Campaign Updates: The Blue Room

This week, I only refereed my House of Worms campaign. That's because, as I've previously noted, the Dolmenwood campaign is on a temporary hiatus. Meanwhile, I was feeling a bit exhausted on the day I usually run Barrett's Raiders, so I took a bye. Normally, I try not to do this. I'm a firm believer in playing every week unless I have a good excuse not to do so. Building consistency is an important part of ensuring campaign longevity, after all. However, I just wasn't feeling up to it this week and decided I could do with a break. 

I was, however, very much up to refereeing House of Worms, which continues to barrel ever close to its conclusion. In the latest session, the characters decided that now was the time to reclaim Kirktá's golden disk, the one that could verify that he was indeed an heir to the Petal Throne. Having determined that it was located within Béy Sü's Temple of Belkhánu, Kirktá, Keléno, and Nebússa set out there to find a priest named Chekrásh, whom Kirktá remembered from his youth there and who, in a previous meeting, had intimated that he knew something more about his past.

Chekrásh received the trio with enthusiasm. After exchanging pleasantries, it quickly became clear that the old priest was waiting for Kirktá explain why he had come – the real reason, not some ruse. This was difficult for Kirktá, as he was cautious by nature, all the more so given the current situation in Tsolyánu. Eventually, though, he admitted that he had come for the golden disk and Chekrásh seemed pleased. He explained that the disk was in the possession of another priest named Míru and that, if Kirktá wanted it, he'd have to come with him to meet Míru.

The name Míru was quite familiar to all three characters. It was the name of a priest whom they knew back during their days in Linyaró. A priest of Belkhánu and a colleague of Keléno's first wife, Hmásu, he was also secretly a priest of the One Other. He'd been instrumental in helping them thwart efforts by the Temple of Ksárul to free their master from the Blue Room. His reappearance in Béy Sü as the keeper of the disk was thus a surprise – but also not. In some ways, it seemed almost inevitable that a priest of the One Other whom they knew well would become involved in their present struggles.

Míru didn't hesitate to offer Kirktá the disk, so that he might "take his skein into his own hands." He explained that the disk was "no mere token of clan or blood. It is a reminder of a pact, one older than Tsolyánu" itself. He added that Dhich'uné hoped not merely to subvert the original pact between the first Tlakotáni and the One Other but to unmake it. In doing so, he would throw not just Tsolyánu but all of Tékumel into chaos, which is why Kirktá and his friends have no choice but to stop him. Míru then pledged to aid them however he could.

When pressed for more details about the consequences of Dhich'uné's plans, Míru elaborated. 

“In the time before Time spiraled inward, before we lost the Sky-that-Burned, there was a great betrayal. Ksárul, the Ancient Lord of Secrets, He Who Confronts the Inner Being of Reality, looked beyond the Curtain and beheld the cold fires hung in endless darkness, shining without warmth and without mercy."

“The other gods, even those of Change, opposed him. They knew that to follow him beyond the Curtain would be to lose everything. The cold fires heralded their own extinction. There is no place for gods beyond the Curtain. Sorcery dies there. The Pattern crumbles. Why Ksárul would want this they could not conceive."

“So they sealed him up in the Blue Room. It is his cage, a place beyond Time, where the Doomed Prince lies dreaming of escape, not just for himself but for mankind. He dreams of the cold fires and the unmaking of Tékumel.”

“For untold millennia, his priests have whispered rites in silent vaults, peeling back the seals, seeking to open the Final Door. And always, the One Other has stood in his way.”

Míru then added that, knowingly or not, Kirktá and his comrades have aided the One Other in preventing Ksárul's escape and all that would follow from it. Dhich'uné's plan would upend this. He seeks to bend the One Other's covenant with the Tlakotáni to serve his own ends, but, in doing so, he risks awakening the Dreamer, rending the Curtain that protects Tékumel from the cold fires of the void. The original pact with the One Other must remain intact and unchanged. Just as the nine gods of Stability and Change turned to the One Other to seal Ksárul away in the Blue Room, so too did the Tlakotáni do so to ensure the strength of that seal.

Míru said that Kirktá had been prepared, though he did not remember it, to be something that has been lacking for many generations: a Tlakotáni priest of the One Other, who would oversee the conclusion of the Kólumjàlim as it was meant to be concluded. This had not been done in some time, because even the Tlakotáni had forgotten the true meaning of it. Now, with Dhich'uné foolishly trying to pervert it to his own ends, Kirktá was needed now more than ever. He could not enter the Choosing as a candidate; he must survive. Of course, that's exactly what Dhich'uné seems to want as well ...

