The Heroic Legendarium

Most of the 11 readers of this blog are probably familiar with the "AD&D Companion," the book of uncollected AD&D material by Gary Gygax (mostly from Dragon magazine) + original material I wrote based on or inspired by Gary's unrealized ideas and post-TSR games, that I compiled a few years ago and distributed as a pdf. I put a lot of work into that document and was pretty proud of it, but due to the nature of its contents was always leery of distributing it too widely lest I invite a Cease & Desist Letter from Wizards of the Coast or the Gygax Estate, or both.

Those same 11 readers may also remember that there was some D&D rules content on this blog (some new races, spells, monsters, magic items, etc.) that is no longer here. The two are related.

A couple months ago I began revising the Companion to remove all of the content that was directly copied from a prior source - in some cases adapting it, in other cases leaving it on the cutting room floor - as well as editing the whole thing to become OGL-compatible via OSRIC, which consisted mostly of changing references from "DM" to "GM" and not referring to AD&D or any of its rulebooks by name, but also of substituting out a few other "protected IP" terms - such as names of particular off-limits monsters, planes, locations, and characters. [A key point worth mentioning here is that in those cases where the OSRIC rules differ from AD&D - either through that work's editors' legal caution or personal preferences - I have not adapted my work to their standards and in particular have not adapted any of the alternate/substitute versions of AD&D classes found in Dangerous Dungeons (though I have pulled some names of monsters and planes from there).] Doing all of that left about 2/3 of the material from the Companion - those parts I wrote or adapted myself - all safely OGL compliant. From there I started plugging in new material I'd written since the Companion was released, as well as revising and updating the contents to reflect a couple years of additional playtesting and feedback. Some of this material has previously been posted here, but much of it is new.

That effort is still ongoing (a lot of new material exists only in rough-draft or outline form and still needs to be expanded and polished) but I'm making good progress and it seems likely at this point that within a couple of months I will have a document at least the size of the original Companion (if not larger) that consists entirely of original content - some of it adapted from other games, the rest of it original to me, but inspired by the spirit and flavor of Gary Gygax's AD&D. I'm calling this new version The Heroic Legendarium (because I obviously can't use its old name) and I think it's going to be very useful to anyone who plays AD&D or OSRIC in the manner of the original Gary Gygax-penned rules and adventures - that it really will feel like something TSR might have put out had Gary remained in control and the company not shifted directions creatively, a way for those of us who still hold onto and prefer that original creative vision to continue in that direction rather than remaining frozen in amber.

A few items from the old version are gone (Roger Moore's very long and boring article from Dragon magazine about the Astral Plane has been deleted and adapted into 2-3 paragraphs of useful info, the monsters and magic items collected from TSR's 1984-85 modules are no longer included, and neither is the Hunter class) but I feel the new material that's been added in their place all still captures the same spirit more than makes up the difference. I'm also declaring everything in the book to be "OSRIC Reference Content," so that any other OSRIC-licensed product may use and refer back to it: if someone writing an OSRIC adventure wants to use one of the classes, races, monsters, magic items, or anything else from this book they will be able to. I'm probably kidding myself about the likelihood of anyone actually doing so, but it seems kind of cool that they'll at least have the option to.

The downside (for you, not for me) is that now that I will no longer under the cloud of potential C&Ds, I'm no longer going to give it away for free - it will go up on one or more web-stores (as pdf and/or POD) and I too may get to live the dream of earning dozens of dollars as an rpg publisher. I don't have an estimated release date yet because I'm still working on the text (and haven't even begun to tackle the subsequent challenges of transforming that text into a credible publishable product) but I've made sufficient progress, and am sufficiently excited, that I wanted to share this update with all 11 of you, to let you know what I've been up to during the last few months and what's to come in the future. I hope you'll stay tuned!

