my opinion. Mishler is one of those guys who clearly gets the Wilderlands and its surrealist qualities and the lack of such details makes these PDFs a little less appealing overall, at least for me.

Monstrous Menaces #1 is the shortest of the three at 8 pages. The monsters it describes are:

• Gharlidh: Subterranean humanoids with an incapacitating keen. I can't say they made a huge impression upon me.
• Grulnosc: Acidic giant snails. I found them less interesting for themselves than for the uses to which their carcasses can be put.
• Rocktopus: Who doesn't love evil, intelligent, land-dwelling octopi?
  

Monstrous Menaces #2 is the longest of the three PDFs, at 12 pages. The monsters it describes are:

• Blade Dancer: No, not the ridiculously over-powered kit from The Complete Book of Elves, but humanoid constructs made from bladed weapons.
• Goblin: The bulk of this PDF is taken up with an extensive description of goblin society and culture. If one likes fantasy sociology, it's quite well done.
• Tharghûl: A form of undead that rules over ghouls and ghasts. I'll admit that I've been a sucker for this concept ever since I read references to the King of Ghouls in the Monster Manual.

Monstrous Menaces #3 weighs in at 9 pages and describes:

• Akhlat: Chimerical sphinx-like creatures. I could have really used an illustration to get a better sense of what they looked like.
• Oogloog: Intelligent oozes from outer space. I was reminded -- happily -- of the old Judges Guild adventure "Night of the Walking Wet" by these guys.
• Woodwose: A "wild man" that borrows from legends of sasquatch, the yeti, and similar creatures.

All of these PDFs sell for $1 and there's no question that, at that price, they're a steal. Certainly there were a few monsters that didn't do much for me, but each product included one truly inspired stand-out that I plan to swipe for my own campaign, which is usually an indication of a good product. I tend to be very picky about monsters -- I use only a small sub-set of those available -- so any products that make me want to add a few more to the repertoire are worthy of mention.

That said, I would have preferred fewer monsters like the gharlidh or woodwose, neither of which filled a clear gap in the existing fantasy menagerie, and more like the rocktopus and oogloog. I know all too well that monster creation is a very hit or miss affair, with more misses being produced than hits, so I can't fault Mishler here. I suppose it's more that, having seen his best work, I wish all of it were of the same quality. As they are now, the Monstrous Menace series is somewhat uneven, a flaw offset to some degree by its bright spots and its price. They're well worth the price if you're looking for ideas to pillage and it's probably in that context that they deserve the most praise.

Presentation: 5 out of 10
Creativity: 6 out of 10
Utility: 6 out of 10

Buy This If: You want to swipe a few ideas for new monsters.
Don't Buy This If: You're expecting new monsters unlike any you've ever seen before.

REVIEW: 100 More Calamitous Curses

If the late James Brown was the hardest working man in show business, then James Mishler may be the hardest working man in the old school movement. In recent weeks, he's produced a flurry of new PDF products for Castles & Crusades (all of which I'll be reviewing over the next few days), but the one that really solidifies my awe at his industry is 100 More Calamitous Curses, the sequel to his previous 100 Calamitous Curses, which I reviewed earlier this year.

Most of what I'd say about this product I already said in my review of its predecessor. Once again, Mishler has come up with 100 inventive curses for the delectation of the referee and the dismay of players. If anything, the curses in this product are even more clever than those in the earlier release. They're certainly far more complex, which undoubtedly explains why 100 More Calamitous Curses is 15 pages in length -- three pages longer than 100 Calamitous Curses. The increased word count has also led to an increased price. This product sells for $3.00 compared to the $2.50 (discounted to $1.00 for the moment) of the original.

100 More Calamitous Curses is ostensibly a Castles & Crusades product, but the game mechanics are light enough that referees of almost any fantasy roleplaying game will be able to use them without much difficulty. This isn't a "must have" product, particularly if you haven't yet exhausted all the curses in its predecessor. But, as I said of low-level adventures, you can never have too many random tables when running an old school campaign. Likewise, there are so many clever ideas contained within the descriptions of these curses that they could easily be pressed into other uses by referees, such as spells, magic items, or even special attacks by monsters. 100 More Calamitous Curses is a veritable goldmine of inspiration and is heartily recommended.

Presentation: 6 out of 10
Creativity: 9 out of 10
Utility: 8 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for even more ideas for unpleasant magical effects to inflict on the player characters.

Don't Buy This If: You don't like curses or already have enough ideas for them in your campaign.

AGP Customer Appreciation Sale

James Mishler of Adventure Games Publishing has announced a Customer Appreciation Sale. All sixteen of AGP's products are now reduced in price as a way to say thank you for those who've purchased them in the past.

I've reviewed most of AGP's products here in the past, so here's a handy set of links to the individual reviews:

100 Calamitous Curses
100 Exciting Encounters & 100 Treasure Troves
2008 Wilderlands Jam
Adventure Games Journal, Issue #1
Aendryth's Eldritch Compendium
Barbarians of the Wilderlands I
Forn Sidthr: The Old Custom
Martial Artist Class
Monsters & Treasures of the Wilderlands I (Revised Version)
Wilderlands Maps

James Mishler is one of the hardest working guys in the hobby. His output is amazing both in terms of volume and quality. If you've ever thought about buying one of his many terrific products, now's a good time to do so.

