The "Competition"

Today, I purchased a 500+ page guidebook purporting to "provide the key" to unlocking your imagination and teaching you how to be an RPG game master.  Well-stocked on the shelf of my local Barnes & Noble, well reviewed on Amazon, this book is a USA Today bestseller (meaning it's one of the top 150 books by volumes sold considering all media across all outlets) and its author a winner of numerous game-related awards.

I went to the store, deliberately, with the intention of purchasing the book, for the following reasons:

• As someone working on a similar work, I thought it only "due diligence" to check out the competition and see what was deemed to warrant such rave reviews. 
• As someone working on a similar work, I thought it only "common sense" to see if there was anything left for me to ADD with a book of my own, seeing as how this one was designed to take you "right from the beginning of prep to running a successful game" (in the words of one reviewer).
• I needed to do some Christmas shopping at the bookstore anyway.
• I recently received a fat payment and had money burning a hole in my wallet.

So, I picked it up and, after a hearty meatball sandwich lunch, spent the afternoon reading it from cover-to-cover, mainly skimming it (there are a lot of examples and diagrams) but diving into the parts that seemed to present newer info, thoughtful advice, or deep(ish) ideas and "guidance."

Then I drove back to the store and returned it, getting a full refund.

You will notice that I am not naming the author nor the book in question. I have two reasons for this:

1. As a person who has written books before, and who is undertaking a similar gargantuan task of explaining how to DM this game I love, it is clear that the author put a crap-ton of effort into this book...a monumental investment of time and energy. While I may have a negative opinion of the work itself, I'm going to give the author some credit just for birthing this thing. 
2. In general, I don't believe in "bad publicity," and as such I usually don't name things...positive or negative...unless I'm okay with people putting 'em in their shopping cart. That's just a me thing. Yeah, I broke that rule when I wrote about the 2024 DMG, but that was more akin to a public safety announcement...I knew people were going to buy that (regardless) and felt a "warning label" of sorts was necessary.

The bottom line is this: yeah, a book like the one I'm writing is still needed. Maybe I'm not the one to write it, but if THAT thing is considered the pinnacle of "how to DM" books, than the bar has been set extremely low.  Most of the information in it wasn't anything more than what you'd get reading Moldvay's Basic book (a lot of the "adventure design" seemed to be taken directly from Moldvay with slight adjustments and a LOT of extra word count) and the NEW "guidance" was...bad. Just bad from the opening chapters. Always saying yes to players, just as a default...um, no. Explicitly stating that the DM's job is EASIER than the players' job? Um, sure...if you SUCK at being a Dungeon Master.

Do we really need a book to explain dice nomenclature? Isn't that on page one of every edition of every RPG ever? And you state right up front that you're not going to teach the rules, so they need to read the instructions so then what's with the elementary intro crap?

*sigh* That's enough. I could keep piling on but that's not productive. And it wasn't a waste of my time to read through it...it gave me solid ideas of what I should and shouldn't be doing with my own book, AND boosted my spirits that I'm not totally reinventing the wheel. That's a comfort. 

Now back to work.

; )

Tis The Holiday Season

Just pumping out a post 'cause I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have to blog this week. Sofia's out of school, so while he's sleeping in (at the moment), I'm going to be hanging with her in my "free" time. Parent-teacher conferences at the middle school today...it will be interesting to hear what they have to say about my 6th grade daughter. I'm genuinely curious.

I don't talk as much about my daughter as I do my son. I don't know why other than I'm constantly amazed by his accomplishments. Sofia's amazing, too, but her "magic" is so much less demonstrative. I have a feeling that she will probably have the "bigger impact" on the world when all is said and done: she'll either end up some scientist that invents something brilliant or else she's going to wind up being some sort of famous film or music-related celebrity. But none of that is anything happening right now (other than she can astound people when she sits down at a piano in a hotel lobby)...right now she is this incredibly sweet, funny, friendly kid who just likes to smile and snicker and play. Since we brought my mom's piano home, not a day goes by without the sounds of music filling the house at some point. Right now it's a big Christmas piece she's working on. Delightful.

Yes, you heard me...delightful. I'm one of those curmudgeonly types that gets annoyed with people who start their Christmas-ing before Thanksgiving. Usually. This year has been...different. The "yacht rock" radio station that has long been on our satellite car radio...since at least 2019 as it helped soothe our nerves through the entire pandemic...disappeared a couple weeks ago to be replaced by the "Hallmark" channel which plays nothing but holiday music. And Sofia, of course, LOVES holiday music and so we've been listening to it, whenever we're out driving to one of her various things: school, church, soccer, basketball, piano, guitar. Whatever. And darned if I haven't gotten in to it, too. Like the yacht rock, it's soothing on the nerves.

Well, most of it (I'm not really into the "hip hop Christmas" stuff...give me Andy Williams or Nat King Cole any day of the week).

So, yeah. I've started the holidays early. I think we got our first thing of eggnog the week after Halloween? That went fast, and I haven't replaced it yet. Still have our "Autumnal" wreath on the door, but evergreen one is coming. We've got tickets to Mexico for Christmas...took us a while because they're so damn expensive (you can fly to Japan for half the price!). Not sure if that's just because the current administration is only interested in people taking one-way trips south of the border or what (*sigh*), but since they've made damn sure that's my in-laws can't renew their visas till 2027 (*sigh*) we must purchase four tix if we want to see our family, rather than just flying mis suegros up here. Too bad for the local economy, of course, as we'll be doing all our shopping down there...but then Trump has been nothing if not hard on the local economy. 

But enough of that...I've been in the holiday spirit, as I said, and I've been focusing on other things. My son, who I gush about far too much, has his first national volleyball tournament for his club in Los Angeles in a couple weeks, and he and I will be flying down there with the team. The last couple days we were at a local "exhibition" tournament...it was pretty wild. He's a U15, but his team was playing in the U16 division...four matches in the group stage on Saturday with two matches on Sunday in the playoff bracket; when not playing or warming up he and his teammates acted as line judges and scorekeepers for the various games going on non-stop on four courts in an airplane hangar-like gymnasium (they were running U14, U16, and U18 divisions...all men's volleyball). Holy smoke...what an event! And the L.A. one is supposed to be a LOT bigger...I can hardly imagine.

Anyway, their team is great and pretty talented. They ended up winning their division, winning in straight sets for both of their playoff games. They were rotating liberos between Diego and another, more experienced kid (except for D and Jesus, all the other kids have been together for two or three seasons), but by Sunday's championship game it was just Diego, clearly in command, exhibiting presence and leadership on the court, making spectacular saves, picking up his teammates...all the usual "Diego" stuff. When they were down 18-9 in th second set of their first playoff match, Diego came in as a DS to serve 15 straight points and put them up 24-18...he didn't come out after that. Just great stuff from the kid. We had been contemplating trying to get to his soccer game Sunday afternoon and said we'd think about it after we saw how the morning match went...he came of the court and just said "I'm staying for the volleyball." 

[fortunately the club was playing the no-win bottom of their division and got a 4-2 result even without their captain]

But it was an exhausting weekend. Diego had a hard time getting up this morning (he still has a couple days of school before break)...though he's excited because "cousin Spencer" is picking him up from school today! Yes, my 27-year old "nephew" is back in town...all 6'1", 205# of baby-faced kid. He just finished up a year long stint of chefing at some fancy restaurant across the street from the Opera House, and now he's back in the PNW before doing another jaunt, this time in Japan (his dad's originally from Canada so he has joint citizenship and can do a work exchange on the maple leaf passport). Anyway, hanging with us all weekend at the volleyball stuff, he's taking Diego rock-climbing this afternoon (just what my kid needs...to be introduced to another recreational hobby...). Fingers-crossed that Diego doesn't fall asleep in class or on the boulder....

Hopefully, I'll get a chance to run some D&D for Spence while he's in town...I know he digs that. He's heading out to Spokane on Wednesday (Thanksgiving with his mom's mom), so our window is tight, especially with the kids' soccer practice on Tuesday. Wait, wait...just checking and it looks like they might have the night off!. All right, maybe Tuesday evening then. If we DO get our game on, I've already decided I'll be breaking out C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan...a perfect little scenario for Diego, Sofia, and Spencer.

