Inspirational Art: Mithras

This week's Inspirational Art is a departure. It doesn't a cover a single artist but a single subject. It is also historical more than fantastic.



Mithras was the subject of a mystery cult common in the Roman Legions during the Imperial period. Also know as "Mysteries of the Persians" it first appears in Rome in the first century AD. While the figure of Mithras carries a Persian name it is open to debate if this religion was imported from Persia or created in Rome out of bits and pieces of Persia and other lore.

The image above is called the tauroctony and was the central image of Mithratic sites. The image depicted is the ritual slaying of a bull although the meaning is open to debate (you'll see this phrase a lot in studying the Mithratic Mysteries). The interior of his cloak is lined with the cosmos and it is commonly believed that the symbolism is astrological. The image below is of the other common Mithratic iconography, the banquet. It portrays Mithras feasting with the Sun on the hide of the slaughtered bull.



Mithraism, along with the other mystery cults, offers a grand pattern for Dungeon Masters to add a unique religious element to their game. One reason we know so little of the religion is the nature of mystery cults. They have multiple levels of initiation with secrets taught at each level, not unlike some modern groups like the Masons. With Mithraism we even have the names of the levels: Corax (raven), Nymphus (bridegroom), Miles (soldier), Leo (lion), Perses (Persian), Heliodromus (sun-courier), and Pater (father).

Imagine a variant cleric class with spell lists and powers keyed to what little we know of Mithras (or some other mystery religion) using the initiation stage names as level titles and powers that evoke the name.

Miss Manners Wouldn't Play D&D

Some rules I have encountered in my travels:

• Refrain from making negative comments during play concerning the contracts made.
  
• Always pay attention to the play and stop your mind from wandering.
  
• Making a questionable claim or concession is inadvisable.
  
• Don't prolong the play unnecessarily.
  
• To vary the normal tempo of bidding or play in order to distract opponents is not recommended.
  
• Do not leave the table needlessly before the round is called.
  

While a few of you might be able to guess what these are for I suspect most of my readers won't. They are taken from Bridge: Rules of Etiquette by David Braybrooke.

You are probably asking one of two questions and possibly both. The first is "why am I bringing up contract bridge in an RPG blog?" The second is "why am I bringing up rules of etiquette in an RPG blog?" The answers are "because bridge is commonly seen as a game for adults" and "because RPGs aren't" respectively. Last week I discussed how TSR's marketing choices moved D&D into being primarily perceived as a kids game. Today I'd like to discuss what I consider the single biggest obstacle to changing that perception; role-playing gamers as a whole have horrific manners.

Before you contend I'm alone in my thinking or that I'm merely subscribing to gamer stereotypes let's look at the evidence. While I had considered this before the topic was rammed home by two postings in the RPG community. The first, and more acerbic of the two, was by Alexis at The Tao of D&D and was titled DM As An Asshole (a how-to guide). The RPG Rules of Etiquette he laid out were very strict and drew on his experience as a chess player, specifically tournament play. However, strict as they are he correctly points out that they are common for many activities such as yoga, theater (performing or attending), and even playing in some musical ensembles. About two months after a similar post was made at RPG.net entitled Critque my table rules by D. Archon.

As for gamer stereotypes, I am indulging them. If we want to move RPGs back to an adult hobby from a kid's hobby which for any niche hobby is vital to its long term survival, we need to confront these stereotypes on two levels. The first is most people have them. The unwashed, mouth breathing, obsessed with his 70th level Paladin/Mage/Dungeon Master and the S&M elf chick that character is having sex with is the broader view of the hobby. Alexis is right. That is exactly what your coworkers are thinking when you walk away after talking about what you did this weekend. They may not think it of you specifically, but even then they wonder why you put up with people like that and what's wrong with you. To claim the same respect hex and chit wargaming had in the 1970s, an acceptable adult hobby even if not for everyone, we need to correct this image.

Before you start writing Alltel or the guys who write whatever sitcom dumped on gamers this week we need to clean up our own house. The fact is the matter is Alexis only went part of the way when he said, "D&D has consistently been, in my experience, the second worst offender when it comes to poor manners, poor habits and unbelievably infantile self-proclaiming posturing. The worst, of course, is any bar with a television where you’re trying to get solemnly drunk." The reality is too many of us not only accept this but celebrate it. When you consider the most popular gaming comic out there, Knights of the Dinner Table, this is driven home. I love the Knights and identify too much with the comic. That is part of the problem. Three different tables are regularly featured and at best one of them has a majority of functional adults at the table, Patty's Perps. To even bring them to that status of majority functional adults we have to include an ex-con as functional. That an ex-con trying to go straight is more functional that all but one of the lead group's players (the only functional adult in the Knights is Sarah) says something. Before anyone says, "but it is just a comic", they should come up with a reason for it being routinely funny and very popular that doesn't involve it reflecting the hobby as a whole.

If you need a more real world example let's return to D. Archon's table rules at RPG.net. Despite being milder than Alexis's rant there were multiple objections to rules I would consider fairly common sense. Some examples that people thought were "bring your own stuff" and "be on time or call". When you're 14 these are common issues that you put up with. When you are 25 or 35 or 45 or beyond and trying to squeeze gaming in along with a full time job, grad school, spouse, kids, maintaining your house, and so on the behavior being explicitly prohibited should not even come up. Even more disturbing, for me, was how much of myself I saw in both lists and how, with one exception (being on time, which is an ongoing personal struggle), they are mostly gaming specific.

The fact is we don't act like chess, bridge, or hex and chit gamers. We don't model their public and tournament play in our public and tournament play nor do we model their casual play in our casual play. We have more in common behaviorally with science fiction fandom. Even adults who love fantastic literature and media often avoid fandom. For the same reason, a large number of adults who love the literature and media that inspire us and love to create stories avoid our hobby. Not only do they avoid it but actively consider it in a negative light.

Yet that occurs in a world where one of the most influential figures on TV, Stephen Colbert, an NBA player, Tim Duncan, and some popular actors, Robin Williams, Mike Myers, and Vin Diesel, are all one of us. As I wrote last week this could be the real golden age of the hobby. It is older than it's been in two decades in terms of players, fantastic media is on the upswing, some prominent people are players, and we are returning to our DIY roots as DIY is on the upswing again. Let we are still considered a childish hobby. If we want to begin to reverse that trend and take advantage of all the possibilities to carve out a place as a stable, adult, niche hobby that will be around for our old age and our grandchildren the first step is to act like adults. Hell, in this day and age that might be another groundbreaking creation of the hobby.

2d6 Expldding on Doubles

What are the odds of scoring any value three through 20 on 2d6 if they explode on doubles? This, is of course, the same as saying "what are the odds on a T&T Saving Roll?" Because I'd like to convert the thief's skills to T&T style talents I needed to come up with values for levels one through 20. I'd have to look up the math to do an exact probability calculation so I wrote a Perl script to do 1,000,000,000 simulations instead. The results for those who are interested:

Roll	Odds	Odds <=	Odds =>
3	8.0%	8%	100%
4	8.0%	16%	92%
5	16%	32%	84%
6	16%	48%	68%
7	17%	65%	52%
8	9.0%	74%	35%
9	9.7%	83.3%	26%
10	1.3%	84.6%	15.4%
11	2.0%	86.6%	13.4%
12	1.4%	88%	12%
13	2.1%	90.1%	9.9%
14	1.4%	91.5%	8.5%
15	1.9%	93.4%	6.6%
16	1.2%	94.6%	5.4%
17	1.3%	95.9%	4.1%
18	0.1%	96.9%	3.1%
19	0.1%	97%	3%

Twenty was under a tenth of a percent even rounded so I excluded it.

Inspirational Art: Natalia Pierandrei

This week we return to Deviant Art to find a source of inspiration. A first, however, for the Inspirational Art series is actual RPG art.

Natalia Pierandrei says At the End of the World is "Concept art I'm doing for a RPG set in Victorian Age." Certainly it's enough to make me want to check out the project, but then again I have a weakness for Steampunk/Neo-Victorian/Neo-Edwardian settings, especially the kind often seen in anime that unselfconsciously mix magic and multiple technical levels. It's probably the airship thing.

While she is at Deviant Art I'd suggest following up with Natalia at her own website, A Forgotten Night Tale. She notes she is available for freelance and specifically mentions RPGs. My friends in the OSR who find her work compelling might contact her for that next big thing you're working on.