REVIEW: 100 Calamitous Curses

There are lots of things one can focus on when trying to pinpoint specific game mechanics that separate old school games from their modern descendants -- save or die effects and level draining are two of the most popular ones. Strangely, I almost never hear anyone mention curses. Back in the day, cursed magic items were pretty commonplace -- about one out of every ten scrolls or swords, for example, was cursed -- which is why both magic-users and clerics got the remove curse spell in OD&D. Curses were a standard part of the referee's bag of tricks and players understood the need to be wary when picking up that cool new sword you looted from the troll lair or reading that scroll you found on the dead body floating in the subterranean lake.

If there was a problem with curses, it was that, after a while, it became increasingly hard to come up with new and interesting ones. Volume 2 of OD&D, for example, provides exactly five sample curses for use in the game. Now, five is better than none, but, if a campaign lasts long enough, odds are you're going to use up all those options and how many more times do your players want to see their characters transported to Barsoom as a result of a cursed scroll? That's where the relentless James Mishler's 100 Calamitous Curses comes in. For $2.50, Mishler gives you just what the title promises: 100 different curses for use with your favorite fantasy RPG. Though written for Castles & Crusades, like so many of Adventure Games Publishing's products, this 12-page PDF is effectively system-neutral. There's only a small amount of C&C-specific game mechanics in the text, so little that I don't hesitate to recommend it to any referee who's looking for new and unusual curses to add to his campaign.

And what curses! I've commented many times before that James Mishler has a real knack for creating game material with a decidedly swords-and-sorcery vibe. 100 Calamitous Curses is no different. Consider just two curses:

• Curse of Unquenchable Thirst: The accursed one is always thirsty, and must drink a gallon of water every hour. If in hot dry weather or during exertion (such as extended combat), the accursed one must drink two gallons per hour. Every gallon missed the accursed one suffers one point of subdual damage, which cannot be healed naturally or by magic until she catches up on all the missed water.
• Curse of the Ghoulish Gourmand: The accursed one develops a taste for the flesh of humans, demihumans, and humanoids, but especially those of his own race. This is first noticed when he is within 10 feet of a corpse, which to the accursed one smells like an irresistible well-seasoned and perfectly-grilled steak. The accursed one must make a Charisma check each time he encounters a new corpse (with a -2 penalty for the flesh of his own race), or he decides to succumb to temptation and tucks in without worry for cooking or seasoning (though he still seeks to do so surreptitiously, if others can see). After failing and consuming such flesh a number of times equal to his Constitution score, he is hooked, and can only subsist on such flesh; all other foods are regurgitated or simply provide no sustenance. Thereafter for every day he goes without the flesh such a being he suffers 1d6 points of subdual damage, which cannot heal naturally or be cured by magic until he once again consumed forbidden flesh.

And there are 98 more curses in this product, many of them even more inventive than these two examples. This really is a remarkably useful product for old school fantasy games. I know I'll get a lot of use out of it and I expect I'll not be alone. Once again, a superb piece of work from James Mishler and AGP.

Final Score: 5 out of 5 polearms

Monsters &Treasure of the Wilderlands Updated

Back in September, I wrote a review of Adventure Games Publishing's Monsters & Treasure of the Wilderlands I, giving it a perfect score of 5 out of 5 polearms. Well, the indefatigable James Mishler has been hard at work, expanding the product by adding eleven new monsters (27 as opposed to 16), artwork by Peter Bradley (including a full-color cover), and more information on how to integrate these creatures into the Wilderlands of High Adventure campaign setting. The PDF version of the expanded product sells for $8.00, twice the cost of the original version, presumably because of the cost of art and cartography. A print version will retail for $10.95 and should be available soon.

The new monsters are as good as those in the original release and it's nice to see illustrations of these beasties, even if Bradley's art isn't quite my cup of tea. If you didn't pick up a copy of the original release, I have no hesitation about recommending the expanded version, as it's well worth the price. Mishler's products are extremely good at providing a lot of useful flavor in addition to game mechanics. That is, there's no "fluff" here. Instead, what you get are nice little details that in themselves suggest adventures or that make an encounter more memorable. There's no gilding the lily here, just good old-fashioned creativity in the service of great gaming. And Mishler's magical treasures continue to be some of the best written in many a moon. They're weird and mysterious and, best of all, dangerous. They're perfect for swords-and-sorcery style games and I absolutely adore them.

This expanded version is another milestone along Adventure Games Publishing's journey to restore the Wilderlands to its former glory as one of the pre-eminent settings of fantasy gaming. Between the little touches in the monster and treasure descriptions and the maps that provide a wider context to it all, you can see just how much Mishler loves adding gameable details to this setting. That love is infectious and, while I still worry that AGP's Wilderlands offerings could result in too much detail, we're clearly not at that point just yet. Instead, we have another excellent bit of work that testifies to the lasting power of Judges Guild's products and ideas.

REVIEW: 100 Exciting Encounters & 100 Treasure Troves

I'm not usually a big fan of PDF products. Oh, I'll buy them, mostly because they're cheap and provide almost instant gratification, but it's rare that I find the format sufficiently better to traditional printing that I find myself thinking, "I'm glad this product is a PDF." Adventure Games Publishing's recent offerings are rare examples of products that do get me thinking just that.

