The Ugliness Of Comeliness

From Dragon Magazine, issue #67:

Frank Mentzer and Francois Marcela-Froideval are already hard at work, and I am being flooded with suggestions and ideas from these Good Gentlemen. Francois uses a "Beauty" attribute for his characters, and I have come to the conclusion that you might also like to use such a rating. Here are my thoughts...

E. Gary Gygax, November 1982

Oh, man...my urge to say something snarky regarding "the French" is nearly overwhelming.  However, Monsieur Marcela-Froideval was an important figure in introducing Dungeons & Dragons...and the general role-playing hobby...to French speakers through the Casus Belli magazine (reviews and translations of which can be found over on Prince of Nothing's blog), and that alone is worthy of my respect.  But, yeah, trust a Frenchman to come to the conclusion that a "beauty" attribute was needed in his fantasy game.

Gygax, though, should've known better.

Instead, his "thoughts" on the a beauty attribute led to the creation of a new, seventh ability score called comeliness, made official with the advent of the Unearthed Arcana. Comeliness appeared in the UA pretty much exactly as presented in Dragon, save that the effect of high level magical scores provided an effect similar to the new 2nd level illusionist spell fascinate (in the original Dragon article, Gygax lists the effect as similar to charm person). For those who've never heard of this new ability score, I'll note that it never appears in any other edition of D&D...the shelf life of this 'wonderful addition' lasted all of  four years in "officialdom."

To understand why I am so sour on comeliness, I need to first explain why I rather LOVE the charisma ability score. Charisma, while an abstract attribute, is still an excellent way to measure an very real trait possessed by real life humans.  We see examples of people with (and without) "charisma" all the time: it is that "likeability" factor, that je ne sais quoi, that "star power" that some people possess...and that others don't. It is one of those "intangibles" that coaches of pro-sports teams talk about particular players having...or lacking. It is not dependent on good looks...it is not dependent on talent. It is something else that some people have in greater measure than others...though it is impossible to measure.

The D&D game provides the mechanics needed to measure it with the charisma attribute. Mechanically, it impacts reaction rolls, loyalty, and morale of one's followers...all things that you want and need to measure in a fantasy adventure game. Remember that D&D did not come out of the tradition of the lone, cinematic hero-guy/gal, taking on the army of baddies single-handedly.  It was a game created by and for war gamers who had grown up reading adventure fiction that dealt with leaders of men and methods of outfitting and leading others into unknown dangers. Bob Howard's stories are filled with these forceful personalities (Conan is always at the head of some group of pirates or barbarians or mercenaries...and neither Belit nor Sonya of Rogatino are shown as slouches in the leadership department), and the Lord of the Rings books...an obvious inspiration for fantasy war-gaming...have plenty of "charisma" examples from Aragorn who is portrayed as "fair though appearing foul."

The charisma ability is plenty efficient in providing for the mechanical needs of the game, i.e. how one interacts with (potentially) friendly NPCs, and how one attracts (and retains) followers and henchmen. A character can have whatever appearance the player wants them to have...the handsome assassin with the charisma of 7 is still going to be off-putting and nasty, while the grizzled paladin has that "air about him" that puts folks at ease and makes them want to fight by his side.

*sigh* I could (and someday should) wax on about charisma, and how it impacts the game by the character classes that have high charismas...whether due to minimum requirements (druids, paladins, and bards) or for those choosing NOT to use the ability as a "dump stat" (say, fighters, magic-users, and thieves).  But enough digression...this post is about lambasting comeliness, not lauding comeliness.

In the campaigns of my youth, we of course used comeliness. My long-run PC had a comeliness stat even before I'd laid eyes on the Unearthed Arcana. I'll relate the anecdote from my personal history for the sake of posterity:  my best friend and co-DM, Jocelyn, called me up one afternoon in the summer of 1985; I was in my kitchen, my parents (probably) both at work.  She told me (excitedly): hey, I need you to roll a D20. What for? I said. I'll tell you afterwards, said she. So I ran to my room (because my telephone was on a cord, naturally...this was '85), and returned to the kitchen, diligently rolling the D20 on the kitchen counter, with zero idea the reason.

The die roll came up a "1." Since this was possibly some sort of saving throw, I re-rolled rather than tell my DM the result (sue me...I was 12 years old at the time), and the die came up a 20. "20," I said (figuring this was a great number). No, that won't work, she said...you have to re-roll. Now I was wondering if I should have gone with the "1."  But I rolled again, as instructed, and the die roll came up an 18. "18," I said. Okay, you have a comeliness score of 18, she told me. "What the heck is that?"

You see, Jocelyn was often the first one of our group to pick up the new book or adventure module...she had a lot of ready spending cash (care of her family), and easy access to a nearby (large) bookstore. So she had picked up the new Unearthed Arcana (before any of the other members of our group had even heard it existed) and was making sure all our regular characters had the new comeliness score duly recorded. Rather than clue us in to what we were rolling (by having us roll 3d6) she was having us roll D20s and only taking numbers that fell between 3 and 18 (us kids having little concept of "bell curves" at the time, having skipped over that boring section of the DMG).

So, for most of my 1E career in my youth, I was playing a half-elf bard with an 18 charisma and a 21 comeliness, a character who could easily fascinate any female character he met unless they possessed a wisdom score of 15+. One can imagine how that went. 

[we had far more "urban" adventures than dungeon]

But without going into the sordid details (which, one could argue, detracted from the overall gameplay), I will point out that plenty of other PCs in the game had outrageously high scores, and not just from "mystery D20 rolls." It wasn't long before ALL of us regular players (Jocelyn, Scott, Matt, and I) had our own copies of the UA, and we all incorporated comeliness as part of our standard chargen process. And being adolescents, comeliness scores became very important. 

To the point that we stopped seeing certain types of characters. Gone were dwarves, gnomes, and half-orcs. Halflings only appeared as NPC henchfolk (or the occasional thief-acrobat) and were generally considered "comic relief." Most characters were in the high teens for their COM score...a lot of elves and half-elves. My character didn't even have the highest score...one PC had a 22 comeliness. And these weren't even results from fudging dice rolls (though I would not be surprised if some were...); rather, characters with low comeliness scores would be deemed as unplayable.  No teenage kid wanted to play a character that was "plain to average" in looks...let alone "homely" or "simply ugly." Regardless of the player's own self-esteem, the teasing was merciless.

And consider that we were playing D&D as it was originally meant to be played. That is, we were not doing the "new school" thing of portraying some "character" with their tragic backstory of needing to overcome being the Ugly Duckling or whatever. For us, we were exploring the D&D game world and the character was only our vehicle...so if the character was ugly then WE were ugly.  Why would anyone want to embody that?  We were playing escapist fantasy not because we wanted to pretend to be something we were not...we were playing escapist fantasy because we wanted to do things we couldn't do in real life: Cast spells. Fight monsters with swords. Climb sheer cliffs. Etc.  No one wanted to be judged (negatively) on their looks. Shit...we could get that in our normal, daily life!

Using comeliness in-play...and especially high comeliness with its mechanical effects...led to the game becoming different. No longer was Charisma a wonderful stat for modeling "leaders of men" and "commanding presence." Instead, when interacting with NPCs (and with other PCs!) we were more concerned with that O So Important first impression...and just how much mileage one could get out of manipulating someone before the comeliness effect wore off.  It became, in fact, a method of PVP for the players at the table, a weapon to be wielded both directly and indirectly (through the ability to influence NPCs)...a method of 'one-upping' other players, promoting rivalries, creating resentments, grudges, and hurt feelings.

Comeliness contributed to the decline and eventual death of our campaign.

Yeah, that probably sounds overly dramatic...and probably is (I am writing of events that occurred some 30+ years ago). Definitely it was more than just "comeliness" that led to the breakdown of that first, long-running game of AD&D between me and the friends of my youth. However, let me add one more anecdote from my history:  after my gaming group broke up (shortly after we'd all entered high schools), I got the urge to play D&D again...probably around my sophomore or junior year of high school. And I started a new 1E campaign, running a game for my brother and a couple of his friends.  It lasted a few months...long enough for the PCs to get up to level 12 or thereabouts (we were doing the Giants-series when we all lost interest or got too busy to continue). But we didn't use comeliness in that game at all. In fact, I'm not sure I allowed ANY of the UA rules for that campaign...though I might be misremembering.

Anyway.

Regardless of what I may or may not incorporate from the rest of the Unearthed Arcana, I have long since determined that comeliness is NOT an ability score I want in my game. If I want a handsome prince or beautiful princess in my game, I'll put them in without any such score. If I want a more "fairytale feel" to the campaign, I'll link their outward beauty to their inherent Charisma; if I want something more "true to life," I won't. But I really don't see any benefit to including an objective measurable stat for how pleasant or unpleasant a person appears.

This is a funny illo, though.

Besides...isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder? Just because Gimli has a thing for ancient elf queens, doesn't mean most dwarves wouldn't prefer dwarvish women, right? Wouldn't a halfling be a bit off-put by the sheer size of a human? Why one stat, one scale, for all species? That's not how the biology of species works...a cat doesn't eye-up a good-looking dog. Jeez.

