So close...

The weather charts and hireling/henchmen pages have been rewritten/reworked and the index (below) has been completed. (BTW, rewriting one small paragraph on the weather page took about an hour!) All that's left now are a few illustrations, the back cover copy, a round of spellchecking, and a round of proofreading.

Really Old Old-School Artist: A. Garth Jones

Every so often, I get lucky and stumble across a really old old-school artist of whom I've never heard. In the case of (Alfred) Garth Jones, I found his name in a minor entry in Modern Book Illustrators and Their Work—which in a few weeks will be officially 100 years old, so... uh... not so modern now as when the book was published. This is a book I've used before as a starting point for seeking out more really old old-school art. Somehow, I've heretofore missed the mention of Garth Jones. It's no wonder, though. Take a look at the book yourself, and you'll see how much great illustration is in there, and how you could research any number of artist represented therein, and not realize you'd missed a couple.

I happened to get the Google ebook result for this book (as opposed to the Archive.org link above) while searching for another illustrator's work (but at this point I couldn't tell you who that was). A short paragraph that begins on page 11 and finishes up on page 12 speaks of illustrations for "Poetry, fantasy, and romance." Jones's name is mentioned alongside the likes of Edmund Dulac, Byam Shaw, and OSR favorite John D. Batten.

Just a couple of biography bullet points and I'll get on to showing some of Jones's work.

Jones starting using his middle name of Garth (Alfred is his given name) to distinguish himself from artists with similar names. (Although I can't find specifics, I would imagine this includes Edward Burne-Jones, Alfred Roller.)

Demand for his work as a book illustrator declined after World War I. (In an age where folks like Virgil Finlay and Hannes Bok were creating new dialects for the evolving language of illustration, I imagine that Jones's style was become a bit unfashionable.)

Compared to the quantity of work Jones produced before World War I, his post-WWI output seems to pale by comparison.

I love the look of the penwork, and how even his pen and ink feels like woodcut.

The Tree Wizards... Friend or Foe of Ents?

So the other day, my wife and I were having dinner at the Tex-Mex joint around the corner from our house. And, as usual, we perusing our neighborhood edition of The Coffee News, looking for the little man they hide in one of the ads, when lo-and-behold, I came across this ad. Yes. That's right. The ad for the "Tree Wizards" featuring this little ent illustration. I just have to wonder, what would this ent say if Gandalf were coming at him with a chainsaw?

New Acquisition, circa 1984: Time & Time Again (Time Travel RPG)

I love when I pick up something old and moderately obscure for next to nothing. Friday morning's find is Timeline Ltd.'s time-traveling RPG Time & Time Again. Timeline Ltd. is the company behind The Morrow Project, the RPG in which players rebuild after WWIII.

The first thing that struck me about T&TA is that game mechanics don't start until exactly halfway through Book I (Book I includes the following: Temporal Physics, Bureau of Temporal Affairs, World Governement, Character Generation, Armed and Unarmed Combat, Skills, and Voltageur's Tales). Literally, on the right-hand page on the spread where you see the staples, the game mechanics begin.

The first half of Book I deals with the background on the setting, including an account of the political and military events of the late 80s and early 90s (written in 1984; have I mentioned my fondness for early 80s near-future predictions where the U.S. and U.S.S.R. are the two superpowers?), an overview of "time translation" and the use of time travel, an overview of the The World Government (the former United Nations had failed its purpose), and information about The Bureau of Temporal Affairs where legions of paramilitary Votigeurs (a name taken from a type of Napoleonic skirmish unit) are sent on time travel missions. There is a lot of care taken in the reasoning behind the game's time translation methods to do as much as possible to eliminate the paradoxes that plague time travel fiction across the board (e.g., theories as to why the past can't be changed but the future can, rules for meeting one's self, "science" to explain why you can't be accidentally transported inside another object, etc.).

Voltigeur's undertake a variety of missions, including: 1) initial contact (with cultures), 2) follow-up (after a contact mission), 3) observance, 4) escort, 5) rescue, 6) sojourn (dangerous missions of observance and learning in "bad times" where little contact is maintained; e.g., during the plague), and 7) eradication. That last one is the most interesting to me. In a game where changing past events should be theoretically impossible, there are factions attempting to change the past anyway. Eradication missions send Voltigeurs to deal with these troublemakers. Honestly, other than that last mission type, the majority of the time travel in the game is educational in nature (the World Government is also responsible for being a fulcrum of academic learning). Although the focus on time travel seems to be focused on the past, travel to the future is possible as well.

This brings us to the staples in Book I, and the second thing that struck me about T&TA... the game mechanics use a d200 system. Yes! A d200 system! The book suggests three ways to achieve a result from 1-200:

1) a d20 numbered 0-19 and a d10 numbered 0-9
2) a d20 numbered 1-20 and a d10 (requires subtracting 1 from every d20 roll)
3) two d20s numbered 1-20 (requires subtracting 1 from each of the d20 rolls)

This d200 system doesn't seem to facilitate anything that couldn't be done equally as well using a d100 system. So I have to ask, "Uh... why?" My guess is because they were trying to do use the Chaosium system without obviously using the Chaosium system. Welbo (a fan The Morrow Project) tells me some editions of The Morrow Project directly reference Chaosium's BRP system.

