Alignment I: It's A Relationship

A decade ago I dedicated a number of posts to thrashing through alignment in the D&D family of games. A few complicated half-baked systems emerged in these pages. But in the actual play of games I've run since then, I've never had players write down their alignment. Let me show you how it works instead, from my online game this year.

The atmospheric "burning bridge" from Dragon Age -- looks well burnt!

The adventurers, seeking a prophecy at a Dervish shrine, had to cross a magic bridge. The span gave protection from fire through black ashes that floated up from the chasm below and stuck to the person on the bridge. The amount of ashes was in proportion to the virtue of the person. This was relevant to the next magic bridge, which roasted its passengers with flames.

Judging this strange place was uncontroversial. Everyone remembered the characteristics that had emerged over by then six months of weekly play. Some characters had shown benevolence and moral prudence, attracting a full coating. Others had shown the deficient magnetism of their moral compass by constantly urging mayhem, torture, and murder. Sparse were their ashes indeed! 

And this discrepancy set up one of the more touching moments of the campaign. A virtuous lizardman sun-priest embraced a questionable armadillo-folk* entertainer, and this act of compassion transferred half of his protection to the sinner, allowing both to pass scorched but alive.

Indirectly, my example illustrates the first and most useful point about alignment. It is not a rule, but a relationship.  I treated the rewards of virtue as judgement from an implied spirit of the bridge. The spirit had total access to past deeds, and its own concept of sin and virtue. Would a different spirit have decided differently? Possibly!

Do you, the GM or designer, sometimes need to make benefits or malisons depend upon player behavior? You can avoid the many pitfalls of a universal rule by stepping into the role of a supernatural judge with its own agenda. For example, if you feel the powers of a paladin need a limitation on behavior, you can make level advancement conditional on a "performance review" with an angelic tutor. Play it out as you would for any other non-player character in a mentor role.

Alignment in the environment is another story. You can have spells that detect, defend, and attack the forces of good, evil, law, and chaos. But only by becoming a lich or a saint can a player-character register in this world of essences.

This brings me to two ideas from my earlier musings on alignment. They have endured in my game-running, not as rules, but as principles, lurking in the background. I'll cover them in the next two posts.

Alignment is inconsistent - but so is morality

Neutrality is everyday morality

One Page Dungeon Contest 2020: Stela Obliterata

In these pandemic times, I have summoned seven redoubtable players from my previous one-shot games and campaigns to join in a weekly online game, following the path of least resistance to Roll20 and the well-supported, and still world's most popular, 5th edition D&D. For this year's One Page contest I thought I'd work-up an area based on the campaign.

Here I must ask my current players to look no further!

The campaign is set in a region of Mittellus, far away from where eight years ago the Game of Iron campaign began. It is a desert-ringed land, culturally combining ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the ruling empire a torpid and death-obsessed metropolis amid concentric canals that divert its life-giving river. There is more promise in the vassal kingdoms. The campaign began at the edge of one of these, Wahattu, which had recently seen its neighbor Dulsharna fall to incursions of gnolls.

My principal goal was to make this campaign last longer in game time than previous ones, which had compressed three or more years of real-time play into less than a game-year. To this end, characters would spend months between levels training up. I also wanted to give the players more of a stake in the land by having them sponsor and economically improve the last bordering village, Alakran.

After about 12 sessions they have had some outdoor and social adventures, and run through two adapted scenarios I placed in the map (Jason Morningstar's Khas Fara from Fight on! #2, their introduction to Alarkan; and following a newly dry streambed to relieve a family of flying camels from drought, they found it had been diverted to feed the fell doings of the Sinister Shroom, whose Pod Caverns lay below).

I might have more to say about this low-level economic game, and about 5th edition in general. later on. But right now, here's the entry ... wherein the players have only ventured to, and been soundly thrashed in, the bronze cedar tomb.

Saints, Gods and Pretty Pictures

Thought I'd share a long-standing illustration I've been using to introduce players to the canon of saints and holy days in my original campaign world (well, original in the sense that it's yet another way to present Is-Europe-Is-Not-Europe) ...

