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[geneweigel]

What is really interesting from my perspective is the game play wrapped up in the holy war mentality of the user-end paladin contradicting Gary's sentiments of a more versatile paladin who is

A) ready to go,
B) knows the give and take of combat and
C) not slowed down by overbaked armchair moralities.

Whenever Gary spoke about paladin play it was shocking because from his perspective, as he saw user-end Gygax-less TSR gameplay, had degenerated into more of a classical dervish (not game version) cemetery defender type and not the knight gallant who is chosen (i.e. Gary's paladin does not use peace knots.)

This is most likely from lack of support of the author and lack of action type campaigns fortifying the good for a game character. The easiest example of which are the questions:

User-end question "Can we kill the evil hostages with the paladin present?"

Gary's type question "Can we kill good hostages with the paladin present?"

I believe Gary would answer yes to both but all of us, having mucked around in the dark for so long with user-end/Lorraine D&D, it is hard to process what constitutes an evil act and blanket morality answers that were once thought to speed things up actually slow things down worse than a slow spell.

I think what Gary was driving at was if evil logic can ruin the adventurousness of a paladin then evil wins. So if the air tight situation involved a rapid disposal of those innocents, who potentially could have been saved but can't possibly be saved, then the paladin must rise to the job instead of letting others do it while they look away.

[GRWelsh]

Paladins can be played lots of different ways, and I'm not opposed to the "holy war" mentality to purge a lost city of evil, since unlike in real life it isn't just a pretense to take someone's land. The whole "we kill the captives while the paladin isn't looking" was already a phenomenon when I started playing D&D in the early 80's. I remember this in middle school when players of good characters would try to look the other way while their fellow party members were up to no good... I'm not the sort of DM who likes to put my players into moral dilemmas since to me a heroic fantasy game should be fairly cut and dry, but sometimes players put themselves in awkward situations and do it to themselves.

The humanoid females and young in the Caves of Chaos used to stop my players cold from adventuring and shift into arguing over the moral dilemma of whether it is good and/or lawful to kill orc babies... I respect EGG for including humanoid females and young in the lairs for the sake of verisimilitude. But honestly, as a DM, I'd rather avoid these un-heroic situations, and so I started to remove the females and young completely and define the Caves as military outposts rather than lairs. That's an example of how I try to make things easier for paladins and other good-aligned characters. I don't want your alignment to feel like a ball and chain you're dragging around.

But if you choose to associate with giggling sociopathic cutthoats... That's on you.

[geneweigel]

I'm not saying user-end wasn't around but the presence of DRAGONLANCE* and BASIC-EXPERT-COMPANION-MASTER** is proof in the pudding that Gary was no longer "there" like he was priorly. Just because there was good in 1982 doesn't mean everything from 1982 was good.

The Lorraine Williams' era of D&D 1985-1999 might be considered "Advanced Official User-End" while the Blume rebellion era (-1985) might be considered the true "Official User End".

Dragonlance gave us the gloomy paladin Sturm Brightblade as an ideal paladin. No more need to be said about that.

Around the same time, the paladin would also be introduced to small children in the Companion Set (1984), unlike the 1981 Basic-Expert sets these Mentzer-edits no longer required an adult, and you can read the ambiguity towards Gygax in Mentzer's introduction. This paladin is all law and "good" is best left for adults.

These all affected our AD&D games as the need for clarifications arose and the younger and fringe (Dragonlance readers, etc) D&D players were graduating into AD&D.


* Dragonlance was ultimately a forced march away from Gary called Project Overlord started in 1982 hidden in plain sight as one of Gary's ideas. From DL5 DRAGONS OF MYSTERY (1984):

