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Annotations to Crap Books II: Son of Crap Book

This post is a bit late, but I got invited back to Podside Picnic to continue my conversation with Pete on what we jokingly call “crap books”. This time, we circled back to talk a little bit more about the influence of D&D and the Satanic Panic on what I’m calling my genre (mis)education. Again, the latest episode is free to listen here if you haven’t yet, and I also had some follow-up posts with annotations that build upon that first episode.

Because the crap books conversations tend to flow, I may misremember stuff, so of course I’d name the wrong title of Leiber’s Lankhmar books. I mentioned Swords Against Wizardry or Swords Against Deviltry, when the one I meant is simply called The Swords of Lankhmar.

My interest in Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser was spurred by my friend César lending me the books, but I don’t remember if this was before or after seeing the Deities of Nehwon section of the old Deities & Demigods.

This is the same Deities & Demigods that also had entries it had to later remove. These included entries on the so-called deities of the Cthulhu Mythos and the weird pantheon of the Elric books, which co-writer Jim Ward is adamant that he got permission to include. TSR was challenged by Chaosium Games, which apart from seeking licenses for its own Cthulhu game, it also was developing Stormbringer as an RPG set in Elric’s world of Melniboné. At the time, TSR was cash-strapped and so chose not to fight Chaosium in court and subsequently removed any references to Cthulhu or Elric in later printings.

By the time Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition (aka “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”) was released, TSR removed mention of any devils or demons from their Monster Manual, as well as re-titled Deities & Demigods to the much more innocuous Legends & Lore. Some of the changes may have been to avoid further implication in the deaths of James Dallas Egbert III (popularized in the Tom Hanks movie, “Mazes and Monsters” which was adapted from a book of the same name) and Irving “Bink” Pulling, both of which were highly publicized and increased sales for TSR.

Pulling’s mother founded BADD (Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons), and the death of her son likely prompted the infamous “Darkest Dungeon” Jack Chick tract.

The Nehwon entries stayed and appeared in 2nd Edition because Gygax put Fritz Leiber up at his house while attending GenCon X as Guest of Honor in 1977. Based on his friendship with Leiber, Gygax included stuff like “The Gods of Lankhmar” — which make an appearance at the end of Swords of Lankhmar — in Deities & Demigods as well as other members of a pantheon Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser would have known well.

Now we get to my first brush with Vampire: the Masquerade. It arrived at my local comic book store at the time, and the striking visuals of an ankh and a red rose against green marble truly sold me on the concept. By then, I had finished reading all three of Anne Rice’s initial vampire novels, and was probably following her new book about the Mayfair Witches, The Witching Hour.

I was goth at heart, even if the Caribbean discouraged a goth wardrobe.

I read anything and everything Vampire: the Masquerade. Vampire Clan splatbooks, supplements, the very evocative, artsy and extremely goth Book of Nod. A purported collection of in-world poems and other writings that served as a type of Book of Genesis for the so-called Kindred? I ate it all up.

I was in love, and as soon as I knew there was tie-in fiction in this setting, I tried to pick it up. Many of these didn’t stand out except, perhaps, in how much I didn’t like them at the time. While Blood Relations was a low point, Nancy Collins’ A Dozen Black Roses was a great example of a book that had a lot going for it (Tim Bradstreet art on the cover! A kickass woman protagonist! Vampire clans from the game!), but I definitely remember not liking it much at all.

This dislike was further cemented by having to defend my reading of it. I was halfway through it when a nosy co-worker decided to advise me against that type of book. Maybe she meant well, but her tone was unmistakable: I should set that type of reading aside and find Jesus.

As one could expect, I did not take this very well.

“You know what book no one ever tells me to watch out for?” My smile probably didn’t match my gaze, since my co-worker recoiled slightly. I didn’t care anymore and pressed my advantage. “The Bible. That thing’s full of sex and violence!”

Not my best moment, but I did get a grim satisfaction from the exchange, and no one at that job bothered me about what I read ever again. Granted, my supervisor didn’t extend my job contract once it expired, so who’s to say who got the last word?

Thankfully, by this time, I was playing more or less every week. Given that at one point we had more than 10 people playing, our GM ran a World of Darkness campaign. This allowed everyone to play whatever flavor of supernatural creature they wanted, including some homebrew ones such as immortals from Highlander (yes, inspired by the TV show).

As with most good things, though, our World of Darkness chronicle came to an end. We did play some other games of the period as palate cleansers such as Steve Jackson Games’ In Nomine or one shot adventures from Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu game (don’t ever trust a gangster with an interest in the occult–take it from me). We had a lot of fun playing these other games, and eventually the next big World of Darkness chronicle started.

But that will have to wait for another installment of Crap Books.

Note: the Poppy Z. Brite short story I referenced in The Compendium of the Weird is called “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood”