They Remember Lemuria: Troglodytes Revisited

It seems to me that the reptilian folk of D&D don't have a lot to differentiate them. Consider the poorly named troglodyte: It's only distinguishing factor from a variety of reptile-men is that it lives underground, and--well, stinks.

Alright, maybe that's a little unfair. Still, at the end of the day, the troglodyte isn't on anybody's "best monster list."

But what if the troglodyte looked less like a chubby lizard-man and more like this:

Now that look opens up a whole new set of associations...

"Sinuous bodies that moved with effortless ease, seeming to flow rather than step. Hands with supple jointless fingers and feet that made no sound and lipless mouths that seemed to always open on silent laughter, infinitely cruel. And all through that vast place whispered a dry harsh rustling, the light friction of skin that had lost its primary scales but not its serpentine roughness."

- Leigh Brackett, The Sword of Rhiannon (1949)

For one thing, the Sleestak image reminds me of paleontologist Dale Russell's hypothetical Troodon-descended, dinosauroid sapient, to whom the Sleestaks bear an uncanny resemblance. For another, anyone steeped in Land of the Lost lore knows that the Sleestaks are the degenerate descendants of a once advanced reptoid civilization.

Maybe troglodytes are a similarly fallen race, and maybe, like the dinosauroid, they share an ancient lineage. Maybe they were once the rulers of the world, before the rise of mammals. Whether this civilization was more like that of Robert E. Howard's Serpent-Folk or Harry Harrison's Yilané, is a matter of taste. Maybe it was a bit of both. Note that the world they were the rulers of need not be the campaign world--planar travel exists. In any case, they ruled from a lost continent, an ancient Mu or Lemuria, what have you, until some cataclysm (the arrival of the moon, perhaps? Hey, it go Doctor Who's Silurians out of the way) drove them underground.

Or maybe, it drove them all the way to the Hollow Earth. If so, maybe an advanced reptoid civilization still thrives there, waiting for the chance to try to regain the surface world. Or maybe they changed with the eons, too. A review of Burroughs' Mahars of Pellucidar might be instructive. Even in this rosier (maybe) scenario, some of their race wound up in-between the inner and outer worlds, in caves, slowly devolving and losing their ancient grandeur--becoming primitive and brutish, and possibly anthrophagous. In short, they became troglodytes.

So, its pretty easy to see where one might go with this. Like with the Sleestaks, there maybe be atavistic troglodytes who have intelligence (or even psionic powers!) not possessed by their peers, for adventurers to encounter. And of course, there could be an army of magical biotechnology armed reptoids waiting for the chance to bust out of the inner earth and lay low upstart mammalian civilization.

Maybe that disgusting stench is smell of troglodyte victory.

Fire & Ice

"I don't think I'd go talk to my Dad dressed like that."

- Dawn K., 2001 (as Princess Teegra, attired in S&S lingerie, talks politics with her father, King Jarol)

I rewatched  Fire and Ice (1893) for the first time in nearly a decade, and the first time ever on blu-ray.  It's murky and probably not hugely better looking than the DVD--and maybe not even the VHS.  The rotoscoping and cel coloring make the characters appear completely separate from the lushly painted backgrounds much of the time  It's silly in a lot of ways and has its share of plot holes. 

It's also probably the most Frazetta thing ever to make it to film--and that goes a long way.

Dungeon Calling

As promised last post, here's pretty much the entirety of "pitch" I gave my players to give them a feel for the game I wanted to run. It seems to have worked well for those with a strong past history of D&D.  For the others, maybe not as much.  This was written before the GURPS incarnation of the game, sometime in early 2008, but most of the terminology has changed only slightly between conception and the current Warriors & Warlocks campaign.

The clever China Mieville quote at the beginning nails the adventurer even better than the one I offered up last time: "Anything for gold and experience..."

“…Apparently, there’s a few serious adventurers in town right now, claiming to have just liberated some major trow haul from the ruins in Tashek Rek Hai. Might be up for a little paid work.”

