#baxa

[ferdinand-kovacic]

Resting Rust | Lime Kiln Baxa

[vintagerpg]

Dragon 186 (October, 1992). Cover by Tom Baxa. Baxa also has the weird flatness thing baked into his style, but he also has unnerving control of light so that kind of makes up for it. The interplay between those two elements, I think, can be unsettling to the eye. I didn’t really appreciate it in the ‘90s, but I love it now.

[vintagerpg]

I love Hollow World. Deep irony here, because I kind of hate how versions of real world cultures crept into Forgotten Realms, and here I am being all “The Known World, which is a collection of fantasified real world cultures is the best” but taste is weird like that.

Hollow World spins out of the Gazetteers, a popular series of sourcebooks that, practically country by country, detailed pretty much the known entirety of the Known World. Having run out of stuff to cover on the outside, Bruce Heard and Aaron Allston decided that the Known World was hollow and started in on the inside. To my knowledge, this is the first time in RPGs that a hollow planet is investigated, which seems strange considering how large the concept looms in 19th and early 20th century fantasy and science fiction.

There’s all sorts of awesome, pulpy stuff down there (including an interior sun — this ain’t no Underdark). The inside is populated by surface cultures that were on the verge of extinction. Rather than let that happen, the Immortals brought them inside, so you you have fantasy Aztecs and fantasy Egyptians and fantasy Greeks alongside stuff like talking dinosaur gods and pirates and more (and, in a couple years, Alphatians too, after the events of the Wrath of Immortals box, which I covered back in January).

The thing is jam packed, too. Maps of course, a 128-page book for the DM, 64-page book for the players and a 32-pager of adventures. The packaging is half the fun, I love how the covers of all the Hollow World books have the big hollow globe. Something about the lady evokes the idea of Vril energy and all that nonsense. Baxa does a lot of the interior art.

Also, did I mention: TALKING T-REX GOD?

[vintagerpg]

First off, special note as to how much I like Fred Fields’ cover here. Nice Baxa stuff inside, too, and some real nice maps and architectural drawings!

This is Nightstorm (1991), the final part of the trilogy of Hollow World adventures. There was one other, and a couple Gazeteer-style sourcebooks (we’ll look at one of those tomorrow) and that’s basically it for Hollow World, which is a bummer!

Anyway, this installment brings us to Shahjapur, which is a stand-in for the Moghul empire. It follows the previous installments in being a sandbox punctuated by events. If this was a run of the mill scenario from the early 90s, it would culminate with a rigid railroad of events in which the players watch as someone else fights the final battle. Not so here! At the end of this epic, the PCs find themselves juiced to semi-Immortal levels, while their antagonist Thanatos suffers a bit of a drain. The result is that they’re on pretty even footing and get to duke it out directly. I can’t tell you how satisfying this is, even just on the level of reading it. I can’t think of another 90s-era D&D adventure that lets you punch the main villain in the face so thoroughly. It’s thrilling!

[vintagerpg]

Nightwail is the first of a trilogy of adventures that bring players into the hollow world then introduces them, in turn, to three of the major cultures within. This first one involves the Azcan Empire, a stand-in for our Aztecs.

The first segment is pretty typical — some royalty is missing, investigate the crime, explore a dungeon and then, whoops, fall into the world inside the world. I really the love swerve of this, and how all of a sudden the players have to deal with pyramids and jungles and dinosaurs. Once there, they become embroiled, unwittingly, in the plots of the Immortals.

What that plot is…OK, so, I hesitate to say this trilogy of modules is great in a conventional sense. There are lots of great pulpy moments (They wind up on the sun! In the first part!), and I doubt any player’d be disappointed in the end. But the underlying plot is ridiculous. In the best possible way! I find it delightful. But it basically establishes a system of D&D rules justifications for how the Known World and the Hollow World exist, then threads the plot around unravelling those spells and such. It’s all very meta and the villain, the Immortal Thanatos, is essentially a very clever rules lawyer trying to unmake creation? Like, major plot points hang on rule technicalities. Does this matter for the players? Maybe not, most folks probably run the thing so this doesn’t shine through, but I think this sort of thing is fantastic, a mystery based not on human impulses and desires, but on the interaction of obscure D&D rules. Planescape does the same sort of thing, a little more broadly, so of course I love this.

[ferdinand-kovacic]

Lime Kiln BAXA I | Mannersdorf

[ferdinand-kovacic]

Lime Kiln BAXA II | Mannersdorf

[vintagerpg]

This is Dragon Magazine 162, from October of 1990. The cover painting, by Michael Weaver, is called “Lost Soul,” which takes on a dual meaning since I am otherwise unfamiliar with Weaver’s work. I like the idea of this knight just staying in that one place, unmoving, night after night.

It being the October issue means, naturally, that it is Halloween themed, with a number of articles on the undead and Ravenloft (will always take a little more Stephen Fabian). It’s a perfectly OK issue, content-wise; nothing really screams for my attention. Art wise, though, holy crap, look at that Baxa painting. I think that is my new all time favorite Baxa. So lurid! And that control over light!