Voodoo in D&D

As I continue to take in all things of a piratical nature, I've been reading Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides, the novel that inspired the Pirates of the Caribbean movie of the same name.  I've been meaning to read The Anubis Gates, so this was a convenient entry point to this author's work.  I'm enjoying the book a lot, more so than I did the movie, so I'll write a review/recommendation when done; today is just focusing on the thread of magic and sorcery in the novel.

In the story, it seems that nearly every pirate ship has a resident Bokor, a voodoo practitioner, and many of the rank and file know a few tricks themselves - at least, all the pirates moving in the same circles as Blackbeard have voodoo influences.  Magic is used to cure tropical diseases, heal wounds, bless ships, and protect in combat, among other things.  Hermeticists from Europe also find their arcane powers are increased in the Caribbean.  There's a conceit at work here; the New World in the 17th century is unformed, wild, and primal, and the significance of magic is stronger.  Magical effects described from the times of myth and legend are  possible again in the New World.  The Pirates of the Caribbean movies have a strong supernatural theme running through them, revolving around the influence of the 'heathen gods'.  This is great, great stuff if you're looking to run a historical fantasy game featuring a strong magic component, like D&D, but otherwise don't want to upset the historical apple cart.  The motif that the progress of time, civilization, and/or the Church drives the magic out of the world ripples across many literary genres and works.

The bit that fired my imagination is this idea that "every pirate ship has its resident Bokor…"  It sounds a lot like every adventuring party bringing along a thief, magic user, or cleric.  The Bokors in the story function most like healers and augurs, putting them in the same design space as the cleric in D&D.

I don't profess to know any more about Voodoo, Vodun, or Obeah than what one picks up watching movies and the occasional urban fantasy book; I also realize modern forms of the religions are heavily syncretistic.  It involves rituals and ceremonies invoking various powers of the spirit realm (the Loa), frequently equated to Christian angels, messengers, and saints in the modern view.

What would it take to make pirate-clerics in the Goblins of the Spanish Main campaign Bokor practitioners?  Very little, it would seem - renaming various clerical spells to fit the mood is a simple enough starter.  In On Stranger Tides, for instance, there is a spirit euphemistically referred to as Mate Care-For (the Loa Kalfu or Carrefour) that is frequently invoked to help heal injured pirates in the story.  The ubiquitous Cure Light Wounds could be referred to as "Touch of Kalfu" or even "Mate Care-For's Breath" and you 're ready to roll with it as is.  I can easily see players calling out, "Hey man, we need some voodoo up here - Hawkins just took a cutlass to the face."

There are perhaps a few signature elements of the popular conception of Voodoo that I'd want to address - zombification, voodoo dolls, and spiritual possession.

Animate Dead is typically a higher level (arcane) magic user spell, and calls to mind a necromancer calling forth hordes of skeletons from a desolate graveyard.  I'd probably make a lower level clerical version that allows the Bokor to create a single zombie.  Not sure yet if it would be the zombie powder version of The Serpent and the Rainbow or White Zombie - a living human transformed into an automaton - or an actual undead servant brought back from the dead.

All of the Bokor spells could be cast through a degree of Spiritual Possession, the level or type of spell dictating the degree to which the Loa needs to inhabit the Bokor's body during the spell casting.  For instance, augury or divination spells (when the cleric acts in the role of oracle or soothsayer) could require the caster to ecstatically channel the personality of the Loa.  Could be fun for the roleplaying opportunities.

I like the idea of making the Voodoo Doll a new type of magical construct that clerics can make, like scrolls (and about as difficult as a 1st level scroll - or perhaps the level of the doll = the level of the target).  In modern voodoo, the dolls are used more for sympathetic magical healing than sticking pins in their eyes.  Use of a doll would provide an interesting and flavorful twist to the typical clerical limitation of "laying on hands" by allowing a Bokor to cast different types of healing spells over a distance if an appropriate Voodoo Doll exists of the character.  Getting personal effects of an opponent to make an appropriate voodoo doll of that enemy offers some intriguing adventure ideas.