Derkhan looked up. Her face creased in distaste. She shrugged unhappily.

“I know they’re some of the hardest people in Bas-Lag,” she said slowly. It took some moments for her to turn her mind to the issue. “I don’t trust them though. Thrill-seekers. They court danger. And they’re quite unscrupulous graverobbers for the most part. Anything for gold and experience…”

- China Mieville, Perdido Street Station

All over the world there are found catacombs, tombs, ruined underground cities—dungeons. These dungeons are full of wealth beyond imagining—hoards of gold, silver, and jewels, and magical artifacts of a lost civilization much more advanced than the current one. Obtaining these treasures is seldom easy.  Dungeons are also full of deadly, inhuman creatures in a bewildering array of forms—strangely an even greater variety than in the world above.

Still, there are many brave—or foolish—enough to try.  They are called adventurers, and they are the legends, folk-heroes, or folk anti-heroes of their world. They're the Robin Hoods and Sir Lancelots of their world, but also the Jesse James, Doc Hollidays, and Bonnie and Clydes. They challenge the horrors of the depths, and wrest glory and riches from them.

Boomtowns grow up around the entrances to newly discovered dungeons.  Merchants, harlots, and entertainers seek to supply the needs of adventurers or relieve them of their loot. It is a fluid, chaotic age in many ways; the old stratifications of society are loosening, leading to opportunity and uncertainty.

And there are gains to be made beyond wealth and status. Such was the wisdom of the ancients that they were able to discover a fundamental trait of the universe. The quickest way to ascend to levels beyond the mortal realm, to gain the power of a demigod or even a god, is through the challenge of adventuring.

Quick isn’t easy. Many more adventurers end their careers with their bones moldering in the underdark—the victims of monsters, traps, or fellow treasure-seekers.

Adventurers are philosophical about this. After all, it just leaves more for the survivors.

ENCYCLOPEDIC GLOSSARY

ADVENTURER: An individual who utilizes his skills in magic or force of arms in the pursuit of wealth in various dangerous ways. The term is often used pejoratively by common-folk, but just as often tinged with envy or awe. It is commonly known that adventuring played an important, perhaps central, role in the rites of the GODMAKERS.  This does not endear the activity to religious or temporal authorities, though there is a degree of hypocrisy in their attitudes in that many of society’s leaders are former adventurers themselves, or at least the descendents of such.

ASCENDED, the: IMMORTALS who were once mortals.

ALIGNMENT: The name given to the moral “colors” of the spectrum of magical energies emanating from the Outer Planes of the GREAT WHEEL and infusing the PRIME MATERIAL PLANE. These are envisioned as matrix of the interactions of two axes—Good (eusocial, empathetic) versus Evil (antisocial, egoist), and Law (rules-based, stable) versus Chaos (anarchic, mutable). "Neutral" generally describes a state not strongly attuned to the poles of either axis, but can also refer to energies of balance.

CLERIC: Originally, the name used for a priest of a religious militant order, many of which were established for adventuring in service of their temple. Their ritual investment allows the practice of theurgy, wherein the cleric acts as a conduit for divine energies to cast spells. Over time, the term came to be applied more broadly to any theurgist, including non-militant priests or even laity.

DELVER: An ADVENTURER involved in exploring (i.e. looting) a DUNGEON.

DEMIHUMAN: Subspecies or closely related species to mankind, which are generally amicable and take part in human societies. DWARVES, ELVES, GNOMES and HALFLINGS are the most prominent examples.

DEMON: The colloquial name for the beings of the Abyss, primordial beings aligned to chaos and evil utterly devoted to the ultimate dissolution of matter.

DEVIL: The colloquial name for the hierarchical, egoist beings of the Nine Hells who seek to overthrow the current order of the multiverse. Legend holds that devils were initially soldiers for the gods in their war against the DEMONS and other chaotic forces in early creation before rebelling against their former masters.

