Monday Pointers, 2012.07.30/NCurve Edition

D4: Drow I could get behind
Like a lot of people I'm elfed out and looking for alternate types. So, making use of my all time favorite sci-fi bad guys...hell yeah.

D6: Visual Appendix N
Although I'm not a huge fan of movie/TV references to ground a campaign I look at this and think, "Can I play?"

Playing with History

Influenced by a old Jeff Rients post and prompted because the third has been on my mind today and the second the past week (actually about a week ago, but just finishing the post) here are some pseudo-historically based campaign ideas I've had:

Period	Campaign Idea	Notes	Probable Rules
About 110,000	Clark Aston Smith's Hyperborea set in Sangamonian interglacial period Greenland	When reading about Greenland due to reading The Tale of Satampra Zeiros I found this map and it's been the primary inspiration.	Of all the ideas this is the one most likely to have me drag out AD&D and believe it or not, second edition. Second edition seems like plays much closer to what I've called Intermediate D&D which I played in the early 80s than full blown AD&D. Also, I've never really played second.
871 AD	The Viking conquest of Britain during the reign of Alfred the Great.	Having long had an SCA persona who was a pre-Conquest Saxon Although for years he actually bridged the Conquest and went on the Crusades...as I spent time in I got more interested in Anglo-Saxon England. Afred's reign. Bernard Cornwell's The Saxon Stories would be the major literary influence.	Lamentations of the Flame Princess for the non-advancing fighter and the very dangerous magic which would be the halmark of the invading Vikings in constrast to the clerics of the Saxons.
late 1400s	The Valley of Mexico just before the Spainish Conquest (and possibly during).	This is the most recently inspired, by the pyramids episode of Out of Egypt which I watched on Netflix. I didn't realize that Teotihuacan was not of Aztec origin but in fact predates their culture. That alone sounds like an excellent megadungeon. Plus, Aztec culture, even the poor "I read Wikipedia and a overview book plus watched some TV" cultures that characterize D&D games (even ones based on the Middle Ages or Roman), is alien enough for most of the people who might play in my games to make it interesting.	While part of me wants to do straight OD&D with this one I suspect Runequest of some form (I've got 2nd and 3rd edition as well as BRP and GORE on the shelves and I'm open to either Mongoose version, 6th edition, or Open Quest). More than the other three I'd like to use An Echo Resounding with this one. The Valley of Mexico is perfectly sized for it at 3816sq miles. Remember, in Pre-Columbia America there are no beasts of burdern or riding animals so distances will always be driven by foot speed.

RPG Free Association

Matt's excellent Pars Fortuna includes all new spells. Reading them to build a list of 1st level spells for a new game that includes no stock spells I came across Miner's Nose which is described as "This spell grants the target the ability to magically smell precious metals and stones within 30 feet."

I immediately thought of this:


From Comics.org:

Once upon a time, there was a prince who was born in the shape of a donkey. He was the most beautiful, delightful, lovable little donkey in the world. But he was the saddest little donkey, too, for his greatest wish was to become a real human prince. Though he did not know it, there was one way he could become a human prince. But would he ever find the way?

The reason he was born that way was his father hired a wizard to help the barren queen give birth. When payment came due the king put copper at the bottom of the sacks of gold and the wizard smelled the different. Then the wizard cursed the child.

Outside of Scott at Huge Ruined Pile I don't see a lot of OSR people taking a lot of deliberate inspiration from fairy tales (this particular one is found in Grimm among other places). I don't know if Matt did here, but certainly his spell reminded me of a fairy tale (and wistfully...this particular comic was a favorite as a child).

Perhaps as much as Howard and Lovecraft we need to look at Grimm, Anderson, and Lang.

Monday Pointers, July 2, 2012

D4: Everchanging Book of Names
One of my favorite pieces of GM support software (in fact, one of only two RPG specific programs I use) is the Everchanging Book of Names. I have yet to see any OSR mention of it so I wanted to list it today. You can setup name parts and patterns that fit your world and let it generate away. Several books (sets of parts and patterns) are available include one for Greyhawk as well as other popular settings and literary sources. My favorite is, of course, Glorantha.

D6: Detailed Hexcrawl Rules
Justin has an interesting series of rules for running hexcrawls designed to keep the hexes behind the screen while players react to the environment.

