Get your reality out of my fantasy

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

Which way do you go as far as using social conventions in your game world?  Humans are not nice to each other.  Reading history is more shocking than any horror movie could be.  Forget about the large scale horrors of genocide and colonialism and war - even more mundane elements of past societies - the degree of racism, slavery, sexism, casual attitudes towards infanticide or child abuse - are revolting to the modern person.  (I hope they're revolting to the rest of you, too).

So the question is, how much do you aim for historical verisimilitude in representing your fantasy world?  I suppose I can see a number of common positions.  One is to put all the historical elements in place, and turn the past into a foreign country - the players need to learn the social conventions - "Slavery is okay here!" - in addition to adventuring.  Sword and Planet stories, right here on Earth!

Another approach would be to use anachronistic, modern social conventions - women and children aren't just property, for instance.  Modern players then don't need to grapple with social problems and can focus on adventuring.

Finally, in a fantasy world with an alternate power structure than 'might makes right', there doesn't seem to be any problems ignoring real world social conventions.  There are many leading female characters in fantasy worlds that don't have to deal with glass ceilings and double standards.  Magic is a great equalizer.

I see myself working more in the quasi-historical space going forward (not the Black City, mind you, that's 100% fantastic) so it's an interesting question to me.

The Black City - more surface areas - E, G, and H

A continuation of the series describing special surface areas in the Black City.  As has been the case lately, I'm posting mainly descriptive stuff and saving stats and encounter details for the upcoming pdf.

E The Misty Hollow
There are a handful of prominent holes in this part of the city, deep shafts that extend down to the steaming caverns of the level 2 Warrens of Decay.   The caverns are heated with geothermal water, and excess moisture and warmth is vented up through the shafts that empty here.  The rocky ground surrounding each shaft is consistently slick and icy, and misty water vapor clogs the air.  The letter E hex and surrounding areas are perpetually foggy.

If any character is unfortunate enough to slip near one of the open shafts, there's a chance they'll slide into one of the deep air vents and drop 80' down a slide before emerging from the ceiling of the Great Warren, another 60-80' above the cavern floor.

The Misty Hollow surface area is particularly dangerous to explorers due to traps, the aforementioned ice, and the predation of a deranged killer, "Bonecracker".  Collapsed buildings have formed a deep cave, and the murderous Northman, Bonecracker, lairs there, sucking the marrow from the bones of victims dragged back to the cave.  While Bonecracker used to be from Trade Town, he has mutated beyond recognition due to roid worm infection (see the article on Black City berserkers for the details).  Bonecracker is a Stage 3 berserker - he stands over 8' tall and has stats similar to an ogre in combat.

The hexes surrounding the Misty Hollow are riddled with various man-killing traps, set by Bonecracker with wicked cunning.  Spiked armatures whip out of the mist without warning after a tripwire is triggered, impaling the unwary; booms sweep across a trail at knee height, hobbling trespassers; always there are the simple pitfalls, designed to detain a group long enough for the lord hunter of the area to arrive and claim his victims.

Despite his size, Bonecracker moves quietly and knows the terrain of the Misty Hollow intimately.  The infection has heightened his senses such that he can hurl giant-sized spears out of the mist with minimal blindness penalties.  Fear and terror are his allies.

G The Great Ramp
This colossal hole in the ground leads to a 40' ramp that descends into the darkness  at an incline, making a right turn every 120' or so in a great spiral.  The top area of the ramp is clear of ice and snow, but once the group gets beyond the first bend, the ramp is coated with ice and requires appropriate climbing gear to continue the descent.  The ice clears after a few more bends in the spiral.

The ramp circles downward until it connects to level 4, the Halls of Machinery.  The ramp is essentially a service entrance to allow oversized automatons in and out of the lower levels without using any of the vertical shafts / elevators in the Transit Tunnels that were reserved for lighter duty traffic and inhabitants.

Near the bottom of the spiral, the party will approach an opaque, shimmering wall of light (treat as a Wall of Force).  They will be unable to proceed further unless a member is carrying a green passkey gemstone.  Bringing such a gemstone within 5' of the wall of force will cause it to disappear, reappearing once the gemstone holder passes more than 5' away.

Tidewater glacier in Spitsbergen (inspirational)

H The Great Glacier
The great glacier is a river of ice, issuing from the nearby mountains, that splits the city.  Over tens of thousands of years, the ice has gouged a moraine through the center of the city, reducing everything in its path to rubble as it pushes onward to the fjord.  60% of the island of Thule is covered by glaciers, and its common for smaller ones like this to find their way to sea.

