"I don't always run Call of Cthulhu, but when I do..."

This is what I think about.

Sure, everyone has their own iconic fantasy illo for D&D (often with the name Trampier, Otus, or Elmore attached), but so few people talk about what they picture when other RPGs come to mind. I first saw "Ward 13" in the 4th edition of CoC and I've never been able to shake it. For me, its appeal is that this is one of those pictures that begs the questions of the viewer, "What the holy hell is going on here and how did it come to BE?!" I found a few Call of Cthulhu illustrations over the years that have the same effect, but this is my first. And you never forget your first.

In Case You Missed It

You might have seen that Goblinoid Games is continuing to gobble up Pacesetter titles for re-printing and to create new games using the Action Table system. Buried in the most recent announcement that Dan Proctor has acquired Sandman: The Map of Halaal (I put him in a head-lock at Gary Con and refused to release him until he agreed to buy it) was this:

Looking for more Pacesetter System^TM games? Michael Curtis has just finished writing and playtesting an all new game using this system. It will be opened for additional playtesting very soon to members of the Labyrinth Lord Society!

I can't release any details until Dan makes a formal announcement, but let me just say I had a blast writing this one. If I could only tell you some of the weird-ass books I used as reference material on it... I was worried I went a little too far into Bat Country, but so far, those who have seen the game really dig it. Forget D&D Next! Sign up to become a member of the Labyrinth Lord Society and get a first-look and chance to playtest it before it hits the shelves!

Hex Crawl Easter Egg

Just something that popped into my head today. Use it in your next hex crawl and see if the PCs (or more correctly, the players) pick up what you’re putting down.

Hex XXXX: A shallow grave lies in an overgrown thicket that stands here alongside the river. Excavating the grave reveals the rotted, mostly skeletal corpse of a halfling. His tattered clothing identifies him as being a River Halfling in life. A careful examination of the corpse discovers he was strangled to death.

Why is the OSR not producing a fanzine like this?

There are many fine amateur and semi-professional publications out there in the OSR, but I sense there’s a niche that needs to be filled. We need our very own “armpit slick” fanzine complete with covers done in the style of the men’s adventure magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. Hell, most every cover blurb for the stories inside scream to be transformed into a roleplaying adventure (OK, maybe not “The Diet That Can Double Your Sexual Batting Average,” but still I make a good point).

I can’t do it. I’m booked solid and I’d make a lousy publisher anyway, but couldn’t you see a quarterly OSR fanzine done in this style and containing adventures for Call of Cthulhu, Weird Adventures, and other RPGs of that ilk? Man, I’d be all over that slick, especially if it occasionally did tell me about “The Nation-Wide Shame of Teen-Age Sin Clubs” and where I might find one in my neck of the woods.

Dragontales: “Out of the Eons”

The third story in the Dragontales anthology is by an author that will produce a response of either “Him?” or “Who?” depending on the reader’s familiarity with the Golden Age of Comics. “Out of the Eons,” the tale that concerns us today, was written by Gardner F. Fox, the man responsible for (in whole or in part) such comic book superheroes as the original Sandman, Flash, Hawkman, Doctor Fate, and the Justice Society of America. He also wrote the first Batman stories not penned by creators Bob Kane & Bill Finger, introducing some of the concepts and equipment now firmly embedded in the Batman mythos. In addition to his work in the comic industry, Fox penned numerous novels in almost every imaginable genre; sword & sorcery fans may best remember his creations Kothar, Barbarian Swordsman and Kyrik: Warlock Warrior, both of whom are listed in the famed Appendix N as inspirational reading. According to one source, Kothar’s first story, “The Sword and the Sorcerer” is responsible for the lich as we know it in D&D.

Neither Kothar nor Kyrik is the subject of “Out of the Eons.” Instead, the tale concerns another of Fox’s sword & sorcery heroes: Niall of the Far Travels. Niall may have the honor of being one of the few, if not only, fantasy heroes who owes his entire existence to Dragon magazine. Niall’s first appearance was in Dragon #2 in the story “Shadow of a Demon.” The hero would reappear several times in the pages of Dragon, returning in issues #5, #13, #23, #33, #36, #38, #44, and finally #55. “Out of the Eons” is located chronologically between the tales “The Cup of Death” from #38 and “The Lure of the Golden Godling” in issue #44. In the interest of full disclosure, “Out of the Eons” is the only Niall of the Far Travels’ tale I’ve read despite owning the first 250 issues of Dragon on CD-ROM.

“Out of the Eons” begins in an unpretentious manner: Niall, Commander General of the armies of Lurlry Manakor, king of Urgrik, is expanding his wine cellar. When his pick unearths a wall that simply shouldn’t be there, however, Niall inadvertently unleashes an ancient evil upon the world; a creature that escapes from “Out of the Eons.”

Almost immediately thereafter the reader becomes aware that Niall shares a special relationship with the goddess Emalkartha and her human avatar, Lylthia. The relationship is of an amorous nature and this becomes an issue throughout the tale. Thanks to Niall’s connection with the divine, he learns that what he unleashed was a being known as Adonair who once threatened the world—you guessed it—eons ago before being imprisoned by the gods. So long ago did the deities challenge Adonair that they not only forgot he was buried next to Niall’s every-expanding wine cellar, but they can't quite remember how they defeated him the first time around. To compound matters, Adonair, who appears as a green fire, decides he needs a physical body to conquer the world and deems Niall a suitable host.

The rest of the tale involves Niall’s quest to locate something the gods hope will defeat Adonair and their attempts to shield him from being possessed. As a protective measure, Niall is accompanied by the goddess Thallatta, which leads to problems on the home front when Niall starts “paying homage” to anther member of the pantheon, so to speak. Conan never had issues of this magnitude.

Speaking of the Cimmerian, “Out of the Eons” reminds me very much of a “King Conan” tale. Niall is not a wandering reaver, but a warrior of much renown and political status, and his duties to King Lurlry and his queen is what motivates him through much of the story—that and getting back into the good graces of Emalkartha.

“Out of the Eons” is pulp sword & sorcery, the first example of the genre we’ve encountered in Dragontales. Fox was exposed to the writing of Edgar Rice Burroughs at an early age and the impact that Burroughs had on Fox’s development seems to linger long after exposure. Niall is very evocative of John Carter, both in his being a warrior of skill in a position of great influence and his romantic relationship with a powerful, beautiful, and ultimately alien creature.

