High Level Adventuring

[apologies...this was supposed to post on Thursday. Then I got distracted by other stuff]

So, once again someone was asking questions about running "high level" adventures because they were planning a convention event for PCs of around 8th level...

Stop. That's not "high level."

I know, I know 8th feels IMPOSSIBLY huge...if you're used to playing Basic-system games where you encounter (and sometimes fight) godlings at levels 3-5. 8th must be super-duper stupendous, right? Your character might have an armor class of -3 and 60+ hit points, yeah?

Oh, boy.

No. 8th level is NOT high level. It is still "mid." Adventures geared for PCs of this level are "mid." Oh, what? You're going to come at me with Against the Giants and its listed level range of 8th-12th? Ever checked out the pre-gens for that one?

12th level magic-user, 13th level thief, 12th level cleric, 14th level fighter, 5th/8th level fighter/magic-user (equivalent of 9th level), 9th level cleric, 9th level fighter, 9th level magic-user, and 9th level ranger

Against the Giants IS a high level adventure and suggests NINE characters with an average level of 9th. Any 8th level you're bringing to the module is probably just a henchman.

I've discussed this in prior posts, but they may be hard to find; you can check them out:

Tiers of Play

What High Level D&D Looks Like

Here's the TL;DR version: 9th level is the MINIMUM level needed to be considered a "high level" character, and honestly those L9ers are just the babies of high level play. In my book, you need double-digit levels to really be considered a lofty, high level character...most demi-humans need not apply.

• For fighters types of 10th level you should have a barony and the money to pay for a force of men (or bunch of followers). You are a beast in combat with magical equipment and multiple attacks EVEN IF YOU GET LEVEL DRAINED a couple times. You should be able to finish/survive most fights unless you get magically held or poisoned.
• For thief types of 10th level, your skills work more often than not, and you have no hesitancy in using them. Your backstab damage is at least quadruple and, coupled with a magic weapon, means you can inflict DEVASTATING blows from stealth. You have ability to read magic scrolls (both magical and clerical) and can act as an emergency caster of either variety.
• For magic-users, by 10th level you have access to multiple 5th level spells. You are NOT a high level magic-user if you cannot cast 5th level spells, including such fantastic numbers as contact other plane, passwall, teleport, and wall of force. These are GAME-CHANGING spells...if ice storm is your best spell, sorry: you're still "mid."
• For clerics, by 10th level you have access to multiple 5th level spells, most of which are fantastic, including commune, dispel evil, plane shift, and raise dead. If your best spell is still the 4th level cure serious wounds then, sorry, you're still "mid." A 10th level cleric has a chance to turn any undead on the board (55% chance against vampires!), and can fall back on dispel evil for those pesky demons and devils.

None of which, by the way, is "game breaking" stuff...at least not with the AD&D game. Attrition is a thing. Resource expenditure is a thing. None of these abilities are going to allow a party to "pwn" hordes of giants and dragons and beholders and mind flayers. None of these are going to be an "auto-win button" when it comes to creatures from the nether planes: demons, devils, daemons, slaadi, night hags, etc.

What these powers DO give the players are a fighting chance against the most powerful forces of badness in the game. What it means to the DM is that you're able to access MORE CONTENT when creating adventures for the players. Do you think its an accident that mind flayers can be encountered in groups of four? Or that fire/frost giants might number eight in a meeting? Or that magic resistance is based on casters of 11th level?

Characters aren't being awarded intelligent dancing swords just to fight orcs.

If you've been running a campaign for over a year, you should have PCs that are in the 9th - 11th range, assuming weekly games; if bi-weekly it might take two years depending on how long your sessions are. Gygax (in The Strategic Review) estimated 50-75 game sessions to reach these levels, which doesn't sound unreasonable...I often see big "jumps" in x.p. when a party, acquiring a treasure designed for seven, only make it back alive with three or four members of the group. These "jumps" offset x.p. lost for energy drain, keeping a nice ascending trajectory of advancement...assuming the players are learning and growing and not getting over their skis too often. If you run D&D in long form, campaign style play it is INEVITABLE that you'll see high level characters.

Best be ready.

; )

What High Level D&D Looks Like

I can already tell I'm going to get in trouble for this post. Ah, well. No one reads blogs on Fridays, right?