Comeliness...out.

D&D Combat

Good morning! Sorry, it's been a while...last week was busy, as was the weekend, though we did have a chance to get back to our on-going exploration of Dragon Wrack. Unfortunately for the kids, the session didn't end well.

It started well enough: they found the hoard of great the red dragon, Usumgallu, and looted the hell out of it for about an hour (for the adventure module, I created a procedure for searching dragon hoards, given that players generally want to pick out the best bits of these piles; it's in the appendix). Time was of the essence as the approaching Red Wing of the dragon army was close to arriving...had they exited the temple-fortress via the tunnel to the dragon pits outside the city, they would have found themselves quickly barbecued. 

However, they instead decided to go back up to he temple proper and find a different exit, blundering into the Black Wing's color guard standing watch over their army's battle standard. While four elite orcs aren't a match for an eight-strong band of seasoned adventurers, the horns and sounds of combat brought another 40 orcs who completely surprised the party and quickly grappled them...all except the assassin, Salamander, whose 17 dexterity allowed him to react, and whose boots of speed allowed him to escape capture.

Total treasure found: 296,147 g.p. plus a huge assortment of unidentified magic items. However, more than half of that was in a bag of holding that was captured by the orcs. Salamander absconded with the party's other bag of holding (it is his, after all). Diego plans on attempting a rescue of the prisoners (that will be our next session). but he's not terribly thrilled at the prospect.

I wanted to write a bit about running D&D combat, especially AD&D combat. I get a lot of questions on the subject (usually via private email), and have thrown in my two cents on various blogs and forums elsewhere. Combat is not, in my opinion, a very difficult thing to do, but one needs to approach it from the right perspective; the correct mindset, I find, is incredibly helpful.

First off, remember D&D is a game. Hold that firmly in mind. I will elaborate on this in a second, but it's important enough to mention first. 

Second, one has to understand that D&D's roots are literary, not cinematic. It is to be expected (these days) that a lot of people coming to the game form many of their assumptions of fantasy adventure from films and television shows (both live-action and animated) that they have watched.  However, it is not useful to think of D&D combat in terms of what one sees on the screen. Cinematic combat, like all things in a cinematic story, is supposed to exist for one (or both) of two reasons: to develop a character or further the plot. 

[of course, some filmmakers will also do combat simply for entertainment (fan service/expectation, etc.) which is why some combat scenes might be called "gratuitous," but let's not digress too much]

Because cinema is a visual medium, combat needs to be visually interesting, and over the years elaborate choreography has been developed to appeal to an audience that (presumably) has watched countless "fight scenes" over the years and need different, more elaborate or intense, forms of stimulation to maintain the viewers' engagement. Scenes play out with fancy maneuvers, camera zooms on individual 'moves' and actions, each swing of the blade being emphasized, each punch or kick being given attention, slow motion being employed to show the specific tripping or headbutting or individual wound that causes a specific form of pain and suffering.  

It is akin to the comic book form of story telling, where each individual panel is a moment of frozen time, to be lingered over by the reader's eye.

Generally speaking, combat in literature is nothing like this. Whether you're talking Tolkien or Howard or any of the other fantasy/pulp influences on D&D, the literary medium is not a place you will find blow-by-blow combat scenes...certainly not on the scale one finds in TV and film.

"About turn!" [Gandalf] shouted. "Draw your sword Thorin!"

There was nothing else to be done, and the goblins did not like it. They came scurrying around the corner in full cry, and found Goblin-cleaver, and Foe-hammer shining cold and bright right in their astonished eyes. The ones in front dropped their torches and gave one yell before they were killed. The ones behind yelled still more, and leaped back knocking over those running after them. "Biter and Beater!" they shrieked, and soon they were all in confusion, and most of them were hurling back the way they had come.

The Hobbit, Chapter 4 (Tolkien)

He beat the creature off with his hands -- it was trying to poison him, as small spiders do to flies -- until he remembered his sword and drew it out. Then the spider jumped back, and he had time to cut his legs loose. After then it was his turn to attack. The spider was evidently not used to things that carried such stings at their sides, or it would have hurried away quicker. Bilbo came at it before it could disappear and stuck it with his sword right in the eyes. Then it went mad and leaped and danced and flung out its legs in horrible jerks, until he killed it with another stroke....

The Hobbit, Chapter 8 (Tolkien)

Jehungir did not try again. That was his last arrow. He drew his scimitar and advanced, confident in his spired helmet and close-meshed mail. Conan met him half-way in a blinding whirl of swords. The curved blades ground together, sprang apart, circled in glittering arcs that blurred the sight which tried to follow them. Octavia, watching, did not see the stroke, but she heard its chopping impact, and saw Jehungir fall, blood spurting from his side where the Cimmerian's steel had sundered his mail and bitten to his spine.

The Devil In Iron (Howard)

Shifting his reddened scimitar to his left hand, he drew the great half-blade of the Yuetshi. Khosatral Khel was towering above him, his arms lifted like mauls, but as the blade caught the sheen of the sun, the giant gave back suddenly. 

But Conan's blood was up. He rushed in, slashing with the crescent blade. And it did not splinter. Under its edge the dusky metal of Khosatral's body gave way like common flesh beneath a cleaver. From the deep gash flowed a strange ichor, and Khosatral cried out like the dirging of a great bell. His terrible arms flailed down, but Conan, quicker than the archers who had died beneath those awful flails, avoided their strokes and struck again and yet again. Khosatral reeled and tottered; his cries were awful to hear, as if metal were given a tongue of pain, as if iron shrieked and bellowed under torment.

Then wheeling away he staggered into the forest; he reeled in his gait, crashed through bushes and caromed off trees. Yet though Conan followed him with the speed of hot passion, the walls and towers of Dagon loomed through the trees before the man came within dagger-reach of the giant.

Then Khosatral turned again, flailing the air with desperate blows, but Conan, fired to berserk fury, was not to be denied. As a panther strikes down a bull moose at bay, so he plunged under the bludgeoning arms and drove the crescent blade to the hilt under the spot where a human's heart would be.

Khosatral reeled and fell.

The Devil Iron (Howard)

Five Picts were dancing about them with fantastic leaps and bounds, waving bloody axes; one of them brandished the woman's red-smeared gown. 

At the sight a red haze swam before Balthus. Lifting his bow he lined the prancing figure, black against the fire, and loosed. The slayer leaped convulsively and fell dead with the arrow through his heart. Then the two men and the dog were upon the startled survivors. Conan was animated merely by his fighting spirit and an old, old racial hate, but Balthus was afire with wrath. 

He met the first Pict to oppose him with a ferocious swipe that split the painted skull, and sprang over his falling body to grapple with the others. But Conan had already killed one of the two he had chosen, and the leap of the Aquilonian was a second late. The warrior was down with the long sword through him even as Balthus' ax was lifted. Turning toward the remaining Pict, Balthus saw Slasher rise from his victim, his great jaws dripping blood.

Balthus said nothing as he looked down at the pitiful forms in the road beside the burning wain. 

Beyond the Black River, Chapter 6 (Howard)

I could go on, of course, citing other examples. I'm currently reading E.C. Tubb's Dumarest saga, a series of science fiction books that seem to have been a major influence on Marc Miller's Traveller game (I am considering starting a classic Traveller campaign and want some inspiration). Reading these old SciFi pulps from the 60s and 70s, one finds plenty of action (Dumarest is a pretty beefy action hero) is less "dripping blood" than in Howard's Conan stuff, but it's still pretty good adventure fiction. It is also well devoid of blow-by-blow tactical exchanges. The specific details of fights are glossed over, unimportant: "they attacked." "he struggled." "the enemy fell, dead." Etc. And then the book goes back to the story, the adventure, at hand.

D&D comes from a literary tradition. It is not D&D's fault that people don't read like they used to; it's not D&D's fault that people discover fantasy through a movie or cartoon instead of a book. But it is OUR fault, if we make the mistake of wanting combat in D&D to be as elaborate and cinematic as we see in an episode of Game of Thrones, and feel disappointed by what the game offers.

Again, back to my first point: D&D is a game. It is NOT a game of combat...it is a game of fantasy adventure. Combat is an important aspect of fantasy adventure: you see this in the literary medium which spawned D&D. Thus, one needs specific rules for running combat. However, combat in and of itself is not the be-all, end-all of the genre. It is just one aspect, and requires only as much importance as what it gets.

Thus, we have D&D (or, for my purposes, AD&D) combat. We have attack rolls and damage rolls and hit points. We have initiative. We have surprise. We have lists of armor and weapons, and we have rules for minor tactical maneuvers: charging, attacking people that flee, auto-hits on characters that have been paralyzed by magic effects, etc. It is not an elaborate game of strike, parry, dodge, roll with punch, strike for weak spots, etc...it is an abstract system for resolving fights quickly and simply. Because that's what it emulates. You want that other stuff, go play Palladium (Kevin Siembieda was a comic book guy FIRST, and it shows in his system). You want realism with regard to death and dismemberment, go play 1st edition Stormbringer (which wonderfully emulates the non-heroic literature of Moorcock's fiction). That's not what D&D is. 