Having not been exposed to the Niall tales preceding this one, I was ultimately left to judge it solely on its own merits. As a whole, the tale is entertaining, but not remarkable; a story suitable to while away a quiet night or an afternoon at the beach. When I first read it, so many years ago, I do remember being more fond of it, but for a reason having little to do with the plot of the tale.

“Out of the Eons” can be read as a good example of the D&D endgame, the time when the PCs put down their swords and start dealing with issues that can’t be solved solely by riding out and smiting them with sharp objects…even if that’s what Niall eventually does. This tale introduced me to a sword & sorcery hero who was not a landless wanderer, and the events of the story laid the groundwork for how my friends and I did “name level” play. Our high level PCs often got involved with world-shaking events and hobnobbing with the gods, even as we dealt with the mundane concerns of building a new tower on our holdings or excavating a new wing in our thieves’ den. Looking back, I now know that “Out of the Eons” was responsible for this approach to dealing with high level play. I really should go and read the early Niall’s tales and see how he grows into his position. They may give me new insights on the D&D endgame that may be of use in my current Labyrinth Lord campaign.

I also love the beginning of the tale and how the event that launches the plot is so mundane. Digging a new wine cellar is about as incongruous a starting point for a tale involving alien powers and gods as you could imagine. It strikes me as just the sort of minor activity that would get Fafhrd and the Mouser embroiled in some wild scheme. This kind of dichotomy tickles my fancy and the story wins me over because of it.

Before I get to the game material, I should note that “Out of the Eons” is illustrated by Kevin Siembieda. Siembieda is one of those designers that I forget can produce art as well as write, much like Paul Jaquays. I always remember Siembieda more for his Palladium work and the occasional explosion that occurs over there than I do for his art, and every time I see his name scrawled beneath a piece of illustration, I always have that “Oh yeah…” moment. In rereading this story and encountering his work again, I must admit that I kept expecting to turn the page and confront some skull-motif, jackbooted Nazi thug laying in wait for me. The Rifts RPG has apparently done a number on my Siembieda art expectations.

Elixir of Desperate Measures
Many millennia ago, when the universe was a newborn dream, the gods gathered in their starry hall to address a lingering concern. As powerful as the gods were, the cosmos was a mutable place and there might come a day when one of their number became too powerful to be held in check by his fellow deities. Should that day ever come to pass, the cosmos would be at the mercy of that deity alone.

One of the wisest of Powers suggested that the gods pool their divine essences to create a substance that could slay a single god outright and that they thereafter secret this elixir upon the earth in a place impossible for any but a great hero to reach. If the day ever arose that one god needed to be put down, the location of the elixir would be revealed to a mortal hero and it would become their task to destroy that which the gods themselves could no longer challenge. The result was what the bards sing of as the Elixir of Desperate Measures.

When found, the Elixir appears as a glowing white liquid held in a silver cup of plain design. When a weapon is touched to the elixir, it spreads across the length of the weapon, running like water, but clinging like pitch. Once the weapon’s edge is completely coated by the Elixir, the liquid glows brightly for a moment, then fades away as if the weapon absorbed it completely, leaving no trace of the Elixir behind.

The Elixir’s power effectively turns the implement into a weapon of god-slaying. The weapon acts as an arrow of slaying against deities. Its enchantment is only good for one or two successful strikes against a god and it attacks as if a +5 weapon. Each time a deity is struck by the weapon, it must make a saving throw versus death as if it were a 1st level fighter. Failing this save results in instantaneous and irrevocable death. A successful save means the deity suffers damage as normal, provided that is possible given the weapon, attacker, and any other defenses the god might enjoy.

Suffice to say, the Elixir is nearly impossible to locate and it is protected by many magical and monstrous safeguards. No single god knows the location of the Elixir and only several working in concert can deduce the location of the substance and convey its hiding place to a mortal hero. They would only do so in the extremely unlikely event that one of their number amasses enough power to threaten the universe and is deemed a danger to the existence of all living and non-living creations in the cosmos.

Dragontales: “Dragon’s Fosterling”

The second story in the Dragontales anthology is “Dragon’s Fosterling” by Ruby S.W. Jung and illustrated by a “M. Kay” according to the signature on the accompanying pieces. Moving away from the genre of game fiction, “Dragon’s Fosterling” is more in the vein of the faerie tale or chivalric romances, but it takes its own path once the story gets going. Starting with the commonplace scenario of a young maiden being abducted by a dragon, the tale treads less stereotypical ground before too long.

Ms. Jung, like John L. Jenkins before her, seems to have been an amateur writer as a web search for additional work under that name was inconclusive. And unlike Jenkins, it is impossible to speculate whether she was (or is) a gamer based on her single credited story. Whereas the game influences are prevalent throughout “The Wizards Are Dying,” “Dragon’s Fosterling” owes a greater debt to the women empowerment movements of the late sixties and early seventies.

“Dragon’s Fosterling” is the story of Asgara, the daughter of a duke who finds herself abducted by a dragon and carried back to his valley lair. The dragon grows tired of rolling about in his treasure horde and occasionally kidnaps maidens so that young knights will come to rescue them and provide him with a bit of diversion. The 184 swords & shields that adorn his cave and vale attest that these brave souls are never successful in their quests.

Asgara finds herself a coddled prisoner, unable to leave the dragon’s vale but given full access to the wonders of the wyrm’s cave—including its library of esoteric lore. In time, Asgara grows to womanhood, still imprisoned by her scaly captor as knight after knight falls beneath the dragon’s claws. Eventually, she decides to do something about her situation…

In my youth, “Dragon’s Fosterling” was not one of my favorite tales in the anthology. Too young to see what Jung was doing with the format and too male to identify with the girlish antagonist, the story rated low amongst the book’s ten tales. But, as I mentioned at the start of this series, one of the joys about returning to Dragontales as an adult was to find that certain stories were far better than I remembered them. “Dragon’s Fosterling” is one of those.

Having spent my undergraduate years in pursuit of an English degree and taking far too many interpretation and criticism courses, I now enjoy this story for its depth and complexity—something that “The Wizards Are Dying” lacked. Jung’s tales drips with so much subtext that it’s difficult to see what she intended the story to be interpreted as.

On one hand, it can be read as a “Fractured Fairy Tale,” a story that takes the expected scenario of “dragon abducts maiden and knight comes to the rescue” and turns it on its ear, which is in itself an enjoyable read. Scratch the surface and look a little deeper and you’ll see other possible interpretations lurking below the veneer.

