Truly Random Charges for Magic Items

Just a thought. Rather than generating the number of charges remaining when a wand (/rod/stave/misc. charged item) is discovered in play instead:

Pick (or roll) a number between 1 and 20.
Each time the wand is used, roll a d20.
If the number matches the pre-selected one, the wand is out of charges.

• If the wand was a looted object and/or previously used against the party by someone else, pick 2 numbers.  {reflecting depletion through use, duh.}
• If the wand was crafted by the wizard him/herself: pick 1 number, roll d30 when used.  {This incentivises crafting by PC wizards, and reflects a maker's mastery of his own creation. "I know every nut and bolt and cog; I built it with my own hands!"}

Why bother with this rules wrinkle rather than "xd10 charges"?

Because - contrary to what contemporary D&D orthodoxy would have you think* - magic is chaotic, unpredictable and will probably let you down at exactly the worst possible moment. This variant models the uncertainty of a world without fuel gauges on magic items.

In addition, it's engaging in play: every time a wand is used there's a chance (rolled by the user, no less!) that it blows a fuse and reverts from throbbing arcane phallic extension to useless decorative back-scratcher.

* Post-scarcity D&D? *pshaw* There's no way a plan that goes "bind the power of Kaos to bootstrap an industrial revolution" ever ends well.

Hat-tip: Zak S for Lucky Number Kung-Fu.

Bonus Factoid: According to the magic items chapter of the One True DMG (AD&D1E) there's a 1% that any wand discovered is rigged to 'backfire' when used. Whether this is due to malignancy on the part of the creators, or the innate perversity of magic, or just down to thaumic decay over time, is undisclosed. And quite what 'backfire' entails is left for the GM to determine. (cue evil laughter)

-----

Unrelated: Oh look. A DNDClassics pdf purchase site. Looks like WOTC decided to do the blindingly obvious after four years of fighting the tide. What was that line about even a stopped clock being right twice a day?

Lets Read Mythus pt15

Dangerous Journeys: Mythus + opinionated gabshite + alkyhol: mix and stand well back.
You know the drill by now.

A note to the confused: You will see references thought-out this stream-of-consciousness jabbering spree to something called That Damn Table. I include it here again for reference purposes:

To know it is to loathe its ubiquity.

Today we’re going to cover the last batch of Advanced Mythus K/S Areas, then have a brief rant on how I’d have done things differently (and arguably better), before finally talking about the incidental art of this section of the book. It’s gonna be a long one, so charge your glasses.

And we start this week’s final thicket-thrash with:

Mediumship
Described as the reverse of Exorcism, this is the art of inviting spirits to appear for the purpose of wasting everyone's time with table-rapping "Your grandfather sends platitudes but no useful directions to where he buried the gold/hid the title deeds" antics. No compelling of spirits is allowed, and failure/fumble "...could bring a hostile or malicious entity..."

Bored now.

We're offered two paragraphs of rules for séances. Said exercises allow the Partial or Full Physical Manifestation (given their own TLAs as P-/FPM *gluk*) of spirits through ectoplasm (or, as the Victorians knew it, oiled muslin) leeched from the Physique TRAITS of séances participants. The benefits of having a spirit Physically Manifest escape me. I've checked the index, and that either sends you into a "refer to" loop, or to an entirely unrelated appendix. F--ing amateurish. Rules for resisting potential unwelcome ectomonglers? Left in the lap of the GM, presumably as extra credit homework.

Bored and irritated by half-assery now.

Characters with the Mediumship K/S Area also gain access to Medium Castings in accordance with the inevitable reprinting of That Table. According to all the tables relevant to this section Mediumship does generate Heka, but there's no mention of this in the text.

Bored, irritated and wishing this skill description would die in a fire now.

Would I touch Mediumship for an Classic RPG? As written, no. In fact: Hell no! Advanced Mythus Mediumship reads like it belongs in an Arcana Victoriana game like Forgotten Futures 4 and 8 or For Faerie, Queen and Country: it’s gutless, deracinated spirit magic for the bored middle classes in a pre-TV age. I get that it’s also supposed to represent the character invoking ancestor spirits, genius loci, ideolectic gestalts, etc. but the flavour text and rules on offer are far too Derek Acora [no link, the man is vermin] for my tastes.

Metaphysics
We’re given the better part of a paragraph of definition of metaphysics before EGG cuts to the chase and explains it in game terms. It turns out that under all the philosophy syllabus waffle this is a non-evil equivalent of Demonology with the option to make "roll to detect celestial influences" checks. So, angelology for a world with stabbable spiritual entities. ("Jeez EGG, that’s all you had to say.")

As well as generating Heka, which is pretty standard issue for an Advanced Mythus Spirit skill, Metaphysics also has a half-baked ‘gain Spiritual strength’ rule. At 41 skill, and at every 10 points gained thereafter, a person may make a "Hard" (x1) difficulty Metaphysics roll to gain a point of SMCap. After gaining two points thus the difficulty of future rolls increases to "Difficult" (0.5). Hey, free stat points. Shame that none of the Physical or Mental skills enjoyed such an advantage.

Metaphysics skill as written is all over the place. It’s academic metaphysics, and stat-enhancing meditation/spiritual exercises, and an detect angelic meddling skill, AND a spotter’s guide to celestial beings too. I’d probably break this into a couple of skills if I were going to make use of it at all.

Multiversal Spheres & Planes
Knowledge of the position and makeup of the multiverse, divided up by plane.

Eleven sub-areas:

1. Alternate Material Planes
2. Elemental Planes
3. Shadow Plane
4. Negative and Positive Planes
5. Aethereal Plane
6. Nether and Pandemonic Planes
7. Empyrean and Concordelysian Planes
8. Entropic and Celestial Planes
9. Temporal and Panprobable Planes
10. Abyssal Plane
11. Astral Plane

All that lot fits together in a manner which may look more than slightly familiar to AD&D veterans.

Yes, because the problem with AD&D’s Great Wheel cosmology was that it wasn’t complicated and prescriptive enough.

No useful information or stealable moving parts in this skill description. It just sits there without even a helpful reference to the Mythus Magick book where the cosmography of Advanced Mythus is actually explained. More and more I begin to fear that this game isn’t actually comprehensible without the Mythus Magick book in close attendance: not quite 400 pages of crippleware, but dangerously close.

Musical Composition
You can make up instrumental music, but not write lyrics (because that’s an entirely different discipline, roight?). The Musical Composition skill generates Heka if you have all three of Spellsongs, Music and Poetry/Lyrics. A character with this skill can also read music with a DR of "Easy". Even someone afflicted by the bane of music dyslexskia (like Skwizgaar Skwigelf "I do nots wish to talks about it") finds this last a bit eyebrowish. Is sight-reading so risibly easy?

Musical Composition has no skill cross-feeds (no, not even to the obvious ones) and no sub-areas. I find that last a bit peculiar, as what constitutes ‘good’ composition in, for example, the classical Chinese musical tradition != ‘good’ in the traditional West Asian or European modes.

Mysticism
Ooh, this sounds like it might be cool. So what kind of mysticism does Advanced Mythus deem worthy of coverage as an entire skill in its own right? Sufi? Buddhist? Taoist? Qabbalist esoterica? Blakean whackdoodlery? Nope, this is 70s Californian mysticism, so we get two pages of rules about crystals and crystal-derived woo-powers.

Ah yes. Those powers. A mystic knows eleven of them, listed A-K:

A. Self-Improvement: meditate 1 hour/day and make an Easy skill check to gain +1 per 4 bonus to AP/General awarded. That means "25% bonus to XP" in standard gamer.
B. Self-Healing, Heart & Mind: meditate 2 hour/day and make Hard skill check to heal 2d6 damage to both Mental and Spirit TRAITS. 1/day.
C. Mental/Spiritual Defence: presenting your crystal as a shield awards Armour vs. magic effects that harm mind or spirit according to the table below:

D. Mental/Spirit Offence: allows the crystal-waver to attack manifested spirits using 50% of their Mysticism or Dweomercraeft skill.
E. Mental Heka Force Amplification: meditate 1 hour + Hard skill check to boost one Heka-using skill by 50% for 5 minutes. 1/week only.
F. Heka Concentration: meditate for up to 2 hours + make Hard skill check to dump 1 Heka/minute in crystal.
G. Visions: using Mysticism to "clue me" is one DR easier than normal when using a crystal as a focus.
H. Self-Healing, Body: as power B, but a Difficult skill check. 1/day.
I. Heal Others, Mind & Heart: as power B, but base difficulty of Hard, +1 DR per additional person healed. 1/day.
J. Heal Others, Body: as power I, but for others. 1/day.
K. Scrying: "Easy" skill check to see invisible presences. Rules on types of crystals required to scry other planes.

