Judges Guild Retrospective #4: Tarantis

And so, as promised in my earlier post, a retrospective reivew of Tarantis:

This 1983 publication from Judges Guild was the last of its kind, a city-state guidebook for the Wilderlands of High Fantasy.  Joining the inimitable City State of the Invincible Overlord and the City State of the World Emperor, Tarantis was the third city state to be detailed.  Written by Bob Bledsaw, it bears many marks of his authorship -- namely, attention to detail and a strong sense of setting.  It's also "Bledsawian" in the sense that, like the rest of the Wilderlands, it's a sandbox too.  There are no dungeons detailed here or plotlines to follow.

Overall, I give Tarantis a "C" grade and can only recommend its purchase for collectors and those running a Wilderlands sandbox campaign.

Setting & Flavor

One of the nice things about a Bledsaw work -- you always have a great sense of location.  On the shores of an Eastern subcontinent in the Wilderlands, Tarantis is a port city and home to a people reminiscent of the Turks, the Sumerians, and a dash of distant India.  Bledsaw captures the maritime flavor of the area with a nice historical overview of the area.  Like the other large cities of the Wilderlands, Tarantis is an orderly place with a relatively brutal government with a Lawful Evil / Neutral flavor.  How much of this is a reflection of Bledsaw's politics or worldview is hard to say, but it is a recurring theme in the Wilderlands.

On the edge of an Asiatic wilderness with its own Mongol analogue, Tarantis, while interesting, lacks much of the fantastic whimsy of the City State of the Invincible Overlord.  Rather like the nations of the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting, Tarantis is very much a human-focused nation; the elements of fantasy are few and far between.  With its mercantile/piratical/barbarian-horde-avoiding tone, the area feels more like a low fantasy swords & sandals locale than one where elves and ogres and mind flayers congregate.  That's a minor quibble, but perhaps it's a strength as well -- perhaps Bledsaw deliberately wanted to give "Judges" a low fantasy city option.

Other bits of flavor are sprinkled throughout.  A particular standout is a huge rumor table (provided in a d100 list that is much easier to use than the rumor in the CSIO (which were one rumor per city locale).  The rumors themselves evoke the setting and provide Judges with a huge repository of adventure ideas.

The artwork, all black and white other than the cover, is of fair quality and overall evokes the setting well.  My overall impression is that it is light on art.

Physical Product

You knew this was coming, but here it comes regardless: Tarantis' overall physical presentation is poor, especially by 1983 standards.  Once you get past the single-page glossy color cover sheet, you are dealing with two 96-page newsprint-paper staple-bound books in the traditional JG mold, along with the campaign map (DM/Judge and Player versions).  I find these production values increasingly hard to justify, but JG at this point in their lifespan was trying to keep costs down by having an arrangement with a newspaper printer that did JG stuff "on the side" on the condition that the material be prepped for printing in a precise way, run once on their paper with no do-overs, and be done.  While this low-cost printing strategy kept JG in business in the short-term, it crippled them in the long-term from a competitive standpoint.  It also led to questionable editorial decisions where full-page artwork of dubious quality was slapped into a product to fatten it up so that the manuscript could get to the required number of pages.

Overall then, we are left with a fairly shocking conclusion: that a 1983 JG publication was of lower quality than TSR's original white box OD&D offerings of 1975.  Let that soak in for a moment.

Content & Organization

The maps, as always, are great.  They are as usable now as they were in '83.

My initial beef with Tarantis' content is that a large portion of it is regurgitated, particularly many of the tables and charts.  I estimate that no less than 10-15% of the content (encounter charts, terrain generation, etc.) was previously-published.  More infuriating is that this is content that likely Tarantis buyers already owned by virtue of having a copy of the CSIO, the Campaign Hexagon System, or some of the Wilderlands releases.

On top of that, there is unnecessary content.  Pages and pages are devoted, for instance, to a listing of settlements in the entire 18-map Wilderlands.  How this information was supposed to be useful to a purchaser of one-map Tarantis is beyond me.

Editorially, Bledsaw also fumbled, allowing his military fetish to shine through as he waxes about every significant military unit within Tarantis' military.  Four to five pages are taken up with descriptions of company commanders and their troops with tangential, if any, interest to player-characters adventuring in a typical exploration/dungeon-based sandbox setting.  Those were five pages that reasonable purchasers in 1983 would have wanted back -- pages that could have been used to supply actual adventure-related content.

