The Gothic Film in OD&D

Whether due to Appendix N being the popular mélange of fiction considered key to understanding old D&D’s genre emulation or other reasons, discussion of the 1974 rules seems to bypass their debt to gothic movie cycles a lot. It’s one thing to recognize OD&D’s origins in the Blackmoor campaign and give passing note to the cheesy horror movies Arneson watched on a given weekend (very likely The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle). Quite another to read the booklets as a document that emerges in that period of gothic revival in popular film, between the ascension of Hammer, Dark Shadows and others.

Gothic old D&D has been practiced, from Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque to Ghostly Affair and many others. I’m interested in seeing how much of the writing in the original booklets evokes those movies by themselves, if briefly as I prepare a campaign around it.

The Cleric

• Famously Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing in Hammer’s Dracula features, but under gothic film setting assumptions stands as an integral catch-all for every puritan witch hunter in the genre (also Solomon Kane).
• Often removed from campaigns, due to “gamey” reasons (keeping the undead scary, keeping the Fighter’s niche in armor use, not wanting to deal with the metaphysical implications etc.) Argued to not fit OD&D, argument that only holds water if one assumes the booklets as just sword-and-sorcery emulation (likely due to low familiarity with such movies).
• Demand for “non-edged weapons” is an awkward inclusion to protect Fighter’s niche, often interpreted as bad historical work regarding religious practices.
• Fits no historical understanding of Christianity but the very pop Christianity of gothic movies, whether produced by Protestants or Catholics. A functional Christianity that exists as a recognizable prop for a game because vampires in movies fear the cross. Law and Chaos become Christianity and Satanism.
• The human limitation for Clerics also reflects well the puritan intolerance and “establishing of the human as sacred and the inhuman as impure”, in my eyes.
• Alternatives to the Cleric still within gothic movie OD&D: Turn Undead available to all, Turn Undead as a Fighter power (assumes role as witch-hunter figure).
• Detect Evil represents the cliche movie scene of the hunter of evil entering a place and saying, “I sense… evil”.

Bestiary

• The specific presence of silver-tipped arrows, garlic, wolfsbane, two kinds of cross and holy water among equipment does suggest that they are expected to be regularly used, and therefore the hunting of vampires, werewolves and such are major activities that will be undertaken in the campaign. The mirror itself may be another addition to recognize hidden vampires, besides harming them, and it may have been included in those grounds before its now classic function to spy into the other room. While much has been written about the weird pricing in the list, the specific function of garlic in a gothic campaign would justify expensiveness as a game resource. The Potion of Longevity, among magic items, matches the liquid required for sustained survival and youth in Hammer’s The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959).
• Evil High Clerics and their strongholds match the satanic cults present in many such movies, for example the adaptation of The Devil Rides Out. Hammer also produced a horror film around Rasputin that could serve as inspiration.
• The undead are classically silent in the movies (the transition to sound cinema was required to make that detail stand out, so one can attribute it to White Zombie, but it’s fair to say that undead in silent film also act as such to sneak upon others, Nosferatu as classic example). Not a mechanic that comes from antagonistic GMing but genre emulation.
• The undead as under the command of priests and sorcerers of course ties back to zombie films pre-Romero.
• Encounters with animals such as wolves and rats serve as a prompt for the GM to include a nearby vampire or werewolf.
• While not gothic, The Blob serves as comparison to the gelatinous monsters, as well as Hammer’s X the Unknown (1956), which itself was related to Hammer’s Quartermass film adaptations in production.
• Although the source for the Medusa was probably just myth directly, Hammer’s The Gorgon (1964) is a coincidental inclusion of that figure in gothic film.
• The town encounter tables suggest that undead will be a common encounter, which matches the vampire invasions or evil priest conducting summoning of ghosts and zombies that are standard in those movies as common narrative situations for the game.
• Although not gothic, an extraordinary amount of the bestiary can be recreated just using Hammer’s non-horror movies, especially their films in the Lost World genre or dealing with alien threats.

Game Concepts

• The Angry Villagers rule specifically mentions horror cinema, and the presence of angry villagers is commonly gothic.
• The castles, manors, ruins and tombs (including mummy’s with its traps) in gothic film offer a much more immediate reference of dungeon crawling than efforts in tying the gameplay to pulp sword-and-sorcery (even though predecessors also feature there). Many an Italian gothic movie will be centered around a dungeon under a castle and the terrible rites and tortures that happened there.
• Stuck doors are recurrent in such films as a way of building suspense as a character tries to run from a monster. Also, stucking the door to prevent entrance of monsters in chases.
• Secret doors and tunnels are also a nearly obligatory feature, with possible inspiration from the adaptations of The Phantom of the Opera.
• Monsters’ always perfect sight in the dungeon’s darkness and any door opening for them matches the genre convention in horror movies of the monster suddenly appearing and detecting the enemy. It would be a stretch to connect the monsters’ tendency to give up pursuit after turning a corridor with the “I think we lost them” recurrent scene.
• Attention with light, the carrying of torches and candles is a staple in those explorations, as well as the slow speed of movement to avoid calling the attention of evil threats.

Tags: adventure gaming, horror