Not a Golden But a Gilded Age

Although it overlaps ages in James Maliszewski excellent D&D chronology the period from 1981 to 1985 is generally considered the golden age of D&D and of RPGs in general. People generally say the early 1980s but I'm putting in specific dates for a reason. They represent the beginning and the end of the worst thing to happen to our hobby. The opening year is the release year of the Moldvay Basic set which is generally seen as the classic version of Basic D&D. The closing year is the year 60 Minutes ran its now famous expose about the game. They also serve as rough bookends for D&D as a fad. The damage of that era is due to how TSR choose to mass market D&D. Unlike many OSR members I do not think that appealing to a mass or broad market in and of itself is destructive to the hobby. The sin against the broader hobby TSR committed was marketing to kids

The Moldavy boxed set reads "The Original Adult Fantasy Roleplaying Game For 3 or More Adults Ages 10 and up". Contrast that cover information with the earlier Holmes boxed set's test that read "The Original Adult Fantasy Roleplaying Game for 3 or more players". The original boxed set had no age information on it.

For those who weren't around in the era you need to understand a few things about games in that time frame. Games for adults, especially in the mass market, were generally party games. Hobby games were mostly hex and chit wargames sold in hobby shops and for some peculiar reason I've never learned Avalon Hill games were commonly found in Hallmark stores. Board games were mostly kid or family oriented games. Major game publishers indicated the target market for their games with lines like "suitable for ages 10-14". In choosing ages 10 and up for their marketing TSR was making a conscious choice to market D&D to tweens. By 1983 and the Mentzer set TSR had dropped any pretense of marketing to adults by removing the word itself from their mass market oriented age range. The Mentzer Basic read "Ideal for 3 or more beginning to intermediate players, ages 10 and up". Star Frontiers, Marvel Superheroes, and other TSR games would bear the same age range in that period.

This had a series of perverse effects. First, adults who even three years earlier might have been open to the game were lead to perceive it as a "kids" game. Second, by marketing to the fickle children's market TSR was choosing a ton of revenue today in exchange for sacrificing a steady income stream in the long term. The worst damage, though, was to both the kinds of kids who were playing and the nature of the groups they played in.

I've written before about the value to teenage players of being accepted into an adult peer group as an adult. Testimony from people who started playing as a teenager in the era of 1975-1985 is quite interesting. Those who stayed in the hobby tend to have been their group's kid while. Those who were in peer group games seem to have left during and after high school. A handful are now coming back in their late 30s and early 40s. I have no hard statistics to prove it, but I suspect most of the former stayed and most of the later left to never come back. Peer group players were taught the same thing adults were taught by the box ages, this is something for kids not adults.

That is the true damage TSR committed and it is both deep and far ranging. Listen to this story from NPR's All Things Considered about the release of third edition. The story talks about designers trying to appeal to a new adult fan base. Anyone with a clue about the hobby knows most third edition books were sold to adults who had been playing for decades. This association of D&D with kids is a huge part of the negative geek image the hobby has. To the average adult choosing to be involved in a kids game puts you in the same category as comic book guy from the Simpsons. For example. just two years later the same show would run this story for the thirtieth anniversary. As you listen to the tone in parts of that story you are paying the interest on all that money TSR made. The surprise that adults still pay a kid's game is palpable.

The sad thing is that TSR could have chosen another path to a broader audience. In that version of the past D&D never becomes the fad it was but remains an adult hobby. The mass marketing moved into Hallmark stories along the lines Avalon Hill games or into mass market bookstores aimed at adults. In that world TSR probably still exists and Avalon Hill probably does too. That marketing, after all, marked the hobby as whole and just roleplaying as a kid's hobby. We'd still be different but in the way chess players and amateur painters are today and wargamers were in the 1970s. Do not underestimate the changes to our hobby, internally and externally, that acceptance as an adult hobby would have.

So, I don't consider the mass market era a golden age. It was a gilded age that hurt the hobby for two decades. The silver lining is some of the players who played as a teen and left at adulthood are coming back. The indie movement of a few years ago, the OSR, and even WotC's targeting of people in their 20s with both of their editions of D&D all are doing today what TSR could have done then. The hobby survived long enough for use to get a do-over. Having seen the error of appealing specifically to children we can now appeal to adults, even those 10 and above.

Crosslink: Death Frost Doom infiltrates WotC

James Edward Raggi IV got the most surprising plug of all for his excellent Death Frost Doom.

Mike Mearls plugs it on the current official D&D podcast. You know, the one from the company that makes Fourth Edition.

Get the link at Lamentations of the Flame Princess

Are Horror RPGs Possible?

So, today I finally watched the original version of The Wickerman having had it from Netflix since before Thanksgiving. While watching it I was reminded of a time when horror meant something other than gore porn which alone was worth the time. It also brought back memories of very frightening thriller horror from that time period focusing on witches and satanism as well as pagan.

Like many gamers it made me want to get out some horror rules (specifically the first edition of Palladium's Beyond the Supernatural) and plot out a campaign. But I was stopped fast.

Can you really create a horror RPG campaign that will be fulfilling for both players and the game master? It is certainly possible to create a mood of horror as Death Frost Doom shows. Consider this, however, in horror there are generally few if any survivors and most horror films, especially of the more thriller type, leave a suggestion if not an outright demonstration that the leads have failed in ending the horror.

As a result we have to create action horror games. Sure, we have horrific events and a variety of supernatural and normal horrific events. That said, from the earliest horror games such as Stalking the Night Fantastic, Chill, and the afore mentioned Beyond the Supernatural you were a very competent individual who stood a chance of defeating the horror for good while surviving. Even the game that began horror as a genre, Call of Cthulhu was more August Derleth than H. P. Lovecraft for this reason. The other path, mostly as a result of White Wolf's Vampire and its success although also see in Stellar Games's Nightlife is you playing the monster.

In the end the best we can do is something like Call of Cthulhu which intersects with horror in a more TV than movie space (I don't feel qualified to comment on horror literature having limited exposure). CoC investigators, with their regular success and survivability are more akin to Kolchak: The Night Stalker and The X-Files (especially the pre-mythology conception of the show) as well as Derleth's The Trail of Cthulhu.

In that way, I think the development of those games has hurt RPG horror. While a horror campaign is probably not possible the proliferation of a "horror light" mentality and horror mechanics to enforce the mood has dampened the ability to bring horror as a style for certain adventures. It has encouraged us to think of horror as sanity points and monsters who eat them (instead of hit points). Horror should be a feeling of doom and that, even if you get out alive, you somehow didn't win.

Buried Treasures: Big Rubble, The Deadly City

The BIG RUBBLE is the perfect hunting ground for both prospective and veteran adventurers. From the relative safety of the frontier town of New Pavis, exploration parties may venture forth into the Rubble to once again tap the treasures and magics buried in its ruins. They will be aided and hindered by the guards and bureaucrats of the occupying Lunar empire.

Recently there was considerable discussion in the OSR about the ability to publish a mega-dungeon. Some, such as James Maliszewski over at Grognarda, didn't think it could be done. Other disagreed including Michael Curtis over at The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope who published his Stonehell soon after. One constant in all the discussion, however, was the conclusion the attempts at publishing one of the classic mega-dungeons like Blackmoor or Greyhawk had all failed. While that might be true at least one early structure that should qualify as a mega-dungeon did see the light of day. In fact, it had two published boxed sets cover it and the associated city which still garner high prices on eBay and were reprinted as one massive book in the 1990s. That mega-dungeon is the Big Rubble, the ruins of the city of Old Pavis in Glorantha.

For those who are wondering why you have never heard of Pavis or The Big Rubble along side the Slaver, Giants, and Drow modules the answer is simplicity and fate. Pavis: Gateway to Adventure and Big Rubble: The Deadly City were published not by TSR but by Chaosium. They are not for D&D but for Runequest. I find it ironic that the game that in its day was considered the anti-D&D published the most successful mega-dungeon of the period. Both boxed sets were among a series of supplements, mostly boxed sets but some booklets, that represented the golden age of Runequest and, in my mind, of Glorantha as a game setting. Anyone interested in early campaign styles that started to add loose plotting to great sandbox settings should look at most of these sets.

What is the Big Rubble? It is a the ruins of two cities the later of which was about sacked about 400 years earlier. The first city was founded about 900 years before the supplement begins by a culture of evil magicians to capture magical cradles carrying giant babies to the sea to join in the battles of Glorantha's mythological age. It only lasted twenty or so years before being destroyed by a giant and his allies who included a minor god. They built the towering walls (80 feet plus in height) of Old Pavis to use as a fortification. About thirty years later a man named Pavis, whose city was sacked by the same minor god's followers, lead a giant, faceless statue and some nomads to take the fortifications. After the battle the statue was used to build the interior buildings. Pavis himself would later become the city's patron deity but the city would be sacked by trolls around 400 years after its founding.

