The Death of RPGs

Photo credit: MoToMo

The brains of trolls often run in odd little circles...

It started with... Well, it probably really started with my job. Spend all day up to your eyeballs in SEO (that's Search Engine Optimization for the uninitiated, the practice of raising a website's visibility to search engines like Google) and these sorts of things bubble up from time to time. But that's just the background. The catalyst was an article on the escapist by fellow Austinite Allen Varney entitled “Internet Killed the Tabletop Star”. I think he's a bit off the mark, though. His thesis appears to be that table-top RPGers should embrace the 'net, even though all these MMOGs have killed pen-and-paper RPGing. He then points out all the cool pen-and-paper RPG happenings on the 'net, like the old school renaissance and online tabletops.

Which is all well and good, except MMOGs are a distraction to the problems in the pen-and-paper RPG world. The folks who left our games to play MMOGs mostly prefer what MMOGs have to offer, and only really played pen-and-paper games because MMOGs hadn't been invented yet. These are the folks who played primarily for the DING! of level advancement, who eagerly waded into 10' x 10' rooms where orcs guarded pies and never needed anything else. They're happier playing MMOGs than they could ever be rolling dice and enduring the budding romance between the character of the player to their left and an NPC. And, at the risk of sounding like sour grapes, my games at least are better off without them.

So where are the new young roleplayers? They're not in the MMOGs, ladies and gents. They're enjoying free-form roleplay in chatrooms and bulletin boards. They're running through the halls of Hogwarts or creeping through the mists of Mirkwood. They're doing everything we're doing, and doing it so much that Mom is having to limit their computer time, only they're not rolling dice or filling out character sheets. And they have no damned use for a 300 page, $35 book full of rules.

No damned use at all.

And that, right there, ladies and gents, orcs and trolls, is the elephant in the living room. The truth nobody wants to look at.

MMOGs didn't steal an entire generation of gamers, young people who were raised on Harry Potter and the Lords of the Rings movies and collecting Pokemon, a generation better primed than almost any before it to enjoy RPGs. Nope. It was the pen-and-paper RPG industry that drove them away.

Justin Alexander, in a comment on Grognardia's post about Mr. Varney's article, said it best:

While other forms of entertainment have certainly poached tabletop's audience, I still think a major contributing factor is the lack of gateway product...

...The investment time in terms of reading the rulebooks also drastically increased. The BECMI Basic Set I started playing with had roughly 100 pages in it, and a significant chunk of that was actually a solo play adventure. By contrast, 4th Edition's core rulebooks are 800+ pages.

D&D is still the game synonymous with RPGs and to start you need to shell out $140 and read 800+ pages. I have no idea what kids make mowing lawns these days, but I do know that $140 will get you in to see one movie a month for an entire year. It's over twice the cost of a new video game. And before we even talk about price and the daunting size of the rules, D&D has got to overcome the hurdle of being that game Dad played way back in the Mesozoic era, when he wasn't running away from veloceraptors barefoot through the snow uphill on his way to school.

(Ok, that's not entirely true. There's a $17 Starter Set that's a sort of cut-down version of the game that will take you up to 3rd level. Is this the first you're hearing of it? Me to. I stumbled across it when doing research for this rant, er I mean, blog post.)

D&D has abandoned that target audience of young, budding gamers. And D&D is supposed to be our gateway game. Maybe, if we're lucky, a few might stumble into the game via Magic: the Gathering, but isn't the steam draining out of that engine as well? I wouldn't know, so if you know otherwise, tell me.

I'd dare say that Spike is probably doing more today to introduce kids and teens to RPGing than WotC.

And to me, this looks like an opportunity. The prime RPGing years are roughly 9 to 16, when you're reading and making your own choices about friends and entertainment, but don't yet have your own car. The next best chance to get someone interested is in college, when you have more time than money and lots of people your own age around, but transportation is mostly limited by how far you can get on foot. After that, it gets harder and harder to interest someone in a hobby that's as time-consuming and imagination-demanding as RPGs.

You can maybe make the case that 4e is a good fit for the college crowd, but 10 year olds? I don't think so. WotC has abandoned them, and they are ripe for anyone with the right marketing strategy.

Speaking of, here's something else interesting. When I Google “roleplaying game”, D&D doesn't even show up on the front page. Wikipedia is my first two results, followed by a hosting site for free online MMOGs. What's 4th? RPGnet followed by RPG Gateway then RPG Sheets, RPGNews, and 1km1kt. You have to go to the second page before D&D shows up under their preferred spelling of “roleplaying game”.

The field is abandoned. The audience is out there. They're web-savvy, eager to use their imaginations, and steeped in the lore from movies and computer games. They want something more, and since they've not been given it, they're making it on their own. And the industry has nobody but themselves to blame.

UPDATE: The Alexandrian agrees, with a tale of a young player getting into RPGs only after persevering in the face of not quite getting it the first few times.

Why I Love Living in Austin

We do stuff like this.

Subdued Addendum

Guten tag to my readers in Deutschland, especially those of you coming by way of Brave Halfling Publishing's German bulletin boards. Attention from that board to my Table of Death and Dismemberment, plus Chgowiz's recounting of a bar brawl in the solo game for his wife has me thinking about subdual damage. Traditionally in D&D, subdual damage is tracked separately from “real” damage, and I'm not entirely certain why. My guess is that a captive is generally more valuable than a corpse, and tracking them separately means you can't use fireballs and lightning bolts to subdue a foe. The only place subduing a foe shows up in Moldvay's Basic is under the dragon entry of the monster section and speaks specifically against allowing spells and ranged weapons.

Fair enough, but I'm still not seeing the necessity. Right now, if someone tells me they want to subdue their foe, I run combat like normal except that the target is knocked out instead of slain at the end (unless, of course, those final hit points are lost to a lightning bolt). It's not quite the same thing that Moldvay was talking about, but it's worked pretty well for me in the past.

If someone wants to capture the PCs I do things the same way. They still get a roll on the Table of Death and Dismemberment, but any roll other than a 10, 11, or 12 results in simply being knocked out rather than losing limbs and whatnot.

I also noticed that there's no roll that results in losing an eye on my table. Eye patches are cool, so I may need to change that.

Traffic Notes

Just an interesting observation:

I saw a 30% spike in traffic on Friday the 13th. Besides being my lucky day ("If it wern't for bad luck I'd have not luck at all...") I really saw nothing to drive that spike. Most of the traffic came from Jeff's Gameblog and Lamentations of the Flame Princess. I can only assume the title of the blog, "Why I Wimped Out", was the draw. I've never noticed a spike like that based on a title before.

I think I can rule out weather, since the rest of the week shows pretty typical traffic for me. Spring Break starts at different times in different places, so I think I can rule that out as a significant influence as well. (If anything, I'd expect the break to lower my numbers, not raise them.) If you've got some thoughts on the subject, please let me know. I'm very curious about what exactly happened and why.

I draw my sword and... Wait, it's a what?!?

I think the old school crowd is starting to rub off on poor Chatty. He's thinking of mixing things up a bit in Thunderspire Labyrinth:

So I’m going to make one small change to that encounter.  While the adventure mentions that the first NPC the players are likely to meet should ‘attack the PCs on sight’, I’ll give the NPC some motive to prefer to deal with them and have them remain alive in the complex...

If this works out, the NPC may point out toward the second set of NPCs in the area and propose some sort of cooperation to advance a common agenda.

Ahhh who am I kidding? The PCs are likely going to be rude to the NPC up to the point where I’ll say something like ‘it grips it’s sword in anger’ and all everyone will reach for their d20s.

This is one of those areas where old school and new school players diverge and not in the stereotypical ways. The new school knows that orcs is for killin'. Veterans of the Caves of Chaos, the D series of adventures, and Danger at Dunwater have a more circumspect relationship with humanoids. I think this is one area where 2e really pushed the envelope, with lots of adventures in Dungeon magazine that had players doing such things as rescuing a green dragon's eggs from magmen. Planescape not only had the PCs playing races that had previously only been monsters but made dealing with demons and cross-dimensional horrors just another day at the office.

There is something the 4e DM can do to shake things up and make the players adopt a more cautious attitude towards encounters, and that is to throw in something clearly beyond their level. Things are so clearly delineated by levels that tossing in a monster that's beyond the PCs' ability to fight straight up is fairly easy to do. Heck, to really throw them for a curve, make it a monster above their tier. If the players know anything about the MM and are paying attention, that should be all it takes to get them to stop and weigh their options a bit more seriously. Once they've had a taste of that sort of play, hopefully they'll look for more opportunities to play like that in the future.

If, instead, they look puzzled and ask, “Is this a combat situation or a skill challenge?”, well, I dunno how to help you there. I really, really doubt, though, that most players are to that point.

