Glenn Rahman

My history with Divine Right
1) Sometime in 1979 played with my friend Paul and his older brother Phil

2) Sometime around 2004 Paul gives me a copy of the game he got on eBay because he can’t find anyone to play the game.

3) Also probably around 2004 I try to play the game with 4 other people but we give up after about 2 turns because the rules bog us down and everyone gets bored.

4) Around 2011 I decide to use the Divine Right world as the D&D world for my first 5e campaign but it only lasts 3 or 4 sessions.

5) Around 2022 I find an online group and end up playing online 4 or 5 times over the next 2 years (and hopefully more in the future)

6) Early 2023 I find out about this book and read it throughout the year.

I've always been super nostalgic about the game, even though I probably only played it a couple times when I was 9. 😊 At some point I’m definitely getting part of the map as a tattoo, I’ve worked on a couple of designs for it. It would be nice to play an in-person game, maybe with a bunch of other old people who played the game when they were young. Also thinking about using it for a future D&D campaign.

The book was not super exciting, kind of a dry history type affair, with the end section about individuals being the high point for me. Unfortunately, it seemed like no one proofread the last 200 or so pages because there were tons of grammatical errors that were kind of distracting.… (mehr)

I sought out this book about Glenn Rahman's ancient fantasy hero Rufus Hibernicus after having enjoyed his contribution to The Gardens of Lucullus, co-authored with Richard Tierney and featuring Tierney's Simon of Gitta. Heir of Darkness, though obscure, was not dear. It is a pretty ugly physical production in mass-market paperback format, published by Gary Gygax's short-lived New Infinities imprint in Lake Geneva. I'm glad to have it in my library! The story is a delightful sword-and-sorcery-and-sandal romp during the cusp of the imperial reign of Caligula, and set chiefly in Tusculum, Rome, and Capri.

Rufus Hibernicus is sort of a secondary hero for the plot, which has a mechanism somewhat like the Robert E. Howard story "A Witch Shall Be Born," where Conan, although involved in the events in his indomitable way, is more peripheral to the political scheme featuring Valerius as its protagonist. In Heir of Darkness the German ("Engle") Osric is in the Valerius position, for a series of events where the stakes are not a throne but a dread magical artifact.

As in his later collaboration with Tierney, Rahman seasons his classical magic here with a bit of yog-sothothery. But the primary magical flavors are those of Germanic "rune singers" and Greek/Egyptian Hermetic sorceries. The pulp-style action story resolves in roughly the manner of an ancient comedy, although it is never exactly clarified who the "heir of darkness" actually is! It could be Osric, Caligula, the witch Frigerd, or one or two other characters. It is clearly not, however, Rufus Hibernicus.… (mehr)