Retrospective: Q Manual

After seeing that advertisement for the James Bond 007 RPG, I found myself thinking about it, something I hadn't done in quite some time. I've been a fan of the espionage genre since I was quite young, influenced at least in part by my affection for the early James Bond films. Consequently, when the roleplaying game was released in 1983, I was an early adopter and had a great deal of fun with it.

One of the things that really set James Bond 007 apart from its competition, like Top Secret. was its remarkably elegant and thematically consistent design. Much of that is probably owed to the efforts of its lead designer, Gerard Christopher Klug, who seems to have had a rare talent for mechanical innovation in service to genre emulation. I adored James Bond 007 for its action resolution and chase systems, as well as its emphasis on style as well as substance. It was a really tight, inspiring design.

Since I've already written a Retrospective post about the game itself, I thought a good way to return to discussing James Bond 007 would be through the Q Manual, published the same year as the core rules. Subtitled The Illustrated Guide to the World's Finest Armory (not a misspelling; the 007 RPG used American spellings throughout), the book conjured images of white-coated technicians, deadly attaché cases, and Roger Moore raising an eyebrow as Desmond Llewelyn stammers his way through the latest miracle of British engineering. That’s exactly what the Q Manual delivers: an in-universe catalog of gadgets, vehicles, and weapons straight from the MI6 labs, lovingly detailed and immaculately presented.

The book takes the form of a “field guide” issued to agents of the British Secret Service, complete with an introduction by Q himself and dossiers on the equipment available to operatives in the field. That this fiction is maintained throughout the book is no small achievement. One of the many things that sets James Bond 007 apart from other spy RPG is the importance given to tone and presentation. The Q Manual, written Greg Gorden, leans hard into this, turning what could have been a dry list of gear into a flavorful extension of the world of the game. 

One of the most striking things about the supplement is its production values. Victory Games, being a subsidiary of Avalon Hill, inherited that company's penchant for clean layouts and effective use of art and typography. The illustrations in The Q Manual are clear, reminiscent of technical drawings, which only enhances the feeling that one is paging through a genuine intelligence dossier rather than a gaming supplement. Even the typefaces and formatting choices reinforce the conceit, giving it a restrained, professional look that stands apart from the appearance of most other RPG books of that era.

Mechanically, the Q Manual provides complete game statistics for each item, compatible with the system presented in the basic game rulebook. Everything from the iconic Walther PPK to rocket-firing cigarettes is detailed with both practical and, at times, tongue-in-cheek commentary. In this way, the book acts as both a mechanical expansion and a setting book, grounding its fantastical gadgets in a consistent rules framework while reinforcing the tone and flavor of the Bond universe. It’s a great example of rules and presentation working hand in glove.

Of course, all of this is just another way the Q Manual reinforces what makes the James Bond 007 RPG so special: its commitment to genre fidelity. Like the best RPG supplements, it doesn’t merely tack on new rules or equipment. Instead, it deepens the player’s immersion in the world of the game, reminding him that this is a game about style, daring, and cool-headed efficiency in the face of over-the-top supervillainy. Every gadget and vehicle included serves not just a mechanical purpose, but an esthetic one, enabling players to act (and feel) like true agents of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Re-reading it now, more than forty years later, I was struck by the book’s clarity of purpose and sincerity. It does not wink at the audience nor lapse into self-parody, as even the later Bond films would sometimes do. Instead, it treats the world of Bond as one worthy of exploration and emulation, not as camp, but as aspirational fantasy. I think that's a key to why both this supplement and the entire James Bond 007 game line were favorites of mine. 

No supplement is perfect. Like the game itself, the Q Manual assumes a particular flavor of "espionage" – clean, glamorous, and British to its core. There is little room here for the messy realities of the Cold War or the moral ambiguities of Le Carré. But this is James Bond, not Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The Q Manual knows what it is and does it exceptionally well. Honestly, that's what I love about it, even now. It captures a particular fantasy of espionage and invites you to step into it, martini in hand and mission dossier at the ready. It's refreshing to revisit something so joyfully committed to the escapism it's offering.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "For NPCs Only: The Death Master"

Ah, that staple of Dragon from back in the day: the "NPC only" class. One of the oddities of the magazine was that, while there was a voracious demand for new character classes, as a house organ of TSR, it could never offer up a new class for use with D&D without a formal caveat, unless it came from the pen of Gary Gygax himself. Of course, this was done with a nod and a wink, as no referee I knew back in the day ever refrained from allowing his players to use "NPC only" classes if he felt they were well done and fit the spirit of his campaign. I know I never had any problems with it, though, to be fair, I was choosy and, in any event, most of the new classes presented in Dragon were so specialized as to have limited appeal.

