On Transhumanism in RPGs

From time to time, various RPGs present themselves that are billed as being transhumanist in nature. As a transhumanist myself for more than a decade, I find myself both disappointed and annoyed by the vast majority of such outings, as they clearly do not understand what transhumanism actually is.

My own bona fides; I've been a transhumanist for more than a decade, served on the board of directors of the World Transhumanist Association for two years (now HumanityPlus), have given lectures on transhumanism, and wrote the WTA's pamphlet on human cloning. I think I know whereof I speak.

One of the greatest misunderstandings about transhumanism is that it is merely high-tech, technophilia, genetic engineering, bionics, cyberpunk, virtual reality, a technological Singularity, or a combination thereof. It is not.

Simply put, transhumanism is the process of consciously improving oneself, or a group of people, beyond the limitations of "baseline" humanity, and thereby create a new, post-human species. Without that conscious desire to exceed humanity, one is neither a transhumanist nor a transhuman. One can be a technophile, or a cyborg, or genetically enhanced, but unless that is coupled with the goal of moving beyond "humanity", it is not transhumanism. There is a reason that a common transhumanist symbol in the early days was >H.

Now, transhumanism certainly can involve all those things I mentioned above. Space exploration, nanotechnology and post-scarcity economies, cybernetics, virtual realities, cryonics, artificial intelligence; all these things and more are staples of transhumanist interests and projections. But they do not, in and of themselves, make something transhumanist. For that, one must have the desire to create (or become) a new, post-human species.

In game terms, as well as in fiction, the ripest field for exploring this theme is the conflict between baseline humans and the transhumans (and/or posthumans). Conflicts between different transhuman factions are also possible, maybe based on their attitudes towards the baseline humans. (And yes, there are definitely "factions" among contemporary transhumanists along such lines, as well as how transhumanist-potential technologies should be distributed or made accessible.)

So when I see a game, or read a novel, that makes the assumption that having a bionic arm or having a virtual reality world is de facto evidence of someone being a transhuman or posthuman, I get irked. On the one hand, I'm happy that transhumanism is gaining more mainstream acknowledgement, but on the other hand I'm bothered by the fact that it's being misunderstood, watered down, and made "safe" for the corporate, mainstream world (which is a phenomenon certainly not limited to RPGs).

Sort of like punk music. The punk label got noticed by the mainstream, and once that happened, it started getting applied to all sorts of things that were anything but punk:

Yeah!

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Also, please don't forget the Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary Kickstarter ends at midnight (ET) Saturday! 900 monsters, suitable for most OSR-type games, all under one cover. Can you help get us to having an illustration for each and every one?

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On Intelligent Magic Items

Even back in the very earliest days of my RPGing career, it never made all that much sense to me that the only sorts of magic items that could be intelligent were swords. Perhaps the most famous intelligent magic item in fantasy literature, The One Ring, bucked that particular restriction:
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The One Ring

Forged by the Dark Lord Sauron many centuries ago, the One Ring is filled with a portion of his malignant will. It has an INT of 17, an Ego of 17, and an alignment of Lawful Evil. It will make its wearer invisible whenever worn, and will also allow the wearer to dominate the will of any creature wearing one of the other 19 Rings of Power at any distance. It has a special purpose of reuniting itself with the Dark Lord Sauron and ruling the world.
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That said, the intelligent magic item is not otherwise unknown to fantasy literature, whether it is the Singing Harp from the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk, the crown of the former king whose will allows him to dominate his descendants and rule the kingdom through his puppets, or Aladdin's magic carpet. So breaking it out of the intelligent sword mold is a simple enough thing. In fact, it's one of the things I built into the magic item section of the Adventures Dark and Deep™ Game Masters Toolkit. You could have an intelligent ring, an intelligent wand, etc.

That begs the question of just how an intelligent item comes to be. Surely there is something that could happen during the magic item creation process to imbue the item with intelligence, but in most rules that's not spelled out at all. Even in the Adventures Dark and Deep™ Players Manual, there's one way listed in the rules that it could happen (roll a 00 on the mage spell reincarnation table), but it's explicitly stated elsewhere that there are other, undefined, methods.

I've wondered what those methods could be. I didn't want to bake them into the rules, since that's exactly the sort of thing that a game master could use to make his campaign world oh so cool and sinister and interesting. But that doesn't stop me from speculating.

There are basically two possibilities. The intelligence comes from a (formerly) living person, or the intelligence is unique to the item. In the former case, some sort of necromancy could bind the soul of the person to the item, or it could be an accident of the means of death, or an act of utter Will from someone who simply refused to die.

Is Carpet really an eternal
prison for the trapped soul of
some poor sacrificial  victim?

For the latter, it would most likely be either an accident or a deliberate function of the way the item was created. Does tapping into the positive or negative planes at the moment of creation do the trick? Is it due to some rare and unusual material (gem, metal, etc.) used in its construction? Is some variation in the spells normally used responsible? Perhaps there is a unique spell that is unknown to most mages, that creates a new personality for the item.

Maybe it's a hybrid of the two. Maybe if a human sacrifice is attendant to the creation of a magic item, that is enough to imbue it with intelligence. That need not mean the personality of the sacrifice is transferred, of course, unless the ritual goes awry in some way. In which case, the item might well seek revenge against its creator/slayer, and that could be a very interesting plot twist to a campaign indeed...

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Also, please don't forget the Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary Kickstarter going on right now! 900 monsters, suitable for most OSR-type games, all under one cover. Can you help get us to having an illustration for each and every one?

