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?

A Government by the Evil, for the Evil

What are some of your favorite portrayals of "evil" fantasy societies in gaming?  As I've been thinking about how I want to portray humanoids in the game world it's gotten me thinking about the role of societal alignment, government, and power.  Maybe this topic has been covered in a Dragon or one of the Dungeon Master Guides, and an astute reader can point out a reference?

For instance, I've always thought of "Lawful Evil" societies as tyrannical police states, heavily militarized, with a side of casual cruelty.  Would Imperial Rome be Lawful Evil?  How about Sparta?  How about the old Soviet Union or totalitarian states from the mid-20th century (like the Axis powers?).

What would a realm be like where the prevailing alignment of the populace is Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil?  In real world terms, I think of Chaotic Evil "states" as zones with warlords and armed bands, with complete disregard for traditional morality or norms.  Examples include regions controlled by drug cartels or notorious warlords who ravage entire regions, a populace living in fear.  A Chaotic Evil society is one where life is cheap and guns make the rules.  How about cultures where rampage was a way of life?  If you transport real world cultures to a game universe where alignments represent eternal and absolute truths, would the Huns and Mongol societies be Evil in D&D terms?  How about the raiders during the Viking era?  "Good", as the 1st Edition DMG defines it, represents "a belief that any creature is entitled to life, relative freedom, and the prospect of happiness".  By definition then, any society modeled after a historical counterpart that countenanced slavery would seem to be evil.  There goes antiquity.

I usually like to return to OG Gary's materials to clarify this kind of stuff, but while the Greyhawk Folios identify many kingdoms where the societal alignments point towards evil, there's not a lot of color on how the societies function or what a day in the life is like for the citizenry.  Examples would include The Horned Society, Bandit Kingdoms, Iuz, or the Great Kingdom.  We get encyclopedia facts - ruler, population, and a bit of recent history, but not the texture of how the societies run.

My favorite example of an evil place is Erelhei-Cinlu, the great Drow city in the Vault of the Drow.  Module D3 depicts armed houses of competing Drow nobles jockeying for position among the families with murder, assassination, and politics all part of the repertoire.  The city of Erelhei-Cinlu itself is a dangerous place where powerful non-Drow visitors - demons, undead, archmages, and the like - mingle in the streets and markets.  There's not so much "law and order" but rather a recognition that everyone there is a predator that can handle themselves, and if you can't defend yourself, victimization is to be expected - very much the strong survive.  It's my favorite depiction of a playable Chaotic Evil city (the Forgotten Realms knock off, Menzober-I-can't-spell-it, is targeted at compelling Drizz't fiction rather than something easy to use at the table).  The Drow may be the largest example of a Chaotic Evil society... for humans it tends to be smaller groups, and transitory - the equivalent of biker gangs, pirate ships, the aforementioned warlords or cartels, but not anything at scale or which persisted.

Here's another odd factoid I learned while considering evil societies.  Orc alignment shifted through the years!  TSR D&D had Orcs as Lawful Evil, but when WOTC took over with 3rd Edition, Orcs were recast as Chaotic Evil and this has persisted into 5th Edition.  We recently re-watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies, and I can see how the depiction of Orcs there could be considered Chaotic Evil... it's fear of their powerful supernatural leaders that keep the armies together, and left to their own devices, Orcs fall to in-fighting and scrabbling with each other (such as the in-fighting at Cirith Ungol or out on the plains of Rohan by the eaves of Fangorn Forest).

Anyway, this post is not meant to be a deep-dive on Orcs, per se, I'm still mulling.  I'm sure other media has done Orcs well - maybe Warhammer or World of Warcraft - perhaps as masters of warfare and the military arts, basically "evil Klingons" - time for more research.  On the main topic though, I would love to hear how readers would characterize notorious historical regimes in terms of societal alignments.  Similarly let me know if you've got examples of game settings or fictional states that presented compelling examples of interesting evil societies.  Thanks!

