A Western in Fantasy Dress

D&D can be understood as a Western in fantasy dress. The reasons for this are not complicated. D&D grew largely out of the American pulp fantasy tradition, and that tradition largely had its historical origins in stories about cowboys and Indians. This is present in the game's very DNA. D&D PCs roam around a landscape full of danger and carry out feats of derring-do in return for glory. And this is, essentially, what every cowboy in every Western does. Sometimes the feats of derring-do are unquestionably good (like The Lone Ranger or Shane). Sometimes they are morally ambivalent or even morally undesirable (like in High Plains Drifter or A Fistful of Dollars). And both of these are present in the different branches of D&D play, with mainstream games often resembling something like Rio Bravo, High Noon, or The Naked Spur, and more OSR-oriented games often resembling something more like The Wild Bunch or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The genius of D&D, however, is that it (entirely, I am sure, unconsciously) recognises that Westerns have both limited shelf-lives and limited scope. Ultimately, the Western is not that interesting as a long-term proposition. Westerns work best as short stories, or as films (which are the visual equivalents of short stories). They are a chunk of concentrated action and adventure with a definite beginning, middle and end. They are not the stuff of, say, a multi-volume series of epic novels each of 1000 pages in length.

This is the reason, I think, why we don't really see many Western RPGs in general. There are only so many innocent Indian tribes to vanquish, robber barons to dispossess, stagecoaches to protect, banks to rob, and outlaws to apprehend, before things get stale. Those things are fine as one-offs. But they aren't the stuff of campaigns.

The genius of D&D lies in the fact that, just as English layers a great deal of French (and loanwords from other languages) on an underlying Germanic chassis, it submerges its Western skeleton in fantasy tropes - and thereby brings in almost limitless variety. And this variety comes in at two levels. On the one hand there is just so much more to do (you can vanquish hostile tribes, dispossess robber barons, protect stagecoaches, rob banks, and apprehend outlaws, but you can also fight dragons, defeat vampire lords, delve beneath the ocean to fight sahuagin, summon vile and ancient demigods, and so on). And on the other hand there is much more scope to improve. A cowbody is always a cowboy. But a D&D PC can go from being an ineffectual, green-around-the-gills schlubb to being in effect a demigod in his own right.

I don't think that Gygax and Arneson explicitly saw this (maybe they did), but they certainly unconsciously intuited it. Western bones + Tolkien meat = a delicious feast. 

Two corollaries arise from this.

1. The Western structure also works for other genres - certainly science fiction. In principle, any type of meat can be put on the Western bones so long as the underlying skeleton is left intact.

2. It is I think also true that fantasy dress can enliven any underlying structure. Mystery RPGs on their own are quite dull and hard to make work. But the structure of the mystery may be vastly improved by making it a mystery in a fantasy setting, with all the variety that entails. There may be other examples.

Adding a Touch of Colour: Or, Blue Dwarfs, Yellow Giants, and Red Trolls, Oh My!

There is a pleasing direct vividness about colour words appearing in book titles, monster names, or fantasy geographies. 'The King in Yellow'. Red Mars. Purple Worm. 'The Masque of the Red Death'. Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight. 'The White People'. The Silver Chair. The Black Speech. And so on.

The reasons for this are not very complicated, I suppose. First, we are so alive to colour as such that it instantly appears in our mind - one need only see the word 'red' to immediately see vivid red in one's mind's eye. No mental effort required. 

Second, colours often have connotations. Silver feels mysterious; white feels cold; red suggests blood or fire; green suggests nature or spring, and so on. There is a lot of semiotic significance packed into these single words. 

And the third is the blunt effectiveness of these often monosyllabic, Anglo-Saxon-sounding terms. Which of these is more evocative: The Blue Mountains or the Mountains of Syllrabiastra? It is the former for a whole arsenal of reasons, but one of them is simply that 'Blue Mountains' has a ring to it. 'Blue' is a good, solid word that anybody can understand; it also doesn't beat around the bush. It goes straight at you, in your face. Most colour words - certainly the simple colour words that we learn as children, or when learning a new language - have this quality. They don't mess around.