Mmm...looking through Ye Old Blog archives, I don't see I've ever written much of anything abou Tamoachan. It's a decent enough tournament adventure...probably my favorite of all the old TSR tournament modules (looking at both the A- and C- series). I've run it at least two or three times in the past, usually with the three pre-gens designed for the scenario. It's pretty tight, design-wise, and even though it's a fairly linear gauntlet (much like the tournament portion of S1) it has a ton of flavor and a lot of interesting bits and bobs. Though, man...I don't think I've run it since the early 90s (maybe the early 2000s...?). I should probably give it a quick re-read. I have no idea how the thing holds up in my current "paradigm" of game play, but Philippe ran it at Cauldron for some folks who had a good time...it should still work for a one-off.

Other than that....

I'm working on the book. It's slow going. I started writing the section on running combat...turns out this could probably be a whole book, in and of itself. Which is not really what I want, so I probably need to rethink the section. 

It's tough. I'm trying to condense and consolidate decades of knowledge and essays into a practical guidebook that IDEALLY would have a smaller page count than any of the existing (AD&D) rulebooks. It's a rather daunting prospect. This is far less about writing "AD&D for Dummies" and more like a Strunk & White's Elements of Style. Lord, how I wish I'd studied technical writing in college. Maybe I should go back and re-read my Strunk & White...it's still on the book shelf somewhere. 

Yeah. Probably going to end up bigger than S&W.

But I am writing.  A little bit óvery day. Except when I'm at all day volleyball tournaments. But OTHERwise...one brick at a time. Just laying one brick at a time. 

*sigh*

I should be publishing a couple adventures soon, too, depending on my illustrator's time schedule. Hopefully I'll have a couple PDFs out by year's end. We'll see. December tends to fly by when you're in the midst of holiday cheer with friends and family. And  now that my brother's hash is finally settled (he was evicted on the 12th...a day before my birthday)...I need to put the sale of my mother's house into overdrive. Sofia and I might be working on that a bit the next couple days, depending on when I can borrow my buddy's junk hauler. A lot to do but it is finally getting done. Finally.

Mm.

My apologies...did not mean for this post to slide into a downer note. It's the gosh darn holiday season! And I'm excited about all the stuff I've got on my plate right now. Yes, the busy-ness is off the charts. Yes, finding time to take a breath is a challenge. BUT:

- volleyball tournaments

- guitar recitals

- holiday feasts and get-togethers

- trips to see family and friends in Mexico

- school Christmas concerts

- running D&D

- publishing adventures

- writing books

- closing my deceased mom's estate

And just listening to cheerful music as I drive around town on my various errands...man, that is all GOOD STUFF. I am enjoying myself. I am really, thoroughly enjoying myself.

And I'll admit, part of it is that I'm home in Seattle for Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday of the year) and that I get to eat some God-honest turkey for a change. I seem to be the only person in my family that craves a drumstick and a pile of apple-sausage stuffing drenched in gravy. My goodness! I am SO looking forward to Thursday!

Hope ALL of you have a happy one...I pray that all of you find some joy in season, and find a way to share that joy with others. Even a smile goes a long way this time of year.

Cheers.

: )

Good Bones

In the past, I've watched a lot of "house flipping" and "remodeling" shows on television. My wife digs this kind of programming (she finds it relaxing) and I find it...well, interesting enough. I am rather the opposite of a "handyman" type. But I don't mind spending a lazy weekend afternoon, sitting on the couch and drinking coffee.

[we rarely have the time to "veg" that much these days, considering all the weekend kid events...but I did start this post with the phrase 'In the past...']

Anyhoo, I myself have done very little "remodeling" in my life...I've certainly never "flipped" a property. But as I said, I've watched these shows and there's this phrase that I sometimes here come up about a house...that it has "good bones." Which, I assume, means it has a good foundational structure on which to build or hang new drywall or, well, whatever. I don't know...I said I wasn't "handy" like that.

What I AM somewhat handy with is adventure writing/design (well, I think I am anyway...). The last couple-four days I've been working on my rewrite of I4: Oasis of the White Palm. Oh, man, it's really good. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm kind of in love with what I'm writing...this looks like it's going to be really fun to run. I'm digging it. 

But I want to give some credit to Philip Meyers and Tracy Hickman, the original writers. Because the thing has good bones...there IS a strong foundation here, mainly in the maps and some of the overall 'Big Concepts." Not the story, mind you...the story is terrible and I've discarded it completely. But many of the situations and factions are quite workable. Well, re-workable. Er...I mean, they're stuff that I can work with and pound something good and decent out of. If that makes sense. Which, maybe it doesn't. But I mean it as a compliment...if a back-handed one.

I'm currently working backwards through the thing because dungeons are more fun (and, in many ways, easier) to stock than other areas. Eh, what am I saying. It's all pretty easy to stock. But the dungeons are definitely more fun. Because they have more obvious threats (and bigger treasures...I like treasure). So I did the Crypt of Badr al-Mosak first (even though it's Part III of three) and then, today, I finished up the Temple of Set (Part II). Yes, these have all been renamed. No, there are no "EverFall Pits" with flying mummies, nor any kidnapped princess-brides...you want that, you can buy the original as a $5 PDF and run it. This is going to be clever, okay? Without the silly puns and with a modicum of sense and sensibility.

I mean...*sigh*  So, NOW, I was just about to sit down to start in on Part I (the Oasis itself), and...as is my wont...I started diving into my analysis of just what is here. What IS this town? I already know a lot of what MY town is going to be, but I want to look at the BONES of the place, the underlying structure. Because the structure is functional...I've run I4 before, back in the day, pretty much exactly as written and I don't remember any hiccups or problems. So let's see what we've got...first up, the Oasis random  encounters, lifeblood of a dynamic environment (or, at least, that which provides verisimilitude of a living-breathing town). What have we got?

Women carrying water. Women carrying clothing. A trader "with beads." Traders with palm dates. Traders with camels. Home Guard. A drunk. 1-4 Male Drow. A noble. A slave on an errand. A....

Wait, what? 1-4 male Drow?! In the desert? Who cares if it's at night...how the hell did they get there? What the heck are they doing? They're not even one of the "special" encounters...just a normal evening encounter around the village.

*sigh* This is why O Great & Glorious Hickmans...this is why I rewrite your adventures. Crap like this. There's a lot of whimsical stuff here that doesn't really fly in my view of an AD&D adventure, but I can stomach a certain amount of whimsy (even if...sorry...I'm writing the pegasus squadron OUT of the adventure). But there's "whimsy," and then there's nonsense. A thriving oasis town filled with fantasy-Islamic/Bedouins is not a place where Drow are just "walking around."

Many, many problems here.

Ah, well. The first two bits have turned out great; no reason to think the town part can't be spruced up. I've even added a couple new NPC personalities to the mix, which is also good fun. One nifty thing about my version: the writing's quite a bit tighter (which is to say, I don't pad it out as much as the original). Consequently, I've already trimmed about four pages from the text. That is GREAT; I really want to keep this thing to 32 pages (max), but I want to add more actionable, game-able content, not just:

D. Hills

Craggy, low hills of broken and baked stone jut upwards at weird andles and cast tortured shadows.

Play: Movement rate is half normal in such areas for all persons except dwarves. There is a 60% chance per hor spent searching of finding a cave shelter large enough for the party.

Or this:

E. Bleached Bones

The trail suddenly broadens amid the dunes. The clean, white bones of camels stand in a roughly 100-foot circle.

Play: There is a 30% chance that a party member will discover that the bones have only recently been picked clean. All worthwhile objects have been taken from the area. A set of three sled tracks leads east to location F.

Or this:

L1-L4. Ruins

Jutting jaggedly from the midst of the desert are ancient broken pieces of hand-hewn stone.