D8: System Matters in the Sandbox
Ravencrowking has a multi-part discussion of why system aspects are needed for a sandbox to work. That he concludes the system in D&D 3.x and Type IV aren't conductive to sandbox play isn't a surprise. What I do find interesting is his conclusion on what currently available game beats out any version of D&D or retroclone for this position. By the reasoning he gives a retro-clone plus An Echo Resounding and Adventurer, Conqueror, King would meet the "best of show" standard as well.

D10: Nine Minute Campaign Design
Another one of those quick questions to get your setting down post that I've found useful.

D12: Crowd Funding by the Ton
Lamentations of the Flame Princess is trying to crowd fund 19 separate adventures. There are bundle options where you can get all that fund for much less than buying print plus pdf for each individually. If you are a Pembrooktonshire Gardening Society there are discounts on the bundles. It is Indiegogo, not Kickstarter, which means you pay upfront and get refunded if they don't fund. Given my two favorite OSR companies (LotFP and Sine Nomine) are effectively teaming up in it I'm most interested in seeing The House of Bone and Amber by Kevin Crawford (of Stars Without Number and Red Tide fame as well as the afore mentioned An Echo Resounding) although I'll be buying the bundle.

D20: Magical Pacts and Worshipful Machines
Speaking of Kevin Crawford we now have small free releases for Red Tide and Stars without Number.

Monster lists and the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis

So, Delta put up an interesting analysis of the LBB monster list, Original Monster Elegance. One of the things he noticed was the creatures were grouped by type and ordered, within type, by hit dice. You had humanoid types from half hit dice (kobolds) to 12 hit dice (giants). Similarly you had undead from half hit dice (skeletons) to 9 (vampires). In both cases the top monster had a variable range (8 to 12 for giants and 7-9 for vamps). After that you get, in Delta's words, a block of chimerical and serpent-like monstrosities, culminating with dragons, purple worms, and (on the flip) sea monsters.

Lately, I've been looking at the very common OSR idea of campaign unique monsters and spells. I wondered, what if you took the LBB groups and did the same thing uniquely. A group of humanoid monsters, a group of undead, and a group of...well, what do you call them, monster monsters.

There is this linguistic theory called linguistic relativity. Read the Wikipedia article for the detailed and not screwed up by me defition. I first heard of it as the Sapif-Whorf hypothesis in a Heinlein story (Gulf if memory serves). I've always understood it as "the words you have influence what you can think about" but Wikipedia tells me it's more complex than that. However, I think there is a kernal of truth.

See, when I was coming up with my three basic groups I was looking for a word to describe what Delta called "a block of chimerical and serpent-like monstrosities". Then, one hit me. I wrote down kaiju. At that moment, as silly as it might sound, just choosing the word to define the group of non-humanoid, non-undead monsters put it into focus. I immediately started thinking not only of Godzilla but Rodan and Gamera.

Maybe, in the end, the monsters won't end up that different. After all, they'll still be based on real animals in some way. I certainly don't want to create some "Japanese" setting. To be honest, if I wanted to use Japanese media as a primary inspiration it's more likely to be for a space fantasy game using Message from Space, The War in Space, Atragon, and so on. However, I do think choosing that word got me out of what I'll call the D&D mindset, the whole Elfy/Dwarfy thing.

Your Cleric is an Initiate

Most D&D style settings have a polytheistic religion that is simply either:

1. An overly simplified Catholicism with the various deities being similar to saints.
2. A modern mix of individual churches similar to Protestantism in the US.

I think we're missing a real opportunity.  While the first model is probably close enough to the state polytheistic faiths in the ancient and Classical worlds for the general faith of the people I think it misses the boat with clerics.

In the Classical world there were a series of religions variously known as mystery cults, mystery religions, or just mysteries.  Enough is known on two to even result in cult specific articles on Wikipedia: the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Mithraic Mysteries.  In fact, I wrote up a "race as class" version of Mithras a couple of years ago.

These cults were highly secretive and consisted of levels of initiation. The closest analog today is probably Masonic and similar orders as well as groups like The Golden Dawn. Based on that you might consider mystery cults to be more appropriate to magic-users.  While both groups are occult organizations the modern groups rely on intellectual understanding of the universe being increased instead of a divine revelation.  Both fit well in a campaign.

