19th Level

There's a lot of controversy going on with the latest incarnation of Vampire: The Masquerade . Apparently, in the new Camarilla book Vampires are posited as being behind the Chehen anti-gay purges - somehow related to hiding the true threat of Sharia law or something. To be honest, I found the editing of the text a little hard to follow. White Wolf's owners, Paradox Interactive, has announced they are recalling a pair of books with such offending text as well as exercising greater control over White Wolf and no longer developing products in-house. The backlash has ranged from "about time" to "they're not really taking responsibility" to "they are caving into social justice warriors". I'm thinking a bit about what I would consider to be, at best, a horribly clumsy attempt at including real-world horrors into an RPG. At worst, it was an act of ill intent, trivializing the real suffering of LGBT people to push an agenda I find abhorr...

I saw Vampire: The Masquerade  a number of times at the local Waldenbooks in the early 1990s. As a poor college student without a lot of free time I didn't make that many gaming purchases back then - and without a regular book there didn't seem much point in purchasing it. But every time I was there I flipped through it and was amazed - it was different from any other RPG I'd ever seen. From the evocative art to the comic book style story within to its themes. Eventually I wound up purchasing it. Truth to tell, I've not gotten that much play out of it - in that, it resembles Pendragon - a game I really like but have gotten very little opportunity to play. However, the few times I've played it were a blast - whether it was dark and moody or superheroes with fangs, it was a blast. There's a number of things about Vampire that I found - and still find - appealing. I love politics and Vampire games can be all about politics - high stakes politics in the style...

I'm actually able to give a straight answer on this one as I do have an actual favorite - it's a classic and one I'm sure others will have it as well and deservedly so - David Sutherland's A Paladin in Hell from the 1st edition of the AD&D Players Handbook. For me this illustration captures the heroism of the paladin - not the infamous "lawful stupid" caricature but the true hero who will fight the forces of evil in their own domain against overwhelming odds. I'd also like to highlight the work of Tim Bradstreet who became best known for his work on Vampire: The Masquerade.  Another of my all-time favorites is his "Methusalah" illustration from that game's 1st edition: It would be hard to overstate the impact Vampire had on the gaming community in the 1990s. A large part of this was its extremely evocative art. I tried to picture one piece of Tim Bradstreet's art which really captured the moment,

Both my current and immediately previous campaigns could be considered "old school" campaigns. Right now I'm playing Dungeon Crawl Classics and my previous campaign was of Call of Cthulhu, something of a living fossil in that despite being in its 6th edition it is very close to the game it was when it started. Despite this I don't necessarily consider myself to be an old school player and this blog has discussed newer games in addition to the older ones. I've enjoyed both flavors. Reflecting on this has made me think of the transition from old school to new school gaming. In the 70s and early 80s most adventures, at least for D&D, had the slimmest of plots. There was typically a dungeon and sometimes there was a bit of a plot and reason for you to go there but these were usually easily changed. In his Grognardia blog, James Maliszewski has referred to this transition as the Hickman Revolution. Tracy Hickman wrote the Desert of Desolation series of advent...