[no other info given, just the boxed text description]

This is what I like to call "tourist crap." It's not nonsensical, but it serves little or no purpose. Regardless of whether or not the players figure out that the bones "have only recently been picked clean," so what? It makes no difference to the adventure. Even if there ARE dwarves in the party, they still can't move any faster than the other, non-dwarf members. This is just extraneous detail for a "tour guide DM" to dole out, presumably to "break up the monotony." Hey, try to roll under 30% on percentile dice? Yeah, you made it? You can see these bones were only RECENTLY picked clean...dun-dun-DUN!

Far easier to simply:

• Calculate the distance between point A and B
• Calculate the time needed to travel there.
• Roll for random encounters based on the time traveled

...and just get to the play at the important bit (wherever that final destination is). 

It's not that we need to 'get to a place where we roll dice,' but it IS about getting to a decision point where the players can make a meaningful decision. Looking at the wilderness map of I4 (which I will be redrawing to match my southern Idaho desert), I can see there's no reason the players would ever have to go to area #D ("Hills")...no road leads there, no plot requirements mandate them passing through the area, nothing. It is just USELESS FILLER.

My adventure doesn't have useless filler.

Anyway, I'm enjoying myself and my little project. Ugly as the original house is, I think my "remodel" will look quite swell. Despite my complaints the thing does have "good bones;" that makes a difference.

Later, gators.

[also, just for fun: this came to mind when I wrote "tour guide DM;" it's kind of catchy!]

Poison

This is not what I should be doing.

I am sitting at the car dealership, getting a 75K service and oil change (as one does). I am eating a fresh baked cookie some lady just brought around (chocolate chip), and I am putting off the adventure writing that I've been doing the last two days, in order to write this post. Because I feel bad I haven't posted anything in a couple days.

What I should be is writing that darn adventure...and I will be getting back to it today (maybe after a second cookie). But I fell down the rabbit-hole of checking Ye Old Reddit feed and Oh. My. F'ing. God.

It makes me want to cry. Just sob.

The title of this post is "Poison." Because I was just listening to the band (Poison) in the car on the way up here. I was not a fan of Poison back in the day...they were all that was wrong with the crass commercialization of rock music, they were all about the "big hair," they were a "chick band," whatever. Reasons, all right? But they have exactly TWO great songs: Talk Dirty To Me and Nothing But A Good Time.  Both of which, at first pass, feel like throwaway pop metal with a catchy guitar riff (which they are) but which have the ability to evoke far deeper emotion...a nostalgia that conjures memories of early sexual encounters as a hormonal teenager and the alternating hopelessness and hedonism of a young person in their twenties with a few bucks to spend but nowhere near enough to 'make a life.' I don't know about kids these days who just live at home till there 30 and crush out on video games and internet porn, but back when I was growing up (the 80s and 90s) these were fairly universal experiences for "us kids" to go through.

Point is: I appreciate them now.  I wonder if they'll ever speak to my own kids some day.

This Reddit roll, man...just look at these titles from the DnD channel with the topic heading of "DMing:"

Any Tips For A New DM?

Where Can I Find The Text In Each Book Describing How The DM Can Change Or Ignore The Rules?

Awkward Silences With The DM

How Do You Create A Campaign?

Any And All Tips For A Brand New DM?

How To Make Low-Level Encounters Fun And Challenging?

Story Telling Struggles

How To Make Players Engaged In RP?

I'm Very Confused On New DND Content??

Trying DMing For The First Time

How Do You Kick Off And End A Session?

DMing My First Table

Guys, It's My First Time DMing. I Am Starting A PbP Campaign. Am I Being A Bad DM?

Potential Ideas For My Campaign?

What's The Best Starting Campaign For A 1st Time DM?

DMs, What Are Some Skills/Things You Had To Learn Before A Session?

About To Be A New DM, Any Advice You Wish You Got?

Need A Campaign Idea

Need Some Advice On My Story

Need Help Looking For Boss Music [sigh]

All of these have been posted in the last 48 hours. Almost all of them start with some sentence or two describing how they are new to DMing or first time DMing or have no experience DMing or...whatever. The point is: most of them are newbies. AND THEY ARE COMING TO REDDIT TO FIND OUT HOW TO RUN A DUNGEONS & DRAGONS GAME.

Do people not see how RIDICULOUS that is? Is this not the kind of information one might assume would be in the INSTRUCTIONS MANUAL of the game they are playing? And be fairly clearly laid out? Like, maybe on PAGE ONE? Or (if not on page one), wouldn't you think that Page One would say "Hey, in Chapter 5 we describe how to run the game as a DM." You'd think this, right? I mean, I would think this.

But I am old. See my reference to "Poison" above.

On the first page of the Introduction to Moldvay's Basic set (in the first column) I find this:

"Part eight, DUNGEON MASTER INFORMATION, gives a step-by-step design of a sample dungeon level plus tips to help the referee."

I mean, it's D&D right? Not rocket science (which I presume is difficult). All these questions, all these subjects should be addressed right out of the box. Why are people going to the internet for answers to basic questions about DMing? WHY?

And, just by the way, not ALL of the questions are from "newbs." Here's a gem:

So im running a new game for some friends who are brand new to dnd. Ive been dming for 12 years now so i tend to run my own adventures instead of the books. However this is my first time running more than one campaign at a time and ive put so much time and effort into my main group that ive drawn a complete blank on what I should do with my new group. If you guys have any ideas for cool stories I could run them through that would really jump start my creativity and then I can take it from there. I just need something to get me going. So any suggestions?

Yeah, I've got a suggestion: run your new group in the same campaign world as your current, on-going group. Why are you trying to make more work for yourself (when you're already making more work by running multiple groups)? Again: not rocket science. You have 12 years of experience. You are adept at making and running your own adventures. Surely you have already created/run material that could be recycled for the new folks...why are you trying to reinvent the wheel from scratch?

Also: learn punctuation. It's a life skill.

I really, really, really want to take a break from the internet...at least, from all the "interactions." The blogs, the discords, the reddits, the forums, etc. It is all so non-helpful, so non-constructive. And it makes me sad. It saps my energy. I, again, (briefly) considered actually creating a profile on the reddit to address these querying questioners, to get involved in the verbal sparring and disinformation and misinformation that is being promulgated by "D&D experts." I considered it...as if this would be a good use of my time. As if trying to put out each small fire on an individual level would somehow keep the  forest from burning down around my ears.

No. Poison. This shit is poison. 

SO, I'm going to step away. Going to take a deep breath. Brew a pot of coffee, throw on a little Sade Love Deluxe (I thought about the Eagles, but that way leads to day drinking). Going to buckle down and see how much of this adventure I can knock out today. I'm hoping to, at least, finish the crypt portion...that part's easy.

Let Rome burn, while I fiddle away. Ain't looking for nothing but a good time right now.

"Dragon Wrack"

Hope folks had an enjoyable Father's Day this last weekend, whatever your relationship to "fatherhood" might be. Speaking for myself, it was delightful, due in large part to my family bending over backwards to make Sunday a special day for Yours Truly.

Doesn't mean it was perfect, of course. I wasn't able to get the dinner I wanted (not for lack of trying...we won't go into that), and I did still have to do some dishes (though not nearly as many as usual), and I would have preferred a different pie than "Key lime" (it's not bad, just not my favorite). And then there was the gaming....

SO, one thing I forgot to mention the other day: the latest installment of Prince's No ArtPunk contest has been published. NAP 3 is available as an absolutely enormous, 'pay what you want' PDF file. 

How enormous? 694 pages. Yeah. Granted, it contains 14 high level adventures (including maps) interspersed with some half dozen essays relating to "high level play" (the theme of this year's NAP competition) and a few pages of art, but still...it's big. The adventures are big. Prince included his own most recent module (Slyth Hive) in the compilation, and that's damn near 100 pages itself.