In light of it publication year (1980), one would be hard-pressed to completely dismiss the influence that the women’s rights movements of the previous decades had upon the story. In this tale, Asgara is no pale maiden desperately pining away for her knight in shining armor. She quickly becomes disillusioned with traditional gender roles and sets about freeing herself from captivity. By tale's end she has not only become a hero in her own right, but also come to terms with and embraced her sexuality. This is pretty heady stuff for a story appearing in a TSR publication, even one under the Dragon Publishing imprint.

But this is just one of a few possible interpretations; others remain to be explored. The dragon—he is given no name, demonstrating that when there is only one dragon in the neighborhood, names are unnecessary—is older and wiser than Asgara, and although kind to her, he demonstrates a streak of cruelty in dealing with her would-be rescuers/suitors. It’s not hard to see the dragon as a father figure, making this tale one of a young girl and her Electra complex. It could also be interpreted as a cautionary tale to young women about the dangers of becoming involved with an older man—although they have great wealth and treat you with kindness, this comes at the cost of one’s own freedom. All this complexity, even if it can be argued that this says more about me than the author, makes “Dragon’s Fosterling” one of the best tales in the book.

Jung has an admirable command of language in addition to her skill with story structure. There are several choice lines throughout the piece, including my favorite, “Her hair was black as treachery,” which given my fondness for dark-haired women, resonates on a much deeper level with me. Her early depictions of the relationship between Asgara and the dragon are also well written and they draw the reader into this strange relationship, which is necessary for the success of the story. I only wish that the illustrations was equal to the prose it accompanies. I'm not certain who “M. Kay” is, but his or her style, although competent, is not one I prefer.

Looking back on “Dragon’s Fosterling” from a role-playing design perspective, I see that this was likely the tale that introduced me to the concept that a dragon’s lair need not just be a cave in the earth containing a dragon and his wealth. The dragon in this tale has several amenities in his lair, both for the comfort of his occasional abducted guest and as testaments to his own prowess in battle. I’ve used these and other touches to personalize dragons’ dens over the years.

“Dragon’s Fosterling” is a good story, but not one that I would recommend to a young child. This is not solely for content reasons, although it does feature implied sex, adultery, and other mature themes. Rather, I would wait until he or, especially, she was old enough to enjoy the tale on its many different levels and revel in the subtle flavors it has to offer.

Magical Properties of Dragon Hearts
Some hoary tomes profess that he or she who eats of a dragon’s heart gains preternatural abilities. This statement is difficult to prove due to the difficulties of conducting field tests. Should the referee decide that the heart of a dragon grants magical powers to the eater, he or she may roll or choose on the table below to determine its effects. Only one person can benefit from the consumption of a dragon heart and that individual must either be the one whose blow killed the wyrm or who dealt the greatest amount of damage to the creature prior to death (referee’s choice). All granted abilities are permanent.

1) Eater gains the ability to understand the speech of one class of animal (mammal, reptile, avian, fish, etc.)
2) Eater gains 10% magic resistance.
3) Eater gains a +4 to all saves vs. breath attacks.
4) Eater can cast one magic-user spell of level 1-3 each day regardless of if they are a spell caster or not. If a magic-user, this spell does not count against their total daily allotment of spells.
5) Eater regenerates damage at the rate of 1 point per hour.
6) Eater can see invisible creatures and objects.
7) Eater can breathe fire for 2d6 damage up to 20’ away once per day.
8) Eater can fly for 1 hour each day.
9) Eater can breathe underwater for 1 hour each day.
10) Eater gains a natural -1 bonus to his or her AC.
11) Eater gains 1 point in each ability.
12) Eater transforms into a dragon and becomes an NPC.

Tales of Dragons and the Shaping of Perceptions and Expectations

In the nearly three-years that I’ve been following and participating in this thing of ours, I have read hundreds if not thousands of blog and forum posts written by people who wanted to muse upon the hobby and the sources that birthed and shaped it. These discussions invariably lead to what gaming products form the core of fantasy roleplaying by virtue of establishing the tropes and atmosphere that we now take for granted almost forty years later.

These posts typically contain the usual suspects list of sources: For fiction, it the great Appendix N and the authors and works listed therein; for game products the titles “Keep on the Borderlands,” “Tomb of Horrors,” “Against the Giants,” “Arduin,” “Wilderlands,” and other appear again and again for good reason. But perceptions and expectations are formed by unique, personal experience, shaped by forces as varied as those affected by them. It is perhaps due to this that I have yet to see anyone speak of the book that had more effect on my nascent understanding and expectations of the game than any other. It is time to put that to rights.

It was Christmas of 1981. My interest in fantasy role-playing was formed the previous holiday season while visiting relatives and I was given a copy of the Moldvay Basic set earlier in that year. As I opened my presents, I found a slim parcel mixed amongst them. It was the right shape and size for an adventure module (something I had undoubtedly asked for), but when I opened it I discovered something else awaiting me. I was now the owner of a special issue of Dragon magazine entitled Dragontales.

This anthology of stories was the first (and to my knowledge, only) collection of fantasy fiction produced under a separate cover by Dragon Publishing. Released in August of 1980 under the editorship of Kim Mohan, the book features ten fantasy short stories written by a collection of authors ranging from the renowned to the unknown—some are even quite surprising.

In the months and years to come, I would pour over this anthology again and again, reading and rereading each story within until I knew them by heart. They covered quite a gamut of style so it was difficult to grow bored with them. Some were pulp sword and sorcery; others, trippy fantasy whose roots grew out of the psychedelic landscape of the previous two decades.

Remember that this was 1981, a time before TSR began churning out game fiction by the truckload and the fantasy genre in general was not as glutted as it stands today. My exposure was swords & sorcery fantasy had so far been limited to the Bass-Rankin productions of The Hobbit and Return of the King and whatever my local library had on its shelves—which was not a lot. To me, Dragontales was a fantastical feast that not only whetted my parched thirst for fantasy but also used the races, classes, monsters, and terms that I had been reading about for the last year in my rulebooks. It was a dream come true.

Somewhere along the line I lost my copy of the book. It was probably discarded after I read the thing to pieces and could recount the tales within by memory. As time went on, the stories began to grow dim and my interests moved on to other things. The market was now flooded with fantasy and straight-out game fiction, so the novelty of these stories was no longer there. It is not surprising that Dragon never produced a second anthology of tales.