Crossing the glacier requires climbing ice that crests over 50' in the air and covers nearly half a mile across in places.  It's common for there to be variations in the ice flow that create crevasses and other climbing hazards.  Unless a group scouts ahead properly, there's a 1 in 6 chance the path they've chosen for ascent causes them to retrace their steps due to an impasse such as a large crevasse.

Unencumbered characters will have a 3 in 6 chance to climb the glacier without incident (roll per hex).  The group can improve their chances with climbing gear (spikes and hammers and axes), +2 per person.  Proper rope use won't reduce the risk of a fall but will negate much of the damage.  50' of rope is sufficient to rope two characters together.  Having a trained mountaineer, or specialist/thief, scout a proper course will also increase the chance per person by +1.  Encumbered characters take penalties to the climb roll, -1 per encumbrance level above unencumbered (-1 for light, -2 for heavy.  Severely encumbered characters can't climb).

Climbing the ice is extremely slow, and will take an unencumbered group an hour per hex to cross.

DM's note:  the glacier serves to separate the northern and southern halves of the city; the northern half is quite a bit more dangerous.  Enterprising groups might consider taking longboats or even long ships up the fjord to bypass the glacier, but it's crucial to avoid calving ice in the misty waters of the fjord; icebergs are common near the ruins of the city.

Glacial predators often follow the ice out of the mountains, and the glacier provides the chance to introduce unusual ice monsters (like whatever will be the Black City equivalent of Rhemorhaz or similar ice worm).  The glacier has its own wandering monster table, but it's likely I'll add something more bizarre when we start the playtest.  I may need to adjust the scale/size of the city as well, depending on how quickly players traverse it.

Unspeakable!

I caught wind of a new podcast through Yog-Sothoth.com about The Unspeakable Oath.  The Oath is an old magazine put out by Pagan Publishing in the 90's that resurfaced a few months ago under new leadership.  The podcast is mainly of interest to folks that do some Call of Cthulhu type gaming, but the primary interview on this one was with Jon Tynes, and he had some things to say about game design that are worth looking at in light of D&D (so I'm putting it here).

About Jon Tynes - he was the founder of Pagan Publishing, writer of the totally awesome 1990's Delta Green setting for modern Cthulhu, an ex-WOTC employee, co-writer of WOTC's Cthulhu d20, now a video game developer.  I would imagine anyone that's done Cthulhu gaming knows Pagan, they were Chaosium's major licensee and produced excellent stuff.

One thing that really stood out in the interview was the recognition from a video game developer how video games fail against the table top experience in creating "derived stories" through a shared world.  Through the table top's collective 'Socratic method' - asking and answering questions about the game world - a story emerges through actual play that can't currently be matched by the disjointed cut scenes and limited decision trees in the video game world.  He went on to hold out the table top sandbox game as the highest form of RPG gaming because of the degree of agency given to the players and the shared world that emerges from those player actions.

On making the Mythos Coherent:
Our goal  (as monster maker/adventure writer) should be to make an amazing experience, not write the missing page in the Cthulhu Encyclopedia.

This was wrapped in a larger section on keeping a sense of mystery in the game by not providing explanations around the horrors and monsters in your game, coming up with your own interpretations of Lovecraftian monsters, and getting away from using published bestiaries.  Trail of Cthulhu attempts to keep the Mythos creatures fairly ambiguous.  I'm pointing it out here because we're seeing OSR folks like James Raggi advocate 100% custom monsters, and I can see the value in keeping all those things beyond the realm of man strange and unknowable.

The rest of the podcast might not be as interesting if you don't follow the Call of Cthulhu RPG or the Lovecraftian gaming scene.  Otherwise, you can find it over on iTunes under The Unspeakable Oath.

Gothic Greyhawk Game 31 - Ravenloft!

Cast of Characters:
Mordecai, a Cleric-5: Adam
Forlorn, an Elf-4: Bo
Mister Moore, Magic User-5: Mike
Soap the Wizard, Magic User-4:  Nogal
Barzai, a Cleric-4:  Ben
Shy, a Fighter-4:  JR
Arden, an Elf-1:  Z

Henchmen:
Phat Kobra, a Dwarf-4
Zeke, a Fighter-4
Starkweather, a Thief-4
Grumble the Smug, Halfling-4
Serge, a Fighter-4

=========================================
AD&D 1E, I6 Ravenloft
=========================================

The road the party was walking along was obscured by a thickening mist, and they came across a pair of ominous columns of stone supporting iron gates across the road, as if traveling into the land beyond the gates would represent entrance to a twilight realm of mist and fog.  Familiar with the set up of the future Ravenloft setting, and not ones to meta game too much, the characters strode purposefully forward.  Within the hour, they emerged from the woods and came upon the town of Barovia, still obscured by light mists.  Somewhere high above the town, they got the sense of an ominous castle perched high on a cliff.