What about players wanting to play traditional European "clergy" in the Caribbean setting?  I expect that to be the norm, as long as we address the idea that fantasy Europe is lower magic than a typical D&D world as befits the weird fiction space.  It could be that actual miracle workers are rare, or clergy are uniformly low level and not capable of the vast wonders that adventuring clerics can achieve; perhaps magic-working clerics are members of secretive, mystical sects that perform clerical magic, and the mainstream clergy are mundane.  I prefer to keep the workings of the cosmology somewhat vague when developing weird fiction settings, since clear sides of good and evil and transparency about the cosmology undermines horror and mystery alike.



*The image is the M:TG Voodoo Doll card; my oldest kiddo just started playing Magic recently and now it's all he talks about.

In Which Halflings Don't Suck

Black City Game Report - Session 13

Hope all the readers that celebrate such things had a nice Thanksgiving.  Sitting before a nice fire in the hearth, after putting up the Christmas tree earlier in the evening and entertaining some guests, my D&D thoughts are drifting towards that lover of comfort and the warmth of home - the Halfling.

Enjoying a bit of hearth and home in the late evening, Halfling style

I love the Halfling class in basic D&D.  Of course, the class is rarely played by us in accordance with how they're portrayed in the source material; I've used them as heavily armored front row tanks (because of their huge AC bonuses) with a pair of fighters behind them with spears, or they're used cynically as all-purpose crash-test dummies, checking for traps (the hard way) and testing potions for poison.  Mario and Luigi were two such Halflings in the last campaign.  But they have killer stealth abilities, and in that regard, they can function a bit like those sneaky fellows from the Middle Earth stories.  Basic D&D doesn't have much CharOps power gaming, but the Halfling is the one class most prone to abuse (ie, not using it for its intended purpose) and that makes them pretty interesting.  So I do like Halflings, which is why I'm mentioning up front that Halfling stealth made a huge difference during last week's game session.

In The Black City Campaign, Halflings are proper Britons from the south of England, typically taken as thralls in Viking raids and forced to work off a life-debt back in the Scandinavian lands; Halfling adventurers have earned their freedom and opted for the adventurous life of a raider.  My roots in Mystara are showing, since Mystaran Halflings are frequently pirates - nasty, brutish, and short.

This recap resumes when Brick Bunnybreaker, the party Halfling, climbed atop a large pile of rubble to keep an eye on the surrounding ruins while the others split into two groups to search the current ruined hex exhaustively.  (One of the players was convinced there would be an entrance to the first junction below ground somewhere in the hex - good instinct, but not this time).  When a murderous Hersir and his ring-men skulked up the path following the group's trail, Brick was instrumental in spoiling the ambush.  After  a bloody first round with the noble and his crew, Timur ended the fight with a Sleep spell.

The leader of the other group was a youthful nobleman, but rather than take him prisoner and ransom him back to his ship, a common practice, the group just killed him and his gang outright and took their gear - fine broadswords and chain armor, hacksilver, and a wealthy fur cape.

If the party's reputation is drawing attackers, it's also lending to their mystique; in a further hex, they intimidated some poorly equipped bandits, and claimed the rights to search a pyramidal structure the bandits were scouting.  Brick found a secret door entrance, and the only furnishing inside was a 15' tall obelisk made of lodestone in the center of the pyramid.  When no one else had the guts to touch the obelisk after fruitless searching, it was Brick they asked to touch it.  Alien math flooded his brain when he touched the obelisk, and he gained a point of intelligence (a one-shot boon).

"Don't think I haven't figured out why you keep asking me to touch things", said the now-brainy Brick Bunnybreaker, whose intelligence went from 12 to 13.  "I'm too smart to do anything foolish now."

I told you it was Brick's night, and he proved key in the next scene as well, creeping up to the large hole in the ground the party previously used to leave the Mist Dungeon from below.  They had successfully bushwhacked a way from the Well of Woe to the Mist exit, across 8-9 ruined city hexes, and now that they reached their goal, they were grumpy someone else was down below in the dungeon.  Smoke and voices drifted up from the 20' opening.  Brick crawled forward, Ninja-Halfling style, eavesdropping and spying on the interlopers.