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The OSR is nothing new

OSR blogosphere circa 1976

Telecanter, on his excellent Telecanter's Receding Rules blog, puts out a good case that the OSR, as such, is not a collection of people or products so much as it is a collective recognition that RPG rules aren't graven in stone, and innovation, alteration, reconstitution, and the like are to be encouraged and recognized as legitimate.

I have absolutely no issue with his argument or his definition, but I do think it should be stated categorically that this is not a new phenomenon.

Even before there was an RPG hobby, the wargaming community was replete with hobbyists who thought nothing of taking an existing game and folding, spindling, and mutilating it. Witness the plethora of Diplomacy variants that flourished in the 1960's and 1970's, from versions that merely added Asia to the already existing map to versions (including one by Gary Gygax) who placed the game in Middle Earth.

Miniatures wargames were no stranger to this practice, either, and the early 'zines are similarly filled with alternate rules, new rules to add to existing games, and completely new games riffing off of previous work. Some of these amateur efforts were precursors to now-famous professionals within the hobby. But in addition, it was precisely this DIY ethic among the wargaming hobby that led directly to the creation of the RPG hobby itself. Witness Braunstein, Blackmoor, and of course Greyhawk.

Once Dungeons and Dragons was published, this DIY ethic didn't dissipate; indeed, it flourished with a new garden in which to grow. Thus we have Alarums & Excursions, Dungeoneer, White Dwarf, and of course Strategic Review (and later The Dragon), all adding to the still-flourishing 'zines. Thus, when Telecanter says:

"The OSR was more than a bunch of objects.  It was a feeling of power.  It was a license to create.  It was a conversation.  It was about examining our beliefs and revising them.  It was messy and recursive.  There was no end goal."

I see nothing there that doesn't apply to the earliest days of the hobby, when Strategic Review and The Dragon (before the "The" was excised) were filled with new and exciting stuff (not all of it particularly good, of course, but again that applies today as well as it did in 1977) and people passed around huge mimeographs (yeah, mimeographs) of house rules from hand to hand, not to mention new spin-off publications like Chivalry and Sorcery and Arduin intended to "fix" D&D, that effectively were the Carcosas, Vornheims, Teratic Tomes, Labyrinth Lords, and Spellcraft & Swordsplays of their day.

While this DIY spirit never really died, it was severely tamped down by the rise of more professional productions, and the transition of TSR (especially, but not exclusively) from hobby publisher to professional publisher. There were surely variant rules, classes, etc. aplenty floating around in the 1980's, but nothing like the wild and woolly 1970's, and the Mayfair Games lawsuit in 1993 naturally had a chilling effect as well, leaving most players with "official" material, that which they wrote themselves, and little else.

I think what the OSR can most be credited with is a return to that DIY ethos. The availability of desktop publishing, print on demand, and blogs has served as the needed growth medium, and the OGL has been the restraining hand on the weed-whacker that previously cut down any dandelions that dared pop up, that has allowed such a flourishing of new creative material outside the control of "major publishers", and short of a severe new legal crackdown from WotC (which would be both dubious from a legal standpoint as well as self-defeating PR-wise, but is still conceivable), I don't see that ethos going away any time soon.

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Why Are The Standard Races... Standard?

One of the things that has been commonplace within fantasy RPGs since their inception is the roster of "standard" fantasy races available as player character choices. Aside from humans, we have elves and dwarves, and often (but not as often as the others) gnomes and halflings. And of course half-orcs, which are much more D&D-specific and are not nearly as ubiquitous across different game systems.

Now, there are certainly exceptions to this rule. Skyrealms of Jorune famously (one might even say infamously) presented a fantasy world that was almost completely alien. Tekumel, too, veered consciously away from the "classic" milieu mold. Runequest has its ducks. There are many other such examples (and when done to consciously differentiate themselves from the standard, fall into the "our monsters are different" trope).

The inclusion of halflings aside, and despite Gygax's protestations to the contrary, I firmly believe that the reason so many fantasy RPGs present elves and dwarves the way they do are the works of Tolkien. Nowhere in the vaunted swords & sorcery literature that makes up the bulk of Appendix N do we find characters of that ilk. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser never stole a pouch of gems from an elf, Conan never did battle with a sturdy dwarven warrior, and both are conspicuously absent from the Dying Earth and Mars. The Lord of the Rings seems to stand out, in fact, among the works listed in Appendix N, as something of a different type from its fellows.

Indeed, Tolkien's elves and dwarves do more than make an impression by their presence; their very nature harkens back to his work directly, which itself takes its inspiration from Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythology. The elves of Victorian myth were diminutive fairies only half in our material world. Dwarves were good for little more than hording gold and perhaps clever craft-work. Tolkien hearkened back to pre-Christian mythology and envisioned multiple, physical, races living alongside humans. And that basic model, more than the specifics of the races themselves, are the long shadow that is cast across most RPGs today.

It's very possible that other authors had created works that similarly featured many races of creatures living side-by-side with men prior to Tolkien. But it was Tolkien, transmitted through Gygax, who influenced the RPGs of today. Plus, the humans-elves-dwarves-(halflings) formula was repeated endlessly in fantasy literature after the Lord of the Rings caught on, much to the chagrin of those who preferred human-centric swords & sorcery fiction. So if a particular RPG author was influenced by, say, the Shannara books, he was still indirectly influenced by Tolkien.

