Old Table-Top Magazines

[Necron 99]

Reading back through old issues of Dragon has been a favorite time sink from time to time. Occasionally I get the itch and throw the archive on my iPad then crash out on the couch and just read through the various articles and such. Outside of the main content, I also enjoy seeing all of the advertisements, comics, and related media that fills the pages. A while back, I decided to scour the interweb and managed to find a few troves for other older table-top gaming magazines.

Adventurer Magazine, Ares, Challenge, Different Worlds, Imagine, Pegasus, Polyhedron, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Space Gamer, and White Dwarf are the few that I've either managed to find, or had any interest in reading. From a historical perspective of the hobby, these magazine are fantastic, each one showing different views and perspectives that both GMs and Players shared at a time when table-top gaming was switching from wargaming to role-playing.

It's also illuminating to see just how the hobby started and changed over the course of years and decades. I didn't get even know what D&D was until the mid-80s. Up to that point, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, Fighting Fantasy, and similar books were my gateway into any sort of non-electronic (computer/console) adventure gaming.

Last night I started reading Different Worlds, published by CHAOSium, starting in 1979. I guess, back in the day, that is how the company spelled itself, that's how it's shown in the magazine. Anyhow, what I particularly like about the 1st issue, is that they have a special feature article titled, "My Life and Role-Playing". This article is a compilation of introductions and brief synopses from various people in the hobby at that time, some of whom I am familiar and other I am not.

There is a metric ton of information and history within all of these magazines, so in this thread, I think I'll make it a point to post various bits and pieces from the magazines as I read through. I find the material pretty fascinating and I think others will too.

Ken is one of the more prolific game designers around, preferring to stick mainly with fantasy and sci-ft. He is the editor for Flying Buffalo's new magazine, Sorcerer's Apprentice.

I don't know when I first heard the old saying about life being a game, but I've always believed it. And I've never really been content to just play other people's games-I'm always messing with the rules, trying this or that variation.

Let me introduce myself - Ken St. Andre, at your service. I'm a native of Phoenix, Arizona, now in my 31st year of existence in my current incarnation. My chief claim to fame in gaming is that I didn't like the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons on first sight, though I loved the basic idea of fantasy role-playing. I didn't set out to compete with D&D - it just happened, but the battle has been joined for a couple of years now, and there's no end in sight. I'll get to the genesis of Tunnels and Trolls later. Right now, let me get back to my gruesome self-portrait.

Six feet tall, brown-haired (once thick but now thinning), near-sighted as a bat, 180 lbs., I am an indifferent though not totally worthless swordsman, I like large-breasted women, and am married to one named Cathy. Since the 7th grade, I have been a reader and collector of fantasy and science fiction, starting with Edgar Rice Burroughs and moving in steady quest of the bizarre to ever more obscure authors and mythologies. I have always been a social misfit (and will always be one, I think). Introverted, my tendency is to run around with a small circle of very close friends and generally ignore the rest of the world. I admire extroverts, but don't like them. I have always done well academically and finally wound up with a Master's degree in Library Science. I have a large and steadily growing book collection of which I am unreasonably proud and protective; nevertheless, it has been harshly weeded and only the cream of all the books I've ever purchased are still with me. I have a complete run of the Marvel Conan comics. I was one of the original founders of the Kingdom of Atenveldt which is the local branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism in Phoenix, but I dropped out of it in 1971 when a lady broke my heart, and I never really went back.

It seems like my whole life has been spent inventing games. The first one I ever did used the Monopoly board, pieces, and dice, and was a simple race game, with the railroads, corners, chance, and community chest places acting as traps to slow or kill the moving figures. Another early invention was combat chess. The rules are exactly the same as regular chess, but when you attempt to take a piece, the two pieces fight it out and the winner remains on the board. (The attacking piece gets 3 dice while the defending piece only gets 2, doubles or triples add and roll over). I can't remember how many different varieties of War I invented with cards before I ever knew there was such a game.

High school was devoted to World War II, the jungles of Tarzan, and the dead sea bottoms of Barsoom. Those games, which filled many an afternoon for me and my friends have all perished long ago. Most of those friends are gone, too. Only one space war game that literally took over our local science fiction club meetings for about a month. The Romulans tended to sin a lot, but the Federation was always tough.

And the process continues. It seems that I get at least one new game idea per week, often more. Needless to say, most of them never even get as far as being put down on paper. Such a game is Tarot Bridge-a little trickier than regular contract bridge (15 to 13), but should be a lot of fun to play for those who are mystically inclined.