"It was horrible," cried an injured man on a hoist.  A large group of northmen circled the hole, where ropes and hoists with men in harnesses were being pulled out of the chasm.  The other two men that were hoisted from the deep cavern below were dead - one of them mangled and dripping blood, the other bloated and poisoned.  "The bottom was crawling with giant bugs… a spider jumped on Olaf, Holvir and I were attacked by huge beetles…"

"We'll have to prepare better", said a wheezy, hoarse voice from the shadows.  "We'll send down heavily armed veterans instead of scouts, and more fire with them, so we can defend a position".  Brick had heard enough; the voice was Galm, one of their rivals, so he crept back from the hole to inform the party.

DM's Note:  Galm was an early retainer of the party; during one of their adventures, he opened a lead -lined chest and an otherworldly ghost wasp flew into his head and infested his brain (this was session 1 or 2).  They cashed Galm out back in town and parted ways, wanting no part of a possessed henchman in their service.  Galm went on to recruit other dungeoneering groups, desperately seeking a way into the lower dungeons.

In a recent game session, the party saw an entire  hive of those ghostly devil wasps in the dungeon deeps, after they turned on some alien equipment and gained short glimpses about those dark places.  Galm worried them.

Now, Galm was apparently close to his goal - he had a large party of mercenaries and veterans, and was building hoists down to the caverns beneath the first level.

Because this was a day or so after previous events in the recap, the party had  recently camped in the ruins and gained their Sleep spells back; now the magic users (Tribunas and Dominicus) crept forward to nuke Galm's mercenaries from above.  Once the magic users started chanting spells, I gave the guys down below regular initiative rolls to try and plug the magic users with arrows.  Luck went the party's way, and multiple Sleep spells blanketed the area below ground.  Some of the men near the edge pitched forward into the void as they slipped into unconsciousness.

The group quickly dropped their own ropes and scurried down to kill the sleeping opponents.  What to do about Galm himself?  The topside group urged Mustafa and Brutok to bash his head in and loot the body, but at the last minute, Mustafa got cold feet and merely shoved Galm's limp body into the void.  They couldn't decide if killing Galm would just free the devil wasp to possess someone else, and they didn't want to be the ones to find out.

A few prisoners were trussed for questioning, while the rest were pushed into the void.  Galm's group had apparently cleared the Mist Dungeon, finding the missing parts of the robot the players were collecting - Galm had the missing treads and arms.  (The party had found the torso and head on previous capers, and the pieces were securely stashed in a hideout).  They left Galm's survivors, bound and gagged, and decided to go retrieve their own robot parts and try and put the thing together finally.

A wandering monster check (ghoulish zombie gjengangers) meant that the prisoners were eviscerated when the party finally got back to that room, having been discovered by ghouls, and the monsters stopped ripping out the guts of the dead captives to attack the front line; the party made short work of them.

The game ended in a desperate fiasco.  Another useful item the party had sequestered in their secret cache was a control unit related to the hole in the floor and the various clamshell doors.  It turns out there was also an elevator or platform deep in the cavern, and the party was bringing it back up to the surface.  Unfortunately, they'd been dumping corpses down the hole over many sessions… and the area below was crawling with monstrous vermin.  Climbing on the mound of revolting bodies were a trio of giant tiger beetles.  Borghild frantically pushed buttons on the control unit, trying to get the elevator platform to reverse course, while everyone else got ready for a beetle onslaught.

These vicious predators have thickly armored carapaces (plate armor) and bites that deal 2-12 damage per round - that's terrifying for 1st and 2nd level characters!  Someone quickly tried to drop an oil flask on one of the beetles before the elevator finished the ascent, and others pelted the monsters with arrows and spears.  It was a desperate fight when the elevator drew flush with the floor, but Brutok (recently armed with the enchanted Ingomer broadsword) was the hero of the fight, holding the line with his 17 hit points and crushing one of the beetles with some vicious strikes.

Looking ahead to this week, the party is considering assembling the robot; possibly selling it to the wizard; looking for more topside landmarks; or perhaps finally moving on to the Adamant Dungeon.  I ask, but I don't usually get a clear answer to guide my prep.  You know how it is; "Just be ready for anything, DM".


