Ten-foot tall Neanderthals

The Moldvay BX book says that Neanderthals are led by 10' tall male and female Neanderthals, that are not actually Neanderthals - they're from a similar, larger race.  And they're chosen to be the leaders by the Neanderthals themselves!  I'm going to call them Uberthals.  I'm thinking that the Uberthals must live apart in the wilds, then the Neanderthal clan sends some envoys out to where the Uberthals are hanging out in the big and tall shop, and the envoys appeal to them with gifts and honeyed words to send a pair of Uberthals to come and be their new leaders.  Or something.  It's such a throwaway line, yet implies so much about the Neanderthal world.

Does anyone with a wider grasp of pulp literature know from whence came the idea of 10' tall super-sized Neanderthals leading the regular-sized Neanderthals?  Another reason why I think of Moldvay BX as the beloved edition.

Overcoming the Spousal Bait-and-Switch

Show of hands - how many of your spouses or significant others changed something about themselves that was important to you in the years after you got hitched or moved in together?  For me, it had to do with Football and Gaming.  Ah, those were the days, when wifey curled up on the couch during Monday night football and got excited for hot wings and a Broncos game, or (gasp) actually played in my RPG games.  I'm here to tell you, those days are long gone, brother.  Gaming happens in the man-cave far away from the main activities of the house, and the only football game we catch as a family is the Super Bowl (and that's just for the commercials).

In the interests of full disclosure, she's quick to point out that "someone needs to watch the kids while I'm off pretending to be an elf and playing with my little plastic orc-men".  Oh, and apparently I used to have long hair like a hippie, which she misses, and I cared more about theater and did more improv theater back in the day, as well.  Touché.

So there we were, enjoying a quiet moment the other day, when I popped the question.  "So, I'm thinking when M- (our new son from Ethiopia) can read and write pretty well, of starting up a family D&D campaign.  For the whole family".  That sounds good, she says.  "Really?  Because it would be the whole family - both boys, our daughter, and you.  The four of you can be your own adventuring party".  Okay, she said.  No problem.

I had no tape recorder and no notaries were nearby to witness an affadavit, so I'm doing the next best thing - I'm putting it on the internet:

On or about 4pm, on Sunday July 24th, while sitting around the dining room table and holding casual conversation with her husband, Mrs Beedo did formally agree to play in the family D&D campaign.

Once it's on the internet, it's true.  I figure the youngest will take about 2 to 2 1/2 years to get to gaming age, so I'm probably looking at late 2013 or early 2014 before the family game will be a reality.  Muhahaha.

Meanwhile, kid's gaming has been partly successful.  You may recall, last year I was running two games - a weekly adult game and a bi-weekly kid's game.  It was eventually too much to keep up with, and not all of the kids were really ready for gaming, so we brought two of the older kids (now 9 year olds) over to the adult game.  One of the other dads picked up running a second (just for kids) game a few months ago, so now we've got a Senior circuit and a Junior circuit running in the neighborhood.  And there's a crop of younger kids in the 4-5 year old range that are just biding their time until they get to play.  Some of them are fooling with the Dungeon board game.  Good stuff.  Like I tell my kids - read, read, read some more - turn off the computer, turn off the TV; table top gaming is a literary activity and kids that can read well will have the attention span and imagination to make it work.

I figure I have two years before I need to get a campaign together that my daughter will love - a mash-up of knights, princesses, witches, elves, and tough fighting chicks with big swords like Eowyn.  I'm sure it will have to be part Hogwarts, part every kid's series they've read - Prydain, A Wrinkle in Time, Fablehaven, Narnia, and Percy Jackson.  But Eowyn is far and away my daughter's role model of what an adventuring girl should be like.

Mythic Monday: The Origin of Demons

It's been a few weeks since the last Mythic Monday - I'm finding I don't have as much time for reading, research, and writing with a brand new, non-native  4 year old in the house.  Every day is a little better though!

One thing that struck me when researching Azazel a few weeks ago were the conflicting ORIGINS for demons in folklore, magic and religion.  Whether it's a side ways mention in the Bible, the Book of Enoch, the rabbinic tradition, or the magical theorizing in Renaissance grimoires, each writer has a different theory whether demons are fallen angels, devils, spirits, djinn, or something else.

