Cacodemon

What do you think of, what image comes to mind, when you hear the word "wizard?"

Is there some iconic character of the silver screen pops into your head? A classic illustration of some sort? Merlin? Gandalf? A video game persona you've been running on your favorite MMORPG? A medieval woodcut?

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that more than a few of my readers have their images of the “magic user” informed by RPG art, especially that of Dungeons & Dragons. Depending on how young you were when you were introduced to the concept of D&D, it’s quite possible that much of your mental pictures of “fantasy” were informed by D&D…or informed by art inspired by D&D.

My iconic wizard.

My own mental image goes back to something different, though. I usually picture the wizard off the cover of the Time Life Book, Wizards and Witches, which was one of my favorites as a child…despite not owning it.

[I don’t know if Time Life Books still publishes these types of series books. They used to be advertised in TV infomercials all the time…volumes on the Old West or WW2, for example. I knew a couple people who collected the “fantasy” series growing up and had a chance to peruse these books…later on, I was fortunate enough to pick up Wizards and Witches, the first volume of the series, in a used book store]

Wizards and Witches provides a lot of good, fun information on the magic users of folklore and mythology, collecting a number of stories from different cultures, not to mention containing many beautiful illustrations. Published circa 1983, this was the first place I discovered Baba Yaga and Vainamoinen and Faust, despite being a (young) veteran of D&D. But then, I was always drawn towards fairy tales as a child (even before D&D) and stories of knights and dragons and wizards and unicorns, etc. would get me amped up faster than a two-liter bottle of Coke. It’s probably why I read so much as a child…back then, books were the main place (or only place) to find such stories, which I devoured when I could get my hands on ‘em.

Anyway, wizards (as depicted in W&W) were pretty much always shown as older gentlemen with long beards and fantastic headgear…miracle workers, with a penchant for flamboyant garb, if an otherwise, respectable and learned “elder” air about them. And I daresay that one will find a similar theme running through the illustrations of the older D&D editions. Whether you’re talking Easley’s painting of “Ringlerun” on the re-vamped PHB (my go-to book for many years) or the Otus drawing on the cover of the Cook Expert set, the robe-and-beard chic instantly identifies an image as a person of sorcery.

Who are these geezers?

THIS is Dungeons & Dragons.

Take a look at the original cover of the AD&D PHB…beautiful and iconic and probably the best depiction of “what D&D is all about” just in terms of the action portrayed. Yes, we have a number of adventurers depicted doing “adventurous stuff.” Can you spot the wizard in the illo? My guess is you’d be drawn to this geezer here:

Withered much?

Now tell me: exactly what retirement home did the party knock over to get this guy on the team?

In my D&D games, I can’t ever recall seeing an “old” wizard. After all, nothing in the rules requires you to create a character that is anything other than a young adventurer in the prime of life…and considering the fact that most campaigns will see you starting at a low level (i.e. “with little magical knowledge”), who would want to play an old coot that’s still “learning the ropes?”

Even if you use the aging tables in the 1^st edition AD&D DMG (we always did, back in the day), a first level magic-user has a maximum starting age of 40, and an average age of 30 or so. The guys on the cover of the PHB seem to about the right age for a group of adventures (20s and 30s that is)…except for the geezer with the staff and the long beard. How is that representative of D&D?

Answer: it’s not. But it IS representative of the iconic figure of the “old, bearded wizard.”

But those iconic wizards with the bent back and long beard are also miracle workers, full of might and power...or at least well versed in magical knowledge. If anything, the rules of D&D allow you to create a young magician and tell the story of how exactly he got to the old age, long beard, and powerful wisdom so often depicted in images and folklore.

Except to do so would make the other heroes likewise old and decrepit. Heroic adventurers (other than wizards) are supposed to be hale and hearty individuals in the prime of their lives…and unless there’s some sort of carry-over from campaign-to-campaign (with old, high-level wizards being “grandfathered in,” no pun intended) you’re never going to see that stereotypical geezer hanging with the young Turks. Well, maybe after an unfortunate run-in with a ghost.

But, okay, let’s forget the whole “geezer deficit” thing for a moment. Let’s ask WHY the archetype is typically portrayed in this way?