; )

As my group gears up for another campaign start (the players need to generate PCs after our last TPK, and I need to find yet more low-level scenarios for 1st level characters...*sigh*), some questions arise in Ye Ol' Brain. Questions like: What's the aim here? What's the direction? Where do I hope to see the campaign go? What do I hope to accomplish with this thing? Why do I want to run a game at all?

To which the answer almost always comes back the same: I just want to play D&D.

What's the aim? Direction? Um...I don't really care. Where do I want to see the campaign go? I have no destination in mind. Accomplishments? It's just D&D.  My joy is in playing...and as a DM, "play" for me means creating a world and various scenarios/challenges for my players and then running those and seeing how they pan out. I am a mad god, with no ultimate divine plan...because, of course, I am not a TRUE God, and my life is as finite as any other human and will some day end. So I play to play. Because I enjoy it.  My players seem to enjoy my game (and why would they not when it is D&D, a magical realm of fantastic possibility, perilous danger, amazing rewards/loot). And so I run the game, hoping to see it last and last and last.

The world building is, thus, of paramount importance. Why? Because for a game to last it must have far more possibility and potential than what can be explored and consumed within the lifetime of the DM. Fortunately, our own world is a wonderful example of just how big a world can be. How many "adventures" (and misadventures) of large and small variety have you had in your own town? Or in towns that you've visited? Or wilderness areas outside of towns? And how many THOUSANDS or TENS OF THOUSANDS of towns and cities and wilderness areas have you NOT visited in your lifetime? Heck, I've been to Europe four or five times, visited three times that many cities (at least) on the continent and had amazing experiences, and that has barely scratched the surface of the possibilities...and all without a single combat encounter or larcenous incident.

This is why I can take an area as small as the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and British Columbia) and know that this TINY CORNER of planet Earth can provide all the "world" I need for the rest of my days. Throw in western Montana, parts of the California coastline, extraplanar adventures, and (possibly) some sort of "Underdark" like what you find in the classic "D" module series? There's far more than I could ever "finish;" far more than I'll ever probably need. My world map is set. Everything else is just keeping track of population points, resources, political factions (only if/as needed!) and "adventure sites" (i.e. dungeons). 

"Um...JB? You mentioned 'high level play' in your post title?"

Right, sorry...getting to that. My current world...the one I've been using since I started playing AD&D again (a couple years back), has yet to see high level characters as I define them. The players I've been working with are, after all, kids who are still learning the ropes of the game...but mainly it's just that 1E isn't a cakewalk game to play. Characters die...and with SMALL parties (less than six or seven characters), any single loss can lead to cascade failure and disaster. Eventually, some combination of skill and luck will enable a number of player characters to reach the higher levels, and once they do the "PC EcoSystem" will become much more stable and secure. They just haven't got there yet.

But I have seen high level campaign play in the past...both as a DM and a player. And with much talk about high level play being bandied about in recent months (both here and elsewhere), I thought I'd share my experiences, so that people can understand my perspective on this somewhat mythical level of play. 

BECAUSE...IF you share my joy of the game, and ARE committed to the long haul, and have a robust world that will LAST for the long haul, THEN with committed, determined players, you WILL eventually have high level PCs to deal with.

SO...there are two ways to end up with high level characters in your game: players "work them up" in standard fashion (aka The Hard Way), or they are "gifted" to players in the form of pre-gens or scenario specifics characters (which might be just one-offs or they might be allowed to linger in campaigns). I've run...and played...both types in past campaigns.

My first "campaign" lasted from circa 1982-1985 and mostly consisted of my friends and I learning to play the game (for the interested, I documented a rough history of my gaming history last June). I hesitate to even call it a proper campaign: much of it was dissociative, like a series of con-games...or FLAILSNAILS type adventures...with no common thread aside from the characters being used. Because our game started with B/X it was deadly but not punitive: resurrections didn't reduce CON for example, wishes did not age individuals and the DM (me) was fairly lenient with giving PCs means to reverse failures. However, there was NO world building to speak of, no real "town play" (just dungeons and wilderness), nothing for PCs to spend treasure on besides castles and specialist hirelings (B/X doesn't have upkeep and training costs).  Towards the end of this period, we began incorporating AD&D books into our game: high level spells, artifacts and relics, demon princes and arch-devils, etc. But the game was generally a mess...as one might expect from a bunch of pre-teen kids with little knowledge of the "real world" (history, geography, politics, economics, etc.). Just low-level D&D with bigger, fancier toys.