Why I Wimped Out

There's been a lot of macho talk about death in D&D lately. Most of it I agree with. The occasional death of a PC, or even an entire party, gives the game a visceral edge that plot immunity simply can't match.

And yet, I've clearly wimped out with my Table of Death and Dismemberment. Well, mostly wimped out. There's a lot of save-or-die in Moldvay/Cook/Labyrinth Lord. Still, this table makes it a lot harder to kill a PC. So, if I agree that the threat of imminent death is good for the game, why have I watered it down?

Because, to be blunt, I find death boring and frequent death blunts its sting. Yeah, I know, rolling up Roger the Fighter II is something of a tradition in Old School D&D, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. When it gets to the point where you just don't name a character until he gets to 3rd level, and death is an annoyance rather than a serious issue in the game, the Trollsmyth is no longer a happy DM.

Besides, why would I want to kill a magic-user when I can chop off his hand? What's he gonna do now? Can't cast spells with just one hand, and nothing short of a wish will restore it. It's crunch time for the player. Take on some grand quest to get the hand back while enduring the handicap? Change classes? Or retire the character? That last might seem the most obvious, but just think of all the possibilities that offers the DM. The next time they're in town, the PCs might pass the poor crippled ex-magic-user begging for coins in the street. But that dude's still got a 17 Intelligence. You think he's going to stay down forever? Imagine how the PCs will react when their “old friend” returns, looking for a little payback a few levels later, backed up by the toughs of the Beggars' Guild...

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Get Back to Where You Once Belonged

Oddysey asked a question about returning to an old but beloved campaign a few days ago. I haven’t had the time to write the sort of pithy and succinct response appropriate to comments, so you get a long and rambling dissertation. ;)

”Which leaves me wondering why it is that they want to play this sequel game so badly.” - Oddysey

Very good question. The answer should guide your next steps.

I'm going to go waaay out on a limb here and suggest character empathy is a strong part of it. Your players feel a really strong connection to their characters, and they want to see how the story goes on, what happens next. (If this is the case, congrats! You did an excellent job of GMing,and they did an excellent job of playing.) Beloved characters are a joy to play just in their own right. When they already have a collection of cool gear and a web of associations with interesting NPCs, there’s even more fun in the offing.

If this is true, you really need to let the players either play their old, beloved PCs or new PCs who have a strong connection to those PCs, like their children or close retainers and lieutenants. In either case, you’re not starting the campaign at the traditional 1st-level-nobodies. Even if the PCs are first level, they’ll likely have access to powerful contacts and resources. You can, of course, invoke some major disaster to sever the PCs from most of these, a la the opening paragraphs of A Game of Thrones. However, this isn’t necessary and might feel a bit like a cop-out. The “Road Warrior” is as great as it is primarily because it doesn’t bear much resemblance to “Mad Max”. Likewise, “The Empire Strikes Back” doesn’t start with Luke back on the farm, but picks up where “Star Wars” left off.

You might, however, have serious issues if your players feel too strong a connection to the characters. If they’re feeling overly proprietary, and absolutely refuse to allow anything bad to happen to their beloved PCs or associated NPCs, it may not be worth revisiting that campaign. Give your imprimatur to whatever fanfic they want to write, or just tell them that everyone lived happily ever after, and leave it at that.

Another strong draw may have been the themes of the campaign. If your campaign was all about fighting for social justice, or dealing with a doomed world in an unfeeling and alien universe, or had a strong comedic element that really resonated with your players, this may be what they are looking to return to and play with. If this is the case, you might be better off with a new campaign, or maybe even an entirely different game system! However, you’ll have a hard time convincing the players of this if they haven’t made this realization themselves.

Finally, the players may feel that the campaign ended without resolving issues that they feel personally invested in. This is a not uncommon problem in more sandboxy games where some goals end up being deferred as other take precedence. Yes, Khanthrax the rakshasa prince was defeated and his plot to turn all the good humanoids of the world into rodents was thwarted, but a pretender may still sit on the throne of Lorany. Or Sir Martin never reforged his father’s broken sword. Or Kalit never finished building that temple as she promised Isis she would. If the issue is small enough and personal enough, you might not need a full-scale campaign. A few adventures or scenes might be enough to create appropriate closure for your players. Feel free, though, to let players whose PCs were not directly involved to take part. Friends helping each other through these sorts of things is a rich vein in literature and can be fun to play with, if those other players don’t mind their PCs playing second-fiddle for a bit.

For myself, I’ve both played in such a campaign (specifically, the children and students of the previous generation) and run such campaigns. Some of my old college group want very much to dust off those characters and continue their adventures. The trick, for me at least, is to find new themes to explore and challenges that I find compelling without doing too much violence to the things that the players loved in the original campaign.

Old School, New School, Red School, Blue School

This started as a reply in the comments to Chatty DM's discussion of building a megadungeon with old-schooly aspects for 4e. First, let me say that I think his emphasis on a game that he and his crew will enjoy is spot-on. That's probably the most important aspect of any D&D game, in any edition.

I asked Chatty what he meant by “player psychology-driven controlled encounters “ and he replied:

I meant encounters designed to hit the motivations of each of the players in your group. My group has a strong butt kicking streak, so I need to put in combats. I have a few Tacticians so I need to let them plan in some encounters instead of having them react all the time. There are strong Storytellers so encounters need to make sense in the world around the PCs and so forth.

I don’t think old school dungeons were designed like that. Although I clearly recall reading about Gygax and Kuntz designing part of their respective dungeons to specifically challenge their players.

I do know that the infamous Tomb of Horrors was designed to thwart common strategies and certain kick-in-the-door-and-whack-everything-that-moves proclivities that seemed to be cropping up in the game at that time. Beyond that, I couldn't say. What I can speak to is the flexibility of dungeons from those days of yore. My favorite example is Shrine of the Kuo-toa. Every encounter, from the mad boatman to the svirfneblin to the shrine itself can go any of a number of ways. Does the party draw swords and charge in with spells flying? Do they attempt stealth? Or do they negotiate their way through the encounter? A smart, observant, and lucky party can pass through the entire module without ever having to fight, and emerge out the other side with extra treasures in their packs and maybe even some allies that might prove very useful in tackling the Vault of the Drow.

This flexibility is a bit of a challenge to reproduce in 4e. In the latest iteration of D&D, encounters are designed from the start as combat or skill challenges or whatever. But older versions didn't have this separation. Any encounter could be a duel to the death, or a tense negotiation, or something else entirely. This is why it mattered that kobolds hated their orc neighbors, or that the ogre had a toothache, or that the owlbear hadn't eaten in days. This is why 3e statblocks are such monsters; if the PCs might negotiate with a creature, it's important to know the necessary stats, skills, and feats that might apply to such an attempt. 4e attempts to thread that needle by making the DM decide ahead of time how the PCs will deal with the challenge, so you only need to worry about it as either a combat challenge or a skill challenge, and then you apply the appropriate rules, and only those you need.

That said, I'm sure a skillful 4e DM can swing one way or the other adroitly, without the players ever the wiser. I think it's a bit easier with Labyrinth Lord, but that likely says more about my personal preferences and strengths than it does about the games. I do know that this flexibility in older editions made it easier for the players to mold the game into the sort of thing they preferred. If they wanted to kick down doors and wade in, that was an option. If, instead, they enjoyed more a game of politics and shifting alliances, the game easily accommodated that sort of play. Players who were all about battle mats and miniatures could acquire hirelings and henchmen before entering the dungeon, marshaling their mercenaries to wage tunnel warfare against the dungeon. Granted, some encounters could better be tackled with certain strategies. In the Villa of the Poyma, there are a few encounters that are very tough for a straight-up, mano-y-mandible fight. Trickery or truce would work better in those situations. But I'm not dictating anything, and whatever method my players chose, I will give them whatever odds seem most just according to the situation.

“You’re in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.”

As I mentioned in the previous post, Oddysey has started work on her megadungeon. She's got some neat ideas:

The initial first level -- what I'm working on right now -- is The Labyrinth, originally intended as a defense system for the fortress. (And amusement for its owners.)

Mazes are cool. They're chock full of mythic and spiritual resonances, can be generated by mathematical formulas (and can you get more nerdy than using an algorithm to build your D&D adventure?), look great on your graph paper, and just ooze old school as much as pig-snouted orcs and rust monsters.

They can also be game killers.

If you assume the maze can only be solved by marching through it and building a detailed map from the inside, it quickly devolves into the DM and the mapper shooting short-hand directions back and forth at each other while everyone else takes a nap, texts on their cellphones, or sees how high they can stack their dice. A raw maze, can, in short, be boring.