Click, enlarge

This approach leads me to think how else illustrations could be repurposed by a world creator in need of a quick and dirty pantheon. For example, Sidney Sime's illustrations could illustrate an exotic, Tekumel-like religion ...

Not the god of square dealing

But a surprisingly good resource is the Marvel universe, in particular marvel.wikia.com searched under "gods." Thor over the years had dealt with many other pantheons, and the more obscure of these make great god-fodder for an original campaign ....

And if you can stand this level of comic-bookery then maybe you could just cut out the middleman and have your world worship one of the more obscure groups of superheroes. Like for example, I dunno, the Young Gods:

In fact, names like "Highnote" and "Splice" are just begging to be filed off, and I'm not sure how even as actual superheroes, these people can face the modern world they never made each morning. She's the sun goddess Zos, he's the moon god Elu, together they fight crime. Much better.

Fantasy Science

For the past six or so sessions I have been DM'ing the Band of Iron in an adventure set in an ancient compound on a remote, mountainous island, built by the lost race of Golden Men. It's fair to say that the adventure, while light on treasure, has opened up unknown vistas, revelations about cosmic and human history,and encounters with wonders unknown to our heroes so far.

Now, a classic conceit of Science Fantasy is to have the "wonders of the ancients" be the products of a technological civilization, even ours ...

YOU BASTARDS

Not so, the World of Mittellus. It's inevitable that a game of exploration eventually reveals deep secrets of the far past, but in doing so I consciously tried to avoid that particular cliche. My reasoning (Band of Iron players may read on, as you have already figured out what I'm going to say about the Golden Race):

The kind of adventure scenarios that D&D-type games support best involve medieval-level technology people journeying to a lost, mysterious labyrinth, there to confront monsters and perils, and haul back wondrous artifacts and treasures. As some have noted, this encourages a background assumption of a fallen world, consistent with many of the source inspirations for D&D. In particular, Jack Vance's Dying Earth gives a well-reasoned background for magic, in which the "basic science" that allowed generation of new spells has been lost, leaving only an "applied science" of spells learned by rote - literally crammed into the brain!

Specifically, let's think of any technique or technology as having four elements:

Research:  theoretical knowledge of the underlying phenomena generates new ideas;
Development: experimentation and testing creates new applications;
Engineering: specialist knowledge keeps the techniques running in a stable state; and
User Interface: the techniques are adapted for use by non-specialists.

In D&D, as in Vance, the Research stage has been lost - otherwise, the magic would look more like Ars Magica's theoretically coherent system. Wizardry in Vance is essentially Engineering, learning set spells at a great cost in training, and only rare and costly magic items present an easy User Interface. And D&D allows for spell research, but only by trial and error, typical of the Development layer cut off from Research.

Golden Race: so old they used Myspace.

The era of the Golden Race, I thought, would be one in which the Research and UI aspects of the color magic system had been fully developed, unlike the present Vancian age of the world Mittellus. Magical forces had been harnessed beyond the single spell; forget "Continual Light streetlights" when power, heat and illumination were provided by raw Red magic, force fields and matter creation by Blue, alteration by Yellow and so on. Additionally, the reversed colors of magic were understood; anti-Red gave stasis, anti-Blue gave utter destruction (great for garbage disposal), anti-Yellow preservation and so on.

On the user level, the most simple magical powers were coded into site-specific patches of color, as well as items, most of which are now lost or destroyed. More complicated procedures like medical regeneration required some degree of specialist knowledge and mental training.

For other people's games, the above analysis of technology provides an easy rebuttal to those who wonder why magic doesn't automatically lead to sorcerous streetcars and demonic dishwashers. If magic is confined to a guild where specialized knowledge is needed to wield it, then individual wizards may conjure up invisible butlers for themselves or for the masters they serve, but the lack of an large Engineering class means that magic never becomes an institution. Without the engineers of magic, its phenomena are confined to the lab and testing grounds.

