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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 30, 2021 2:18:29 GMT -5
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Post by hengest on Mar 4, 2021 20:20:26 GMT -5
I hope it's okay to post here after the placeholder re: A&E 2, cover date July 1975.
The cover depicts monsters entering a "modern" party with music and so on, and someone making a remark that plays on "noisy parties" (with loud music) and "noisy parties" (groups of loud adventurers). This is interesting. One element of the noisy party is someone playing a guitar, so I think of the connection to the "filksong" activities in that era. But more important to me is the bare fact of the depiction of monsters and regular humans in "the same" world. I get it, it's a cartoon. But I think this would look pretty juvenile now. Even not so many years later, when the AD&D hardcovers came out, there was a cartoon in there where a fantasy character jokes about a game where you pretend to be modern people going to the post office (or something like this). That's similar to this cover image, but there's a big difference in that the A&E cover depicts "us" (regular people), while the later AD&D cartoon depicts "them." To me that suggests a decrease in comfort with the "juvenile" play part of the whole thing, as if "we" don't want to be depicted "believing in monsters" anymore. Same joke, different perspective. Now, of course this is based on two cartoons drawn by different people years apart, so I really shouldn't make too much of this.
In another section, there's a letter from Gary Gygax in which he thanks Lee Gold for the first issue and (among other things) warns them against going down the road that "Diplomacy" fandom did -- ""feuds, bickering, invective, etc."
In a column by Robert Hollander, we read "A good dungeon master is not in the business of handing out experience points via treasure."
Overall, my impression here is that there's a tremendous amount of learning going on, and these people can't even have been playing the game for very long. But it reminds me of what you hear about those early days when jobs were different and the culture was different -- people would play all weekend, for 8 or more hours a day, no phones, no internet, no nothing. Hard to imagine now for those of us who weren't there. They moved quickly and learned quickly, I guess.
What seems especially strange to me now is the "everything and the kitchen sink" aspect of it. I suppose this stuff makes it entertaining enough for inclusion in the zine, but...did people actually play this way? Dungeon rooms full of werewolves, then tons of walking jellyfish in the next room? Those are not actually examples from this issue, but that's how it feels. Just seems like a completely different approach to the game. Not wargaming, not "role-playing," not even the kind of highbrow megadungeon material that you see these days. Something else. Really cool, but pretty alien to me.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Mar 4, 2021 20:55:28 GMT -5
I hope it's okay to post here after the placeholder re: A&E 2, cover date July 1975. ... One element of the noisy party is someone playing a guitar, so I think of the connection to the "filksong" activities in that era. ... Lee Gold was and is heavily in to filksongs. See Xenofilkia and AN EGOCENTRIC AND CONVOLUTED HISTORY OF EARLY "FILK" AND FILKING by Lee Gold, Copyright March, 1997 and Cumulative Xenofilkia Index by Title through Xeno #195Overall, my impression here is that there's a tremendous amount of learning going on, and these people can't even have been playing the game for very long. But it reminds me of what you hear about those early days when jobs were different and the culture was different -- people would play all weekend, for 8 or more hours a day, no phones, no internet, no nothing. Hard to imagine now for those of us who weren't there. They moved quickly and learned quickly, I guess. I grew up with all that and in college the only phone was a payphone in the hallway. Calls were made very rarely and I have little, if any, memory of anyone on the phone. I doubt that we had any games that were shorter than 8 hours over those four years, 12 hours were not uncommon, 16 hours happened on occasion and 24 hours happened a couple of times. From Friday evening at 5 PM through 5 AM Sunday morning we have played all but 10 hours of that time many times, which is 26 hours total for the weekend. I really miss those 8 hour plus games. I will be 65 in about 6 weeks and I would still referee for 8 hours given the chance, I would even do 12 hours, but I doubt I would have the stamina to go longer than that now. What seems especially strange to me now is the "everything and the kitchen sink" aspect of it. I suppose this stuff makes it entertaining enough for inclusion in the zine, but...did people actually play this way? Dungeon rooms full of werewolves, then tons of walking jellyfish in the next room? Those are not actually examples from this issue, but that's how it feels. Just seems like a completely different approach to the game. Not wargaming, not "role-playing," not even the kind of highbrow megadungeon material that you see these days. Something else. Really cool, but pretty alien to me. Yes, "everything and the kitchen sink" is the way my group played. What I call Full Gonzo. That is what Dave Arneson and Dave Hargrave both played. |
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Post by hengest on Mar 4, 2021 21:02:24 GMT -5
Except for the fact that Lee Gold is into filksongs, every part of the post above is just overwhelmingly amazing to me. If only I had been born in another time.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Mar 4, 2021 22:03:06 GMT -5
Except for the fact that Lee Gold is into filksongs, every part of the post above is just overwhelmingly amazing to me. If only I had been born in another time. The other thing in this is that by the time I got to college, I had read most of the stuff Gygax lists in Appendix N and a ton of stuff that is not mentioned there in terms of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mythology (Greek, Roman, Celtic and Norse with some other stuff), thousands of fairy tales, folk tales, fables, legends, along with the The Iliad and The Odyssey, tons of poetry and short stories, tons of Classic Literature, the World Book Encyclopedia from cover to cover and whole slew of other things. Along with most of the movies that Arneson had watched and, of course, The Hobbit and The LotR Trilogy (both twice at that point). The main thing I lacked was the sand table war-gaming and the synergy of a group where multiple people also were or became referees. Oh, I had also read The Havard Classics by this time and they are now available free in pdf. |
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Post by hengest on Mar 4, 2021 22:24:16 GMT -5
See, The Perilous Dreamer, you had read more in the 70s than I have now. Another argument for the idea of a zine, even a one-off, that interviews people with similar background and experience. |
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