I never planned to be a game designer for profit. What I always wanted to do was write fantasy. But due to a lack of drive and an inability to face rejection slips, I never made it as an sf writer, though I've been trying since I was 18. One rejection slip and I don't submit anything professionally for one to two years. Consequently I have very few rejection slips, and even fewer sales.(None that count for anything outside gaming.) Well, if fantasy gaming is to be my métier, than I intend to make the most of it.

Which brings me back to Tunnels and Trolls. and the great debt I owe Gygax and Arneson. In January of 1975 I began to hear about a new game called Dungeons and Dragons from some of my correspondents. It sounded fascinating, but it hadn't reached Phoenix and no one I knew had actually ever played. Finally, in April I got the chance to examine the original D&D Rulebooks. I sat down where I was and studied them for about two hours. When I had finished I was convinced of several things: (1) that the basic ideas were tremendous, even revolutionary, but that (2) as then written the mechanics of play were nearly incomprehensible, and (3) that the game rules cost far more than they should and (4) that 4,8, 10, 12, and 20-sided dice were too much to bother with. As I stood up I vowed that I would create my own version of the game that I could play immediately and that would correct all the other things I thought wrong with D&D. And I started on it that evening, and worked straight through for a week devising a basic set of alternatives to the D&D rules. Since that time I have never studied the D&D rulebooks again.

In about a week I was ready to try my fantasy game on my friends. They went berserk. They loved it. Some borrowed my one typed set of rules and photo copied them. Others just wanted to borrow and keep my rules. Those rules were getting dirty and worn-out fast, so I offered to get them printed up in enough copies that everyone could have a set. The idea was popular.

By that time other people had begun to have an effect on the development of the rules. Steve McAllister had aided greatly with the invention of the spells. He and Bear Peters had also come up with their chart for personalizing various types of humanoid monsters. Greg and Hilde Brown had suggested a system of dealing with missile combat. Probably the biggest change was in the name. Everyone was calling it Dungeons and Dragons around Phoenix at that time. I knew we couldn't do that. (Incidentally, Gary, I want to compliment you on a remarkably good choice of a name for a fantasy game. Dungeons and Dragons says it all!) I have always loved alliteration (and other poetic techniques. Would anyone out there like to see some fantasy poetry some time?), so I decided to call my creation Tunnels and Troglodites.

Needless to say that cognomen went over like a lead balloon. First the gang laughed me out of the room; then they called me back and told me that Tunnels and Trolls was more reasonable. Well, it sounded a bit simple to me, but you all know what happened...

1975 was my last real year of leisure. I had my new degree in library science, but no job to go with it, so I was able to sit down and work on writing rules in an organized fashion for a solid month. It was at that time (May to June) that the detailed weapons charts were created. I twisted Rob Carver's arm until he did some art for the thing. I wanted something I could look at as well as play with. I arranged to have it printed at my own expense (100 copies cost me $60 at the Arizona State University print shop). I got McAllister and Peters to collect and collate the thing, and I went off for a month's vacation with my wife to Lake Tahoe and San Francisco. I planned to meet them at the WesterCon in Oakland over the Fourth of July and see how it came out.

It came out pretty well. The cover of the first edition shows a chunky unicorn watching over a large-breasted maiden who is bathing in a pool, and the words on the cover are: ''... perpetrated on an unsuspecting world by Ken St. Andre, Robin Carver, Mark Anthony, James Peters, et al. of the Phoenix Cosmic Circle." The title "Tunnels and Trolls" showed up at the bottom of the first page (Contents and Malcontents). We sold about 10 copies at WesterCon in '75, and first met Liz Danforth.

When I got home I had about 40 copies of the original 100 that I didn't know what to do with . Rick Loomis, owner-manager of the infamous Flying Buffalo computer games house, agreed to try and sell them for me. He sold them very easily and approached me with an offer to manufacture and distribute the game. The rest is history. T&T has gone through 3 revisions and a supplement, and is currently being revised again-for the last time I hope. Sales have continued to grow.

Around the end of that year Howard Thompson asked me to do a fantasy roleplaying game for Metagaming. I already had one in hand. For a couple of months I had been toying with the reverse of the original premise. Instead of humans raiding and plundering the home territory of monsters, evil wizards, etc., why not play the bad guys in their evil attacks on mankind? Thus , Monsters! Monsters! was born. At Howard's urging I put together a game manuscript for M!M! as quickly as I could and sent it off to him before the year was over, complete with illustrations, and suggestions on how to print and market it. Howard didn't really care for my ideas. First of all he decided it needed a color cover, and then he decided that Steve Jackson should edit it for clarity. All this took a long time. It was the middle of 1976 before the game was ready to print, and production costs had risen. Is it any wonder that T&T which was selling then for $3 a copy greatly outsold M!M! which went for $7, even though M!M! was slick and beautiful by comparison?

