Malazan Book of the Fallen... and Your Campaign

There are bright spots to the pandemic lock down and switch to online remote work.  I'm saving time by not having to don corporate America's "casual business attire" every day and migrate to the office - time that's being redirected to hobbies and hanging out with the kids.  From the perspective of self-improvement, I'm trying to get better at chess, learning a little Spanish, and reading more books.

My wife's been working through a series called The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss, and she says they're quite engaging.  The first one is called The Name of the Wind.  I picked up a lengthy series called The Malazan Book of the Fallen.  It's been languishing on my reading backlog.  It's a 10 books series, clearly not for the faint of heart, and so far I've only read the first two books - Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates.

The world of the Malazan Empire started as a shared roleplaying campaign world in the 1980's.  The referees each went on to write two entire fantasy series in their shared campaign world - the two authors being Steven Erikson and Ian C. Esslemont.  It sounds like they dabbled in Dungeons & Dragons but ultimately landed on GURPS as their preferred system.  Curiously, wasn't Westeros also based on an early GURPS campaign?  Unlike George RR Martin, the Malazan guys don't seem reticent about discussing the gaming roots of their fantasy creations.

Here's a brief overview of what I've observed, 20% of the way through the series.  The Malazan Empire, which calls to mind Imperial Rome or similar pre-modern empires, sprawls across multiple continents, with armies deployed far and wide to conquer new cities in the name of the Empress, or garrison distant places and stifle revolution.  Most the main characters are military people, and the books very reminiscent of Glen Cook's The Black Company - fantasy through the lens of soldiers on the march.

Erikson has integrated magic into the everyday life of the army, very much taking what we'd call a "high magic" approach to world building.  It's common for army units to have a "cadre mage" if not an entire unit of spell casters.  Battlefield communications through magic is a thing - telepathy between mages or warlocks, or the Malazan equivalent of "sending stones".  There are demi-planes called "warrens", from which a mage draws power, that can also be used for limited forms of fast travel.  There's an element to each battle where enemy mages face off and attempt to neutralize the magic on the other side, before the grim work of the foot soldiers can take place.

There are gods and clerics in the world - both elder gods and "Ascendants", humans who have used magic to transcend to a demi-godlike state.  I'm not familiar enough with GURPS to know if it had options for apotheosis, but BECMI certainly did - all of the "immortals" of the Mystara setting were transcended humans, great heroes of the past.  A Malazan-like setting could be done well with BECMI.  I'm greatly enjoying how Erikson works the machinations of the Ascendants into his series - although some of the Ascendants have recognizable goals, their appearances are mysterious and terrifying.

The world of the Malazan empire is ancient, with a history going back hundreds of thousands of years.  Both Erikson and Esslemont have backgrounds as archaeologists, and it comes through in the way secrets related to ancient, inhuman races emerge to trouble the current age.  There's not an elf, dwarf, or halfling in sight.

One of the most gameable concepts I plan to lift is the maxim "power attracts power".  The idea is that in a world with ancient and powerful entities, a certain "low profile" should be maintained because powerful forces attract powerful opponents, like a natural law.  In a game like Dungeons & Dragons, where player characters inexorably rise in levels, the maxim "power attracts power" provides a rationale why your epic characters attract high level trouble as they move around or create domains.  "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, the Queen of the Demonweb Pits walks into mine."  Play it again Sam.

Not Elric or Drizz't... it's Anomander!

The series has a staggering number of characters.  Each book has several pages of "dramatis personae" to help keep track of all the factions and minor characters as the narrative jumps across globe-spanning events and military campaigns.  There's even a fanfic character!  Anomander Rake, the Son of Darkness, and scion of a decadent, elder race, wields a soul-stealing sword called Dragnipur.  He zips around in a giant floating tower called the Moon's Spawn.  But Erikson manages to pull off the Elric homage, and I'm looking forward to Rake returning later in the series.  I'm only on book two of ten, and the hardcore fans all seem to say the series "really starts cooking after book 3", so I'm already committed to keep going.  The second book has been principally concerned with a 1,000 year old prophesied "Whirlwind" in the southern holy deserts, and a vast uprising by desert tribes and nomads who rise up in support of the Apocalypse.  The classic adventures Master of the Desert Nomads and Temple of Death in the X series trod similar ground.

There's much I've been appreciating as a gamer and world builder.  I usually have distant or absent deities in my settings, but Erikson strikes a good tone with meddlesome gods and machinations of the "Ascendants", as well as his portrayal of priests and clerics as agents of their respective deities.  Because many of the gods were recently mortals, they have scores to settle with human empires.  I also like the portrayal of how ordinary soldiers and people get caught up in events with these terrifying immortals or ancient powers - they enter a scene, wreak some havoc, and take their struggles elsewhere.  It's almost like getting the view of New York City from ordinary folks after the Avengers have had a giant battle in the city - but a fantasy world equivalent.  There are techniques to be learned here on presenting your high fantasy, high powered gaming setting.  Here's my list of game-able elements gleaned from Malazan, that have kindled my imagination:

• Meddlesome gods and Ascendants
• Clerics as divine instruments
• Magical healing as a military resource
• The importance of warfare and political scheming
• Mages in the military, and practical magic
• Horrifying pre-human cultures and ruins
• Orders of assassins - the Talons and Claws

Has anyone else read this series?  Would love to hear whether you borrowed any of Erikson's ideas, or perhaps Glen Cook's Black Company, for your game world.  (I can't speak to Esslemont's writing yet).  It also makes me want to look at more contemporary fantasy fictions and see what else is out there.  Erikson's approach is so transparent with tropes taken from the world of gaming, it raises a new question - have forty plus years of Dungeons & Dragons so thoroughly influenced fantasy literature the genres are betimes indistinguishable?

