Thursday, October 27, 2016

Jeffrey C. Dillow: Creator and Author of High Fantasy RPG and Fantasy Novel Series

When Jeffrey Dillow's High Fantasy was originally published in 1978, it didn't capture much attention. Neither did the two subsequent printings in 1979. It didn't really appear on anyone's radar until 1981 when Reston published an expanded hard cover second edition. 

Third printing of the original 44 page saddle stitched edition. This is the edition I first owned in 1980.
Unfortunately, the most important review High Fantasy received for it's 3rd printing of the 44 page softcover 1st edition, which appeared in White Dwarf  in June 1980, unfairly criticized it not for rules or setting issues, but simply for the fact that it was a fantasy RPG. Essentially the criticism read (very liberally paraphrased by me), 'we already have a dominant game, why would anyone play another?'. Unfortunately, the review reinforced an attitude that was pervasive at the time. Even though game play was different--High Fantasy is based on 
percentile dice system, with a hit and dodge combat mechanic for characters and creatures--it was a time when players were still swooning over the new D&D sensation and thus weren't ready to explore alternate rules systems. High Fantasy also had different classes like Animal Trainer and Alchemist, who could create gun powder and use firearms, but despite this there was no way to 'compete' with D&D in the early 80's. Even the strongest alternative games at the time, Runequest, Tunnels and Trolls, and Traveller, were obscure titles to most of Dungeon and Dragon's fad audience. Despite this, the HF still had strong distribution through bookstores as well as hobby shops once the Reston edition came out. Numerous supplements followed in '81 through '83.

Extremely rare High Fantasy boxed set.
I picked HF up in 1980. I was sold on the color cover art of the 3rd printing of the original edition. Sadly though, I never got a chance to play it. No one that I gamed with in the early 80's was...Surprise!....
interested in learning another system. The copy I owned was sold in 1986 when I ditched 90% of my game collection all for $100. All for a slew of records that seemed important to own at the time...How I lament that day.

When I got back into games I often thought of that book. 6 years ago I couldn't find much about it online which made it grow in magnitude as a lost gem that I needed to replace. I tore apart boxes of my old collections at my parent's house hoping it wasn't part of my RPG sale. I kept checking Ebay for copies, kept searching online, and slowly I found info...then a little more...and a little more. Over a couple of years I discovered the other editions and supplements, plus copies for sale that I couldn't afford, and a little biographical info from Jeffrey on a forum. The history of the game seemed to be slowly bubbling up from the murky depths of obscurity. I finally found Jeff's website in 2012(?) and discovered he was publishing novels based on his game world. You really should check the site out, Jeff has lived a very busy and incredibly interesting life. 

In 2008 C.D. Berry left a review of High Fantasy on Amazon.com. The comment was a perfect response to Don Turnbull's White Dwarf review, it's just 20 years late. Berry wrote,

"I will sum it up like this; Faster than Dungeons & Dragons and more in-depth than Tunnels & Trolls. Don't let anyone tell you it's a "knock off" of D&D!" 

I finally made contact with Jeffrey Dillow earlier this year (it's not easy), and I was so over the top excited that he was willing to participate in Appendix N Happy Meal. I'm especially excited to present Mr. Dillow's interview as the first of our new season. Enjoy!

Thanks Jeffrey!


Favorite Toys

What were your favorite toys during childhood? What is it about these toys that you most identified with? What made them so special? How did you play/enjoy this toy? (shared or solo play).

Wizards and Warriors supplement
Jeffrey: My early years were filled with a mixture of store bought and homemade treasures.  One of my most favorite store bought toy was a pair of Johnny Seven guns.  This was a plastic gun that was actually seven guns in one.  It was a pistol, machine gun, rocket launcher, anti-tank extravaganza piece of equipment that fired bullets and grenades and anything you could imagine. I took both my gun and my brother’s gun to my neighbor’s house.  There, CJ (my friend) and I strapped them on the side of two wooden crates.  This was the beginning of a two-seater spaceship that would rival any other ship in the galaxy. 


CJ’s father often visited the Army Surplus stores looking for Lionel trains.  We went with him one time and brought home bags full of 12 volt lights and WWII switches and we used these to create our cockpit and control panels.  We are talking toggle switches, buttons, and large lever switches like Frankenstein used.  We grabbed a spare Lionel transformer and hooked it up to supply the power.  It was magnificent (in our minds).  From CJ’s basement we ventured across the galaxy using National Geographic maps of space to chart our course to different planets.  We fought and flew our way through many solar systems to get to our destination.  Then we would land, jump out of the crates (I mean spaceship), unhook our Johnny Sevens and fight the aliens.  Whenever our ship got damaged we would fly back to our base where we could make repairs and restock for our next adventure.  If we ever encountered civilizations that were too advanced for our ship, we simply dug into our bags of spare parts and invented a new feature for the ship that would even the odds and help us win the day.  I am very proud to say that we were never defeated in all of these adventures.  And I might humbly add, the world as we know it, owes us a debt of gratitude for saving it so many times.