Access to the above powers are governed both by state of mind and by the purity of the crystal the mystic has attuned (navel gaze for 7 hours, Easy skill check). The requirement that mystics "...must be sane, sober and not Dazed to use a crystal with any degree of success" which just goes right against the grain of verisimilitude for what we actually know about Californian mysticism.

As well as dictating your ability to use your skill crystal quality also gives modifiers to base DRs ~and~ determines the Heka storage potential of your pet rock. All these factors are determined by crystal price, which makes hearty mock of the outmoded concept of mystics as people who abjure earthly wealth.

A textual note says that high quality rocks can be X2-3 the listed price. I wouldn't have objected to this information as a second footnote to the table.

In addition to the powers above the Mystic gains Mystic Castings according to That Table, generates Heka, and has access to two additional perks:

Dreams & Visions: another "obtain clue" skill, with DR determined by how often in the past month the mystic has bothered the sublime crystalline entities (or whatever) that his little tchotchke(sp?) resonates with. The reading referee is cautioned in special invisible to players italicised text not to dish out too many clues in response to "clue me" skills. EGG sagely reminds us to "...always make the HPs work for most of their information. [...] Thinking is worth a score of successful die rolls."

Detect Spirits and/or Magick: a Mystic, or maybe his crystal, will *ping* in the presence of spirits (detection DR is dependent on magnitude of manifestation) or magic (Base DR "Extreme", one DR easier per 100 Heka expended), or if the Mystic or his friends become the subject of a magical Link. No idea about what this last entails, but I console myself with a delicious soothing beverage. (*gluk*)

The downside to using a pretty stone as a lever to move the world? Anyone else touching your crystal scrambles the attunement (hippies don’t share well); your crystal crumbles to dust if you ever fumble a Mysticism roll; and lastly, you are a pretentious crystal-gazing woo-monger.

As you may have surmised by now this skill contains the makings of a pretty comprehensive patchouli-scented Hippy Crystal Chick class, if that’s something that floats your boat.

Nature Attunement
This is Druidism as skill. Unfortunately it’s not the cool ‘20 years of training, then you get buried alive in a flooded coffin to compose your dissertation in verse’ druidism the Romans wiped out, but instead tediously worthy ‘listen to the land’ crying Indian/GROLIES one. I’m really not kidding:

purity, sense, feel: nice of Gary to highlight the hippy detection keywords for us

Doing any of the things listed above is DR "Hard". Users of this skill can also blend into natural surrounding at a base DR of Easy, modified by terrain and vegetation.

Finally Nature Attunement has five non-standard sub-areas:

1. Growing Things
2. Natural Cycles
3. Personal Relationship
4. Animal Husbandry
5. Exotic Places

Instead of actually doing anything useful in their own right all these sub-areas do is provide cross-feed to other skills:

Growing Things gives 10% cross-feed to Agriculture and Herbalism,
Natural Cycles cross-feeds to Ecology and Geology.
Personal Relationship (grossly mis-named) actually benefits your Hunting/Tracking and Survival skills. Go figure.
Animal Relationship cross-feeds to Animal Husbandry, but not at all to Riding or Animal Handling.
Exotic Places cross-feeds to Phaeree Flora and Fauna and Subterranean Aerth knowledge.

The highly developed spiritual and metaphysical connection to the living world granted by Nature Attunement does not generate Heka in any way shape or form.

Necromancy
One of the bad-boy rock star magic skills. I’m sure you don’t even need this defined for you, right? Ha! This is Advanced Mythus, of course it gets defined! Cue one very skippable paragraph of thesaurus abuse (*gluk gluk*) telling you what necromancy is. Of course it generates Heka, and of course you gain access to Necromancer Castings according to That Table.

Most of the word count in this skill description is expended on 3 rather unimpressive abilities you gain by virtue of sending off for your mail order skull ring. I’m almost embarrassed to expose EGG’s nomenclatural shame here, but:

1. Coldbody - lower body temperature by 1° F per skill point for up to 1 AT (5 minutes) per STEEP. One/day AFAICT.
2. Darksee - infra- and ultravision by other names. You see in the dark as if it was twilight. Always on.
3. Shadowskulk - hide in shadows. DR Easy (total darkness) or harder. Lasts 1 BT (30 seconds) per STEEP. One/day.

So sad. You’d expect a fan of Vance, KAS, et al to be better at evoking the terror and majesty of Death Magic (yes, it rates the caps) in his ability names, wouldn’tcha? I mean, I can throw "Chill of the Grave", "See in Darkness" and "Enrobed in Night" down as substitute names with precisely zero thought on the matter.

Anything worth stealing here? Naaaah. Advanced Mythus necromancers can’t even animate zombies from the look of it. You’ve probably written a better necromancer class yourself, or know a guy who has.


Occultism
Knowledge of the names and hierarchies of ghosts, elementals and similar entities: a handy skill for mediums, conjurers or anyone else determined to get bossy with those bodiless folk in the spirit world. By contrast with the needless wordiness of many Advanced Mythus skill descriptions this one actually feels rather like a précis of a (missing) longer section on spirit magic and Truenames.

Learning about spirits is easy; a simple d% roll determines whether or not you learn the name of a useful entity. On a success skill check the character learns a spirit’s name and then rolls two more d% to determine whether they know it’s supernatural rank and/or leverage-enabling Truename (see table below).

Spirit entities have a crazy number of names, anything from three for the lowliest up to eighteen names for the most powerful. I’ve no idea what use this information actually is; it’s just thrown out there with us left to infer it by reference to other Spirit skill descriptions (Conjuration, Sorcery, etc). Creatures of Major status or above have multi-part Truenames that can’t be wholly learned through Occultism. Don’t ask how you can learn their full Truename though; the text is stonily silent on the matter.

Occultism has no sub-areas or cross-feed to any other skills: an all-or-nowt skill. It does grant Heka = STEEP, but there appear to be no Occultism castings, so for once there’s no Special Guest Appearance from That Table.

Whether you’d ever make use of this skill in your non-Mythus game depends on whether you care for Truenames, or for creatures having a dozen or more situational epithets. Personally I’ve always found that "I am known by many names" mythology shtick a bit pretentious and vaguely absurd. Too many aliases = cheap and shifty in my book.

Painting (Artistic)
Distinct from Painting (House), which seems to be missing (*tsk*). Characters with this skill can make pretty pictures [link], assess the value of artwork (toe-trampling makes Appraisal skill saaaad), and also know art history. Painting as a Spirit skill though: is that right? Let’s just take the snide historian gibe about art history not being a proper intellectual discipline as read and move on, shall we?

Pantheology
Mythology knowledge. In a world with manifest divinities this is probably something more than just a gateway field of study for geeks; knowing which god to make propitiatory obeisance to may actually be useful. The skill grants broad general knowledge about all pantheons in the game world, but the further away a pantheon is from your home culture area, the harder are skill checks required to remember salient information. Proximate pantheons are "Hard", those more distant "Difficult" or "Very Difficult".

Sub-areas can be taken (to no apparent benefit), and there are nineteen of these listed, from Atlantean to Voudoun.

This skill is simultaneously vague and game world specific; a lot of work for the player and GM. Pass.

Phaeree Folk & Culture
Distinct from the Phaeree Flora and Fauna skill this is "...the study of the many intelligent races inhabiting the Aerth’s counter-world": poxy pixie politics.

There are six sub-areas to this skill: three Races of [faction] Nature and three Culture of [faction] Nature sub-areas. You can pick the Seelie, Borderer or Unseelie factions as fields of, for want of a better word, interest. No cross-feeds to other skills, and you’re limited to a ceiling of 35 in your skill until you spend time in fairyland.

This is a boring, unevocative take on faerie lore. All the legwork is left for the GM, or to a later (never published) Mythus Phaeree sourcebook.

(Oh, and that misspelling, like Magick and -craeft, just gets more annoying with time.)