Just a few years ago, not long after I started this blog, I discovered that a friend owned a copy of Dragontales and I asked to borrow it so that I could reacquaint myself with its stories and authors once again. I requested this with more than a little trepidation. Would the stories stand up to my memories of them after all these years or would a more mature palette find them lacking and result in another fond childhood reminiscence sullied by an ill-advised revisit to the halcyon days of the early 1980s? To my delight, I found that the stories not only retained their ability to entertain but in some cases were actually improved by a greater understanding of both the genre and its authors.

Looking back on those stories again also made me realize how much they helped shape my attitudes and expectations about D&D. With the exception of Leiber’s Fahfrd and Mouser stories (which I didn’t read until college), no other single source had more of an impact on my fantasy campaigns than these ten stories. Reading them again was not only a passport back to my own youth, but also to a different time in fantasy fiction and the gaming business. It was a rougher, wilder time back then, not sleek and slick as the pages of a splatbook like they are now. Dragontales reflects that time, a snapshot of a place impossible to return to.

This past weekend I asked my friend if I could borrow the book to take that journey once again. In the weeks to come I will be doing a post on each of the tales included in the anthology, talking about how they influenced me and returning the favor by using the stories as inspiration (or outright burglary) for new game material. I’ve started to read the first story today and I can already feel the mixture of nostalgia, expectation, and sheer entertainment rising up within me. In fact, I had to break my resolution regarding the purchase of books this year and order my very own copy of Dragontales to replace the one I lost long again. Until it shows up though, I have the borrowed version to peruse. If you’d like to come along for the trip and are missing a copy of your own, both Noble Knight and Amazon have some for sale. Place your order now or dig out your own copy and meet me back here next week when we take a look at “The Wizards Are Dying” by John L. Jenkins.

Owlbears of a Different Feather

I just got hipped to this post over at the ArtOrder blog thanks to the webcomic Darths & Droids. It seems that back in September of 2009, ArtOrder has a competition to redesign the owlbear. The entries range from the noble, to the silly, to the outright creepy. As someone who likes alternate takes on old classics, I found the submissions to be excellent design fodder for the next time the players run across D&D’s favorite hybrid. Do yourself a favor and check them out.

Ten Things I Wish I Bought Back Then So I Could Have Them Now

Since it’s the time for holiday wish lists and general greed, I’ve been thinking about what I really wish I could have as gifts this year. These presents are not realistic by any means, but since I’m a simple man and all I really want is the new Social Distortion album and for somebody to destroy Mumford & Sons so I never have to hear “Little Lion Man” ever again, it’ll take a theoretical flight of fancy to finish stuffing my stocking.

Limiting myself to 10 items for 2010, they are, in no specific order, the gifts that I wish I had bought for myself back before they went out of print or became incredibly expensive to procure. Almost all of them are pure nostalgia fodder. I’ve specifically left role-playing game books and other supplements off the list as they represent an entire category of their own, one considerably longer than ten items.

10) A set of official Wraith: The Oblivion Dice. When it comes to role-playing games, I’m not a completionist except for two titles: Gamma World and Wraith: The Oblivion. I’ve mentioned that I own every Gamma World edition since its debut. I also have the majority of W:tO stuff. Nevertheless, the dice set never made its way into my possession. I think most of the run of these ended up in a landfill somewhere because they‘re impossible to find, even in the dark alleys of the internet.

9) A Dragonbone: We used to mock this thing mercilessly back in the day, not only because of the adolescent hilarity found in anything called a “Dragonbone,” but because we figured how lame were you if you couldn’t be bothered to actually throw some dice? (An opinion I still have.) Now I want one for simple nostalgia sake and to be able to “whip out my Dragonbone” the next time I’m at a convention and the guy next to me is using a friggin’ iPhone app instead of real dice. I’d show him some hard-core, old school boneage!

8) A Gryphon Games Miniature Case: Another cool product from the back pages of Dragon. I couldn’t paint worth a damn back then, but the idea of having what I imagined to be a massive treasure chest to keep them in was too cool to not want. These things didn’t leave so much as an electronic ripple on the Web, making me think that their plywood construction and brown leatherette covering failed to hold up to the passage of time.

7) A few pads of Armory 1/10” x 1/20” Graph Paper: I posted about this stuff back in October. I haven’t got much of it left, but if I had known then how much this stuff still instills me with a sense of pleasant nostalgia and memories of happy afternoons drawing dungeon maps, I would have bought a pallet of the stuff back in the mid-1980s.

6) Dungeons & Dragons Computer Labyrinth Game: I remember playing this as a kid and I wasn’t all that impressed with it after a few rounds with it, but I never had one of my own: a fact my friend Greg used to lord over me. Alas, that hole in my psyche can never be healed and this is just a vain attempt to fill that emptiness.

6) Kenner’s Alien board game: I actually owned this as a kid and it probably contributed to the irrational fear of xenomorphs that still plagues me to this day. The fact that there was a children’s board game published that was based on an R-rated move with a rape subtext still boggles my mind. Blame the Star Wars merchandising machine for this one. I’d love to have this in my closet again—even though the idea of an actual Alien in my closet makes me lose bladder control.

5) A carton of assorted Presto Magix transfers: Only tentatively gaming-related as some were historical or science-fiction in nature. I can’t even guess as to how many of these I bought at the corner variety store in my youth. Each came with a fold-out background the depicted some exotic vista and a sheet of color transfers that you rubbed over with a pencil to affix to the background. It allowed any kid, even the ones like me who couldn’t draw worth a damn, to create cool action scenes, provided you didn’t mind them not actually performing any actions.

4) A complete set of the Gregg Press Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books: I mentioned in a previous post that this edition was my introduction to Leiber’s famous twain. I own scattered editions of more recent vintage, but to have the orange cover books from the 1970s on my shelf would make me a happy man.

3) All of the Grenadier AD&D miniatures boxed sets: Grenadier’s D&D minis and this game will forever be entwined together in my brain. I owned only a few single pieces in my youth, but each time I saw an advert for them in Dragon or encountered someone who owed these pieces, usually exquisitely painted, made me think I wasn’t getting the full D&D experience. I started refurbishing some of my old miniatures just before the “Out of the Box” game and was reminded that, as clunky and chunky as Grenadier’s early work was, those pieces remain the epitome of game miniatures to me.