Dwimmermount's Setting as Old School Tribute

As I continue to run a series of pick-up games in Dwimmermount, I'm going to explore aspects of the setting and dungeon and defend why it's a key OSR creation and model.

The elements that fixed my commitment to reading the voluminous Dwimmermount were the clear lines of inspiration between the setting, Appendix  N literature, and D&D's earliest settings.  Regarding Appendix N, I started this blog years ago with a journey through the list of Appendix N literature.  (If you're a younger gamer, Appendix N refers to a list of inspirational reading, 1979 and earlier, presented by Gary Gygax in the original AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide).  Fantasy shifted in the 1980's with the resurgence of Tolkien's popularity - the genre became dominated by multi-part epic quests, "The Sword of Shannara" effect, incarnated in series like Shannara, Thomas Covenant, Wheel of Time, and so on.  It wasn't until I started devouring earlier fantasy that I understood how the picaresque quality of D&D reflected earlier literary sentiments.

So while TSR and WOTC D&D moved on to principally focus on "adventure path" style gaming that mirrored the shifts in film and literature, the OSR movement developed retro clones and looked to the past, to recreate the energy and wonder that leaps off the page when you read old accounts of the hobby from the 1970's.  It's not all about nostalgia, however; the earlier approaches to running and presenting the game are stylistically different.  Dwimmermount is a modern attempt at recreating a 1970's style setting, dungeon, and play experience.

For now, we are focused on setting.  There are many elements that jump out as throw-back fantasy.  The planetary cosmology, with emphasis on space as a gaseous aether, and the access to nearby planetary realms, is a theme that flows through authors like Lovecraft, Dunsany, and Burroughs.  The green-skinned Amazonian women of Kythirea and red-skinned Eld of Aeron are reminiscent of Jon Carter, while the moon-beasts feature in Lovecraft and Dunsany.  (And of course, I can't help but think of that green-skinned woman from 1960's Stark Trek, you know the one).  The strong Law versus Chaos axis that echoes throughout the dungeon is heavily inspired by Moorcock and Poul Anderson, while the demon lords (particularly Arach-Nacha and the toad-like Tsath-Dagon) are direct homages to Clark Ashton Smith.

Although there were great empires in the past, the men of the present-day setting of Dwimmermount rule isolated City-States.  They hold exotic titles like Despot, or Exarchate, rather than Medieval Kings or Duke, immediately evoking a sense of the decadent and autocratic rulers in the Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar series, or the petty rulers that populate the background of Howard's Hyborian stories.  It's also a clear tribute to one of the earliest and beloved settings for D&D in the 1970's, The Wilderlands of High Fantasy, which was ruled by various City-States and their Overlords, which in turn was hearkening back to earlier styles of fantasy.

Finally, the setting blends a significant amount of 'science fantasy' into the mix.  As characters plumb the depths of Dwimmermount, and unearth more and more of the setting's backstory at the same time, they are put into contact with machines and scientific wonders of the earlier ages (including the gods themselves).  Early D&D settings like the Wilderlands gladly mixed science fantasy into the D&D genre, drawing inspiration from the pulp fantasy authors of the 1930's that freely blended themes themselves.  The principal author I'm thinking of here is Abraham Merrit; the two pieces I've read are "The Face in the Abyss" and "The Moon Pool" (And for film analogs, check out some evocative 1930's movies like "She" or "Lost Horizon").  James calls out his appreciation for AE Merritt in the introduction, even putting a "moon pool" on the first level of Dwimmermount as a direct reference.  Merritt's themes involve people of the present time discovering more advanced lost races, either in forgotten ruins or a hidden society beneath the earth, and getting embroiled in an ages-old conflict.  Dwimmermount incorporates these themes flawlessly with the Terrim and the City of the Ancients deep beneath the dungeons.

I'm sure there are literary references I'm omitting or flat-out missed.  James was extremely well-read on the pulps and incorporated many of the themes into his work; it's hard not to admire the degree to which he emulates, borrows, steals, and recreates themes from early fantasy and the pulps in providing a backdrop for Dwimmermount - almost to the point of affectation!  If you view Dwimmermount as just a big dumb dungeon, you're missing out on it as a vehicle to transport you and your players to D&D's earliest settings, literary roots, and styles of play.

I loved the Wilderlands; my one wish for Dwimmermount's setting is that it included a larger sketch of the world, showing the homelands of the Thulians, the Volmarians, or the mysterious east and its Kingdom of the Priest-King.

True Names in D&D

I realized there's a through-line in all of the fantasy books I've been reading lately - they've all involved the importance of names and language.  I'm reading the Earthsea trilogy aloud to the oldest kiddo; those  books strongly feature the power of true names and language; the language of wizards is an older tongue (the language of dragons), and to name a thing in the old language is to have power over it.  The major arc in the first novel, A Wizard of Earthsea, is for the protagonist to learn the true name of a creature of darkness he released into the world, and thus defeat it.  There's an awesome showdown with a dragon, where the young wizard Ged rightly guesses a dragon's true name and avoids destruction - also underlining the importance of paying attention to history and study old books.

I recently finished The Chronicles of the Black Company, and am eagerly looking forward to continue the series.  Major plot elements involve recovering and guarding old records left from a fallen empire; only late in the story do the protagonists suspect the old documents contain the true names of the immortal antagonists facing the Black Company.  Ultimate success hinges on piecing together scattered lore and finding translators that read the dead languages before a final reckoning.  I greatly enjoyed the Black Company; the novels portray the pragmatism of an elite military faction weaponizing magic in a world of swords and sorcery.

It seems like I should be able to rattle off more fiction that features the power of names; I'm just not remembering… of course, the Dresden files are full of true names and the importance of little bits (blood, hair, fingernails) to target the magic; the Eragon young adult books had the theme as well.  I suppose we're all familiar with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.  Hellboy is bewitched when called by his true name, Anung Un Rama.  And no exorcist or demonic possession movie is complete until the priest names the demon as part of the dramatic ritual of removal.