[yes, all my ranting from the other day about large page counts still applies]

But laptop memory eater or not, slog or not, it's a pretty amazing compilation. A lot of creativity on display, a lot of enthusiasm. Folks really attacked the NAP challenge with gusto, and the sheer volume and variety of submissions is...well, as I already wrote, "amazing." I plan on doing a read through over the next couple months (slog, remember?) and will probably pen some 'capsule reviews.' At least for the AD&D modules.

Now, about that gaming...

The last couple-three years, my kids have been really good about making sure I get some serious D&D play in when Father's Day rolls around. That's just what Nerd Dad likes doing: I'm not (much of) a golfer, so I don't want to hit the course or (even) sit on my couch watching the U.S. Open. D&D (or other games) is the main event on the docket and, what with being a weekend (and usually one that's OFF from other activities), we can carve out a nice large chunk of time for ourselves, rather than the couple hours snatched here and there during the week. Often, my kids will run a game for me, but this year I wanted to DM because I had something specific I wanted to run: Dragon Wrack, my high-level entry for NAP3.

If you pick up the NAP3 book, you'll see the adventure, as it made the cut as one of the finalists. In brief: it's a re-writing/re-working of the old TSR module DL14: Dragons of Triumph. Yep, I'm still on that whole 'rehabilitating DragonLance" kick, though in this case I redrew all the maps and chucked pretty much everything from the original module save for the general concept (Tiamat's temple-fortress, surrounded by her armies, PCs doing an infiltration gig, while the Forces of Good are marching on the place). I mean, I even wrote the thing for use with CHAINMAIL, including an appendix of new AD&D specific adaptations, since I never was into "BattleSystem."  Sure, it includes pre-gens bearing a passing resemblance to certain "heroes" of the DL novels and, yeah, it has some Dragon Lords...but it's not really the same adventure. It's not set in Krynn, but in my own PNW world (Moscow, Idaho taking the place of "Neraka"), and you certainly won't find any "draconians" or "kender" or any bars of gold that have been completely devalued by the setting. Au contraire, what you WILL find are heaping piles of treasure, as well as Tiamat who never makes an appearance in the original module, despite featuring prominently on the cover. 

Illo by Clyde Caldwell

Why did I want to play Dragon Wrack? A couple reasons. First, I never had the chance to play-test the thing when I first wrote it (I was under serious time pressure just to get the thing out by the submission deadline). Second, I wanted to take a break from our current campaign...as a test for a future publication, that adventure is requiring a bit more work and attention then I really have time for at the moment. But mainly, it's just that...now that NAP3 has been made available to the general public...I figured I should at least say I've given the thing a spin myself.  And this was as good a time as any.

Hoo-boy.

Problems, problems, problems...abounding, right from the get-go. 

First, there's the premise. Unlike a normal "explore and loot" scenario, DW has a fairly specific objective: find a way to disrupt the Queen and/or her forces so that the Allied army can win the day. Okay, but how? The party is basically the equivalent of a high level task force / commando squad (or the generals of the Allied host...if you want to play it that way)...but this needs to be spelled out a bit. "Intel" could be better: what the players know (and don't know) needs to be very specific, because the time crunch, the time pressure of the thing, is very real once you sit down to play the scenario. My players have been trying to get intel AND formulate plans at the same time, all on the fly, with very mixed results.

The whole intro/background section of the adventure needs rewriting, in other words.

Then there's the town of Moscow: my original idea for the adventure was to include at least a rough sketch / layout of the place, based on actual city maps of the town circa 1890. Unfortunately time constraints caught up with me (I had less than a month to write the whole thing, start to finish), and this got 'cut' from the final. But without something to show the players, keyed or not, it's hard for them to really visualize the situation they're in. Besides which, I hadn't even bothered to decide the answers to questions like 'how open is the town?' 'What are the streets like?' 'Are there dragon army patrols / town militia / etc. and what is their composition?' Once again (as many times before) I was struck by the inadequacy of the game to provide procedures for running a town or urban environment.

The adventure has a decent timeline of events that is based on the specific pre-gens the players choose to use on the adventure. For my players, they wanted to bring their own characters as well (a provision accounted for in the adventure) despite being a little under-leveled (8th and 7th) for the scenario. Because of the particular party composition chosen, the players found themselves just a few hours ahead of the Black Wing of the Dragon Army. However, rather than try to get into the temple first, the players decided to sit and wait, giving the army a chance to enter and occupy the fortress. 

Why? Because they decided to scale the temple/fortress from the outside and wanted to wait till the dead of night to do so. And here again I see things missing from my scenario that would have been useful: pieces about foot traffic in and around the temple, patrols in the grounds, locations of guardsmen, numbers and weapons. Yes, some of this is there...in the form of wandering monster tables and percentage chances for room occupants depending on whether or not the army is present. But, as written, it needs more. And probably needs greater specificity. Also, how long a Wing takes to enter the place and in what order (as well as where they go from there)...all things I ended up needing to work out at the table during play.

Because, at the last minute, the players decided it would be easier to simply infiltrate the place as part of the army; Diego's assassin disguised himself as an orc soldier, the magic-user cast invisibility on Sofia's fighter, and the two joined the back file of grunts marching through the Black Wing's gate.

At this point, we've been playing for two days now (I'm typing this Tuesday morning; while we started the game on Sunday, it ended up continuing to Monday). The lack of clear objectives has meant the players are kind of running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They're divided on whether or not they want to find a way to the roof (to let down their ropes to the others), or find their imprisoned companions (also part of the scenario), or find Tiamat herself (though I'm not sure what they'd do if they did!). They've been wandering about, blundering into places, and then having to explain why they're in the wrong areas/sections (again, notes on how the temple's inhabitants react to such blunders should have been included in the adventure). 

All in all, I'm rather disappointed in how the thing is playing out...so much so that the original title of this post was "Dragon Crap." It IS tense and pressurized, but as written the adventure lacks focus or a clear path of action for the players...and that has meant the pace of the thing has been slow. I'm used to a brisker adventuring style, not this cautious, tentativeness (caused by the lack of direction). It's frustrating; I wish I'd had a chance to play-test before submitting the thing for publication. 

Ah, well.

We'll see how it goes today: last week the kids finished up school for the year, and we ain't got shit to do (at least, not till soccer practice this evening), so I'm sure it will be "game on" after breakfast. The players finally stumbled into a fight (right at the end of yesterday's session) and it seems pretty clear they've managed to alert the section they've been poking around.  I'm going to try spending a little time organizing the pages this morning, to see if I can get some semblance of what organized resistance to the PCs' intrusion. Hopefully, things will go smoother.

Later gators.

: )

Page Counts

Waaaay back in January, I mentioned Ben Gibson was hosting an adventure writing contest (specifically, an adventure site writing contest), but I absolutely failed to write any particular follow-up post on the subject. My apologies. Here's the skinny: the contest ended and, yes, my entry won. 

However, that latter bit is completely unimportant. What IS important is that the compilation of the best entries was released (um, yeah, back in April dude) and is currently available for FREE over at DriveThru. Would you like a handful of adventure sites to sprinkle into your game world as little side excursions? Well, here you go: 32 pages of PDF consisting of eight "adventure sites," each constricted to two pages of text plus map. Not bad. And did I mention it's free?

Here's the bit that I like about it (besides being one of the entries): it's 32 pages.

There was a time when D&D adventure modules ALL clocked in at about "32 pages." That time was long ago, in the magical time period known as the 1980s. 

[funny side note: my kids have romantic notions of the '80s and have often said they wish they'd been alive at that time. My daughter, especially, has lamented that time travel isn't possible, as she'd want to travel back in time to the 1980s and live her childhood then. It makes me laugh. Yes, there are many things about that decade that I miss and/or that I'm nostalgic about, but having LIVED through them...yeah, no. Mm.  Okay, enough...that's a tangent I could wax on about all day...]

And there's good reason for that number. 32 is just eight pages, folded and saddle stitched. Half the size of the B/X books which (at 64 pages each) were just about the limit for a saddle-stitched printer of the time.

