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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 22, 2020 9:59:30 GMT -5
In OERTH JOURNAL #11, published in 2000, there was a featured article titled "A History and Timeline of the Suloise" by Lenard W. Lakofka and Steve B. Wilson. I'm pretty sure I saw it on the internet before that. Does anyone know when it was first written and if EGG ever gave any opinion on this timeline? From what I understand, when EGG was drawing the map for publication in the WORLD OF GREYHAWK Folio (1978) he offered to let Lakofka have a place on the map for his campaign. Lakofka said that from their migrations many Suel ended up on Lendore Isle, and took it upon himself to flesh out the Suel deities with some editorial oversight by EGG before they were published in DRAGON (early 1980s). What I'm unclear about is if EGG "gave" the Suel history to Lakofka to develop further, or if Lakofka just took it upon himself to do that as well -- and what EGG's opinion on it was. I've always considered "A History and Timeline of the Suloise" to be at times fanciful and entertaining ("-1113 SD: The 5th Key of Difficulty is unlocked. An elf teleports into a solid wall providing more merriment for the dwarves."), but for the most part uninspired and not conveying any real sense of antiquity or weirdness.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 23, 2020 14:09:18 GMT -5
Wow, I just saw that Lenard Lakofka passed away this morning. I was sorry to hear that, as he was one of the few left living from that original circle of gamers and writers. RIP Leomund! Just yesterday, I watched the Legend & Lore podcast Q&A with him, that Allan was also on incidentally: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiXdY9WstD4&t=4739s |
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 23, 2020 20:22:39 GMT -5
He was difficult to talk to so I only had a few backs and forth. RIP Leomund.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 23, 2020 20:32:56 GMT -5
I'll have to wait until my computer is back up to see what I said specifically about Lakofka but in person talk, he confirmed he enjoyed his output.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 23, 2020 20:33:40 GMT -5
In regards to Gary commenting on Len.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 24, 2020 9:42:13 GMT -5
Was Lakofka some kind of style authority? No. Was he a contributor above TSR staff like E. Moore? Yes. His greatest asset was being available to Gary on demand. That's the way it seems on paper. Pumping out a droll history years later out of that context seems absurd without big pimped up products to service it. The actual Gygax Suel product would probably be related to the Sea of Death novel. My feel was that "all that material was stolen from me" meant this was an unknown series. Not the Dille-Williams'"porn Greyhawk" but something along the lines of Circle of Eight exploration of the multi-layered groupings. As "Gord" was one step away from "Ape" it would have to handled in that manner. Some kind unknown product that would have commercial value but somewhat new and somewhat tied. Sea of Dust subterranea locales for adventures which the novels would gloss over. So searching for clues in Sea of Death are probably only a stepping stone to some x factor product.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 25, 2020 12:51:43 GMT -5
Something I did like from Lakofka was the article ""New charts, using the '5% principle'" in Dragon Magazine #80 (Dec. 1983). It was credited to both Lakofka and EGG. I liked the way everything was combined and this was something I still use to this day. Those 5% increases are crucial, especially for low level characters. Lakofka said he was very detail-oriented, and gaps in the system bothered him, and so he tried to fill them in. Like the missile fire penalties of -2 at medium range and -5 at long range... He asked "What happened to -1, -3 and -4?" He had a valid point there, but it never bothers me unless it is something that has come up in play and this never did. Not once did I have a situation where a monster stepped back one yard to go from medium to long range and have a player notice it.
The archer and archer-ranger were a bit overpowered and one of my close friends in high school, who was a min/maxer, came up with his own ridiculous variation that made it even more powerful with magical additions: the prismatic archer! We said, "Why stop there, just make it the prismatic commando!" and that was what we called it ever after. I think the point blank range came from this class, and maybe weapon specialization came from it as well.
I never played L1 "The Secret of Bone Hill." I had the L2 module "The Assassin's Knot" but never ran it or played it, but I enjoyed reading it and seeing an example of an assassin guild done by someone who worked closely with EGG. I got L3 in the Silver Anniversary boxed set, but never played that either. It is worth revisiting the series to consider for upcoming games. I did enjoy Len's Gods of the Suloise write-ups in Dragon Magazine, and thought he did a good job continuing the formula EGG started with the Gods of the World of Greyhawk.
Something else I found out recently was that Lakofka helped EGG to edit and write the PH and DMG. I would be nice to know what specific parts he contributed.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 25, 2020 16:23:21 GMT -5
Lakofka main influence on my campaign was death masters, archers and ultra-players quoting his variant rule articles. Otherwise the modules weren't a hit with us.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 26, 2020 9:53:53 GMT -5
Everyone was impressed with death masters when that article first came out (DRAGON Magazine #76, August 1983), and it was cool to read. It has one of my favorite Roger Raupp illustrations! But I don't remember anyone ever using a death master in a game -- certainly not as player characters. For me, that niche had already been filled by 5th+ level clerics who had the important "necromancer" spells of animate dead and speak with dead. Using NPC classes as PCs must have been ubiquitous and not must at my school in the early 80's because the article title is:
And in the article he writes:
That makes me laugh because it was a time period which included lots of players running NPC classes and evil characters. I agree with Len, and I wouldn't want to play like that all of the time, but there is something to be said for experimentation and player vs. player action.
I'm very nostalgic about that era of DRAGON Magazine since the first issue I got was #63 and I was fascinated with each issue I could get my hands on after that (not many, since I didn't have money), and they all seemed to have something useful or at least inspirational for the game. I remember leafing through the Hell articles at a bookstore at the mall, and not having the money to buy #75 and #76 at the time (summer between 9th and 10th grade).
Something else I just noticed for the first time: the art in the header for the column "Leomund's Tiny Hut" was by Darlene Pekul! It normally appears as a hut in a tropical looking forest, but is different in issue # 76.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 26, 2020 14:00:02 GMT -5
Yes, the NPC label was almost treated as a warning for people who didn't know what they were doing it seemed. I think one mag suggests it but I don't have anything on hand. The necromancer characters were there in NPC form as the most popular common made up thing followed by the "fire mage". I recall three people making death master pcs but more with necromancy "specialists" (pg 41 dmg) from scratch usually as villains but there were many pc necromancers.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 27, 2020 9:39:11 GMT -5
Len also contributed to the pyrologist class, a "fire user" written by Gary Gygax and Len Lakofka, which appeared in Lakofka's Diplomacy fanzine, Liaisons Dangereuses #74 (September 14, 1976).
I freely adapted the fire wizard and its opposite, the necromancer, from THE ELVES AND THE OTTERSKIN (1981) by Elizabeth Boyer. Heavily influenced by Scandinavian folkore, her fire wizards were the good guys and the necromancers had powers of darkness and ice as well as powers over death. Their usual attack spell was an ice bolt. I got a lot of use out of the necromancer NPC, Lorimer, who was my own version of one of these specialists mentioned in the DMG.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 27, 2020 11:14:16 GMT -5
The weird classes really made the game. Even imported from other stuff. In 1981 everybody was using anything and everything but as the round 2 and round 3 basics set in it confused the pile with minimalism.
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Post by grodog on Nov 1, 2020 23:47:42 GMT -5
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