Other great toys included a James Bond attaché case, Strombecker slot cars, and a NASA rocket launcher.  These were great toys, but none of these were my favorite.

My father used to pack all four of the kids in the back seat of his car, attach a trailer, and travel around the country. This was torture for me. Sitting in a car for hours to see something I was not interested in was not great fun.  After all, I had galaxies and foreign lands that needed my help back home.  Along the way, we would make stops at what we called “Junk Stores”.  These were the little road-side stores at gas stations that sold souvenirs.  There I discovered that you could buy, for 25 or 50 cents, bags of Roman, Trojan, or Barbaric plastic soldiers.  These were fantastic, with chariots drawn by up to four horses, bags full of siege towers, catapults, and cavalry horses.  Forget little green army men, this was Hercules, Caesar, and my most favorite ancient of all, Hannibal.  From there on I was hooked.  I begged for quarters mercilessly at each stop until I had multiple armies at my command that followed me across the country.  These armies are still here with me today.


Favorite Films and TV

What were your favorite films or TV shows during childhood and what age were you when you enjoyed each favorite? What did you identify with about these shows? Do you think these shows had an influence on the adult you? 

!981 Reston edition
Jeffrey: I remember being very sick once where I had to be separated from the rest of the family. It was only for a week, but I had a very high fever.  When I started to get better and I could sit up, my mother wheeled in a TV.  Since none of my siblings could come in the room to bother me, I could watch whatever I wanted. I found the movie “Forbidden Planet”. I knew after watching it, I was back and ready to save the world once more. It was a great moment of clarity.  Then I got to eat a big bowl of Chef Boyardee spaghetti (the kind that came in a box not that squishy canned stuff) and watched the Smothers Brothers. They were particularly funny that night.

I am not sure if these shows had a great effect on me or if I was already fully formed by then. I was opinionated and gravitating to the shows I liked and avoiding most of the things I did not like. I hated Gilligan's Island and I was tired of all of the Westerns. There was a time when all three major networks would broadcast competing Westerns at prime time.


Creating Games

Think about playtime, did you create games or imaginary worlds as a child? If so, please describe an important original game or play world you enjoyed.

Jeffrey: I think you can tell from question one that we created lots of games. We had two tree houses and a real miniature train you could sit in that ran around the back of CJ’s house. They never let us hook up a gas powered motor to the train Engine, but we did have a railroad handcar that you get on and ride. 


Our games extended to the outdoors where we built real catapults.  We could shoot a metal Hawaiian Juice can filled with water for half an acre. Here we used timber and bicycle tubes (not tires) to run our experiments. Advanced models could swivel and elevate for better aim.

CJ’s dad also had one of the most extensive collections of Lionel trains you could imagine.  A permanent track was set up in the basement that covered more than three ping pong size tables with a train engineer’s control station cut out of the middle. There you could stand surrounded by transformers, switches, and controls for the train crossings and loading stations.  We had many types of trains and cars to choose from and we reenacted the Great Locomotive Chase more than once. We played with these trains, but it was too formal and ridged to keep our attention for long.

Play Community

As a child how did you feel about how you fit in with the rest of the world or community or friends? Like, were you very social or did you prefer spending time alone? Your environment, was it rural or urban? Were siblings a big part of your playtime? Did adults interact with you in game play, and if so was it structured play (sports, scouting, clubs, etc.) or free form? 

Jeffrey: I grew up three doors outside of Indianapolis, but I was surrounded by farms. 


This is a difficult question because you have to answer it as a child. I would say I fit in well as a standard reply. I had friends. I was confident and outgoing. It was a fun childhood!  However, I always felt a little different. I was not concerned with most of the normal things. 

I remember trying to build a calculator with my bag of light bulbs and wires. I drilled holes with a hand drill in a plywood board and wedged row after row of lights in them. I was not allowed to use a soldering gun because I was too young, so I punched holes with a nail in aluminum strips and Scotch Taped the wires and lights together. I connected the columns with one set of switches and the rows with another.  I tried different cross-wiring configurations to see if I could get a row and a column to add together and light up in multiples. I powered it with one of our trusty Lionel transformers. I got very frustrated because I could not keep the wires connected long enough to test out my theories. I got so mad I turned the transformer on high and blew up row after row of lights. It was a spectacular end to a project, but maddening nonetheless.

I had no problem playing alone with my armies and I had no problem inviting others to join in. 

I played basketball, baseball, and football.  However, I can say with certainty that my younger years were influenced more by free form play.

