The Blue Dancer campaign begins!

Actually, it begins again. But this time, I'm focusing on a megadungeon.

In the last several months, I've been reading various old school blogs. One of the key elements that I think were lacking in all my previous campaign starts was a so-called tent pole megadungeon. I knew that Greyhawk and Blackmoor started with a large dungeon. But I suppose that I hadn't considered such dungeons essential until recently.

For the last several years, I had been tremendously interested in the imminent release of Castle Zagyg, Gary Gygax's legendary dungeon. In anticipation of it's release, I obtained a copy of WGR1 Ruins of Greyhawk and a copy of the Free City of Greyhawk boxed set. Impatient for the release of Castle Zagyg, I purchased the Yggsburg hardback and examined the region surrounding the castle dungeon. Finally, Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works was released. As I examined the module, I wondered if I could do better? Now I'm trying to put that to the test.

I had never gamed with any of the players before. But our common interest was playing 1e (OSRIC) in the old school style. Our first session was mostly spent getting to know each other, rolling up characters, and re-familiarizing ourselves with the rules. Of primary importance to me was knowing what the players expected out of playing D&D. The real learning experience for me was the second session, which took place last night, when I could learn more about how the players wished to conducted the game.

This time around, I made very minimal world building notes before I started the first actual session of game play. Excessive world building can cause infant campaign death syndrome. The best way to prepare for a sandbox campaign is to make a map of the local country side, place a few monsters here and there, note some important NPCs, briefly detail the "home base" town of the adventure, and prepare the first dungeon.

But although I knew the essentials of starting a sandbox campaign, I spent almost no time working on anything other than the megadungeon itself and the map how to get there. Because of previous attempts at starting this campaign, I had already worked out some general details about the campaign world. With this group, I was starting it again at a new locale. I knew the name of the home base town, Walton, but I wrote up absolutely no detail about it other than the name of the tavern and who owned it. I knew that there was a chain of forts linked together, Hadrian's Wall-style, on the nearby frontier border but I drew up no floor plans or details of any NPCs. I knew that beyond the wall was a valley that was a part of the Feywild that was permanently affixed to the Prime Material Plane but I detailed nothing other than a random monster encounter table. And although I had focused most of my attention on Castle Xeva, the megadungeon sitting in the middle of this magical valley, I had only drawn up one or two complete levels and I had only sketchy notes about the inhabitants.

One might think I was horribly unprepared for DMing a new campaign. Especially in the last decade, it seemed standard practice to work out all of the details of a campaign world before it actually begins. But it seems to me that tremendous preparation yeilds little in the way of anticipated results. Unless you're trying to railroad the players. And my ability to anticipate the actions of players I had never gamed with before was nearly zero. So what was the point of rolling up stats for the captain of the town guard? The players might not interact with that NPC at all. What if the players make a bee-line to the megadungeon and purposefully skip any nifty side adventures? This time around, I really did not want to put any work into anything that had less than a good chance of being used.

So I prepared a list of randomly-generated names of people, places, and things. I typed up one-page briefings of the campaign world and the history of Castle Xeva for the players. The campaign details I gave them were very general and allowed for tremendous latitude. Before I start filling in details of this campaign world, I want to see how the PCs behave. Indeed, I learned much during the first session of game play.

Luckily, this crew of players turned out to be excellent, experienced gamers. All of them had played various editions of D&D before. Although few had actually played 1e, this wasn't a problem. To my delight, the players had plenty of ideas that gave me fodder for future encounters. They all knew the cliches of D&D adventures. It turns out that I could have thrown a few adventure hooks at them because they were expecting them. But since I was laying out a clear path straight to the megadungeon, I didn't put such distractions before them.

Perhaps players have been conditioned to expect plot hooks. I intentionally started with just one. This band of heroes are all friends for whatever reason they want to work out amongst themselves. The half-orc fighter and halfling thief won in a game of chance a map to a secret entrance to Castle Xeva. With the help of the cleric and magic-user, the party obtained official permission to travel beyond the wall. They were there in the town of Walton to equip for an expedition to this legendary dungeon. All PC inquires about local threats and kidnapped merchant daughters turned up nil.