DUNGEON: Most common name for the seemingly artificial, subterranean complexes found throughout the world. Most dungeons are ancient (from the time of the EMPIRE OF GODMAKERS, or before), though some date to known historic times. They are frequently inhabited by multiple species of exotic monsters, some found in no other environment. The monsters seem to be imprisoned there, hence the name. Some sages have pointed out the obviously magical nature of these environments, noting that the creatures residing in dungeons often have no visible means of sustenance, ensconced torches often seem to burn perpetually, and traps have been found to “reset” themselves after a space of time. The Godmakers believed the dungeons to be essential challenges for heroes on the path to apotheosis.

DUNGEON MASTERS: The putative beings or culture responsible for the creation of the majority of ancient DUNGEONS. They may or may not have been the same as the GODMAKERS.

DWARF: A DEMIHUMAN species with short stature and stocky builds. Dwarves are adapted to colder, mountainous climes, but often are at least semi-subterranean. As a group, they are known as fierce warriors and great artificers.

DRUID: Adherents to ancient cults in the service of the balance of nature. Druids are able to channel energies in the manner of CLERICS, though they serve an ideal or force rather than an IMMORTAL.

ELF: A DEMIHUMAN species close enough related to mankind to interbreed. Elves are theorized to have been magically uplifted (perhaps by an IMMORTAL patron) from base humanity—they are longer lived, more graceful and beautiful, and adept at arcane arts.

GODMAKERS, EMPIRE OF: An ancient hegemony spanning most of the known world.  The central rite of Godmaker society was the creation of new IMMORTALS by several paths their sages had discovered. Ultimately, the machinations of these Immortals and the erstwhile seekers of immortality caused their culture to collapse and led to large areas being devastated by arcane weapons of mass destruction. Historians argue over whether the DUNGEON MASTERS were of the same cultural lineage as the Godmakers, or preceded them.

GREAT WHEEL: The common model of the structure of the OUTER PLANES. While it in no way accurately represents the reality of these realms, whose actual structure is multidimensional and beyond human understanding, it conveys the metaphysical relationships between them.

HALFLING: Child-sized DEMIHUMANS often living close to human settlements.

HUMANOIDS: Anthropoid sapients mostly inimical to humankind. This includes orcs, goblins and related species.

IMMORTALS: Gods and god-like beings. The ASCENDED are Immortals who were formerly mortal, but acquired god-level power through various means. Some philosophers have hypothesized that all Immortals are ascended, but theologians ridicule this idea. Whatever there origins, all gods derive their magical abilities from one of the OUTER PLANES and must adhere to its ALIGNMENT.

MAGE: A practitioner of the art and science of ARCANE spellcasting, often also referred to as a wizard. Mage’s research and collect formulae for harnessing the raw energy of the multiverse for thaumaturgic purposes. These are formulae are ritually reduced to sigils which the mage imprints upon his consciousness to later released in a casting. Mage’s are barred by the interference of the Immortals from spells of healing or resurrection.

MONK: Generally refers to a member of a monastic religious order, but in the sphere of ADVENTURERS it refers to a member of an esoteric religious or quasi-religious sect which practices unarmed martial arts.

ORC: A humanoid species generally inimical to humans and DEMIHUMANS. Orcs are capable of interbreeding with humans, and half-orcs are often found among the ranks of ADVENTURERS.

OUTER PLANES: The thirteen conceptual realms idealizing the ALIGNMENTs. They are home to OUTSIDERs, which may appear on the PRIME MATERIAL PLANE.

OUTSIDER: Sapients from the planes other than the Prime Material; Ultraterrestrials.

PRIME MATERIAL PLANE: The universe, or set of universes, which are home to humanity. Based on the Great Wheel cosmology, it is literally the center of the multiverse.

