Excerpt: The Adventurer's Guide to Miles

Rough Map of Miles

We've been preparing rapidly to take the 10th Age on the road to GenCon. Our offering this year is going to be a free booklet (though it is starting to look more like a book now) and we're really struggling to get all the art and text in on time. Here are some entries from the book, culled at random, and above is the rough map that I've worked out for Stephen and Danny to turn into a real piece of art.

Enjoy, and look for more (free!) at GenCon!

Falling Down

Getting hurt is an integral part of every roleplaying ruleset that even approaches simulation. We need ways to figure out how to be hurt, and what exactly happens when our characters are. All simulated fights require a method of dishing out "damage" of some form or another. For AD&D (and all the D&Ds, really) that method is the slow whittling down of hit points until you drop dead at zero. Older gamers (those who tout the OD&D style of play) tend to prefer the very simple rule of zero being death. However, I grew up on Second Edition and there was a rule that we used all the time, mostly because my games would be too lethal without it.

One out of four characters dies before reaching level two in the games I run. I've heard this technique referred to as the "character grinder" or the "character funnel," as those who survive that first winnowing generally make it to higher levels. The rule that allowed me to keep that ratio instead of, say, three out of four, was the Dead at -10 rule. I realize that it seems to run counter to the kind of playstyle I claim to espouse: gritty, dangerous, deadly.

However, here are some reasons why I still use Dead at -10, beyond lightening my kill ratio:

He's beyond my magic!

Healing magic is a touchy subject. Divine magic of any kind, really, can be touchy because its use strongly affects the setting. For example, if healing is easily available why don't priests of all the gods simply extend the lifespans of people who would have otherwise died? Essentially, the question of free healing for those who need it invariably comes up. Why don't the gods make sure that everyone gets the healing they need?

The answer to this question is multifaceted and, at least in the 10th Age, I've had to give it a lot of thought. Today, we're going to discuss just one of the ways in which the miracles of the gods are stymied or otherwise prevented from being panacea for the poor sap who gets his arm crushed by a falling piece of masonry. There are other ways that I limit this as well (socially, within the community of gods, and by the rigorous training needed to become a divine conduit) but this one is the most commonly applied.

Stand up and fight!

Now, I'm not normally into a lot of metal. Led Zeppelin is certainly one of my favorite bands and apparently is classified as metal. I lived with a guy who was into metal in college, and his even-more-metal friends were always around so I learned some about it. I like Dream Theater recreationally and some other metal bands, but I have never gone out to seek metal of my own to experience.

I stumbled upon the Finnish Turisas completely by accident; Danny was looking for some images to compare the escurae varani with and I was trying to find a picture of the Varangian Guard, the historical inspiration for the praesental army of Miles. Well, this image to the left here came up and I wondered what the hell it could possibly be. After doing a little research I discovered that it was the cover of an album of symphonic metal that was all about the Varangian Guard. I knew that I had to at least give it a listen; if it was terrible it would pass unremarked and unmourned into the internet and no one need ever know. It wasn't terrible.

I actually quite like the album and have discovered a love for the band that made it. The folks that make up Turisas (or at least the person who wrote the lyrics) are clearly educated and interested in the medieval world, at least in passing. I read on youtube that someone's history teacher made fun of this album... but if it can inspire young and inquiring minds to discover things about the middle ages, why mock it? No one expects a piece of music to be 100% or even 40% accurate in terms of historical events.

Sure, the Varangian Guard fight some pirates in one song and typical 1700s accordion music starts up in the background. But there's also real Greek and references to real historical places: the Golden Horn, the Bosphorous, even a song about the Greens and the Blues, the infamous sports teams-cum-political parties.

The music itself is definitely metal, but it has a strong element of orchestral symphonics to temper it. The lead singer has a voice that speaks of the darkest Finnish nights, a deep basso with that slight twinge of Wartooth-esque accent to it. There's very few speed solos with the drums (is that what they're called? I don't know, but I'm not really into them) and the grumbly metal-voice general takes second place to the dulcet tones of the lead singer.

Where the album is most effective is, I find, in a song called Fear the Fear where the band breaks the fourth wall to address the audience and deride them (you!) for finding escape in movies, television, and stories while being unwilling to stand up for what you know is right in your everyday life.