By way of comparison, the CSIO contained adventure seeds and some blank dungeon maps.  It was screaming for adventure.  Gimme some encounter charts and let's head off to Thunderhold!  Sadly, Tarantis has no adventuring locales even partially described, requiring the DM to do all of the work.  This is not a fatal flaw, but it certainly renders Tarantis less "ready-to-play."

As I have previously explained in other posts, in 1982 JG lost the license to publish gaming materials using  "approved for use with D&D / AD&D."  Thus, Tarantis was printed with the "Universal Fantasy System" imprint, a thinly-veiled attempt to make the game statistics as generic as possible.  Miscellaneous odd statistics were added, rendering characters as a long statblock of sometimes-comprehensible abbreviations.

Which brings me to my final gripe: the organization of the city locales themselves, being laid out as though each were another room in an above ground dungeon.  A rote name-and-description style works for a dungeon because the DM needs to read it a few times to understand the contents so that he can describe it in-game.  Consider, however, how players actually interact with an urban setting.  Unless a given location plays into a particular adventure, all I as DM want to know is the name and personality of the main NPC at the location (so that I can roleplay his part) and what products and services are available at the location.  The game stats of the NPC and remaining fluff (e.g., that the NPC has a chest with 500 gp and a toy doll, etc.) is simply filler that can be placed elsewhere or eliminated entirely.  While town/shopping adventures can be fun for low-level parties, they rarely devolve into wholesale blood lettings involving the shopkeepers.

I am experimenting presently with a facing-page urban layout with the map and key on the left (the key merely identifying the location) and a chart on the right describing the NPCs, products and services, and random encounter chart.

Conclusion: It's a C, and I'm being rather generous.

While it is a useful and evocative product, in retrospect Tarantis is an uneven and rather sad coda to the Wilderlands offerings of Judges Guild.  Not even my nostalgia and love of the Wilderlands and its cartography can get me past the numerous failings of JG's later offerings.

Greyhawk and the Fall of Judges Guild

It's 1983, and Dungeons & Dragons, despite the documented problems within TSR's ownership group, is apparently doing well by all external measures.  Its core gamer base remains in an expansion mode despite the protestations of satan-fearing religious types, and many of the kids and adults who started playing over the prior eight years are clamoring for new and better content and game aids.  While TSR was fighting its own internal battles, a few hundred miles south in Decatur, Illinois, a competitor and sometimes-friendly colleague in the RPG publishing business, Judges Guild, is in deep trouble.

I am not breaking any news here, but my thesis is that JG was at its best in publishing two categories of gaming product: campaign setting content and maps related to the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, and game aids (tables, charts, and mapping materials) for use in the Wilderlands or in homebrew settings.  JG was at its weakest, with a few notable exceptions (Tegel Manor and Dark Tower among them), in writing adventures and rules-related offerings.  In this way, JG was a great complimentary publisher to TSR, which had roughly opposite strengths and weaknesses.

To give you an example of why I adore JG campaign materials:

A "Player Map" of Tarantis: Campaign Map Four, printed in 1977

For its time, JG printed wonderful maps.  Not because they were beautiful (though I thought they were), but because they were big, they were on the faux-parchmentish paper, and because you were expected to write on them and actually use them.  The Player Maps were exactly that -- to be filled out as the players explored the unknown, with only a coastline, a few rivers, and some distant mountain ranges to guide them.  Now THAT is how you sandbox, people.

So as you read this post, please don't think I'm dancing on JG's grave.  If anything, I am angry that this company didn't recognize and capitalize on its niche while it had the opportunity.  Bledsaw and Owens, the main operators of JG in the 70s, had a virtual monopoly on officially-licensed campaign settings.  They came up with two fabulous ideas: (1) the Wilderlands itself, a huge sandbox of a game-world (really, about the size of Europe) and (2) an ahead-of-its-time subscription-based publishing strategy to put out setting-related materials, supplemented by the Pegasus magazine, one of the main functions of which was to promote and support the Wilderlands setting.  They had a good plan.  They did not execute the plan.

