Gen Con IX report by Ian Livingstone

GEN CON IX report by Ian Livingstone (Click on pic for a larger view)

In the summer of 1976, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson of Games Workshop traveled to the US to attend the ninth Gen Con. This was the last year that the event was held it is original location, the Horticultural Hall in Lake Geneva. Ian Livingstone later wrote about their trip in a con report for Owl & Weasel #18, September 1976, the predecessor of White Dwarf magazine.

The scan quality is not great, since I grabbed this image from an Ebay auction, but it is readable if you click on the picture above.

Some choice quotes:

"The Con kicked off with an auction at 10am with a great pile of games and figures being skillfully sold off by this-is-cheap-at-twice-the-price Tim Kask"

"...naturally Fantasy was featured strongly, with games of D&D, Lankhmar (see review), War of Wizards and Petal Throne being played everywhere"

 "Before lunch, Fritz Leiber gave a seminar on sword and sorcery and also on the development of his game Lankhmar. During the afternoon there were even more games but perhaps the most interesting part was an Empire of the Petal Throne adventure guided by the inventor Professor Barker and made famous by the enormous model of the Jakala Palace he'd built together with his red-shirted entourage"

"The ubiquitous insomniac D&D brigade carried on through the night whilst lesser mortals slept"

"Steve and I spent [Saturday] checking out new games with a view to importing some of them and obviously spent a lot of time with all the members of TSR to whom go our thanks for putting themselves out for use despite the time constraints of the Con. Special thanks go to Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz for the guided tours and introduction to the Next Door Pub!"

Here is a picture of Leiber, Gygax, Barker, Jackson, Livingstone and Kuntz from this con, published in 40 Years of Gen Con by Robin Laws. I grabbed a scan of it from here.

A Rogues Gallery of Game Designers

This relationship bore fruit - Jackson and Livingstone obtained the rights to distribution TSR products in the UK, and by late 1977 Games Workshop was printing UK versions of TSR products, including the Basic Set.

Part 36: "They May Dare a Tiny Sip"

Part 36 of a comparison of Holmes' manuscript with the published Basic Set rulebook. Turn to pages 36-37 of your 'Blue Book' and follow along... (pages 35-36 for the 1st edition)

Potions

OD&D Vol 2 has a list of 26 potions, and Greyhawk expands this to 30. Holmes picks 10 of these for the Basic list, using only selections from the original 26. And for the most part these are from the very first part of the original list, specifically 9 of the first 12 potions.

The list of ten potions from the manuscript is unchanged in the published rulebook, although one (Speed) changes name in the 2nd edition. In the manuscript, Holmes uses "Speed" in the list of Potions, which conforms with OD&D, but "Haste" in the description section. This discrepancy made it into the first edition of the rulebook. The 2nd edition corrects this by changing the name in the list to "Haste". This differs from both AD&D and B/X, which both stick with "Speed".

Moldvay shortens the potion list to 8 items, dropping Giant Strength, Speed/Haste, Flying, and Delusion (all relegated to Expert), and adding ESP and Levitation back in from OD&D. So six of Holmes' choices went on to become standards of Basic.

Descriptions

This section is titled "Magical Potions" and begins with an introductory paragraph that expands on the one in OD&D Vol 2, pg 31. Holmes notes that potions can be used by any character, something implied in the original but not clearly spelled out. Greyhawk restricted the use of Giant Strength and Speed to Fighters only, but Holmes leaves this out.

OD&D notes that a "small sample can be taken" to determine a potion's effect. Holmes expands this into "If the characters lack a detect magic spell, they may dare a tiny sip to see what the result may be". The new first part perhaps implies that a Detect Magic spell will not only indicate that a potion is magical, but also tell what type of potion it is. The original Detect Magic reads, "A spell to determine if there has been some enchantment laid on a person, place or thing", which Holmes may have interpreted as including the type of enchantment, like the later Identify spell.

Holmes also clarifies that the variable duration of a potion (6 turns + 1d6 turns) is not known by the imbiber, only the DM.

For the descriptions of the ten potions, Holmes follows the OD&D descriptions closely. The original doesn't have descriptions for Invisibility or Flying, since they mimic spells, so he keeps these very short and close to the relevant spells.

Poison is also missing a description in original, possibly because its effect was considered obvious (save or die!), but is given a typically Gygaxian note in Greyhawk: "Referee will mislead players to the best of his ability in order to either make them believe it is a useful potion or to taste the poison, for even a small sip will suffice to kill" (pg 42). Holmes is more lenient, changing this to: "The Dungeon Master will, on careful questioning, give a hint that the potion is dangerous". He also makes explicit the saving throw. 