For that matter, the power of names has a strong religious element to it in Western culture; it calls to mind the Greek "logos", and the hymn at the beginning of the gospel of John:  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...  The name of YHWH, the sacred Tetragrammaton, was forbidden to be spoken because of the power and sanctity of the name.  Off hand, though, I'm not placing the first literary instance of calling out the name of the devil and having him appear.  Perhaps it was Marlowe's Doctor Faustus?  Don't say Bloody Mary seven times in front of a mirror.

Our friends in the Cthulhu space have not overlooked the theme; in the dreaded twelfth volume of the Revelations of Glaaki, reading the name of Y'Golonac subjects the reader to the attention of the god, potentially turning the victim into an avatar of Y'Golonac and a channel for demonic manifestation.

In a moment of monkey brain, my thoughts even jump to TS Eliot, and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.  The naming of cats is a difficult matter, after all - it isn't just one of your holiday games.  Now pardon me a moment while I go scrub my brain and get back on task.

The D&D game hasn't had a lot of interplay with the true name motif.  A few monster entries in the Monster Manual and Fiend Folio mention the value of true names - mostly involving demons and devils, and amulets or talismans that grant power of the entity.  I seem to remember Skeleton Warriors were the same way with their medallions

THE LOST CAVERNS OF TSOJCANTH* greatly expanded the portfolio of extra-planar spells, and many of them require the entity's true name; part of the power and allure of the Demonomicon of Iggwilv is that the master witch scribed various demonic true names in the book, giving the owner ready access to forbidden knowledge and the means to execute on it.

The spells from the Demonomicon are carried over into UNEARTHED ARCANA, and supplemented with some new ones, such as an actual True Name spell, which lets a caster run roughshod over a victim if he possesses the name - changing the creature's form, sending it far away, or making Suggestion-like demands.

The clones or sequel games haven't gone much further.  LOTFP has a high level spell named Demand, which functions akin to True Name, but requiring bodily bits of the target - straight out of Frazier and theories of sympathetic magic; I like the flavor.  Holy Word is a spell across the editions that calls to mind the forbidden Tetragrammaton.  ACKS didn't seem to have anything around true names, though it would be ideal as a high level ritual for either clerics or wizards.

The exciting thing about this motif - uncovering an opponent's true name as a means to power, whether as part of a spell, ritual, or simple plot device - is that it supports excellent quests beyond the dungeon; the characters might need to borrow a tactic from their Call of Cthulhu brethren and spend time in dusty libraries with restricted tomes, traveling to distant sages, or embarking on a bit of archaeology and tomb-raiding.  Sign me up for getting more of that into my D&D games.  As it is, I'm always this close (pinches fingers) between ditching adventure-style D&D and running my fantasy games like a Cthulhu game.

I've got some ideas of (modest) house rules or additions to make true names universally important if they can ever be discovered; what have you seen out there, either in other games or later editions, as mechanical ideas for making true names important?


*Gygaxian titles require all caps.

Seneca Crane Must Die

I had this guy as a DM once...

The Hunger Games movie recently hit DVD, so most of you should have had the chance to see it, assuming you didn't read the book last year.  My wife fanatically tore through all three books of the trilogy last year, eventually loading the audio books and making them mandatory listening on one of our overnight road trips this summer.  In this way I've managed to take in the first two books, and am working my way through the third now.  As an avid table top gamer, it's hard not to see parallels between the referee and the role of Seneca Crane - the Head Game Master of the 74th Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games novel describes a dystopian future where a vicious central authority, the Capital, has its boot on the throat of the twelve districts, after a bloody civil war concluded some 75 years ago.  As punishment for the rebellion, the districts must send a pair of children each year to the capital to compete in "The Hunger Games", a 24-person elimination blood sport where only a single child emerges alive from a specially prepared wilderness arena.  The annual games are designed to demonstrate the impotence of the districts, and the futility of struggle against the might of the Capital.

The main character of the story, Katniss Everdeen, volunteers to attend the games on behalf of her kid sister, who gets selected in the random lottery to represent District 12.  But I don't want to discuss Katniss; let's just take a look at the games themselves and the character Seneca Crane.

Each year, the games are held in a specially prepared arena designed with meticulous care by the current Head Game Master.  It's a sprawling wilderness terrain littered with natural hazards such as poisonous plants and dangerous fauna.  The 24 players (Tributes) begin at a central depot called 'the Cornucopia', where the Game Master has provided weapons and gear for the taking.  Players thrust into the game must choose between fleeing immediately into the wilds, or trying to weather the inevitable bloodbath that erupts at the Cornucopia as players fight to the death over weapons and gear.

Here's a crucial piece of the equation; the Hunger Games are televised throughout both the capital and the districts as entertainment and political message.  Seneca Crane's role doesn’t stop with the creation of the arena;  he's expected to deliver exciting television to the viewers back home and send an object lesson to the districts.  Fairness in the games is irrelevant.  If a player moves too far away from Crane's action, the arena is manipulated to guide them back towards harm's way.  If a player or group of players is doing too well, Seneca Crane inflicts additional hazards on them.  We see an example in the movie, when Katniss continually eludes her opponents, and Seneca orders her to be herded arbitrarily towards a group of murderous Tributes by a rampaging forest fire.  Along the way, she is blasted by fireballs and seriously injured, further decreasing her odds of survival.  Later, Crane conjures mutated hounds to chase her down as she continues to elude him.

Seneca is no hidden creator, no unrevealed prime mover, who lifts the curtain on the stage and then steps out of the spotlight.  He is a celebrity in his own right, interviewed on national TV by Caesar Flickerman.  He covets the stage.  He considers himself quite important - after all, he is privy to the secret thoughts of the President.  He has an agenda, and he will not be denied.  His manipulations infuriate the players, just as much as his meddling infuriates us as readers.