The DRAGONLANCE™ game project was DRAGONLANCE series would be a trilogy of begun in 1982, when Tracy Hickman proposed a fantasy novels in addition to modules. After three-module series featuring evil dragons. As much discussion, Tracy Hickman and Margaother members of the TSR design staff looked at ret Weis (of TSR’s Book Department) were his ideas, it quickly became clear that here was a assigned to write the novels.
major epic—something that could not fit into the normal categories. It was even bigger than the famous Giant/Drow (G/D/Q series) modules by Gary Gygax. When Gary saw the initial proposal, he was very excited, for this project happened to work well with an idea he had been kicking around for some time: a twelve-module series that featured each of the official Monster Manual dragons. With Gary’s active approval, a special design group was set up within TSR: Project Overlord. A veil of secrecy settled over the planning process, and regular meetings began. The original planning group was led by Tracy Hickman, and included Harold Johnson, TSR’s Director of Design, Larry Elmore, Carl Smith, Jeff Grubb, and several others. This work led to the creation of the DRAGONLANCE™ Sourcebook, the “bible” for all subsequent work. The DRAGONLANCE game heroes were created, and TSR designers developed histories and personalities for each one. Slowly, the plot was written, and the project was broken down into modules. It was decided that the Two years later, the first DRAGONLANCE module was released to public acclaim. Work continues day and night to bring you still more exciting
DRAGONLANCE products. It is impossible to list everyone who has contributed to this project. There are the DRAGONLANCE game designers (Tracy
Hickman, Doug Niles, and Jeff Grubb), the TSR Art Department (Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, Keith Parkinson, Jeff Easley, Jeff Butler, Dave “Diesel” LaForce, and Dennis Kauth), the Game Editing Staff (Michael Dobson, Anne Gray, and Steve Winter), the Book Department (Margaret Weis, Jean Black), and TSR management (Harold Johnson, Director of Design, Mike Cook, Vice President of New Product Development, Kevin Blume, President of TSR, Inc., and Gary Gygax, Chairman of the Board). Each and every one has contributed to make the DRAGONLANCE series what it is today. We hope that you enjoy playing and reading the DRAGONLANCE line as much as we have enjoyed creating it.

** Basic-Expert-Companion-Master in the intro alone seems geared against Arneson but its also coincidentally geared against Gary:

ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS@ Games The AD&D@ game system is different from the D&D system, which you have now. It is also a fantasy role playing game, but is much harder and more detailed. There are currently six hardback books of rules for the AD&D system. Since it is so much more complex than the D&D system, with established rules for almost everything, it is often used in large tournaments, where accurate rules are needed. Remember: you are not playing the
more complex AD&D games with these rules. You are playing the original DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game!

[geneweigel]

Sorry I accidentally wrote "Arouse" instead of "arose".

Hmmm... Is that what a certain DM, that I played with in the 90's, was really thinking about the paladin player that he was over punishing?

[GRWelsh]

I guess I'm lucky I started playing before all of that. In the D&D games I played with, the paladin archetype came from the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and it was assumed you were aspiring to be a gallant knight errant and hero of the realm. To this day, my gaming group often refers to paladin characters as knights even at first level. Even though knight is a granted title only given to higher level characters, I let this slide as it is being true to the source material and creates the right vibe.

I read the DRAGONLANCE novels back in the day, and they were okay, but suffered badly by comparison to THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Conan stories, Elric, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, etc. I never played the 12 module series but it seemed like a bad idea to attempt to structure adventure modules around the plot of a novel... That was pretty much the definition of railroading my players hate, since they put such a high value on free will and player creativity. A series of dragon themed adventures is still a cool idea.

[Zenopus]

I wrote up what we know about this adventure in a new post on my blog: Gygax's "City on the Edge" Adventure

[GRWelsh]

Good job on the write up, Zach!

[geneweigel]

Nice write up but this "Gene Weigel" character sounds a little sketchy...

In regards to the paladin, did you ever feel like the "Arthurian" D&D material would have been a different approach if taken up by Gary? Like the way he reacted to the Kuntz/Ward version of Conan the barbarian in GODS, DEMIGODS & HEROES (1979) by doing CONAN! IN DRAGON MAGAZINE #36 (April 1980) how exactly Conan might feel in D&D? Just makes me wonder how "paladin" are knights of the round table? Kay was supposed to have a fire element and he's just a "knight of quality" (a high level fighter). Did knights of the round table ever behave as D&D paladins?

[GRWelsh]

I thought the cavalier class was EGG's take on that, i.e. knights are cavaliers but not all knights are paladins.

[geneweigel]

Well that's more "Chainmail" homage with an emulation of the standard college history class genericizing of knights as in a class of their own. Obsessed with getting to the battlefield, etc I mean would he have given special treatment to Arthur and Lancelot? I recall talking with him about it and he seemed well versed in it.

[GRWelsh]

I seem to remember EGG saying the D&D paladin was inspired by Holger Carlson from THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS by Poul Anderson. In that story, Holger Carlson turned out to be Ogier the Dane, one of the twelve paladins of Charlemagne from the Chanson de Roland and other legends.

[geneweigel]

With that in mind, I wonder if the paladin concept of part magical was condensed. The parallel between Arthur and Ogier (Holger) is that they both were healed by going off to the fairies in the legends.

