by E. Gary Gygax
 

-	-	Comeliness	-	-
Dragon #67	-	1st Edition AD&D	-	Dragon magazine

Lest I be forced to an existence of doing
nothing save answering your flood of
missives, please be forgiving if I am unable
to answer each of you personally
— though I shall, indeed, attempt to do
so. At times all writers feel as if they are
addressing a void, for seldom does an
article bring any response. An occasional
letter of praise or of critical (even insulting)
nature is often a treasure, for
such tokens indicate that someone is actually
reading what is written at great
effort. Allow me now to add a new identity
to readers of this column: Hyperactive
Enthusiasts! I am inundated with responses,
and I am pleased, for I do indeed
need the benefits of your thinking!

When I attended the World Science
Fiction Convention in early September, I
began to get an inkling of the interest
players have respecting the expansion
of the AD&D™ game system. After interview
questions, the audience was (as is
usual) given a chance to ask what they
would of me. Many questions pertaining
to new character classes were posed
then, and afterward in casual chats. When
I returned to the office after Labor Day, a
stack of letters on the subject awaited
my attention. The correspondence continues
to come in, and I am doing my
best to keep up. For the benefit of all, I
will sum up several important things I
have gained from perusing the mail:

Learned Players, I assure you that I am
not overly sensitive to critical opinions.
Not only do I speak freely when I think it
is necessary, I consider intelligent comments
of all sorts, whether they agree
with my own opinions or not. Several
letter writers apologized for not liking
one class or another, and were hesitant
to express their thoughts for fear I might
be offended. Far from it, I find such
comments very useful in development of
material. After all, while it is impossible
to please everyone, critical opinion is of
great benefit in improving approaches,
or in the decision-making process which
could lead to discarding an idea. If anyone
has hesitated to write because of not
wanting to “offend” me with a contrary
opinion, I trust the foregoing will reassure
that the forum is an open one where
blame as well as praise can be aired.

The range of comments was astounding.
There is absolutely no consensus of
opinion as to which class is most desirable.
For every letter which listed Savant
on the top and Jester on the bottom, I
seemed to find another which reversed
the ratings. I have gone ahead with the
Thief-Acrobat split (Editor’s note: The
description will appear in issue #69), and
I sincerely hope all of you will favor me
with your immediate impressions and
considered opinions garnered from actual
play. Input from you is helping me in
finalizing the Barbarian sub-class of
Fighters, just as actual play-testing here
is. Cavaliers were usually rated in the
upper middle range, and that average
was carried through for Mountebanks as
well. Mystic rated the lowest, since no
individual’s rating had it as number one.
However, from the general comments, I
fear that much of that is due to my own
inadequate description of the class.

Several Good Readers suggested that
I seek ideas from character classes published
elsewhere. I regret that I cannot
do so, of course, copyright laws being
what they are. In fact, I make it a point to
not read other systems and articles,
since I do not wish to plagiarize. However,
details of the classes which have
developed since I wrote about them, or
were not gone into in the brief treatments,
will please many who viewed one
or another proposed class as too limited.

What will not be covered in the expansion
are the anti-paladin (perish the
thought!) and the samurai. An assassin
is about as close to an anti-paladin as is
needed. Evil is strong and well represented.
I by no means champion it. As I
have said before, an anti-paladin is a
third leg, and I have never yet seen any
reasoned proposal which justifies the
inclusion of such a sub-class. I believe
that attempts to include the character
type come from players who wish to
have an “unbeatable” character for themselves.
Furthermore, there is little mention
of such a type in mythology or fantasy
literature, so we do not have a solid
role-model.

Samurai are a different story entirely.
Granted the Monk is not part of Medieval
tradition or the usual European-based
fantasy. It belongs in an Oriental-based
game. Why then not include samurai?
Why compound error! I intend to move
the Monk to the appendices where Bards
now reside. It is hoped that sometime
soon we can begin on another version of
the AD&D game system which is based
on Sino-Japanese culture. While such a
work will be aimed principally for sale in
the Far East, you may rest assured that
an English-language version will be available
to all interested players, so that a
complete and meaningful campaign
based on Oriental tradition and myth can
be run. That means Ninja, Samurai, Ronin,
Yakusa, Monks, and possibly Taoist
clerics. Naturally, they will be in a setting
which is relative to their powers and interrelationships,
with appropriate monsters
and deities, arms and armor. The
possible meeting between these two separate
cultures will be difficult to handle,
and so some special rules will probably
be required. That remains to be seen, so
let’s leave it at that for now.