I would hope the applications to table top gaming are evident.


Capsule Review:
Stepping off the soap box a moment for a capsule review, I will say the books are an entertaining, fast read.  The series follows in the footsteps of great dystopian works like Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid's Tale, and 1984, holding up a mirror without too much overt proselytizing.  The parallels to reality TV and the Survivor phenomenon are compelling.  As a fan of mythology, I appreciated the allusions to Theseus and the use of the term "Tributes" to describe the unlucky children chosen for the games.  It's a theme that echoes in the other books.

I recommend the series if you like science fiction, and don't mind it toned down just a bit to fit the 'young adult' genre.  Young adult does't mean unintelligent.  You might even pick up a few useful ideas for tricks, traps, and puzzles from the arenas, for use in your own role playing game setting.  I certainly did.

Turning One's Thoughts to Westeros

The second season of HBO's Game of Thrones is in the books.  My wife has been pestering me to read the latest book, A Dance with Dragons, so I started it last week.  Apparently 'big things happen', and she's been biting her tongue not to drop spoilers, but is insistent on discussing it.  So now I'm reading it.  One of the regulars in the gaming group is getting caught up on the first season and just started reading the books as well.  It's natural to consider if you'd run a D&D game in a setting like Westeros.

There won't be any spoilers here, I'll just be discussing A Game of Thrones in general terms.  The stories have a number of engaging elements; they follow the rise to fame and infamy of the scions of various noble houses in the fictional land of Westeros during a civil war.  The king dies in the first book with a contested heir and the novels relate the chaos in the aftermath.  No one has any plot immunity.  Life in Westeros can be nasty, brutish and short, and main characters frequently get offed.  From that perspective, there is always anticipation of 'what will happen next' when reading GRR Martin.

Westeros itself is very familiar.  The map always seemed to me a fantastic version of England, stretched to the size of a continent.  Hadrian's Wall is replaced by the gigantic ice wall, separating the settled areas from the wild north.  Folks have commented that the war between the Starks and Lannisters is reminiscent of the war between the Yorks and Lancasters; the names share more than a similar phonetic cadence.

The fantastic elements in Westeros are subdued so as not to overwhelm the human element of the conflicts.  There are hints of The Others, ice-born undead beyond the great wall, and legends of a time of dragons, but most of the main characters are disinterested in magic or stories.  Certainly these fantastic elements have gotten more prevalent as the series has progressed.

How would Westeros work as a D&D setting?  The archetypical career of the D&D character, as an explorer and dungeon delver, doesn't seem to have a place in the literary version of the setting.  There are scant mentions of ruins, and there's certainly no freeman profession of "professional adventurer" the way we see it in more typical D&D worlds.  The literary version wouldn't seem to support wealth through salvage.  Mercenaries, yes, but not gold-claiming monster-slayers.  Characters in A Game of Thrones rise to power through politics and feats of arms.  Wifey was telling me - Oh c'mon, you could put old ruins beyond the Ice Wall, or beneath Harrenhall Castle, or on one of the many islands.

Why not just use a standard D&D setting and add a layer of politics and sheer bloody mindedness?  Chances are your D&D setting already has some rulers who were previously adventurers, and a D&D setting assumes it's common for self-made rulers to rise to prominence after starting their careers as dungeon-sacking adventurers.

However, I can think of some things to strip out of D&D to make it fit the theme.  I'd de-emphasize alignment.  The question of right and wrong is highly subjective in A Game of Thrones, and a sympathetic case can be made for each side.  The vast majority of monsters need to be removed as a force in the world.  It's fine if you have some isolated monsters in the ruins or on the frontier, but there are no apparent global monster threats that would trigger the human kingdoms to unite; there's nothing to distract the nobles from beating on each other.  Many D&D worlds follow the Tolkien model of the big bad evil guy, providing a rallying cry for all the 'free peoples' to band together for all mankind and sing the campfire songs.  Not in Westeros.

I'm ambivalent about the degree of magic.  Westeros is seemingly low magic; there are few flashy spells or planar entities or magic weapons getting swung around.  The gods seem distant and remote, but there is evidence of magic-working priests and priestesses.  There's even a fair amount of 'raise dead' that happens in the stories, although the results aren't necessarily comfortable or desirable… more like revenants.

I've been using a list of campaign criteria for a good D&D setting to help the analysis, here's how it shakes out vis a vis Westeros:

The List:
Adventures and Frontiers, Autonomy, Dungeons, XP for Gold, Treasure and Magic Items, Classes and Levels, NPC Classes and Levels, Alignment, High Magic, Humanoids and Monsters, The End Game, Demi-Humans, Clerical Magic, Vancian Magic

We've already said the setting would need to be altered by adding the ruins of prior civilizations to support an adventurer class, autonomous explorers, XP for gold, recovery of treasure and lost magic, and so on.  (Valyrian steel!).  Plenty of the rulers and main characters appear to be tough, high level characters, in game terms, so there's no problem there, and the standard D&D end-game of rising to power and claiming a domain works very well here.  Alignment needs to be removed or face an adjustment, and humanoids and monsters must be marginalized (same for demi-humans).  The political conflicts are human vs human, there's no joining hands with the friendly elves to fight Sauron or Iuz or Tzass Tamm.  I'm ambivalent about low versus high magic, but tend to think low magic would work better in terms of flavor, whereas high magic would require less tweaking of the game engine.

What do you think?  Have you tried playing a D&D game in Westeros, or borrowing ideas and themes from A Game of Thrones into your game?