Philosophy
Front and centre: "...philosophy adds 10% of its STEEP to the Influence K/S Area" (you remember that particular mess, right?), which is yoking the ‘philosophy and rhetoric = trufriends4eva’ connection a little too tightly for my tastes. What’s the skill good for in itself? Well, aside from being another "clue me" skill philosophy also makes you "...a sophisticated kind of person...", and one "...not easily misled by sophistries and falsely persuasive arguments."

Pwahahaha!!! Oh my sides! I can only wonder how many philosophers EGG ever met.

Poetry/Lyrics
Good for writing odes, sonnets, ballads, librettos which don’t grate on the ear (DR "Easy" or harder). The skill also covers critical analysis and history of poetry and music.

Poetry/Lyrics has no sub-areas, but does cross-feeds 10% to Etiquette/Social Graces, which bonus "...applies across all cultures and societies", as we are informed in italics most grave. Poetry/Lyrics also grants Heka to a character provided they have some ability in all three of the Spellsongs, Music and Musical Composition K/S Areas.


Priestcraeft (sic)
This chunky page-long description open with two paragraphs on determining Full or Partial Heka Ability, which is practically a reprint of the similar section in the Dweomercraeft skill description. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: not the right place for this rule.

After this we’re introduced to the requirements to become a full-fledged priest. These are:

• Full Heka Ability
• STEEP of 31+ in Religion K/S Area (q.v.)
• Exclusive devotion to one god of one pantheon
• Vow of Faith/Pact with Evil (depending on whether your god is white or black hat) to chosen god

In return for all the above you gain both crazy Heka and access to a bunch of special Tutelary Castings specific to your ethos. In return you are at the beck and call of an inscrutable, omnipotent egomaniac (already a familiar experience to many players). Non-priests with the Priestcraeft skill gain somewhat less Heka and have access to non-Priest Castings in accordance with That Table.

We’re informed that, unlike many skills, Priestcraeft has ‘insular’ sub-area. Once the pomposity has been hacked away (I kid you not, the word ‘Ethoi’ is used no less than three times in one paragraph!) it turns out this means: "pick the sub-area of Priestcraeft that matches your god, abjure all others; that’s you now."

The five Ethoi of Priestcraeft are:

Balance - disinterested neutralism. Taoists, nature worshippers, etc. Has some overlap with the Elemental School of Magic. Basically this guy:

Gloomy Darkness - black hat maltheism. Combines chaos with tyranny for delicious full-fat double evilburgerness. Has so much in common with the Black School of magic it ain’t even funny.
Moonlight - ‘little from column A, little from column B’ omnivorous ethos. Moon and sea gods.
Shadowy Darkness - grey hat darker-and-edgier antihero ethos. Non-evil gods of death (Osiris, Hades, etc.) hang out here. Has a lot on common with the Grey School of Dweomercraeft.
Sunlight - white hat light and order. Sun gods, lawgivers, etc. Corresponds to White School of Dweomercraeft.

Not much of use here for Classic RPG gamers. Classics players generally already have god-bothering rules to their satisfaction.

Religion
Knowledge of the rites and rotes of any one religion and pantheon, which must be chosen when the skill is taken. A STEEP of 31+ in this skill is required to be an ordained Priest of a temple. The skill generates Heka, but appears to have few if any in-game uses.

Sculpture
The art of making sharp, vivid, three dimensional images from physical stuff. A necessary skill for anyone with a yen to shape golems. Sculpture offers no sub-areas, because the skills involved in casting bronze, carving stone or wood, shaping clay, or shaping jade are all same-same. The skill offers no skill cross-feeds, mainly because as written it's just too broad and vague to meaningfully apply to Masonry, Forging/Welding, Carpentry (another mentioned-but-MIA skill), Jewellery, etc. But hey, those are just lowly Physical skills; it’s not like they do actually matter in Mythus-world.

Sorcery
The other bad boy rock star magic skill. This is the one that lets you grow a goatee, dress in full Halfordian mode and generally act like the villain in the film adaptation of a Dennis Wheatley book. Provided you have even a smattering of skill in the Demonology K/S Area, and are prepared to make a Pact with Evil (Vow of Faith by another name) forfeiting your soul, this is the full-on demon magic.

Yeah, almost exactly like that, wicker man and all.

What do you get in return for selling 21 grams of spiritual self?

• a non-trivial multiplier to the Heka generated by this skill. The text says anything from double to ten-times normal, but I think we all agree that x6.66 is the most thematically appropriate.
• access to Sorcerer Castings per That Table.
• the ability to call up infernal entities to do your bidding, Faust-style

Which segues us nicely into the half-page of demon invoking rules. These are largely a copypasta of the Conjuration rules with specific reference to evil-themed paraphernalia. The Heka cost and difficulty of upsetting the MADD element is given in a table coyly named "Called Beings":

But wait! There’s more. A sorcerer also gains five innate ‘in the inverted pentagram club’ minor powers. The names of these last aren’t as groan-inducingly bad as those listed under Necromancy, but they’re still not much to write home about.

• Delusions - win a contested K/S roll to mentally troll ("Look again. You’re eating maggots.") a person within one chain (66ft), up to 3/day.
• Flamesdance - control flames. Flames can be made to flicker, dim or expand in size by up to x6(.66) for damage + chance of setting things afire. Usable 1/day.
• Impsummon - you get a squeaky little infernal minion to order/kick about. Usable 1/week.
• Kiteseyes - you can see through the eyes of any carrion bird out to a maximum range of 6 leagues. 1/day.
• Ratseyes - you can see through the eyes of rats. Mean-spirited mice and black squirrels are also "...good candidates for being pawns of this power!" 1/day.

There is a Carcosa-style suggestion that you can exploit the knowledge provided by this skill to fight evil, so long as you don’t summon demons, make pacts, or cast the naughty Sorcery spells. ("Goat Boy finds that disgusting. Where is the fun in that?")

Is there anything here usable for a Classic D&D game? Not really. AD&D already has a string of mid-to-high-level summoning and binding spells that form a perfectly adequate demon-bullying mini-game in their own right. It is refreshing to see EGG just plain not giving a phuq about possible ‘RPGs are satanic’ clucking though. The sorcery skill has a definite air of "This is the subject matter under discussion and honi soit qui mal y pense".

Streetwise
The ability to fit in and not embarrass yourself among sub-cultural groups within your own culture. Examples sub-cultures listed include urban proletariat, rural peasants, mercenaries, beggars, etc. You know one sub-area of non-standard etiquette per 10 skill points. The skill is also good for identifying those groups traditionally shy of local law enforcement.

Thespianism
"All that fuss. Why not just try acting dear boy?" - Laurence Olivier to Marlon Brando
Includes both ability to act and knowledge of stagecraft. No cross-feed to Disguise, Persuasion or to anything else you might think related. I’m still not sure if this skill doesn’t render the Impersonation superfluous.

Witchcraeft
Dunno why this is distinct from Sorcery, other than Gary had a Witch class bug up his butt right from the early days of D&D. IIRC it was an example class as far back as OD&D. Whatever the reason we are informed that "...any individual practising Witchcraeft is of vilest malevolence and dedicated to Evil."

Sooooo Evil! Burn immediately.

After a couple of paragraphs of introductory matter which might as well have just read "refer to Sorcery" (*gluk gluk*) we’re treated to a column or so on the all-important administrative requirements of being a witch. We’re told of the benefits of regular attendance at Sabbats and Esbats (basically bonus Heka: so much for turning up; more for being boss hag; even more "...if especially honoured for evil works." I can’t believe that known punster Gary missed the mentioned in Esbatches gag...), and of the swingeing punishments inflicted on witches who fail to keep their covens up to regulation strength: "If ever a coven should have exactly seven members for even as short a time as seven hours, the remaining members are lost, for their Pacts are foreclosed, and each and every one is doomed!"

In return for their dedication to the infernal bureaucracy witches gain their bonus Heka, access to Witch/Warlock Castings per That Tables, and two witchy-themed minor powers:

• Eyebite - give someone the Evil Eye. This is basically a pre-incarnation of the SRD’s silent/still spell feats.
• Beastform - the witch can adopt the form of a totemic carnivore (wolf, bear, or big cat) between midnight and dawn on nights when the moon is either full or dark.

Could you use this as the basis for a Classic RPG witch class? Not really. Half the skill is a recycling of the (already half-recycled) Sorcery skill, and the non-spell abilities of Witchcraeft are pretty duff. There’s nothing here to appeal to anyone who wasn’t aroused by the internal politics of the AD&D Druid class (one boss per area, fight to advance, etc.).