Those who adhere to the ways of the old school may take me to task on this. Have I not postulated that logistics and exploration are at the heart of old school D&D? And is there any challenge more suited to that sort of play than the maze?

All true points. But unless your players are really engaged in the mapping process, there's simply nothing for them to do while the mapper leads them blindly through the labyrinth, trying to puzzle it out. And true old school mazes were exercises in unbridled sadism. The DM knew the mapper would try the old follow-the-left-hand-wall trick, so they eagerly set out to foil it. Old school mazes were full of sloping passages, invisible teleporters, and rotating passages. Marks made on the walls or floor of the maze would be erased or altered. There's a picture in the 1e PHB where a warrior is carefully laying out thread from a spindle behind him to mark his way through a maze, while behind the corner a troll is just as carefully wrapping it back up. Drop a party of unsuspecting players who are used to more story-driven adventures into an old school maze and they are likely to quit out of boredom and frustration long before their characters starve to death, hopelessly lost in the bowels of your beautiful design.

In his computer game design series entitled “Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!” Ernest Adams has this to say about mazes:

The original text adventure, Colossal Cave, had two mazes. One was a series of rooms each of which was described thus: “You’re in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.” The other was a series of rooms described as, “You’re in a twisting little maze of passages, all different” (or “You’re in a little twisty maze of passages, all different,” or “You’re in a maze of little twisting passages, all different,” etc.). These were the prototypical boring and stupid mazes. Colossal Cave was the first adventure game ever, though, so I cut it a little slack. But that was over twenty years ago; there’s no longer any excuse for doing that now. Somebody gave me a copy of The Legend of Kyrandia a few years back, and I played it with some pleasure – right up until I got to the maze.

Mazes don’t have to be boring and stupid. It’s possible to design entertaining mazes by ordering the rooms according to a pattern that the player can figure out. A maze should be attractive, clever, and above all, fun to solve. If a maze isn’t interesting or a pleasure to be in, then it’s a bad feature.

I am in complete agreement with Mr. Adams in this regard. Even a raw maze without the gorgnard's clever attempts to foil mapping is boring. Besides, your maze can be so much more.

I imagine the ur-maze for those of us who discovered gaming during the Silver Age was probably Jim Henson's “Labyrinth”. While much of the appeal of the movie is in the visuals (from the art direction of Brian Froud), there are also the puzzles and thematic elements which make that maze work. The movie features old chestnuts like the door that always lies and the door that always tells the truth, the friendly-looking denizen who is actually very dangerous and the scary-looking creature who is actually very helpful, and the massive gate with a built-in, steampunk goblin mecha. Er, ok, maybe that last one isn't something we've seen much of before or since, but you get the idea.

That maze is a fairly simple thing, being a collection of atmospheric obstacles sprinkled through the labyrinth. There are other ways to make your maze interesting. There's the maze that is really a bunch of interdimensional back alleyways as used in Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits. A maze can also be a right-of-passage, a miniature journey through the Underworld from one stage of life to the next (which, in its way, is exactly what the maze in “Labyrinth” is, though I prefer something more mythological/anthropological and less preachy ;) ). There's the maze that's actually a machine, where the walls are arranged to focus magical energy or are actually giant gears and cogs that perform some amazing work when the bits are properly arranged and the right activation sequence performed. This is akin to the interactive maze, where the players can adjust the shape of the maze and thereby what parts of the maze they can visit and where the maze exits to. And that's a neat version to pair with the maze as tactical challenge, where the maze primarily serves as interesting terrain in which the party fights an enemy.

I suspect that Oddysey has in mind one of my favorite variations on the maze, which is maze as pitcher plant. These mazes are very easy to get into, but once you do, getting back out again can be a real challenge. At that point, things can get really exciting. Logistics come to the forefront and every wound and spent arrow is an agony for the party. The pitcher plant maze forces the party deeper and deeper to the center while slowly whittling away at their resources, a death of a thousand cuts with the promise of sudden, terrible, and almost certainly lethal violence at the end.

What? Are you suggesting I'm as sadistic as the DMs of old? Perish the thought!

Megadungeons Everywhere

Fight On! #4 is out. The latest entry of the magazine's megadungeon, "The Darkness Beneath", is written by James "Grognardia" Maliszewski. Mr. Maliszewski also brings us word of the latest from Monte "No, Really, I'm Retiring" Cook. The author of Ptolus now offers us a subscription website where he'll be building a megadungeon with daily updates called Dungeonaday.com.

The project is intriguing. For $7 per month (if you join in March as as charter member) you'll get:

new game content every weekday. Basically, what I'll be doing is building an ongoing dungeon-based campaign of a decidedly old-school tradition, but utilizing all the newest presentation options. So expect an adventure like no other with hypertext references to all the important game content (including various rules references), fluid encounters, and incredible amounts of detail.

The centerpiece is to be a megadungeon called Dragon's Delve, but you'll also get:

the surrounding area (filled with intriguing ruins), the nearby town of Brindenford (which is far more involved in the goings-on than it first appears), side trips to a mysterious island and an extradimensional tesseract, and forays into strange other planes. And that's just for starters. Seriously.

He has this to say on rules:

The rules supported will be primarily 3.5, but let me offer up two thoughts in that regard. The first is, even as I'm writing this I'm struck by how rules-light it all is. It would be a piece of cake to use it with any edition (older or newer) of the game. The second is, if I discover that a large percentage of the membership is using another rules system, like say Pathfinder or Arcana Evolved, I'll make a point to offer up frequent conversion information, assuming that I can do so legally, respecting copyrights where needed.

He's hit some of the old school buttons, but I suspect this will be the exact opposite to some of the themes the old school has lately embraced. For instance, he's promised "incredible amounts of detail." Compare to the One Page Dungeon form being used in such projects as Stonehell from "The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope". I also don't expect to see Mr. Cook embrace the Empty Room Principle. I do expect the project will be very interesting and may in fact be worth what he's charging for it. If anyone in this industry can provide value in a project like this, it's Monte Cook.

But it's no surprise to read Mr. Maliszewski's wistful conclusion:

there's a big part of me that wishes the old school community could organize itself into a similar kind of project but without a fee. I know we have the talent to do so.

I completely agree. Hell, I'd probably pay hard cash for a megadungeon crafted by James M., Mr. Raggi, and Chgowiz, populated by creatures and treasures designed by Taichara and Noisms, with art direction from David Larkins and Jeff Rients.

In the meantime, Oddysey has begun work on her megadungeon, inspired in part by Castle Heterodyne. Yeah, there really does seem to be something in the air...

Fluid Edge - An Invitation to Play

To make magic magical, I've suggested making it dangerous. There are, of course, other options. How about magic that invites you to experiment, to indulge your exploration itch, and rewards you for thinking outside the box?

Taichara delivers again. Not only is this a fun toy for the players to explore, but the DM can also use the blade to express something about the campaign. Is the blade useful? Benevolent? Scary? Eldritch? Do the result reflect a theme? Are they random (I could easily see one of Jeff's random generators being tied to this)? Comedic? There's all sorts of fun to be had with this wonderful magical "weapon".

And here's another cool thing: the "guts", if you will, the actual working mechanics of the weapon, can be ported to any system. 4e, 3e, OD&D, True20, Pendragon, Burning Wheel, GURPS, whatever lights your fire.

Keep your eye on Taichara's Hamsterish Hoard. Lots of neat stuff happening there.

New GSL

Just when you thought it was over...

I haven't been keeping a weather eye on WotC since 4e failed to light my fire and I ran into the open arms of Labyrinth Lord. Luckily, fellow Austinite mxyzplk has been paying attention and brings word of the latest itteration of the 4e GSL. He says it's better, but not great:

Well, the other big change is that they removed the remaining “poison pill” clause. This clause basically said that “you can’t publish the same stuff under the OGL and GSL.” In other words, if you want to create a 4e version of an adventure, campaign setting, etc. that is also available via OGL - you have to give up the OGL. Of course, this meant that everyone with multiple product lines including OGL stuff - Green Ronin’s Freeport, for example - wouldn’t touch 4e with a ten foot pole.

Now, apparently, you could put out a “4e Guide to Freeport,” adapt existing 3.5e adventures to 4e, etc. You can’t dual-stat; the FAQ states that, say, using Cleric as defined in the OGL inside a GSL-licensed product violates the “don’t redefine things” clause in the GSL. That’s a little annoying - I fail to see how they have a vested interest in someone not dual-statting an adventure, for example - but it’s a minor restriction in lieu of the previous huge ass one.

There's a lot more at the link, so if you're a 4e fan or just curious what your favorite third party publishers might get up to, be sure to read the whole thing.