PSIONICS: A paranormal power directed by the minds of gifted individuals and creatures. Its metaphysics is poorly understood save that it emanates from the individual, not from extraplanar forces, and that it is undetectable by means used to perceive arcane

So you get the idea.  While not comprehensive, it gives an overview of several of the common D&D touchstones, reinterpreted through the conceits of the setting.  It obviously something of a rationalized setting, in that many things are "explained" or given a sort of scientiftic veneer, as opposed to one which portrays the fantastic in an irrational or inherently irreducible manner.  This won't be the everyone's taste, and it's not to my tastes in every campaign, but it's what I wanted to do here. 

Another question it might raise is from what "stance" is it written?  Is it a document as might be read "in world" or a scholarly text looking at it from on outside perspective?  On that issue, I've never completely made up my mind.  I suspect that this is mainly "player"--as opposed to "character"--knowledge.  I think educated characters would be aware of most of the information presented above, but probably wouldn't understand it or conceptualize it the same way.

And looking back on it now, I think my conception of the setting, and where I want to go with it continues to change--in no small part due to it moving from an off-hand idea of mine to something others are interacting with and putting through its paces in play.

Stay tuned.

Glossary-lalia

Being something of a world-building aficionado, I love a good glossary/encyclopedia at the end of a fine novel. Good supplementary material of this sort shouldn't be strictly necessary for the understanding/ enjoyment of the work, but it ought to enhance what's already there, and if there are sequels (and with fantasy fiction there usually are), tantalizingly hint at mysteries to come.

Tolkien, world-building master though he is, doesn't provide the best of these to my tastes. Mainly, this is because he was doing something different in his appendices.  He offered up several essays to expand or explicate his background, not give a ready reference or lay the foundation for sequels. No, interesting though Tolkien's Lord of the Rings appendices may be, I don't find myself revisiting them. They're just too weighty.

The the best, in my mind, is the "Terminology of the Imperium" in Frank Herbert's Dune. Not only does it support the text for readers of poor memory or with "exotic" word difficulty, but it expands upon the text in ways that feel like bonus value. There's nothing really there that you need to "get" Dune, but it certainly increases the feeling of depth in Herbert's world. Herbert also gives us some short Tolkien-esque essays as well, which are really good, but the "Terminology" is where it's at.

I've on occasion tried to use a similar device/technique in gaming. I know some might be critical of this. Their response will be something along the lines of "if the players need a glossary for your game then it's too complicated!" but I think that's a simplistic view. The exoticness of the names in Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne might be an impediment to some players (after all, a lot of people have a hard time remembering everyday English names), but does that mean they should be barred from playing in worlds with more challenging linguistic backgrounds?

Surely the litmus test should be: is the supplementary material enhancing the enjoyment of the players, or is it serving the ego of the world's creator?

Now, there's no reason it can't do both, but the former, I believe, is the essential ingredient.

Anyway, I first tried something like this back in the days of  second edition of AD&D. Our campaign was suitably in then-current fashion of "EPIC!" and had a large cast and a continental sweep. Tad William's lists of people, places, and things (broken up by culture) from his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy was the model followed. The player's at the time liked this, and I was pleased with how they utilized it in play, but my tastes have changed, and I now find this style of campaign suboptimal.

I did use a similar approach in a GURPS fantasy game several years ago. It was less well received this time--or at least it was utilized less in session. Maybe it was the player group, or maybe feeling they were a part of a "meaningful" storyline made the player's in the AD&D game more interested in savoring detail. Who knows?

In preparing my current game, I did sort of a "pitch" document for the players so we could get on the same wavelength. A portion of that was a short "encyclopedic glossary" as sort of flavor text. This time around, I didn't intend (or expect) player's to use it at gaming sessions.  I just wanted to help them get what I was going for. Largely, I feel its been successful in that regard, though maybe one of my player's may jump in here and say otherwise...

Next time, I'll post the text I gave the players--both to further my ongoing digressions on the campaign, and as one example of how I think a glossary can be used to enhance play.

