D & D Go!

This wound up being a very photo-heavy post. I'm trying out the "jump" feature to spare people who don't want to download all the photos at once. (I hope it works!) The short story version is that I had a very strange dream, which led directly to a full on analysis of the printmaking techniques used in The Fiend Folio, a first edition hardback addendum to the original Monster Manual that was published in Great Britain in 1981. Because, of course it did. The Fiend Folio contains a wonderfully eclectic mishmash of techniques - something you will not see in today's editions with their art editors and style guides.

And, another gaming session, another beverage to review... this time, it's Pumpkin Harvest Ale by the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company. Yes, it's October. But beyond that, I don't know why I did this to myself. I'm that rare bird that hasn't gotten on the IPA bandwagon. This is just labeled as an "ale" which means it was likely to be less hoppy than an IPA... and for my palate that's just fine by me. (Dedicated porter/stout girl here.) Furthermore, I don't like pumpkin spice anything, really. I will tell you more about that in my full review, which is at the very end of this post.






Last night I had a dream that was a mashup of Dungeons and Dragons and Pokémon Go. I suppose that isn't entirely surprising given that I was looking at the 1e Fiend Folio right before bed, and I am a casual player of Pokémon Go. (This blog is a paean to the truth that even consistent casual play can get you somewhere over the years. I'm level 36.)

I really like the artwork in the Fiend Folio, biases of the times notwithstanding. Unlike later editions, the art is entirely pen and ink or black and white prints, and there are multiple artists' work represented. The work was fairly consistently high quality, but there was no effort to create a uniform esthetic, so the personal inclinations of the artists really shine through. There are a few monsters in there that distinctly remind me of Shel Silverstein's work, for example. So these trigger another odd mashup in terms of childhood memories for me. The Norker on page 69 drawn by Nicholson is particularly evocative of Silverstein (who wrote for Playboy long before he penned The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends), as is the Killmoulis on page 57 by Russ, the Svirfneblin drawn by Russ on page 84, and the

Norker from The Fiend Folio, 1e

unattributed hoofed minor demon on the title page. There are works done entirely in pointillism, linoblock prints, crosshatches, and combinations. Many of the pieces are signed. I love the variety and individualism.

As a fan of art prints, I have to acknowledge the visual power of the high contrast graphic esthetic of pen and ink and printmaking. Paintings may give a more 'realistic' anatomical understanding of the monsters, but nothing packs a punch like a black and white print where the artist harnesses that sharp contrast for drama or humor. And even within that restricted palette there is enormous variety in how people express themselves. Take a look at the the Skulk on page 80 and the Firenewts on page 37, and compare:

Skulk (L) and Firenewts (R) from The Fiend Folio, 1e. 

The Firenewts are a classic linoblock print. Linoblock prints are similar in technique to a woodblock, but there is no grain of the wood to contend with. In a linoblock print, you use a gouge to rout out the flat surface of linoleum mounted to a block of wood. Once you are done carving away at the linoblock you roll ink across the remaining surface and print to a piece of paper. The results can vary from highly rustic to quite refined depending on the intent of the artist, the size of the gouges and the level of detail. Linoblock, like woodblock, is an inherently linear medium. It is extremely difficult to gouge out punctate marks in a block. Because the carving motion is directional, artists often harness that directionality to convey more information than just dark/light values. For example, a carved line might curve, to imply that the object being depicted is rounded and has mass. Certain lines are very effective at implying motion. Hatching or closely packed wiggles can convey a texture or an undulation.

This particular linoblock uses a great deal of shading technique, but many block prints are very graphical in nature. There is a great example of this solid-form graphic capability right here in the same block print - in the background you see other mounted firenewts silhouetted by flames - that is what I mean by the graphic potential of a block print. There is no grayscale, the blacks are black and the whites are white and the high contrast is used to convey the drama of the scene. Because you must actively choose to create whitespace on a black ink field (as opposed to what people usually do when drawing, which is to actively choose to place ink on white space), woodblocks and linoblocks are very well suited for depicting dark environments, which is why the technique works so very well here. The firenewts are depicted in a volcanic environment, the sky darkened by clouds of smoke and ash. Fire and lava create light sources at the ground level, illuminating objects from underneath instead of the more typical light source from above. Linoblock was an excellent medium to choose for depicting these firenewts, and while you could certainly render them admirably in other mediums, this is a case where the marriage of medium to subject works particularly well because the artist (Alan Hunter) used the natural tendencies of the linoblock technique to his advantage.

The Skulk is pointillist pen and ink. Pointillism in its purest form is a technique that solely employs dots of ink or paint to render the entire drawing. This is not unlike the pixels used to render images on a computer screen. Spacing of the dots determines the intensity of the ink color. Clustered densely together, dots convey darkness. Spread out, the dots convey an airy lightness. In a true pointillist work, lines are not drawn, they are created by placing dots of ink (or paint) carefully next to each other. You might think, "What's the difference?" The simplistic answer is "Flow."

Even with digital art that is inherently pixel-based, artists use tools to paint digitally. Whether it's a mouse, a stylus or a finger drawn across a screen, most digital art is not rendered on a pixel by pixel basis by hand. (Well, at least not anymore. If you are an old school gamer like me, you will remember 8-bit video games, where nearly every pixel was indeed laid down individually.) When using a tool like a paintbrush, a pen or a stylus, you have the opportunity to see a record of the gestures of the artist in the work. Brushstrokes or pens dipped in ink are drawn across the canvas or page, and you can see the flowing movement of the hand in the marks left behind. In many cases an artist may choose to leave that directionality visible, harnessing the sense of motion it can convey to give convincing texture or a sense of movement.