Book Review: The Mathematics of Magic, The Complete Enchanter Series

About the time I started blogging, a little over a year ago, there was a movement towards rereading the classic fantasy works that inspired Gygax and Arneson for making Dungeons & Dragons.  These have been listed out most famously in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide Appendix N.  You'll often see lists identified online by one gamer or another as 'my version of Appendix N'.  I've aspired to read through my own list as well, and finally got the chance to finish another one - The Mathematics of Magic, a collection of novellas by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt.

The protagonist for this series is Harold Shea, a clinical psychiatrist who discovers a way to slip from our dimension to various alternate realities where the worlds of earthly literature and mythology exist as real places - he visits mythic Ireland and Finland, the world of the Norse gods, the realms of literary creations like The Faerie Queene or Orlando Furiousa (The Madness of Roland).  Other realms that are visited include Kublai Khan's Xanadu, the Land of Oz, and Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom.

If you like stories where modern characters either travel back in time or find themselves in a fantastic realm, you'll appreciate the central conceit for each of these.  Harold Shea is brainy and bold, and constantly has to match wits with dangerous "heroes" that are both stronger and a bit homicidal.  Protagonists that seem to be idealized stand-ins for the author are oft referred to as a "Mary Sue", and Shea falls into that space.

One aspect of the stories that will be fairly interesting to gamers is this; Harold Shea is a fencer, and many of the challenges involve using fencing styles against other styles and armor.  At the end of the collection, there are a few interesting essays from the 1960's debating whether fencing would work in other times and places, including various field tests by the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism).  There's also a letter by a young General Patton, then only a lieutenant, discussing sword techniques for the pre-World War I era army, and revising army doctrine around slashing and stabbing.  Considering the frequent arguments in the blogosphere regarding shields in D&D, table top gamers would find the essays quite interesting.

The writing in the Shea stories isn't fantastic, but many of the fantasy books I've read from the 40's through 60's don't light the world on fire with their prose, so take that as you will.  The primary reason I found the collection enjoyable was because of the author's interpretation of those various mythic and literary realms traversed by the characters.  For instance, I've never read The Kalevala, but Harold's adventures in mythic Finland are intriguing and I could see myself adding that to the reading list.  Same with mythic Ireland, and the stories of Cuchulainn bounding over the turf in a chariot and chopping off heads to mount on his wall of trophies.  I would recommend reading one of the novellas, going off and reading something else, reading the next one, and so on.  500+ pages of Harold Shea straight through started to feel like a grind.

Inspirations for Gaming
The Harold Shea stories are often held out, alongside Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories, as inspiration for the magic system used in Dungeons & Dragons.  I tend to think Vance's influence was primary, but Harold Shea does need to learn various verbal, somatic, and material components to perform his spells, and anyone who's played 1st Edition AD&D is familiar with those terms.  The magic in Shea's stories often uses theories of sympathetic or contagious magic, as well, which we see in the choice of material components in AD&D.

This book is likely the inspiration for the D&D green dragon; in the Norse tale, a dragon emerges from a cave and breathes poisonous, chlorine gas.  Other creatures I remember include cockatrices and griffins.  But most of the antagonists are the violent, homicidal "heroes" of myth and folklore.

So perhaps the most direct inspiration is on AD&D's Deities and Demigod's Cyclopedia.  The heroes and gods of Finnish, Irish, and Norse myth are featured in the book, along with some introductions to their mythic realms, and an enterprising game master could use the Deities book, along with the source materials and the staging in the Shea stories, to create a campaign built around traveling from one mythic realm to another.  Don't tell me that wouldn't be totally awesome.

Literature Review: The Worm Ouroboros

The Worm Ouroboros is probably the best fantasy book of which you've never heard.  If Scott over at the defunct Huge Ruined Pile hadn't been "the prophet of ER Eddison", I might not have prioritized it so highly on my reading list.  I'm glad I did.

The book was written in 1922, predating Tolkien, and the cover of my edition has a quote from the Professor praising Eddison as "the greatest and most convincing write of 'invented worlds' that I have read."  High praise.

The story has an epic sweep in the style of Homeric or Arthurian myth - nations at war, epic heroes battling, armies on the move, the mustering of massive naval fleets.  There's politics, romance, betrayals and treachery, important quests, and even a few monsters.

I should take a moment and caution the reader on the writing style.  It's written in 1922, but the narrative style seems earlier (19th century), and the dialogue is downright Shakespearian.  I flipped to a random page to grab a sample.  Here, Lord Juss (one of the heroes, the other being Brandoch Daha) has just had a dream about the location of his missing brother.  His brother was carried off by a demon, summoned by their enemies in Witchland with whom they're at war, and imprisoned on a distant mountain across the ocean.

"Is thine heart utterly bent on this journey?" said Brandoch Daha.  "Or is it not preposterous, and a thing to comfort our enemies, that we should thus at the bidding of a dream fly to far and perilous lands, rather than pay Witchland presently for the shame he hath done us?"


Juss answered him.  "My bed is hallowed by spells of such a virtue that no naughty dream flown through the ivory gate nor no noisome wizardry hath power to trouble his sleep who sleepeth there.  This dream is true.  For Witchland there is time enow.  If thou wilt not go with me to (the mountain) Koshtra Belorn, I must go without thee."

See what I mean?  Either you can read a 440 page book in that style, or you'll put it down after a few pages.  It took me about twice as long to absorb The Worm Ouroboros than the recent page turners I devoured.  Out of the 6 or so Appendix N books I've read since starting the reading project, I had been ranking The King of Elfland's Daughter as my favorite, the most literary and worthy of a second read in the future.  The Worm Ouroboros is right up there.

As usual, my goal here is to highlight some of the inspiration these books provide for gaming and what kinds of ideas I'll mine from them for future games.  Here goes.

High Level Play
The main characters in the story seem like 20th level fighters, and they are all sorts of awesome.  Whether it's battling  a horde of soldiers alone, holding a besieged castle, or leading an army, their deeds jump off the page.  Rarely have I so enjoyed the exploits of such larger than life characters.