A game master opening the Big Rubble boxed set could look forward to "thousands of acres of ruin and destruction now remain, full of robbers, outcasts, and inhuman monsters." To get an idea of the scale consider the image to the left superimposing both the old (larger) and new (smaller) city on modern London (the original source has one imposed on Manhattan as well). The white area outlines medieval London contrast. No attempt was made to detail all of this area. Instead a 48 page "Rubble Guide" details some highlights of the area. Nine scenarios detail such a maze-like canal built for seemingly no purpose to a troll town hiding a magical artifact and everything in between. Plenty of notes are provided to help the game master build his own sections of the city. Finally, some forms used by officials in the new city to control exit from the rubble to the new city are included.

So, you can publish what amounts to a mega-dungeon. You can especially publish an adventurous, mostly above ground, one rooted in unique mythology. You can even create one of our hobby's forgotten masterpieces in the process.

Review: First Edition Feats/1E Heroic Abilities

In the rush of new products some older products that are clearly OSR material but "predate" the movement have gotten lost in the shuffle. Today we'll look at two of the from the same publisher and author: First Edition Feats and 1E Heroic Abilitiesby Malcolm Shepard at Mob United Media. Both supplements are PDFs available at RPGNow.com for $2.99 and $1.50 respectively.

First Edition Feats is an eleven page PDF two of which are taken up by a full color cover and the OGL. The contents are just what you would expect. It adds a feat system, except it calls its feats combat proficiencies, to 1st Edition AD&D and OSRIC. It should be easily adaptable to other versions of D&D with no or little work. The biggest issue for D&D as opposed to AD&D is it is based on the weapons proficiency system. Adopting it to the BECMI/RC weapons mastery system would be easy and either of those could be grafted onto the rest of the family.

The rules on combat proficiencies take about two pages of rules including design notes. It allows a character to substitute one of the combat proficiencies for a weapon proficiency. Each combat proficiency can be taken twice for two levels of effect. The rules require a character to take at least one weapon proficiency and prohibit the doubling of a combat proficiency at level one. The system recommends that monsters of at least low intelligence have access to the system at up to one combat proficiency per 2HD and requiring at least average intelligence to take a double proficiency. I can imagine an orge or orc shaman with a couple of these spicing up a combat.

The rest of material describes twenty-one combat proficiencies. Each has a name, one sentence description, prerequisite, class, single proficiency benefit, and double proficiency benefit. The prerequisites are generally ability score values or weapon proficiencies although there is one alignment prerequisite. Most of the abilities provide a small bonus under certain circumstances. For example, the Two Handed Weapon proficiency adds +1 to damage when using a two handed weapon. Shield Bash allows you to sacrifice you shield's AC bonus and use your shield as an off hand weapon. The only magic-user allowed proficiency allows magic-users to use a single type of magical weapon where the weapon type is not normally allowed but unable to use the magical abilities unless they take the double proficiency.

The proficiencies occasionally have two additional entries. Special gives notes outside of the above. For example the special section on the Archery proficiency notes you can use more than one slot on the double bonus, which is bow type specific, to use it with another bow type. The second section is called Normal. This to me is what makes this a true old school product. A common complaint against feats and skills in the OSR is they are limiting. If your character lacks feat X then they can't try to do that. While a valid complaint I think this is only half the story. As I've written before old school characters are made out of what they're good at doing. By supplying a normal rule for proficiencies which don't have rules already in place this supplement emphasizes the fact they are about what you're good at doing and not "permission" to do something.

While I have some quibbles, such as not opening up the special staff abilities to magic-users, in general I think this was worth the cost. I bought it for a proposed 2nd edition game and would probably use it with everything from that to Labrynth Lord. It is low impact in terms of time added to character creation and game play. It helps provide mechanical differentiation to the one class in older versions of D&D that really needs it, fighters. In fact, if you're in an older game with a dozen different fighter types you might be able to prune it some if you'd like. Finally, it provides a good outline to Dungeon Masters and players wanting to add their own unique abilities. If the publisher were to revisit it the one thing I'd like to see is a single page summary chart of the combat proficiencies.

I'm not as enthused about 1E Heroic Abilities. It is a mere six pages, again two used by the full color cover and OGL, and provides three related expansions to ability scores. First, for each class it defines certain abilities as having secondary ability scores. These are decimal scores identical to and generated in the same manner as exceptional strength. Roll percentiles for three ability scores for your class and list them in the traditional format: XX/yy. Once per day per level a character may roll percentiles against a given scores secondary ability and success allows you to treat it as the next highest value. You cannot use this to raise hit points or gain bonus spells.

The second usage is when the character has a base 18 in their prime requisite. For those characters it provides tables for 18/xx bonuses for the three ability scores which are prime requisites and don't 18/xx bonuses in the core rules. Dexterity adds to thief skills. Intelligence add languages and increases the chance to know spells and save versus illusions. Wisdom provides spells, additional magical attack saves, and magic resistance.

The final usage is to increase ability scores. At each level a character gets three dices pools of 3d10, 2d10, and 1d10 to add to there secondary ability scores. One must be assigned to each of the abilities for the class. If the total exceeds 100 you subtract 100 from the secondary abilities and increase the primary score by one.

This system isn't that different from those common in 'zines back in the day or even that in Hackmaster 4th edition. It's not as unique or compelling as First Edition Feats. I wouldn't recommend it as a separate purchase although if the two products were folded together and the price set at about four dollars I would recommend the combined product.

Inspirational Art: Ursula Verno

I found Ursula Verno when search for artistic inspiration for my Fantasy Nouveau idea. While art nouveau elves and dragons are quite common (the former having helped me find an earlier inspirational art entry) Ms. Verno did something I found interesting: art nouveau orc women. While intriquing they weren't quite what I was looking for. However, the page had a url for site. Searching the character galleries I found today's entry for inspirational art. Her notes on the piece indicate I would love to sell prints, but somehow I lost the original file, and the jpg is all that currently remains. Too bad, as I think they'd sell.

Still, we have this great image. I see the last druid of a culture whose waste of the land has left it a desert. She sits as a guardian of a tomb not of some great leader but of her culture's heritage and the consuming soul that destroyed it.

RPG Legos

A common concept of the OSR is the idea of making the game your own. Beyond keeping the rules available in print the strongest reason for the retro-clones is making the game your own. Mutant Future and Ruins & Ronin are among the best examples of this idea, neither being 100% compatible with a prior game even fairly tight clones like Labrynth Lord or Swords & Wizardry put their own spin on the past. Even more important are the numerous mini-supplements, add-ons, and fanzines like Advanced Edition Characters or Fight On!. They embody something common in the early days of RPGs explemlified by early fanzines, The Dragon (especially in the single and double digit issues) and other professional magazines, and the early fantasy games that were essentially house ruled D&D. These new products all aspire to regain the days when "playing D&D" meant you were playing a game whose genesis was in one or more of a series of books plublished by TSR, that you had a character who had a class and improved by going up in levels, and you had combat by rolling a d20. Beyond those basics you needed to learn the lay of the land, including rules and conventions as well as the setting, when setting down with a new group.

Regaining those days is a noble goal. The increased reliance in the hobby on official and "complete" rules and settings has diminished the hobby as a creative outlet. That said, some more modern games, viewed correctly, provide more of that vibe than we in the OSR acknowledge. In particular there are two systems readily available (one in print and one out of print but very, very common) that provide what I'll call RPG legos. There is so much published material for these systems, much of it contridictory and some of it trash, that a GM can easily mix and match his way to a unique game completely distinct from the DM next door while still being able to draw on fans of those systems. They are the Palladium Megaversal system and, wait for it, D&D 3.x/D20.

Palladium, in particular, is very much old school at its core having began as a house ruled version of D&D. Several games with different genres or settings exist or have existed. Checking the Palladium website there are currently in print twelve game lines using the Palladium core system (more or less) and 116 individual items in print or back-ordered. They also have several prior lines now out of print but readily found. The design of Palladium's books make them perfect for a mix or match campaign (as well as great OSR supplements). Each book is a mish-mash of new rules, classes, spells, monsters, and items (magical and tech) with some setting pieces. Even these bits of setting are often easily adaptable to a variety of settings. With new Gygaxian building blocks in each sourcebook you could pick one core rules set and then just pick two more books that wet your appetitate (a la Jeff Rient's Alchemical Formula) to create an interesting campaign. As new ones tickle your fancy or you need new material you can just add a book.

