Overheard at the Barking Dog

Reprint (?) of 1rst ed AD&D coming in April

2012-01-18T21:50:00.000-08:00

Follow the link for details: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Product.aspx?x=dnd/products/dndacc/02410000

Doesn't look like it will be something supported outside of this limited run. Still, an interesting curiosity given all of the chatter about soliciting input from fans for the eventual new edition.

Ye olde magic items

2009-08-31T06:56:00.000-07:00

Magic items have always been an important part of the game for me. Some people prefer to have more of the action rest on the character’s abilities than what he or she is dragging around through the dungeon, but I like bestowing powerful abilities through items. Items can come and go, so it’s easier to control what level the PCs can play at, and I think the dependency on magic weapons and other objects serves as a good reminder as to the vulnerability of the characters when they’re in the dungeon. Similarly, I feel more comfortable throwing (or being thrown into) a more risky encounter when the PCs are backed up with powerful magic.

That being said, there have been times when certain items have unbalanced the game or had other kinds of distorting effects on how the campaign went. Sometimes that’s a good things, sometimes it’s a bad thing. Even if it’s not the best thing in the world it can turn a session into a memorable experience and help develop character motivation. Here are some examples from over the years. All of them are weapons of one kind or another.

The Glyptar sword: Technically this isn’t actually a magic item. You won’t find it in the DMG or similar guides. It’s actually from the second edition Monster Manual, and is a variant on one of the monsters, the Maedar. The Maedar is the male companion to the medusa, and instead of being able to turn things to stone they can pass through stone as if it were nothing. On top of that, these critters can occasionally find themselves trapped in swords. When that happens they bestow the ability to cut through stone to the sword, effectively turning the weapon into a handy way to get around a dungeon or to break into (or out of) a stronghold or other structure. This can be a more toned down version of the Rod of Passage. Our group received one after defeating a medusa and her maedar mate. Hilarity ensured as he broke people out of jail, cut our way through catacombs, and struck fear into the hearts of golems everywhere.

Acidic Dagger: I think this was a variation on the Dagger of Venom, although instead of injecting a deadly poison it instead produced an acidic substance that would eat through pretty much anything. The DM eventually got fed up with the weapon’s ability to get the party thief out of any situation he could throw at him, a problem which he tried to solve by having the weapon lose its magic through a disenchanter or something like that. However, rather than accepting this and moving on, the player of the character who had the item became obsessed with re-enchanting the item, and dragged everyone on a wild-goose chase to find the means of making it work again. That eventually happened, although it was much more toned down in its new form. Having a player-originated motivation for the campaign was interesting, but I think of all of the items mentioned here, this one was by far the most disruptive to the game.

Breaker of the Ninth Chain: This is a near-artifact level Holy Avenger scimitar from the Ruined Kingdom’s module for Al-Qadim. It’s like a regular Holy Avenger but its damage bonus is against Lawful Evil, it has two or three detection abilities, and it deals double damage against the Geomancers and their allies. The author of the module tried to balance it a bit by making it a bit of a pest, but it was still really, really powerful in our group. We had some trouble with the “end boss” of the module, but having the weapon was really the only thing that made it possible in the first place. Being able to cut down her bearded devils bodyguards in a single hit was just crazy, and as I recall it only took a round of combat or two for the paladin to make puree out of her once he got past her defenses. Even against non-geomancer foes it was still really powerful. I think having the damage bonus against Lawful Evil is a lot stronger than Chaotic Evil. That way you can cut up things like githyanki, beholders, and red dragons like there’s no tomorrow. The sword was eventually lost to THE TALONS card from a deck of many things (in the story recounted in the post before this one), which was both sad but a sign of relief for everyone.

Cliff’s Harpoon: This item doesn’t have a real name, so I’ll just call it by the character’s name. This was actually an item that one of my characters (Cliff Ahab) possessed for many a year. Cliff was a whaler-turned adventurer, so his weapon of choice was a harpoon. He joined an ongoing campaign at level one, so the DM thought he could balance things out with a magic item. The item? A +5 returning harpoon. I will tell you now that the DM rued the day he let that happen. Cliff quickly level up to the point where he could fight well, and with his magical harpoon he was a terror in both melee and ranged combat. Also, he fought with a harpoon, which is just badass. The weapon was eventually destroyed when Cliff was tossed into a pit of molten lava by a lich. He has yet to find a second magical harpoon. I’ve considered retiring him many a time just because it’s no fun playing Cliff without a magic harpoon.

Twilight Doom: This is another powerful weapon that Cliff had hauled around for some time. It came from a second edition Forgotten Realms module, although I forget which one. Cliff was able to pry it from the hands of a Death Knight, but not before the creature took one of his hands with the blade. Twilight Doom is, in addition to other things, a sword of sharpness. It’s also a +4 two handed sword that bestows fire giant strength, at least two detection abilities, the ability to heal the wielder once per day, and the ability to disintegrate Lawful Good opponents. Yes, the sword is evil. It eventually corrupted Cliff, but not half as much as it did one of his followers, who, at the sword’s suggestion, lead Cliff into a trap where he could be killed and all of his items taken. That follower now wields the blade, and is a major villain of the campaign.

Sometimes you draw THE TALONS!

2009-08-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

The Deck of Many Things is a cruel mistress. It offers some powerful boons to whoever might draw the right card, but more often than not you find yourself facing the grim reaper, trapped in another dimension, or the target of a powerful otherworldly being’s wicked schemes. And yet despite all of those risks it’s very hard to resist a draw from the deck for more than a few dungeon-crawlers. A lot of D&D characters (and, let’s face it, their players) are quire greedy and motivated primarily by the chance to achieve great fame and power, and that ambition can easily blind one to the dangers involved in taking a card. Granted, it can be a practically effortless way to gain a tremendous amount of power or wealth, but from my experience it rarely works out that way.

Why bring this up? A character in one of the groups I play with was recently faced with the dilemma of the Deck, although with an interesting twist. Usually the Deck of Many Things is used for the chance at expanding personal power and/or wealth, and, from my experience, outside of the dungeon and the adventure itself (usually in the safety of a stronghold or the like). However, in this case it was a last-ditch effort to save a friend. The character in question was a paladin, and he and his henchmen had set themselves up as self-styled vampire hunters. The paladin was tricked out with all kinds of incredibly powerful magic items, so he was rarely in any real danger on such expeditions, but his henchmen were quite vulnerable. Still, they went were he went, and more often than not that meant heading out to some isolated graveyard, derelict mansion or the like in search of bloodsuckers. Thus when one of the henchmen was slain by the vampire the paladin decided that he had to do everything he could to save his friend from the horrible fate of becoming an undead. As luck would have it, the vampire’s treasure included a Deck of Many Things, which the paladin decided to draw from in the hope of gaining the means of saving his friend and ally.

Long story short, it didn’t work out that way. The poor sap was hit with everything BUT a card that could help him. He lost a point of intelligence and a healthy dose of experience points, was forced to either change his alignment or be judged (pretty much fatal for a paladin), and, to top it all off, THE TALONS! This was an eleventh level character that had been played all the way from level one, and through some pretty tough modules, so he was decked out. An intelligent Holy Avenger, a suit of enchanted plate mail that offered protection from fire, the Shield of Greyhawk, a powerful ring that warded off energy drain, gauntlets of ogre power, and a cloak of resistance. On top of that he also had a castle/fortress where he defended the weak from the local tyrant and a not-insignificant amount of gold and treasure (for a paladin anyway). But because of one card all of that disappeared in a flash. And to make matters worse, his friends was still dead. And he was no longer a paladin!

That was one of the harshest things I have ever seen in a D&D game. Say what you will about “save or die” and the like, I don’t think I could imagine a more devastating end to an adventure. This character was eleventh level, and by that point in a PC’s career he or she could probably be raised from the dead quite easily, but gaining back everything you lost over years and years of playing is not a task I would want to be faced with anytime soon. In fact, most of us thought that was the end of the character then and there, but the player decided he could continue. It would be hard, but he was determined to give it a go. He borrowed some left-over items from his party-members and set out to redeem himself. His first action? Rescue his dead, soon-to-be-a-vampire friend! That, my friends, is how paladins roll. His reward? Redemption that restored his class and another shot at claiming a holy sword. Now that is turning lemons into lawful good lemonade.

Boardgamegeek meets D&D?

2009-08-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

For those not in the know, Boardgamegeek is a user-created-content-driven website about boardgames that has an entry for everything from the everliving Monopoly to the most obscure Eastern European "Guess Who?" variant that you could dream of. Naturally the more popular games have the most thorough entries, but even some of the lesser-known titles have pretty good writes up for those trying to track down a copy or just looking to see what's out there. It's not exactly a social-networking site, but because it's mostly user-created stuff there's a pretty strong sense of identity (if not necessarily community) about gamerdom among the users. There's a lot of useful information available in the form of reviews, session reports, and even rules clarifications and errata, and some of the image galleries are pretty interesting if you're looking to trick out your copy of Settler with a pizzeria theme or whatever. For years the people who ran the site have been talking about doing something similar for RPGs, but it never took off.

Until now!

User-created content and RPGs seem to go hand in hand, so this could be a great thing. Blog-networks and webforums take care of that need to some extent, but everyone is spread out, tucked away in their private corner of the interwebs so there isn't a lot of chatter between group A and group B. But I also wonder if the faction-oriented mindset of so many gamers will keep the new site from taking off like BBG did and becoming something of a hub for the RPG community (do we even want/need that?). BBG always had the "Euro-games" vs "Ameritrash" thing going on, but that was always mostly a joke about the diversity of the industry and the way games are produced. However, RPG people seem to be a bit less humorous in their identification with one playing style over another, and basically have no interest in other games unless it's about telling other players how stupid they are for playing system X rather than Z, so I guess we'll have to see how that shapes up. The way in which the site develops might depend a lot on what kind of people start laying down the ground-work with the opening salvo of reviews and the like.

I also wonder to what extent RPGs need that kind of a database like website. Most boardgamers I know have a fair share of games and are always looking to pick up something new, so having access to that kind of information is really useful. However, RPG people tend to stick with one or two systems for as long as they can. Yeah, new editions will shake things up, and sometimes when you relocate you have to go with whatever you can find, but my impression is that the D&D people aren't going to be looking up information on In Nomine as much as they will be arguing over the merits of supplement X and edition Y in the forums.

That being said, one thing I really like about this site is that the focus is on games rather than the discourse surrounding games. I don't doubt that there will still be digressions about gaming philosophy or theory, but I think the way that the site is structured around individual games should keep everyone on message. Maybe people won't be able to talk about previous editions of D&D without going on about what "old school really is" or the what not, but I think it should shape up better than what the blog community has turned into over the past year or so.

No posts for awhile

2009-06-12T04:27:00.000-07:00

I'll be absorbed in language study for the next two months (plus change), so there won't be any new posts her for awhile.

Five modules worth checking out

2009-06-08T13:37:00.000-07:00

Everyone’s played through the classics like B2, G1-3 and such, but there are plenty of interesting modules and adventures out there that don’t get enough credit. The shift toward official campaign settings in second edition basically made it company policy that a lot of the best stuff would never been seen by a wide audience, but for those who are willing to comb through the archives of TSR inc there’s still plenty of good stuff to be unearthed. Here are some of my favorites that don’t seem to get a lot of love.

“Into the Silver Void.” From Dungeon #43. Dungeon was pretty much the place to be for generic second edition modules, although my impression is that the magazine was always overshadowed by the higher production values of the boxed sets that were put out for the various game worlds. This one, written by Steve Kurtz (one of my favorite authors), is a high-level adventure against the githyanki. It involves some psionics, but thankfully the module tells you how to run those abilities properly, so it’s easy to find equivalents spell-abilities or to fake it with a simplified system. The first part of the adventure takes place on the prime and involves a recently constructed outpost, but the second part takes you to the Astral plane on a delve into a Githyanki fortress. My group found the second part to be almost impossible in a straight up fight, so stealth and diplomacy are advised. The adventure is well written, has some interest magic to throw at the players, and makes a nice use of a great foe and a memorable setting.

“Stormcrows Gather.” This was actually published through Dragonsfoot, an online 1AD&D community. You can download it for free at their website. This is actually the third part of a series of mods dealing with a diabolic menace in a pseudo-viking setting, and of the three I think it’s the best (although the first one is also great). It’s more of a series of locations and encounters than a drawn out narrative, which is nice for DMs like me who like to drop stuff into their own campaign worlds. There are some nice rivalries between factions to play around with, some compelling NPCs, and a creative twist on the “showdown” for the end. Lots of magic items are included, some of which may be considered too powerful for the recommended level range. To the best of my knowledge this has nothing to do with the Stormcrows campaign journal on Dragonsfoot, although it was written by the DM for that group.

“Isle of Sahu,” from the Complete Book of Necromancer. This was also written by Steve Kurtz, who has unfortunately retired from writing anything for D&D. It’s a pretty thin sketch of a campaign, but I’ve found it to be chock full of good ideas, and have developed a major recurring villain out of it for my own campaign. Evil necromancers have been done to death, but Kurtz’s “dark Arabia” that bears the influence of Smith and Lovecraft is a gem. The NPCs and deep historical background really help to flesh the setting out and inspire new paths to work with. There is a lot of work for any DM who wants to use this on their own, but I think that this kind of a rough sketch can often be the best kind of aid for putting your own unique spin on a module. I’ve long been planning to revisit this one, but I don’t think I can convince the group to head back to the island given their previous experience!

“Kingdom of the Ghouls,” from Dungeon 60. This is a long, long quest, and will probably take as much time as the D series to run through. It’s an underdark campaign, but the twist is that it’s not about the drow. Instead you get a new kind of undead adversary, who presence in the world below has shaken things up for the familiar faces of the rogues’ gallery. There are a number of memorable encounters, many of which will challenge even the most well-equipped and battle-hardened party. The downside is the “army of light” part in which the heroes are expected to collect allies within the underdark for their assault upon the ghoul kingdom, which I don’t think was handled in the best way. It’s hard to pull that kind of mass combat off really well. Still, this is a nice change of pace from the drow, and it’s always nice to have a unique monster to toss at the players to throw off their expectations.

“Under Xylarthen’s Tower.” This is something that Jeff Rients (of gameblog fame) wrote for a WinterWar con a few years ago. It’s for OD&D, and captures the mix of peril and humor that goes so well with the “old school” style of play. I ran a mid-level party through it and they still had some problems with the deeper levels, but I think a low level group would do fine if they were cautious and willing to head back to the surface every now and again. A good variety of monsters are included in the dungeon, some of which are faction oriented and some of which are solitary. There’s also some interesting magic scattered about, such as the efreeti statue on the first level and the wooden frog idol in one of the deeper levels. The dungeon has a few stairs and tunnels that go to levels that haven’t been mapped, so be prepared to break out the pencil and paper if you players start to progress deeper into the complex.

Making the Mystic of Nog Work

2009-06-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

The Mystic of Nog is a class (kit actually) that I’m sure a lot of people aren’t familiar with, so I’ll try to explain it as best I can. It’s a wizard kit from the wonderfully bizarre Complete Sha’ir’s Handbook for the Al-Qadim setting. Despite its name the Sha’ir book actually has very little to do with Sha’irs, and is really an alternate “Complete Wizard” book for the Al’Qadim campaign world. The book has some of the most imaginative stuff produced during the second edition period, such as the ghul lord kit (which is a necromancer that casts spells using his hit points) and spells like Tattoo of Power (which allows casters to store spells on their bodies). It’s been one of my favorite sources of inspiration for a long time.

Anyway, the Mystic is one of the kits from said book, and, fitting with that pedigree, is one of the strangest and most difficult to use kits every published. The popular interpretation is that it was meant as a second edition replacement for the absent monk class, and given the kinds of abilities listed in the Sha’ir book I tend to agree. The Mystic’s gimmick is that instead of casting spells it can “write” magic into its body and increase its physical abilities. Thus ability scores can be raises and monk-like abilities (such as catching missiles or powerful punching damage) can be gained through the sacrifice of spell levels. The kit also fit into the history of Al-Qadim quite nicely, particularly for those who were interested in the "Ruined Kingdoms" angle.

The problem with the kit as published is that it’s so weak and difficult to play that it’s just no fun. You have to give up half of your spell levels to the Mystic abilities, and the cost of these abilities is balanced to fit their power. Thus all of the fun stuff is pretty expensive. The problem is thus that at lower levels characters will have little or no spells to cast, will have generally weak Mystic abilities that don’t add a lot to the experience (such as raising DEX from 12 to 13 or being able to gain a +1 to hit bonus for one round), and will essentially be a level behind a regular wizard due to the fact that the first new spell slot for each spell level must be spent on Mystic abilities.

