Somewhere Under a Lost and Lonely Hill…

 So some time back, I mentioned working on a writing project that was very cool, and which I couldn’t talk about. What I didn’t say at the time was that it was actually two related writing projects, whose juxtaposition made both even cooler. Here’s the first.

In the new Tomb of Horrors super-adventure, the excellent Ari Marmell (lead designer) crafted a story framework within which we both had a hell of a lot of fun thinking up new and exciting ways to send your D&D characters to an untimely end. You can read more about it here, and I’m sure people will be talking about it elsewhere, so I’m not going to.

Except to say this.

The super-adventure builds on the events of Gary Gygax’s original Tomb of Horrors, as well as the sequel Return to the Tomb of Horrors by the incomparable Bruce Cordell. In that mega-adventure, a necromancer’s enclave called Skull City has been built up around the fabled dungeons of the Tomb. In the new Tomb super-adventure, the original Tomb of Horrors dungeons have been mostly destroyed. Skull City is a ruin, fought over by factions allied with and against the demilich Acererak. One of those factions is a group called the Skullbreakers, which are described as follows:

The Skullbreakers

Much smaller in number and presence than either the Blackfire or Faithmarked factions, the Skullbreakers are not the descendants of those who settled Skull City. Rather, this loose band of warriors consists of heroes who heard that the Tomb of Horrors had been drained of power — and who intend to make sure it stays that way.

The Skullbreakers are named for the shattering of Acererak’s skull — the legendary (though ultimately false) means by which the demilich was said to have been endlessly destroyed. (The devious Acererak had long spread rumors that an Acererak construct guarding the Tomb’s final vault was the demilich himself.) The Skullbreakers control a well-defended portion of the residential ruins, from which they make strikes against the Faithmarked and Blackfire factions.

But what nobody knows except me (and, well, you now) is that the Skullbreakers are based on me and three good friends of mine — David, Kevin, and Mitchell — who were the three people I originally started playing Dungeons & Dragons with lo those many years ago.

(Heroic portrait by the excellent Kerem Beyit.)

From left to right, that’s Myshal (Mitchell); Daud Jatmor (David, from David the Giant Killer, his first PC); Njall (me, from Nigel, an old nickname; it was the 80s, leave me alone); and Kobhein (Kevin, continuing to demonstrate my incredible fantasy-writer ability to translate ordinary names into Epic-Speak).

Frankly, I think the likenesses are amazing, especially considering that Kerem wasn’t working off of any pictures of the actual people, but merely my art-order description of celebrities we each kind of resembled. (I’m seriously thinking about getting that skull tattoo.)

In a pivotal encounter in Chapter Three of the super-adventure, the PCs face off against the Skullbreakers — and hopefully parley with them, because we will kick their asses.

And if that wasn’t cool enough (at least I think it’s cool; your mileage may vary), here’s something else.

As mentioned, the original Tomb of Horrors is a wasted ruin in the new super-adventure, which I thought was a great twist by Ari on which to build a “sequel”, of sorts. However, the backstory of the super-adventure made me think it would be kind of cool to actually update the original Tomb to the 4th edition rules, making it a kind of “before” picture to the super-adventure’s “after”. I pitched the powers that be on doing just that for Dungeon, and they agreed — but wanted it done as a free adventure for the RPGA (a worldwide players’ group that TSR created and that WotC now runs). That free adventure was also out this month, and was just as much fun to work on as the super-adventure. Especially getting to break out the cover credit.

The one thing that I want to share from the RPGA update module is the afterward.

The short version: I really like my job.

(Archive post from the personal blog.)

Time Stands Still

One of the most memorable things about gaming isn’t the degree to which time flies. It’s the way in which time slows down.

Time flying is ordinary. Time flies while you’re gaming in the same sense in which you lose track of time when you’re watching a great movie, or when you get caught up in a book to such a degree that what seems like an hour’s reading turns out to be four. That’s ordinary. Everybody does that.

But when you’re gaming, there are points at which things slow down. A particular way in which the passage of moments, of thought, of all group and individual dynamics grind to a halt like some kind of remote event-horizon time-dilation effect. Things that should move forward cease to do so, and you get caught up in the isolated singularities of particular moments in a way that i don’t think is true for any other creative or entertaining pastime.

