Terrence Malick: From Best to Worst

Few artists have the luxury of being able to make films at their own snail's pace, and even fewer have this clout on the strength of a small number of films. Terrence Malick's five, released in '73, '78, '98, '05, '11, are not the box-office material that make one a Peter Jackson. (I always wondered at the reason for his 20-year hiatus between the second and third films and can't help but wonder if Malick was so depressed by '80s cinema that he swore off filmmaking forever; someday I'll have to write a blogpost about the evils of '80s American films.) I think of Malick as a composer of nature's symphonies. With one exception, nature is the lead character in all his work, through which plotting and the actual characters are filtered to yield an aesthetic that's pleasing, even exciting, whether you're inclined to arthouse or not. It was a given that Malick would place in this blogathon of favorite film directors, and here's how I rank his work.

1. The Tree of Life. 2011. 5 stars. Like Kubrick's Space Odyssey, this is a picture-perfect film attaining heights out of reach to all but the most gifted filmmakers. It spotlights an American Catholic family within a macrocosm of evolution, and an implied dialectic of nature vs. grace. If there ever was a case to be made for religionless Christianity, this is it. It pivots around a man reliving his childhood (in hindsight both wondrous and grim) while reflecting on his own place in the universe (negligible one level, having everything to do with it on another). In particular, grace emerges not as something which contradicts nature (even if it's its conceptual opposite), but something inherently part of it, or complementing it, or mutating from it. It's an incredible film, with each frame depending on just the right camera angle, scoring, and particular subtleties around snippets of dialogue you can barely hear. And it ends on a spiritual apocalypse that can strike to the heart of even the most unyielding atheist: the yearning for reunion in some form of afterlife, a hopeless fantasy we cling to in order to cope with pain and loss, gelling spendidly with the evolutionary framework of the film. I've seen The Tree of Life more than any other Malick film, and have been turned by new surprises each time.

2. Days of Heaven. 1978. 4 ½ stars. Quintessential Malick, gorgeous as it is simple, Days of Heaven preserves a still in every frame that you'd be proud to hang in your living room. As with Tree of Life, it's the kind of film that takes just the right director to make work. Or least for me, because I'm big on character, and here the characters are kept at arm's length even by Malick's standards. Nature is of course the lead in most of his work, but in Days of Heaven the horses, wheat, locusts, and pastures eclipse Bill and Abby to the extent we almost don't care a whit about their story with the dying farmer, yet remain hooked to the overall tapestry. There's nothing romantic in this vision: it shows nature like it is, completely indifferent to humanity, a theme strongly revisited in The Thin Red Line. Interesting is that Malick reportedly trashed his own screen-play during the production, deciding instead to allow the actors to improvise and find the story in their own way. And it shows, because nothing feels rehearsed -- it's as if you're watching something real through a painting come to life.

3. The Thin Red Line. 1998. 4 ½ stars. There are two films I can't avoid comparing to Saving Private Ryan, a film I never cared for. One is Kubrick's Paths of Glory, for the suicidal attempt to take the hill; it retains a brutal intensity that Spielberg couldn't match in the opening act of his overpraised film, much as he tried. The other is Malick's Thin Red Line, for the time of its release, the same year as Spielberg's but sadly overshadowed by it. This film laments warfare through naturalist philosophy, and it's horrific and uplifting in a completely organic way (as opposed to the manipulative cheap-story way of Saving Private Ryan). I maintain that anti-war films have the strongest difficulty doing right by the viewer. They must get their message across loud and clear, but without resorting to college-campus screed, political innuendo, or hollow contrivances. Bergman's Shame, Kubrick's Paths of Glory, and Malick's Thin Red Line are my trilogy of exhibits proving this is possible. What Bergman did at the level of personal intimacy, and Kubrick did along the ladder of military hierarchy, Malick expands to the broadest level possible, examining life and death in cosmic terms, finding beauty in each, yet an undeniable rage at the way the latter is reached. It's sheer genius.