I recommend at least a listen, even if you aren't favorably inclined to metal.

Sending Letters: Sacred Messengers and viators in the 10th Age

Moving messages from place to place in the 10th Age can be dangerous and is certainly time-consuming. People rarely have the time to carry their messages directly to the person they want to speak to; that's one of the reasons why messages exist in the first place! Otherwise, you could find who you were interested in talking to and just go and talk to them.

This has led to the growth of a sort of "industry" if you will of viatores and heralds who, for a sum, will serve as message-bearers to distant lands. Sometimes viatores band together to form small guilds or mercantile interests and they generally have contacts with local shipping in order to find themselves cheap rides on boats, which are the fastest method of travel.

Viatores are common in the more sensible kingdoms of Atva-Arunia. The empire has a great number of them, but they can be found in Dorlan, the Three Kingdoms, the Vales, Weyland, Stonemark, Claulan, Llyris, Anarea, the Wilderlund, etc. All elvish kingdoms maintain their own special types of message-bearers who will be discussed later. Dwarves have followed suite with the mannish practice and mercenary viatores or letter-delivery folk can be found throughout the Arinnfal and other dwarf-dominated regions.

People who choose to be viatores range in motivation from the purely mercenary to those who seek the adventure of travel. Indeed, many viatores are actually simply adventurers paid to bring messages back and forth between distant regions. Of course, they are generally more reliable than the common adventurer, since most adventurers would forget they were even carrying anything important and let the letter or book or what-have-you fall by the wayside. Some kingdoms may endorse official viatores; in the empire, one is required to get a seal of approval from the Sacred Heralds which demonstrates that you are a reliable carrier.

Wizards and Weapons, sketches for Gencon

So, my faithful friends and I are putting together a quick book on the city of Miles to hand out at GenCon in about a month. Of course, this means a frantic scramble to get the thing completed, but it has caused my two artistes to bloom in ways I never thought possible: the rapid approach of a deadline seems to encourage prolificality.

For today, then, I present to you some sketches by Stephen Doolittle and Danny Perdue, the two artists who are imagining the 10th Age right alongside me. They are liable change, and I will try to give a little info about each one.

Figure A is a study of a Milean sword; the lack of cruciform hilt here is important; I've tried to stay away from any and all cruciform weaponry.

Figure B is a goblin sailor of some kind who has presumably shaved his natural fur, perhaps to better facilitate his work at sea.

Figure C are some of Steve's other sword designs and a wizard with a cowl lurking away on the right.

Figure D is one of my favorites, a Dorlish wizard (note the near-Renaissance garb common in Dorlan) staring at his cat familiar who apparently has been telling him lies.

Figure E is, of course, the venerable Solon the Silent who will eventually be in full color.

Figure F is Danny's study of various sword types. Starting at the upper left, we have a Milean arming sword, an ancient southman escurus (so arcane and obscure in today's Age that no one except a scholar of ancient history would even recognize it for what it was), a dwarven shortsword wrought with runes, and an elven scimitar designed, like so many elvish weapons, to mimic shapes found in the natural world.

If you're looking for a copy of the Miles book, we may make it available after GenCon. It's a player's sourcebook for the city, written by Hamish Letterfriend and directed specifically to adventuring audiences. We hope to include a short adventure pamphlet for DMs as well as a map and some other incidentals.

Profession Digression: the Medieval Village

I promised to perform the Profession Digression over the weekend, so I have been compiling a list of professions that are suited to towns and villages of the medieval type. This can be helpful in a number of ways; I myself find that I tend to make places too "sleepy" as it were, without even the requisite amount of excitement. The thing to remember is that these places, while they may seem sleepy to outsiders, are never simply boring lumps or bypassable dots on the map to the people who live there. It's always the human drama which allows you to bring that out.

Professions

Farmer, free. Free farmers are probably going to compose the bulk of the people in your town or village. They own their own land (or rent it) and owe only a few hours a week's work on their lord's land. Generally they bake their own bread in the communal oven (bannum) and grind their grain in the communal mill. They pay a fee to do both of these things, which can lead to some resentment over their lord's control.

