I is for Indigenous People

[over the course of the month of April, I shall be posting a topic for each letter of the alphabet, sequentially, for every day of the week except Sunday. Our topic for this year's #AtoZchallenge? Revamping the Grand Duchy of Karameikos in a way that doesn't disregard its B/X roots]

I is for Indigenous People; the aboriginal natives of Karameikos.

We all know what a "native" is, right? A person born of a place. I'm both a "native Seattleite," and a "native Washingtonian." Technically, I'm a "native American," though the term is usually reserved for people who lived on this continent prior to European arrival, and the descendants of those people.

There is a human "monster type" (similar to the bandit, noble, merchant, etc.) found in the classic adventure module X1: The Isle of Dread titled "native." The description for the entry states:

"Natives are primitive people who live in jungles, wilderness, or on tropical islands. The warriors of the more warlike tribes (including cannibals) will all be 1st level fighters, but the natives of peaceful tribes are mostly normal humans with fewer high level leaders. Most natives wear no armor (AC 9), but some will wear the equivalent of leather armor (AC 7), and the tribal chiefs may wear special armor of hardened bone or lacquered wood that is the equivalent of AC 5 or 6. Natives may also carry shields."

Here we see the term "native" used in the pejorative sense of the term. "The natives are restless," likely had its origin in referring to the indigenous (native) people of an area and, over time, came to represent any "primitive" non-Western race that a European (i.e. British) conqueror might currently be in the process of re-making in his own image.

To the point where I asked my eight year old the other day, "when I say native person, what do I mean?" and he replied "Someone who lives in a hut or doesn't have a lot of food or stuff like we do." Oh my. We had to have a loooong conversation.

"Primitive" isn't a very good term for a non-industrial or "technologically advanced" society. I'm not a trained (or even amateur!) sociologist or anthropologist, but even a dummy like me can see that ANY people organized into a society has some sort of culture and cultural tradition...concepts and behaviors that have evolved and been passed down over generations...and any such organized society is going to be as culturally developed as another.  The pre-European contact peoples of the Americas (and Africa and the Pacific Islands, etc.) already had a developed, advanced culture adapted for their lifestyles...nothing "primitive" about it.  We equate a lack of specific technology (steel, firearms, ship-building, etc.) with a lack of intelligence and development...they're a step up from cavemen!...when really the only thing they lacked was the necessity and easy cross-pollination that occurred in other parts of the globe.

[you can kill someone with a stick or rock just fine, but when the guy on the other side of the mountain range is wearing metal armor, you better develop a weapon that will penetrate it...and figure out a way to get some armor of your own!]

Post-contact aboriginals of every landmass had no problems picking up, learning, and using advanced technology, even to the detriment of their would be "colonizers" (in parts of the U.S. it was a capital crime...i.e. punishable by death...to sell firearms to "indians" up through the 19th century). Even learning the language and customs of European was no big deal.  What these indigenous people had a much harder time with (and were oh so stubborn about) was abandoning their own culture...their own language, customs, religion, and mindset...that had developed over the course of centuries, in order to adopt wholesale the culture of these invading people.

"Surely they must be primitive...look at them following these superstitious practices!" As if the Christian religion looks O So Grounded in scientific fact, yeah? Where'd I put that machine that measures grace?

Anyway, humans of all stripes have treated strange peoples as "barbarians" since at least the time of ancient Greece (I know this because the word barbarian comes from an ancient Greek word). Age of Sail Europeans were not the first folks to conquer, enslave, and impose their culture on "others," but developments in technology allowed them to have lasting impact on huge swaths of the globe. It is what it is...but let's not continue to judge different cultures by the standards of 500 years ago, okay?

SO...Karameikos. Going by the B/X description of the duchy, there's no mention of any native (i.e. indigenous or aboriginal) humans. There are peoples residing in the land: gnomes, elves, goblins, orcs, and frost giants...but no fellow humans to be "colonized" by a conquering adventurer. GAZ1 is the first place we're introduced to the idea of an "indigenous people" of Karameikos.