That said, it brings up another question. If those are the "standard" fantasy races of today, why do we not see any sort of similarly "standard" science fiction races? Precisely because there was no single work whose influence was so ubiquitous. There's Star Trek, and Vulcans and Klingons (or their analogues) are probably the closest thing we have to such, but the Kzinti of Lary Niven's Known Space novels are also pretty widespread (and themselves can harken back to Flash Gordon's Lion-Men). Without the sort of singular lingua franca with which all or almost all science fiction fans were conversant, in the way that all or almost all fantasy fans were conversant (or at least familiar) with Tolkien, science fiction never produced "standard" races in that way.

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Please, if you haven't done so already, consider supporting my Kickstarter for the Adventures Dark and Deep Players Manual, going on now through December 19th. I need your help to make it a reality!

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In Defense of Level Drain

The always-interesting RPGPundit has a post over at his blog that takes aim at the level-drain mechanic. I was going to reply there, but my reply became so long I figured I'd turn it into a post of its own. While I agree with the main point of his post (that nostalgia for its own sake is not necessarily a good thing), I'll take a stab at defending the level drain mechanic. Specifically, he says:

But let's think about this: is there anyone who actually LIKES level-draining no-save monsters? Really?  I think no one really likes these. Its stupid. Its not a clever mechanic, the kind of risk it creates is not an exciting in-game risk (like poison, or attribute drain, etc), but rather something that steals away your accomplishments.  Its a hassle for GMs too, to put these monsters in the right amounts, knowing that if things go badly one of them can seriously disrupt your campaign... or end up doing fuck all.

I would argue that level drain makes a lot of sense in the type of campaign that was prevalent at the beginning of the hobby, and which has made a comeback in certain corners of the OSR. It's a perfect embodiment of the logistical challenge-type game, where difficulty in the dungeon is assessed (roughly) by how deep one is and succor is available for a (high) price. I speak of course of the megadungeon-with-nearby-settlement game.

For example, a group adventuring on level 7 of a dungeon, which is suddenly decreased in experience level from 8 to 6 by wights, has gone from being slightly overpowered for the level to being slightly underpowered. This represents an unexpected logistical challenge that the PCs will then have to overcome; do they go back to the surface to regroup, move to a higher (= less challenging) level of the dungeon, or do they press on, knowing that they're now somewhat outclassed? In that sense, it does indeed add to risk in the game.

Bear in mind, too, that level drain is no more permanent in such a game than is character death. How is losing a level any more "stealing away accomplishments" than losing an entire character? Level drain is, in such a game, an opportunity to skim large amounts of g.p. from characters (by hiring a cleric to cast the spell restoration), just the same as character death is relatively easily solved by hiring a cleric to cast raise dead or resurrection. Such wealth-draining opportunities are a time-honored tradition of the game.

Now, in a more modern-style game, where encounters are more individually tailored (and which are more often arrayed sequentially to further a particular plot), it may well be that energy level drain becomes a problem, although I might argue that, even then, it becomes yet another challenge to be overcome.

I would say that it presents more of a problem in games where ready access to high-level spell casters willing to be hired to cast spells such as restoration and raise dead is not necessarily a given. But again, how is losing a level any worse than losing a character? In that sense, level drain is a much preferable alternative to death. Does losing a level seriously disrupt a campaign any more than killing a character by poison? In a game where restoration spells are available (even if they are very expensive), the answer is no.

It's one thing to say that level drain doesn't work logistically in a plot-driven game. It's quite another to say that it doesn't work in *any* style of game. It works well as a mechanic in the type of game I run, because it fits in with the other mechanics around it. So yeah, I like level drain, but not for the sake of nostalgia or atavism.

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Please, if you haven't done so already, consider supporting my Kickstarter for the Adventures Dark and Deep Players Manual, going on now through December 19th. I need your help to make it a reality!

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"The world needs another generic fantasy system like it needs udders and a top hat"

Game Knight Reviews has a terrific interview with Mike Nystul about the now-running kickstarter for his new game "Axes and Anvils", which is an all-dwarf RPG. Love the idea, and I've backed it myself. Do check it out; there are four days left!

It does bring up an interesting notion, though. While I firmly agree that we are now supersaturated with generic fantasy games*, are we in a position now where niche fantasy games will start popping up? Why entire niche RPGs rather than supplements for already-existing games?
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* I view games like Dragons at Dawn and my own Adventures Dark and Deep™ as niche games, because of their special nature as research/recon projects, even though the games themselves are generic in the same way that D&D is generic.

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Rules vs. Imagination

Commenter kensan-oni made the following comment in response to my previous post on x.p. budgets. I thought it was an important enough point that I wanted to make my own response to him as a post unto itself.

I think one of the things that should be noted is that while I agree with you on a level, the "Encounter to be Avoided" is something that doesn't work if you stay by rules as written, ever since 2nd edition. The movement speeds are codified, the halfling's hide in plain sight ability negated, and a lot of monsters are just plain faster than PC's. Since Move Silently has been a real proficiency and the default sneaking ability, you just can't sneak past that Giant anymore. Oh, you can turn away, and maybe, if you have horses or a teleport, get away, but the Giant moves faster than you do, and typically has attacks with great reach. 

The only thing that lets the party not be detected by monsters is DM Fiat. Which is something which you may do, but players will know that it's because you choose not to notice them that they got away with sneaking or moving past a unbalanced encounter. 

