18 February 2010

Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

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UPDATE — FUNGUS FOREST Retrospective: Chill

FEB 17, 2010 08:14A.M.
FINISHED
FEB 17, 2010 07:46P.M.

Dunegeon Level 2B the Fungus Forest has been completed. You can see
it here.

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Shroomenkin
FEB 17, 2010 07:15P.M.

Armor Class: 5[14]

Hit Dice 1+1

Attacks: 1 hands (1d8) For a great many gamers, horror roleplaying begins and ends with Call of
Cthulhu and it’s not difficult to see why. CoC established itself early as
Saving Throw: 12 the leader within its genre and, while the game’s focus is the cosmic
horror of H.P. Lovecraft, since its initial release in 1981, the game has
Special: Immune to mind control spells. included plenty of support for more “traditional” horror adventures and
campaigns featuring werewolves, mummies, and zombies.
Move: 14
At the same time, there have always been gamers who didn’t like Call of
Challenge Level: 2/80 Cthulhu for whatever reason — too “literary,” too bleak, too deadly —
which left room in the RPG marketplace for other takes on horror. One
such take was Chill: Adventures into the Unknown. Its first edition was
published in 1984 by Pacesetter, a gaming company founded and staffed
primarily by ex-TSR staffers and whose brief existence (1984-1986) was,
in my opinion, a glorious misadventure. Pacesetter’s RPGs all possessed
a certain zest to them, the kind of enthusiasm that can only be found in
the young and naive who truly believe that their ideas can change the
world. Nevertheless, they’re very hit or miss, both mechanically and
esthetically and Chill was no different.

Whereas Call of Cthulhu took its main inspirations from the writings of
H.P. Lovecraft and his disciples and imitators, Chill was, for good and for
ill, inspired by monster movies, particularly those produced by Universal
Studios and Hammer Films. Player characters were assumed to be
professional monster hunters called “envoys” in the service of a secret
society known by the faintly ridiculous acronym of S.A.V.E., which stood
for Societas Albae Viae Eternitata — “Eternal Society of the White Way”
— and whose purpose was to protect mankind from the dark forces that

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected] 18 February 2010

lurked in the shadows. As a framing device for an episodic monster ROGUE FEED
hunting game, S.A.V.E. worked well enough, although, even as a younger
person, I found it a mite unsophisticated. Adventure
FEB 17, 2010 07:33A.M.
The game’s rules were unremarkable, being a serviceable, but not
inspired, variation on the mid-80s fad for chart-based action resolution
pioneered by Marvel Super Heroes. Character generation was a mix of
weighted random rolls (for basic abilities) and choice (for skills). Skills
all had a chance to succeed based on an average of two to three relevant
abilities, with bonuses and penalties assessed to the roll. Combat
involved comparing one character’s “attack margin” versus another
character’s defense on the action table to determine both success and
damage. Like most of Chill, it worked well enough, but was neither
particularly innovative nor flavorful. Characters could also learn
disciplines of “the Art,” which was a kind of low-level magic appropriate
the style of horror the game emulated.

What really made Chill work, though, was its attitude and approach. The
game was not a doom-laden meditation on man’s insignificance. Neither
was it filled with angsty melodrama. Chill was unapologetically — even
gleefully — a game about kicking monster butt in the name of goodness,
just like Peter Cushing did back in the day. To call it a “horror” game is, Gamers of my vintage will fondly remember the 1979 Atari video game
in many ways, a mistake, because it was “scary” only in the same way entitled simply Adventure. Though the gameplay and graphics were
that Halloween is scary. Chill was never intended to be soul-shatteringly decidedly primitive, I nevertheless had a great deal of fun with the game,
frightening, a fact many reviewers missed when the game was first which involved a quest to find a magical chalice hidden away in a locked
released. Its horrors weren’t intended to shock or terrify; rather they castle, protected by dragons, a mischievous bat, and a maze, and whose
were meant to be opposed and, ultimately, beaten. gate could only be opened by discovering a key that was place randomly
within the game “world.” Hard though it is to imagine nowadays,
Pacesetter released a slew of modules and supplements for Chill, many of Adventure was innovative for its time and was another step along the
which were quite good, assuming what one wanted was to run a road to the D&D-fueled ascendancy of fantasy as the premier genre for
campaign about professional monster hunters. This earned the game a video games.
“lightweight” reputation in many circles, which is probably why, when
Mayfair produced a second edition in the mid-90s, they — foolishly in Reader Matthew Fox pointed out that the Atari website includes a Flash-
my opinion — made the game darker and grittier, turning it into a faux based port of the game that you can play online if you’re looking for a
Call of Cthulhu by way of White Wolf. It’s a shame, because I had a lot of little blast from the past.
fun with the original Chill and I’d hoped that Mayfair’s revival of the
game might provide the same kind of fun, “beer and pretzels” monster
bashing I remembered so fondly. Alas, it was not to be.

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected] 18 February 2010

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Gygax on OD&D; and AD&D;

FEB 17, 2010 06:43A.M.

Since it frequently gets referenced and because not everyone is familiar

with the original quote, here again is the famous June 1979 quote from
issue 26 of The Dragon, where Gary Gygax discusses the differences
between D&D — what we refer to today as OD&D — and AD&D, the
latter of which would be completed with the then-imminent release of
the Dungeon Masters Guide.

Because D&D allowed such freedom, because the work itself

said so, because the initial batch of DMs were so imaginative
and creative, because the rules wre incomplete, vague and
often ambiguous, D&D has turned into a non-game. That is,
there is so much variation between the way the game is
played from region to region, state to state, area to area, and
even from group to group within a metropolitan district,
there is no continuity and little agreement as to just what the
game is and how best to play it. Without destroying the
imagination and individual creativity which go into a
campaign, AD&D rectifies the shortcomings of D&D. There
are few grey areas in AD&D, and there will be no question in
the mind of participants as to what the game is and is all
about. There is form and structure to AD&D, and any
variation of these integral portions of the game will obviously
make it something else.

I’ve bolded the phrase “D&D has turned into a non-game,” because it’s a
really remarkable turn of phrase, both in terms of its actual content and
because of the way it marks a turning point in the history of the hobby —
the point at which the demands of TSR’s business interests took
precedence in determining the future direction of Dungeons & Dragons.