Yes, I realize the concept of Traldar is first introduced in B10: Night's Dark Terror. Here's the thing: the Traldar of B10 have no relation to the people of Karameikos; they are some kind of post-neanderthal slave race who've never been "outside the valley" of the Hutaaka. In the ancient history told by B10, there are no "humans left behind to fight the gnolls." There is no King Halav & Co. -- that part of the story is all spun by Allston in GAZ1. In B10, the Hutaaka simply take their proto-humans and leave the scene...centuries later, all one finds in the region is an unblemished (by human) wilderness ripe for conquest by Stefan Karameikos and other adventurers.

All that jazz about Nithia and a "Dark Age" following Halav's battle and whatnot? That's all ADDED to the mix beginning with the Gazetteer. The "Traladara" with their "shared national identity" is all spun from whole cloth by Allston. And while it's interesting to have the political and social ramifications of an on-site conquered people in one's adventuring region, I find the history problematic, and not just because of the pseudo-Gypsy nature of the indigenous natives.

For one thing, I just can't buy into the whole "high-culture-devolves-to-hunter-gatherer-stone-age-in-five-generations" thing. We're talking a single century that the original Traldar clan (from the pseudo-ancient-Egypt Nithian culture) is in Karameikos before losing their shit. Just wouldn't happen. They're not marooned on some desert island or extrasolar planet (like the MZB Darkover setting)...they're on the other side of the mountains for goodness sake! If times got too tough, they'd head back! And in the fantasy world of D&D wouldn't they have clerics, magic-users, etc. with them? And if they didn't (or if these adventuring types were all killed), isn't it a pretty safe bet that the colony would have all perished to a man? We're talking about a D&D wilderness here: one with dragons and trolls and frost giants! It's a tad more hostile than what Lewis & Clark faced on the Oregon Trail, people.

From Egyptian to Gypsy
in 1000 years.

If the Nithian colony survived at all, it wouldn't have degenerated to a state that some dog-headed artist-types could ply them with "whatever" (see the prior blog post) in exchange for turning them into their labor force. I mean a COLONY expedition would have the people they need to...duh...start a colony, "harsh winters" or not. And if they couldn't hack it, they would have returned to Nithia...or died trying.

Yes, yes...I am a dude with no imagination just pissing in the cornflakes of everyone who LOVES "Mystara" as conceived and published. Here's the thing about fictional histories and backstory, people: for most players of tabletop RPGs this stuff matters very, very little. It matters MAINLY in what it provides as adventure hooks and/or clues to solving current dilemmas (like "how do we defeat this menace" or "where do I find this particular McGuffin").

The person who will find it MOST USEFUL and (hopefully) interesting is the Dungeon Master running the campaign. The DM uses this stuff to understand how and why the setting operates; the DM uses the material to generate adventure ideas and scenarios. The DM uses it as a "setting Bible," a reference to explain to players the answers to questions (about the setting) that might arise in play. "Why do the dwarves hate our characters when we haven't done anything to them?" "Why does this particular village insist on wearing green for the entire month of July?" All that kind of "stuff and fluff" gets answered by the background material AS NEEDED.

[DMs who insist on burdening players with a bunch of extraneous setting detail run the risk of simply BORING their players. D&D is a game of active participation, not a book club]

SO...If I am the Dungeon Master that's running the campaign set in Karameikos, the damn setting better make sense TO ME. If it doesn't, I'm not going to be able to make the best use of it with regard to my players, no matter how cool some people might find a peaceful, advanced tribe of dog-people living in a hidden valley. Sorry.

Having got that all out of the way (and after, once again, deluging readers with a wall of text), let's get some possible ideas for spinning the indigenous folks of Karameikos in a way that doesn't suck too bad (from my perspective):

Option #1: No indigenous humans. This is the easiest, and most "B/X" option. Adventurers seeking to build strongholds or castles are required to clear the area of all monsters and monster lairs before building. As a monster is defined as "any creature or character not controlled by a player," I don't think it's unfair to consider the duchy to have been "cleared" of any pre-existing communities and societies. One might still find hermits, "mountain men" (and "women") or the occasional brave settler family living in the wilds, but most of these (if not all) should be recent arrivals to the region. Any ancient ruins or whatnot found should be from mysterious, long-since-vanished (or exterminated) peoples...and not necessarily human ones.