I’ve played two Mystics that have tried to address this problem. The first was a multi-classed Mystic/Priest called Ool Mantlar, who was sort of a hermit with a panache for strange magic and healing. Priest spells could not be spent toward the Mystic requirements, but a greater variety of scrolls and other items could be used. It was still a very limited class, and very slow to level, but it did break away from some of the inflexibilities of the original kit. I eventually retired the character and decided to try again.

The second was a transmuter specialist who I dubbed Fid Gord. This model provided a greater number of spells levels to be spent and also allowed for the character to “keep pace” with a normal spell casters progression due to the bonus spells of the specialist class. In order to focus the character even further we also decided that he could only use alteration magic, and that his focus would be on spells that effect the body or have some relation to the earth. It was still a difficult class to play during the earlier levels, but once he acquired the “First of Stone” ability (which imitates the monk’s unarmed damage) he became incredibly powerful in melee.

Originally I had the character research a 3^rd level variation of the “Fist of Stone” spell from the wizard book. This had the same effect as the official spell, but it gave him two attacks a turn instead of one. Coupled with haste (and sometimes enlarge) this turned the Fid into a one man-wrecking ball. For example, during the Geomancer’s campaign the character took down an earth monolith by himself in only two or three rounds of combat. After that we decided to limit the Fist of Stone ability to a single hand so that he wouldn’t be too overpowered.

Here’s the character as things stand now:

Fid Gord, Earth Genasi Mystic of Nog (transmuter) 11 XP: 443,152

Chaotic Good, Worships: Arthur of the Jug

STR: 15 DEX: 17 CON: 16 INT: 14 WIS: 9 CHA: 10

AC: 0 thaco: 18+3

HP: 50

Nonweapon proficiencies: ancient history (gor), tattooing, spellcraft, dancing, musical instrument (pipe)

Weapon proficiencies: staff, darts

Languages: common, dwarven, giantish, goblinoid, trollkin

Racial abilities: 8 AC natural, pass without trace 1/day as 5^th level druid, +1 save vs earth

Possessions: talisman of protection +5, IOUN stone that store six levels of spells, rod of passage (5), skull of Iman Suhail (commune 1/week),Amulet of life protection,

2 oils of fiery burning

Mystic abilities: +1 CON (1 level), +2 DEX (3 levels), detect magic at will (3 levels), Eyes of Foreseeing (1 level), +1 STR (1 level), stone hands (5 levels), improved THAC0 (6 levels, +3), stunning blow (3 levels), immovability (2 levels), leap (3 levels), silent walk (1 level), enhanced hearing (1 level), denial damage (5 levels)

Magic-User Spells: 2/2/2/2/1

1: color spray, read magic, cantrip, burning hands, enlarge

Researched: fist of stone

2: strength, fist of the adder, alter self

Researched: iron skin

3: fly, haste

4: stoneskin, polymorph self

5: passwall, teleport

He got his start as part of a raiding party to Khunmar’s Mine, which is an excellent sketch of a dungeon that you can find online (I’ve lost the link unfortunately). We probably made it three or so levels into the mines before getting fed up with all of the ghouls and decided to look for greener pastures. After that we ran through some of the Al-Qadim modules (including the geomancer campaign) and some Celt Campaign related stuff involving the Cauldron of Plenty.

I’ve been trying to think of some new spells for him to research. I’d like to have a longer term variant of shocking grasp, but that might also prove to be too powerful. Keeping with the elemental theme I’ve also considered a spell that turns his fist into a flametongue weapon. In general he seems to do well with hand-to-hand related spells (despite his low THAC0), so I’ll probably continue to push that direction.

The character’s greatest moment actually came during the final showdown of the Geomancer campaign. All but two members of the party had been cut down by the minions of the “Ninth Chain,” the final surviving Geomancer. Fid and the party paladin (Bran Oldenhaller, wielding the semi-artifact holy avenger scimitar “Breaker of the Ninth Chain”) were trying to stay alive while fighting off devils, elementals, and the geomancer herself. The dispelling aura and magic resistance of the holy avenger were keeping Bran save from most of the magic being thrown at him, but he was slowly being cut away at by bearded devils and the like.

Fid’s solution? Teleport out of the dungeon and find another adventuring party who would be willing to lend a hand. Our campaign world is a shared campaign that involves a number of different groups, so interaction between one party and another was not unheard of. This kind of thing had not been attempted before, but the DM allowed it. Fid was able to retrieve a high-level sha’ir (and her efreeti companion) and a fire genasi fighter/mage. The sha’ir teleported everyone back to the dungeon and they all made quick work of the devils and other minions. Bran had thankfully survived the two or three rounds he had to spend on his own, and with a little bit of luck and supporting magic was able to throw down the final geomancer with his enchanted blade.

We ended up having to pay the two (N)PCs most of the magic we had liberated from the geomancer, but completing the quest and restoring the peace was reward enough. Most of the other characters from the party who had been slain were also raised in one way or another, and those that weren’t were later revived after we sought out the Cauldron of Plenty.

how I survived S1: the tomb of horrors (and received a lucrative book deal to tell the tale!)

2009-06-01T06:48:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this the other day and thought I’d share. I don’t know if people will find it funny or not, but what the hell. I actually used to read SomethingAwful quite regularly back in the day and remember there being a very funny D&D related photoshop event a few years back. If I can find that maybe I’ll post it as well. Anyway, this might rub some of ye olde grognards the wrong way, since it is after-all having some fun at the expense of one of the holiest of holies, but I think it’s done with affection. There are other entries in the same series about the Monster Manual and the earlier version of the Deities and Demigods book for AD&D.

Seeing this also reminded me that, yes, I have in fact run a character through S1 without perishing. First kid on my block! This was some years ago, and done with pre-generated characters since at the time no one had been able to play a character to high enough a level to attempt the module. I believe this was also the first published module we have ever played through. Before that everything had been homebrewed to a crispy brown perfection, although the first D&D related item I ever bought was a Dragonlance module which I had ripped apart in order to build a pseudo-D&D system from the ground up before any of us had the real books. Another thing unusual about the S1 game was the Alex was the DM, something which I’ve only witnessed maybe three or four times in all of our time playing together.

Anyway, the set-up for S1 was as such: my character was an evil human necromancer/occult priest of sorts, and he had hired out some mooks (the other players) to help him raid a certain tomb of a particularly frightening quality. Said mooks included a halfling thief (played by Mike, who basically always plays a halfling thief) and a dwarven berserker type dude (played by Greg, who was likely intoxicated with Warhammer at the time). Alex also provided some gnoll henchmen for us, who were lead by a medium level flind captain. All the PCs were above tenth level as I recall, although I don’t remember the exact spread. We also had a bunch of magic items, which was rare for us since the DM was usually a stingy old sod (that would be me). In retrospect we were probably too low in numbers to give the tomb a realistic shot, but we didn’t know any better at the time.

Despite that handicap we lucked out through a lot of the early traps and encounters. We may have lost a few gnolls along the way, but they were there to die anyway, right? I would like to think that our early survival was due in large to my character having memorized tons and tons of divination spells and all of us having a backpack full of random items to poke through holes and test the ground with. Mike and Greg had actually attempted to play through the tomb once before (albeit unsuccessfully, and without getting very far into the module as I have heard), but they didn’t seem to remember much about it. It’s possible that Alex changed some of the stuff around, since I think he also had the second edition reboot.

S1 was the first trap-oriented dungeon I had ever run a character through, so it was a whole new kind of experience for me. I knew the mod by reputation only, but that was enough to be extra careful with everything. I was also smart enough to let the other guys go first through every door way and to open every chest on their own. That paid off near the end of our trek, when both of the other characters (and most of the henchmen) were blasted to atoms by the wishing gem in the room/hall near the mummy dude. Mike’s thief couldn’t resist the temptation of such an item, and upon grabbing it naturally wished for great treasure. He was of course then crushed under the weight of a few million gold crowns that were produced by the gem to satisfy his greed. The others then crowded around to see what was up, just in time to get a face full of explosion. My wizard-dude was the last man standing!

The quest came to an end after I beat up the mummy-thing in a nearby room. That took up most of the magic my character had available to him, and I was foolish enough to believe that the decoy had been the real Acerak (spelling?). To my horror, Alex then made me work my way out through the tomb in excruciating detail. Having failed to keep a record of the dungeon that meant testing each door for traps all over again. After a healthy chunk of time I was able to escape, none the richer, but still breathing.

That might not count as “completing” the module for some, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I freely confess that there is no way my character could have survived a one-on-one show down with the demi-lich (or really any other encounter at that point), but I think getting out of there in one piece is reason enough to celebrate.

one more time!

2009-05-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

What’s this? A new blog entry? Surely I must be joking. After months and months of inactivity I doubt anyone I still paying attention, but in the rare event that someone might still be listening I would like to recommend an old campaign journal on the Dragonsfoot web forums: “the Stormcrows in Hell.” It follows a lot of the better-known modules from the days of ye olde AD&D, but they’ve all been customized a bit to fit the campaign world of the referee and the cast of characters and history that he and his players have developed over the years. Campaign journals are by-and-large quite forgettable and not very fun to read through, but I have to admit I found this one to be very enjoyable. The way that the referee ties so many modules together and gets the player characters involved in larger plots is done quite skillfully. On top of that, it really made me want to play D&D again.

link: http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1289

Speaking of which, there actually has been some gaming-related activities as of late. Mostly some old Dungeon Magazine modules, including such greats as “Mud Sorcerer’s Tomb’ and ‘Into the Silver Realm.” Some of the higher-level modules are pretty generous with the magic-loot, which is a bit new for my group since we’ve traditionally been pretty stingy with that kind of thing. Still, the characters are, after years and years of play, pretty high level now, so it makes sense that they be armed with appropriately ridiculous weapons and the like. My Al-Qadim Mamluk warrior Aberax has almost completed his collection of magical scimitars, which includes a lot of bizarre, semi-overpowered/semi-cursed items from the published modules such as the genie-slaying sword and the “definitely not-Kinslayer” sword from Cities of Bone. Having so many powerful magical weapons might prove a problem in the long run, but there’s something amusing about a perpetual bum like Aberax hoarding away priceless enchanted blades in his squatter home.

How 'bout them psionics?

2009-02-20T14:47:00.001-08:00

First things first: I openly admit that I have never used psionics in a game of D&D. Some might consider it wise disregard my opinion on the issue given this lack of experience, and maybe those people have the right idea. However, I am a tinker by nature and not knowing anything about any given topic never stopped me in the past, so why start now?

My first encounter with psionics happened when my friends Greg showed up to the table with the second edition sourcebook one day. I paged through it a little bit, but the seeming complexity of the mechanics kept my interest at bey. Come to think of it I don't remember seeing Greg actually use the book either. I think the perceived "non-fantasy" nature of psionics made it a hard sell for our group, and given that most of our players couldn't be bothered to learn the spell lists for magic users and priests the chances of them reading up on something outside of the core-rules was rather slim.

I recently found an electronic copy of the second edition book to page through, although to be honest I really didn't get very far into it. It still looks way to complicated to learn to be something that I would want to bother figuring out. Still, for whatever reason I've been intrigued by the idea of a mentalist running around and giving people mental head-butts. I think in general I've become more open to the idea of mixing science fiction with fantasy in the last year or so, and psionics seems like a good way to broach those two genres.

My basic idea for rehauling the psionics system comes from the magic system used in Mordeim. This was the fantasy version of Necromunda made by Games Workshop in the late nineties and early...whatever it is we call this decade. The system is quite simple: a character has power X, which can be used once per turn if he or she is able to roll over the difficulty score of the power on two six sided dice. May approach takes that mechanics as a replacement for the magic-point system used in TSR's version, since I think it allows for a nice facsimile of the repeated casting theme of the psionicist without turning the character into a mathematical drudge beast. Here are some examples:

Mental Hand (difficulty 7): 10 pound telekinesis.

Mind Stab (difficulty 8): interrupt a wizard’s ability to cast spells unless a save is made.

Animosity (difficulty 7): target group must take morale test or start arguing amongst themselves. A second attempt can try to force them to combat.

I plan to organize these abilities by caster level, following the same general layout as magic-users. It will probably be necessary to keep the number of known abilities relatively low, both in order to keep the character from becoming to powerful and to avoid weighing the game down with ability selection.

Yet another alternate class: the Ghul

2009-02-16T15:01:00.000-08:00

I've always had a soft-spot for the sha'ir kit from Al-Qadim. The way it was designed originally is a bit too clunky for my tastes, but I really like the idea of having an alternate form of spell-casting to go along with the tried-and-true Vancian system. The use of a familiar-type creature is also really cool, as they don't seem to do a whole lot normally (other than provide a weakness for villains I suppose). As such, I've always wanted to fine-tune the class and make it a bit easier to use. I wanted to keep it's vulnerability in combat and maybe narrow it down thematically a bit.

The basic idea for this class obviously comes from the sha'ir in terms of how the mechanics work, but in terms of flavor it probably has more to do with the classic European witch than anything from the Nights. In fact I think the Historical Sourcebook of the Romans campaign suggested using the Al-Qadim sha'ir for the Roman witch. I haven't given any information on the spell-list for the class here, but my intention is for it to be made up primarily of curses and divinations, which I think also echo the archetypal witch.

Ghul

Prime Requisite: Constitution

Hit Die: d4

Max Level: 10

Ghuls are hideous creatures that have been corrupted by their exposure to magic and necromancy. They appear as emaciated corpses to most, but upon closer inspection one realizes that they are in fact living beings. Their corrupted bodies are sustained by their use of warpstuff and magical energies from the Spirit World. All ghuls are accompanied by infernal familiars that do their bidding.

Each Ghul begins the game with a familiar. An imp is a good choice. Magical vermin are also appropriate.

Instead of memorizing spells as normal, Ghuls use their familiars to retrieve magic from the spiritworld, which they then shape into spells. When a Ghul wishes to cast a spell he or she must send her familiar away. It will be gone for a number of turns equal to the level of the spell sought + the result of a die roll. Starting at level five the character may subtract -1 from this roll, then -2 at level six, etc. The caster always goes last on the turn he or she casts the spell.

The chance of success is equal to the roll of one dice. If the roll is greater than the level of the spell being requested it is successful.

Only spells known by the character can be requested.

Ghuls advance as wizards but choose spells from their own list. They lose one point of constitution and one point of strength on alternating levels. No ability can be reduced below 5 from this effect.

Do not use armor or weapons of any kind.

Literary Inspiration: the Al-Qadim sha’ir and ghul lord. Older tales of witches and warlocks also provided some inspiration.

News of late

2009-02-14T09:28:00.000-08:00

It’s been a bit since my last post. When I first started this blog I had the intention of posting on a regular basis, so I feel bad about letting things fall behind. I guess the primary reason why I haven’t posted anything as of late is because there hasn’t been a whole lot of gaming going on around here lately. The Dogs of Krell game looks like its dead for now, which is too bad, but understandable. It’s hard to pick something up after such a long absence and still have “the magic” from when things were still fresh. One of the other players from that game has moved on to 4e with another group while another is pitching a new campaign that looks like it will basically be a novel that he will run the characters through. I probably won’t be joining in. The last time I played in a game like that I found it very frustrating.

I’ve returned to Warhammer Quest for a bit since that’s far less involving than a real RPG. I had forgotten how unrelentingly difficult it is though. I think of the four times we’ve played through in the last month or so the group only survived the first dungeon once. That victory was followed by a TPK in the first room of the second dungeon. It was fun to play despite all that, but we were left wondering how the hell the game is supposed to advance given the sheer difficulty of it. Damn minotaurs. If they only had one attack it MIGHT be a fair game.

On a somewhat unrelated point I just finished reading ‘Book and Sword’ by Louis Cha and I have to say it’s quite good. It’s a martial arts novel from Hong Kong that was originally published in a newspaper in a serialized format. I think the edition I read had been heavily revised since its original publication, not to mention the changes involved in translation, which I gather were substantial. It reminded me a lot of the Thousand and One Nights, which is probably my favorite piece of literature of all. The use of disguises in particular struck me as very Nights-esque. I think gamers might find some inspiration in it. And it is nice to have a fantasy-related story that isn’t so heavily tied up in the conventions of roleplaying-style fantasy.