Still.  There were some beefy dungeons back then. And even uber-high level characters fear black puddings and rust monsters. No nerfing required.

In the fall of 1985, we decided to blow up the entire thing and start over from scratch using By The Book AD&D...as best we could. Characters started at 1st level and had to "work their way up." But, again, we didn't do much in the way of world building: a lot of "town adventures," but the towns were (mostly) nameless and unconnected other than by nameless roads. Mostly we were learning the AD&D rules, including the incorporation of the Unearthed Arcana. The campaign was short-lived...I would guesstimate my character earned a maximum of 300,000 x.p. over the course of the entire thing (and my PC was the most consistently played of all our group, now that we were sharing DM duties). That's only "mid-level" in my book...the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth was one of the last adventure modules we ran, and the party ended up abandoning the quest sometime in the upper caves. 

Sometime circa 1986ish (I'm guessing the summer, maybe fall), we started over a final time, and this time went hard. We used the World of Greyhawk map, but far less of its background/history, and our pantheon of gods were strictly Grecian (as had been the case since moving to AD&D). Characters initially had to be started at level one, although replacement PCs, brought in to fill out decimated parties, were allowed to start at higher levels as per Gygax's stipulations on page 12 of the DMG. Over the course of the next two+ years, these PCs DID reach high levels...my own character, started as a first level fighter, eventually became a bard in at least the high teens (16th+) range. That's well over a million x.p. earned, and while some of that was certainly acquired magically, he definitely lost levels to level drain as well. 

In all honesty, it is my experience in that final, grand campaign that provided most of my concept of what "proper" AD&D adventuring should look like. This was not a sit-down, weekly session with the same six friends kind of thing: the campaign was always "on," always being played. Whenever the DM was with one or more players...and had his/her books, dice, etc....and an idea, the game was run. Records were tracked (time and location) to ensure continuity, but this was not otherwise an 'organized' affair. Hell, a lot of our games were conducted over (landline) telephone, and we had party lines and three-way calling to enable this kind of activity.

Sure: the campaign started off with 3-4 players and a DM with some introductory scenario, in some small town. After a few small successes, the characters would move onto the next adventure "lead" to another town. Many of the characters in the campaign were reiterations of past characters...I played the same half-elf bard in all three of these campaigns (I don't believe he even reached bard status in the second campaign)...and thus many had established "backgrounds" and personality quirks even if we did minor tweaks (alignment was OFTEN changed) between re-boots. Anyway, with "known" characters...and being experienced players...many of us had ideas and ambitions of what we wanted to accomplish in the game world, and set out to achieve those ambitions. First, of course, there was always the need to make a little coin and get some levels under the belt, then we'd move on to grander schemes...often causing the party to drift apart.

However, since the game was always "on," this separation allowed all of us to adventure independently while still maintaining the same world. Players would have secondary (or tertiary) characters that could join a group when their "main" PC was doing magical research or building their fortress or whatever. We would eventually have a total of eight players participate at one time or another, four of whom were "regulars," and two of whom acted as co-DMs of the world.  That's EIGHT players...but the number of PLAYER CHARACTERS that showed up was more like three-four times (?) that. "Main PCs" (for lack of a better term), like my bard, were the major characters by dint of their high levels, which gave them access to considerable resources (hirelings and henchmen, magic items and money, hit points and spells, etc.)...of these, my PC was the closest thing to a high level "murder hobo" since, being a bard, he never settled down, never had henchmen, and was fairly self-sufficient with a wide range of abilities. But I was still DMing, too...usually with modules (I ran a pair of 12th level PCs through D1: Descent Yadda-Yadda, though they never made it to the Grand Cavern before chickening out).

Because AD&D scales so well, the game never devolved into cartoony, superhero D&D. Any character can fail a poison save. Any character can fall off a cliff or be assassinated or get hit with an arrow of slaying. BTB wizards (who should ALL have INT 18) are still extremely limited in the spells they know, unless they are actively pursuing spell books/scrolls OR spending a tremendous amount of treasure on research...and all the best spells have serious restrictions (expensive components or side effects like aging/system shock). Because it's a bit of a grey area we only reduced CON for raise dead and resurrection, but PCs wished back to life had no such loss...even so, that knocked out a lot of wishing rings and luck swords and we still had characters with CON drain (my PC must have been brought back to life seven or eight times). 