2) A vintage set of Crossbows and Catapults: True story—In 1983, my brother and I were playing a game of “Crossbows and Catapults” on our bedroom floor. At the precise moment one of our walls (I forget whose) went crumbling down under a fired disc, a tremendous explosion rocked the neighborhood. Although we initially believed we had somehow unleashed Armageddon by means of a siege warfare game, our father quickly (and somewhat disappointingly) informed us that the Grucci Fireworks Co., located in the next town over, had exploded. That remains one of weirdest moments of synchronicity I've ever experienced in my life and I’d like to have a set again so that my brother and I could possibly destroy other local landmarks.

1) My true #1 is something I’d rather keep to myself. Suffice to say it would require a little bit of time-travel and whole lot of “I wish I knew then what I know now.” The best things in life aren’t things, you know. Barring that, however, how about a complete run of original ROM the Space Knight comic book series? I'm sure it wouldn't stand up to my memories of it, but I remember the Dire Wraiths as being pretty bad ass, largely due to the fact that they regularly killed folks, which was pretty radical for a comic book at that time. I never owned the ROM action figure, but the books had a big impact on my development...which probably isn't a good thing to reveal.

Radioactive Theatre: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

It is amazing how a little bit of money can ruin a perfectly good apocalypse.

Just four years prior to the release of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, a little movie called Mad Max 2 (aka The Road Warrior) set the standard for all post-apocalyptic movies with a budget of $2 million dollars (US). The movie went on to earn eleven times that amount at the box office in the US alone. It’s therefore no surprise that the sequel saw its budget inflated to three times its predecessor’s and had a whole lot more people interested in the success of the film. In Hollywood, that’s usually a recipe for a disaster and Thunderdome can’t quite escape that morass unscathed.

Before we get down to the nitty gritty, here’s the thumbnail recap:

Max, last seen standing alone on a desolate stretch of highway, is still wandering the wasteland. With the last of the V-8 Interceptors a smoldering ruin, Max has traded in horsepower for camel-power to haul his wreck of a truck across the desert. That is, until he’s cold-cocked by the landing gear of a Transavia PL-12 and finds his camels and vehicle heading off into the desert without him. Luckily, Max has replaced his dog with a monkey, who tosses Max his boots and bosun’s whistle—which will come in handy later. Everything’s better with monkeys.

Hot on the trail of his hijacked vehicle, Max makes his way to Bartertown, a sort of Los Vegas/Mos Eisley/flea market that represents the return of civilized life to the wasteland. When Max finds his camels up for sale, he makes a stink that attracts the attention of Bartertown’s head honcho, Tina Turner (Aunty Entity, really, but I think the movie is improved by pretending Tina, finding her singing career dead after the apocalypse, becomes a semi-benevolent despot). Aunty has a problem: a certain “George and Lennie” duo named Master-Blaster that effectively runs Bartertown via a stranglehold on the settlement’s methane supply (energy consumption and control being a recurring theme throughout the Mad Max series). If Max kills Blaster, he’ll, like a country-western song played backwards, get his weapons back, his truck back, his camels back, etc. Max takes the deal, showing exactly how far his morality has crumbled since his days as a police officer prior to civilization’s collapse.

Through an arranged conflict, Max finds himself in the Thunderdome, which is the film’s greatest contribution to Western culture so I need not elaborate. During the fight, Max discovers that Master, hulking brute that he is, is mentally disabled and has a child’s intellect. When Max refuses the kill Blaster, Aunty, sensing that her administration is about to have some uncomfortable questions lobbed at it, gets Maxgate swept under the rug by strapping him to a horse, planting an oversized Carnival head on him, and sending him out into the desert.

Normally, this would be a death sentence, but Max is discovered by the band of ridiculously-named, adolescent hunters-and-gatherers. The movie then picks up an aviation theme and runs with it, which is appropriate because this part of the plot almost causes the whole film to crash and burn.

It turns out that these kids were all survivors of a plane crash that occurred not long after the fall of civilization. Organized by the messianic figure of Captain Walker, a small group of adults and children fled the cities aboard a jet liner only to go down in the wasteland. The adults, probably as annoyed by the kids as I was, decide to abandon them to go find help. They wisely never come back for them, leaving the children to grow up, go all Blue Lagoon, and wait for Captain Walker to return to take them to “Tomorrow-morrow Land,” that magical place where steel-eyed airline pilots live in luxury with their Vegas showgirl wives.

The kids mistake Max for Walker in a most contrived plot development, but Max sets them straight quick after realizing he’s about six seconds away from wandering into Daddy Daycare territory. Some of the kids say “Screw you, old man,” and decide to head off to Bartertown, which they mistake for the Land of Pilots and Showgirls. Max, perhaps seeking redemption or just trying to avoid spending the rest of his life with these mouth-breathers, heads back to Bartertown to save the Kids Who Went. The Kids Who Stayed are thankfully never seen again.

It will surprise nobody to discover that the kids quickly find themselves in hot water (or at least warm pig shit) and Max has to rescue them. In the process, Max blows up Bartertown before escaping with the kids, a convict named Pig-Killer, and the previously mentioned Master, who, like so many of his race (see Yoda), is a mental genius yet unable to speak using coherent sentence structure.

A train-and-car chase erupts when Aunty sets off in pursuit of Max and her escaped brain trust. Luckily, Max runs into the same father-and-son team that stole his camels at the start of the movie and everybody but Max escapes in the airplane, leaving Max to face Aunty Entity –who chuckles and leaves. The film ends with the kids who left now established in the ruins of Sydney with a new civilization growing around them.

You’ve probably guessed that Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is not my favorite of the series. It is a film that doesn’t seem to know what it’s supposed to be about or who its audience is. Digging around a bit to get the behind the scene story makes it clear that Thunderdome was following a wildly spinning compass from the very start.

Thunderdome began life not as a Mad Max film, but instead about a group of children living in the wild without parental figures. When the screenwriters began tossing ideas of who might find these kids around, Max’s name dropped into the mix and the film was reworked as a Mad Max vehicle. And since Mad Max 2 had been a hot property, this film found American financing sniffing around it and offering up gobs of cash, which is why you get Tina Turner shoehorned into the largely Aussie cast. A bigger budget also calls for a wider audience, so the film was shot with a PG rating in mind.