Hm. Okay, I'm making an assumption there: my own printer has told me that 64 pages + cover is pretty much the limit of their capabilities. Not sure what reprographics technology was like back in the early 80s. But all those old TSR game manuals (Top Secret, Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, Gamma World, etc.) clocked in at 64 pages or less.

But TSR's adventure modules were always smaller, maxing out at 32 pages apiece...at least up through 1985. 1985 sees the release of WG6: Isle of the Ape (at 48 pages) as well as the Temple of Elemental Evil "super-module" (although that one wasn't saddle-stitched). Beginning in 1986, larger saddle-stitched modules become more and more common offerings from TSR, including most of the final Dragonlance scenarios, B10: Night's Dark Terror, other BECMI-era modules, the DA (Dave Arneson) series of adventures, etc. Of course, 1986 brought the entry of even more "super-modules" to the market, too (A1-4, GDQ, I1-3, etc.) as well as the infamous H-series (Bloodstone). 

In other words: about the same time adventures started turning bad.

Boo-hiss! JB you suck! I love Mentzer's I11: Needle, and I12: Ravenloft 2 is an absolute masterpiece!

Sure, sure, whatever. I'm sure there are plenty of good adventures published by TSR after 1985...my own purchase of modules post-'85 were very few and far between (unless I was picking up old modules...used...from The Book Exchange in Missoula, MT). Fact is that there was a period of time as a kid when I simply had little access to adventure modules at all...that period being between (roughly) 1986 to 1988. As a kid without income (any "allowance" my parents gave me was pretty paltry and probably spent on the occasional comic book), and no car (few places within biking distance of my house at the time carried ANY D&D stuff...maybe B. Dalton's books), there was simply no real opportunity to even peruse these latter-day modules, let alone purchase any. And by the time I got to high school (1988) I was (mostly) out of the D&D hobby anyway, having discovered actual game stores (in the University District and Capitol Hill) and a plethora of distractions...including other RPGs.

These days, though...

There is a limit to what I will read. That's the truth. My time and, frankly, my attention span is rather limited. A 32 page adventure scenario is pretty much the limit of what I can dig into. Oh, I've picked up other offerings...both from the OSR and those "glory days" of the late 1980s...that are far, far larger than 32 pages. But in general they are a slog to read through. And as adventures, they are tricky (for me) to conceptualize and 'hold' in my mind.

Let me explain what I mean by that: when I DM an adventure I need a good "grasp" of the thing to be effective in running it. I need to be able to keep track of the NPCs, the encounters, the way the adventure 'works' (functions) as a site (or sites, if multiple). I need to be able to hold these things in my head in order to react to the antics of the players in a fashion that is appropriate. And by "appropriate" I mean A) in a way which doesn't harm the verisimilitude of the play experience and B) does not cause a cascade effect of errors down the rest of the adventure due to dereliction or neglect. 

Probably I should give examples...and yet I'm so set in how I do adventures already, I don't have any "bad examples" to provide. Perhaps I'm just lazy: maybe I could take and run a 60+ page monstrosity without needing to look stuff up, flip through pages, get confused, get lost. Maybe. Perhaps I've tried running such an adventure in the past and just...can't...remember.

But here's the thing: an adventure is just a scenario. That's it; that's all it is. It (ideally) has a key of encounters that should be both sensible and appropriate (two terms I'm using very specifically). And (again, this is for me) it should have an overall design concept in which those encounters function together in synchronicity...not like a "well-oiled machine," but more like a healthy living organism. Because when we play Dungeons & Dragons we are immersing ourselves in a world and a world lives and breathes. And the person running that world is also a living organism, one subject to error and illness. 

Ugh. I'm probably not laying this out right. Let me approach it from a different angle: 32 pages is IMMENSE, okay? Considering that you are providing a single scenario for adventure...something that the players may choose to ignore or move on from or spend several evenings delving...there is a LOT you can pack into 32 pages. Ravenloft was only 32 pages...and it has more than 120 keyed areas, AND wasted page count on full page illustrations and fortune-card mini-games. The entire Against the Giant series (G1-G3) was published in a 32 pages, and that can take months to complete.  32 pages is a LOT.

If you need more than 32 pages to pen your adventure module, then it probably needs to be broken up into more than one scenario.

That's my opinion, of course. But it feels like a lot of these huge page count adventures are "something more" than a single scenario. They are "setting guides." Or they are "mini-campaigns." And, especially with regard to the latter, why wouldn't you break them into different sections, different linked/related adventures rather than a single, unwieldy book?

Of course, there are also the vaunted "mega-dungeons": the Barrowmazes and the Stone Hells. I know some folks love these. I know that some folks consider mega-dungeon delving to be the TRUE way of playing D&D based on the examples set down by Gygax and Arneson (with Castles Greyhawk and Blackmoor, respectively). They're not for me. I am nearly as interested...and yet far more invested...in the world outside the dungeon, as in the dungeon itself. The idea of playing through a dozen levels of anything is foreign to my game...why O why would I ever want to purchase such a thing for my table?

Heck, I've never been able to finish reading the Temple of Elemental Evil without dozing off.

So, I've come to a conclusion: I'm not going to write any any adventures with a page count higher than 32. 'Big deal, JB, you don't write adventures.' Well, I'm starting to. And I'm going to set some working parameters for myself. 32 pages, including cover page, appendices, pre-gens, etc. That's it. Truth be told, I am a little disappointed that Dragon Wrack was a whopping 41 pages...however, in my defense it did include six pages of pre-gen write-ups and a three page Chainmail supplement.

No more!

I'm totally serious here (silly as this subject might sound). An adventure should offer maximum playability with minimal prep. A 32 page adventure module can be read and digested in an afternoon, and run in the evening...THAT should be the goal. The adventure isn't the game, after all. Oh, it's a big part of the game, but it. Ain't. The. Game. 

[I feel like I'm writing a lot of sentences like that lately]

32 pages should be an absolute maximum for the adventure proper. Many adventures shouldn't even need that many pages (pick up a copy of classics like S1: Tomb of Horrors or C1: Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and remove the illustration booklets...count how many pages those are). Just what are we doing these days with the adventures being published. Here's a list of the last 25 adventures reviewed over at TenFootPole:

1. a 60 page "non-adventure"
2. a 17 page adventure with a 7-room dungeon
3. a 32 page "walking simulator" (not an adventure)
4. a 17 page adventure with a single encounter
5. a 30 page adventure with 6 encounters
6. an 18 page adventure with 12 rooms
7. an 87 page adventure with 30 rooms
8. a 100 page adventure with 60ish rooms
9. a 48 page "digest pointcrawl" with 17 encounters
10. a 100 page dungeon of nine levels
11. a 150 page supplement/setting guide
12. a 104 page jungle hexcrawl
13. a 120 page city supplement featuring 3 dungeons ("not an adventure")
14. a 58 page adventure featuring 67 encounters
15. a 34 page regional guide with "nothing of interest"
16. a 182 page adventure (holy jeez)
17. a 31 page adventure featuring 3 mini dungeons of 6ish rooms each
18. a 75 page "Call of Cthulhu-type" adventure
19. a 38 page "not an adventure"
20. a 30 page adventure that seems pretty good
21. a 24 page adventure that also seems pretty good
22. a 24 page adventure with 35 rooms
23. an 8 page adventure describing 12 encounters
24. a 44 page incomprehensible "adventure"
25. a 19 page "adventure" consisting of random tables

[why am I looking at Bryce Lynch's reviews? Because A) he is prolific and experienced, B) he has standards to which he adheres, C) he (tries to) only review things classified as "adventures" and does so fairly indiscrimately]

Of those 25, 14 have too high a page count for (my) practical purposes, 3 more are non-adventures, and 4 of those left have a higher page count than the number of encounters in the thing (which is totally unacceptable). That's 21 of 25 (84%) automatically eliminated from my consideration for running, regardless of how "good" the review might be.

Of the four remaining, #22 and #23 get eliminated due to their ratio of encounters to page count. Yeah, there are more encounters than pages, but nor much more...a designer should not need a whole page to detail an encounter, and even though I realize the number given is the average...well, that's still too much extraneous detail/padding for my taste. Tighten it up, folks!