Wild, Fantastic Hazard Had Been Their Lot

"They were immediately and absolutely recognizable as adventurers...They were hardy and dangerous, lawless, stripped of allegiance or morality, living off their wits, stealing, and killing, hiring themselves out to whoever and whatever came. They were inspired by dubious virtues."

- China Mieville, Perdido Street Station

When I was in the early stages of planning my new game (began in GURPS and now reincarnated in Warriors & Warlocks),  part of what occupied my imagination was a reconsideration of what an "adventurer" was.  The concept is such a staple of roleplaying, that I had for sometime just accepted it at its face and hadn't much thought about what it meant.

Well surely Fafhrd and Gray Mouser are adventurers in the rpg sense, as is Conan (for much of his life), and Imaro (at least the short-story version--he gets a little more "epic" in the novels).  Nifft the Lean fits the bill.  Owen of Marrdale and his companion, Khitai of David Mason's The Sorcerer's Skull would probably be welcome at guild meetings, too. 

But there are an awful lot of fantasy literature protagonists, though, that may have elements of the RPG style adventurer, but also, quite reasonably, embody some literary archetype.  We've got hidden monarchs, brave little tailors, cursed wanders, battle-haunted veterans, and wrathful avengers.  Elric, Kane, Salmanson's Tomoe Gozen, Taran Pig-keeper, and Arthur, King of the Britons, are all wonderful creations, but not archetypal adventurers--if one uses the term strictly in the D&D since.

Nothing wrong with that.  In fact, a little bit more backstory in a gaming character never really hurts, provided it serves as a springboard for good adventures or adventure elements.  Convoluted backstory with no game use is really just indulging the desire to write fiction in the guise of gaming (which may not be a bad thing either, but it's beside the point).  But none of those literary archetypes really encompasses the professional adventurer that one sees emerge from game manuals or sessions. 

Yes I know, I keep saying that but not really defining what I mean.  Well, let me direct your attention to exhibits A and B at the opening of this post.  First we find Dave Trampier's cover to the AD&D Player's Handbook which encapsulates perfectly the concept I'm driving at.  James Maliszewski at Grognardia dissects it just shy of perfection here, so I won't try to compete, only amplify by quoting his cogent observation about the enthusiastic fane-robbers: "These aren't necessarily heroes. They may be heroes, at least some of them, but they don't seem to be motivated solely by altruism."   To which I might respond, rhetorically: "solely?"

Exhibit B is the quote from China Mieville's wonderful, first Bas-Lag novel, Perdido Street Station.  This is not a book about adventurers per se--any many ways, it's an anti-adventurer book--but such individuals exist on the fringes of the society.  Perhaps good aligned D&D characters might take offense at the description (though their behavior might suggest otherwise), but for neutrals and evils its a critical hit.

When I think of adventurers in this context, and not as characters in a typical fantasy novel, I begin to see a whole new group of literary touchstones.  Are the scalphunters-turned-bandits of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian that far off?  At least for a mostly evil-aligned party?  On the more virtuous side, how about Chabon's titular Gentlemen of the Road?  Moving from tumultuous history to dark future, I'd offer Case, and Molly, the protagonists of Gibson's Neuromancer.

We don't have to stick to literature.  I see a lot of inspiration in film, too.  Why don't we give our adventurers a Ennio Morricone score?  Tuco, Blondie, and Angel Eyes in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly may not be robbing crypts, but their hearts are in the right (or wrong) place.  Fist Full of Dollars (or its original Yojimbo) could almost be a D&D adventure if either director had bothered to include one short dungeoncrawl.  Probably the same could be said of The Wild Bunch.  I'd love to see a player do a medieval fantasy take on Holden's Bishop Pike.  Or even better: Borgnine's Dutch Angstrom as a dwarf.