On a tragic note, Byron Kennedy, producer of the first two Mad Max films and a friend of director George Miller, died in a helicopter crash prior to shooting. Miller lost interest in the project in the wake of Kennedy’s death and a co-director was hired to take some of the weight off his shoulders. This second director, George Ogilvie, handled most of direction so that Miller could concentrate on the action sequences.

To further burden the movie, the children actors are not especially memorable or gifted one. Many eyes glaze over once they show up in the film, which brings the movie to a screeching halt just as things get going. This, however, is not the strangest decision regarding actors in the film.

For years, I never could understand the relationship dynamic between the character played by Bruce Spence and Max. They had formed a partnership if not friendship during the events of Mad Max 2, but events in the film separated them by the end. I always assumed that the hijacking of Max’s truck at the start of the film was a random accident, as it must be hard to identify a robed figure sitting atop a buckboard while clinging precariously to the wing of a moving aircraft. I figured that it was this perceived betrayal that leaves Max and the pilot at odds near the climax of the film. But then, to my surprise, I learned that Bruce Spence is not playing the same character in both films.

The decision to have Spence play two pilots in the wasteland and do nothing to differentiate them other than change aircraft and give one character an actual name (which is never mentioned on screen) boggles the mind. You can’t blame poor Spence for the situation and one wonders if even he was informed that he was indeed playing another character before the film finished shooting. I think this is another sign of the film’s lack of specific direction.

I will give a hearty round of applause to Tina, however. She’s got charisma and presence, and she holds her own on the screen in a role that she appears to be having a lot of fun with.

Phew. I guess my issues with this one go deeper than I imagined. Now that I’ve vented them, let’s look at what there is to steal for a Gamma World campaign. There’s not a whole lot, but the stuff worth taking is all 100% pure cinematic beef.

Top of the list is Thunderdome, no questions asked. Whether as wasteland justice, Cryptic Alliance initiation, or an alternative to jugging, the apocalypse will forever remain incomplete without a Thunderdome or at least a similar form of public execution/sports entertainment. One of its ilk will be incorporated somehow into campaign.

Next is Bartertown itself. While the trend in later editions of Gamma World was to bump up the tech levels and baseline civilization development at the start of the game, I’m old school apocalypse and the idea of a grungy, rad counter clicking settlement with a bar and grill called the “Atomic Café” hits all my right buttons. There will be Bartertown, albeit under a different moniker. I’m on the fence about the pig shit power plants though. Maybe big honking mutant pigs instead…

Third and final thing to steal:

Cow F’ing Car: Don’t cruise the wasteland without it!

I was going to cover The Quiet Earth in a future installment of Radioactive Theatre, but some time has elapsed since I watched it for this series and my impressions of the film have grown a bit dim. Although an entertaining film, I’m not certain if I want to go back there again so soon just to cover it here. From what I remember, there is not a lot worth stealing for an outright Gamma World game. I may instead do a big budget Hollywood double feature next month and cover both The Road and The Book of Eli. I need to think on it.

So What’s Next?

Now that the Stonehell Supplement Two is out the door and working as intended (and I again thank you for your patience in the early hours of the day when things were amiss), it’s time to look at the last item on my “To Do” list for 2010.

Some folks remember that way back in June, I had a moment of inspiration and a new book idea exploded from out of nowhere. Several people kindly stepped forward to assist me on that project and I’ve gotten most of their contributed elements now. All that remains is some of the maps and for me to finish writing the damned thing. The draft is about half-way done and still needs some heavy beating with blunt objects to form it into the shape I want, but this is going to be my final project for 2010 and I expect to be putting all my energies into this one. It wants to be a bigger book than I initially imagined and I’m currently torn between giving it a little freedom and reining it in hard. In either case, I think some people will enjoy it while others maybe not so much. That’s why I’m doing it in-house rather than shopping around to see if some publisher has interest. If it face-plants on release, the suck stops here.

Without going too much into a book that’s still under construction, I’m going to be shooting for more of a high fantasy feel with this one instead of the grittier pulp vibe that’s been the backbone of the OSR. My design goal is, stated loosely, “What if Dragonlance was done more as a sandbox for starting characters instead of a railroad that led to the Big World-Ending Evil?” Now you see why I say some will like it and others will loathe it. I’ve got some ideas I think are nifty to bolt onto the Basic D&D/Labyrinth Lord framework without turning it completely into another beast, but it will ultimately be you folks who determine if I did it right or not.

I’m going to take a day or two of “creative palette cleaning” by scrubbing my brain with sci-fi, but then it’s back to high fantasy. I’m hoping that the book will be out in time for the holidays or to at least take advantage of the money you get for returning that crappy gift from Aunt Sheila. If you’ve already contributed art to the book, have no fear—the project is moving forward and you haven’t been forgotten. I’ll be contacting those folks again in a few weeks as I get closer to the finish line. I’ll likely be looking for someone to help slash the book to ribbons with an editorial pen since it’s too big and I’m too close to the material to do so myself.

A new Radiation Theatre will be up tomorrow, but here’s a short recommendation for another film. If you’re running or will be running a Metamorphosis Alpha game, I’d suggest checking out Pandorum. This is especially true if you’re starting the game using the alternate “We’re All Clones” beginning or are going for a darker, nastier feel to the campaign instead of wild and zany. The film is not high cinema, but it does feature folks running around an adrift spaceship while being chased by weird, murderous creatures without a clue of what went wrong. No robots, unfortunately.

Countdown to Armageddon: Teenage Cave Man (1958)

With the most influential post-apocalyptic film covered, it is time to move on to the most Gamma World-esque piece of cinematography. Those of you who have never seen the 1958 version of Teenage Cave Man are undoubtedly scratching your heads in confusion, while those who have witnessed the film are nodding sagely. What’s a caveman movie doing here? There are spoilers ahead in the strictest of senses, but since the Big Reveal is actually the promotional blurb on the back of the video jacket, I’m guessing that it wasn’t intended to be a secret of Rosebud proportions. That being said, if you’re the type of person who can’t stand knowing anything about a movie before you watch it (and you intend to watch this film), stop reading now.