Heroic. Fantasy. Adventure. Game. 

Characters fight until they're dead, they flee, they surrender, or they're victorious. That's it. And then...back to the adventure. Back to what's going on. In a game of "resource management," hit points are the characters' most important resource...because when they're done, you're done.

Mm. Of course my players had plenty of hit points remaining when they were captured. I suppose hit points and brains are the players' most important resources, followed closely by luck. Guess I should have said "hit points are the characters' most important measurable resource." Yeah, that makes more sense.

All right...that's enough for now.

Killing Gods, Part 1

The other day, in the comments on my Whimsy Addendum, I decried a trend I've seen in a lot of adventure material recently, which is: players encountering (and fighting with) "gods." Part of my annoyance has been with regard to overuse of the scenario (welp, here's another adventure where the main antagonist is a fallen deity...) and part of it has stemmed from the execution: how such encounters are portrayed and used in these adventures. 

And the good Prince of Nothing took umbrage and issued me a challenge, writing:

I think if you could manage to distill the right approach to portraying S&S style deities in DnD, complete with a few examples, you'd be doing the OSR a huge favor.

Wait...what? This is on me?

Set aside from the moment any notion of me doing the OSR "favors" (ridiculous to think they'd take any advice from me, even if I wanted to give it!)...what the hell qualifies me as the authority and resource for this particular subject? I'm just a blogger that runs his mouth...er, keypad...a bit too much with long-winded meanderings. 

On the other hand, I have fought a god or two.

*sigh* Challenge accepted. 

I'd like to first start out with a discussion of the inspiration behind this particular idea, this claim that it is O So Very Sword & Sorcery for grungy, pulp heroes to be going toe-to-toe with gods and godlings. So let's crack out our fantasy literature and take a look. Never mind that these are stories, not games...we understand that these stories are the impetus and foundational pieces for Dungeons & Dragons play. And it's always useful to have a firm handle on one's source material.

First up, everyone's favorite barbarian: Conan. One gets the impression that the gods of Howard's Hyborian age are fairly mortal (much like the Norse gods)...if Conan stuck Crom with 3' of  good, Hyrkanian steel, he'd probably die. However, we never encounter Crom in Howard's stories, perhaps because Crom is an actual deity. Conan kills some godlike frost giants, an ancient "god in a bowl" (appears to be a naga, much like the one in module N1), and an alien time-traveller that resembles a small elephant. These aren't gods: they're monsters. In the bluntest of D&D terms, they are meant to be slain and looted. 

Elric gets prepared to
throw down with the
god of lizards.

Next up, we'll look at Moorcock's albino sorcerer, Elric. He fights all sorts of gods. The "Burning God." Balo the Jester of Chaos. In the end, he is responsible for the death of ALL the chaos lords (gods) including his own patron, Arioch. Except that, actually, he's not doing the killing. It's his Most-Powerful-Artifact-Weapon-In-The-Multiverse (Stormbringer) that is doing the actual soul-sucking, not Elric. In the final battle he does a one-shot spell that summons a multitude of Stormbringers (Stormbringer has siblings), and they fly around killing all the gods. Stormbringer, as an artifact, was forged to slay gods (and to "keep in check" higher powers). It's a plot point of the books. Do your D&D characters carry such an artifact weapon? 

Okay, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser. Haven't read as much of them as I'd have liked, but I can't remember them KILLING any gods. Running afoul of them, getting mixed up with them, fleeing their wrath or being cursed by them...sure, all that. But mortal combat (i.e. the hit point draining kind)? No, I don't think so.

Karl Wagner's Kane...well, I've only had the chance to read Bloodstone, and it's been a while. If memory serves, Kane "kills" a super computer masquerading as a deity. Machines break...they are mundane/mortal, not supernatural. Maybe. I get a little depressed thinking about Wagner; he died so young (age 48, alcoholism). 

I don't remember any hero versus god action in Clark Ashton Smith, but I probably haven't read enough of him. I have C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry ordered from Amazon, so apologies if she kills a bunch of godlings and I failed to mention it...haven't yet had the chance to read her stories.

H.P. Lovecraft isn't really an S&S writer, but there's no denying his writing's had an impact on D&D and many OSR offerings. Lots of extreme, alien gods walking amongst men in HPL's stuff. But people don't fight them. They get killed and eaten by them, or possessed, or driven insane. It's not really mano-a-mano. Well, except for a certain Norwegian sailor, who's ship-to-kaiju combat was absolutely NOT stolen by Disney for the climactic battle in The Little Mermaid against the giant octopoid entity. Nope, no way...that scene is straight out of Hans Christian Andersen. Regardless, it's one exception to a multitude of non-combats.

How about non-S&S literature...say, Tolkien's Sauron and all his knockoffs (Donaldson's "Lord Foul," whatever the hell Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan use, etc.). They're "gods" right? And the good guys fight and defeat them?

Well, no. At least in Lord of the Rings, Sauron is never confronted directly, and he's not killed so much as "dispersed" by the Ring's destruction. But perhaps he could have been, when he was mortal. Morgoth was wounded by Feanor with a mortal weapon, after all (elf weapons in Tolkien aren't, strictly speaking, "magical" but, rather, gear of exceptional craft). If he could wound Satan with nothing more than courage and a well-made blade what could the elf lord have done with a typical D&D magic weapon...something invested with supernatural power by a wizard?

Pullman's His Dark Materials (in which a couple kids kill old man God) hardly bears mentioning; not really the same genre. Neither is Piers Anthony's "Immortal Incarnate" series. Dragonlance I'll discuss when I talk about god-fighting in gaming proper. Probably I'm leaving out some (or a lot) of stuff, but I just don't read much fantasy anymore. And, anyway, one would think that "Awesome Confrontations Between Man and Godlike Being" would kind of stand out in Ye Old Memory. I used to read a lot of fantasy, and there ain't much popping up there.

SO...from whence this desire (in D&D) to fight/kill gods?

Just what are these "gods" in fantasy literature? I mean there's GOD, of course (omnipotent, omniscient, unknowable, and unavailable...more a force/influence than a being). Then there are 'the gods,' like the Greek/Norse pantheons (or Babylonian...currently reading Ship of Ishtar)...entities that are uber-powerful, live in a different realm, but have feelings/needs/thoughts that are recognizable by humans. There are supernatural entities from other dimensions/planets (Cthulhu, strange "intelligences," etc.). And then there are mortal beings of immense power that are worshipped as gods, but don't necessarily grant any special favors or divine influence...they simply inspire awe/reverence in lesser mortals (though the same could be said...on a grander scale...of ALL the various "god types" listed).

Different fantasy writers have tackled divinities in different ways (duh, JB) but, perhaps surprisingly, I feel a lot of authors take the approach of their being but one GOD (in the monotheist sense), perhaps with various demons and pretenders, but those certainly aren't necessary (Poul Anderson's Three Hearts, Three Lions is S&S and doesn't require any such entities). Certainly Tolkien is all Christian analogue with fallen angels and whatnot, but Howard's, too, stuff has a mostly Christian (i.e. monotheistic) vibe to it. Even his Conan stuff...while I joked before that Crom was probably mortal enough for Conan to slay, the fact is Crom never actually appears (and neither does Set or Mitra, etc.), nor do those gods grant any sort of "divine powers" to their devotees. Either they are false gods (as would be the typical monotheistic point of view) and their priests simply sorcerers, magicians, and charlatans OR they are just names/aspects of the One True God who (generally) stays out of mortal affairs, allowing folks to exercise free will.

And it makes sense that these writers would take this tack: American pulp writers of the early 20th century were, of course, individuals steeped in Western (generally monotheistic) cultures. They're just writing a fantastical version of the world they grew up in, some with reverence though plenty without.

[writers that leave out questions of divinity from their fantasy work at all...like Vance and Zelazny...I chalk up in the same monotheistic category...the lack of a demiurge points to/emphasizes its existence. Regardless, no one is fighting gods in those books]

There ARE outliers, however, and three of them have had an immense impact on the Dungeons & Dragons game: Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, and Howard P. Lovecraft. Leiber's world of Nehwon is filled with gods of the "pantheon" variety; so is Moorcock's Young Kingdoms (although antihero Elric is always searching for a Grand Designer behind it all). HPL, of course, gives us all his crazy-ass Star Children from the far reaches of space. Of these three authors, I'd judge Leiber and Moorcock to have had the greatest impact on the game as far as "cosmology" is concerned. That being said, I think in all three authors' cases a major takeaway from their stories is: the gods are NOT to be futzed around with.

You don't fight them. You're not going to kill them. You certainly don't loot their bodies.

All of which runs quite counter to D&D's credo.

But I'll be talking about that in my follow-up post, which will be specifically focused on god-fighting in D&D.

