tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post8738529798159517327..comments2024-03-13T23:09:50.841+00:00Comments on Vaults of Nagoh: I Never Got DungeonsChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04072272223837426211noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-54400835866515429212010-04-12T07:12:01.576+01:002010-04-12T07:12:01.576+01:00http://www.ian-miller.org/artwork.htm
I think ther...http://www.ian-miller.org/artwork.htm<br />I think there's some on page 2. Also lots of decidedly chilling looking orcs from the Tolkein Bestiary.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-72581568350483219942010-04-12T07:06:21.935+01:002010-04-12T07:06:21.935+01:00Likely the easiest way to find the Ian Miller Gorm...Likely the easiest way to find the Ian Miller Gormenghast illustrations in print is the, if I can remember the name correctly, Realms of Fantasy coffee table book. It has IIRC Tolkein, The Land, Howard, Moorcock, ERB, and possibly more along with Peake. Ian Miller illustrated the Peake section.<br /><br />He also contributed several inspirational illustrations (some full color) for the Tolkein Bestiary (?) that tends to present a rather interesting view of Tolkein's world. The fall of Gondolin in particular comes to mind.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-91997097860163380332010-04-09T13:34:36.696+01:002010-04-09T13:34:36.696+01:00And I echo that echo!And I echo that echo!Crusty Onenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-1854983581030171542010-04-08T23:45:49.919+01:002010-04-08T23:45:49.919+01:00It's Mysterious Cities of Gold. ;)
On a less ...It's <i>Mysterious Cities of Gold</i>. ;)<br /><br />On a less pedantic note, this is a great post, and I echo the call for a close look at the British face of the OSR, the BOSR perhaps. Certainly we seem to have a very different context for our fantasy gaming to our colonial cousins.thekelvingreenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01928260185408072124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-6746654944436722862010-04-08T16:19:51.480+01:002010-04-08T16:19:51.480+01:00Thanks all for your comments.
@Norm: I'd have...Thanks all for your comments.<br /><br /><b>@Norm:</b> I'd have killed to have read Philotomy's excellent summation back in the day. Reading it was an uncanny experience of 'this guy is saying everything I always thought, but couldn't articulate'.<br /><br /><b>@Gibbering Ghoul:</b> Ian Miller did Gormenghast illustrations? How did this escape me? The thrumming brainhive comes through again!<br /><br /><b>@James:</b> *mumble, blush*<br /><br /><b>@Telecanter:</b> I think, apart from odd mystery cult stuff (Orpheus and suchlike) and Egyptology, you're pretty much right about D&D inventing the dungeon as setting. Sure we'd had buried tombs, cursed treasures and suchlike before, but there's still a world of difference between a haunted barrow and the endless trap-filled tunnels 'neath the Mad Wizard's Castle.<br /><br /><b>@Coopdevil:</b> I thought I was kidding about having to respond to everything you wrote with "+1, what Coop said". Obviously not.<br /><br /><b>@Crusty One:</b> Even the non-dungeony parts of "The Hobbit" - Mirkwood, for example - feel dungeony in retrospect. Though I did find riddles an almost complete dead-end. Any puzzle with a single right/wrong answer runs the risk of bringing things to a grinding halt, and did for me more than once. A lesson hard learned. :(<br /><br />This is going to sound odd. But I only ever picked up a couple of books in the (excellent) "Dragon Warriors" series by mistake. Being green-spined paperbacks, just like the FF books, they tended to fade into the CYOA shelf in Waterstones.<br /><br /><b>@Trey:</b> MS&T is <i>criminally</i> under-rated IMO. Yes, it was post-Tolkien high fantasy, and that's easy to rip on (*cough* Eddings *cough* Brooks). But MS&T was written as a conscious homage to Tolkien's iconic epic, albeit with a leavening of quasi-Arthurian flavouring. <br /><br />I'm still not sure where the Eskimo Hobbits came from though...Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04072272223837426211noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-7922070950260893142010-04-08T11:18:52.990+01:002010-04-08T11:18:52.990+01:00Good post.
