Movie Review: The Beastmaster (1982)

Based (loosely) on the hugely influential and genre defining tales of R.E. Howard's legendary Swords & Sorcery protagonist, the 1982 film "Conan the Barbarian" was itself also hugely influential and genre defining, and spawned a host of imitators in the years that followed.  Of these, this week, I wanted to give a shout out to one of the best yarns produced in Arnie's long shadow, "The Beastmaster":

"The Beastmaster" begins with a prologue of sorts, where three witches with hideous faces but sexy bodies give high priest Maax (confusingly pronunced MAY-aks), played by Rip Torn, a prophecy that he'll die by the son of King Zed.  The King busts in, two of Maax's henchmen commit suicide for unclear reasons and everyone is surprisingly nonchalant.

Things get weirder when one of the hideous sexy witches manages to sneak into the royal bedchamber with a cow (!), to teleport the unborn prince from the Queen's womb into the cow's womb (!!)... even though the cow is male (!!!), and to sneak out.  After the cow gives birth to the prince, the hideous sexy witch attempts to ritually murder the infant, but the baby is saved by a timely passerby.

The child grows up to be Dar (played by Marc Singer), a farm boy unaware of his true lineage (where have we heard THAT before?).  Dar leads a simple but happy life and discovers his ability to communicate telepathically with animals.  Unfortunately, his village is massacred by the Jun Horde (and Maax, who's there as well for some reason), which sends Dar, who now only wears a few bits of strategically placed leather, out into the world to seek revenge.

In short order, Dar encounters his animal companions: an eagle (Sharak), a pair of ferrets (Kodo and Podo), and a black tiger (Ruh).  He also puts together a band of human heroes, including the former slave girl Kiri (played by the very lovely Tonya Roberts), whom many people feel is the best part of this movie.

The rest of the story meanders a fair bit, and the film's five act structure produces what feels like a false ending (especially since the real ending is not hugely necessary to the overall narrative), but the pacing is fast and the story is filled with interesting Swords & Sorcery moments, such as Dar's encounter with the weird bat creatures.

Immediately, one can see the "influences" of "Conan the Barbarian" on "The Beastmaster":

• Barbarian?  Check.
• Dark sorcery?  Check.
• Mighty thews?  Check.
• Quest for vengeance after village is massacred?  Check.
• Villain is the leader of a nefarious cult?  Check.

And so on.  However, one important difference between the Cimmerian and the Beastmaster is the  latter's twist on the genre (being able to telepathically communicate with animals), and this actually saves the entire film from being a complete ripoff, as it gives the titular character a unique skill set.

The film also feels quite different, partly because "The Beastmaster", unlike "Conan the Barbarian," has good amounts of mostly effective humor, which helps to alleviate the mostly hammy acting (the times that Dar is "speaking" to his eagle are painfully funny/bad).  Of course, hammy acting is sometimes actually a strength, such as Rip Torn spending the entire movie chewing scenery.

The film is goofy, mixed with sudden moments of grim dark (which the film doesn't dwell upon), and has plenty of cheese without crossing the line into outright camp.  Mostly.

Not certain how that bird can carry that child...

"The Beastmaster" is not a great movie but, if you accept it for what it is, it is great fun.  The flaws can be glaring, such as the poor fight choreography or the strange bits of plot (Dar's love interest is his cousin!).  However, there are also plenty of good points, such as the excellent costume design, excellent cinemotography, excellent work with animals and pretty decent practical and optical effects for the time.  Director Don Coscarelli, Jr. also tried to imbue an epic feel to the film (e.g., building an actual ziggurat) and there are other nice touches (e.g., Maax is a charlatan magician).

If you are a fan of Swords & Sorcery movies and/or you want to be as pervy as our hero (watching Kiri bathe naked), you owe it to yourself to watch this 80's classic!

RPG Design: Weaponry

Earlier this year, I discussed the importance of gear in tabletop role-playing games.  This week, I wanted to focus on what many players think is the coolest and most important part of any gear list, Weaponry:

As befits their wargaming ancestry, many RPGs make combat is a key or even central element of gameplay (e.g., hack and slash).  So, unsurprisingly, weapons are also a fundamental part of many RPGs, since they literally the tools of war.

This is a subject that many players of tabletop role-playing have spent many hours thinking about and can be a key part of the imaginary fun of role-playing.  For example, as I mentioned before, there is a different role-playing feel when one is a sword guy versus an axe guy.