D&D is surprisingly silent on the origins of demons.   Here's about the most you can surmise from the various 1E monster books and Manual of the Planes:  The Abyss is an evil place, and the demons just happen to be the indigent race birthed there - they're demons because they're natives of the Abyss.  Other editions of D&D introduce the idea of the Blood War (you know - demons hate the devils, devils hate demons, grrr, fight, fight, fight).  4E goes a bit further by explaining an origin for the Abyss - the cosmology posits the placement of a Shard of Pure Evil that creates the Abyss (tearing a bottomless hole in the elemental planes).  Demons are corrupted elementals, and demon princes are corrupted versions of greater powers (like "Primordials").  Of course, it just shifts the question to "where did the shard of pure evil come from?"  In 4E, evil predates the gods.

However, real world folklore has some useable ideas on the origins of demons, so the Monday column for the next few weeks will be on how these could be used in a D&D game.  A few I'll be looking at are the war in heaven, the lost angels, and the old gods theory.

And there was war in heaven...

The War in Heaven
Lots of myth cycles involve a war in heaven.  I imagine most readers are already familiar with the Judeo-Christian version.  Rebellious angels, led by Satan, fight against the Creator in Heaven; banished, they are consigned to Hell, where they plot to corrupt creation.  It's not exactly a Biblical story - there are a few oblique references in the big book, but most of the story about the rebellion and fall evolved in folklore in the early centuries AD.  The most famous retelling is in Milton's Paradise Lost - it's really excellent.

So why'd they do it - why did the rebel angels turn against the boss?  Milton's Satan is too prideful to take orders - he considers himself "above the law" - he denies the boss's authority, declares God a tyrant, and becomes the first rebel.  Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.  A similar figure is Iblis, also called Shaytan, in Islamic folklore; man is given free will and a soul, and the prideful Iblis disobeys the creator in respecting man, whom he views as a lesser creation and beneath him.  Another story of pride and arrogance.

The fallen angels in these stories are exiled to Hell and swear to spend eternity confounding mankind evermore.  The first thing Lucifer does in Paradise Lost is conspire to travel to the world and corrupt it.  However, you'd be right in thinking these guys are a better fit for the origin of D&D's devils instead of demons.  Here's the thing - Renaissance occultists didn't differentiate between demons and devils - they were the same thing.  Lists of demons in the Renaissance grimoires, like the Lesser Key of Solomon or other Goetic texts, are actually the names of the fallen angels.

Okay - I have to say, I'm not a big fan of using the War in Heaven theory as an explanation for bad actors like last column's demon, Azazel.  If the devils are all in Hell, how do we get these dispossessed demon spirits deep in the wilderness, possessing victims and causing mayhem?  Maybe some of them got lost on the way to Hell?  Could be that when some devils escape to earth, they got stuck here as the bodiless spirits we see in the demonic possession stories.  However, I do think we'll see some better ideas for demons in the coming weeks.

But there's no doubt that using the War in Heaven as a basis for a campaign cosmology is excellent.  It supports a fairly straightforward world-view of opposing sides with clear battle lines.  You can play it straight up (good vs evil) or build in some sympathy for the devil.  There's no lack of literary inspirations or ideas in popular fiction - I'd dip into books like Anne Rice's Memnoch the Devil, or The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman and his use of Hell and Lucifer (and of course, Milton's Paradise Lost).  Since plenty of fallen angels are named in the grimoires, there's no lack of cool and evocative names to find out there.  Drop a note in the comments on your favorite literary use of Hell or devils - I'm interested to hear what's out there.

Even if you don't use Angels and Devils, you can still use similar ideas by making the War in Heaven related to a mythological pantheon or some homebrew.  The War in Heaven theme isn't limited to the Judeo-Christian tradition -  for instance, the myth of the Titanomachy.  The Greek gods needed to kick the Titans out of heaven before they could assert ruler ship; even the Norse deities fought the Giants before the world was created.  The Percy Jackson series of kid's books bases its central conflict on the ongoing struggle between the Titans, representing pure evil, and the Greek gods.  Demonic spirits in a D&D game could be the cast down losers of such a War in Heaven, exiled to the prime plane as bodiless entities.

That's all for now, next week we'll take a look at the Nephilim and the Grigori angels of the Book of Enoch.

The Sandbox Triangle

Yesterday's post on Sandbox vs Story created a lot of discussion.  The basic thesis was this - for my style of old school play, it means using a rules-lite system and running the world like a sandbox.  Not all games support the style - some are rules heavy, some require a heavy DM hand to guide a plot.  Part of it could be genre.  Can you run a sandbox in a modern setting?  Can you structure a mission-oriented sandbox for spies or supers?

To advance the discussion, I want to draw two definitions - sandbox as structure, and sandbox as technique.