Writing, Creative
You can make stuff up and write it down, or polish non-fiction into an entertaining read. I’m surprised there’s no self-pitying authorial plaint on the difficulty of writing here; maybe EGG got that out of his system back in the Difficulty Ratings section of this chapter. Creative Writing cross-feeds 10% to the Influence K/S Area, which I suppose represents speechwriting and such.

Yoga
Don’t expect a thorough-going examination of the magic(k)al benefits of a 5,000 year old mystic tradition here, Mythus yoga is fakir tricks, pure and simple. The skill description covers the better part of a page, but the core of it is that the skill grants "...resistance to Mental and Spiritual attacks, immunity to normal fires, the ability to heal Mental, Spiritual and Physical wounds, and the ability to slow physical body functions." All these benefits, as well as innate resistance to Insanity-causing effects, are granted per the Yogi Abilities Table (reproduced below):

As well as making you an unkillable pucnic-basket- plundering hobo the Yoga K/S Area also generates Heka, and cross-feeds 10% to Hypnotism, Perception, Acrobatics/Gymnastics, Endurance, Mysticism and Nature Attunement. Yes, all of them.

You’ve seen this skill before in your Classic D&D game. Split the abilities up among a bunch of levels and you’ve pretty much got the Monk (aka Mystic if you speak BECMI). The body control thing? That was right there in OEPT all the way back in 1975.

And, having reached page 200 alive and (relatively) sane, I am glad to report that is the end of the Advanced Mythus K/S Area descriptions section. 64 seemingly endless pages of:

Mythus skills: my face when

Was it worth the swedge? Arguably not: an average of a couple of possibly interesting elements for your game per dozen pages really doesn’t justify the effort expended. I’m just glad I did it so that no one else has to.

How I’d Have Done It Differently

Before we call finis on this gibbering horror for all time I’m just going to indulge myself with a brief retrospective of the Advanced Mythus K/S Areas section, why it sucks, and how it could be made better. Trust me, this is a necessary exorcism for someone who’s just spent six weeks staring into the void.

The number one improvement would come from having a guy like this on the staff:

"Hello. I'm here to edit your text."

Everything else flows from there.

For starters, the universal skill lists on pp100-101 would have been moved to the K/S Area Descriptions section, with *copious* page numbers and textual references in the Vocations section.

Second, each and every skill would have to justify its existence in the book. If you’re going to have a comprehensive skill system, then it has to be comprehensive, not half-done and lopsided.

Duplicate another skill? We have that thanks. Off you trot.
Stupid number of sub-areas? They get purged and/or the skill gets split up into two or more separate skills, which then have to justify their own existences.
Vapid waffle text? Expand skill description to a meaningful degree, or cut: pick one.

Then, and only then, I’d have put the surviving Heka-active skills in a section of their own, maybe called something sensible and obvious like Heka-Active Skills to indicate that they are not quite like their mundane counterparts.

All the skills would be collected into one table with a fat wedge of relevant information all in one place. Thus:

Name	TRAIT	Heka from	Casting Access?	Sub-Areas?	Other Abilities?
Arglbarglism	M	Skill+MMFoo	Y (Arglbargl)	Y (# of)	Y/N (see pXXX)
Chodmancy	M	Skill+PNBar	Y (Choddery)	N	N
Gonkology	P	Skill only	N	Y (# of)	Y (see pXXX)
Murblnurfism	S	Skill+Ssblah	Y (Murblnurf)	N	Y (see pXXX)
etc	etc	etc	etc	etc	etc

There’d be one, and only one, instance of That Damn Table, renamed to something logical like Casting Access for Heka-Active Skills. The newly renamed table would have a header or footnote explaining that all Heka-active skills that gave casting access did so according to this one table; no exceptions.

After that, Heka-active skill descriptions, edited down to the needful information. Got a bunch of setting material and/or worked examples? That’s what the Mythus Magick book is for. The Rulebook is for the rules you need to play the game. The clue is in the name.

There’d also be one clearly marked and logically placed explanation of the process of checking for Full or Partial Heka Ability in characters. This also would be page referenced to within an inch of its life because we have respect for the time, effort and money the reader has expended upon our game.

Bosh! Greater clarity, ease of reference, ~and~ a bunch of pages saved for more actual substantive content. The whole section would actually read like a usable rulebook rather than as a bunch of half-thought-out fob-off skill descriptions interspersed with setting essays, authorial advice, worked examples and over-stuffed uber-skills.

Job done. I am rock!


Art of the Section
Before I finally collapse into a gibbering heap for the rest of the week I’d just like to mention the three b+w pictures which *ahem* grace the Spirit K/S Areas section of the Advanced Mythus rulebook. All three are b+w incidental art, rather than the full page colour spreads we’ve come to know and loathe.

• p182 - Daniel Gelon pic of a Faerie Prince and his court, complete with robed eminence gris naturally. Odd bits of this picture include the weird black dot doll eyes of the prince and the Bowie homage(?) focus on his groin as the focal point of the entire composition. This piece is WTF Mythus? territory.
• p195 - Not visibly credited (Mitchell?) pic of an Ogre standing before a Mycenaean-looking tomb. The ogre is characterfully drawn with a slightly pathetic air which gives the impression that beating on this guy would have a slight whiff of 'bullying the local weirdo' about it.
• p198 - Ellisa Mitchell pic of a generic Conan-style fantasyburg. This architectural style in this picture will be more than slightly reminiscent to anyone who saw the opening reel of the execrable Solomon Kane film.

Next Time: K/S Areas Use for Economic Gain, in which Ernie Gygax and his old man expend seven pages laying down the law on earning your keep in /Advanced Mythus/.

Pic Source: Dangerous Journeys: Mythus rulebook, Mythus Magick, Action Philosophers, the intarwubz

Lets Read Mythus pt7

Welcome to this week's installment of Lets Read Mythus. Or should that be Lets Reach for the Meths? Oh well, too late to change now... (which is my standby excuse for all my many faults and excesses)

Today we'll be covering sections 4 and 5 of Advanced Mythus character generation: skills and general persona information.

Section 4: The Knowledge/Skill Areas

This section covers pp 96-101 of the rulebook and -- in a marked departure from established Mythus tradition -- compresses quite a bit of information into its six pages.

Page 96 does come on in the same old way (wordy), so we shall meet it in the same old way (sarky). Two paragraphs caution the reader that having a skill doesn't mean you can use it flawlessly. This is so numbingly obvious a statement that I can feel my face seizing up, tragically rendering me unable to offer comment or critique more structured than a loud "A-duuuuuh" noise.

This specimen-quality sample of RPG obviousness is followed by a section on Universal K/S Areas Known to All HPs, or ‘universal skills’ as they are known among people without a raging neologism fetish. Each HP gets 5 or so of these. Skills, not fetishes.

Etiquette - which might actually be useful in status-conscious pre-modern societies. It is worked out as 5xSEC+MMCap. That's five times social class: posh people obviously being better mannered 'n' that. Primitive vocation types get a flat '5' to this skill when outside their home culture, but civilised folk get to swan around the Primitives’ lands with their courtly manners working at full effect. I offer a trenchant "Balls!" to that: different standards of etiquette does not imply a lack of same. Honour, respect, good manners, 'face' and taboo are universal human concepts, albeit with specific cultural manifestations.

Native Tongue - you speak whatever you spoke growing up at 5xSEC+MMCap. Toffs talk better than plebs, which makes sense: moar edjamikashun meens clevura wordin's.

Perception - 2 separate skills, Physical or Mental. Your vocation's Trait determines which you get, Spiritual types can pick. If you have both skills (probably through a vocation skill package, or later purchase with APs) you get two Perception checks to notice something. Interesting ruling that.

One oddness though:

There, did you see that? Physical Perception is +reasoning ability, Mental Perception is +nerve speed. I’ve looked at that for a long time and it still makes precisely no sense to me. F***ing Perception skills: how do they work? Oh, and the text doesn't appear to match the formula. Either I fail reading comprehension forever, or GDW editing *derp*artment knocked off early and went to the pub again.

