27 January 2010
Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
ROGUE FEED
REVIEW: The Dungeon
Alphabet
JAN 26, 2010 01:46P.M.
There are some reviews I look forward to writing; this is not one of them.
I say that not because The Dungeon Alphabet by Michael Curtis, author
of the excellent Stonehell Dungeon, is a bad product — quite the
contrary! It is in fact a well-written, beautifully illustrated, and
inspirational volume. Indeed, it may be the single best statement of the
Old Ways yet put into print, a feat that’s all the more remarkable because
it’s not presented as a philosophical manifesto but rather as an
abecedarian syllabus, employing the principle of “show, don’t tell” to
sidestep the usual litany of complaints about how “old school” can’t be
defined and any attempt to do so is both wrongheaded and doomed to
failure. If anyone, after absorbing The Dungeon Alphabet‘s 48
compendious pages, still claims not to understand what is meant by “old
school,” the fault will lie not with Curtis but the reader.
It’s precisely because there’s so much right about The Dungeon Alphabet
that I didn’t look forward to writing this review. Any compliments I pay
to it will seem banal and any criticisms I make of it will seem petty. The
book presents us with 26 entries — one for each letter of the alphabet —
each of which is ostensibly connected to some topic pertaining to
dungeons, such as altars, doors, oozes, or traps. Each entry is a brief, two
or three paragraph, meditation on the topic in question, providing both
practical advice on using the subject matter in designing a dungeon and
“philosophical” musings on the whys and wherefores of doing so. It’s a
potent combination and Curtis’s writing is straightforward without being
vapid and detailed without being pedantic. Each entry is rounded out
1
with a random table of some kind to jumpstart one’s imagination about
the topic (such unusual jewel properties or thirty results of a pulled
lever).
The Dungeon Alphabet is lavishly illustrated, boasting a full color cover
by Erol Otus. The interior art contains a mix of artists associated with
earlier editions of D&D — Jeff Easley, Jim Holloway, Jim Roslof, the
aforementioned Otus — and a number of newcomers, including old
school renaissance favorite Peter Mullen. In my opinion, there’s not a
single bad piece of art in the book and that includes the illustrations
done by Easley and Roslof, two artists I never much liked back in the
day. Roslof in particular impressed me with the quality of his work,
something I’d never have expected. The book also includes a foreword by
David Cook in which he extols the virtues of whimsy and randomness in
both game design and game playing — a fitting entré for this volume.
The Dungeon Alphabet is a thin hardcover retailing for $9.99, which is
an excellent price, but allow me to nitpick nonetheless. Given its subject
matter and method of presentation, I wish it had been published as a
smaller book, perhaps adopting the format of a children’s book. That
would have, I think, better suited it and made it a more interesting
artifact to boot. I suspect that the ironclad demands of retail shelf space
dictated the book’s format, which is a shame. I also think that the
random tables are somewhat uneven in quality. The original blog posts
on which the book is based had no random tables (that I can recall —
someone can correct me if I am mistaken); they’re new to this version of
the text. While some are really excellent (the random book titles, for
example) and would prove quite useful in play, others (such as thirty
fiendish traps) are fairly uninspired. Again, I suspect the demands of
retail sale dictated that the book be expanded to a greater length. I
certainly don’t regret the inclusion of the random tables, as many are as
inspiring as the text, but they’re not as consistently excellent as the rest
of the book.
In the end, it’s Michael Curtis’s terrific little entries that are the heart
and soul of this product and they never once disappoint. Each one of
them is a tiny masterpiece, a succinct elucidation of not just what makes
a good old school dungeon but also what distinguishes the Old Ways
from the new. Long ago, I printed out the blog posts on which The
Dungeon Alphabet is based and, whenever I lacked for inspiration in
detailing Dwimmermount, I re-read the posts and carried on. Now that I
have the whole thing in “proper” book form, along with random tables,
you can be sure that it’ll always be close at hand, ready to give me more
great ideas to inflict on my players.
Presentation: 8 out of 10
Creativity: 10 out of 10
Utility: 9 out of 10
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
Get This If: You’re looking for a nice summation of old school dungeon
principles to inspire you.
Don’t Get This If: You have no interest in the Old Ways or in attempting
to understand them.
