12 February 2010

Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net

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It’s Interesting Yag-Kosha and Dwimmermount

FEB 11, 2010 11:18P.M. FEB 11, 2010 09:14A.M.

For some reason, I can always remember that, in AD&D, unarmored

characters have an AC of 10, as opposed to 9 in OD&D, but I can never
remember that leather armor, which is AC 7 in OD&D, is AC 8 in AD&D.
In fact, I’m pretty sure that, back when I played AD&D regularly, I
typically treated leather armor as AC 7, even though it wasn’t.

I wonder why that is.

ROGUE FEED

Virgil Finlay is Awesome

FEB 11, 2010 04:36P.M.

“I am very old, oh man of the waste countries; long and long

ago I came to this planet with others of my world, from the
green planet Yag, which circles for ever in the outer fringes of
this universe ... We saw men grow from the ape and build the
shining cities of Valusia, Kamelia, Commoria, and their
sisters. We saw them reel before the thrusts of the heathen
Atlanteans and Picts and Lemurians. We saw the oceans rise
and engulf Atlantis and Lemuria, and the isles of the Picts,
and the shining cities of civilization ... All this we saw ...”

After reading the recounting of the last session of my Dwimmermount

campaign, a perspicacious reader wondered if the wounded space
traveler Xaranes, worshiped as the Iron God while he convalesced in an
otherworldly pocket dimension, was inspired by Robert E. Howard’s
character of Yag-Kosha from the 1933 story “The Tower of the Elephant.”
I am not ashamed to admit that the answer is a resounding yes.

“The Tower of the Elephant” is one of my favorite Conan tales, precisely

because it defies so many expectations about both the character of Conan
and the Hyborian Age. Before Terry Brooks proved that aping Tolkien
was the secret to mainstream success, fantasy literature had no
compunction about freely adding “science fiction” concepts to “fantasy”
stories. Indeed, such a distinction didn’t even exist, as evidenced by the
fact that, for example, Fritz Leiber’s “Ill Met in Lankhmar” won both the
1970 Nebula Award for best novella and the 1971 Hugo Award for the
same, competing against other stories that would today be considered
“science fiction” without qualification. This sort of elision between what

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 12 February 2010

are now considered two distinct genres is something that was very much
in evidence in the early days of the hobby, if you consider Dave Arneson’s
Blackmoor, Dave Hargrave’s Arduin, Barker’s Tékumel, and Bledsaw and
Owen’s Wilderlands, among many others.
It was to these settings that I looked for inspiration when I started
thinking about Dwimmermount. I wanted a setting where a space
traveler mistakenly worshiped as a god would seem perfectly natural and
so that’s what I created. From the beginning, I made “extraterrestrial”
contact a fact, with the Red Elves — the Eld — being ancient conquerors
from another world. With that established, it’s no great leap to then
imagine other alien beings traversing the ether in like fashion. I was
reminded too of Smith’s Zothique, which he described in February 1931
as being
• A link to your blog, wandering monsters, random events, adventure
background or introduction, and descriptions of tricks or traps are
all optional.
• One entry per participant. Participants may revise/replace
their entries up until the end of contest, with the last revision
counting as their official entry.
• Submission must be mailed in PDF, Open Office, or Microsoft
Word format to Alex Schröder at kensanata@gmail.com (feel free
to publish and links this email address without mangling it).
• Link for the contest main page including the list of prizes:
http://campaignwiki.org/wiki/DungeonMaps/One_Page_Dungeon_Contest_

more subject to incursions of “outsideness” than any former

terrene realm; and more liable to the visitations of beings
from galaxies not yet visible; also, to shifting admixtures and
interchanges with other dimensions or planes of entity.

Smith’s description could easily be used for Dwimmermount as I

conceive it and as the setting is slowly beginning to reveal itself to the
players. As I’ve noted before, Dungeons & Dragons is primarily a game of
exploration, which is why it’s essential that there always be new places to
explore. I wanted to be sure I never ran out of unique realms to visit and
so I unhesitatingly penciled in a vast campaign universe, of which
Dwimmermount itself is a focal point and lightning rod, for reasons the
characters have only just now begun to uncover.

So don’t be surprised if future Dwimmermount sessions see the

characters journeying to other worlds, interacting with alien beings, or
plumbing the hidden depths of the wider universe. This is exactly what
I’d always intended to do with the game and it’s perfectly in keeping with
its — and D&D‘s — inspirations.

ROGUE FEED

One-Page Dungeon Contest

FEB 11, 2010 09:10A.M.

Alex Schröder is organizing the 2010 One-Page Dungeon Contest and

asked me to pass along the word to those who might not be aware of it.
Here are the details:

• Submission deadline is March 1, 0:00 GMT. You have all of

February to work on your submission.

• Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative

Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license with credit to the
contest participant.

• The submission must have a name, an author, a map, a key, a

link to the license, and no game stats.