The Guildsman #4 Gamers' Guild University of California, Riverside Spring 1991 Cover: Stiletto Mike Smith A Blurb from the Bard 1 Fantastical Facts Suicide & AD&D John G. Schroeder 2 Truth & Heresy 6 A Response to Probabilities Jeffrey Contompasis 10 Fiction Navero XX - XXIV Daniel Parsons 19 Harrison 7 & 8 Jim Vassilakos 33 Getting out of the Doldrums Jo Jaquinta 47 Ashorax and the Wizard Edward Stauff 48 \So Who Is This Killroy Guy Anyway?" Brian Myers 60 In This Land Garry L. Faulwel 68 When Computers Dream Josh Finney 69 FRP Casual Encounters 84 Mounds of Motley Monsters 93 The Grasslands of Merakai Mark Hassman 99 New Classes & Weapons for AD&Dv2 Stewart & Wallace 110 History of the Isles Aaron Sher 113 Magic Items 115 Shared World Guidelines 118 A Shift in the Balance of Power Richard Loritsch 129 Funnies Cruel DM Torture Table 138 Blipverts 143 A Blurb from the Bard F lirtacious felicitations gentle reader, and welcome to a funky fourth issue of The Guildsman, er. Guildsperson? Well, there's a mini-saga behind that, actually. One of our more audacious readers of whom we hold most near & dear had the outrageous nerve (gag, choke) to actually accuse us (wheeze, sputter) of sexism (Aaaarrrrgh!) with respect to the title of our illustrious zine. Sexism! If I'd only known such a religion existed, I'd have joined years ago! In any case, to reluctantly deviate from such a horridly, deviant topic, thanks for this issue goes to Wayne (lord zar) Wallace, Brian (as- modeus) Saylor, Ray (Way Wrong) Wong, and Jason (tonto) Bishop for additional editing, proofing, LATEX-work, and all the other silly things which go into producing our beloved zine (never-you-mind what those other silly things are!) as well as to our numerous contributors who art, of course, too innumerable in number to enumerate. Before pressing on, however, apologies must be offered to all those tal- ented & generous personages whose submissions did not find their way within this issue. If the truth be told, this is the first quarter that we've received more material than we could safely shake a ten-foot pole at, and with recent budget cuts, the situation is not likely to improve any time soon. What that means, in the future, is that we'll be looking at a heinously smaller Guildsman, so please send us your very best so that we can make the most of the little space we'll hopefully muster. Thus, having once more successfully rendered the prospective readership stupified with his vacuous editorial verbiage, the Bard did finally spaketh such words as were very long awaited (and with muchly abated breath, I might add): \Let the show begin!" | [email protected] ucsd!ucrmath!jimv (uucp) 1 Dungeons and Dragons: Cause of Suicide or Parental Scapegoat? c 1991 John G. Schroeder [email protected] Dungeons and Dragons was created in 1974 by Gary and his coworkers at the hospital found his interest in Gygax, an avid medieval, fantasy, and romance fan the game and asked him to be their dungeon master. (Weathers 109). The game consists of rule books, He has not always refereed for adults, though. In his guide books, manuals, modules, dice, maps, figurines, earlier years, the doctor refereed a group of teenagers. and reference books and has branched out to fill in He said of them that there was seldom a problem that more than eight worlds. The publisher, TSR, has could not be solved by blowing the enemy to bits. become a major publisher in the fantasy and science After the teenagers started to mature, though, they fiction genre. In the seventeen years that Dungeons started to get less into the pure bloodthirstiness and and Dragons has been on the market, more than eight more into the other aspects of the game such as ro- million copies have been sold to three to four million mance and heroism. But the teenagers enjoyed the people in the United States alone (Brooke D1). game for several reasons. One of which is that the According to Diane Weathers in Newsweek, universe of Dungeons and Dragons is \produced by college students are the biggest fans of this game its social reality." It is something that teaches peo- (109). Even with the increasing popularity of the ple how to act together and not how to act alone. game, there are those who oppose the sale of this It is something that teens enjoy also, because it is harmless game. These people argue that Dungeons something that is new to explore. Dr. Holmes said and Dragons, along with all other similar games, lead it best when he said \You always wanted a world of to suicide and Satanism among teenagers. I've been magic and mystery to explore, and now a group