MANOWAR: the perfect music by which “to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women”

Ever since high school, about an hour or so before I’d take a seat at the table where we met every week for Dungeons & Dragons, I’d listen to music to get me into that game-state.  It’s no different than what ball players do, you know, listening to AC/DC or some such stadium, fist pumping rock.  I needed the dice-rolling equivalent, and I typically found it in the music of Rush.  Caress of Steel was my album of choice.  It had The Necromancer, The Fountain of Lamneth saga, and even Bastille Day when I felt those historical inclinations.  Sometimes I’d put on Bytor and the Snow Dog from Fly By Night.  I’d even been known to listen to a medievalish ditty or two from Jethro Tull or Broadsword from their electronic period The Broadsword and the Beast. 

As our campaign graduated to college, I picked up the Michael Moorcock inspired tunes of  Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult.  They all worked perfectly, too.  By the time I sat down, I was ready to roll with the best of them, because you and I both know that no matter how much role-playing elements the DM puts into the adventure, what it always comes down to is that final, hack and slash for survival.  By the time graduate school came along, however, I found the band that put all others to shame when it came to putting me into that sheer I’m-gonna-kill-that-freakin-frost-giant-even-if-I-have-to-pummel-him-with-my-own-severed-arm mentality.  That band was Manowar.

Manowar have been together since the early eighties and epitomize all that was, is, and can ever be metal.  The music is hard, powerful, though sometimes fast, but always grand.  Eric Adams’ vocals can rage and soar in the same song. They are truly the heavy metal equivalent to Wagner (who is also apparently one of their music idols).  Their most recent project is teeming with the Wagnerian love of Norse mythology.  Oh, they’ve had their share of songs that all metal bands do, things like “we’re the ultimate metal band,” “we sing about evil stuff,” and “here’s our song about the Jonestown tragedy.”  Their strength, however, has always been those songs inspired by the sword and sorcery genre, and that’s what makes them the perfect band to get you pumped to sack the Temple of Elemental Evil.

Pre-game favorites: Hail & Kill, Heart of Steel, The Crown and the Ring, & Blood of the Kings.Game inspiration actually begins before you even listen to the music.  Ken Kelly, the artist behind some of science fiction and fantasy’s classic book covers, has been doing the cover art since their fifth album, Fighting the World.  And if that doesn’t put you in the mood, flip it over and check out some of the titles: Hail and Kill, Battle Hymns, Dark Avenger, The Power of Thy Sword, Swords in the Wind.  The titles aren’t misleading either like you get with a lot of other metal bands, who would have Heart of Steel be a syrupy, love power ballad.  Not with Manowar.  The title pretty much sums it up.  Heart of Steel is an anthem of individual spirit – no retreat, no surrender. 

And then there are the lyrics.  Here’s just a brief sampling: “Our arrows fall like hail/Trample on the Cover art by the great Ken Kelly.dead/Ride through the Gate of clouds/stand on the open steppe” (Kill with Power); “For The Glory Of The King, We Fight To Stay Alive - FIGHT/By The Power Of The Will, The Spirit To Survive – FIGHT/Across The Gates Of Heaven, Beyond The Gates Of Hell – FIGHT/We Fought To Stay Together, We Have Won And Have Lived To Tell Who Would Be King” (King); “Fight For The Kingdom Bound For Glory/Armed With A Heart Of Steel/I Swear By The Brothers Who Stand Before Me/To No Man Shall I Kneel/their Blood Is Upon My Steel” (Call to Arms).  I’m ready to take on an army of hill giants just thinking about these songs.  I dare you to listen to Battle Hymn without it stirring that primal urge to roll a d20.

While they have sadly never achieved more than a cult following in America (as is typical with a majority of the world’s great bands), they have pretty much conquered the rest of the world.  In my favorite review of one of their albums, the writer suggested that if Conan the Barbarian ever listened to a band, Manowar would be that band.  If that’s not an endorsement for these guys to be your D&D house band, I don’t know what is.  Now pick up those dice, and let’s go kill some orcs! 

Quite Quotable

"The greatest truths lie within, always within.  They cannot be given.  They must be found."