The great whatsit

2009-01-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

“It was well said of a certain German book that ‘er lässt sich nicht lesen’—it does not permit itself to be read. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes—die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burden so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the grave. And thus the essence of all crime is undivulged.”

The above quote comes from Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Man of the Crowd,” originally published in 1840 in the collection ‘Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.’ Part of the reason why I’m posting this is because it was recently Poe’s 200^th birthday. That served as a reminder for me to mention the influence of Poe on my own gaming. I suppose Poe might seem like an odd choice for a fantasy game given the wealth of available literature that is written in the fantasy milieu, but I think Poe’s writing captures something salient about the strangeness of modern life that I think makes for good gaming material. As mentioned before I think the city is a superb setting for a fantasy campaign, and in my opinion Poe’s story does a good job of demonstrating why.

The concept of a “book which does permit itself to be read” was immediately attractive to me even when I first read this story some years ago. Although for Poe the illegibility of modern life ultimately belongs to the city I think that we can also try to transplant that same idea to other things once we move back into to a fantasy setting. In Poe’s world the city represented new forms of commerce, communication and travel, all of which drastically redefined how people were able to relate to one another. Space and time were in effect changed by things like the locomotive and telegraph, and with in that new world the life of the individual in a sea of unnamed faces must have been an often frightful one. Looking to the fantasy setting, we can see some of the same things offered through magic that we get through technology in modern life. How does magic change how people have control over their own lives? How does it change structures of power in a fantasy world?

One way I tried to incorporate some of those ideas into my current campaign was through a magical item. The item is more of a MacGuffin than anything else, as it doesn’t really do anything discernable. However, a lot of the history of the campaign world was created around this object (it once belonged to a powerful figure) and it is a much sought after item by many of the factions that battle over the future of the world. As such, it is of considerably value despite its enigmatic nature. The item is, naturally, a book. The cover reads “Empire of Anarchy” but the inside pages are completely unintelligible. Comprehend Languages and the like aren’t powerful to penetrate its un-readability. When the characters recently uncovered it (rather unceremoniously lying about in a villain’s hideout) it was accompanied by a few pages that hinted at its contents, but they don’t appear to have a sense of its significance yet.

The book is, in short, a manifesto of sorts, praising crime and criminals and generally celebrating chaos as a philosophy. The clash between law and chaos is something I’ve tried to incorporate into the game a lot, and the rivalry between demons and devils is something that I plan on introducing farther down the line. As for the state of the game right now, the book was recently caught up in a plot to overthrow a military tyrant who has been making advances toward the network of city-states that the characters live in. The book has semi-religious powers for worshippers of chaos in addition to the instructive nature of its contents (which the recently slain villain was able to gleam some meaning from).

The author of the book is known only as M. Its full name is Mabuse, which I shamelessly stole from the series of crime films made by Fritz Lang. This Mabuse isn’t a mortal criminal though. He is, for lack of a better word, the former custodian of the world. The world of Attrition actually began as something of a science experiment for a young power, who decided he/she/it had to test its power at creation once it achieved that level of power. The power quickly grew bored with the world and decided to leave behind a servant to look after things while he/she/it pursued other interests. Mabuse was that guardian.

Somewhere along the lines Mabuse figured out how to wield the powers of creation for himself and he decided to remake Attrition to suit his own purposes. However, exposure to the stuff of creation changed Mabuse, corrupting him with raw, chaotic energies. Mabuse thus became a creature of entropy and anarchy. His original physical form was forever changed (and forever changing) and he was driven mad. From that madness he resolved to change the world of Attrition once more, this time in the image of the unimaginable. He would create a world with no meaning, no order, and comprehensibility. For in what world would chaos thrive if not one without definition?

To cut things short Mabuse was stopped from achieving this. However, being a creature that exists beyond time and space he was not destroyed. The book is, however, his last tie to the physical world of shapes and definition. If he were a lich it would be his phylactery. Due to Mabuse’s incredibly power and his role in waging the cause of chaos the book is thus a prized object to the forces of chaos, and one that many believe they can use in overthrowing the forces of law. Now that the characters have it it’s only a matter of time before someone comes looking for them.

Enter the Spirit Warrior

2009-01-21T10:03:00.000-08:00

Here's another class-substitution I whipped up for my ongoing Labyrinth Lord project. This one is intended to replace the Paladin and the Monk. Neither of those are actually in LL proper, but I figure that they're familiar faces to most D&D players so I consider them part of the same genre of gaming. As mentioned before I've always had a bit of an issue with the paladin and his obvious basis in European Christianity. I believe that there's plenty of room in D&D for narrow classes such as the paladin, but I've never been a fan of the paladin's "reality effect" that I see as intrusive to the genre. The spirit way takes up some of the same ideas about religion and duty, but I think it's either far enough from any particular faith to cause the same problem. The D&D monk has also been a bit of a problem for me, although in his case it's been the mechanics rather than the style that has irked me. I actually really like the idea of a monk (Eastern or European) who travels around kicking butt, but my experience with the 1AD&D monk has been a bit mixed. Maybe if I had played in larger groups I would have taken more of a liking to the monk. He seems to be more of a supporting role than one of the heavies, so I would assume he plays a lot better when surrounded by others. I've tried to employ some of the same ideas from the monk class into the Spirit Warrior, particularly the extraordinary abilities each can acquire as they become more powerful.

The Spirit Warrior also shares the original monk's origins in Chinese culture. If you've seen a lot of kung fu and swordplay movies you've probably seen something similar to what I'm aiming for here. Think of 'A Chinese Ghost Story' and the like and you start to get the picture. As an aside, one thing I've always liked about fantasy or supernatural literature and film from China is the importance of inns and taverns. Many of the heroes in these stories are wanderers or abject figures who are always bumming around, so the inn (being itself sort of always-already stuck between civilization and the frontier) is the natural place for them to meet up and head out on new adventurers. Sounds a lot like D&D, no? I think the idea of someone having a rare-talent or being from "so-and-so" school is also a compelling idea for a D&D game. It helps flesh out the world through small details that don't necessarily need to be expanded upon. The setting I'm trying to craft relies on a similar emphasis on wandering and wilderness exploration, so I wanted to grab a hold of that body of literature and incorporate it into the game.

There are a few things that the class description references that I haven't posted about yet, so apologies if some of it doesn't make sense. Spirits and demons are two of the more common adversary types I'm planning on using. They'll come in a wide variety of forms and power levels, so they'll be something characters face at every level of the game. I'm also going to rework a lot of the spell lists to simply what each class is capable of doing. For example, the zealot (my replacement for the priest) will specialize in magic that enhances the body, such as boosts to physical strength or curses that afflict the body in strange ways.

Spirit Warrior

Prime Requisite: Strength, Wisdom, Constitution

Hit Die: d8

Max Level: 12

The spirit warrior is a member of a secret organization dedicated to hunting down the one thousand and one spirits and demons that were released from the Forbidden Temple by the former Emperor of men, who is naturally now the King of the Spirits. Spirit Warriors often travel in disguise to protect their identities and their mission from agents of evil. Most carry enchanted weapons of great power and other magical wonders, but to the untrained eye they look like common folk. Their special training grants them many mystical abilities to help them in their quest to rid the world of evil.

Spirit Warriors may use any type of weapon. They do usually not wear armor unless it is enchanted due to the restrictions on movement. They lose their class-related bonus to armor class when wearing armor (but not due to rings, etc).

Spirit Warriors advance as Magic Users. They gain abilities as following.

Level 1: +1 AC; may turn undead, spirits and demons; add half of level to damage against spirits and demons.

Level 2: +2 save against mind affecting magic and abilities from spirits and demons.

Level 3: +1 AC

Level 4: any melee weapon wielded counts as magical for the purpose of hitting demons and spirits. Gains limited spell-casting abilities.

Level 5: +1 AC

Level 6: +1 to all saving throws.

Level 7: +1 AC

Level 8: +1 AC

Level 9: +1 to all saving throws.

Level 10: +1 AC

Level 11: +1 AC

Level 12: may become immaterial and enter the spirit world at will.

Spirit Warriors must donate practically all of their wealth to their organization. They must be of lawful alignment.

Literary sources: “The Magic Sword and the Magic Bag” and other “Tales of the Strange.”

To return to the idea of inns and taverns for a moment, I'm playing around with the idea of having former Spirit Warriors run many of the taverns players will come across. That way they'll always have half-a-foot in the door to the organization and the battle they're involved in.

Drachenfels

2009-01-18T16:41:00.000-08:00

This is the first “RPG universe” book that I’ve read in quite awhile. I read one or two books from the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance series when I was way younger and still new to this whole fantasy thing. Those books were pretty standard, disposable fare of the genre, although at the time I thought they were cool because I had just started playing D&D and I liked the fact that they referenced stuff from the game like character class and the classic D&D monsters. It was familiar stuff to a know-nothing-kid who had gleamed through Tolkien a bit but was blissfully unaware of other traditions of fantasy literature. But even with the familiarity of the game I was generally ignorant of the settings themselves, so a lot of it was new to me. I think I knew a little about the Realms through overhearing friends talk about some of the computer games and the Dark Elf books, but that was it.

Looking back, it’s easy to dismiss the inward looking gaze of post-D&D fantasy literature and its postmodern pastiche. However, I don’t want to condemn it all out of hand just yet. I think it would be interesting to do a project surveying how the genre of fantasy has changed over the years as the influence of roleplaying games has seeped in and the readership has adjusted itself to match (or was it literature changing itself to meet the audience?). What’s salient (for me at least) about these books is how similar their system of production is to the stuff that is now celebrated as the classics of the genre. Authorship in particular strikes me as worth looking at in these works. Although we tend to celebrate individual authors such as Howard and Leiber, both contemporary RPG lit and classic sword and sorcery literature were/are produced in circumstances that can be seen as repressing the author’s authority in generating a work. Constantly approaching deadlines, the serialization format, and an unsteady readership would have made completing the individual work and getting it accepted somewhere more important than producing an artistic imprint. That’s why you see the use of formula and set pieces in so many of these works (even the best ones). Similarly, the commission based work and its restrictions in contemporary RPG lit places some conditions on a writer before he or she even picks up the pen or sits down at the word processor. In that sense, both cycles are be similar in that they are more bound by conventions of genre than the ambitions of the author. That’s one of the reasons why fantasy as a genre is dimissed at large by lit crit.

That brings us to Drachenfals, a book set in the Warhammer universe that I just read through last night. I forget when or where I had first heard about the book, but the premise immediately intrigued me. It was supposed to be about “what happens after the adventure” or something like that, which was an idea that I thought would be perfect for an RPG based novel. That premise leaves the “game” part alone and covers what is usually passed over by the players. In a sense the novel could therefore be seen as doing labor on behalf of the hobby. I was also keen on the Warhammer world, and although I had never really planned on reading anything from its line of literature, that fact that this book came from that universe certainly didn’t hurt.

Drachenfels is an interesting book because it looks to have been written with ambitions beyond the formula of fantasy but remains quite adept at juggling the tasks of the RPG novel. It starts with the end of an adventure but conceals the drama of the final moments of the battle from the reader. What follows is the story of a down-and-out playwright trying to get his life back together as he has been commissioned to create a staged version of those moments that we did and did not read just a few pages early. The survivors of the original battle are brought together again to share their stories in order to create the most fulfilling narrative possible. Naturally all of that goes wrong.

I think what I find most interesting about this book is how strategically it denies the reader the pleasures of fulfilled expectations based on the genre (i.e. refusing to show the final moments of the battle) but then diverts those energies to other goals. The story is a comic farce, poking fun at heroism and vanity aplenty (particularly those at home in the fantasy genre), not to mention a few send-ups of Warhammer-style gaming (through the senile old Elector Count and his toy armies). The grotesque and monstrous are also given a shed of humanity, mostly through the vampire protagonist, but also through the not-quite-a-dwarf character (who is in fact a human midget rather than a fantasy dwarf!). It’s cleverly written, and some of the characterizations are quite good. The “Warhammer stuff” is also dealt with quite effortlessly and never becomes a source of distraction or derailment.

That being said I actually don’t know if I would call this a good example of RPG fiction. While it certainly does fall within those parameters I think it’s also a bit too “different” to really deliver the basic pleasures of the genre to the connoisseur. But then again the hope of finding these kinds of moments of play and these kinds of alterations to the formula are what keep the connoisseur reading, so maybe it is just the right thing. I would give the strongest recommendation to people who are interested in understanding fantasy literature in general, then a slightly weaker recommendation to those who are only vaguely interested in fantasy, and then finally the weakest recommendation to die-hard fans of RPG lit. The Gotrek and Felix books are probably the best bet for the latter.

Meet the Traveling Performer

2009-01-17T08:53:00.001-08:00

This is part of a new project of mine, which is essentially an alternative campaign setting for Labyrinth Lord and similar systems. The style I'm trying to achieve is a blend of first edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay with touches from early twentieth century speculative fiction and some "strange tales" from China and the one thousand and one nights. I see it primarily as a wilderness based campaign, and as such most of the replacement character classes are outcasts or abject figures of some sort. The first such class I'm sharing here is the replacement for the thief class, named the Traveling Performer. It's also the most radical break from how D&D characters have worked in the past in some ways.

Traveling Performer

Prime Requisite: Charisma and either Strength, Constitution, Dexterity or Intelligence

Hit Die: d6

Max Level: 12

Traveling Performers come in a variety of forms. Some are circus acrobats and strongmen who perform feats of incredible agility and strength. Some are carnival fire-breathers and sword-swallowers who can do the impossible. Others still are con-men and charlatans who haunt the streets of the city and play upon the unwary. In all cases, these performers are men and women who employ unusual skills in order to impress an audience and generate wealth. As such, the performer class is built upon narrow specialization and showmanship. These skills can occasionally be put to use in adventuring when the performer is forced to look for other forms of work.

When a Traveling Performer character is made the player should choose a skill he or she would like to use and an appropriate prime requisite to go along with it.

Traveling performers are able to substitute their Charisma bonus to any action related to their special trade. Furthermore, each performer can, once per day, automatically succeed in a single action or task in which he or she is the agent.

Traveling performers do not wear armor. They may any simple weapon. At the discretion of the DM they may also choose one or more other weapons to use, providing it fits with their skill set.

Traveling performers also gain special skills as they acquire character levels. Roll on the table associated with your character’s prime ability every third level gained (3, 6, 9, 12). The character begins the game with one ability.

Performers gain levels as thieves.

Strength

2: The Human Giant! May wield two-handed weapons in a single hand (excluding bows)
3: Stronger than Before! +1 Strength
4: The Earthshaker! May choose to stun an opponent after a successful hit in melee, forcing that target to lose its next turn. Once per adventure.
5: The Sword of Death! Gain an additional attack against an adjacent enemy to the one you just attacked if you killed it in one blow in melee.
6: Witness the Berserk! Double your number of attacks when charging.
7: Master of Death! When rolling damage roll twice as many die as normal and choose the higher.
8: Hulking Hurler! You may throw any item within your weight class, dealing d6 damage.
9: Power attack! Once per adventure you may add your level to any damage roll.
10: Fists of Stone! Punches deal d6 damage each.
11: Slow Swings the Axe! May choose to go last in combat in order to deal double damage. Once every three rounds.
12: The Human Juggernaut! +1 to hit and damage when charging.

Dexterity

2: The Human Lightning Bolt! Always goes first in initiative order.
3: More Agile! +1 Dexterity
4: Dagger Expert! +1 to all attacks with thrown weapons.
5: Catlike reflexes! +1 To all saving throws.
6: The Artful Dodger! +1 AC in melee.
7: Disarm Trick! When attacking you may choose to force an opponent to drop his weapon rather than deal damage.
8: Acrobat! May fall ten feet for every three levels without taking damage.
9: Brilliant Leap! You may jump ten feet from standing or thirty feet from a running start.
10: Combat Ace! May attack a number of times equal to your level against foes with less than one hit die.
11: Fast Shot! May fire an additional missile in each combat.
12: Supreme Dodge! Gain a 6+ saving throw against any attack made in melee.