For me, that notion has always been a part of the game (both as player and DM). However, the most amazing thing about it from the perspective of trying to describe it is that it doesn’t happen on an individual basis. Rather, it’s in those moments when the group of players actually functions as a single unit (distinct from a group of characters doing the same). Whether it’s an everything-up-for-grabs final melee or a noncombat challenge that somehow manages to require a little bit of everyone’s skills to complete, there’s a sense of each moment stretching out to great lengths as everyone gets caught up in everyone else’s thinking and actions. I’ve always assumed it to be a kind of right-brain thing — cooperative strategy as a nonlinear creativity (examining the actions of everyone at the table at the same time) that works opposite to the more linear left-brain individual strategy (first I’ll do this, then I’ll do this, then I’ll do that...).

For me, it’s the difference between ‘hurry-up’ encounters (where everybody tunes out, makes small talk, et al while waiting for the player with initiative to check his sheet, look up a rule, or make his rolls) and those encounters where everyone hangs on the actions of every other player (no matter how mundane) because they see and feel the significance of those actions beyond the individual context. In that moment, I think that players actually go beyond the normal submersion-in-character and into a deeper submersion-in-party state of mind. They move past the individual and into the whole — the thing that gaming does in way no other pastime can.

(Archive post from the personal blog.)

What Dreams Are Made Of

It’s been long enough since I felt the impetus to get a blog going again that I had begun to idly wonder what it was going to take to finally inspire me.

I wish I hadn’t found out.

•

Across the RPG industry, scores of people are attempting to summon up words regarding what this day means to them. Most of them are going to make the point that if not for the work of Gary Gygax, they wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. I, too, can state the conspicuous — that if for not Gary Gygax’s vision, his passion for game play, and his belief in the value of this new thing called roleplaying games, my life would look very different today.

But for me, it’s not just a matter of saying “If it wasn’t for Gary Gygax, I don’t know where I’d be right now.” If it wasn’t for Gary Gygax, I don’t know who I’d be right now.

Throughout our lives, there are a number of key moments that define our state of mind and imagination. In my own life, I have the same number of linchpin turning points as anybody — points that mark my journey along the increasingly complex social and intellectual pathways that brought me to the point where I stand right here, right now. But though those points all carry the same amount of potency as we pass through them the first time, one realizes in looking back at it that very few of them are really all that irreplaceable. For the most part, their value lies in their transformative power, but most transformation is subtly self-directed in the end. We become what we seek to become, searching mostly for impetus, not innovation.

Like many geeks of my generation, Star Wars was a monumentally important moment in my life, but with the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that Star Wars was mostly about meeting a previously established need for vicarious wonder. If George Lucas had never made Star Wars, something else would have happened to take its place. Likewise, if I’d never read Harlan Ellison or Philip K. Dick, some other pair of authors would have shown me the upper limits of what speculative fiction can do because exploring those limits was already a predefined hunger in me.

But in all the world, there is nothing that ever could have or ever would have taken the place of what Dungeons & Dragons did for me. What it did to me. What it made me.

Like I’m guessing is true for pretty much everyone else sharing their thoughts on what this day means, Gary’s work changed my life.

As I suspect is secretly true for a smaller number of us, Gary’s work saved my life.

I’m one of those fortunate enough to have had the chance to follow professionally in the footsteps of Gary and the other giants who built this hobby, this game, this shared world of imagination. When I do so, every word I write, every assessment and adjustment I make as an editor is built on the singular memory of sitting in a darkened bedroom on a winter night in 1981, opening a thin paperback volume with a dragon in blue on the cover, and having my life changed.

Everything I do in this industry is built around the vain hope that somewhere, sometime, a 15-year-old kid will read something I’ve worked on and feel what I felt that night.

From the AD&D Players Handbook:

“Enjoy, for this game is what dreams are made of!”

See you in dreams, Gary.

(Archive post from the personal blog.)

The Old Lore

Hello! If you’re here looking for the actual start of the “Missives From Mooncastle” blog from Scott Fitzgerald Gray and Insane Angel Studios, this isn’t it. But you can find that here.

“Missives From Mooncastle” officially started up at the beginning of 2023 (when this post is being written, despite it being backdated to put it at the beginning of this blog). But for long years before that, Scott kept a now-gone-from-the-Internet personal blog that covered a wide range of creative and philosophical topics, including the RPGs that have been the focus of much of his personal and professional life.

All the posts between here and the actual start of “Missives From Mooncastle” are RPG-themed entries from the personal blog that felt like they might still be of interest. A few feature spicy language, so please watch out for that if it’s an issue for you. Enjoy them as you wish.