My guess (or theory or whatever) is that it has something to do with these individuals being wise and learned individuals. Knowledge and lore is, for the most part, only acquired with time and experience and wizards, having excessive amounts of knowledge (compared to the average person) must have been around for a long time.

[yes, there are some pretty young thang sorceresses to be found in folklore, but the really powerful witches – like Baba Yaga – tend to be portrayed as ancient crones, and more than a few of those female mages are said to augment their appearance with their magic. The main vanity of the male wizard appears to be the length and flow-yness of his beard]

I mean, I suppose they could all be half-demons aging backwards like Merlin or Benjamin Button…but then wouldn’t the stories be littered with child-size archmagi?

No, I think that wizards are supposed to be old and stooped due to the time it takes them to acquire and learn the magical knowledge that sets them apart from their fellows. In a pseudo-medieval world (like your typical D&D campaign) there’s no internet and a near total lack of libraries and “centers for higher education.” Knowledge…especially occult knowledge…is scarce and hard to come by. There’s a reason why your average villager isn’t learning a handful of crop-growing spells. It’s not that there’s a limit on magical talent in the fantasy world…it’s that there’s a dearth of learning opportunity.

And trying to get that learning is going to COST you, too. Being a scarce resource allows wizards to charge a pretty penny for their knowledge…and keeping that price high means keeping a lid on the supply. If the village does happen to have a hedge wizard or wise woman, they’re unlikely to want to train any new apprentices…at least not until they’re ready to retire as the local potion-maker of the region. Any type of “wizard school” is likely to only enroll the wealthiest of students…and knowledge will probably only be doled out by the spoonful, as the majority of an apprentice’s time will be spent doing chores around the tower or recopying ancient, decaying tomes…not to mention working in the gardens, cooking meals, satisfying the wizard’s more carnal desires, etc. Basically paying an exorbitant amount of gold for the privilege of being a slave; all for the promise of learning magic. Only the most intelligent of nobleman’s children are going to learn much of anything anyway…and only after a long time (and probably only after taking the initiative to do their own extra studies in snatched, spare moments).

Is it any wonder when sorcerers turn to supernatural means of acquiring knowledge? Including diabolic sources?

The idea of learning magic from Satan or his minions isn’t a new one, of course. Even outside of fiction, the Christian prohibition on working magic is in part based on the premise that its knowledge is procured from hellish sources (the other part of the prohibition comes from the separation from God that occurs when one attempts to acquire powers that should only be available to our Divine Creator). The word occult simply means “hidden,” and there’s a school of thought that such knowledge is hidden with good reason. The Faust story, retold often over the last several centuries, is the prototypical illustration of this.

Faust is an aged, learned guy who, being jaded and getting on in years, decides to make a pact with Satan to live out his last years with all the decadence that magic and hell can provide. Of course, this costs him his eternal soul…but then, that’s why it’s a morality tale. You learn Faust got the short end of the stick and you shouldn’t make his mistake (even in the Goethe version, BTW…Faust is only saved because of his actual repentance, and the kind of divine intervention no one should expect).

But D&D is a game, not a morality tale. I don’t kill people and take their gold in real life…my normal approach to “conflict resolution” usually involves establishing a dialogue and using a little empathy. Part of the fun of a fantasy game is gleeful immersion in the role of a “scurrilous rogue;” why wouldn’t you make a Fasutian bargain if it was available?

Assuming your character isn’t some do-goody paladin-type, of course.

Now, personally, I don’t think the concept of demon summoning goes very well with the Vancian magic of D&D. The pseudo-scifi-weirdness of Vance’s Dying Earth is…well, it’s a different animal compared to the spell working and conjuration found in many folklore tales. A character in Vance’s DE imprints a spell in his brain through memorization (duh) and “fires” the incantation like a chambered bullet, taking immediate effect. There’s no gathering of ingredients, no waiting for the right stars, no chanting and dancing and ritual…all things associated with magic in tales and literature (the only “instant” spells being…usually…associated with magic items, which themselves may have taken time to prepare)…unlike D&D’s Vancian magic.