I had great male role models around, like an electrical engineer on one side and a mechanic on the other.  The other neighbor built real igloos out of snow.  I mean the kind made from blocks that somehow can be stacked into an Eskimo hut.  He also let us borrow every kind of tool we needed.  Well, let’s just say he left his garage door unlocked.  My time up until eleven was mostly unsupervised.  Grown-ups were watching but not organizing.  They often stopped us when we went too far.  Gas powered things seemed to be off limits.  We wanted to mount a lawn mower engine onto a go-cart frame;  I already mentioned we could not finish the engine for the backyard train.  They also stopped us from using pulleys to build elevators for the tree houses.  I think that was because they did not want their expensive pulleys sitting outdoors all summer long.  Still, no one seemed to mind when we jumped out of trees with an army surplus cargo parachute.  No matter how high we climbed, it never opened.  


Playtime Impact on Adult Games


Do you have any thoughts about any aspects of your childhood playtime that might have influenced your passion for RPGs? Have you ever intentionally incorporated memories of childhood playtime into game work you have created as an adult?

Jeffrey: I don’t think I need to go into much detail here.  Once I read Tolkien I knew I could blend all my interests into one exciting adventure. 

I still write and create today.  I have created virtual environments for the American Stroke Association, the NIH, and pharmaceutical companies for training.  What can I say, “I am just a boy who likes his toys.”

Lost In Space Media Cache 

You are the last survivor of your crew. You are adrift aboard an intergalactic cruiser. You no longer remember your mission or destination. Your ship sent out a distress signal, but you lost contact with your home planet months ago. Your chances of being rescued are nil. The ship is well stocked with everything necessary for your physical survival. You have no fear of starvation and there are no security threats. On board with you are two AI bots programmed for average human intelligence. You were allowed 10 items of any type of entertainment of your choosing (movies, recordings, books, videos, games, comics). The ship is capable of playing everything you brought, regardless of format.

What choices do you hope you packed away so that you avoid dying of boredom?

Jeffrey: I cannot answer this one the way you would expect.  I understand that you would like me to list ten of my most favorite things.  However, it is the last part of the question that bothers me… “to keep from dying of boredom.”  Having already flown through space in my early years, I already know the answer.  Without the ability to guide the craft and to engage others in exciting new explorations I would never make it off the launching pad with my sanity intact.

Web Links:
Jeffrey Dillow's High Fantasy Website: http://highfantasybooks.com/
More covers and info about the original game at Wayne's Books:  http://www.waynesbooks.com/HighFantasy.html

Monday, July 4, 2016

Leigh Grossman: Game Designer, Author, Publisher, Wildside RPG

Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to play in one of Leigh Grossman's game sessions. Leigh had left the Atlantic City area by the time I befriended many of the people who were fortunate enough to sit at his table in the early 80s. In a way Leigh was indirectly involved in me getting back into gaming after a few decades. It was through my wife's mutual friends with Leigh on Facebook that I found out about his Wildside RPG Rules System, which led me to investigate the state of roleplaying in 2010, and that led me to get involved with the games I cherish now. Which leaves me feeling guilty over not playing Wildside yet. 

Leigh is a Professor at the University of Connecticut and teaches classes in writing, Fantasy Literature, and book publishing. He has several fantasy novels and academic books published, and he also runs his own publishing company, Swordsmith Productions. Currently Leigh is running a Kickstarter ending August 4th for a versatile RPG app, Wildside Gaming System App: a free RPG tool, that accommodates not only his own Wildside gaming system, but virtually any game system you play. The scope of this app (which can be used on phones, tablets, and laptops) is so extensive that you need to read the Kickstarter page to appreciate the scope of this project. Although it's called The Wildside Gaming System App, there are customization templates that will allow this app to be used with virtually any system. Definitely a tool I'm checking out for OSR / DCC RPG compatibility.

I'm really excited to present this interview from a home town author and game designer, especially since this is a perfect opportunity to introduce Leigh to the Appendix N Happy Meal, and OSR G+ communities. 


Favorite Toys

What were your favorite toys during child hood? Like, the TOP 3 TOYS of all time and pick your favorite of these toys. What is it about any of these toys you most identified with? What made this so special? How did you play/enjoy this toy? (shared or solo play).

Leigh: When I was very young, having something to ride on was really important to me. The first toy I remember was a little red fire engine that was left behind when my family moved to the Atlantic City area. (I was two and a half years old.) I don't know if it was a favorite or not - I suppose it must have been - but I felt a keen sense of loss at it having been left behind. I remember I had other riding toys, like a metal horse and later a big wheel (whose plastic wheels quickly wore out from overuse on the concrete sidewalk). Once I was old enough to ride a bike I took it everywhere, biking the length of the boardwalk to look at the old hotels and play at the amusement piers, or biking to friends' houses.