Even at high level, you STILL didn't traipse lightly into the Abyss to see what kind of treasure Jubilex (or whoever) had in his hoard...nether planar creatures will F you up in a Very Bad Way very quickly.  Adventures tended to be less "wahoo" gonzo and more grounded: rival baron with army is causing problems in your domain, or an unsullied Really Bad Dungeon so dangerous that any explorer under 10th level gets vaporized looking at it. You don't really need to nerf PCs when a dragon can strafe everyone in the party for 88 points of damage...that's a deterrent for dumb-dumb play right there.  So is grappling by hordes of 2HD humanoids (bullywugs are a good choice). So is energy drain. Hit points (and spells) always run out eventually. Yes, the fighter's armor class may be so low as to be un-hittable in melee...but there's no to hit roll needed for falling damage. And traps saved for half-damage will still whittle you down.

What you DO get with high level characters is the ability of PCs to operate far more independently of one another. No longer do you NEED to huddle together in groups of five to seven, pooling your resources and abilities. One high level PC...solo or accompanied by a pair of trusted henchmen...can make their own forays into forbidden cairns and tombs. And often they'll WANT to go solo: acting first to acquire some rare magic item or coveted spell scroll before another PC can acquire the same. As PCs become high level movers and shakers, it's not unusual to see more inter-player conflict as rivalries develop...which can work, sometimes, but isn't conducive for the long-term health of one's campaign.

[which is why I play with a strict, no-PVP policy these days]

But even with the ability to operate as independent agents, high level PCs can do MORE working together than apart. Yeah, invading the Demonweb Pits is probably a bad idea anyway, but it's a lot easier when you've got five or six stalwarts and as many lieutenants at your back. I've never run megadungeons myself, but I'd imagine you want as many spell batteries as possible when your group is pushing into the 6th (and deeper) levels below ground.

Regardless, in running a campaign that includes high level characters, it is important for the DM to provide carrots for the players to keep them engaged. GENERALLY SPEAKING, the world building by itself is the most important thing, because for long-term satisfaction, players must feel like they are having substantive impact on the imaginary environment and that is ONLY possible with a solid foundational setting. 

"Can I start a thieves guild?" Sure. "Can I run a tavern/brothel?" Yep. "Can I marry the prince, have him secretly killed and become Queen of the country?" Why not? All these things and more should be on the table for the enterprising player...and how they accomplish these goals IS the thing that becomes the adventure. High level characters have more grandiose dreams: my character, for example, wanted to become a deity and usurp Hades spot as the God of Death and the Underworld. It never happened for him (duh), but it was fun trying to figure out how one might go about doing it. As a DM of a long-running campaign with players who have put in the time and effort and earned their high levels you should expect...and be prepared!...for players to want to do more than look for the next 20-chamber labyrinth.

Because they'll want more. They always do. 

This is why the vast majority of the (very few) "high level" adventure modules fall into the range of fairly bad to nigh unplayable. High level characters are not only defined by their increased abilities and extraordinary gear, but by the relationship they've built over time with the campaign world. The constant interactions...necessary to achieve a high character level...over time embeds the character and builds them a place in the world's structure. I'm not just talking about strongholds and hideouts, but the relationships they build with the fantasy people (NPCs) of the world.

For example: the characters, mid-level (5th - 7th or thereabouts) get beat up pretty badly in some poorly thought-out venture. They have at least one or two beloved characters in need of resurrection, but they are far from the nearest city that might have a fundable patriarch (too far to arrive within the time limit of a raise dead spell). However, it just so happens that there is a rather seriously powerful druid (L13+ nearby) who is friendly to adventurers that are "forest helpers" (or non-orcs or whatever) who can give 'em some healing. 

And so they build a relationship with the archdruid (or whatever) and this EXTENDS their operating range as they can now push deeper into the wilderness, and...

Damn. Just got a call from my aunt. My 93 year old grandmother appears to be on her way to joining my mother in the Great Beyond. Ugh.

Sorry to cut the post short. The family and I are driving to Montana. I'll check in later.