Farmer, servile. These farmers don't own their own land. They work as part of a lord's estate and generally do not have as much time to farm the regions they are given as part of their agreement with the lord. They do much more work on the lord's land than free farmers. However, the lord is also required to provide them with food and ale semi-regularly and servile farmers can actually wind up being better off than their free counterparts.

Cotter. Cotters don't belong to the town proper. They're traveling vagabonds who come in during harvest or sewing time and work in exchange for some beer and some bread and maybe a place to stay. They are generally disliked but tolerated, as they provide a source of cheap labor. If a murder occurs in a town during a time when there are cotters present, they are the first to be suspect.

Fiction: The Storm Breaks

Julius was polishing his helmet absently. He'd been making the same repetitive motions for nearly an hour, his oilcloth sliding mutely over the riveted steel crest. Olandus kept adjusting the belts on his gear, as though to make certain it was all tightly stowed. In a corner, huddled against the wooden swell of the hull, Durius was trying hard not to be sick. Thelius looked around at his brothers-in-arms, cast his eyes through the little group. There were twenty of them, each man dressed in heavy white-lacquer lamellar with chain beneath. Poleaxes lay akimbo all throughout the hold, the distinctive weapons of the escurae.

The ship creaked and groaned like a living thing. Somewhere below the clack of the oars thrummed up through the floor. There were eighty slaves down there, criminals who had been sentenced to rowing the imperial galleys, alongside eighty free rowers. Thelius did not envy them. The slow thud of the drums beat out the rowing rhythm; anyone who did not row at the proper time (particular to each oar) could not only endanger the ship, but risked breaking their hands, arms, or ribs against the trunk-sized oar.

There were ten imperial marines with the escurae and probably more on deck. Unlike the emperor's chosen, the marines wore light or no armor. Some were in simple tunics, short for better movement in combat. Some wore light leather cotes that laced up the back and kept their vitals safe. Not a one had anything heavier on. The marines all seemed to be in own of the escurae not least of which because they were wearing their full gear. Even a shirt of mail could drag a man down into the briny depths to meet Vodei; a full suit of lamellar with all its attendant fastenings... there was no way to escape a death by drowning if you fell into the ocean wearing that.

Recompense

As I'm taking a long (long) weekend from blogging, here's Choice of Broadsides, a choose-your-own-adventure style interactive fiction game about commanding a frigate against Gaul.

Early Knock-off Time

I was planning on writing the Profession Digression (the medieval village) article for today that detailed a list of every job you could find in a medieval town. However, pressing events that require my attention mean I'll have less time than normal this week to update.

So look to me on Monday for your Profession Digression or potentially a murder mystery set in Classical Athens!

Adventurers as Insiders

Last week I wrote about adventurers as outsiders and why they are almost always slotted into that category. Today we're going to talk about ways that you can avoid this and integrate your adventurers so deeply into the society of your setting that they aren't really adventurers (in the classical sense) at all anymore.

The easiest way to begin the process of tying a character into their society is through the use of backstory. I know that I have railed against too-complex backstories hundreds, if not thousands, of times before but in this case the story can serve an integral purpose. Every link created in the character's past is one that can be used to anchor them to a certain social construct. Perhaps we should look at some good examples? Here they are then!

Nobility. The most obvious of the anchoring-points in a backstory, being a member of landed nobility is a perfect way to integrate your character into society. Even second and third sons would generally have some expectations placed on their shoulders (but not too much, enough that they could detach and transform into the classic "outsider" adventurers). If you have a character who is a noble that either stands to inherit a sizable estate or has already inherited it, this will certainly give you inexorable ties to the land, the people, and the social structures of the region.

There's also a huge number of pre-built conflicts that come with being a noble. You have the politics of other houses, the royal politics of your king or overlord, and the dangers to the entire kingdom which you can become involved in.

The Great Gencon Adventure

Having never been to GenCon before, this trip is assuming something of a Meccan quality to it. I have been in consultation with some of my players and we are working on producing a free hand-out by the time GenCon rolls around—an "Adventurer's Guide to the City of Miles" with a small DM's pamphlet which will contain an actual runnable adventure.

IF you're going to GenCon, I hope to see you there. For now, I'm in overdrive as I try to finish my second manuscript (Heavenly Devices) as well as the Adventurer's Guide.