As described in the recent campaign recap, they wandered the empty cobblestone streets, passing numerous houses and cottages with doors and shutters hanging loosely, no sign of the people.  A few appeared to be inhabited, but no owners came to answer their doors.  In the town square, smoke came from a large tavern building, the Blood on the Vine tavern, and the group entered.

I'll skip a bunch of faux dialogue and get to the gist of what they learned after speaking with the bar keep, some gypsies at the tavern, and the village priest.  First, the villagers referred to the lord of the castle as The Evil One, and he returned after a long absence - a century or more - and began abducting villagers in the night.  Since before the winter, literally thousands of people went missing, but with the return of the lord of the castle, no one may leave the valley once they've breathed in the mists.  (The players are thinking they may be trapped too).  Only a dozen families are left in a town that once boasted a few thousand people.  The lord of the castle is an ancient vampire called Strahd Von Zarovich.

No one they met knew the details of Ismark's quest to return the magic long sword from Death Mountain, so no one could direct the players on where to take the sword.  Maybe Ismark's surviving sister would know?  So they went to the house of her father, who was also the mayor.  The stench of death pervaded the house, and they learned the mayor had died a week ago and his corpse was lying in a side room unburied.  His (gorgeous) daughter Ireena was living sequestered upstairs in the mansion.  They convinced her they were trustworthy, knew her brother, and would help her bury her father in the family plot.  There hadn't been enough able bodied villagers willing to help.

She pointed out that the vampire had visited (and bit her) twice before, and many now shunned her as marked by the vampire… she seemed grateful for any company.

That night, the characters on guard duty were startled when a huge snarling animal slammed into the front door, to be followed by another.  A pair of massive dire wolves were taking runs at battering it down.  Other characters spilled out of bed and trundled down stairs with weapons, and the group opened the door to let the wolves in before the door hinges were smashed beyond repair - front line fighters engaged them with swords, while the back ranks threw magic missiles or shot arrows.  During the battle with the wolves, an ominous figure stood beyond the iron gate to the mansion, classic vampire cape and collar, demanding to be invited into the residence.

Strahd remained on the scene long enough to cast a spell, mocked Ireena by telling her that her new friends wouldn't protect her for long, and that it was her fate to join him as his bride.  He was also leaving her a present.  He then flitted off into the night in the shape of a bat.  The taste of things to come.

Just as the battle with the dire wolves winded down, the animated corpses of the family dead, with the zombie mayor in the lead, shuffled from around the corner to continue the attack.  The echoes of Ireena's scream lingered in the night air long after the party quickly dispatched Strahd's "present".


*Picture is the cover of TSR's I6 Ravenloft, by Clifton Caldwell

Alignment of the Night's Watch

Game of Thrones: Oath of the Night's Watch

Night gathers, and now my watch begins.
It shall not end until my death.
I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children.
I shall wear no crowns and win no glory.
I shall live and die at my post.
I am the sword in the darkness.
I am the watcher on the walls.
I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men.
I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.

-The oath of the Night's Watch, A Game of Thrones

If you're watching HBO's A Game of Thrones adaptation, you're familiar with the Night's Watch - it's an order of rangers and soldiers that swear oaths to protect the realms of man, foreswearing all previous loyalties and family ties when joining the order.  They garrison a series of fortresses along a massive northern wall, protecting the civilized southern lands from threats beyond the wall.  (In the books, those threats are "wildlings" - barbarian north people - and creatures of myth and legend, like the White Walkers, a kind of winter wight).

The Night's Watch is not made of moral heroes - many of the members are criminals and rapers, sent north to take their vows after choosing between the watch or death.  And yet, throughout the Song of Ice and Fire series, the men of the watch continue to keep their eyes on the wild lands to the north in accordance with duty, while the many noble houses fight and backstab each other over control of the throne.