It follows that if one wishes to add some spice and vividness in worldbuilding, one can't go too far wrong with creative use of colour in the naming of things. This perhaps shouldn't be overdone, but it is surprising how much life can be breathed into even the most hackneyed concepts with a fresh hue. Instead of the Goblins of Elrexinfrax, go for the Purple goblins of Elrexinfrax. Instead of the Dwarfs of Undermountain, go for the Blue Dwarfs of Undermountain. Instead of the Empress of Yeffinfeff, go for the Red Empress of Yeffinfeff. And so forth. 

The important point here is not that the goblins, dwarfs, or empress are necessarily actually purple, blue or red (though they may be). Perhaps the blue dwarfs are called such because they mine blue-tinged iron to make their weapons. Perhaps the purple goblins make a violet dye from some strange fruit and use it to colour their skin, or for tattoos. Perhaps the Red Empress is known for bathing in the blood of virgins. Whatever. The colour both generates an evocative name - and a reason to pique the curiosity of the players - but also gets the creative juices flowing. 

To this end, I recommend using this technique before coming up with any details in advance. While stocking your hexmap you decide that this area of land is populated by a race of giants known as the Yellow Giants. Why are they yellow? That's what gets the ideas flowing. 

Terrain Types for Encounter Tables and Hex Maps: What Principles?

How fine-grained does one like one's terrain types, sir? And is it possible to come up with some principles regarding how many such types there should ideally be? 

I ask because I happen to have been paging idly through Oriental Adventures just now, and came across in it a page of Encounter Tables by Terrain Type. These are:

• City/Town
• Tropical/Sub-tropical mountains
• Tropical/Sub-tropical ocean
• Temperate swamp
• Rural
• Tropical/Sub-tropical forest
• Temperate mountain
• Temperate freshwater
• Steppe
• Tropical/Sub-tropical swamp
• Temperate forest
• Temperate ocean
• Aerial
• Tropical/Sub-tropical freshwater
• Temperate plain
• Cold regions (all terrain types)

Clearly the designers got bored by the end - or perhaps just didn't have enough monster varieties - and decided not to bother with distinct tables for 'cold' forests, mountains, swamps and so on. There are also some oddities and lacunae in their approach. One is that there is no distinction drawn between tropical, temperate, and sub-tropical cities and rural areas. Another is that there is no concept of hills: everything is either mountain or forest, or open flatland. 

Otherwise their usage is pretty consistent with what one would expect, and what I imagine most DMs resort to when populating a hexmap and writing up wilderness encounter tables. 

But this does raise the (to me, at any rate) curious fact that, for all that there are more blogposts and print and digital products about how to create, populate and run hexmaps than there are grains of sand on all of the beaches in the universe, I don't believe I have ever read anything by way of principles guiding selection of terrain types for hexes. All I've ever seen are rough and ready preconceived ideas put into practice. People just do it 'by eye' and don't, I think, give it a great deal of thought. Nobody really seems to think through, in a reasoned way, why the division is between temperate forest, temperate mountain, etc., but not, for example, temperate deciduous versus coniferous forest, or dense versus light forest, or mountains above and below the treeline, or whatever. Likewise, nobody really seems to consider whether there are meaningful differences in terms of movement rates or the population of wilderness encounter tables between, say, a temperate plain versus a steppe, or tundra versus arctic, or whatever. 

Without having thought the matter through a great deal, and therefore offering this post as a conversation starter more than anything else, I will suggest there are probably three main approaches to the matter:

1. The realistic approach: the DM simply tries as hard as he can to come up with a list of terrain types which reflects actual real-world complexity as he sees it. If he thinks a forest flatland is different to forested hills, or a rural piedmont is different to a rural plain, then he duly deploys different hex styles to reflect those differences. 
2. The game management approach. The DM uses as many terrain types as is practically useful given the nature of the campaign. If the hexmap is mostly jungle, then he may divide the terrain into dense versus moderate versus light jungle; big and small rivers; bogs versus marshes versus swamps; forested hills; etc., so as to maintain variety. On the other hand, if there is already natural variety within the hexmap (because one area is deserted, another mountainous, another more temperate, etc.) then there is no need to get too fine-grained.  
3. The monster-availability-led approach. Rather than starting off with the map, the DM makes a list of all the monsters he can think of and, from that, decide how many terrain types are meaningful. Why draw a distinction between arctic and tundra if the number of cold-place monster varieties is very small and the wilderness encounter table will therefore largely look the same? Why draw a distinction between dense versus light forest if there are only so many forest-dwelling monsters in the bestiary? And so on.