Bearwards of Weyland

One of the common amusements of Middlemark was a "sport" known as bear-baiting. While this past-time has all but died out in Stonemark and is not common to be seen in Claulan or Anarea, its roots are deep in Weyland and it continues to be popular in the Thornwood region to a degree not seen anywhere else. The practice (which has been called deplorable by Aellonians, who claim that the natural dignity of all creatures involved are insulted) focuses around a traveling entertainer and his bear, who is chained to a stake. The chain is long enough to allow the bear to maneuver (but short enough to prevent it from attacking any of the people involved).

Hungry (and possibly mad) dogs are driven to attack the bear, and then bets are placed on who shall be the victor. Bearwards are the men who own the bears and who travel to bring the shows from town to town and city to city. They are a strange and unpleasant lot. The kit below describes is for the thief class, and its use describe the common bearward of Weyland.

The Llyrian Tourney Circuit

The kingdom of Llyris, born from the tribulations at the end of the Eighth Age, has a long history of horsemanship. Originally, Llyris was settled by colonists of the ancient and powerful kingdoms of Llernea and Llynder though it did not gain its own status as a kingdom until the early 7th Age, after the Wars of the East with the Moon Goblins. The free peninsula was forced to unite, and great numbers of Thegnari horse-men crossed the mountains into Llyrian territory, being driven before the goblins.

This marked the foundation of the modern chevalier (Varan, cavalirus, milite) or knight, an ideal developed within Llyris after the arrival of the great Thegnari herdsires. Indeed, the breeding of huge war-mounts (Varan, destrirus) began in the middle 7th Age and resulted in a society devoted to what has been come known as the Llyrian Ideal, i.e. knighthood.

As the years progressed and the notion of knighthood became entrenched in Llyris (and spread throughout the north of Arunia), the tourney circuit began to develop. It was common for Llyrian knights to engage in mock-combats to test their mettle and this eventually became the capital-T Tournament. While other kingdoms hold tournaments (most notably the Three Kingdoms region and the Empire) none do so with such aplomb as the lords and ladies of Llyris.

The tournies of most other nations are seasonal, but in Llyris it is possible to be engaged in tournaments year-round. With some planning, a hopeful knight can arrive in Llyris in Thaw and fight right up until Thaw of the following year, hopefully winning some acclaim and a large purse or two. The imperials have an expression for Llyris: cavalirorum laudica terre, which means the "land of knightly acclaim." A somewhat more cynical expression is common amongst those less inclined towards warm relationships with knights, namely: cavalirorum clamica, "knightly clamor."

Adventurers as Outsiders

Whenever we see adventurers in pre-WotC D&D games, we see them as outsiders. The adventurer and the outsider are essentially the same category within these earlier games. Adventurers are not integrated into society -- they actively remove themselves from it. They are as integrated into their societies as their High and Late Medieval counterparts, the mercenary (as a good exemplar of a mercenary-adventurer take Sir John Hawkwood), which is to say not at all.

Adventurers begin life refusing the normal social order of the setting. They will not be farmers, they will not be merchants, they will not be bakers, or butchers, or blacksmiths. They have run away from their fathers, refused the allure of steady apprenticed work, or perhaps have no other place to turn (ah, the ubiquitous adventuring-orphan). They are literally outside the social structure. Adventurers have no place in society, not even as cotsmen or wandering laborers do.

Furthermore, they are travelers. They go from place to place, itinerating over great distances. They cross county, kingdom, and wasteland without staying long in any one place. Anyone who lives in a single region for long enough will eventually develop ties with the locals, both legal and emotional. These ties are weak in terms of adventuring parties unless they decide to settle for good and begin the next phase of their development. As we all know, the adventuring arc takes outsiders and transforms them into insiders: lords, landed mages, temple-founders.

The Moveable Feast: calendrical rights and their importance

Holy days and feast days were amazingly important in pre-modern and pre-industrial society. Our own holidays pale in comparison. I've missed many in the last few years, due to work or travel. For us, holidays aren't really that special. They're important when we are children, and then they become less and less so as we age. I would make the argument that the same is not true of medieval people, and the same need not be true of the folk of your fantasy game-world either.