Andals versus First Men

Option #2: Iron Age rivals. Do any of you folks watch that Game of Thrones show? So, the history/backstory of that setting goes like this: the First Men crossed into Westeross through a (no longer existing) land bridge and conquered "the Forest Children" (elves) using their Bronze Age armor and weapons. These First Men were then (mostly) conquered by the Andals who invaded with Iron Age technology, including plate armored cavalry (knights)...the lone hold-outs were the "Kings in the North" who retained their old culture and religion rather than convert to the Andals' Seven Gods. Finally, a handful of Tagaryan refugees (fleeing the destruction of their ancient island home) showed up with some dragons and used their air superiority to unite the entire continent under the rulership of one Iron Throne. Riffing off Martin's world would probably put Stefan and the Thyatians in the role of the Andals, perhaps with the Black Eagle Barony being the lone "First Men" hold-out (i.e. the Starks of Winterfell). Without drago-riding Targaryans, the land becomes one of constant squabbling between various "kingdoms" (i.e. rival warlords) of which only Stefan has the best foothold of all the Thyatian/Andal adventurers in the region. By the start of the campaign history, the indigenous Bronze Age culture has already acquired and adapted steel technology, putting them on a fairly equal footing with their would-be conquerors (or "equal enough" that negotiation and political strategy will be necessary to uniting the region, not simple military conquest). The elven tribes (in the role of "Forest Children") are a wild card force that doesn't like EITHER human side (seeing as how they chop down their trees for firewood and timber), as are the goblins ("snarks"), orcs ("grumpkins") and frost giants ("giants").

"Gath of Baal"

Option #3: Conquered dissidents. So maybe there WAS a large population of indigenous humans that the Thyatians/Romans overran with their armored legions...think the opening scene from Ridley Scott's Gladiator (or Tacitus's text Germania). Even better, let's look at fantasy equivalents like James Silke's "Death Dealer" series (based on the Frazetta character) with Thyatians in place of the steel-clad, slave-taking "Kizzak Horde" and the tribal ("barbarian") villages of the region being the stand-in for the Iron Age communities of the Forest Basin. Of course, without Gath of Baal to pull the villagers' fat out of the fire, conquest would likely be a walk-in touchdown for the Kizzak/Thyatians. Enslaved and oppressed by a ruthless, technologically superior (and magically formidable) force, the player characters would probably end up fighting a guerrilla war...either as members of the indigenous community or "sympathizers" among the Thyatian conquerors. Maybe. In such a setting, I think it'd be important to start the "invasion history" with Stefan's arrival on the scene (i.e. thirty years prior) rather than GAZ1's published timeline in order to give the PCs a fighting chance of upending the Horde's decimation of the native peoples and deforestation of the region's resources. This is a pretty grim campaign setting, filled with atrocity...but so is any story of conquest, really.

Black Eagle Barony?

Option #4: Conquered decadents. As a slight alternative to Option #3, make the indigenous people an ancient powerful and "advanced" society, overthrown by their own people as much as by the invaders. This is the enslaved tribes of Mesoamerica joining forces with Cortes to overthrow their Aztec overlords...or perhaps some sort of weird and decadent Atlantean/Egyptian society that is in no position to defend themselves from an ambitious, violent invader (they're too busy indulging in hallucinatory drugs and sorcery for entertainment to control the slave uprising that accompanies the Thyatian advance). Plenty of pyramids and thousand-year old strongholds (complete with exotic treasure and still functional booby-traps) are left behind after the conquest of the region, and Stefan is only too glad to allow youthful adventurers the chance to pillage such structures (he knows his coffers will receive a healthy tax on any loot recovered). Perhaps these ancient-but-still-standing fortresses can become castles for Name level adventurers...maybe Fort Doom is the equivalent of Castle Grayskull and Baron Ludwig is just the latest person to "claim" it as a residence.

Ya. More tomorrow.

Assessing Damage

Jonathan N. posted the following comments on Wednesday's post regarding the B/X battle axe:

Huh. I would have made the battle axe just do 1d4+4 damage instead. Actually, 1d6+2 is probably more fair. Same average as 1d10.

Indeed, it IS the same average damage. But it's not the same range of damage, which for my game is the important part of the design model.