*sigh*  I'm sure I'm coming off as entirely unfair and/or "out of touch with the times." Yeah, okay. I'm mean and old (and getting meaner and older). But here's the thing: adventures are meant to be played, not read. Yes, I know some people purchase these things strictly for reading enjoyment. Yes, I'm aware that writers publish material with this very criteria in mind (and that's how they earn their bread). Yes, I realize that a shit-ton of people don't really understand this hobby we're in. I get it. Fine.

Adventures are meant to be played, not read. D&D is meant to be experienced through play...not through reading a book and/or watching other people (i.e. on a streaming series). I get that people derive enjoyment from this type of thing, and that's fine (if, IMO, "weird"). But folks that are doing this are NOT "playing D&D."  They are not doing the activity that we call gaming. They are doing AN ACTIVITY, but it is NOT gaming. It is reading. It is watching. It is "fanning." It is consuming.

But it's not playing D&D.

Adventure modules facilitate play of the game. That is: they make it easier. Or, rather, they should make it easier. That was their original purpose. But that's been lost...for the most part. It happens. A lot of things have been lost over the years. Doesn't mean we all need to (or want to) travel back in time to the 1980s.

My parameters are my own. You're welcome to create your own parameters. "32 pages" works for me.

Adventure Writing

One thing about cutting out the booze and caffeine...so long as I don't overeat and get to bed at a decent hour, I tend not to sleep all that long. 

Today I awoke a bit before 5am, which is less than six hours of sleep, but part of that is stress. I've got a lot I've got to get done today...a LOT. None of it should be terribly hard, just mentally taxing as I have to deal with a number of different people with a number of different emotional needs and pitfalls to navigate. That bit's a challenge but...whatever. I said I'd do it, so I've got to do it.

Also, it's our last volleyball practice before our first game. Oh, man. Things are looking better than they were, but there is a LOT we haven't covered, especially regarding on-court procedures. And tonight's practice is going to be a short one; communicating info to the players while still working skills is going to be tight. I'm hoping we have a full roster today. I'm hoping the jerseys come this morning (they're supposed to) and that they fit. I'm hoping we're competitive this weekend. 

And the taxes still need finishing.  *sigh*

SO...adventure writing. A nice distraction from the stress and humdrum of daily life. I think I've done more adventure writing in the last 7-8 months than I've done in the last 7-8 years. Okay, that's probably an exaggeration. But I've certainly been writing more standalone, site-based adventures recently than any period I can remember in the past.  Contests and conventions have been largely the reason for this writing "explosion," but its also enjoyable work: a creative exercise, a stretching of the mental muscles. Adventure writing is one part of the DM's "craft," and it's fun to indulge in this aspect of the work. It's a chance to strut a bit...to show others what I'm capable of, to exhibit my own particular style and knowledge base.

And it's good practice. The strictures and limitations imposed by contests or the needs of a con game (time blocks, etc.) forces restraint, requires me to be "tighter" in my writing...expressing the needed information in the most efficient, practical means possible, for maximum clarity and playability. It's good, challenging work...and I enjoy good, challenging work...the same way one enjoys a good session of physical training (in the gym or on the field for example). It feels good to be constructive.

It's also nice to get feedback on one's writing. Most all the things I've published lately have received reviews from one source or another. Here (for the interested) are some of the latest:

Ship of Fate, Shrine of the Demon Goddess, Dragonwrack, Lost Vault of Kadish

This is all good stuff. Not just because positive feedback is encouraging, but because critique shows me ways I can improve...things I'm not doing well enough, areas I need to improve, exposition that needs more clarity. I've written before that reviews of game adventures are largely unfruitful without having played (and, thus, experienced) the adventure...however, for the author of  the adventure, reviews are helpful: they show whether our ideas are "landing" and whether or not they make sense for the person doing the reading. 

If we can't communicate the ideas properly, how is there even a chance that the adventure can be run in a fun and engaging manner?

These are the thoughts I'm having this morning. That and the question of whether or not, going forward, I should try monetizing such works. To date, all the adventures I've published have been freebies, downloadable from my mediafire files. Each adventure has garnered several hundred downloads. If I had polished them and sold them as PDFs on DriveThruRPG for a buck apiece, I could have netted...well, you get the math. Not a lot of money...but not insignificant, either. ANY money exchanged for one's creative endeavors is "significant;" it tangibly affirms the artist's decision to create.

Anyway...

Just my thoughts as I down my (decaf) coffee and prepare for the morning ritual to begin. And...it's time to go. I'll yak at y'all later.

: )

Writing Adventures

I got back into Seattle on Tuesday. My grandmother passed away yesterday (Wednesday); I got the call at the same time I was placing flowers on my mother's gravestone, one week after her burial.

Life goes on.

***

In addition to all the "real world" stuff I've got on my plate at the moment, I'm currently engaged in a crap-ton of adventure writing. I mean, a LOT.

The re-write/re-purposing of the I3-I5 Desert of Desolation series has been temporarily suspended. Not because it's not a great idea (I mean...I love it), that it's really not suitable (even as an open region of my campaign world) for exploration by characters under 3rd level or so.  And all my players are about to start over (Friday afternoon) with brand-spanking new 1st level characters.

TPKs have a way of resetting things.

SO, I need some low-level stuff to get them up to snuff. Because I've been busy, and because I needed a breath of fresh air, I took the time to comb through the racks and a game shop near my grandmother's house in Missoula. Shout out to Retrofit Games, which had an absolutely beautiful store and friendly/helpful staff, who were able to get me something sufficient for my needs (as well as great recommendation for a cheeseburger in town: Frugal's. Get "the Classic Fix"). 

What I got, was a 20 page DCC Lankhmar adventure module written by Michael Curtis called Grave Matters. I am on record as a "non-fan" of the DCC system (which I've played before, multiple times), but it's close enough to B/X...which is close enough to AD&D...that I can make it function with minimal work.

And I mean minimal. Curtis knows his stuff ("Duh," says all the people who own Stonehell Dungeon, etc. However, this is my first product of his so far as I know). For a measly $10, I got a book with TWO adventures (Grave Matters and Madhouse Meet), neither of which suck, and perfectly suitable for PCs of 1st and 2nd level. The treasure counts are even (well, almost) correct, which is the usual thing you find lacking in OSR games.

SO...yeah, Lankhmar-esque adventure is perfectly fine for my Bandit Kingdom Boise. And with a little x.p. under their belts, it should be a simple matter of slipping the group a treasure map to get them out into the desert...probably a nice way to leave behind past shenanigans.

But campaign stuff isn't the only thing for which I'm writing. Turns out I'm going to a game convention this year...my first since the pandemic...and even though it's not till October, I plan to be well-prepped for the three game slots I'm slated for. The con is called Cauldron, "the OSR EuroCon" and it's supposed to be a celebration of 1st edition AD&D that will play out over three days in Hessen, Germany. Fortunately, it is an international affair and so games will be run in English (the international language of tourists). 

Room and board...and beer...appears to all be included in the ticket price, but you have to bring your own books and dice, and I'm cognizant of my responsibility to represent the USA well (currently, I'm the only Ugly American on the docket). Because I am old and lazy, and because it is one of my most beloved adventure modules, I am re-writing I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City into something suitable for a three-part, con-style adventure series that...um...doesn't suck(?) too much (??). 

Con games are tricky: you have a few hours to get down to business, and (hopefully) provide a fair amount of game play, with a satisfying (or conclusive) end. Cauldron also has the additional challenge of being run with ADDKON rules (Germany's version of the FLAILSNAILS conventions)...which for me means that I'm not running these as one-offs but as adventures that will impact the PCs even after I've left their schönes Land (und bier) behind. No apocalyptic party-nuking scenarios, just good clean AD&D.

ANYway. It should be great, but I want to play-test those, too. And ideally, that will mean getting my current group up to 5th & 6th level by the end of the summer. Doable...but a tall order nevertheless.