Politics and War
In some of my recent posts I've wondered whether I should create War Machine and Dominion Economics statistics for all the nations of Greyhawk.  Now I see that experiencing the awesome politics and war in The Worm Ouroboros was certainly part of that inspiration.  There's diplomacy, ambassadors, jockeying for influence amongst the generals and military commanders, relationships complicated by marriage and loyalties, all the things you'd expect.

No Humanoids!
It took me a bit to get used to this idea, but in hindsight it was brilliant.  The lands of the world have names like Demonland, Witchland, Goblinland, and Impland… and the people that live in those lands are called Demons, Witches, Goblins, Imps, Pixes, Ghouls, etc.  This is a story that predates the Orc or Hobgoblin of modern fantasy.  At one point it's mentioned the Demons have small horns on their heads, and some of the Witches know magic, but otherwise the story is about people vs people, man vs man.  That feels completely different in tone than standard fantasy, humans versus orcs (or whatever).  It humanizes it.

If I choose to get rid of humaonoids in a setting, I'd take the approach used by ER Eddison here.

Fantasy Fiction for Kids

A follow up to yesterday's post - I try to have a good-sized stock of books at home for reading with the kiddos.  My daughter is still in the Ramona and Beezus and The Magic Tree House period, but my son has been hearing (and reading) fantasy for a while.

He's read a few series to himself - The Spiderwick Chronicles, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and a few odds and ends, like How to Train Your Dragon.  He recently took on The Hobbit.  Although the Percy Jackson series is a Potter knock-off, it's about right for an 8 year old to work through by themselves - not too difficult, and he did learn a bit about Greek myth along the way.

We enforce some time each night where one of us reads to the kids, so we've been able to read a number of kid-oriented books.  A few of the recent ones included the 7-book Harry Potter series, the Bartimaeus Trilogy, and Fablehaven (5 books).

The first Bartimaeus book (The Amulet of Samarkand) is on the way to being a movie; it was an interesting series, but a little bit over the head of a kid.  It's an alternate world ruled by the British Empire, and the Empire is openly ruled by magicians, and magicians work by summoning Djinn and making the Djinn go and do the dirty work.  There's a lot of politics and skullduggery; in hindsight I'd recommend it for older kids and not the 7-8 range when we read it.

Fablehaven is a recent series that turned out to be just fine.  Written slightly better than Percy Jackson and Co, the series is an urban fantasy, where mystical creatures live on secret magical "wildlife preserves", safe from the mundane world of non-believers.  The bad-guy group, the 'Society of the Evening Star', is seeking to return magic to the world by opening a demon prison, overthrowing the preserves, and ushering a new dark age.  The major story arc involves a race to recover a series of artifacts.  All the books beyond the first one feature interesting dungeon crawls, plenty of traps in said dungeons, and all sorts of mythological creatures.  Good inspiration for a youthful D&Der.

Prydain!

We're at the point that we can start moving into books that are considered a bit more "classic - the Chronicles of Narnia, The Golden Compass, A Wrinkle in Time, stuff like that.  We're starting with Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series.

Tom Moldvay placed some 'Young Adult Fantasy' suggestions in the back of the Basic book - some he lists include John Bellairs The Face in the Frost, Alan Garner The Weirdstone, Ursula K Le Guin's Earthsea - does anyone have experience with those authors and can make a recommendation?

There are plenty of dads (and hopefully a few moms) playing D&D with their kids, hope these give you some ideas!

Literature and D&D and Kids

Here's a simple thesis:

Table top gaming is a literary activity
Reading develops cognitive ability
If you want your kids to play D&D, encourage them to read

There's a lot of folks reading classic fantasy in the OSR these days - there's a whole Appendix N revival movement happening.  Gary Gygax, Tom Moldvay - those guys were well read!  Chances are, if you're playing classic D&D or AD&D, you've read your share of fantasy and science fiction books too.  The virtual mind space we create in our imaginations during a table top gaming session is  like envisioning a fantastic setting while reading.  Viewing a video game world through a monitor is like watching television.

There are brain studies online that illustrate the connection between early reading and later cognitive ability.  Time Magazine just had an article how the multi media generation is teaching themselves low attention span behavior through multi tasking across different sensory inputs at the same time - watching TV while texting - for instance.  The scary thing is all this passive reception of media is changing how people's brains are wired and reducing the ability to focus and concentrate.

If you're a parent and a table top gamer, wouldn't you love it if your kids took up the hobby once they were old enough?  I'm doing my part to get all the neighborhood boys entrenched in our D&D group - I need someone to DM for me when I'm a cranky old guy!

Get your kids to turn off the TV, unplug the computer, put down the iPod touch, pick up a book - this is common sense type advice.   Read out loud to the younger kids, and help your school age kids develop a love for reading on their own.  It'll make them smarter, improve their school work, wire their brains so they can concentrate, and might just get them interested in your D&D game, too.

Literary Review: The Broken Sword

I had finished Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword as part of my Appendix N reading a few weeks ago, but hadn' t gotten the chance to circle back and do a review.  Pondering The Ring yesterday made me remember how many common elements the stories share, since they draw inspiration from the same myths.

Like my other 'literary' reviews, I'll only provide some general impressions of the work, then dive into what elements I found inspirational for gaming - why it's part of the Dungeon Master's Guide reading list in the first place.

The Broken Sword takes place in Norse England, the Danelaw, during the Viking Age.  It tells the story of the doomed hero Skafloc and his villainous "brother", Valgard.  Skafloc is abducted by the elves as an infant and raised in the mythic world amongst magic.  Valgard is a changeling, son of a troll and an elf, substituted for the infant Skafloc and raised in his place.  The story details the rise to prominence of the two brothers in their respective spheres, Skafloc becoming a hero to the elves and Valgard becoming a murderous leader for the trolls.

