As a creative, gaming-obsessed, pre-teen I sat in my corduroy shorts in prep school assembly seeking inspiration from the hymns we sang... just what was the to hit/damage bonus of a "bow of burning gold", what effect did "arrows of desire" have and just how fast was a "chariot of fire"?
In 1977, as well as discovering Star Wars, I had been introduced to Dungeons & Dragons and the whole world was suddenly "research material".
Everywhere I looked there were potential magic items or monsters for characters to contend with in dungeons drawn from every imaginable source.
My prep school co-dungeoneer, Tom, even ran me through a D&D adventure based on the first season of The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy (a radio serial he had introduced me to and also had a major impact on my life).
Television and books (particularly the sword and sorcery tales of Fritz Leiber, and a little later Harry Turtledove's first Elabon stories - Wereblood and Werenight) shaped many adventures and characters in those early years; then later comic books became a major source of inspiration as our games moved away from straight fantasy into the four-colour world of superheroes.
From these I still have three comic book standards that I would one day love to weave into a single, long-running roleplaying game: time travel, alternate dimensions, and cosmic entities.
Yet somehow, even in the games I've run for the Tuesday Knights in the past couple of decades, I have yet to squeeze all three of them in successfully; feeling that a campaign needs to progress at a steady pace for a considerable length of time before such contrasting, incredible elements can have their full, desired impact when introduced.
That said, all three feature heavily in The Sailor on The Seas of Fate, the second of Michael Moorcock's Elric books.
Even dreamier, more surreal and more psychedelic than Elric of Melniboné, this 190-page delight had me joining Elric on a ship sailing a strange ocean that linked not just islands, but worlds and planes of existence in time and space.
In a series of three adventures, Elric discovers he is but one face of The Eternal Champion, travelling to the Earth's future with three other incarnations of the Champion (Hawkmoon, Corum and Erekose) to battle two universe-threatening alien magicians; then he finds himself being chased by a Melnibonean sorcerer from history and swept up in a mythical love story; before finally taking a Heart of Darkness-style river journey to the legendary, lost birth place of his people.
These stories continue to leave me breathless, blown away by the absorbing text, the clever imagery and mental stimuli they spark in my enfeebled brain.
It also made me appreciate, perhaps, why I have never successfully tackled such cosmic themes as I desire to in my roleplaying games - they are best left to the master storytellers!
My prep school co-dungeoneer, Tom, even ran me through a D&D adventure based on the first season of The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy (a radio serial he had introduced me to and also had a major impact on my life).
Television and books (particularly the sword and sorcery tales of Fritz Leiber, and a little later Harry Turtledove's first Elabon stories - Wereblood and Werenight) shaped many adventures and characters in those early years; then later comic books became a major source of inspiration as our games moved away from straight fantasy into the four-colour world of superheroes.
From these I still have three comic book standards that I would one day love to weave into a single, long-running roleplaying game: time travel, alternate dimensions, and cosmic entities.
Yet somehow, even in the games I've run for the Tuesday Knights in the past couple of decades, I have yet to squeeze all three of them in successfully; feeling that a campaign needs to progress at a steady pace for a considerable length of time before such contrasting, incredible elements can have their full, desired impact when introduced.
That said, all three feature heavily in The Sailor on The Seas of Fate, the second of Michael Moorcock's Elric books.
Even dreamier, more surreal and more psychedelic than Elric of Melniboné, this 190-page delight had me joining Elric on a ship sailing a strange ocean that linked not just islands, but worlds and planes of existence in time and space.
In a series of three adventures, Elric discovers he is but one face of The Eternal Champion, travelling to the Earth's future with three other incarnations of the Champion (Hawkmoon, Corum and Erekose) to battle two universe-threatening alien magicians; then he finds himself being chased by a Melnibonean sorcerer from history and swept up in a mythical love story; before finally taking a Heart of Darkness-style river journey to the legendary, lost birth place of his people.
These stories continue to leave me breathless, blown away by the absorbing text, the clever imagery and mental stimuli they spark in my enfeebled brain.
It also made me appreciate, perhaps, why I have never successfully tackled such cosmic themes as I desire to in my roleplaying games - they are best left to the master storytellers!