Taking a page from D&D's past, James Mishler has produced two excellent products modeled on TSR's Monster & Treasure Assortment. The first, entitled 100 Exciting Encounters -- 1st Level Encounters presents 100 full-statted encounters suitable for use against a party of 1st-level characters. Of course, as Mishler notes, "some encounters are designed to be rather tough; however, at some point early in their careers all characters should learn that discretion is the better part of valor and that it is better to run away to live and fight another day!" If I hadn't already liked the idea behind the product in the first place, this comment certainly would have won me over!

The second product, entitled 100 Treasure Troves -- Treasure Type 1, follows a similar format, being a collection of 100 treasures of the sort one might reasonably encounter on the 1st level of a dungeon. The treasure are a mix of coins, gems, art objects, and miscellanea, as well as the occasional magic item. One of such magic item -- a wand -- is cursed but it's the kind of cursed item that generates a lot of fun, as the players try to come to grips with its peculiar malediction. Mishler has a real flair for creating dangerous but enjoyable magic items, as I noted in an earlier review; I hope to see more of his handiwork on this topic in the future.

Both PDFs use a simple simple, straightforward layout that is effectively a gigantic table numbered 1-100, so the referee can randomly generate encounters and treasures for use in populating his dungeons or wilderness areas. There's no art in either product, but that's not really a drawback, since there's no need for illustrations here. These products are meant to be used -- printed out, stuck in a referee's binder, and written on as the encounters and treasures are introduced in play, just like the old Monster & Treasure Assortment.

Both products are written with Castles & Crusades in mind, like all of AGP's products. That means that 100 Exciting Encounters requires a small bit of conversion if you use it with a different game, because the stat blocks use the ascending armor class system I so dislike. Granted, it's a small matter to convert them into the traditional D&D system, but it is an inconvenience worth mentioning. 100 Treasure Troves has no such problem, being completely usable without any modifications.

The old Monster & Treasure Assortment is still available as a PDF, but it's more expensive than these two products combined, so, if saving a couple of bucks is a concern, you might be better off grabbing AGP's offerings, particularly if you're playing C&C. Myself, I use both in populating Dwimmermount, as I find variety is never a bad thing. Indeed, one of the often-forgotten dangers of designing a megadungeon is falling into ruts, which is all too easy when dealing with dozens of rooms per level. By having not one but two collections of random monster encounters and treasures, I can avoid that more easily. Consequently, I heartily recommend 100 Exciting Encounters and 100 Treasure Troves to anyone running an old school campaign; they'll both save you a lot of time and effort better spent on creating fiendish tricks and traps and what referee wouldn't rather be doing that?

Final Score:

100 Exciting Encounters -- 1st Level Encounters: 4* out of 5 polearms
100 Treasure Troves -- Treasure Type 1: 4½ out of 5 polearms

*Judged solely on its broad old school utility. As a C&C product, it probably rates a 4½ out of 5.

REVIEW: A Tale of Two Monks

Or a monk and a martial artist anyway.

This review is the first time I've ever directly compared two similar products. As a rule, I don't like the notion of comparing and contrasting RPG products, because I think that even ostensibly similar products can have very different goals and intended audiences. I remember an article in an old issue of Dragon that was ostensibly a review of TSR's SF game, Star Frontiers. While the review was quite thorough, what I remember most about it was that the reviewer frequently compared it unfavorably to GDW's Traveller. Now, as everyone knows, I'm a Traveller geek and make no bones about that. I rank the original 1977 boxed set up there with OD&D in terms of being one of the greatest works of imagination ever produced by this hobby. That said, even at the time, I thought Star Frontiers deserved to be taken on its own merits and reviewed solely on that basis.

Consequently, this review isn't so much a comparison of Adventure Games Publishing's Martial Artist Class and Brave Halfling Publishing's Delving Deeper - Monk as a discussion of how two two different writers writing for two different games can draw on the same source material and spin it in different ways. One of the joys of the old school revival is watching how a wide variety of people take the same inspirations and present them in so many unique ways. What's even better is that, because old school games have such simple mechanics, it's very easy for me to buy a product intended for, say, OSRIC and adapt it to my Swords & Wizardry game. If anything about 2009 reminds me of 1979 it's this glorious smorgasbord of product offerings from which to swipe cool ideas and not have to worry about whether they'll "work" in my home game.

Let's start with AGP's Martial Artist Class. Written for Castles & Crusades and selling for $1.00, this 7-page PDF follows the same basic format of other recent electronic products by James Mishler. Although completely lacking in art, the product more than makes up for it by the density of its two-column text, which presents an alternative to C&C's monk class. Using Strength as its Prime (rather than Constitution, as the standard monk does), the martial artist is focused primarily on combat, both unarmed and armed. That's not to say that it's lacking in other class abilities, but it's clear that, as its name suggests, the martial artist is intended for players who want to play characters who've devoted themselves, bodily and spiritually, to becoming living weapons. In this respect, the martial artist is a broader archetype than the monk, since the class lends itself to a variety of character types that break the "militant ascetic" mold. Rounding out the PDF is a collection of descriptions of exotic and mundane weapons and how they might be used by martial artists.

Brave Halfling's Delving Deeper - Monk is also a 7-page PDF, written by Luke Fleeman and selling for $0.75. Of those seven pages, one is taken up by the cover, another by the Open Game License, and a third by a piece of short fiction. In addition, the product includes a couple of pieces of black and white line art by Brian Thomas. As a result, Delving Deeper - Monk isn't nearly as textually dense of Martial Artist Class, but that's to be expected in a PDF supporting Labyrinth Lord, which is far simpler mechanically than Castles & Crusades. The monk presented here is much closer in concept and presentation to the monk of OD&D/AD&D, being a more "generalist" class with abilities beyond those focused primarily on combat. The monk is thus the class for people who wish to play characters that cleave closely to "inscrutable mystic warrior" archetype -- equally adept at conversing with animals as kicking ass. The product also helpfully includes some advice on integrating monks into a campaign, either as PCs or NPCs.

