Discover Top Posts Tagged with #lawrence schick

''Advanced Dungeons and Dragons - Realm of Horror'' by Gary Gygax and Lawrence Schick, 1987

#advanced dungeons & dragons #adnd #dungeons and dragons #dnd art #gary gygax #lawrence schick #snakes #fantasy art #fantasy illustration

Dodging spikes flung from a manticore's tail (Jeff Dee cover for AD&D module S2: White Plume Mountain, by Lawrence Schick, TSR, 1980-81 edition)

#D&D #Dungeons & Dragons #Jeff Dee #White Plume Mountain #manticore #dungeon #adventuring party #shield spell #dnd #AD&D #Lawrence Schick #Dungeons and Dragons #TSR #1980s

This is Heroic Worlds (1991), by Lawrence Schick (of White Plume Mountain fame).

There are a bunch of books from the ‘80s and ‘90s that attempt to catalog and review RPGs and they kind of boggle my mind (the same is true for the similar genre of print paperback tip guides for videogame). Even having lived in the pre-internet era, I don’t understand the rationale for these books from a publishing perspective. Which is not to say I don’t adore Heroic Worlds. I do! It just seems…improbable.

The book essentially amounts to an index of every RPG product produced from 1974 to 1990. It feels a tiny bit like an Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (another publication I’ve always been baffled by), except without the prices (though there is a small section on collecting — the advice still rings true today, primarily: be patient!). The listings are interrupted periodically with short essays by a rogues gallery of RPG designers: Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, Greg Stafford, Steve Jackson, Jennell Jaquays, Michael Stackpole, Ken St. Andre, Tom Moldvay, Ken Rolston, Sandy Petersen, Erick Wujcik, B. Dennis Sustare, N. Robin Crossby and Greg Gordon. That is a pretty all-star cast of characters talking about tabletop game design!

The main attraction for me, though, is Schick’s commentary. Nearly all of the listings are accompanied by very brief appraisals; they give Robert Christgau’s album reviews a run for their terseness. Schick has a dry wit that creeps into the capsule reviews that soon becomes addictive. And there is just something wonderful about having a period of time captured so exhaustively in a single volume. I don’t think EVERYTHING ever published through 1990 is in the index, but Schick sure makes the book feel like it does. I refer to it constantly for my Instagram posts, it was a constant companion when writing my own book and honestly, it deserves a lot of blame for the size and scope of my collection. Damn you, Schick!

(Repost from April 30, 2020; revised)

#rpg #d&d #dungeons & dragons #tabletop rpg #roleplaying game #ttrpg #Lawrence Schick #Heroic Worlds

129. Lawrence Schick - A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords (1981)

In one of those moments of serendipity or kismet or what have you, I happen to get to this at exactly the same time as I am reading the 2015 Out of the Abyss 5E Adventure. I had no idea how connected these two were but they are indeed. In both cases your party wakes up in an underground prison and has to escape to the surface while bereft of equipment. Also Myconids are a big thing in both adventures, in fact our fungal friends first show up in this adventure, complete with all the strange spores they use to communicate or induce hallucinations and so on.

This is the culmination of the A series of modules (even if we would still have to wait a couple of months for A2 to come out) and was originally the final module at Gen Con XIII, as such it's a pretty awesome final set. If the previous A1 and A3 were pretty light on story and wonder, being not much more than a hack and slash, A4 seems like a lot of fun, from strange creatures to the challenge of finishing the dungeon with little equipment, the excitement of periodical earthquakes and the culmination in a volcanic eruption while the PCs try to escape the island, add up to a truly fun adventure.