Constitution

2: Feels no Pain! The Performer can ignore a single attack or spell effect that deals damage once per adventure.
3: Tougher than an Ordinary Man! +1 Constitution
4: Drinker of Poison! add Charisma modifier to saves against poison.
5: Iron Skin! Gain a +6 save against all physical attacks.
6: Fast Healer! Once per adventure you may rest for 1 full round and gain a number of hit points equal to your level. This cannot bring you above your starting allotment.
7: The Unmoveable! Can elect to become unmovable, wherein the character cannot be physically moved from his or her position. Lasts one turn and can be used once every five turns.
8: “Ain’t got time to die!” You may ignore the effects of poison for a number of turns equal to your level.
9: Man of Steel! +1 to all hit die.
10: True-Grit! +1 to all saves.
11: Battle-truck! You may wear any type of armor.
12: Unkillable! Gain an additional hit die worth of hit points.

Intelligence

2: Scholar of the Arcane! Gain d6 level one spells from an inherited spellbooks. You may cast one first level spell per day for every three levels you have accumulated. Spells must be memorized as normal.
3: You got Brains, Kid! +1 Intelligence
4: Master of Languages! Learn an additional language.
5: Mind Reader! ESP at 15 foot range.
6: Knower of Secrets! You may use scrolls.
7: Weapon skill! You may use any weapon.
8: Ask Any, Ask All! Gain the bardic knowledge skill!
9: Alchemist of Wonder! You may brew potions.
10: The Living Genius! You may use your intelligence modifier in place of your Dexterity, Wisdom and Charisma.
11: Master of the Human Form! You deal critical hits on a natural 18 or higher.
12: Tinkerer! You may craft magic weapons and armor.

Literary Inspiration: Most of the ability ideas came from Necromunda and other Games Workshop games from that era. The basic premise appears in a lot of recent fantasy (I’m pretty sure one of the Wheel of Time books has some circus folk), although they’re usually as peripheral characters rather than heroes. Older films such as Freaks also had some influence.

From the grimoire of Finn Kirkjabber, gnome illusionist

2009-01-15T10:35:00.001-08:00

Here are a few spells that were developed for one of my longer running characters, Finn Kirkjabber, a gnome illusionist. He made it to tenth level before being put into semi-retirement as an NPC. I'm a big fan of whipping up customized spells for characters as a way of defining their personality as a spellcaster, although I've never been as focused on a single gimmick as some of the well-known wizards of D&D have been (i.e. Bigby and the hand spells).

Kirkjabber’s Eagle Eye: This first level spell allows the caster to see the area around him or her from the vantage point of a bird flying above his or her head. It doesn’t actually require a bird to cast, bur rather just places the caster’s gaze as if it were at a great height up above. Original used in traveling across the wilderness and the Beastlands. I think I got the idea from another spell, but I have long since forgotten what the original might have been. Another magic-user I played for a long time developed a similar spell that mimicked the effect of a telescope or binoculars.

Finn’s Goblin Ward: This spell produces an illusionary face that frightens away goblins and other weak foes when they try to enter the designated area. It has a pretty short duration so it’s more useful as a stalling tactic that a permanent solution. Used a lot in early dungeon crawls. Not so useful anymore now that Finn is more likely to match wits with a dragon or demon than a kobold.

Kirkjabber’s Charm Swap: A level two spell, this allows the caster to transfer the benefits of an existing charm spell to his or herself. Therefore, he or she could make the victim of a charm spell view him more favorably. Mostly used as a counterspell for when the fighter was charmed by devils or whatnot. Saved the party’s butt on more than one occasion.

Kirkjabber’s Impressive Shrinking: Like the spell reduce on steroids. This shrinks the caster down to a few inches in height, allowing him or her to fit through the smallest cracks and snoop around undetected. Beware of casts and other animals though! I don’t think this was used very often. Being nearly slain by the wizard’s familiar is no fun. I can only affect the caster, so it's use is rather limited.

Kirkjabber’s Marvelous Mirror Escape: This level three spell is a riff on mirror image. Not only does it produce a number of illusionary decoys, it also propels all of the decoys and the casters in different directions to further throw off pursuit. It’s basically a combination of mirror image and something like expeditious retreat with an extra movement thrown in. Probably inspired by old Road Runner cartoons or something like that.

Finn’s Deep Slumber: A level four version of sleep that affects a larger number of creatures and stronger foes. Pretty standard. I’m pretty sure I got the idea from somewhere else. A staple of Finn’s traveling spell books.

Kirkjabber’s Restful Dream: One of Finn’s many dream spells. This speeds up healing on sleeping allies so that they’re reading to kick butt some more once the sun returns. Maybe a bit of a stretch for an illusionist, but I was on a roll with all of the dream-related spells and this one seemed like it could fill a useful niche. The lack of clerics in our games made magical healing rather scarce.

Kirkjabber’s Dream Vision: Another dream spell, this one allows the caster to enter the dreams of another from a distance and give a brief message or cause a minor nightmare. I think this came from the 2ed Barbarian Handbook, which had a shaman class that did something similar with dreams. It also allowed for some conversation between the two participants.

Finn’s Illuminating Dream: A level five spell. Functions like a commune spell for the sleeping caster, who then wakes up with the benefits of the new knowledge. Actually inspired by one of the runes from the Viking book from the historical series. A very useful spell, and one that Finn uses quite often now that he’s been retired as an NPC.

The dream motif originaly grew out of a desire to find a source for illusions. Rather than go with the whole "Shadow plane" things I decided that illusions where basically made of dream-stuff, and therefore illusionists were somehow able to manipulate those materials through their magic.

When you're level one...

2009-01-12T09:32:00.000-08:00

When you’re level one…

Every coin liberated from the dungeon is a fortune! Every gold. Every silver. Every copper!

Every lukewarm ale and flavorless meal at the village’s most downtrodden tavern is a banquet!

Every quiet trip back to town with your fellows is a parade!

Game-related artwork doesn’t necessary correspond to game mechanics, but I’ll be damned if that picture doesn’t epitomize level one of D&D. The smallness of their victory is easily erased by their gleaming sense of satisfaction and the obvious hardship of the struggle they endured. The pose-like nature of the image suggests it might be presented with some sense of irony, but I think it’s also showing an important part of the game: the day the scrubs ruled the world! Low level play basically defines D&D for me because most of the games I’ve played in died out before we got to the higher levels. The hard-earned victory by a bunch of low-level punks has thus been a staple of my D&D experience.

When I first started DMing the only two books I had were the second edition PHB and the Dragon Dawn Dragonlance Module. I didn’t know how to make sense of the module, so I mostly just used it for inspiration to make my own quest (for example, I didn’t know what hit die were, so I just used those as hit points). This picture (which is the first image you see when you open the second ed PHB) also provided an important source of inspiration for me. I looked at it and thought, “Yes, I’ll have them fight a dragon.” Mind you I had no idea what the mechanical representation of the dragon as suggested by the Monster Manual looked like, so my version was considerably different. Still, I made it into a tough fight for the players, but through some creative tactics they were able to defeat the beast and make off with its treasure. Well, some of it. A lot of the coinage was destroyed when it used its breath weapon against them.

The lower levels of a character’s life can be frustrating to play through, there’s no doubt. Not a few view it as a chore that they’d rather avoid, with some going so far as to skip the first few levels all together. More recent editions of the game scale the power levels of the characters so that they’re less vulnerable at the early levels, but that misses the point for me. Those early moments of a character’s life when every second in the dungeon is life or death can be thrilling. Stuff that would seem mundane later on can be used to produce grand drama and lasting memories. Simple traps become trials of skill and luck with no guarantee of survival. Encounters as weak as kobolds and goblins are often avoided or hidden from rather than risking a needless death (or TPK!).

Another round for the scrubs!

The other dungeon

2009-01-11T13:35:00.000-08:00

I have never run a “megadungeon” game nor have I ever played in one. My group made it through the first half or so of ToEE before we got bored with it, but that’s probably as close as I’ve gotten to the classic, Lake Geneva-style game. However, that sort of dungeon-driven campaign seems to be the talk of the D&D community these days. Some have even argued that the megadungeon is the defining hallmark of old school D&D. I don’t particularly care whether may gaming is old school or not, but I do find it interesting that there seems to be a consensus of sorts about how different styles of playing can be defined and to what extent it is necessary to make those definitions (indeed, the identity politics driven nature of the “old school revolution” is perhaps the most interesting aspect of it). And I do find the idea of the megadungeon interesting even though I have no experience or great interest in delving through one. For me that sort of thing is an entertaining project but not necessarily a practical part of the game experience.

Part of that is because for me the dungeon (as a game setting) has always promised the enchantments of mystery but actually offered something closer to the predictable. Maybe it’s that same sense of “classic,” genre defining convention that goes hand in hand with the dungeon and fantasy gaming that produces this feeling. The “classicness” of the dungeon is something that I think has been worked into the expectations of players through things like game art, descriptions of play in rulebooks, monster ecology and the like, not to mention shared anecdotes between players or game designers, and that I think those things add up to a semi-enforced notion of what is and is not possible in the dungeon. I feel that those limitations on our expectations are what render the dungeon as predictable underneath its veneer of magic and wonder.

For example, the dungeon adventure is almost by definition a case of “breaking and entering” style adventure. Thus players will always be expecting certain kinds of reactions from the monsters and NPCs they meet, which in turn fosters a specific set of reactions in them as well. Meeting an orc in a dungeon seems to (at least at a hypothetical level) invite a certain kind of reaction. I’m not sure if the case is the same in wilderness or urban encounters, which I think would be structured more by the specifics of the campaign than that of the encounter space. Similarly, the physical space in a dungeon is highly rigid. Mobility is also highly limited in most cases. Part of the fun of the “dungeon crawl” is to navigate that space successfully, but my experience tells me that most dungeons are essentially linear anyway, so the process of navigation is almost always illusionary. The dungeon actually shuffles the players along through its design, as opposed to letting them seek out their own path. There can be exceptions to this, but I think the general design of the dungeon (no matter how abstract of creative) enforces a predictable model of movement and progression. I recently read an interesting post on Dragonsfoot about this, but I can’t find it now. It was a study of some classic dungeons such as the Moathouse from T1, the Glacial Gift from G2, the Caves of Chaos from B2, etc. The possible courses of action for the players were mapped out in each case, often revealing a very rigid, linear set of options (of any options were actually presented).

Neither of those are deal breakers for me. Indeed, other environments will often invite similar problems. However, what really kills the enjoyment of the large, sprawling dungeon for me is the tedium of mapping. Both the DM and the players have to deal with this at some point, with the exception being when a random generation system is being used (although even then mapping during play is often necessary). In the past I’ve overcome this problem by either using miniatures or by sticking to small, easily navigated dungeons that have obvious layouts. This obviously won’t be a problem for DMs who enjoy the project of building a huge dungeon, but for me, I’d rather be playing. I wish I was better at mapping, or at least better at communicating the layout of the dungeon to my players, but previous attempts have often resulted in confusion or errors.

My surrogate for the dungeon has been the city. I’ve run and played in many campaigns that have used cities as their “megadungeon,” the site where the players return to again and again for further intrigue and adventure. There is a wealth of fantasy literature to fuel ideas for city-based adventures (Lankhamr being among the greatest and most famous), but inspiration can also be taken from more contemporary sources, such as earlier twentieth century crime literature, film noir, or others. Let’s not forget the life experiences of the players either. The ease with which we can collapse distinctions between the modern and the medieval/fantastical in the city is something that makes it almost unique in the fantasy campaign. I find that valuable.

But to return to the topic at hand, in some ways the urban space of the city the opposite of that of the dungeon. The surface of everything is readily available and visible in the city, thus creating a sense of instant intelligibility. The dungeon is conversely defined by its presumed unintelligibility, driven by unseen corridors, traps, and secret doors, not to mention an uncertainty of director, depth or conclusion. However, I believe that the assumed intelligibility of the city can be deceptive, concealing a greater sense of mystery and uncertainty underneath. What lurks behind the doors to that house? In those sewers? Who are those people when our backs are turned? The physical arrangement of the city does not exhaust its possibilities, but rather provide a way of accessing what remains unseen or unknown. Similarly, the dungeon’s assumed mystery is often more of a case of delaying or managing expectations rather than rearranging or denying them. In other words, the expectations of having the find something in the dungeon renders its attempts at obscurity as a way of teasing out the suspense of a foregone conclusion rather than an unsolved mystery. The city is able to function on a wider level of axis in concealing the truth and providing misdirection than the dungeon. I believe it is possible to run a dungeon that accomplishes this as well, but I don’t think it is likely given the way that players are taught to play through example, rulebooks, and the visual world of the hobby.

Consider Krell, the (probably) most important city of my campaign world. After so many years of playing I still do not have a map of Krell. I instead use descriptions of its different wards and its general layout to provide a sense of the space to the players. That way the space of the city is never exhausted. There can always be one more tavern, one more back alleyway, one more mansion or stronghold. I don’t know if that kind of improvisational building is possible in the dungeon, which seems to rely on a certain amount of preparation (or either forgoes organization through random generation). The key here is that while everything is visible in the city and not always visible in the dungeon, the city can never be exhausted through the gaze. That way there will always be something new for the players to find, even in places they think they know already.

Encounters are also less predictable in the city. Players will not likely view everyone they see walking down the street as a potential threat or foe as they would in the dungeon or wilderness, but the matter is that any one individual could in fact be that enemy. The rearrangement of expectations changes that dynamic a lot and generates a different set of player reactions to what they find. The encounters of the city are not structured by the environment because it is both social and hazardous. There are assumed refuges and assumed danger zones, but a lot of grey areas that can float between varying degrees of the two. Playing around with those expectations and the assumptions based on different spaces can provide for a lot of exciting possibilities.

The “rogues’ gallery” of the city is a lot different than that of the dungeon or wilderness. It’s more difficult to pull off a dragon encounter in the city than elsewhere (outside of an attack on the city), but in many cases the spaces beneath the surface can provide for appropriate locations for monsters. Thus a band of outlaw orcs could be dwelling in the basement of an inn, a were-rat and his followers might skulk the rooftops by night, and a sorcerer may conjure demons from his library. Fantastic locations can be easily transported to the city, such as the Tower of the Elephant from Conan or the city of the rat people from Swords of Lankhmar. The ability to peel back the surface of the city and reveal almost anything provides for some interesting possibilities.

For my money the NPC is the shining encounter of the city. The faction/secret society in particular seems well suited to this setting. Krell, for example, has groups as diverse as the Hidden Hand (a band of foreign merchants and war profiteers), the Dagger in Back (a group of guardians turned thieves and assassins), the Enforcers (a privatized police force that sells their muscle to the highest bidder), the goblin mafia (which I’ve been meaning to find a better name for), not to mention the sub-groups of mercenaries, adventurers, and other scum. Thus individual encounters can build upon larger networks of relationships and lead to all sorts of madness. These kinds of factions are also easily scalable so that they can become either long-term foes or short-lived opponents for a brief battle or two.

Of course I should also say that I do not consider dungeons "badwrongfun." There are obviously a lot of people who get a great deal of enjoyment out of both putting them together and in running them (or running through them). I have also drawn inspiration from some of the dungeon modules that I have read and played through, not to mention accounts of others that I have heard and read. I suppose my point with this post is that the race to find and tag the "essence" of D&D can often lead us to miss compelling alternatives. There's plenty of room at the table despite the differences in play style that people find themselves drawn to.

Full of tinier men

2009-01-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

As is probably obvious by now, I am a big fan of the board game Heroquest. I haven’t played it in a long time, and I’m sure I would be bored with it if I ever did pick it up again now that I’ve tried more sophisticated games. Still, it made a really big impression on me back in the day and I still find myself mining it for inspiration now and then. Dungeon crawls are a dime a dozen, but this one came with furniture for the dungeon! The real appeal of the game for me is simplicity and self-containment. The obviousness of the classes (despite their lack of advancement capabilities) and the use of cards for spells, treasure and the like was very well-done and intuitive. There’s something attractive about being able to clearly discern both the game system and the world it offers through just a surface reading of the components and other materials. D&D of course offers lots of choices and customization, which, at the end of the day, is my favored style of gaming (it is hard to “turn back” after all), but I also recognize that something is lost once you go down that road.

Warhammer Quest was sort of the successor to Heroquest. Games Workshop had initially licensed a bunch of their properties for Milton Bradley for Heroquest and then tried to carry that audience over to the hobby with Advanced Heroquest, but that game wasn’t quite the success that its predecessor had been. I think they only managed to produce one expansion before killing it off. Warhammer Quest came a few years later, and was sort of the opposite in that it was aimed at Warhammer players, who were encouraged to poach their armies for monsters and such, rather than trying to bring board gamers to army games. Like a lot of the other great GW games of that period (Necromunda) WHQ was abandoned rather quickly, but my friends and I had snagged a copy almost as soon as it had come out. We were already pretty heavily into D&D at that point, and when we had started collecting Warhammer minis we just used D&D rules for them rather than trying out the game proper. I think we were hoping that Warhammer Quest would offer a marriage of sorts between the two.