Have any readers given it any more thought than this? How do you decide how many terrain types your campaign map will have, and how fine-grained or abstract do you tend to get? 

The External and Internal Faces of Nerd Commerce

Yesterday, I had half an hour to kill in the local city centre while waiting for a delayed train. There are two chain nerd shops not far from the train station, and almost right next to each other, so I popped into both.

The first, Travelling Man, is a cornucopia of obviously quite carefully curated delights. Not all of it is for me, of course. But it contains a big RPG section, a big board game section, a big Games Workshop section, a big manga section, a big comic section, and various others. It is almost overflowing with stock, all of it creating the impression of having been chosen by enthusiasts who really like what they are selling. There are recommendations; there are displays; there are regular customers engaging in awkward nerd-banter with the staff. I found it a very congenial space in which to spend time.

The second, Forbidden Planet, essentially sells those little Funko figurines with the big wobbly heads. And that's about it. There are one or two glass cabinets featuring other, more expensive forms of tat (a cast iron statue of the batmobile, etc.), but I would estimate that over 75% of the shop's revenue come entirely through selling Funkos. I found it alienating and depressing to be in there for more than two minutes. 

I observed this - that more or less next door to each other there are these two wildly different approaches to, let's call it, nerd commerce - to a friend with a WhatsApp message and he made the following comment:

There are lots of people who like tat. Or people who don't know what to get someone for a gift but they think they remember the person saying something about Star Wars one time and so they buy them a Star Wars Funko Pop/keyring/poster etc.

I thought this was pretty astute. And it alludes to an important distinction between two aspects of nerd culture, and suggests that nerd commerce is in fact bifurcating (or has bifurcated) to meet them.

The first aspect of nerd culture is that it is very inward facing. It is insular, introspective, and indeed introverted; nerds like a special thing which only they and a very select group of other nerds know very much about. And Travelling Man meets the need of that audince. It feels like going into a clubhouse. And it would, I imagine, be quite an intimidating place for a non-nerd to go. It would be hard to figure out what half the stuff in there even is without having been introduced by somebody in the in-group.

The second aspect of nerd culture is that it is also outward-facing. Nerds like to be associated with 'their thing', I think often almost as a kind of shield behind which to hide their more private thoughts, and non-nerds will often fixate on the 'thing' that the nerd in their lives is into, recognising it to be an important facet of their personality. 'I am Bob and I am into Babylon 5' becomes a means through which Bob's friends, family and colleagues can relate to him (in much the same way that they might relate to his brother, Reg, through the fact that he is a big Motherwell fan). 

These two faces, the internal and external, interior and exterior, private and public, exist in a state of tension in nerddom as such, and within the heart of the individual nerd. I perform no psychoanalysis here, but it is interesting that the two sides of the nerd personality appear to have given rise in our age to two very distinct mode of moneymaking activity: on the one hand, the studiedly hobbyist outfit; on the other, the acceptable face of nerdishness as laundered through gift-giving. To experience one or the other is almost to step into a different world - one (to me) warm and comfortable, the other cold and transactional. But some readers, no doubt, will rather like Funkos, so perhaps that's just me. 

Pale as a Ghost in the Afternoon

 

I like the moon, and moons, as a feature of RPG adventures and settings. A while ago, I wrote that: 

The moon has played an exceptionally important role in the development of the human imagination. The sun gives life; we know this intuitively, and we have long worshipped it as a result. But the moon is different. It stands there in the heavens and seems to suggest to us that our world, the human world, and the sun that gives it warmth and light, are not all that exists in creation. It calls for an explanation. It seems to have its own, cold and pale, source of light. It presents us with mysteries, at times concealing its face and at times revealing it, and sometimes looming larger or even changing its colour. Looking at it carefully, one can discern features on it, which to some cultures resembles a face, to others a rabbit, to others a woman carrying sticks. It is trite to call it 'otherworldly', but that is how even the ancients seem to have thought of it. Is it possible to imagine that human beings would have come up with science fiction if the moon did not exist? 

To the hardened SF enthusiast, the moon is old hat; we have even been there. But in a fantasy, or apocalyptic, or 'dying earth' setting, the moon can be anything. Anything can live there; any rules of physics can apply; its pale white surface could conceal any kind of structure or environment one would wish...