Before moving on from Palladium let me add one final advantage and a caveat. The advantage is Palladium material is often found used if your FLGS has a used section. It is also quite common new or used on eBay for very reasonable prices. The caveat is the Palladium system can be a bit unweildy, especially if using the MDC rules. Combat requires a lot of judgment callsand nothing is consistant across systems. For an OSR game this problem, as well as many other complaints about Palladium's system such as a dozen different classes for soldiers or skills having all different percentages to give, are pure gold. In addition the web abounds with houserules as does Palladium's The Rifter or you can roll your own.

D&D 3.x/D20 (henceforth D&D3 for simplicity) is a tighter system with less room for judgment calls so beloved of the OSR but more than we grognards credit it. At this point it has at least several major variations six or seven by my count) at least two of which have their own minor variations. They cover fantasy (too numerous to list), science fiction at least twice (Star Wars and Traveller), espinage (Spycraft), superheroes (Mutants and Masterminds), and generic modern/historical/future (D20 Modern). Beyond that there exist different tweeks for other styles and conventions (i.e. BESM D20 and True20). Add in a ton of mostly compatible D20 branded supplemental material and you have more than enough to build a unique rules set. More over, much as Palladium, most of this is now in the used market due to 4th edition.

D&D3 has three advantages over Palladium in practical and artistic terms. First, finding players willing to play is easier as the system is more common and familiar to a broad base of players. Next, there is more material available, although almost to the point of being overwhelming. The final benefit is the material is OGL. You can, to a large degree, compose your own player's handbook out of all the pieces you've selected and distribute it. You may have to rewrite lots of descriptions as most OGL materials are OGL only in the game related materials and names while descriptions are considered PI. However, in my opinion this is a plus not a minus. Allowing you to combine the best of OGL game material with your world specific descriptions allows you to create something new and unique to you but clearly built from the widest available game system.

I hope my friends in the OSR will forgive me...

but I'm being tempted to run a D20 campaign again...not 3.x per say but a striped down version or True20 game.

Oh, and I've pitched a Savage Worlds idea.

That said, I'm still working on both S&W ideas: Demon Haunted World (come play at OwlCon) and Nouveau Fantasy.

Artistic Inspiration: Virgil Finlay

Being one of the favorite artists of James M. of Grognardia means you're probably a good artistic inspiration for old school gamers. Add in the use of a relatively rare and interesting artistic technique and being one of the last of the old school illustrators and you probably have reached "significant".

Virgil Finlay is an odd choice for my series of inspirations. He is later than most artists I would feature and while he has some elements of movements that tend to speak to me (Pre-Raphaelite, Symbolism, and Art Nouveau) he generally does not fit. What draws me to him is his female forms (true of two of the three above, all but Symbolism) and some horrific elements (which touches on Symbolism). That said, his style is one of the archetypical one for the pulp era science fiction magazines.

First up is a picture titled Conquest of the Moon Pool which I am sure is related to the Merritt story, although Finlay was five when it was first published. Finlay did work for Merritt at The American Weekly.

Our second picture is more a direct inspiration to gaming. Get out your copy of Spelljammer and compare that image to the skeleton ship here. Which, to your mind, is more of a pulp fantasy magical flying ship. In fact, I'd love to see various people write up Finlay's ship as a treasure or even a monster.

Recommending Products in Products

How do you view products that recommend other products inside them. Not full page ads but items like "a good system for generating unique demons can be found in Scribe of Orcus #2". Does it make it seem like you've been sold a broken or incomplete product? Does it matter if the products are produced by someone other than the producer of the book you're reading?

The reason I ask is I'm taking a first pass at some sections of A Demon Haunted world and I'm inclined to recommend items I use in developing the playtest scenarios (and if I get players the campaign).

A Demon Haunted World: The Problem of Gunpowder

In trying to have magical adventures in the modern day one must find a way to explain why heroes don't use guns. After all, if facing a demon would you rather have a sword or an AK-47? Some games handle this by making magical creatures have what amounts to tank armor for skin. An interesting, if not completely convincing idea outside of certain settings.

Of course, the easiest method is to claim magical creatures are invulnerable to modern weapons. To my mind, and many others, that is a cop out.

That said, if I want A Demon Haunted World to be modern sword and sorcery adventures I need a way to limit guns, flamethrowers, and artillery, among other things. To do this I'm going to look at modern weaponry a little differently. What if the wasn't from the bullet or the flame but from the source: a strange mixture that propels the sling stone instead of a sling or a strange mixture that burns instead of lamp oil?

Well, in the S&S world, especially in the context of Old School fantasy gaming we have a word for strange mixtures that can harm you: potions. We also have a way to escape harm from potions: saving throws. Why not allow creatures of myth and magic (including my Blooded race of humans) a saving throw against potions when attacked with modern (gunpowder and later) weapons, flame, and explosives. A successful save resists the potions effects and converts the damage into the equivalent muscle powered weapon: sling stones, natural fire, and so on. Or perhaps a save allows no damage. Tougher (more magical) creatures might get a plus on this save to reflect their distance from the modern world.

Artistic Inspiration: Frank R. Paul

Amazing Stories: Master Mind of Mars And we have another Barsoom illustration, this one from the Amazing Stories run of Master Mind of Mars by Frank R. Paul. Paul was Amazing's house illustrator from 1926 to 1929 and did a variety of other magazines as well. His most influential work was illustrating the Buck Rogers comic strip from its beginning in 1929. The visual vocabulary he started would be imitated in the Flash Gordon strip and serials as well as the Buck Rogers serial. He arguably defined what a spaceship would look like until the Enterprise's silhouette appeared with Star Trek (which was revolutionary in and of itself).

Artistic Inspiration: Wild Elf

I found this by a Google Image search for art nouveau elf. While this image isn't the one I found I think it's a great inspiration for D&D.

This image is titled "Sacred Weeds" and to me invokes the The Wild or a Mythic Wilderness.

Mid-vacation humor post

From the Ansteorra mailing list:

>Obviously I've been gone *way* too long...that sounds like something you'd
>see in a D&D campaign...
>
>Alden (the old one)

Yes, but in D&D, the Savory Toasted Cheese has six hit dice, a cholesterol-based attack, and dissolves leather, wood and flesh. (Dire Savory Toasted Cheese has nine hit dice.)

Of course, "the old Alden" *also* sounds like something you'd see in a D&D campaign.


... or maybe a Toon campaign.

Anyone want to find art for using Savory Toasted Cheese in MF?

A Demon Haunted World: Human Races

In my Demon Haunted World humans come in three (down from four) flavors. Below are my first passes at the three races written up for Swords & Wizardry.

The Heirs

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

The meek have inherited the earth.  Over ninety-five percent of humanity has no touch or ability with magic or the supernatural.  Most of them live entire lives unaware of the world of the mystical or of the adventurous part of reality. Such unaware lives are not always blissful as it might seem.  Millions of The Heirs thrill to books of action and adventure to fulfill the yearning of their souls for wonder and achievement although fewer do each year with more and more doing it via pictures and movies that provide a thrill while dulling the very instrument of wonder the mind.

Yet even now a handful rebel.  By chance or design (theirs or others) they see a demon or befriend a wizard.  As such they become adventurers in the Demon Haunted World

Examples: Zander from Buffy and Gunn from Angel.

Requirements: None
Ability Adjustments: None
Bonuses: To saving throws against magical wands, staves, rods, and spells based on constitution: 3-8 +1, 9-12 +2, 13 and higher +3
Penalties:

1. May not be any spell casting class.
2. Each time they use a magical items if will fail to operate on a 1 on a d6.  For constant items check when first used (such as putting on a ring).  Test magical weapons and armors at the beginning of each combat.

The Blooded

Yet it is not the meek alone that remain among men.  There are still men and women who can touch the magics left both by the Old Ones and by the powers that oppose them.  For them The Demon Haunted World is not an adventuresome reality they can discover or seek out but their heritage.  Every generation a handful cast off their birth right but remain in the world of magic.  Of those who do a handful go on to become the freebooters and adventurers of today.

Examples: Harry Potter at the spell casting end while Giles the Watcher from Buffy is a perfect example of a little or no spell casting Blooded.

Requirements: Intelligence 12 or Wisdom 12
Ability Adjustments: None
Bonuses:

1. Inherent magics: At creation pick one common 1st level spell.  The character may cast this spell once per day with a casting level equal to half his level, rounded up.
2. Minor magics: Even non-wizard Blooded may use minor magics for usual daily chores using the minor magic rule.  Available effects are based on their Inherent magic.

Penalties: While attuned to magical effects they are somewhat divorced for the more mundane world and have a -2 saving throw against everything except magical effects such as poison and breath weapons.