Back up for a moment. Recall D&D's original roots in CHAINMAIL, a tabletop war-game. It included a man-to-man element, but it was still of the "one hit equals one kill" variety: with a war game we are much more concerned with the movement of armies as a whole, not individual melees. Weapons were on a human scale, and humans (with the exception of some fantasy hero-types) of the "grunt" variety, regardless of arms and armor. One man = 1 die roll = 1 hit absorption...the standard unit of play from which all other units derive.

[a "hero," as an example attacked as four units, i.e. four humans, capable of rolling four dice to attack and absorbing four hits of damage. A "superhero" was the equivalent of eight units]

When you get to Men & Magic (volume 1 of OD&D, from which B/X is, more or less, directly derived), this standard unit mentality is still present. Heck, CHAINMAIL is the default combat system (with the "roll-D20-versus-AC" being an "alternative" option). The new game, however, is concerned with a smaller scale of action...heroic individuals operating at the skirmish level...and thus a more granular approach to combat is needed. Players aren't using armies in D&D, but individual characters...and losing one's character is the equivalent of losing one's entire army.

Enter hit points: the granular solution that fits the war gamer's paradigm. If your character is your "army," than each hit point represents a "grunt."  On the battlefield scale we're concerned with how one force attacks another force, and standard units (i.e. soldiers) are removed depending on the results of the attack. On the small scale we look at attacks on an individual (man-to-man) basis, to see how many hit point "units" are removed as the result of an attack.

Now, as I said, weapons are based on "human scale;" originally (in CHAINMAIL) a successful attack resulted in the removal of one unit, i.e. one soldier. But now that we are looking at a granular scale, we need to determine just how granular (that is, how many hit points) are possessed by a "standard unit." And the OD&D answer to that question is D6. That is how many hit points a one HD human soldier has in OD&D.

[remember that the D8 hit points per HD thing in B/X was a later adjustment in Supplement I (Greyhawk) that was carried over to Basic, AD&D, B/X, etc.]

One unit has 1 to 6 hit points. Thus, one human scale weapon inflicts 1 to 6 hit points of damage...this is the origin of the "all weapons do D6 damage" rule of OD&D and its descendants: Holmes, Moldvay, etc.

Once you know the "standard" elements involved, you can tweak and adjust. You can say that a heroic fighter PC (who starts with the lofty title of "veteran") can have MORE than the standard HPs: in OD&D it's 1D6+1; in B/X, it's 1D8. You can say that a 1st level magic-user only has 1D4 hit points (no doubt due to being a pasty academic) but that an experienced 2nd level magic-user has 2D4...she's been hardened by adventure and hiking in the wilderness. You can say that an ogre, a creature capable of sustaining damage enough to kill four men, receives 4 dice worth of hit points.

And you can adjust weapon damage appropriately as well. A dagger is capable of killing a sedentary citizen within 10 seconds (the length of a B/X combat round), but generally takes longer against a trained fighter, except under extreme circumstances (the fighter is weak and/or injured, the weapon is enchanted, etc.).

SO NOW (having got the preamble out of the way), let's look at the battle axe again. An attack roll is a check to see if an opponent can inflict damage in the round; the damage roll provides an indication of HOW that damage was inflicted based on the amount of the result.

A battle axe has a good range of damage (1 to 8...enough to kill a trained veteran with a perfect blow). Let's break that down in granular fashion:

1 point - a blow from the weapon's haft, the kind that will leave a nasty welt or bruise.
2 points - a severe blow from the weapon's haft to a vital joint or organ (like jamming the butt of the axe into the diaphragm like a blunt spear).
3 points - a concussive blow, capable of stunning the person with pain or blunt force trauma.
4 points - a strike with the axe head, causing a major laceration and probable blood loss.
5 points - a strike with the axe head that tears muscle, breaks bone, and/or severs major arteries.
6 points - a deep blow to the body, causing massive internal damage and blood loss.
7 points - a severing blow to a vulnerable joint or a full-on strike to the skull with the business end of the axe causing immense damage and probable death.
8 points - a wicked blow to the neck causing decapitation and immediate death.