Compost Heaps and Snowflakes - a Look at Hommlet, Phandalin, and the Keep

Last post I laid out a thesis - as the style of play in D&D has shifted towards "unique and special heroes", it's significantly altered how designers approach world-building - particularly around setting demographics.  I used the Fight Club/Tyler Durden movie quote as a launch point for a look at how styles have changed.  As an experiment I'm now reviewing the design choices in a few of the iconic starting locations for early D&D and then Fifth Edition - comparing the Village of Hommlet and Keep on the Borderlands with the Village of Phandalin (the starting locale in both of 5E's boxed sets).  The designer's approach to detailing the demographics and factions of the home base imply what the game is about and activities contemplated in the respective locales.

Home Bases in the Compost Heap
Two of the most well-known starting bases in D&D's history are The Village of Hommlet (from module T1 of the same name), and the Keep, from module B1 The Keep on the Borderlands.  Both were penned by Gary Gygax, co-creator of the game, and have a lot to say about his world-building philosophy and view of player characters.  Let's start with a look at Hommlet.

Hommlet's main track

I've started so many AD&D campaigns in Hommlet through the years I can practically close my eyes and imagine entering the village from the west on foot, passing Elmo's farmhouse, and turning up the tree-lined road towards the Inn of the Welcome Wench - with the sounds of the blacksmith's shop across the way ringing out in the morning air.  It's a D&D equivalent of the Prancing Pony and the Village of Bree, a launchpad for adventure.  What jumps out to you when reading the depictions of Hommlet is how every cottage and building has a description that goes beyond a superficial view of what the players see - it'll include the strongbox with 50sp under the loose floorboard, or how the farmer is a member of the "Old Faith" and trains with his strapping sons for the village militia.  Their spears and ringmail armor are polished and in the shed out back, in case you need to know.

In fact, many of the people in Hommlet have character levels as adventurers.  Elmo is a 4th level Ranger, who keeps a magic battle ax, chain armor, and shield, buried in a lead-lined chest to foil detect magic attempts.  The Druid of the Grove is 7th level.  Not only are the nearby rulers, Rufus and Burne, retired adventurers themselves (8th level fighter and magic user respectively), but the players can hear local tales about how the pair fought a green dragon and a large horde of bandits in their younger days.  Now they're spending their adventuring hoard on a sturdy tower and keep, and protecting the area with a troop of mercenaries, the Badgers.

What does this approach to setting design imply about the world?  First - the player characters are not particularly special.  The world is full of monsters and dangerous places, and the player characters will not be the first people to take up arms against the night creatures and return from their exploits with wealth and experience.  Hommlet has 15 non-player characters (out of about 75 or so) that have character levels.  In fact, the village boasts a 10th level thief, a 7th level assassin, 8th level fighter and magic user, 7th level druid, 6th level cleric, and then a handful of lower level NPCs.  Essentially 20% of the village has a level like an adventurer!  This is a place that could mount a defense against an assault on the village, or put a bunch of rogue player characters in their place if they turned into actual "murder hobos" and unleashed mayhem, as the haters would say.

This type of design anticipates a range of alignments and play styles at the table - not everyone is expected to be Dudley Do-Right.  Gary planned for scoundrels.  You don't hide Elmo's magic armor in a lead-lined chest under the floor unless you expect mischievous player characters to use their detect magic spell to try and find something to steal.  Hommlet envisions a game world where characters with magic and powers are known, and reasonable people train and prepare because the wilds have bandits and monsters.  People that come to town might have low morals.  Be ready for them.

Furthermore, it shows a career arc for player characters, right from the beginning, that grounds their journey in the world of the setting.  Adventurers accumulate wealth and fame, and then settle down as rulers or leaders in the community.  The clerics build chapels or temples or groves, wizards create towers and places for their libraries, fighters attract men-at-arms and settle the wilds.  They don't necessarily stop adventuring, but the types of challenges that cause them to take up arms are different, the threats must be greater.