4. Badlands. 1973. 4 ½ stars. Released the same year as The Exorcist, Malick's first film is in every way a '70s work par excellence, and one that only obliquely distinguishes itself as a Terrence Malick film. That's not a bad thing: the '70s were the Golden Age of filmmaking, and Badlands, like so many productions of this era, epitomizes the ideological emptiness of America after Vietnam and social upheaval of the '60s. Like many artists of the time, Malick takes an amoral stance, refusing to either condemn his delinquent killers or cheer them on as anti-heroes. The visuals of the American Midwest landscape are breathtaking -- on this point, the Malickian thumb-prints become evident -- but Badlands is the one film on this list where characters don't play second fiddle to nature. Malick is clearly trying to underscore the way characters react and relate to meaningless violence, and what I find most disturbing about it is the tone of disinterest and nonchalance; the duo don't relish killing, nor do they murder with any real purpose; it's just a way of life that came naturally to them given their circumstances. Of the umpteen Bonnie-and-Clyde films, Badlands is my choice, tied with Larry Clark's Another Day in Paradise.

5. The New World. 2005. 3 ½ stars. For all its stunning aesthetic, there's something fundamental about New World that irks me: this isn't the way I like historicals. I don't want figures like Pocahontas painted over Terrence Malick style, I want them delivered on a platter of artistic simplicity (as in A Man for all Seasons), induced documentary (as in Gospel According to St. Matthew), or even action-adventure brutality (as in Rob Roy). When nature is the main character -- as is almost always the case in a Malick film -- it distracts from what an historical epic should be about. Credit must be given for the way New World rescues Pocahontas from sissified Disney versions and portrays the love affair between her and Smith with subtle poetry. Most commendably, this isn't a slam against the White Man, nor a condescending, racist reverence for fantasy "noble savages" (who must nonetheless be saved by a whitey who grows to loathe himself -- per Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, Avatar, ad nauseum). Objectively, there's a lot to admire about this film. But I respect it from an emotional distance, because the historical genre is just not one I find suitable for Malick's style.

Next month: David Cronenberg.

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Zeba Crook's SBL Response to Mark Goodacre

Mark Goodacre has posted his SBL critique of Zeba Crook's Parallel Gospels, which should be read before going further. Mark was one of four reviewers at the SBL session (the others being Struthers Malbon, Paul Foster, and Robert Derrenbacker), to whom Zeba responded at the end.

Zeba has given me permission to post his response-paper, but I'll just paste the Goodacre part, since the other three reviewers haven't (to my knowledge) made their papers available online. Readers of this blog know I hold both Mark and Zeba in high esteem, though on inter-synoptic issues, I obviously tend to see eye-to-eye more with Mark. But I haven't read Zeba's book and can't offer any critical assessments at this point. So read Mark's critique and Zeb's response, and weigh the wisdom of each.

________________________________________________

Zeba Crook, SBL 2012, Review Session on Parallel Gospels

[Response to Mark Goodacre]

"Goodacre suggests that word-level parallels are key to sound synopsis construction. I wholly agree, so let me explain. This is ideal synopsis construction meets real world market. I think Mark would have loved the original synopsis that OUP saw. But the synopsis OUP saw was over 500 pages, because lining up parallel words on parallel lines creates a lot of white space on the page. Now I really liked that white space; I felt it gave the student room to think. OUP didn't. They wanted a synopsis that was going to be affordable, and this one really is. Making the synopsis Goodacre wants would have been ideal, but it also would have been much more expensive.

"In the end, we (OUP and me) opted for a compromise: Words that begin a short syntactical section are paralleled. So, in the section to which Mark refers (#184; Matt 18:2//Mark 9:36//Luke 9:47b), it is true that the three instances of “young-child” are not on exactly the same line. But two lines above clearly starts a new section, beginning with the triple agreement on the aorist participle (having-summoned in Matt; having-taken in Mark; and having-taken-hold-of in Luke). So the very short section lines up at the start, and it lines up at the next stage (Matt 8:3 and Luke 9:48 == Mark doesn't have any text there), and then after Matthew’s verses 3-4, the three line up again at the start of the next section (Matt 8:5, Mark 9:37; and the continuation of Luke 9:38). A compromise had to be struck, between ideal synopsis construction and marketability, and I think this is actually a good compromise. Goodacre complains that it makes the student work harder, but I actually came to see this as an added benefit: my original synopsis was so word-paralleled that it left almost no work for the student to do!

