Retro-stupid Refuel - Mad Max: Fury Road Review

Mad Max: Fury Road is, in spite of all the hoopla to the contrary, exactly what it says it is on the tin, and lots of it. Intense car chases, brutal action, and over-the-top spectacle are all over the place in this one, all laced together with a barely-there revenge plot thinly layered over a pastiche of the entire plot to Road Warrior melded with the kids’ plotline from Thunderdome. Everything that’s original here is in the visuals.

And what epic visuals they are. Everything here is bigger and nastier and more chromed-up and over-the-top than ever before. The dune-buggies of yesteryear are gone, replaced with monster-trucks, tank-treaded muscle cars, and sedans bristling with insanely huge rusty spikes. Forget all that nonsense about gas being rare after the apocalypse; in Fury Road, every vehicle is covered in so much armor plate, spikey-bits, and iconography that none of them can be doing better than five miles to the gallon.

I do love the way the cultures of post-apocalyptic Australia have evolved in this franchise. In Mad Max, they were barely different from present-day suburbia, struggling to maintain a pocket of normality. In the Road Warrior, that normality was gone, but most of the people were still everyday Joes and Janes, struggling to find safety in a world gone mad. The inhabitants of Barter Town had made peace with their post-apocalyptic existence, trading the last bits and bobs of their lives from before in exchange for water, food, and barbaric spectacle.

The people of Fury Road, however, come off like the descendants of the airplane kids. They inhabit bizarre cultures built around survival and apocalypse-shaped religion. Life is cheap, except when it’s pure, untouched by the ravages of the apocalypse, at which point it becomes more precious than gold and gasoline and bullets. The pre-apocalypse world isn’t a memory but a myth, and its death is a point of theological contention.

This only adds to the impossibility of placing this movie in chronological order with the others. The opening implies it belongs between Mad Max and Road Warrior. Things happen to Max that make it impossible for this movie to have happened before Thunderdome. More than that, however, this Max is clearly the post-Thunderdome Max. Where the Road Warrior didn’t give much of a crap about the settlers until (maybe) the very end (and I’m not sure he really cared more about them than he did about his vengeance), but then goes out of his way to save the kids at the end of Thunderdome, Fury Road’s Max signs on pretty quickly to doing what he can for the helpless innocents of this film.

And yes, in spite of all the politically-fueled nonsense you’ve probably seen surrounding this film, there are helpless innocents in need of being saved by Max here. Frankly, it’s hard for me to see how this film is all that much more feminist than the very-similar Road Warrior. Yes, there's no rape scene like in the beginning of The Road Warrior. Instead, we get a scene of women with the bodies of fertility goddesses being milked like cows. It's not quite as kinky-erotic as a similar scene in Pink's “Raise Your Glass” video only because the women are bovine-docile instead of writhing about in restraints. These gals and their milk kinda-sorta pay off at the end of the movie metaphorically, but it's so heavy-handed it feels gratuitous.

Charlize Theron is great in this movie, and her Furiosa character does have a more interesting arc than Max does, but that's not saying much. To praise anyone for their acting in this flick seems a bit much. It's all perfect for what it is, but make no mistake: this is a car-chase movie punctuated by bits of dialogue. It's an awesome car-chase movie, but it's no Casablanca, or Princess Bride, or hell, Star Wars.

So Theron's acting primarily involves closeups of her face with one of two emotions on it: either some-asshole's-gonna-pay or oh-shit-the-only-choice-we-have-is-to-crash-straight-through-this. Grim, vengeance-fueled determination or edge-of-your-seat, hope-we-make-it-through-this-too-late-to-swerve-aside-now. Both are picture-perfect and entirely in service to the film's actions beats, giving them the drama-nitro they need to rev up beyond the potential of mere cars crashing about in the desert.

And sure Furiosa's an awesome kick-ass character, and the way she and Max come to understand one another very much echoes a similar relationship in the last Riddick movie. The atonement thing is cool, and it's a thread they share. But this movie also comes with a literal truckload of defenseless damsels in distress. The Vulvalini are bad-asses... so long as they avoid fist-fights. When it comes to mano-a-mano action, the guys with their massive chests and thick fists dominate the action with all the thuggish brutality of jungle beasts. The Vulvalini are outlaw banditas and ace shots with a gun, but they're also victims to be literally crushed under the wheels of a big-bad's monster truck. If there's a political message in this film, honestly, it's the same message you get from an NRA poster of a smiling 12-year-old girl holding a bright pink AR-15 and captioned "God Made All Men, But Smith & Wesson Made Us Equal."

So leave your pretentious at home, bring your 12-year-old self that thrills to car-crashes and revenge-fueled power fantasies, and come get your retro-stupid refuel. This insane film is chock-full of adventure seeds and crazy ideas to inspire the DM in you, from bullet farms to chrome-worshipping neo-viking suicide bombers, to stone-column citadels carved with crazy skull symbols and topped with garden paradises and pleasure domes.  The murder-hobos in your life will thank you.

Feast of the Unicorn

So, Blue Rose is possibly returning. I suspect it will make its Kickstarter target. This isn't Green Ronin's first rodeo, after all.

Blue Rose is an RPG modeled on what the designers termed “romantic fantasy.” We're talking about authors like Anne McCaffrey, Ursula K. Le Guin, Barbara Hambly, Anne Bishop, Jacqueline Carey, and many more similar authors. I'd also include Wendy and Richard Pini and the Foglio's for “Girl Genius” among them.

I do still encounter, on occasion, comments that equate this sort of fiction with stuff like “My Little Pony.” Folks wonder why a mechanic (d20 in the original Blue Rose) built around combat would be used for a game about making friends over tea parties and resolving conflicts through mediation and...

And I have to wonder what books these people are reading.

Actually, no I don't. I know they haven't read any romantic fantasy. They look at the pastel covers with the prancing horses, manes blowing in the wind, and the heroine gazing mistily into the distance, and assume.

Well, neighbor, if that's your assumption, reality's ringing your doorbell and has a whole case of bitch-slap to deliver.

Let's start with a classic of the genre: the prologue to Anne Bishop's Daughter of the Blood.

Very, very NSFW. Also, if you require trigger warnings, romantic fantasy is not the genre for you.

Want more? Try the prologue to C.S. Friedman's Black Sun Rising.

Keep in mind, these are not the meat of the stories. These are the prologues. They're just the hooks (though, like good hooks, they're short, sharp, and dig into your flesh).

And this stuff isn't unusual. Jacqueline Carey's original Kushiel trilogy starred a masochistic sacred prostitute. Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince pivots around the rape of a male character by a female villain. Mercedes Lackey's Arrow's Fall (sporting one of the most pastel-and-merry-go-round-pony covers ever) includes fratricide, rape, torture, and attempted suicide. The conclusion includes a violent execution and a pitched battle between two armies.

Sure, there are talking animals, gorgeous clothes, weddings, friendly dragons, and the occasional unicorn or gryphon. Why not? The target audience has proven through their buying habits that they love that stuff.

And yes, there are openly gay characters and bouts of polyamory now and then. But the sex isn't always the happy-happy hippy-trippy lovefest some would lead you to expect. Because the minds of teenage girls are full of monsters, and, as Ursula Vernon says, sex is “the mommy monster at the bottom of the well, with fifty lazily blinking eyes and muck settling across its back” and they want to drag those monsters into the light, see them, be terrified by them, and then toss them back into the well.

The truth is, all good writing is vicious. An author lulls you into caring for a character or three and then spends the next handful-hundred pages abusing them terribly. If the misfortunes of the characters resonate with your own life, the book will be all the more powerful for it. Nobody enjoys pre-chewed pablum. Most will enjoy a vicarious and dangerous thrill that flirts with the monsters lurking inside their own skulls.

Now, having said all that, if you want to argue about how well the Blue Rose game communicates and invokes that sort of thing, then we'll have something to talk about. :)

Thoughts After My First GAMA Trade Show

Nobody in this industry has any idea how to do this.