Riding or Boating - You get one, usually horse-bothering. Riding skill level is SECx5 again (Nice nod to the old cliche of toffs born in the saddle, while plebs grub in the mud). You get to add your PMCap (trans. "strength") if you’re a roughdy-toughdy outdoorsy Physical vocation type. Boating is included as a substitute skill for seagoing types. Characters get this skill at PMCap+PNCapx0.5, because sailing is an all-classes pastime dependent upon actual ability.

Trade Phoenician - which is Mythus Common. Humans get this, non-humans don't. SECx3+MMCap.

Non-Human universal skills are slightly different. They don’t get Trade Phoenician, but instead get one of three types of Nature Tongue. Cue Frankie Howerd arching eyebrow meaningfully. Choices are Fair, Hob- or Goblin; which are basically sparkly pixie alignment languages. The pointy-eared and iron-afflicted* contingent also get to speak the local language of whichever place on Aerth their folkloric origin equates to. I assume this means Redcaps speak Scottish, Djinn Arabic, Trolls Norse, etc.

* Bet there are rules for this later. Betcha. Is folkloric.

Additional HP K/S Areas
As well as your ~20 vocation skills, and your 5-6 Universal skills, your alter ego also gets some free-pick extras. You get a number of skills for each Trait determined by your total score in that Trait, plus one extra pick for your vocational Trait. All these extra skills are at 2d10+Attributes.

This also makes a bit more sense of the inscrutable Trait Limitations to Heka-Generating K/S Areas table we encountered a couple of weeks back. I’ll resist the urge to bang on about layout and organisation again; just take that particular rant as read.

The rest of page 97 is a worked example, which is helpful. And then there’s an odd little optional rule that humans - and only humans - can choose /not/ to take their vocational Trait bonus skill but instead split 2d10+highest Attribute in that Trait points between existing skills. Fair enough, but the condition that you can only spend 2-6 points per skill seems simultaneously tight-fisted and arbitrary. That's at best 1-roll-in-20 you'd make that you'd otherwise fail.

Urge to rant... rising...

Flipping rapidly over to Page 98, we're introduced to K/S Sub-Areas. "Oh goody", they cried, "because the Advanced Mythus skill system simply wasn't crushingly comprehensive enough already". The whole sub-areas thing is exactly as nitpicky as you imagine it. This is Advanced Mythus on a crystal meth/nitrous oxide cocktail; going above and beyond, into positively goatsean levels of anal retentiveness.

You get sub-areas to each and every skill you have according to the following table:

Working out your skill sub-areas is going to involve a *lot* of page flipping, given that the comprehensive skill rules cover 64 pages of dense text (pp137-201).

We're also offered two optional rules regarding K/S sub-areas:

The first of these is specialisation. Spend two of your K/S sub-area slots on a single sub-area and you get 1.5x the normal skill level. But - and here’s the kicker - all your other skill sub-areas drop to half normal. Yes, that's right. All. Of. Them.

Talk about paying twice. Even the AD&D Unearthed Arcana fighter didn't get hosed that hard! Sure, he was outdone at his niche by a bunch of newer, shinier classes, but at least UA weapon specialisation didn't make a character vastly clumsier with every weapon in the world other than his one favourite.

It’s graciously conceded that when you get to 51+ in a skill you’ve elected to gimp yourself specialise in that you can then pick half the sub-areas you know and use them at full ability. Ooh, how generous. So instead of a knee to the balls and a kick to the head, you will now only be kicked in the head.

I sincerely wonder if that little rule was ever used in play, or even playtested in a meaningful way.

The other option is to delay choosing K/S sub-areas until you actually choose to use them in play. So you get to sketch in your character's base skill, then draw in on more detail about exactly what parts it he's good at as you discover you need to know things. This would be kinda cool -- if there weren't so damn many skills in Advanced Mythus.

Bitching aside, the latter of these two rules might actually have some use for new players in a 'skill rules, but only kinda' game like AD&D or full-fat BECMI.

Consider the following hypothetical: poor confused newbie player gets skill slots, but has no idea what’s going to be useful. Fair enough. The GM rules that newb doesn't have to pick a skill until they decide what they want to be good at during play thereby enabling player agency/awesome. That’s a good rule even for experienced players who a) don’t know the GM’s preferred play style, or b) don't know whether the campaign will be all dungeon-crawling, all ships, all city adventures.

An actually useful suggestion in Mythus? Well paint me purple and call me Shirley!

Pages 99-100 are tables of all the skills in Advanced Mythus, divided up by Trait and complete with their Attribute calculation equatiomabob. Simple page references to these tables would have saved bags of space (about 6 pages or so) in the Vocations section. There are a grand total of 60 Mental skills, 48 Physical and 37 Spiritual in Advanced Mythus, which is... erm... many in total. More than I could possibly care about. And don’t forget that you can take certain skills - Jabber Foreign Moonspeak, for example - more than once.

Page 101 is a list of 76 languages of Aerth, intended for use with the aforementioned Speak Slowly and Loudly at Johnny Foreigner skill. The list is in alphabetical order, which tells you precisely nothing useful about what's spoken where. The entire list of glorified auslander gargling noises is a right mess, with Brythokelltic being somehow distinct from both Kelltic and Kelltic Dialect, and Deutsch being somehow different to Francodeutsch, Boideutsch or Neustrian. There are also four Atlantean and five Lemurian languages, but we're told nothing about them.

Oh, and a lot of the languages have an additional Dialect option, so that, for example, Soumi (Finnish?) is distinct from Soumi Dialect. I have no idea why this is the case, and no explanation - or even reference to one - is offered. By contrast with the needless dipthong-bitching fiddlyness of the European languages most of West Africa appears to speak one generic 'Beniyorob' tongue (no subdialects).

And that's enough to bring on the red mist. So here's our now customary ‘fix Mythus with a red pen and some common sense’ aside:

Your 'umble scribe would have done the whole languages fustercluck a bit differently. Very differently in fact.

See, my way of doing it would have been to divide languages up by culture area (Christendom*, Greek ecumene, Persia/Araby, Aztec Empire, Cathay, Atlantean domains, etc). Each culture area would have a hegemonic (literary/legal) language, a regional trade pidgin, some scholarly/arcane tongue(s), and a slack handful of local languages/dialects in which the local peons gibber to one another. Anything else is just outright foreign babbletalk.

*  or nearest Mythus equivalent: Greater Frankish cultural area or sommat?

Here's a historical example of what I mean:

Roman Empire
Hegemon language:		Latin
Trade pidgin:		Greek
Arcane:		Etruscan, Egyptian, Minoan
Local Languages:		Oscan, Spanish and Gallic dialects, German dialects, Rhaetian, Illyrio-Moesian, Macedonian, Aramaic, etc.

See, by limiting things like this you can still have 1,000 languages in a game world, but starting characters only need to pick from a shorter local sub-list. That way you get both the benefits of a fantasy-style common language ~and~ the point-and-gesture language barrier thing, as well as the entertaining (and authentic) historical experience of two educated foreigners communicating via literary quotations in a third language both known mainly from books.

Heading outside your usual culture area? Spend some points to learn the lingo, or get a native guide.

/end aside on languages done right.

The next table on page 101 gives us a dozen Phaeree (non-human) Languages. This one is a masterpiece of gygaxian specificity sans any kind of useful context. Apparently Drowish is distinct from both Elvish and Trowish, and I have no idea what Slaughite is and why it is distinct from Goblintalk. We are helpfully cautioned that the table is incomplete. *eyeroll*

Our last language table is Ancient, Arcane, Dead and 'Lost' Languages. It has the usual suspects: Ancient Greek, Latin, Sumerian, Vedic, as well as some intriquing oddities like Arachnidean, Arcane Magickal, Etruscan, High Atlantean, Lemurian Pictogram, Unknown Tibetan or Y'dragi Runic. Nicely evocative. Could be worse.

Section 5: More Heroic Persona Data

This is pages 102-111. Lots of tables and -- would you Adam and Eve it! -- some actual potentially useful stuff for a non-Mythus game. I'm gettin' that celebratory Finnish folk-rock feeling!

Page 102 repeats the rules for Attractiveness we encountered in Mythus Prime. Apparently the maximum for HPs is 18, even though the 2d6+8 die roll gives you a 12-20 range. I find myself having trouble caring about that particular caveat, and hope you’ll concur. Advanced Mythus does add an Inner Beauty/Ugliness rule, which modifies apparent attractiveness of NPCs, sorry, Other Personae, by +/-5 (roll d10) based on their character and moral/ethical qualities. This is a complete reversal of D&D, where Charisma is the big deal and Comeliness the raggedy-arsed poor cousin afterthought.

