Surviving Nobility, a Primer on Familial Power

This topic came up recently at Really Bad Eggs with Flambeaux and I thought it might make an interesting discussion in terms of roleplaying games and how one can endeavor to integrate real history and social movements into a game to make it more "realistic" (or less hyper-real, as the case may be!)

Now, entire multipart books have been written on this subject so I am not making any kinds of claims for completeness or a perfect record on accuracy. Nor am I near my personal library this week, so I can't make references or even suggest further reading at this time. Instead, I'm just going to use my best memory as a medievalist to recount to you guys the things I know (or think) about medieval nobility. Anything that is wrong, I will try to correct as soon as I can.

First, before we begin talking about the strategies employed by nobility to preserve familial power and the ways in which they could flex it, it is important to define what exactly the nobility where. There's a distorted perception of them in the public eye, probably because of such psuedo-medieval fantasies of the Victorians and perhaps the things we glean from fairy tales. The view we've been presented of nobility most of our lives (and indeed, of fairy tale environments) is one that is firmly stuck in the pre-modern world. Even the best folklorists cannot trace folk stories earlier than that because one can only go so far back using oral sources.

The nobility of the 1600-1700s is a different thing entirely from the nobility of the middle ages. By the 17th, 18th, an 19th centuries they had become an entrenched class with rigidly defined boundaries. If you were not in the register as a noble you were not a noble. If you couldn't trace your nobility back generations on either side, you were not a noble. There were strict rules defining what nobility meant and who was allowed to be a noble--and there were attendent rights that came along with being noble.

Dwarves and their Tombs

I had to go to a job interview this morning, which is why the hasty blogpost. As a reward for sticking through thick and thin and over 100 posts, here's a look at the Dwarven Catacombs of the ruined folkhall known as Pinehall that will be featured in the Halloween module Heart of Darkness:

Drivethru what?

Not a lot of time this morning, so I'm going to have to be brief. Yes, yes, essays are coming back, you'll see one tomorrow about something esoteric, I promise!

The Adventurer's Guide to the Imperial City is on drivethru rpg now, and I have made a solemn promise: anyone who writes a review, positive or otherwise, shall receive a copy of Heart of Darkness (which is slated to be exactly 1 dollar) free of charge. So get crackin'!

Dungeons and Hyper-reality

I'll bet you were just itching to get back to esoteric nonsense here at the Mug, weren't you? You've started to shift uncomfortably, looking at modules and reports of GenCon, checking down statlines and downloads and think to yourself "When is he going to write another essay that's mostly intellectual masturbation?" Well, my friends, you've come at the right time because here it is: an exploration of roleplaying games (particularly Dungeons and Dragons) and hyper-reality.

Before we launch into the topic, it would help to define our terms. What exactly is hyper-reality? It sounds like an easy enough word to parse, but it can hide a whole bundle of meanings. Here I'm using it in the same sense as Umberto Eco and the semiologists: hyper-reality is a reality that is "more real than real." It's a reality so widely accepted as real (from constant input through media sources of all kinds) that it seems more real than actual reality. It's preferable to reality, better than reality, and overwrites reality itself.

How can D&D be "more real than real?" Well, one of the things that we constantly struggle with here at the Frothing Mug is the collapse of an aesthetic that focuses on simulation of real situations. When someone in one of my games wants to know how much a barrel full of water weighs, I look that up not in a rule book but with a calculator and some estimates on volume. When someone wants to know how long it takes to build a castle, I do research and establish rules. This approach is the least hyper-real that I can get. Sure, no one suddenly has to pee while fighting goblins, but we can assume that bathroom breaks generally take place between the action. The fact that they don't happen as part of the action is the first concession to hyper-reality. My D&D games are better-than-real because you're never suddenly caught unawares by the need to relieve yourself.

Heart of Darkness

Work proceeds apace on new 10th Age things for you to own. What, you thought I was all done now that I put out the Adventurer's Guide to the Imperial City? You thought wrong!

Next year at GenCon we are planning on releasing a 10th Age boxed set (we'll see how that goes) and this year right around halloween we're planning on getting out a new adventure. This one for 4-7th level characters and set in the Black Mountains north of the Vales. Did I mention it'll be halloween themed? Oh yeah, prepare yourself for darkness and misery, horror and the undead!

In non-RPG related news, Heavenly Devices is drawing near to a finish. I'm four chapters out from the end and once I reach it I'll be able to begin the editing and rewriting process (fun!) Also, The Wizard's Ward, a 10th Age novel, is being considered right now at Curiosity Quills, so you might see it before long. Of course, that's in addition to the ebook I already have out (Amalric Ogusson and the Fimbul Queen), so make sure you check that sucker out.