This is a good range of damage, easily scalable to an opponent. For example, a concussive blow (3 points) versus a normal citizen who only possesses 3 hit points, might be a blow that puts the guy into a permanent coma. On the other hand the 3rd level fighter on the receiving end of an 8 point decapitating strike can consider that she just dodged a bullet (or, rather, an axe) and that her luck (those extra hit points from her greater experience) won't last forever.

Darkwolf's rotoscoped axe-work is pretty good.

Decreasing the range from 1-8 to 5-8/3-8 as Jonathan N suggests decreases the range of possibility inherent in a weapon like the battle axe. What's worse, it's no longer "human scale:" a weapon that inflicts a minimum of 3 hit points of damage (let alone 5!) will automatically kill three-quarters of the "normal human" population found in B/X. It leaves no room for the possibility of a glancing, non-fatal blow from a weapon that has more attack surfaces than just the axe head.

The +1 attack bonus I gave in Wednesday's post ("Can-Opener") stems from the ideas that A) a wedge-shaped axe-head delivered forcefully is good at penetrating armor, B) a mass weapon like an axe delivers enough concussive force to inflict damage even when failing to penetrate armor, and C) the battle axe is light enough (compared to other two-headed weapons), that A and B aren't offset by the weapon's overall lack of maneuverability compared to light, one-handed weapons (5 pounds versus 15 pounds).

[a +1 attack bonus is also enough to offset the +1 AC bonus provided by a shield, and "hooking" shields was a well-documented tactic of axe-use by Viking warriors and others; however, I know there are more than a few people who disagree with the amount of protection offered by a shield in B/X]

These are justifications to my overall design goal of making the battle axe a viable weapon choice in B/X, based on the B/X system as it exists. Increasing the average damage doesn't fit into my particular paradigm, but increasing the range of weapon damage (via the use of the variable weapon damage table) does.

For me, anyway. Plus it gives me a chance to roll dice of other shapes besides the D6. I've got them on-hand anyway.
; )

By The Way: I personally don't think this is anything that needs to be pointed out in a game text. The designers of Monopoly don't bother explaining why you receive $200 for Passing Go, after all. I realize that it's kind of "the thing" these days to include handy little sidebars in texts explaining design choices (boy, role-players sure are an over-analyzing bunch, aren't we?) but is it really worth it to make a cramped layout and increased page count? Well...that's a rant for another day.

The Face of Evil

I was telling Doc how I felt the battle axe got short shrift in D&D and he said:

"Not if you take Monkey Grip as a feat!"

What a maroon.

Over at BoP, Father Dave points out that Frazetta's Death Dealer character is (to him) faceless evil, and violence personified, and that he finds nothing heroic in the character, it being a reflection of the darkness found in all of us. I couldn't agree more. The Doctor reminded me, "wasn't your axe-guy character Chaotic Evil?" Yeah, I think he was.

"Talk To The Axe..." (Redux)

Gone is my favorite fantasy artist of all time. Originally, the title of this post was going to be something along the lines of "Aw, Shit..." but you know what? F that noise.

Once again, I am going to set aside sadness and instead celebrate a life that touched the hearts and minds of many folks...inspiring some to great art and others to imaginative journeys through the pages of literature. Frank Frazetta was a great man, and certainly one who left an indelible mark on the fantasy genre. His courage and creativity will NOT be missed as his artwork...some of the most memorable commercial art of the 20th century...will surely outlive most of us viewing it today.

Thanks, Frank. I know I was both inspired and thrilled by your works.

[the above piece of art, posted withOUT permission, is perhaps my single favorite fantasy work of all time. No doubt about it, God blessed that man's pen]

Forty Whacks With An Axe

It would be fairly easy for me to fill pages and pages of this blog with posts about Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer character and axes in general…but then I should’ve called this the Lizzie Borden blog or some such. Maybe next week’s “theme” will be “Axe Week;” ‘course folks might mistake my blog for a History Channel ad….

Sorry for the tangents; perhaps I can relate all this to the topic at hand (i.e. RPGs).

James R. Silk (no idea if this is a pen name or not) penned a series of novels based on the Death Dealer character, first created by Frazetta in 1973 (the year I was born…hmmm…). Although Frazetta has created six Death Dealer paintings, I am only aware of four novels by Mr. Silk (each is based on one of the six paintings). I’ve read three of the books even though I’m not a great fan of Silk’s writing (he has an extreme tendency to over-using the simile and metaphor as tools of prose…it gets annoying). They are S&S Nouveau, 3rd generation Swords and Sorcery pastiche. Which is not terrible (hey, I bought the books!), just not terribly original.