For Speed/Haste, Holmes follows the original (double movement) but also adds that the user "can deliver twice the usual number of blows during combat for the duration of the potion effect". This extra effect doesn't appear in the OD&D Speed Potion, or the Haste spell as it originally appears in Chainmail or OD&D. Gygax left this in the published rulebook, and it also appears as a feature of the Speed potion in AD&D and B/X.

In adding this feature, Holmes may have drawn from Empire of the Petal Throne (1975), which he was a fan of. The EPT Haste Spell specifies that "this does permit the "speeded" person to strike two blows (instead of one) per combat round" (pg 24). There is also a Eye of Hastening Destiny that gives triple speed and 3 attacks per round (pg 72).

Or possibly it is an interpretation of the Eldritch Wizardry (1976) alternate initiative rules. These rules are notoriously arcane, but end with a note that "HASTE will double effectiveness while SLOW will decrease it by one-half". However, these rules are only supposed to apply to missile fire and spells, not melee.

Note that since Holmes writes "deliver twice the usual number of blows", he actually means 4 blows per melee round, since his combat rules in the manuscript give ordinary weapons two blows per round.

In the Holmes Basic version of B2, Gygax has skeletons with a Haste spell on them that lets them attack twice per round, "once at the beginning and once at the end" (pg 21). This gives us a clue as to how to integrate the Haste Potion effect with Holmes Dex-based initiative.

In the published rulebook, the introductory paragraph and most of the potion descriptions are unchanged from the manuscript. A minor typo is introduced into the Haste potion, where "duration" is written as "durations".

The only major change is to Giant Strength. Holmes' original follows OD&D closely, "Confers the full advantages of Giant prowess including doing 2 dice of damage when scoring a hit", whereas the published version changes the "Giant" to "stone giant" and "2 dice" to "3-18 points", and adds "and having the same hit probability as a stone giant". This change conforms with the updated damage for stone giants introduced in Greyhawk. 

Continue on to Part 37 (forthcoming)
Or Go Back to Part 35: "A Potent Weapon in the Hands of a Dwarf"
Or Go Back to Start: The Holmes Manuscript

Holmes' Little Metal People, Take II

After I posted yesterday, Billy Galaxy sent me a much better copy of the photo from the L.A. Times article. It's uncropped and the resolution in the scan is fantastic: the individual minis are actually identifiable. The table may be the same one as in the photo in his 1981 FRPG book, with a blackboard surface for drawing dungeon maps in chalk. 

I'm far from an expert on minis but I do recognize three "Pumpkinhead Bugbears" (Archive, 1976, Dungeon Nasties set) near his left hand.

Detail of Holmes' Bugbears

Here's a close-up of someone else's painted one from an old Acaeum post:

These minis were based on the original Bugbear drawing (by Greg Bell) in the Greyhawk supplement (1975), which also served to later inspire the Jack O' Bear of Runequest.

The original D&D Bugbear illustration

Billy also identified some of the minis as Dragontooth Saurians, inc the large lizard in the middle, and some Minifig Gnolls to the far right. Let me know if you recognize any other minis from the picture.

See also these follow-up posts:
Holmes' Saurians
DCSIII Customized Saurians

Holmes on Empire of the Petal Throne

"Dr. Holmes considers EPT..."

     As reported elsewhere, Professor M.A.R. Barker, creator of the world of Tékumel and several RPGs based on it including Empire of the Petal Throne (TSR, 1975), passed away a few days ago. Today also marks two years since the passing of Dr. Holmes. As a tribute to Professor Barker and his work, I've transcribed Holmes' review of EPT from his 1981 RPG book. I think it provides an excellent introduction to Tékumel for the uninitiated.

Empire of the Petal Throne

by J. Eric Holmes, part of Chapter 7 in Fantasy Role Playing Games (1981)

     The world of Tékumel is one of those rare creations of a single human imagination. It is a fully realized planet with a geography, ecology, history and bizarre civilization, all the invention of Professor M.A.R. Barker. Many greater writers of fantasy have created imaginary worlds or countries so elaborately detailed that their readers become half-convinced that they exist. J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth comes immediately to mind, as does Barsoom, Hyperborea, Islandia, Earthsea, Witch World or the Land of Oz.

     Barker began imagining his own world at the age of ten. Like Tolkien he is fascinated by languages (he is a professor of languages at the University of Minnesota) and started with the written and spoken tongues of Tékumel. As the years went by, his fantasy world became more complete, an entire science fictional history developed as well as the geography, fauna and flora of one of the most exotic planets in all of imaginary literature. Unlike most world creators, though, Professor Barker turned his creation not into a story (although there are rumors of a forthcoming novel) but into a game!