Tiers Of Play

Man, it's been a rough week or two. Or four. January...rough this year. Been pretty stressed; if I made a salty response or comment (here or on your blog) in the last few days...my apologies.

Okay. On with the show!

[oh, wait...yeah, I changed Ye Old Blog's layout a bit. Blogger is "easy" to use, but it's a bitch to adjust when you can't access the code and the options for manipulation are limited. Hopefully, people aren't having a hard time with the new look...more apologies for any inconvenience]

Over at Prince's, there was an announcement that the "goal" for this year's NAP III contest would be to explore the concept of play/adventures for high level characters, a woefully underdeveloped area of D&D gaming. This prompted much discussion amongst the commenters...both excitement and not-a-little trepidation.

There is...and has been for a long time...a dearth of D&D game play in the upper echelons of level range, at least amongst MANY of the folks 'round this neck of the woods (old edition D&D players). Which is a tad silly, considering how many YEARS this OSR ball has been a-rolling. Why silly? Because, with regular, committed game play, getting to a "high" level in D&D doesn't take that long...assuming, of course:

A) players are getting better at playing, and

B) DMs are providing adequate, regular opportunities for x.p. (i.e. treasure)

There are two AD&D campaigns currently going on in my household: one run by me, one run by my son. For a variety of reasons (mainly sheer busy-ness) we don't get as much time to play as anyone would like...maybe a couple/three times pre month?...the boy hasn't even run us since, I think, December or November.  Today, he'll be our DM.

[ah, jeez. Just found out Diego is sick with something...has a fever. Well, that throws a monkey-wrench in everything. Add more stress to the pile!]

Hmm. Well, today he was supposed to be our DM. *sigh*  

Anyway, despite that game playing infrequently, I've still managed to get my "main" PC to 5th level and a secondary PC to 4th. In MY campaign, the players started new 1st level characters, and the party ranger (a notoriously difficult class to level up) just hit 2nd level after three-ish sessions? That's withOUT an earned x.p. bonus (his ability scores don't meet the threshold for the +10%).

If we were to play regularly (which I'd consider four to six hours per week), I'd expect all players to be hitting mid-level in two to three months. By the end of the year (always assuming decent play and participation) I'd expect most...if not all!...of the players' main PCs to be starting to see the lofty heights of "high-level."

But what does that mean, exactly: High level? Mid level? There seems to be some confusion/consternation floating around in Ye Old Inter-Webs. Some folks consider anything above 7th level to be "high level;" I saw one commenter who considered 5th level to be "high." 5th? Not much room for a mid-tier there!

I think, perhaps, some definitions could help.

AD&D is the most robust of the old school systems, and (of the older editions) is best able to accommodate ALL scales of D&D play. In fact, I would argue it is DESIGNED to do so (compared to the Basic sets which were written to introduce new players to the game, or the OD&D rules which were a "first pass" at the creation of this new hobby). Plenty of monster, magic items, powerful spells and hostile environments (planar travel, anyone?) to challenge the highest tiers of character power.  However, there are (for me) clear delineations, or TIERS, of play.

Low-level play: 1st through 5th

Mid-level play: 6th through 11th

High-level player: 12th+

These are approximations. To measure in experience points, I'd tag a good breakpoint for "mid-level" at 50,000 x.p. and "high-level" at either 500,000 or 1,000,000 x.p. (depending on the individual campaign).

My measure for this is in terms of PC power/effectiveness which (in AD&D) can generally be equated to which magical spells are readily and easily accessed by an adventuring party with a good variety of character types. 

The mark of mid-level play is the ability to access 3rd level spells...easily and readily. 3rd level spells is the category when the troubles of low-level (beginning) adventurers start to lose their sting. In the cleric section we see spells like continual light (who needs torches?), create food & water (ditto rations!), cure disease (removing rot grub, green slime, giant rats), dispel magic (handy), glyph of warding (protect your safe room in the dungeon!), locate object (where was that stairway up?), and remove curse (obviously good). For the necromantically inclined, animate dead can turn those dead orcs into meat shields and/or treasure porters, and speak with dead gives PCs good intel on the dungeon.  Dungeon crawling, the meat and drink of low-level adventurers becomes far easier with a handful of these babies every day.