Especially considering Prince of Nothing just announced his (third) annual NoArt-Punk contest. And, of course, I want to enter (again). And, of course, I want to put forth a good showing and build on what I learned in the last two NAP events. And THIS year, the theme is "high level" D&D, something that holds a special place in my heart. My last two entries (one of which was a finalist and got a place in the book) were both written for parties of 10th-14th level. I'm thinking this year's will be more in the 9th-12th level range, but I already have an idea for it and it's a little on the ambitious side: something on the scale of 60-some encounters instead of my normal 30ish. Which (to give you some perspective) would be around 50% larger than all three scenarios I'm writing for Cauldron combined. No small feat, especially considering I need to draw the maps and I suck at maps.

But NAP III isn't due till November 30th. Prince suggested I write it on the long flight back from Germany to Seattle. We'll see.

Yeah: a lot of adventure cobbling going on at the moment, some of it fairly ambitious. But working with monsters and traps and treasures and fantasy scenarios is a welcome respite from dealing with all the other "stuff" that's going on in my life at the moment. And these respites help keep me...mm...stable? Not sure the word I'm looking for ("grounded" ain't it). D&D helps let the pressure off; it's the valve that keeps the steam from blowing the kettle. I'm not sure if my life would function better (or differently) without it, but for right now I'm glad to have it.

Later, Gators.

Literacy

I'm guessing this post will be shorter than the last one. Yay!

Continuing the discussion of languages in D&D, we move on to the subject of literacy which for game purposes I'm going to define as "the ability to communicate through writing." That's a little more than the literal definition of the term (which is simply the ability to read and write), but for purposes of a game rule/system I want to make sure I'm considering "practical application."

The history of writing is a long and interesting one that predates the invention of paper. Mainly, the need for a written form of communication seems to have been tied to the rise of administration/bureaucracy (which itself was only made possible by the advent of agrarian culture and large communities of people starting to congregate). This is a gross simplification (I am as much a hack academic as I am a hack writer), but it works well enough for where I'm going with this (plus I said I wanted this to be shorter!).

The main part of originating writing is the development of an alphabet: illustrative characters that can represent sounds, words, or whole concepts. The alphabet I use (that I'm typing in right now) is the Latin alphabet, first developed some 2700 years ago (though it wasn't the same then as it is today). Other alphabets developed other places. Some of these are still used today, many have fallen by the way (or been subsumed into others). 

The latin alphabet is used throughout most of the "western world," because of the reach of the old Roman Empire and its influence on the rise of western culture. Romans needed writing because they had a gigantic bureaucracy to administer. Prior to its fall, folks living within the empire (both citizens and non-) enjoyed a high level of literacy and writing seems to have been quite proliferate. After the disintegration of the Empire...and the loss of a cheap source of writing material (papyrus from Egypt), literacy fell drastically in western Europe, and would remain low for centuries. 

[one might ask which came first: loss of literacy or loss of governmental cohesion. They probably fed into each other in a death spiral of de-evolution]

Again...I am grossly simplifying because it's not my objective to write a long essay on the subject (lots of good sources on this stuff exists for interested folks). However, for purposes of world building...and then rule design...this gross simplification provides the foundational material I'm working with.

Does the Dungeons & Dragons world need literacy? That's not a terrible question to ask. Originally, the main things PCs were supposed to read included spell books, magic scrolls, and treasure maps (all of which I intend to discuss in a follow-up post). And other then scribing ones own scrolls, the only thing a character was presumed to need to write were hiring notices posted at taverns...and, of course, one could hand-wave even this, given the likely illiteracy of desirable hires (especially considering it's the exact same cost for simply "having servitors circulate in public places, seeking such persons"). 

Spells like read languages (from OD&D, book 1), magic items like a helm of reading magic and languages (from OD&D, book 2), and the thief's ability to read languages are all explicit to reading treasure maps:

Thieves of the 3rd level and above are able to read most (80%) languages, so treasure maps can be read and understood by them without recourse to a spell.

- Supplement I (Greyhawk), page 4

Reading doesn't otherwise appear to have been all that important (note the low level associated with both the spell and the thief ability) to the D&D game. As Alexis pointed out the other day, having written text for PCs to discover is generally just finding a different, novel way of delivering exposition to the players. And if that writing is in a language that they don't understand (or can't read), the only thing you're gaining is time; i.e. the DM is delaying the delivery of exposition to the PCs, which is only rarely useful.

And yet, in my mind's eye I always remember that scene in 1952 film Ivanhoe in which Robert Taylor seeks out a local priest to read a letter confirming the location of King Richard (Ivanhoe is not a stupid man but obviously an illiterate nobleman...not terribly unusual for the 12th century). It's not "exposition" that's gained from the priest's literacy, but a useful clue. Such a clue isn't necessary to your typical D&D adventuring party (who could just as easily decide to assault every keep in Austria until they find their king or die terribly), but it is a useful piece of information, helping to save resources (and lives). And the prospect of a literate captive (one with whom a literate party might communicate via message) ALSO has uses. 

Even so, that's a fairly singular example of mundane literacy being useful (the party cannot be expected to rescue a king in durance vile every week!), and as far as using written messages with each other, nothing prevents party members from working out their own coded signs...or hiring scribes to read/write for them. 

The main reason that I want literacy is from a world building perspective. I like the idea of there being books in the world to be read, and useful information to be gleaned from their pages. Sages are hella' expensive after all...though that might simply reflect the fact that few persons can read the texts in the sage's library (ooo...I like the idea of a book thief campaign!). Useful hints, rumors, legends, and even magical command words should be available to the person able to read the memoirs and journals that have been left behind by other, literate folk. And the quest for folks who can read ancient alphabets...well that can be an adventure in and of itself!

SO...to the rules. There are two parts to comprehending writing: understanding the alphabet, and understanding the language the alphabet is expressing. I can read the Latin alphabet just fine, but if the words are in Danish, I'm not going to grasp what's been written down. In my campaign world, there are only a handful of written alphabets, all developed by their own cultures (generally long ages prior to the start of the campaign) for the purpose of administering their civilizations:

• the "Common" alphabet used by humans
• ancient elvish, a script not used in a thousand years
• "common" elvish
• runic dwarf (mainly used for counting and/or religious/magical purpose)

NOTE: ancient elvish can only be used by someone with fluency in elvish; runic dwarf may only be used by someone with fluency in dwarfish. These symbols used in both these languages communicate concepts, not just sounds, and cannot be used to transliterate the languages of other cultures.

There are at least two other languages I'm toying with adding: one will be related to an ancient snake-man (yuan ti) civilization, lost in the southern jungles. The other would be an "Underdark alphabet" used as a common script by the various deep dwellers (drow, svirfneblin, etc.); though drow themselves will mainly use a "tarted up" version of ancient elvish. Mind flayers, being big-brained telepaths, have never needed to develop an alphabet. 

Most of the other sentient humanoids of game world neither have nor use alphabets of their own. Goblins, orcs, gnolls, lizard men...none of these creatures have ever had the administrative needs to develop their own forms of writing, and few have access to learning the writing of others. That doesn't mean there aren't literate humanoids! They are just few and far between and the ones that do write are most likely to use the "Common" alphabet of humans.

[though to whom would they write?]

Learning any single alphabet requires only one point from the character's pool of language points (see the rules in my fluency post). Some DMs might want to make particularly rare or difficult languages "cost more" to learn...I don't. It amuses me to have a halfling academic who knows how to write "good morning" in common elvish without actually being able to speak elvish, or to have a rather low intelligence dwarf who still knows his holy runic writing.

Oh, and just by the way: with the inclusion of these rules I will be removing the thief skill of reading languages from the game. But that will be discussed in my next post regarding secret languages.

: )

Making Clerics Work

The last couple days have been "Snowmageddon" up here in Seattle. Not really an issue (I've got four wheel drive these days, even if I wanted to go somewhere...and who needs to when the supermarket is across the street from my house?), but my kids have been out of school. Which is fun but means I've been "on duty" for four straight days without a break.