If Warhammer Quest did offer the hybrid we were expecting to find it turned out to be something that actually wasn’t to our liking. The game seemed too complicated for a pick-up-and-go ordeal like Heroquest and too mindless to be a proper replacement for D&D. It had a lot of interesting features, and the rulebook was quite impressive, but it wasn’t able to scratch either itch for us. I remember it being a rather large disappointment at the time, particularly because the components were so well designed and that the scalability of the game (which could go from automated hack-n-slash to table-top rpg-lite) were very compelling. I think WHQ is basically perfect for the kind of game it was meant to be, but that kind of game just wasn’t what we were looking for.

I have since dug up both Warhammer Quest and Heroquest to be used for D&D games. I actually didn’t use minis for D&D for the first decade or so that I played, so it took awhile to come around to that. The first time I really used minis was when I went to college and had to leave my original group behind. I wound up playing with the local gaming club, who had an erasable mat that was useful for mapping out all sorts of dungeons and other locations. They also had some old minis that we used for whatever we needed. The group played by a style that wasn’t too my liking, and the campaign I played in was quite terrible, but it was interesting to see how other groups did things and I had some new ideas to change how I would do things in future games.

It’s kind of funny that while D&D as a brand has moved toward a miniatures game I’ve come to view minis as more useful in older editions of the game. It makes running a dungeon crawl a lot easier and frees up the DM from worrying about exact measurements or troop arrangement. That part of combat has always been one of the most difficult parts of the game for me. I tend to be pretty lax about what I’ll let the players get away with as a result of that, but in truth I’d rather have a much firmer grip on how things operate. Using minis and a board/dungeon tiles helps remedy that quite a bit. They can of course be a distraction as well, and no DM likes having his players paw over a bunch of painted pewter while he or she is trying to explain something, but sometimes you’ve got to take the good with the bad.

What I’d like to do now is combined some of the random-generation mechanics used in Warhammer Quest with D&D. I like the modular nature of the dungeon tiles, which can also work well with a system like Herquest’s fixed but customizable board. The use of cards for generating the dungeon and encounters is also appealing. It might work for treasure as well, since one could simply throw in the items that seemed appropriate for the party’s level and let them draw what they may. I also love the dungeon event, travel event, and settlement event tables. I would have to alter them in order to ensure that roleplaying was still possible before using them though. I don’t like the idea of a character being forced to simply accept something like “you pick a fight with someone, roll to see what happens.” I’ve actually never been a big fan of random encounters in the dungeon, but I like the idea of having bizarre wilderness encounters to break up long stretches of travel and make the world seem more populated and dangerous.

Combining some of the components of these games with D&D might also be helpful in getting non-gamers to try it out. Having a “board” makes it easier to interpret the space of the game/dungeon and having minis or tokens for the characters, NPCs, and monsters makes working out things like combat more simple for me to run. Things like distance, visibility and the like are easier to approximate and the scale of things like larger monsters becomes more tangible.

How it all began...

2009-01-08T09:12:00.000-08:00

I still remember the first time I played D&D. It was the summer between 5^th and 6^th grade, so my friends and I were all between ten and twelve at the time. This was therefore before girls, jobs, and getting into a good school became the realities that would haunt us. We had all played Heroquest many times over, but I’m pretty sure that was as far as our fantasy related gaming had gone at that point. We did know a little about D&D though,* mostly because of some older kids we knew through my brother. One of his friends from school was the local DM that a group a misfits all flocked to. We also knew a few of them through Boy Scouts and other activities, but they were still kind of intimidating to us given the difference in age and their pseudo-gothiness (although this was before we knew what goth was). However, once we decided we wanted in on this strange game we started pestering them about teaching us how to play. As with all teenagers, they were way too cool to be seen with the likes of us (we being not only dorks, but younger dorks). However, once school was out the long desired invitation finally came. Yes!

Four of us made it over for the first foray into the dungeon. And when I say dungeon I mean it in both the sense of the imaginary place that the game took place and this person’s basement. That’s not to say that he lived in a messy place. It was actually an incredibly nice house, and probably bigger than all the rest of ours put together. I say dungeon because this kid was really into creating a sense of atmosphere for his games. He had theme-appropriate music, a nice gaming table with all kinds of maps and other props, and of course appropriately dark lighting. No Cheetos and Mountain Dew here folks. Naturally his parents exiled us all to the basement for this, but we were fine with that. We were gonna play D&D damnit!

We were joined by a regular from the DM’s normal group who was going to show us the ropes. He dusted off a seldom used, low level character to help us through an introductory module. His character was an elf of the Tolkien school, which we were all familiar with even at that age of cluelessness. Although I don’t recall whether this is really true or not, I believe it was actually this kid that convinced the DM to let us join. We had met him a few times the previous summer at a Scout camp and then later at a Ren Fair. Yes, we went to a Ren Fair. Shut up. (Also, 2 Trek cons). I think he was the one that decided that we were “okay,” or maybe just useful shield fodder to help protect his character while he gained some XP and treasure.

As this was our first game we were also all handed pre-made characters. Given that all we knew before this was Heroquest that seemed perfectly natural to us. When we started playing later on our own and discovered that you could make your own character our minds were all blown. I think we spent half of our first few sessions just making and remaking characters. Anyway, I played a dwarf. Battle axe + shield and pointy helmet. My friend Mike played a thief, a class which he has only deviated away from twice in all the years that I’ve gamed with him. I forget what Greg and Matt played, but I knew one was a magic user of some sort and the other was a cleric. I spent must of the introduction to the game marveling at how badass my dwarf was so I missed out on a lot of that.

The adventure started at the entrance to the dungeon. This was also not a problem for us, as all of our previous adventure gaming experience had been exclusively dungeon-based. We had miniatures to go with one of the maps, although some of the others were just for reference. All in all it didn’t seem that different from Heroquest to begin with, but we were all still diggin’ it.

Once we figured out that we could do pretty much anything we wanted to things got pretty silly. Mike’s thief started climbing walls for no reason and the rest of the decided that there had to be a secret door somewhere for us to find. Spells were cast for no reason other than to see what they did (we apparently didn’t trust the rules on the character sheets). That blissful moment of interacting with the environment with no rhyme or reason came to an end when a dreadful beast came-a-calling. It was a hideous insectoid-thing the size of a small horse with dozens of legs and a face full of writhing tentacles. A carrion crawler! Not knowing what that was we all thought we should rush it. The more experienced player tried to warn us, but we figured there was no way that the first monster we encountered could be strong enough to take us out. A few turns later most of the group lay paralyzed on the dungeon floor, waiting to be rescued by the now impatient elf.

The session ended before we could do anything else, but we were all hooked. It wasn’t long before we all got a set of our own dice and some of the books and started playing on our own. I’m actually not sure why we never tried to game with that DM’s group. Not that they wanted anything to do with us, but given that we had worn them down once before I’m surprised we didn’t take that strategy up again. It’s also interesting that we did pretty much everything differently than the way that they had shown us. We never used music or props, nor did we bother with modules, miniatures or maps.

*the first thing I ever heard about D&D was that it was a game where you could do almost anything you wanted to and that a local kid had his character take a piss on a dragon in order to gross it out or scare it away or something. It instead breathed fire on his stream, thus causing his bladder to boil and explode, killing him in a most gruesome manner. To an eleven year this sounded pretty badass, so naturally

By Thor's Hammer!

2009-01-06T13:01:00.000-08:00

Having just read The Broken Sword I thought I’d take another look through my copy of HR1, the Vikings Campaign Sourcebook. I’ve read all of the books from the series at one point or another, but the Viking book is the only one I own. It and the Celts book are the stand-out entries of the series for me, but I’m sure there are plenty of people who have gotten use out of the others. I think these two benefit from being comparatively self-contained, whereas some of the other books suggest using them with other non-core materials (such as Al-Qadim materials with the Crusades book). They also seem to do better at mixing fantasy and myth with the history and in dropping in useful stuff like classes, kits, or character races. On the other hand it could just be because Vikings kick all kinds of ass. The Celts aren’t far behind. They even have their own berserker!

One thing I really like about the Vikings book is the low magic setting it offers. That’s not to say that there’s no magic. There’s plenty, but it’s far more restrained than the fireball wielding, across-the-planes-teleporting magic-users of generic D&D. The Invocation and Alteration schools of magic are gone, which greatly roles back the power of spell-casters and makes them a bit more of utility characters than blasters. That is a change I welcome. Maybe it’s because I tend to play more urban and character driven campaigns than dungeon crawls, but I definitely prefer the idea of a magic user who is a keeper of knowledge than that of a walking demolition team. A few magic items have also been taken out of the setting and replaced with more Viking-appropriate stuff, such as drinking horns that never empty or shirts that grant different kinds of magical protection. I’d take a magic drinking horn over an enchanted, gruel producing spoon any day of the week.

The priest character has also been replaced with the runecaster. My distaste for the D&D priest has been covered before, so it should be no surprise that I welcome alternatives such as this one. This fellow uses a magic system far different than that of the traditional priest or other Vancian-magic users of D&D. I guess the closest comparison is the sha’ir from Al-Qadim, which is similar in that it is slow to cast stuff and weak in terms of combat related magic, but on the other hand capable of far more castings per day and potentially more versatile than its counterpart. Some of the runes are kind of dopey if you’re not playing a hard-and-fast Viking campaign, but some are really cool. I love the Dead Rune, which summons up a spirit to be interrogated. Most of the runes have potentially devastating downsides if they don’t work, which I also dig. I like the idea of a character struggling over whether or not to use one of his powers. Balancing benefit against the risk is something that I’d like to see more of in D&D. It creates drama without enforcing any particular outcome.

All that being said, despite my enthusiasm for this book I can’t imagine running a true Viking campaign wherein the players go about the coastline murdering and pillaging. I’ve stolen a lot of stuff from this book to use in my own campaigns though. I’ve used a few runecasters in the past, not to mention plenty of berserkers and trollborn. Right now I’m thinking of making a clan of trollborn who will serve as an adversary for the Dogs sometime in the future (or maybe as allies? You never can tell with those guys). I like some of the changes they’ve given to the monsters as well. Nothing keeps a party on their toes like meeting a familiar looking enemy who starts doing stuff they never expected. Giants that can turn the earth to stone and goblins that cast spells? Sign me up. The alternative to the traditional elf is also right up my alley. I’ve never liked the elves presented in the PHB. I prefer them to be far more alien and distant. I think their immortality makes them too weird for PCs, or even everyday interaction for PCs.

I guess one of the great benefits of having such a limited setting is that everything seems to make sense. There’s a consistency within this single mythology that you can’t always keep a hold of when you introduce monsters and magic from other cultures. I like that the monsters all seem to belong to another world that men only occasionally wander into, and that magic is both strange and feared. I think one could introduce a lot of the material from the Celts book without disrupting that consistency too harshly. They have a similar adversary in the fornorians that the Norse have in the jotun and trolls, and magic is also scaled back a bit in that setting. The linnorm dragons from the first MC annual are also really cool. I’ve used some of the weaker ones now and again, but a few of them seem way to powerful to ever use in my campaigns. The characters almost never make it high enough in level to take them on.

The Fallible Fiend

2009-01-04T10:07:00.001-08:00

This book starts out really strong. The premise of a demon being summoned and unable to correctly interpret the contract of his master is full of exciting possibilities, and indeed the first section of the book when Zdim (the demon) is bound to servitude by a human wizard is rife with humor and wit. I’ll spare those who haven’t read it any spoilers, although I’m sure most will anticipate most of Zdim’s slip-ups before they even happen give the use of similar concepts in D&D. Most of this section revolves around Zdim’s trouble in deciphering the “correct” meaning of assignments that are phrased in poorly worded speech. Zdim takes things a bit literally you see.

I feel that the book would have been better had it just been a short story that focused on that scenario rather than continuing on as it did. A few of Zdim’s misadventures that follow are interesting (such as his brief stay at the carnival), but a lot of it is pretty generic fantasy. He bumbles around the world trying to save the kingdom, all the while encountering different tribes of predictable fantasy archetypes. The only difference between this story and countless others is that the hero of the story is an otherworldly demon. That lends the situation some humor, but even that minor twists grows thin rather quickly. The book is quite brief even with all of that other stuff tacked on, and I was able to burn through it over the course of a flight from Philadelphia to Chicago.

There is a bit of a winking critique of man’s hypocrisy and vanity in Zdim’s misadventures, not to mention a lampooning of tribalism in general. Zdim is quick to realize that men rarely follow the standards they set for themselves but are always quick to condemn others if they are caught violating the same codes. Similarly, no one seems willing to help someone from outside of their in-group without a heavy incentive (usually money). The fate of the kingdom rests on the various tribes and factions being able to band together for a common goal, but even the threat of possible destruction isn’t enough to get some of the characters to get over their identity politic. And naturally everyone forgets the favors they did for one another once the threat appears vanquished.

In that sense The Fallible Fiend is sort of like a fantasy version of Candide. I don’t say that to elevate beyond what it deserves, as I found it to be mediocre, but it does takes the same premise of a journey by an idiot figure as a way of exposing the nature of man and his follies. I think it would have been more interesting for Zdim’s journey to be a satire of fantasy clichés, but as it is I think it’s a clever concept even if it wasn’t handled in the most innovative fashion.

I was also able to get a start on Anderson’s The Broken Sword. I’m about half way through, and will likely finish it up later today. It’s really good so far. I like the use of historical myth, the descriptions of each race’s world, and of course the doubling of the two main characters. I’ve tracked down a few of Anderson’s other books and will be sure to read through those soon as well. I’ve also got the first six books of the Elric series, which I have never read before.

Two great pieces of dungeon art

2009-01-02T12:50:00.000-08:00

What I really like about this piece is how dramatic and magical it feels despite the rather mundane subject matter it has in comparison to a lot of other D&D art. Magic Mouth is a pretty ho hum spell, but the combination of the torch-light and the suggested depth of the dungeon corridor makes this really come to life and capture that moment of adventure. I also like the fact that the party is all dwarves. It isn’t too hard to imagine the kinds of relationships these guys have or the background they might share. Their reason for all being there at the same time isn’t answered through the visual information we’re given, but I think there are enough elements for us to dream-up something on our own. They look like an adventuring party without falling into the "one of each class" thing, which feels kind of meta to me. I really like the design of the dungeon as well. It isn't clear whether it's meant to be dwarf height or meant for something taller. The dark, grungy style that the artist used also seems to really fit the low-light environment in my opinion.

This next piece is actually from Advanced Heroquest. That game was never as popular as its predecessor. It wasn’t expanded upon as thoroughly or marketed as widely as vanilla Heroquest, but I still remember seeing it on store shelves once or twice. I kick myself for not picking it up back then. Games Workshop had some excellent art back in the day. The first edition of WFRP and some of the older games like AHQ were filled with great stuff like this. I like this piece for a lot of the same reasons that I like the previous one. It’s a simple scenario and a bit on the mundane side for a fantasy adventure. I guess I just really dig the use of light sources in dungeon exploration in fantasy art. The little details like the way the guy carries his axe over his shoulder and the way he is stepping forward also give it some personality. Most of the other art in AHQ is really busy but this one excels at capturing the loneliness of the dungeon.

Posting will slow down starting tomorrow. My vacation ends then and I resume my on-and-off access to the internet. I’ll try to keep things going with a new post everyday or two.

In praise of the d66: Alternatives to Character Death

2009-01-02T08:57:00.001-08:00

I first encountered the d66 in the nineties when I was playing a lot of the Games Workshop games that were being produced back then. Necromunda, Warhammer Quest, Gorkamorka, and Mordheim all used the d66 in some way. A major conceit of the die roll mechanic for those games was that despite their complexity the only die that was to be used was a six sided die. There were a few cases where you might need to use a die that had something other than numbers on its faces, but everything came with six faces.

The d66 was a lot like the d100. It used two die of the same type, with one acting as the tens place and the other as the single digits. It was used for generating results on tables such as “Series Injuries,” “Dungeon Events,” and the like. In my opinion the d66 offered just enough randomness to be fun and unpredictable without making the “look stuff up” part too much of a hassle. Since Warhammer Quest is one of my touch-stones for D&D I’d like to incorporate those kinds of random tables into my game.