Was this lack of side adventure hooks a mistake? Maybe. But I have every intention of providing new adventure hooks later on in the campaign. But not now. I tried my best to make this clear to the players. They seek gold, fame, and fortune. And gold. When/if they come back from the dungeon, they'll gain a bit of noteriety. But right now, they are just 1st level nobodies.

The first encounter was randomly generated. A group of four goblins were out on patrol on the trail leading to the castle. After the ambush and capture, the PCs questioned the goblins. Uh, oh! I didn't expect that. I figured that the PCs would probably just slay them and take their stuff. The players wanted information! So I made it up on the spot. The goblins, of course, were based in the castle. Their chief brought them there from the mountains to the north. And, along with other tribes of demi-humans, they work for a group of humans that seem to be calling the shots. But these lowly goblin chumps knew little else. While the PCs argued about what to do with the surviving golbin prisoner, an unnoticed treant standing behind them snatched up the golbin and ran off into the forest. Why did that happen? Did the treant rescue the goblin? Or was something else going on? Did I make up all of this on the spur of the moment? Some parts yes, some parts no. But I won't be specific because my players will more than likely read this blog. The point is that I had some general ideas about wilderness surrounding the megadungeon and I'm letting random events shape the course of things to come.

Not all of the encounters that happen in this campaign will be random. But it's been my experience that random events can precipitate new directions. This one little random encounter has set a chain of events into motion. Not only has it given me ideas, it has given my players some ideas as well. One player thought it might be good to take the goblin shortbow and arrows and use them to kill members of rival demi-human tribes within Castle Xeva in order to precipate fueds. Brilliant! I had no idea that they would think of something like this. Maybe it will work! Go for it!

Another interesting PC-inspired development was that our cleric decided that he was a follower of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Sure! Why not? I expected the player to pick from the defined set of deities from the rule books. I could have set up a big campaign story arc involving the scheming of gods that used their priests as pawns. Or maybe a world-shaking divine threat needed to be thwarted. All such long-term story planning would have been shot to hell because the cleric PC decided to take on a joke god. So I'll probably address the campaign gods in a more humorous manner for the time being. And lots of pasta jokes.

Our first session of game play ended with the goblin encounter. No doubt next week they will enter the dungeon proper. And already the plot thickens like a good tomato sauce.

Zagyg's gate to Barsoom

In E. Gary Gygax's Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works, I noticed that part of one of the room descriptions reads as follows:

If the CK desires, this cave can serve as a gateway to a SMALL RED PLANET (not unlike Mars), where a lesser gravity is in effect and where 4-armed green giants, blue men resembling plants, huge albino apes, and six-legged riding beasts dwell; the world by and large ruled by the green giants and various colors of humanoids. The Castle Keeper can either develop such a setting whole cloth, utilizing any and all appropriate fictional resources as inspiration (such as the novel John Carter of Mars by E.R. Burroughs) or wait until such a supplementary adventure to the Castle Zagyg pruduct line is released.

Did Gary loose his marbles in his final days when he wrote this? Absolutely not. In fact, it's entirely consistent. And very deliberate. Furthermore, the Peter Bradley cover illustration of the Mouths of Madness booklet included in Upper Works is a scene depicting the cave that connects to said gate to Barsoom.

James Maliszewski, in many of his recent blog entries over at Grognardia, has been discussing the various literary influences upon the work of Gygax. As James has pointed out, Gary was not influenced by Tolkien when he created his fantasy role-playing game. Instead, he was very much influenced by pulp fantasy writers such a Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, and many others. Edgar Rice Burroughs is also one of the authors that Gygax cited as inspiration in the appendex of the Dungeon Master's Guide.

Many gamers assume that Tolkien's popularity in the 1960s and '70s was the impetus for D&D's invention. I confess that I made this assumption for a long time. Several years ago I discovered that this was not the case at all.

I've read Tolkien, of course. And I've read a few other fantasy novels. But not many of them. It's about time I took that dive into Gary's reading list. For me, it's long overdue.

Stop whining about GG and Castle Zagyg

This whining about Gygax Games shifting gears with the publication of Gary Gygax's legacy is beginning to annoy me. It annoys me far more than the recent business decisions of that company.

