#AtoZChallenge2024: E is for Expert

 There are a lot of "E"s I could have gone with today. Epic. Encounter. Heck, even Eclipse and how it relates to D&D. But there is really only one "E" I want to talk about, and that is the Expert Set.

The Expert Set is the follow up the Basic Set I covered on Tuesday. Just like there is more than one Basic there is more than one Expert.

So, a bit of background.

The Expert Rules for D&D follow the Basic Rules. So these books are compatible with the Basic-era of D&D, the so-called "B/X" rules (Basic/Expert) and the "BECMI" rules. They are not, and I would later discover, part of the same line as Advanced Dungeon & Dragons.

The first Expert set was out in January of 1981. This is the one I started with.  Edited by David "Zeb" Cook with Steven Marsh it is sometimes called the Cook/Marsh Expert or B/X Expert.  I have a lengthy review of it here: D&D Expert Set.

The second Expert set was edited by Frank Mentzer, so it is sometimes called the Mentzer Expert or most often the BECMI Expert. BECMI was for the entire series of Mentzer edited/authored Basic line of Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal rules.  I reviewed this Exper set here: BECMI: Expert Set review.

I discussed these differences for my B post, B is for Basic Set Dungeons & Dragons.

The two sets are largely compatible with each other with just minor changes that I detailed in the BECMI Expert review. 

The focus here is higher level characters, levels 4 to 14, and moving out of the dungeon into "Wilderness" and, therefore, more dangerous adventures. This is the end of the B/X line but that actually is a feature, not a bug. The adventures from levels 1 to 14 represent some of the most exciting adventures you and your character can do. It was true then and still true today. Many of the official Dungeons & Dragons adventures end at level 15 (even though the limit now is 20), and the post-popular "D&D" adventure out now, Baldur's Gate 3 video game, has a limit of level 12.  While the BECMI moves on to level 36 (C & M) and beyond (I), I still think this is the sweet spot for most gamers.

"That's Not REAL D&D!"

I got my start with Holmes Basic then quickly moved on to Moldvay Basic and it's companion Cook/Marsh Expert. And I was very, very happy with that for the longest time. While it is not a perfect overlap, I always equate this edition with my gaming in Jr. High.  My then regular DM, Jon Cook, and I would play a lot of this. He also had the B/X books but he also had Advanced D&D (published in 1977) and we played a mix-mash of them both (something I later on discovered was very typical). Sure I wondered why things were different between the games. Clerics had slightly different spell progression and everyone was a bit tougher in AD&D, but I was content. I was happy. Until one night.

This would have been near the end of Jr. High, I know because the Mentzer Expert had not been released yet. I think I must have been about 12 or so. Anyway, Jon and I got invited to a "real" D&D session with some highschool kids. Now let me step back a second here and set the stage. At this time D&D was popular enough that we had a lot of local groups playing completely independent games. I can remember sitting in the lunch room in my Jr. High and listening to friends talk about their D&D games, I was in awe and wonder (of course, I later learned that many of them were just stealing from things like Dune like I was Dark Shadows!).  So we got to go to this game and we were told just bring out PHBs (Player's Handbooks), I didn't have one, I had an Expert book.

Well. I got told in no uncertain terms that what I was I playing was NOT REAL D&D. I was like, "what are you talking about?" Gygax's name was on the insider cover. It was published by TSR. I had very nearly the same rules you did. 

My friends, I had entered into my first battle of "The Edition Wars," and I did not come out unscathed. "Edition Warring" in D&D is the misguided (and stupid, yeah I said it) notion that one edition is better than the other. There were only two editions (maybe four) editions of D&D out at this point and I am already getting shit for it? The effect it had on me was enough that I can still remember it over 44 years later, AND it kept me from playing the BECMI version of D&D for nearly half that time. 

Which is, of course, stupid. It also was not the last time I'd make a bad choice based on editions, but at least the next time was all my own doing. I'll detail that on Sunday.

Today, if I am going to go back and play some "Classic D&D" chances are real good I mean the B/X versions of Basic and Expert.  

It is also my favorite to write and publish for with four of my books designed specifically for the B/X rules in mind, via the Old School Essentials clone game.

• The Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch Tradition
• The Warlock
• Monster Mash
• Monster Mash II: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Much like what I said for the Basic Set any future "Basic" or Introductory set of D&D needs to do what these sets did. Introduce me to the game, give me some options, an adventure to play, and if possible, some dice! I still have my original Basic and Expert sets of dice.

Tomorrow I talk about a topic that has dominated my posting all year long, The Forgotten Realms.

#AtoZChallenge2024: D is for Dice

$3.97 in the 80s. A LOT more now.

One topic spans the years and editions of Dungeons & Dragons and many other Role-Playing Games.

DICE!