Next is Joss, which is clarified as being pidgin english for "deus", and not at all a reference to Mr Buffyverse. Joss is generated on 1d100, with roughly equal chances of 2-14, 14 being the absolute maximum anyone can have. The rules covering the use of Joss in play are elsewhere entirely, but I expect they'll be pretty much standard Luck/Fate Points.

What a minute. Did I just see some sly gamer humour in among all the dry-as-dust lecturing?

Birth Rank sounds as dull as ditchwater, and largely is. Which child in the family are you? *yawn* The exception is the "7th child" rule, which is the kind of funky 'roll, and get lucky, maybe REALLY lucky' thing Jeff Rients might come up with. I've reproduced the full-page table below, mainly to save myself from having to describe the damn thing:

You’ll notice that 7th children are the commonest type of Low Class HP, but are massively rare in the Upper Classes, which totally fits with both folklore and medieval demographics. The middle classes produce a disproportionate percentage of adventuring 3rd children (likely sons, given that gamers are 90% male). Again, in keeping with folklore.

Actual mechanical benefits of Special 7th Snowflakism are underwhelming. Plus 1-3 here or there doesn't mean d*ck in a percentile system, it’s less than a rounding error FFS.  This is a bit of a shame, as Advanced Mythus almost displayed a flicker of mechanical character for a second. And then it died aborning, strangled to death by a spreadsheet.

Pages 104-105 are entitled Background and Quirks, although the vast majority of the spread is taken up a sub-section on determining character age and how it affects Attributes, Skills, Attractiveness and Finances. All I can say about this is: picture the AD&D age categories rules; now imagine someone laughing at them for being pathetically imprecise and unscientific; now imagine that person was an actuary in his former life. Yep, pure fantasy heartbreaker; almost a send-up of gygaxian simulationism.

There's a mildly irritating footnote to the gains/losses by age table which specifically rules that civilised people get 20% more bonus skill points per age category than primitive types. Again with the "householders are superiah!" snobbery Gary? Your fixed-abode-centric rules make Conan, Genghis Khan and Hiawatha saaaaad.

Quirks (Knacks and Peculiarities)
Page 106 is two columns of *blah blah* about giving characters unique identifying details. It's recommended that you give with one hand and take with the other, balancing each minor benefit with a corresponding disadvantage. Cited is the example character having a minor sixth sense for impending danger, but an old jousting wound "...(because his sixth sense doesn't help when he is already in a dangerous situation!)." This has actual mechanical benefits in the game:

Holy crap! A slick, simple rule you could actually extract from Mythus and use in an old school game without instigating a violent revolt at the table. "Woo hoo! We’s partying now Leeroy! Pass that thur jug o’ pinecone liquor ma way!"

The only other thing worth looking at on page 106 is a pretty sweet Daniel Gelon pic of an Egyptian-looking wizardy guy and his lion? jackal? sidekick. In all seriousness, the b+w art in the Mythus book is (IMO) far superior to the full-colour plates. There’s probably a lesson about quality content trumping perceived style in there somewhere.

No crackle of lightning bolts, no wall of action, 

and no lunging monsters on the ‘roids: 

still better than 90% of contemporary fantasy art.

Pages 107-108 are two full-page tables of example Quirks (Advantages) and Counter-Quirks (Disadvantages). Most quirks are pretty trivial, things like +/-1 to a particular Attribute, +/-5 to a skill, or non-mechanical stuff like "good orator", "cheapskate" or "can't swim". Some are more significant: "Non-magickal: 20% Heka doesn't affect character", "Lie detector", "Anti-Midas Touch" (income 10% normal), 'hated by all animals' and 'halved healing rate' leap off the page at first look. These tables are potentially useful if you like random traits in your games.

More actual usefulness?! In terms of what has gone before we are currently mining a motherlode of usable information. Let’s see if we can’t keep this roll of joyful sozzlification going.

Pages 109-111 are Instant HP Information Tables. These cover all sorts of character details you might prefer to roll, rather than agonize long and hard over:

• handedness - 75% R, 20% L, 5% ambidextrous,
• background - job before becoming an adventurer. 9 tables, by SEC,
• political beliefs - anachronistically 20th century,
• religion - everything from agnostic to acolyte of Gloomy Darkness,
• general personality - cool and casual through to crazy, wild,
• degree of conformity - radical, fashion-chaser, outcast, etc.
• general interests - travel, music, lore, politics, etc.
• more Quirks - generally more powerful than the earlier tables, effectively mini-superpowers/curses. Strictly GM option.
• race - five races: Black, Brown, White, Red and Yellow, each with more local sub-groups.

Handy, albeit nothing dazzlingly novel. I'd say that's a two-finger drink, based on the *might* use it in game if all other books are in storage somewhere factor.

And that last table may be... let's just say 'problematic' to modern sensibilities. Yes, people look different, and yes, there's precedent in pulp and adventure fiction - especially the older stuff - for dividing fantasy world humanity up into capital-'r' Races. But it does jar somewhat to see the word race used in this context in a fantasy game written only 20 years ago.

I dunno, maybe I'm being oversensitive about this. Have a look and see what you think:

I'm not sure what EGG was thinking here: is Aerth a semi-melting-pot world? Do certain races find themselves more prone to adventure and exploration? Who knows, there might even be 'sunstroke/vitamin D deficiency by biome' rules deeper down the Advanced Mythus rabbit hole. We're given no explanation of course, just a big, fat hostage-to-fortune to anyone willing to take offence.

EGG: unwitting racist, or simply hardcore 'simulation uber alles' product of his time and reading preferences? Knowing what we know of the man I'd honestly have to go with option 'B' (rather than option /b/tard). I think this table was just a case of perfectly innocent "It's a fantasy game; not a political tract" creator naivete.

And, with that last little bout of pidgeon-catting, we say finis to this sacking-and-looting spree on sections 4 & 5 of character generation in Advanced Mythus. Surprisingly undepressing really, although how much of that is down to it being an unseasonably sunny spring day here in Blighty is undetermined. I counted at least four possible takeaways from this section; which is - I think, it's all a little hazy right now - more than in the entire rest of the book so far!

Good news Mythus. It appears we will not require the services of famously placid Scotsman David Hume this week:

Next Time: we brave the sixth and final part of Advanced Mythus chargen: Heroic Persona Resources. That's money, contacts and gear, all in EGG's inimitably specific style. And - given that most of that section is equipment tables - we might even make a start on Chapter 11: Core Game Systems.

Pic sources: Dangerous Journeys Mythus rulebook, Ryan Dunlavey's Action Philosophers

A-Z April, also Buffbear

And that's all I have to say about that.

JOESKY Tax

Buffbear
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: non-standard (Sexay)
Movement: 120' (40')
Armor Class: 3 (scalemail + amazing dexterity)
Hit Dice: 3+1 HD of undiluted studdlyness
Attacks: 1 sword for 1d8+1*
Save: F3
Morale: 12
Hoard Class: VI

• Radiates a constant fascinate effect (as the spell, see LLAEC or OSRIC) which affects both men and women. 
• Able to use a specific, limited form of the ESP spell at will. This works on all women and female creatures**, but is useful only for determining what they desire most. 
• Never surprised (he is VERY open-minded)

Buffbear always speaks of himself in the third person. It is part of his mystique.

*  By inclination Buffbear is a lover, not a fighter. He will always attempt to *ahem* negotiate first.
** Normally asexual creatures have a 50% chance of counting as female for the purposes of Buffbear's ESP. A gelatinous cube with a bow on top definitely counts as female.

What a guy.

Buffbear discovered by Jeff Rients. Statted up at the request of Jason Kielbasa.

CAUTION: Don't make the mistake of googling the word "Buffbear" in search of a larger version of this image. My eyes!!! [link thankfully SFW]

Pic source: both c/o the internet. No specific source known.

Djangos Gurnery

An uncannily accurate representation of my work process.

Further to a question posted in the comments by Kelvin Green ("Kelvin, a name derived from the old English word for 'shameless instigator and causer of trouble'."):

If you rewrote Mythus so that it said what it needed to say and nothing more -- and putting aside any attempt to make it fun and playable -- to how many pages, would you say, could a ruthless editor reduce it?

I initially thought the answer was 16 pages. It turns out that -- at least for Mythus Prime -- the answer is actually one single solitary page (plus about 1/4 page of setting material).