What is original is Frazetta’s primal character. Called Gath of Baal in these novels, the “prisoner of the horned helmet” is an Ice Age barbarian of the forest, who gets his head stuck in an unholy artifact (said helmet) and is transformed into the embodiment of the god of Death. He gets a lot of titles (the Dark One, the Forest Lord, the Death Dealer, etc.) and he kills a lot of people (mainly with an axe) when his soul is not being saved by his fair lady (Ahh…how cute). The character is very different from the recent comic book series (which needs a post of its own), as the Death Dealer is a possessed mortal, rather than an animated corpse.

I’ve modeled stats for ol’ Gath in D20 in the past (that was fun), and even tried to craft his horned helmet under the BECMI artifact rules (a bit frustrating). I may or may not post these sometime in the future. However, the FIRST time I used the Death Dealer as D&D inspiration was the first and only time I played 2nd Edition AD&D.

This would have been around 1997…just before I met my wife but probably 7 or 8 years after my last high school D&D game. My co-worker, James, offered to run a game for me, I lassoed a couple other buddies, and we ran in his (I think) Forgotten Realms pocket campaign.

My then-roommate, Mike, played his usual (I found out later) ranger-archer character, “Keldern.” Kris ran his standard Thief (are they called “rogues” in AD&D2? I don’t remember); I belief he was named “Zandramas” but Zand may have been a later, different thief. I was thinking of playing a fighter (since AD&D2 bards suck), but it was strongly suggested that I play some sort of clerical-type. So I came up with my own version of the Death Dealer.

"Baalzac" (I believe that was his name, because we later referred to him as “Ball Sack”) was ostensibly a “cleric,” but a peculiar type of cleric. As I explained to my fellow players, Baalzac was a priest of the mad God of Carnage in War, Tarjan (yes, stole the “mad god” from Bard’s Tale). Tarjan’s priests were required to fight in combat with the god’s chosen weapon (three guesses, folks) and was granted higher hit dice and fighting ability than a normal cleric. However, as a trade-off to this, Tarjan granted no spells, nor did his priests have the ability to “turn undead.”

In other words: a fighter. But Baalzac specifically referred to himself as a cleric/priest, and had both code and doctrine that he was required to uphold. James was nice enough to let me run with this idea. "Keldern" did not appreciate the joke.

I was also fairly insistent that I wanted a “magic horned helmet.” I’m not sure what exactly I was thinking at the time (both Kris and I had decided to get a serious “buzz on” before sitting down to the table), and I’m sure James didn’t either (he was a military history buff, nor a Frazetta fan), but he gave me a "+2 helmet” that acted pretty much like a ring of protection…that is, it contributed +2 to my character’s AC and provided no other bonuses. God bless him, it was perfect.

The adventure was pretty random…go somewhere, do something, all that is forgotten now…but my character was a hoot to play. The highlight was definitely an encounter with an NPC noble-fighter and his retinue, during which “Ball Sack” took offense to the snubbing of his deity by the lord's high priest. I got to make a big speech and challenged the priest to a holmgang, “acting as proxies for our deities.” Of course, in a straight up melee my “cleric” slaughtered the high priest and Tarjan was “vindicated” as the mightier demigod.

Talk about an anti-paladin…

As a one-off game, AD&D2 wasn’t bad…of course, there are more rules than what are really needed for a one-off game (the “kits” James made us choose seemed fairly redundant). But as a “get-drunk-and-f-around-game” it was fun. “Keldern” the ranger was a total wanker, though. Really wish I’d had a chance to introduce him to the business end of my hatchet….
: )

"Talk To The Axe..."

I love Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer...as I know I've posted earlier, I am a HUGE fan of the axe as a weapon, and the wearer of the Horned Helmet is definitely the epitome of the axe-slinging barbarian.

Heck, I've even read James Silk's novels (based on Frazetta's art)...and of course I've seen Fire and Ice (nice in its own way).  

I always liked how the body and head seem to be floating away from each other....