"Next Goodacre comments on problems with clarity and readability that are the result of my one-to-one translation principle: that cuts me to the core, Mark. Everyone here needs to understand how much sleep I lost in the decade I spent on this book over the issue of readability. I don't need to be told that hupo with the genitive means 'by' not 'under.' I don't need to be told that tis with an accent can mean who AND what. But in end I had to decide that if my goal was to devise a way for the non-Greek-reading student to see what words the gospel writers shared, how they may have changed words and phrases a lot or a little, over and over again, then this was the only way. I had to accept that the goal was NOT translation, but rendition, and I had to accept that readability had to be sacrificed. But then I also realized this: if I wanted to produce a source-language translation, I had to follow through on it. The translation Goodacre wants in a synopsis already exists out there (in multiple forms), and they all show that tis can mean 'who' and they show that Jesus was baptized 'by' John, but they also produce endless false positives, false negatives, and generally create agreements where none actually exist. My goal was to create a new synopsis, not duplicate existing synopses.

"But then I realized this: synopses exist for only two reasons: to be able to compare gospels structurally and at the level of the minute detail. These details are the foundation of source and redaction criticism. The reader who wants readable 'scripture' can go to target-language translations like the NRSV or NIV; the reader without Greek who wants to be able to really see word agreements and disagreements among the Greek gospels needs this book to be able to do that. No other English synopsis book will give them that. Mark is not wrong: the translation is a challenge to read; but what the student gains from that translation is greater than the cost. I've been told on many occasions that students, after a couple weeks of grappling with the strange translation, have a eureka moment in which they both 'get' what's happening and find their eye can do the necessary skip and dance to read it somewhat fluidly.

"Finally, Goodacre suggests that giving a column for Q gives Q an unrealistic concrete tangibility, and that it forecloses this important debate. I think this is unfair. Making a column for Q no more forecloses the debate than including John and Thomas forecloses the debates about their relationship to the synoptics. Further, the reader who thinks I have foreclosed the debate on the existence of Q merely by placing it in a column has not actually read my synopsis: a) one only has to read to the second paragraph of my introduction to see me state clearly that a column for Q does not give it material status. It is there simply to give students access to what scholars think the text of Q looked like; b) I am extremely clear in my synoptic study guides that Q is hypothetical, that there is no evidence of its ever having existed, that those who disagree with the Q hypothesis are perfectly reasonable scholars; and c) there are ways, I think, in which my synopsis challenges positions of the 2DH: my translation results in way more minor agreements being visible, which are an issue for the 2DH, and there is this: one of the key planks on which the Q Hypothesis rests is that Matthew and Luke never agree on inserting double tradition into the same place in Mark, usually after Q 3:7-9 it is said. But my synopsis arrangement ends up with 8 pericope that Matt and Luke place Q at the same point in Mark (pericopae #s 17, 19, 23, 25, 89, 122, 123, 126). I was curious to know what Goodacre would think of including Q, but I expected him to be more effusive about the pro-Mark-without-Q features of my new synopsis over others."

UPDATE: Mark Goodacre responds to Zeb's response.

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Plotting Among Giants and Drow

The most epic D&D campaign of the old-school era is the seven-module series later packaged into four: Against the Giants (G1-G3), Descent into the Depths of the Earth (D1-2), Vault of the Drow (D3), and Queen of the Demonweb Pits (Q1). From murderous dungeon crawls, to lethal underworld domains, to the unforgiving Abyss itself, players take on a coalition of giants in thrall to a group of drow (dark elves) whose hideous cultic allegiance spells disaster for the surface world.