Think of the analogy in technological fiction; it's no coincidence that the typical pulp techno-villain is someone who has hatched an advanced technique of mass control or destruction in isolation. The only thing distinguishing the D&D wizard from the Bond villain is the flavor of handwavium needed to explain their wondrous deeds.

Hermits of Renown

The holy lands of the Inviolacy have attracted and encouraged a roster of religious eccentrics. Abandoning comfort and hygiene, they dispense wisdom from sylvan retreats. Here are three of the most notable.

THE DENDRITE

Renouncing his name, this venerable fellow set to climb the most secluded oak in the park of the bustling city of Schiecchi. He has been there so many years that he could not leave if he wanted, because his beard has become entangled in the leaves and branches of the tree; his garment is simply this self-same beard, augmented by dead leaves and acorns. Birds and squirrels bring his meager provender. He is a beloved treasure of the town, and especially valued when the affairs so often consummated in the leafy lanes of the park bring unwanted complications.

Advises the laity on: Practical matters, the lovelorn, the casting off of passions.
Weakness: Greatly craves any verbal description of food and drink.

THE TWO HERMITS

Reasoning that solitude is an even more meaningful devotion when practiced in the company of another, these two men - alias "Destra" and "Sinistra" - decided to join forces, sharing the same cavern two miles outside the metropolis of Fanguillia, but refusing to acknowledge each other's existence. They receive visitors in a glade, where they sit on opposite sides of the same stump. Their devotion is reinforced by the braiding together of their beards, which have reached a prodigious length.

A small devotional industry has sprung up around the Two Hermits; pilgrims must pay 2 silver pieces in the chapel of St. Sylvain in the Fanguillia cathedral for an oak leaf badge for the journey, then a consulting fee of 5 silver on arrival, and a further fee of 2 silver to replace their oak leaf with the twig rood indicating successful pilgrimage. Furthermore, a great variety of refreshments, religious figurines, medallions, scapulars, unguents, lamps, candles and candelabra are on sale from a spacious shack outside their grove. Based on these proceeds, their forms avoid any suggestion of haggardness, and their garments, while plain, are never shabby.

Advise the laity on: Visions suggesting what to do next, especially for those who feel they have missed something obvious, with a touch of homespun pragmatism (Destra) or tough love (Sinestra).
Weakness: They have grown to hate each other and will not pass up the opportunity to make some pointed comment, which the other must pretend not to hear.

TITHONUS, THE FORMER ORNAMENT

The Duke of Santilena, having enclosed and ornamented a spacious pleasure garden with flora, wildlife, and picturesque ruins brought in from every corner of the Middle Sea, found lacking from this romantic idyll only a wise old hermit. Being more comfortable with the mystique of faith than its uncomfortable restrictions, he advertised around the town for a desperate young man of the laity who would be contracted to grow out beard and nails, dwell in a hut on the premises, and offer pithy aphorisms to visitors. The cleverest of the applicants, one Neppo, was hired on the spot and took the holy name Tithonus.

This ornamental hermit, however, came to inhabit his role so seriously that he underwent a religious conversion. Subtly tinging his advice with barbed remarks about the Duke's dissolute ways, Tithonus eventually forced a confrontation, from which he emerged victorious. The Duke bequeathed the estate and duchy to Tithonus, and went on a penitent's pilgrimage to the Axis Mundi, from which he never returned.

Tithonus now rules the Duchy in sobriety, chastity, and benevolence, although most of his day is spent in conference with bailiffs and administrators. He has hired the wastrel youngest son of a declining line as an ornamental Duke, to dwell in the palace, excite gossip, and in general furnish the bad example that Tithonus' sermons need.

Advises the laity on: Matters requiring justice and discretion.
Weakness: Is losing his connection to the Almighty with so much hustle and bustle around; feels the need to get away for a while.