The story is epic in scope.  Much of the major action revolves around a war between the elves and the trolls, but the story includes gods, giants, monsters, magic, quests for a magic sword, fate, destiny, and plenty of blood, gore and violence - much more so than the other book I read of Poul Anderson, Three Hearts and Three Lions.  There are many common themes with The Ring cyle of operas, such as the incestuous love between a brother and sister (who tragically don't know they're related), the re-forging of a broken magic sword, and the certainty of fate.

The Broken Sword is an easy read, and would be good general inspiration for a Viking-era game or one with Norse themes.  Here are some more specific elements I liked:

The Sword of Wrath
I don't believe the broken sword is named in the novel, but it's the sword Gram (or Nothung, from The Ring) -  a gift of the gods that is forged anew through the efforts of the hero.  In The Broken Sword, it is cursed to always kill when it's been drawn from it's sheath, and fated to bring doom to its wielder.  Along the way, it lends great strength, cuts through anything, and turns Skafloc into an engine of destruction.  What gamer doesn't want to be an engine of destruction and get to have their own Stormbringer or Blackrazor?

Machinations of the Gods
Was Poul Anderson channeling some post-war geopolitics?  The gods, as superpowers, intervene in the mortal world only through proxies, and let their followers battle it out.  Neither side (the Asgardians or the Giants) wants to commit themselves to the mortal realm and bring about Ragnarok, so they arm the combatants and provide indirect help like the Cold War.  It’s a model that would work well for D&D.

Monotheism
Both of the fantasy novels I've read by Poul Anderson put Christianity directly in conflict with the magical world, but in both cases, the power of belief in Christianity trumps all other magic.  In The Broken Sword, the armed combatants fight in the mythic realm and mostly avoid the civilized world with its churches and parishes, lest they wake the sleeping giant, the religion of the "White Christ".

I remember a conversation with James Raggi where he mentioned using a monotheism that "shut off" pagan faiths as it became the primary belief system in an area; I get the sense the ideas would be game-able and create interesting conflicts between faiths.  I find these questions come up any time I consider settings that mix polytheism and monotheism and I'm trying to reconcile which belief system is 'true'.

Note:  I have yet to see a cleric that can turn undead in any pulp fantasy, but there are tons of priests that turn elves.  Funny stuff.

The Mythic Realm
Urban fantasy has co-opted the idea of the mythic realm that's all around us, we just can't see it; at some point I'd like to trace that idea back and see how deep that rabbit hole goes.

In The Broken Sword, the mythic realm overlaps the mortal realm; ordinary folks catch glimpses of trolls and elves during storms and foul weather, on certain nights of the year or during the largest of battles.  But mortals can be ensorcelled so they can see elves and trolls and creatures of magic all the time.

I don't recall any D&D settings taking this tact - making the world extremely mundane, but having a coterminous secret world where anything goes.  I do like the idea of making the mundane and magical world's adjacent - the magic world is across the river, or just past the old forest.  It's out there.

Too often I use maps rooted in real-world ideas of countries and borders, where each country has it's own little borderlands or sections of chaos.  How about a map where a large homogenous region is settled, mundane LAW, and everything past a certain point - across the river, perhaps - to the very edge of the world, is CHAOS?

I feel some West Marches style EGADD coming on...

Review: Three Hearts and Three Lions

As I go through the Appendix N reading list, I can see there were books that heavily inspired game play (like the various Swords & Sorcery offerings), and a few books that heavily inspired game elements and mechanics - things like Tolkien, Vance, and then this book -Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions.

Plot

The basic story involves a 20th century man, Holger Danske, who gets knocked unconscious while fighting the Germans in WW2; he wakes up in a legendary version of medieval France.  Although much of the book takes place in the wilderness, we learn that the human world is being threatened by Chaos and Fairy; the forces of Chaos seek to overrun Law and return the world to a state of twilight and magic.  Much of the movement in the story is Holger coming to grips with living in this world of magic and folklore and discovering his role.  Much of the charm is Holger trying to apply science and logic to find solutions to all the magical situations he's encountering…

The story is a light-hearted page turner, definitely a quick read and very accessible to a modern reader (though expect to find a used copy - it's out of print).  One of the things I found most interesting was it's depiction of the world of chivalric romance - the story takes place maybe 50 years after the Song of Roland.  The story of Arthur has been done to death; Three Hearts and Three Lions takes a supporting character from The Matter of France and asks the question, What Happened Next?

Using It In Your Game

Alignment

The first thing I'd point out is the introduction of the Law vs Chaos alignment axis.  This might be the first instance of it - I'd be curious to know if it appeared earlier than Poul Anderson.  It certainly predates Elric of Melnibone or Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber, two works that feature Chaos, and are also in my reading queue.

If you've read the introduction to B2 Keep on the Borderlands, where Gary Gygax waxes poetic about the Realms of Man and the forces of Chaos threatening just beyond man's borders, you would swear he was leafing through Three Hearts and Three Lions and pulling quotes; this book is the source for the playable version of D&D's alignment system (as opposed to what was done to 1E).

The Paladin

The concept for the paladin class came whole cloth from this book - the detect evil, the laying of hands, the warhorse, the quest for a holy sword, it's all there.  What didn't come from this book is the Lawful Stupid approach generations of DMs have saddled on the paladin.  The 1E PHB should have a disclaimer - "make your DM read Three Hearts and Three Lions before you attempt to play this class in his game…"  Another case where the 1E alignment system fell apart.  I'll say this - Holger as paladin has just as much carousing fun as any Swords & Sorcery roguish hero, while staying true to the quest.

The Troll

The climactic fight in the novel is against a troll - the D&D troll!  It's as if the artists used the text descriptions as their work order, and Gary used the text to define the troll's abilities.  As limbs are severed, they crawl back to the troll's body and reattach themselves; it was excellent seeing the origin of one of D&D's iconic monsters.