Sandbox as Structure
The sandbox is a way to structure information about your campaign.  Most bloggers writing about how to build a sandbox are using it this way - sandbox is a noun.  For D&D, the basic sandbox might include a home base, a hex map, encounter listings, a few adventure sites, lists of NPCs, and maybe some helper tables - wandering encounters, rumors, things like that.  Sandbox as structure.

Sandbox as Technique
Sandbox as technique begins the moment you start playing - now the DM needs to present the sandbox.  How do you run the sandbox at the table?  For me, that means having NPCs introduce plot hooks, and having a schedule of events and timelines.  The overall goal in running the sandbox is to present information so that the players can make decisions and interact meaningfully with the game setting.

Those are my definitions - I've said before, there are lots of online guides on building a sandbox, but not as much advice on running one.  One thing I'm hoping to achieve with the Black City manuscript is putting some of my home-game techniques on bringing it to life, down on paper.

The Sandbox Triangle
There are some interrelated elements that provide constraints on how one structures and runs the sandbox.  You project managers out there are familiar with the Iron Triangle - time, quality and scope.  (Sometimes folks will refer to 'fast, good, and cheap - pick two' as a similar construct for products or product development).  There's a balance between the three points of the triangle - enriching one area will mean losing something somewhere else.  If it's fast and good, it won't be cheap; if it's cheap and good, it won't be fast, that kind of relationship.

For gaming, the Sandbox Triangle is Effort, Detail, and Freedom.

Freedom
The more choice and freedom the players have to go anywhere, the more effort the DM needs to put into the setting, and the less detail on any one area is feasible.

The more the DM constrains player choice, less effort is needed to provide more detail.  (Adventure Paths are intricate and deep, or lazy - a few linear scenes can be sketched out literally minutes before game time).

Detail
To provide a lot of setting detail, effort needs to go up unless freedom is constrained.

Effort
To keep effort low, the DM needs to provide scant detail for a wide area, or provide deep detail and constrain the coverage by limiting player choice.

Back to Sandbox vs Story
There seems to be a misconception that in a sandbox the world doesn't change without the players interacting with it - the sandbox is passive - a quantum Schrödinger's box where the off-screen actors freeze when the spotlight moves to a different part of the stage.

When I run the sandbox, I do have events and timelines and elements that could be called "story" running in parallel with the player's actions, but the level of detail I put into those depends on player choice.

Let's contrast two adventure structures.  A story DM prepares a number of scenes for his adventure path or scene-based game:  Scene A -> Scene B -> Scene C.  The sandbox DM prepares three adventure sites - Site A, Site B, and Site C.  Effort for the two games is similar at this point.

However, as long as the first group is willing to go to Scene A, and be led or follow the hooks to B and C, none of the DM's effort is wasted.  The players have sacrificed some freedom of choice.

In the second example, if the players go to site B, site A and C could go unused - especially if B leads down a different series of choices - B -> B1 -> B2 etc.  Maybe B is the first level below the old monastery, and choosing to explore B lets them discover deeper levels below the monastery too.

Not only can sandboxes waste some DM effort, but it can be a lot to keep up with!  That's why I use a lot of published modules that are presented as adventure sites; I can seed them into the sandbox with minimal effort, and only invest time into preparing them if the players choose to go after those plot hooks.

The other mitigating factor that can help limit effort in the sandbox is one of those "social contract" kinds of things.  If the DM wants to invest an inordinate amount of prep time into something, he'd be pretty chapped if the players blow it off in the name of "freedom of choice".  So it's good to have out-of-game conversations to establish agreements.

"So, you guys have a number of choices in front of you - which way do you think you'll go next week?  Oh, back to the old ruins?  Good, that gives me an idea what to prepare…"

Okay - I really enjoy these blah blah blah theory posts, but next week I need to get back to some stuff on the Black City!

Gothic Greyhawk - Game 35 - The End of Strahd

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-2:  Z

Henchmen:
Phat Kobra, a Dwarf-4
Zeke, a Fighter-4
Starkweather, a Thief-3
Grumble the Smug, Halfling-4
Serge, a Fighter-4

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AD&D 1E, I6 Ravenloft
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"We don't stand a chance in the castle without two clerics", began Mordecai.  "You've done your part protecting the village, Father Donavich, but soon there will be no village to protect.  Your best chance of saving the rest of your people is coming with us and helping us to put down the vampire".

Thus began our latest game of Gothic Greyhawk, as the group did a full-court-press with charisma and silver tongues to convince Father Donavich, the parish priest of Barovia, to join their ranks as a heal-bot.  Their words were true (or at least, the reaction roll was a good one!) and soon they were sitting down with their newest member to plan tomorrow's ascent.