Running away has been something that has not worked for decades now, under the AD&D system. While I *like* the idea of an encounter one shouldn't fight, actually getting out of an encounter if you accidentally stumble upon it is just not likely. 

I realize it's a playstyle issue, but by the mechanics, I've given up trying to run away or sneak a whole party by something long ago. 

While I can pull off what you are searching for with other systems, or 1E, I can't so that with any version of D&D post Proficiencies.

First off, I take issue with the idea that "avoiding the encounter" begins and ends with "sneaking past" something.

Avoiding the encounter is just that-- seeing a danger and then moving around it or not encountering it in the first place. This is why thieves are there, sneaking and hiding in front of the party. Or why magic-users have spells like clairaudience, clairvoyance, and wizard eye, and magic items like crystal balls. Or rings (or spells) of invisibility. You don't have to sneak past the trolls if you just back away quietly before they know you're there.

If your group is just going around busting in every door they see, then perhaps you have a point (but even so, see below). But if so, then they're doing it wrong from an old school POV. It's all about taking stuff, not necessarily killing monsters.

But that doesn't even address the issue of dealing with encounters in a non-combat way.

What ever happened to *talking* your way past an encounter? Trying to convince the ogres that you're really envoys of the necromancer, here to inspect their guards?

What ever happened to distracting enemies? If you really, absolutely, must get past something, then perhaps you should consider luring them out of where they are. That's why there are spells like ventriloquism and dancing lights. Draw out the ogres (or even just some of them) and deal with the rest.

What ever happened to running away? You say that some monsters are faster, by the book, than characters. Well, maybe those characters who are weighted down with loot might just have to drop that bag of coins to speed themselves up. Or maybe you could use caltrops, or oil, or illusions, or spells like wall of fog, ice, or iron... If you think running away is only about speeds written in the Monster Manual, you're just not using your imagination.

And therein, I think, lies the real crux of the issue. When someone says "the rules don't let me do X", I say either:

1. the rules aren't a straightjacket; use your imagination, or 
2. use your imagination; the rules aren't a straightjacket.

RPG rules should allow and encourage creative thinking by the players (and the DM). Kensan-oni's comment exemplifies why I don't like the all-encompassing approach of 4E (or, for that matter, 3.x). He says it's a play style issue, but then in the same sentence complains that the rules don't let you do something.

Let me challenge you thus; my play style says I can do things the rules don't explicitly say I can. It says that if the rules throw up a roadblock, I can use my imagination to try to overcome that roadblock. Will I succeed? Who knows? But I'm going to try.

That's the sort of culture I want rules to encourage. DnD Next started off strong in that score, but seems to have backed off lately as they move to appease the 4E players. I hope that trend doesn't continue.

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On X.P. Budgets

The following quote caught my eye from today's Legends and Lore by Mike Mearls, talking about monster design in DnD Next:

When it comes to combat, the math that our system uses assumes an adventuring day that lasts a number of rounds and involves a total experience point value for monsters based on the party’s level. Higher-level parties fight more and face tougher creatures. 

The adventure design guidelines give an XP budget for an entire day, a range of XP values for easy, average, and tough fights, and a suggested maximum XP value for a single monster. In other words, you have a daily budget you can spend, guidelines for how much of that budget to spend on a given fight, and a limit of how much XP you can spend on a single monster. As with everything that focuses on the DM, this is all advice to use as you see fit.

Except for that last sentence, everything here looks exactly like it did in 4th edition, which is one of the many reasons I really didn't care for 4th edition. The question becomes, just how significant is that last sentence?

Old school gamers would say that it's entirely superfluous. Nobody needs to be told that the DM can ignore something that happens to be in a rulebook (even-- especially-- the Dungeon Masters Guide). That's the argument some make in favor of 4th edition; so what if it has x.p. budgets for encounters? The DM can just leave that part out.

The flip side of the coin, of course, are the many non-old school gamers who take exactly an opposite view. One of the great things about 4th edition, they say, is its finely wrought mathematical balance. By ignoring rules that enforce that balance, you're turning it into a different game, and that's not fair to the players who come into it expecting to play the game as it was written.

For myself, naturally I fall on the side of the old school in this debate. As DM, decisions as to how difficult to make an encounter are entirely mine, and nothing is going to change that just because there's a formula for balancing encounters in the book. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of old school play is that some encounters aren't there to be overcome-- they're there to be avoided. 

It will be interesting to see just how far the "just because it's in the book doesn't mean it must be used at the table" attitude is translated into the next iteration of the DnD Next playtest rules, and of course the final rule set. But they seem to be moving the pendulum back in the direction of 4th edition, which will most certainly turn me off if it goes too far. It's one thing to take a stab at a new game if it is compatible with my style of play; it's quite another to have to bend and twist it to do so. In that case, there's no reason to leave what I've got now*.
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* Please note: I don't want the comments to turn into a dozen variations on "I don't see any reason to leave what I've got now anyway". Please keep comments on the topic of x.p. budgets. Offenders will be deleted without warning. Well, other than this warning, of course. 

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First Exposure Playtest Hall at GenCon

I just got an announcement with this pretty neato news from the folks who put on Dexcon, Dreamation, and Metatopia here in NJ. If you're going to be at GenCon this year, it's definitely worth looking into. Plus you get to try out brand-new games before they're even published!

Double Exposure, Inc. is pleased to announce a new area of Gen Con 2012 - the First Exposure Playtest Hall.

Double Exposure will be using their unique formula of reversing the focus of the games - allocating eager players to the requests of the Designers and Publishers!