Still, the presentation of Len Lakofka's death master class in issue #76 (August 1983) went above and beyond those of most other classes in terms of making it clear that it was intended only for NPCs. You can see the title of the article in which it appeared above. In addition to the "For NPCs Only" phrasing, there's the subtitle that calls the class a "monster" and notes that one shouldn't consider playing as a death master. Even more notably, the article itself begins with an "Introduction/Sermon" where Lakofka opines

The AD&D game should not have assassin player characters. In fact, no player character should be evil at all unless adverse magic affects him.

This is an interesting, though not unusual, point of view, especially as the '80s rolled on. It's also worth noting that assassins were eventually eliminated from AD&D in its second edition, a point of view even Gygax toyed with on occasion, though for different reasons. In any case, Lakofka continues in his introduction to explain that he feels evil is treated too casually in the game. One of his reasons for creating the death master class was to rectify this.

As a way of putting evil in its often without enough of a penalty proper place, here is presented an evil character that makes an assassin look like the boy next door. The death master is meant as a non-player character -- one the player characters and their party have to defeat. Please use the character that way only. If I ever run into a player character death master at a convention, I may turn evil myself. . .

Again, it's an interesting point of view, especially when viewed against the changing culture surrounding D&D at that time. Naturally, Lakofka's concerns had zero effect on me at the time, since there was for a brief time a PC death master in my old campaign – brief, because he was eventually slain by the other PCs, but I allowed the class nonetheless. The PC in question was a formerly good character turned to evil by possession of the Hand of Vecna and who became obsessed with eliminating his former companions in the belief that they would eventually destroy him. He was right, as it turned out, though, ironically, his destruction was more the result of his repeated attempts to slay the other PCs than their own desire to see his life ended. In any event, I didn't heed Lakofka's warnings and I'd be amazed if I were the only one.

The death master class itself is somewhat interesting. It's basically a necromancer, with many powers over the undead and a collection of new spells. Beginning at 4th level, the class also gains the ability to make a variety of "potions, salves, and pastes" that replicate some of his spells and class abilities. At the time, I found it an impressive addition, since it spelled out a bit more explicitly the crafting of magic items than was seen elsewhere. In retrospect, I'm not sure a new class was needed, when new spells alone could have probably sufficed, but that was the style at the time. Regardless, I'm not at all convinced that the death master did anything to advance the notion that evil should be Evil and never an option for player characters.

"Experience the Life of a Secret Agent ..."

Though I played a fair bit of Top Secret in my youth, I think my favorite espionage RPG was James Bond 007 from Victory Games. Even ignoring its connection to Ian Fleming's novels and the United Artists film series, James Bond 007 was in my opinion a great bit of game design, with elegant, emulative rules and terrific graphic design. I had a ton of fun with it during the brief time when it was in production (1983–1987). 

Initial Thoughts on Dragonbane

As I mentioned at the start of the month, my ongoing Dolmenwood campaign is on a short hiatus while one of the players is away traveling. In the meantime, another member of the group has kindly offered to run a few sessions of Dragonbane, Free League's fantasy roleplaying game, and I’ve taken the opportunity to step out from behind the screen and join as a player. I jumped at the chance, not only because Dragonbane has been on my radar for a while, and this seemed like the perfect time to give it a try.

For those unfamiliar with it, Dragonbane is the modern English-language evolution of Drakar och Demoner, Sweden’s first major fantasy RPG, originally released in 1982. That game was built on Chaosium’s Basic Role Playing (BRP) system, adapted under license and inspired in part by Magic World and RuneQuest. Over the decades, Drakar och Demoner went through numerous editions in Sweden, each refining or reshaping its rules. In 2023, Free League acquired the rights and reimagined the game as Dragonbane, distilling its BRP roots into something faster, lighter, and more accessible. While it retains the BRP hallmarks, like skill-based resolution, opposed rolls, it swaps out percentile dice for d20s and favors simplicity wherever it can.