One of the features of D&D has been the use of and inclusion of "polyhedral" dice. Each is used for various things in the games, which can sometimes lead to confusion with new players, but a lot of fun for experienced players.

The dice are used for various random numbers.  A typical set includes the following:

• d4 Four-sided dice
• d6 Six-sided dice (the most common)
• d8 Eight-sided dice
• d10 Ten-sided dice (for percentile roles)
• d12 Twelve-sided dice
• d20 Twenty-sided dice (the most popular)

These dice got their start as various Platonic Solids and were originally from a teacher supply store to teach math. I have in turn used them to teach my own kids math and used them in my stats classes to teach probability.

The old Basic sets all used to come with dice, except for the Holmes set. There was such a demand for dice then that TSR had to ship many set with "chits" instead of dice.

Like many gamers I have a lot of dice. Even though they are all just variations of the same 6 dice, I have different sets I like to use for different games and different themes.

This is the set I use when playing Ravenloft of any other Horror themed D&D-like game. Made up of black and red dice with some Castles & Crusades dice.

These are my main D&D dice right now.

My Ghosts of Albion Dice.

I got a bunch of Drow Dice at Gen Con and have used at Gen Con when running the GDQ series.

Some of my oldest dice. Used these throughout high school.

Various witch-themed dice.

Halloween-themed dice!

More old dice to add to my collections.

Some "Holmes-themed" dice, including some Gary Con ones.

Here are two of my newest sets.

These are replicas of the old "Basic era" dice that shipped with the Cook/Marsh Expert set, and the Mentzer Basic and Expert sets. Yes, I had to use a crayon for these!

I got this set at Gary Con, so they are only about two weeks old. I got them at The Bewitched Parlor at Gary Con. The dice bag is from my wife from this past Christmas.  Since I loved themed dice for my characters, the old-school blue set will be for when I play Sinéad, and the purple set will be for Taryn.

Dice have even become a secondary market catering to Gamers. And there are some really nice ones out there.

Places like Dice Witchery, ZucatiCorp with their Holmage Dice, Threshold Diceworks, and so, so many more.

Tomorrow, I take a step back to talk Expert Sets to round out my week of some Classic D&D themes. 

#AtoZChallenge2024: C is for Critical Role

 One of the biggest cultural phenomenons to come out of modern D&D has been the success of Critical Role. It was successful because of D&D 5th Edition and, in turn, made D&D 5th Edition more successful.

What is Critical Role? 

The voice actor players.

It is a streamed "actual play" Dungeons & Dragons 5e (for the most part, more on that) game. Each session is about 4+ hours long (resulting in over 2,000 hours of content) and features a group of voice actors: (top L-R, picture above) Sam Riegel, Taliesin Jaffe, Marisha Ray, Dungeon Master Matt Mercer, and (bottom, L-R) Liam O'Brien, Laura Bailey, Ashley Johnson, and Travis Willingham.

They began just as a group of friends (Travis and Laura were either already married or dating, Matt and Marisha were dating) playing a D&D 4th Edition and then a Pathfinder game.  When D&D 5e came out, they moved over to that. You can even see some rule confusion in the early episodes.

The characters. Can you match who is who?

They soon became wildly popular. How popular? Well there is an Amazon series based on their first campaign ("Vox Machina"), there are several books about and by the Critical Role team, their Gen Con shows are sold out months in advance, and they also sold out Wembley Arena back in October of 2023. A live event to watch a bunch of friends play D&D, and they sold out a space that had previously seen sold-out shows of the likes of Led Zeppelin, Genesis, David Bowie, Queen, The Who, The Grateful Dead, and more.

While they were not the first online Actual Play D&D streamers, they are the biggest, and they made this into not just their own genre of entertainment, but they have been making an absolute ton of money. 

There are three campaigns featuring different groups of characters. Campaign 1 featured the above characters in Vox Machina. Campaign 2 was their big breakthrough campaign featuring the Mighty Nein. This also introduced Laura Bailey's character, Jester Lavorre, the tiefling that inspired a thousand cosplays. 

There have also been four published books for the D&D 5e game.

The cultural phenomena that is Critical Role has not been without some critics. There are those that complain that they are not really gamers. Or that they are not really playing. Or that the "Mercer Effect" has ruined what people expect from D&D.

To those critics, I say, "Do you remember exactly when it was when you let fun die in your life?"

Look. The hobby space that D&D occupies now is not the same as it was in the 1980s. This is a good thing. 

People can watch Critical Role and enjoy it without rolling any dice of their own. They can watch the show and then think, "Hey, this looks fun. I want to try this." They can cosplay Jester, Keyleth, or FCG. They can enjoy the Amazon Prime series.