Dozens of Designers and Publishers will present their prototypes for playtesting at the FEPH, and Gen Con attendees will be able to get FREE tickets to try out new concepts with the genres and mechanics they are interested in.

The FEPH will be running throughout Gen Con, from 9AM Thursday to 2PM Sunday. Role Playing and Story Games will be put into four-hour slots beginning at 9AM, 2PM and 8PM (10AM on Sunday). Board Games, Card Games and Wargames will be put into two-hour slots following the same schedule.

Designers and Publishers: This is your opportunity to officially tap into the giant pool of players at Gen Con - put your games on the tables and Double Exposure will find you the people you want to playtest with - give us your needs and we'll fill them!

Players: Help to shape the next generation of games - fill out a short questionnaire about yourself and your interests, and Double Exposure will match you up with a new game that you can assist in the development of. Designers and Publishers will even put your name into the playtest credits when they release their game!

Join us for the debut of the First Exposure Playtest Hall, to be located in Sagamore 6 & 7 at Gen Con 2012.

For more information, send email to: firstexposure@dexposure.com.

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More On the 15 Minute Workday

One of the issues that I don't recall ever seeing Gygax discuss is the so-called fifteen minute work day in D&D. That is, the tendency of players to do only as much exploration, combat, etc. as they can without depleting their resources much, if at all, and then retreating in order to recharge, get new spells, regain any lost hit points, and then return. Taking on dungeons salami style*.

I think I've figured out why this particular tactic might never have come up in the original Lake Geneva campaign. There was too much competition.

Bear in mind that the original LG campaign was a cloud, not a party. There were dozens of adventurers, all competing for gold and glory in the dungeons beneath castle Greyhawk. Now, consider this advice from the DMG:

Generally, time passes day-for-day, or turn for X number of real minutes of active play. Players who choose to remove their characters from the center of dungeon activity will find that :a lot has happened while they were away", as adventures in the wilderness certainly use up game days with rapidity, while the shorter time scale of dungeon adventuring allows many game sessions during a month or two of game time. Of course, this might mean that the players involved in the outdoors someplace will either have to come home to "sit around" or continue adventuring in wildernesses and perhaps in some distant dungeon as well (if you are kind); otherwise, they will perforce be excluded from game sessions which are taking place during a period of game time in which they were wandering about in the countryside doing other things. This latter sanction most certainly applies to characters learning a new language, studying and training for promotion in level, or off someplace manufacturing magic items.

Given that sort of philosophy in the application of game-time, I can really see that someone venturing into the dungeons, taking 3 h.p. of damage and casting a spell, and then returning to hit the next room at full strength, would rapidly be overtaken by other adventurers who were more willing to take risks and push the limits of their resources. Otherwise, after returning to the dungeons after a couple of days' rest and relaxation, one might well find the section of dungeon originally intended for exploration had been sacked by others.

Having that happen once or twice might well make even the most cautious of adventurer become just a tad more... adventuresome.
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* One slice at a time. ;-)

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Setting Things Aside

As my regular readers may have figured out, I've always got a LOT of different pots a'boilin'. RPGs, modules, wargames, boardgames, convention games... there's always a lot of things that need to be finished around casa de grognard.

I find that this actually works out well for me. I'll develop something in my mind, maybe set out an outline or even write a couple of pages... and then drop it. It'll stay there, in the back of my mind, percolating, writhing around in my synapses, and then finally, like the spawn of some creative parasite, out it comes in one creative gush.

That's what happened with my "Temple of the Old Ones" AD&D scenario, which I'm running at this year's Dexcon. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do with it, did a map of the first level, and it just kind of sat there, staring back at me.

Until last Monday, that is. Suddenly it demanded to be let out, and the words just wouldn't stop. And I've got to tell you, it is indescribably cooler than it would have been if I had forced it a month ago, just to "get it off my plate". Now it just needs a little clean up, and it's good to go.

So don't be afraid to set things aside, and pick them up when the time is right. You may find that the quality is improved a hundredfold when you do.

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Combat in RPGs

A question to the audience.

Do different styles of combat require different combat mechanics? Or is it possible for a single game system to portray widely disparate forms of combat coherently and in a way that make them workable against one another?

Consider the following examples:

The question becomes, can a single combat system handle all those disparate types of combat? Should any single system be expected to be able to handle them adequately, or do different genres (or sub-genres) require unique combat systems? And, of course, the other question is, does the (A)D&D system handle them adequately as-is?

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Getting Past the Holocaust

One of the things I think is lacking in most post-holocaust RPGs is the "fish out of water" element. That is, most such games, like Gamma World, have the player characters come having grown up in the setting, many with mutations, etc. I think such settings are made for a scenario which envisions people from the modern era somehow being thrust into the post-apocalyptic world, and having to explore it and deal with the changes the cataclysm has wrought.