This isn't the condemnation it might seem at first. Yes, there appears to be way too much “amateur hour” at nearly every level of the industry, but if you think that's unique to hobby games, then you didn't work in the internet during the '90s. (And I'd be shocked to learn it's much better than it was; today it appears more people have credentials to hide behind, but...)

Rather, I'm talking about how hard it is to even define what the professionals try to talk about. On the obvious end, questions bedevil attempts to quantify the industry. Is Cool Mini or Not's Zombicide a boardgame or a miniatures game? Should Monopoly be counted as a “hobby game?” What about Star Wars reskins of Monopoly?

And then there's the dance of trying to figure out just what's happening. Did D&D steal some wind from Pathfinder? Scuttlebutt in the halls was that Pathfinder's appeal appears to be weakening. However, the folks who make their money attempting to guesstimate actual market activity say that D&D's 5e mostly grew the market with Pathfinder staying fundamentally strong.

(And keep in mind, please, as I talk here, that the GAMA trade show is heavily tilted towards the interests and concerns of your FLGS. How many people play a particular game isn't nearly as important as what people actually buy. Unless they're lining up to buy A Red and Pleasant Land, people playing 1e D&D or the like are completely invisible to most of GAMA's members. And they're only a shadowy mass in the mists if they're buying online.)

What everyone agrees on is that things are good now. The best guesstimates I saw (again, by the pros who get paid to guesstimate, largely based on interviews since everyone plays their cards close to their vests), is 15% to 20% growth across the hobby games market in North America every year for the last four years. Things are good and 2015 looks to continue the trend.

China rules in manufacturing. If your game is all paper, there are North American sources that have become competitive, but if your game includes plastic or wooden pieces, nobody right now can compete with the Chinese. However, Chinese manufacturing, while cheap, may not be as big as you think. When WizKids needed a big order of dice for their Marvel's Dice Masters game, they pretty much took up all of China's dice-making capacity. There's also a six-month delay between placing an order in China and delivery to stores in the US. Delays, quality issues, and inventory headaches were all big topics. Those of you who are fans of Fantasy Flight's x-wing game probably know all about this.

Want to start an argument at GAMA? Ask people about Kickstarter. While the manufacturers and publishers are almost universally fans, retailers tend to blow hot or cold on it. Retailers can also be very thin-skinned when it comes to the topic of online shopping. Many feel like they're being taken advantage of by shoppers who will try a game out in a store and ask the store staff for advice, but then buy the game online.

Fate is a serious contender in RPGs, frequently showing up in the top 5 in terms of sales, but usually at number 5. That may not seem impressive, but keep in mind that it beats GURPS, Savage Worlds, Cubicle 7's Tolkien-based The One Ring, and Mutants & Masterminds. And sometimes Shadowrun. FF is also a serious contender, especially if you combine all their Warhammer 40k and Star Wars lines.

Collectable card games make up more than 60% of sales in terms of dollars spent by gamers. Blind packaging leads to more sales; make it collectable and you'll see an easily measurable jump in sales. Miniature games (mostly Games Workshop) make up roughly 20%. Board games, non-collectible dice and card games, and RPGs combined make up something just less than 20%. While everyone recognizes that RPGs gave birth to the modern hobby gamer market, it's now a sliver of a niche.

Again, do keep in mind that all of these are at best guesstimates, only apply to North America, and are measured in terms of sales in dollars; who's buying what rather than who's playing what. Raggi's almost completely invisible to this crowd and Mearls stated he thinks the numbers given for RPGs are too low.

Variations on a Theme by Mearls

Part of Mearls’ talk at GAMA was supposed to be about the future of RPGs. He ended up not having a lot of time to get into that (and I’d forgotten about it when I had an opportunity to speak with him, so I utterly failed to follow up on it). Still, he did touch briefly on where he saw the hobby going.

And that is toward simplicity in mechanics. He constantly mentioned Numenera and Fate. Numenera, I think, is the better example. It’s got a crazy, wahoo, Saturday-morning-cartoon meets ‘60s post-apocalyptic fiction meets Dying Earth meets Gamma World as illustrated by Deviant Art setting. It can get pretty dense in sections.

The mechanics, however, are bog-simple. Want to spend points from three stat-pools to boost your roll? Decide, roll, rinse, repeat.
There’s little in the way of tactical minutia to occupy the GM’s frontal lobes. Heck, if you’re playing the game RAW, the GM doesn’t touch the dice during combat. The GM’s principle job is to watch for good points for intrusions, giving the fight context, and creating fun at the table, not adjudicating bonuses, facing, or distance.

Now, this is old hat to the OSR crowd. We’ve been crowing about this for over seven years now. Grognardia launched on March 30, 2008. That’s the same year the Old School Primer was published. And, as some demonstrated to my previous post about what Mearls had to say, a common response ‘round these parts can be largely summed up thusly: “Duh!”

But it’s interesting how slowly but strongly this idea is percolating through the collective consciousness of RPGing. I’m not sure most folks even recognize it yet in D&D. They’re still expecting to find rules for every situation. If it’s not out yet, it’ll be released in a supplement, right?

Only Mearls has said, there won’t be that many supplements. So maybe a free-to-the-web pdf or something?

Or maybe not at all.

Mearls pointed out that, for many designers, D&D sets the tempo. It’s assumed that players have played D&D, so D&D is your baseline for expectations, especially in terms of complexity. People see the rule-for-everything of 3.x or the giant-wall-o’-combat-options from 4e and assume that people coming to their game bring expectations shaped by that sort of thing. And thus you get monstrosities like Shadowrun 5e.

This stuff we’ve been raving about for seven years now is starting to seep out, but kinda below the surface. Have people noticed what’s happened to D&D in 5e? Will it still be seen as a success next year when there aren’t three brand-new core books everyone wants? If it is, will they recognize the value of simplicity? Or are the punch-clock designers too set in their ways, and too deep in their bubble, to notice?

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any RPGs ripe for a new edition. When we start seeing new editions of games, it’ll be interesting to note if this move toward simplicity is found in them.

Mearls at GAMA

Mike Mearls gave a talk on RPG design at the GAMA trade show on Tuesday afternoon. Much of it was based on the playtest for 5e, so keep that in mind as I delve into the meat of his discussion.

He started by discussing the perception that RPGs are in decline. This was something of a shock to me and with the retailers I mentioned this to. While RPGs are not the tent pole products FF miniatures games or M:tG are, they don’t seem to be in decline to us. Nor to Mearls.

Granted, the man certainly doesn’t want to come to a show like GAMA and say something like his industry is fading fast. And he wasn’t willing to risk his job by releasing WotC sales numbers.

That said, he reported that internal numbers show peaks and valleys, but overall slow but steady growth. Organized play has grown with each edition of D&D since 3rd. He also said that the numbers they had showed a skew towards younger gamers. The assumption that the kids are playing MMOGs and old farts are playing pen-and-paper games is the opposite of reality. The average age of D&D players appears to be around 30 years of age; the average age of MMOGers is 35.

After that, he got into some details from the 5e play test. One thing he thinks the industry as a whole has gotten wrong is the desire for complexity. When 3e was released, lots of people just assumed their audience had played it and that was the benchmark for complexity. The result has been much denser games with rules for everything.

But players don’t appear to want that. He described watching people play 4e from behind a one-way mirror and just grinding his teeth at how everyone got the rules wrong. Yet, while the designers were squirming in frustration at everything going awry, the people playing were almost always having a great time. In short, the rules mattered much less than the group.

Even more, as they play-tested 5e, while the designers squirmed at the lack of rules to cover edge-cases, the players seemed thrilled with a simpler game. They found that players actively disliked complexity during combat. (Mearls assumes this is due in some part to the bad side of spotlight time; if everyone’s staring at you, waiting for you to take your turn, you really, really don’t want to screw up. The pressure to “get it right” makes more options less fun. Not entirely sure that’s what’s going on there, but I can see where Mearls is coming from.)