What's fascinating about this series is how ambiguous the plot is. Of course, as a rule old-school modules kept plotting underdeveloped so as not to stifle DMs and railroad players, but for a multiple-module campaign to pull this off cohesively is no mean feat. James Maliszewski's retrospective of the D3 module, Vault of the Drow, offers one way of looking at the plot-path of the first six modules:

"There is absolutely no plot to [D3], just as there was no plot to its precursors in the D series. The 'plot' of the series, such as it is, mostly occurred in modules G1, G2, and G3, where the drow priestess of the Elder Elemental God, Eclavdra, was attempting to organize the giants into a vast army with which to subjugate a portion of the surface world, in the process gaining power for herself and her house, Eilservs. Once that plan is defeated, though, all that remains for the PCs is vengeance and exploration of the depths of the earth. Eclavdra -- or her clone -- reappears in Vault of the Drow, but only as the leader of House Eilservs, not as 'the big bad evil guy' of the module. No such personage exists in D3, as its 28 pages are devoted primarily to describing the city of Erelhei-Cinlu, its inhabitants, and their activities."

I suspect, however, that most DMs proceed on the design that Eclavdra (or her clone) has a backup plan in reserve if the giants fall, and that most PCs will assume that a drow attack on the surface world remains a viable threat. Otherwise there would be no point in pursuing the drow to their home under the earth. I never heard of PCs invading the underworld for pure vengeance or curiosity sake, though of course either scenario is possible. For myself as a DM, the Eilservs weren't giving up, regardless of the outcome in the fire giant hall. More to the point, even granting the two factions of drow posted there, it's exceedingly unlikely that PCs will have deduced (by the end of G3) that Eclavdra's crusade is opposed by most of the drow community.

Which brings us to the question of if and how and to what degree the PCs ever learn this, once they get past modules D1 and D2 and arrive in the Vault. Joe Bloch maintains there are two possible conclusions players will eventually draw as they proceed through D3:

(1) 'We need to stop the Eilservs once and for all, to halt their ambitions against the surface world.'

(2) 'We need to stop the drow once and for all, because they are evil and are ultimately a threat to the surface world.'

"The first attitude bears with it the implication that the drow factions can be parleyed with, and used against other drow factions. The second attitude implies that the party should be looking for some way to collapse the Vault itself...[In the second case] they have effectively declared war on the entire city. Wish them luck, and I hope they have 4d6 handy to roll up new characters... The module, of course, implies the first option."

I'm not so sure. There is a third possibility which straddles these two options, and indeed the one that seems to form the premise of later campaigns developed for 3rd edition D&D: that "marauders [PCs] from the upper world assaulted not only the Eilservs estate, but also the Fane of Lolth itself" (Dragon #298, p 84), which initiated an all-out war on the upper world, this time spearheaded by Lolth (who in the G1-Q1 modules opposed such action), as well as a civil war in the Vault (the priestess wars). I never heard of PCs who went into the Vault without, in some way, striking against the Fane. Granted I had a poor understanding of how to run Vault of the Drow in my early gaming years (see here, #5), I'm dubious that players, without heavy-handed steering from a DM, can bring themselves to ascribe to any drow faction a complete hostility/opposition to the spider goddess. After all, House Eilservs still coexists alongside the other Houses, right next door to the Fane.

Furthermore, option (2) is a reasonable conclusion in any case. The feud between House Eilservs (serving the Elemental God and allied with House Tormtor) and the Fane (serving Lolth and allied with all the other noble houses) owes to local politics, namely Eclavdra's desire to set herself up as Queen of the Drow, thus undermining clerical autonomy. Her crusade against the upper world is intended to consolidate a power base more than anything, but the fact is that all drow are ultimately driven by their ancient grudge against the surface, and not least Lolth's priestesses. Subjugation of other races is hardwired in drow genes; if one house can start a crusade out of self-interest, so can another, and so (especially) can the Fane. What the Fane is opposing is not a crusade against the surface per se, but Eclavdra's crusade and her bid for power, which also promulgates the worship of a rival deity.