Now take a moment and contrast the mission and Oath of the Night's Watch with this introduction to the Keep on the Borderlands by Gary Gygax:

The Realm of mankind is narrow and constricted. Always the forces of Chaos press upon its borders, seeking to enslave its populace, rape its riches, and steal its treasures. If it were not for a stout few, many in the Realm would indeed fall prey to the evil which surrounds them. Yet, there are always certain exceptional and brave members of humanity, as well as similar individuals among its allies - dwarves, elves, and halflings - who rise above the common level and join battle to stave off the darkness which would otherwise overwhelm the land…

How about using alignment in the way Gygax is discussing here in the Keep intro?  There is the Realm of Man, and the borderlands beyond the realms of man represent Chaos.  It's a world view of man against monsters, civilization against the wilderness, regardless of parochial interests or loyalties.  The Keep is for all mankind.  And if good and evil are present at all, they are relative - good is equated with civilization, and evil with its absence, a very human centric viewpoint (with small exceptions tossed in for our faithful demi human allies).  FrDave had a similar idea over at Blood of Prokopius a few weeks ago when making sense of the Law-Chaos axis, and it's even a throwback to Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, where Law and the realms of Man were pretty much synonymous.

And this brings me full circle to the Oath of the Night's Watch - it is an Oath to Law, an oath to protect the Realms of Man against the forces of Chaos beyond civilization.

Some final thoughts - first, when you're using the three-tiered alignment system of old D&D, Law, Neutral, and Chaos, it's common to conflate Law with AD&D's definition of good and chaos with AD&D's view of evil.  After all, Moldvay's edition actually say, Law is *usually* the same as what people think of as "good" and Chaos is *usually* "evil".  But there are certainly ways to use the alignments of Law and Chaos beyond AD&D's ethics-management straitjacket.

I'm using something a bit different in Gothic Greyhawk - Law represents the divine order (both good and evil) and Chaos represents the elemental and magic realms - once again, neither good nor evil.  Alignments are like magic auras (and only folks that draw on divine or magic power actually radiate an alignment).  It's a supernatural view of alignment that works well in a game featuring themes of supernatural horror.  It's also almost identical to the LOTFP approach.

Oh - and next time I bust out Keep on the Borderlands, I just may make the garrison "sworn brothers" like the Night's Watch, bound by duty to take up a lonely vigil on the very edges of the Realm of Man to ward against the forces of Chaos beyond the walls of the Keep.

Gothic Greyhawk - Campaign Recap

Our campaign just hit a big turning point - all of the work that went into the characters forming their adventuring party and getting a handful of experience levels under their belt is done, and they're ready to start on the next arc of their careers - the mid-levels.  Last game session they entered the Valley of Mist, discovered the death-haunted village of Barovia, and before the night was through, came face to face with their nemesis - the vampire Strahd Von Zarovich.

I realize with intermittent game reports it's likely readers lose the scope and sweep of a campaign, so a recap of what has gone before is in order, tracing the events that led the group to the base of the high cliff on which Strahd's castle, Ravenloft, perches high above the deathly still village.  (There's an old campaign map at the bottom of one of the first Gothic Greyhawk posts on the blog).

Back then they didn't think of themselves as "heroes", they were just a bunch of low level guys that heard about an abandoned wizard tower a few days away from their home town of Mittleberg  (The Tower of the Stargazer).  They cleared the tower and claimed it for themselves, eventually walling a prisoner within the tower behind blocks of brick and mortar, "cask of amontillado" style, so they wouldn't have to listen to him beg.  They really weren't nice people back then.

In fact, they were concerned that other people (a band of thieves) might know the location of their new tower hideout, too, and wanted it kept secret - so they tracked the thieves to a ruined village to make sure they'd keep it secret - permanently.  Dead men tell no tales.  They ended up fighting the rival party down in a death-trap puzzle dungeon and then went on to explore the whole thing (The Grinding Gear).

It was close to the autumn equinox and a nearby village, Poignard, was hosting its annual tournament, and the fighting men amongst the group chose to compete.  Along the way they stopped a madman from opening a demonic gate and flooding the countryside with shadow demons (Blood Moon Rising).

One other thing that happened was they helped a fairy Pookah named Hogsbottom reopen a portal to the Otherworld and allowed a sidhe lady, the Lady of Dawn, back into her sacred grove.  They learned a bit about an ancient struggle between Law and Chaos, and that Chaos was on the move again.  Some of the characters received boons from the fey.