Once my brother outgrew his legos (do you ever really outgrow legos?) I got to use them. I built spaceships, cities, worlds. A lot of buildings that (lego) ships of one sort or another could dock on. I never liked the lego "people" which were just starting to be available in the 1970s because they took up too much space; a limited supply of legos meant things had to be smaller scale. I used small plastic figures that were widely available for my very limited budget - typically cowboys and Indians but it didn't really matter since they were more likely to be space rangers or undersea explorers. Eventually a collection of small plastic soldiers from various wars and nationalities supplanted the legos - they would be arranged in elaborate battlefields, sometimes over hours, and then played out - the kind of visual representation that eventually led me to wargaming and other simulations and then to RPGs. This was very much solo play - this was about learning how to express things in my imagination; when I played with other kids when I was younger it generally was outdoor play, or at their houses.


Favorite Films and TV

What were your favorite films or TV during childhood and what age were you for each favorite? What did you identify with about these shows? Do you think these shows had an influence on the adult you? 

Leigh:The one that made the biggest impression wasn't a favorite, exactly. My father was a film professor, and he built a screening room on the side porch of the house (which would become my brother's recording studio after my father was out of the picture, then eventually the room where I arranged giant battles and later ran RPGs). One night, when I was five or so, he showed the movie Titanic (the 1953 version with Robert Wagner and Barbara Stanwyck). Then, because it was getting late, he sent me up to bed before the last reel. Remember, I was five - I didn't know how the story came out. The iceberg had hit the ship, people were trying to deal with the chaos, it was a battle against desperate odds - and I got sent to bed without finding out how the story ended. I think it was the first time it hit me that it was possible to have a story where you never knew the ending - that not all stories ended with happily ever after or the estranged sister being rolled down the hill in a spiked barrel. (By five I already knew that stories often didn't end happily, but missing endings were new to me, and something that still bothers me.)

We didn't have a TV until I was ten years old, so I didn't really have a favorite show. Even with no TV I was passably conversant with Saturday morning (and afternoon) cartoons, which I would sometimes watch from the neighbor's basement. But books had a much bigger impact on me. From the time my mother read me The Hobbit when I was six (it took a year, and the seasons lined up which gave it a greater impact) I tended to think in longer story arcs. Even TV which did have an impact was book driven - like Star Trek, which I only saw (in syndication or film festivals) after having read the original James Blish novelizations. I'm hoping my daughter grows up thinking in story arcs - she's five now and I've been reading her the Narnia books.

Live entertainment had more of an impact than TV I think. For a few years after my father left there were a lot of really interesting friends of the family in and out of the house - actors and folksingers and people with complex lives. (My mother was co-founder of the Women's Center in Atlantic County and the first rape crisis center in the county was run out of our kitchen.) I remember one family friend singing "Stewball was a Racehorse" and "Puff the Magic Dragon" and being totally caught up in the stories. They were real in a way that was much more emotionally intense than most TV and movies.

Seeing Star Wars in the theater did have an impact on me. It was never a favorite film in a "this is great science fiction" sense - by the time I saw it when I was ten or so I had read a fair amount of much better science fiction. But the lines around the block to see it, a year after the film had come out, and the visual power of the storytelling opened me up to new ways of telling stories. I think that Star Wars did a lot to start me thinking about how ideas had to be expressed in different media, and how you had to work with the strengths of the medium you were creating in, not try to force a narrative into a medium where it didn't work. There are a lot of intersections between how I write, how I run games, and how I teach, but being conscious of how the storyteller needs to adjust the narrative to the audience. The kind of narrative I set up for a game is very different than I use for a novel - in much the same way the way I teach a "live" course is different than how I teach an online course. But they are all related kinds of storytelling.


Imaginary Worlds

Think about playtime, did you create games or imaginary worlds as a child? If so, please describe an important original game or play world you enjoyed.

Leigh: I would sometimes create puppet shows or (attempted) parade floats for adults. The worlds I created were mostly for my own use, though. I remember there was a complex narrative involving a family of ghosts and fourteen invisible horses who lived in an elevator somewhere in our house. That was just storytelling, though - I didn't really have a relationship with them or (as far as I remember) think of them as real.

Other worlds were entirely mythological, or set up as scenarios for solo play. I had whole worlds that I would play in when I was playing outside, with improvised props. It was essentially role-playing, but not shared with others until I was older.


Play Community

As a child how did you feel about how you fit in with the rest of the world or community or friends? Like, were you very social or did you prefer spending time alone? Your environment, was it rural or urban? Were siblings a big part of your playtime? Did adults interact with you in game play, and if so was it structured play (sports, scouting, clubs, etc.) or free form? 