But what are we going to talk about today? Well, since we're all hard at work on a halloween module perhaps we should talk about horror and achieving it in dungeons and dragons, which can be a very difficult proposition indeed.

[Fiction] The Reservation

John watched the giant rotors twisting lazily in the breeze. There was something peaceful about being out on the wind farm, away from everyone else. There was work to be done, of course; there was always work to be done. Old Mister Gutman had called him out to have a look at his pickup again. Mister Gutman didn't treat his trucks kindly, taking them into all kinds of wilderness. He could afford to, and who would stop him, after all? John wondered if he hunted up there. He knew Mister Gutman owned a carbine because Sam Stalton had sold it to him. Sam was the last gunsmith this side of the city and the Stalton house was renowned for its handcrafted weapons. John liked to work at Stalton Farm. Sam was a kindly soul, and liberal with his wife's chilled iced tea.

Not Mister Gutman. If Misses Gutman had ever made a pitcher of iced tea, it was when she was still a child. Everyone in town said the Gutmans'd be better off moving back to the city but here they stayed, year after year. They'd won the contract to build up the wind farm way back in the hazy days of the town's first legal battles with city officials and they'd changed as the money rolled in from on high. "Yes," Mister Gutman liked to say, "We don't like those city folk, but we'll surely take their money!" Then he would laugh and clap you on the back and probably offer a cheroot or a stogie to take the edge off of his wealth.

Damn, that man was worth a lot of money. Most people in town couldn't afford real hydrogen engines. Electrics, electrics, everywhere you looked. Not Mister Gutman. Of course, he'd torn the fuel line or some such nonsense, probably driving it up a mountain side. When John peered into the darkened barn the Gutmans used as a garage he could see the dangerously explosive super-cooled hydrogen dripping from the undercarriage.

Hirelings, a Review

So while we were at GenCon Indy this year (for the first time) we met John Harris, an awesome fellow with a board game to kickstart. That board game was Hirelings: the Ascent, and its family friendly, putting you and your companions in the shoes of level-less hirelings who's adventurers are dead. You're carrying their backpacks, stuck in the bottom of a dungeon (in this case a dragon's cave), and the dragon is about to breath a roaring cone of fire through all the tunnels and scorch you alive.

Sound like an amazing game premise? It is. Being level 0 stuffhaulers and bodymen, you come into the dungeon with a backpack full of stuff that belonged to the (now dead) adventuring party. However, as it isn't your pack you don't really know what's packed in there. Magical items, generally helpful, fill it to the brim. You have a limited supply of these and they may help you to get out... but you don't get to decide what you're grabbing, you simply dip your hand in and pull out something that may (or may not) be worthwhile to you.

But don't be fooled! Those items are ALSO your health! If the fireball catches up to you, you need to lighten your load to put on some extra speed, thus throwing off one of your treasures from the backpack. If you have none left to ditch, you're done, mate: fried, cooked, annihilated! No more running for you. This simple game design manages to capture the frantic frenetic pace of a real escape very well.

GenCon Digestion, the Report

We set off for GenCon a merry crew, three travelers in a tub-sized ship with naught but the endless stretches of I-80 before us and nothing behind save the lives that we had lived. We had stocked ourselves with provisions and then made off into the wild blue; our GPS told us where to go and we had no other thought but than to follow it to the ends of the earth or Indiana: whichever came first.

We found ourselves rather quickly entering Pennsylvania hill country along the great stretch of the trucking route I-80. On either side rose the wooded climbs, wild and mountainous. Occasionally a dell or little vale would be visible, the hills drawing back for a brief moment to reveal a steep fold in the land populated by pines and hardy oaks. The cocooning webs of spiders were everywhere, lending the endless forest a sinister aspect and the settlements of man were thin and far between. There were lonesome farmsteads and isolated cottages but it was a long way between the coal-mining villages that were speckled across the hills.

From Pennsylvania to Ohio we came, barreling out of the high hills and into the great level lowlands of the plain. Forbidding wilderness was replaced with girdles of tamed land: farms, acres and acres of them in all directions. Trucks along the great arterial road were now seen to be carrying massive blades, as of wind-farms that must reside somewhere in the state. We stopped but once at Grandpa's Cheesebarn along the road to stock up on delicious delicacies before we shipped out once more towards Indiana.

Crossing the border, we encountered more churches than I have ever seen before in my life. Billboards proclaiming the religious epiphanies of Christ and Tom Raper were everywhere. I don't think I've ever felt so uncomfortable before, or so much like an East Coast Librul.