A Playable Fantasy Europe

The implied setting of D&D is a medieval place like Western Europe, with Tolkien's races tossed in for variety; what struck me about this book was how it presented the Europe of Christian folklore.  The story took the quirks and foibles of the chivalric stories, and presented them as the baseline reality of the setting.  There are monsters driven back by a few holy words spoken in Latin; there are fairies that dissolve when struck by iron.  States of grace and virtue matter and have a real effect in the world.  The campaign style this implies certainly isn't for everyone; lots of folks try to remove the Christian-trappings from their D&D worlds.

Other interesting elements that make appearances are a dragon, a werewolf, the introduction of the Swanmay (I suppose Lohengrin predated it a bit - :smirk:), wood and mountain dwarves, witches, demons, the courts of Fairy, a nixie - chock full of interesting presentations to fuel your imagination.

To understand where D&D came from, this book is a must-read.

Review: The King of Elfland's Daughter

Be careful what you wish for...

This will kick off the first in a series of reviews as I work through my own personal Appendix N.  I'm no literary critic; I'll take a moment  to say some things about the work itself, then move on to discuss it as an inspiration for gaming.  Dunsany is listed in the AD&D 1E DMG, and The King of Elfland's Daughter is called out by title in Moldvay's Basic Rulebook.

The short novel starts with an introduction to a distinctly English setting; the parliament of a small land, the Land of Erl, desires to be ruled by a "magic lord" so that their small valley gains renown in the surrounding lands and earns a place in the history books; to that end, the lord bestows a quest on his heir - to find the mythic realm of Elfland and there seek to marry the Elf King's daughter.  From the mixing of the mortal and magic realm emerges a story that seemed to me a classic fairy tale writ large.

The story is written in a slightly archaic style (although published in the 1920's, it seems reminiscent of 19th century writing, to me) but the style is imbued with such poetry and lyricism, it's easy to get carried away by the charm of the prose.  If you like literature, you'll enjoy Dunsany - I highly recommend this piece.

Inspiration for Gaming
I'll confess - at times I grow weary of the long shadow of Tolkien on gaming, and appreciate alternative imaginings of classic races when I encounter them.  The elves of Dunsany live in a realm of faerie that's coterminous with our world, but the borders of the realm are capable of retreating at the will of the King of Elfland.  Most mortals seem ignorant about how close Elfland lies; it's just over that nearby hill.  Elfland itself is an eternal, unchanging place, where a single moment stretches for an eternity; much of the charm and vision in this story happens when creatures of the fairy realm slip into the mortal world and begin to experience Time and Change.  And play tricks on people.

The story includes trolls (presented more as mischievous goblins than the trolls of D&D); there is unicorn hunting, the dangers of will-o-wisps and marshes, and the half-elf/changeling son of the Elf King's daughter - Orion - drawn to both worlds.  Other D&D-like elements include the forging of a magic sword, various quests, and consultation with witches and sages.

One of my favorite touches, one which I'll develop in a later post on Law vs Chaos, is the relationship between Elfland, and magic, and the church of man; the Freer (the name given to the local priest) dispels the magic of Elfland with his candle and bells and holy words, and is content in a mundane world devoid of magic.  Perhaps he was right in the end?

Appendix N: My List

Midway in our life's journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood...


First Post!

Why start a blog?  Simple - I wished for a place to chronicle my projects.  Right now, I have two gaming related projects:  a megadungeon project and a reading project.  We'll get to that megadungeon project in a bit; the reading project is below.  I'm also a game master for a couple of games; I expect I'll post some game reports here too.  Most importantly, this blog exists to give me a safe place to ramble on about the philosophy of gaming, my reading interests, reviews, game reports, and ideas, without endangering innocent bystanders or boring my spouse.

About that reading project.  Earlier this year I was inspired (by this guy) to peruse works of fantasy fiction I had overlooked for too long; I started with "Tales from the Dying Earth" and quickly developed a sizeable list of fantasy and horror fiction that had been left unread, or that deserved a second read to admire the works with a new perspective.  While most of these are from the AD&D DMG list, I've added a few horror selections to round out my Lovecraft list, and will likely add a few more as well.



I expect I'll be updating this list often; books with strikethroughs have been completed since the project began.

 The List:
Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth
Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan, Gormenghast
Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter
Lord Dunsany, The Gods of Pegana
HP Lovecraft, various collections
Poul Anderson, Three Hearts and Three Lions, The Broken Sword
ER Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros
Roger Zelazny, The Chronicles of Amber
JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings
TH White, The Once and Future King
Robert E Howard, Conan Stories (various)
Clark Ashton Smith, Return of the Sorceror (collection)
Michael Moorcock, Elric of Melniboné, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate
Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked this Way Comes
Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan, The Novel of the Black Seal
Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun
Fritz Leiber, Swords and Deviltry and others
L Sprague De Camp, The Compleat Enchanter
John Bellairs, The Face in the Frost
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Pellucidar, Barsoom
Gardner Fox, Kothar
M R James, Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories
Margaret St Clair, Sign of the Labrys, The Shadow People
Richard Tierney, Simon Magus
Algernon Blackwood, Best Ghost Stories
Abraham Merrit, The Face in the Abyss, The Moon Pool
Sterling Lanier, Hiero's Journey
Karl Edward Wagner, Dark Crusade
Andre Norton, The Witch World
TED Klein, Dark Gods
Tanith Lee, Night's Master
Thomas Ligotti, The Nightmare Factory
William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland, The Night Land
Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness, A Wizard of Earthsea
Leigh Brackett, Mars or Skaith
Lloyd Alexander, Prydain series
Alan Garner, The Weirdstone
MJ Harrison, Viriconium


What am I missing?