Weapons are also important because they can be a fundamental part of a character's power in some RPGs.  Indeed, the effect of weapons are a baked in assumption for one of the Core Four classes, the Fighting-Man (aka the Fighter), since this is the primary way that Fighting-Men affect games.  For example, in Original Dungeons & Dragons (1974), the magic weapons tables are skewed towards swords, which can only be used by Fighting-Men.  This was a deliberate design decision to help balance the power of the Fighting-Man vis-à-vis the Cleric and the Magic-User.

Consequently, some RPGs have lengthy lists of weapons.  The AD&D Player's Handbook (1978) had an eye-popping, for the time, FIFTY weapons!  Sometimes even entire books mainly devoted to weapons (e.g., "Compendium of Weapons Armour and Castles" (1989)).

In terms of the level of mechanical depth, there are a number of approaches for weapon statistics, from OD&D very simply treating all normal weapons as mechanically equal (all weapons do 1d6 points of damage), to a great deal of crunch, such as AD&D's differing damage by size (versus large damage) and weapon versus armor modifications or GURPS' different types of damage (e.g., burning, crushing, cutting, impaling, etc.).

From a design point of view, the biggest thing to avoid is creating a best weapon (i.e., a weapon that is always mechanically superior to other choices) or making certain weapons redundant.  For example, AD&D had a huge number of pole arms that were probably overkill for pretty much anyone, except for Messr Gygax.

Furthermore, ideally, the mechanics of weaponry should provide some Tactical Depth, but not at the expense of too much complexity.  There shouldn't be so many weapon statistics that they become difficult to track.  For example, I personally didn't use any of AD&D's extra crunch (differing damage by size (versus large damage) or weapon versus armor modifications) because they required too much looking up (which slows down gameplay).

Myself, I'm a big fan of the approach of Baldur's Gate (1998), which had a streamlined list of weapons with streamlined statistics, so gameplay was quick.  However, BG also created tactical depth through its use of weapon groups and weapon proficiencies.  Thus, I adopted this approach for my rules set, Sorcery & Steel, since I think it provides the best balance of speedy gameplay with meaningful choices for weaponry.

Literature Review: "Beowulf" (~1000)

This week, I want give a shout out to the greatest work of Old English literature, the epic poem about the legendary Scandinavian warrior king: "Beowulf":

"Beowulf" is a classic tale of the triumph of good over evil, whose titular character bravely faces monstrous foes time and again.  One of the earliest recognizable High Fantasy adventure yarns, in "Beowulf," our hero is a Geatish prince who sails to the aid of King Hrothgar of the Danes, whose realm is plagued by the monster Grendel.

Eschewing weapons because he wants a fair fight, Beowulf takes on Grendel hand-to-hand and rips off the poor bastard's arm!  Grendel flees and bleeds out.  Grendel's Mother seeks revenge, killing  Hrothgar's most loyal fighter, so our hero takes her out, as well.  Beowulf refuses kingship of the Danes and returns to his home, becoming king of his own people.  A half century later, a fearsome dragon threatens the kingdom and Beowulf, despite being an old man at this point, rides out for one last job.

Originally passed down through oral tradition, "Beowulf" was transcribed to manuscript form by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet, referred to by scholars as the "Beowulf poet".  Although the epic poem was actually written down sometime around 1000 AD, the action takes place throughout much of the 6th century.  The poem blends both fact and fiction for entertainment purposes, including actual people and events, such as the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern.

When I note that "Beowulf" is a "epic poem," I don't just mean that it is a poem that is epic, but rather "epic poem" is a literature term of art:

"a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds, and events significant to a culture or nation."

An epic poem, of course, requires an "epic hero": a brave and noble hero with superhuman abilities who embodies traits that are important to their culture.  Other epic heroes include Achilles and Roland.

A key figure in the literary analysis of "Beowulf" is none other than Oxford scholar J. R. R. Tolkien (who, of course, in his spare time wrote the definitive high fantasy works "The Hobbit" (1937) and "The Lord of the Rings" (1954)), who noted the epic poem's place in the cultural history of Britain.  This, in turn, helped to re-popularize this ancient yarn.

It's no surprise that the good professor was a fan of "Beowulf".  For example, Tolkien said that the Dragon in Beowulf is one of only two *true* dragons in all of literature - the other being Fafnir.  It's also no surprise that "Beowulf" was a source of inspiration for the good professor.  For example, the Dragon in Beowulf responds to the theft of one of its shinies by going on a murderous rampage throughout the countryside...  In addition, "Beowulf" continues to inspire adaptations and reinterpretations even a millennium later.

So, if you are a fan of adventure, High Fantasy or fantasy generally, Norse mythology and culture, or history generally, you owe it to yourself to check out the adventures of one of the first dragon slayers, Beowulf!