I like both these products. They're both a terrific value and have the benefit of including lots of simple mechanics that can be lifted for use in almost any old school game. In addition, their differences highlight the fact that there's no "right" way to present anything in an old school game except what works for the referee and his players. Despite having already offered up my own version of the monk some months ago, I still found lots of food for thought in these two PDFs. Of the two, I give Deliving Deeper - Monk a slight edge, because it's closer to the monk of Blackmoor and thus closer to the kind of class I'd use in my own campaign. Mind you, the martial artist isn't intended to be a replacement for the monk class of C&C, nor does it occupy exactly the same mental space. It's closely related, to be sure, but there are subtle differences and, in some campaigns, the monk and the martial artist could reasonably exist side-by-side without any contradiction. I still prefer the monk for its closer connection to tradition, but I can easily imagine that others might feel the martial artist is a broader and thus "better" class.

Chacun à son goût.

Final Score: 4 out of 5 polearms for one, 4½ out of 5 polearms for the other -- You decide.

Upper Works Response

Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works writer and developer Jeff Talanian dropped me an email in response to my recent review. He was kind enough to give me permission to post it here for everyone to read. He writes:

Thank you for taking the time to review Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works. I appreciate the time and effort you put into sharing your opinions with your usual articulate and thoughtful manner. I must bear full responsibility for most of your content-related criticisms, for I was provided much latitude in the design and development of Gary's famous work, for good or ill. I understood the expectations were high, and I accepted the responsibility knowing that my resources were limited and that Gary's health was in a severe decline; notwithstanding, I peppered him with emails throughout the process, seeking his advice in matters small and large. Essentially, James, I did what I feel was my best work at that time, given the circumstances. I am proud of the work, and I make no excuses for all the warts CZ:UW no doubt bears. Noting your criticisms (not all of which I agree with, of course!), those of Allan Grohe, and other gaming peers whom I respect, I hope to turn my design and development weakness into strengths so as to produce better adventures in the future. Again, thank you.

I would also like to thank Jeff for all the hard work he did in trying to do justice to this project, particularly given the circumstances under which he no doubt worked. Although I am less pleased with the end result than I had hoped I would be, I remain glad to have picked up The Upper Works. There's a lot of good contained within its pages and I'll certainly be swiping bits of it for my own megadungeon, which I mean to be a high compliment. In addition, I have no doubt that, without Jeff's tireless labor, we'd never have seen as much of Castle Zagyg as we did. We are all in his debt for that. I sincerely look forward to his future products, as I have every reason to expect great things from him.

REVIEW: Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works (Part III of III)

As I noted in Part II, I like Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works. I believe it's a very fine product and well worth the money I spent on it. I also think it's a fitting capstone to Gary Gygax's life and career, even if it's a somewhat melancholy one. I say "melancholy," because TUW is a textbook example of opportunities missed and promises unfulfilled. While it is still, by any measure, a worthy product and a truly Gygaxian one, it could have been better than it was. There's a host of "could have beens" associated with this product and I'd like to talk about several of them to give a better context for my final review of TUW.

1. Timeliness: As we now know, TUW will be the last product of the Castle Zagyg line published by Troll Lord Games. That it was also, by most standards, also the first product in the line to attempt to make good on what most fans expected from it only makes this fact harder to accept. I understand that at least some of the delays in getting TUW to press were not TLG's fault. A combination of factors, no doubt including Gary's failing health, contributed to its tardiness. By the same token, had the projct been better managed from the start, with a realistic timetable and a fewer about-faces in terms of content and format, there's a chance we might have seen more than TUW in the four years since the project was first announced. A good portion of my dissatisfaction with TUW stems from the fact that, after all these years, it's all we've managed to see of the megadungeon I had hoped we'd have seen by now.

2. Appearance and Organization: Being an old schooler, I'm quite accustomed to amateurish products and indeed have a certain affection for them. At the same time, there are many companies out there that have managed to produce attractive and well organized materials without having the resources of Wizards of the Coast. TUW should have been treated like the prestige product that it clearly is. Its organization should have included at the very least an index and better cross-referencing and I don't think it's asking too much in expecting an overview of the entirety of the Castle and its levels. TUW is packed with information -- which is a good thing! -- but it's not particularly user friendly, especially compared to products like Rappan Athuk Reloaded or Castle Whiterock, both of which are larger and yet easier to use. Likewise, TUW's box is flimsy; mine is already splitting after very little use and its pasted-on cover is starting to peel and crack. All these complaints are minor in themselves and I'd have quite happily overlooked them, but, in aggregate, they contribute to the impression of a product made with less care than it ought to have been.