While complexity outside of combat is appreciated, Mearls firmly believes that adding to that complexity is a Red Queen’s race the publisher can only lose. Keeping something new constantly on store shelves may be great in the short run, but it leads to quicker burn-out. A smaller core-rules footprint, in short, is better for the longevity of the game.

What's Up at WotC?

Joe Kushner of the blog Appendix N isn't happy with the support WotC has given 5e:

Wizards of the Coast just released something called "Unearthed Arcana". A few pages with no illustrations and no page design to them. It looks like something that fell off of some designer's desk that WoTC said, "Yeah, put that up online."

This is terrible. People, well, me, I expect some professionalism from WoTC. With all of the stock art they have, with all of the templates for designed books they have, with all of the trade dress they have, the best they could do is this? This half-baked mess? Well, you get what you pay for here.

Just how bad does Mr. Kushner think it is? “My opinion hasn't changed much from my earlier musings on the subject. Unless WoTC somehow surprises me, 5th edition will be the last print edition of the game.”

So what is going on? I think, I honestly do think, that WotC has no idea what they want to do with D&D.

Over at ENWorld, we have this quote from Mike Mearls on the non-publishing of the Adventurer's Handbook:

we've played things close to the vest is that it's a huge, open question on what support for the RPG should look like... we do a lot of stuff that may or may not end up as a released product. For instance, we now know that the high volume release schedule for 3e and 4e turned out to be bad for D&D. It wasn't too many settings that hurt TSR, but too many D&D books of any kind. lots of experiments ahead...

Ever get the feeling that, so far as Hasbro is concerned, WotC can do what they like with D&D just so long as they keep the IP alive and don't fumble the glorious gravy-train that is Magic: the Gathering?

Seriously, it very much feels like D&D is this tiny department whose directive from on-high is, “Don't go over-budget, but keep the name alive until somebody figures out how to make real money with this thing.”

Frankly, if that's true, it's very exciting.

The truth is, lots of supplements are bad for a game. Paizo recently launched a “core rules” version of their organized play. Why? Because, in spite of Paizo's slow-drip release schedule for rules, there's simply too much there for new players to master, and if you don't master it, you're going to get overshadowed and steamrollered by the veterans. Also, their original adventures crumble when you toss the new character options at them.

This sort of thing is bad for the an RPG. It inhibits growth, it alienates existing fans that don't want to always have to scramble to keep up with the latest-and-greatest, and, if you read between the lines, it looks a bit like some of the original classes may now be obsolete next to the new sexy hotness. That's not going to sit well with fans of the old classes.

The last thing Paizo wants to do is release a new edition of their game. Helping people keep playing 3.x D&D is how they got started. It's the very foundation of their success.

The last thing WotC wants is to be where Paizo is and be forced to shatter their fanbase by releasing 6e in four years.

So what to do?

This is pretty uncharted territory. Chaosium's really the only outfit I can think of off the top of my head to pull off a long-running RPG business without seriously mucking with their core rules. And they're not exactly know for a hot-and-heavy publishing schedule. Their big seller support product still appears to be “Horror on the Orient Express” which was first released in '91. And they've just kickstarted a new edition of the game.

Tori Bergquist thinks Green Ronin's go this thing down, able to keep a strong publication schedule rolling in spite of the current environment. Sure, they've got a robust schedule for 2015. But what's Green Ronin's flagship game? M&M? Only one dead-tree release is scheduled for 2015. Their Dragon Age RPG is getting what amounts to a new edition, replacing the boxed sets with a book, a revised DM's screen, and a dead-tree, expanded version of an old PDF adventure. You can maybe-sorta count the release of the Dragon Age mechanics in their own book with the setting stripped out as another book in that series, but that's kinda stretching it.

And the story is the same for their SoIaF RPG: one big adventure book, one rules supplement, and some PDFs. In short, while Green Ronin's publishing schedule may look robust, for each individual game it's a rulebook, an adventure that may or may not be in dead-tree form, and maybe some PDFs.

It sounds like Mearls wants to do something different. That sounds very cool to me. It also sounds like they're still figuring out exactly what that is. Here's hoping for something innovative and sock-blowing.

Succubi Suck!

The succubus of 1e AD&D is the stuff of jokes because of the picture. Still, she was a classic femme fatale, able to lure the innocent to their doom with a come-hither gaze, copious charm spells, and a deadly kiss. She suffered from being rather fragile in a toe-to-toe fight (unless she could summon in some help), was yet another good reason for PCs to be constantly paranoid, and, honestly, was eclipsed by the more flexible and dangerous lamia.

When WotC took over,the succubus’ repertoire got broadened. She became the ultimate spy, an expert in such skills as bluffing, intimidation, impersonation, and investigation. Toss in her magical powers and she could become the true power behind the throne, a sort of Grima Wormtongue with more sex appeal.

So, what did WotC do with the succubus in 5e?

Frankly, I’m not sure.

Oh, I have the MM. She (and the incubus) are on pages 284 and 285. The flavor text talks about the succubus infiltrating the dreams of a chosen victim in order to weaken their moral resolve. That might be a fun thing to play, or a neat little side-plot to a more developed adventure (“Why is Brother Anselm always looking so tired these days? And why is he so cranky?”). It’s not, however, the sort of thing D&D adventures are typically made of. Nor is her sleep-invading power defined in any way, so exactly how you thwart it is really up to the DM.

She’s got great Deception and Persuasion skill bonuses (+9) and a good Insight bonus (+5) to back them up. But while those skills are exceptional, they’re hardly supernatural. She can still shift her form. But she’s lost all her magical abilities like suggestion except for her charm power.

Which can only be used on a single person at a time.

And only lasts 24 hours at most.

And then, when it ends, can’t be used again on the same individual for another 24 hours.

A harem of inc/succubi could be a really annoying additional obstacle in a fight; you're here to kill the Grand Warlock, but while you're attempting to put the hurt on him, his whatever-cubi buddies are hanging out in the ethereal, tossing charms and popping into the material world just long enough to drop 5d10+5 points of slobbery kootie damage on someone. But, frankly, is that cooler than a wand of lightning bolts, a flock of pet harpies, or a pair of amorous red slaadi?

To put it bluntly, I’m a bit at a loss as to what I’m supposed to do with this critter. She’d probably be most effective popping in, charming some NPC, then going ethereal while she interrogates her new best friend via her telepathic bond that can bridge planes. Useful, sure, but it would seem you could replace the monster with a nifty spell or two. Like scrying.

Scrying is one of the powers the lamia has, in addition to suggestion. She can also toss geas once per day. Her intoxicating touch, while nowhere near as potent as the old Wisdom-draining one, is a lot more fun and useful than the succubus’ boring kiss (which does nothing but deal damage and can only be used on someone she’s charmed, and even then gives the target another saving throw to break out of the charm).

The only thing that the succubus has over the lamia is the ability to go ethereal. It’s a neat trick that will allow the succubus to escape certain death most of the time (until the PCs get a way to thwart it). Whether that allows for a cool repeating villain or creates an annoying and not-fun headache for the players will depend on careful play by the DM.

As for me, right now I’m tempted to replace every inc/succubus with a lamia. They’re both rated at Challenge 4, the lamia has more neat tricks in her bag, and she’s much more likely to come across as challenging rather than annoying.

You're Not Wearing That Tonight, Are You?

Or, 10 Random Facts About Kyma.

Kiel Chenier suggested we share ten “random” facts about our campaigns that make them unique. The campaign that I’m getting the most play in now is my face-to-face 5e game. It’s a (mostly) urban game, taking place in a metropolis that’s heavily inspired by ancient Babylon, medieval Constantinople, and fantasy cities like Sanctuary. The urban random encounter tables I’ve been posting were made for this game.

This was my first attempt at running a 5e game, so a lot of things are fairly bog-standard. I didn’t create any special classes or races, and I made room for all the things that were in the PHB.