Enough Westerns?  How about something from the Tarantino catalog?  Reservoir Dogs sort of ends like a number of my high school D&D games.  Pulp Fiction even has a scary dungeon.  From Dusk til Dawn has a whole adventuring party raiding a vampiric temple--only its cleric can't turn undead.  "Hardy, dangerous, and lawless" would certainly describe the Brothers Gecko.

You get the idea.  The traditional fantasy inspirations and their knockoffs will always have their place, but there are other sources to go to find models for the sort of folks that would brave dark labyrinths, kill things, and take their stuff.

Let's make the most creative use of those "dubious virtues," shall we?

Post-Game Report: A Weird Shadow Over Raedelsport

Last night we met for the fourth session of our D&D inspired Warriors & Warlocks game.  Despite, the desire to get "back to the dungeon" so to speak, these first few sessions have been mostly city adventures.  I've found the conversion suggestions from Greywulf very helpful in porting things over from 3e to the M&M system, as I've been using as the backbone of the campaign Paizo's Pathfinder: Second Darkness adventure path.   Despite some wariness about "adventure paths" in general (dating back to Dragonlance), there were some of elements of that storyline that I found really interesting and worth using in a modified way in my own campaign world. 

This setting is the latest iteration of the world I've used for most of my fantasy gaming since late middle school.  Currently, it centers around an Australia-sized island continent called Arn.  Arn is now the frontier for the nations of the large, Eurasian-like landmass to its east, but in previous ages it was center of various now-fallen civilizations--including the enigmatic "Dungeon Builders" who left Arn riddled with their labyrinthine, subterranean ruins, so attractive to adventurers.  Arn is the site of several city-states founded by the Old Thystaran Empire, amongst hostile, barbarian tribes, and nonhuman enclaves.  The greatest of these is Terminus, named so because it was founded on the site of the farthest boundary marker of Thystarus at a landing on the River Fflish. 

But Terminus isn't where the player's currently find themselves.  Instead, they're on Arn's northwest coast, in the narrow streets of the mist-choked, pirate haven of Raedelsport.  As supplied by The Second Darkness, the city is currently beset by strange happenings related to an omnious, inky-black cloud which hangs, unmoving, overhead.  After various interactions with the criminal underworld of Raedelsport, its finally time to move beyond the city and find out the secret of the eldritch cloud.

So that's the set-up.  Here's the cast of player characters:

• Zarac: A veteran sellsword from the eastern Arn, troubled by an acquisitve nature and a current surfeit of funds after the untimely death of his last employer.
• Gannon: A monk and thief from an abbey in the Eiglophian Mountains (yes, a lot of pulp fiction name borrowings here) to the north.  He's a servant of a obscure minor goddess, Mother Scythe, the Lady of Reaping, whose exoteric teachings focus on self-reliance and stoicism, but whose inner mysteries promote fleecing the less wary.  He's been sent on a mission for his goddess.
• Renin: A wanderer from distant Staark (think Prussia under the Teutonic Knights, mixed with a pinch of ancient Sparta, and a smidge of various millenialist heretical sects in the Middle Ages), with rare powers of the mind (psionics, to use the D&D-ism), drawn to Raedelsport by mysterious dreams.  

Like all good characters, they get me thinking about hooks in their backstories.  For instance, I hadn't really given much thought to the inclusion of psionics until Eric proposed his character.  Now I'm thinking about where the other psionicists might be hiding, and that leads me to think about Beneath the Planet of the Apes...But I digress.

Play of first module has seen the basic outline and set peices remain largely intact (in a Yojimbo to Fist Full of Dollars sort of way), with changes to NPC presentation and motivation, and some player driven digressions along the way.  I hear some later chapters get more railroady, so I'm fully prepared to jettison some of them entirely in favor of crafting our own version of the overarching "plot."

Anyway, so far, so good.

Whither D&D?