Approaching the Keep on the Borderlands

Let's pivot to the Keep on the Borderlands.  The civilian section of the Keep is far more limited, with only about 30 or so non-military personnel in the "outer bailey".  Overall, the Keep has about 10 people with character levels, ranging up to a 6th level fighter and 5th level cleric.  However, because it's a military installation on the frontier, there's a much larger contingent of guards - 140 level 1 fighters as soldiers.  Much like Hommlet, the depictions of the Keep include details that would only be relevant if the players attempted some mischief, like stealing from the jeweler or looting the chapel.  Also like Hommlet, there's enough "beef" present to make short work of any clumsy attempts to rob the good citizens of the Keep.  The players can try, but they'd better be careful and lucky.

There are two other facets of Hommlet and The Keep to discuss - the idea of factions and quests.  Factions represent roleplaying opportunities for the characters to establish their identities and develop allies.  In Hommlet, the factions include the new faith (based around the church of St Cuthbert) and the old faith (represented by the druid of the grove).  Most citizens are identified as belonging to one or the other of the village's principal religions.  There is also a loose faction concerned with law and order - not far from Hommlet is the large ruined dungeon, the Temple of Elemental Evil, and various factions for good in the nearby kingdoms have agents in or near Hommlet keeping watch on the nearby evil temple.  Elmo reports back to the Viscount of Verbobonc, for instance.  These factions give the players opportunities to learn rumors and lore for adventures - an early form of quest-giving.

The Keep on the Borderlands is straightforward; basic D&D used a simple Law vs Chaos alignment structure, and the Keep is a bastion of law (civilization) out on the chaotic frontier.  Everyone in the Keep stands for a Law, other than one of the prominent NPCs in the outer bailey who is a secret agent of Chaos.  Like Hommlet, the players have the opportunity to collect rumors from citizens of the Keep, which can lead them towards various adventure sites in the nearby wilds.

Where Snowflakes Get their Jobs
Fifth Edition has two boxed sets - the 5E Starter Set and the 5E Essentials Kit.  Both sets came with a basic set of rules and a starting adventure, featuring the village of Phandalin.  If you're a newer player, you may have encountered Phandalin as your model for an introductory home base - either through Lost Mine of Phandelver or Dragon of Icespire Peak, the two starting adventure books.  Phandalin doesn't loom in my memory as a living, breathing place the same way as Hommlet, but Hommlet had 40 years and several beloved AD&D campaigns to establish itself.  I came to appreciate Winterfell and the Nentir Vale during 4E, so newer settings can resonate.  The Forgotten Realms have never excited me, so the bar for Phandalin is higher.  But let's assume I'm a newer player that started with a 5E boxed set, the way I started with the Moldvay Basic Set way back in 1981.  What lessons would I glean from Phandalin about world building and expectations of the game?

First off, Phandalin is sparsely described.  There are 30-35 buildings in the village, but only a handful have descriptions.  There are 14 named characters in the village across the two adventure books.  There are no game stats anywhere.  The text literally says "The characters have no reason to fight ordinary townsfolk, hence no game statistics are provided for them".  Nor are there guards, soldiers, or any type of law & order beyond a non-combatant "town master".  There's a saying - in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.  In a village where everyone is a mere commoner with 4 hit points, a couple of player characters with infinite magic cantrips (take your pick - fire bolt, ray of frost, or eldritch blast) could declare themselves emperors of the village.  I guess there's no point in sacking Phandalin, since none of the locations have anything of value.

You begin to understand what a 5E setting implies about the game.  Characters with adventuring levels are extremely rare - a typical village has no one like the player characters.  Settlements are vulnerable to bandits, ruffians, and any type of predatory humanoid unless adventurers come along to save them.  A town or village is only there to provide clues, hooks, and rumors that quickly route the players out of town to where the adventures happen.  Town is not  a place for action.  Obviously, this also requires everyone at the table to agree to play a "hero" - scoundrels and rogues need not apply.  I'm imagining one of those badly designed video games, where you try and use your attack button on the store clerk, and the game flashes a "you can't do that here" warning on the screen.