From my own research and readings, calendrical rights played an all-important role in the medieval mind. They sometimes marked days of major labor (for instance, those rights associated with the harvest feasts wherein even freemen had to work on their lord's lands) and sometimes instead marked days of major remittance. Either way, they were almost always accompanied with drinking and eating beyond what was considered the acceptable amount. These were the feast-days, the days when social barriers were relaxed, food was abundant, and a festival atmosphere reigned.

A third type of holiday was the common and secular market day, which generally happened as often as once a week and as rarely as once a month in large towns and villages in England and France. Market days, while not of the same power as a regular holiday, still caused many hundreds of outsiders to pour into a center of distribution and engage in a festival-like expression of commerce. These gatherings were not as liminal as the true holy days, but they still provided an outlet. Indeed, a yearly market (such as the Champange Fairs) might last for several days and have the feeling of a true holy day! In the yearly market towns the arrival of foreigners from every corner of the globe was certainly a chance to trade with and speak to merchants from regions that one would otherwise know nothing about.

The Ale-connors of Heimir

Heimir was originally an Eylic god, mostly worshiped in Old Middlemark and the Anarean basin with some tendrils of culture extending through the Skinchanger Kingdoms that would eventually become a powerfully devoted cult. Interaction with the Thegnari and Eyls spread his worship to the Empire during its Second period and Heimir (Heimirus in Varan) is now amongst the gods that the imperials consider to be their own, having long integrated him into their pantheon and forgotten the ancient days before his introduction.

The monks of Heimir are inevitably male; unlike the other gods, Heimir accepts no women into his sacred orders. Indeed, Heimiran monks only worship in one of two forms: wandering, or cloistered. There are no regular priests or clerics of the God of Beer that do not follow one of those two rules. He has no temples outside the monasteries, and his monks are forbidden from all manner of activities, not least of which is marriage and having children.

Monks of Heimir concentrate their daily labors on two things. The first is, of course, providing hospitality to strangers. No Heimiran monastery, inn, ale-house, or other establishment will turn away someone who needs a roof over their head. The second, and more time consuming, is following the ancient brewing recipes of their houses and making the beers which are sacred and pleasing to the Laughing God.

The Tunnelers, a review

Today I have on the slate Geoff Gander's "The Tunnelers," a Lovecraftian novella that delves into territory below the shale of Canada. While I found a few problems with the novella itself, it was entertaining and definitely worth the read. I believe this is Geoff's first novella-length outing, and for the very beginning of an author's career it does not dissapoint.

The Tunnelers opens with the a twinge of horror, a technique present in most Lovecraft stories; the narrator, looking back on the story itself, foreshadows the terrifying and mind-blasting events that are yet to come. Regret for prying too deep, and warnings to others that will follow. This has become a tried-and-true method of identifying works as Lovecraftian in nature.

The actual content of the story turns out to be the collected notes of a psychiatrist in a mental health facility in Ottawa. This is an interesting change of perspective for a tale of Lovecraftian horror; we are presented not with the point of view of a raving lunatic (as Lovecraft himself is so often eager to give us) but rather of the man attempting to heal him. It turns the traditional structure of a Lovecraftian narrative on its head.

I had some problems with the "notes" structure of the story, but they were fairly minor. My issue was that it seemed impossible to tell when any given group of notes had been written; were they immediately after a session with the madman? Where they days after? In some cases the notes seem to have been compiled en mass at the end of the entire story, as though Dr. Armstrong was being interviewed about a succession of days. I would almost rather have been shackled with him as the story progressed, not having any intimations of the future and not knowing at all that there were dark events to come. How could he have known on July 15th that the patients ramblings would "turn out to be right" so many days later?

That having been said, I find the Lovecraftian element of the tale itself interesting, though it was telegraphed very early in the story. The second section reveals the chilling antagonists and not much more is done to keep their identity in doubt throughout. While this detracts somewhat from the "mystery" aspect of most Lovecraft stories, it does allow the reader to see the ultimate conclusion of the Tunnelers coming and feel helpless to avoid it.

All in all, I found the Tunnelers to be a fairly good, but not perfect, story of unpleasant knowledge beyond the sphere of men.

Guest blogging for my mother

I wrote a guest blog for my mother over at You Still Have to Eat... about an ice-cream shop in Connecticut; the best ice-cream shop in Connecticut.

