Monday, December 20, 2021

Late Era Role-Aids

Photo by Needles

I've been revisiting some late era Role-Aids (90s) products recently, some purchased at my only Gen-Con experience to date, the others a gift from Hydra compadre, Robert Parker. While earlier Role-Aids products are hit or miss, these are quite good, I think. 

One thing that immediately caught my eye was art by some comic book illuminaries: Arch Magic has a cover by Dave McKean, Demons II has one by Glenn Fabry, and a couple of Demons supplements have art by Alex Niño. Beyond that they seem to borrow both from innovations at TSR (the loose leaf monster format) and White Wolf (some of the subject matter and design), and in some minor ways anticipate the aesthetic and subject matter of Planescape.

The Demons related products (Demons and its loose leaf spinoffs, Demons II, and Sentinels and Apocalypse) suggest use in a campaign setting that is more a battleground for the forces of good and evil in a Heaven versus Hell sort of way than the standard D&D setting. The descriptions of it's demons are somewhere between Monster Manual and demonology book, both in terms of their physical appearance and what sort of requirements they have for the making of pacts. All in all, it provides a push more in the roleplaying than combat encounter direction for these beings (not that they are full stated for combat).


Arch Magic gives a whole new class (the Archmage) for sort of ultra-high level magic-users and some new, powerful spells, but the interesting part is the adventuring locales: a city built in the bones of a monstrous skeleton, The Macrodome, where a game controlling the destiny of the universe is played out, and the Red Room of madness (probably inspired by Twin Peaks).

These products feel like the creators had much more free rein than AD&D products of the era. The are no better executed--perhaps at times a little worse--but the imagination involved seems less fettered,

3 comments:

Dick McGee said...

Kind of wish I'd picked up more of the Role Aids stuff when I had the chance. They always looked intriguing but it seemed like there was always something else I wanted a little bit more and the gaming budget only went so far.

Timmy Crabcakes said...

Good finds!
I've got Arch Magic and there is a lot of fun/weird stuff in it.
I've also gotten into the demons books, mostly because of Mike Nystul's involvement with them (his later game, The Whispering Vault, was a big inspiration for me).

Dick McGee said...

You can certainly see some of the truly weird and horrifying creature design elements from the Demons sets echoed later in Whispering Vault. Quite the striking setting in that game.

Plus, y'know, it's Mike "Magic Aura" Nystul. The man's got some real gamer cred from his TSR days. :)