The Touched

The blood of the magical runs in many a mundane veins, often due to an ancestor who was Blooded but turned their back on the magical world.  As a result even the most mundane of families produce those attuned to the magic in this world from birth.  Often the result is presumed insanity often followed by the real thing, but some find or are found by those who see The Demon Haunted World.  Ironically, many great wizards are found among them, perhaps gaining new perspective by seeing magic without the assumptions of a magical family.
The Touched are the default race of A Demon Haunted World, fulfilling the role of humans in Swords & Wizardry.

Examples: Heirmone Granger from Harry Potter and Willow from Buffy

Requirements: None
Ability Adjustments: None
Bonuses: None
Penalties: None

These are all first draft and suggestions and hints are welcome.

One specific idea I’d like comment on was The Blooded were originally allowed to use wands as a nod mostly the Harry Potter.  I removed it as I considered having it in addition to the spell ability was too much.  That said, giving them only expanded magic item usage would make the idea of a being a Blooded Wizard pointless.  Ideas on walking that line are welcome.

Death Frost Doom back in stock

At Noble Knight Games. Also, three new Lamentations of the Flame Princess products.

Artistic Inspiration: Frank Schoonover's A Princess of Mars

Dejah Thoris had raised herself upon one elbow and was watching the battle with wide, staring eyes. When I had regained my feet I raised her in my arms and bore her to one of the benches at the side of the room.

While I grew up with the Michael Whelan cover for A Princess of Mars a while back I discover this cover to the first book edition (it originally appeared in All-Story Magazine and fell in love with its style which, like much illustration of the period, showed Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau influences.

Frank Schoonover was an American artist of the grand age of book and magazine illustration. Born in 1877 he would study with the great Howard Pyle and begin an illustrating career in the 1890s. In terms of fantasy art he illustrated King Arthur and the Arabian Knights as well as Burroughs for various publications. He also illustrated a variety of pirate and similar adventure books.

Building a Better Dungeon Key

In writing the rough draft of a review to appear later this month I wound up reading this section from the classic Runequest adventure Snakepipe Hollow by Greg Stafford and Rudy Kraft.  It was  also used in some Judges Guild modules. I consider it a great format, especially for those new to designing location oriented adventure. Just reading it probably helps defeat some common assumptions (such as dungeon design being static).  It also provides excellent organization.

DESCRIPTION OF AREAS
Each room will be organized in the following manner:

INITIAL DIE ROLLS: This will have the chance of a certain event or the presence of certain creatures stated as a single 1D100 roll. Some rooms may always be empty or always have the same thing in them. Those will have "none" in this category. If a later roll contradicts results obtained in an earlier roll, the earlier roll takes priority (i.e. if a die roll has stated that Joe was in room 2 sleeping, he cannot later be in room 17 carving a turkey unless the referee feels that he would have had time to shift and could reasonably be expected to have so shifted).

FIRST GLANCE:It includes the size and shape of the room as well as any outstanding features. Also included here will be an indication of what type of rock the room is made of.

CLOSER LOOKS: Significant details, some of which will be misleading and/or unimportant.

EXITS: They will specifically state each of the possible exits from each room, where they lead to, whether they slope up or down, and any important details which need to be mentioned about the passageways between rooms (also included here are the types of rock through which these ways pass).
HIDDEN SPOTS: Included in this section will be the time it takes one person to search a room (See Found Items section for explanation of search procedure) and the chances of a found item being present. Also included is the existence of other items or places which can only be found via a Spot Hidden Item roll.

TRAPS: This is a description of where any traps in the room are as well as how they are set off and what effect they will have.

DENIZENS: This section will give the important information on what ever monsters or being live in the room. If this section says non, it means that no monster makes his regular home here but it may still be possible via the Initial Die Roll for monsters to be present.

TREASURE: This section describes the appearance, power, and values of all treasure items found in the room (except of course the found items which are explained in their own section).

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES: Assorted odds and ends which doesn't really fit into any other category.

The mentioned found items section basically says, when characters search roll the found item percentage to see if there is something to find. If there is make the Spot Hidden Item role for the searching character (if more than one character is searching pick one and only one to roll for). If they fail to find it they can try again at half value. If they do, roll on a big chart of items (20 in this case) to find which one, re-rolling if you get one already found.

Sure, if I was writing this up I might wind up with a page of material per room excluding stat blocks.  However, for a new Dungeon Master that might not be a bad idea. Even for a more experienced hand using this format in a one per sheet or index card with numbers in a corner might find it easier to search than the traditional list on a piece of paper.

Artistic Inspiration: Warwick Globe

She took up the jewel in her hand, left the palace, and successfully reached the upper world

Warwick Globe was a children's book illustrator of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. His specialties were exotic scenes of the Far East and fairy tales. Often appearing in Pearson's Magazine he illustrated a number of early science fiction stories including many by Frederick Merrick White and a little tale called The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.

The above image is from a 1912 volume entitled Folk Tales of Bengal by Rev. Lal Behari Day.

Silver Age Appendix N: The Belgariad

Long ago, so the Storyteller claimed, the evil God Torak sought dominion and drove men and Gods to war. But Belgarath the Sorcerer led men to reclaim the Orb that protected men of the West. So long as it lay at Riva, the prophecy went, men would be safe.

So reads the back cover of a Del Ray fantasy novel released in 1982. That book, Pawn of Prophecy, would kick off one of the most successful fantasy series and fantasy writing careers of the past twenty years. David Edding's Belgariad is the epitome of the world saving quest fantasy series that would dominate fantasy literature in the 80s and the 90s. While lacking the grand depth of Tolkien's singular achievement it contains the major elements of medieval quest literature (Eddings held a Masters of Arts in Middle English) and is firmly rooted in fantastic literature from the medieval world on.

My personal relationship with the series is mixed. I got into it between the publication of the third and fourth book, having resisted due to two teenage trends, rejecting the popular and idealism (the quickness they came out seemed fake). At the time I devoured them and awaited the fifth book anxiously (the fourth having come out while I was reading the third). About a decade later an attempt to reread failed to get me through the first book and I put them in the "things that didn't having staying power from my youth". However, I recently reread them prepping to run a game for some people I know in the local music scene and consumed them in either seven or eight days and enjoyed them thoroughly.

The series follows a fairly standard path. Garion, a farmer boy, spends his early life in the care of his aunt until one evening an old storyteller reappears and leads them off on the quest to recover a magic gem. Along the course of their journey they travel every land in the obligatory maps at the front of each novel, ancient prophecy is fulfilled, a war is fought with the followers of an evil god, a fated group of companions is assembled, and Garion finds a destiny much greater than that of a farm boy. You've read it a dozen times. It was old even before Eddings wrote it and has become downright cliche since he did. Yet he was able to fashion a very good novel with only a handful of flaws, mostly of language and slight omission, especially in the last book.

What then makes Eddings in my mind the epitome of the 80s fantasy quest to save the world and an huge influence on those who took up D&D at the time it was published. In my mind there are two main influences he brought to bear on fantasy RPGs: a literary realism and a knowledge of pre-Tolkein influences which imparted a fairly formalized structure. Although there are many other influences he had, especially on the path of fantasy literature, I want to concentrate on these two.

Eddings had earlier published a mainstream novel in the early seventies and spent most of that decade trying to publish more. In his later book of series background, The Rivan Coex, he admits the success of Terry Brooks and Stephen Donaldson lead him to take up a mythical map he had placed away in a drawer to not distract from serious work. While earlier writers had introduced politics, weather, and other travails of everyday life these had fallen into two broad categories. The first, exemplified by the storm on Weathertop in The Lord of the Rings, treated even mundane items as part of the magical framework. The second, exemplified by Kurtz's early 70s novels, placed the mundane in charge and basically put a fantasy patina on fairly conventional novels. The later was common enough by the mid-70s to inspire Ursula K. Le Guin's essay From Elfland to Poughkeepsie on what made fantasy more than trapping. Eddings's succeeds in walking a line between the two.

Eddings admires Tolkien but has knowledge of the same sources that Tolkien drew on and was influenced by them as well. In fact, in the above mentioned Rivan Codex, he criticized later fantasy writers for thinking the genre began with Tolkien. The result was a kind of formalism that later fantasy literature would imitate. This shows most directly in two ways. First, each and every country on his map is visited. In fact, he uses this fact to structure the books into segments that, with two exceptions, carry the name of someplace on the map. The second is the usage of character archetypes. Instead of the fighter, magic-user, cleric, etc that D&D players know he used types more familiar to mainstream and medieval literature: "the wise man", "the knight protector", "the princess", and "the questing knight".

Which brings us to Eddings's role in influencing Silver Age D&D and later fantasy literature. As James M has pointed out the Silver Age was about realism. The Dragon had many articles in the same time frame about weather, encumbrance, what horses could really do, and so on. Each reflected the same concern with making sure the world seemed real while being magical that the Belgariad did. Up until that time a common refrain in the letters column and around game tables was fantasy couldn't be real. I think the power of a popular, well written fantasy series showing the exact opposite weakened that camp and gave their opponents some justification.