However, that still left a lot of space for me to put my own spin on things. Here are ten examples of that:

1. Orcish Manhood: when a male orc reaches a certain age, he is tried by his clan, found guilty of being a feral beast, and banished. He must then prove his worth to another clan before he’s allowed to join it and fully be accepted as an adult orc. Typically, it’s the females of the tribe who’ve successfully raised sons to the point where they’ve been banished whose approval must be won. Kyma is thus home to a steady population of young orcs looking to win gold, fame, and steel in the city by whatever means necessary. They often end up fighting in the colosseum, acting as thugs to those with money, or forming fraternal gangs in the city’s expansive sewers and catacombs. If orcish females are about, one or more of these “juvenile” males won’t be far away, looking for an opportunity to prove his mettle.
2. Warlocks: most citizens of Kyma believe that warlockery is illegal. Technically, this isn’t true. What is illegal is fraternizing and dealing with demons, devils, and other inhabitants of the “Lower Planes.” Those whose powers derive from an Archfey are not in violation of the law. Technically, neither are those who’ve turned to the alien Great Old Ones. However, since most folks can’t really tell the difference between a demon and a Great Old One, the distinction rarely saves a warlock from being burned at the stake. However, the warlocks can easily tell, and those who serve Fiends and those who serve Outsiders revile each other. Violence is common when they can get away with it while not drawing too much attention to themselves.
3. Paladins: in 5e, these come in three flavors. On the streets of Kyma, they come in four flavors. Those who take the Oath of the Ancients serve the Fey Powers. They tend to be hedonists with hearts of gold, and if you think Fandral or Volstagg from The Warriors Three, you won’t be far wrong.
4. Most paladins who take the Oath of Devotion join the priesthood of Xithras the Defender. When not slaying monsters and routing the undead, they turn themselves to rooting out the warping powers of Transmutation magic. Feeling that the “natural” forms of creatures is sacred, anything that threatens that purity is anathema, even the use of potions fashioned from minotaur milk to enhance fertility. As an organization, they are distrustful of tieflings, seeing them as living examples of the horrors that await anyone who starts down the slippery slope of magical enhancement.
5. The Hasheeshins of Skotas the Hidden take the Oath of Vengeance. They seek to pierce the veils of lies and illusions people cloak themselves in via the use of powerful hallucinogens. The line between dream and reality is of vital interest to Hasheeshins, and thus they have a harder time of perceiving it than most. However, where others assume, the Hasheeshin looks deeply, and is more likely to root out hidden truths.
6. The paladins of Phaedre, goddess of War and Love, are all women (though not all were born that way). They can swear the oaths of Devotion or Vengeance. All sorts of rumors swirl around their mysterious rituals and practices: that they are cannibals, that they will remain forever young so long as they bathe in the blood of their goddess’ enemies, that any man who slays one of these Warriors of the Red Dawn will sire a daughter who will be his death. Phaedre’s paladins do little to discourage the rumors.
7. Calendar: Kyma exists in a sub-tropical zone with monsoon-dominated weather patterns. The calendar I used is a modified version of this one.
8. Elves: have words, rituals, and patterns to accommodate a large array of what humans would call romantic relationships, from one-night-stands to lifebonds (until death do them part) and even soulbonds (which persist through this life and into the next). What humans would more easily recognize as marriage does exist, but is usually contracted for a period of years divisible by seven. Tradition favors seven, 49, and 210 years. This is the most common arrangement for the raising of children. The most famous such relationship was between Kyma’s great sultan Zafir and the elven princess Kosmyna. It was a time of strong unity between the humans and the elves. Unfortunately, Zafir was slain during a campaign against the tiefling Sea Princes. When word of his death reached Kyma, the harem exploded in a frenzy of bloodletting and murder. Kosmyna was among the first to die. Kosmyna’s homeland, the coastal city-state Galazos, declared war against Kyma. In spite of gifts and abject apologies from a number of sultans over the decades, Kyma's ships still keep a sharp eye out for vengeful elven corsairs. After all, a marriage that took place 88 years ago may seem like ancient history to most humans, but is within the living memory of all adult elves.
9. Fashion Tips for Men: Pants, and pretty much any bifurcated garment, are seen as barbaric in Kyma. A man in trousers is making a statement, being publicly humiliated, or doesn’t know any better.
10. Yuppie Street Violence: dominated by middle-class artisans, the Terraces are a bustle of noise and industry during the day and a bustle of noise and revelry (mostly by the artisans’ apprentices) in the night. The streets are mostly clear of crime and gangs from the other parts of the city because the apprentices are quick to defend what they consider their turf (unless they’re busy in guild-vs-guild shenanigans and rumbles). Most of the ruckus dies down by midnight, when the apprentices have either settled into their favorite taverns (the Terraces sport a wide range of them) or moved on to the Night Blooms to spend what coin they’ve managed to scrounge up.

Brandon Liao

Just added a new artist to my art links on the right: Brandon Liao.

His work has a very Numenera-ish feel to me, a sort of '70s-80s-era Saturday-Morning-Cartoons-grown-up feel I find pleasantly inspiring.

You can also see his stuff over at Deviant Art under madspartan013.

Turning "What did we get?" Into "Here's What You Know."

Angry’s got a pretty good rant (or, rather, how-to) on exposition. Suffice it to say, your best world-showing probably happens in the game, rather than before (though I never fail to sneak in a little via character creation, and D&D 5’s backgrounds are a great opportunity for more of that).

There are some related thoughts on ars ludi about using treasure as a method for providing exposition:

There are lots of times during a game when players are half-listening, or thinking about other things, or maybe just wandering into the kitchen to get a soda. But in the magical post-combat pre-treasure window, everyone’s attention is high, their curiosity is piqued, and they are clamoring to hear what you will say next.

Couple this with the Three Clue Rule and you shouldn’t have much trouble filling out your treasures with interesting stuff. The treasure doesn’t just include a map to the ancient elven forge, but an elven silvered dagger worn by the scholar the map was stolen from bearing his family crest on the pommel, and an ornamental lapis-and-gold bowl engraved with runes commemorating a deal between the forge and a dwarven nation which agreed to supply the forge with mithril in exchange for an even weight of brandy.

Which answers the question Zak brought up when I was trying to find where I’d read the ars ludi quote above:

I just go "…aaaaaad 5200gp worth of random fancy junk". The thing I hate is when it's like "…and 37 copper and 2 tourmalines worht 6000 each and…" like: why are we doing math for no reason and hearing random jewel names?

I’ll admit the Gygaxian Naturalist in me knows exactly why the hobgoblins have a chest full of uncut rubies, but, as Zak points out, it’s really all the same to the players. (Most of the time. My college group was big on the types of gems they were getting and using them in jewelry they designed and commissioned for themselves. But they were an exceptional bunch in many ways.)

With treasure-as-exposition, you get to eat your cake and have it too. Just be sure the exposition gives them something actionable. That is, it’s not just, “Hearken ye back to the days of yore…” and is more, “Hey, I’ll bet these elves could tell us something about the lost forge,” or “Wait a minute… these are all tools for hunting vampires. Do you think these guys knew something we don’t?”

"There's Gonna be a Rumble..."

Mr. Robertson has been contemplating urban adventures lately after flipping through the 1e DMG’s urban random encounters table (you know, the one with the wanderling harlot subtable). As per usual with 1e random tables, there’s no effort spared on encounter balance. Just as in the wilderness where 3rd level PCs could encounter ancient dragons, so too could that wandering harlot be a succubus and that old man could be a high-level wizard. So Mr. Robertson asks:

While the idea of letting players run into this range of adversaries is appealing to me, I wonder if other people have had success with this? How did you make players aware of the risk involved in the average man they meet with a sword when they could be a 0-level person, or 10th level fighter? If they are not dressed like a Lord, do not have obvious magic items, and are hanging around in a common sort of place do you give any hints to ensure the players don't unwittingly bite off more than they can chew?