Tad Williams, To Green Angel Tower

Douglas Adams May Not Have Gotten It Quite Right

Space is deep - so says Hawkwind (& L. Ron Hubbard)Hyper drives and worm holes not only distort space but also perceptions.  Take movies like Star Wars or shows like Star Trek, for example.  Need to get from Quadrant 42 to Earth?  Punch a button to make it so.  Yeah, it’s a great plot device, but it doesn’t make you stop to think about the reality of it all.  That’s one thing that strikes me whenever I’m reading one of Ben Bova’s Grand Tour books.  In Saturn, for instance, the whole plot takes place on the way THERE.  Those books made me really appreciate what Douglas Adams was getting at writes in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:  “Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."  For the longest time, “really big” pretty much summed up the size of it all for me, but now I'm not quite convinced he got it right.  

One night while I was perusing through Baen’s website, I came upon Les Johnson’s The Size of It All.  Please do yourself a favor and click on over to check it out.  Talk about a reality check.  After I read it, I just had to go out on the porch and look up.  

Wow, I thought.  Space is really, really, really big.

Quite Quotable

"Knowledge can be a dangerous thing in the hands of the ignorant."

Paul Kearney, The Heretic Kings

Role-playing on the Red Planet

Adamant Entertainment's Mars RPGIf you’re like me, you can’t wait to see John Carter of Mars hit the big screen.  I’ve started rereading the Barsoom tales on my Kindle already.  But, if you’re like me, sometimes reading and watching is just not enough.  Sometimes, you have to immerse yourself in it.  Be a part of it.  That’s where a good old paper and pencil role-playing game comes in to save the day.  Look at all the choices we’ve got out there that go beyond Dungeons and Dragons and all of its variants.  Tolkien fan?  Try I.C.E.’s Middle-earth Role-Playing or Decipher’s Lord of the Rings: The RPG.  Moorcock?  There’s Elric!  (either the Chaosium’s or Mongoose’s.)  Don’t forget Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Conan.   There’s also Babylon 5 and Star Trek.  And there’s Cthulhu for any setting you can think of.   Fortunately, we John Carter fans have some excellent options, too. 

Space 1889 is one.  Heliograph republished the material a few years back, and Savage Worlds has just released Space 1889: Red Sands.  I love this game for its battles between airships and sky galleons and the possibility to reenact some of my favorite battles involving outnumbered British soldiers.  All in all, however, Brits colonizing Mars just doesn’t have that Edgar Rice Burroughs feel.  It’s just a little too Jules Verney or steampunky. 

Closer to the Mars we know and love is Adamant Entertainment’s Mars.  It’s offered in d20 and Savage Worlds versions.  I picked up the latter and was quite impressed.  It’s very Burroughsian, and the fast-paced, cinematic feel of the system works perfectly with the sword and planet genre.  There’s Green and Red Martians and White Apes.  Of course, they’ve made the game their own; it’s not an ERB RPG.  The Green Martians and White Apes look like those of Barsoom but with only two arms.  Another difference with the White Apes is that they are intelligent, have their own culture, and strive with the others races for habitable portions of the dying planet.  Adamant also adds Gray Martians into the mix, which are essentially the H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds variety, tripods included. 

Skirmisher's Barsoom d20 PDFOf course, if you are a die-hard, Barsoom-or-Bust role-player, you can visit Savage Barsoom on the web.  It’s a wonderful website offering Savage Worlds rules based on Burroughs’ books.  The site covers races, culture, technology – everything.  If it’s in the books, it’s there or going to be.  There’s also a d20 source from Skirmisher available at DriveThru RPG called Shadows of a Dying World.  It actually works more as a bestiary, covering the various flora and fauna encountered in the John Carter stories.  It was published a few years ago.  Supposedly more material was going to be follow, but I’ve never seen it.    

I also recommend John Flint Roy’s A Guide to Barsoom (Del Rey 1976).  It is a compilation of material for the original Burroughs books covering everything from pre-Carter Barsoom to language and religion.  The paperback copy I have contains several wonderful illustrations, too.

Bronze Age Miniature's Wasteland MutantAnd finally, let’s not forget the role-players who want miniatures on the table top.  There were some John Carter minis released some years ago.  They’re pretty difficult to find now; some do pop up occasionally on eBay.  Your best bet, though, is a series released by Bronze Age Miniatures.  They’re not labeled Mars or Barsoom, but they are some of the Best Burrough-esque miniatures I’ve come across.  Check out their Wasteland Mutants if you want to see a good, formidable Green Martian, and they have male and female warriors that couldn’t be beat as Reds. 

So you don’t have to settle for simply waiting for the film or rereading.  You can live the great tales of the dying, red world, and the beauty of any of these systems and supplements is that you can follow the canon as closely, or not, as you like.