Folk Saints: St. Gumption

Continuing an extremely irregular series of the folk saints in the world of Mittellus. This one emerged with player input during a session last weekend as I floundered for a name for the main church in Renneton.

***

A Short Oar Sect image of the saint.

The long-deceased holy woman, Gunderdon of Frusk, often has her name shortened to Gumption when she is honored as an unofficial saint along the wild borders of the True Religion.

Escaping a raid on her convent, this devout sister of middle years set forth on a choppy sea in a coracle with woefully insufficient provisions. Her faith, grit, and determination pulled her through this ordeal and the subsequent trial of shipwreck on a deserted, cold island, where she remained for seven years, defending herself against wolves and sea-devils with a broken oar.

After her rescue, she traveled the wild shore on a donkey, enduring fantastic extremes of cold, dry and wet, surviving horrific tortures of the heathen. Eventually, broken in body but not in spirit, she met her martyrdom on a hot griddle, demanding to be turned over so she would roast evenly, and taking a miraculous three days to cook through and through.

Gumption's faithful scorn the complexities of civilization. If the Church will not canonize her because she never performed any miracles on anyone else's behalf, well, what do those incense-swingers know about anything anyway? Her followers place a premium on self-reliance and stick-to-itiveness, and waste no opportunity to teach these lessons to their children. Temples and shrines to the Saint are scrubbed clean, often several times a day.


If Eracle is the folk saint of strength, Gumption is the folk saint of constitution, and other elusive qualities besides. In social relations she is called upon to lend chutzpah. Where initiative is needed, she doles out moxie, spunk, pluck, pep, and good old-fashioned get-up-and-go. In uncertain situations, she recalls horse-sense to mind. And when danger looms, her blessing reinforces guts, strengthens the kidney, stiffens the spine, and thrusts the chin upward. Her spiritual enemies are lazybones, stay-a-beds, those who dilly-dally and shilly-shally, dingbats, duffers, poindexters, and the legions of the lily-livered.

Prophets of the Saint dress in plain, frayed and much-mended clothes, and carry as their sacred weapon a broken oar. There is a rift between the Long Oar (as staff) and Short Oar (as club) sects, often coming to blows; the Long Oars are seen as decadent by the Short Oars, and foolish in their hope that Gumption will eventually be canonized.

All her prophets lack the ability to abjure evil creatures, but emanate a 10' radius aura of morale (+2 for allied NPCs and animals). Additionally, they can exhort others to buck up and pull themselves together, having the ability to dispel fear, confusion, and paralysis at will by touch (at 1st level), at 30' distance (at 3rd level) or for all creatures in a 30' radius (at 5th level). Finally, they save at +4 versus all mind-affecting magic and distractions.

Today My Universe Killed A Kitten

R.I.P. the white kitten from the goblin room of Tomb of the Iron God. The elf Sivir carried this animal in her backpack for a month and a half of game time, somewhat implausibly - I never rolled a meow check when the party was hiding, ol' softie me.

As the party went exploring the cliffside of their current dungeon, seeking an alternate route to the tunnels below, they improbably came upon a second cave, the first one having been deemed empty. This cave, rolling for random room contents, I determined to contain a monster and treasure. The monster was a swarm of rats and the treasure was a sack with a few gold pieces.

After defeating the rats, Sivir decided to feed some of the dead ones to the kitten. Well, every one knows dungeon rats have a risk of carrying disease. This one did ... the kitten failed a save, and got sick ... the wood elf henchman tried to cure her, but failed ... the kitten failed another save later, and died. A brief service of burial was held outside the town walls.

Death from bad choices, so no regrets. And a memento mori the party scarcely needs, as the pressure slowly ratchets up in the campaign. How can I even begin to recap? High-level maneuvering among three power centers in the Durrin Hills Confederacy has delayed the consequences of the party's complicity in the partial destruction of the town of Goran's Anvil, via purple worm breach caused by a mysterious flute they unwisely granted to a priest of Ygg*.