Only PCs with high risk-addiction complexes would likely try allying with the Fane, as Bloch suggests, even on the logic that "the enemy of my enemy is my tool". If the drow were lawful-evil oriented, that would be one thing, but they're intrinsically chaotic and poisonous like the spiders they nest with. Getting in bed with the sisterhood is arguably as much an invitation to the grave as declaring war on the Vault. Lolth, for her part, thrives on the divisiveness and backbiting of her people, and would characteristically shaft any makeshift allies (especially foreign ones) at first opportunity. All things considered, PCs would be justified in concluding that the Fane is the ultimate (if not immediate) menace, and in striking a blow against both it and the rebellious Eilservs to send a clear message.

My point is not that restricting oneself to Bloch's option (1) is necessarily misguided, just that it's not the only sane course of action open to PCs. It's possible, with enough shrewdness and care, to strike against the Fane without having to take on the entire Vault. On the other hand, I agree completely with Bloch that there isn't much reason, per the plot design of G1-D3, for players to take the audacious step of confronting Lolth on the Abyss in order to kill her. It's been widely acknowledged how disappointing Q1 was in terms of design (as Gygax bailed on the project and left it in the hands of David Sutherland), but it's seldom acknowledged how much of a non-sequitur it is. Q1 only makes sense if the PCs are overambitious hotheads or fools -- or if they just want the orgasmic thrill of trying to kill a goddess on her home plane (which perhaps makes Q1 realistic after all!). On the other hand, Q1 could become relevant at the later time, when Lolth takes over the assault on the upper world, which is the follow-up scenario designed for later editions of D&D.

The fact that the plotting of G1-Q1 remains so murky and debatable is precisely its strength. In old-school D&D, plotting was barely integral to module design, and left largely to the interactive dynamic between DMs and players. In this sense, at least, Bloch's scenarios are as credible as anything I've countered with. That's what made the game what it was. Gygax even spelled this upfront:

"While considerable detail has been given, it is up to you to fill in any needed information and to color the whole thing and bring it to life. You, as Dungeon Master, must continue to improvise and create, for your players will certainly desire more descriptions, seek to do things not provided for here, and generally do things which are not anticipated. The script is here, but you will direct the whole, rewrite parts, and sit in final judgment." (Against the Giants, p 16)

This sort of gaming philosophy is of course anathema to the script slavery and rigid plotting of later "modules" (Dragonlance and beyond), which hand-held DMs and predestined players. G1-Q1 are a healthy reminder that series modules can indeed work with minimal plotting.

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Old School D&D: Simple Rules, Great Modules

If I had to sum up the attraction of old-school Dungeons & Dragons in a single phrase, it would be: "simple rules, great modules". Nowadays things are so backwards. There's a D&D rulebook, it seems, for everything under the sun, and modules aren't even close to what they used to be. You certainly don't hear gamers rhapsodizing about modules like I did back in the day, when we couldn't wait to get to the store to buy the new temple of darkness penned by Gary Gygax, or the coastal haunted house that masked a nefarious business. James Maliszewski has written extensively about the evolution of D&D modules, one of my favorite posts being Locale and Plot.

Essentially, as Maliszewski contends, the D&D modules of the late '70s & early '80s focused on presenting locales with minimal plotting. Any plot resulted from a dynamic unfolding of what happened to the PCs once they were there, not something the module authors scripted in advance. Dragonlance (in 1984) changed that focus, introducing heavy-handed plotting on prepackaged narratives, with the result that PCs became increasingly consigned to enacting preordained roles. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it got to the point that modules weren't really "modules" anymore -- things you could pick up and drop into your own adventure with ease. They became the adventures themselves, which defeated the whole concept of interchangeability that was inherent to a "module".