While I’ve played my fair share of BRP-based games over the years, most of my fantasy RPG experience comes from Dungeons & Dragons and that likely shapes how I see other systems in the genre. That said, Dragonbane feels immediately familiar in all the best ways. Like older editions of D&D, character creation is fast and to the point: you choose a kin (i.e., race), a profession (class), some skills, and you’re good to go. It's more straightforward than making a character in RuneQuest and only marginally more involved than in D&D. You can feel the BRP ancestry throughout, but almost everywhere the system has been pared back to emphasize ease of play. The use of d20s streamlines resolution, and Dragonbane replaces modifiers with “boons and banes,” a system akin to advantage and disadvantage.

All of this is well and good, but what pleasantly surprised me was the combat system. I’m someone who often finds combat a necessary but uninspiring part of roleplaying games. I don’t dislike it outright, but I rarely look forward to it. In Dragonbane, though, combat has consistently been fun: brisk, dynamic, and full of opportunities for clever play. In fact, I’ve found myself anticipating combat encounters, which is not something I say lightly. It’s almost as if the Dice Gods are mocking me for having just written a post about my ambivalence toward combat mechanics. If so, I don’t mind. I’m grateful to have found a system that’s helping me understand what I do enjoy in RPG combat.

Each round, a Dragonbane can move and act. Special weapons or abilities can bend the rules in flavorful ways, but the core loop remains fast and approachable. Initiative is determined with cards rather than dice and reshuffles every round, introducing a layer of unpredictability. There are ways to act out of turn or swap initiative order, which adds some tactical flexibility. Beyond that, there are other mechanical wrinkles, such as morale checks, weapon breakage, special maneuvers, that bring the system to life without bogging it down.

That, for me, is what stands out about the Dragonbane combat system: it hits a sweet spot that’s hard to find. Too often, combat systems fall into one of two traps: they’re either so streamlined that they feel flat or they’re so loaded with options and subsystems that the pace suffers. Dragonbane threads the needle rather well in my opinion, offering just enough crunch to make combat engaging, but not so much that it becomes a slog. Whether this will remain my considered opinion over the long haul remains to be seen, but so far, it’s been a delight.

Field Assessment

DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
FIELD ASSESSMENT – SUBJECT: “NEW AMERICA” MOVEMENT
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET – EYES ONLY
DATE: 04 DECEMBER 2000
COMPILED BY: DIA FIELD SECTION 47B, MILGOV REGION 3
REFERENCE NO.: 00-FS47B-NA/337-A

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

New America (NA) is a revolutionary, ultra-populist insurgent movement that has emerged as one of the most ideologically coherent and operationally dangerous factions within the constellation of Free States groups. Drawing on a hybrid ideology of anti-elitism, apocalyptic renewal, and militarized spirituality, NA frames itself not merely as a resistance group but as the vanguard of a new American order, one that seeks to erase the legacy of both pre-war democracy and Cold War ideological systems.

Recent intercepts and recovered propaganda confirm the movement’s alignment under a codified manifesto titled "What We Believe." This document outlines a doctrine combining post-constitutional rejectionism, anti-globalist conspiracy theory, revolutionary spiritualism, and a violent commitment to social purification. The movement’s symbolic and organizational cohesion appears increasingly centered around a messianic figure known only as “The Preacher.”

Campaign Updates: Politics By Other Means

As I mentioned last week, the Dolmenwood campaign is on hiatus until the end of this month. That means there will only be updates for the Barrett's Raiders and House of Worms campaigns. Fortunately, both campaigns provided plenty of action recently, especially House of Worms, where the struggle for who will succeed Hirkáne Tlakotáni upon the Petal Throne continues to heat up.

Barrett's Raiders

Michael and Radosław took the Ford F-150 truck (one of three vehicles assigned to MLG-7, the others being a LAV-25 and a Humvee) in the direction of the coded radio message Bum Farley had picked up. This led them to an obviously damaged roadside diner that had a ring of damaged cars around it. Sneaking up to it, Michael was able to ascertain three people – two inside the diner and one outside keeping watch, armed with an M16. While Radosław kept an eye on the guard, Michael slipped in the back, surprising the two inside. One was a woman and the other a man. After a brief moment of tension, Michael and the man exchanged pass phrases and countersigns that made it clear to each of them that they were both operatives of the CIA.