For those few who might be interested I hereby present the world's first super-condensed (and, AFAIK, only) Mythus retro-clone:

Django's Gurnery ver3

A one-page fantasy RPG

(inspired by Dangerous Journeys Mythus 

by Gary Gygax and Dave Newton)

And, for further delectation of the loyal, Mythus-loving readership:

Epic of *Narf* ver2

A one-page supplement of

GM pointers and setting material 

for Django's Gurnery

Thoughts? Opinions? Demands that I rein in my tendencies to grandiloquent verbosity at the expense of rules clarity?

Note: Last modified 28th March

Thalggu Demands More Flattering Portraiture!

Inspired by Mr Zak S[mith/-abbath] esquire's assertion that the artwork is a substantial element in the "cool monster or not?" decision-making process.

(Can't find the exact quotation. It was either in his alphabetical MM thing, or in one of his FF-reimagined posts.)

WI: the Brain Collector had had *this* (or something similarly monochrome and atmospheric) as its artwork from the get go? Would it get more fan-love? Or would it still flounder in obscurity?

Joesky Tax to follow...  

Pic source: Moebius, via Monster Brains.

Thalggu Needs Brains!

The Neh-Thalggu doesn't get enough love. An alien intelligence that warps in from other realms to steal the brains of powerful wizards like some bizarro truffle hound. 'Alien wizard ninja seeks delicious brains for fun, companionship'. What's not to like?

 

Look at him. He is avid for your skull meats. 

That is one pro-active, go-getting Slug Eat Your Face of brain acquisition.

The Brain Collector has been presented in a number of different ways over the years. It's variously been a kind of brain-fixated Mi-Go (in X2 Castle Amber and the AC9 Creature Catalogue), an enigmatic but non-hostile alien scholar (in Bruce Heard's Voyage of the Princess Ark series), or a massively powerful Mind Flayer-equivalent (3E's Epic Level Jokebook/SRD). We don't talk about its cameo appearance in the ill-conceived, ill-fated AD&D Mystara setting: that whole situation was just desperate wholesale corpse-robbing by late period TSR.

Of course, being 'only' a BECMI monster, the Neh-Thalggu gets no official D&D respect. That's only to be expected though; it doesn't have name recognition or marketability even on a par with second stringers like the Slaadi, the Githyanki, the Aboleth, or the Flumph. There's no Illithiad or Sea Devils creature culture book for the Brain Collector; no Neh-Thalggu of the Underdark sourcebook expounding on the nuances of their sophisticated cerebro-connoisseur culture. AFAIR they didn't even rate a mention in 3E's dedicated tentacles-and-alien-insanity sourcebook Lords of Madness.

Gaming popular culture is similarly left unaccountably cold by the NT. It even seems to have fallen between the cracks for those parts of the blogosphere that otherwise love their theramin-soundtracked science fantasy and/or Klarkash Ton-infused weird. No blog posts. No WTF D&D? citations. Not even a single passing mention in noisms' epic 2,000+ page Let's Read the Monstrous Manual compilation. Poll a hundred gamers and I'd put money that not one would have named the Neh-Thalggu as a top ten fave beastie.

Why is this? Is the whole 'We come to take your brain Mr Wizard' thing too adversarial for power-fantasizing bathrobe fetishists? Is the Brain Collector somehow UWP* 'bad form' in the same way disjunction is, but the Rust Monster unaccountably isn't? Or is it just that the Neh-Thalggu intrudes on the Mind Flayer and Aboleth conceptual niches?

* unconscious wizard privilege?

I think part of the problem is presentational. The write-up in the CC is a bit *meh* and the art is distinctly unflattering. Bizarre-looking: yes; arresting, inspirational and thought-provoking: no.

Neh-Thalggu LOEV photobombing

As written the BECMI Brain Collector is a No.# App: 1 ronery-ronery closet troll which pretty much acts as a wizard of d6 levels with fighter HD and a bite attack. The threat it presents depends largely on the luck the GM has with its 0-12 randomly determined spells. It's a definite test of GMing ingenuity to compose a meaningful 'eat the wizard's brain' threat with - for example - knock, infravision, floating disc, ventriloquism and locate object.

This being the case you could argue that the Neh-Thalggu is a classic old school monster; one where imagination and improvisational skill in using it trump listed abilities. But it still seems a little - well - naff for an intelligent 10HD otherworldly brain epicure.

Moving on to the Epic Level Jokebook (hereafter referred to as the ELH), this book claims that the BECMI write-up 10HD Neh-Thalggu are mere juveniles out on a first brain-looting spree, and that the full-grown Brain Collector is a 32+HD godbeast. Thanks to the ability sprawl endemic to post-Classic D&D the 3E ELH Neh-Thalggu reads like its several monsters rolled into one:

• save-or-suck poison,
• plane-spanning bite,
• debilitating tentacles strikes,
• Mind flayer-style brain extraction,
• extradimensional nature (which enhances defences),
• PC-equivalent spellcasting ability,
• immunity to critical hits thanks to weird organ placement,
• ability to teleport and/or flee to other planes.

Yeah, there is a LOT of power duplication there. That could easily be a power list for two or three different hit-and-run terrors, brain-seeking or otherwise.

However, if divested of power duplication and general Epic Level Jokebook cruft (+20 Insight bonus to AC? Hahahahahaha, no. As Mitchell and Webb would put it: "That's numberwank!"), the SRD Neh-Thalggu still offers interesting optional abilities for the creature in a Classic D&D game. Put the above powers into a d8 table and roll a couple to instantly individualise a Neh-Thalguu. That'll keep even players who've heard of the beasty on their toes, and will be a marked improvement on its current solitary one-trick-pony 'spells, then bite' tactics.

If you don't fancy rolling for additional abilities simply give the BECMI Neh-Thalggu some way of paralysing/stunlocking opposition, such as the similarly brain-eating Illithid already enjoys. Just give it carrion crawler tentacles* (or the use of a wand of paralysis**, or a cult of net-armed minions, or whatever) and an agenda: instant scheming alien kidnapper.

* Additional idea: Carrion crawlers = Neh-Thalggu larvae.
** This will likely be by GM fiat. By the book BECMI Neh-Thalggu are dirt poor, with only TT ‘C’ (average value 750gp and only a 10% chance of magic) to their unpronounceable tentacle-waggling names. By stark contrast the ELH Neh-Thalggu are the single richest monster in the book: triple normal treasure.

And the SRD Brain Collector has more to offer aside from its (absurdly broad) power list. Take a look at the text of the Neh-Thalguu SRD write-up:

A creature whose brain has been harvested by a brain collector cannot be raised, reincarnated, or resurrected while the brain is in the creature, because the collector preserves and draws upon the soul and basic personality of the creature for as long as it retains the brain. Neh-thalggus’ own language is a silent sign language 'spoken' with their writhing head-tentacles. They can also communicate telepathically with any creature that has a language within 100 feet.
-- d20 SRD

So as well as more powers than you'll ever need to make an interesting stalker/killer monster, the SRD Neh-Thalggu also has AS STANDARD:

• Genius-level intelligence
• Natural telepathy
• Soul/personality preservation
• Resurrection lock

A genius alien with tongues + magic jar on demand. That's a campaign archvillain power list in and of itself! All that's required is a GM call on precisely how much of a captured personality (memories? emotions? values? attachments?) the Neh-Thalggu can access. Slap that on the BECMI Brain Collector, and enjoy.

So here's to the Neh-Thalggu: always outnumbered, never outgunned.

Edit: found a Neh-Thalggu mini. It's a fantastic-looking kitbash of GW Tyrannid parts created by a guy screen-named Kep as part of his sculpt all the ELH monsters from scratch project. Behold the googly-eyed toothy magnificence HERE.


Pic Source: BECMI D&D AC9 Creature Catalogue, AD&D 2E Mystara sourcebook(?)

Puritans &... Pleistocene?

A half-formed thought inspired by notes on The New World for SBVD, by re-reading Marvel's 1601 comic, and by a thread at alternatehistory.com entitled No Megafauna Extinction (in between threads entitled "Cato's Cavalry" and "A Long and Flowing Whig" - those AH guys are nuts. Erudite, but nuts).

So Daniel Boone crossed into the bluegrass country of Kentuckee. 
Only to happen upon...