The Spitsberg Pirates - Cast of Characters
Player Characters
Agnar Beigarth, a Northman fighter (L2)
Mustafa of Arabia, a scimitar wielding desert warrior (L2)
Brutok the Strong, a dwarf (L2)
Borghild, a Norse cleric of Odin (L2)
Timur, Russian Elf (L1)
Vitaly, Russian Elf (L1)
Dominicus, Byzantine magic user (L1)


Retainers with the party:
Tribunas, Byzantine magic user (L1)
Brick Bunnybreaker (halfling L1)
Ayerick the Young (Fighter L1)
Bjorn Fjordrunner (Fighter L1)
Bottvild (cleric L1)
Ivar the Bow-bender (specialist L1)

Plus 3 unnamed L0 sailors to help carry tents and supplies


Retainers back at the boat:
Grimson (Fighter L1)
Fafnir (Fighter L1)
Skoldig (specialist L1)
Halam (cleric L1)

Call of Cthulhu vs LOTFP

Jim LOTFP has been trending towards placing his LOTFP material in an alternate earth and featuring more explicit horror adventures.  It does raise the question, beyond system, what's the difference between LOTFP and a period-based Call of Cthulhu game?

The difference in tone is huge.

In Call of Cthulhu (COC), characters have a moral position.  COC characters investigate eldritch horrors from a sense of responsibility, thus the frequent "save the world" story lines in Call of Cthulhu games.  This lends a tragic undertone to the sanity mechanic - you are putting your character in harm's way and will eventually be driven mad or forced to retire.

In D&D style play, even with the horror theme, the party traditionally consists of roguish sorts motivated by treasure.  If they run into the occasional eldritch horror, it's an occupational hazard that turns the game into a desperate fiasco to survive.  Certainly not a mandate to do something heroic.  This is why the sandbox works so well for the one approach, while the other assumes the characters will see the plot through to a finale.

On a separate note, would you refer to a period-based horror game as "alternate earth", "secret history", "pseudo-historical", or something else?  These are the burning questions for which G+ excels, and I'll inquire there as well.

Junkyard Necromancy

"What is the most resilient parasite? An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate..."
 -Inception

I see it every day.  An excitable game master runs straight to the internet, carrying TNT and a plunger, to blow up their existing campaign because they absolutely *must* run that new game system or bring their players to a new setting.  You can't run a long term campaign without effective coping strategies for the gamer attention deficit disorder.  This is a serious problem, my friends, I know it well.  Ideas are a two-edged sword yielding creativity and madness.  How's that expression go, "I'm not just the president of the hair club for men, I'm also a client…"

My name is Beedo, and I have a problem with gamer attention deficit disorder.

My own coping strategy involves classic project risk management - Gamer ADD is the risk, and you either need to mitigate, accept it, avoid it, or transfer the problem.  I created a section on the blog called The Junkyard to park ideas that are exciting, but I don't want them to take up too much time and capsize the boat.  Getting them down in print is a coping strategy - I just tell myself I'll get back to them, someday.  Here's the Junkyard's mission statement:  This is the place where I put campaign ideas, notions, and high concepts that just haven't gotten built.  Yet.

Sometimes though, one section of the junkyard gets pretty full, and a towering mound of discarded ideas threatens to topple into the orderly little campaign next door and introduce some real collateral damage.  I had an epiphany this weekend that a half dozen or more ideas I've been circumnavigating are all about the same type of campaign - in fact, one campaign could include them all!

It's alive!

Arise, you dead ideas consigned to the junkyard, arise, and live again as a stitched together frankenstein campaign!

I've been sketching out a small horror sandbox adventure.  The initial launch of the campaign involves the players acting as marines on a small merchant vessel or privateer in the mid-17th century.  It could start in Jamestown, Bermuda, or somewhere in the Caribbean (Port Royal, or New Providence), but takes the group to the Carolina coast to investigate a derelict Spanish galleon adrift in colonial waters.  An abandoned, derelict ship is such a classic horror locale.  Before all is done, there are French pirates, hostile natives, and a reawakened heathen blood god of the Aztec world.  Assuming the players survive or flee, there's a good chance they'll have their own sloop and be free to start cruising around a Caribbean saltbox breaking things.  Yo ho, me hearties.