The man identified himself as Lee Gerber. He'd been doing deep cover work in Richmond, infiltrating the virulent Free State offshoot, New America, that had been growing in influence recently. When USMEA attacked, he only escaped thanks to Wyatt Henshaw, a Virginia National Guardsman and Dana Richter, a paramedic. They've been with him ever since, with Richter tending to cracked ribs he sustained prior to his escape. Neither one thinks much of USMEA, so Gerber was glad Michael didn't bring any soldiers with him. Gerber claimed to have sensitive information about New America, but wouldn't reveal it to Michael. Instead, he asked for a lift to the west side of Richmond, if possible. Michael couldn't do that – he was expected to rendezvous with Barrett's Raiders as they headed toward Fort Lee. Gerber was fine with that and asked to be dropped off, along with Henshaw and Richter, as far as Michael could take them.

 

Meanwhile, Barrett's Raiders was make its way toward the I-295 interchange, which was as close to Richmond as they dared go. Captain Calloway had warned them against traveling near Richmond, as USMEA was not popular there. Because he hoped that Michael and Radosław would catch up with them before they headed southwards, Lt. Col. Orlowski ordered their vehicles to stop so that they could reconnoiter. Doing so proved smart. Up ahead, near the interchange, there were two vehicles, a Humvee and a black SUV, neither of which bore markings. With them were at least six soldiers, who likewise had no clear insignia on their uniforms. Worrying that they might be deserters turned marauders, Orlowski ordered Barrett's Raiders to avoid the highways and head south through smaller state roads.

Michael caught up with his comrades just before they left the highway. He also dropped off Gerber and his companions, wishing them luck. Gerber told him that, should he make contact with someone in the CIA, mention the name "Marcus Fallon" to them. It's important, he explained, and they'll know what to do with it. Now a full unit again, the group made their way south, stopping at the Varina-Enon Bridge over the James River, which was manned by a small detachment of military police from Fort Lee. The soldiers explained that the road was clear to the fort, but to stay buttoned up, because some of the locals liked to take potshots at passing USMEA vehicles. Orlowski thanked him for the advice and ordered the vehicles to continue their journey south.

House of Worms

Still reeling from the revelations regarding Prince Dhich'uné's plans, the characters tried to determine a way forward. Prince Táksuru admitted that he was simultaneously in awe of his half-brother's bold scheme and in fear that it might just work, securing eternal rule over Tsolyánu until the End of Time. Of course, not everyone was so sure that things would work the way Dhich'uné imagined. Chiyé in particular felt that Dhich'uné was deluded in thinking he could outwit the One Other and suggested that it might well give the pariah deity the means to become even more involved in the affairs of Tékumel – not a pleasant prospect! 

There was also some discussion of certain similarities between Dhich'uné's plan and what had happened to Aíthfo some years ago. When Aíthfo died and was resurrected through Naqsái sorcery, he seemingly lost his Báletl or spirit-soul, which was replaced with the power of the god Eyenál. The worry now was that, if Dhich'uné sacrificed his spirit-soul to the One Other while emperor – even if he believed he could survive as an undead being – he risked providing an opening (literally!) to the One Other to inhabit him. Again, what this might mean remains unclear and it's precisely for that reason that the characters are so concerned. There were simply too many unknowns to Dhich'uné's gambit to allow him to pursue it. One way or the other, he had to be stopped.

Nebússa's wife, Srüna, arrived and asked her husband to forgive her for something she had done. She presented him with a sealed letter, bearing the seal of Princess Ma'ín. She explained that she had for years made use of a contact within a small local clan, the Green Smoke clan, who acted as middlemen for nobles and priests who wished to communicate discreetly. Her contact had intercepted this letter and thought it would be of interest, especially since it was headed for the clanhouse of the Domed Tomb clan, where Dhich'uné spent his time while in Béy Sü. The letter was a poem written in Classical Tsolyáni that, while in code, clearly suggested that Ma'ín wished to throw in with Dhich'uné, seeing him as the inevitable winner of the Kólumejàlim.

This concerned Táksuru, since his and Rereshqála's plan depended on all the other princes entering the Choosing of the Emperors in order to minimize the likelihood that Dhich'uné might win. While Ma'ín's odds were not good – she's a lover, not a fighter – her presence might still drain Dhich'uné's resources enough for others to defeat him. Srüna suggested substituting a fake letter for the one her contact intercepted, one that was more ambiguous and might undermine the burgeoning alliance between princess and prince. Nebússa agreed this was a good plan and made arrangements for it to happen.

Word also spread that Prince Eselné, who'd been absent from Béy Sü recently, would be entering the city in two days at the head of several cohorts of the First Legion, led by his friend and mentor, General Kéttukal. Ostensibly, this is a parade in honor of his deceased father, the emperor. However, Táksuru believes it's also intended as a provocation to Dhich'uné, a reminder that he has not yet won and that others are prepared to stand up to him. Eselné is not called the "Chlén-beast in blue robes" for nothing, after all! 