Or rather, “unlike D&D’s Vancian magic as originally conceived.” Since the advent of AD&D, magic has become a bit of a hybrid, combining folklore with Vance. Spells have “casting times” often exceeding the “instant” time frame. Spells require “material components,” some of which require elaborate preparation. Whether this was done to make Gary’s world more “mythic” in feeling, or simply a matter of “game balance”…who knows? To me, the answer doesn’t really matter, because the starting point (i.e. Vance; see OD&D) doesn’t work for me. It’s a faulty foundation from which to derive the system of magic most folks now take for “D&D magic.”

Yeah, that’s the heart of the matter, and the crux of this post. I don’t play wizards in D&D, don’t much like wizards in D&D, because they don’t meet my expectations of what a wizard is or should be. How’s that grab you? I don’t want to play a 30-something dude with a sleep spell and maybe a charm spell imprinted on my brain…that doesn’t meet my world view when it comes to spell-casters. What I want are old geezers who can truck with demons and spirits and produce supernatural effects because of the occult lore they’ve accumulated over decades.

Is that too much to ask?

I mean is it? Does that wreck the “game balance?”

Let me tell y’all a story. There’s this little spell in 1^st edition PHB called cacodemon…not sure how many of you are familiar with it. It’s a 7^th level spell; its first appearance (maybe only appearance) in any edition of D&D is in 1E AD&D. It allows the magic-user to summon a single demon of the more powerful type (IV, V, or VI) and bargain with it for service…or condemn it to an otherworldly prison.

You may not be familiar with this spell…I wasn’t (even after many years of playing AD&D) until I saw it used in a game my younger brother was running for two friends. They were about age 12 or so at the time, and it was a fairly typical Monty Haul type game with high level pregens…the kind of game you run when you’re a young DM and have just gotten your hands on your older siblings supercool AD&D books. My brother’s buddy Mike was playing an evil mage (a typical character for this particular player), and when they got into a combat with some monster or other, Mike announced he wanted to summon a demon using cacodemon.

Unfortunately, the casting time is six hours so my brother (in typical young DM fashion) ruled the PC would be out of action for the duration while completing the summoning…presumably off in some corner of the dungeon. The combat proceeded with the other buddy (Brandon) in equally ridiculous fashion, and they all had a few laughs and a pretty good time. I had only been brought in for “consultation,” but having never seen the cacodemon spell in action, couldn’t really provide any great insights.

That was almost 25 years ago. It was the one and only time I’ve seen someone attempt to use the spell.

I like the idea of cacodemon, but I can’t for the life of me see any real application for it in the AD&D game. I guess it could be used like a suped-up invisible stalker, but there sure is a lot of work and effort needed considering its effect…including the need to discover a demon’s “true name?” Why go through the trouble, even to “imprison” the creature; you’d probably have an easier time simply killing the monster if you really had a bone to pick with it!

The presence of cacodemon…and spiritwrack, for that matter…is just odd to me. As I said, I like the idea of it (because, you know, Faust) but it’s a 7^th level spell, requiring a 14^th level character to cast it. And most 14^th level characters don’t have much use for a 7+7 or 8+8 hit dice servant…especially one so resentful and dangerous and so limited in scope of duration. The time to summon such creatures should be when a character is of a lesser level…when the wizard is inexperienced and naïve, and believes the reward outweighs the risk. Not when the wizard can toss around disintegrate spells and14 hit die lightning bolts! I can only assume this is Gygax’s homage to Faust and other demon summoning in literature, and that it was given as a 7^th level spell for purposes of “game balance.” Or maybe it was simply provided as a justification for high level opponent wizards to have demonic servants?

I really don’t know…what I do know is that in 25 years of play, I’ve never seen it used. In fact, I briefly considered trying to beg my way back into Alexis’s on-line campaign with  sole objective of playing a mage and trying the cacodemon spell (how many hit points would a Type IV demon have in his campaign using its size/mass?)…but upon realizing it would probably take 10+ years to achieve the required level, decided the “experiment” wouldn't be worth the amount of effort involved.

Such is the case with a lot of the “high level content” of D&D. You pick up the book and say, “hey, my character can control weather or teleport once I hit X level.” But the chance of hitting that level (and opening that content) is so remote given the normal parameters of table-top play, that you might as well save yourself the despair and skip the spell descriptions of any spell over the 4^th magnitude.