The back story of the galleon involves a Spanish witch hunter escorting a dangerous artifact back to Castile (and ultimately the Vatican).  As these things are wont to do, the wrong person messes with the artifact and madness, bloodshed, and death ensue, turning the ship into a floating abattoir.  I've often mused that a cool way to kick off a horror sandbox would be to inherit the library of a retired or recently vanished monster hunter like Solomon Kane.  The journals detailing his exploits and unfinished investigations allow a group to follow in his footsteps.  So why not put the guy's journal and library right on board the derelict ship?  The players can come out of this first adventure with a ship and a long list of journal entries describing eldritch horrors and lost treasures discovered by this Catholic witch hunter across the Spanish Main.  Time to raise the colors and set sail.

I mentioned that a number of my recurring campaign ideas have coalesced around this particular adventure, it's nice to realize the convergence.  Pirates, guns, ships, and weird horror.  Here are some of the many older posts littering the Lich House involving the theme of a 17th century sandbox for the Age of Sail:

• The Library of de la Torre
• Goblins of the Spanish Main
• Colonial Hex Crawl
• Mythos Expeditions as a D&D Campaign
• The Wide Area Sandbox

The discussion of Gamer ADD and risk management was here:  Winter is Coming, and so is Gamer ADD.  Now I just need a name for the new campaign (although Goblins of the Spanish Main is kind of catchy, even if there are no actual goblins…)

Black City Game 12 - Free Odin

Last game ended with the players staring into the starry void of space, while standing on an orbital platform high above the earth - with a 7' tall Odin in front them, declaring, "Welcome to Asgard".

As it turns out, that wasn't exactly true.  "Asgard" was more like an orbiting telescope in geosynchronous orbit high above the Black City, and Odin claimed that the ancient builders of the city bound his godly form to the platform in the distant past.  Long has he waited for the bold men of Midgard to discover his prison and set about to freeing him.

The first hour and a half of the game was Q&A with Odin, as he explained what he knew about the city, the workings of the devices back in the tower, and what it would take to free him.  The group learned how to safely open portals to the other 9 Norse worlds, including the homeworld of the ancient builders of the city, where super weapons lay deserted in the wasteland.  The players are beginning to wonder what kind of damage they can do with laser rifles and their own flying saucer.

They also learned that Odin was stripped of much of his power when he was imprisoned, and by connecting him to other parts of the city, his powers will increase and he'll be able exert himself beyond the tower.  They agreed to a mission to make some repairs in the domed building, which Odin called "Central Command", and fixing his connection to Central Command will extend his consciousness.  In terms of godly powers, he's demonstrated telepathy, a degree of clairvoyance, and the ability to generate matter from energy - he created 100 large crystals for them (about 1,000sp in treasure, using 1sp = 1 xp).  They're wondering if Odin can make a magic sword - he scanned one of their weapons, commenting on its "unusual compositional matrix and atypical energy signature..."

None of the players think the real Odin is actually trapped in space (although the characters are acting that way) - "Odin" is either a demon or hideous entity bound in servitude by the ancient Greys, or the projection of an insane alien super computer.  Either way, he's got POWERZ and they're hoping to benefit financially from helping him out.

After agreeing to return in 9 days with their mission complete, the Spitsberg Pirates returned to the tower - as Odin attested, the tentacled, globular, "opener of the way", was gone, and it was safe to leave.  However, some miscreants had set up an ambush at the base of the tower, waiting for them.

A mean looking halfling, with a desert-clad Arab fighting woman at his side, stepped out onto the path, and the group became aware of some archers and axe-men off to the side.  This NPC group, Awen's Looters, were in a foul mood after being stymied by the tower guardians time and again, and demanded to learn how the party entered unscathed when they lost so many men themselves.  When Awen learned about the passkey gems, he demanded a chance to buy or trade for some, having plenty of arctic fox pelts in their camp.