For me, it is all great fun. I started watching the old streams (still on Campaign 1!), and I enjoy them. They have also given me ideas for my own games. Between Campaign 1 and "Stranger Things," there is a whole new generation of D&D fans out there. Yeah, so sometimes I get 20-year-olds excited to tell me all about Vecna (the BBG in both), but hey, they are excited.

The Future

Critical Role has been a huge money maker...for Critical Role. It should not surprise anyone that the Powers That Be at Hasbro (the current owners of Wizards of the Coast and D&D) wanted in on some of that action. So last year in January, Hasbro/WotC wanted to put out some new guidelines on what various creators can do with D&D material, essentially walking back on 23+ years of access and goodwill.  Well, people naturally were angry.  It was enough that I even stopped using the very permissible Open Gaming License to produce my own works and spent most of 2023 working on solutions. Others did the same. One of those solutions for the Critical Role team was to build their own RPG that they controlled and had all the rights to. It is a very good idea.

They began with an actual play series and a new game called Candella Obscura. It is a quasi-Victorian, horror-themed fantasy game, so you know I am interested! I have not played it yet, but we have the hardcover and it looks fun.  You can try it out for free with their QuickStart Guide. 

Their newest game is called Daggerheart. It is still being playtested, and I discussed it a while back. Will people leave D&D 5 for it? Well, there is some indication that D&D 5 sales dipped in 2023. Was that because of Wizards of the Coast's series of PR blunders or because D&D 5R (One D&D) is due out at the end of this year, and sales ALWAYS dip after these announcements? Hard to say, but it's likely a combination of both. But in any case I wish Daggerheart and the Critical Role team nothing but the best and hope they are wildly successful.

Even if you don't like Critical Role. The Stream, the Amazon show, their D&D 5e content, or new games, you have to like the attention they have brought to this hobby. Even if only 1/10th of the people drawn into this stick around for other games, that is more than we had before.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about a topic that is very near and dear to the hearts of many gamers. Dice!

Check out the April A to Z Challenge

This is also my first entry of the month for the RPG Blog Carnival, hosted by Codex Anathema on Favorite Settings.

#AtoZChallenge2024: B is for Basic Set Dungeons & Dragons

Yesterday I talked about the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game.  Today I want to take a step back and talk about the Basic D&D game.  Though there are several sets that can make the claim of being the "Basic Set."

Regardless of how many or for which edition they all share some things in common.  The Basic set is usually a simpler or stripped-down version of the D&D game designed to introduce new players. They typically come in a boxed set and very often have the very first set of dice a player will own.

My own history with D&D begins with the Basic game. 

Moldvay D&D Basic

Christmas 1981 will forever go down in my memory as the one where everything changed.  I was in Junior High and had been playing D&D for about two years, off and on.  I had read the Monster Manual and I had a copy, badly xeroxed, of the Holmes Basic set.

Christmas though was the turning point. I got two box sets that year; the Ballantine Books boxed set of Lord of the Rings and the "magenta" Basic Set.
Inside was finally my own book, not a copy of someone else's book. I had my own dice (finally!) and a complete adventure.
I devoured that book. Cover to cover. Every page was read and read over and over.

A lot of people talk about "the Red Box." My Red Box was magenta and had Erol Otis on the cover.  For me this was the start of what became "my" D&D. Not someone else's game, but my own.

In 1981, I felt fairly proficient in D&D. But with Holmes D&D, I always felt like something was missing. I only learned later about the "Little Brown Books" and how "Basic" actually came about.

The Moldvay Basic set had almost everything I ever needed for a game.  Plenty of classes and races.  More monsters than I expected (it had dragons!!) and what then felt like tons of spells.  I made dozens of characters, some that saw actual game play, but I didn't care, for me it was the joy of endless possibilities. And that was just in the first couple of dozen pages.

Everything I know about exploring a dungeon, checking for traps, carrying holy water and a 10' pole began here.  I learned that ghouls can cause paralysis (unless you were an elf!) and that zombies always attacked last in the round.  I learned that Thouls was a magical cross-breed between a hobgoblin troll and a ghoul. No, I still have no idea how they are made. I got to meet Morgan Ironwolf herself.
There was a sample adventure in the book, but I never really looked over. I don't think anyone did. It was called the Haunted Keep by the way. Though I very recently was reading that someone put it under the Keep in the famous adventure, Keep on the Borderlands.

This magenta-colored box with strange art on the cover also had other prizes. There inside was my first set of real D&D dice.  No more raiding board games for six-siders, though I learned those dice were properly called "d6s," and my new ones were "polyhedral."  I had a set of blue dice with a white crayon to color them in.  They are not great dice, even then, I knew.  But they were mine, and that is all that mattered.