But now, something's got a camp of Goranic warriors parked on the road south from the town of Parmentell and scouting the country north, which the party has been traversing to get to the dungeon. Lack of lantern oil is the main thing limiting their exploration of a network of spacious tunnels many miles long, revealed by digging through the clogging cast of a purple worm trail. Information from a panicked, hostile gnome miner leads them to believe that the tunnels lead eventually to the Purple Worm Graveyard, and treasure in crysknife-sharp ivory beyond reckoning ... but by the same token, to a rampaging, live purple worm variously described as "singing" and "piping."

Soon the moment of judgment will be at hand. Equilibrium will break, secrets will be revealed, and more than a kitten's life will be at stake!

*Ygg: with Crom, one of the two chief male gods of the North. What kind of stuff would Odin get up to in his quest for wisdom, if the universe contained Great Old Ones and Underdark realms? And what if the rivalry between him and Crom had a little bit of the rivalry between the Slavic gods Perun and Veles? You have a more sinister religion than our friends from the Church's lands perhaps realized. A bas-relief found in the dwarven shrine beyond the petrified purple worm's gullet shows Ygg whispering to a worm on his right and slaying a worm on his right. A vast worm - said to encircle the world - frames the depiction.

Mittellus: Religion

Some notes on the religious history of the world, Mittellus, that houses the Trossley campaign.

The Old Way has always been the way of man: gods that were their domains, harvest and springing stag, rills and mountain peaks, served by shamans, Druach votaries, goat-leapers and wind-witches. Cut down time and again by the empires of men, the ancient rites find accommodation, and spring back when empires fall. But this time, they have competition: the Church.

In the dark years after the breaking of the Millennial Empire, it was commanded that three prophets receive the Revelation that there is but one God: Odaus, the sage of the East; Invictus, the young soldier of the West; and Amalthea, aristocrat of the ravaged Millennial homelands. Spreading the word and the blessings of holy miracles, the three found each other within a decade, and the Church was formed. Then, on a mission to convert a King of the North, Odaus betrayed the Lady Amalthea to the barbarians to save his own skin, a despicable act for which his followers in the East blamed Invictus. So was born the schism of the churches, West against East, with Amalthea as martyr.

Folk-saints Phoebe and Mitras counsel King Thonar

It has been five hundred years since then. Kings and pontifices of the West have waged near-constant war, against priest-emperors of the East and eruptions of barbarians and worse from the edges of the world. Trossley sits in a landlocked area of the Northern Continent Alatoria, within the sphere of the Western Church, but here the reach of the Sacred Seat is tenuous. Mitras, Hermas, Froellia, Uncumber, Eracle and other folk-saints are much honored hereabouts. Priests are trained and knowledge concentrated in fortified phalansteries, and it seems every town of some standing is trying to build a church to rival its neighbors.

Enemies of the Church are many. The benighted Eastern followers of Odaus, even more infuriating for their claim to the true Revelation; the Anti-God or Devil known from the Revelation, a subtle fellow with many secret worshippers and guises; the Powers of Beyond, demons of utmost Chaos who enter the world through the gates of human desire; and those who cling to the Old Way, although these are the least of the Church's worries and are even somewhat tolerated in the Alatorian hinterland.

Silvanian mendicant friars

Against these stand the Church hierarchy and the holy Orders. The unforgiving black-robed followers of St. Hieracon are charged with maintaining doctrinal purity and order among the Church and her faithful. The brown-robed hermits and peaceful wanderers of St. Silvain are popular with the common folk but suspected to be soft on the Old Way. The main Militant orders are three: the Order of Valentia, the Order of the Tower, and the wandering Peregrines. Holy Sequina, the Divine Wisdom, shelters mystics and intellectuals alike in her white-robed Order.

Raise, then, the equal-armed Cross and let the banners of the Church advance! But make sure that the Cross you raise has the horizontal bar over the vertical - the Western church's Hilt of Invictus - and not the vertical over the horizontal - sign of the Devil's own heresy, the Staff of Odaus, sacred to the Anti-Church of the East.