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This is it, my last post about a first edition D&D product. I’ve covered them all, now. Wild. [Update: this is a slight fib, a couple things have slipped the net and will appear here in 2026, but when I wrote this in 2024, I thought it was 100% true.]
This is FR6: Dreams of the Red Wizards (1988). Coupled with the title, the wizard in this Clyde Caldwell cover painting sure seems like a creepy voyeur. Valerie Valusek provides the interiors, most of which are fairly unexciting. The temple of Bhaal is nice and I guess the gnoll with the whip is cool, but it’s weird that the gnoll has the title of constable? Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.
In the scheme of Forgotten Realms staple villains, I’m more interested in the Zhentarim than I am the Red Wizards and, despite being penned by RuneQuest co-designer Steve Perrin, they don’t really leap off the page at me here. They have always struck me as low-rent riffs on Robert E. Howards Stygians and, though Szass Tam has a cool name, his status as an arch-lich bent on conquering his neighbors just doesn’t fill me with dread. Not that Forgotten Realms NPCs have time to interact with players, what with all their rivalries with other NPCs taking up all their time. He probably gets more interesting after his god Myrkul bites it. I will say, though, that his one interesting thing was that he looked like a normal person and it is sort of a bummer that recent incarnations of him just have him looking like any old lich. In fact, I would say that one of the few appeals of the red wizards at this point was that their vibe was sort of “charmingly evil grandfather” with all the stereotypical wizard garb, just, meaner. Remember that asshole Edwin from the Baldur’s Gate games? Looked like a boring wizard, except you could tell he was an asshole because he filed his nails to a point and had a nose ring. Bring back villains who are just douchebags rather than conduits for cosmic energy or whatever, would ya? The head tattoos are a later invention and honestly, are a little too cool.
Where was I? Oh, the gnoll. His name is Hargun Skullnuckle. Constable Skullnuckle to you. He’s the chief of police in Bezantur. It goes without saying, probably, that he’s corrupt and also a member of the Thieves Guild. This is perhaps the best distillation of Thay: a place where gnolls are cops. |