Leigh: I was mostly comfortable with adults, though I would be mortified if I said something embarrassing. My brother and sister were much older, and I did not socialize particularly well with other kids. I had friends, but with a few exceptions didn't have a lot of "best friends" who I was completely comfortable around until high school. I was very social but also shy, and very conscious that I was faking a lot of socialization around other kids. I was picked on, but was also an outsider. It was accentuated by physical abuse I was going through - there were things I couldn't talk about, and when I tried to (like with the police during the several times I ran away from home) it was made clear that no one was going to help and telling others only made things worse. Eventually, I learned that the power of words could overcome abuse, or at least lessen it - but by that time, by the time I could consciously plan to put a stop to abuse without any adult help, the feeling that I was always an outsider even when I was at the center of what was going on had sunk in (and lingered for decades).

I don't think it's a simple cause-and-effect with the abuse - my daughter has a lot of play similarities to me at the same age: Loves to explore, plays well with other kids but prefers to play alone or with a trusted adult and prefers creating her own games to following the "rules."


Playtime Impact on Adult Games


Do you have any thoughts about any aspects of your childhood playtime that might have influenced your passion for RPGs? Have you ever intentionally incorporated memories of childhood playtime into game work you have created as an adult?

Leigh: Besides the things I've already mentioned, there was another factor that shifted me from solo play to RPG in groups: When there were friends or outsiders visiting, I wasn't abused. Making friends was a survival strategy at first, not something that came easily to me. Once I'd started doing it, having friends was great of course - I still am close with some players in my original gaming group from the early 1980s. One of the things that abuse did was taught me to step outside myself, to be hyper-aware, to slow time down and plan how to react since reacting in just the right way might get me out of trouble. There were times later when that would be a good thing - talking my way out of a gunpoint encounter, for instance - and other times when difficulty relaxing and being in the moment was a liability. But it meant the transition to gaming was a very happy one. Discovering an environment where an ability to create worlds, to improvise on the fly, to convincingly convey drama and danger were useful for something fun, not just for staying alive - that was a revelation.

I discovered RPGs when I was about thirteen, and gamed pretty much every day that summer. A friend brought home a single sheet of paper printed on both sides with a bit about this new game, Dungeons and Dragons, he'd more-or-less learned at camp and we improvised with that until I was able to find first the basic set and then the first edition books. This was the late 1970s and the books were not easy to find - they were carried by the occasional hobby shop, but mostly it wasn't even a niche market yet in the northeast. Once I started high school I had a regular group meeting at least once a week, and had started rewriting rules that I didn't like into better game mechanics. Pretty soon I was writing my own games. I still have those first books, heavily annotated and filled with printed workarounds. Somewhere I still have a box with all the characters from that first summer.



Lost In Space Survival Question 

You are the last survivor of your crew. You are adrift aboard an intergalactic cruiser. You no longer remember your mission or destination. Your ship sent out a distress signal, but you lost contact with your home planet months ago. Your chances of being rescued are nil. The ship is well stocked with everything necessary for your physical survival. You have no fear of starvation and there are no security threats. On board with you are two AI bots programmed for average human intelligence. You were allowed 10 items of any type of entertainment of your choosing (movies, recordings, books, videos, games, comics). The ship is capable of playing everything you brought, regardless of format.

What choices do you hope you packed away so that you avoid dying of boredom?

Leigh: When I was twelve or so, someone visited who was hooked on the Strat-O-Matic baseball simulations, and a lot of my love of baseball and sports comes out of it. I wrote sports simulations of my own (played with friends but never written for publication) and in its final iteration, it made a fantastic game for solo play. I played out dozens of hypothetical future seasons. So some of those Strat-O-Matic games would be great, along with a selection of Avalon Hill and other 1980s wargames. Mostly I think I'd want the means to write new games, though - while playing other people's games is fun, I really like to play in my own sandbox.

Notes:

Wildside Gaming RPG App Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/610865190/wildside-gaming-system-the-free-tabletop-roleplayi
Wildside Gaming: http://www.wildsidegame.net/about_wildside.asp
Swordsmith Productions (Leigh's publishing house): http://swordsmith.com/

I really want to give Leigh a bump to help spread the word about this app within the OSR G+ community (but wanted to keep this part separate from the intro & interview). So, the following is a few of the items taken from the Kickstarter page that highlights some of my favorite functions of the app. I sincerely encourage everyone to take a look at the Kickstarter.
  • Remote Gaming - supports text, audio, and video chatting with other members of your group, either during games or separately for planning sessions.
  • Maps - view and search campaign and dungeon maps created by your GM or purchased as add-ons.
  • Dice - Roll dice either privately or shared with your group
  • Groups - Join a group created by your GM or other open groups (such as groups devoted to spell writing, players of a particular RPG, or finding players in your area). Share messages to the whole group or individual players. (No more making the rest of the group suspicious by passing notes or whispering.) Give equipment or other possessions from your character to another player’s character in the same game.
  • Roll up Characters - create, copy, modify, update, and print characters, archive past characters. Characters may be free-standing or linked to a particular campaign created by a GM in your group. Characters can be rolled up in the app, or copied from existing characters. The Wildside Gaming System is fully supported, and templates for many other popular RPGs are included. Customized character sheets for “house rules” or your own game can be saved and shared with other members of your group.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Tim Kask: Game Designer, Writer and Publisher, First TSR Employee, Editor of The Dragon

Tim Kask has been a part of our hobby since the very beginning. He was hired by Gary Gygax in 1975 as an editor at TSR which makes Kask the first full time employee of the company. He had his hands in many of the projects that we all know and loved while growing up during the early years of Dungeons & Dragons (and still do!), including editor of the first 33 issues of The Dragon magazine.. When Tim left TSR in 1980 he created and published Adventure Gaming magazine.