I have to wonder if this helped inspire Necromancer Games' interest in producing an "old school" version of 4e. Frankly, I'm not certain they're barking up the right trees; the first thing I'd tackle is the treasure and magic item creation rules, and then work my way back to character classes and powers. It'll still be interesting to see what they come up with.

Just Write, Just Play

I do a lot of writing these days, some professional and some just for fun. Often, I have a vague notion about the topic, but no specifics. I learned back in college that if I just start writing about the topic, eventually my thoughts will crystallize into an argument that I can hang a paper around.

I run my campaigns the same way. The first session of my current Moldvay/Cook/Labyrinth Lord game was back on the 22nd of January. Only this morning, after chewing on it late last night when I couldn't fall asleep, did I finally get around to writing down what the big movers and shakers were doing. And even then, it was in the vaguest of terms.

Why? First, because what the big movers and shakers are up to hasn't been terribly important. The party started out shipwrecked, made their long way back to civilization, and now is involved in tracking down a small party of dangerous elves. Yes, what the Powers That Be are up to does have some influence on this, but it's only tangential. Yes, there will be clues for the PCs to find, but nothing solid yet. The truth is still out there, somewhere, but it's not likely to fall into their laps for some time yet.

Secondly, I wasn't sure what the PCs and players were interested in. And I'm still probably being premature, so I've left things vague. It could be the PCs will, in the end, have nothing to do with the grand schemes I wrote about. It might only end up as background window dressing. If that turns out to be the case, there's no point in me pouring buckets of sweat and blood into it. Much better to focus my energies where they will bring the most fun to our game. Right now, that's a bit of old school dungeon delving mingled with some para-anthropology and empathetic NPCs.

Third, I was still getting a good feel for this campaign. Nearly every other D&D game I've run in the past has been high fantasy of some stripe or another. This is the first where I've tried to inject a bit more Bronze and Iron Age feel. Plus, the new rules for magic and character classes might still alter the flavor of the game in ways I haven't anticipated yet.

And finally, the players are still putting their mark on the campaign. The players always add their own spin on things, and until you do you can never really tell what new dimensions or angles they might bring into focus. It's their game, too, and should reflect their interests and desires as much as mine.

It all comes down, eventually, to wiggle-room. You always want to leave a bit of room for a new monster, or an adventure in an unusual environment, or a sudden shift in the interests of the group. A good campaign is a dynamic one, and keeping things loose and malleable at the beginning gives you lots of room to define things as you and the players express your interests in the play of the game.

Villa of the Poyma

I'm hoping that clicking on the image above will allow you to get a larger version that's actually legible. Yeah, it's ugly, a hand-drawn map scanned and edited with my meager Photoshop skills. I'm certainly not using it to advertise my capabilities as a cartographer. ;p

This is the Villa of the Poyma, an ancient elven clan. The building's been abandoned for over 700 years now, with intermittent habitation by orcs and goblins. Otherwise, it's become the home of various less-than-sentient monsters, including rats in the storeroom (bottom southwest corner), bats in the armoury (just east of the barracks, the little room with the secret connecting passage), a pair of tarantella (tarantellas? tarantelli?), and mystery creatures that are buzzing very loudly in the unexplored area east of the kitchen.

Ugly as the map is, it's a good example of my design philosophy for dungeons. This place was built to be lived in, not as a challenge for adventurers. It was a functioning home and center of operations for an influential family who were leaders in their community. The single entrance in the western wall brings you into an audience garden, where the matriarch of the family or her stand-in would greet clients, debtors, and petitioners on a regular basis. Many of these would bring gifts or payments, usually in the form of goods the household needed. So a farming family might bring milk from their cow every morning as part of the tuition they owed the family for a son attending the family school. Non-perishables would be kept in the storeroom directly south of the garden. Just north of the garden are the stables, where the riding beasts were housed. The large doors in the eastern wall of the garden open directly into the great hall, where the family would hold parties and feasts. The kitchen is directly south of the great hall and east of the storeroom, convenient to both.

You can see how this style of designing makes it easy to fill up your graph paper. One area flows naturally into the next, because lived-in locations have their own logic. It's a great way to get started if you find a blank page daunting. If you know who built a place and why, you can then begin to shape it based on those assumptions. Later inhabitants will then move in and put their own mark on the place. You can build a ruin in layers like this.

This particular villa was also built in zones. The western-most rooms are all about coming and going: audience garden, stables, and warehouse. North of the great hall are the barracks and "sand garden" (for sparring and training) of the guards/mercenaries. The small room with the secret door to the east of the barracks was their armoury. The secret passage allowed the guards to get quickly to the matriarch's chambers, and also allowed her to get inside the armoury and lock it from the inside if she feared mutiny. The southern portion of the map was the servants and slaves territory, including the kitchen and storeroom. I doubt I'm giving too much away when I say that the rooms beneath the "fog of war" were more barracks and workrooms for the family's slaves. Finally, the eastern portions of the map were the private areas enjoyed by the family. Knowing all this helps when coming up with descriptions. The finest furnishings and fixtures are found in the family's dwelling rooms, while the rudest and most utilitarian are found in the slave quarters.

After I knew how the Poyma used and lived in the villa, I could then add the layers of years since they fled: orcish graffiti gouged into the pear tree in the audience garden, the detritus of the goblin spider-hunters' camp in the old guard barracks, the wounded carvings and doors where gems and gilding have been plundered.

There are a few old school touches here and there. For instance, while the villa has only one "official" entrance, the first room that entrance opens into offers multiple paths for exploration. The entire place is a bit of a circle, and after exploring for a bit, the players can then pick-and-choose which challenges they feel up to tackling.

Playing with Witches

Here's a new character class for my Moldvay/Cook/Labyrinth Lord hack. It grew from some stuff that came out of a long-running one-on-one game that recently went on indefinite hiatus, work I've been doing on the campaign background for my Thursday game, and inspiration I've been picking up from various parts of the web.

Clerics have always felt like an odd fit in D&D. As proto-Christians, they work ok, but that opens up a whole nasty can of worms about how the Christian pantheon operates and where the powers come from and so on and so forth. I'm rarely comfortable tackling that sort of thing. Plus, Christianity fits poorly into my games, and would really throw my Iron Age Thursday game out of whack. 2e clerics kinda sorta got close. They, at least, acknowledged that clerics of Poseidon probably shouldn't wield the same powers as a cleric of Thor. But that threatened the cleric's role as healer in the party, and it was very easy for the inexperienced to create gimped clerics.

For my Thursday game, I embraced the D&D cleric because I really, really didn't want to try to create an entirely new class, nor did I want to fold the cleric spells under the magic-user's domain. I was tempted my Mr. Maliszewski's idea that clerical magic sprang from the same source as magic-user magic, only approached from a different angle. However, since I wanted my gods to be walking the world and rubbing elbows with mere mortals, I took another tack. I decided that clerical magic was a byproduct of the existence of the titans and the gods, and their relationship with mortals. It's the odd and complex magical nature of these relationships that dictate the no-edged-weapons rule and the nature of the powers that clerics get.

The Eldest, however, are different from the titans and gods. They really are separated from mortal existence. They are emanations of creation itself, and while they have physical manifestations in the the plane the campaign started in, their existence also manifests on every plane and reality (though not always in recognizable forms).

The source of all of this, and everything else for that matter, is the Mother. Among mortals, there are those who attempt to commune with Her, to make the most of being a part of Her, and to see creation from Her perspective. They attempt to see beyond the dichotomized world to a universal truth beyond, the central truth that unifies all of existence. There are many names for these folk, but most call them witches.

Central to learning the ways of the witch is a union with the Mother, the universal feminine. Because of this, nearly all witches are women. Any man who wishes to become a witch must abandon his masculinity. These males must either be magically transformed into women or castrated. Regardless of the process, they then adopt the clothing, behavior, and rituals of women in their culture.

Witches seek to recognize the Mother in all things and all people. They search for the interconnectedness in all things, and then seek to teach this knowledge to others. Most witches live within a community where they serve as natural philosophers, teachers, advisers, herbalists, healers, and midwives.

The prime requisites for a witch are Wisdom and Charisma. If a witch has a score of 13 or greater in both stats, the character will gain a 5% bonus on earned experience points. If a witch's Wisdom is 13 or greater and her Charisma at least 16, she gains a 10% bonus on earned experience.

RESTRICTIONS: Witches use six-sided dice (d6) to determine their hit points and use the cleric's saving throws. They must be Neutral in alignment. They may use any weapons or armour, but may not use any that are made of iron. Yes, bronze is fine and yes, this probably means I need to better define the drawbacks of bronze. Witches use the same attack tables as clerics. They have their own spell list which they draw spells from, and they may use any magic item normally reserved for magic-users and clerics, including scrolls.