To begin, here is the synopsis of Teenage Cave Man:

Robert Vaughn plays the Symbol Maker’s son, who lives with his Stone Age clan in Bronson Caves and wonders why they’re living in a barren wasteland when, just over the river, is a green land filled with stock footage of dinosaurs. Unfortunately, the Word prohibits the clan from going there (because, despite what you’ve heard, the Word is the Law and not The Bird) for that is where the God that Gives Death with its Touch lives. Vaughn, being a teenager, isn’t satisfied with old man logic and decides to take a trip across the river with his friends. There, they encounter my favorite dinosaur battle (an alligator with a dorsal fins glued to its back takes on a water monitor amidst a scale model landscape) before one of the teenagers dies in an oatmeal quicksand pit. This doesn’t sit too well with the elders once Vaughn gets back and he’s shunned until he finishes the rites of manhood. Once a man of the tribe, he remains determined to get the tribe out of the Bat Cave and into the lush land of stock footage dinosaurs. He figures that if he kills the God that Gives Death with its Touch, the tribe will have nothing to taboo about. So, after inventing the bow and arrow, young Bob heads back across the river to take on the God. Of course, the rest of the tribe figures that’ll piss of the local deity and they head after Vaughn to stop his hot-headed plot. A misunderstanding of "Three’s Company" proportions occurs when Vaughn, the God, and the tribe all meet up on the other side of the river, ending with the God dead on the ground and a whole lot of confused caveman. As it turns out, the God that Gives Death with its Touch is actually a spaceman—the last survivor left from before the world was destroyed by a nuclear holocaust. The radiation prolonged his life and turned the local wildlife into dinosaurs. Man returned to the caves and forgot his ancestry. All that remains of civilization is a book that the spaceman formerly known as the God that Gives Death with its Touch carried around. DUN DUN DUNNNNNN!

Granted, Teenage Cave Man is not a great movie by any stretch. A product of Roger Corman “The Employer,” a man whose autobiography is entitled How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood And Never Lost a Dime, Teenage Cave Man was shot on a typical shoestring Corman budget (the bear that attacks the hunters looks suspiciously like a bathroom rug strapped to Beach Dickerson—who plays four roles in the film and dies three times). Originally called Prehistoric World, the film was renamed by the studio, allowing Corman to claim—truthfully—that he never made a movie called Teenage Cave Man. Robert Vaughn was quoted as calling it the worst movie ever made. But that’s when the movie is weighed against concerns like “quality,” “good acting,” and “plot.” If we limited ourselves to those categories, the post-apocalyptic genre would be a slim one.

Luckily, I’m looking at it as a Gamma World referee and I say the movie is the closest a film gets to what I consider to be the standard theme of the game: The grossly uninformed and ill-equipped take on things they don’t understand and hope for the best.

This default reading of the Gamma World setting is due to the sample adventure introduction from the 1st edition of the game. For those of you unlucky enough to have never read it, I’ve reproduced it below:

You are the inhabitants of a small village of about 200 that is situated just inside the border of the great forest. You have grown up listening to the legends of the Ancients and of the Shadow Years, but since those years were long before your time, you consider them just that—legends. You are much more concerned with hunting for meat to supplement the meager living you scratch out of the soil, and with avoiding the dangerous creatures which prowl the area. It is now the time of the year, however, for your coming-of-age and for the “Trials,” in which you will be judged by the village leaders and elders as worthy (or unworthy) of membership in the adult society of the village. Part of the “Trials” involves venturing forth into the wild lands just outside and proving yourself to be proficient hunters and fighters.

The sachem, the chief elder and leader of the village, possesses a device of Ancient technology (incomprehensible to you, other than its effects) that can kill at a great distance. You have seen this device used against a villager who attempted to steal it for his own. The sachem touched the device in some strange manner and a brilliant beam of light was projected, striking the villager and searing a small hole through his chest. He died almost instantly and the sachem warned the villagers about attempting any similar theft in the future.

There is an old tale, however, that the sachem returned from his own “Trials” with that very device. It is by means of the power which this device gives him that he was able to elevate himself to his present position. It is said that the sachem had come back from his “Trials” from the west—a taboo area. It is said that only the gods can walk in the taboo area and live. The only thing the sachem ever said about his “Trials” is that the strange device had come from one of the houses of the Ancient Gods.

This year’s “Trials” are to be different. The sachem has decreed that any who desire to be an elder or to sit on the Council of Leaders must go to the taboo lands in the west. To prove you have done so, you must bring back a stone from one of the houses of the Ancient Goods.

Therefore, at dawn you leave with your allowed weapons, a bow and six arrows, your knife, and food and water for one week. You have little choice; if you desire to rule, you must go west into unknown danger. But the thought occurs to you, it would be nice to have a device like the sachem’s…

I can’t even begin to count how many times I read that intro as a kid. Whatever the count was, its depiction settled down into my bones and became the scenario against which all Gamma World campaigns shall be measured. That Omar (the fictional referee in the chapter) is one hard ass. “Here’s you starting equipment: a bow, six arrows, a knife, and a week’s worth of rations. Now get out there and go kill a Death Machine or something.” That is how every Gamma World game should begin. None of this beginning in higher level Tech centers like later versions allow. You’re a goddamn cave man!

I suspect but cannot prove that Jim Ward and Gary Jaquet might have been familiar with Teenage Cave Man when designing the game or when Ward was writing Metamorphosis Alpha, although the possible connection there pales in comparison to Aldiss’ Non Stop influence (published coincidently in the same year as Teenage Cave Man). Nevertheless, even if it wasn’t an influence, it should be one on any referee setting out to run a classic scenario game of Gamma World.

From the point of view of a referee, there’s not much to directly steal from the movie for use in the campaign. There’s a couple of good names (the Forbidden River, the Burning Plains, and of course the God that Gives Death with its Touch) but the referee should really look at it as a template for starting off a campaign. The Rite of Passage scenario appears in at least two commercially produced modules (Famine at Fargo and "Part VI Rite of Passage" from the 2nd edition Gamma World Adventure Booklet). There’s no reason to not use the same to launch one’s own campaign. It’s just too good of an kick off.

If you feel you can’t survive a straight viewing of Teenage Cave Man, track down a copy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode 315 and watch Joel and ‘bots take it on. Oh, and if anyone can point out to me where the original appearance of the alligator vs. water monitor battle was, I’d appreciate it because my Google Fu has failed me so far.

Next time on Radioactive Theatre: the only post-apocalyptic sports drama ever.