Currently, Tim, along with Frank Mentzer, Jim Ward, and Chris Clarke, are publishing material through their company, Eldritch Entertainment. He's also a contributing editor for Gygax Magazine. Tim can frequently be found at gaming conventions across the country running games in the great 'Old School Tradition' which he was among the first to create and play 40 years ago. 

Before returning the interview, Tim asked me to define my final interview question concerning Desert Island Media. So in honor of Tim's participation I have changed the final question and it is now the Lost In Space Survival Question.

Tim, thank you for participating in this interview! If you ever find yourself back in my neck of the woods again, please give me a shout and I'll set us up with a fishing trip you're gonna remember! I look forward to hopefully sitting at one of your tables at the next Gary Con (which I WILL NOT miss again!).Thanks. 

Favorite Toys

What were your favorite toys during child hood? Like, the TOP 3 TOYS of all time and pick your favorite of these toys. What is it about any of these toys you most identified with? What made this so special? How did you play/enjoy this toy? (shared or solo play).

Tim: Army men from TimMee Toys and MPC, the Blue & Gray play set (with firing cannons) and the Prince Valiant play set with the tin castle (and catapults that fired).

Tons of war movies were made when I was a kid, and my folks took us to the drive-in movies a lot in warm weather. I also developed an interest in military history at a young age. The army-men were a means of recreating battles as well making up my own. The PV set made me love the movies like Ivanhoe and the like, and I recreated them as well. 
The B&G set was an entirely different matter; it had cannons that fired. It was only much later that I learned that I had created my own version of HG Wells’ Little Wars in my younger siblings’ sandbox. One of the cannon types’ bore exactly matched the diameter of a “ladyfinger” firecracker. I had real, although tiny, explosives. If they knocked over a figure, it was dead.

I most played solo. That was a result of several factors, chief amongst them that I went to a Catholic school and had no classmates closer than four or five blocks away. My parents were beginning to get concerned about the time I turned 11 or 12 and was still playing in the sandbox. Not long after, I found Avalon Hill’s D-day.


Favorite Films and TV

What were your favorite films or TV during childhood and what age were you for each favorite?

Tim:My family did not watch much TV when I was little. The big deal each Sunday was Disney, so I really loved Fess Parker as both Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. My TV was Sat. morning cartoons, especially Mighty Mouse. Mighty Mouse is probably a prime example of what made PTA ladies campaign against violence on TV. MM slaughtered the evil cats by the literal heaps with tanks, dive bombers, machine guns and artillery. Merrie Melodies and Popeye rounded out Sat morning.  Popeye battled the Nazis and the Japanese. (Those cartoons are really hard to get today.) Then there were the Three Stooges, but you said only three.

What did you identify with about the shows?

Tim:Nothing; they were entertainment.

Do you think these shows had an influence on the adult you? 

Tim:I loved the historical aspect of Boone and Crockett; they might have led to my eventually teaching History. The cartoons were just fun.


Imaginary Worlds

Think about playtime, did you create games or imaginary worlds as a child? If so, please describe an important original game or play world you enjoyed.

Tim:I made up “battles” (they’d be called scenarios today) all the time. Didn’t matter if it was WWII or ACW; I would sort of stick the men around real quickly for one side and walk away. Then I would come back a little later and do the same for the other side without looking. 
With the Prince Valiant set (my favorite comic back then), I went back in time.


Play Community

As a child how did you feel about how you fit in with the rest of the world or community or friends? Like, were you very social or did you prefer spending time alone? Your environment, was it rural or urban? Were siblings a big part of your playtime? Did adults interact with you in game play, and if so was it structured play (sports, scouting, clubs, etc.) or free form? 