Several means by which someone from 2012 might be catapulted into a post-apocalyptic world (whether it be 100 or 1,000 years in the future) include:

• Time Travel. The player characters are transported into the future by a time machine. Unexpectedly (or perhaps as part of the plan), it is a one-way trip, and they are now stranded. [The Time Machine, sort of; he chooses to stay, rather than being stranded.]
• Time Dilation via Space Travel. The player characters are astronauts traveling at near the speed of light. Thanks to the time dilation effect (which is a real thing, btw), time travels much more slowly for them than it does on Earth. When they return, many more years of objective time have passed back home than have passed subjectively on their ship. [Planet of the Apes.]
• Cyronics (or other means of suspended animation, such as induced hibernation). The player characters are frozen and then revived (via some automated process, or perhaps by their discovery by natives of the future world, who revive them accidentally or purposefully). [Genesis II and Planet Earth.]
• Isolation. The player characters are the descendents of survivors of the holocaust who took shelter just before the bombs hit (or the plague happened, or whatever the apocalypse happens to be), and who may or may not have maintained their culture as it was at the moment the world ended. Perhaps there are some gaps in the knowledge that has been transmitted-- perhaps the residents don't even realize there is a world outside to explore until something happens to force them out of their sheltered environment. [City of Ember, Logan's Run, and Wall-E.]

They key to the "fish out of water" element is that the player characters haven't witnessed the holocaust first hand. They're not merely survivors, but find themselves in a very different world from the one they knew. If I do a Gamma World game, I'd definitely want to structure it this way.

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Authorial Voice

I'm not a big fan of "consensus".

I think, especially in creative endeavors, that following a single driving vision is preferable to having something designed by a committee. Some folks are going to like it, some folks aren't, and that's okay. It's the philosophy I followed with Castle of the Mad Archmage and Adventures Dark and Deep. I wrote those for myself, and if folks wanted to read it as well, that was great.

I noticed something the other day when going through some of my Greyhawk materials. In the late 1990's, they stopped having author credits. They had design teams instead. There were exceptions, of course, but on the whole the later materials lacked a certain verve. The prose was mechanical, and the product so homogenized as to be lacking in a certain rough charm that the earlier materials had. Compare, for example, the "gold box" Greyhawk set with the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. Sure, it can be argued, that the LGG is much more comprehensive; there's no denying that. But personally, I find it somewhat soleless, and I think that's because it is lacking in a single authorial voice.

That's not to say that an author's words are inviolate, and shouldn't be touched by an editor or proofreader except in the most egregious of cases. But I do think that having a single author infuses a work with a certain personality that a design team just can't match.

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Is a Samurai Just a Fighter in Funny Armor?

This past weekend I posted about how I might approach an "oriental adventures" rules supplement, essentially saying that, where the OA book published by TSR was jargon-heavy and skewed more historical (and was heavily weighted towards Japan), I would skew mine more towards Samurai and Kung-Fu movies, and would try to make it more accessible to an English-speaking audience with a limited knowledge of historical Japan and China (and that I would balance it more between the two cultures).

The post generated a lot of good discussion and links, but regular GG commenter (and player in my campaign) Hamlet made the following observation (quoted here in part; go to the original to see the whole thing):

"...all you really need is a pamphlet covering the basics. A glossary of terms, a few pages describing culture and honor and the like, which can be done for Japanese, Chinese, Indian, assorted "other" cultures of the region...

"...for the most part, you have everything you need to run a campaign of samurai and ninja already in the core books. The PHB only needs a very light reskinning, which can be done in a matter of a few pages, to fit the bill. Fighters are now called Samurai or Bushi or whatever. Ninja would probably be thieves or multi-classed if demi-humans"

I found this a very interesting approach, and wanted to highlight it as a counterpoint to my original post. Is a new class beyond fighter (or cavalier) really needed to play a samurai, busei, or kensai? Or can you do it with just a new list of armor and weapons? What's a wu jen other than a mage with a different list of spells? Do ninjas need to be a class of their own, or, as Hamlet posits, can you just use the existing 1E thief (or perhaps assassin) class, wear a mask and hood, take a proficiency in shuriken, and be done with it? And do you really need an honor mechanic?

Any thoughts?

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How I Would Approach Oriental Adventures

I was as thrilled as anyone in 1985 when I got my copy of Oriental Adventures. And instantly a group of NPC adventurers from the West showed up in my Greyhawk campaign for a few sessions, then faded away. I put an OA adventuring party in my Castle of the Mad Archmage, just to spice things up, as well. But on the whole the published OA book was kinda... meh. And I think I know why.

First, it's filled with terms that nobody either recognizes nor understands. Quick! Which of these lives in the water: hai nu, hsing-sing, con-tinh, or bisan? No offense intended to anyone, but the names of the monsters are largely gibberish to dumb Americans like me, and I think that went a ways towards making them less approachable and ultimately less used. Yes, there are goblin spiders and gargantuas (Godzilla and King Kong), but they're a distinct minority.

Now, when you come to the character classes, it gets much better, but there are still things left to be desired. You know what a samurai, a ninja, a yakuza, and a ronin are. Wu jen? Yeah, I can internalize one more class name, and I think I've heard that somewhere else before. Shukenja? Is that the cleric analogue or something else? Sohei? Um... is that the cleric analogue or something else? Is a bushi a fighter? Are there even "just fighters" in an OA game?And a kensai is something like a cavalier, right? But isn't that what a samurai is supposed to be? And why are they all Japanese?

This guy was a Wu Jen, right?

There's points one and two: make it accessible to dumb Americans like me. And make it broader than just medieval Japan.

The good news is that this work is largely done, although not in game format. There are two distinct genres of film that could be mined here: chanbara and wuxia. They are, respectively, samurai movies and kung-fu movies, and they have very distinctive tropes that identify them as such. Any setting or set of rules that would attempt to portray an oriental-based fantasy game would need to have those genres firmly in mind, because they define "eastern" fantasy as Conanesque "Swords and Sorcery" and Tolkeinesque "High Fantasy" define Western fantasy.

