Black Gate

One day, long ago, I went to a Waldenbooks and picked up a copy of TSR’s Monster Manual II. It was my first monster compendium, the only other I’d seen was a borrowed copy of Monster Manual I with the rather mundane David C. Sutherland III cover. It was this book, covered by Jeff Easley, that taught me just what it was to hold the power in your hand over a world of fabled monsters.

Still, the journey into the realm of the enemy, the monster, was on well its way with that purchase, as was my apprenticeship in the profession of Dungeon Master. That trip has taken a long and twisting road through more realms of imagination that could be spoken of this day, but nonetheless, it’s been a truly special one.

Monsters, you see, are the key to everything that truly IS a role-playing game. Sure, you could make the argument that it’s about the players, the story, the social interaction, but at the core it all revolves around the conflict. This conflict, and the experience points born from it, is inherently tied to the realm of monsters.

Simply put, to be an effective Game Master [as the term Dungeon Master has become antiquated over the decades, I guess, although I still use it…] you need to have a plethora of monsters at your disposal.

This is true of any system, but even more so in a fantasy setting, and as I started playing Paizo’s Pathfinder upon its release, I’ve had the pleasure of filling my shelves with some of their rather incredible monster supplements.

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After taking a moment to pull down the Dragon Mountain Boxed Set, I thought it might be fun to do the same with other lesser known boxes that came out of TSR around 1990. That period was actually the beginning of the end for the role-playing giant, Gygax ousted, sales flagging, and the need for fresh ideas and worlds seemingly all that the company could see as its savior.

As we are well aware, the next wave in the gaming industry wouldn’t come from the RPG table, but instead from cards, ala Magic the Gathering, but still TSR struggled to not only survive but come up with something fresh enough to gather new players.

It was here that we find various new titles rolling hot off their press, but many of the games in that period simply turned into boxed campaign settings along the lines of Maztica, which in itself is set in The Forgotten Realms.

This campaign was written by TSR staff author Douglas Niles, and although not as famed in novel fiction as Weis and Hickman, by 1990 Niles was pleasantly entrenched in the Forgotten Realms with his Darkwalker on Moonshae Trilogy. He also penned the Maztica Trilogy, including Ironhelm, Viperhand, and Feathered Dragon, but I’ve never read these three books so I can’t speak as to their worth for the purpose of supporting this setting.

Niles was challenged in this project to create a Mesoamerican world that mingles with the fantasy setting of the Forgotten Realms. In my opinion, after several so-so attempts at reading this set, he fails to deliver on what would make such a setting uniquely cool, ala demi-humans! The work tends to bog down in a kind of repetition of real-world conquistadors waging a campaign against indigenous peoples of the far south continents where the only change in the story line is that the priests actually had working magic.

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