3. Historicity: I had hoped that Castle Zagyg would have taken an approach closer to Rob Kuntz's products, such as The Living Room and The Original Bottle City. In those products, Kuntz not only presented a reconstruction of material from his days as co-DM of the Greyhawk campaign, but also commentary on the origins of this material and how it was used, including reminiscences of events from those days. In some cases, this made the material very "modular," which is to say, disconnected from its original environment, but it also made the material far more useful for referees hoping to drop it into their existing campaigns. Furthermore, it made the material of terrific interest to people whose primary attraction to it is in gleaning insights into the early days of the hobby, not to mention details of one of the oldest fantasy campaigns in existence. Granted, there was never much chance that the Castle Zagyg line was going to adopt this approach. Anyone who'd read Yggsburgh could have seen that. Gary himself stated on numerous occasions that he didn't favor treating the Castle as a "historical" product. I think this was an error in judgment on his part, if only because I don't think historicity need get in the way of gameability. Indeed, I think a greater emphasis on historicity would have made the material of wider interest and greater gameability, particularly for old schoolers such as myself. Again, it's probably unfair to judge TUW too harshly because it didn't adhere to a model that its creator rejected, but I can't deny I held out hope that he might have changed his mind in the course of writing it.

4. Completeness: In itself, TUW contains everything it promises. It does detail all of the Upper Works of Castle Zagyg. Unfortunately, the Upper Works aren't where the Castle "lives." They're, at best, a tantalizing glimpse of what lies beneath them, a sideshow that briefly holds our attention before we move on to bigger and better things. Jim Ward notes that, in the original Greyhawk campaign, the Upper Works occupied very little of the players' attention, because the subterranean levels were far more lucrative and intriguing. I find it hard not to feel the same way. Were it not for the fact that the Upper Works are all that have been described, I rather suspect that most adventuring parties would imitate their Lake Geneva predecessors and delve deeper, lured on by the promise of sights more exciting than endless humanoid barracks and store rooms. To be fair, there is much more to the Upper Works than these things, but, taken as a whole, the feeling I come away with is that TUW describes only a handful of truly memorable encounters and a whole lot of filler intended to keep players busy until such time as the Real Dungeon is published. Alas, it never will be, at least not by TLG -- and that's deeply frustrating.

As you can see, my complaints are, in large part, extraneous to the actual product itself, having more to do with what I wish had been the case rather than what is. For me, TUW, like the entire Castle Zagyg line, is timid and mundane when it should have been daring and otherworldly. TLG and Gary clearly decided to "play it safe" in presenting the Castle and I can't shake the feeling that this approach was unwise. Had TUW (and Yggsburgh before it) treated us to lots of commentary, historical context, and vintage Gygaxian lunacy, I would likely have deemed the entire line a glorious failure cut short by the vagaries of licensing. As it is, what we have is a solid -- dare I say "workmanlike?" -- product with occasional moments of brilliance. TUW has a kind of watered-down, washed-out feel to it, as if it were a copy of a copy of a copy. You can still see the artistry of the original piece of art, but it's muted compared to what it must have looked like fresh from the brush of the Master. Instead of being grateful that the original was preserved, however badly damaged it was from the toll of years, I found myself thinking it far less impressive than the stories I had read of it from those who saw it in its glory.

My hope is that Gygax Games, now that it has reclaimed the license, will take a new tack in any future publication of materials relating to Castle Greyhawk. There are many valid approaches a company could take that would, I think, do justice to this most famous of megadungeons. My own preference is for an approach similar to that adopted by Rob Kuntz in his own work, with additional input from members of the old Greyhawk campaign, where possible. This approach would almost certainly run counter to the tastes of modern gamers, but then I don't think Castle Greyhawk was ever likely to appeal to modern tastes and it was a fool's errand to ever think it could. Perhaps the best approach is to treat Castle Greyhawk/Zagyg primarily as a document of historical interest rather than as a complete, ready-to-play "mega-adventure." Such an approach would be truest to the spirit of the Lake Geneva campaign back in the day and also the most realistic as a publishing project. Anything more would, I fear, reduce Gary's legacy to a mere brand -- which isn't to say it won't happen. Even TLG was heading in that direction, as they dubbed the line "Gary Gygax's Castle Zagyg."

As far removed as we are in time from the days of the Greyhawk campaign, it's well-nigh impossible to produce a definitive version of the Castle that fulfills 30+ years of hopes and dreams. It would be best, I think, not even to try to do so and it's here that TUW's reach exceeds its grasp. By aiming for a playable Gestalt approach to the megadungeon, it winds up being less than the sum of its parts, at least as far as I'm concerned. It's lacking both in the expansiveness necessary to make me overlook its disconnection from history and in historical depth to make me overlook its smallness. For some, these are probably not flaws and the middle of the road approach adopted in Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works hits a sweet spot that neither of my preferences would have done. I certainly recognize that my own tastes are idiosyncratic and far from widespread, even among old schoolers, most of whom seem to like this product far more than I do. Even I, for all my complaints and nitpicks, can't grade it too harshly. I remain unmoved from my repeated assertion that I am glad I own this and find much good in it, but I am equally unmoved from my belief that, as the final work from the pen of the Dungeon Master, it's disappointing on numerous levels. Gygax Games has one more chance to fulfill the promise this megadungeon holds. Let's see if they do so.

Final Score: 3½ out of 5 polearms

REVIEW: Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works (Part II of III)

As I noted in Part I, Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works consists of six staple-bound booklets and three glossy maps. I'd like to comment first on the physical qualities of these items before diving into a more detailed discussion of their contents. I think it's fair to say that TUW is by far the best looking and presented product Troll Lord Games has ever made. It's very clear to me that they quite correctly saw this boxed set as a prestige product and made every effort to avoid the past mistakes of earlier TLG offerings, many of which are legendary in their production missteps. That's not to say that TUW is entirely free of the gaffes I've come to expect from TLG -- there are typos, omissions, and other editorial infelicities to be found throughout, but none that I came across struck me as anything more than the kinds of errors one might reasonably expect from a product of this size and scope. Cory M. Coserta is listed as the editor for TUW and he deserves a debt of thanks for his work on it.