From the originating thread:

I see there being a market for Glyptotherium and D. clavicaudatus shells as curios in europe, along with Ivory, utterly massive furs, from Arctodus, Castoroides ohioensis and C. leiseyorum, and various fibers from all the different Camelids. F***! It'd be like a treasure trove for anyone stupid or desperate enough to try and set up shop there.

Hell, in the Caribbean, where things aren't as deadly, you've still got miniature ground sloths, Flightless Owls and rather interesting parrots (that might revive the fashion for parrots among the nobility back in Europe,) plus all the stuff that drove settlement IOTL.

We have scads of Pleistocene beasty stats in B/X; we have our grungy, low-powered D&D modcops; and between ckutalik's Hill Cantons Domain Game and Autarch's forthcoming ACKS we have our colony-builder systems. This is just crazy enough to work!

And lo! The gods did look upon the ravings of the fog-addled bogmonkey, and decreed that Mammoths and Muskets (or Brutes & Buckskins? or Settlers & Smilodons?) was a stupid idea, but one that might have legs, so don't knock it on the head just yet. :)

Edit: You know, I should probably split all this non-Vaults stuff off into another blog. Or would that just be annoying and fiddly?

Pic Source
Frank Frazetta (of course), found in the Comic Art Community Frazetta gallery.

[SBVD] Crime and Punishment

Note: the topicality of this post in the light of recent events in the UK is entirely accidental.

Sooner or later our brave heroes (such as they are) are going to fall afoul of the law (such as it is). Here are some half-formed thoughts on making their big day in court fittingly Kafkaesque and memorably unjust.

Detection and Detention
Thanks to the thieving antics of travelling vagabonds, gypsies and suchlike sturdy beggars (*cough* adventurers *cough*) outsiders are generally the first to fall under suspicion when a crime occurs. Many jurisdictions still hold to the old legal principle that if no one is punished for a detected crime then the elected headmen of the community are guilty of conspiracy with the criminals. This tends to concentrate the mind on finding anyone to punish, rather than the right person.

There are no police as we understand the term in the world of SBVD: no CID, no CSI, no Special Branch. There are civil watchmen and rural road wardens, but these are paramilitary peacekeeping organisations with no interest in helping recover your stolen purse. Privately hired watchmen are common in cities, but their effectiveness as deterrent to criminal activity is limited by the innate venality and cynicism of the breed. [1]

Unless someone is actually caught red handed and captured by an initial hue-and-cry [2] the best way to bring someone to trial is to either: 1) hunt them down yourself, or 2) hire a professional thief taker (prototypical bounty hunters and/or private detectives) to bring them in. Struggling artists and jobbing printers do a roaring trade in lurid Wanted! posters commissioned by clubs of vengeful private citizens.

1] Many (most?) private watch organisations are little more than local mafias operating on a "Shame if anything happened to your place..." protection racket basis.

2] This is the common term for the ever-present pitchfork-wielding mob in vigilante mode. The more archaic and formal term posse comitatis is used by highfalutin, la-di-da legal types.


Trial
Once captured, stripped of their goods and remanded into custody in the filthy local cells (save vs. poison or contract a random disease) a defendant will have to wait 1d20 days before being dragged before the beak. The concept of bail (remanding into the care of an appointed custodian) is gradually evolving in the cities.

The trial system in SBVD is archaic, arbitrary, chaotic and entirely dependent on how bored or dyspeptic the judge feels today. Half-forgotten centuries-old traditions and ridiculous practices are rife, and illogical - but procedurally correct and thus technically legal - decisions are the norm. Think in terms of the Red Queen’s Court in Alice in Wonderland, rather than the stately gravity of contemporary courtroom dramas.

Outrageous as it may seem to people raised under the aegis of Common Law, but the society of SBVD works on a quasi-European inquisitorial system of law. The magistrate hears the evidence he wants to hear, and then passes judgement based on his personal prejudices and/or knowledge of precedent and case law. Judges to the busy, important urban courts are appointed either by the civic council or Imperial decree, but many rural courts are still feudal, presided over by whatever semi-educated local toff feels like wearing the big wig for a while.

If a jury is convened to pass judgement (common in the big city, less so in the boondocks) they're more likely to be there to get out of the rain than to deliberate with wisdom and discretion. Most juries will either be prejudiced against the defendant ("He's in the dock; he must be guilty"), or liable to use the case to address longstanding local grievances ("Can't let rich toffs think they're above the law").

Travellers are warned that the old customs of trial by combat or ordeal are still on the books. These expedients are resorted to if the judge just can’t be bothered and fancies livening up proceedings with a bit of bloodshed.

The outcome of a trial can be decided either by GM fiat, or, more fittingly, by a 2d6 Reaction Roll:

2d6	Result
2	"Pass me the black cloth cap. I might be needing it..." Found guilty. Punished with all the harshness and imagination the GM can muster.
3-5	"Hand me that book, that I may throw it at the wretch." Found guilty. Sentenced to something harsh and onerous, but usually non-fatal.
6-8	"The court requires further evidence. Now, what's for lunch?" Remanded in custody for another 1d10 days.
9-11	"Not proven. Now stop wasting my time." Let off with a warning to quit town/be on best behaviour.
12	"This was obviously all a dreadful misunderstanding." Exonerated with an apology and testimonial to good character signed by the judge.

If the GM desires, the following situational modifiers may adjust the reaction roll:

+1 for each that applies
Respectable defendant
You didn't do it
...and you have an alibi
You bribed the judge
Your lawyer is a shark
Minor offence

-1 for each that applies
Respectable victim
You did it
...and witnesses saw you
Hanging judge
Your lawyer is an idiot
Outrageous crime


What About My Defence?
Oh, the cost of hiring a lawyer? This is very much a "What you got?" situation, but most decent lawyers won’t get out of bed for less than 50GC/day. They’ll expect payment whether or not they get to present their evidence in your defence: lawyers might be venal, ethically flexible logic-choppers, but they’re not stupid.

In cases of trial by ordeal/combat a retained lawyer will offer advice on procedure, and the name of a good doctor or judicial protagonist (if required), but won’t waive his fee. ("It’s not my fault the judge decided to revive the ancient tradition of ‘trial by flaming tarred pants’ just for you. I recommend running for that pond over there as fast as you can...")

A word of warning about lawyers: watch out for the keen-eyed pro bono crusading ones out to make a name for themselves. Their grandstanding antics are just as likely to annoy the judge and get you hanged on a technicality as to get you off with a virtuoso display of logic and rhetoric. Young, fast and fiery are fine qualities in a racehorse, but less than ideal in an advocate.

Punishment
Judicial punishment is harsh, exemplary, and usually ironic in nature. Incarceration is rare and special, reserved for valuable hostages or those who someone with an oubliette wants lost and forgotten. Most punishment involves some form of violence, public humiliation or hard labour. Debtors are put to work in chain gangs; givers of short weight are forced to wear a locked cartwheel around their neck; thieves and fraudsters are fined and lose a finger; seditionists get their tongues clipped or their lips seared; rapists are castrated; grave robbers are buried alive; murderers get the rope or axe, or occasionally, a ‘Ketch Special’.

Public headsmen are a wickedly inventive breed, constantly in competition to produce the most interesting and spectacular forms of public execution. Throwing to the dogs has fallen out of fashion as cruel and barbaric; the current fad is a spectacularly pyrotechnic form of breaking on the wheel called 'the flaming Katrin'. Such spectaculars make a great day out for the whole family.

Exceptions to the Rule
There is no equality before the law in SBVD. Some people are simply above it; others aren’t even considered legal persons. In many jurisdictions a nobleman, wizard or clergyman can only be bought to book by his social peers. Yes, this means that the upper classes can literally get away with murder, so long as they don’t pick on anyone liable to arouse the sentiments of the mob. There are also places where serfs, foreigners and/or non-humans are considered legal minors or chattel, legally the responsibility of the respectable types they accompany.

Mutants, warlocks and the like rarely even get to trial: the angry mob tends to skip straight to punishment. Such cancers to the body politic commonly ‘die of injuries sustained resisting apprehension’. Creatures entirely outside society (NPC races like beastmen, orcs, giants, etc.) are deemed outlaw and thus fair game for anyone with the ability to take them down. You don’t bring an action for damages against a giant eating your sheep; you apply to the army, or that gang of passing heroes.

Pic Source: Breaking on the Wheel, courtesy of seiyaku.com