Interestingly enough, instead of launching Sleep spells and just crushing these guys, a few members stepped forward and essentially talked the halfling out of the ambush, convincing them of the futility of taking on the totally awesome crew of Isgerd's Fury.  Awen's crew chose to leave peacefully.  Maybe they saw Mustafa's duel or something - their reputation is growing.

The second half of the night was hex crawling around the ruins north of the Well of Woe, trying to bushwhack a trail to the clamshell doors that lead down to the Mist Dungeon.  The party is looking for an alternate entrance to that mini dungeon, something to make salvage easier.  Along the way, they explored a few extant buildings, fled a haunted chamber that seemed to be crawling with dark shadows, found a ceremonial building with a bas relief carved alien procession marching up a ziggurat, and followed blood trails from a battle site to where a group of hungry Viking ghouls - gjenganger - were pulling the guts from a few dead vikings.  They gjengangers charged, only to be cut down and decapitated fairly quickly.  Another night of D&D was in the books.

We had a nearly full crew this evening, including some guys who had missed recent weeks, so some of the new names in the party are either elves or magi that came with the Byzantines and hired on seeking arcane lore in the city.


Cast of Characters
The Spitsberg Pirates:
Agnar Beigarth, a Northman fighter (L2)
Mustafa of Arabia, a scimitar wielding desert warrior (L2)
Brutok the Strong, a dwarf (L2)
Borghild, a Norse cleric of Odin (L2)
Timur, Russian Elf (L1)
Vitaly, Russian Elf (L1)
Dominicus, Byzantine magic user (L1)

Retainers with the party:
Brick Bunnybreaker (halfling L1)
Ayerick the Young (Fighter L1)
Bjorn Fjordrunner (Fighter L1)
Bottvild (Cleric L1)
Ivar the Bow-bender (Specialist L1)
Tribunas, Byzantine magic user (L1)

Plus 3 unnamed zero-level sailors to help carry tents and supplies

Retainers back at the boat:
Grimson (Fighter L1)
Fafnir (Fighter L1)
Skoldig (Specialist L1)
Halam (Cleric L1)

Two Houses, Both Alike in Dignity...

Two households, both alike in dignity, 
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, 
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, 
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

Alignment is one of those things… you'll get 100 different answers from 100 different DM's how (or if) they bother to use alignment in their games.  95.32% of the time I don’t bother using it as a behavioral yardstick; I usually have a simple Law vs Chaos axis and treat alignment as a kind of supernatural fingerprint; anything with a divine power source is Lawful, and arcane is Chaos, and all non-magic characters are Neutral, and it has nothing to do with moral choices.

Today I'm suggesting we look at alignment as "dramatic allegiance".  To facilitate the discussion, I'm going to borrow some screen writing and fiction terms - dramatic characters, iconic characters,  procedural scenes, dramatic scenes - all concepts picked up while listening to Robin Laws describe narrative gaming.  Note: I'm not turning in my old school ID card to be a dramatic story gamer, just borrowing some lingo to help the discourse.  Dramatic characters, the type we most often see in movies and TV, undergo story arcs where their viewpoint changes over the course of the story; iconic characters are steadfast (action heroes).  Likewise, procedural scenes are action-oriented and built to get things done, dramatic scenes are emotional and character oriented.  A dramatic character is usually pulled by competing poles over the course of dramatic scenes - such as, the need to earn the trust of a spouse, versus the need to get revenge on their enemies.  A dramatic character wrestles with those poles, lying to the wife in order to go and whack a rival; an iconic character doesn't vacillate.

Alignment as Ethos or World View
In this view, alignment is a (dramatic) behavioral choice, a way of indicating which side you're on like an affiliation.  Lots of fantasy features a conflict where a dramatic character either straddles the line or switches sides in the conflict as an external symbol of their changing viewpoint.  Anakin Skywalker starts as a Jedi Knight, seduced by the Dark Side to become a Sith, then switches back to the light side of the Force when he's been saved by Luke.  Snape is a Death Eater who covertly joins the Order of the Phoenix in the Harry Potter series.  Stephen King's Dark Tower features feudal gunslingers facing off against the Crimson King and his allies, the Man in Black and Farson the Good Man.  Even in Lord of the Rings, Sauron starts as a being of light who becomes one of Morgoth's lieutenants in the First Age.  Lots of Judeo-Christian folklore features themes of the fall from grace and the possibility of redemption - and consider romances like Tannhauser, or the tribulations of the knights during the Grail Quest, not to mention the historical lives of many saints.  The chivalric tales of Arthur and Charlemagne I've been discussing feature the Christian world in conflict with the pagan world, the Muslim world, or the realm of Faerie.