I want to pause here a second and come back to that art.  Let's look at the cover again.  A woman casting a spell, a man with a spear. Fighting some sort of water dragon (that didn't even appear in the rules!). But look how awesome it is. Do you need to know anything else? No. They are fighting a dragon! That box is why so many gamers fell in love with the art of Erol Otis.  Inside are some equally important names; Jeff Dee, James Roslof, David LaForce, and Bill Willingham.  They gave this D&D a look that was different than AD&D.  I love that art in AD&D, but in this book, that art was just so...timeless. It was D&D.

In that box was also the adventure The Keep on Borderlands. I don't think I need to go into detail there. We have all been to the keep. We have all taken that ride out along the road that would take us to the Caves of Chaos. Nevermind that all these creatures, who should by all rights be attacking each other, never really did anything to me. They were there, and they were "Chaotic," and we were "Lawful." That was all we needed to know back then.

What treasures in such a small box!

The Moldvay Basic set was more than just an introductory set to D&D. It was an introduction to a hobby, a lifestyle. The rules were simply written and organized. They were not simple rules, and re-reading them today, I marvel that we all conquered this stuff at age 10-11. It may have only covered the first three levels of character growth, but they were a quality three.

I bought the Expert Set for my birthday in 1982. For the longest time, that was all I needed. Eventually, I moved on to AD&D. I discovered those Little Brown Books and even picked up my own real copy of Holmes Basic. I love those games, and I love playing them still, but they never quite had the same magic as that first time I opened up that box and saw what treasures were inside. I did not have to imagine how my characters felt when they discovered some long-lost treasure. I knew.

Today, I still go back to Tom Moldvay's classic Basic book. It is my yardstick for measuring any OSR game. Almost everything I need is right there, just waiting for me.

Basic D&D is a very popular topic for me on the old A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here are some other "Basic" posts I have done in past years.

• 2011 Basic D&D
• 2012 B is for Basic Clones (games that play like Basic D&D)
• 2016 A to Z of Adventure! B is for Basic Adventures

Other Basic Sets

It would be very remiss of me not to mention that there were other Basic sets as well.

Holmes Basic, also called the "Blue Book," was my start. Sort of. The rules I used back when I began were a hodge-podge of Holmes Basic and AD&D, particularly the Monster Manual. This was fine, really, since, at the time, 1979, these game lines were a lot closer to each other. I have talked about this in my "1979 Campaign" posts.

Edited by Dr. John Eric Holmes, this book took the original D&D books and re-edited them to a single cohesive whole, though limited to 3rd level, as a means to get people introduced to the D&D game.  The Original Rules (see "O" day!) were an eclectic collection of rules that grew out of Gary Gygax's and Dave Arneson's playstyles. Debate continues on who did what, and I am not going to provide anything close to a definitive answer, but the game sold well but had a steep learning curve to others who were not part of that inner circle or came from War Games. The Holmes Edition attempted to fix that.

Mentzer Basic, or the BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortals) rules, was published after the Moldvay Basic, Cook/Marsh Expert sets. The rules between the B/X and BECMI rules are largely superficial (I will discuss this more), and the BECMI rules go past level 14 into the Companion rules (more on that tomorrow).

There is evidence that the Mentzer Basic set, also known as the "Red Box," was one of the best-selling editions of D&D ever, even outselling the flagship line of AD&D at times. It was also sold in more countries and more languages than any other version of D&D. If you recall Sunday's post, the D&D Basic line was in play for 22 years, covering the same time period as AD&D 1st and 2nd Edition rules. And it is still widely popular today. 

Basic books from England, the USA, and Spain

Is Basic D&D the Game for You?

Basic D&D (all three varieties) are all remarkably easy to pick up and play. Character creation is fast, and the play is super flexible.  It is also one of the main systems I still love to write about and publish for.

Basic D&D has great online support regarding books from DriveThruRPG and other "Old School Renaissance" creators. But it is an older game. One of the oldest in fact. So, some things made perfectly good sense back then that would cause people to scratch their heads at the various design choices (Descending Armor Class? Level limits?), but that doesn't detract from the fun. Finding a Basic game or even people to play it with will be harder.

Any future version of D&D (or any RPG) needs to use Basic D&D as its model for introduction to the game.

Tomorrow, I will talk about a newer topic, Critical Role.

Check out the April A to Z Blogging Challenge

#AtoZChallenge2024: A is for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Welcome to the A to Z blogging challenge for 2024!  As I have been talking about all year, 2024 marks the 50th Anniversary of the first commercially successful (and in many ways the first in all respects) role-playing game. Dungeons and Dragons.

All month long, I hope to celebrate this with my A to Z of D&D.