In a pointillist painting or drawing, all the brushstrokes are uniform punctate motions. Pip pip pip. The motion is staccato. As a result, many pointillist drawings and paintings have a stillness to them. They seem fixed, no... pinned to the page. The artist must actively create a sense of motion by adding linearity to an inherently non-linear art-form.

But another by-product of pointillism, especially in ink, is the ethereal quality many of these works possess. Because the artist is using the absolutely smallest unit of pigment possible - a dot - it is a style that permits the conveyance of lightness, transparency, translucency, and shine with a medium that ordinarily tends to be quite graphic and bold. If you are restricting yourself to pen and ink, and wish to convey a sunlit window covered by a billowing gauze drapery, pointillism almost certainly the easiest way to go about it. And if you want to draw a ghostlike figure without making it cartoonish and campy, you could do no better than pointillism. So it makes perfect sense that the artist that drew the Skulk chose this technique to render the apparition.

Each of those images uses the particular artistic technique to really evoke the qualities of the beast being described.

This unmixed melting pot of esthetics is also an indicator of the scope and appeal - an age marker if you will - of the genre. Broader success, cultural acceptance and financial power bring to D&D a much more polished and consistent esthetic in later editions. The true tale of the artworks in the D&D books are told on the title pages - in this 1981 edition of the Fiend Folio, there is only a single editor followed by a list of illustrators, and nothing more. There is no Art Director, no Additional Art Direction, no Brand Managers and Imaging Technicians that you see in later editions. The variety of artistic expression has been lost in later editions due to the success of the franchise, and I can't complain about that success. But I'm glad there was a time when D&D had a smaller toehold in the world, with a little less polish. Yes, the makers of the game displayed biases in the early books in ways that were uncomfortable to me then and are uncomfortable in retrospect. Discussion of the imagery biases of older editions would make a marvelous post - it's fascinating to look at the visual evolution of D&D over the decades. But even with that uncomfortable phase in the earlier years of the D&D library, there is a silver lining, and you are seeing it here: with less polish there was more individuality permitted in terms of esthetics.

Achaierai from The Fiend Folio, 1e.

So, back to my dream. In this dream I was attempting to use a greatball to catch an Achaierai, which to my eye looks like a hybrid between a house sparrow (or two) with an ocean sunfish. I used up all my greatballs to catch this thing, sweating and swearing the whole time, because if I wasn't successful, that thing was going to eviscerate me with its front claws like an angry ostrich. In my dream I commented to my husband that I really didn't like the turn that Pokémon Go had taken lately. It's one thing to catch pokémon for fun or a friendly competition between mates, but it's another thing entirely to have to catch them just to be certain you won't be dropped to negative hitpoints in your own neighborhood.

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...And now, for the beer review.

I really do not like pumpkin spice anything. After a few decades of baking, I've come to understand the specifics of my dislike, and the specific thing I dislike in pumpkin spice is nutmeg. In fact, I'm a downright picky bitch about nutmeg and I have been ever since I remember. I had to extract the aromatic compound in nutmeg way back when I took organic chemistry lab in college, and I spent those hours forcibly restraining myself from jumping out the nearest window. Abominable. I'm clearly still traumatized because it comes to mind every October when stores start trotting out pumpkin spice everything... Pringles, Twinkies, KFC, you name it.

If I'm truly honest, I don't absolutely hate nutmeg in every application, I just think a little goes a long way, and the quality of that 'little' matters a great deal. There is an acrid and overwhelming quality to nutmeg that drowns out any other nearby notes, especially when paired with sugar. If it's been sitting ground up in a shaker on a shelf for 9 months, any redeeming nutmegly qualities seem to evaporate, and all you are left with is that dominating sharp note. So when I use nutmeg in a dish, I prefer it savory, I use it sparingly, and I grate it fresh. A single whole nutmeg can last me a very long time, but the nutmeg is actually a wood nut, and in my experience you can just grate off the top layer and the nutmeg underneath that retains far more of its more subtle and interesting flavors than the ground stuff in the little shaker jars.

Holy crap how did this turn into a diatribe against nutmeg? Right, I hate the stuff. Anyway, I don't like ale, and I don't like nutmeg, but to be fair, I'd give this beer a 3 to a 3.5 out of 5 rating. Because despite it being a pumpkin ale it wasn't very nutmeg-y and as ales go, it wasn't very bright and hoppy.  And while it might be considered a little sweet by some since it's not terribly hoppy (I swear some people think that a beer is sweet if it doesn't have an IBU rating higher than 30; sweet is not the absence of bitter, thankyouverymuch), it's not sweet enough to trigger that nutmeg + sugar = EW response in me. It's a huge bottle, and I drank the lion's share of it over the course of the evening. Spice wise, I smelled more allspice and cinnamon, but these weren't particularly overwhelming. I didn't taste pumpkin precisely, rather I felt I was tasting pumpkin's effect on the ale, which is to mellow it and give it a little more "bottom" - a direction I like to go, given that I am a fan of stouts and porters.

So basically, I found it drinkable because it wasn't particularly successful at being pumpkin-y or ale-y. Which means if you're looking for something that tastes like pumpkin or ale, you'd be disappointed. For me, in this month of undead-pumpkin-spice that will not die and comes after you around every corner, it was... acceptable. Would I buy it again? Not on purpose. But if I were forced to imbibe or eat something pumpkin spice-ish (as October is wont to do) this would be a reasonable choice.

How's that for a ringing endorsement?

For the record, my husband thought it was vile.