I think the image I had in mind here, as is generally the case when I (or anybody else) envisages the moon, was of the moon at night. But of course, the moon is just as often visible during the day, appearing faint and almost translucent in the blue of the sky.

This calls to mind an altogether different image of life there. Whereas the night-time moon looks bright, cold, and full of magic and puissance, the day-time moon looks somehow both elegant and haunted - lighter (in the sense of lack of mass) and less substantive, more cloud-like than rocky.

In a book of children's poems by Shirley Hughes she describes the moon as 'pale as a ghost in the afternoon', and this conjures in the mind - or, at least, in my mind - an idea of the moon as a ghost itself. Once there was an actual moon, but it has been destroyed, perhaps by the Gods or by powerful magic. And now only its ghost remains.

This seems like it should be part of a fantasy setting, but I can't think of one - I have some vague recollections of vanished moons being an aspect of Eberron, but that's not quite the same thing. Perhaps this is a genuinely novel idea, and I am immediately struck by various thoughts:

• Perhaps the ghost-moon is imbued with a consciousness, and somehow communicates with people on the world below, or even functions for a particular specialist class of priests or magic-users as a means of scrying or soothsaying (or as a medium with the dead), who offer 'gifts' of some kind in return for its aid.
• Peharps the ghost-moon is where the dead go when they are dead, and people from the world can go there to try to find lost loves ones.
• Perhaps the ghost-moon was densely populated and when it was destroyed all of its inhabitants became undead. Perhaps these undead visit the world from the ghost-moon to haunt it.
• Perhaps the ghost-moon was once a palace, and it is now possible to go there and bring back ethereal treasures or magicks from the dead civilisation that it was once home to.

What else might be true of the ghost-moon, and what role might it play in a campaign setting?

Oh, Tell Me the Truth About Lusaphone Fantasy

Due to a strange confluence of events, my life has recently become dominated by all things Portuguese. All of my professional interactions and personal friendships lately appear to revolve around Portugal itself, Brazil, or lusaphone Africa.

The universe, I have decided, is telling me something. Ahead of a trip to Brazil which I will be taking in the coming year, I have been quite earnestly learning Portuguese on duolingo and enjoying the experience. And this has made me curious about fantasy (also SF) literature in Portuguese.

I know that there are Brazilian readers of this blog, and perhaps also from other parts of the Portuguese-speaking world. While I by no means suggest I could easily tackle a Portuguese-language novel, I am curious about what is out there by way of fantasy literature and would love some recommendations from my readers. For clarity: I am not interested in literature that has been translated into English, but 'native' work that will help me practice and learn the language better. 

Reviewing the Covers of a Miscellany of Treasures Found in an Old Box in the Cellar

The other day I was doing a clearout of old junk and came across a box filled with books put into storage from a childhood bookshelf. Below, they are pasted in all their glory. Behold them, DESPAIR, and MARVEL. I will now commence to review and rank them. Reviews are based on artistic merit, excitement level, and innovation, marked in the traditional way (1-5 bec des corbins), with the marks averaged and an overall ranking produced. 

There is something faintly ridiculous about this cover, for all that it depicts something fabulous and for all its technical merit. Is it really plausible to imagine that his quads are strong enough for him to ride around on those tigers all the way across a semi-frozen lake? Does he not feel the burn? Does his facial expression not lack a certain je ne sais quoi? Bonus point, however, for creative and tasteful deployment of a cod-piece. 

Artistic merit: 4, Excitement level: 3, Innovation: 2.

It is a tower of destruction and it destroys. I loved this image as a child, and I love it still. Take that, innocent village of innocent villagers! Tell me that the image, while fairly by-the-numbers in the grand scheme of things, does not want to make you play the book.

Artistic merit: 3, Excitement level: 5, Innovation: 2

This, on the other hand, is, to use the technical expression, pants. Lacking in motion or vibrancy, it appears to depict not so much a demon as a vaguely non-plussed and rather sheepish looking skeleton who is not so much brandishing his weapons as showing them off to his audience. He is accompanied by two fish-men goons who appear to be almost a backing chorus. This is poorly executed.

Artistic merit: 2, Excitement level: 1, Innovation: 1

This is an example of a particular genre of RPG/Gamebook art, which depicts fantasy creatures interacting in some way with the paraphernalia associated with the game (in this case it is dice, which is normally the case, but it could be pens or paper or a rulebook). This runs contrary to my taste (I can't fathom why this approach could be considered more exciting than a depiction of an actual 'in game' event), although I do quite like the way the tigerman slobbers ravenously, and the strangely haunted looking dwarf emerging from the dice itself.