: )

Howardian Healing

I was re-listening Dan and Paul's livecast about clerics while I was out driving today because...well, football season is over (and the regular news is depressing) and I'd finished all their other recordings

[and, yes, I'm a big geek. Thanks]

...AND I was listening again to their complaints about the cleric class that I mentioned a couple days back and they did have this solid one about "siloing" healing magic in a single class. Part of Delta's reasoning for chopping the cleric class and making healing potions common and readily accessible is to take the onus off a single (or pair) of party members being responsible for the "medic" role. Instead, everyone has their own responsibility for their health.

[jeez...as if they didn't already. Risk-reward, people]

*AHEM*  Anyhoo, it occurred to me that even though my re-skinning of the clerics as bards and witches might give you the same spell suite in a more palatable package (my main reason for doing it), you still have that "onerous burden" of one person being called on to bandage the aches and pains of the team.

Which isn't a terrible thing, by the way...I mean, everyone has some role in a party (Do fighters complain about being meat shields? Do wizards whine about being the artillery?), and a cleric is no different. Some folks even get off on the position...I mean, they relish being relied on to patch up the group's hurts. Personally, I always had fun with it (the couple-three times I played a cleric)...though I also just enjoyed being The Hammer of God (B/X clerics having the same potential in melee as a fighter).

But it's still putting all your healing eggs in one basket. The cleric's supposed to be responsible for caring for the physical well-being of the party (in a game where hit point attrition is the main source of "resource management"). Party health (HPs) is the fuel that lets the players drive. If the one "pumping station" (the cleric) goes down, it's only a matter of time before you're out of gas.

Thinking about this, I was reminded of those old TSR modules adapting Bob Howard's "Hyborean Age" to AD&D...Conan Unchained and its ilk (the "CB" series). I've only ever owned CB2: Conan Against Darkness, but I definitely read through the others, including Red Sonja Unconquered, and they all have the same basic rules relating to the Hybrid setting: lack of demihumans, lack of "artillery-type" magic spells (fireballs and such), lack of heavy armor (it's present but uber-expensive), and, of course, lack of clerics and healing magic.

The rules provide a couple things to offset the absence of clerics, the first being an (unknown) number of "Luck Points." These don't heal a person; instead they're used to do thinks like make an extra attack, or automatically hit, of knock someone out, or spring away from a trap in the nick of time, etc. Luck's purpose is to aid the character in the adventure so the character quickly progresses before attrition sets in...and luck always runs out (eventually).

The other rule is a more straightforward offset: characters heal faster than normal. All Hyborian characters heal one hit point per day, whether they're resting or not, and they heal half their Constitution per day (rounded down), when they actually take the time to rest.

Considering that most of the pre-gen characters have high (14+) scores in Constitution, that's quite a bit. Conan has an 18 Constitution (duh) and can heal his 100 hit points in less than two weeks. Most of these characters can go from zero to full in 10 days; that's pretty darn rapid considering the amount of punishment needed to take them to 'death's door.'

But in retrospect, I'd say the main reason this works is because these modules are designed for high level characters, and all the pre-gens have a ton of hit points. If you were running low level characters, this would seem supernaturally rapid...1st level characters would hop up after a day or two of resting with nary a scratch, regardless of the clubbing an ogre had given them the day before. To me, that's a little too close to "long rests" and "healing surges" for my taste.

However, for folks who simply want to supplement character healing such that the players are not entirely reliant on the party healer, it's not a bad start (better than stashing healing potions all over the setting like a video game, IMO). Here's how I'd modify it:

• Characters heal one hit point per day, regardless of rest
• Characters at rest (in comfortable surroundings, not on an adventure) regain one-half their level in hit points per day, rounded up. The number of hit points gained per day may not exceed the one-half the character's Constitution score.
• Characters at rest and being ministered by trained healers (as defined by your campaign: could be the House of Elrond, a temple of pacifist priests, or some roadside witch) regains hit points equal to their level; such places should generally have a price associated with their use. Again, the hit points regained may not exceed one-half the character's Constitution score.

This should still allow some fairly rapid recovery. I would only institute these rules in a game where access to healing magic was limited or restricted.

The Barbaric Edge

All right, you guys finally broke me. You don't know how tempted I've been to break my self-imposed "blogging ban" this last week. Clerics! I want to write shit-tons about clerics! But I've held off and held off. I cannot, however, maintain silence in the face of a really, really good idea, even if I dislike its execution...especially when it fires my own pistons.

So it is with this latest post from John Slater over at Land of Nod regarding the "edge" displayed by the barbarian protagonists of Bob Howard (and emulated by pulp S&S writers everywhere). The idea that such rugged individuals, by dint of their hard lives and uncouth nature, are a cut above civilized folk is a standard fantasy trope...and one that begs for the modeling and re-modeling (or at least re-examination) of a "barbarian class" time and again. And again.

*Bleah* (that's the sound of me gagging)

I know I've taken a couple-three whacks at the idea over the years, though none of them have "stuck" in my own campaigns...though perhaps that's as much influenced by my personal bias (I like the standard B/X classes) and/or folks' aversion to the idea of playing some primitive malcontent stereotype. Regardless, having a barbarian "class" hasn't worked for me. It just comes down to a set of particular themed bonuses or abilities, and the CONCEPT of the character gets lost. This is why the barbarian class of 5E is so stupid. It's not about someone wanting to model a "barbarian;" it's about wanting a rage bonus in melee combat.

[yes, yes...for some of you it MIGHT be about playing a barbarian. Shouldn't it be a background than? Something to be added to ANY class...barbaric shamans, thieves, etc.? And just what background is a barbarian supposed to take, anyway? Aside from outlander, it would take a bit more effort to work with most of the other 5E backgrounds...but I digress]

The word "barbarian" comes from the Greeks, which they used for all those "uncivilized" Germanic tribes that lived north of their ancient empire. The word means "bearded guys" or hairy ones or something, but it's really a derogatory term for people who don't speak Greek. In other words, "I see you are talking, but all I hear is 'bar-bar-bar.'" Still, though, "beards." We see that today in Romance languages (barba means beard in Spanish, for example). It doesn't mean indigenous American, or spear-chucker, or "savage" (though these things can be inferred from the use of the term). It simply means, someone from outside our polite society.

Howard was a Texan and a bit of a misfit to boot, giving him real issues with regard to "polite society." This he communicated through his stories, both in the attitudes of his heroes and the circumstances in which they generally found themselves (strife and turmoil in the land caused by the decadent machinations of people in power). It's not surprising that a man who felt himself an outsider would write about outsider heroes, nor is it surprising that his characters would resonate with those seeking escapism from "real life" in the fantasy fiction of pulp stories. Anti-authority is a fine attitude to have, until and unless you need your streets paved, your police and firefighters to arrive in a timely fashion, or your post office and DOT office to be well-staffed and helpful.

But D&D is fun for the same reason: escapist fantasy (how often do PCs need a post office?). And PCs are fairly "outside normal society" by their acts and profession anyway, so it's fine and fair to indulge in a little fantasy barbarism of the Howardian staple...the hard dude (or dudette) that sneers at polite society, that solves problems in Gordian fashion, that has an aura of primal leadership (or animal magnetism). A type of character that has an edge, in other words...something gained by dint of their upbringing and uncivilized attitude. Here's how I'd implement it, mechanically, for B/X (or similar "basic" games):

1. To be from a barbarian tribe, you must be a human character, though you can be a cleric, fighter, or thief (magic-users, even those from barbaric backgrounds, have too broad a perspective to carry the disdain of barbarians...their arrogance is of the magician to the mundane and their "edge" is their spell-casting powers beyond that of mortal men). Your character must have a CON of 9+ to reflect the fantasy trope (in a sense, you are playing a new type of demihuman race).

2. Your "barbarian" begins with the following restrictions: you receive one-half the normal starting gold at first level (roll 3D6x10 as normal, but divide the amount by two). Your character speaks your own language (as "Human Dialect," see page B13) fluently, but can speak only broken, accented common (the "civilized" tongue). You begin with no other languages known, regardless of INT.

3. When dealing with civilized individuals of authority (gate guards, tax collectors, nobles, etc.) your character receives a -2 penalty to reaction rolls unless the person in question speaks your character's native language.

4. If your character has an INT of 13+ you may choose to learn a new language (up to your maximum additional languages known) every time you earn a new level of experience. Learning a language implies fluency and capacity for writing as well. Common may be chosen as a language. Being able to speak fluently in a person's language removes the reaction penalty above.

5. Your character gains the following bonuses as his/her "barbaric edge:" +1 to melee attack rolls, +3 hit points, +1 save versus mind control magic, +1 bonus to hear noise, +1 bonus to detect traps, +1 bonus to retainers' morale score.

6. Success and soft-living will gradually remove your character's edge; every time you go up in level, remove one of your edge bonuses (your choice of which is lost). By the time most barbarians reach 7th level, they are thoroughly "civilized."