The five booklets containing the descriptions of the Upper Works all use the same workmanlike two-column layout that TLG seems to use for all its products. It's not pretty but it's quite serviceable, particularly given the density of the text itself, which uses a very small typeface. The text is broken up by black and white art drawn by TLG stalwart Peter Bradley and Jason Walton. Of the two, I found that Walton's work was by far more to my liking. There's a sameness to Bradley's pieces that reminds me a bit of Elmore's later work, whereas Walton's pieces have a "rougher" and slightly cartoonish look that somehow struck me as more appropriate to the subject matter. Ironically, Bradley's color work for the covers of the booklets were much more in a vein I like. Art, of course, is highly subjective, so I certainly won't hold my own opinions against TUW.

On the other hand, I will hold cartographic errors against TUW. Aside from lots of minor but inconvenient issues, such as inconsistent map symbols, there are a number of missing or misnumbered locations. Likewise, there are places where the maps contradict the text or where the maps were drawn in a way that I found difficult to follow. In a location-based product of this size, I would have hoped that greater care would have been taken to ensure that the maps were made as exactingly as possible and that their presentation would aid the referee in their use. The sense I get, though, is that this project was just a little too big for TLG's resources and, while they put forward a solid effort, it still wasn't quite as professional as TUW demanded.

Two more brief points before proceeding: TUW includes neither an overview of the entire Castle nor an index. In themselves, neither omission is ruinous, but their lack contributed to the "drip, drip" in the back of my brain, slowly wearing down my enthusiasm for this product. An index would certainly have made using TUW much easier and an overview of the entire Castle would have given some much needed context to the material we were given in the boxed set. Combined with the unnecessary contrivance of the "Curse of Fog & Frogs," this made me wonder exactly how much of Castle Zagyg had been completed at the time TUW was published.

1. Mouths of Madness: This is the first of the six booklets included with TUW. 44 pages in length, it details the wilderness surrounding Castle Zagyg, including the eponymous Mouths of Madness, a collection caves in which dwell several different types of humanoids and other monsters. If that sounds remarkably like the set-up for Keep on the Borderlands, I'm sure that's no accident. Despite the nostalgia this elicited, I found Book 1 to be one of the weakest bits of TUW, consisting mostly of repetitive humanoid encounters. There are a number of memorable bits -- the ogre's cottage, the gateway to Barsoom -- and several references to fabled locales (such as the Black Reservoir), but these were few and far between. I suppose it didn't help that TLG had already sold me this booklet in the previously-released Eastmark Gazetteer, but I can't say I found much here that excited my imagination or inspired me.

2. Ruins of the Castle Precincts: This 48-page booklet was much more to my liking, both because it deals directly with the Castle's grounds and because the encounters within it were varied and generally interesting. There is a goodly supply of tricks, traps, and diversions amongst its monster encounters, as well as snippets of Greyhawk lore (with the serial numbers filed off, of course). It's here that you catch glimpses of the whimsy and mercilessness that are Gygaxian trademarks. There's also a fitting -- if heavy-handed -- tribute to Gary himself in the form of a goblin cobbler that seems all the more poignant in the wake of his death.

3. East Wall Towers: At 20 pages, this is the shortest of the booklets, but it hits well above its weight category in terms of allusions to Greyhawk lore. Here we encounter the brothers of the Crimson Hand, as well as a shrine to a "celestial deity" that includes a number of nice twists and turns.

4. Castle Fortress: This 44-page booklet is another excellent one, detailing the ruins of Zagyg's old surface fortress. This area of the Castle contains a goodly mix of encounters, some of them quite memorable and challenging. According to the introduction, which includes quotes from Lake Geneva campaign regular (and Gamma World designer) Jim Ward, these ruins received very little exploration in the original campaign, as the subterranean levels had "more and bigger loot," to quote The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. Consequently, the material here is potentially quite new, in the sense that it has never before been even hinted at in earlier accounts of the Lake Geneva adventures. I found this booklet held my attention for quite some time, as I read and re-read it for details I might have missed. There's lots of inspiration to be found here.

5. Store Rooms: Another 44-page booklet, it's a mixed bag, with several interesting encounters and far too many rooms filled with humanoids barracks, armories, and storage chambers. It's probably unfair to have expected anything more from it, given its name, but I did feel a mite disappointed. I'm a fan of Gygaxian naturalism, as you know, but this section of TUW proved fairly dull because of it. The book concludes with many new magic items, monsters, and a fully-statted rival adventuring party, the latter being a very nice old school touch that I greatly appreciated.

Maps & Illustrations Booklet: 36 pages in length, 20 of them is devoted to maps of the Upper Works. I've already mentioned my feelings about them above. The remainder is a series of 33 illustrations (all by Jason Walton) that are presumably intended to be shown to players at appropriate times, after the fashion of the illustration booklets of TSR modules of old. I was very taken by many of these pieces, as they nicely highlight the whimsical and deadly nature of the Castle. Just looking through them is a terrific antidote for anyone who, like me, tends to look down on the unique pleasures of funhouse dungeons. In some ways, I found it the most inspirational portion of TUW.