Frustrating. Give me my old geezer who can at least do a neat thing or two. I’m willing to be aged and beardy if it means I can part the sea and call rocks down from the mountains. Hell, I don’t want to play a “young apprentice;” I want to play a wizened loremaster. Forget game balance for a moment…game balance is only a “problem” due to magnitude of spell being linked to ass kickery and putting wizards in the role of “fantasy artillery.” The whole damn class needs a paradigm shift, in my opinion. Which means, from a design perspective, starting from scratch once again.

Consider the desired end result:

-        Magicians should have enough knowledge to be (magically) effective throughout a game session.

-        Magicians should be old geezers and crones by default…unless you want to play someone young and not very knowledgeable/proficient.

-        Magicians shouldn’t over-shadow the other characters. Magic cannot solve every problem.

-        Magic has limitations and/or hazards; there are reasons for not using magic all the time.

-        Magic is not Vancian.

-        Magic is not confined to individuals who possess a special “magic gene.”

-        Magic is not artillery…or only in very limited circumstances.

-        Magic use requires secret knowledge.

-        Magic use requires belief and conviction.

I’ll be building from there. More on all this later.

"Come forth, Mephisto!"

Wanting Better Fantasy

I started writing a big ol’, rambling post yesterday but forget all that noise. I’ve got something else on my mind.

People who have picked up Five Ancient Kingdoms and read its contents (or, God forbid, played the game) will have certainly noticed its departure from “traditional” D&D in many facets. No, I’m not talking about the inclusion of skills or “non-weapon proficiencies;” that kind of filler is something I can do without in my games.

No, here are some of the rule differences:

• No dice other than D6s (no D20, D4, D8, D10, etc.)
• Rule Zero (already discussed)
• HPs limited to player characters
• HPs rolled every game session (no carry-over)
• Hit Dice repurposed as all-encompassing multi-use combat stats
• Combat based (roughly) on Chainmail
• Magic inspired (roughly) by Chainmail and non-Vancian
• Unlimited magic for magicians
• Treasure tables removed (treasure types for monsters remain)
• Magic item creation combined into a single table-system
• Different saving throws (and based on 2D6 roll)
• XP earned for treasure/monsters scaled by level (less XP received as PCs advance)
• Additional XP bonuses for “experiences” that don’t scale
• Motivations that have (light!) mechanical impact
• Romance rules
• Warfare rules based on scaled up combat (simplified Chainmail in other words)

Those are the major rule departures; there are many more minor differences (like coinage, encumbrance, and movement rules). I’m also probably leaving out other major differences, but it’s not the point of this post to enumerate every deviance of design.

Now in case anyone’s wondering, most of these differences were created due to:

A) Repurposing to patch problems and inconsistencies

B) Removal of patches of the original designers for things not broken, and/or

C) Setting specific changes (especially regarding spells, equipment, monsters, costs, etc.)

I understand that for many people, the particular edition of D&D they’re currently playing (with or without additional house rules) is perfectly fine and dandy…it’s been working for ten or 20 or 30 or 40(!) years and they’re not interested in changing that now or anytime soon. The reasons I wrote 5AK was not an attempt to usurp the existing editions’ (nor clones’) place in the hearts and minds of role-players. Nope. My original motivation (as I’ve probably noted elsewhere on this blog) included a combination of 1) throwing my particular heartbreaker hat into the ring (i.e. my own ego), and 2) showing that such a thing could be done (and I mean, showing myself as well as others, BTW). AND I was truly irritated by the whole D&D Next thing and decided it would be a more constructive exercise to quit my bitching and just do my own version of D&D…D&D Mine, I called it.

[literally…that’s how the files are labeled on my computer]

But somewhere along the line, my original motivation morphed into something a bit different, due in no small part to the pride I’ve taken in this creation. It IS a complete game, after all…something I plan on supporting via a web site (currently under construction) and soliciting contributions for. There are FIVE ancient kingdoms after all…each could certainly use its own supplement book!