In "Appendix N" literature, I've always had a soft spot for The Chronicles of Amber, where members of the House of Oberon switch allegiance to the Courts of Chaos, or choose to defend the Pattern.  I take guilty pleasure in the Dresden files series of novels, and Harry Dresden's allegiance ends up ping-ponging all over the map (these days he's on the outs with the wizardly White Council, and has sworn allegiance to Queen Mab as her Winter Knight - quite a soap opera.)  Alignment in fiction tends to be fluid.  It's also true that these conflicts frequently feature only two sides, simplifying the conflict for the reader.

In all these cases, alignment combines elements of political affiliation, group membership, social goals, and values - it incorporates many more distinctions than a vague conception of  'good' or 'evil'; the nuances of affiliation are elaborated by the fictional world and the power structures.

D&D as written isn't a great game for dramatic role playing; it's not laden with supportive mechanics for governing a behavioral scale, like Vampire's humanity path or virtue paths, or Pendragon's traits. In fact, alignment change (by-the-book) authorizes the DM to drop a giant hammer that nerfs the character until proper atonement is made - in the 1E DMG, punishments are draconian and swift, involving loss of level and the wrath of god(s).  In other words, D&D characters are meant to be iconic, unchanging action heroes.  You make a choice at 1st level and stick to it, and see it through to the bitter end - or else.   The mechanics governing alignment are otherwise limited to esoteric alignment languages (ignored by all), the insufferable paladin or druid requirements, and various detect and protection spells.

Considering how much value old schoolers place on emergent character, it's surprising alignment is set for life at character creation.  We joke about not naming characters until they survive to level 2, but the unchanging life-long value system of these un-named characters is set before a dice is rolled during game play.  Shouldn't these allegiances and world views materialize through play?

Mechanically, one of the only D&D settings I can recall that presented dramatic alignment shifts in the way that mirrors fiction was Dragonlance - it had those White, Red, and Black robed wizards and the moons and the towers of High Sorcery.  Of course, Dragonlance was a setting based on a series of novels - alignment was a vehicle for the fiction.

I've got some ideas on implementing dramatic alignments - grist for an upcoming post.  In the meantime - how about you?  Have you used alignment in a dramatic, literary sense, with two sides both alike in dignity in fair Verona where we lay our scene - something like the Jedi vs the Sith, or the Pattern vs the Logris, encouraging players to switch allegiances as appropriate when their values change?


Tl;dr:  D&D alignment choice should be fluid to support emergent characters, and involve nuances of the fictional setting rather than bland, generic descriptors like good or evil, law or chaos.

Challenges of the Saltbox

The archetypal D&D game, where a beginning group of adventurers meet in a tavern and head out to the local ruins, doesn't necessitate skills beyond those inherent in the class descriptions; fighters are already good at fighting, magic users cast spells, clerics can affect undead, and so forth.

Not so when you consider staging a maritime adventure.  The roles on a ship demand specialized skills - navigators need to read charts, calculate dead reckoning, mark soundings, and take latitude measurements; crewmen need to know the proper rigging of the sails and ship maintenance; gun crews need to know the elevation and targeting of cannons and the measurement of charges based on range and shot.  The captain is perhaps the most knowledgeable and experienced sailor on the ship, as well as requiring a strong personality and commanding presence.

Old school (rules-light) D&D doesn't provide much support in the rules for adjudicating these situations.  Which is fine, the game is Dungeons & Dragons, not Sloops & Sailors.  I imagine one reason many campaigns don't feature significant ocean travel is precisely due to discomfort by the DM.  If you're going to run the saltbox, you need a plan.

