Cult 1980's Fantasy Worth Watching (or Rewatching)

For some reason, fantasy movies feel especially good to revisit in winter, so in this video I decided to focus on the genre, specifically the 1980s.

You won’t find obvious picks like Krull, Excalibur, or Conan the Barbarian here, not because they don’t belong, but because you already know them well. Instead, this list makes room for slightly less popular titles.

Some proper classics here, including my boy, the pioneering Hawk The Slayer and his sleazy cousin Deathstalker, as well as Beastmaster and a wonderful Ray Harryhausen epic in the shape of Clash of The Titans (his Medusa is the definitive Medusa for me!).

Plenty of old school Dungeons & Dragons inspiration to be found in this lot as well.

Tell Me About Your Character

One of the most powerful influences in my formative gaming years - and one that still inspires me to this day - is the "dedication" sections found in old role-playing games, where the author records (usually in just a simple phrase) the fates or notable deeds of play-tester's characters.

Not only did this prove to me that the system had been thoroughly play-tested (something a lot of games, I fear, these days - especially from some of the 'bigger' companies - don't get) but also that the players were clearly putting some thought into their characters and helping craft a grand story, the bigger picture.

The list of characters above is from the 1979 Heroes game, a Dark Ages RPG that has long since left my collection - the only memento I retained from it being a photocopy of the dedications page.

But as great as the Heroes dedication was, the ones that have driven my role-playing ambitions the most were the dedications by Dave Hargrave in the first two volumes of his seminal Arduin Grimoire:

I know I've talked about the "Elric in Hell" scenario several times in recent days, but this is the kind of myth-making that is a cornerstone of my love of role-playing games, especially those with an 'old school' flavour, over any other form of gaming.

I don't want to know about your "feat-combos" or "power-ups" - I want to hear the stories you've had a hand in creating, the actual adventures your characters have undertaken... and I want to help my players create those moments and memories as well.

This, for me, is the essence of role-playing games and why they are the greatest hobby in the world.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Nick's Traveller Campaign

Until the formation of the Tuesday Knights in 2008, our longest running campaign was Nick's Traveller game, which began when we were still in school.

It followed the intergalactic adventures of Jamus Dirkson (a suave, big game hunter, Roger Moore-wannabe and ladies' man, played by Steve), and his stunted, ne'er-do-well comrade, Marcus DeChambre (a psychotic, trigger-happy, bargain basement-Wolverine, mercenary/scout, played by me).

As much as I enjoyed the gun-fu, hack'n'slash of Marcus at the time, in retrospect I realised I role-played the character very poorly and Nick was extremely tolerant of my juvenile violence obsession - no matter how much it must have screwed with his carefully plotted adventures.

Pete made guest appearances every now and again - but always playing different characters as was his M.O. during that period.

This campaign ran for years and years and only came to an end because 'real life' got in the way and meant regular gaming meets were exiled to the waste bin of history.

After Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller was the first game system of any substance that I played regularly, thanks to Nick. I would hazard a guess that, with substantial breaks, this particular campaign ran for about a decade.

As a side-project Nick also invented the Grav-Ball boardgame (kinda American football in zero-G), which in later years of school became a mainstay of the after-school games club, when we created a league. I'm not sure if we ever finished a season of that, though!

Years before Eden Studios suggested framing games of their Buffy The Vampire Slayer RPG as a television show, Nick was presenting us with Traveller adventures as on-going seasons of futuristic vid-casts.

Back in 2007, Nick kindly unearthed his log of our various adventures over the years, with annotations where appropriate.

Season 1

• 1. Loggerheads (an old Journal of The Travellers Aid Society adventure)
• 2. Rumpus on Ranther
• 3. Yo-ho-ho (river pirates in Apocalypse Now-style boats)
• 4. Wheel of Fortune (the first appearance of the Corsair Casino, a popular haunt, and Grav-Ball)
• 5. Hot Spot (archaeology in Vargr space...)
• 6. March or Die (... results in 'volunteering' for the Vargr Alien Legion)
• 7. Night-time on the Khanate (... from which I believe you ended up deserting!)