7. A player may stave off the eroding effects of civilization by disdaining its decadent trappings. This includes taking following actions:

• Never sleeping indoors unless the weather is bad (and even then, preferring a hard, bare floor to a cushy bed and soft pillows).
• Eschewing wealth; discarding 90% of all monetary treasure (giving it away, blowing it in taverns/brothels, etc.), and never retaining more than can be carried on one's person and/or horse. Equipment purchased must be of the most practical type: no fancy clothes, decorative armor, etc. Most fantasy barbarians (either sex) never bother wearing pants.
• Maintain a healthy respect and distance for enchantments; never possessing more magic items than the character has hit dice (so maximum of nine at levels 9+).
• Display nothing but contempt for the decadence of civilized folks: sneer at their pointless politics, their indulgent foods, their polite manners. Character should be forthright and blunt in interactions and avoid slyness and dishonesty. 
• Your character's word is his/her bond. Never break an oath.

This issue provides a good model
in the erosion of "barbaric virtue."

So long as the character abides by these restrictions, her barbaric edge is only lost every two levels gained (so at 3rd level, 5th level, 7th, etc.). No spartan lifestyle can completely halt the erosion of one's edge!

[if a character "falls off the barbarian wagon," she may jump back on upon reaching a new level of experience...i.e. after losing one edge at the standard rate...by reconsidering her decadent life and "getting back to her roots" (vowing to follow all strictures). However, only one such attempt at "atonement" is allowed...if the character succumbs to the temptations of civilized life a second time, there's no third chance!]

All right...we now return to our self-imposed silence. Shhhh...
: )

Delving 4E (Part 3)

My plan is to post my thoughts on the classes and powers in the 4E PHB (I've got a copy of the PHB2 as well but...well, we'll see if I get to it), specifically what I like. As I wrote in my last post, this isn't about lauding 4E as its own game, nor about bashing it for "how it ain't D&D." This is more about what I find interesting, neat, or intriguing as a design choice and possible addition to an actual (D&D) RPG.

Oh, yeah...since this is an attempt to stay positive, I will stay away from the subject of how 4E handles the races in D&D, except to say that I dislike them immensely. Sorry. My distaste is such it might even stop me from playing in a 4E game, knowing I'd probably be adventuring alongside "dragonborn" and "tieflings."

But here's what I like:

With a couple exceptions, I like all classes and "builds" presented in the PHB, at least conceptually, if not their actual execution; this includes the two new classes, warlocks and warlords (more on these in a moment). The ones I don't like (for the curious) are the ranger and paladin, especially the former. In fact, may I just say for the record that I haven't seen a ranger class that I've liked as a whole since (probably) 1st Edition. And let me further add that when I played a ranger character in 1st edition he did wield two weapons (using the rule in the 1E DMG) and you'd think I'd be ecstatic over the class's morphing into a dual-fisted expert over the years. No. Zero (as my four year old would say).

For those who don't know, "builds" are diverging specializations classes are required to take (do you want to be a "battle cleric" or a "devoted cleric," for example). I was actually working with a similar concept in one of my recent (now scratched) heartbreaker designs, so I'm somewhat partial to the idea. However, my motives were different: I provided specializations to help distinguish otherwise simple (B/Xish) classes from their like adventurers and give them a little extra "zing"...like the fighter who specialized in archery (and thus got an extra bonus with a bow). Builds in 4E seem bent on limiting choices. Well, that's a little harsh...most powers of a class are open to any member of the class, regardless of build. But builds do appear to provide some direction when it comes to choosing one's powers, as well as a clear road to "optimization"...which I hate.

[4E's design choice in this regard seems a direct descendent of World of Warcraft's talent trees, though again it's not nearly as restrictive (which is a good thing)]

However, it doesn't HAVE to be this way. There's a lot of shit 4E gets wrong, as far as role-playing games go, and the main one is its emphasis on combat encounters. Such an emphasis encourages optimization, as good play should (in theory) lead to shorter fights allowing the party to proceed to the next encounter faster in order to fight and continue having "fun." But that's just 4E's game. If you can get past the idea that D&D is just about combat (and structure your power options to be more than just combat options), then builds become a bit less static as characters are concerned with more than just fighting. Maybe.

Anyway, leaving aside (for the moment) the actual powers presented and the gameplay of 4th edition, I find (as said) that I like the majority of these classes and builds as concepts. Let me just run through them quickly:

• The fighter's builds (two-handed weapon or sword-and-board) are simplistic but, hey, he's a fighter. On second pass, a large part of my objection to the ranger is that its builds...the archer and the dual-wielder...are not just BORING, but they should also, IMO, fall under the purview of the fighter, being combat styles. Can't the ranger have, like, a "woodsy/druid" build and a "scouty/guerilla" build?
• For me, the cleric's "battle cleric" versus "devotional/saintlike" build represents a perfect duality, as does the rogue's "brawny" versus "trickster." In fact, the brawny rogue is an excellent example of the Conan as thief archetype found in S&S literature (see also Fafhrd). It is really unfortunate that, even for the "brawny" build, all the rogue attack powers require the use of a "light blade" (dagger, rapier, or short sword) in melee. Poor execution and a missed opportunity (let's make all our thugs fight with the same three weapons)...but I'm digressing.
• The wizard's builds ("war" or "control") are no great shakes, but the concept and direction of the wizard as a whole is pretty cool/interesting...though it needs to sit next to the warlock to really appreciate it.

The warlock is one of the two new classes presented in the 4E PHB, and while initially turned off by the presentation (probably the tiefling illustration) upon reading the entry I was far more impressed. This is the classic sorcerer of fantasy literature (which, BTW, is nothing like 3rd Edition's "sorcerer" class). I suppose they needed a new name because they (WotC) intended to bring back the weak-sauce version in the PHB2 (which they did). A shame. Anyway, the warlock is great and, in addition to its two builds ("deceptive" and "scourge") we get a choice of three pacts (sorcerous bargains with supernatural powers) to color the character: fey, infernal, and star (fairy, hell, and Cthulhu!).

[gosh, I can't believe this was published in 2008 and I never saw it. In retrospect, my books with similar concepts...like the Summoner in TCBXA...look like complete knock-offs. Hell, that Conan post was from 2009, even...]

Positioned in opposition to the sorcerous warlock, the wizard begins to take on the look of the classic enchanters of legend: Merlin, Vainamoinen...heck, even Gandalf (who's basis is in those old fairy tales). The sorcerer curses and hexes and summons, while the enchanter manipulates the environment with magical effect. Very nice bookends of the arcane spectrum...much cooler than simply "this guy reads books and this dude has 'dragon blood' in his veins."

The warlord, despite its stupid illustration (a dwarf? that's the last guy you want to be a warlord, ESPECIALLY if you're trying to optimize! Jeez) was not one I had to steel myself to read. In fact, it was the first class I read, and definitely my favorite concept in the entire book. This is the class I'd be playing if I sat down at a 4E table. But then, I've always played my characters like warlords (whether they be clerics, fighters, or bards): jumping into battle, barking orders, thinking tactically. I told you people I like war-games...there's more than a bit of the "armchair general" in me. This class alone could get me to play at least a few sessions of 4E.

[though never as a dragonborn; human only, please, and "inspiring," not "tactical" build]

A warlord surveys the battlefield.

It's a shame that the warlord's concept is so much a part of the 4E premise...I'm not sure it would work in an old style D&D game where actual maneuver in combat is profoundly de-emphasized. Might as well just use a fighter (or a heavy-hitter cleric if you want to still use the inspirational "buffs" on your party). You don't really need a "combat brain" when all people are doing is rolling a D20 to hit when it's their turn in initiative.

But that's the problem...D&D (at least in the traditional, pre-4E sense) has so many other elements, aspects, and scenarios that don't involve combat. And the power selection for the 4E classes are almost entirely combat related. Of the 17 powers gained during the course of a 30 level career, only 7 are "utility" powers; the rest are straight up attacks. And the majority of "utility" powers are still designed to be used in combat (conferring bonuses, healing party members, etc.), they're just not direct attacks. Even liking these class/build concepts, they'd need a lot of modification to make them less combat-focused.

Which should be a good time to discuss tiers. If I'm remembering correctly (this is many years ago) I already swiped the idea of tiers from 4E back when the book first came out...er, wait, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe not. Um, let me back up...the last version of D20 Star Wars (Saga) was in some ways a precursor to 4E. It was also a direct inspiration (and impetus) for me starting up a B/X version of Star Wars lo those many years ago. One of the things I came up with was the use of "tiers" as an added measure of character power/effectiveness...but I cannot for the life of me remember if I was influenced by the 4E books (something I browsed? something someone told me?) or if it was just a logical step based on my reinterpreting of Saga. Regardless, my tiers work quite differently from 4E (I use them to help compact the range of "levels," getting more bang for one's buck).

