D&D with an 8-years old

 Following the earlier post on HeroQuest, here I report my first real game of D&D with my son, now eight. It was massive fun.

The rules are the classic, 1st edition D&D, those from the Red Box.

The first causal game, just to explain how the system works, was a bit hit and miss. My son generated a Fighter which the named "The Viking". Armed with an axe and a shield, the Viking single-handedly assaulted a dungeon butchering the goblin guard, which was fun.

Scared by the commotion, the other goblins started barricading the only access door, but the Viking started happily axing the entrance, bent to bloodshed.

As terrified as the goblins were, they had enough presence to shoot him with their bows through the gaps of the door, and wounding him, then they ran to call their boss, an orc.

The Viking paid no heed to his wounds: he charged through the door at the orc but, lamentably, missed him and was dispatched with a single blow. Thus endeth the story of the murderous Viking. 

That wasn't fun, but it taught my son the value of assessing the power of an enemy and never underestimating a wound.

For the second game, I forced him to reroll a new character, which he named the Avenging Viking. He was, of course, the Viking's son.

The rolls were abysmal, since this Fighter has Str 8, Con 10, Int 7 and Wis 6. On the plus, he was nimble (Dex 13) and had decent outlooks (Chr 12).

The Avenging Viking (AV) was smarter than his late father. He killed the goblin guard but, being armed with a sword, had no means of bashing the barricaded door open, so the first day he left the goblins alone.

On the second day, the AV returned but failed to catch the goblin guard by surprise. He killed it but found the main door barricaded again.

On the third day again the AV assauled the dungeon: this time the goblin guard sounded the alarm and all the denizens of the dungeon ran out to face their besieger. The AV ran away, and the monsters decided not to pursue him since they had no love for the light of day. Realizing he lacked a ranged weapon, the AV returned to the village and sold the dead goblins' gear and his remaining money to buy a short bow and ten arrows.

On the fourth day the AV was unable to sneak on the goblin guard, and as the alarm sounded and all the monsters rushed off, the AV and them exchanged rounds of shooting, wounded each other lightly, but eventually came to a standoff. The AV left and, upon returning to the village, found he had become a the subject of local interest, with local elders offering unwanted advice and generally making good-humoured fun of his numerous attempts at killing the monsters. One of them suggested that the dungeon might have a backdoor, easier to attack.

On the fifth day, the AV looked for a backdoor but only found the den of a wormlike monster, which he managed to wound but not to kill. Then he assaulted again the main entrance, alarmed the monsters, ran away, exchanged volleys of arrows with them until they decided to pursue him. Luckily for him, the AV managed to distance them. That night, at the village, he learned that the creature he had found was a Carrion Crawler, a dangerous monster better left alone because he could paralyze victims with his tentacles.

On the sixth day, the AV manufactured himself a spear, which he used to attack the Carrion Crawler while keeping out of reach. The worm retreated into its hole, but the AV wisely decided not to crawl into it and follow suit. Again he disturbed the monsters, was chased, and eventually returned home with a couple of arrows sticking off his back. That night, the elders suggested that it was dangerous to go alone, and the AV should look for an adventuring companion at the tavern. This is where the AV met Banedon the Cleric, who wanted to fight evil monsters in the name of the Gods.

On the sixth day, the AV and Banedon approached the dungeon and were able to sneak on the goblin guard. Then they set up an ambush: while Banedon distracted the monsters, the AV would hide and attack their rear. Everything seemed to go well, when the AV fell on the orc and plunged his sword into its black heart, avenging the death of his father. But then the remaining two goblins decided to fight like cornered beasts: one killed Banedon and the other wounded badly the AV. Just before the killing blow that would have ended the Fighter's life, Banedon's warhammer shone of a divine light, distracting the goblins and allowing the AV to escape (yes, GM intervention, that's ok I guess, the player needs encouragement). The AV made his way back to the village, grieving his friend's death at the hands of the goblins.

This time the AV took a few days to heal from his wounds. Again, he looked at the tavern for a companion but only found a magician girl named Ghiscar, who was very keen to join him. At first the AV would not hear her pleas - he didn't like girl adventurers, thank you - but at last he was convinced by the lack of other options.