Season 2

• 1. The Mission (captured by Claw, the Ho Chi Minh of Vargrdom)
• 2. The Shooting Party (hob-nobbing with the local nobility)
• 3. We're Leaving on a Jet Plane (making their getaway...)
• 4. The Night After the Morning Before (... back to the casino)
• 5. Age Concern (a spot of big-game hunting)

Season 3

• 1. Unlucky for Some (fighting the Vargr invasion on an iceworld)
• 2. Dirkson's Dogfight Demise
• 3. Royal Dirk (in which Jamus becomes King of Andrex...)
• 4. King Kang: The TV Movie (a diplomatic mission to a mad Vargr ruler, which also involved rescuing the Marquessa, Jamus' recurring romantic partner [although he had to keep dodging the Marquess] from the harem)

The Mini-Series

• 1. Adventures in Baby-Sitting (a luxury liner - Pete was B'zarr, the head of security - escorting the Archduke's young niece and nephew home)
  
• 2. Day of the Knight (a hijack attempt - well, there had to be really)
• 3. Farewell to Arms, Hello New Order (the all-time quote of the game from Marcus de Chambre: 'I grab a beermat and rush into the toilet..' Dirkson is knighted on Deneb, Marcus deChambre gets proper bionic arms, aahhhh!)
• 4. Dirkson's Dirk (into the desert; velociraptors are mentioned)
• 5. Bungle in the Jungle (possibly some big game hunting to finish off?)
  

What I always loved about Traveller - besides the character generation system where you could kill off your creation before he'd even got to adventure - was the simplicity of the whole system, something sadly lacking in many of the modern inspired systems.

You had a handful of skills, rolled 2d6 for task resolution and your physical attributes were also your "hit points"... it really couldn't have been any easier.

Meet Dunk and Egg - Your New Favourite Westerosi

Elric In Hell!

My beloved original Arduin Grimoire trilogy

I mentioned the foundational roleplaying text (for me) the Arduin Grimoire the other day, but I'm pretty certain it's not as famous (infamous?) these days as it was when I was growing up as a young gamer.

When I first encountered Dungeons & Dragons, back in the late 70s, I had little to no idea about the concept of worldbuilding.

It wasn't until I acquired the three little tan books that make up David Hargrave's original Arduin Grimoire trilogy (there are now nine volumes in total, but none as inspirational as the first three) that it even dawned on me that 'other people' were making up their own worlds to campaign in.

The first thing that struck me, and that I still love today, was the sense that the history of Arduin had been a co-operative development between the gamesmaster and his players.

This was crystallised in the dedication pages of the first two volumes where Dave lists the names of the some of the player characters and their fates.

In the first volume, Dave's own character is listed simply as "Elric The Hell-Lost", but this is expanded upon in volume two, Welcome To Skull Tower:

"The Baron In Exile, Lord of the House Of The Tower of the Dragon, wishes to thank formally the brave and steadfast people who gave their years and their lives to return him and his from the very clutches of the Lord Of The Undead.

"These true friends crossed three hells and seven and a half long, long years to fight their way to our succour. Our House is ever in the debt of the House Of The Rising Sun, the House of Ibathene, the House of Greylorn the Patriach, and to all those heroes who joined in that undertaking.

"You who slew the Great Lord of the Undead himself know who you are, and you know that our House will give its all in your need, if ever that time should come. We who were hell lost and soul caged SALUTE YOU, our comrades and friends.

"David A Hargrave

"a.k.a. Elric,

"Baron and Lord of

"The House of the Dragon Tower".

However, the most detailed explanation of these events came in issue two of the superb Different Worlds magazine,  in which Dave Hargarve recounted a potted history of his campaign:

"Elric, Duke and Lord of the Dragon Tower, spent seven years in hell, a captive of Cimmeries, Lord of the Undead. The efforts to free him cost the souls of over 40 other characters and was directly linked to the causes of the Great Insurrection. But freed he was, to take up a blood feud with those he felt had left him there!"

It's no wonder that that imagery has stuck in my head for the better part of 30 years, and has constantly played a leading role in my "wish list" of unfulfilled role-playing moments.

Although the hefty Legendary Lands Of Arduin makes reference to Cimmeries as Lord of the Undead and Elric's House of the Dragon Tower, there is no mention in that 800-page tome of his time in the underworld that I can see (but I haven't read the book cover-to-cover!)

I'd love to find out more details of this "campaign-within-a-campaign", if there is anyone out there in the Interwebs with more detailed knowledge please get in touch.

Shiver Me Timbers! The Bluff Looks Brutal and Bloody!

In the late 19th Century Caribbean, a former female pirate must protect her family when her past catches up to her.