With respect to the maps of the Wilderlands, 18 campaign maps (with mostly-blank Player versions) were published and distributed on or before 1978.  The often imititated, never duplicated, City State of the Invincible Overlord (launched in 1976) was the centerpiece of the game world.  JG's setting-related offerings (e.g., Modron, Shield Maidens of Sea Rune, Verbosh) often focused on nearby locations within easy reach of the City State.  Thus, in fairness, JG's main intent was in supporting City State-based campaigns, rather than necessarily expanding the Wilderlands.  The Wilderlands' next most substantial content-related expansion arguably was the 1980 release of the City State of the World Emperor, detailing the Overlord's main rival to the West and the surrounding lands.

In prior posts, I have more or less identified the core reasons for Judges Guild's fall (from a product standpoint only; I can't speak to JG's financials or ownership issues), to wit: low-quality and stale production values, poor art, missing-in-action editing, a tendency to regurgitate previously-published material, and a failure to adapt to the rapidly increasing sophistication of TSR's product line (as well as the D&D target market itself) in the early 80s.  The coup de grace, however, was JG's 1982 loss of the license to put the D&D and Advanced D&D logos on its products.  JG already was moving into second-class publisher status; the licensing debacle relegated it to the role of gonzo publisher -- though one with a fairly impressive back catalog.

The Kiss of Death

So in 1983, my guess is that Bob Bledsaw, one of the founders and the remaining owners of JG, decided to stick to what had worked in the past (and frankly, something that capitalized on his best personal skills -- writing and setting design), and published Tarantis, a city-state in the eastern portion of the Wilderlands of High Fantasy. 

At first blush, one would think this was a significant upgrade for JG, which in some sense it was.  A glossy color cover certainly was de rigueur in the early 80's.  As with many JG offerings, however, this was lipstick on a production pig, for under the single-page glossy cover, under the shrink wrap, were two 96-page staple-bound cheap paper books. 

To make matters worse, look what else came out in 1983:

As you will recall, this was the fabulous boxed set for which fans of D&D had been clamoring for years.  It had a polished gazetteer and of course the iconic Darlene Pekul map of the Flanaess.  Tarantis (as good as it is -- see below) -- had no shot.  This was the "game over" moment for JG, because TSR had officially gotten into the campaign setting business.  JG's Wilderlands of High Fantasy had a six-year virtual monopoly on this sub-industry -- and the World of Greyhawk smacked it aside like the proverbial redheaded stepchild.

As a side note, 1983 also saw the release of Ravenloft, which was in itself a seminal moment in the development of D&D.  JG had long since fallen behind the curve on adventure publishing, which TSR absolutely dominated since around 1978 (despite a few Paul Jacquays standout offerings for JG).

Now here's the punchline: remember the date on that Tarantis Player map?  1977.  When was Tarantis published?  1983.  Why did it take Judges Guild six years to publish Tarantis?  Or to put a finer point on it -- why couldn't Judges Guild fully flesh out the Wilderlands with a six year head start?

So to recap -- JG had no D&D license, third-class citizen status amongst the game-buying public, stale production and 1970s sensibilities -- and it lost primacy in its best category.  Frankly, they are fortunate TSR didn't get into the setting business sooner, because if Gygax had published the City of Greyhawk and World of Greyhawk early on in D&D's life-cycle, JG wouldn't have made it past 1978.

In the end, though, Tarantis was a largely forgotten product, which is sad.  As a whole, the Wilderlands is in some ways a superior product to the WoG, especially for OSR players.  I'll post my review of Tarantis in in the coming days.

Edit: a day late and a dollar short: Grognardia's retrospective on the Wilderlands makes many of my points for me -- as usual.  Looks like I'm playing catch-up!

Judge's Guild Retrospective #3 (Grab Bag Edition): Field Guide to Encounters (vol. 1 & 2) or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being a Fly-Man Were-Triceratops Ninja God

Another "cold" review, opening up the shrink wrap for the first time ever.  I'm pretty curious, and really, who wouldn't be with this sitting in front of them:

"I always liked the cover for that book, with the gorilla in the bed and the giant woman’s hand coming through the window. Didn’t like the coloring on that, but it was a fun cover." -- Bob Bledsaw.  Perhaps his taste in art and editorial decision-making here had something to do with the fact that mini-Kong here was drawn by Bob Bledsaw, Jr.  Just a thought.