More immediately pressing was the matter of Kirktá's golden disk. He still did not have it and, without it, he could not participate in the Kólumejàlim. The characters had earlier learned that it mostly likely lay somewhere within the Temple of Belkhánu where Kirktá had been trained as a young man. However, its precise location was unknown. Rather than directly looking for it, the characters opted to journey into Béy Sü's underworld beneath the temple, while Keléno's third wife, Mírsha, made use a locate object spell. Though the plan worked, revealing where the disk was likely located within the temple, it did draw the attention of temple guards in the underworld, who asked them to leave the area. Apparently, masked and robed men had been attempting to enter the temple from the underworld and now it was on alert against further incursions. Who these men were and what they wanted was yet another mystery. 

Serious Fun: An Ode to GDW's RPGs

As I've said innumerable times since I started this blog, I was never a wargamer.

I didn’t have shelves stocked with hex maps or spend my weekends calculating armor penetration on the Eastern Front. I wasn’t part of that sacred brotherhood that spoke in acronyms and argued over the effective range of a Panther’s 75mm gun. Yet somehow, whether by accident or by fate, I fell in love with a company born from that world: Game Designers’ Workshop, better known as GDW.

GDW got its start in 1973 as a publisher of serious, detail-oriented, historical wargames. While I didn’t know almost any of this when I first encountered their roleplaying games, I nevertheless felt it. Even as a teenager, I could tell there was something different about the games GDW made. Where TSR gave us magic missiles and gelatinous cubes, GDW gave us vector movement, speculative trade tables, and the quiet horror of running out of fuel in central Poland.

Like a lot of roleplayers, Traveller was the game that first introduced me to GDW. I came across it several years after playing Dungeons & Dragons, and the contrast was immediate. Traveller didn’t just offer you a character; it offered you a life. Character generation gave you a person with a backstory in the form of a career and an odd collection of skills and equipment. Of course, if your rolls were unlucky, all you got was an early grave before the campaign even began. This was the kind of game where you might end up as a grizzled ex-Merchant with a gambling habit and no pension instead of a mighty-thewed barbarian.

Traveller’s vision of the far future wasn’t shiny or triumphant. It was bureaucratic, complicated, and often rather gray. There was something fascinating about how it treated space travel not as an exciting novelty but as a job, equal parts dangerous, expensive, and frequently boring. It was, I later realized, a very wargamer approach to science fiction: not about wish fulfillment, but about systems, trade-offs, and consequences. Even though I’d never played Drang Nach Osten! or Pearl Harbor, I could still intuit that GDW’s RPGs were built by people who thought about conflict, logistics, and uncertainty in a fundamentally different way.

That sensibility was especially evident in Twilight: 2000. T2K was a game that asked, “What if the Cold War ended in fire and now you’re out of gas in a broken-down Humvee, trying to negotiate with a Polish farmer for potatoes?” It was bleak, but it was real. Every decision mattered. Ammo wasn’t just an abstraction; it was the difference between life and death. Characters had to eat, find shelter, manage morale. There were no magical solutions, just the grim satisfaction of surviving one more day.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think Twilight: 2000 taught me something about roleplaying that's stuck with me to this day: adventure doesn’t have to come from epic quests. Sometimes, it comes from the struggle to get by in the face of all sorts of obstacles, both big and small. Fixing a broken axle under sniper fire, bartering for antibiotics with a suspicious local, or just figuring out where the next meal is coming from. That was the adventure.

Later, I picked up Traveller: 2300 (later rebranded 2300 AD), which built on the ashes of Twilight: 2000's world to envision a future shaped not by utopian ideals, but by historical inertia. Nations rebuilt and space was colonized by corporations and governments with agendas rather than by high-minded dreamers. It wasn’t heroic, but it was plausible. It had an internal consistency that made it feel like a real place, even if that place was cold, indifferent, and occasionally French.

Then there was Space: 1889, GDW’s pioneering foray into what we'd now call "steampunk," complete with ether flyers, Martians, and an entire solar system shaped by European colonialism. Space: 1889 had a slightly lighter tone than its siblings, but it nevertheless bore the hallmark GDW seriousness. There was surprisingly detailed setting material, a respect for history, and a commitment to internal consistency that made its outlandish premise feel oddly plausible. Even in a world where Queen Victoria reigns over Venusian swamps, GDW still asked you to think like a colonial officer, an inventor, or an explorer navigating the realpolitik of empire.