And of course, by the time of 3rd edition D&D (in 2000), the term "module" had indeed been officially dropped in favor of "adventure". But that switch in terminology should have occurred sometime in the mid to late '80s, prior to the release of even 2nd edition D&D. Story supplanted design to the extent that role-playing felt more and more like script-slavery. This isn't to say (as Maliszewski emphasizes) that old-school gamers didn't create their own stories; far from it. The point is that they were their own stories, not the module authors', and more importantly, the stories grew by the spontaneity (and often unpredictability) of the players' seat-of-the-pants actions. Post-1983 modules were, to use the old-school cuss word, "railroady", meaning they forced players on too many paths or plots to make the module "work". There's obviously some degree of railroading to any D&D campaign (otherwise it could be hard to get one off the ground), but the ratio of PC free will to DM predestination was large by design in the old days. DMs were trained to expect the unexpected from their players, and to shift gears accordingly.

Dragonlance ushered in nothing less than a lazy breed of gaming, often justified by the insistence that DMs no longer had as much free time to develop plots on their own and prepare for counterplots. Maliszewski rightly refutes this: creating a plot/story is the easiest part of being a DM, not the hardest. It's the modular parts -- maps, room descriptions, treasures, monsters, encounter areas, game stats -- that are a pain in the ass and so bloody time consuming for the referee to develop. And it's this stuff that need to feel inspired. Dungeons, cities, and wilderness locales are where creative energy need to be poured, and where we relied so heavily on the genius imaginations of Gary Gygax, Tom Moldvay, David Cook, and Roger Moore -- and believe me, I'm the first to admit that my own self-designed modules weren't nearly as inspiring as theirs. The overarching plot and adventure, however, is more basic, and what I want to be my own. Just as I want my characters to be my own as a player. (Pre-generated characters, except in tournament settings, are as anathema to the spirit of D&D role-playing as pre-packaged adventures.)

Let's be frank: there haven't been awesomely inspiring modules like Tomb of Horrors, The Lost City, Castle Amber, and Vault of the Drow in a long time. They succeeded so well, and remain classics, because they detailed as much as they inspired, around minimal plotting. They were suitable as self-standing isolated affairs, but could just as easily be worked into larger campaigns -- adventures, that is, determined by the interactive dynamic between DMs and players.

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James Maliszewski's Favorite D&D Modules

Over a year ago I ranked what I consider to be the best Dungeons & Dragons modules of all time, vexed as I was by Dungeon magazine's choices from years before. Since then I've received inquiries about other old school pick-lists, but there aren't many out there, and none that I find very good. James Maliszewski, however, has written wonderful retrospectives of almost all the classic D&D modules, and it's not too difficult to guess how he might rank them if he chose to. So here's me guessing. This is intended as a fun exercise, and in no way an attempt to speak for James. On the contrary, I'm going to let him speak, and him alone: in these guess-rankings, I provide links to his reviews, and cite portions I think most relevant for deriving a plausible ranking scheme. I should note that the "Moldvay trilogy" was particularly hard to keep apart, and I ranked them simply in numerical order at positions 5-7 (B4 at 5, X1 at 6, X2 at 7) -- I can't for the life of me guess how James might favor one of these over the other. I'm pleased that all of these modules find a home somewhere on my top-20 list. (This one is half the size; there's no way I can do a guess-list beyond 10.)

This post is also an homage. James' writings on Grognardia have done so much to remind me of why I loved D&D of the late '70s and early '80s -- and why I detest contemporary editions. I encourage readers to follow the links to his retrospectives, and to check out his entire blog.

(1) Tomb of Horrors. Gary Gygax, 1978. (For levels 10-14) "While it might be an exaggeration to say that this is the greatest D&D module of all time -- though the case could certainly be made -- I think it is fair to say that no other module is a better Rorschach Test of one's gaming sensibilities... It's too hard for many players and it's almost certainly unfair, but neither complaint makes it a bad or indeed unfun module -- quite the contrary... One of the things early D&D borrowed most heavily from wargaming was the notion that one could 'win' a module, which was conceived of in much the same way a wargamer might look at a scenario. Certainly, you can't 'win' a D&D campaign the same way you could win a wargames campaign, but, in a sense, you can 'win' a module and this mindset was commonplace in the old days. To be able to say you'd 'beaten' this module or that was a point of pride and Tomb of Horrors stacked the deck so thoroughly that many D&D players simply could not beat it, especially if the referee got into the spirit of the thing and was as malicious as possible."