One thing Phandalin does well is quests.  Both starting adventures have ample rumors, clues, and quests scattered liberally across the NPCs in the village.  Icespire Peak is a little more heavy handed, with an actual "job board" posted at the town masters, but I don't disagree with the sentiment there.  The surrounding areas are presented like an open world, with many small adventuring sites.  I like the approach the writers (Perkins and Baker) made in building out the nearby wilds.  There are also a handful of the Forgotten Realms "factions" represented in Phandalin, such as the Harpers, Order of the Gauntlet, Zhentarim, etc.  These can be allies and sources of information for similarly aligned player characters.  None of the contacts are retired adventurers.

What a strange turn modern D&D has taken from the roots of the hobby!  The presentation of Phandalin characterizes how D&D has moved away from explicitly supporting Sword & Sorcery fantasy fiction, clever tricksters, or sullen anti-heroes; there's no longer any model for a career arc from adventurer to authority figure or ruler; even absolute novice adventurers are rare and powerful compared to ordinary people, and could quickly overwhelm a "rugged" frontier settlement like Phandalin.  I will say, in later adventures like the hardcover Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, more care and attention was placed on establishing a city that has institutions and authority figures experienced with dealing with powerful adventurers.  Waterdeep works as a more sensible 5E settlement that assumes adventurers are present in the world and society has adapted to their presence.  Unfortunately, new players get stuck with Phandalin as their model.

Next
Despite my criticisms, I'm currently playing 5E and my players love it.  My project has been to fold, spindle, and mutilate the Fifth so it behaves more like the older editions.  It's a work in progress.  And don't get me wrong - AD&D 1E is full of its own warts.  Weapon speed factors, weapon vs armor class, training costs, psionics, the whole of Unearthed Arcana, the monk class.  It's a rough game to try and play "by the book".  The only truly perfect edition is Moldvay basic (and yet there are detractors of race as class out there).  So don't take any of this too seriously, I'm just poking fun when I use descriptors like compost heaps and snowflakes for game styles.

However, since I am trying to get my 5E settings to behave more like Hommlet, and less like Phandalin, I need to take a harder look at NPCs in the Fifth and what we can do there.  How would we do a 5E version of Hommlet?  How do we create rival adventuring parties?  That's coming up next.

In the meantime, I've posted a new poll.  Some of our best games involved roguish scoundrels landing themselves in regular fiascoes when they tried to rob the bank at the Keep, or break into the evil trading post in Hommlet.  In your games, do you treat your towns and villages like adventuring sites (fair game for unscrupulous players) or more like the Phandalin "video game" approach - "you cannot take the attack action here in town"?

Update:  I needed to pull the poll down as I exceeded "monthly views" for the free gadget - will need to find an alternative.

Are Your PC's Snowflakes or Compost?

Why Tyler Durden Would Play AD&D

"You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap."

I spent some time perusing a message board recently and encountered (gasp) many different opinions.  As I scanned several discussions, particularly about world building, a pattern became apparent to me- a loose correlation between how the referee views adventurers in the setting, and their approach to world building and running adventures.  I'm labeling these two approaches to player characters Snowflakes or Compost.

Snowflakes
Referees in this type of game are likely to come right out and tell the players their characters are special.  They're also expected to be heroes.  Adventurers are rare in the setting, and the player characters, who are all chosen, god-touched, destined, royal blood, or otherwise meant for greatness, will set out on a heroic journey to do something... very important.  This is the realm of Tolkien, Shannara, Earthsea, and much of fantasy literature.