Tim:I was pretty ordinary as an athlete, not great, not awful. I tended to excel in odd sports; but once I faced pitchers that could throw a curve, my baseball career went up in smoke. I played Dad’s Club baseball several years. I was on my bike all the time, often traveling miles and miles in a day with a buddy or two. I swam, I ice skated. 
I was a class clown; George Carlin lived my life ten years before me. I was also considered one of the “brains’ or “eggheads” (nerds or geeks, today) only for my smarts. I had a glib tongue and a slight issue with authority in the form of rules that just didn’t make good sense.
I grew up in the Quad-Cites; they straddle the Mississippi River in Illinois and Iowa. In total, maybe 200K altogether back then, but divided fiercely by city limits. There was a high school for each of the cities and towns that made up the area, about 8 in all counting the Catholic HS’s, within 20 miles of each other. They were extremely blue-collar; they were the Farm Machinery capitol of the world, with over thirty factories in their heyday.
My Mom is the reason I love games of all kinds. We played games from the time we were old enough to play Candyland until I left at 18 for the Navy. We played board games of all sorts and tons of card games, checkers, Parcheesi, Chinese checkers and chess. (Which I abandoned in 6th grade when I discovered D-Day.) Her father taught me poker, playing for my milk money; I had more than a few dry lunches until I learned the subtleties of bluffing.


Playtime Impact on Adult Games

Do you have any thoughts about any aspects of your childhood playtime that might have influenced your passion for RPGs? Have you ever intentionally incorporated memories of childhood playtime into game work you have created as an adult?

Tim:I had favorite figures in my various armies. I gave them special attributes, like having to be killed twice. Sound familiar? Parallel development is a real possibility.


Lost In Space Survival Question 

You are the last survivor of your crew. You are adrift aboard an intergalactic cruiser. You no longer remember your mission or destination. Your ship sent out a distress signal, but you lost contact with your home planet months ago. Your chances of being rescued are nil. The ship is well stocked with everything necessary for your physical survival. You have no fear of starvation and there are no security threats. On board with you are two AI bots programmed for average human intelligence. You were allowed 10 items of any type of entertainment of your choosing (movies, recordings, books, videos, games, comics). The ship is capable of playing everything you brought, regardless of format.
What choices do you hope you packed away so that you avoid dying of boredom?

Tim:As I have no idea if by then they will have little holograms that duke it out or whatever, I will twist your question a little. “In the cargo bay you find a container that says it has games from the late 20th and early 21st Century. What do most hope to find in it?”

With only two possible opponents to play against, I am hoping that there are several games with what I refer to as “infinite re-playability” in which all three of us can play. That would mean games like one of the Ticket to Ride series (hopefully Europe with the Expansion); Serenissima, a trading game in which fighting is a last resort; Feudality, although the bots may not pick up on the humor; War of Kings, a vary re-playable game of conquest and rudimentary resource management; a complete suite of War at Sea and In the Pacific for straight up competition; Fire & Axe, because it never plays out the same; B-17, Queen of the Skies because if the bots get too easy to beat, this is a fantastic solitaire game; An up-to-date copy of Age of Wonders, the best TBS PC game I ever played that I could play against one or both, or against the AI; the complete set of Babylon 5 DVD’s, all the seasons and all the extras; for my last item I hope for a copy of the movie version of Paint Your Wagon, with Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood.

Notes:
Eldritch Entertainment: http://www.eldritchent.com/
Tim's Blog 'Dragon Grumbles'http://kaskoid.blogspot.com/
Gygax Magazine and TSR Games: http://store.tsrgames.com/

Monday, May 30, 2016

James Ward: Game Writer and Designer, Creator of Metamorphosis Alpha & Gamma World.

I expect that most of my readers are well aware of James Ward's impact on our hobby.  When it comes to the early history of Role Playing Games, there's probably very few people outside of the OSR community that acknowledge the contributions of anyone but Gary Gygax, and to a lesser degree, Dave Arneson. While their contributions are obviously immense, there was a number of other people whose creative genius helped the hobby to take off like wild fire. They were part of a community of designers, writers, and artists, most of whom were working for Gary Gygax at TSR in the late 70s and early 80s, and Mr. Ward was one of those creative geniuses. 

When James suggested to Gary Gygax that a sci-fi RPG should be created, Gary suggested James go for it, and so he did. Metamorphosis Alpha, the first sci-fi RPG ever created was released by TSR in 1976. It's been in print in a variety several editions for a many years. Then two years ago Goodman Games re-released the 1st edition of MA in a hardcover edition that is a loving tribute to the game that also covers it's development and early history. Goodman Games continues to develop and release new material for MA with James and Goodman's own stable of creative geniuses.

Gods, Demi-Gods, and Heroes (coauthored with Rob Kuntz) for D&D published by TSR in 1976. Then in 1980 TSR released his Deities and Demigods (again with Kuntz). I owned these two back in the day, but the first game I came in contact with written by James was Gamma World, first published in 1978. I think it was the 3rd printing of the 1st edition that I owned. 

The list of James' other contributions to the hobby is long. He's designed board games and collectible card games. He's written for Marvel and DC, and he's had numerous novels published. In 1989 he was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame. 

