One Page Weapon Vs. Armor Chart

This year being the 35th anniversary of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Player Handbook, I thought it only fitting to remedy some of the realism gaps in mine own 52 Pages ruleset, taking a leaf (no. 38, to be precise!) from the Dean of Dungeons himself - possibly the most beloved page of all in that estimable tome.

After extensive research in musty fechtbueche, after in-depth consultations with American ninjas and dead-serious dudes who will cut you if you call them "reenacters," I decided to ignore everything they told me. D&D was never supposed to simulate the literal medieval era, but rather, a mythopoetic simulacrum-dimension called "Dungeon Game Reality." Hence, D&D is always correct - and thus, inevitably, AD&D just advances the correctness to a near-unbearable level, in a brief golden decade before the "Et tu, Brute?" of 2nd Edition.

Of course, because the attention spans of today's gamers are beset with daily rat-race and squalling offspring - or else, were strangled at birth in a world of point-and-click instant gratification - the chart had to be cut down from its original 57 x 9 to a mere 4 x 4.

Combat now presents a terrain of real strategic choice! Do you drop your enchanted flatchet and choke-up on your retainer's mundane awl-pike, the better to penetrate the crevices of the giant serpent's scales? From the rack of pole arms, do you grab the sword-like glaive-guisarme as the tool wherewith to Julienne that room of giant mushrooms, or trust in the axe-like power of the bardiche to dismember the killer ants foretold in yon scrawled graffito? And at last, the traditional poisson d'Avril shines forth in the arsenal of adventure, delivering a most efficacious slap to unjacketed varlets.

Future Advanced 52 Pages updates include psionic combat, aerial jousting rules, that hardscrabble hero class the Monk, and Boot Hill character conversion guidelines.

Spawn of Fashan Retro-Clone Project

Now that I've made you look ...

See, since back when I read Lawrence Schick's review in the April 1982 issue of Dragon (p. 76), which ended up explaining this ill-conceived RPG as a parody, I always assumed the review itself was an April Fool's joke on a nonexistent game.

But over the years, Dame Experience has since taught me that there's no satire like reality. Information about SoF is surprisingly light on the net, but it looks like it was a real game.

It's reviewed at length on RPG.net.

Older and wiser, the game's creator reflects on his 15 minutes of fame.

As I noted reviewing bad monsters, there's a difference between "flamboyantly awful" and "just awful." In hindsight, Spawn is just your garden variety, poorly edited, simulationist-preposterous attempt to improve D&D. What's sad is that the championship belt of "worst RPG ever" has since gone to systems that topped  bad design with worse social attitudes. The fate of such should be obscurity, not the notoriety they crave.

PS: Speaking of "just awful," have a gander at the carefully segregated official April Fool's content in that Dragon magazine issue. Um ,wow.