My Formula for the Original Development of OD&D Psionics

With the recent release of the 5th Edition psionics playtest document, I thought I'd take a look back at where psionics came from in the first place.

As many of you know, for the last year-and-a-half or so, I've been working on a psionics adaptation for classic editions of the game (BX/LL). Throughout the process, I've been lucky enough to remain in contact with Steve Marsh, one of the original contributors of psionics to D&D, and I've gotten a great insight on the process for the development of psionics in OD&D.

The gist of the story/process is this...

Before Steve worked at TSR, he would mail things to Gary. One of the things Steve sent was a concept for a mystic character class (based on the tradition of Indian mysticism). This was envisioned as a standard character class that would gain additional mystic powers as they rose in level (much like a MU). [These abilities would inform the majority of the standard psionic disciplines from OD&D.]

Separately, Gary was developing a psionic combatant class—the devine. The devine had attack and defense modes (though I can't speak to how they changed as the devine rose in level). [These modes are obviously the foundation for psionic combat.]

The most interesting insight is the following (based on a comment Steve made a couple of weeks ago on one of my blog posts in reference to the editorial process on Eldritch Wizardry):

"It should be noted that Tim (Kask) got everything as sheets in a large bowl and told to work with it. He did amazing work given the conditions. As for where material came from, Tim would get clues when Gary would put the credits together..."

Yes. Tim had a literal BOWL on his desk that Gary would dump things into as work in progress. [Steve mentioned to me that the "WIP bowl" is something he himself only learned of last month when talking to Tim Kask at the recent NTRPGCon.]

Finally, Tim Kask brought a lot to the psionics party in the forms of the charts and tables. From a Dragonsfoot.org post in 2007:

"I LOVED psionic combat and had great fun devising it with all of its tables and charts. Apparently I was in the tiny minority. I guess mental combat was too esoteric for most D&Ders; not enough of them shared my fondness for the Dr. Strange Marvel comics and Mindflayers."

So here's my interpretation of the formula for how psionics developed for OD&D:
[(Marsh Mystic + Gygax Devine) × Kask Bowl] ÷ (Gygax Input + Kask Editing) = OD&D psionics.

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[On a related note, the illustration that appears at the top of this post is by F.Y. Cory from a Frank Baum book titled The Master Key: An Electrical Fairy Tale, Founded Upon the Mysteries of Electricity and the Optimism of Its Devotees (1901, Bowen-Merrill). I'm thinking the Cory illustration may be the image that appears on the title page of the Basic Psionics Handbook.]

A look at some old-school fonts...

Let's take a step back to the late 1980s for a moment...

I was in college majoring in graphic design and, unlike today, there wasn't a Mac on every designer's desktop. In fact, I almost quit the program my Junior year because I'd been hand-lettering the type on a letterhead mockup for three hours straight, continuing to mess up and curse life because I knew if we would just get some damn computers I'd have been done in ten minutes!!! In 1987/1988 (my sophomore year), I knew that the Mac would be the wave of the future and had to take some Communications electives just to get a chance to work on the macs (I think maybe 4 hours for the entire semester). In 1989, there still weren't any Macs (or computers of any sort for that matter) in the art department. The school paper did, however, have a Mac setup (two SE's and a Macintosh II)... but the paper only had them because I (as the Art Director in cahoots with the Editor-elect) told them to get rid of the old Agfaset. Back in the old-world-ways of the art department, we were still putting copied pages from Letraset type sample books in a photo-enlarger-style Art-O-Graph projector and having to hand-letter that shit for hours at at time. Utterly ridiculous by today's standards when I think that stuff that used to take me an hour or so to hand-letter can now be accomplished in a few seconds.

Granted, the variety of fonts on the Mac at the time were rather limited. The system-standard fonts were the ones mostly named for cities (New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Geneva, et al.) Additional postscript fonts were available, but expensive and also limited. By contrast, the Letraset catalog had all these really great fonts, though many of them were sadly out-of-date for the late 80s, but still available as rub-down transfers (the heart of Letraset's offering) and were, therefore, represented in the catalog. Nowadays, we take the landfill-sized variety of fonts for granted. In the late 80s, only those of us with access to these kinds of graphics resources (e.g., architects, designers, etc.) knew what was there. That Letraset book began my love affair with type, particularly those of the funky persuasion.

My late-80s edition of the book "died" years ago from mis-use; it was spiral bound and the pages just didn't stand much of a chance. But I do have a 1981 edition that I bought several years ago as a shelf reference; it's perfect bound and, therefore, not subject to the same issues as a well-handled spiral book. What's below are pictures from that 1981 edition of some of the fonts that I've long been in love with, but that also fit in to the old-school RPG aesthetic.

Just a warning... many freebie versions of the fonts listed below are bad/clunky conversions/copies of the originals, and suffer from both compromised forms and bad kerning pairs (kerning is the space between two individual letters, and in bad type faces, these kerning pairs are largely ignored, leaving "gaps" in words when typeset).

The cover of the 1981 edition of the Letraset catalog.

Galadriel. Designed by Alan Meeks in 1975. Named (I assume) for the LoTR character. There are freebie forms of this, but a decent version is available for about $30.

Marvin.There are bad versions available of this font, but if a decent commercial is available, it's possibly got a different name.

Arnold Böcklin. This baby goes back to 1904; the Art Nouveau influence should be obvious. Corel draw came with a version named Arabia so people assumed an Easter/Oriental influence, though it's very "French." And, yes... it is the typeface White Dwarf magazine used during its early days.

Tip Top. The original version of this font was released by a German type foundry in Leipzig. Again, this is an Art Nouveau era font, but I think 60s pulp fantasy when I see this one.