Finally, there was Dark Conspiracy, a game that asked what would happen if you took the economic anxiety of the late '80s, mixed in extra-dimensional horror, and then handed the whole mess to a security contractor. As I mentioned in my recent Retrospective, Dark Conspiracy failed to live up to its full potential, but even so, it was strangely compelling. Beneath the neon-soaked dystopia and monstrous invaders, you could still feel GDW’s trademark seriousness at work: the emphasis on gear, tactics, and systems that made survival feel earned rather than assumed.

What bound all these games together wasn’t genre; it was approach. GDW brought a wargamer’s eye to RPGs. They cared about detail, about systems that worked even when they weren’t elegant (though I continue to maintain that Traveller is one of the most mechanically elegant roleplaying games ever designed). GDW wasn't afraid to make things difficult or even bleak, because they believed that challenge and immersion went hand in hand. As a player and a referee, I must confess that I didn’t always understand every rule. I sometimes made do with what I thought they meant, but I nevertheless respected the intent. GDW’s RPGs weren’t about wish fulfillment. They assumed you were already smart enough to navigate their worlds and tough enough to handle the consequences. 

As someone who entered the hobby on the more fantastical side represented by D&D and Gamma World, that was both refreshing and bracing. GDW showed me that roleplaying could be serious, by which I don't mean dour, but serious in the best possible way. Roleplaying games could provoke you to think, to plan, and to inhabit a world that didn’t care about your character sheet unless you used it wisely.

So, as I said at the beginning of this post, I was never a wargamer, but I was – and remain – a GDW fanboy. Their RPGs showed me a different way to play, a way shaped by history, consequence, and thought. Almost thirty years after the demise of the company, that kind of grounded imagination still feels like something worth celebrating, hence today's ode to the amazing roleplaying games of Game Designers' Workshop. What an incredible company, what an incredible library of games.

Retrospective: Merc: 2000

The last six months of 1989 marked the beginning of the end of Communism in Eastern Europe and, with it, the Cold War. Between June, when Solidarity won Poland's first semi-free elections in decades and the execution of Nicolae Ceaușescu in late December – not to mention the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9 – the world that had existed since 1945 unraveled in real time. These momentous events ushered in what U.S. president George H.W. Bush optimistically dubbed the “new world order.” For a time, many breathed a sigh of relief.

At Game Designers’ Workshop in Bloomington, Illinois, though, the end of the Cold War created a creative dilemma. Their military RPG Twilight: 2000 was built on a dark, alternate history premise: détente had failed, nuclear war had erupted, and civilization lay in ruins. Now that reality had taken a different path, that premise was suddenly obsolete. Line developer Loren Wiseman didn’t throw in the towel but instead adapted.

Merc: 2000, released in 1990, was his answer.

Rather than pivot away from military adventure, Merc: 2000 reimagined a world where the Cold War ends more or less peacefully, as it had in reality, but the peace is shallow. The Soviet Union lingers in a diminished state, the Third World seethes with brushfire wars, and the major powers, unwilling to commit their own troops, outsource dirty work to deniable assets. Enter the player characters as mercenaries for hire, plying their trade in a world where “peace” is just another illusion and every war is someone's business opportunity.

In hindsight, Merc: 2000 reads as much as a nervous exhalation from a culture suddenly unsure of who the enemy is as a RPG supplement. To varying degrees, it captures the jittery uncertainty of the early ’90s, when ideology faded but the machinery of conflict kept humming. If Twilight: 2000 was a fever dream of what might have been, Merc: 2000 was a grim-eyed projection of what was coming.

And it wasn’t wrong.

The setting anticipates the rise of private military contractors, the shadow wars of the post-9/11 era, and the morally murky interventions of the ’90s, such as Somalia, the Balkans, and the Persian Gulf, among too many others. It imagines a world of porous borders, covert missions, and soldiers who work for paychecks, not flags. Its tone of weary professionalism, competence without cause, sets it apart from the more operatic tone of Twilight: 2000. In some ways, I'd go so far as to say it's aged better.

That said, Merc: 2000 isn't a standalone game. It builds directly on Twilight: 2000's second edition, also released in 1990, and inherits both its strengths and its spiky complexity: crunchy mechanics, detailed equipment lists, and an emphasis on logistics, firearms, and realism. If you liked T2K’s obsessive attention to detail, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here. If not, Merc probably won’t change your mind.