Randomness in the Daily Life of the Adventurer

As a game scales further towards a narrative, randomness must necessarily decrease. We have two models on opposite sides of one another and a sliding scale that lies between them. On the one hand we have life, infinitely complex beyond the analysis of anyone, man or machine. On the other hand we have things such as novels, which must necessarily be less complex than life. Indeed, novels are a frozen set of choices: they never change, no matter how many times you read them. That's not to say that there aren't stratified layers of meaning that can be unpacked, that books themselves do not contain an infinitely deep amount of information.

I think this is a good way to classify the distinction: depth versus breadth. Novels are very limited in breadth due to the nature of their construction. They cannot typify a wide variety of inputs. Indeed, they are only good for one input, that which the author has created. This is, of course, discounting the interaction between reader/author and the interface between art/viewer. For the purpose of this argument, however, novels are deep rather than broad. They have themes, motifs, movements, and other indicators of depth.

Old school games (non-storytelling games) are broad, rather than deep. No one looks for the leitmotif of an AD&D game because that is not a question that the game addresses. There are no themes, no poetic justice, really no literary devices of any kind. The reason for this is, of course, the fact that they are infinitely broad. The scope of the game is unlimited, which means that any message developed by a literary device would be lost amongst the myriad trivialities of every day life as experienced by the PCs, even if the DM wanted to include one.

There is, of course, in the Deconstructionist sense, a single overriding theme in a broad game. Namely, the uncaring nature of the universe, the randomness of human experience, etc. But that is the only theme that can be present because the game, like life, is so complex as to defy the classifying structure of literary and dramatic criticism. Namely, things happen not because they reinforce a particular point or serve as a metaphor or device, but rather simply because they do.

There are storytelling games where motifs can be developed, random encounters are done away with, tables are minimized. White Wolf's games, for example, fall distinctly into this category. They no longer seek to emulate a broad experience, but rather a deep one. There's nothing wrong with that, save that the natural powers and inclinations of pen and paper roleplaying games tend the other way. That which is proper to a novel is not necessarily proper to an rpg, so the game becomes some manner of hybrid between story and game.

The allowance for random interference increases the closer you get to life and decreases the closer you get to story. Indeed, even novels or games with a high appearance of randomness can be completely (in the case of a novel, must necessarily be) locked along a fixed path wherein the randomness only serves to further illustrate a point. This is the dreaded illusionism which many OSR proponents, including myself, reject as a method of controlling the game.

Deep games can be fun, but they are fundamentally different from broad games. Games that attempt to masquerade as both are terrible. It is an essential lie, an irreconcilable difference between two utterly contrary modes of playing, and I have never played in a game that attempted to emulate the feeling of breadth with the control of depth that has not made me want to claw out my eyes.

There and back again, a historian's journey

When I began this long road, I was in elementary school. It was third and fourth grade that saw me enter the world of fantasy roleplaying, though I wasn't using Dungeons and Dragons. Instead, I wanted to play games with my friends like the roleplaying games I played on the SNES, and I made up a ridiculous set of rules to do. You see, I had seen an old Dungeons and Dragons manual at my grandfather's house. Asking around as to what it was, I was told that it was a game that you play with pencil and paper with your friends.

Forgotten Realms was the first D&D product I ever bought, followed rapidly by the 2e PHB and DMG. I was in fourth grade, and I was a tyrant of a DM, angrily blasting players into greasy smudges when they made fun of Elminster or irritated me with backtalk. I was a child-DM and they child-PCs, so perhaps it was excusable.

That was the start of some kind of mania that has remained with me for the rest of my life. Shortly thereafter I became convinced that I needed to learn more about the middle ages to my D&D experiences better. I was a voracious reader, and I devoured every fantasy in the library and read the Lord of the Rings once a year to keep it fresh in my mind.

Fourth of July Fiction, Bury this Letter Deep

This is a little tale that I cooked up especially for today.

Dearest Margaret,

Bury this letter deep. My time in the Continental Army has almost come to a close. You alone know that my feelings towards King George were never anything but lukewarm; but now I can, in the fullness of time, return home to you. There are men slipping away every day and soon I shall be back in the plot on Long Hill that we purchased with your father’s money. When I return, we may start our life anew, free of all our past misdeeds.
   