(2) Dwellers of the Forbidden City. David Cook, 1981. (For levels 4-7) "One of my favorite D&D modules of all time, if not my actual favorite... This lost city recalls Robert E. Howard's Conan yarns -- no surprise given David Cook has admitted that the city was inspired by 'Red Nails'. Though getting to the Forbidden City is an adventure in itself, with multiple means to enter it and lots of potential allies and enemies along the way, it is within the city that the real adventure begins... It is a world unto itself, one that operates according to the whims of its inhabitants, chief of whom are the yuan-ti snake men... It was easy to make and remake the city to suit my present needs, whatever they were. My personal preference for modules these days are ones that fire my imagination; they give me the bare bones details I need to get started but they don't weigh me down with extraneous details that either get in the way or easily forget in the heat of play."

(3) Vault of the Drow. Gary Gygax, 1978. (For levels 10-14) "It might be an exaggeration to call this the greatest D&D adventure of all time; it might even be an exaggeration to say that it's my favorite D&D module of all time. However, I think it could reasonably be argued that it's the greatest Gygaxian naturalist adventure of all time, for what it presents is a vast subterranean locale -- the Drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu -- brought to darkly beautiful life, from the various feuding dark elf noble houses to their monstrous servitors to their pitiful slaves. It's really an amazing piece of work [and] it's easy to see why the drow made such a profound impression on gamers. What Gygax has done here is present us with an entire evil city to use as our sandbox, pursuing whatever adventures we wished within or without its walls. It's a great example of location-based design and a reminder of what modules were like before the demands of convention play or obsession with 'story' changed their nature forever."

(4) The Village of Hommlet. Gary Gygax, 1979. (For levels 1-3) "I absolutely adore The Village of Hommlet... There are a lot of reasons why this is so, but I think, more than anything, what I like most about it is that it has an ominous, brooding character to it that haunts my imagination. Unlike, say, The Keep on the Borderlands, Hommlet feels like it's a community that sits on the precipice of disaster... I don't know; it's hard to explain. There's just something powerful about this set-up, something that, for me anyway, strikes me as the perfect set-up for a new campaign. I share with Tolkien the conception of history as a 'long defeat' and The Village of Hommlet touches on that theme obliquely -- the notion that each generation must stare Evil in the face and bar the way of its advance, even if it's ultimately just a holding action, for Evil can never truly be defeated in this life... Hommlet inspires in me a lot of feelings and emotions that I find incredibly useful in kicking off an old school fantasy campaign."

(5) The Lost City. Tom Moldvay, 1982. (For levels 1-3) "The city's connection to pulp fantasy is readily apparent, as it presents a decadent subterranean civilization of great antiquity in the thrall of a foul alien being, whom many worship as a god. The player characters are flung headlong into this civilization, which is riven with factions and secret societies, each of which has its own plots and goals... What Moldvay did here is nothing short of remarkable. He presented us with a mini-sandbox campaign setting that reminds me both of Howard's 'Red Nails' and Paul Jaquays's The Caverns of Thracia... I can't stress enough how inspirational I found this module when I first read it. Even now, I consider it the best thing Moldvay ever wrote and one of the great adventures of the Golden Age... It presents no story; it's almost pure location and so much of that location is left to the referee to develop for himself... I find it a pity that it was Hickman's epic storylines that carried the day rather than Moldvay's evocations of pulp fantasy like this one... The Lost City is an overlooked masterpiece."

(6) The Isle of Dread. David Cook & Tom Moldvay, 1980. (For levels 3-7) "If the purpose of published modules is as much to provide a model for inexperienced referees as to provide a ready-made adventuring locale, then The Isle of Dread is certainly one of the most influential modules I've ever read... and I can't even begin to count how often I used it in my old campaign. One of the primary reasons I love it is because it's an archetypal location-based module, a format I prefer above all others. There's an exceedingly thin plot to The Isle of Dread: the PCs find a treasure map and, if they elect to pursue its instructions, find themselves on a far-off tropical island filled with all the Lost World staples -- primitive natives, monstrous wildlife, inhospitable terrain, ancient evils, and wealth galore... Even with all the encounters included in its pages, there are many areas that receive no attention whatsoever, allowing the referee plenty of room to incorporate his own ideas... I'd love to see modules like this again."