The most easily seen influence on fantasy literature, however, is in his character archetypes. Unlike Brooks or even Dragonlance he uses historical archetypes directly instead of through the lens of Middle Earth. It is also here that I lay down my opposition to an idea that game writers as diverse as Ron Edwards (in Sword & Sorcerer) and James Maliszewski (in How Dragonlance Ruined Everything) have championed. Their argument is fantasy literature, as a commercial genre, is now dominated by the influence of D&D and similar games. Maliszewski even goes so far as to specifically reject claims that the blame rests with Brooks by saying Dragonlance was known to more D&D players who went to become the next generation of fantasy authors.

My counter argument is simple. In drawing on medieval archetypes directly Eddings wound up with an all human cast (although one member was technically a Dryad) where the archetypes expressed national differences, not race ones. If Dragonlance was the dominant later influence, or even Tolkien or Brooks, then we would expect a party of elven archers, dower dwarfs, and so on just as we see in D&D all the way down to fourth edition. In literature, however, the names that would dominate the best seller lists and just the genre section are overwhelmingly human centric with the diversity of types provided by nations and cultures. Excluding Eddings, who would be a best seller through the 90s, we have Mercedes Lackey, Robert Jordan, Anne Bishop, Robin Hobb, Elizabeth Haydon, Katherine Kerr, and L. E. Modesitt, Jr just to start. Lackey and Jordan alone would argue that Dragonlance was not the major influence on the period. In fact, outside of the RPG based novels such as Dragonlance and The Forgotten Realms the only major elvy/dwarfy writers in the period are Brooks and Dennis McKiernan who both pre-date Eddings by several years.

There is also the fact that Eddings was a published mainstream author who turned to fantasy for commercial reasons, at least in part. He did this in 1978 and would publish his first fantasy novel as the Dragonlance project was just beginning.

What is my final judgment? Anyone interested in the evolution of fantasy literature or gaming during the 80s should read The Belgariad. When Eddings passed away last June it didn't raise much of a fuss. Many people saw him as another forgettable author of bog standard post-Brooks fantasy. Yet, I think he is as important in the establishment of fantasy as a separate commercial genre as Brooks and Donaldson were. While the latter two proved that the success of the Lord of the Rings was no fluke Eddings proved that quest fantasy that didn't slavishly imitate Tolkien could be successful without being weird or edgy like Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant whose main character was so reprehensible that many people couldn't get past a certain incident in the first book. The Belgariad created the pattern for fantasy series up through Jordan who finally abused the form to the point is fell out of favor (modern quest fantasy seems to have smaller horizons). I can't promise you'll like it but I can promise that if you read it in context with its times you gain a lot of understanding of modern fantasy.

A Demon Haunted World

Yesterday I wrote about using the background of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, specifically the show's ancient history, as the setting of a Swords & Wizardry game. I specifically discounted the idea of using S&W for a modern world game in the setting.

Well, today I'm partially turning my back on that on that idea. I think a S&W supplement in a modern day world where the characters move in a shadow world populated by the last vestiges of the Old Ones is a great idea. I want to create a modern fantasy game not of the de Lint/Bull school (as much as I love War for the Oaks and similar novels) nor of the strictly horror genre but a modern swords and sorcery game of demon hunting, forbidden magics, and a parallel magical culture. Touch stones for such a game would obviously include Buffy and Angel. I would also add Neverwhere and the Harry Potter novels. For those wondering about the latter, it wandered in from discussions my Trollsmyth and d7 as well as here about appealing to Harry Potter fandom.

If nothing else I think such a project is an excellent response to the twin questions: how far can you stretch Classic D&D and will the OSR create something new or just repeat the past.

Thus, I'm announcing my S&W project, tentatively called A Demon Haunted World: Swords & Sorcery in the here and now. I'll present pieces as I create them here at Places to Go, People to Be with at least one new piece every Thursday. I already have a character class, The Chosen, to replace clerics (and modeled on Buffy herself obviously). I also have some ideas on the economy of the magical world based on gold but with different values and uses for different alloys and colors. Some fairly common (and some less common) rules for wizards already running around will be in, such as Light/Dark wizards, counter-spells, and wizard dueling. Finally, new races are already on the drawing boards with men divided into four kinds and half demons giving five racial options. Half demons will be a character class by themselves but the four types of men will have different class options (and advantages at certain classes).

The long term (Christmas 2010?) goal is to actually write this up as my entry into the pdf/print product market. I've been looking for something that spoke to me in a way that made me want to publish. Given my love of modern fantasy of all types I think this is it.

A Demon Haunted Past

This world is older than any of you know and, contrary to popular mythology, it did not begin as a paradise. For untold eons demons walked the earth and made it their home...their Hell. In time they lost their purchase on this reality and the way was made for the mortal animals, for Man. What remains of the Old Ones are vestiges, certain magics, certain creatures...and Vampires

A quote from Lovecraft perhaps? Maybe it's from August Derleth or even Clark Ashton Smith?

No, the above is actually Joss Whedon and from The Harvest, the second episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. While the show was definitely about hip young people slaying modern demons (both of the life stage and supernatural kind) bits and pieces of this history would show up over the course of the series, especially in the seventh season, and would play a major role in the spin-off series Angel.

I find it interesting that what many gamers would consider a core swords and sorcery trope is at the core of Buffy. The show is very modern in its time period, its characters, and its sensibilities yet its core mythology, from the pilot on, is one that has great deal in common with the weird tale. Certainly, Whedon admits to being a horror fan. However, in the interviews I've seen it's horror of a movie sort and it is a rare film, in my experience, that has any mythos much less one with a horrific demon haunted past. That said, despite its similarity it does miss some of the elements in the Lovecraftian past. While the Buffyverse is a universe where the struggle against evil never ends and most characters will eventually fail (an idea more obvious in Angel than in Buffy) it is still more heroic than fatalism. The heroism is in the struggle and even failure can be a defeat of evil.

Watching the entirety of both series (itself an enjoyable pastime) with a notebook in your lap could be a great way to "design" a setting for a game, especially one of the very flexible retro-clone like Swords & Wizardry.

No, I'm not saying you play S&W in the show's modern setting (although that could be interesting). There already exists an excellent role-playing game for it. However, imagine taking the open to this post and all the various references to ancient demons, cults, religions, and magics through out the two series. Then set it among the ruins of Atlantis or some other pre-Sumerian civilization or even in a Hercules/Xena ancient world.

I suspect we might start seeing bits and pieces of A Demon Haunted Past showing up here every now and then.

Artistic Inspiration: John Williams Waterhouse 1

Waterhouse was one of the last of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This image of The Lady of Shalott entitled I am half-sick of shadows, said the Lady of Shalott was the last of three on the subject Waterhouse would do and dates to 1915. It displays a lot of similarities with his Penelope and the Suitors of 1912.

The subject is taken from theTennyson poem of the same name which in turn based on Elaine of Astolat. Interestingly Tennyson would include the story, using Elaine of Astolat directly, in The Idylls of the King.

Silver Age Appendix N: Intro

One of the more interesting ideas James M has followed over at Grognardia is his Pulp Fantasy Library which concentrates on literature that influenced Gygax and others at the beginning and similar literature.

What is in interesting is the pulp fantasy revival of the late 60s and 70s was part of a much larger fantasy literature revival. While Gygax's tastes may not have drifted heavily into the realms of non-pulp fantasy the tastes of many who took up D&D were decided non-pulp fantasy. I think taking a look at the fantasy literature in broad print from 1974 (when D&D left home for school as it were) to 1984 (when Dragonlance ushered in the Silver Age of D&D).

With that in mind I'm adding a new irregular set of posts (given my reliability in posting I'm loathe to call it a series) called Silver Age Appendix N. It will focus on those fantasy and science fantasy books and authors who had a broad presence in the late 70s and early 80s. These authors not only shaped how people in the second and especially third generation of D&D players approached the game they influenced fantasy literature at large. Some grognards like to claim that gaming fantasy novels of the late 80s irrevocably changed fantasy literature. They fail to appreciate how these authors directly and indirectly influenced influenced the path of AD&D II and fantasy literature at least into the 90s and even to today. To the degree that gaming literature such as Dragonlance changed the fantasy literature market it did so in the context of authors like Terry Brooks and David Eddings.

We'll be starting off later this week with what I consider the perfect 80s quest fantasy series (for both good and ill), The Belgariad.