I present to you the “Alternatives to Death” table. If a fallen character’s body is saved from the dungeon or other site of danger by the end of the quest he or she may roll on this table rather than accepting death outright. It’s still pretty harsh, and in most cases players will probably want to abandon a crippled character and start over rather than be stuck with damaged goods. That’s okay with me. I’d actually like to see these kinds of ex-adventurers turn into henchmen or other servants for the next generation of heroes. My group doesn’t use henchmen nearly enough in my opinion, so this is one way I’d like to encourage them to take that part of the game up more. I might also play around with giving experience rewards to players who rescue the bodies of their fallen allies.

11-16: Stone cold dead. Your friends have liberated your corpse from the dungeon in order to give it a proper burial.

21: Chest wound. You have a serious wound in your chest that makes breathing painful. You do not gain hit points for additional levels you achieve from now on. You also recover from damage at a slower rate than your allies.

22-23: Hurt real bad. You lose two points of constitution from severe damage to your organs. You must also rest frequently or grow exhausted, gaining a -1 to all rolls.

24-26: Lost an arm. One of your arms is now property of the dungeon. You also lose a level from the trauma of dismemberment. Items attached to the arm may be lost.

31-33: Leg injury. You move at half speed from now on as you shuffle about. Moving silently becomes more difficult. A second leg injury will result in immobility without some sort of mobile chair or platform.

34-36: Came back different. Your alignment is changed! Being so close to death has changed your perspective on life. Your alignment change should be as drastic as possible. Thus Lawful good becomes chaotic evil, etc. This can result in the loss of class abilities.

41-43: Lost an Eye. You are now blind in one eye. All attacks are at -1 to hit, and enemies save against your spells with a +1 bonus. If you lose all your eyes you are blind, but further loses do not give additional penalties (in the case someone has more than two eyes).

44-46: Weak arm. One of your arms is badly hurt. Lose two points of strength. You cannot use two handed weapons or shields anymore.

51-53: Came back ugly. Horrible scars and damage to you appearance reduce your charisma by two. If you are playing with the rules for Comeliness you really shouldn’t be.

54-56: A change of heart. You are now terrified of the creatures that nearly took your life. Roll a saving throw or flee in terror the next time you encounter said creatures. If you and your friends do not defeat these foes you must roll again until you do. If humans are the villain go by class.

61-63: Missing fingers. You lose d4+1 fingers on one hand. Lose one point of dexterity for every two fingers lost, rounding up. Rings being worn may be lost as well. If you lose all fingers you lose the hand.

64-65: Deafened. You cannot hear. Bards and magic users may lose their abilities. Enemies now gain +2 to surprise you.

66: Possessed by a demon! A creature from the world below now inhabits your body. It will attempt to infiltrate the world of men and cause as much trouble as it can before being found out.

Seen around Krell: Dagger in Back

2009-01-02T08:07:00.000-08:00

The guild of thieves has been a staple of fantasy gaming and literature since Fritz Leiber introduced Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser to the streets of Lankhmar so many years ago. I think that the present popularity of such institutions in fantasy lit has more to do with D&D than Leiber’s original stories, which is unfortunate as I think those are some of the best fantasy tales ever produced. The way that D&D has replaced its own fantasy lit origins with its interpretation of the same conventions is an interesting topic, but unfortunately one I do not feel prepared to tackle just yet. This post is rather about my own interpretation of the thief’s guild.

The Dagger in Back (hereafter known as the Daggers) is a well known but little understood force in Krell. Many believe them to be the Krellian equivalent of a thief’s guild due to their control over illicit trades and crime and their interest in managing the behavior of other thieves in Krell. They are, however, more of an anti-thief guild that has successfully exploited expectations about urban thief organizations in order to fool their competitors.

The Daggers got their start as a response to foreign traders such as the Hidden Hand, who infiltrated the streets of Krell to barter in magic, steel, and gold in order to promote conflict within the Free Coast. The Daggers intended to keep Krell safe from such threats by establishing a network that would keep an eye out for shady activities of all kinds and eventually force the perpetrators of said activities out of the city. Things soon turned sour as individual agents started accepting bribes to look the other way or started to believe they could take over the same operations for their own gain.

As such the Daggers are presently occupied with controlling the activities of all would-be-thieves in Krell. They want to clean up the mess they made before so they can start policing the Hand again. Their membership is highly disciplined and they are ruthless in pursuing those who they perceive as transgressing their declaration against organized thievery in Krell. They have spread the rumor that they are in fact an organization of thieves, and that aspiring thieves should try to work with them rather than start up on their own.

This is partially true. The Daggers are responsible for quite a bit of the theft and cross-trade in Krell. They tend to focus on operations like the Hand though, hoping to keep things under control before they are ready to deal the final blow and secure Krell once and for all. They’re also more than happy to harass other would-be-thieves of merchants who have been considering working with groups like the Hand or the Goblin Mafia. One could argue that the latter oversteps the mission statement of the Daggers and that they have set themselves up for another collapse. Just don’t let one of their agents hear you say that.

The other rumor that the Daggers have successfully spread is that their membership is exclusively women. Why do this? Perhaps to maintain a sense of mystery or to simply confuse their enemies. Either way, more than one captured or cornered Dagger of the male variety has been able to bargain for freedom based on the widespread acceptance of that rumor.

The Yes remains the one part of Krell that the Daggers have never been able to successfully infiltrate. Greedy mercs just have a nose for that sort of thing. As such, adventurer thieves have thus escaped the reach of the Daggers. The sole exception to this is from when Daggers were involved with a minor trade war with the Yellows back when the Yellow Pub was still in business. The Yellows were in league with the Hand and thus marked for death by the Daggers. The recent collapse of the Yellows’ network has decreased the Daggers’ need to risk venturing into the Yes, so things have calmed down a bit lately.

Some recent fantasy related films

2009-01-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

I don’t watch a lot of fantasy movies, which I guess is kind of odd given my shared interest in gaming and film. There aren’t a ton of fantasy movies to begin with, and on top of that a lot of them are rather forgettable. As far as traditional fare goes I like the first Conan film, the first LotR film, and Dragonslayer. I also find some of the more erratic films like Legend interesting even if they’re not great. If we can count stuff like Hammer Horror I absolutely love Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter and some of the Frankenstein films. I’d rather not talk about The Swords and the Sorcerer’ and most of the other Star Wars and Conan spin-offs from the eighties.

Recently I’ve started watching some lower-budget films. The first I saw was The Gamers, which I’m sure plenty of people have heard of by now. It’s a neat concept and lasts just long enough to satisfying while keeping things from becoming stale. The cast is also terrifically funny, which I think helps to balance out the low production values and somewhat amateurish (if innovative and adventurous) filmmaking. It’s one of those films that you can show to almost anyone with gaming experience and they’ll get a laugh or two out of it. Some of the non-gamers whom I’ve shown it to have also enjoyed it.

I recently saw the follow-up to the Gamers, entitled Gamers II: Dorkness Rising. It’s a lot more polished looking than the first one, and, while still short, is full-feature length. The out-of-game plot is developed a lot further and most of the gamers have discernable relationships with one another rather than just filling in the role of gamer archtype A, B, or C. There’s also some effort made to show gaming culture outside of just D&D, with references to Munchkin and some other games (real or imagined). Part of that is due to the product-placement deal which I’m assuming funded the film in part. It isn’t done to an obnoxious degree, but it’s pretty easy to take notice of.

Overall I think it’s as good as the first film. There are plenty of laughs and riffs on gaming culture that the target audience is sure to enjoy. It’s also a much more professional and accomplished film from a technical stand-point, not to mention the more intricate narrative and better defined character relationships. Some of the conflicts between characters might be too obscure for non-gamers, such as arguments over story-telling in roleplaying, alignment, and other nerdisms. On the other hand, part of the story revolves around introducing a non-gamer to D&D, so maybe it will still be accessible to a wider audience. I hope the guys who make these films find success, as I think they’re very talented and they seem to “get” fantasy in a way that the film industry proper doesn’t seem to.

Another film I watched recently was a documentary on LARPing called Darkon. I know very little about LARPing and I don’t have a lot of interesting trying it out. It does however make for compelling documentary subject matter. Examinations of sub-cultures within popular-culture are often handled in the same way as ethnographic studies, and Darkon is no different. It follows around a few of the players/characters of the ongoing campaign as they struggle with real-life and Darkon-life simultaneously. Most of the players claim that the game offers them an escape from their real-life problems, such as worries over their careers, relationships, or assigned place in the social food chain. At the beginning of the film it’s interesting to see how each person tries to escape into the game and their alter-egos, but by the end the in ability to face personal responsibility for everyday things is a bit disturbing.

The central narrative to the film follows the attempt of one player to challenge the military rule of another so that he can change the political landscape of Darkon and put himself on the road toward power and glory. The raw ambition this individual (and a few others) is quite fascinating, particularly in the way that he does not perceive his own agency in doing (fantasy) violence to others and destroying relationships on his quest to greatness. There is a lot of talk about glory, honor, and the like, but most of it has no content. They are merely rehearsals of fantasy clichés handed down through films and novels. Similarly, the political drama of rival nation states in Darkon seems to be little more than an excuse for countless battles which resolve nothing in within game. People are able to cultivate identities for themselves and their membership, but I’m not sure what “playing the game” actually entails and how the campaign is advanced. It seems that most of what happens within the game actually happens within the minds of the players and how they perceive themselves.

One thing that I found interesting was the presentation of the dark elves. You knew there would be dark elves, right? The players on the dark elf team seem to be the most creative and dedicated in terms of character immersion. The sequences in which they appear are all staged scenarios (as opposed to the documentary recording of the other stuff) in which they speak in a fake language, cover themselves in blackface, and act out the whole “evil but beautiful” thing. The filmmakers seem to eat this all up, as they go out of their way to help make the dark elves look cool and badass. The funny part is that outside of these orchestrated sequences the dark elves all speak English and act like everyone else (but in blackface).

The curious thing about this kind of documentary is that it invites us to interpret the psychology of its subjects, but you can’t produce a fair, human psychology from such brief glimpses of someone’s behavior. Are the players who roleplay as dark elves racists for using blackface, or have they convinced themselves that they’re doing something else? Similarly, can we fairly judge the actions of the protagonist as a man of self-mystifying ambition through such a small (and likely carefully constructed) picture of his life? Can we understand the game of Darkon at all? I have my doubts, although the filmmakers certainly offer us an easy interpretation with the way they present things.

The final fantasy film I watched recently was actually not the Final Fantasy film, but rather the latest Futurama movie, Bender’s Game. There are a few sequences devoted to D&D and a lengthy LotR parody, but otherwise it’s the same old Plant Express you know and love. However, it was rather mediocre for a Futurama episode in my eyes. The LotR stuff seemed straight out of Family Guy and a lot of it didn’t seem to go along with the tone taken by the series. I have to admit I do not get the whole “pop-culture references as a substitute for jokes” thing. Testing the audience’s skill as a fan of popular culture can be fun for awhile, but I’m baffled as to why it’s becomes such a big part of our humor in the last decade (or however long it’s been). The jokes about D&D turning people crazy were a few decades too late as well. I thought the first Futurama film was okay, and never saw the second one, but this one was a bit of a disappointment. There were a few really good lines and gags, but a lot of it was lacking in what made the original series so entertaining.

Brainstorming an alternative to the thief class

2009-01-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

There’s been a lot of talk about the thief class on the ole blogosphere as of late. Many have decided that the introduction of game mechanics such as the thief’s skills reduce an important part of the game (player skill and ingenuity) as well as taking away what other classes had previously possessed by default. Some have suggested doing away with the thief all together by returning to the original three booklets and discarding the supplements. That’s a fair solution in my view, but I have a lot of long-time players who really enjoy playing the archtypical D&D thief, so I’d like to find a more forgiving alternative.

Enter the tomb robber, a replacement for the thief class. The conceit of the tomb robber is that he or she has been poking around in nasty places for awhile and thus has a lot of experience to draw on when venturing into dungeons. For now I’m fine with using the experience tables, hit die and other mechanics for the thief. The difference is that the thief abilities will be replaced with the following.

Resistance: For me the main conceit of the tomb robber is that he or she should have a lot of experience facing things like traps, poisons, and odd magic from past experiences breaking into crypts and the like. As such, I think a way of representing superior resistance to such things is in order. The tomb robber recognizes some of the more common mechanical traps and knows how to avoid them in comparison to other classes, and has probably inhaled more than his or her fair share of deadly gases and stagnant air, so perhaps a slight tolerance to some poisons can be justified. The easiest way to do it would be to award a flat bonus such as a +2 to all saves, similar to that of the paladin. Another way would be to allow the tomb robber to avoid these kinds of dangers would be to allow for a re-roll of failed saves. That would probably come close to guaranteeing successful saves at higher levels, which I’m not sure if I want or not.

Magic use: A tomb robber’s experience with breaking and entering and encountering magical traps could also provide enough knowledge of the arcane to manipulate items such as wands and scrolls. I’d actually like to expand that, allowing the robber the ability to use any magical item available. A lower-powered version of this idea might be the ability to select one magical item per level that would normally not be useable. I feel like this could help make the robber a useful support character, although it might risk making him or her another “blaster” with wands and staves.

Combat: I’d like to scale back the robber’s combat abilities. Taking away the backstab ability and replacing it with something else might work. I was thinking of something along the lines of allowing the robber to always have one item of size small or smaller with him or her at all times, no matter the circumstances. Thus a dagger could be snuck past a thorough body-check, a wand could be hidden from a detection spell, etc. This might be hard to justify in some cases, and as always everything should be up to the DM, but I like the idea of the robber being prepared for any situation.

Surprise: The robber should probably get a bonus to surprise and being surprised to represent his or her ability to scout ahead silently. The ranger’s ability provides a useful blueprint. The bugbear is another alternative. There should also be a set of conditions for when the bonus can be used, such as requiring the robber to be alone, only with other robbers, or only accompanied by other characters who have surprise related abilities.

Other possibilities: the ability to force the DM to reroll the random treasure assignment once per adventure. Superior snooping skills wield greater rewards! Or maybe the ability to apply penalties to enemies saves against the robber’s poison or magic.

I’m actually not sure how useful this character would be or what kind of role it would play in an adventure. The magic-use ability is the most “active” and will therefore likely influence how the class might be used the most. I conceived of the tomb robber as actually quite similar to the original thief in purpose: someone who scouts ahead in the dungeon, finding traps and spying on monsters and the like.

Gav Thorpe’s halfling thief character for Warhammer Quest provided some inspiration for a few of these ideas. I actually use a lot of stuff from WHQ in D&D, particularly the random tables for travel.

More on enforcement

2009-01-01T07:34:00.000-08:00

Happy new year!

With this post I’d like to look at how various styles of DMing have been encouraged throughout the ages, both as a way of following up on my previous post concerning balancing DM and player influence over the game and my general project of analyzing how different editions of D&D enforce particular styles of play. Picking apart each edition of D&D as a comparative exercise might flirt with the whole edition warrior thing, but looking at those kinds of things is part of the reason why I started this blog.

As mentioned before I got my start during the heyday of second edition. Second edition is generally remembered for two things: the “complete” series of player character supplements and the numerous campaign settings produced during that time. I think the books aimed towards the players set the table for later editions in a lot of ways, but for now I’d like to focus on the campaign setting materials. It’s important to note that these materials were essentially all meant for the DM and the DM alone, which is one of the reasons why TSR went under during this period. They were trying to sell the game to the most narrow sub-group of their audience. That changed in third edition, when Wizards of the Coast started targeting the PCs by including new classes, feats, skills and prestige classes into every book, making it valuable to everyone and thus expanding the potential consumer base.

The other effect of TSR’s strategy with second edition is that there was a large emphasis placed on setting and continuity. Powerful NPCs were cast as the guiding forces of these worlds and there were often major events that the players had no control over or ability to interact with. As such, in my view the role of the PC was scaled back a bit during second edition and the DM was given the reigns to plot out the campaign. Looking at the modules from Al-Qadim and Planescape, and some of the supplements for Forgotten Realms, there often isn’t a lot of freedom for the player characters to move around on their own and deviate from the story. Some of the better written material is more subtle in guiding the players through the established narrative, but some of it is quite heavy-handed. I suppose we could also say that the role of the DM was also scaled back during this period, since he or she wouldn’t be making as many decisions when running a module, but I think those things were more of a sign of the role of the DM changing from a referee to a storyteller. Take the much praised Dead Gods module published for the Planescape setting. It has a clear goal that the PCs will constantly be pushed toward through NPC-supplied hints. Similarly, the major NPC of the adventure (Orcus, now going by the name Tenenbrous) cannot be killed. There are other examples of “untouchable” NPCs in other settings as well, which I’ve never liked since it implies that the NPCs of TSR are somehow privileged over the player characters.