Today, I start with the edition of D&D that most people who grew up in the 1980s think of when someone says Dungeons & Dragons.  That would be the 1st Edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  This is the edition that we see the kids playing in "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" and on "Stranger Things." This is the classic 1980s version of D&D. The one from the Satanic Panic.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

This game was created in 1977 by Gary Gygax in response to the overwhelming popularity of the Original D&D game.  While the original game relied on some knowledge of wargames at the start, its popularity grew to people who had no experience with war games.  Also, many rule variations began to pop up in terms of both official publications and non-official ones. Gary felt that a gold standard of rules should be written.  There was also the idea that a new game, with a different name, could be used to keep royalties out of the hands of Dungeons & Dragon co-creator Dave Arneson, but more on that in a bit.

The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game was not just evolutionary but revolutionary in it's own right as well.  Until now, most RPGs were printed as softcover books, many in digest format.  AD&D featured full 8.5x11 hardcover books with color covers and improved interior art.  The game was divided into three separate books. A Player's Handbook for everyone, a Monster Manual for all the creatures encountered and most importantly a Dungeon Master's Guide for everything the Dungeon Master (the Game Master or Referee) needed to run the game.  Soon, all other games sought to emulate this style.

While hard figures are not easy to come by, a lot of legwork and deep investigation by Ben Riggs, author of "Slaying the Dragon," points to AD&D having its best years between 1980 and 1984. Some of these sales are also likely from the D&D Basic Set, which I'll talk about tomorrow.

What made it Advanced?

Well. That's a tricky question. The official line was always this. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was a "new game" that covered a variety of rules for all sorts of situations, but mostly for tournament-style play and "official" events. The notion came from the idea that Gary Gygax saw all sorts of things going on in D&D that was not what he considered part of the rules, so he collected all his notes and made this new game and one he hoped people would follow as opposed to his prior game, Dungeon & Dragons.

That was the story.

Since that time, there have been accusations that Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was created as a legal loophole to keep royalties of the game out of the hands of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Dave Arneson. When Arneson left TSR, the company producing Dungeons & Dragons, he was owed quite a bit of royalties. The word is that TSR and Gygax didn't want to pay those (and wouldn't until a later lawsuit was brought in).  

Gygax denied this back in the day, of course, and soft-pedaled it later when all the dust had settled. However, there was a lot on the pages of Dragon Magazine at the time to try to make the point that D&D and AD&D were two completely separate games.  

None of us paid much attention to that. In those early days, we mixed our Basic D&D and Advanced D&D rather freely. It was not until later in my game-playing that I became dogmatic about D&D and AD&D being distinct. 

What were the Differences?

Drama and inside baseball aside, some key elements made Advanced D&D different? 

AD&D had classes (occupations) and races (species) as explicitly separate. Basic D&D had four human classes and three demi-human classes. AD&D expanded on all of these. More classes and more races. The levels went higher than Basic D&D did at the time (the BECMI sets would fix this later), and there was just more everything.

Additionally, there were a lot of rules to handle a lot of specific situations. Gary always imagined that D&D (via OD&D) would be the one people played however they wanted. AD&D was going to be for serious and tournament gameplay. He saw AD&D as having a solid set of rules and judgments like Chess. In practice, though, the average gamer didn't care about all that. We played AD&D much like D&D/OD&D. We ignored all the extra rules we didn't like (weapon speeds?) and kept the ones we liked (like the new monsters and expanded alignments).  So, all this noise about AD&D and D&D being separate and having different games was always a little lost on me. Of course, I learned that others did not see it the same way. I learned when I took my D&D Expert book to an AD&D game. 

Today, the differences again seem very minor to many. The same can be said about AD&D 1st Ed and 2nd Ed, which are still largely compatible. 

For me, AD&D 1st Ed was my game in high school, and I played a lot of it. Despite appearing over 35 years ago, AD&D 1st edition is still played and enjoyed today. If my recent Gary Con trip was any indication, the old games are still doing well. And thanks to Print on Demand you can buy brand new copies of the original AD&D game now for a fraction of the cost of the book in the aftermarket or even the originals.  

• Dungeon Master's Guide
• Monster Manual
• Players Handbook

And additional books for more classes and spells and monsters.

• Unearthed Arcana
• Monster Manual II
• Fiend Folio

I like having these in softcover for my game table, and that way, my originals no longer get abused.

Tune in tomorrow, and I will talk about Basic D&D.

Check out the April A to Z Blogging Challenge

#AtoZChallenge2024: Sunday Special, Introduction to Dungeons & Dragons Editions

 I am going to use Sundays of this Challenge to talk about the various Editions of the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) game that have been published over the last 50 years. 

One of the challenges people have when getting into a game like D&D is where do you start? Generally speaking, you are always best starting with the edition that people around you are playing. If they are playing the newest edition (right now, 5th Edition), then great! This will make finding products easier. If it is an older edition, then great! All editions are fun. 