We've had a few firsts with T&T in the gaming field. Solitaire dungeons, a means of fantasy-role-playing without anyone else needed, are the brain-child of Steve McAllister. Rick Loomis actually wrote the first (and still one of the best) of them: Buffalo Castle. I wrote the second: Deathtrap Equalizer Dungeon in February 1976. We were the first to get a foreign publisher: Games and Puzzles in England. They re-edited the game again, probably to their detriment, as I have had letters from England comparing the American to the British volume and saying they preferred my wording. This year (1978) we (Flying Buffalo and I) issued the first directory of T&T players. For 1979 we will have our own calendar. We try to innovate, not just commercialize.

One thing that has always seemed ironic to me is that others reap the chief benefits from my game. Illustrating T&T has developed into a full-time job for Liz Danforth with Flying Buffalo. Bear, Steve, Liz, everyone I know have wonderful high level characters to play with-my best is an 8th level warrior maid. And so it goes. But it's been fun. It almost makes up for not being a well-known fantasy writer. And it's still growing, still evolving.

One controversy that has come up is whether T&T has the right to imitate D&D. Ideas and systems are not copyrightable. Nor is T&T in any respect a plagiarism of D&D. Combat and magical systems are radically different, and growing further apart as time goes on. The point we like to make is that T&T can do everything that D&D does, but in a simpler and easier way.

Another point that all should consider is that people have the right to innovate, to offer alternatives, to go on with other games and systems. The advent of Chivalry and Sorcery, Runequest, The Fantasy Trip, Legacy, and others is healthy and right. There is room for more than one FRP system in the world, room for more than one interpretation of anything. I believe the FRP gamers I most admire are those that combine different game systems and make their own unique creations. That's involvement and originality! Well, enough of history, sermon, and apologetic. Keep growing, and may you always make your saving roll!

[Necron 99]

Steve Marsh is your basic Fantasy Role Playing fanatic. He's been involved with it ever since Dungeons & Dragons first hit the streets. He has worked with Gary Gygax and is a regular contributor to Alarums and Excursions, The Wild Hunt and The Lords of Chaos.

By the time I entered fifth grade, I had learned not to study. Years of schooling had encouraged students to be the same, and this left my outlook passive. Then I encountered blackmail.

My teacher allowed me to read The Hobbit. But I didn't get any more books until I began to study. As soon as my grades picked up, I got to read The Fellowship of the Ring. But The Two Towers waited until my grades improved again. Russel (Men, Martians and Machines) and Twain (Letters from the Earth) followed Tolkien. Before I knew it I had become a student and a lifetime addict to F&SF.

In 1972 a friend introduced me• to SPI's Napoleon at Waterloo. Before long I had subscribed and begun a modest game collection. I am still working on a board game I started then. But the fall of 1974, when I encountered D&D underground, randomly, in Religion 231, is the true landmark.

I had been developing a fantasy world, drawing guidelines for it from my philosophy classes and some multi-dimensional concepts of my own. Races, peoples, and dynamic set-ups had been prepared and I was trying to work up a way to game it all. Never having used (or even heard of) miniatures rules, I stood at an impasse.

Wandering into my LDS Philosophy (Religion 231) class one day, I sat down next to this guy holding the strangest set of graphs I had ever seen, and floor plans and a hipogriff-illoed book caught my eyes. Soon thereafter I managed to sit next to this collection again, and could ask about it. That is when I met Dungeons and Dragons.

Roll three characters and play one: Intelligence 14, Charisma 12, all else 9 or worse...looks great! But what to do with him? Intelligence goes with magic users? A name? Elaikases would be good (it was the name of a major character in my game). Thus I began to play D&D.

I played in a hard-keyed world using Jack Vance magic and Chainmail combat. Since I had read Vance short stories and Eyes of the Overworld (the latter as I went through BYU's back issues of Fantastic looking for '' Dilvish the Damned" stories) as well as Moorcock, I enjoyed the magic system and understood alignment fairly well.

Before long I read the rules and found out that life in a hard-keyed world was hard. But life and gaming were great, and I never knew what to expect or how to expect it. Everything was new and fresh, and that time may never come again. Since then the sense of wonder and bewilderment has fled. In many ways roleplaying has become almost mundane.