I hope to find you and our child well. The bloody work is done, and the chains that bound us to earth have been slipped. We shall make our lives in Waterbury without fear, and raise our daughter to be a strong and upright woman. Whether we live beneath the rule of the King or the so-called Continental Congress, we shall be finally free of Jeremiah Hooker for the rest of our days.

If they say at home that the fighting has been fierce, they are not wrong. We looked to this winter for a respite from bloody battles. It has been worth the danger to secure your safety and the safety of little Emma. But the rest we had hoped for has not come. The General has marched us down near at hand to the camp of the British soldiers, and we have spent nearly a month so far in this frozen wasteland.

Living Towns and the Medieval Mind

There has been a lot written about creating good sites of adventure, and some written about building good cities, and even a few articles here and there about building good towns. This falls into the latter category, since town-building is something that I do often.

When I was first introduced to D&D it was by reading the supplements for things like Forgotten Realms. I always felt as though my own personal creations should strive to match things like the Guide to Shadowdale in terms of completeness and detail. Thus, even from a very young age as a DM I liked to map out my towns and to write down the names and some details about the personalities of all the major NPCs. If I miss anyone or anything important, I name them in play and immediately add that name to the list of town-NPCs for later so that the next time PCs come to that place the NPCs haven't radically changed.

One of the tools that I've found extremely helpful is the (by now probably very well known) article on Medieval Demographics by S. John Ross. It serves as a good tool of approximation for many kinds of amenities a town, village, or city might have. However, without some basic knowledge of how a medieval township might have operated, you're as good as spitting in the wind: you may hit what you want, but more likely you'll just wind up covered in spit.

Again, we approach the problem of the sliding or mobile time-period. There's nothing that is steadfastly "medieval," since the medieval encompasses so many different periods, developments, etc. For myself, I focus on the 12th and 13th century for the central kingdoms of Arunia, with more far-flung places tending either towards totally fantastical formations or things more redolent of the 8th and 9th centuries.

On Fantasy and Escape

Tolkien once famously said of fantasy literature: "Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape? ... If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!"

I hate to disagree with the grandmaster of modern fantasy literature, but disagree I do. Not, of course, concerning his value of escapist literature (which I suppose is alright), but rather with his judgement that fantasy is necessarily escapist at all. George R. R. Martin, in an interview, explained why so many beloved characters died in ASIAF; he said it was not comfort literature. I would argue that Lord of the Rings isn't comfort literature either.

Fantasy does not have to be light-hearted, uplifting, or hopeful. What good is the escape of following Ned Stark? No good at all, in terms of escapism, I would argue. But the same can be said of poor Frodo, who is in essence a tragic hero: he wins only to also lose. While Middle Earth is saved from the machinations of the Dark Lord, Frodo himself is hollowed out and ruined by the experience. He sacrifices the things that make his life worth living in order to protect Middle Earth—he sacrifices himself.

This isn't escapism. Fantasy literature can be as true and vital and vibrant and necessary as any other genre. Just because it takes place in a secondary world doesn't mean that there are not truths about our world there. Indeed, Derrida would scoff to think that you could ever construct a document that was not riddled with hints and truths of the author's society and intention. Deconstruct Lord of the Rings and you will find the truths that Tolkien thought were essential to humanity.

I'm tired of hearing slanders made against fantasy literature. What exactly irks people about it? That it's not history? I'm sorry to say that most novels are not history. That novel you read about a love story? It didn't really happen. Not only that, but it probably couldn't have happened. What about the authors we most value as part of the English corpus? Shakespeare? Well, again, I'm sad to tell you that Shakespeare (while he didn't make up his stories, since he wasn't a great plot-author so instead had to take them from other sources) wrote a lot of things that didn't happen.

It seems hypocritical, strange, and almost unbalanced to rage against the fantastic simply because it is fantastic. Sure, you can be angry at bad writing (and I suppose fantasy has been an umbrella for poorly written work for a long time, due to the fact that critics simply dismissed the whole genre and refused to help sift through the shit) but to be angry at the genre of fantasy itself is as senseless as hating adventure, romance, documentary, or any other genre-style.

Fantasy itself is exactly as credible and as real as any other fiction.