HERBALISM & HEALING: In seeking the interconnectedness of all things, most witches begin by studying the natural world. A witch may use her skills as an herbalist and healer to aid others. Those under the care of a witch regain hit points through rest and other natural means at twice the normal rate. Those convalescing or suffering from a disease recover at twice the normal rate.

Any character inflicted with a poison or a disease who does not die outright can be aided by a witch. The witch will need at least one uninterrupted round to treat the inflicted character (which means both will have to be standing still without someone trying to hit them with weapons or malicious spells). The character then gets to make a second saving throw, adding the witch's Wisdom-based saving throw adjustment to the roll. If this roll also fails, the witch may try again, but only after she has an uninterrupted minute to work on the inflicted. (Keep in mind that rounds in my game last only 10 seconds.) A third saving throw is rolled, again adjusted by the witch's Wisdom. Success on any of these saving throws means the inflicted no longer suffers from the effects of the disease or poison, though any lost hit points or modified stats must be recovered in the normal ways.

If the witch knows exactly what sort of poison or disease might be threatening a character, she may attempt to inoculate them ahead of time. This requires the witch to work uninterrupted for at least one hour to prepare her potions, but allows the character to add the witch's Wisdom-based saving throw bonus to saving throws against this particular poison or disease over the next 24 hours. Only one such inoculation per character is allowed in any 24 hour period.

In order for a witch to do any of these things, she needs access to a supply of herbs and minerals, water, and some common cooking tools (fire, pot, knives, etc.). It can be assumed that a witch in the wilderness is constantly resupplying her stash of herbs and minerals. However, DMs may rule that this is impossible in especially barren or alien environments.

FAMILIAR: A witch may summon a familiar if she doesn't already have one. This requires a full 24 hours of preparation and ritual. Any non-sentient creature possessing fewer hit dice than the witch may be summoned. The type of creature who answers the summons should be determined randomly by the DM. The witch and her familiar share a powerful mental bond. The witch can experience the world through the familiar's senses if the familiar is within one mile per level of the witch. The familiar will obey any command it is mentally given by the witch, even self-destructive commands. However, should a witch's familiar die, the witch will lose one level or, if the witch is first level, she must save vs. Poison or die herself.

SPELLS: A witch gains spells in the same manner as a cleric, automatically gaining access to all spells at each level. While she can cast spells if her hands are full, such as when holding weapons or a shield, she may not cast if her hands are bound or if she cannot speak. Witches draw their spells from the following list:

1st LEVEL
1.Detect Magic
2.Entangle
3.Pass Without Trace
4. Predict Weather
5. Purify Water
6. Speak with Animals

2nd LEVEL
1.Charm Person or Mammal
2.Create Water
3.Cure Light Wounds
4. Feign Death
5. Locate Animals and Plants
6. Obscurement

3rd Level
1.Cure Disease
2.Neutralize Poison
3.Plant Growth
4. Protection from Fire
5. Stone Shape
6. Water Breathing

4th Level
1.Animal Summoning I
2.Cure Serious Wounds
3.Dispel Magic
4. Protection from Lightning
5. Repel Insects
6. Speak with Plants

5th Level
1.Animal Growth
2.Animal Summoning II
3.Commune with Nature
4. Control Winds
5. Insect Plague
6. Transmute Rock to Mud

6th Level
1.Animal Summoning III
2.Confusion
3.Conjure Elemental
4. Control Weather
5. Cure Serious Wounds
6. Wall of Thorns

(Those of you with really good memories or active 1e campaigns may recognize the above spells as coming from the 1e druid's list. They seemed a good match for what I was going for, and most won't require any serious tweaking.)



I'm fairly happy with the way this turned out. It's not quite the druid, and it's certainly not the cleric. Level advancement is a bit slower than the cleric, but I think the ability to use magic wands and staves and magic-user scrolls more than makes up for that.

Little Blogging, and a Preview

Wednesday is going to be extremely busy for me, and I'll likely be tied up with workaday matters until the late evening. Blogging will be light, if it happens at all.

Late Wednesday or early Thursday I'm hoping to post a new character class for my Moldvay/Cook/LL hack based on the information of the Eldest. The witch (tentative name, but the best I've come up with) is kinda-sorta a cleric to the Eldest, combining the roles of herbalist, natural philosopher, midwife, and village wisewoman. I may also post parts of the dungeon I'm using in my Thursday game. (And yes, Oddysey, I will get you those scans of the portions you've explored so far before we play Thursday night. My apologies for being slow on that.)

And after that, hopefully I'll finish my series on mapping Pitsh. With luck, that should take me through the weekend.

My Top 10 D&D Monsters

A number of bloggers have been having fun with these, and I'm pretty worn out after a bit of a rough day, so something light and fun seems to be appropriate to end the evening with.

10 - Tarantella from Moldvay's Basic
A horrible pun, but a fun monster. If it bites you and you fail your save vs. poison, you start a spastic dance that could wear you out and leave you helpless. Even worse, anyone who watches you dance must save vs. spells or start dancing too! Came about as close as we got to a TPK last Thursday thanks to one of these.

9 - Drow from Fiend Folio
Effete sadomasochistic hedonists. What's not to like? Got the next best thing to a TPK with these on my old college group. Luckily for them, the poison the drow use only puts you to sleep. Unluckily for them, Lolth needed some sacrificial victims to try out a new version of her drider test.

Oh, and drow have nothing whatsoever to do with comments on race relations in modern America, veiled or otherwise. The drow are jet black because Elric of Melnibone was an albino. (And no, I can't quote chapter and verse on that from anything Gary ever wrote, but it seems pretty obvious to me.)

8 - Aboleth from Monster Manual II

Some of my players are going to be shocked the aboleth rate so far back. They are my favorite big scary monsters: alien, inscrutable, and possessing some very nasty attacks. Plus, they live so deep down and underwater that they're nearly as hard to find and reach as they are to understand.

7- Kuo-toa from Fiend Folio

I loved the anthropological detail these guys were described with. They've got a wonderful mix of Cthulhic and Mayan influences that just fires my imagination. When I was told that the name of their goddess, Blibdoolpoolp, was an onomatopoeia for the sound of a drop of water falling into a pool in an echoing cave, that just made them all the cooler.

The classic module Shrine of the Kuo-toa is a wonderfully open-ended adventure. If the PCs play their cards right, and learn the rituals of the kuo-toans, they might make it through the entire shrine without ever having to draw their weapons in anger. Very cool stuff in my book.

6 - Lamia from Monster Manual

I once got a vision of one of these with a tiger's body wearing heavy anklets around its paws and it fired my imagination. I created male versions and had them living in tribes where an alpha male lorded it over beta males who tended to the kittens and the camp while the females hunted and competed for the alpha's attentions.

5 - Graz'zt from Monster Manual II

A favorite villain of mine. Suave, sophisticated, utterly ruthless but always with an eye over his shoulder because if he ever stumbles Orcus and Demogorgon will be all over him like ducks on a junebug.

4 - Gnolls from Moldvay's Basic

I think it was in Moldvay's Basic that the gnolls were first described as hyena men. Hyenas have very unusual social dynamics, and certain unpredictable savagery that really clicks with my imagination. I had fun crafting a culture for them based on these ideas.

3 - Tiamat from Monster Manual

My love affair with Tiamat started with the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. That led me to the mythological Tiamat. In high school, I chunked the lawful evil version, made her chaotic and somewhat capricious. Happy to use the PCs towards her own ends, she's treacherous and sly, and always looking for the double-cross. She has a lot of respect for powerful or sly opponents, and a love-hate relationship with Baphomet.

2 - Succubus from Monster Manual

Yeah, well, ok, looking beyond the fact that I was an early teen when I got that book and the art is, um, well... Yeah...

Ahem, anyway, succubi make wonderful hidden villains. Everything points to the baron being a the source of all evil, and the PCs tool up to take him down, hardly paying any attention to the sweet, freckle-faced slavegirl at his feet. Until, of course, it's too late, and she's gating in Demogorgon who wants to have a word with these uppity mortals who seem intent on ruining his plans...

1 - Trolls but only kinda sort inspired by the D&D version

Well, duh! I mean, look at the name of this blog, and it should be obvious. ;)

Seriously, I've loved trolls since before I knew there was such a thing as RPGs. I'm rather fond of the cow-tailed versions from northern Europe especially. My trolls are creatures of fey, keepers of chthonic wisdom and guardians of not just bridges, but any place of transition, where worlds meet and realities cross. But I mostly still use the stats from monster lists. I just change how the trolls react to the PCs, and what the PCs can hope to gain from meeting a troll. That sort of change is easy and potent, and can transform any monster into something special and unique to your campaign.