Harry Potter and the Bag of Dice

So, last month was free RPG day. We all got cool games but how many new gamers did it bring into the hobby.

Two weeks ago was the premier of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince. How many potential table top roleplayers waited in line to see it at midnight and how many free RPGs did we get to them that night. If you are concerned about bringing new, young blood into the hobby you should treat that as more than a rhetorical question.

I mostly ignored the back and forth over James Mishner's "The industry is dead" post. Probably because I don't read RPG Pundit thus missed the flames getting lit. However, I did catch some of the brush fires around it, most notably Trollsmyth's musings on it. He had a valid point I hear a lot that no one address:

Because there is a huge number of kids out there reading, writing, and yes, even roleplaying right now. A sizable groundswell of interest in fantastical fiction and play that crosses gender lines has risen up in the Harry Potter generation, the likes of which have probably never been seen before. But you'll notice I mention nothing about games. Regular readers know what I'm talking about: fanfic and free-form roleplay. It's easy to laugh and dismiss this sort of thing (just as RPGs were laughed at and dismissed in my youth, when they weren't being blamed for suicide and devil worship), but here are a bunch of kids so desperate for roleplay that they have built websites and software and communities to facilitate their play. They've done it all on their own. Why on their own? Why didn't they take advantage of the 30+ years of RPGs that were available? Probably because they were never invited to.

So, again, I ask, why are we trading free RPGs with each other once a year in a comic book store, where most potential table top roleplayers already are playing tabletop and not out there giving free quickstarts and game out to the Harry Potter kids.

We have two more chances in roughly two years with the Harry Potter franchise. Wouldn't it be great to see every theater with a midnight showing giving out a Harry Potter goody bag sponsored by local gamers. Along with the branded products it could include a version of the S&W quickstart with a more Harry Potter like adventure. Maybe a GORE quickstart (or CARE for Classic Alternative Roleplaying Engine) aimed at the same crowd with 2-3 adventures. Maybe a "welcome to tabletop adventures" website linked to with additional free and pay products building on those materials.

A crazy marketing nightmare? Maybe. It also might be an idea to help the hobby grew a new generation.

Gaming Update 07/22/2009

Friday night we started the Rolemaster campaign. To say it's a change from my house ruled LL campaign is an understatement. In three hours of play we basically had a combat after a tiny bit of ship handling. I have an advantage in two players have a set of charters and one has more extensive experience with RM. I let them handle much of the results look up while I ran combat. It got me to thinking of the possible value of Master/Apprentice DM training via pair DMing not unlike pairs programming. Perhaps I'll write about that or, even better, experiment with it.

Although the situation I was engaged in was somewhat impromptu (actually stolen from The Dice of Life on the same day) reviewing my half-done 5x5 Matrix I was able to fit it in as the first location/event of my one of the plot lines. I have selected a follow-up location for event two in this plot which is also the first location for another.

What's interesting is all was created on the fly. I had a very high level outline of the setting, a sketch map on one piece of notebook paper, player backgrounds, and a Jeff Rients Alchemical Proposal for allowed rules and fluff (although a bit more expansive given on the rules side given RM). Using the Everchanging Book of Names I've added a two places (the island of * and its north eastern port of &) and one NPC (the harbor master #). I kept each on note cards and a sheet of notes which I'll be typing into my folder for the game.

As an aside I've been storing all computer files for the game in a Subversion repository for backup, revision tracking, and general internet accessibility.

I’m better prepared for this Friday and may be engaging one of the characters’ backstory.

If you missed buying Death Frost Doom

have heart.  I just got the following email from Noble Knight Games:

RE: Death Frost Doom

I'm talking with them now, should hopefully be within a few weeks at the most. I'll drop you a line when they come back into stock.

Best Regards,
Aaron Leeder

So, if you haven't bought a copy it should be in next month or September.

If you don't know what I'm talking about well, let James Mal over at Grognardia give you a description and review.

Gaming Update: Markers for a Heartbreaker…

Back when I discussed our shift to Rolemaster I admitted I don’t really like D&D.  That’s not quite true.  I like D&D a lot except for a few things but they become deal breakers.  More and more I’m finding myself writing a heartbreaker for another try at “old school” gaming…probably more a retro-clone supplement more than a full on game.

That said, given we didn’t play last Friday and thus have no gaming update to make I thought I’d throw some markers for a retro-clone 1st generation derivative I might write:

Flatten the Hit Point Curve: While I have no problem with increasing hit points I do have a problem with the D&D curve and it’s a fairly common one: At first level even a fighter can be killed by a house cat and by 10th level the average Magic-User is roughly on par with a White Dragon in hit points (24 vs. 27).  There are a couple of ways to accomplish this: separate wound and fatigue points or just a flatter curve.

Lack of the Ability to Be Good at Things: I have discussed before why “skills” aren’t anti-old school when they are seen as what the character is good at as opposed to what he can do.  In City States of the Apocalypse I tried using the Tunnels & Trolls saving roll and talent system but they didn’t work out well due to poor design (and DMing) on my part.  Today I read a post on using FATE Aspects in C&C that was similar to my idea but not as game breaking.  I think I’ll look into something similar.

Magic Shouldn’t Be Unified: If there is one thing the first edition of The Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying Game got right it was the multiple types of magic-users.  Magic isn’t one method or set.  However, we don’t need a dozen classes either.  I’d say have three or four who do different things.  If you do real campaign time you can have an alchemist as one.  The spell slinger of D&D is another.  A more ritual oriented mage is a third.

Dungeons: I’ll admit I’m a Silver Age quest player more than a dungeon delver.  That said, there Tolkien/modern fantasy super world changing quest doesn’t appeal either.  Is there a middle ground, more of a “Knights of the Round Table” approach?

I’m sure I can come up with others but I think these three will be among the hallmarks of whatever system I come up with.

Gaming Update…

Last Friday my group finished up the character creation for our next game: Rolemaster.

The game has a name, a combo of the two suggested, which seems to indicate I’m headed for long running silliness: Six Savage Salvagers of the Seven Seas.  Before that they had named their ship the Incorrigible.  That seems to fit us.

Our framework is the characters are the officers of a salvage vessel in an archipeligo called The Beard that connects two contients.  On the eastern one is a large empire and a pseudo-Arabia.  The other is more secretive allowing trade and access only through a handful of ports.  The continents are also connected by a more northern archipeligo called The Brow.

The crew is somewhat Firefly like in that they take what jobs they can get and sometimes don’t worry too much about the morality of it all.

Interesting bits of trivia: the ships of the setting are more Chinese Junk than Western Cog/Crack.  This allows a smaller crew for a given size plus a little flavor.  Except for the Frenzing Barbar everyone is a spell caster, although only one pure one (and no hybrids).  Half the crew has a mysterious past (and the others haven’t provided backgrounds yet).  The only elves are aquatic and the only dwarves are Sea Dwarves (campaign secret: if you have the old Heroes magazine with the ships of Glorantha article those Dwarven ships roam the seas south of the beard towards the 10,000 Islands).

We don’t play this Friday so next week’s Tuesday post (gaming update) will be about my prep work for the first week.

My initial set to “An Alchemical Proposal”

Given I mentioned Jeff Rient's Alchemical Proposal in my last post I thought I should list my fantasy set for the challenge:

Rules

1. Core Rules: GORE
2. Similar Supplement: Monster Coliseum (AH Runequest supplement)
3. Dissimilar Supplement: Library of Bletherad from Palladium Books

Fluff

1. Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey
2. Coming of the Horseclans by Robert Adams
3. In Search of the Trojan War by Michael Wood.

No, I won’t give the one sentence outline like people are at Jeff’s blog.  That’s what we did in the old “pick three GURPS books” game.  This is something different.  This is an actual effort at synthesis as a form of creativity.

Alchemy of the Stars

So, inspired by Jeff Rient’s An Alchemical Proposal and a need to revisit how to go about doing my Imperial Space game given I won’t try to base it on OD&D I thought I’d try to boil it down to his rules + 2 supplements + 3 fluff standard.

Here is what I came up with:

Rules

1. Core Rules: GORE (what I picked for fantasy upon reading the original).
2. Similar rules supplement: Future World from the old Worlds of Wonder booked set.
3. Dissimilar rules supplement: Jedi Academy Sourcebook from the D6 Star Wars roleplaying game.
This book is not what I thought it was. I'll be looking for a psionics book of some kind.

Fluff

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Heretics of Dune
3. The Oresteia by Aeschylus

That’s it. Those six books are the canon sources for my Imperial Space game.