[The novel proved to be Man of Gold (1984, DAW) - Z]

     Empire of the Petal Throne is a fantasy game in which the players take the role of adventurers in a completely unique world, and a very dangerous and exciting world it is, too. Tékumel has been colonized, in the distant past, by humans and other races from far parts of the galaxy, suppressing the original inhabitants. The world then suffered some cosmic catastrophe, was dislocated in space and time, and is now isolated completely from the rest of the universe, alone with its sun and two moons in a continuum where the ordinary rules of physics no longer hold. Here magic is possible and demons from other dimensions can enter Tékumel and influence the course of human events. The catastrophe destroyed the human civilization and most of its technology and now, after 25,000 years or more, mankind has risen again to something one step ahead of barbarism. The game takes place in the Empire of Tsolyani, and the players usually enter the game at the capital city of Jakalla. Most of the creatures and non-human races of Tékumel are unique, being either original inhabitants (mostly hostile) or remnants of extra-terrestrial races who had colonized the world with the original human settlers.

     Professor Barker's rule book gives much of this background as well as an adequate discussion of the rules of the game. Conduct of the game goes very much like Dungeons and Dragons and is obviously modeled upon it. Barker makes extensive use of "percentile dice" - rolling two 20 sided dice and having one be decimals and one units. Combat uses one 20 sided die, and gives the die roll for a hit against whatever armor the defender is wearing. There isn't much metal on Tékumel; armor is frequently a specially treated animal hide, Chlen hide, hardened to metal-like consistency. Magic users command an increasing number of spells as they rise in experience, as do the priests of various gods. There is usually a chance that the spell will fail to work (60% at first level of experience), although the magic user's basic talents will increase his ability to cast spells.

     Magic spells are quite varied. The magician may have the ability to perform ESP or telekinesis or cast an illusion and then gain more spells as rises in level, learning eventually how to do things like call demons, fly, grow invisible or create walls of fire, ice, stone or water.

     Because Tékumel was once a world of complex technology, there are "magical" artifacts still available which perform remarkable feats. Chief among these are the "eyes," small round gem-like objects, usually with one or more control buttons on their sides. Players discovering one of these magical devices may be able to call up a faceless army, or raise the dead, knock down doors, freeze opponents or charm the opposite sex. It is the quest of such power-giving items, as well as golden treasure (Kaitars) which motivates most of the players in the World of Petal Throne.

     There is an underworld to Tékumel, a maze of buried passageways beneath most of the large cities. Here the treasure of the older, lost civilization may yet be found, and also monsters and traps encountered. The "dungeon" aspect of the fantasy game is preserved. Construction of maps for all these aspects of the adventure is left to the hard working referee.

     Playing fantasy adventures in Te'kumel has the appeal of exploring a world which, although human, is totally alien. This may create more work for the poor referee, who must master the background information on politics, zoology and religion before letting the players loose in the world. The clarify of the rule books, however, is outstanding. The rules are remarkably blood-thirsty; the demons and devils of Te'kumel are real; the politics are treacherous; slavery, human sacrifices and assassination are commonplace. The society resembles that of the Byzantine or Aztec empires at the height of their power more than it does contemporary America. But then, if one is going on an imaginary adventure, why not take incredible risks?

     In the past Barker's minor masterpiece has been printed and distributed by TSR Hobbies. At the time this book is written, however, there is a rumor that this relationship has ended and that Lou Zocchi will be producing a new version of the game. Barker's fans publish an "occasional" magazine and some other additons to our knowledge of Te'kumel.

     Professor Barker's rules come with complete descriptions of all of the other worldly characters, monsters, demons and gods of his world, often with illustrations of the more bizarre. The round-bodied Ahoggya, for example, have four legs, four arms and four faces. The illustrations are often amateurish, but make up for anything they lack in artistry in their clarification of detail and the atmosphere of exotic other-worldliness they give the book.

     The rules for the game are carefully explained. Barker is a teacher, and one could predict that he would go to considerable lengths to clarify the methods of play. There is also a map of the major city, Jakalla, with all the major buildings, temples, palaces and tombs indicated thereon. Maps of a large portion of the planet are also included. Professor Barker has of course also included brief descriptions of the Tsolyani script and a guide to pronunciation. These need not be mastered to enjoy the game, however.

[Bolding to one sentence added for emphasis - Z]