To Fafhrd, or not to Fafhrd? That is a question TSR’s Lankhmar campaign setting tackled over and over again. Based on Fritz Leiber’s fantasy stories focused on a pair of rogues name Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, a certain amount of the appeal of the setting for players comes from the appeal of those swashbuckling antiheroes. So how do you slake that thirst while creating an open-ended setting, without having the characters Forrest Gump their way through Leiber’s stories? Can you put those beloved characters on the cover without customers thinking they’re buying an on-rails experience (akin to the Conan modules)? On the other hand, can you sell the books without those characters on the cover?

Nehwon tries to answer a couple of these riddles. That fellow on the cover with the eyepatch also appears on the cover of Slayers of Lankhmar and I think he was an attempt to create a stand-in character that got across the Lankhmar vibes without being Fafhrd or the Grey Mouser, a mascot of sorts, not unlike the sample characters in D&D 3E that featured in art and miniatures. Since he only appears on two covers, I guess he wasn’t a huge success. He always kind of reminded me of Carrot Top. (Only five of the 13 Lankhmar books have Faf and the Mouser on the cover, but most of them towards the end of the line’s lifespan – that probably says something about sales expectations)

As for the problem of Forrest Gumping, this is probably the Gumpiest of Lankhmar adventures. The contrived plot sends players all over the known world looking for magic items that just happen to be in locations explored by Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser in the stories – the Sea King’s court, Stardock, Cold Corner, the Shadowlands and more. All the locations are translated to D&D terms with loving care, but I would have preferred a straight source book in all honesty.

Nehwon, incidentally, is the name of the larger world that Lankhmar exists in and is “No When” backwards. Clever Fritz.