Well, as long-time readers of this blog know, I’m more than happy to let my players bite off far more than they can chew anytime they feel like it. That said, my current 5e campaign is almost exclusively urban (we’ve been playing since September and I think they’ll have their first real dungeon-delve of the campaign in our next session or the one after). So I do have some recent observations to throw into the ring.

In general, I've found players avoid violence inside cities. The social repercussions are seen as too daunting. Sure, you can kick around that one-legged beggar, but if he's a member of the Beggars Guild, that means facing enforcers from the guild later, large men without necks and a pinch or two of ogre in their background and absolutely no senses of humor.

And this pretty much holds for the entire city: the pencil-necked alchemist could hire an expert duelist to call you out, the sailor just off the boat has his crew backing him up and the urchins travel in packs.

So violence, when it happens, tends to be very focused, very quick, and the PCs have to be all but pushed into it. (Of course, since we're playing 5e, that also means I've had to chunk the EXPs-for-murder mechanic the game is built around).

Now, I did front-load this by tying local knowledge into character creation, using their chosen backgrounds as opportunities to speak of the dangers of the Beggars Guild, the political alliances of the city, and tying the PCs into their own alliances (that are too useful to threaten by acting like jerks).

Another consideration going the other way, however, is the openeness of the urban environment. If they players haven't wandered into a well-planned ambush, they can almost certainly flee in multiple directions. So if they do get in over their heads, they can generally beat a hasty retreat, regroup and figure out who they need to pay off to make this problem go away.

Mr. Robertson adds:

I was thinking of the 'Rake' encounter from the DMG: 2-5 young gentlemen fighters of 5th to 10th level (d6 +4). The rakes will always be aggressive, rude, and sarcastic.

In this case, the NPCs are begging for a fight. If the PCs take the bait (the wood elf barbarian and feral, raised-by-wolves half-elf ranger in my current group absolutely would), what then?

Well, assuming they’re badly outgunned, they’re unlikely to suffer a TPK in a single assault. Even 10th level fighters can rarely do more than 20 points of a damage to a single individual in a single attack, and that’s only if they roll critical. (I think. Important caveat here: I've only played so much 5e and barbarian rage can be pretty scary.) So it’s unlikely even one PC will be KOed after the first round of combat. Even a wizard with no Constitution bonuses or defensive spells up has 14 hit points by 3rd level, and the party’s fighters will have 22 without Constitution bonuses. So they’ll get a single round of fighting at the very least where I can make clear to them the skill of their foes when describing the wounds they take. A smart party would hopefully see what’s happening and take the opportunity to flee, regroup, and plot revenge.

And if they don’t? Well, as Mr. Roberts points out, “The 5e rule where they could elect to make their attacks non-lethal might be helpful as well.” Why did the rakes start the fight? Maybe they just roll the PCs, lifting all their loose coinage and jewelry and leaving them for others (local clerics or the like) to rescue. Were they just trying to make a point to a patron or organization friendly to the PCs? Or do they drag them off for ransom? Sell them to the Temple of Shkeen? With a TPKO, the adventure’s just begun.

Whither DUNGEON and DRAGON?

I haven’t heard. I have heard scuttlebutt that they’re still trying to figure it out, and I suspect that’s the case. Magazines aren’t the revenue-generation machines they used to be. With the existence of the internet, DRAGON can’t be the social hub and font-of-all-news they were back in the 21st century. Print is expensive to produce and ship; unless you plan to go the Raggi artisanal route (which is kinda the polar opposite of what we expect from a magazine, but in this age of retro-cool maybe it could work) there are better methods for delivering that sort of stuff.

For 3e, WotC farmed out production of the magazines to a third party. This created Paizo. I suspect there’s some resistance inside WotC towards going down that path again. Still, it is in keeping with farming out the production of the Tiamat adventure series to Kobold. So while I see this as terribly unlikely, I don’t see it as beyond the realm of options they’re probably looking at.

The magazines went digital in the era of 4e, serving as loss-leaders and content generators for a digital portal that was supposed to be the hub of 4e play and a strong source of revenue. Alas, about the only part that really worked was the (admittedly indispensable) character generator. With the faceplant that was the Morningstar project, I suspect D&D’s digital future is still being hashed out. If they go digital with the magazines, there’s a very good chance they’ll be attached to whatever online offerings WotC offers behind a paywall. I see this as the most likely option, but that’s assuming WotC doesn’t just throw up their hands and walk away from any sort of digital for-pay products. Their history with that sort of thing isn’t exactly festooned with success.

Which brings me to what I consider to be the most interesting option. Assuming a fairly permissive third-party publication license, DUNGEON and DRAGON could be the methods by which WotC leads and guides that sort of thing. They could serve as a sort of Manual of Style for publishers. They could be used to showcase the sort of work they’d (officially) like to see more of. The magazines could be a vehicle for publishers and designers to get their names out there. In short, they could serve as a sort of guide and ideal and possibly even imprimatur by which WotC could lead third party publishers and their customers towards the best work.

What appeals to me about this is that, as a guide-by-carrot, it won’t shut down the likes of Raggi if they decide to publish something really out there for 5e, but could possibly mitigate some of the tide of utter dross a really open publishing license is likely to unleash. However, I’m not seeing a really good way to directly monetize that sort of thing short of selling ad space (which isn’t a bad thing, mind you, just not a recipe for financial success to date). Maybe they could go the route of digital comics and sell dead-tree collections, or maybe best-of compilations as they did in the 1e days?

Ok, Yeesh, I'm On It...

Fine, fine, yeah, I'm on it.

But really, what's there to say?



"There has been an awakening. Have you felt it?"

Lots of theorizing about whose voice this is. I want it to be Max von Sydow, who's supposed to be in this movie. I want to see him be the villain and go all Ming-the-Merciless on the Star Wars universe. Why not? After all, there's a direct line between Flash Gordon and Star Wars.

Then we get freaked-out Stormtrooper. My favorite explanation for him is that he got separated from his squad when he ducked behind a dune and did some Tatooine peyote.

But seriously, clearly not a clone of any Fet we've ever met. Is he a crashed Tie-pilot? A Stormtrooper who's gone AWOL? A Republican in disguise? (The Rebels won, right? So shouldn't there be a new republic? If that's the case, shouldn't the folks who used to be Rebels now be Republicans?) (Oh, and no, that's not a political statement, though now that I go back and read that, I can see why they absolutely won't be called Republicans. >.< Just so long as they're not called Rebels because that implies they still have something to rebel against. Unless, of course, they do, but that would feel both extremely lazy on the parts of the writers and undercutting the victory at the end of Jedi.)

And, ever so faintly, at about 0:25, you can hear the sounds of an imperial probe droid, sounding exactly like the one that Han and Chewie killed on Hoth. Is he being hunted by someone?

Cute soccer droid! Seriously, if you needed any indication that international bank was vital to the success of movies, this is it. R2-D2 has been turned into a soccer ball. Though even making worried boop-beep-boop noises doesn't save this from totally undercutting the tension the music is trying to build.

Happy Stormtroopers! So clearly, somebody's not just using the old symbology and Imperial look-and-feel, but has been improving on it as well: new armor, new assault blasters (with noticeably bigger scopes; can these guys hit what they're shooting at?). So either:

A) the Empire's still alive and well, either in pockets or is actually still calling the shots in most of the galaxy, in spite of the death of Palpatine and the destruction of much of their fleet at the Battle of Endor.

B) or somebody's attempting to resurrect it. This is the less lazy option, honestly, but the more difficult to pull off.

Cute scavenger girl! Her goggles, apparently, are fashioned from the lenses of an original-trilogy era Stormtrooper visor. Her ride looks a lot like Luke's at the beginning of New Hope turned on its side. And if you freeze the screen at 0:39, you'll see, strapped to the side of her ride, what looks like a lightsaber on the end of a long pole. The link between samurai and jedi has been made repeatedly. Is this a jedi version of the traditional weapon of the onna-bugeisha, the naginata?