But what are the Editions? Are there 5 then? Well...it is a bit more complicated than that. Hopefully, this graph (making its rounds on social media and started on Reddit.) will help. The editions are all only sort-of compatible with each other. I'll explain that throughout the month. 

So there are, by some counts, 15 different versions of D&D. Some are 100% compatible with each other, some less so. 

For my posts, I am likely to focus on Basic era D&D (1977-1999), Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977-1988), and D&D 5th edition (2014-2024).  Right now "One D&D" is not out yet. It is due near the end of the year, and by all accounts, it should be 100% backward compatible with D&D 5. We will see. 

Here are a couple of notes for people who don't know (or care) about the differences in these games.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition is the edition made popular by Stranger Things and E.T. the Extra-Terristrial. It was the one popular in media in the 1980s, though there is some evidence that it was D&D Basic (edited by Frank Mentzer, aka "The Red Box") sold better.

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition is the edition made popular by Critical Role. 

I hope that this month I can help with some of the confusion and mystery and maybe, just maybe, make so new players out of you all.

In addition to doing the April A to Z challenge, I am also doing the Ulitmate Blog Challenge. 

AND

I hope to have some good entries in the RPG Blog Carnival, hosted in April by Codex Anathema on Favorite Settings.

Blogging A to Z 2024 Theme Reveal

 It is that time of year again. Time to reveal my theme for the annual Blogging A to Z challenge.

This is the year I have known what I would do for a long time. Since it is the 50th Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons and I am spending the year celebrating, for April, I am doing the A to Z of Dungeons & Dragons.

Granted, this might not really be much of a "challenge" for me, but I hope to inform and maybe even get some people into this weird little hobby of ours.

Who knows. Maybe I'll learn something new myself.

Catch all the other A-to-Z-ers doing theme reveals this week here: https://tinyurl.com/mv4nhbmj 

The main Blogging A to Z website is here:  http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/ 

#AtoZChallenge2023: Doctor Who Zygons (and Vogons!)

Doctor Who has had many writers over the years who have contributed to the deep lore of the show. But some writers stand out and some creatures stand out. 

Today I want to wrap up my A to Z of Doctor Who with the best-known Z creature they have, the Zygons, and maybe their related species the Vogons.

Zygons

The Zygons are great creatures. They first appeared in "Terror of the Zygons" where they were controlling the Loch Ness Monster. They are shapeshifters, but require special technology to achieve this, and look like they could be related to cephalopods.  This seems confirmed when we meet them again in "The Day of the Doctor."

I like that idea, to be honest. An octopus has natural camouflage abilities, it is likely that the Zygons did too, and then used their superior technology to take it to the next level.  They are the perfect doppelgängers in Doctor Who. 

Like the cryptids I mentioned yesterday, the Zygons kind find their way into myths and legends of the Earth by replacing doppelgängers or changelings (the faerie kind, not the Star Trek kind, though they work too).

Their planet was destroyed as collateral damage in the Time War, so they have taken to settle on Earth. At first they wanted to take it over, but soon realized trying to live in peace and hiding, is a better choice.

But what about their lesser-known cousins? The Vogons?

Vogons

Now to be fair. Vogons are not really related to the Zygons, at least not in canon. They do share some similarities, though. But their biggest connection comes from the creator of the Vogons, Douglas Adams.

Douglas Adams has a deep connection to Doctor Who. He was a script editor during the Tom Baker years. He was good friends with Lalla Ward (Romana II) and Richard Dawkins. In fact, he introduced them to each other and they were married. He also wrote some Doctor Who episodes, namely "The Pirate Planet" and "Shada."

Adams' character of Professor Chronotis, aka Salyavin, is a renegade Time Lord (much like the Doctor) and appears in the serial "Shada." Shada is the Time Lord's prison planet where Salyavin was supposedly kept.  Professor Chronotis also appears in a not much-changed appearance in his own novel "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency."

This has lead some to conjecture that Adams' own "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is part of the Doctor Who universe.  It was at least what we all thought back in the 1980s while reading HHGttG and watching Doctor Who.  My first Doctor Who characters were versions of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Zaphod Beeblebrox. All three of these characters also appear in the 8th Doctor's version of Shada as prisoners. Zaphod I get, but certainly not Arthur.

To make the connections deeper, the BBC TV series of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" aired in 1981. The show has a solid Doctor Who look and feel to it. I swear that they were the same sets half the time. Also Sandra Dickinson, who plays Earth scientist Trillian, was married to Peter Davidson the Fifth Doctor at the time. Their real-life daughter is Georgia Moffett, now Georgia Tennant, who is married to David Tenant, the Tenth Doctor, and Georgia played "Jenny," the Doctor's Daughter in "The Doctor's Daughter."  Confused? Yeah not surprised.