Taken as a whole, TUW didn't shake that "drip, drip" feeling I noted earlier. Part of it was that my own expectations for this boxed set were unreasonably high. I had hoped that we'd actually get to see something of the fabled dungeons, not just the areas immediately above them. Clearly, that was never the plan and I can't hold TLG accountable for that. Gary Gygax likewise decided that, rather than attempt to recreate one of several versions of Castle Greyhawk from the past, he would instead create a new castle that was a distillation of all of them that was at the same time none of them -- a kind of Gestalt. This was certainly not my own preference, but, again, I can't blame TLG for this, since it should have been clear, after having read Yggsburgh, that the best I could hope for was an "impressionistic" approach to the Castle and its levels.

Even so, TUW felt "small" and I don't just mean in the sense of its expanse, although it certainly did seem far smaller in size than I'd have expected. Rather, it felt as if there was a great deal missing from it -- its "heart," if you will. What we got in this boxed set certainly had lots of Gygaxian flourishes to it. It was hard not to recognize the spirit of the Dungeon Master hovering above it. Yet, it also had many other hovering spirits and, while I can't quite put my finger on all of them, their presence at all made me feel that TUW wasn't as good as it could have -- should have -- been.

It's not as if there's not a lot to like here, because there is. I know I'll be swiping portions of it for use in my own Dwimmermount campaign. However, I was never moved to try to and run TUW straight out of the box. Indeed, I found TUW wanting compared even to the notes that loremeister Allan Grohe has assembled on his webpage. Certainly, TUW is more "complete" in the sense of containing more statted up encounters, treasures, and so forth, but there's a very real sense in which that attempt at completeness works against it. For one thing, TUW isn't complete; it's only one very small part of a much larger megadungeon that still hasn't seen publication yet. For another, it doesn't invite the kind of tinkering and personal modifications that, say, Rob Kuntz's Lake Geneva Castle & Campaign products do, which perhaps says more about my own expectations than it does about the weakness of TUW, but there it is.

In the end, I like Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works. It's a worthy product and one I'm glad to own. But I don't love it; it didn't knock my socks off and I had hoped that it would. Again, maybe that's unfair, which is why the final part of this review will be a discussion of what I had hoped I would see and what that means not just for this product, but for any future publications of Gygax-derived material.

REVIEW: Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works (Part I of III)

Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works -- or, more precisely, Gary Gygax's Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works -- is the coda that brings the symphony of Gary Gygax's game writing to a melancholy conclusion. Consisting of six staple-bound booklets (varying in length from 20 to 48 pages) and three glossy maps in a large box, The Upper Works (hereinafter abbreviated TUW) is available from Troll Lord Games for $44.95 until the end of December 2008, after which TLG's license to publish and sell it and other Gary Gygax-related products ends. This had made TUW an instant collector's item for devotees of the late Dungeon Master. And collector's item it ought to be, for TUW is a remarkable, if flawed, piece of work. These flaws do not, I think, diminish the remarkable achievement Gygax and his protégé, Jeff Talanian, have given to the gaming world, but they do contribute to the lingering sense of time wasted and promises unfulfilled that swirl around Gary's gaming legacy.

Gamers have been waiting to see the fabled levels of Castle Greyhawk since 1980 at least, when Gygax indicated that TSR would be publishing them in an upcoming module. Since then, no such module has ever appeared, although numerous products supposedly connected to Castle Greyhawk have been published. Gygax was involved in the writing of none of them and the relationship of even the best of them to the megadungeon of the original Lake Geneva campaign is tenuous at best. Consequently, news that Troll Lord Games would be publishing a series of products detailing the renamed "Castle Zagyg" was met with great excitement. That not only Gary Gygax but also Rob Kuntz, co-DM of the Greyhawk campaign, was actively involved in writing these products only heightened the anticipation many felt. At long last, it seemed as if the fabled Holy Grail of fantasy roleplaying was about to be revealed to the world.

Alas, such hopes proved to be misplaced. The first Castle Zagyg products appeared in 2005, consisting of the 250-page hardcover Yggsburgh by Gygax, detailing a large settlement near Castle Zagyg and the surrounding wilderness, and the 40-page softcover module Dark Chateau by Rob Kuntz, detailing the ruined and abandoned former abode of the Mad Archmage himself. Anyone who read these early products with clear eyes could have seen warning signs that the Castle Zagyg project would likely never see completion nor would it fulfill the fondest hopes of gamers. Yggsburgh, while a worthy product in many respects and full of trademark Gygaxian goodness, offered little to nothing in the way of new information about the fabled Castle nor about the campaign whose centerpiece it was. Dark Chateau hinted at much but was ultimately constrained by the fact that it was quite clearly a "space filler," a bone thrown to gamers while they chomped at the bit for the main course of Castle Zagyg itself.

It took two more years before additional Castle Zagyg products appeared -- the East Mark Gazetteer and the "City Expansions" series -- but none of these new products detailed the Castle and most of them contained not a word of Gygaxian prose, instead focusing on the ever more minute details of Yggsburgh. TLG in fact planned to produce 19 separate products describing each of Yggsburgh's districts. Of these, only four were ever published. Again, it was an omen of things to come and in more ways than one. Along the way Rob Kuntz removed himself from involvement with the project, with several explanations from several sources being offered for this turn of events, but, in retrospect, it seems most plausible that it was disagreements about the direction of Castle Zagyg that were the most pertinent. When TUW finally debuted at GenCon 2008, I have to admit that I was more than a little surprised. I honestly never expected to see any more Castle Zagyg material, especially since Gary had died almost six months beforehand. I saw no reason to doubt that Castle Zagyg would disappear into the same black hole as the Castle Keeper's Guide and other such announced-but-never-materialized TLG products.