The four elemental genie races deserve special mention here as well. I love playing with them and their rivalries, and the djinn and efreet usually make some sort of appearance in my games. Traveling to the cities of the elemental planes makes a nice change of pace from dungeons and wilderness areas, and gives the players new cultures to explore in a setting where combat is extremely dangerous but for the most advanced parties.

Little Treasures, Huge Imagination

Don't linger, click over to pick up Taichara's latest gift to the gaming world: a collection of wonderfully described works of art fitting for the richest treasure hoard. They run the gamut from tasteful and understated ("A finger-ring of translucent, deep green jade, carved to resemble a twisting vine of ivy") to the splendorous barbaric ("A sword scabbard of thin wood overlain with the spotted pelt of a great cat, with fittings of granulated gold and the cat's tail hanging freely from the scabbard's lip") to the just plain bizarre ("An ornate reliquary of cedar overlaid with ivory and ebony marquetry; inside, on an undyed velvet cushion, is a skeletal finger tipped with a long curved claw"). Some just make me bop my own head and ask, "Why didn't I think of that?" (I'm most particularly thinking of fabric spun from the feathers of peacocks. Peacocks figured prominently in my last 2e game, and this cloth would be an amazing shimmer of iridescence.)

It's a downloadable .pdf file, so be sure you get it ASAP. The items are completely stat and rule free, so they can be used with just about any RPG you can imagine, from traditional Tolkienesque fantasy to decadent space opera to pulpy archeology-adventure.

I'm a CISP!

Or a CISPO if you adhere to the Zak S. addendum. Find out what you are with Noism's Playstyle Categorizer.

The Eldest

This is a bit of background for my Thursday night game. It has very little bearing on the current adventure at hand, just in case any of my players were wondering. I'm mostly posting this to offer a bit of additional mythology and to explain some of the curses and exclamations used by the coarser NPCs. It's also a bit of background for a new class I'm contemplating for my LL game.

The Eldest are, as the name implies, the oldest creatures in existence. They are the most primal forces in creation, and as such, their influence in all things is powerful, but sometimes very subtle. Their exact relationships are not always clear, and there's much debate on just which beings are Eldest and which are titans. Tiamat, for instance, is called an Eldest by some and a titan by others. I include her here, because I prefer it that way, though many wiser than I certainly disagree.

The first name given is the most common used and the second name is the Common version of that name (almost always derived almost directly from the tongue of the Lizardfolk). The third name refers to the celestial body associated with the eldest.

The Mother, Kohma, the Sun
The Mother is the eldest of the Eldest, and existed before creation. She is the source of creation and all that lives. Some traditions say she gave birth to all creation, others say that she fashioned it of herself, and other say she is herself all creation. Most traditions agree that she is the primal source of all that is, in every Plane and every world.

The Earth, Wakax
The Mother's second son and believed to be her favorite until he angered her. Most traditions say that the Mother lusted after her second son, but that he spurned her advances. In anger, the Mother called upon the Planes of Earth and Fire and bound her son securely in place, a torment and a prison until such time as she chooses to forgive him. This imprisoned Eldest is the world upon which our adventures begin.

The Ocean, Ukot
The Mother's first daughter. When the Mother bound her son with Earth and Fire, she then bound her first daughter to him with Air and Water. Exactly why is a matter of debate. Some say that Earth spurned his mother because he was in love with Ocean, and that the Mother punished her out of jealousy. Others maintain that Ocean chose to be bound to Earth out of love, though whether that love was romantic or filial is also a matter of dispute. Most traditions maintain that she also has feelings for the Silver Moon and strains at her bonds to be with him. All the fish of the plants, fish of the sea, beasts of the earth, humans, lizardfolk, dwarves, and all else that is mortal but is not a monster are said to be the children of Ocean and Earth.

The Huntsman, Kinsik, the Silver Moon
The Mother's first son. The Silver Moon is called the Hunter, Huntsman, and the Gatekeeper. He has authority over all transitions, portals, and transformations, and thus is seen as a potent and powerful force in creation. The stars are said to be his daughters, sired upon the Mother. Of all the eldest, he is probably invoked and propitiated by mortals the most.

Tiamat, the Mother of Monsters, Prisoner of the Red Moon
Tiamat is a wild and dangerous creature, but also very much a mystery. Most agree that she was born of the Mother, but there's a lot of debate as to who her father was, assuming she even had one. It's believed the first dragons were sired on her by the Huntsman, and that she raped the Earth to give birth to the first monsters. She claims credit as the source of most of the monsters that plague the world, including orcs, goblins, hydra, seaserpents, basilisks, and slimes. All wise agree, however, that she is not responsible for the undead.

Near the end of the century-long Third War Against the Monsters, it is said that Tiamat flew into a rage and personally attacked a number of elven cities, leaving nothing but smoking craters and melted ruins in her wake, and leaving hideous scars upon the flesh of Earth. The titans and gods, terrified that Tiamat might accidentally slay or even free Earth, subdued her and created the Red Moon to imprison her in. Most believe, and the gnomes maintain, that the gnomes came from the feylands in order to help heal Earth of the wounds Tiamat inflicted upon him.

Tiamat is a very ambiguous figure. While she is seen as the source of bloodthirst and rage, she's also the wellspring of mortal fertility. It is said that she was imprisoned and not slain because, if Tiamat were to die, no plant would ever flower again and no babes of any animal or race would ever again be born. Tiamat is the second most invoked Eldest, but always with caution. Among the lizardfolk and those humans who have not adopted the ways of the gods, it is still customary for a woman to serve at least a week as a hierodule in Tiamat's temple before taking a husband.

Stupi Educated NPC Tricks

To say that I'm overjoyed by Oddysey's reaction to last Thursday's game would be an understatement. What DM wouldn't be? The thrill of exploring the unknown, of daring its challenges and emerging (mostly) intact is very much at the core of most D&D, whatever the edition. Or, at least, that's the way it's always been for me.

What follows was already discussed in the game or emails, so my players should feel free to read on if they wish. No spoilers here, though a few more details are fleshed out.

The group is currently on the trail of some murderous elves. That trail has led them to the villa of the Poyma family, on the outskirts of the ruined elven city of Krybol. The city and villa were abandoned hastily at the beginning of the Third War Against the Monsters. It was occupied briefly by an orcish army. Being far from the coast, however, it was ill suited to the plans of the nagpa who led their armies to the coast where great barges were constructed to carry the armies of Tiamat across the Turquoise Sea.

Krybol didn't figure much in the rest of the war. Even when the combined armies of the elves, lizardfolk, gods, and titans besieged the island in the closing months of the war, Krybol was mostly ignored. In the intervening 700 or so years, it's been the haunt of this or that tribe of humanoids. Most lately, a tribe of orcs called it home, but these were driven out by an army of human mercenaries and freebooters, financed and led by priests of Uban, eager to plunder the city of its mysteries, and willing to let their army plunder whatever gold or jewels they might find.

Back in its heyday, Krybol was a distant outpost of the Elven Empire, a refuge for free thinkers, deviant artists, and those who sought to revolutionize the mystical and natural sciences. The Poyma were a powerful family in the city. They exercised influence over the Tower of Stars, a center for research and learning. They were also rather wealthy, and loaned money to those they felt worthy of credit, or who would give them additional influence in the community. The villa was the seat of their power, and was designed to be a display of their wealth and influence, an administrative center for their political and financial dealings, and a fortress in time of need.

Which is all well and good, and certainly was a big help when it came to designing the layout of the villa. But handing your players a giant chunk of exposition before or after a game is hardly the way to put everyone in that adventuring frame of mind. Even George Lucas was pushing it with those long crawls at the beginning of the Star Wars movies. In the early days of B sci-fi movies, exposition would be handled by one character turning to another and starting a long speech with the phrase, “As you already know...” This has since been deemed unbearably clunky, and writers have found more elegant ways to handle exposition. In Dr. Who, for example, the Doctor's companion, who generally knows less about the universe than the Doctor, can always ask for the audience, “Hey, what is this giant slime monster chewing on my leg?” Later, shows like Star Trek and Stargate: SG1 would have the commander of the team ask the science expert to explain what it was they were encountering.

This latter was the tack I chose, made easier when Rukmini decided to hire a retainer and specifically set out to find a cleric of Uban. The one she got was something of an expert on the elves that settled on Dreng Bdan. So when they found the villa, he was able to fill in these details as they encountered things or questions were asked:

Rukmini: I go over to the door to the east. What's it look like?

Trollsmyth: Nicer than the rest. You think it once held some gilding and carvings of winged serpents, but somebody defaced the carvings when they pried off the gilding. Still, 700 years isn't good for any wooden door, and this one is in pretty bad shape like the others.