That's right, friends.  THIS publication (written by Dragon's Byte, 1982) is the launch of a "new role playing system."  Does this staple-bound, newsprint-paper publication just get your inner gamer fire burning for a new game system?  What about the cover says "New Fantasy System" or even "Hey, there's 600 new monsters in here!"?  Nothing.  This is Confusing Aspect 1: the non-sequitur product title/artwork.

Remember, this is 1982.  To the left is a TSR product ca. 1982, Gangbusters.  Production values.  An actual design.  Artwork that sold the product and communicated what the game was about.

The second confusion?  How about the author, "Dragon's Byte"?  Turns out, thanks to this acaeum article (a real treasure trove of information, if you read between the lines), that the author is a collective of sorts, a game group from Detroit that submitted this material to Judges Guild for publication.  So JG decides to publish a two-volume product (a fan submission, essentially) ... with 600 new monsters, a new game system (more on that later) and little to no editorial control at the top.  Per Bledsaw: 

When they told me how many monsters they had I knew I could only have a small description and a single picture each. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication with my art director (I think he was on vacation when it was scheduled for production) and none of the artists realized that the pictures were supposed to fit exact descriptions from Dragon’s Byte, especially the monsters from the novels. I didn’t see it before it left for printing, and when the Dragon’s Byte guys got it they were quite unhappy.

So neither Bledsaw nor the Art Director even looked at this pile of crap before it went to the printer.

Confusing element 3: the "New Roleplaying System" being published here in 1982 is ... wait for it ... NOT the Judges Guild Universal System put out in 1982.  That's right: one publisher putting out two competing game systems in one year.

So to recap: a product with poor labeling, artwork, production values, no editing, and homebrew content wildly conflicting with soon-to-be-published official product.  All in a gorilla-encased, $12.00 package.

I'm going to recover for a moment before I begin to review this turkey.  Deep breathing ensuing.

CONTENT REVIEW

The New Roleplaying System in the Field Guide has no name.  So I will call it the Field guide ROleplayinG System, or FROGS.

FROGS uses the standard six D&D ability scores, plus Cunning (cleverness, for thieving), Psionics, Magic, Tracking, Poison Resistance, and Lycanthropy.  All of the stats are generated on 3d6 except Psionics, Magic, Poison Resistance and Lycanthropy, which are on d%.  Ability modifiers are generally similar to OD&D, though one needs a high (16+) score to get a modifier, unlike D&D of that era.

FROGS then implements a host of secondary stats, including Willpower, Psionic Strength Points, and Genetic Spell Points.

We then learn that everyone starts at level 1, except "cult-based" characters, who start at a higher level.  This is the first and last time this is ever mentioned.

Hit points are interesting; after level 1, the PC has a chance of getting a new hit die (of a kind based on race, not class) -- fighter types always get new hit die as they level, but the wimpier classes roll a d% to determine whether they get more hit die.  This is done to accomodate the other conceit of FROGS, which is that it allows PCs to play any monster as a PC -- predating the Effective Character Level concept of Third Edition by a good 18 years.  Take that, WotC!

Skipping over some oddly-placed weapon material charts, we arrive to this gem: "Power Points and Manitou Combat."

I know a few gnome tinker-types that could go for this.  Actually, Manitou here refers to soul to soul combat between psionic combatants.

FROGS uses a spell point, rather than Vancian, magic system.  Presaging 3e's metamagic feats, FROGS refers to spell augmentations to change effects in exchange for a greater spell point expenditure.

We then have a wall-o-text for a few pages describing Lycanthropy and its various types, including:

• Were-Barracuda
• Were-Pteradactyl
• Were-Shark (ok, that's somewhat interesting)
• and my personal favorite, the Were-Triceratops.

How the herbivorous dino in question manages to impart its curse upon its victims is a question for another time.

Occupations (FROGS' version of classes) follow, including such heroic archetypes as the Acupuncturist.  I shudder to think of the impact of a thousand tiny needles jammed into a Beholder's central eye, for instance.