And that's point three; it shouldn't just be Dungeons and Dragons with new classes and spells. It should be oriented (pun intentional) towards the specific cultural tropes that define chanbara and wuxia. Where swords and sorcery has its standard themes of a morally apathetic universe, barbarian outsider vs. corrupt civilization, and small-scale stakes, and high fantasy has its themes of universal good vs. evil, everyman-evolving-into-hero, and familiar-world-with-a-twist setting, we see chanbara as exploring the theme of duty vs. morality, the code of bushido, and "invented tradition" that goes beyond the historical model. Wuxia is quite distinct from this, featuring the xia code (roughly a Chinese equivalent of chivalry or bushido), personal loss leading to personal growth (usually through intense martial arts training), and a setting that is at its core corrupt, requiring the administration of law and justice to be handled by heroes because such things are beyond the vast corrupt and distant bureaucracy of government.

Actually a fair representation of Wuxia-style film. No joke.

The point being that there's a huge well of well-established mythology (in bonus visual format) there that's at least somewhat accessible to dumb Americans like me. It's obviously not going to be historical, but it's exciting and accessible. Like Excalibur or Conan.

I should point out that Bollywood also provides a similar framework for yet a third genre of Indian-based non-European fantasy; complicated love triangles (often including long-lost relatives), unrepentant villains who are villains for the sake of being villains, and a self-conscious mixture of action, comedy, and Broadway-style dance numbers. Well, maybe that last doesn't have too much application in gaming...

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Inspirational Reading - What Lies Beneath the City

The pair started to follow the passage that had been concealed behind the secret door, Evaleigh carrying the lantern and Gord with dagger in hand.

After a short distance the narrow corridor dead-ended at a broader one that led both left and right. Gord opted for the left, saying that they could try the other direction if this one failed to offer something positive soon.Before long they entered a larger place, pillared and arched, that was the nexus of many tunnels. In addition to the one they had entered from, there were four other passages leading off fro the place, and a spiral flight of stone stairs leading upward as well. Gord disliked the sight of the steps, and after a moment of deliberation, he set off to the right, his female companion in tow.

"What is this place, Gord?"asked Evaleigh.

"Towns and cities are full of surprises like this," he began. "In addition to sewers, drains, cisterns, caverns, and catacombs, there is a warren of escape tunnels and secret adits-- the highways of many who wish not to be seen."

"All cities?" Evaleigh asked incredulously.

"I can't speak for all of them, only a few. I've encountered this sort of passage before. It is part of a hidden means of communication and escape, from its look, and one that hasn't been neglected, either-- so let's press on!"

- Gary Gygax, Saga of Old City, pp. 192-193.

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The Straitjacket of "The Adventure"

One of the design features of later editions of D&D that really bugs me is the idea that there should be some formula for determining how difficult an adventure is, based on the total levels of the player characters. That is, if the player characters have a total of X levels, that means that "the adventure" should have Y total hit dice of monsters (or CRs of traps, etc.), and a concomitant amount of treasure. I bring this up because of something Mike Mearls said in today's Legend and Lore column, talking about the upcoming 5E:

The DM needs rules that can allow for adventures with as many fights as needed, from a single big brawl to a number of shorter fights. I'd like to see an adventure design system that gives me a suggested total XP value for monsters and traps to use so that I can push the characters to the limit of their abilities. I can then spend that XP for one battle, lots of little battles, or just sprinkle monsters in an environment as I choose.

I object to this idea on several levels.

First, it treats the dungeon master like an imbecile, implying that he can't design a fair adventure without some sort of mathematical formula to guide him. While it is very true that most older modules carried with them an indicator of the intended level of player character for whom the module was written ("An AD&D adventure module for levels 6-8", etc.), those were not derived from any sort of tallying of the total hit dice of the monsters therein, but rather were a subjective measure to assist the consumer. If the player characters in your game were all 3rd level, you didn't want to spend your hard-earned module money on Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl...

Second, although I've not heard of this happening, I could see it being used by certain rules-lawyery types to complain that a given scenario was not only "unfair", but was actually "against the rules". It's just a hypothetical, but I can really see someone saying "Hey, you shouldn't have put two xorns in that cave; that put it past our maximum allowed challenge level! I want that last battle re-run with only one xorn."

Third, though, is both the most objectionable and the most insidious. By treating "the adventure" as a unique, distinct ideal for how the game is played, such a system actually makes it difficult (if not impossible without ignoring that part of the rules) to play in a style of campaign that's anything other than modular and combat-oriented. How does one calculate the challenge level in a sandbox-style campaign? Or a megadungeon-based campaign? Part of the challenge of such games is the players realizing when their characters are over matched, and retreating in order to come back later when they are more experienced, have had a chance to gain intelligence about the enemy, etc.

If everything is based around "the adventure", then the game becomes by implication an episodic affair with distinct objectives that the players are expected to meet before moving on to the next. While I have absolutely nothing against such adventures, and myself designed and DMed hundreds of such, I don't want it to be something that is forced by the rules. When "the adventure" is made up of whatever plot threads the players decide to pull this week, or whatever encounters they find (pre-planned or random) in the wilderness hex they decide to explore, mechanics for determining the challenge level of "the adventure" become meaningless at best.