As she takes off, you hear more lovely Star Wars engine sounds. The Star Wars universe has probably one of the most recognizable soundscapes out there, and the new crew appears to be milking it for all its worth.

Have you noticed how long the pauses of black screen are? They're just a touch too long, to induce you to sit forward impatiently while you wait for the next scene.

X-wings! Our pilot looks clean-shaven, but his helmet has those scratches and dings we associate with the Star Wars universe. (Though, arguably, it should look nicer and cleaner because the Rebellion won. Didn't it?) Hot-dogging x-wings coming low over a lake. The only planet we've seen so far that looks like this is Naboo. Why so low? Training exercise? Attempting to come in below someone's radar?

If you look closely, you can tell that these are not duplicates of the x-wings Luke flew. The engines appear to be solid to the body, with the folding wings stretching out from them. Some have suggested these are closer in design to Ralph McQuarrie's concept art.

Oops! AWOL scene from Game of Thrones! Seriously, cloaked dude in a snowy wood? Is winter coming? "The Dark Side... and the Light."

And here we get what's become the most controversial bit of the trailer: the cruciform lightsaber.

Only, I'm not sure this is a lightsaber. Oh, sure, it's a laser-sword of some sort, but notice the sound is off? That it sputters and flickers more? That the blade is longer and thinner? It looks like a cheap knock-off of a lightsaber, honestly.

Since the original series, there's been a huge revival in what folks are calling the Western Martial Arts, mostly involving the swordfighting techniques of Western Europe. It would be cool to see some of that in a Star Wars movie.

That said, a lot of longsword play had you grabbing the blade for leverage, or to bash people with the quillions. While these quillions look pretty deadly, grabbing the blade looks like a good way to lose your fingers. Maybe this crossguard is simply the logical response to the Skywalker penchant for cutting people's hands off?

WOOHOO! The music, the Falcon, the getting-dizzy-in-your-seat barnstorming, the howl-and-rattle of attacking tie fighters. Fans over the age of 30 just got hooked; we're gonna see this thing no matter what else you tell us about it. :p

Seriously, the Falcon looks great, and it's fun to see it rolling and swooping over the sands to launch head-first into the ties.

Que title, que date, fade to black and give us a lightsaber sound. Seriously? Why end with that? Weird...

But there you go. So far, they've proven they've gotten the basics down. If this trailer's any indication, The Force Awakens will look and sound like a Star Wars movie. Well done to everyone involved. I'm very much looking forward to seeing more.

The Great Purge

Lo, as was promised in days of yore, it has begun!

If you'll look at my blog list, you'll see it's noticeably shorter. It's not as short as I expected it to be, but some blogs got whacked. Most got whacked because they're not even there anymore, which is annoying, but what can you do? Others because they haven't updated in over a month or...

Well, to be blunt, this is my blog list and represents blogs I find interesting. So with some, they changed their formats or topics. The Nerdy Girl's Game Blog is now Amber By Design. It's a neat crafts & cooking website, but not really the sort of thing I associate with Trollsmyth. With others, I drifted away from them.

Others haven't been updated in years, but they're still here because I still find them useful (like the wonderful Hamsterish Hoard and How to Start a Revolution), or I've linked to them a lot or I find them of historical interest and value (like Grognardia). Such blogs will likely always have a spot on my blog list for so long as they remain up.

Next step: adding new blogs. I'm still soliciting suggestions, so if you don't see one you think you should, let me know!

"He'll Save Every One of Us!"

The RPGPundit, in his infinite wisdom, has chosen to save the OSR from unmitigated disaster. In order to prevent “the enemies” of the OSR from defining it, he has chosen to define it for us, thus locking the OSR in amber, preserving it for all time. His definition is as follows:

OSR: a design philosophy of creating systems, settings and adventures that fit within the boundaries of old-school mechanics and concepts; that is, either directly utilizing features that were in existence in the period before the advent of 2nd edition AD&D; or features that, in spite of not having historically existed at that time, could have existed in that period without the addition of material or design concepts that are clearly the product of subsequent ideas or later theories.

Indeed…

So try this experiment yourself: get up from your computer and walk to your kitchen/office breakroom/coffee shop counter. Get yourself a drink. Now, before you return to your computer, recite RPGPundit's definition.

How much were you able to remember?

How many of you were unable to actually finish reading it before it turned into the mwah-mwah-mwah noises of an adult in a Peanuts cartoon?

I understand what RPGPundit is trying to do here. For the lists and tourneys of the message boards he adores so much, I suppose that definition would serve fairly well. (Looks a touch too broad in concept to me, while also assuming there’s a significant mechanical difference between 1e and 2e that I don’t think he’ll get much support on. But meh…)

You want an actually useful definition of the OSR? Here’s one:

Rulings, not rules.

Now, RPGPundit is going to hate this definition with a purple passion. It’s absolutely useless in a joust with the likes of Ron Edwards. It does nothing to fence “the swine” from the OSR or prevent them from claiming bits of it as their own. And it easily supports a meme of the OSR as a system in which DMs abuse their players.

But you know what? At a quarter-after-midnight, after a grueling but triumphant 4+ hour DMing session, when you’re talking to someone in the parking lot of your favorite gaming store, you’ll remember it.

And when you lay it down, it’ll actually mean something to the person you told it to. And they’ll be able to tell, instantly, whether or not your game is the sort of game they’d like to join in on.

Because that, ladies and gents, is what it’s all about. That’s how the OSR rose to the victorious heights it enjoys today.

And don’t make any mistake about it, folks. The triumph of the OSR is all around you. You can see it in the re-release of the 1e core books in collectable hardbacks (with a portion of the proceeds going to a Gygax memorial fund). You can see it in WotC using The Caves of Chaos in their public playtesting materials. You can see it in the boxed sets of the Dragon Age and Doctor Who RPGs. You can see it in Monte Cook’s Numenera core book, where he writes:

Numenera is a game about ideas, not rules. The rules are meant to be a framework upon which to hang the tapestry of the story you and the players create.

You can see it in the latest adventure path for the Pathfinder Game (a true rival if the OSR has one) being a loving homage to Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. And most of all, you can see it in the games people are actually playing.

And how did the OSR achieve this triumph? As much respect as I have for the research and historical perspective offered by folks like Maliszewski, the truth is, we did it by doing fun things and getting excited about them. We built our megadungeons and published them on our blogs and shared death-counts (both those of monsters and PCs) as they were explored. We went through every monster in the 2e Monstrous Manual and brainstormed hundreds of awesome, crazy, and silly ideas. We applauded Jeff Reints when he described our style as Retro-stupid and thrilled to the zany joys of Encounter Critical and spidergoats. We started magazines because magazines are cool and we published boxed sets because boxed sets are cool and we hold contests of all sorts and do blind Christmas exchanges and share our settings and get excited about new adventures and kick-starters because these things make our games more fun. We read about the open-table, nomadic PC play styles of the ‘70s and said, “That looks like fun!” and started Flailsnails. We embraced the “lawn crapper” heavy-metal trappings of Raggi. We have no shits to give about Zak and his face-to-face group’s nine-to-five, or what it says about women in gaming or blah-blah-blah because what they do at the table is freaking amazing and cool and is fun.

We are frikken’ gamers who frikken’ game and have a great time doing it.

And that is incredibly contagious.

People want a piece of our action because our action is a great way to spend three to nine hours. We don’t gaze at our navels, fretting about 30 minutes of fun, brain damage, or what our games say about society. We fill our time with fun things, hang out with cool people, and create amazing memories.

Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? And, having that, who’d want to waste time worrying about what Ron Edwards thinks?