Slight update today

More posts, and better ones, will come later in the week (starting tomorrow with a digestion of GenCon) but for now I wanted to note that the pdf version of the Adventurer's Guide to the Imperial City was flawed (by a page-repeat) and a new version has been uploaded.

Additionally, the Lulu version is now available at this page both in hardcover (the more expensive version) and softcover.

Next year? We're hoping to release a boxed set. Spread the word, get people interested, the 10th Age is now (more or less)!

More GenCon

Spotty internet connections in the hotel (the Clarion Northwest) mean that I've been unable to post another blog. I don't have a whole lot of time now, either, because the Con is closing down at around 5 today and we got some serious gaming to do.

I will briefly mention John Harris and Prolific Games as they have built (and taught us, through a playable demo) a great boardgame known as Hirelings, the ascent. I'm definitely going to do a review of it when I get home, since it was amongst our favorite things at the Con entirely -- we played it twice through and considered playing it a third time.

Of course, True Dungeon was also amazing and we're looking forward to doing that again next year. Yeah, I know, it uses the 3rd edition (d20) rules as a base, but what can you do? I'm sure no matter how hard I ask they won't revert it to AD&D.

Plenty of other stuff to talk about, but I want to take my time and compose my thoughts properly before I post about 'em. For your benefit, here are some pictures of Frank running from a dragon.

GenCon, The First Day

So we arrived in Indianapolis at around 8:45 last evening. I hadn't had a WHOLE lot of sleep, what with preparing the adventure and all, so I slept until 10am this morning, missing the entire wizards panel and announcement about the future of D&D and all that jazz.

The room is ungodly hot and the air conditioning doesn't really work, so we have to stew in a roomful of hot air. We discovered a repetition on one of the pages of the Adventurer's Guide to the Imperial City, so now anything I hand to Bruce Heard or Ed Greenwood is gonna have this weird page duplicate.

Having never been to GenCon before and having failed to get up early enough to go to the Wizards panel or any of that I don't have a whole lot to report right now. That will change as the day goes on, and further reports from GenCon will come in as the day progresses.

The Long Road

We are 2.5 hours into a 10.5 hour journey to Gencon. The car is stocked with free 10th Age giveaway adventures. If you're gonna be at Gencon, try to suss us out--we have no booth so we'll be wanderin!

On to greater triumphs!

The new 2-page character sheet is uploaded, and the Adventurer's Guide to the Imperial City is now available in hardcopy (both as a paperback and a hardcover) from Lulu!

BEHOLD AND TREMBLE

Well, my friends, the day has come. The Adventurer's Guide to the Imperial City is now available for download absolutely for free.

What's still coming? Well, more 10th Age character sheets, two adventures (Sordid Stories of the Mother City and Malvolio's Universal Mind), and other great stuff including a hard copy of the Guide to the Imperial City available through Lulu.

Buckle in, kids. It's gonna be a wild ride.

Necromancies from Arunia

The study of necromancy has been largely demonized and generally forbidden in the public eye since the Wars of Necromancy of the 9th Age which culminated in Tharos' ascension to godhood. However, that doesn't mean necromantic learning has suffered—no, indeed, Tharos' own Library of Black Knowledge as well as the many wizards in the north who refuse to be beholden to such trivial concepts of morality have advanced the Art within that field.

As such, I present two level one necromantic spells culled from the books of wizards Arunia-over:


Tharos' Siphon(Necromancy)

Range: 10 yards/level                              Components: V,S
Duration: 1d4 rds./level                          Casting Time: 1
Area of Effect: One target and caster       Saving Throw: Negate


Tharos' siphon establishes a necromantic link between the caster and a single target. The siphon appears to be a long sinuous purple-black line of negative energy. It will bend and snake around things that attempt to cut it off, though contact can be broken if the target places an object 10' thick or greater between himself and the caster. If that target fails its saving throw, the caster begins to sap energy from it at the rate of 1 HP per round. Each round the spell remains active, the caster gains 1 HP and the victim loses 1 HP. A successful saving throw negates this effect; additional saves are allowed every four rounds to sever the link. Horrifyingly, the caster need not maintain concentration to continue this drain and is free to take other actions. If the target flees beyond the spells range, it ends.

Hit points gained over the caster's max are temporary and vanish at the end of the spell.



Sicken
(Necromancy) 

Range: 10 yds./level                                    Components: V,S
Duration: 1 hr.                                             Casting Time: 1
Area of Effect: One humanoid target           Saving Throw: Negate


The target of sicken at once loses 2 points of CON (or 2 HP if they do not have a CON score) and suffers a -2 to-hit penalty due to the overwhelming ill feeling the target gets in his stomach. This does not cause the target any other immobility other than the to-hit penalty. If the target makes their saving throw vs. death magic, the spell is negated.