of playing the game for over ten years and have played your friends gathers every two or three weeks to ex- with many assorted individuals, and have never once plore it with you. For a few hours, everyone agrees to been around anyone who could not differentiate be- accept that world, to accept your pretense that you tween reality and fantasy. Although role-playing are a magician who can throw exploding balls of fire games do create an intense atmosphere, there is no from one hand. The fantasy has become a reality, a documented evidence that Dungeons and Dragons sort of giant folie a deux, or shared insanity." (D&D) or any other role-playing game leads to sui- Gaming session can be very intense as prob- cide among teenagers. lems pile up on the players. As more and more ac- John Eric Holmes, a staff physician at Los An- tions are taken by the players, the Dungeon Master, geles County Hospital and associate professor of neu- or the person who controls the game, must keep track rology at the University of Southern California School of every single move and remember what will happen of Medicine, writes in Confessions of a Dungeon Mas- at a given point down the road. Even though the ter that one of his players, another doctor, invented DM has trouble keeping things straight, the players a character called Grog. One day the doctor brought never erupt into bloodshed (even if tempers are short his girlfriend to a game, and when Grog went into at the time), only the characters do, and that is very action, the other players said to her, \That's Grog. frequently. The game is also a great stress reliever, You've probably never seen Grog before." She replied, because \In real life, you can't cleave the IRS man \Oh yes. I think I've been in bed with Grog sev- with your broadsword." (Holmes 87) eral times." This shows that players do not live out The Brotherhood Against D&D (B.A.D.D.) totally separate lives in fantasy or take the fantasy disagrees with the argument that role playing is a home with them, but include a part of themselves healthy outlet for violence, anger and imagination. into each of their characters (87-88). They site several suicides that, according to prelimi- Dr. Holmes' current gaming sessions started nary investigations, were caused solely by the game of after he edited a rule book for Dungeons and Dragons Dungeons and Dragons. They argue that if even one 2 suicide is caused by Dungeons and Dragons, that the involved with drugs and had fought with his mother game should be removed from the shelves. B.A.D.D. (Brooke D1). has even sent propaganda to police departments cit- Several studies have been done to determine ing the link between suicide and Dungeons and Drag- whether or not people who play Dungeons and Drag- ons and asked the departments to find the link if it ons are mentally different than \normal" people. looks like Satanism is present in a teen suicide case. One of these studies, reported in Psychology in the B.A.D.D. was established by the mother of a Schools, gave players a 16-point test at a convention suicide victim who, at the time of his suicide, had to see if gamers were \normal" or not. Results came been a player of Dungeons and Dragons (Shuster 64). back normal in all respects (330). In another study, The founder, Pat Pulling, said that the game manuals players were administered three tests to measure give \detailed descriptions of killing, satanic human alienation and anomie. They were specifically tested sacrifice, assassination, sadism, premeditated mur- to see if the following were distorted: alienation, pow- der, and curses of insanity." The National Coalition erlessness, normlessness, estrangement from work, on Television Violence, accompanying B.A.D.D. in cultural estrangement, and meaninglessness. Cul- it's efforts to get the game banned, has petitioned the tural estrangement was taken as watching television Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Protec- or some other nonproductive chore around the house. tion Agency to require TSR Inc. to put labels on all The results were staggering. Seventeen percent of the items sold relating to D&D and to put warnings on players had feelings of meaninglessness as opposed the cartoon \Dungeons and Dragons" aired all over to forty-six percent of non-players. Forty-nine per- the country on Saturday mornings (Shuster 64). cent of players felt they watched too much television, Opponents to Dungeons and Dragons have while only twenty-three percent of non-players ac- been trying to get the game banned from school dis- knowledged that they might be culturally estranged.