However, my point is that I LIKE the idea of "tiers." Now, do I like their implementation in 4E? Mmmm, maybe. They're a little hit-and-miss for me. The wizard and warlock paragon classes are perhaps the most interesting, having strong color/fluff associated with their choices. Many of the others...like the rogue's...simply reinforce class stereotypes, rather than offer truly interesting choices. Many of them (especially those in the PHB2) simply seem to be re-hashings of the 3rd Edition prestige classes, just shave to fit the round hole of 4E. Which is good for some of them (there were a lot of otherwise weird and "semi-useless" prestige class floated out in the days of D20 splat books, and here they become more pertinent), but I'm just not sure I'm totally down with the idea.

Actually, the concept of high level characters becoming paragons, gaining an exponential boost in power over low level heroes, and being required to further specialize IS a concept I can buy into. Again, it's mainly the execution that leaves me a little cold.

Similarly with the epic destinies tier. Here the constraints of the 4E system really start to show themselves...what, no conquerer/king destiny for the warrior class? No founding a religion for clerics? Fourth edition really is about kicking ass from encounter to encounter, not about role-playing or world immersion or whatnot, and the destinies appear designed to fulfill that goal up to 30th level. It's singular destination (immortality) is very reminiscent of the old BECMI quest for immortality, but with fewer (and less interesting) paths, and no real options besides such a quest.

Then again, maybe that's only logical (from an in-game point of view)...anyone who spent so much time getting to the top has got nowhere else to go but ascension, if they're still driven by ambition. At least 4E provides an endgame scenario of sorts. I can't remember if 3E's Epic Level Handbook provided such an outlet for characters...I think they just continued on ad infinitum. It's not bad, it's a nice option. I'd just like more options here.

Mmmm...this is getting long (again). I told you folks I had a lot of thoughts about 4E. And I still haven't written about the non-Vancian take on magic, spell rituals, and the combat system in general. That's all going to have to come in a follow-up post, I'm afraid.

Later.

If I Had to Do It Over...

...I do not think I would have included enchanted weapons and armor of power greater than +3 in my B/X Companion.

At the time I was writing it, I was still in the mindset of culling "the best of D&D" for the thing, and still hanging onto the conceits found in the later books of AD&D...+5 Holy Avengers and Hammers of Thunderbolts and the like. After all, you need a +5 weapon to harm the Tarrasque, right? Even though I was basing MY version of the Tarrasque on mythology rather than the MM2...

In retrospect, the end result means a gradual power inflation to the B/X game which, while not nearly as terrible as in D20 or even AD&D, does a lot to undermine the heroic simplicity of B/X. It's not that it renders some monsters/obstacle obsolete, after all (in B/X even the lowliest creature can damage your high falutin' character with an attack roll of "20"). But the presence of such items in the game creates an expectation in players: 'Hey, I'm a 23rd level thief! Where's my +5 leather armor?'

I don't dig on that.

In fact, if there's one thing I can't stand about D20 and later editions (well, there's a lot more than ONE thing, but only one thing regarding the topic at hand)...*ahem* If there's one major thing about the topic at hand that really irritates me regarding the latter editions of D&D, it's the assumption that part of character development revolves around the acquisition of things. That part of the process of increased character effectiveness assumes a certain amount of "stuff" (in the form of enchanted items and apparatus) will be discovered for use by the PCs.

This is gaming of the lowest common denominator. This is a video game mentality. This is Diablo or World of Warcraft. I've played both those video games, and they were enjoyable fun in their own mindless sort of way, but that is NOT what I expect or want from a role-playing game. Requiring the acquisition of stuff, in order to achieve the proper level of effectiveness for challenge, is just about the worst possible part of a reward system one can dream up.

Why? Because it makes the game less about player achievement (can the players manage the proper risk-reward factor to overcome the given challenge in this gamist-facilitating RPG) and more about proper "seeding" of "loot" during the course of the campaign. Which types of magical treasure to provide, in what amounts, depending on artificial game need.

Why bother to "level up" or measure experience at all? Solely for the sake of hit points?

[no, of course not...wizards who can't use magic arms and armor measure spell power based on level; though it seems only a short step o logic away from imposing WoW-style level restrictions on equipment use: "oh, your paladin cannot use the Holy Avenger sword until you're at least 15th level"]

Bollux on that. As a DM, I have a LOT more important things to worry about than not allowing a +3 sword to fall into the hands of a 2nd level character...or making sure the 9th level magic-user has found a staff of power or the requisite wand of lightning bolts. Must every halfling thief acquire a ring of invisibility at some point in their career? If so, why do they even bother to practice their hiding in shadows craft?

And so here I sit, currently working on 5AK (which will be play-tested this week, hope-hope-hope) and looking at the "magic items" section of the document, still blank. And wondering what the F I want to do with it. Because one thing I do NOT want to do is build a game with an expectation that magic items (and their acquisition) are in any way necessary or integral to the process of the game. BUT, at the same time, I don't want to leave the reader/player/DM with NO info...I don't want to just say, "hey, create your own enchanted artifacts as circumstance dictates." I want to give folks some guidelines. I like random tables, and even more so I like making the DM's job easier, not more difficult.

It's enough of a burden just drawing a map and coming up with a monster roster that makes sense for a particular adventure scenario.

*sigh*

I really haven't figured out what to do yet. The above published gripes don't even discuss what it is I want the game to model, namely the fantasy literature and mythology found in books pre-D&D. It used to be that magic was feared and respected, and that most every magical item found by a hero came at a price...no one just picked up a +3 sword out of some bandit's treasure chest and found themselves super-tough ever after. Real fantasy doesn't work like that. A powerful weapon was usually designed for a specific purpose like killing a demon-dragon...and when that purpose was served the thing usually "went away," perhaps dissolved in the acid blood of the foe it was designed to slay. Items' powers rested as much in what they represented (like Aragorn's blade Anduril or Arthur's Excalibur) than in their particular sharpness or whatnot.

Conan may be a "high level fighter" in D&D terms, but you don't find him running around with a vorpal blade and plate mail of etherealness. Is that because he lives in a "magic poor" world? No...there is plenty of magic and sorcery and supernatural foes and items (review Howard's story People of the Black Circle story). But magic is something to be respected and feared, as likely to turn on you as aid you, and if you can get by without it (as Conan often does), you're better off.

Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone owns a magic sword for the majority of his career...but it is a bound demon that often acts on its own accord, slaying friends and loved ones as eagerly as Elric's enemies (more eagerly...often Elric encounters monsters and foes against whom the blade is partially if not wholly ineffective). Yes, it gives him great strength and power...at a price. And his reputation as a swordsman is good even without the blade (only his cousin Yrkoon is said to be his equal in swordplay).

How to capture/model this kind of thing in my game...while still making it as easy as a few random tables for the DM? Maybe I need three tables:

• one random set of items
• one random set of bonuses/benefits
• one random set of drawbacks/problems

Again with an eye towards giving players the choice of what they're willing to risk for a particular benefit. Ugh...it sounds, good, by only have a couple pages of space in which to get it done. And how does that work with magicians and magic item creation?

*sigh* (again)

I guess I better just get back to work on the stuff I've already got sorted out. For the play-test Thursday, I'll probably just end up using magic items from other editions. Or not. I don't know yet. Ugh!

All right...talk to ya' later.

Red Sonja (and Swords)

So besides Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor, the other thing I picked up over the weekend was Volume 1 of Red Sonja, the latest re-boot of the Marvel Comics heroine from their Dynamite imprint. I don’t buy many comics these days (trade paperback or otherwise), and lately I’ve mainly purchased them for “research” purposes (i.e. because the story somehow pertains to a game I’m designing). Heck, I think the last one I bought was Xenozoic Tales when I was first tinkering with the idea of a “dinosaur game;” and that was…when? August or September of last year (2011)? Oh, yeah…I picked up a collection of The War That Time Forgot (again, for the dinosaur game) back in September, too.

So, yeah, once every 10-12 months I might pick up a comic book, so the fact that I pick up Red Sonja should say something. Mainly that I am and have been a huge fan of Red Sonja. Back in the waaay back past I owned the first half dozen or so issues of her original Marvel series, and I had several of the later issues of the original series as well (after artists started drawing her with more clothes than the chainmail bikini). Red Sonja was one of my favorite titles to pick up, though once I actually got into my “collecting phase” (which wasn’t till high school and didn’t last all that long) her regular series had been cancelled. Many of her comics I picked up at Ye Old Used Book Store in Missoula, Montana. And as with many of those comics I read them many, many times with great enjoyment.

Now unlike other boys of the 12-14 year old range that may have collected or enjoyed the “She-Devil with a Sword,” my interest in Red Sonja had absolutely zero to do with her usual state of undress, nor her voluptuous body. Really. Comic book “titillation” has never done anything for me, no matter how sexy or how risqué. It doesn’t; it hasn’t. I was never “turned on” by Vallejo art, either, for what that’s worth (or any other chainmail bikini-type artistic imitators)…which may make me weird by the standards of male gamers, but I came to grips with MY weirdness a long time ago. I design RPGs for fun, folks: I’m strange.