The class system does have a few interesting tidbits, though, presenting base classes that are effectively multilclassed.  Hence, we have the White Wanderer (a magic/psion), a Shifter (a lycanthrope/fighter), Crimson Seeker (psion/fighter), and Shadow Walker (psion/thief). I find this to be the most interesting bit of FROGS, considering that in standard AD&D of 1982, Psionics were an optional feature layered on top of the class system.  Here, psionics is embraced and whole new classes presaging 3e's Psionic Warrior et al are presented as interesting options.


After that glimmer of hope, the Field Guide retreats to its comedic muddle.  Nowhere are spells or psionic powers, a combat system, a movement system, or any other game mechanics described.  Thus, FROGS must be viewed as an Unearthed Arcana style overlay for D&D, C&S, or other FRP of the time, rather than a "new roleplaying system" unto itself.  But why derail this retrospective with serious commentary?

The middle 40% of volume 1 is dedicated to the Intelligent Monster Supplement, essentially adding a template to character creation to modify statistics and impart special racial abilities.  Wanna play a dolphin?  How about a fly-man (yes, it's what you are imagining)?  Why not a lycanthropic flyman ninja that's secretly a were-triceratops?  Oh yes.

The last parts of volume 1 describe how to become a god in FROGS -- kneel before me, my fly-folk were-triceratops minions!!  Further beyond we also learn what happens to characters with a 100 PSI score (they get Gamma World-esque mutations, that's what!), and finally, the cross-breeding allowed between the various intelligent monsters.  You will be happy to know that a troll and a bison have a 7% chance of successfully procreating.  That is all.

Volume 2, all 96 pages of it, is all monsters.  On page 78, I was elated to discover not only an entry for Toast, but one for Burnt Toast as well.  "Class: Construct: Burnt Toast with face/feet/hands."  Illustration: dark piece of toast, upright, with angry face and threatening gestures.

ART, LAYOUT, AND PRODUCTION

I think this (along with the cover) says it all:

On the plus side, there is a lot of content (there are a few diamonds to be found among the steaming piles of were-triceratops dung), but the art quality is consistent with JG's typical offerings of period, which is to say generally horrid.  A Kevin Siembieda piece on the back of volume 1 is a actually a quite nice gnoll drawing that was unfortunately butchered by a horrific inking job, rendering our hyena-headed humanoid a sickening shade of troll-green.

A bit of color type printing in parts of Volume 1 were a nice touch, given JG's low-budget production, but really just lipstick on this hog. 

Editorially, the Field Guide is a disaster, with a lack of proofreading for both typos and internal consistency.  Again, this was never JG's strong suit -- stronger on game tools than on game content.  Again, it makes one wonder whether this was what led TSR to pass on granting Bledsaw a renewal of the D&D license.

CONCLUSION:  There's little wonder that JG had 1,600 Field Guides left over (to end up shrink-wrapped and sold to grab-bag EBay suckers like me, two decades later).  The few interesting morsels of gaming goodness in these 192 pages of birdcage liner could have been summarized in a Pegasus article back in the day. 

I need a drink.

Jeff Reints review from '07 here.

How not to launch a new FRP game system

Yes, this 1982 publication of Judges Guild, complete with confusing-yet-humorous Fay Wray - King Kong switcheroo, was the launch of a new Univeral Fantasy System in the wake of JG's loss of licensure to produce D&D product.  Nothing says "ready to square off with AD&D" like a game system spearheaded by the efforts of an undersized, fuzzy purple-slippered primate.  I'll be reviewing this gem tomorrow in another Grab Bag Retrospective, but for now, the shrink wrap stays on.  Wish Kong luck, fellas -- looks like Fay is ready to play.

Judges Guild Retrospective #2 (Grab Bag Edition): Caves and Caverns

Back in the aughts, whilst hunting for missing elements of my Wilderlands Campaign map collection on Ebay, I bought a few Judges Guild "grab bag" packs from a particularly creative vendor.  Some of these have remained unopened for 7+ years.