Hunter. This is another one I've seen used in the past on books, but can't seem to find a digital version at all, much less a bad one.

Quentin. We should all recognize this one. However, it is a victim of poor conversions and the freebies really suck. However, a decent version is available for only $20.

Souvenir. This is the BX typeface, and the font family I've adopted as the house typeface for my Oe/BX/1e compatible stuff (Old School Adventures). Luckily, this is one of the first digital typefaces I ever owned. It's never really gone out of style, but was still pretty commonly used in the early 90s when I started building my Postscript type collection.

Futura Display. A great 60s pulp sci-fi feel. Or if you want to see uses of this one that are more general, check out this link.

Company. The problem with finding a copy of this one is the name. I guarantee that putting the word "company" in a Google search doesn't do a damn thing for finding this face.

Thalia. This is the DragonQuest typefaces. And it's probably the best example of being the most poorly converted (even worse than Quentin).

Pretorian (aka Pretoria). I've really been looking for an occasion to use this one. In fact, I want to use it so bad, I would consider naming and designing an adventure just to fit the personality of this typeface. (Hey, I'm sure we've all created adventures around far smaller kernels of an idea than that.)

Eckmann Schrift. Designed in 1900 by German Otto Eckmann to reflect Japanese calligraphy (Japanisme ran rampant during the Art Nouveau era).

Serif Gothic. This was designed by typography mastermind Herb Lubalin in 1974. The typeface Lubalin is best known for is probably Avant Garde (the typeface used by TSR on the first wave of adventure modules).

Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers!

Well, if you want to kick your RPG game old school... yeah, you do.

The night before the North Texas RPG Con kicked off this year, I had the privilege of playing the old TSR Board Game Knights of Camelot with Steve Winter, Erol Otus, and Dennis Sustare. (See the pics here.) So, during the game, the knights on their various quests across the map have various encounters, including some of the animal variety. That list includes harts, boars, wolves, palfreys (a medieval horse), brachets (an archaic name for a bitch hound), and badgers. Yes. Badgers. Then Erol said something that intrigued me (and I'm paraphrasing here as I don't recall exactly what he said)... "Those TSR guys loved badgers." Why wouldn't they? Lake Geneva is only about an hour-and-a-half from UW, home of the badgers. Gary moved to Lake Geneva in his late childhood. TSR co-founder Don Kaye grew up there. D&D contributor Rob Kuntz was born and grew up there. That's not to say there wasn't a medieval pedigree for the badger; after all, it was hunted for sport (though it was considered inedible).

So what's the badger's pedigree with early TSR games? Of the items of note below, I have not listed badgers where they appear in wandering monster tables and the like. (Please note, this list is by no means exhaustive, just based on some of the searchable PDFs I have on hand. If you have any additions, please leave a comment. Thanks!)

Knights of Camelot Board Game: This game includes badgers among the animal encounters. (As mentioned above.)

Gamma World (1st edition): includes an animal called the "badder." It is a "badgeroid" species organized into a society "equal to that of the medieval period in human history."

Metamorphosis Alpha (1st edition): includes a mutated animal called the "metaled one (badger)." It's a 3-foot long badger whose fur has mutated to be composed of hard mineral, "giving it a sort of armor." Best of all, this highly-intelligent creature can mentally paralyze an opponent (assuming the opponent is within 6', because the damned thing is near-sighted!)

1e Monster Manual: Of course it's in here, but there's no pic. How cool would a Tramp or Otus badger illustration have been? Oh. The description does include hit dice and damage notes for the giant badger. The badger has subsequently been included in Monstrous Compendium Volume Two (1989), Monstrous Manual (1993), Monster Manual (2000), and Monster Manual v.3.5 (2003).

1e Player's Handbook: The first creature on the reincarnate list for the 7th level druid spell Reincarnate is a badger (p.64).

1e DM Guide: One of the likely animals for the 4th-level druid spell Animal Summoning is a badger (p.45). For the 7th-level druid spell, Reincarnate, the badger is the example given of reincarnating the character as an animal (p.35); yes, of all the animals they could have chosen for the example, they chose the badger. Also, the badger one of the animals listed for the bag of tricks magic item (p.139) and as a conjured animal (p.222).

Dragon Magazine #69: The badger is one of the forms that Greyhawk deity Obad-Hai may assume (p.29). On a side note, this is the second Dragon magazine I ever bought.

Dragon Magazine #122: In a profile on artist Jeff Butler (pp.68-69), there is mention of the comic The Badger that was drawn by Butler (created by Mike Baron). What the article doesn't mention is that Butler was quarterback for the Wisconson Badgers in 1977, but stopped because of a series of concussions.

Module S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth: Encounter Group 3 in Gnome Vale (p.10) includes animal handlers and 3 giant badgers.

Module Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits: For Lolth's hopefully final attack on the fortress of Kandelspire (gate to the kingdom of Maldev), she has assembled an army that includes 8,000 gnolls, 2,000 bugbears, et al., and 50 giant badgers!

AC1: The Shady Dragon Inn: The character Begol Burrowell (p.23) was once "...trapped by a rabid badger and had to burrow his way through eight feet of soil to freedom."

Mentzer Companion Rules - Players Companion Book: "Badger" is the name of one of the characters in the "The Arena of Garald the Blue" adventure included in the book (p.60).

BTW, Swords & Wizardry Complete includes a giant badger, but no regular variety; Swords & Wizardry White Box has neither (the Oe books did not have a badger, though Blackmoor does include a giant beaver). Also, the standard version of Labyrinth Lord has no badgers, but the Advanced Edition Companion does (the B/X books didn't have any badgers, but 1e obviously did).