Dragon Age: Origins First Impressions

Yeah, I’m really that behind in the world of computer RPGs. >.<



That’s mostly because I was spoiled by Ultimas IV and V in my youth. I got to play a game where the NPCs had lives of their own that didn’t revolve around me and my quest. I played a game that didn’t constantly lie to me about how “urgent” a quest was, and then punish me if I avoided side-quests in order to complete the main quest as quickly as possible. I played a game where you actually had real multiple paths to success and taking everything that wasn’t nailed down was recognized as theft.


Damn kids these days need to stay offa my lawn…


Anyway, I’ve heard tons of good stuff about BioWare’s CRPGs and EA is offering DA: Origins for free, so I figured out check it out. I’ve enjoyed BioWare’s other offerings in the past, most especially Neverwinter Nights. But I’ve cooled on the whole genre over the years.

The big issue, honestly, is that combat-as-puzzle doesn’t really hold my interest, especially when it’s real-time. And most especially when…

Ok, so I choose a mage and I do their Harrowing tutorial, which was a neat way to do a tutorial, even if I did have to ask a lot of questions like I’d slept through every class at the Tower. But after that? My next big quest is pest-control: clearing the storage caves of spiders. Ok, they’re giant spiders, but still…

And just to make it worse, I’m also looting the place. In a real, living world, this would be theft, or possibly even embezzlement. In a computer RPG, stealing everything that’s not nailed down, no matter where it is, is Tuesday.

And then there’s the interface. The things I need to know about my characters are far away from them, way off in the corners. I’m not watching the cool combat animations because my eyes are glued to the spell cool-down timers. Even with one character I’m hitting the space-bar multiple times in combat; once I’ve got a large party I’m really going to be wondering why this thing isn’t turn-based.

There’s supposed to be a “tactics” system that’s supposed to jump in when certain conditions are met, but so far it doesn’t appear to be working. I imagine there’s some sort of box I haven’t checked somewhere to do that. Or it does less than I think it does or only works randomly?

So yeah, so far, not terribly impressed. I’m mildly intrigued by the story. Part of that is because I suspect I’m coming at it from a place that’s very different from where I think most players default. Sure, yes, the magi are being treated poorly and oppressed. But neighbor, I’ve walked the streets of Mordheim and I know what happens when the horrors in the universe next door get their pseudopods on a juicy mage to use as a gateway. No, I’m not helping you abscond with your priestess girlfriend, and the reason you’ve not been tapped to experience the Harrowing is because you’ve already failed!

(If you help that guy and don’t end up fighting him as a demon-possessed horror later in the game, the writers should have their knuckles rapped by a fire giant. Seriously!)

The Oldest War

Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.

- Agent Smith

The Manual, however, has a schtick which suggests being unable to breath air is just a disease transmitted as a side effect of being near the aboleth-- which I like very much. I also decided that it drains color out of nearby fish.

- Zak Smith

There are those, learned and respected scholars all, who will tell you that the first Great War was fought between the lizard folk and the serpent folk who were the gods of the Yuan-ti. They spend much of their time combating their minority colleagues who insist, no, the first Great War was fought between the aarakocra and the thri-kreen. Neither side does much more than emit scoffing laughs (laced with a disturbing sense of directionless embarrassment) when the wild-eyed and unkempt seers speak of even older things.

In the mind’s eye of poets and madmen dance a race of children. These children dwell in the happy spring of our world, cavorting and making as they dance and sing. Since this world is all they know, they name their mother the All-mother, and they name our world All Creation. And they shape the beginnings of our world with all the love, curiosity, enthusiasm, and vicious tyranny of children in the nursery.

And then something from Outside came. To say it invaded is to imply agency and choice. To say it tumbled implies it was pushed or tripped. So lets just say it came.

It was utterly inimical to the games and songs and dances of the Children. Their voices quavered in its presence, their gardens wilted, their games went all sideways. They couldn’t even speak with it, and its utterly alien ways went beyond uncouth, beyond creepy. It was utterly abominable.

And, by its very presence, it warped things. It didn’t so much spawn as twist things already in the nursery world and remake them in its image, to fit its idea of what nursery ought to be. It was, to the minds of the Children, the ultimate theft of their toys.

And this they could not stand. They made war against it. They tried to burn it with fire and freeze it with ice. They sang at it and they threw stones at it. But everything that touched it warped and became part if its corruption of the world.

Even worse, its corruption was infectious. The Children built an army, a massive collection of soldiers, all unified in purpose and of one single mind. At the first touch of it, a wave of instability passed through the entire army. The Children were forced to destroy their soldiers before they became a tool of their enemy.

Their next army was far more clever. Each was not just a unique individual, but misanthropic as well. Each individual specimen was a singular army in itself, armed with every clever weapon the Children could devise, it eschewed the company of all others, and most especially those like itself. Thus, should one fall to corruption, the others would be unmoved.

We call the by-blows of these warriors of the Children beholders. And, in the end, they murdered their creators, whom they considered just as repellent and horrible as the enemy they were created to destroy.

The beholders also won the war against it. They created an army of their own, an army of raw chemical hunger that sought only to dissolve everything, rendering it into fuel to grow itself. We know the remnants of this army as the various slimes, oozes, puddings, and gelatins that still lurk in the dark places.

So it was defeated, but the corruption it left behind was not undone. For, you see, the Children were right about their mother. She was also the mother of it. And it was a daydream, a fantasy of children-that-might-have-been, and its very presence implied into being the nursery-that-could-have-been-if-only…

And you can still find those echoes of its existence in the aboleth, and in the twistings of our own mortal shells that we call the illithid, and in similar horrors that do not belong and are not right. And we rightly recoil in horror and destroy to the utmost these terrible children of the Mother Of Us All. For their continued existence whispers in our heart-of-hearts that Mother loves them more than us.

Addendum to my Review of 5e's MM

There are a few bits of coolness in 5e’s MM I forgot to mention yesterday. First are lairs. Many monsters has a special “lair actions.” These special actions don’t count towards the usual limit of actions a monster has and happen on initiative count 20 (though after any tying initiatives). Most are just extra attacks:

A cloud of swarming insects fills a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on a point the [black] dragon chooses… Any creature in the cloud when it appears must make… a DC15 Constitution saving throw, taking 10 (3d6) piercing damage on a failed save...

A lot also knock people prone. Many are clearly designed to give a single monster a fighting chance against the focused alpha strikes PCs will (wisely) unleash against “legendary” monsters. Some are suitably creepy and atmospheric, such as eyes opening on solid surfaces in a beholder’s lair to fire off an extra eye-ray attack, or walls suddenly sprouting “grasping appendages.”

These legendary monsters also create “regional effects.” These are very similar to the sorts of things that precede the attacks of the dragons or the arrival of the monsters in Raphael Chandler’s Teratic Tome. These range from the atmospheric to the mechanical. Some look fairly lame on the surface of things: the first time you enter a demi-lich’s lair you take 16 points of necrotic damage, a sum that will certainly keep out the riff-raff, but barely serves to slow down a party of adventurers over 4th level. On the other end of things, they can make otherwise mundane encounters far more interesting. For instance, the terrain around a blue dragon’s lair can develope dangerous hidden sinkholes. Rodents and birds within a mile of a green dragon’s lair serve as its eyes and ears. Kraken can control the weather within 6 miles of their lairs.

These are both cool ideas and, frankly, I wouldn’t object to extending them to more monsters than got them. Those of you who enjoy playing with mythic-underworld dungeons might even want to come up with lists for orcs, goblins, and similar humanoid manifestations of the evil that lurks where the sun never reaches.

5e's Monster of a Manual

It’s thick; at 352 pages it’s just noticeably thicker than the the PHB. And it’s full of monsters! (I know: shock and surprise.)

All the standards are represented: dragons both metallic and chromatic (but not gem), giants from hill to storm (plus ettins and formorian), goblinoids from kobold to bugbear, orcs, gnolls, skeletons and zombies and wraiths and vampires, elementals, genies, angels, devils, demons, slaad (and yugoloths!), non-insecty lamia and snakes-made-of-water weirds.