James' game books, and those of his colleagues, are infinitely more expansive than just their mere word count. For me and my friends in the early 80s, the pages of these volumes were like magic carpets that transported us to places that felt more real than movies, novels, or comics ever could. Back then I never imagined that I might one day have the chance to interview the author of those books, and I consider myself very fortunate that James agreed to participate. Thanks, James! Thanks for the interview, and an especially huge thank you for everything you've given to the hobby! I look forward to finally making it to Gary Con next year and so I can meet you in person (and maybe play in one of your game sessions!!!!). And Happy Birthday! (Albeit, a bit late). James celebrated his 65th birthday last week.

Favorite Toys

What were your favorite toys during child hood? Like, the TOP 3 TOYS of all time and pick your favorite of these toys. What is it about any of these toys you most identified with? What made this so special? How did you play/enjoy this toy? (shared or solo play).

James: 1 – Six inch tall green army guys
My father was a lifer in the army. We moved to the state of Washington during the Cuban Missile Crises as the army troops from Washington moved to Florida in case Cuba had to be invaded. Military talk encouraged me to think about military toys and this was before the time of G. I. Joe. I had tanks and canons and lots of military toys. My younger brother was 18 months younger than I was. We shared in the military battles we dreamed up with those toys. 

2 – Robby the Robot battery toy
Forbidden Planet came out in the movies when I was 2. I have a distinct memory of the Christmas tree that year having a Robby the Robot Toy. I sure wish I had that box and toy now. No one but me could play with Robbie. 

3 – Raj the plush toy tiger
When I was young I had lots of nightmares of me falling from a great height and I would wake up screaming. My wise mother bought me Raj the plush tiger and explained to me that he would guard me from harm. I never had a nightmare after Raj started sleeping with me every night. I never played with Raj, he was only there to protect me at night. 


Favorite Films and TV

What were your favorite films or TV during childhood and what age were you for each favorite? What did you identify with about these shows? Do you think these shows had an influence on the adult you? 

James: 
Forbidden Planet
Time Machine
Mysterious Island 

In Forbidden Planet I wanted to fight the monsters of the Id before I even knew what the Id was. 
In the Time Machine the idea of going into the future was a fascinating idea and still is. 
In the Disney movie the idea of exploring an odd island filled with wondrous things was especially interesting to me. 

All of those shows were filled with adventure. Those and others encouraged me to read a lot and find adventures from science fiction with Tom Swift in fifth grade to the Hardy Boys through 8th grade. 


Imaginary Worlds

Think about playtime, did you create games or imaginary worlds as a child? If so, please describe an important original game or play world you enjoyed.

James: Whatever the current TV show or movie I saw was the background for adventures. I can remember the Buck Rogers cliff hangers with Buster Crabb and the Rocket Man series at the movies. Flash Gordon and the evil Ming was fun to imagine. 


Play Community

As a child how did you feel about how you fit in with the rest of the world or community or friends? Like, were you very social or did you prefer spending time alone? Your environment, was it rural or urban? Were siblings a big part of your playtime? Did adults interact with you in game play, and if so was it structured play (sports, scouting, clubs, etc.) or free form? 

James: My brother and I ignored real life back in the day. As soon as we could we were out the back door of the house and putting our selves in the pits of Mongo or the super cities of the Han. We didn’t really fantasize when the other neighbor kids started playing with us. In those days we did the games of children like four-square, jump rope, baseball, and dodge ball. My younger brother Larry got in the games early, but when I was in 6th grade we had my brother Mark and I generally just babysat him in the summers. Adults in those days just called us into the house for meals and to wash up. 


Playtime Impact on Adult Games

Do you have any thoughts about any aspects of your childhood playtime that might have influenced your passion for RPGs? Have you ever intentionally incorporated memories of childhood playtime into game work you have created as an adult?

James: I have a reputation for writing good science fiction as I designed the first science fiction RPG in Metamorphosis Alpha and the first apocalypse RPG in Gamma World. I know all of those Flash Gordon, Rocket Man, and Buck Rogers series gave me fun inspiration for doing RPGs. 


Desert Island Media

What are the top 10 things you would want to have on a deserted island - music recordings - films - books - TV shows - comics - games - or toys? 

James: Hmmmmm, I’m not putting down any survival gear, even though those types of items would fill my list. Other things would include: 
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
A powered computer with a hefty memory of games
The complete works of Robert Heinlein
A Star Trek powered replicator
A Julie Newmar robot
A dome house with the amenities
All of the James Bond CDs and a powered cd player
A large screen powered TV
An exercise machine. 

Notes:
Metamorphosis Alpha: http://www.metamorphosisalpha.net/Site/Welcome.html
Goodman Games edition of Metamorphosis Alpha: http://www.goodman-games.com/store-MA.html
James Ward Board Game Geek Page:  https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/1832/james-m-ward
James, Crusader Journals available on Drive Thru RPGhttp://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?x=0&y=0&author=James%20Ward