Am I the only one who was wondering why it took so long to release Upper Works? That thing was supposed to be on store shelves years ago. YEARS AGO. I could only guess why. My best guess was that Gary's failing health delayed its completion. Or maybe it's because of something about the nature of Troll Lord Games? I don't know.

It's so easy for people to jump to the conclusion that the family of a deceased celebrity would exploit the deceased's estate to selfish ends. Such scheming might be likely if the family in question had nothing to do with the life of said celebrity. But, as far as I know, Gary's family was supportive of his work.

I think it is likely that the Gygax family is very protective of Gary's legacy. So much so that they have their own ideas of how his intellectual property should be handled. Call me crazy but I think it stands to reason that the surviving members Gary's family are the only ones to make that decision. Fans can cry and stamp their feet all they want. The reality is that they are the ones calling the shots and there isn't anything we can do to change this situation.

Does anyone remember the existence of hobbits in D&D? Gary wasn't interested in incorporating elements of The Lord of the Rings in his game. He was far more interested in the works of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber than that of J.R.R. Tolkien. But the folks that Gary gamed with demanded elves, orcs, and hobbits. So the first incarnation of D&D included those fantasy races. But the Tolkien estate took issue with this. Specifically, they objected to the use of hobbits, a fantasy race that was invented by Tolkien and was central to his stories. They did not object to the game itself. In fact, they did not pursue the issue further once the name of the D&D race was changed to "halfling." And eventually there was published a role-playing game based on Middle-earth. (I would be interested in reading the precise legal details of this conflict someday.)

Did this make the Tolkien family money-grubbing ogres? No, it didn't. Did they ruin the legacy of one of the greatest authors of the 20th century? No, they did not. They realized the importance of his work. They protected it. They were very cautious about handling their inherited intellectual property. Ralph Bakshi's movie aside, it was a very long time before that family allowed the production of a movie based on The Lord of the Rings. Tremendous care was taken with Tolkien's remaining notes and letters about Middle-earth. Books pertaining to his invented mythology were published slowly. They did not "sell out" or exploit his epic work in an unreasonable manner.

There isn't any doubt that Gary Gygax was the godfather of all role-playing games. It can be argued that Arneson and others were indispensable to the precipitation of the genre but that's the subject of another discussion. The fact remains that Gygax and his Castle Greyhawk mega-dungeon was one of the primary testbeds of Dungeons & Dragons. The dungeon beneath Castle Greyhawk was the axis about which the entire Greyhawk campaign revolved. Many of Gary's famous modules set the example for others. But his most famous dungeon, for whatever reason, remained unpublished for all of these years. Make no doubt about it. The dungeons of Castle Greyhawk was his epic work.

I won't get into the history of Gary's relationship with TSR and other companies. When he planned to finally publish his epic mega-dungeon, he had to change the name to Castle Zagyg for legal reasons. Historically, Gary's Castle Greyhawk was just a dungeon and nothing more. No surface ruins, no local environments, nothing. So when he decided to publish it, he rightly thought it important to properly place it within a sandbox campaign setting. Putting it in WotC's Greyhawk campaign was out of the question. But he managed to work around it. This took time and delayed the publication of the actual dungeon itself.

Why did it take so long? As I said, we can only guess. Personally, I was annoyed with the never-ending delay of the release of Castle Zagyg. It stands to reason that the factors contributing to the delay of its publication were directly related to Gary himself, the people he collaborated with, and the game company publishing the product. Those factors and nothing else were the reasons for the seemingly never-ending delays. But Gary ran out of time and now he is with the Great Gamer in the Sky. The future publication of Castle Zagyg now has absolutely nothing to do with the factors that have heretofore delayed its release.

The bottom line is this. We haven't seen any part of Castle Zagyg produced by Gygax Games. We don't know how quickly it will be produced. We don't know anything about its quality or how closely it follows Gary's plan for the dungeon's final published form. It is not our place to second-guess the abilities of the Gygax family to handle Gary's legacy.

So settle down and just wait and see. For all we know, further publications of Castle Zagyg may be of astonishing quality and released very quickly. Or maybe not. The fact is that we have no reason to think it will be one way or another. We have no choice but to place our faith in Gygax Games and respect whatever decision they make. Because that's the way it's gonna be.