It appears the authors have defaulted to older versions of monsters, as exemplified by the lamia (a move in the right direction) and the water weird (which wasn’t so much). With incubi/succubi, they split the difference and separated them from both devils and demons, making them the independent contractors of the nether-realms.

There are also numerous quotes in the margins referencing classic D&D stuff. Count Strahd, Emirikol the Chaotic, the Temple of Elemental Evil, Acererak, Iggwilv, House Orien (from Eberron), and Undermountain all get shout-outs in the margin notes.

Modrons up to the pentadrone are in the book. The classic demon lords are named and briefly described, but not statted. Beyond Asmodeus, the devils don’t get nearly so much attention (and the hierarchy appears to be the one described in Cook’s Book of Vile Darkness, with Geryon, Malagard, and Moloch all deposed).

It’s not quite the 2e Monstrous Manual. Most creatures get a full-page write-up, but a lot more of that page is taken up with art and the stat block. Still, we do get a few interesting tidbits about each critter, though there’s some blatant padding as well, such as being told multiple times in the aboleth entry about how they remember being defeated by the gods in ancient times. If you’ve got a copy of the 2e book, keep it handy; it remains the best source of monster-based inspiration-fuel yet for D&D.

There are some rather interesting back-and-forth call outs from one monster to another. There’s an intriguing triangle developed between the efreet, salamanders, and the azer, for instance. Graz’zt gets mentioned a lot. Don’t be surprised if he’s central to the plot in organized play in 2015.

There’s a surprising number of monsters that don’t actually die when killed. In addition to vampires, demons, devils, and similar that we expect that sort of behavior from, rakshasa and naga also come back after being slain. Expect to see these as lieutenants and Big Bads that show up later in a chain of adventures, bearing a grudge and with more friends to put the hurt on the PCs.

Like the PHB, the art is very much a mixed bag. Also like the PHB, some of the best stuff is the environmental pieces. Among the best creature illustrations are the hunting pseudodragon, the trippy myconids, the colorful adult salamander, the disturbing piercer, and the amazing harpy.

Unlike the PHB, there’s a distinct lack of multiculturalism in the book. Most of the monsters, especially the humanoids, are wearing tamer versions of 3e’s dungeon-punk stylings, with more restrained bandage-wrappings and shorter spikes on their pauldrons. Even the monsters that you’d expect to be flaunting exotic cultural trappings, like the oni and kenku (who’ve lost all traces of their hawkish beginnings and are now fully crow-ish) look decidedly plain in their simple tunics and hoods and robes.

There’s an annoying amount of soft focus, sometimes taken to extremes. The picture that opens the drow entry is so soft-focused you can barely make out the figures, and facial-features are non-existent. It’s a technique whose time has come, gone, and seriously needs to be retired.

Some critters have small black-and-white studies accompanying their full-color art, and there’s never been a better example of how ubiquitous color has not improved RPG books. The black-and-white sketches are nearly universally superior to their color brethren in life, creativity, detail and playfulness. See especially the delightful running otyugh at the bottom of page 8 for an excellent example of what I mean.

The organization is more than a little puzzling, and I suspect it was done more with an eye towards making things easy for the layout team than it was with making things easier for the DM. Each entry is divided into two parts: a write-up that’s well organized into useful paragraphs summed up with a quick phrase in bold letters and a stat-block. So far, this is great, and works really well for most monsters. Things get a bit wonky, however, when you get a monster type that includes lots of individual critters. In that case, the written descriptions are grouped together and then the stat-blocks and illustrations are grouped together. This puts the werewolf’s written description on page 207 and its stat-block on page 211. The worst offender might be the erinyes, with five pages between the description and the stat-block.

Things really fall apart with Appendix A: Miscellaneous Creatures. What’s in Appendix A? We are told:

This appendix contains statistics for various animals, vermin, and other critters. The stat blocks are organized alphabetically by creature name.

So what’s actually there? Lots of normal animals, giant animals and a weirdly random smattering of classic monsters like blink dogs, winter wolves, blood hawks, flying snakes, phase spiders, and worgs. Plus, the sea horse.

Yes, the sea horse. Since it’s listed as being a “tiny beast” I assume they mean the little curl-tailed critter, and not some fabulous combination of fish and equine. Why is it there? Damned if I know. (Is summoning a single sea horse part of some druid spell?)

But wait, it gets worse, because these creatures are listed in alphabetical order and not by creature type. This means the giant constrictor snake is next to the giant crab and nowhere near the giant poisonous snake. The giant spider is on page 328, the giant wolf spider is on page 330, the phase spider is on page 334, and the just-plain spider is on page 337. If you’re building a spider-themed dungeon and just want a full list of all the spiders, sorry buddy, you’re SOL. Even the index in the back lists them alphabetically, which means if you don’t know to look for the giant wolf spider, you’re likely to miss it entirely. Nor are there any wandering encounter tables from which you could crib a list.

In short, Appendix A appears to be a collection of critters they wanted to include stats for but didn’t want to do full-page writeups on. A few get art. For the most part, all you get is the stat-block, with four to five critters on each page. It’s a mess, and unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, good luck finding anything.

It nearly ruins the whole thing for me. If I didn’t have a group of 5e players very much enjoying the game described in the PHB, the MM might have soured me to 5e. As a DM who often builds adventures by flipping through the MM for inspiration, this mess is going to prove deeply suboptimal. Still, much can be salvaged by publishing a horde of good, themed random encounter tables, lists of monsters by challenge rating (there’s none in the MM), and a better organized index.

ADDENDUM: First, I forgot to talk about two bits of coolness in MM, which are lair powers and environmental effects from the monsters themselves. I rectify that in another post.

Second, WotC has published a PDF version of the index of monsters by challenge rating. This is good to see, and would be great if they included the page number these critters appear on in the MM. This list is from the upcoming DMG.

From the 5orcer's 5croll: Actions

I’ll admit, I tend to be a minimalist when it comes to any sort of in-combat action economy. Typically, no matter what the system is, I give players a move, an action (drink the potion, hack the computer, shoot the stormtrooper), and that’s it unless something odd comes up. And I’m always willing to toss even that out the window if it seems to make sense to do so.

This works with most games and in most groups I’ve played, but I could absolutely see it breaking down as sub-optimal, as it did when running The Lost City this past Labor Day. The PCs were fighting a gang of ghouls. The PCs got the ghouls in a narrow doorway, where only two could fight at a time. When the PCs got a bit worn down, they’d rotate out and let in fresh fighters.

Now, by strict 5e rules, the ghouls should have gotten opportunity attacks on them. What’s interesting, if you look at opportunity attacks, is that opportunity attacks are a subset of actions called reactions. And you only get one reaction until you take your next turn. So each ghoul would only get to make a single opportunity attack until their own turn returned.

More than that, if they used that opportunity attack, they’d not be able to take advantage of any other opportunities for either opportunity attacks or any other kind of reaction until their turn came around again. This means sometimes it makes more sense to ignore an opportunity attack if you know something better is coming along.

As an added wrinkle, some spells can be cast as reactions, meaning it really behooves certain spell-slingers to hold back and wait for the right opportunity if they think it’ll come up.

A lot of the same things can be said about bonus actions. Lots of things, but most especially class abilities, can give you bonus actions. You take a bonus action on your turn, mixing it up with your move action and your other action. However, as Mearls made a point of saying at GenCon, you only get a bonus action if something gives it to you and you can only take one. Mutliclassing and spells that grant you multiple bonus actions really only give you lots of options to pick from, but you still only get to pick one.

Which again keeps things simple and more interesting. You have to pick when to fire these special actions off, because you only get one each, and once you use ‘em you can’t again until your turn comes back around. This means a single player shouldn’t be hogging up lots of time by taking action after action on their turn. It may mean preparing to help someone through analysis paralysis, however. In the main, I think keeping things simple like this is good, but then, I like my combats short and sweet. As in all things, YMMV.