My interview with Harley Stroh is up at www.koboldquarterly.com. Keep an eye out for weekly interviews at KQ, as well as the occasional podcast with authors such as Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, and R. A. Salvatore. Issue #7 of the print magazine will include an interveiw with Sandy Petersen.
Harley Stroh mostly writes adventures—good old, down and dirty dungeon crawls reminiscent of the AD&D modules of yesteryear. His scenarios feature vengeful rat kings, bat-riding goblins, and twisted, giggling evil gnomes who worship the eldritch crystal that deformed them.
In a Stroh adventure, there are plenty of new monsters, exotic magic items, and more than enough room for a spirited DM to improvise and for curious PC’s to wander off the mapped path. Mostly, there’s a lot of hacking and slashing without restricting role-playing and character development.
For the last few years, Stroh has kept busy writing adventures for Goodman Games and serving as the Line Editor for Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC). Recently, Stroh has written a few adventures set in the world of Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor and the first installment of the Master Dungeons (MD) line for Goodman Games.
Stroh’s 4E GenCon releases, DCC #53: Sellswords of Punjar and MD M1: Dragora’s Dungeon, show his range, as well as his love for books found in Gygax’s Appendix N. Dragora’s Dungeon has all the over-sized wonder of Robert E. Howard, as well as the grit, wit, and steel. Sellswords of Punjar, on the other hand, leaps from rooftops and races down back alleys, much like a Fritz Leiber Fafhred and Gray Mouser yarn.
The second paragraph of every DCC begins with the following: “Remember the good old days, when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was the dragon on the 20th level? Those days are back.“
Harley Stroh remembers those days, and he’s doing more than his share to keep those days alive. Early this year, Stroh and I talked about writing adventures that hook GMs.
Read the rest of the interview here.
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