Too, the very notion that everything revolves around XP for slaying monsters flies in the face of not only one of the OSR's chief conceits (XP for treasure, which encourages imaginative play and tactics that allow the PCs to grab the loot by distracting or otherwise avoiding the monsters), but also those of those more inclined towards storytelling games (where XP is gained by successfully interacting with the NPCs, in order to obtain whatever goals one has). I see the value of all three ways of doing things, depending on the circumstances, and wouldn't like to see one become the de facto standard way of play by rulebook fiat.

Lest it be thought that this is going to be one of my posts that gets tagged "grognardish grumpiness", I should point out that the larger points of Mearls' post are ones I can agree with. The very notion that one can roll up characters and complete a full module in an hour is one I, and I think many of my fellow OSR travelers, can embrace. I am also on record as saying I like the notion of varying levels of complexity being able to be played at the same table, even if I may be a tad skeptical as to how it can be implemented.

But if they really want this new game to be something embraceable by fans of many different versions, I hope they don't cripple that goal out of the gate by baking a particular style of play into the rules.

____________________

Also, please take a minute to check out the Adventures Dark and Deep Kickstarter campaign. Help make the ADD rules supplement, suitable for use with all 1E-compatible games, a reality!

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Now I've got to get the premium cable channels again...

When they're done right, the glossy looking historical (or, in some cases, fantasy) drama series are really great things to behold. Rome was absolutely terrific, and it was a shame that it was so expensive to produce that it only made it to two seasons. The way they managed to insinuate Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus into the affairs of the mighty, but also kept them well-grounded in their own mundane world, was a model for how such things could be handled in an RPG.

I loved The Tudors as well, and it's really colored my notions of how a campaign focused more on what is sometimes called "domain level play" could go; lots of intrigue and politicking, and caring deeply and passionately about things that ordinary folks (or, ordinary adventurers) don't normally give a fig about; dynastic succession, wars of religion, and international politics.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand and its prequel Spartacus: Gods of the Arena attempted to regain the mantle of Rome, but it really fell flat. It tried hard, but it almost seemed... vulgar... compared to Rome, and the fact that such comparisons are inevitable was probably unfortunate for it, but it seems to have hit a niche, and the series is still going strong with Spartacus: Vengeance. I might be tempted to give it another try.

Last year two new series in the same started off and I was instantly hooked on both. Game of Thrones is, of course, based on George R.R. Martin's enormous (and enormously successful) fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, and The Borgias is a more historical drama concerning itself with the papacy of Rodrigo Borgia (aka Pope Alexander VI) and his family, including the lovely and infamous Lucretia Borgia. Both series had successful first seasons and were picked up, and the premier of the second season of each is within sight.

First off, beginning on April 1 is Season Two of Game of Thrones on HBO:

Next, starting on April 8 we have Season Two of The Borgias on Showtime, staring Jeremy Irons:

 

I'm very much looking forward to both of these, and I'm finding that not having read A Song of Ice and Fire didn't hurt my enjoyment of the series at all, and might actually be contributing to it, as I'm not making comparisons to the books and complaining that this or that got changed. I'm also finding that plot twists came as genuine surprises (Ned Stark, anyone?) and it's a lot of fun not knowing what's about to happen. All in all, it'll be a good Spring for television.

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You're Right, Monte, It Does Sound Crazy

Monte Cook's first post-5E-announcement column is up, and it gives a broad view of what the folks at WotC are doing with the new version. It basically confirms the speculative chatter of the last week, that 5E will be modular. Fine, I get that. Options for simple, moderate, and complex combat, skills, etc. No problem.

What I can't seem to wrap my head around is this:

Second—and this sounds so crazy that you probably won't believe it right now—we're designing the game so that not every player has to choose from the same set of options. Again, imagine a game where one player has a simple character sheet that has just a few things noted on it, and the player next to him has all sorts of skills, feats, and special abilities. And yet they can still play the game together and everything remains relatively balanced. Your 1E-loving friend can play in your 3E-style game and not have to deal with all the options he or she doesn't want or need. Or vice versa. It's all up to you to decide. 

What he seems to be saying is that the players can choose which of the modular parts of the rules they want to play with, and that it won't matter which ones are chosen, since they'll all be inter-operative at some level. I'm dubious.

If I'm at a table, and I've got my stripped-down character sheet with 6 stats, hit points, and how much damage my longsword does, I don't want to have to sit through a lot of "I'm using my crushing blow attack and delivering a sarcastic denouement using my witty banter skill while casting dire meteor swarm because my character is following the mage-blade paragon path." I just want to roll a d20 to hit, and I want you to do the same, because you're slowing down my combat with your crappy add-ons.

He says that all this is going to be balanced (oh, that word!), but I can't help but think that someone who spends hours fine-tuning a character with dozens of options and add-ons and fiddly bits is going to be expecting some in-game bennies for doing so. If so, then we'll see an instant arms race that renders the rules lite players completely out of the competition. If not, then aren't the rules-heavy players going to resent doing all that work for naught?

Plus, it makes me wonder how all of this is going to affect the DM. Is he going to be responsible for knowing and using each and every little fiddly bit that some player at the table decides he wants to use? Or is the same modularity principle going to apply to the game at the level of the DM? If so, am I as a DM going to be able to run a stripped-down rules lite game while some of the players at the table are playing a rules-heavy characters? Again, I'm dubious.

So yes, Monte, it does sound like you just escaped from this video. But I'm still willing to give it a thorough look-see when the playtest version is released. Maybe you've come up with a miracle of game design elegance that will be a model for generations of game designers to come. Nobody will be happier than I if that's the case.

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