Winding down and starting up…

So, my second attempt at an old school game has been very successful.  Play has been nearly weekly for about five months, we’ve had a few character deaths, and I’ve had a blast.  I’ve especially enjoyed weaving pop culture references ranging from the Dresden Files to the old Friday the 13th: The Series to The Cask of Amontillado.  It is the most successful game I’ve run in a decade.

And I’m ending it, at least temporarily.

Why would I end the most successful game of mine in over ten years?  I could blame boredom but that’s too easy.  The problem is the game isn’t fun.

Now, before some old schooler goes on a Flame Princess style anti-fun rant hear me out.  City States is build on a desire to get back to my prime gaming roots as part of the old school movement.  But as I pointed out in a comment over at Grognardia despite having entered the hobby in the late 70s I am more in tune with D&D’s Silver Age (late 1st edition/early 2nd edition).  I think that is part of my issue.

I also poorly setup the sandbox aspect.  I didn’t communicate it well to players and only one really tried to drive his character.  But despite that I think I have to admit to my primary reason for boredom.

I don’t like D&D very much.  I was one of those guys in the late 70s/early 80s trying to fix D&D.  I bought RuneQuest as quickly as I could and played every system imaginable.  I was a big fan of The Fantasy Trip and later GURPS.  What playing D&D did for me was force to remember not only the good times I had playing it but the things that frustrated me.  While I can honestly say that they aren’t as bad as I remembered in the end OD&D isn’t, and probably never was, my game.

I’m sure someone from the old school movement will come to take my card, but you’ll have to pry it out of my hands along with my copy of Tunnels & Trolls.  You cannot deny the old school cred of a confirmed T&T referee.

Beyond that I’ve learned one other important lesson in this: I generally don’t do well with complex rules.  I’ve offered my group and all the players in the local club six options for a new Friday game as well as a second week night game.  Of the six three use very simple systems: Prose Descriptor Quality for two and Savage Worlds for one.  Of the three complex ones two are Basic Roleplaying variants and while the recent BRP book is a good three hundred pages either game is really about 50-100 pages of rules.  In fact, that was my goal: rules in under 100 pages for new games.  I’d also argue all three of these systems have a lot more reliance on the referee’s judgment than many modern games, especially PDQ.

What is the old man out? Rolemaster 2nd/Classic.  Yes, that is the antithesis of simple and ruling driven.  However, I’ve long thought a RM 2nd edition game in the Forgotten Realms had lots of potential and with three players interested in RM and the recent series over at The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope on the  FR I’m willing to give it a swing, although I pitched it as two games: “Masters/Questers of the Forgotten Realms” with Rolemaster and Questers of the Middle Realms (a PDQ game) as possible rules respectively.

And now it is for us to continue...

Grognardia is reporting Dave Arneson has passed away.

Yes, there are many of the founding generation left but with Dave's passing the two names on those little brown books are gone. For a variety of reasons, both fair and foul, Dave's name is not associated with D&D the way Gary's is. But certainly in our little community he is remembered.

And we should not forget his passing means the last final burden of duty falls to us. Our creators have left us and now it is for us to continue their creation in a way it hasn't been yet, not even after Gary died.

As for Dave, I hope that now both he and Gary have gone on to a place where the old wounds are completely healed and they can once again enjoy together the game they gave us. As Scott over at World of Thool pointed out this is a capstone to two bad years but man, that is one hell of a set of tables they can have going up there.

A Musical Tangent

Tonight's Oscillator Series Show was a multiple band CD release party. Among the releases was the new boxed set by Great Unwashed Luminaries, which gather and releases their first three albums plus a bonus disk. This is worth mentioning here for five reasons:

1. I'm thanked in the liner notes.
2. The boxed set is called Saving Throw vs. Spell.
3. Their second album was Unearthed Arcana with songs: "Power Word: Stun", "Power Word: Blind", "Geas", and "Power Word: Kill".
4. The back cover art for that album includes part of the Holmes cover dragon.
5. All the CDs are numbered with a D20.

For those interested the set is a 25 copy limited edition for $10 at Sink Hole Texas, Inc

My entry in the intro game idea sweepstakes

Since both James have recently argued for an intro boxed set (here and here I'm going to be contrary and say "no, it isn't".

What we need is an RPG S&T.

It was James Edward Raggi IV who got me to realize it:

Now I'm envisioning a game book in the form of a magazine, 128 pages, with everything in it, and the Mentzer-style tutorial intro as an attached (centerpiece pull-out?) item. Attach a covermount CD with various optional rules and adventures and idea-builders and maybe historical essays on role-playing and different methods of playing.

Okay, first, imagine all those computer, art, and music mags with DVD ROMS on the cover, especially the ones from the UK (go to the bookstore and check them out if you don't know what I'm talking about). Imagine his 128 page magazine as one of those.

Re-arrange the content some. Each one has that intro Mentzer booklet in the center, matching the theme of the issue (we could use LL, BRPG, Four Color (the original Marvel had a similar booklet), Mutant Future, and the Star Frontiers clone). The rest of the magazine has a printed version of a bit more than BD&D...maybe levels 1-6, 1-2 full adventures, and those historical essays, an idea builder or two, an interview (every issue needs an interview...learn from music mags), a book column, and some ads.

The cover DVD ROM can have all of the free RPGs from the old school movement and maybe some others (Computer Music has a consistent and growing studio of computer instruments they recycle each much), new adventures, previews of comerical games, a podcast, and so on.

Put it out quarterly and sell it at the major book stores.

The hard part is dice. I'd say that pullout HAS to be d6 only. One, polyhedrons can be off putting. You might be able to include die but even if you can a dice roller can be on the DVD ROM and a pointer to "buy some D&D dice" which most bookstores carry for the full game would be great.

The mags I'm talking about cost $12-$18 here in the US. I think this is doable.

Score one for the old school...

One of the players in my Friday game surprised me when he accepted a spot in it. He's very much a modern RPG kind of guy. As in playtesting work on games like Noblis.

A few weeks back he said he wasn't really getting into it and might drop out but would give it a few more weeks.

Today he emailed me saying he's thinking of running B/X with mostly my houserules (but some mods). Would I be interested in playing?

First Steps to Alignment

In a space setting where the major currents are the silent war between two groups of metaphysical warriors modeled on the Jedi and the Sith seen from the back of a sandworm with analogs of Greek Oracles, Bene Gesserit, Mentats as non-aligned (or both aligned) metaphysical players the Law/Neutral/Chaos system of OD&D seems to be a poor fit. Expanding it via Good/Neutral/Evil doesn't seem to help.

I was looking for an idea of what the Imperial position would be and considered "anti-life" but not in the sense of death but in terms of the Anti-life Equation of Jack Kirby's New Gods comic. Knowledge of it allows one to dominate others by removing free-will. At the end of the Wikipedia article on the topic (linked above) I found this note:

The Anti-Life Equation is similar to Nietzsche's Aristocratic equation, Good = Humble = Powerful = Beautiful = Happy = Loved by God.

For those unfamiliar with Nietzsche one key idea is social evolution from a Master morality to a slave morality in society. A slave morality is the Judeo-Christian morality of charity, faith, and sacrifice. The Master morality is one that values wealth, strength, health, and power which is also, interestingly enough, a good summary of the Classical (Greek and pagan Roman) virtues. Interesting notes for a game with a heavy Greek mythological patina.

Another Nietzchean idea is "the will to power" which can be variously interpreted to mean internal power (self-mastery) or external power (ruling, being a master). A key idea in Dune is maximizing human potential, which fits very well with the first interpretation. If we take both interpretations and filter them through the Greek heroic virtues the Imperial clans see themselves, through their ability to master both themselves (metaphysics) and others (the metaphysics the Clans call "anti-life") as the natural rulers of everyone else.

So my Imperial alignment is "The Will to Power" but what would the Hidden Clans be and how do I give that a mechanical importance.

Well, what other wills can we think about? The will to live, to serve, to survive, to achieve, to master, to transcend, and so on. Hold that thought.

In thinking about classes and abilities it's been clear to me that traditional Vancian magic is inappropriate to this setting. I had decided to represent them by either using the OD&D/AD&D psionics, importing force powers from the various Star Wars RPGs, or some combo of the two. While I'll take some notes I'm going to hold off given a reworking of the Eldrich Wizardry psionics rules is in progress. One thing I wanted to do was to find a way to insure that Imperials, Clansmen, Oracles, Sisters, and Muses took different powers.

Now I have it. Alignment will be replaced by a system of wills. A character will select one or more (probably two, three at the most) compatible wills from a list (both with each other and class). Each will gives access to certain psionic powers and some powers require a combination of wills. Characters with drift will find their powers failing yet or, as appropriate, having different effects.

Of course, as always, the devil is in the details but I think I've got the basic framework in place.