[C-64] The Realm of Impossibility

Around the same time I got into D&D (1984) our family bought a Commodore 64, an upgrade from the Atari 2600 we'd had for a couple-three years prior. While some kids presumably used their C-64s to learn how to write code and set themselves off on a life as techies, I just used it to play games. Over the years we owned this computer I played lots of D&D-like games, including Temple of Apshai and Wizard's Crown and and a bunch of others whose names I've forgotten (but not any of the Zork series - I needed visual stimulation!), culminating in the actual D&D-branded Pool of Radiance, but my favorite game by far was always the first and simplest - Realm of Impossibility, by Electronic Arts (the same company that later took over the world with sports games).

This game was clearly D&D-inspired, but I don't think I actually recognized the connection at the time because my exposure to fantasy was so narrow that I think I just assumed all of it was "standard fantasy stuff." The premise was very simple - either one or two players ventured into 13 different maze-like "dungeons" with names like Tarterus, Gehenna, the Ethereal Plane, and The Abyss (see?) seeking to gather treasure and get back out without being killed by monsters - zombies, spiders, snakes, and blob-things. You couldn't attack them, you could only run, drop crosses to temporarily block them (the crosses evaporated after a few seconds), or gather scrolls that had a few different effects - freezing all the monsters in place or confusing the monsters or making you impervious to their attacks for a few seconds. The main gimmick and most memorable feature of the game was that the levels were all drawn in such a way that they looked 3-D - the walls were at angles, and you'd occasionally have to go up or down "ladders" or cross over "ledges" to get from one section to another. It was all fake (they were just angled 2-D walls) but looked really cool to my 9-year-old eyes and fired my imagination and made the world feel much bigger than what was shown on the screens.

It's a really simple game, but I played it for countless hours - in part, I'm sure, because I wasn't very good at it so I was constantly dying and having to start over.

Even though I don't think I consciously make the connection between this game and D&D I'm sure it subconsciously influenced my approach to the game nonetheless, both my attraction towards complex, maze-like and three-dimensional dungeons, and my preference for running away from and/or tricking monsters instead of hack & slash melee. Thinking about it now, it might be fun to convert this game's monster-blocking crosses into a D&D magic item. Something, perhaps, like this:

Boccob's Blocking Bases: These items are discs of green soapstone, each about 4" in diameter, engraved with the symbol of Boccob (an eye within a pentagram) on one side and the symbol of Zagyg (two parallel zigzagging lines) on the other. They are always found as a set of six, inside a small sack or pouch. They radiate strong Abjuration and faint Alteration magic if detected.

When one of these discs is placed flat with the Boccob side up, it creates a 5' radius spherical force field that is a completely impassible barrier to all enchanted creatures (cf. protection from evil), all summoned animals or monsters, and all undead creatures (due to the latter's connection with the Negative Material Plane). Each disc will function for 3-18 rounds after being placed, and will then disappear. So long as their possessor has retained at least one disc from the set the others will reappear in the storage device where they are kept 1-3 rounds after disappearing, and may then be re-used. However, if all of the discs have been placed then they do not reappear to that character (presumably they are sent off into the multiverse by Boccob to be discovered by a new user). Anyone not affected by the discs may move them, or may attempt to destroy them, in which case they are AC -2, have 25% magic resistance, and can take 25 points of damage apiece before shattering.

If a beverage container such as a mug or flagon is placed atop one of these discs while the Zagyg side is facing up it will not spill, and its contents will retain their temperature (hot or cold) for up to four hours. Any identification-type magic used upon these items will always reveal the Zagyg-side's functions first.

XP Value: 2,000

GP Value: 15,000 

I never hear anything about this game, and even a Google search didn't turn up much about it. I don't think any of my friends had it but they all loved playing it at my house. That's a little sad to me, because it really was a lot of fun and was a big part of my childhood.

I found a YouTube video of somebody playing (not very well) through the first two levels, which brought back a flood of vivid memories. In particular, I suspect I'm now going to have the theme-song stuck in my head for the next several weeks...