Three days later, the AV and Ghiscar made their way to the dungeon and found it abandoned: the surviving goblins had left, taking with them all the food and valuables they could. Exploring the ruins, the two adventurers avoided a pit trap and found a secret door that the orc might have known, but the goblins didn't. In a secret room they found a chest which they pried open: it contained, among other treasures, the axe of the Viking and a red sword. Overjoyed, the AV felt closure for his quest for vengeance. The heavy chest leaned on a door, also locked, as if the orc had tried to block it. The AV insisted on opening it but Ghiscar would not hear any of it (she was a lot more sensible than the AV and Banedon, it turns out).

Instead they explored the rest of the dungeon. In the main room they found human bones, which could have belonged to Banedon: they gave them a burial. In a side corridor, they discovered an entrance that led to the den of the Carrion Crawler, which they attacked from behind. Among bones and dirt they found many valuable gems, and returned to the village significantly richer than before. But most of all, the AV had avenged his father, retrieved his axe and a red sword which looked very much magical...

My son had massive fun, but I also admit that I had a good time. Red Box's rules are easy and fast paced enough to allow narrative gaming with minimum effort on number crunching. Next time, the AV is going back to open the sealed door... what will he find behind it? Since I have no idea yet, suggestions to the GM are welcome!

Fantasy Visuals: Jeff Easley

Jeff Easley belongs to the TSR group of artists who worked on D&D products in the 80s and 90s. His work is as famous as Larry Elmore’s, and has come to be associated to the “classic D&D” style.

Easley was born in 1954 in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Since childhood he was fond of drawing, especially monsters, a passion that he carried on all his life. His favourite artists was Frank Frazetta, who had a great influence on his style. In 1977 he graduated with a Bachelor in Fine Arts at Murray University in Kentucky. It was probably in these university years that young Jeff met with Larry Elmore, 6 years older and also graduated in art in Kentucky (in a different university, though): the two were just acquaintances at first.

Moving to Massachussets with his wife, also an artist, Easley started working in the comics (Marvel, Warren) and advertisement industry, the first being his passion and the second the way to pay the bills. Everything changed when Elmore was hired by TSR and moved to Lake Geneva. Easley immediately asked his friend if the company was looking for other fantasy artists, and it was: in March 1982, four months after Elmore was hired, Easley also started working in the company.

Easley’s work went directly into the Red Box manual of D&D, and here are some excerpts from that milestone. I’m sure most of you have seen them:

 

 

 

 

 

Jeff continued to work on all D&D and AD&D products in the years to come, focusing mostly on Monster Manuals, his delight. His favourite and most successful pieces were all about dragons and undead.
 

 

 

 

 

 

His work is also notable on the Dragonlance series, where he painted many covers and calendar pieces.

Not to mention the saga of Drizzt the Dark Elf.

 

After TSR was acquired by Wizards of the Coast (1997) he continued painting cards for Magic: The Gathering.

He left WotC in 2003, after 21 years working for the company, and started freelancing.

Easley’s favourite technique is oil, much like Elmore. While obviously following the standard elements of D&D art, his style owes much to Frazetta, with great attention to movement and muscles, and limited palettes that work on the contrast between light and dark. Backgrounds are minimal and light is used to focus on the main scene occurring, very often a scene of action.

Easley was a master of dynamic scenes and his work has fittingly become iconic of a period of Fantasy art. He was one of the great American Fantasy artists of the 80s and 90s. Below are some of my favourite pieces by him.

 

 

 

Fantasy Visuals: Larry Elmore

In the history of Fantasy Art, Larry Elmore is a giant. His work has been seminal to what Dungeons & Dragons and American Fantasy would be and are still today. He came after Frazetta and Vallejo, but somehow his influence was greater and more long-lasting, and the reason is that he was the most important illustrator at TSR, Inc., the publisher of D&D.

But let’s go by order: Elmore was born August 5th, 1948 in Louiseville, Kentucky, a city in the US Midwest. Always interested in art since childhood, he eventually graduated in Art at Western Kentucky University. More or less at the same time he married and was drafted in the army, and sent to Germany where he stayed most of his two years of service.

In 1973 Elmore was released from the military and found his first job at Fort Knox (not far from home) as an illustrator in the Training Aids Department. This job lasted three years, after which Elmore decided to become a freelancer and draw what he liked. By the end of the 1970s, he was publishing in National Lampoon and Heavy Metal Magazines.

The turning point of his career was D&D: he was introduced to the game by an ex colleague and he got in touch with the guys at TSR. Just at that time, the manager Kevin Blume decided to fire most of the artists after personal disagreements, and so the new Art Director Jim Roslof was hiring: in November 1981 Elmore moved to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and his first job was to take care of the graphics of the second edition of D&D. If you are old enough to have seen the Red Box, get ready to jump of the Feel Train for a nostalgia trip.