Here are the examples of healing for the fictional in "3 Hearts" not by Holger":
1) He is healed by "injury washed and a poultice of herbs bound over it with an incantation" earlier in the story

2) Later Morgan Le Fay heals by touch "‘Ah, your poor face! Few men could have stood up to the firedrake as you did. Let me heal those burns.’ Her fingers touched them. He felt pain and blisters vanish. ‘There, now, are you more comfortable?’".

3) At the end of the story, Hugi the dwarf dies from a wound right in front of Holger "The moon broke free again. Holger knelt down beside Alianora. She cradled Hugi’s shaggy head in her lap. Blood pulsed from the dwarf’s side, but the flow ebbed even as Holger watched. ‘Hugi,’ she whispered. ‘Ye canna die. I’ll no believe it.’ ‘Nay, lass, dinna fash yersel’,’ he mumbled. ‘Yon great galoon paid top price for me.’ Holger bent close. In the white unreal moonlight the face below him was like a carving in old dark wood. Only the beard, wind-blown, and a few bubbles of blood on the lips, still moved. He saw the wound could not be staunched. It was too big for so small a body. Hugi reached around and patted Alianora’s hand. ‘Och, dinna weep,’ he sighed. “Tis aboot fifty females o’ ma ain race wha’ ha’ cause to mourn. Yet ‘twas ever ye who we loved best.’ He snapped after air. ‘I’d gi’ ye guid counsel if I could. But the noise in ma head’s too great.’ Holger took off his helmet. ‘Ave Maria,’ he began. There was nothing else he could do, and perhaps nothing better, here on this windy cold mountain. He asked that there be gentleness for the soul of Hugi. And when the dwarf was dead, Holger closed his eyes and signed him with the cross.".

So if applied to this story, is the D&D paladin by some strange means powered by the minions of deities (fairies in this case) as the 3rd, 4th, and 5th level cleric spells ala the DMG:

Cleric spells of third, fourth, and fifth level are obtained through the aid of supernatural servants of the cleric's deity. That is, through meditation and prayer, the cleric's needs are understood and the proper spells are given to him or her by the minions of the deity.

[Scott]

I remember Gary mentioning that as well, and in reading the story it's obvious.

[Scott]

Gene, I talked to Gary about this once and he corrected me. I said I thought that the paladin did not get his powers the same was a cleric did, and he said it was the same. So I guess yes, some of the paladin's powers would be powered by the minions of the deities.

[geneweigel]

That is the piece hidden in plain sight. Like kingfoil is synonymous with bay leaves(AKA laurel leaves {Laurus nobilis}) but you can't imagine Aragorn doling out "chicken soup" so its a mystery plant used in tandem by the "fairy-blooded" king.

[Zenopus]

Over on the Piazza, Night Druid suggested that hat the City on the Edge is reminiscent of the Nameless City by Lovecraft, which I think is an excellent observation, checking several of the same boxes, including a Near-East inspired location, an unknown origin predating current civilization, and shunning by the locals.

Gygax: "...it was there when the Bakluni came to Oerik, and it was quickly shunned way back then"

Lovecraft: "There is no legend so old as to give it a name, or to recall that is was ever alive ... all the tribes shun it without wholly knowing why"

[GRWelsh]

I thought about Lovecraft's Nameless City too. EGG mentioned Lovecraft as an influence in the DMG, so it isn't unlikely. I'd be interested to see if there are entombed reptile monsters in the adventure key... Some think "The Nameless City" was a nod to AT THE EARTH'S CORE by Edgar Rice Burroughs which also had a subterranean pre-human reptile race. This made me think of the lost city motif in general, and other stories such as A. Merritt's THE MOON POOL. We all know how much EGG liked ERB and A. Merritt, and they had more action than Lovecraft! EGG was well read on all of these early pulp writers and often seemed to draw inspiration from multiple sources.

[geneweigel]

If you want ready inspiration, remember the kid's show "The Land of the Lost"? It has elements of the Nameless City in its background. The sleestak were once space/time travellers that fell into barbarism and they live in the sleestak city with their mysterious god of the pit.

Tread lightly. This goes deep and it'll eventually melt your mind trying to find the real world location in Yemen...

[Scott]

I’ve thought about stealing elements from Land of the Lost for a D&D game. There’s a lot of good stuff there.

[GRWelsh]

It is amazing that we got LAND OF THE LOST (74-76) as a Saturday morning TV show for kids. It had a lot of the same writers that worked on STAR TREK contributing to it. For a live action sf/fantasy show it was way ahead of its time. It had so many elements I loved like dinosaurs, time travel, lost civilizations, etc. I still remember how cool the pylons were. They were so mysterious, and got used in a lot of interesting ways with those colored stones. Definitely a D&D-usable idea.