ROGUE FEED
OD&D; Cancer Fund
JAN 26, 2010 09:35A.M.
Randall over at RetroRoleplaying has set up a donation fund to help
defer the costs of his wife’s cancer treatments. Anyone who donates even
$1 will get access to a number of old school-related goodies, such as the
1970s fanzine The Grimoire. However, whoever donates the most
between now and February 5 will receive what Randall’s calling the
“OD&D Woodgrain/Brown Box special:” the three LBB (Men & Magic,
Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures —
Third printing purchased with their Brown Box box, Supplement I:
Greyhawk (2rd printing), Supplement III: Blackmoor (1st printing) and
Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardy (7th printing), and Supplement IV:
Gods, Demi-Gods, and Heroes (5th printing). Also included are the table
sheets from the brown box set, a copy of Arduin Grimoire Volume I, an
almost pristine copy of Booty and the Beasts with its Erol Otus artwork,
a copy of Chainmail, and a few cut Dungeon geomorphs. I’ve reproduced
a photograph of these items from Randall’s blog below.
Even if you can’t donate enough money to have a serious shot at these
awesome OD&D relics, it’s a very worthy cause nonetheless. Randall’s a
great, often insightful, old school blogger. If it’s at all possible to help
him out, please do so.
Thanks.
2
27 January 2010
ROGUE FEED
Dwimmermount, Session 28
JAN 26, 2010 09:09A.M.
Dwimmermount resumed after a two-week hiatus because of family and
work-related interruptions on the part of myself and one of the players.
While unavoidable, these interruptions are the bane of a RPG campaign
in my experience. When playing only once a week, making sure that you
do play once a week is essential to establishing and maintaining the
“rhythm” on which good campaigns thrive. Any disruption of that
rhythm ensures that, at the very least, it’ll take a session or two before
it’s re-established and, at the very worst, could derail things sufficiently
that the campaign suffers a mortal wound.
I’ve seen the latter happen enough times to fear the possibility, so I
dislike it whenever we have to miss one of our weekly Dwimmermount
sessions. Fortunately, my players are sufficiently tenacious to overcome
the inertia of missing sessions, but there’s no denying that the first
session after any interruption is an unsatisfying one, at least for me as
the referee. This past weekend’s session was a good example of that.
Although the characters continued to press on into the catacombs
associated with the temple of the Iron God, not much of significance
happened. I don’t just mean that in the usual sense of the session’s
lacking any revelatory moments — though it didn’t. Rather, nothing
really clicked. There were some combats, much exploration, a few bits of
treasure found, and even some addition clues about the nature of the
Iron God, but none of it gelled for me. I felt like I was going through the
motions rather than actually playing the game.
That’s what I mean about losing one’s rhythm. I don’t expect every
session to be a coherent, dramatically-satisfying roller coaster ride of
non-stop fun. Such an expectation is, I think, at the root of why the Old
Ways aren’t well supported in contemporary games. It’s certainly not
something I need for an individual session to be enjoyable, particularly
in a player-driven megadungeon campaign, which, by its nature, will be
uneven in its feel from week to week. Since I derive my fun not so much
from seeing my plans well executed — I have no plans — I don’t mind
when a session consists mostly of the characters wandering around in
the dark, stumbling across this or that, as they delve deeper into the
dungeon. For me, that’s the whole point of the game.
But what happened this last weekend was what always happens when my
friends and I don’t get together regularly: we chatted with one another
about the usual topics before the game and we continued to do so during
the game. There were many digressions, asides, and breaks in play as we
simply socialized. Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this. I play
RPGs in order to socialize with my friends, after all, and I enjoy their
company even when we’re not gaming. However, satisfying gaming, in
my experience, demands a certain degree of focus that’s hard to summon
up when I haven’t seen my friends in a few weeks. I’d much rather just
talk with them, even about trivialities, than sit around the dining room
table and roleplay.
Interruptions thus guarantee that the first session after the interruption
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 27 January 2010

ends will likely see not a lot of gaming. That’s what happened this
weekend. I’m not terribly upset about it, but, by the same token, I do like
to have as many satisfying game sessions as I can and this last one
simply wasn’t satisfying for me (or, I think, my players). With luck, next
weekend will see us get our groove back.