I hate this. I hate resenting my family, who I love. But my wife gets home from work and she wants my attention even (or especially) after the kids have gone to bed. Damn it, I need some time to myself! And sleep...some time.

*sigh*

Mainly, I just want to get back to my writing. Been working on putting Cry Dark Future together. It's been slow going, but it IS coming together...finally. Was working on it last week (till Thursday...Fridays are the wife's day off and, as said, she wants/needs some attention). Now, well, hopefully I'll have a couple hours tomorrow....literally. As of now, I know the school's going to be two hours late, which means I'll have from 10:30 till 12:30 to write before my preschooler needs to be picked up.

ANYWAY...while staying up too late last night (folding laundry), I got the chance to listen to Delta's most recent "livecast" video with the Wandering DM. I found myself (in my usual fugue state), nodding along with their ideas of chopping the cleric class from their D&D game, quickly eliminating (in true Gordian Knot fashion) all the multitude of issues associated with the class.

[if you're...at this moment...saying, "what issues?" then you might want to go check out the video. They do a good job explaining]

[jeez...while I'm taking a few minutes to type this up, my wife is in the other room watching CNN with the children, explaining what the State of the Union address is. My kids are eight and four. We are such crazy parents]

Anyway (did I already say that?)...as I was trying to drift off to sleep, sometime after midnight, I found myself thinking of all the ways to answer those clerical "problems" without cutting the class from the game. Despite the spinning wheels preventing my rest, I have to say I really appreciated my brain's efforts because I LIKE having clerics in my games (for lots of reasons), and I think it's easier to make minor tweaks that deal with the problematic aspects than defaulting to a "nuclear option."

And because I've been neglecting

[...whoops! Duty calls!]

[many hours later]

...because I've been neglecting my blog readers, I figured I'd share some of MY answers to the problematic parts of clerics.

Wizard or Evil High Priest
(or both)?

1) Sword & Sorcery world VS. Catholic Crusaders: this is an old complaint. D&D is an adventure game largely inspired by fiction based on the pre- (or non-) Christian worlds of Howard, Leiber, etc. yet features a class whose abilities are based off Christian scripture and (Christian) horror fiction. How do you reconcile a monotheistic theology in a polytheistic cosmology? The short answer is: you don't. Keep your Christian pantheon (or fantasy/fictional equivalent) and spurn the other pantheons (whether demonic, Norse, Mesoamerican, or whatever) completely. All "true" clerics worship (and gain spells/abilities) from the "one, true God" though different sects/religions might call that deity by different names (Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah, etc.). Priests of "false gods" belong to other classes (magic-users or fighters most likely, depending on the emphasis of their training)...or are simply clerics that lack spell-casting ability.  In a world like Lankhmar or Aspirin's Thieves World where filthy, crowded cities have whole districts of temples and shrines, you (the DM) will need to determine which ones belong to a "true faith," which ones are demon-worshipping sorcerers, and which are simple hucksters of false gods. They don't all have to be "clerics."

2) Clerics ever-expanding spell list: another old complaint...every time a new clerical spell gets added, all clerics become more powerful (because clerics have access to every spell, unlike wizards). The easiest fix is to treat clerical magic as spells: each spell is a prayer that must be learned just like a wizard's spell formula, limiting clerics to a finite number of spells. This allows clerical spell research (not to mention clerical spell scrolls) to make sense. "But if cleric magic is just another type of spell, why are the spell lists different from a magic-user's?" For the same reason illusionists have a different list...or druids. They are simply different types of magic.

3) The importance of healing (and clerics' healing ability) forcing the class into the role of "medic": I have to say Delta's idea of simply populating his campaign with easily found healing potions really bugs me. First off, OD&D specifically limited spell use to one use of each spell per day (page 19 of Men & Magic), so for folks basing their game on the LBBs, there should be no issue with "lack of variety" of cleric magic (you can't use cure light wounds more than once per day anyway). Another idea I've used before (in Five Ancient Kingdoms) was to limit clerical healing to adventures only: as God-granted miracles, healing magic (or any type of clerical spells) are unavailable between adventures (i.e. "back in town"), instead only being granted when out on an expedition. Clerical magic is a plea of desperation for divine intercession when facing incredible danger...not some trip to the fantasy spa for a little R&R. Make characters heal the "old fashion way" (bed rest and chicken soup) once they've left the dungeon.

4) "Weaponized" clerical magic: have to say I agree that I hate the idea of using clerical spells like light and silence in an offensive capacity (to blind an opponent or neutralize spell-casters); even B/X does this, which just isn't right (permanently blind someone with a targeted continual light? This should be the purview of the curse spell). The easiest fix here is (again) to go back to OD&D where there are no such use of these helpful spells (neither light nor continual light allowed targeting of opponents' eyes, and silence 15' radius was used to "move with no sound" or to silence "an object or thing" not an enemy spell-caster...see Greyhawk, page 30).

5) Providing parties with a "too easy" method of neutralizing undead: this is only an issue if you allow multiple turning attempts against the same opponent in a single encounter (I don't) and/or you're using undead in singular numbers like some cinematic horror antagonist. Mummies (as tomb guardians) should be buried in numbers, vampires should have their "spawn" with them (brides of Dracula?), and Ring-Wraiths (i.e. "specters") always travel in packs. Against multiples of undead a cleric is going to have a much lesser effect, given that no more than one 7 HD vampire can ever be turned/destroyed, even by a cleric of level 11+ (since a successful result only affects 2d6 hit dice of undead).

Drac and "Friends"

Oh, wait...I see this is a case where B/X is actually more limiting than OD&D (in OD&D clerical turning affects a number of undead equal to 2d6). Okay, so the fix here is use the B/X system instead of OD&D...and then make sure your undead are found in numbers greater than one. At least, the undead that you don't want to see turned/destroyed. One of the methods a B/X party has to overcome monsters is breaking their morale; the undead's fearlessness in this regard (which makes them even more dangerous than their special abilities) is offset by the cleric's ability to drive them away. I don't particularly mind that myself.

[okay, I ended up writing most of this post Wednesday morning. Sorry for the delay]

Harder Than I Figured

Yesterday, I started on some of the re-writes I talked about for Cry Dark Future. It was some slow going...I mean, really REALLY slow. By the end of my time in front of the Word doc, I had a few more than 600 words. I knock out blog posts longer than that in a fraction of the time. True, my blog isn't carefully crafted design or incredibly accurate grammatically or anything, but still...I'm talking first draft here. And a first draft of "easy" material at that!

[to be fair, I was a bit distracted yesterday by the whole Howard Schultz meltdown that's been going down locally. People outside of the Northwest might think it's "interesting" to have a coffee magnate billionaire as a possible presidential candidate (or "crazy" considering he has no public service experience or "selfish" considering his stated desire to run as an Independent). People around my neck of the woods, OTOH, are losing their shit due to Schultz being a reviled persona non grata for his role in costing Seattle the Supersonics. As one local radio pointed out, "Ken Behring tried to tank the Seahawks and move them to Anaheim, even hiring a general manager later accused of murdering someone with a crossbow, and HE's not as hated as Schultz." Now, I happen to have info (and on fairly good authority) that Mr. Schultz is actually a kind and decent human being, but I'll be surprised if he goes through with a presidential bid, considering the difficulty he'd have even winning in his (adopted) home state...and Oklahoma only has half the electoral votes Washington does]

Still, the more I peck away at the thing, the quicker the molasses seems to to flow. It's just been a while since I've actually done this kind of thing (working with B/X, writing rules in this format, getting this type of design into my "headspace," etc.). I'm a little leery about the magic system, as there are still a couple issues I haven't yet solved...though it turns out I already got the spell lists written a few years back (when I was re-writing the game as a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting), so that's not an issue. But...well, one thing at a time.

Anyway, I'm working. I'm writing. I really am. I'll throw an update up here by the end of the day, just to give folks an idea of the, uh, progress. At least, I'm (mostly) over my cold, but I'm still tired...went to bed earlier than normal and still slept in. Ah, well: baby steps.