What distinguishes it is scope. Where Twilight: 2000 offered survival in a wrecked Europe (and, later, America), Merc: 2000 gives you the world. Campaigns can explore corporate espionage, peacekeeping gone wrong, proxy wars, failed states, and morally ambiguous black ops. It opens the door to adventures that blend military action with politics, ideology, and personal cost, offering a sandbox of plausible deniability and ethical compromise.

From today’s perspective, what stands out most is how little Merc: 2000 glamorizes its subject. There are no grand causes, just contracts. No crusades, only jobs. In that, it feels oddly prophetic. It foresaw a world where war became a business and soldiers became freelancers in the global gig economy of violence.

Unlike Twilight: 2000, which I played quite a bit, I never had the chance to run Merc: 2000 back in the day. By the time it came out, I’d already drifted away from T2K, thinking the real world had outpaced it. Ironically, as my Barrett’s Raiders campaign heads back to the USA, I realize how much of Merc: 2000 has seeped into my imagination after all, particularly in the types of missions, the tone, and the sense of purpose frayed by compromise that now animate that campaign. 

Thirty-five years on, I think more highly of Merc: 2000 than I probably did upon its publication, not because, like Twilight: 2000, it depicted a world that never was, but rather because it depicted one we hadn’t yet admitted we were already living in.

The Articles of Dragon: "New Denizens of Devildom"

I'm sure it'll come as no surprise that issue #75 of Dragon (July 1983) is among my favorites, one I both remember very well (and for which I, therefore, have a great deal of nostalgia) and one whose content was of very high quality. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that the run of issues between, say, issue #65 (September 1982) and issue #100 (August 1985) may well have been the magazine's best ever. I'm biased, of course, since this run not coincidentally coincides with when I subscribed to Dragon, but I really do think that, from a reasonably objective perspective, that three-year period was exceptional, filled with some of the most interesting and inspiring articles ever to grace Dragon's pages.

Issue #75 is probably best remembered for the first part of Ed Greenwood's superb treatment of the Nine Hells and rightly so. What people sometimes forget is that the issue also included a partial preview of the upcoming Monster Manual II in Gary Gygax's regular "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column. In fact, I believe it was precisely because of the planned appearance of this preview that Greenwood was given the go-ahead – with Gygax's blessing – to develop the Nine Hells as an adventuring locale suitable for use with AD&D. 

Over the course of six pages, Gygax provides game statistics for a plethora of new devils, both generic and specific. The generic ones are notable, in that they run the gamut of hit dice, from the 3 HD spined devils to 8 HD black abishai. While AD&D had always included weaker devils and demons as opponents, I know that, as a younger person, I appreciated the addition of more at the lower end of the diabolic spectrum. Devils, as envisaged by Gygax, have always been compelling enemies to me, but they were mostly the enemies for higher-level characters, given their hit dice and powers. By including more options at the low end, Gygax made it easier for me to use them with a wider range of character levels.

Of course, the true stars of this article (and the Monster Manual II) were the specific, named devils, including several new arch-devils. This pleased me greatly back in the day. The original Monster Manual was the very first AD&D book I ever owned. I bought it at a Sears catalog store in early 1980, using money I'd got for Christmas and I spent an inordinate amount of time poring over its pages. One of the things that I soon noticed was that Gygax hadn't provided entries for all the arch-devils ruling over Hell's nine planes. Who ruled over the third and fourth layers? And what about the eighth, the one closest to the domain of Asmodeus? This article finally answered some of these questions.

Beyond new arch-devils, "New Denizens of Devildom" also gave us "dukes of hell" – singular named devils with unique statistics that were beneath the arch-devils in both authority and power. That last part was especially important, because it meant that there was now space for powerful, named devil opponents who weren't as potent as the rulers of Hell's layers. This was a terrific boon to me and my campaign, though my players back then might have disagreed! Another great aspect of these additions was that they could be defeated and even slain by player characters without worrying about how this might upset the cosmic balance of the Outer Planes.

This is one of those articles that is probably hard to appreciate decades after its initial publication. Nowadays, almost nothing within its six pages is all that notable, its information having long since passed into general Dungeons & Dragons lore. But, during the summer of 1983, several months before the Monster Manual II would be available for purchase, an article like this captivated me immensely. I was seized by the possibilities it presented and the directions it suggested Gygax was planning to take AD&D in future. Consequently, it remains an affectionate favorite of mine, even if it's unlikely to make most people's Top 10 – or Top 50! – lists of Dragon's greatest articles.