In this type of world, NPCs are like monsters.  They strut and fret their hour across the stage, and then are heard no more.  The world is constructed like those old Wild West movie sets, props to give the illusion of a world.  The elements of the game world exist to support the referee's story and enable the characters to be heroes.  Detailed demographics don't add value; the referee is empowered to make up what is needed in terms of NPC's to fit the needs of the story.  Player characters rarely run into rival adventurers in dungeons, if ever.

Adventures involving the snowflake style are probably plotted adventure paths - the goal is to build a story of epic heroic fantasy and that needs planning and authorial guidance.  Referees feature milestone experience or a similar story-based award, to keep the player characters leveling up at a brisk pace so they can face the next set of challenges.  Encounters are somewhat balanced to the level of the characters, to provide sufficient challenges for an exciting game (Goldilocks style - not too easy, not too hard, but just right).

This style seems massively popular with the influx of gamers in the past decade, and what little of I've seen of popular Twitch games.  In the OSR, we trace this shift towards heroic fantasy and plotted (epic) stories back to Dragonlance, where the players take on the role of pre-made heroes of destiny (characters from the actual fantasy novels themselves.)

Compost
This style of world building assumes player characters are made of the same "compost heap" as the rest of the world.  While adventurers will eventually rise to levels of great power, at the beginning they're no better than a common soldier or town guard, true apprentices in their chosen fields.  Adventurers are common in the world; many of the rulers, archmages, and luminaries of the setting got their starts as adventurers themselves.  (Just look at characters like Mordenkainen, Bigby, Robilar, and more from classic worlds like Greyhawk).  Because player characters became rulers with armies, compost settings needed mass combat rules, too.

NPCs in a compost game are built with the same rules as player characters, with the same levels of power.  Rival adventurers are common in this type of setting and the random encounter charts will feature NPC parties regularly, both in the wilds and dungeons.  Compost games favor an open world format - some type of sandbox, with numerous ruins and site-based adventures, and adventurers earn experience predominantly by recovering treasure. The story is less about the referee preparing an epic storyline, and more about presenting a setting with interesting choices.  Compost games are intensely interested in demographics and worldbuilding because they rely heavily on random tables - random tables are defining characteristics of the setting, the secret code.  The world is not level-balanced, and it's possible for careless player characters to stumble into danger way beyond their power level.

Editions and Bias
The snowflake style started in D&D back with Dragonlance.  I don't remember how common it was during 2E (I mostly skipped that edition) but epic adventure paths highlighting heroic characters were a defining characteristic of 3E and Paizo.  Nonetheless, 3rd edition and 3.5 took the compost approach to demographics and worldbuilding to the extreme - every NPC in the setting had player character style rules and templates applied.  It was a path of madness.  I can't comment how it may have improved with Pathfinder or PF2E.  4E completely embraced snowflake style worldbuilding, but it forced the referee to level balance every encounter to the level range of the player characters.  The 4E world made no logical sense in the absence of PCs.  A 4E Troll, for instance, had an armor class somewhere in the 30's; no NPC in the setting could even hurt a troll, unless some level-appropriate player characters came along to fight it off.  A single troll, nigh invulnerable, would reign supreme in a small kingdom!  It was terrible.

5th edition leans more towards the snowflake approach, but the pendulum slowly shifts towards the center.  NPCs don't follow PC rules, and there's no easy way to build rival adventuring parties - the likeliest approach is to cobble something together from the limited NPC stat blocks that have been published here and there in monster books.  There's nothing stopping a referee from making NPCs using player character rules, though - it's just unwieldy.  Random tables for wandering monsters weren't in the base game, they came out later in a sourcebook, but they're there now - and a few of the published adventures have started incorporating them into the design.  A 5E conceit called "bounded accuracy" ensures your village full of commoners could defend themselves against a predatory monster, such as a troll.  There's no in-game path for player characters to move into domain ownership and become rulers or wage military campaigns - 5E campaigns are laser focused on adventuring.

I suppose I'll keep plugging away on my future 5E setting for sometime after Tomb of Annihilation - but now I have a nickname for it that works on several levels.  The compost heap!