As happens with all beginning D&Ders, I found things I didn't understand. The rules ask players to write for clarifications, so I wrote, and Gary wrote back. I guess that times have changed, but in those days the gaming world resembled the Garden of Eden. I say this to emphasize that I indeed viewed it through rose-colored glasses. In that period letters were answered, all new ideas were well-treated, and I changed from a confused neophyte to a writer of rules.

Gary's warmth and friendliness encouraged me to submit ideas and to share what happened to me. Before long this blossomed into my name and ideas in print in both supplements and TSR (TSR Hobbies, Inc.) publications.

In 1975 I started a D&D pbm (play by mail) in response to a request by Jim Cooper, played in a Midgard rules fantasy pbm, and began corresponding with Sean Summers. I also went on a volunteer mission for the LDS ("Mormon") Church which took up to ninety hours a week of my time.

My relations with TSR improved until I was asked to author a supplement. Due to other commitments I eventually wasn't able to do it, and TSR and I began to drift in different ways. TSR was expanding, coping with one of the many mishaps to have come upon them, and I was busy with my own life.

All this time my game was in many ways a mirror of TSR's. Most of my questions had been discussed with or answered by Gary Gygax, and I had met very few other gamers. Most of my gaming had been conducted via the Post Office (after I left BYU) and I had never heard of spell points, critical hits, or any of the other things that seem to come up in every game.

In March of 1977 I came home (home having moved from Germany to California - what happened to the D&Ders my brother and his girlfriend left in Germany I know not). My Dad noticed a war gaming club notice and directed me to it.

That is how I met Kevin Slimak and thus A&E [Alarms and Excursions], TWH [The Wild Hunt], and the world existing outside of TSR. A&E meant meeting A&E contributors, and Kevin Slimak meant going to. GLASC (a Los Angeles gaming convention) and writing for A&E, which I did initially just to get some new blood for my pbm.

Concurrently the shared work and ideas of Sean Summers and myself expanded into the planes of reality (Ice, Fire, Earth, Water, Air) that I did first privately and then for Judges Guild. Jim Cooper and some anthropology yielded the fruits of the system I'd started back in 1973, and I put together the bones of my personal fantasy role-playing system (the mana system) in A&E to establish my claim on the ideas.

And that is up to the present. My gaming life and acquaintances have begun to expand and unfold like a flower. May the fruit thereof be sweet!

What This Has Meant to Me
The impact of role-playing games on my life is more than the kilos of correspondence and reference works on my shelves, more than the pages of rules and the money spent on APAs (Amateur Press Association) and magazines: the impact has been in the relationships I've made, the people I've met, the ideas shared and many ways my mind has been opened.

Sure, it means social encounters with friends. It means (perhaps) fiscal loss or gain. At times it means anger and hope, love and fear, all in their time and place and needed portion. But the sum is greater than the whole, just as a flower is more than color or scent or growing tissue. Gaming is more than paper and words and typewriter keys: it is a part of my life and I would be less without it.

What it will mean to me in the future I don't know. Perhaps I'll flow into different streams, or maybe I'll get lucky and make the big-time for real, but hopefully I'll remain aiive and somewhat vital (as in living) and not slip into the dank, stale fens that have mired so many. I won't know until after it is over. I hope that it will have been good.

Where Here Is
Here is the frantic time of my senior year, and of trying for grad schools. Here is a time once more of writing rules sets and variants and ideas, and hoping they'll work. It is a time of submissions to TSR and JG and ATWM [All the Worlds ' Monsters] and my own personal ‘zine. It is a time of A&E and TWH and wondering if it’s worth the effort to write.

At this time, in this place, I am trying to enter the mainstream which I left during the two years spent in the NY Rochester Mission. My scholastic destiny is reaching another turning point and my personal life is marked by increased activity on all fronts.

But here is also a time for creating a copper-based world. It is a time for building a role-playing world from not Tolkien, Anderson, Norton, or Stafford but from my own foundations. Strangely enough, in the midst of everything, my DMing (Dungeon-Mastering) nearly has disappeared, making now a very good time to change.

The hobby is in a similar place. Many of the people in it are turning corners. Some are finding FRP (fantasy role-playing) forced out of their lives. Others have found their lives forced out by FRP (Dave Hargrave is presently, Gary Gygax already has), and are entering that world in all its glory. Now is the halcyon time's end. The peaceful, undisturbed world has ended and what will come of the children born now, like the chicks of the kingfisher I do not know. The winter is upon is, but it is the end of the winter that for all its fierceness brings the promise of spring.