Rukmini: I push it open. "Navan, why are there snakes all over the doors? Is that an elf thing, or something specific to this family?"

Trollsmyth: "Both, I think. In elven myth, snakes were said to slither between worlds, and to dance between our world and the Elemental Planes. The shrike was on the family coat-of-arms, but it was the serpent that later generations adopted as their totem, because of that myth." The room beyond appears to have once been a comfortable sitting room...

This gives the players who enjoy exploration a whole new level of mystery to pick at. Not only do they get to explore the physical rooms and corridors of the dungeon, but also the temporal dimensions as well, the many layers of history that happened to the location. A DM can use this information to hint at where the PCs are more likely to find whatever goal they seek, or warn them of dangers they might face elsewhere in the dungeon.

And, if you're a history/anthropology/archeology nerd like me, it allows you to wallow in all that “useless” information you've got crammed between your ears. ;)

Role-playing with Rules

Over at “The Fine Art of the TPK” (listed on my blogroll as “All Your Dungeons are Belong to Us” because I keep forgetting to change the name) Donny asks for a definition of role-playing:

Specifically, I'd like to know how or why one game would have it in any more or less abundance than any other.

It's an interesting spin on the old question, and completely legitimate. Sure, some would say that role-playing is just taking on the part of a character and playing out that character's actions in a hypothetical situation, and thus the rules themselves don't matter. You could, theoretically, role-play Monopoly or Settlers of Catan. And to some extent, I have to agree with that, because I tend to RP in my head when playing boardgames.

That said, there's a reason we fork over wads of cash for sets of rules. I mean, if the rules didn't matter at all, we could all just save ourselves lots of money and utterly destroy the business side of the hobby by adjudicating uncertainty through flipping coins or popular vote or DM fiat. But for most of us, that wouldn't scratch our itch, would it? In this, I think the Forgites are right. Rules matter. Setting matters. And the two should, at the very least, not work at cross-purposes to one another.

Allow me to dig deeper into that definition of role-playing. For me, role-playing is taking on a character, inhabiting that other person while exploring an imaginary landscape that is simultaneously internal, social, and physical. Add in the “game” of RPG, and I'm not just exploring that landscape, but tackling the challenges that landscape presents.

So, with that definition in mind, I can begin to come up with a list traits that a game ought to have to “do it” for me. First, the rules must promote and support verisimilitude. I want to submerge myself into the character and the worlds that character explores, and the more I can do that without being asked to fiddle with gaming bits, the happier I am.

This has a lot of consequences for my choice in game. For instance, some games of the Forge school attempt to remove the DM by sharing the world-building duties among the players, or even making it part of the game. This, though, is horrible for me. With the world so uncertain and often times so random, I never feel I can trust it enough to explore it, but must stand back, watching out for where it's going to suddenly transform itself again. I'm much happier with a GM who has a strong sense of what the world is about and how it works. With a good GM, I'll trust a bit of zaniness, because I know, while I might not be able to say how, the whole thing holds together like a tapestry, and if I follow the threads long enough, I'll find how they all weave together.

It also means that I don't want any more rules than I absolutely need. If I'm looking up a rule in a book, I'm not enjoying my character. If I'm using the rules to overcome a challenge instead of using my character or the setting, I'm too deep into the game and too far from my character to get what I want from an RPG.

So why don't I get rid of the rules altogether? Because I need the rules to reinforce the verisimilitude. The rules keep things consistent, dependable, and understandable. This is especially important for the fantastic elements of the game. Magic, fictional technology, and the supernatural need a structure they can hang on, so I can trust that they'll work in a consistent and believable way.

I also need the rules to deal with things that I can't just play through easily at the table. Combat rules are useful because I don't want to try jumping around the dining room swinging swords at my friends. Rules which abstract certain economic realities mean I can focus on the fun parts of being an interstellar smuggler and don't need to worry about keeping track of supply and demand for certain commodities across a hundred dozen markets. Arguing with a spreadsheet is only fun for me if the character I'm playing is an accountant who, you know, spends his days arguing with spreadsheets.

And this is why my game of choice right now is Labyrinth Lord. Combat is abstract, and with a few tweaks it doesn't disturb my sense of verisimilitude. Character creation is also very abstract, so I don't end up with a character who can barely do half the things I'd mastered by the age of 16. Does it have some annoying gameisms? Sure does, but I can live with most (such as escalating hit points) and can change those I don't like (such as the limitations of class, and race-as-class) very easily. More than all of that, though, is probably that I know this game backwards and forwards. I rarely need to look something up. I can gin up a ruling at the drop of hat, without fretting overly much about how this might impact other aspects of the game, and spend more time in the world and less time in the rules.

This is why 3e was such a let-down for me. They'd purged the game of nearly every annoying gameism that had hobbled D&D over the years. But they did so at a cost of such a rigorous and complex rules structure that I just couldn't get away from it. Nearly every sort of interaction now had a rule governing it. I was sad to leave it behind, but I just couldn't enjoy a 3e game the way I did older versions of D&D.

Even though 4e's design philosophy seems to be at least 90 degrees off from 3e, it's got a lot of the same problem for me. There's far too much game standing between me and my character. Keep in mind, this is a completely subjective thing. For someone else, 4e might be the perfect fit. If I was forced to really master the rules of 4e, it's possible I could achieve the level of comfort I'd need to pass through those rules and tweak them so that I could inhabit my character like I'd prefer. But I'm not sure how I'd keep food on the table and a roof over my head while I did that. Labyrinth Lord is working great for me so far, and a game with 4e's complexity would really need to be something exceptional to justify the time and effort I'd need to bash it into a shape I'd enjoy as much as I do Labyrinth Lord today.

SEE the Pleasure Ziggurat of Gallagorgon the Man-Bull!

And this is just the first adventure hook. Someone certainly believes in immersing the players in the flavor of the campaign right from the start.

UPDATE from the comments: "Ungar is willing to risk life and limb (especially those of his comrades) to get that reward."

Mr. Raggi Brings the Awesome

And invites some more.

Nothing invites lateral thinking like plunking a trap in front of the PCs when there are no thieves around to roll them away. But these old-school style traps and puzzles aren't the easiest things to make. It's especially tough when you consider that your single DM brain must compete against a handful of player brains. So it's always great to get fresh ideas from other DMs. I've already been going through my old notes to stock the dungeon for tomorrow night's game, so hopefully I'll find something worth for Green Devil Face.

Insomnia and Fishes

I can't sleep tonight, so you get your herrings early.

So what is all this about pickled herring? One of the challenges at the heart of old school D&D is logistics. This is the reasoning behind the rust monster and the giant centipede whose “bite does no damage, but the victim must save vs. Poison or become violently ill for 10 days. Characters who do not save move at ½ speed and will not be able to perform any other physical action.”

Logistics are especially challenging for first level characters. Let's turn our attentions to the brave Adler Wyrmbane, “gnomish dragonslayer extraordinaire” and brave PC in my Thursday night game. Adler is a brand new character, with but a single evening's adventuring under his belt, and little in the way of treasure to show for it. Learning of a promising dungeon two days away, Adler's player perused the equipment list I gave them for provisions. Alas, a week's worth of standard iron rations proved too expensive. What to do?

I've always found the Moldvay/Cook equipment lists to be a tad anemic. 2e had by far the best equipment lists in D&D, and since I wanted a slightly exotic cast to this game, I cribbed liberally from Al-Qadim to fill in the holes. The barrel of pickled fish (3 gp), however, comes from the standard 2e PHB. It was rendered cheaper by my special rules for the gnome class.

But now I'm left with a quandary. How long can a gnomish hero survive on pickled fish alone? The PHB isn't much help here, alas. Thank the gods for the 'net, where the answers to all of life's tough questions may be found.

Let's see what we can learn:
1 cup of pickled herring has 367 calories

1 US beer barrel = 496 cups
(Let us hope that the barrel was emptied into mugs of good cheer before the fish were pickled in it.)

Thus, some basic math tells us that 1 barrel of pickled herring has roughly 182,032 calories. And an active adult male needs roughly 3,000 calories per day. So our barrel will supply our gnome with just over 60 days of the raw caloric energy he needs. Granted, he won't be a happy gnome, and unless he supplements his diet he runs the risk of scurvy, and I sure as hell won't want to be standing downwind of him.