Five Ancient Kingdoms was written to be a standalone game; a cheap, packaged product (including dice) that people could pick up and use as an alternative to their standard fantasy fare. And for folks not interested in the specific setting of 5AK, I wanted the game to have a rule set that could be readily adapted to anyone’s normal D&D campaign, should they choose to roll with my deconstructed-reconstructed rules (hell, some of ‘em can simply be “dropped in” with no sweat expenditure necessary). But even more than that, my morphing motivation said: I want this to be a game for NEW PLAYERS...for people who haven’t played D&D or who don’t have preconceived notions about these things we call “table-top role-playing games.” THAT’s my main goal: distributing this game to non-players in an enticing package that says, “check this out; it’s interesting, fun, and easy to play.” That is the motivation that started percolating after I had looked upon this thing I wrought. In fact, at this point this might be the thing that matters most to me.

And dammit, that’s not what I’ve got!

You see, this is why it’s so ridiculous to try switching gears mid-stream (or even after the fact). I did not set out to create a game that was user-friendly to newbies; that wasn’t my intention, that wasn’t my initial motivation. My intention was to thumb my nose at WotC/Hasbro, and that’s what I did. I made a game that is exceptionally playable and much more affordable then the inevitable multi-volume 5^th edition that Hasbro will eventually be rolling out. Easy to use? Check. Nice handling with small books. Check. Tastefully illustrated. Triple-check (all thanks to the Arabian Nights Entertainment being dumped into the public domain). If a person can get past the lack of skills, slick color plates, and the title “D&D” on the cover, I daresay a person would select my books over 5E…assuming, that is, that they’re looking to get into something new.

But would it appeal to a new player? I don’t think so. It operates under too many assumptions; it apes too many tropes of D&D (even its look is based on OD&D). It’s designed for players who are already familiar with D&D…hell, the target audience are the people who read this blog. Sure, other folks might pick it up and check it out…people who see it on the shelf of a game shop or hear about it on the internet or who are drawn to a fantasy adventure game with Middle Eastern flavor. But that’s not hitting the market that my shifting motivations want to target.

Kids. I want to target kids.

And not just kids. People who enjoy fantasy and fairy tales and fiction based on something other than D&D-derived fiction. And by “D&D-derived,” I am not simply referring to officially licensed books based on Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms and whatnot. I’m talking about stuff like Game of Thrones. I’m talking about The Ranger’s Apprentice (and similar) that stocks the shelf and the grocery store check-out counter.

I want Russian folklore. I want The Last Unicorn. I want The Hobbit (not The Lord of the Rings). I want Vainamoinen. I want a backwards-aging, half-demon Merlin. I want Robin McKinley. I want Halloween. Is that too much to ask?

And here’s the thing: the beauty of Dungeons & Dragons is that, despite the silliness of its premise (characters go into unexplored adventure site…over-and-over-and-over again) is two-fold. First, the adventure site (i.e. “the dungeon”) is still an excellent game convention, for all the reasons Arneson outlined in various published commentaries. Second, the concept of intrepid adventurers plunging into darkness is based off a literary stable of fantasy literature (often of the “swords & sorcery” or “weird fiction” variety) which is itself based off the older mythology and folklore I’m craving.

Which means (if you kind of reverse engineer my weird-ass logic) that there must be a way to build a fantasy-based D&D-style heartbreaker that doesn't cannibalize itself. That works under different assumptions than those that it has established for itself...over-and-over-and-over again.

Maybe that doesn't make sense. Let me try putting it a different way

I'm aware of the Beyond the Wall RPG. I don't own it. I haven't read it. I've read about it. And I've looked at the downloadable character sheet. It looks just like a B/X D&D character sheet. Regardless of how it gets there (with neat, Lloyd Alexander-like character generation) it appears to be the same game. It's just D&D. And I want something more.

I've got some ideas for getting there, but I've got to do some more thinking. I keep coming back to Holmes...Holmes Basic is about the scale of the thing I want. I've read and reread and reviewed Blue Holmes and Mazes & Perils and Holmes itself and I like all of it, but I don't think they do what I want. But they're my inspiration at the moment.

That and Faust. More on this in a bit.

What exactly am I saying here? Am I going to be dumping 5AK anytime soon? No, no...like I said, I'm still damn proud of it and will continue to sell it for the foreseeable future (in print form that is...electronically, it's already available forever). But, stupid as the idea is (and I feel stupid just typing this) I'm considering writing another fantasy heartbreaker. As if one wasn't enough of a waste. I'm considering writing one with a completely different target audience...and different objective...firmly in mind.

Ugh.