For the magic-user, the spell book really begins to open up with 3rd level spells. Certainly fireball and lightning bolt become wonderful crowd clearers and monster killers, but utility spells like fly, invisibility 10' radius, Leomund's tiny hut, tongues, and water breathing allow exploration possibilities that weren't previously available. Scouting becomes easier with spells like clairvoyance and clairaudience, and protection from normal missiles makes the party's wizard much more durable. Of course, spells like haste, slow, and hold person can provide huge advantages in fights...especially against numerous lesser opponents. 

However, it's not enough that the party cleric or wizard has only ONE of these spells. To be a true mid-level party, you need ready access...enough to sustain a significant delve or session. Four to six applications of 3rd level power is what you're looking for, with six to eight being even better. Once your players have access to that level of magical resource (and are smart enough to not simply stock "fireball x3") then you can look at the group as "mid-level."

In similar vein, I peg "high level" player to approximately 12th level. In truth, with decent players (and excellent magical equipment) 10th or 11th would be a fine breakpoint, as it is the ready access to 5th level spells that denotes high level play. 

But at 12th level, the kid gloves can finally come off.

5th level magic is the kind of stuff that breaks a lot of DMs poor little noggins. For clerics, we get spells like commune, dispel evil, plane shift, raise dead, and true seeing...spells that allow intel/recon without fear, spells that remove the sting of death, and spells that can banish even pit fiends back to their own planes (woe betide the player who feels cure critical wounds and flamestrike are the cleric's best spells of this magnitude). For magic-users, we gain access to cloudkill, conjure elemental. contact other plane, hold monster, magic jar, passwall, and teleport...some of the most powerful spells in the entirety of the game. Whole dungeons levels can be cleared by means of these spells...dungeon levels readily mapped with the use of the 4th level wizard eye spell. 

But 6th level magic (obtained at 11th level by clerics, and 12th level by magic-users) puts even these to shame. Clerics gain the ability to cast heal, which not only enable the curing of insanity and the instant recovery of hit points, but can also bring a raised character back to full adventuring strength (no waiting a week for recovery!). Find the path makes the objective of any dungeon quest far more easily accessible, and word of recall gives the character an instant "get out of jail free" card to return to his/her fortress (and EVERY cleric, by 11th level should have a stronghold staffed by loyal followers).  For magic-users, stone to flesh enables a party to recover from petrifaction, while reincarnate allows the wizard to act as an "emergency cleric" if the group's patriarch has been killed. Anti-magic shell, legend lore, death and disintegrate are all incredibly useful, and no wizard should be caught at sea without control weather in the repertoire.  Just having access to two or three of these 6th level spells can greatly extend the operational range of a high level party. 

Of course, any party that has a 12th level magic-user should (assuming equitable distribution of x.p.) include a 13th level thief (or 11th level in the case of a multi-classed demihuman).  13th level sees thieves with a 99% of moving silently, and 85%-99% chance of hiding in shadows (depending on race), and quintuple damage from a successful backstab. For a thief with a +3 short sword and an (off-hand) +2 dagger...not an unheard of combo...that's an average of 55 damage, enough to bring down a 12 HD monster (say, a fire giant) in a single go.

Fighter types of 10th and 11th level will generally have AC well below zero and hit points in the 60+ range (70+ for rangers) in addition to multiple attacks, and bonus spells (paladins and rangers). An 11th level paladin turns undead on the same column as a 13th level cleric, auto-turning wights, wraiths, ghouls, and ghasts and having a decent (better than 50%) chance against anything up through vampires. And rangers at high level gain IMMENSE damage bonuses versus evil humanoids, like giants. 

All of which is Good & Necessary. As I said, DMs need pull no punches when it comes to high level adventuring parties: greater demons and devils, giants, gorgons, mind flayers, purple worms and (duh) dragons all should be available as challenges for high level parties. Monsters that would result in TPKs if placed in adventures can finally hit the table without resentment; fiendish traps and magical curses can abound. Deep forays into the bowels of the earth...or the unknown of extra-planar realms...can occur. And the DM need not fear reprisal and hostility from the players. After all, this is what they've been working towards, over dozens of play sessions. It is the very reason to play the extended Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

Okay...that's enough to chew on for now. I hope to have a follow-up post that provides some helpful hints on transitioning players from one tier to the next. I feel like THAT is (yet another) subject solely lacking intelligent discourse and explanation.

; )

A typical LOW-level party.