Different Old Schools - dense or sparse maps

I was listening to a podcast talking about that famous picture of EGG running a game at a con, sitting with a dense map in front of him and a very terse key. I think almost every aspect about that map and its implications have been talked about, but some of that just now filtered down to me.

If you have a dungeon where there are rooms everywhere, and the map is that dense, there wont be much space for some things. If you look at many published maps in the blogging community of the old ways, they most often don't look like that. We often do maps with variation in room sizes, some oddly shaped ones and some hallways connecting sections of the level. You know the drill. Gary's map is just crammed full of fairly small rooms.

Imagine if you will a section of the level taken over by gnolls. They might have made one room a lair, another treasury and maybe a larder where you can free some captives, useful for stocking up on PC alternatives if death does occur. Did you see what I did there?

If you have rooms that looks like an abandoned throne room, you will have a gnoll lord sitting there. But, if your dungeon is just crammed with small rooms, you probably never get that 'naturalistic' feel. If your dungeon is more labyrinth than anything else, the kind of play we call player skill is something different that I have been thinking about all this time. Sure, it's skill when you take note of resources, map carefully to note when there's a gap in there indicating a hidden room. But, if the layout makes no sense, then exploring and mapping to make sense of what's "down there" wont make sense. At least not they way I thought about it. 'Naturalism' is not about dungeon layout, in Gary's example.

Some years ago I heard about Ken St. Andre's dungeon Gristlegrim, and though it peculiar. Ken had done a bunch of dungeon rooms on index cards, when they players walked around the dungeon he grabbed another room from the pile. I thought it made the idea of a dungeon moot, since you could not map it and you could not "make sense" of it. Now I realize that maybe that was not so different from Gary's densely packed paper of small rooms in a labyrinth. Labyrinths was never fun, in my book. After you wandered around in the coal mine in Zork, and realized you had to drop stuff to make the similar looking room distinguishable I think the labyrinth had served its purpose.

I think I prefer some kind of naturalism to my dungeons, even though I now think Gristlegrim makes more sense. It's probably more like Castle Greyhawk and the Jakallan Underworld than my dungeons are.

Forgotten Dragonquest

I have gotten this idea, that I want to use DragonQuest for something. Since I have just been re-reading the grey box Forgotten Realms the first thought that struck me was to combine the two. Have anyone out there tried it?

Somebody, I have forgotten where I read it, wrote that the feel of that early FR is very much like the Old West. It's a borderland where civilization is slowly being established, and the daily experience of the encroaching wilderness. I happen to be a big fan of Westerns, so I'm totally buying that depiction of the Forgotten Realms. But, this also made me think about other settings where the "feel" have suddenly clicked for me. Forgotten Realms was never presented that way.

One day when I was browsing the setting book for Kingdoms of Kalamar, I suddenly realized that the schtick this setting had was not to be special at all! The special about it was that it was just a quasi medieval setting presented in as a clear and "realistic" way as possible. No oddities or specials like Talislanta or Tekumel. Take apeek at the books and you will find that was exactly what was described on the can. God knows why I hadn't understood that. This was kind of the inverse of the experience of FR.

I still haven't gotten that feeling for Greyhawk.

How about low level documents from the original campaigns?

I have taken a look at my collection of adventures by Kuntz and Gygax and found out that they seem to be for very high levels. Anyone know if there have been any adventures published at all for lower levels? WG5 is for fairly high level adventures.

How about adventures in Blackmoor or Tekumel for low levels? Have it all been lost, and is all we now have later day recollection of name level achievements?

The only thing I can think of is Greg Svenson's remembrances of the first adventure in Blackmoor castle. Please let me know if you know of anything more.

Wolds of Fantasy Part II - Kingdoms of Kalamar

I have already written about Greyhawk, and concluded that it didn't do much for me. When I first heard of Kingdoms of Kalamar, it was a review on rpg.net. Interestingly enough that review felt it was a good effort, but that it was kind of bland. Sound familiar? I, on the other hand, thought it sounded like my kind of world.

What is Kingdoms of Kalamar (KoK) then? Well, it is a world which stand out as being intended to "make sense". The geography is thought out, with waterways and caravan routes by the big cities, water currents and trade routes and tectonics which looks real. It kind of reminds me of Harn. But, where Harn never worked for me, KoK did.

KoK feels a lot like a less higher powered world than, say, Forgotten Realms. There's NPCs that rule nations and city states, and there are guild masters and court magicians. But, it's not that common for them to be much higher than early "name level". I find that just to my taste. I also really like the political history, which will give you a lot of ideas for conflicts and drama. What made me a convert, though, was the idea of a big set of gods who are described in a general way and also described with different names for different cultures. No more "gods of the dwarves". I liked that. Also, they have no stats.

Now, it is kind of ironic that I feel Greyhawk is kind of bland, for KoK is actually very vanilla itself. It's plain solid medieval fantasy with all the trappings. The one "oddity" it has is that hobgoblins are civilized and have a sophisticated culture. Otherwise it strikes me as just what I think Greyhawk is. It's just a lot more real to me! I'm not a sucker for realism, but it feels more like a believable world than e.g. Greyhawk does. The strange thing is of course that it's not uncommon for people to encounter KoK and thing it looks to dull and non fantastic enough. I wonder what would have happened had KoK been the thing that defined D&D, and not Greyhawk? For those gamers who claims to like the Folio and the bare bones quality, maybe the Judge Guild Wilderlands is a better match, but for the vanilla fantasy mould I know no better than Kingdoms of Kalamar.

Worlds of Fantasy Part I - Greyhawk

I never understood why some people have such a high regard for Greyhawk. Did I just come to it from the wrong angle, or is it not for me?

I no longer remember when I first heard of Greyhawk, but I know I've heard it was "that world Gygax invented in the dawn of the hobby". I knew nothing of Blackmoor or Braunstein then. The first memory I have of it is of an blurb in a catalog from a mail order game store. That product was From the Ashes, and I also remember seeing The City of Skulls. As you can tell, I came to Grehawk fairly late. It didn't seem all that interesting, though. There was a crowd of settings published for 2nd ed AD&D at this time, and they all seemed more interesting than the, to me, bland looking Greyhawk.

A few years down the line, when I first encountered the nebulous subject of "old school", I bought a bunch of the old adventures from eBay and Noble Knight to run an old school campaign with the then new 3rd ed D&D. Now I read some of the short snippets of background in these modules, and it seemed less interesting than ever. I still don't see how it could make anyone care much for Greyhawk. I actually borrowed a couple of later books from a friend, after having heard of the folio and realized it was out of print. Both of these products gave me the impression that you probably had to have been there from the beginning. They referred to wars, rulers and countries, but nothing hooked me. It still seemed, bland.

I have now later been exposed to more of Greyhawk, and still feel it is very bland. It has absolutely nothing that sets it apart, except that it was Gary's campaign world. Sure, not all fantasy campaigns needs three suns and purple elves, but still. I'm beginning to think that the reason so many fans of D&D have a soft spot for Greyhawk is that when they were exposed to it, it was about the only thing out there. Also, the fact that the AD&D tournament modules were a common experience for many players made Greyhawk a common ground of the D&D experience. Greyhawk was D&D, basically.

Maybe someone will now comment and say that Greyhawk is wonderful and the Folio is the best thing that ever happened to gaming. For me it was always just "a fantasy world" and even when I tried it wouldn't come alive. Considering I already from a earlier age knew of Dragonlance from the excellent computer games from SSI, I think Greyhawk is a good example of marketing failure. Considering what happened to TSR as Gygax left I guess it was inevitable.