"But Herb," I hear you say, "how does this differ for being a follower of the god Foo in traditional D&D terms."  The biggest changes are social although some powers issues come up.  In the traditional D&D world your know that Foo's worshiper are healers so that's the temple you go to for healing.  With mystery cults you don't know much if anything about the faith including what powers they bestow or where to find a high priest of Foo or even the site of Foo worship.  In fact, even a PC cleric who is a member of Foo's mystery cult won't necessarily know the powers of those above him especially those significantly above him.  Thus, the indulgence system of gaining clerical favors (go to the temple and make a donation) is replaced with a series of investigations, favors traded, and possibly initiation for PCs.  Remember, much of the cult knowledge is secret and cannot be taught or shared.  This has ramifications for PCs (see below).

In terms of powers the customization would be similar in some ways to AD&D2 but different in others.  Instead of assigning schools to a given cult I would recommend drawing up several circles of initiation.  Each circle could consist of a mix of myths, symbols, titles, and spells becoming available as well as qualifications.  While certainly a level component should be part of a circle change other activities, such as quests or ritual combat similar to the Druid, the Monk, or the Paladin regaining status could be included at the higher levels.

One important idea is don't have the spells map to 2nd edition and later domains.  Mystery cults don't map well to normal deities of the "sun god", "rain god", "war god" style.  They are much closer to early conceptions of cults in Runequest.

The other important idea is secrecy.  Sure, your third circle cleric of the Foo mysteries recognizes that symbol as the sign of Bar from the myths of the Snafu over the wedding feast but you can't communicate those details to the party with risking a religious violation.

To give an example of circles, tomorrow I present my Initiate of Mithras as rules for a cleric.

Monday Pointers, 2012-06-04

D4: In Praise of the Comics Code
While I don't 100% agree with Eric about DC (which may be due to my love being The Legion of Superheroes instead of other groups) I think he has a point. Four color heroes are a meme for a reason and in abandoning that completely the supers have become less. Watchman was supposed to be a deconstruction not an inspriation. In a related note, my recent Lulu order included a print copy of Mystery Men.

D6: Several Cities in Time
Ckutalik is exploring building an underworld built of ruined cities under the current one in his setting. Not only is this an interesting idea, but very historical. In fact, although Pillagers of Troy was originally conceived as a Pavis/Big Rubble type set-up this might work better.

D8: Mother Goose is My Dungeon Master
There is this great bit in the series Sports Night where several characters wish they could have more good ideas. A lot of my fellow bloggers make me feel the same way.

D10: For the Ultimate Rules Lawyer
While the idea of building a game's rules from a blank page up via common law is a bit much in my experience most groups run by common law. For one, very few groups are single GM, single campaign all the time in my experience dating back to the late 70s. While by the 80s the "playing my character in Jim's campaign" style has been replaced by "this is my character in Jim's campaign" style it was still rotating GMs. Groups had common law that they used in all their games. You even had the legal factor of knowing a given judge's style affect how you played.

Unispirations

It's common for people to list the inspirations for their campaigns, but do you have uninspirations?

For example, The World After and it's earlier version City States of the Apocalypse had H. P. Lovecraft as an uninspiration. Although I do enjoy his writing I think he's overdone. One of his key ideas, humanity is insignificant on a cosmic scale, is completely opposite a key portion of both campaigns. In both, humanity, but it's own will, broke the entire cosmos.

It seems many, many gamers want to have Tolkien as an uninspiration but their results are mixed.

So, what are your uninspirations?

Further Notes to Myself for Yellow Book D&D

Expanding on my Chinese menu D&D (for those old enough to remember Chinese menus in that form):

Also take:
Holmes: five form alignment
ACKS: spell formula versus spell repertoire plus free casting from repertoire
Neoclassical Geek Revival: Level breakpoint achievement requirement, especially at level 15 and beyond.

Actually, how many people ever really get to level 36 in BECMI/RC or level 20 in AD&D. I know D&D3 was designed to get to level 20 in something like 18 months (which WotC found was normal time to reboot). I would think a similar philosophy was in effect with Type IV's 30 levels.

Still, assuming bi-weekly play over two years is 52 sessions or going up a level about every 4 sessions for 14th level (13 level increases). Assuming two weeks out of three (about my adult experience) it's 72 sessions or just under a level every 5. Even a very optimistic three out of four only gets 77 or a level every 5.5 sessions. That's assuming no character death.

Do we really need anything beyond BX or LL/AD&D with 14 and 20 level limits respectively.

D&D Next Characters

I haven't played or even finished reading through the playtest materials, but a quick glance at the Race:Class:Background:Theme system with just what's provided there are 400 potential combinations in the playtest.

Is anyone else trying to generate characters?

Also, why play a human? Is this something we'll see later? Should we be surprised that only one of five sample characters is human?