But wait, you say, shouldn't a tiny gnome need fewer calories than a full-sized human? Yes indeed, but remember, our gnome purchased the gnome-sized barrel. The gnomes cancel out, leaving us with the same answer: a man-sized barrel of pickled fish yields 60 days of calories for a man-sized hero, and a gnome-sized barrel of pickled fish yields 60 days of calories for a gnome-sized hero. Or, at least it does in my world, because I like to keep the math simple. ;)

The Three Clue Rule

Ran across a very interesting article on adventure design by following a link in this RPG.net thread. Here's a little taste:

Richard Garriott, the designer of the Ultima computer games and Tabula Rasa, once said that his job as a game designer was to make sure that at least one solution to a problem was possible without preventing the player from finding other solutions on their own. For example, if you find a locked door in an Ultima game then there will be a key for that door somewhere. But you could also hack your way through it; or pick the lock; or pull a cannon up to it and blow it away.

Warren Spector, who started working with Garriott on Ultima VI, would later go on to design Deus Ex. He follows the same design philosophy and speaks glowingly of the thrill he would get watching someone play his game and thinking, "Wait... is that going to work?"

When designing an adventure, I actually try to take this design philosophy one step further: For any given problem, I make sure there's at least one solution and remain completely open to any solutions the players might come up with on their own.

Sounds like excellent advice to me. And there's a lot more where that came from, so be sure to read the whole thing.

(Promised herring later tonight or tomorrow, depending on how late birthday festivities go. ;) )

Unsolicited Advice

...for my players, in honor of our first dungeon delve, coming up soon, I think. This actually comes from The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope:

Stonehell is set up so that it's probably going to be a tough challenge for 1st level characters if they go in swords and spells a' flying and hope to kill everything they come across. In order to best meet the challenges of the dungeon, the party should be open to using their heads as much as their brawn.

One thing to remember is that many of the intelligent monsters down in Stonehell are not going to automatically attack the party on sight. I recommend highly that you use the Monster Reaction Table on p. 52 of the Labyrinth Lord rulebook when the party first meets the monsters, provided that the party doesn't attack them first. On a result of Neutral or Indifferent, the monsters might just warn the party off rather than attack. A result of Friendly might even indicate that the monsters are willing to reveal some information about the dungeon that may help the party in their explorations. Remember that characters with a high Charisma get a bonus to roles on the Reaction Table, so if the party has a character that’s particularly charming do the talking, they stand an even better chance of avoiding a conflict. If that character also speaks the monster's native language, I'd award another small bonus as well...

That being said, there are a few monsters lurking on the first level that have a good chance of eating the whole party should they stand and fight. The Giant Gecko Lizard and the random ghoul could easily tear through a party of 1st level adventurers, so they need to know that running away isn't always a bad thing.

There's more there that's good, so I'd recommend anyone attempting to run or explore an old school dungeon ought to take a look.

I won't be running Stonehell, but an original dungeon of my own design. I'm a product of the Silver Age, with a firm love for Gygaxian Naturalism. Part of this comes from my love of Harryhausen movies. I'm currently watching "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad", a great little flick starring Tom Baker as a villainous sorcerer. One thing about Harryhausen monsters is that most have lives outside of being killed by heroes. So do the monsters in my dungeons. Most are not just sitting around waiting for a fight. Like you and me, they get hungry or sick, worry about their love lives, and make plans for the future. This is both a good and a bad thing for the PCs.

It's bad in that I build dungeons that "make sense". That is, they're internally consistent instead of "fair". If you come across a few kobolds, that probably means there's a whole tribe of the little bastards nearby. That also means that they'll have sources for food and water, and the other things kobolds like to have to turn a ruin or cave into a home. If you meet some skeletons, that probably means there is, or was, a necromancer in the neighborhood who animated them. So I worry more about things being internally coherent than I do about them being the proper "challenge" for your level. In short, I don't play fair. Within the bounds of the rules, neither should you.

And here's where it's good for the PCs. These dungeons make it easier to find advantages. The monsters will behave in reasonable (from their point of view) ways. Kobolds can be negotiated with. Their water can be poisoned. They can be bribed, or driven off by a larger tribe of orcs. The necromancer who created the skeletons probably gave them orders. Maybe they're to guard a certain area, but not leave it in pursuit of the party. Maybe anyone who wears a certain garment or displays a certain symbol is allowed to pass unharmed. In any case, I love lateral thinking, and will usually give any creative idea the benefit of the doubt, or at least a dice roll for success.

This also means that you'll get the treasure that it makes sense for these critters to have. In most cases, that's better for you than the usual returns on the treasure type tables.

Next time, I may get back to my mapping of Pitsh, but it's more likely I'll be posting about the caloric content of a gnome-sized barrel of pickled herring. The things I do for my players...

Thanks to Taichara

Much thanks to Taichara of the Hamsterish Hoard for the monstrous Gefirir. It's exactly the sort of thing I was asking about.

State of the Campaign

Well, we've had three sessions of my Thursday night Labyrinth Lord game, so this is certainly premature, but I figured I'd take stock at this point to give myself something of a baseline to look at down the road.

Labyrinth Lord
Labyrinth Lord is working out very well. I know these rules cold, so it's been very easy for me to just jump and run when the players zig and I was thinking they'd zag. Character creation has been a snap. The flexibility has also served us well, though we really haven't pushed it as much as I thought we'd might. I'm hoping we all get more inventive in the future.

I have had a few folks who seemed interested in maybe joining the game, but then lost interest when they found it wasn't 3.x or 4. Frankly, I'm not going to cry over that, since the players I do have are great. I've also lost more interested players to Real Life concerns rising up, which I frankly expected. Happens in every group.

New Rules
So far, I'm pretty happy with how my hacks are working. We've had three combats, and they've all flowed fairly smoothly. Rolling d6 and 2d4 for damage makes things pretty easy for everyone, I think, and cutting out the roll for initiative has certainly sped things up some. I haven't really gotten to push the spell stuff I did, since the only spell memorized by the party so far has been sleep, which has fairly boring side effects.

Someone chose to play a gnome! And he's really giving the race an interesting flavor. I think David may come to define who and what gnomes are in this campaign, and I'm just fine with that.

Setting
I'm moderately happy with this. I think I've invested the campaign with a certain flavor, and I think the players are enjoying it. I also think it's a bit more friendly than I'd originally conceived, but that's likely to change. The NPCs feel good to me, but I've not gotten much of a sense for how the players feel about them. Time will tell.

Efficiency and Pacing
We're not doing as much between games via email as I'd hoped, but on the other hand, I don't feel the game is dragging at all. We've been able to get things done and have some fun RP usually within three hours. Part of this, though, is because I'm driving events along pretty aggressively, and I'm not getting much push-back from the players. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing yet. So long as they're happy, I'll say it's good. And they took the reins pretty firmly at the end of the last session. As we head towards more traditional dungeon play next week, it'll be interesting to see how this changes.

RP
The players seem a bit hesitant here, but David really jumped into a small hole I left them and got some nice interplay going within the party itself. The players have come up with very interesting characters, and I hope to give them more opportunities to indulge in the backgrounds they've created.

Blogging
Probably the least important, so it comes last, but I'm very happy with this. I was pretty sure that playing would give me interesting things to talk about, and it certainly has. I'm especially proud of the blog about mapping Pitsh (though I'm not sure how popular it's been with y'all) and the latest in my Romance, Sex and D&D series got some great response.

UPDATE: Chgowiz does something similar for his West Marches style 1e game.

Extremist Hindus?!? WTF?

My apologies for this post, folks. I try to keep the Real World as far from my blog as possible, as I consider it a haven, both for you and me, from the madness we deal with every day. But every now and then, I gotta ask, WTF?

Understand, I grew up in suburban America. You meet all kinds of folks here. Our friends and neighbors include Christians of various stripes, Mormons, Muslims, atheists, and Unitarians. I've adjusted dinner plans to accommodate vegetarian Hindus, worn a yarmulke at a Bar Mitzvah, and one of my father's groomsmen was a Sikh. You get all kinds in suburban America. Except extremists. The most extreme I've ever dealt with on a regular basis were some Catholic nuns, but they were pretty much get-along-go-along folks for the most part. So, like most Americans, the idea of religious extremists is something I have a hard time wrapping my brain around. Especially when we start talking about Hindu extremists. I'm sorry, but that makes about as much sense to me as militant Amish.

So can someone explain to me what's up with Shri Ram Sena? I mean, how do you expect us to take claims that women at a bar are “violating traditional Indian values” when you've got this sort of thing (NSFW) decorating your temples? Seriously, the folks that told us that kama is one of the four goals of life are getting their knickers in a twist just because some gals decide to go out and enjoy a few drinks?

Ok, maybe there was more going on in this bar than I'm aware of, or maybe there's some cultural issues I'm just ignorant of. But near as I can tell, this would just be amusing if it didn't actually involve people physically assaulting folks. Can anyone enlighten me?

UPDATE: In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I myself am Episcopalian, which is the American branch of the Church of England. Our extremists look like this.