May your roots grow deep and your metaphors mix!

[Necron 99]

Original D&D. It's interesting to see the origins of the game and how things were shaped and the evolution since it's inception.

There were rules in those three books from the original box, but according to players from back then, there was no "how-to" or details of just how the game is to be played. This left a lot of groups clambering to figure it out on their own, which is why, I think, fanzines became so popular. This also appears to be the origin of the catch phrase "rulings, not rules". It's pretty easy to see that with the lack of detailed or coherent rules in the original edition, DMs and players literally had to sort it out and even create their own "house rules" to fit whatever manner of play they wanted. Early fanzines helped players and groups get a feel for what they should be doing, or at the very least, a generalized direction in which to march to get going. Because of this, consistency of game play was never quite the same, from group to group, or even player to player. I believe this is most likely what led Gary to write and publish AD&D. The need to have a set of rules in which everyone can agree and can be used for tournament play, spawned the "advanced" edition from the original game. Evidence of this is seen by other articles and experiences posted by those in the hobby at the time.

Niall Shapero, publisher of the The Lords of Chaos fanzine had this to say about the topic:

The original rules were a mass of contradictions, vague in the extreme regarding many points key to (our) play, and, in general, somewhat less than useful. I think that the first three weeks saw each of us produce at least two small dungeon complexes each, no two of them run under the same set of "rules."

Chaos reigned for the better part of the next year. Arguments over rule interpretations took up almost as much time as dungeoning, and it was not unusual for stands to change regarding said interpretations on an almost daily basis. The arguments went on for hours and hours, stretching through several days.

A number of fan fueds developed in A&E as the readership and distribution increased and divergent gaming philosophies came into contact with each other. It was, of course, inevitable that eventually people would start screaming at each other over the game; the rules were so incoherent as to virtually guarantee divergent interpretations. And, of course, as A&E was the only real forum that most of us had, A&E was also something of a battle ground for a good many months.

Lee Gold, editor of the largest fanzine, Alarums and Excursions, also touched on this:

None of our crowd were wargamers. We were science fiction and fantasy fans, and certain nuances of the Rules didn't come through too clearly. We rolled D10 + D10 (creating a ben-shaped curve) to save vs . spells or to hit, which truly decreased a begging character's survival rate. We also considered that the Rules specified that each mage knew a limited number of spells but could throw each one as often as he wished. After an, the Rules said he knew the spell, didn't they?

A few months later I created my own dungeon, Neocam. When the Hannifens next came down to Los Angeles, I invited them to play in it but warned them that I had on my own authority as Dungeon Master made a few changes in the Rules. In my dungeon, any being that saved against a spell once was proof against that spell for the rest of the fight.

Moreover, I had decided that you could throw spells only a limited number of times per day. Your Prime Requisite averaged with your Constitution was your number of spell points; an offensive spell cost one point, a defensive one half a point, and a non-combatant one a quarter point. (Lots of people were independently inventing spell point systems around then, and most for the same reason: the D&D rules didn't clearly specify enough limitations on mages' powers.)

Later in 1974, we started a weekly D&D game in Los Angeles among the local science fiction fans. We knew there were people at Cal Tech playing the game (or rather what they considered their own improved version of it) , but we didn't interact with them much, nor with the wargamers who frequented games at the local hobby shop, nor with the UCLA students who played under Computer Club auspices. We had a small but friendly circle of play. Besides, we got nervous when mixing with people who played radically different rules variations than we did.

Around winter of 1974 we encountered Mark Swanson, a science fan and wargamer of LA origin who was now based in Boston and on intimate terms with the MITSGS. He taught us to roll D20 to hit or save and gave us a set of his rules for individuating small bonuses for beginning characters, the Swanson characteristics.

About this time I drew up a set of local house rules including the Swanson characteristics and my encounter tables , which incorporated the Greyhawk monsters and had twelve levels of monsters rather than six so as to provide a more flexible tool for dungeon stocking.

As the months passed, our group became more concerned about the different varieties of D&D play we had encountered: Cal Tech, San Francisco, Boston, LA .. . surely with the Rules' vagueness and fans' inventiveness, if this went on we would soon be unable to play in a non-local friend's game without succumbing to culture shock. Moreover, although D&D discussion was appearing in the local SF fanclub's apa (amateur press association), the increasing quantity of it was beginning to irritate non-players.


I decided it was time to do something to promote communication among D&Ders and went to fannish wisdom for the answer: an apa, a magazine to which anyone might contribute and of which an contributors would get copies.