These connections were finally canonized by the Tenth Doctor in "The Christmas Invasion" when walking around in a robe and his "jim-jams" (pajamas), he remarks that he looks "very Arthur Dent. Now there was a nice man."  The novelization of The Christmas Invasion also makes more mentions of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and the Vogons.

So back in the 1980s we just assumed that Zygons and Vogons had to be related and used them as such in the FASA Doctor Who RPG. 

While the Zygons are deadly, I doubt they have anything near as awful as Vogon Poetry. 

This has been an absolute blast to do. And today's post is a good segway into next month's Sci-Fi Month's topic of the Doctor Who RPGs.

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.

And that is another April A to Z in books.

#AtoZChallenge2023: Doctor Who Yeti (and other Cryptids)

The Doctor has battled all sorts of monsters over the years. But some of those monsters (ok, more than some) have had their genesis in the myths and legends of Earth. I already talked about Vampires, but today let's look at a few cryptids, starting with our featured creature, the Yeti.

The Yeti

The Yeti first appeared in the Second Doctor serial, "The Abominable Snowmen" (1967). At first, we are led to think these are actual yeti, but they are, in reality, robots controlled by The Great Intelligence, a disembodied entity trying to take over the Earth, but it needs a physical body first.  The Yetis and the Great Intelligence appear again in 1968's "The Web of Fear." 

This reminds of the various "Bigfoot" episodes of The Six-Million Dollar Man. Here Bigfoot was revealed to be a robot sent by aliens. 

Interestingly enough, when we meet the Great Intelligence again in the new series, it is in an episode called "The Snowmen." This time the GI is using animated snowmen (as in made of snow) to do the same thing. 

Patrick Troughton (the Second doctor) often said he would have liked to come back to Doctor Who and just play a monster like the Yeti. No one would know it was him under all that costume.

Reptoids

Reptoids and reptilian humanoids are an old favorite among cryptid hunters and UFOlogists. I even featured them twice in last years A to Z of Conspiracy Theories under C Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis and E Extraterrestrials on Earth.  The Silurians and the Sea Devils fit these ideas perfectly. They are reptilians, and they come not from outer space but from the inner Earth.  The Draconians fit the notion of reptile-like humanoids from space.

Loch Ness Monster

The Loch Ness monster might be one of the most famous cryptids ever, and good old Nessie appears in Doctor Who's Season 13 opener "Terror of the Zygons" as well.  In this case, as a creature controlled by the Zygons (more on them tomorrow). The Zygons are using Nessie (in reality a creature from the Zygon homeworld called a "Skarasen") to destroy oil rigs that are digging into their underwater base.

Others

Other cryptids like the Chupacabra and the Australian Yowie has appeared in prose and audio dramas of the Doctor not televises.

Like the creatures mentioned above and the Vampires there is a lot of cryptids in the world now that could be made to fit Doctor Who. Creatures from the past, future or other dimensions or planets are all great choices.

I might have to try my hand at stating a few up for the various Doctor Who RPGs.

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.

#AtoZChallenge2023: Doctor Who Xoanon

Doctor Who: You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views, which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.

- The Fourth Doctor, The Face of Evil

Ok. The quote is connected to today's topic, but only tangentially. It comes from the same episode, and it is just a great quote. 

If there is one thing you can pretty much guarantee in Sci-Fi, and Doctor Who is no exception, if there is a brilliant artificially intelligent computer then at some point it is going to go mad.

Such is the case with the supercomputer Xoanon from the Mordee expedition. We meet this computer centuries later when the expedition had failed and the Survey Team and Technicians are separated and evolved into different groups of primitive humans, the Sevateem and the Tesh, who both worship the god Xoanon.  The trouble for the Fourth Doctor, the computer is mad and has part of the Doctor's own personality stuck inside it. So it's "Face of Evil" is that of the Fourth Doctor.

I rather enjoyed the whole idea of the insane computer. It is something that Doctor Who would come back to a few more times.

In "The Armageddon Factor," the sixth part of the Key to Time series, the computer Mentalis on the planet Zeos (not sure if the computer company was named after it) was at war with the planet Atrios. The computer is running everything and even takes over K-9.

We get another one in the semi-lost story of "Shada" on Skagra's (our bad guy) spaceship, but it is reprogrammed in end by the Doctor (you think he would have learned by now).

Our next encounter with a crazy computer comes much later on in the time of the 10th Doctor.

We meet up with the Doctor and River Song on The Library where everyone has gone missing. Here we encounter the computer CAL who just keeps repeating the same message over and over.  In this case we learn the computer CAL is actually "Charlotte Abigail Lux" and she is not a computer per se but the consciousness of a girl who died early. Her father created the library so she had every book in the universe to enjoy. She downloaded all the minds of the people in the Library to "save" them (as a computer would) and it was driving her crazy.