So then what made me such a huge Red Sonja fan as a young pre-teen? Simple: I wanted to see her kill shit with a sword. Red Sonja was badass, man…and if I’m guilty of any vice with regards to the red-haired temptress it’s the average American male’s addiction to visual violence and action. I guess you could call it “sword porn.”

Sure, there were several Conan titles I collected on occasion, including Conan the King and the beautifully drawn, black and white, Savage Sword of Conan. But you know what? Conan was never as badass as Sonja. For all his toughness, Conan has always been based on the Howard character, and Howard was a man of his time: 1930s gentleman/chauvinist. Which made Conan into a character that was capable of gullibility or soft-heartedness, especially with regard to the “fairer sex” or other defenseless, innocents. It’s something that always felt dated and a bit out of place in the lawless, ancient “Hyborian Age” tales.

Red Sonja had no such softness. She killed EVERYone, without compunction. Oh, she could be merciful, and championed the weak, but she never got taken in by a pretty face. In the new graphic novel I just picked up, she only hesitates a moment before butchering a pack of knife-wielding children (demon-spawn children, we learn, but still…). Sonja had a particular idealistic code she held herself, too, different from Conan’s “lusty gusto for life.” She was a much more “non-nonsense” slayer. And that’s what made her and interesting character and (for me) a better comic to read.

Because it reminded me much more of D&D and my D&D games. It still had weirdness and monsters and the supernatural and perilous danger. But for the most part, I don’t think the Red Sonja stories were based on anything in particular (as opposed to, say, Savage Sword which was based directly on Howard stories). I mean, I realize the character is based on Howard’s Sonya of Rogatino (though to me the She-Devil personality is much more reminiscent of Howard’s Dark Agnes), but the stories are spun from whole cloth as much as I can tell. And they (the stories) could and can serve as a great inspiration for D&D adventures. I know because I’ve used ‘em for such in the past, more than once.

The new Red Sonja is pretty darn good, though I was never a huge fan of the chainmail bikini (I mean, the artwork is great, but I always enjoyed the more “clothed” style of the later-day Marvel issues). However, the artwork IS top notch and the story is better than passable, and a couple days after reading the book, I kept catching myself thinking back on it as if I’d watched a FILM rather than reading a trade paperback. Which is different from pretty much any other comic book I’ve ever read.

Now, there...I’ve said my piece on Red Sonja (except to say that I saw the Red Sonja movie in the theater when in was released…it was PG-13 and I was 13 and by God I was going to see Red Sonja…and was subsequently disappointed. Not just by the cheesy, spring-loaded decapitations, but mainly by the poorly cast lead who A) was not a very good actress, and B) looked NOTHING like the Red Sonja of the comic books. And I say this as a kid who LOVED The Golden Child at the same age…I was not a kid of hugely discerning tastes!). *ahem!* Now let me put my game designer goggles on for a moment to point out something that stood out bright and clear to me in the latest Red Sonja comic:

Where’s the shield?

Here’s a character who’s a fighter-type. Sure she doesn’t wear armor (no, her outfit does NOT count as “half-chain”), relying instead on agility, sword-play, and sheer berserk fury…but why not use a shield? She occasionally makes use of an off-hand weapon, but she’s no Moonglum or Drizzle the Drow. What’s the deal?

Well, besides being a stylistic choice of the artists, one can see that having a free off-hand gives Sonja a degree of versatility and control she wouldn’t have otherwise…the ability to one-hand OR two-hand her blade as the need arises within the moment of combat.

With a little thought, I realized this isn’t quite as uncommon as it might appear. For example, I’m still watching those Game of Throne episodes on the DVD and one often sees a character wielding only a single blade sans shield, and using it to good measure. Same holds true for a number of films that feature the use of a long blade, from more recent films (like Conan and John Carter) to historical movies featuring crusaders in armor.

Now I’ll admit my sword training is limited to fencing, not broadsword. But I know that historically one of the strengths of the long blade was its versatility. Sometimes you WANTED to put that second hand on the hilt (or even grip the forte of the blade with your off-hand gauntlet) in order to put extra “oomph” into a blow, especially when facing a foe in stout armor and wanting to drive the point home (literally).

Wearing a shield provides you additional DEFENSE, but limits your versatility on OFFENSE, reducing you to chopping or one-handed slashes or clumsy (with a long blade) one-handed thrusts. And isn’t the best defense (at times) a good offense?

Nice as “sword and board” sounds, a simpler weapon…like an axe or mace or short bladed gladius…works better with the shield because the offensive action with the simple weapon is already limited based on its capability. You don’t lose anything (or not much) by carrying a shield with such a weapon. Carrying a shield with a LONG sword, though, you gain defense at the cost of some of your offensive technique…or so it appears to me.

But perhaps I’m completely ignorant. I will say that all the long blade “slashing demonstrations” I’ve seen on YouTube…whether with a broadsword or a katana…have been done with a two-handed grip. And since my fantasy games tend to be more cinematic or literary (or comic book inspired), this is something I want to take into consideration and model within the game.

Which, of course, flies in the face of all the D&D rules I’m familiar with. Right now, you have three choices for sword wielders:

- Sword and board (er, “shield”)
- Two-handed sword
- Dual wielding (sword plus off-hand weapon)

No one just uses a sword by itself. At least, not in the game. But in film and television and comics and literature? Characters use a sword all by its lonesome ALL THE TIME.

I have an idea how to do this with D&D Mine. For B/X? Well, off the top of my head I’d say:

“Fighters who choose to wield a normal sword with two hands receive a +2 bonus to attack rolls.”

[NOTE: that’s fighters only, not thieves, though some DMs might apply it to elves and/or dwarves as well]

That’s actually a pretty hefty bonus for B/X (the equivalent of giving the character +3 levels of experience). Maybe +1 would be enough (need to play-test it)…but I know a lot of people think shields should be “more useful” in D&D than a simple +1 bonus to armor class. If you choose to give a +2 bonus to AC for shields instead of +1 then the attack bonus for using a normal sword with two hands should definitely be +2 to compensate.

Of course, I’d probably ONLY to do this when using the standard B/X rule “all weapons do D6 damage.” If you use variable weapon damage, you might want to consider the following instead:

“Normal swords do only D6 damage (instead of D8) if the character wields a shield or 2nd weapon in her off-hand.”

With that, normal swords don’t achieve the “be-all, end-all” default melee weapon status they currently receive…you have to sacrifice some armor class to get that awesome D8 damage. However, I personally consider “offensive versatility” better modeled by “bonus to attack roll” than by “extra damage.” You’ll have to decide how YOU prefer to model it in your game world.

How you decide to model the rules for a chainmail bikini, on the other hand, is a subject for an entirely different post.
; )

Dave Arneson's Blackmooor (Part 2)

Despite a cough, I'm feeling much better today. Thanks.

All right, let's pick up where we left off yesterday, i.e. reviewing D&D in its basest, primeval form.

Oh, is that what we're doing? Well, kind of. I mentioned "deconstructing" Dungeons & Dragons which I meant in the same fashion that the term is used on the Bravo reality show Top Chef (a guilty pleasure). When a master chef (which I am not, just by the way...I make a burritos using canned chili, okay?)...ahem...when a master chef deconstructs a dish, the guy (or gal) takes the base components of the entree, disassembled, analyzes them for how they go together to evoke a particular flavor combination, than reconstructs the dish in a way that bears no semblance to the original dish but still evokes the essence of the dish such that it is immediately recognizable in its most enjoyable pieces.

That's kind of what I aim to do. But before I can reconstruct D&D, I really need to get down into the nitty-gritty of the base design. And stuff like that quote from Mr. Arneson is immensely helpful to that objective.

[and in case anyone wants to ask, 'why the hell bother?' ...well, I could do what I've done before, what everyone seems content to do: tweak and edit and house-rule and twist until the game resembles something "acceptable" OR I can tear it down and do a complete rebuild. Which, by the way, may not be entirely possible (at least to mine or anyone else's complete satisfaction)...but there's always the possibility the rebuild will turn out to be more satisfying (or, at least, have less unsatisfactory parts) than the usual hot mess most of us play with]

Okay, on with the show.

I think it's safe to give credit to Dave Arneson as the guy who invented the base CONCEPT of Dungeons & Dragons. That in no way is meant to diminish the importance of Gary Gygax to the overall project. In astrology there are three qualities of astrological signs: Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable. Cardinal signs are the creators and originators, Fixed signs are the organizers and controllers, and Mutable signs are the communicators and moderators. In business, you often see Cardinal signs in the position of the entrepreneur/idea guy...but without a Fixed sign to act as an organizer or CEO-type, they can lack "staying power." The Fixed sign may never have the original idea, but without their power the Cardinal sign may flare out.

Arneson, as a Libra, is a Cardinal sign. Gygax, a Leo, is a Fixed sign.