So if the d200 thing wasn't enough, "structure points/blood points" are divided by percentages into 12 total body parts. The 19% given to each leg includes sub-percentages for the thigh, calf, foot, hip joint, and knee! This same set of percentages comes directly from The Morrow Project. Don't get me wrong, I think there are times with this kind of simulationist detail is worthwhile, but here it seems unnecessarily cumbersome.

Book I ends up with some "Voltigeur’s Tales"—a group of first-person stories meant to give you a feel for role-playing a character personality in the context of the various mission types. It shows how even the simplest missions can be dangerous (e.g., an ambush in the dark by samurai armed with poisoned arrows), and sets up where this game can take you.

Book II is really the GM's book. It deals with climate, terrain, animals, economics, technology, transportation, government & politics, and ethics & etiquette. It's part textbook and part adventure recipe book. It gives little hints here and there how even the simplest missions can go wrong (e.g., even if the Voltigeur's are taught a language before they go somewhere, they won't speak it the same way as the people living there). There's some nice stuff here, but it appears to be only slightly less inviting to read than the first edition DMG.

Will I run this?
Not anytime soon. I've got other things WAY in front of it in the queue.

Did I get anything out of it?
Yes. One tiny-little-thing that I think might work for The System: Expanded.

Was it worth the purchase?
Hell yes! It's old and it's cool and it represents a time when putting out anything like this was a major undertaking of time and expense, and I cannot help but appreciate that.

Another 24-Hour RPG Design Opportunity Missed

For years, I've had intentions of participating in the 24-Hour RPG Design Contest. This year's theme "Harder than Granite" was of particular interest to me. With the scale being limited to a pocketmod format, I thought, "Surely, I can find the 4-5 hours I might need to pull this off, since in the past finding 24-hours proved difficult." But, as many of you may have read in yesterday's blog post, life conspired against me. BTW, in addition to the size limitations, the other thing that made this theme "harder than granite" was the rule that the game could not use numbers!

I've had a chance to check out a few of the entries. As subject matter goes, they're seem to be pretty standard fair. Because this year's theme was driven by format and mechanics, that seems to be where the entrants' work was focused. In the past, subject-based themes seem to have proved for more ingenious game subjects/worlds.

A couple of years ago for the "Movie Mashup" theme, I'd plans for writing an RPG mashing up Apocalypse Now and The Blues Brothers entitled Apocalypse Blues, wherein all missions would be missions from God. Not sure what happened to my time that year. Same as always, I'm sure. BTW, The winner that year was The Droog Family Songbook, a mashup of A Clockwork Orange and The Sound of Music; it can be downloaded from this page. >>

Sliding back into things...

When any of the many bloggerkin I follow go more than their usual period without a post, I start to worry. So if any of you were wondering where old Rich has been for the last couple of weeks, the answer is, "I have been distracted, but little more." I am lucky my slow blogging has not been because of some of the job, family, or health issues that others in this OSR-blogosphere have had the misfortune to endure. Quite simply, my in-laws were moving, their closing on the new house got delayed, and I had them as unexpected house guests for a couple of weeks. Lump that in with what is traditionally my busiest work time of the year, and this blog's "darkness" over the last couple of weeks is easy to understand.

Other project updates and new content posts will kick back up in earnest in the next couple of days.

Appreciating How Good the OSR Has It

So I've been thinking about some things.

First, the term "Renaissance" is based on the French word for "rebirth." And from my P.O.V., there's no question that what we've been experiencing is a rebirth in the roots of the hobby. And I'm not just talking about going back to the original rules. I'm talking about going back to the original spirit.

Never before have so many people had at their disposal the tools to take their own ideas and bring them to the "global gaming table." No longer are our ideas (and their "by-products") limited to the local copy shop or our local gaming groups.

I know this has been the case for a while, but it's time we just took a step back and reflected on this for a moment.

The fact that we connect on a daily basis and share ideas with folks around the globe (like David Macauley in Tasmania, Catacomb Librarian in Italy, and Brendan in the UK) never ceases to amaze me, especially considering that 30 years ago, I hardly knew any gamers beyond the handful of people in my high school gaming group. Even the game I originally wrote in 1985 has landed on gaming tables in Brazil. (BTW, you'll have to hit the "translate" button on your browser to read the page at that link, unless you speak Portuguese.) Which brings me to my next point...

We also all have the ability to publish on a level heretofore reserved for those with pocketbooks as deep as their interests in gaming. I was lucky; in the early 80s, my dad had a "word processor" and a copier, and I was able to put together the first version of The System (something I'm still considering releasing in its original "low-tech" all-copy form, rather than the retro-inspired modern version I published). And in 1984, I had a friend with an early generation Mac. Sure, technology progressed pretty quickly past that, but there was a time not so long ago when RPGs were being shared through ASCII text files. But consider this... what would Christopher Brandon or John Stater have done 30 years ago? Possibly the same thing that Tim Shorts or Dylan Hartwell are choosing to do now. But the latter two are choosing to publish in the more "hand-made" formats. Regardless, from PDF to POD, there is just so much wonderful out there!!!

I really just wanted us all to take a moment before the first dice roll for this weekend's games... and give ourselves a moment to appreciate the age in which we live, the virtual connections it's allowed us to make, and the access its given us to the wonderful creativity of this fellowship of role-playing.

My personal thanks to all who follow this blog, as well as to all those whose blogs I follow!