The Doctor (ok, really River) fixed her and the Doctor uploaded River to Library computer to watch over her.

There are some others of course. These stories were popular in the 70s when computers started becoming a thing. Now if we want to scare viewers it is less about computers and more about out of control AI.

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.

#AtoZChallenge2023: Doctor Who War (The Time War and the War Doctor)

DORIUM: The asteroid, where you've made your base. Do you know why they call it Demon's Run?
MANTON: How do you know the location of our base?
DORIUM: You're with the Headless Monks. They're old customers of mine.
KOVARIAN: It's just some old saying.
DORIUM: A very old saying. The oldest. Demons run when a good man goes to war.

- Doctor Who, "A Good Man Goes to War"

Today's quote does not come from the episodes I am covering, but it sums them up very well.

When the new series of Doctor Who was released in 2005 Russel T. Davis was very smart on how much detail to give the viewers. Just enough to get the old fans like me hooked and not too much to scare off the new fans (like my wife).

Over the course of many episodes, we learned something very, very terrible. First, the Doctor was the last of the Time Lords. Then later, it was because Gallifrey had been destroyed. Then later because it had been destroyed in the Last Great Time War between Gallifrey and the Daleks.

Over the years, more details emerged. The Time War was so great that there was collateral damage across all of Time and Space. The Daleks and the Time Lords had destroyed much of the universe. Even to the point that regular humans like Cass (Night of the Doctor) knew of Time Lords and their science. 

At one point, the Doctor, tired of running, tired of death, regenerated into something new. The War Doctor, played by veteran actor John Hurt. This time Lord, no longer the Doctor, was a warrior.

"No more."

- The War Doctor

The War Doctor steals a weapon so terrible even the Time Lords won't use it. Known as "The Moment," it will destroy all of Gallifrey and take all the Dalek with it.

This is all detailed in the 50th Anniversary story, "The Day of the Doctor."

After "The Day of the Doctor" aired, I realized that the "New Who" doctors fell into the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief.

• The Eight Doctor - Denial. He avoids the war he knows he caused and tries to help where he can.
• The War Doctor - Anger. He turns to fight against the War. Not against the Daleks or even the Time Lords, but the War itself.
• The Ninth Doctor - Bargaining. He runs. He runs as far away as possible and hopes to make something good.
• The Tenth Doctor - Depression. I mean, look how he acts. The silly façade is only that. Underneath, he was weighted down with guilt.
• The Eleventh Doctor - Acceptance. He knows he can't change his past, no matter what.  Or can he?

The Time War was something hinted at in the Doctor Who novels. No surprise, really, since some of the novel and short story writers would later come on to the show, most notably Steven Moffat.

It could be one of the more exciting pieces of Doctor Who lore created for the show. 

House: Fear me! I've killed hundreds of Time Lords!
The Doctor: Fear me. I've killed all of them.

The Doctor, "The Doctor's Wife"

Rewatching old episodes, especially the old Dalek ones, you get the notion that the Daleks have been ramping up their ability to fight, particularly the Time Lords. I mean, from their point of view, the Doctor has been the center of all their most significant defeats. He was there when they were created and slowed down their progress. He was there when they finally broke out of their destroyed cities on Skaro. He was there to defeat them in their attempts to revive themselves or even against their ancient enemies the Movellans. Even the Time Lord's "weapon" (really a scientific device to harness the power of a star), The Hand of Omega, was used to destroy their homeworld of Skaro.

The Doctor may have wanted to avoid this war, but he picked this fight.

DOCTOR: Do I have the right? Simply touch one wire against the other and that's it. The Daleks cease to exist. Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations can live without fear, in peace, and never even know the word Dalek.
SARAH: Then why wait? If it was a disease or some sort of bacteria you were destroying, you wouldn't hesitate.
DOCTOR: But I kill, wipe out a whole intelligent lifeform, then I become like them. I'd be no better than the Daleks.

The Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane, "Genesis of the Daleks"

The Time War, and thus the War Doctor, were always going to happen.

The idea was so pervasive that even the novels and the audio productions did their own versions before we saw details of it on TV. The two most powerful groups in the Universe were going to butt heads sooner or later.

As I mentioned before, in the language of the Gamma Forests, the word "Doctor" translates into "Great Warrior."  Another tidbit from "A Good Man Goes to War."

In the time of the 12th Doctor's regeneration, we see what being "The Doctor of War" means, in a way only Capaldi's Doctor could. "Try to be nice, but always be kind."  Which, in a way, influences how his 1st incarnation sees things right before his regeneration into the 2nd Doctor.

The Time War was great, but I hope it holds true to it's name as "The Last Great Time War."

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.