To to add a little spice, I am reviewing this product cold.  Here it is, in all of its shrink-wrapped glory:

Caves and Caverns, by John Mortimer, 1982, cover price: $3.98.  64 pages softback, all black-and-white.  As you will note, unlike earlier products, around '82 JG was no longer a holder of the D&D license and was forced to designate their products as "Judges Guild UNIVERSAL Fantasy Supplement."  This development is worthy of a blog post or two on its own, but it was one of the contributing factors to the eventual demise/comatose state of JG; without the "approved for use with DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS" label (complete with official TSR-style branding), JG created a semi-compatible game system and its new products were left to stand on their own merits without D&D branding.  Compare this offering with TSR's product line circa 1982, and the difference in production values is staggering ...

Here's a fairly typical 1982 TSR product with full color artwork that is actually evocative and relevant.  It has a cardstock cover I believe, or at least better binding than a couple of staples.  The unflattering comparison is unfortunate for several reasons, not the least of which is that JG products got short shrift. With substandard artwork, thick newsprint-quality paper, iffy editing, and a generally dated feel, a lot of JG inventory got left in the shrink wrap -- like my copy of Caves and Caverns.  By '82, the hobby had left JG in the dust -- Bob Bledsaw's "TSR Illinois" in Decatur was making product for 1977 audiences.  Whether that sad development was caused by TSR's non-renewal of JG's license or if JG's production values were the reason the license was yanked is a matter of interpretation and speculation.

Back to our Caves and Caverns.  The subtitle: "Forty-eight caves & caverns with nine pages of charts & guidelines using the City State Campaign Hexagon System."  To reiterate from my prior posts about JG: this is par for the course -- offering a game aid to allow DMs to populate their own sandbox settings or the Wilderlands itself.  JG was less in the adventure writing business than it was in the game aid and DM toolbox business.

A bit of a giggle on the back cover.

All right: let's open up this 30 year time capsule.

The first few pages are dedicated to explaining the Universal Fantasy terminology, and Mortimer takes great pains to stress that this product is designed for all game systems, although back in '82, there was D&D, Runequest, and that's about it as far as major fantasy RPGs.  This "methinks he protesteth too much" vibe continued when, at first glance, most of the stats presented were identical to D&D stats, with some minor changes and additions.  One notable alteration was to armor -- Mortimer describes a piecemeal armor system combining armor types with construction material, to arrive at an 'armor rating' that is a damage reduction system rather than the traditional AC-as-damage avoidance system.

To be clear -- I have no issue with JG designing new content.  It's just one of the earliest examples of a non-copyright holder having to create new game subsystems and otherwise engage in various gyrations and contortions to avoid an infringement lawsuit from TSR.

My favorite parts of JG products are the tables and charts, and Caves and Caverns does not disappoint.  The next few pages describe wilderness terrain effects on combat, and the best part of the whole supplement: "Random Generation of Caves, Caverns, and Burrows."  By cross-referencing the base terrain with a die roll, the "type" of cave (limestone, dungeon, lava tube) is generated; the next tables allows generation of the "type of cave entrance" and the size thereof.  The following table is a random cave and dungeon generator, allowing a DM to fill in a blank map quickly, either on-the-fly or to prepare a lair beforehand.  I have seen several random dungeon generation tables that were superior to this, but the fact that it is broken down by "cave type" lends it some additional merit.  JG was never afraid to get hyper-specific in its tables and charts. 

Several of the following pages are devoted to a random monster tables, about half of which are JG original monsters designed for use in their Universal Fantasy System and described further in the separate two-volume (and really poorly-named and launched) Field Guide to Encounters -- which I also own in its original pristine shrink-wrapped state and will review on a later date. About half of the monsters' stats were Universal Fantasy additions (agility, endurance, etc.). The stat blocks on the monsters are pretty heinous walls-o-numbers and pure gobbledygook for those with a D&D-only background. For this reason, the monster list in Caves and Caverns is only partially usable for a DM using D&D unless he has the aforementioned Field Guide.

The remaining 50 pages of the 64-page booklet are dedicated to pregenerated mega-hex wilderness maps using JG's Campaign Hexagon system (more on that in a future blog).  The outdoor maps are entirely modular, allowing a DM to slap down a cave, small dungeon, or other underground feature in any type of prevailing terrain.  The maps alone stimulate an incredible amount of imagination and are well worth the cover price.  They are as usable today as they were in '82.

The product is free of fluff and bad artwork, thankfully.

Overall grade: C, due to the Universal Fantasy System aspects; otherwise, it would have been a B+ due to the utility of the maps, charts, and tables.