The Three Deaths Of Your Player-Character

Reading The Three Deaths Of Conan, from 1990's The Savage Sword Of Conan The Barbarian issue 176, my mind began to ponder the role-playing potential of the situation our Cimmerian hero found himself in.

Penned by Chuck Dixon and Gary Kwapisz, The Three Deaths sees Conan ensnared by a sorcerer who then taunts him with predictions of his ultimate fate, extrapolated from Tarot-like cards - the first three of which presage grizzly deaths (or, in one case, a 'living death').

In the comic, each of these possible futures is played out as a story-within-the-story, so could you do this with a player-character in your game?

In a sense I see this as a variation on my "How I Met Your Mother" thought-experiment, but with the position of narrator shifting from one of the players to a powerful NPC (in this case, a mighty sorcerer).

This set-up would also, I guess, work better in a one-on-one situation with the player running a high-level character he really has a vested interest in.

The DM - as the mage - would draw a number of 'cards' and then play out, with the PC, a mini-scenario that is a possible 'future' for the character. Clearly it would have to be a particularly gruelling scenario, although not unbelievably biased, that the character would have only a slim chance of surviving.

Would you - as DM - have pre-designed these scenarios or would you feel brave enough to really draw cards from a pack and wing a scenario, based on your knowledge of the character and player?

Obviously, none of the damage the character sustains during this "vision" will be "real" - but what rewards would the character gain? Possibly experience points - for having 'lived through' the moment - but also some circumstantial bonus to future die rolls should he ever find himself in a situation that mirrors the scenario that the mage claimed was his possible future.

Perhaps this is a bit too "new school" for us "old school" grognards, but I could see this being an interesting diversion during an established campaign when not all the players can make it one evening.

In the comic, the sorcerer drew a fourth card, which he never got to see, that showed Conan wearing a crown and sitting on a throne...

Are You My Mummy?

Writer/director Lee Cronin promises us a mummy film unlike anything we've seen before. Is that a good thing? Let's wait and see...

Lights! Camera! Die Roll! Set-Piece Ideas For Gaming

By Elizabeth Thompson - Royal Collection , Public Domain, Link

Great memories - that is "magic moments" in roleplaying games - often come from the unplanned and unexpected, but that's not to say some gentle nudging and downright scheming from the Gamesmaster is inappropriate.

Browsing the deep back catalogue of Craig Oxbrow's excellent inspirational resource The Watch House (if you're into sci-fi and/or Doctor Who gaming then you need to read his Door In Time blog as well) I came across an article he'd written on Six Staples Of SF/F Series, by way of Den Of Geek.

These standards are:

• The Bodyswap
• The Time Loop
• Ascension To A Higher Plane Of Existence
• Alternate Dimensions
• The Doppelganger/Double/Duplicate
• The Dream Episode

And all are immediately applicable to the anime-inspired fantasy campaign I'm kicking around at the moment while the Tuesday Knights get all pulpy in Pete's new Outgunned Adventures game (season two of his epic weird science campaign).

Tie these "standards" into my own "wish list" of cool moments and there's plenty of meat for potentially memorable adventures, if I'm GM enough to script plots that can do these tropes justice.

I guess, in part, all this comes from my passion for visual media (films, TV, and comics in particular) and thus my desire to emulate moments I see in these at our table.

The main bullet points from my "wish list" were:

• Have the players running the defence of a "hopeless situation", ridiculously outnumbered by an implacable foe, as seen at Rorke's Drift in Zulu, Dros Delnoch in David Gemmel's Legend, and Helm's Deep in The Lord of The Rings. To name but three.
  
  
• A "Horatio Holds The Bridge" moment - I'd just discovered D&D when this poem was read to us at school and the two just clicked.
  
  
• An interesting time travel story (cf. Doctor Who et al)
  
  
• The party encounters cosmic entities that threaten the world and only the heroes can stop them - every Marvel/DC comic book that features this sort of stuff inspires me to greater madness, combined with a lifelong love of the works of HP Lovecraft.
  
  
• Rescuing a trapped companion from incarceration in the pit of Hell - this came from reading the dedication pages in my original (and treasured) Arduin Grimoire Trilogy, by Dave Hargrave, where he mentions an epic campaign to free his own character.
  
  
• Having the players caught up in a war between angels and demons.

Originally my list was drawn up for a legacy D&D campaign, but the ideas are so broad, universal, and potentially over-the-top that they work just as well for anime fantasy game in the same vein as Delicious in Dungeon, Frieren, and Record of Lodoss War.