Artistic merit: 3, Excitement level: 1, Innovation: 1.

This is a decent, spooky picture, perhaps rather derivative of every early Stephen King cover you have seen, and with an oddly lacklustre horned vampire fellow here at the front. Good evil ents, though.

Artistic merit: 3, Excitement level: 3, Innovation: 1.

It is quite hard to argue that this is a good picture. Indeed, I am struggling to find merit in it. Is there any merit in it? It is, at least, distinctive. Is distinctiveness good even if the image is bad? I will leave this question to the philosophers in my readership.

Artistic merit: 1, Excitement level: 1, Innovation: 3.

I love this one. Yes, it's cheesy. But they had me at, 'An image of an army of baddies descending from a mountain fortress'. Add a glaring, self-evidently mostrously evil warlock at the top and you have some tasty icing on top of the cake.

Artistic merit: 3, Excitement level: 5, Innovation: 2.

I can remember this cover scaring me as a child. I didn't like looking at it, and the figure of the sorcerer has from time to time haunted my nightmares since then. Seen through adult eyes, I think it is a great piece, for what it is, although perhaps the facial expression on the sorcerer lacks some of the necessary bile.

Artistic merit: 4, Excitement level: 4, Innovation: 3.

This is a nicely conceived image which hits all the right notes - I love the little details, like the morning start hanging from the orc's belt, and his tigerskin whatever-it-is (cummerbund?). It also conveys a sense of mystery. What is going on? Those who have read the book will know, but put your mind into the head of a 9-year-old boy seeing it for the firsst time.

Artistic merit: 4, Excitement level: 5, Innovation: 3.  

This, after the two previous highs, is a little bit of a comedown. This is not a bad picture, and I have to say I love the wicked look on the skeleton's face and the gloominess of the atmosphere. But it lacks dynamism. Okay, it's a city of thieves. But what is depicted looks small and rather uninspiring.

Artistic merit: 3, Excitement level: 2, Innovation: 2.

A totally iconic fantasy picture, for me, as The Forest of Doom was the first Fighting Fantasy I ever read, and the cover was a major part of what hooked me. It looked very grown up and very sophisticated in comparison to what I had previously been reading; I just knew, when I saw it, that I wanted to know what was inside. I still think it's a great picture, made special by the beams of sunlight filtering down through the trees, and the sheer menace of the cloaked figure on the front.

Artistic merit: 5, Excitement level: 5, Innovation: 3.

A lot of Fighting Fantasy covers are like this: an image of a monster just sort of standing there, striking a pose. It has a rote feeling to it. This is sufficient for somebody who is already bought in, and who wants to complete his set of books. But it is not inspiring.

Artistic merit: 3, Excitement level: 2, Innovation: 1.

The Crimson Tide is a strange book, and the cover image is almost surreal - two guards, one looking like a shark-man and the other a mole-man, both winged, and both wearing quasi-Japanese, quasi-Arabian armour, stand over a prisoner or slave, while other animal-headed figures lurk in the background and a throned figure guffaws with glee. What the fuck is going on? It's so long since I've read it, I can't remember, but the image is certainly different to others in the Fighting Fantasy line.

Artistic merit: 3, Excitement level: 4, Innovation: 4.

Two for the price of one. I love these pictures. The almost hyper-realistic style works brilliantly, and the images are so dynamic even if there are quibbles over composition. I wish I had the first in the Advanced series, but sadly I never got it - it was in the local library, and those were the days when 'having it in the local library' was sufficient for most purposes.

Artistic merit: 4, Excitement level: 5, Innovation: 3.

The contents of this book are forgettable - or, at least, I've forgotten them. There seemed to be hundreds of these TSR novels being churned out every year, and this did not particularly stand out. With that said, I think this cover looks great. Except for the subject matter, one could almost imagine it hanging in a gallery as an example of a piece of art from the romantic era depicting a biblical or classical scene. My one complaint is that Kaz's facial expression does not quite fit in with the action - why is he looking in the viewer's direction, rather than that of the dragon?

Artistic merit: 4, Excitement level: 4, Innovation: 4.