(7) Castle Amber. Tom Moldvay, 1981. (For levels 3-6) "With its Erol Otus cover, Castle Amber has a phantasmagoric, fever-dream quality [and] remains a good example of an approach to fantasy gaming that has largely been lost, at least among gaming publishers nowadays. It combines literary allusion, hallucinatory imagery, and deadly whimsy to produce a challenge for all but the most clever players. Even better, it combines a dungeon -- Castle Amber itself -- with the mini-sandbox setting of Averoigne, thus making it a useful teaching tool for referees looking for advice on how to combine the two styles of old school play into a unified whole. And all in 26 pages! How many modern adventure modules can compare?... As a kid of 12, I found Castle Amber a tad disturbing... There are many evil people inside Castle Amber, and their actions are objectively evil according to almost any moral compass, and yet, somehow, they come across not so much as evil as bored. On some level, that strikes me as much worse than if they they behaved as they do because they actively wished ill upon their victims."

(8) Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Gary Gygax, 1980. (For levels 8-12) "I am sympathetic to those who don't want chocolate in their peanut butter when it comes to fantasy gaming. I occupy a weird middle place in this dispute... Instinctively, I'm part of the camp that sees sci-fi and fantasy as two separate genres of imaginative fiction. I'm also hyper-rationalist and prefer that my settings 'make sense,' which is to say, that I can explain how and why everything works the way it does, even if my explanations resort to the fantastic to do so. Having spaceships and lasers in a setting with gods and magic takes some heavy lifting to explain; it can be done but it's often more work than I prefer to undertake, so I avoid it. Nowadays, though, I have come round... [to] a better understanding of the hows and whys of what some might see as genre mixing... Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is an excellent romp and a time capsule from an age before the demands of marketing narrowed our sense of what was and was not 'fantasy'."

(9) The Keep on the Borderlands. Gary Gygax, 1979. (For levels 1-3) "Although I contend that The Village of Hommlet is the greatest exemplar of Gary Gygax's remarkable skills as a designer of [beginner's level] adventure modules, I recognize that this is a minority opinion. There's a peculiarly large contingent of gamers who dislike Hommlet, a sentiment I find baffling. Far more gamers, if asked to choose their favorite Gygax-penned module, would choose The Keep on the Borderlands, a touchstone for an entire gaming generation in a way that the better-crafted Hommlet is not... This isn't to denigrate Keep, and there's no denying that there's something extraordinarily primal about it. Gygax was always very good at setting a scene and the scene he sets in this module is a potent one: a lonely bastion of Law, defending the Realm against the creeping hordes of Chaos. In many ways, that's the most archetypal description of Dungeons & Dragons ever written. It sums up the game very succinctly."

(10) Descent into the Depths of the Earth & Shrine of the Kuo-Toa. Gary Gygax, 1978. (For levels 9-14) [Descent] "When I was a younger man, I would have ranked Descent into the Depths of the Earth as one of my favorite D&D adventures. I had a lot of fun using it in days of yore and there are a number of set pieces it includes, such as the lich who has cast over 600 magic mouths in his cavernous lair..." [Shrine] "The Shrine of the Kuo-Toa isn't as good as Vault of the Drow, but it's still very good. It presents a well-realized locale that inspires as much as it describes. There can be little question why, like the drow, the kuo-toa are remembered as among the most interesting antagonists D&D ever placed in the path of adventurers. I am frankly grateful that, more than three decades later, this module remains one of the only places where the kuo-toa are discussed at any length. Unlike the drow, there's still mystery associated with them and I'm sure that contributes greatly to my liking of this module, one of Gary Gygax's finest creations."

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