RPG Design: The Magic-User Class

First of all, I'd like to say this blog is now a year old, so yay!

Next, last year, I discussed two of the Core Four Classes of tabletop role-playing, the Thief and the Cleric.  Today, I wanted to give a shout out to probably the most challenging and the most unbalanced of the Core Four Classes, the Magic-User:

Magic is fundamental to much of fantasy literature and Magicians are some of the most iconic and archetypal characters of the genre (e.g., Merlin, Gandalf, Circe, etc.).  However, "Magic-User" as used in Dungeons & Dragons (and similar games), has a specific meaning: someone with a specialized ability to cast certain kinds of magic while at the same time being relatively weak at combat (e.g., low hit points, poor weapon choices, no armor, etc.).  So, other games, such as Exalted  (2001) or REIGN (2006), don't really have "Magic-Users" per se since all PCs use or have the potential to use magic.

Magic-Users in Old School D&D (and similar games) start out significantly underpowered at low levels compared to other classes (with only a single Level 1 spell per day at 1st level- no cantrips or at-will powers!) and become significantly overpowered at high levels.  As an example of the former, there's the classic meme of 1st level Magic-Users being killed by house cats.

However, as they level up, D&D-style Magic-Users'  spells become ever more powerful, up to and including altering reality itself, and more numerous (an 18th level Magic-User can cast 34 spells, including Wish).  As a result, their magical strength starts to eclipse their physical weakness around 5th level, particularly with the introduction of spells like Fireball and Lighting Bolt.

Indeed, past a certain point, high level Magic-Users can make the rest of the party (in their specialized roles) redundant.

From early on in RPG history, it was clear that linear fighter-quadratic wizard was an issue.  For example, Supplement I: Greyhawk (1975), published only a year after OD&D, introduces Exceptional Strength for Fighters, which is effectively a patch to help balance the two classes.

IMHO, this was a poor design decision that led to increasing stat inflation.  For example, in AD&D1, many people really didn't want to play a Fighter with less than Strength 18.  However, if you use 4d6 Drop Lowest, arrange to suit, to roll your ability scores, there's only a 9.34% chance to get at least one 18 out of six rolls.

And yet there was a striking number of Fighters with 18 Exceptional Strength...

Of course, by AD&D1, there's also stat inflation for Magic-Users:

Like Fighter players, many, many Magic-User players did not want to play gimped characters.  Consequently there was a striking number of Magic-Users with high Intelligence scores...

However, regardless of the drawbacks of low level Magic-Users, they are still quite fun to play.  It's super cool to be able to ignore the laws of physics.  Low level Magic-Users can also really push you to up your player skill, as you figure out ways to contribute to the party outside of your spells.

If you are interested playing a Magic-User, you should check first with your DM as house rules can have a huge impact.  For example, a fairly common AD&D1 house rule is to give Magic-Users with high Intelligence bonus spells, like Clerics with high Wisdom.

Gamebook Review: "Bloodfeud of Altheus" (1985)

Last year, I discussed the seminal Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) series of gamebooks and the legendary Lone Wolf series by Joe Dever.  Today, I wanted to look at another excellent, if under appreciated, RPG gamebook, the first entry in the Cretan Chronicles trilogy, "Bloodfeud of Altheus":

In the days of yore, I spent many, many hours pouring over the ancient tales from Greek mythology: the trials of mighty Heracles, the battles of the Trojan War, the foibles of various mortals and deities, the general dickishness of Zeus.  One of my favorite yarns was the story of Theseus and the dreaded Minotaur, so it's not surprising that I took a shine to this series.

In the Cretan Chronicles, things went a bit differently- Theseus has been slain at the heart of the labyrinth of Minos!  It falls to his younger brother Altheus, played by you, to finish Theseus' quest and to seek vengeance for your fallen kin.

Traveling through mythic Greece, you strive to prove yourself a true Achaean hero as you face numerous challenges, mortal and otherwise.  The gamebook also rewards knowledge of Greek mythology, as a number of familiar names pop up.

The Cretan Chronicles series is perhaps the best blending of rules and setting in a gamebook.  Unlike other gamebook series, which mostly used generic rules, the Cretan Chronicles attempted to model  the feel and pathos of Greek mythology.  For example, in "Bloodfeud of Altheus," you are supposed to role-play the titular character in a suitably heroic manner.

To "encourage" such, there's the infamous Honor/Shame mechanic, where you gain Honor points for honorable actions and you also gain Shame points for (you guessed it) shameful actions.  Most notably, you were supposed to kill yourself if your Shame exceeded your Honor- and if you didn't Zeus does it for you with a thunderbolt!

Respect My Authoritah!