I like the artistic direction behind the Legends of Lone Wolf novel series (well worth tracking down, if memory serves), but this is one of the weaker covers. The sword arm of the humanoid figure (who I think must be Lone Wolfe) is all wrong, and the monster looks almost timid and retiring. Could have been so much better with the right execution.

Artistic merit: 2, Excitement level: 2, Innovation: 3.

There is something about a picture of a powerful magic user emerging from a black hole, surrounded by fire and lightning, that just speaks to me. This is a striking, expressionistic image that manages to convey something of the awe and fear that our protagonist, in chains in the foreground, must feel. I like it, and can forgive some flaws in execution (again - what is going on with Lone Wolf's arms?).

Artistic merit: 4, Excitement level: 4, Innovation: 3.

This is an image of real charm, and I remember the scene it depicts from the book very well, depite having only fragmentary memories of the series as a whole. The look on the character's face (somebody reading this will remember his name) is priceless, and the prospective reader really wants to find out more about what the scene depicts and the story in which it is set. 

Artistic merit: 5, Excitement level: 5, Innovation: 3.

This is another wonderfully moody and atmospheric piece, with bonus points for being exceptionally appealing to the eyes of an adolescent boy. See what I mean about the artistic direction behind the covers in this series? This is classy work.

Artistic merit: 5, Excitement level: 4, Innovation: 3.

This is not a piece one would have hanging on one's wall. But I find it effective in an expressionistic way. The boat really looks like it is moving - an effect which is hard to achieve - and even that it is about to spring out from the cover and into reality. This book sticks in my memory because the opening scene involves Lone Wolf stabbing somebody in the eyeball, which when I read it - aged twelve or whatever - struck me as the most amazing thing ever to have been committed to paper.

Artistic merit: 3, Excitement level: 4, Innovation: 3.

This is a phenomenal image. Everything about it is great. I want this one hanging on my wall.

Artistic merit: 5, Excitement level: 5, Innovation: 3.

The flying beasts here (I wish I could remember the name of the species in question) are depicted with lovely dynamism and skill, and there is something pleasingly minimalist and stark about the overall image. One can imagine these things being about to swoop down to snatch helpless prey spotted far below - and the sun in the background, like something off a metal album cover, completes the scene.

Artistic merit: 4, Excitement level: 4, Innovation: 3.

I have not read this book since I was an adolescent, though I have fond memories of the contents. The cover image is dreadful, though - like a poor imitation of The Return to Firetop Mountain. The demon in the background looks far too cartoonish to be plausible, and what is going on with that chaos warrior's axe? Depicting forward or backward motion is one of the hardest things for an artist to pull-off, and whoever did this piece was very ill-advised in making the attempt. I quite like the bloodletter of Khorne, though.

Artistic merit: 2, Excitement level: 2, Innovation: 1.

I love the sweep of the warlock's arms here, and the sense of motion in the smoke and whatever magical dry ice is being depicted. This is really best concieved in the genre of 'powerful magic user strike a pose', which has been a feature of the covers reviewed here, and one that I have a real weakness for. Imagine looking at this image while your favourite metal riff is being played in the background, and tell me that the result is not awesome in the strict sense.

Artistic merit: 4, Excitement level: 4, Innovation: 3.

The final cover here does not quite work. It is interesting that the samurai's back banner literally means 'bad death' - although the characters are not quite right - but the way he is prancing about on that bridge is not really plausible or becoming bad guy behaviour.

Artistic merit: 2, Excitement level: 2, Innovation: 2.

Final Ranking

1 - The Dark Door Opens

1 - The Book of the Magnakai

1 - The Forest of Doom

4 - Caverns of the Snow Witch

4 - Advanced Fighting Fantasy combo

4 - Kaz the Minotaur

4 - The Sacrifice of Ruanon

8 - Crypt of the Sorcerer

8 - The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

8 - The Crimson Tide

8 - The Secret of Kazan-Oud

8 - Eclipse of the Kai

13 - Tower of Destruction

13 - Return to Firetop Mountain

13 - The Sword of the Sun

16 - Daggers of Darkness

17 - House of Hell

17 - City of Thieves

17 - The Lorestone of Varetta

20 - Temple of Terror

20 - Sword of the Samurai

22 - Fighting Fantasy

22 - Citadel of Chaos

22 - Konrad 

25 - Demons of the Deep