But, whatever...I know many of my readers don't give a hoot about astrology, so I'll try not to mix too much of that in with my premise. As I said, I believe it's fair to credit Arneson with the creating the concept of D&D: a role-playing game (where players are individual heroes as opposed to squads or armies), guided by a neutral referee, through a monster-infested dungeon, seeking treasure/loot. Gygax's Chainmail game (designed for table-top mass warfare) was the earliest set of rules used with the basic design concept, and then this got changed and refined overtime...by both Arneson and Gygax.

Just to jump forward a bit for a quick sec: this is understandable, jah? Every edition of D&D that has come out since the first published Little Brown Books has been an attempt to refine the game, to perfect it and make it better...even if by "better" one simply means "more understandable" or "more logical" or "more consistent" or even just "more fun."

AD&D - is Gygax's attempt to "flesh out" the game.

Holmes Basic - Dr. Holmes's attempt to make D&D accessible to the novice.

B/X - Moldvay's (and others) effort to streamline and refine OD&D.

BECMI - Mentzer's attempt to extend B/X with consistent scaling.

AD&D2 - Zeb's attempt to refine AD&D and make it a viable, consistent engine.

D&D3 - WotC's attempt to bring D&D into the future with serious design considerations and attention to consistency and coherence.

D&D3.5 - WotC's attempt to refine D&D3, work out the kinks, make the game more "balanced"

D&D4 - Hasbro's attempt to make the game even more "fun" and "balanced" while adding recognizable tropes of other 21st century entertainment types (i.e. video games).

D&D Next - Hasbro's attempt to save the cash cow by reconciling the disapproving (earlier edition) fan base with those new fans turned on by D&D4.

Does that about sum it up? Hopefully, none of it sounds too biased...if one leaves out the (*shudder*) capitalist notion of making more money for one's business by putting out new editions, one can easily see how every new edition has been created with the best of intentions. That is to say, each new version of D&D (even those I personally dislike) have been created with the idea of IMPROVING the product in order to provide a BETTER GAME to those who play it (and hopefully, helping to grow the hobby by producing a better system for new, happy customers).

Now let's return to the past, i.e. to the days of Blackmoor, or what we might call pre-D&D. We have the basic concept, provided by Arneson. But let's look at some of the specific specifics, which I shall infer from his preface to the D20 campaign setting quoted earlier:

- DA (Dave Arneson) was NOT a proponent of "sandbox play" (he set the game in a dungeon specifically to "keep the players from running all over the place"). That he bothered to create a town and country around the dungeon speaks more to Arneson the college history major and his interest in historical wargaming and (even more so) his interest in alternative history or "what if" scenarios (he liked the fluff).

- DA was NOT interested in any kind of "tight plot" (i.e. linear adventure, adventure path, railroad, etc.)...he wanted players to have a loose environment for exploration but the freedom to do "just about anything...for better or for worse."

- The original dungeon consisted of six levels infested with monsters. Characters were searching for treasure (loot) and magic items. Major combat (see below) consisted of rolling a pair of dice to determine victory. If this sounds familiar to some folks, it's because it perfectly describes the game and game play of the 1975 board game Dungeon! I have a whole 'nother post planned for Dungeon! (again, with regard to deconstructing D&D); at this time, suffice is to say it was designed by David Megarry who is listed in the DA's Blackmoor credits as one of the original players of the Blackmoor campaign.

- DA writes, "Major combat changed from rolling a pair of dice that resulted in victory or death to one where the hero could fight beyond the first swing just like in the movies!" There are two interesting parts to that sentence. The first is the term "Major combat;" how exactly would that be defined? Or better yet, what would constitute minor combat, since we might infer (from the statement) that minor combats did NOT change (i.e. not every battle needed the detailed battle of attrition that became the mainstay norm...and clunky slow-ness...of all future D&D editions). The second interesting part has to do with how the statement relates to the NEXT sentence in DA's preface:

- DA writes, "Killing critters in one blow was fine but not when it meant getting your character killed." There are two different ways I can interpret this statement (in conjunction with the prior one) in explaining how early Blackmoor combat worked. Chainmail (which, as noted, was first used as a base rule set for Blackmoor) provided a semi-complex man-to-man (i.e. one-on-one or individual) combat system in which one character would strike a blow and, if failing to kill his opponent, would receive a blow in return. In Chainmail, your attack either kills your opponent or it does not, and there are many tables provided that show the chance needed to down your foe based on the combatants armor, weapon, mount, etc. For the fantasy monsters of Chainmail (ghouls, giants, ogres, wizards, dragons, etc.) a simple 2D6 roll is cross-referenced against the chance to kill such a beast. For example a Hero needs to throw an 11 to kill a giant, but only a 9 to kill an ogre. However, against lesser foes (orcs, goblins, bandits, etc.) a character uses the weapon vs. armor table (so a character with a mace needs a 9+ against leather and shield or a 7+ against plate armor...oh yes, folks, your choice of weapon in OD&D really DOES matter if you use the standard Chainmail combat instead of the "alternative combat rules" that later become the norm of the game). So keep these Chainmail rules in mind, while considering Mr. Arneson's recollection.

As I said, there are two ways I can interpret DA's statements here: #1 He used the Chainmail system (with some restructuring: the average Joe is neither a "Hero" nor a "Wizard" and thus has NO chance to single-handedly kill a great monster) giving one character a first strike (i.e. chance to kill) and thus risking a return blow (and auto-kill). This, in turn, led to the development of hit points due to players lack of enjoyment at being "one-shotted." #2 DA had a modified version of Chainmail that featured a SINGLE ROLL of 2d6 that would either result in "victory or death." #2 would actually be a literal (if radical!) interpretation of the statements and I think unlikely (as it's unclear how that would lead to the development of hit points, nor be used in conjunction with armor class, which DA reports to have adapted to his game from an earlier naval warfare game system he designed).

However, if I use interpretation #1, then I have to ask: WHY did you insist on using the SAME SYSTEM for both players and monsters? Dave writes "Killing critters in one blow was fine;" okay, so why change that? Because it wouldn't be fair to the monsters that they can be one-shotted when players can't be? What do the monsters care?!

See, to me, this is a major design over-sight. Sorry, Dave, it is. And the rest of us (those who have played any of the upteen iterations of D&D post-Blackmoor) have been paying for it ever since. There's no law that says the combat rules have to go the same both ways (the rules for monsters aren't the same as for players anyway...I mean, they don't get experience and advance in level for killing adventurers do they?). I've already worked out a way to reconcile this is my own D&D Mine (about three-four weeks ago), but to do so I had to go back to the Chainmail method of combat using D6s and kick the D20 to the curb...something that will no doubt cause people to say, "your game does NOT resemble D&D." To which I'll reply: it resembles the EARLIEST version of D&D before the "alternative combat tables" became standard.

- *ahem* Moving on...according to DA, the goal of his game was the acquisition of treasure. Not saving the world or killing monsters (in order to acquire XP and raise in level). Nope, the goal was to acquire wealth and "cool magic items." From this standpoint, the XP for treasure found continues to be the only sensible way of measuring an adventurer's proficiency. As it always has.

- And with regard to XP and leveling up, DA writes (towards the end of his preface), "Within the first month the players were getting quite attached to their characters. Then came the next big question...'Shouldn't we be getting better at killing stuff like our experienced troops on our Napoleonic campaign?' Okay, let's work something out." Wow, to all those who feel some sort of reward or advancement system needs to be inherent in the process of designing an RPG, even one that facilitates a gamist agenda (as D&D does), this little tidbit is a big "F-- you!" That the idea of experience points and levels were afterthoughts (and only brought up after a month of solid gameplay!) should be an eye-opener to folks who've simply come to expect "that kind of thing."

I mean, certainly counting points (experience or otherwise) and earning advancement (in levels or otherwise) are things that have great merits, design-wise. Putting them into the game was one of the smartest things that could have been done as far as keeping folks interested via constant struggle for achievement. There's a reason why so many RPGs contain reward mechanics! However, that struggle to achieve was NOT the original goal or intention behind Arneson's concept (see the bit about gold). According to DA's statements, the chronological order of development was:

#1) Objective/Goal Created: Acquire Wealth

#2) Players play, become attached to their characters

[note, #2 has nothing to do with achievement/status/power-gaming]

#3) Players ask if their characters should be getting better, more experienced

#4) Advancement mechanics implemented in response

That's fairly frigging mind-blowing to me, folks. In my game designs I almost always use some sort of level/experience advancement scheme and it occupies a helluva' lot o y attention: how XP is awarded, how much XP to level, rate of advancement, benefits of advancement, etc. In many ways, this is the CORE of most gamist RPGs: #1 What behavior is rewarded, and #2 How does that reward increase a character's in-game effectiveness.

But THAT wasn't the point of pre-D&D Blackmoor! It was never, "how does my peon become a 'roid-raging Conan somewhere down the line?" Conan doesn't "advance" in Howard's stories (Arneson's inspiration for Blackmoor)...Conan simply goes on adventures and kicks ass. Period!

All right, all right...that's enough for you folks to chew over for now (I know I'VE been chewing it over the last couple days). We'll do some more "deconstruction" in the next few posts.

: )