If you're a regular reader, you probably saw Monday's "Die Strahd, Die!" and pretty much know that last game saw the death of the big guy himself.  It still might prove interesting to see how they got there.

It started with about an hour's worth of discussion, debate, and planning.  Reviewing inventories of scrolls, potions, and items.  Testing command words for the wand of fireballs until they were blue in the face.  (En Fuego was the winner).  Use of the wand, and discovery that they possessed Dispel Evil, buoyed their confidence.

Here's the plan they settled on.  First, they wanted to find the missing part of Ismark's magic sword before confronting the vampire.  They had a "Locate Object" spell but didn't have a good mental image of the missing piece.  Would a picture or description be available in the castle?  Father Donavich reminded them that the Tome of Strahd, a book he recommended they seek previously, might have such a picture or description.  Could they find the castle's library?

That became the plan.  Find the library or study in the upper castle, then the book; use the book to get a description of the magic sword; use the description to fuel their Locate Object spell to find the missing piece; assemble the sword of prophecy and go find the vampire, armed and ready.

No need to recount the particulars of the journey; once back at the mist shrouded castle, they visited the accountant Lief Lipsiege, to see if he knew where Strahd's library or study could be found.  He had a vague idea how to get to the study, and was willing to direct them (surprised and pleased that they were still alive days after their previous meeting).

Up a dark spiral staircase was a short passage and a pair of alcoves, from which two wraiths emerged out of the shadows to ambush the front of the group.  Both Kobra and Forlorn were level-drained and damaged, but the group quickly responded with magic swords and magic missile spells, and the wraiths were vaporized.

A few empty rooms later, and they found Strahd's study.  A roaring fire burnt in the hearth, and the master of the castle sat near it in a large high-backed chair, leafing through the very book they sought.  "I believe you're looking… for this…" he said, as he stood, put the book on the chair, and faced the group.  "I'm so glad we finally have the chance to speak in a civilized manner".

There was a bit of banter - Strahd recounted how he demanded their "Book of Unspeakable Shame" and would let them leave the castle (but not the valley), alive and unharmed, if they left the book and his bride (Ireena).  For the 20th time, Soap muttered under his breath, "I told you we should have tied Ireena to a tree and left her in the woods".

Once Strahd flashed the hypnotic peepers on Forlorn, who was carrying the Book of Unspeakable Shame, things quickly spiraled into chaos.  Forlorn was wrestled by the nearby fighters, Mordecai dug for the scroll, and the group quickly asked for time-out for table talk.  Could this be the real Strahd, they asked themselves?  Should we burn the scroll and risk it?  It might be our one chance.  Etc, etc.  The die was cast; Strahd lost initiative, the spell was read, and the rest is history - Strahd failed his saving throw, and the centuries old vampire was reduced to dust.

Stunned by such a surprising turn of events, the group rifled through their sheaf of scrolls for the one with Commune.  Mordercai asked the higher powers if the vampire was indeed destroyed… and the answer was YES.  Cheers erupted around the table (the 9-year olds were out of their seats, pumping fists like their team just won the Super Bowl) and high fives went all around.

Meanwhile, while searching the room, they discovered the magical hilt to their sword of prophecy was in the study all along.  Soap used a detect magic wand to find it, and the sword reassembled magically in front of them and became the Sun Sword.  Better late than never?

It was a Sunday (work the next day) so we stopped there.  It's been an interesting week on the blog discussing the turn this game has taken, and I'm looking forward to what the players do next.  Everything they've done up to now has been about getting the magic sword back to Barovia.  That quest is done, and the master of the castle is gone, and the next phase of the campaign is wide open.  Do they clear the castle, in an effort to recover treasure?

I have no idea what we'll be doing.  Well, I have some ideas, but who knows what they'll actually choose!

The Sandbox versus the Story

Where does your game fit?

The Old School Primer lists a series of identifiers that distinguish old school games from their modern descendants - precepts like "Rulings not Rules", and "Player Skill over Character Abilities", and so on, as hallmarks of old school games.  It's a good starting point, but it doesn't articulate for me why old school adventures and campaigns are so radically different in structure from what gets published today, outside some OSR guys.  So there's more to it than just being rules-lite.  There's a whole paradigm of exploration (and by necessity, player initiated adventure) that differentiates today's adventures from the stuff I read from the 70's and how they play at the table.  I've read some adventures recently, published to be "old school game compatible", that I wouldn't consider old school style and it got me thinking there's more to it than just using an old set of rules.

