Women of Early D&D

March 29, 2018 7:11 AM

They laid the foundation: Jean Wells. Penny Williams. Darlene. Alice (Andre) Norton. Rose Estes. And more, of course, like Margaret Weiss and Jean Black.
posted by MovableBookLady (16 comments total)

That's funny, I'd always assumed Tracy Hickman was female, too. Nope.
posted by gurple at 7:20 AM on March 29, 2018 [8 favorites]

In the pre-internet milieu in which I read all of the Margaret Weis/Tracy Hickman Dragonlance titles, I had just always assumed Tracy Hickman was a woman. Until today!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:21 AM on March 29, 2018 [3 favorites]

...aaand it appears I'm not alone in that!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:22 AM on March 29, 2018 [5 favorites]

I remember Hero of Washington Square with great fondness, and the other what... dozen or so Endless Quest books Rose Estes wrote? But Hero of Washington Square, where you were an aspiring spy kid whose best friends were a homeless couple who lived under a statue, really spoke to me. Mary Kirchoff co-authored Light on Quests Mountain and a few others, Jean Blashfield did Villains of Volturnus... I need to go dig those out of the closet.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 7:22 AM on March 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman's Dragonlance novels are what set me down the path of a life long obsession with dragons, knights, wizards, etc. I owe them so much. Thanks for sharing this wonderful history.

Also, my MetaFilter name is because of Weis/Hickman. Fizz is short for Fizban, a kind and befuddled wizard, the mortal form of the God Paladine. Sadly, I too have lost my hat.
posted by Fizz at 7:31 AM on March 29, 2018 [16 favorites]

Jennell Jaquays is one of the original old-schoolers and her works are, to this day, considered to be stone-cold classics. Judge's Guild was one of the first and most successful third party developers of D&D content, and she's responsible for not a little of that. Back in those days authors did a lot of their own art (like I said, old school) and hers was actually well-liked.
posted by Edgewise at 8:13 AM on March 29, 2018 [4 favorites]

I spent countless hours pouring over Darlene's map of Greyhawk. I never played the published adventures set there-in, other than Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, but I did concoct many of my own worlds. And my favorite part of Dragon magazine was Penny Williams clever rules responses. I'm sure there is much more, but those two influences were so formative to my understanding and expectations of the game that in some ways defined my childhood, that they can't be overstated.
posted by meinvt at 8:25 AM on March 29, 2018 [4 favorites]

I also read *all* of the Dragonlance novels as a kid in the 90's and it wasn't until the mid 2000's that I realized the Dragonlance Chronicles borrow *heavily* from Mormonism. That broke my brain a little bit.
posted by runcibleshaw at 10:00 AM on March 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Count me in as one of those who read as many Dragonlance (and Dark Sun, and Forgotten Realms) novels as my weekly allowance would purchase. I still have them all. They are still on my bookshelves.
posted by lazaruslong at 10:02 AM on March 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Wells designed Palace of the Silver Princess to her tastes, and with no regard for TSR’s mandate to make the game more kid-friendly. At one point in the module, players encounter a beautiful young woman hanging from the ceiling, naked, by her own hair. “Nine ugly men can be seen poking their swords lightly into her flesh, all the while taunting her in an unknown language,” the module reads. In-game, this scene turns out to be a simple magical illusion—but the accompanying illustration included in the module that TSR shipped to hobby shops nationally was not.

“A little bit of bondage here, a little torture there, worked its way into the Palace of the Silver Princess module,” Stephen Sullivan, a close friend of Wells and the adventure’s editor, told me. After it was properly reviewed—post-production—TSR’s executives went ballistic. Seventy-two hours after Palace of the Silver Princess was released, it was retracted.


I remember Palace of the Silver Princess. I want very badly to claim that I had one of the original printings, but that seems nuts to me as an adult ...I just remember it being a tonally weird module compared to the other stuff I had played and run - which was awesome, because it gave me a sense of freedom, of possibility, of the places the game could go.

I'm still playing.
posted by nubs at 10:14 AM on March 29, 2018

Alice Norton? Oh my, had no idea. Well I might need to do some re-reads.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:58 AM on March 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

I often say I learned to read from comic books, but Rose Estes taught me to enjoy reading in prose. I owe her a debt I can't repay.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:02 AM on March 29, 2018

Here's a nice Q&A with Rose Estes about the Endless Quest series, published in October 2017:

Ultanya: Twenty Questions with Rose Estes
posted by lefty lucky cat at 11:10 AM on March 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Ha. From lefty lucky cat's linked interview with Rose Estes:

Rose Estes: Well, in 1982 I took a leave of absence to travel with friends who were part of a tent circus, I figured that it would make for interesting newspaper articles. I had been with them for only a few weeks when we set up in Decorah, Iowa and went to town to do some laundry. There was a bookcase and books that one could borrow or buy and I picked up one of R.A. Montgomery's Choose Your Own Adventure books. I realized instantly that the books would be the perfect method of explaining D&D to both adults and kids. It had been my job to try to explain the game to adults, most of whom disapproved of the game without understanding it. So, I cut short my trip and called a friend to come and get me.

When I returned I tried my best to convince the powers that be that TSR should do a Choose Your Own Adventure type of book. But the idea met with little interest despite my many attempts to convince them otherwise. Finally, annoyed that I kept on about the idea I was told that if I thought it was a good idea, I should write it myself.

The thought had never occurred to me. I had worked as a journalist, but had never written or even envisioned writing fiction. But I was so aggravated that I did just that, I went home and wrote the first of what would become the Endless Quest series, "Return to Brookmere." I wrote it longhand on legal pads.

Eventually, the project was introduced at a Random House TSR sales meeting in Puerto Rico in January of 1982. The upshot was that Random House was very familiar with Montgomery's series and agreed that it was a perfect vehicle for introducing D&D to a wider audience. I was tasked with writing three more books in the next three months which I did, all in long hand on legal pads.

Woman: Hey, this is a good idea.

Dudes: LOL. Whatever.

Woman: Fine. Doing it myself.

Dudes: Hey! We have a great idea here!

*sigh*
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:26 PM on March 29, 2018 [3 favorites]

Interesting to hear about the complicated history!

It’d be nice if articles like this mentioned there have always been roleplaying games that weren’t D&D and roleplaying game companies that weren’t TSR/WOTC, though. (Cause then, for example, they’d have mentioned Liz Danforth, of whom I am a gigantic fanboy.)
posted by edheil at 7:40 PM on March 29, 2018

Sometimes I think about how much of my mental hard drive is filled with these fictional universes....like, I can recite from memory so much of the early Dragonlance / Dark Sun stuff. I encoded this stuff in long term memory when I was 14. I am 34.
posted by lazaruslong at 6:09 AM on March 30, 2018 [1 favorite]