You've again brought up the feelin...Good post.<br /><br />You've again brought up the feeling that <i>Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn</i> is highly underrated. Indeed If seen it derided as "Tolkien ripoff" on the internet--which misses Williams' point entirely.Treyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04647628467658839351noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-51010933763195452252010-04-08T11:09:09.914+01:002010-04-08T11:09:09.914+01:00Great post by the way. Were you too young to pick ...Great post by the way. Were you too young to pick up Dragon Warriors the first time around?<br /><br />I agree the the OSR can be very U.S.-centric and that the British flavour is different.Crusty Onenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-45866900770766499372010-04-08T11:03:13.705+01:002010-04-08T11:03:13.705+01:00I don't think you're being fair to the Tol...I don't think you're being fair to the Tolk if you completely neglect "The Hobbit".Crusty Onenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-78674358820345171312010-04-08T09:02:56.371+01:002010-04-08T09:02:56.371+01:00I suspect I'm a couple of years older than you...I suspect I'm a couple of years older than you because when I got started in the Mentzer era, dungeons and associated imagery (that would make a good title for a retroclone...) were everywhere probably because of the FF craze. Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Citadel of Chaos seemed to be on the bookshelf of every one of my classmates and they were dungeon bashes so the whole thing made sense. In a fashion I assume we actually learnt it through a ludography (a good word I picked up from a recent Grognardia post) rather than a bibliography as the typical dungeon concept was a construct arrived at by the neccesity to provide something practical for gaming, rather than a direct lift from literary or mythological source material.<br /><br />Assuming that you came into things a couple of years later after the FF craze had quieten down a bit and I see where you are coming from as regards the lack of obvious dungeon sources in books. Also by the time of AH, Dwarf had left all traces of D&D/AD&D long behind and the "GW Hobby" was predominantly 40k-led.<br /><br />For about a year now I've been meaning to do a series of blog posts on how the OSR seems very American to me and how our Brit sources are very different, lots of love for WD, Fighting Fantasy artists, Lone Wolf, 2000AD (the great seminal influence that never seems to get mentioned) and, as you insightfully pointed out, NWOBHM.Coopdevilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16219253658967958289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-34019165073392597172010-04-08T04:33:29.242+01:002010-04-08T04:33:29.242+01:00Excellent. Thank you! I had a little different e...Excellent. Thank you! I had a little different experience across the pond, but remember well seeking anything D&Dish in popular culture. I think Dungeons and Dragons created a kind of genre of its own with the dungeon crawl. I mean the Tombs of Atuan were sort of similar, but no treasure to be had in there. Not so much dungeon as the Mythic Underworld, as Dungeon as the quiet land of the dead.Telecanterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07238356788092725244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-70149564686353227422010-04-08T04:04:19.854+01:002010-04-08T04:04:19.854+01:00Awesome post. Thanks!Awesome post. Thanks!James Maliszewskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-47138821996680862862010-04-08T03:24:48.722+01:002010-04-08T03:24:48.722+01:00There's a decent audiobook of the Titus trilog...There's a decent audiobook of the Titus trilogy if you find reading Gormenghast difficult. It may work better for you. In a pinch there have been at least two BBC adaptions, the most recent I know is on DVD. It somewhat misses the mark but is entertaining and features a bumper crop of British comedians.<br /><br />I still recommend at least looking at Peake's own illustrations for the series and Ian Miller's illustrations. Both are amazing stuff.<br /><br />To me Peake is post-Aristocratic Gothic Dickensian fantasy of manners. Great stuff, including his non-Titus works.<br /><br />Iron Maiden, Talislanta, Tekumel, Lone Wolf, WFRP etc., all good stuffs and good dungeon / wilderness fodder too.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-21443457735671386822010-04-08T03:07:02.763+01:002010-04-08T03:07:02.763+01:00Just discovered Knightmare the other day. It looks...Just discovered Knightmare the other day. It looks awesome. But, if I had learned about it when I was the target age I'd thought it lamer than lame.<br /><br />Have you read <a href="http://www.philotomy.com/#dungeon" rel="nofollow">Mythic Dungeons</a> It explained everything to me.<br /><br />Besides having way too many words to read I think this post most confuses me cause I don't think there is anything to "get" about dungeons. Whatever you got or not is what there is.Norman J. Harman Jr.https://www.blogger.com/profile/01319655075997712313noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-43502647608830749782010-04-08T02:56:57.854+01:002010-04-08T02:56:57.854+01:00@Matt: There does seem to be a Brit-gamer standard...<b>@Matt:</b> There does seem to be a Brit-gamer standard initiation process, doesn't there?<br /><br /><b>@Aaron:</b> Yeah Tolkers would have been all that. If he could have only anticipated our needs as gamers ...from beyond the grave ...against his own tastes and better judgement. ;)<br /><br /><b>@Norman:</b> A point? You want the moon on a stick man! It's just a nebulous webloperson whiffling on in the hope that one of these onerturned rocks might turn up something interesting. ;)Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04072272223837426211noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-76952010690037946302010-04-08T02:43:27.346+01:002010-04-08T02:43:27.346+01:00> Thoughts? Opinions? Heckling cries of "D...> Thoughts? Opinions? Heckling cries of "Did you never watch X...?"<br /><br />I've misplaced the point of this post?Norman J. Harman Jr.https://www.blogger.com/profile/01319655075997712313noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-11869790484089148462010-04-08T02:22:13.524+01:002010-04-08T02:22:13.524+01:00What an excellent post!
You mention several thin...What an excellent post! <br /><br />You mention several things that I've tried and failed to read--several times in the case of Gormenghast--and I think I will simply have to read Memory, Sorrow, Thorn now. And I'm humbled by your keen tallying of Tolkien's shortcomings as a dungeon-describer, which I had not noticed.<br /><br />I've got so much to learn, and this is a good start, so thanks!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8346997917591558747.post-79400589875775720462010-04-08T02:20:21.931+01:002010-04-08T02:20:21.931+01:00Yep. Advanced Hero Quest and the very few dungeons...Yep. <i>Advanced Hero Quest</i> and the very few dungeons presented in <i>White Dwarf</i> were my primary initiation into dungeons. <i>Gormenghast</i>, <i>Knightmare</i> and Tad Williams are also familiar to me. Good stuff, and interesting to read about overlapping experiences. I remember my first mega-dungeon creation were the caverns beneath <i>Middenheim</i>... I recall running three parties simultaneously through it at school. :DAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05646247954542936623noreply@blogger.com