This gamebook is also notable for its hint mechanic.  At numerous points in the story, you have the option of performing a non-standard action.  Be wary, for if you choose to do something that No Greek Hero would do, you will be penalized!  In addition, the book's notion of what is appropriate for a Greek Hero is sometimes very arbitrary and even bizarre- a great emulation of the source material!

Another nice detail is your relationships with six different gods and goddesses.  You select a Patron deity among them, each of which has different in-game effects, and are Favored/Neutral/Disfavored by the rest, which affects your story at various points.

So, if you are a fan of Greek myths and/or Old School gaming, grab your sword, slip on your himation and read this gamebook- or die of Shame!

RPG Focus: 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977)

While the Mentzer Red box (Basic Dungeons & Dragons) was my introduction to tabletop RPGs (preceded by the Choose Your Own Adventure series and similar gamebooks), I fairly quickly moved onward to 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  This seemed like the obvious thing to do (it was "advanced"!).  While I have since gained a new appreciation for the Basic lines (B/X, BECMI), AD&D1 still remains my personal favorite iteration of Ye Olde Fantasy Game. 

1st Edition is the game I've spent the most time with over the years and it was where I really cut my teeth as a role-player.  I still remember spending hours memorizing the THAC0 tables.

Moreover, aside from obvious nostalgia, I think the biggest reason First Edition remains my personal favorite is the flavor: the purple Gygaxian prose, the particular blend of crunch and fluff, the cool weird bits scatter throughout the books, the Old School artwork (which might not have been great per se but it fired up your imagination), such as:

Rather than spell everything out to the nth degree, Messr Gygax presented a broad framework where one could do and play whatever you wanted and extolled you (in an avuncular tone) to play!  The sense of wonder and adventure that was only limited by what you could imagine.

And while AD&D1 certainly had mechanical issues (*cough*level limits*cough*), that's what house ruling is for:

"As the creator and ultimate authority in your respective game, this work is written as one Dungeon Master equal to another. Pronouncements there may be, but they are not from "on high" as respects your game. Dictums are given for the sake of the game only, for if ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is to survive and grow, it must have some degree of uniformity, a familiarity of method and procedure from campaign to campaign within the whole."

Unfortunately, teh interwebs have a dearth of good videos about AD&D1.  So, this week, I wanted to give a shout out the series of vlogs on 1st Edition by Robert from Black Belt Gaming:

These vlogs are really well done and informative, full of heart and humor.  Robert shares plenty of fun stories that evidence a clear love of 1st Edition.

So, if you are fan of AD&D1, you really should take a gander.  I've already been through the series twice.

Movie Review: Hercules (2014)

This week, I wanted to give a shout out to an under appreciated film that's the best Sword & Sandal romp in recent years, "Hercules":

While it did reasonably well at the box office and it does have flaws, Hercules, in my humble opinion, still hasn't gotten quite the love I think it deserves.

I'm not trying to suggest that Hercules belongs in the same category as a Gladiator (2000) or a Conan the Barbarian (1982), but as a popcorn action flick, it is more than serviceable.  Based on the graphic novel Hercules: The Thracian Wars, our story finds Hercules (played by the Rock) after he has completed his twelve legendary labors: Banished from Athens, he sells his sword (well, club actually, which is pretty neat since that's an underrepresented heroic weapon) for coin.  Lord Cotys of Thrace offers Hercules his weight in gold and hijinks ensue.

As you might expect, director Brett Ratner is workmanlike, and the work behind the camera is competent but not particularly noteworthy.  Set and costume design are better, and I particularly like that the film's use of CGI is more limited and subtle than it might otherwise be.  The action is solid and worth the price of admission, as is the writing, which never has any eye rolling or groan worthy moments.

Even better is the cast: Of note is Ian McShane chewing scenery with relish, but I particularly liked Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock), who apparently spent 6 months training for the movie and is absolutely jacked (selling the physicality of the titular role).  Additionally, Messr Johnson's acting has come light years from The Scorpion King, to the point where Hercules' pathos is reasonably believable.


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I know that some people were disappointed by the "twist" that Hercules is a mere mortal (though, some of his onscreen feats belie that point) and his "legendary labors" were actually military missions undertaken by he and his team and then embellished by his PR guy.  However, that didn't bother me: conversely, I thought it was an interesting and refreshing take on the character.

Plus, the movie, at its core, is a classic D&D adventure: a group of adventurers meet in a tavern, face trials and tribulations, and eventually defeat the evil king.

So, if you're looking for a ripping Sword & Sandal yarn, you could do worse than this movie.  In fact, you need go no further than the other Hercules film released that summer.