This might have all been a reaction to the success of “storytelling” games like the World of Darkness series. The implied continuity of TSR’s settings certainly signals toward an interest in reproducing some of that appeal. Other possible explanations include the desire to sell setting-related literature lines like Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, the chance to create a new “D&D culture” by which many players would have shared similar experiences in playing through the same settings (similar to the popular modules of first edition), or, conversely, a desire to segment their base by campaign setting so that products would be rendered more desirable through an identity politic. No matter the explanation I feel that this strategy definitely gave more influence to the DM and encouraged a style of play that was motivated more by narrative and continuity than previous editions had been.

Looking ahead to third edition I see the opposite. The number of options available to players for character creation was practically endless, and designing a interesting and/or powerful character became a much bigger part of the experience for many players. I remember a lot of players planning their characters’ futures around the eventual acquisition of a certain prestige class or feat-combination. In some games the DM was able to veto some of the more obscure or outrageous choices, but from my experience the players were usually able to design their characters without interference. Similarly, there were now game mechanics offered for many more situations so the DM was not required to lead as actively as he or she might have been in the past. Some have said that third edition reduced the DM to a data processor, and while I think that might be a bit harsh I definitely feel that there was something going on in terms of to what degree the game was “for” the players and the DM was developing the game “for” them (as opposed to second edition where I feel the game was organized “for” the DM). Campaign setting materials and modules took the back-seat in third edition in comparison to second, but they really started pouring out the sourcebooks by the dozen. On top of that there was less of a distinction between products that were meant for the DM and those that were meant for players, which was a very successful strategy for WotC.

My impression is that modules and setting materials were not used as frequently in third edition as they had been in previous editions. Part of that might be due to the perceived lack of strength of what was being produced at the time in comparison to the well-known classics, but I think it was also due to a shift in the “how to” of the game that was encouraged by Wizards’ strategy of using sourcebooks as the main way of reaching players. The availability of online resources may have also played a part. Who needs to drop cash on a module that will likely only be used once when you can just mine the internet for ideas?

Jumping back to first edition AD&D for a moment, I think the modules were the defining product of the era. Many of these were simply locations and lists of the monsters and treasure that could be found there, but they were often organized around a conceit that made things interesting enough to stand out. The comparative lack of detail or plot offered in these products required the DM to flesh things out in order to fit his or her own campaign (hence the use of the term “module”), but this loose presentation also allowed for player characters a great deal of freedom. In that sense these modules (at least the good ones) offer up the greatest sense of balance and shared responsibility between player and DM.

These modules also produced something of a shared experience for D&D players of the time. Everyone has their “war story” of playing through modules like the Tomb of Horrors or smashing giants in the G series. I think that might also be part of the reason why interest in older editions of the game are occasionally dismissed as “nostalgia”: the “shared experience” of players running through the same mods often leads to lots of reminiscing about individual experiences when people get together.

OAD&D was also pretty light on supplements. The two most significant resource books were Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventurers, although I wonder how widely each was used. A lot of people have problems with UA today, but it’s difficult to know how it was received back then. Either way, I don’t think either really changed the dynamic of the game all that much. Presenting the players with more class options, racial options, and a few optional rules could have shifted the game more toward a player-centric experience, but on the other hand a lot of the modules being published by that time (the mid eighties) were also more heavy with the plotting than previous adventurers had been. I’m betting that at that point there was a lot of variation between individual groups.

My experience with the latest edition is rather limited, but I feel it also was designed with the intent of achieved a sharing of duties between the players. Character options are less plentiful than they were in third, but that could of course change as more sourcebooks are released. WotC has actually divided up the core classes between two PHBs, so they’ve already demonstrated one more way of ensuring the shelf-life of the product through savvy release scheduling. Running encounters for the DM also seems to be less complicated than it was in third in some regards, although some of the monsters that have loads and loads of abilities (many of which have limited uses that need to be made note of) threaten to undo that. The game also appears to be much more focused on the use of miniatures, as game mechanics are described in terms of board spaces rather than physical measurements like feet, inches or any of that metric nonsense. My understanding is that the miniatures producing division owned by WotC just folded up, so I wonder if that could be a problem for the health of this edition. In a way I wonder if the emphasis on miniatures and the use of game-mechanic based solutions rather than player-devised solutions will transform D&D into something along the lines of Warhammer Quest or similar hybrids of roleplaying and board games.

My own style probably falls closest to what I’ve described for the earlier period of first edition AD&D. Oddly enough I don’t play OAD&D, but I do use Basic quite often, which I feel takes a similar approach through the use of modules and its light menu of options and game mechanics. As far as campaign setting materials for my second edition games goes, I use some Planescape stuff and a few monsters from various compendiums, but I have my own homebrew setting so I don’t have to deal with any of the NPCs or continuity enforcing devices offered up by TSR. And that’s how I like it.

Promises I'll break for the new year.

2008-12-31T09:52:00.000-08:00

Following the lead of Amityville Mike over at the Society of Torch, Pole and Rope (http://poleandrope.blogspot.com/) I thought I'd share some of the gaming related goals I have.

1) Start the Dogs of Krell play-by-post game back up again. I don’t have an internet connection in my apartment, so this could be tough, but everyone seemed enthusiastic about playing some more and it’s a great way to keep in touch now that we all live in the far reaches of the country.

2) Join a new group as a player. I enjoy DMing, but it’s something that I think I end up doing more out of a sense of “if I don’t do this, no one will,” than a true passion for it. I’d like to join a game using one of the older systems, but given that 4E is still brand new I’m expecting that most games will be using that system. I've played through the first 4E module and I think I'd be fine with that system.

3) Turn at least one non-gamer friend into a gamer. I’ve had pretty good success at this so far. Judging by my experience it isn’t too difficult to get a World of Warcraft player or Lord of the Rings fan to try out ye olde dice rolling games. Video game players are probably more willing than fantasy lit fans, probably because they already have a grasp of things like character leveling and amassing piles of treasure and magic.

4) Run an “all-stars” one-shot, preferably using an old module like G1 that lets people just go postal and whoop it up. By “all-stars” I mean a game where the players bring out an old character that has since been retired, forgotten or what-have-you. One of the major conceits of the Dogs of Krell game is that it allows older characters and campaigns to mix and mingle.

Walking the line

2008-12-31T08:59:00.000-08:00

My friend Mike and I were recently talking about what works and does not work in D&D after our most recent session of the Dogs of Krell campaign. Although Mike and I have opposing DMing styles I tend to value his input more than that of anyone else. He seems to really know what he wants out of a game, a trait that I find to be incredibly valuable in a player when I’m DMing. Similarly, his campaigns have been some of the best and most creative that I’ve played in, so I’m more than happy to listen to his suggestions and see if I can somehow work them into my own game.

The basic theme of our conversation was how a DM needs to clearly communicate what is happening in the campaign to his or her players and what the consequences are if he or she fails to do so. The game I was running was essentially a “sandbox” style campaign world and I was hoping that the players would be motivated enough on their own to pursue the threads that sounded interesting to them. Mike and I agreed that there were two basic problems with that idea. The first is that it had simply been too long since we’ve last played for something like that to work properly. No one remembered everything that was happening when we last retired, and on top of that the brief summary of things I gave them before we started probably did more harm than good (it was basically a rerun of the notes they had stolen from a foe, detailing his agenda and some other factions he was either in league with or competing against). The other issue was that the players in our group are used to a more structured style of campaign. Their characters tend not to have long term plans of their own, and while they enjoy completing a cycle of related adventures and interacting with recurring NPCs, they don’t always know how or when to initiate something on their own. As such, they spent a lot of time wondering what they should do, where they should go, and who they should talk to. I eventually had an NPC offer them some help to clear things up, but it was clear that they weren’t sure what to do on their own.

That being said, I still prefer that style of loosely organized play to more rigid, narrative based approaches. Obviously we don’t have to choose between opposing binaries in gaming, but I think there is a tendency to drift toward patterns that lead campaigns in one direction or the other as gaming groups fall into routines and develop expectations based on their previous experiences. I’m still left with the problem of finding a way to balance between the two while maintaining the kind of setting that I want to run, but I feel like I’m one step closer now. Given how infrequently that we play I’ll probably stick with location based adventures rather than trying to create networks of NPC relationships or information trails.

Mike tends to take the opposite approach. As I said before, Mike has run some incredibly successful campaigns in his day, but in recent times he has adopted a more narrative based approach that lends itself toward leading the players through a story he has devised in advance. Having a DM control the campaign that way certainly makes things easier, and it may have solved some of my problems with the Krell game, but I think it also changes the dynamic in a way so that the pleasure of playing the game belongs almost exclusively to the GM. For example, one of the last games of Mike’s that I played in used pre-made characters that he designed in order to fit in with the story he had constructed. The campaign would then actually be able to move back and forward in time, beginning when the group was already a bit experienced but then going back into the past when they were goblin-fodder. While that sounds like it could produce an interesting story I did not find it to be an enjoyable gaming experience. I had little to no control over what my character could do outside of relatively minor actions. That’s an extreme example, but there have also been less severe cases that produced similar results.

The lingering issue for me is how to juggle my desire to run a free-form, sandbox style campaign setting with enough structure to provide some motivation to my players. NPCs can be useful in this regard, but I don’t want the player characters to be overshadowed. I think one possible solution would be to build up the idea of a professional adventuring economy a bit more. Maybe there could be a place where adventurers go to receive assignments or peruse the offers made by potential employers. That way the players would be able to choose what they do, but they would also have a manageable set of options to think over. I would also like to use recurring NPCs, but it can be difficult to judge when that sort of rivalry has run its course. For example, at the start of the campaign the Dogs had a rival gang in the Yes, the Yellow Dogs, a mercenary group from another tavern. They traded steel and insults with the Yellows for two or three adventurers before they were defeated for good. That seemed to be working well, so maybe I could have milked it a little longer. I suppose it isn’t too late to bring them back in some form, but I also like the idea of having closure when an enemy is defeated rather than facing him or her again and again.

I think on a more general level too much preparation by the DM can get in the way of things and risk a semi-predetermined course of actions. That can be as simple as designing a story to run through, but things like investing too much in an NPC, magical artifact or series of relationships can produce similar results. My partial solution is to arrange campaigns around locations and NPCs rather than events. That way things can remain malleable enough that the characters can help steer where things are going. On top of that, I try to keep things so that it doesn’t matter if the players kill the king, burn down the tavern, or turn down the pleas for help of the peasants. If we can work together the campaign can go in almost any direction, unfolding one step at a time. If the players decide they are “done” with a certain NPC or location, than so be it. I don’t want to rush them through anything or make them dwell on the same stuff for too long.

At the same time, I think Mike was correct in pointing out that the idea of a sandbox campaign is often based on an idealized vision of gaming. It requires players who have a strong sense of agency but who are also respectful of the setting created by the DM, not to mention a DM who is extremely skilled at communicating his ideas to his players. That’s certainly possible, but my experience tells me it is very hard to pull of successfully. A recent example that I think came close was a play-be-email game hosted by one of my other friends, Alex. In this game the player characters did not know one another, nor did we really know what was happening in the campaign. It was mostly based around the city that we all found ourselves in. As such, I was able to develop my own goals as a player and try to pursue what I thought was interesting. The downside of that was that I never really met any of the other players, nor did I recognize the “triggers” of the campaign that were meant to draw me into NPC relationships or other cycles of events. I still had a blast, but I think Alex was a bit frustrated that things weren’t going as he planned. I actually had no idea he had larger plans than just presenting the city when I was still playing (I had to give it up when studying Japanese at Middlebury), so I just did whatever I thought seemed interesting.

Clark Ashton Smith and Steve Kurtz

2008-12-30T14:24:00.000-08:00

My recent travels across this here internet have brought me to a new blog that I will be watching with interest. It’s called the Eiglophian Press and documents the development of a supplement for OD&D based on the work of Clark Ashton Smith. Link: http://eiglophian.blogspot.com/ Smith has long been one of my favorite authors of the genre. I actually first encountered his writing through D&D (rather than the other way around), which must be pretty common among people of my age group who grew up in a world where D&D was already established in the culture by the time we found our way to the fantasy section of the bookstore. However, because I came to the hobby through second edition my initial forays into fantasy literature didn’t come from Gygax’s list in the DMG, but rather through Steve Kurtz’s supplement The Complete Book of Necromancers. This book was rather unique among second edition products in that Kurtz openly acknowledged his literary inspirations and encouraged the reader to track his favorite authors' work down. Most second edition books didn't "break character" that way, or were essentially drawing upon other RPG literature for their inspiration.

Kurtz had previously worked on the Al-Qadim setting for TSR and the CBN feels a bit like a sequel to some of the work he produced for that line. For example, the mini-campaign presented in the back of the book includes an NPC from one of his Al-Qadim modules (Cities of Bone), and the setting he uses is an island that was featured (but never developed) in that campaign world. The CBN combines the fantasy Arabian setting of Al-Qadim with fantasy horror in a way that was very much reminiscent of some of Smith’s work. I believe there was also an article in Dragon by Kurtz's friend and writing partner Wolfgang Baur that used a similar premise. I’ll likely have a more in-depth post concerning the influence that Kurtz and the Complete Book of Necromancers have had on my version of D&D and the kind of literature it lead me toward, but for now I’ll just leave it at that. And be sure to check out the blog if you’re also a fan.

Summon your life force!

2008-12-30T13:49:00.000-08:00

Gaze upon the video from the old TSR boardgame Dragonstrike. This was most likely designed to cash in on the success of Heroquest and introduce boardgamers to D&D. The game was merely okay (I liked the "feat of XXX" mechanic), but the video is pure genius.

Seen around Krell: Gord's Elephant Shack

2008-12-30T08:34:00.000-08:00

Gord’s Elephant Shack can be found on the northern side of Sell Street, adjacent to the Purloined Letter and the Phantasmal Gallery of Karl the Illusionist. The Shack doesn’t do a lot of business compared to other bars and taverns, but due to the rather unusual nature of the establishment Gord is often able to turn an annual profit with a single sale or rental. There isn’t a huge need for elephants in Krell, but every once in awhile a traveling merchant will hire one out for a particularly dangerous journey, filling Gord’s coffers in the process. The Shack of course also sells elephant meat (served in a variety of styles), but there are few who enjoy such a delicacy. Most of Gord’s daily business comes through tending bar and trading gossip.

The idea for Gord’s Elephant Shack came from Howard’s world of Hyboria, the home of Conan the barbarian. Howard basically stuck a bunch of semi-historical settings together in close proximity to create this setting. I really took to the idea of being able to mix a bunch of disparate locations together and play around with the conventional idea of “western fantasy,” which seems to be the default setting for most campaigns. Thus, we have elephants in a city that is itself a mix of Victorian London, Imperial Rome and medieval Spain, with touches of an Orientalist East thrown in for good measure. I feel that having that sort of a setting helps free players from whatever expectations they might possess based on their knowledge of history. It also allows for things like the monk class to exist without disrupting anyone’s immersion in the milieu.

So far the Shack has been featured in two adventures in the Dogs’ campaign. The first time it appeared two of the characters (Draken, an elven magic user and Hans, a hobgoblin fighter) ventured there to seek out an NPC, who they got stinking drunk and then kidnapped in order to prevent him from participating in an event that was scheduled for the next day. The second time they went there it was to lay low and avoid being seen in The Yes (the mercenary district of Krell), but they eventually decided to rent an elephant and use it in a surprise assault on their enemies instead. Much fun was had by all. There has also been some speculation amongst the players about moving to Gord’s for their base of operations. They seem to destroy the Barking Dog whenever they go there, and even Old Harry Bailly’s patience has its limits. Gord plastered advertisements all over the elephant they rented and was able to see some return business on the venture, so he might be willing to put up with them for awhile.

The authority of the rulebook

2008-12-29T09:29:00.001-08:00

It’s been a few days since my last post. Apologies for that. I intend to update this blog on a regular basis, but starting out with a bit of a hiccup probably isn’t the best way to establish that habit. In my defense I’ve been absent because some friends I haven’t seen in a long time have been in town and we’ve been doing a lot of gaming. We even played D&D for the first time in what feels like forever, picking up an old campaign that had previously been run on an online forum (the Dogs of Krell campaign). It had been maybe three or four years since I had DMed in a non-online setting, so I felt a little rusty and never really got my stride back. I hope it went well and that everyone had fun, but it also provoked some new thoughts about the issues I want to examine in gaming with this project.