I didn't attend GenCon this year and so I waited to see TUW in one of my local game stores or available for order through an online retailer that didn't treat shipping to Canada as if it were shipping to Antarctica. I never saw either occur and so bit my tongue and ordered directly from TLG at the exorbitant shipping costs they charged to get it to me. Even at that price, I was glad to pay it, because I doubt I would otherwise have ever seen TUW. Fortunately, TLG was prompt in shipping me my copy and it arrived not long after my having ordered it. Despite being in a box, my copy of TUW was not shrink-wrapped, which at first worried me that it might not be intact. My worries proved unfounded, but, when compared to companies like Necromancer Games or Goodman Games, both of which have produced expensive boxed sets over the last few years, I can't help but be a bit disappointed that similar care wasn't taken with TUW as they showed with their products. After all, TUW was clearly meant to be a flagship product for TLG and Castles & Crusades and yet it certainly didn't appear to be treated as such.

Perhaps it's a small thing and I shouldn't think to much of it. Nevertheless, the lack of shrink-wrap suggested to me a kind of slapdash approach that I feared might carry over to the contents of the boxed set itself. Given the history of the Castle Zagyg project up till the release of TUW, I think my concern was justified. In Part II tomorrow, I'll return to this question at length as I discuss the actual contents and presentation of Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works. In Part III, I conclude my review with my thoughts on the place of Castle Zagyg in the gaming legacy of Gary Gygax and what the future might (or ought to) hold for Castle Zagyg now that Gygax Games has rescinded its license to Troll Lord Games.

REVIEW: Forn Sidthr: The Old Custom

Forn Sidthr: The Old Custom is a 13-page PDF released by James Mishler's Adventure Games Publishing and selling for $3.00. Describing the worship of the Aesir (and Vanir) gods, this product is the first in the "Faiths of the City State" series for use with AGP's Wilderlands of High Adventure setting, but it's generic enough that it'd be useful in any setting that includes the Norse pantheon. Likewise, though Forn Sidthr written with Castles & Crusades in mind, makes no specific references to C&C's game mechanics, thereby making it easy to use with any fantasy RPG, old school or otherwise.

The product begins with a one-page overview of the religious life of the City State of the Invincible Overlord. The overview gives a good sense of the riotous polytheism of the City State and, by implication, the Wilderlands as a whole by introducing five ranks to measure one's devotion to a particular faith: irregular, regular, semi-exclusive, initiate, and priest. What's nice about these ranks is that, in addition to providing context for the setting, they also include practical guidelines about what level of religious devotion qualifies one for each. It's a small thing, admittedly, but I appreciated it, since, as we'll see shortly, there are consequences to whether one is devout or lax in his observances.

Five pages are devoted to Old Custom itself, with information on the religion's history, deities, symbols, hierarchy, and so forth. There's also a section detailing the Forn Sidthr's beliefs and dogma. Again, this information is presented very practically, with eye toward how it can be used in play. This is not an abstract flight of fancy into fantastical theology but rather a brief but specific discussion of how adherents to the Old Custom behave -- or are expected to, at any rate -- and what this means. I also appreciated the way that these five pages gave a sense of the Forn Sidthr as being a unified pantheon with a proper "church." All too often, fantasy games have no notion of ritual, hierarchy, or doctrine, treating religion as individualistic and atomized, with no regard for how its various pieces fit together. Forn Sidthr nicely avoids that error, but without committing the concomitant error of getting bogged down in pointless detail.

The last six pages of the PDF are devoted to a discussion of the afterlife and the disposition of the soul of a follower of the Old Custom. In it, we're introduced to a new system that tracks the virtues and sins of members of the faith, so that the referee can keep a running tallying that determines the fate of a character's soul after death. The section catalogs the major and minor acts that earn one approbation or condemnation in the eyes of the Aesir and gives a table that enables the referee to see what happens to your character should he die at any given point. Depending on his faithfulness, he could be rewarded with a seat at Odin's table in Valhalla or cursed to wander the earth as an undead draugr -- or anything in between. The table also shows how effective raise dead and similar spells will be on a character whose soul is in each category, which I found to be an excellent bit of forethought on Mishler's part.

I can find almost nothing to dislike in Forn Sidthr: The Old Custom, except perhaps its somewhat pedestrian three-column layout, but that's a small quibble, because, boring though it may be, the layout is nevertheless easy on the eyes and free from errors. This is an excellent product and a good example I think of how much Mishler has learned since he began publishing his Wilderlands products. Earlier products tended to be a bit too "heavy" on minutiae for my liking, whereas his more recent endeavors have been eminently "practical" in their approach. They don't skimp on details by any means, but the details are carefully chosen for maximum utility. That is, they're useful in play and not just as bits of trivia that gamers can swap while talking about playing rather than actually doing so. For me, this quality is exactly what old school gaming products should possess and Mishler has shown he understands it well. I continue to be very impressed with AGP's PDFs and look forward to future releases with great anticipation.

Final Score: 5 out of 5 polearms