Lenard Lakofka - Involvement With Dungeons & Dragons

Involvement With Dungeons & Dragons

In 1972, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson began to co-develop a new role-playing game, which eventually led to the formation of Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) and the release of the first boxed sets of Dungeons & Dragons. Lakofka was frequently a playtester as the rules were developed, and advised Gygax on rules he felt were unbalanced. Shortly after D&D was published in 1975, articles about D&D began to appear in his Dippy 'zine Liaisons Dangereuses. Although the names of both Lakofka and Gygax appeared in the articles' bylines, all of the articles were written by Lakofka alone—he added Gygax's name in order to preserve Gygax's copyright on D&D. Some of these articles were almost immediately republished in the new magazine The Dragon. Lakofka started playing D&D in Chicago, using a player character named Leomund. He also created a D&D campaign world called Lendore Isle.

Although Lakofka was not a member of the TSR staff, as the rules for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) were being developed, Gygax passed Lakofka copies of the manuscripts for both the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide. Lakofka edited the manuscripts, and also contributed material to both books. After the rule books for AD&D were published, he created additional spells, magic items and monsters, which were subsequently published in Dragon. He also wrote several more articles about AD&D in Dragon, and continued to help organize and run Diplomacy and AD&D events at Gen Con, which was now owned by TSR, Inc.

At the first official AD&D tournament, held in January 1979 at Winter Fantasy, Lakofka was the second-place finisher. Later the same year, Brian Blume of TSR approached Lakofka at a convention in Seattle about writing AD&D adventures, and for $10,500, Lakofka agreed to write three modules. Dragon editor Tim Kask also approached Lakofka about becoming a regular columnist, and in October 1979, Lakofka's monthly feature, Leomund's Tiny Hut, appeared in Issue #30.

In 1980, Lakofka submitted three modules to TSR, taken from adventures he had originally created for his home campaign of Lendore Isle: The Secret of Bone Hill, The Assassin's Knot and Deep Dwarven Delve. Gary Gygax was simultaneously creating his World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting, and Lakofka asked if "Lendore Isle" could be incorporated into Gygax's new world. Gygax agreed, and Lakofka chose the largest island in the Spindrift Isles archipelago as the location of his Lendore Isle adventures.

On top of his written contributions, Lakofka continued to be a high-profile player in the D&D world: in 1980, he was listed as the 6th-ranked player in national D&D standings; and the same year, as a dungeon master, he placed third in the Invitational Dungeon Master's Tournament at Gen Con. (Frank Mentzer was the winner.)

In 1981, Lakofka's first adventure, L1 The Secret of Bone Hill, was published. Reviews were mixed. In Different Worlds, Anders Swenson complained about the randomness of encounters, and that the monsters and townspeople were unrealistically compressed into too small a geographical area. However, White Dwarf's Jim Bambra gave it an 8 out 10, and liked the roleplaying situations the module afforded. James Maliszewski claimed the module was one of his favorites because it created "a very flexible 'sandbox' framework for a low-level campaign".

In 1983, TSR published Lakofka's second adventure, L2 The Assassin's Knot. Reviews were again mixed. Rick Swan, in The Space Gamer, thought the murder mystery of the plot was "a very pedestrian affair", and the adventure was "just plain dull". Dave Morris in White Dwarf disagreed, calling it "an entertaining murder mystery for AD&D characters" and scoring it 7 out of 10. In 2004, Erik Mona and James Jacobs ranked The Assassin's Knot as the 29th greatest AD&D adventure ever written.

Lakofka also continued to write more articles in Dragon in addition to his monthly column. When Gygax was creating the World of Greyhawk, Lakofka suggested that based on the migration patterns of various Greyawk races as outlined in the campaign setting, that "his" Lendore Isles would have been mainly settled by Suel. When the twelve gods of the Suel pantheon of gods were simply listed in the 1983 edition of the World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting, with no details or powers given, Lakofka took it upon himself to flesh out descriptions of each god. In 1984, Lakofka published this information as a major five-part series in Dragon.