We also played Talisman and some other non-roleplaying games in addition to our D&D session. Talisman is more of a traditional boardgame than some of the others that we normally play (Settlers, Carcassonne, etc), but the fantasy flavor gives it some appeal that a game like Monopoly wouldn’t have despite their mechanical similarities. Our sessions of Talisman and D&D presented us with some of the same problems in terms of how far the rules of the game and the mechanics should be used in influencing play. I was the only one who had played Talisman before, but it was with an older edition, so my initial walkthrough of the game wasn’t always in step with what the more current rulebook offered. For me that wasn’t a problem, as we applied the same rulings to each instance with great consistency, but for another player going against the rulebook was a big issue. Hence, this post will be about the authority of the rulebook in gaming. I wish I could say I planned to write a post about the authority of texts as a follow up to my post about Christianity in D&D, but it happened quite by accident.

One of the more widely repeated maxims given in defense of older editions of D&D is that it promotes “rulings over rules,” meaning that the game itself is always been made and remade by the players (and the referee in particular) in order to suit whatever situation they find themselves in. There are many situations for which a game mechanic is not offered in these versions of the game, which (in theory) forces the players to think beyond what is written on their character sheets and allows the DM to “wing it.” I am a huge fan of “winging it” as a DM, not only in terms of inventing solutions to in-game problems, but also in terms of making up quests as I go along and reacting to what the players do. I also really enjoy gaming with players who come up with solutions outside of my expectations. A good example of this happened during our recent session. The characters found themselves at a bar in Krell known as “Gord’s Elephant Shack.” Gord’s place basically does everything under the sun a fantasy setting business might do, but it’s all done with elephants. Thus the food they serve is elephant meat and the riding steeds they sell/rent are all elephants. The group had been to Gord’s before, but they didn’t bother with the novelty of the shop all that much. However, this time they decided to rent an elephant and use it in an assault on some baddies who had holed up in the Barking Dog.

This created a fun scenario with lots of off-the-cuff rulings and solutions. I’m sure it will be one of those things that we talk about whenever we reminisce about gaming in the future (which we do more often than we play). However, it eventually lead to some problems. The group had strapped all of the treasure they had gained from the previous adventure to the elephant’s harness, and it naturally flew off once it became spooked by the combat with the baddies. Stopping a charging elephant is no easy task, so I tried to keep the bar high for what kinds of solutions I would allow. There weren’t any rules for how morale works in those kinds of situations, so I had to make it up as I went along. However, none of the solutions being offered by the players seemed reasonable to me. Some of them were creative and would have made for very cool, cinematic actions (such as following the elephant by rooftop and then leaping on to its back), but I didn’t think they seemed plausible given the speed at which things were happening, the chaos of the situation, and their inexperience with handling animals. Similarly, the mechanic based solutions didn’t seem to work either. The elephant was too heavy for levitate, too strong for sleep, and too far away for a combination of flaming sphere and pyrotechnics. The process of coming up with a solution must have gone on for longer than I had realized because one of the players became very frustrated and antagonizing when his attempts failed. That change in mood basically killed the moment, so I just ruled that the elephant grew tired and stopped a short distance away. I didn’t like that ruling, as it allowed them to save all of their wealth without any trouble (my other possible conclusion would be for a passing druid to stop it and then bargain with them to return it), but at that point I was happy to end the scenario and not draw out the process any further.

In retrospect I see this as a failing in DMing on my behalf. I didn’t gauge the one player’s patience with the situation very well, nor did I anticipate how difficult it would be for them to stop the elephant (although to be fair most of their solutions were quite outrageous and they looked past the most simple and obvious choices). I hope I can improve my game-mastering in the future based on that experience, but given that we only play once every three years I could very easily have a whole new set of problems by then. However, I think this situation also brings to light some of the challenges we face when trying to interpret the game from different perspectives: rules and mechanics based solutions vs idea based solutions. The characters were all of relatively low level (4-5), so a mechanical solution was almost certainly out of their grasp. When that methodology was exhausted without success tempers started to flare and frustration set in. I didn’t have a particular solution in mind for them, and maybe I should have allowed one of the cinematic ideas to fly since that could have been cool even if I felt it was too easy. I suppose the easiest thing to do would to have just not have the elephant run away in the first place, but I was hoping that they would have had fun trying to stop it.

To return to the Talisman game for a moment, the tables were essentially reversed in that situation. Once we started consulting the rules for everything that game ceased to be fun for me, and I basically drifted out of the game. However, it seems that the player who was championing the rules-based approach (who was also the player who wanted a mechanics based solution in D&D) gained some kind of enjoyment through mastery of the rules. For me that registers that there are different ways of enjoying the same game. That might seem obvious, but I don’t think it’s something that we think about when we play games like D&D. Most of the people I game with were all introduced to the same games through the same people, so we typically have similar experiences and similar knowledge of how things work, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to a consensus on what the point of the game is or how it can be enjoyed. I was actually quite surprised to realize that after so many years of playing D&D together, since I don’t remember ever facing that in the past. It does raise a lot of questions for me in terms of what I can try to do in the future to make things work in a way that everyone will be able to enjoy. I’m not sure if we’ll be playing again this week though.

On a more theoretical level, all of this makes me think about the authority that we invest in rulebooks for the games we play. I suppose I tend to think of rules as guidelines more so than a mandate on how play should really work. I love making up new rules and new game parts. For example, I used to come up with new monsters and items for Heroquest even though the game is essentially “complete” in its final form due to the careful balancing of the campaign it comes with. I also used to make up a lot of cards for Magic the Gathering. Magic is an interesting case of how rules work, because its one of those games in which the rules are constantly broken by the individual pieces. That makes it very rewarding to understand the rules and to play by the rules, because it takes a lot of player skill and innovation to be able to manipulate how the game works at an effective level. Being skillful is often a great source of enjoyment in games, and Magic is one of the best games at promoting that in my opinion.

However, to return to the topic at hand and the two previously mentioned scenarios, I feel that in the case of Talisman our investing so much authority into the rules rather than playing in a looser more improvisational way took away a lot of the fun of the game for me. The rulebook provides consistency and a useful arbiter for unresolved questions, but I feel that when it interrupts gameplay and turns playing into a pseudo-exercise in reference work it becomes a problem. Talisman strikes me as a game that shouldn’t require a lot of attention to things like that, as a lot of the enjoyment one gets in playing comes from just experiencing the milieu and improving one’s character. The game falls apart towards the end, but I don’t know if that can be helped without drastically changing how it works. But I do feel that Talisman is, despite the absurd time commitment, a rather casual game that shouldn’t involve a lot of arguing over the rules.

D&D is a whole ‘nother beast. I don’t feel like I can address that topic in this post just yet, but it might be interesting to think about how the game has managed to transfer authority from the players to the rulebooks with each passing edition of the game. This is done mostly through providing mechanics for more and more in-game scenarios and through the sheer amount of sourcebooks and accessories that are produced nowaways. Each new book provides more rules to be consulted and deployed in game, which in a way makes the more recent editions of D&D like Magic in that being able to manipulate the mechanics of the game because a source of enjoyment for the players. That isn’t my cup of tea, but I don’t think it’s necessarily “badwrongfun.” It’s just a different way of playing. The problem is when you get people from different schools of thought together in the same game and they aren’t able to see eye-to-eye in how the game should be run and how solutions can be produced.

Call a Priest

2008-12-26T12:41:00.000-08:00

I had no idea what “low fantasy” or “high fantasy” were when I started playing D&D. I had read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, but that was basically as far as my familiarity with fantasy literature went. My friends and I had cut our teeth on Heroquest before “graduating” to D&D, but I’m pretty sure we were all green when it came to sword and sorcery and its established conventions. I would wager that our most significant influences at the time must have been film and television. The Hercules television show with Kevin Sorbo was just kicking off when we started playing. On top of that we were all fans of flicks like Willow, Dragonslayer, Conan the Barbarian, and Legend. Well, okay, maybe no one really liked Legend, but we had all seen it. I think we had all played Magic the Gathering before taking up D&D as well, but I might have that backwards.

However, despite our lack of familiarity with all things fantasy, I think we all sensed that clerics and priests (as they were presented in the PHB) were not a comfortable fit for the way we saw adventure games or worlds of dragons and magic. Perhaps it was because Heroquest didn’t include such a class, but I suspect it was mostly because of the obvious Christian influence on the design of the cleric class and how that seemed to be an intrusion into the fantasy world that we all tried to imagine. As I remember it, the prohibition on edged weapons was the thing that ruined the cleric for us. Even then it was clear to our young minds that this was something based on historical record and not otherworldly notions of sorcery and heroism. James Maliszewski’s recent post on Christian influences in OD&D is what got me thinking on this topic again (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/12/implicit-christianity-of-early-gaming.html). Perhaps the limitations on weaponry was intended as a way of protecting the fighter’s supremacy at combat (which is strangely not an issue in more recent versions of the game), but I think James is right in identifying this element in the history of the game and its design. Naturally my group faced a similar problem with paladins, which could never be imagined as anything but proselytizing evangelists. The paladin was of course much more severe in terms of how its mechanics laid out a very specific, very obvious influence and purpose for the class. I actually like the limitations of the paladin now, as I feel there is room in D&D for incredibly narrow classes, but back then it went in the same hamper has the cleric due to its perceived heavy handedness.

To come back to the idea of high and low fantasy, my original gaming group (a bunch of teenagers I knew from school) never bothered with the cleric class. I don’t remember anyone ever stating that clerics would not be used, but we just never found any appeal in that class. That means there was no magical healing and no turning of the undead. In effect we had accidentally stumbled upon a low fantasy setting very much in step with the pulp literature that I would discover later in life without even knowing it. Anyway, this world-without-clerics lasted for many years. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t until we were all undergraduates that someone finally decided to take up the cleric class, and even then it was an unusual specialty priest (we were playing second edition AD&D) of the wicked cultist variety moreso than the type encouraged by TSR.

Even today, nearly two decades later, I still have never played a “normal” cleric, nor have I ever seen one run in a game with my original group. There also does not seem to be a basis for the cleric in the kind of fantasy literature that D&D and other games were presumably inspired by. I suppose what I’m wondering is “does D&D need a cleric class?” There has been a lot of discussion lately about the necessity (or lackthereof) concerning the thief class, so perhaps I’m late to the party with that question, but I honestly do not find it hard to imagine the game without a priest class, regardless of whether it’s the Christian warrior we interpreted it to be or the Peter Cushing inspired vampire hunter that Gygax and Arneson may have been thinking of. I have a great fondness for pulpy cultists and the like, which I think make great characters in addition to villains, but I still feel that the cleric-as-written includes some enforcement mechanics that mark it as Christian and/or historical in design in a way that I feel disrupts my version of sword and sorcery fantasy.

I think part of this is due to my desire to see a fantasy setting that has a diversity of belief structures. I’m a big fan of TSR’s Planescape setting, which attempts to organize the cosmos around structures of belief that are related to the original alignment model put forth by AD&D. I like the idea of factions squabbling over their beliefs and their gods (think of the scene in the Conan movie where Conan and the thief try to “one-up” each other with boasts about their respective gods). Maybe I’m alone in this, but I feel that having the cleric-as-written stifles that possibility by reminding us of a world where monotheism and the interpretation of religion offered by American and European Christianity are normalized as the only available regime of belief. I would like to be able to use the cleric-as-written without having that side effect, but I don’t know how if it’s really possible for what I would like to do with the game.

I don’t think I’ve developed my idea of enforcement well enough to really articulate what I’m getting at, but hopefully it will become clearer in future posts. To rephrase things in more precise terms, as I look over the description of the cleric in the second edition PHD I see that it says nothing about how the cleric needs to be played, what kind of god or gods it needs to worship, or what kind of world philosophy it should carry (or even to degree to which belief is necessary for the cleric). However, details like the prohibition of “blood-letting” weapons, the use of holy symbols, the use of prayer, and even things like how the character relates to his organization and builds a stronghold strike me as perpetuating a vision of the character that is “always already” of Christian influence, if not implicitly Christian itself, and therefore encouraging a certain style of roleplaying. Older editions of the game even use titles that are historically associated with Christian churches for each character level (see James Maliszewski’s previously mentioned analysis for more on this).

I think that’s enough for now, as I don’t like the read very long blogposts myself and I would feel strange subjecting others to the same thing. I’ll end it with this: my group didn’t use magic users for a long time either. Yes, we were that hardcore.

Statement of Purpose

2008-12-26T10:50:00.000-08:00

Yet another Dungeons and Dragons related blog is born from the chaotic warp of the internet! To be truthful, I actually don’t get to play D&D all that often, so part of my motivation in starting a blog was in finding another outlet to “get my fix” and keep gaming a part of my life. There have also been a few gaming related blogs and forums that I’ve enjoyed reading on and off for a few years, so I figured what the hell. If I can help someone relocate that part of their life in the same way that other blogs have done for me I will have considered this project a success. If not, well, maybe this will help develop my writing skills a bit further. Or at least distract someone from doing their job or studies!

I’ll begin by saying that I play both second edition AD&D and the Moldvay/Cook version of basic D&D. I don’t consider myself a “grognard,” but I do find myself agreeing with much of the gaming philosophies (for lack of a better word) presented in older versions of the game in comparison to more recent editions. I don’t consider myself an edition warrior or believer in “badwrongfun” either, but part of my project with this blog will be to look at how roleplaying games are able to “enforce” a certain style of play through their selection of mechanics, artwork, and the publishing strategies they employ. For those who don’t follow D&D or the gaming hobby, a new version of Dungeons and Dragons was recently released. This has naturally helped to reignite arguments over the merits (or lack thereof) of previous editions and what is considered valuable in gaming. That might sound too serious a treatment for a game like D&D, but like most people I tend to organize my thoughts around my hobbies and recreation, so I’m prone to analyzing how the game works and what I’d like to do differently when I have idle time.

The title of this blog comes from a tavern in my own campaign setting, the world of Attrition. The Barking Dog is a pub that caters to adventurer types in the city of Krell. Krell is modeled after Fritz Leiber’s Lankhamr (from his wonderful stories of the duo Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser), with touches of Planescape’s Sigil thrown in for whimsy and humor. The Barking Dog (hereafter referred to as “the Dog”) is one of the more well-known taverns for adventurers in Krell. It also serves as the homebase for a lower level group that is currently running through the setting. They have taken up the name “The Dogs of Krell” due to their association with the place. Part of the conceit of the Dogs of Krell campaign is that adventuring is a profession in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, and therefore fantasy economies and social worlds are organized (at least in part) by adventurers and mercenary types and those who wish to employ said types. Thus, Krell has a district filled with adventurers and taverns known as “The Yes.” That title comes from the fact that anyone can find a hired sword or spellslinger for almost any job imaginable, thus the reply “Yes” became something of the motto of the district. Many of the taverns of the Yes are essentially adventurer guilds and they develop rivalries with one another as they compete for work, treasure and prestige. I don’t doubt that the way I’ve imagined Attrition and Krell have been influenced by my opinions on Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy literature, so the setting will also be a subject I’ll return to again and again in this blog.

In the meantime I’ll leave you with a few links to other blogs and forums that I enjoy.

Jeff Rient’s blog, which is basically my model for this one in terms of the tone I’d like to maintain. I’m not nearly as funny as Jeff though: http://jrients.blogspot.com/

James Maliszewski’s Grognardia, which contains a wealth of historical background on the development of the game and plenty of analysis of how D&D has changed over the years. It’s a little more partisan that I want to be, but I really admire his writing: http://grognardia.blogspot.com/

Dragonsfoot, a webforum for discussing older versions of the game. The link actually leads to a campaign journal for one of the moderators of the site. It’s a great read. The site also hosts a player-made journal that has new ideas for the game, such as classes and adventurers. They’ve also published a few modules. There are a few of the cranky old grognards of legend that haunt the site, so I don’t post there too often, but it’s a lot less hostile that some of the other forums I’ve read: http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1289

I guess I should also add that I’m a filthy leftwing monster from the ivory tower. Part of my hesitance to embrace the old school community stems from the lingering prejudices that some of its members take (and voice loudly and repeatedly!). That will probably crop up in one or two of my discussions of enforcement in game presentation.