There is no doubt that Elmore’s contribution to the books of D&D was part of its success. A whole generation of roleplayers was imprinted with his visuals. There were warriors in exotic armour, evil magicians in flowing robes, beautiful and slender elves, stocky and big-nosed dwarfs, evil-looking monsters with pointed fangs and colossal dragons.

 

Especially dragons - red dragons, blue dragons, green dragons and so on. The best part about Elmore's dragons is that they all look different, and certainly this was no easy feat for the painter. To tell it all, it was probably Elmore who created the fantasy dragon as we know it: no longer the traditional snakelike beast with tiny legs from Middle Ages, nor the more lion-like cousin of Baroque art, often graced with tiny feathered wings. The new dragon had a powerful, muscular, massive body covered in scales and talons; great wings; fishlike spikes; reptilian, glowing eyes; and a mouth full of sharp fangs. Thank you, Larry Elmore.

 

As TSR grew, more artists were hired, whose names probably you have heard before and will be the subject of future posts: Jeff Easley, Clyde Caldwell, Keith Parkinson, Tim Truman. Together they developed the iconic D&D style of the 80s, but somehow Elmore was always on top of them: nobody really incarnated 80s D&D like he did.

Larry Elmore liked to work mainly with oil colours. He didn’t stray from American tradition too much: he painted with real models and this can be clearly seen from any of his works. The level of detail is impressive and there is a strong realism that is only tempered by strange traits of demi-humans and the exotic clothing and armour. Where Elmore differed from his predecessors, was that he also put great attention to the setting: whereas Frazetta and Vallejo were happy with sketchy backgrounds, Elmore was painting traditional oil landscapes complete with old oaks, snowy mountains, forest canopies bathed in the light of warm sunsets, rivers meandering through vast plains, mirroring the light of the sun, and so on. Watching a painting by Elmore made people feel like they were actually there: it was Fantasy, but it was feeling real, and this is ultimately what D&D players were after. Larry Elmore was the right man and the right time.

 

Elmore worked at TSR between 1981 and 1987: these years were the zenith of his career and all of his most iconic works come from this period. While many have fond memories of SnarfQuest from Dragon Magazine, I think everybody who lived in the 80s and 90s and knows Fantasy remembers his contributions to the Dragonlance saga.

   

 

  

  

Elmore left TSR in 1987. Since then he worked on several projects, including Magic: the Gathering and the Sovereign Stone project in cooperation with M. Weiss and T. Hickman. He still cooperated occasionally with TSR. Still active today, he is a living legend and a regular guest at many conventions.

You can’t fail to love Larry Elmore’s work if you have been living those years. I do. And yet, there is something I must spit out, for intellectual honesty. What follows may offend you, but that’s it, this is a personal blog and not a commercial page. We don’t need to be nice, we need to be sincere. And there’s a lot I really don’t like about Elmore’s work, and here’s a list of what it is.

First: drawing from models. Everybody always looks like he’s posing, because he is. Most of group paintings look like group pictures, and they probably were in origin. 

 

Lack of dynamism in characters is one thing, a small one. But there is more about drawing from models: it is good when picturing real stuff, but when eventually stray from reality, everybody can immediately feel it. Vallejo suffered from this, too. Humans and elves were okay, Dwarfs not so much, but it is with Orcs and Dragons and monsters that Elmore’s painting becomes sketchy. Detail stays, it’s just realism that goes out of the window in favour of a comic book feel. It’s true, look at it. Only Frazetta escaped from this curse (because he didn’t draw from models).

 

 

 

 

But that’s overall forgiveable. What really bugs me is something else. It’s the sexy women, often half naked, almost always graced with angelic faces. They, over time, became more and more common. Elmore didn’t invent the sexualization of Fantasy, it had started long before him and was a general trend in 1980s US - just look at comics or cinema. But while this sexualisation was obvious in earlier artists, such as Vallejo and Achilleos with their oily bodies, phallic symbols and girls in pin up poses. Elmore and TSR realized the trend and followed it, but took care to tone it down for young teenagers and their moms. Also, for some reasons, half naked men became more and more rare, but not so with girls.

 

Eventually, this became the standard in the industry on the western side of the Atlantic and, as I said, a whole generation of fans was raised considering this normality. And that’s why John Blanche and his Amazonia Gothique are great. But that’s the subject of another post.