The Sandbox vs the Story Adventure
The sandbox adventure involves areas to explore - large hex crawls, sprawling dungeons, site-based locations.  It could be star sectors and planets, like in Traveler.  The sandbox is usually supplemented by lots of random tables - either for use in-game (like the D&D wandering monster table) or pre-game - like the Traveler planetary generation systems.  Randomization is the enemy of game balance, so character death can be frequent.  But sandboxes give the players near-universal agency to go and do what they want.

Modern adventures present a series of interconnected scenes, events, or locales, and the characters move from scene to scene as the story develops.  Character is important, and many modern adventures spill ink on back story and motivation.  If the players  deviate from the plot line, it forces the game master to do some serious on-the-spot improvisation for the things the author didn't take into account.  In the D&D space, things like Adventure Paths or linear 4E delves fall into this model.

Some notes on the Diagram:
Classic D&D and it's adventures
Fast, disposable characters, lite-rules, site-based locations, heavy emphasis on exploration - welcome to old school style play.

1E AD&D and adventures
Characters are a little more complicated and detailed, but most AD&D adventures are site-based and still free form.

Dragonlance and later adventures
Detailed characters, pages of back story, story and event-based modules, rail road plots.  stamp: NEW SCHOOL.  Next.

Call of Cthulhu
Disposable characters.  Adventures tend to be a mix of site-based and plot-driven - the later in the publishing history, they more they resemble plotted stories.

Traveller
Characters are more detailed and intricate than D&D, with lengthy background generated through chargen.  Heavy focus on exploration and randomly generated subsectors, planets, flora and fauna.

World of Darkness
Fairly detailed characters and scene-based stories.  NEW SCHOOL.

3.x and 4E
Intricate characters (feats, skills, and prestiges, oh my!) and scripted adventure paths and delves.

4E has no support for sandboxes or randomization (the system is enslaved by balance) whereas 3.x did have it's outlier publishers - Necro, Goodman - that developed some old-school site-based adventures.

Final thoughts:
What do you think of the thesis that only "Rules-Lite" + "Sandbox Play" = old school gaming, and "Rules-Lite" + "Story-Driven" is not?  Conversely, does anyone feel that when they were playing 3.X but going through a Goodman Adventure or the Necro JG Wilderlands, they were re-living the glory days of their youth?

If there are other modern games that feature quick and easy character generation, scant rules, and a heavy focus on exploration and sandbox play, I'd argue they fit the old school paradigm.  I don't know - something like Mongoose Traveler or the Stars Without Number game, even though chronologically they're modern games.

I just need to come up with some names for the quadrants.

ACKS report - Adventurer Conquer King

So check it out - I signed up for the ACKS kickstarter and have had the chance to read the rules a couple of times.  Here to bring back some news from the sidelines.

I signed up because I was intrigued by the prospect of a D&D rules set that followed in Mentzer's footsteps and tried to improve on the Dominion economics, ruler ship and demographics rules from the old Companion set.  Ever notice how you can pinpoint someone's formative RPG years through their writings, discussions, and "go-to" set of rules?  The ACKS team has one foot in Mentzer and Moldvay's classic D&D, one foot in D&D 3rd.

The economics stuff seems well-thought out and usable at the table - it includes rules for castle building (along with hideouts for thieves, towers and dungeons for wizards, temples for clerics, and the demi-human equivalents), settling the wilds, growing the kingdom, taxes, revenue, army building, and trade.  As a world builder and someone who thinks too much about this kind of stuff already, I love it.  There were some problems with the old Companion economics (such that there have been a few attempts - either by Bruce Heard in Dragon or the old Mystara gang at Vaults of Pandius) to fix them.  I plan on sitting down with Greyhawk and Sterich and applying them to my current campaign as a trial run to get a sense on how well they work in practice.

Point is - if you play campaign style D&D and expect to reach high levels, the campaign rules will be super useful.  I expect I'll have them at the table regardless of system - 1E, classic, retro, whatever.

I'll save discussion of the classes and rules for another time - I'm hoping to drop in on an ACKS play test at Gencon and get the chance to see it in action.

I was a bit skeptical that a retro clone would get sufficient support as a kickstarter fund-raiser, but the project blew through the target goal in like 2 weeks (ie, the books will be funded) and now they're looking to co-publish the mass combat rules at the same time, which should get funded shortly as well.  I'm a bit surprised more folks in the OSR aren't talking about it.  Backed by the publisher of the Escapist, it's an entrant to the OSR world that comes backed by some muscle.   I'll post a longer thought about it, but we could be seeing the start of a new model - large online media property and publisher publishes games on the side but can leverage a new model for reaching gamers, beyond word-of-mouth or the book  shelf at Borders.

Links:
The Adventurer Conqueror King site
The ACKS Kickstarter