The group's next major patron was Ismark, a gypsy man from a remote mountain village named Barovia.  Ismark had been given a dire prophecy by a fortune teller - an evil that lay sleeping in the mountains would soon awaken, but a great weapon against the evil lay beneath the mountain of death.  Ismark had descended from the highlands seeking a group of adventurers for hire to go and help him find this powerful item on Death Mountain.  The good news is, the group found Ismark's magic sword.  The bad news is, Ismark died beneath Death Mountain in the dungeons of a death cult.  The worse news is, they unleashed an ancient vampire - a servant of Orcus - and 13,000 hungry dead, which proceeded to overrun their hometown of Mittleberg and turn the settled parts of the upper valley into a lifeless wasteland.  (Death Frost Doom).

The group still had Ismark's letter of credit, promising 10,000gp for the sword if they returned it to Barovia, so they went in the opposite direction of the zombie horde and went deeper into the mountains, taking the long way around to avoid the carnage.  (Still not acting much like heroes at this point).  Along the way, they made a pact with an evil witch to retrieve an elf-killing hammer for her to aid the side of Law in an upcoming struggle with Chaos, and sacked a dwarven tomb to find it (Hammers of the God).  The players began to learn that Law and Chaos don't necessarily correspond to good and evil...

By this point, the cleric was having trouble getting some of his 3rd level spells - his lack of faith was, in fact, disturbing.  So he took a vow of poverty and rededicated himself to smiting evil - "We really need to get this magic sword back to Barovia".  The 10,000gp promised reward might have motivated some of the others, too.  It was like 4 months of game time prior when they first met Ismark, before winter, and he had warned them he needed to get the magic sword back "before the ancient evil near Barovia fully awakens…"  Months later, they finally set out for the remote 'Valley of the Mists'.  (They wintered over at a dwarven mountain stronghold named Stonegate).

Before entering the valley of Barovia, they detoured down a worn track off the main road that led to a warm and inviting mansion - which turned out to be a monster-filled haunted house (The Cursed Chateau).  It turned out to be only a slight delay.  But Barovia was soon in sight, albeit without too many people around.  "Maybe we should have got here sooner", they remarked, walking down the empty cobblestone streets, doors and shutters on the numerous abandoned houses banging gently in the winter breeze.

They would soon find out why there didn't seem to be anyone left in Barovia… (I'll post the next game report in a day or so).

So that's where we stand.  The players have lost touch with the progress of the zombie war down in the valley; the last refugees that made it to Stonegate spoke of how the ghouls and zombies overran the upper villages and were now swarming down the valley, into the more peaceful and populated lowlands.  Meanwhile, the Flannish hillfolk of the mountains, ever hateful of the lowland Oeridian knights and lords, had declared sovereignty over the upper valley.

If the characters survive Barovia and ever leave the isolated Valley of Mists, it's likely a civil war will divide the Earldom of Sterich as Flan Hillmen and Oeridian knights of Istvin take up arms against each other (assuming the ghoul apocalypse is even contained).  And all the time, supernatural agents of Law and Chaos begin to make their presence known.

A few other interesting notes - we started this campaign as BX, switched to LOTFP (Deluxe Rules) while we were playing all the cool exploratory OSR modules, and now that we'll be doing Ravenloft (and a slew of AD&D modules to follow), we switched back to BX with the Advanced Edition Companion in effect.  The players really wanted the higher powered spells and options from AEC to be in effect with those meat-grinder TSR AD&D 1E modules.  I find I prefer the more investigative, exporation-based modules, but c'est la vie - the tour-de-Greyhawk is still huge fun.

Incidentally, a while ago I did a treasure-by-adventure module post that tied in encounter density, XP and treasure to get a sense on how some of my favorite new school modules were comparing to the golden age - one thing is clear, a lot of those TSR modules were packed with fight fight fight.  No wonder each new rules set had the power creep!

The Suits have left the Building

Is this the best time to be playing D&D or what?  I mean right now - in 2011.  If you're reading this blog, chances are you're a gamer, and you like the older styles of Dungeons & Dragons.  And this is the best time to be playing old school Dungeons & Dragons… ever.  And tomorrow is going to be even better than today.

We've got the freedom to write about how we play, to publish the kind of books we like, and to buy the books we like that other folks are publishing.  The suits are gone - long live old school D&D.  Let's enjoy the bounty.  I'm enjoying the bounty.

And just cause I don't see as he gets near enough kudos, I want to throw a shout James's way for continuing to publish OSR News on The Underdark Gazette, without which I wouldn't know about half as much of the awesome stuff being put out by we gamers.  Now that it's completely our game.  Can I get an Amen, or a So Say We All?