Hiring Experts
The by-the-book answer is to require adventurers to hire navigators, a captain, gunnery crew and sailors; there's no real provision for player characters to have said skills (unless perhaps the DM is using background professions or something like the 1E DMG).  This is fine if the ocean travel is a means to an end, like getting to the Isle of Dread; not so much if most of the campaign will revolve around the sea.

How would you handle this in an old school game?  Hybrid systems that split the new/old school line (like ACKS) have a proficiency based skill system, so player characters could add specific skills over time.  Alternatively, the DM could rule that characters spending enough time ship-board could learn these professions after a sufficient period as on-the-job-training.

Hack n Slash pointed readers towards an old post on A Rod of Lordly Might that broke professional skills down into categories of unskilled, skilled, expert, and master, and provided ideas on costs and times to pick them up (outside of the class and level system).  I like the idea of requiring experts initially, but letting the players add the skills as professions if they really want to allocate time and effort in game to pick them up for their characters, too.

Adjudicating Skill-Based Situations
In the dungeon environment, rules-light skill decisions on the fly are handled through a negotiation; the player describes what they want to do, the DM comes up with a success chance, the players think of ways to enhance success, and we either agree on a ruling or a roll that needs to be made and move on.

In a situation where specialized knowledge affects frequent encounters and combat, I'd like to push more of this resolution towards a defined system of rolls.  Can the crew get more speed out of the ship in a pursuit and evasion situation; can the captain's maneuver to get into a broadside position succeed; was the grappling and boarding attempt successful; did the navigator succeed in guiding the vessel to that remote island across the trackless ocean?

Looking through the BX rules, there are some guidelines for adjudicating these types of maneuvers, but they don't have a variable element for individual skill.  So one approach is to elaborate these generic guidelines for solving common situations, like pursuit, maneuvering, boarding, and navigation, and then apply modifiers based on player choices at the table.

An alternate approach is to add appropriate individual skills to the mix - use something like ACKS's proficiencies, extend the LOTFP d6-based skills to include some nautical skills, or use professional descriptions like unskilled, skilled, expert, or master to provide some common modifiers.

Agency and Autonomy
I've talked about this in the past, that playing crewmen on someone else's ship doesn't provide a lot of agency and authority to the players - they take orders, they don't give them.  As such, maritime adventures are postponed until the group has sufficient wealth to hire and outfit their own ship.

For a low-level campaign, I like the idea of the group starting with vessels small enough for them to afford, or ensuring one of the earliest adventures puts them in ownership of a suitable vessel.  Lots of real-world pirate careers started with canoes and pinnaces, trading up over time to progressively bigger vessels.  I've been working on a kick-off adventure for such a campaign, where the characters start as conventional adventurers, and gain an opportunity to seize an appropriate vessel and become privateers by the end of the adventure.  I'd use privateers because  I tend to think my players would rather be 'legal pirates' with patriotic targets, rather than murderous, indiscriminate raiders.

A useful thing about the 16th and 17th century colonial waters, the Spanish Empire of the time can be portrayed as universal, unsympathetic villains, the way early 20th century films frequently demonize Germany.  The destruction wreaked by the conquistadors was widespread and massive, dimmed only by 5 centuries.  But that's grist for another mill.

Anyway, that's where I'm at - gathering ideas for resolving common maritime problems, consulting what's been done in BX and AD&D 1E while looking at other game systems (currently looking at how Flashing Blades: High Seas handles similar situations).  James at LOTFP threatened to develop a maritime supplement at some point, but I don't see it on the near horizon (though hopefully the LOTFP guns supplement is inching closer...)

I'm also considering how player characters can gain some professional expertise in these non-dungeoneering professions, if desired.  Not only would this stuff be necessary for a Spanish Main setting, it'd be useful in the Black City - in another couple of months, the Spitsberg Pirates will be ready to buy their own longship or knarr and going where they will.

Game masters that have run a heavy nautical campaign seem few and far between; it's an idea that's occasionally discussed, but infrequently executed.  But if readers have suggestions on these issues, I'm thankful for any insights!