Previously, I took a look at the inspirations Gary Gygax gave for D&D. Looking at the game as constituted we see things not found in the Vance/Leiber/REH/ DeCamp/Lovecraft works, or in any of the Appendix N sources--at least not in the same permutations or proportions. Many of these elements, and later elements that evolved from them, have gone on to form the "implied setting" (as the kids call it these days) of D&D, and indeed so many of its fantasy rpg offspring.

It could be argued that some of these elements are merely artifacts of D&D being--you know, a game--rather than literal characteristics of the world it emulates. After all, who would take Monopoly's rules and structure as an accurate reflection of Atlantic City or the real estate market? How much does the game D&D really tell us about the world(s) of D&D?

A fair question. I think it becomes a more debatable point depending on how finely you want to comb the rules (rules that have changed through various editions, admittedly). I may want to comb them very fine in the future, but for now I'll enumerate the broad characteristics that have real, "in game world" influence:

1. A moral axis ("alignment"): In the earliest editions of the game this is Law vs. Chaos which comes from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts, Three Lions but then gets de-Christianized and becomes a Sword & Sorcery staple through Moorcock's eternal champion cycle. Later AD&D adds a perpendicular "Good vs. Evil" axis (generating, then, nine alignments by combining the two). This allowed for mechanics to drive the Song of Roland-by-way-of-Anderson virtuous paladin class, and the cleric.

The cleric resembles the orders militant of the Crusades, but they have a big role with the undead--which betrays their true origins--the class reportedly being inspired by Van Helsing in the Hammer Dracula films. This implicitly Christian (even more so than the paladin) character seems at odds with mostly pagan, polytheistic S&S. But it fits comfortably on a moral axis.

2. Common nonhumans: Elves, dwarves, halflings, and half-orcs--in other words, every species appearing in Tolkien--get ported over with only the slightest tweaking, for a clash with the human-centric world of the pulp fantasy. This also goes for monstrous adversaries which are way more common than in most pulp fiction.

3. Emphasis on group rather than individual action: Adventurers travel in packs, likely because of the social nature of games, but also because of the high lethality of the adventuring life to folks not gifted the "plot immunity" of fictional protagonists.

4. Emphasis on equipment and "tech": Like in the real world, adventurers need the right tool for the job. Fictional protagonists get writers to write them around needing extra stuff, but adventurers need 50 ft. of rope and 10 ft. poles. And also...

5. Magic items: In a world where magic items are regularly found and manufactured, they would become indispensable accouterments. In fiction, items are rare or whisked away by the capriciousness of plot, but not so in more "naturalistic" game settings.

The first two points seem to be related to a clash of influences. "Pulp fantasy" was the primary source, but not the only one, so there was bound to be some dissonance. (Need there be dissonance, though? How would Lord of the Rings work if it had been writen by Robert E. Howard? A question for another time, perhaps... )

The other points can be summarized thusly: adventurers seem more like somewhat reckless professionals than typical heroic protagonists. Ironically, though their power-levels and abilities are often great, their approach to things is decidedly more prosaic and "business-like." They rifle through the clothing of fallen foes, pry gold fixtures off walls, and check every room thoroughly for secret doors. Its like the difference between a real group of bank robbers and Ocean's 11.

Now perhaps nothing in the rules expressly states it must be this way--but it seems to be an emergent property arising inexorably from detailed equipment lists, trap-filed dungeons, gold equating to experience, and (often) high mortality.

There are other differences as well. The rigidness of class-defined abilities, the interaction of alignment in play, and strong classification of various sorts of fantastic beings into a kind of taxonomy. But these may be areas where we move into artifacts of simulation rather than real world details. Still, the existence of know alignment spells, or the ability of rangers to use crystal balls can surely raise "in game world" questions which would be best dealt with with an "in game world" answers, it seems to me.

It's interesting to me that with all the D&D fiction written, while most (perhaps all) of it shows the traces of these "D&D-isms," none of it I've ever read (admittedly, a small sample, but hopefully representative) actually tries to rationalize or explain these phenomena in the context of the story.

I think that's a missed opportunity.