Countdown to Armageddon: The Road Warrior

What follows is the first of several evaluations (or in some cases, re-evaluations) of films from the post-apocalyptic genre. These are not movie reviews or scholarly treatises on the art of film-making. They are simply a role-playing referee evaluating movies for ideas to enrich, use, or avoid in a post-apocalyptic campaign of Gamma World. Some of the “factual” information presented here might be completely wrong due to shoddy research or referee misinterpretation, but that’s the price you pay for using unpaid sources on the internet for reference. Caveat emptor and try not to take these things too seriously.

The Road Warrior, as it was released as in the United States, or Mad Max 2 as it was titled everywhere else, is not the first post-apocalyptic film, but it might as well be from the influence it has had on the genre. The costume design alone is responsible for the accepted fact that, after the apocalypse, all fashion sense goes out the window and it becomes perfectly acceptable to wear footballs pads with a ballet tutu. Shot against the wide open spaces of the desolate Australian Outback, The Road Warrior made it a requirement for all post-apocalyptic movies to occur in locales without a speck of greenery present, making them easy to shoot just outside of L.A. Without this requirement, the low-budget post-apocalyptic boom that followed The Road Warrior’s release in 1981 would probably never have happened. Luckily for the film makers’ responsible for such gems as Raiders of the Sun, Hell Comes to Frogtown, Cherry 2000, or Steel Dawn, the apocalypse looks surprisingly like Vasquez Rocks.

I’m assuming that all of my readers know the plot of The Road Warrior, but here’s a brief summary:

Since we last saw “Mad” Max Rockatansky avenging the death of his family and friends at the hands (and wheels) of the Toe Cutter’s gang of motorcycle outlaws, the world has really gone downhill. In the aftermath of a nuclear exchange followed by the breakdown of oil pipelines and refineries, society has collapsed and become a place where “only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive.” Max has become a loner in the world, driving the highways in “the last of the V8 Interceptors” with his unnamed dog on a constant hunt for “gazzahleen” to stay mobile. After he turns the tables on an ambushing Gyro Captain (played by Bruce Spence in a manner that I cannot picture him as anything else to this day), Max discovers that there is one last community still pumping and refining oil. This settlement is under constant siege by that Ayatollah of Rock ‘n Rolla, The Humungous (a disfigured giant with a colander on his face) and his cadre of “Smegma crazies and gayboy berserkers”. Although initially just looking to get some fuel from the refiners and disappear back into the wasteland, events conspire against Max to drag him into the conflict. He ultimately redeems himself by becoming the unwitting patsy in the refiners’ escape from the wasteland.

Like many kids in the ‘80s, this film became the baseline for me against which all post-apocalyptic films would be measured. This is largely due to the fact that it is not only an excellent movie in its own right, but because the film loomed large in our imaginations before we even saw it. Being an adolescent in the ‘80s was to live in the shadow of the Bomb. A dim shadow perhaps when compared to those who experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis, but a noticeable one in any regard. Some days it almost seemed as if World War III was inevitable and we were just passing time until the sirens went off.

I remember hearing about The Road Warrior around the lunch table long before I actually saw it. Some of my friends had either seen it on cable or VHS, and those of us who hadn’t due to having parents who actually paid attention to movie ratings listened in amazement to their recitations of the film’s plot and events. By the time I actually saw the movie for myself, I had already built up quite a preconceived notion as to what the film would be. It’s a sign of the movie’s quality that, although it didn’t match what I had envisioned, it still was an impressive film-viewing experience.

The Road Warrior has had a constant albeit subtle influence on me over the years, affecting everything from playing with action figures to fashion choice during my punk rock years to scenarios for role-playing games. I remember my brother and I playing with our Star Wars and G.I. Joe figures in a game we called “Warriors of the Wasteland,” wherein the figures prowled the concrete floor of our basement searching out fuel in the form of Lite-Brite pegs and dealing with a mutated cockroach named “Cookie” who ran the only remaining diner left on the wasted Earth. Later years saw me using the same plot and events from The Road Warrior in a Star Frontiers game when the PC’s ship had to ditch on the charred cinder of a world.

Now that I’m creating a radioactive sandbox, it’s time to see what I can use from the film for that purpose. The most obvious choice would be the idea of fuel as wealth, but there’s a slight problem with that in Gamma World. As you might know, the usual power sources on Gamma Terra are various energy cells left over from the Shadow Years. These aren’t the type of thing a wasteland community is going to be able to produce on their own, although it might be possible for them to be in possession of a stockpile of energy cells somehow. However, the idea of the Red Death encamped outside the walls and demanding the villagers “give up the cells” just doesn’t do it for me. It must be gazzahleen or nothing. (Sorry, but do to the pronunciation of “gasoline” with an Aussie twang in The Road Warrior, the fuel of Gamma World has officially become gazzahleen.)

Further reading of the Gamma World rulebook indicates this isn’t as unthinkable as it would appear. Under the descriptions for the Civilian Ground Car and Military Ground Car, both are alcohol-powered rather than cell-powered. I’ll assume that’s a matter of convenience rather than design, having those vehicles converted over to alcohol power after gazzahleen became extremely rare. I suspect that with a little tinkering I might be able to bolt the rules for gas and alcohol powered vehicles from Twilight 2000 into a Gamma World-friendly format, opening up the possibility of trading gaz for all sorts of supplies and using it as intended to outrace mutants in the badlands.

Less obvious but still cool to steal concepts would include the razor-edged boomerang employed by the Feral Kid, the wrist crossbow used by Wez, and explosive booby traps and knives hidden under particularly choice vehicles. And what would the apocalypse be without an evil leader known by an adjective. Perhaps the PCs will cross vibroblades with The Ferocious?

Of the Mad Max trilogy, The Road Warrior remains my favorite. I readily admit that it lacks the depth of Mad Max, but it does a good job of recasting Max in the role of the Western drifter hero and giving the viewer a films powered by a potent mix of gasoline, nitrous oxide, and testosterone. A much better job than the sequel, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome does, a film that proves the film law which states if you want to screw up a successful film franchise, just add children to the cast (I’m looking at you guys, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Mummy Returns, and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace) at any length.

In revisiting the film for inspiration, I admit that the movie has lost some of its impact, but if this is due to familiarity with the film or simply a maturation of taste, I’m not 100% sure. The plot did seem more straightforward than I remembered it to be, for instance, and I’m certain that if it was done nowadays, we’d see an even more emotionally detached Max to begin with so as to make his ultimate re-humanization that more poignant. The film does deliver in one regard by reminding us how much fun it was to have Mel Gibson star in a movie before he began engaging in his recent objectionable antics.