Sicken is incapable of killing anyone or anything on its own; if hp loss would knock the target unconscious or dead, any damage beyond 1 HP is ignored.

The Cover Sketch

This just hit my desk yesterday, courtesy of Stephen Doolittle. The titling isn't final, and it will probably have to be in grayscale for the free copies (it can remain in color for the pdf and the Lulu version):

That thing you're looking at is the Tour Wyrmais or the Tower of Dragons. It was built by the southmen very early in the history of Miles and served as a warning system when the legendary beasts were far more numerous than they are today.

Lords of the Twin Empires

I was but a boy when Malvek became emperor of all Caruel. He was crowned in glittering glory and attended by fifteen of the great Shadow Wizards that made up his council. His crown was cut from jet and onyx and they say when it was placed upon his brow, the stones set therein glittered in homage to his might. All this I learned later, for I was too young to understand the significance of the procession, the parade. I'm certain my father told me what was happening, for he was a staunch supporter of Malvek. His entire fortune had been pledged to the new emperor; he hated the men of Soloth with such a burning despite that he was willing to gamble all that he had made in his long lifetime as a merchant to see the men of Kallatha humbled and the Wyrm King made to grovel in the earth.

Those days were before the accession of King Deshen, who would accompany Malvek to the brink of the abyss and beyond, bringing all his people down in ruin with him. The Solothans were weak then, and the Shadow Wizards led armies that ran rampant across their borders. I believe this was the six hundred and second year of the Sixth Age as the scholars in the south count it. I do not know for sure, but I seem to recall those numbers.

We lived in Tharaloss in those days, the capitol of the empire. Caruel was an old and storied empire even then, centuries stretching out behind her. My father liked to speak of the great civil war that had sundered us from our Solothan kindred a thousand years hence when Nashketh and Tashbet had their falling out. We were the stronger, borne from the nobility that supported Tashbet, the younger son, who had followed in the footsteps of his father's reign. We were the true sons of Tarkus the Indomitable and it was the Solothans who followed in the footsteps of the Witch-Queen that Tarkus had married.

Her name was anathema for us to speak, for we hated her so. She had corrupted Nashketh, turned him against Tashbet, and sundered these two kingdoms for-ever. No matter that Malvek was no relation to that ancient line: neither was Deshen of Kallatha the trueborn scion of Nashketh. The old house of Haxrea had died out, first in Soloth and then in Caruel. Eunuchs and dragontamers had ruled the north and here in the south wizards and merchants had taken the imperial throne.

I had heard merchants from the Trade Sea call out empires paltry. Nothing, they said, compared to the empire-that-was of Miles. But now the Mileans are gone and the Solothans are gone and every last man of Caruel is gone save for me. So what does it matter whose empire was greater? They have all been swept away.

I grew up fearing the Solothans and hating them. My mother weaned me on the stories of Szorn the Blue and his rider, Stathos Traven the Dragontamer. I would look to the skies in horror to see if Szorn was coming to punish us nightly, but he had been dead for five centuries. The might of both our kingdoms had sunk low. The wizards that had once strode the world with their magery were creeping shadowmasters, forced to rely on the paltry magics of bound demons that they summoned up from the blackest nethers, of shadow-familiars they called forth from the Wall of Night. How could anyone in Caruel have foreseen the end that we came to when our magicians seemed so weak? How could we have known that they still harnessed the power to wipe away all our pasts and futures?

I was fifteen, the year of my blooding, when the war that they called the War of Shadows began. I am an old man now, and my life has been lived in the shadow of that war. I have been born and raised at its pap, and now that I am nearing my last days I have spent most of my years fearing its coming. You see, I did not care for Malvek or his ostentatious palace. I did not care for the way he tore down the marble guardians of my house or redirected the water-channels so they did not water our gardens. I despised the way he grasped after the income of my slave-trading business and the way he "bought" slaves by the thousands with debased and worthless coin.

Malvek was my father's king, but he was not mine. All those years, I gave money in secret to the Shadow Wizards, praying to Tarkus that they would end this war and perhaps kill Malvek as well. They would send shadows by night, murderous shadows to stalk the streets of great Kallatha and teach the Solothans to fear. But never could they assault the king, Deshen the Far-sighted, Deshen the Sorcerer.

I was fifty years - or no, was it sixty? - when the shadows came home. Deshen and the Shadow Wizards had been waging a secret war alongside the battles of clashing armies. They had no need for Malvek Askor the Cruel, he was a toy to them. When I woke on the morning after the great spell, I found myself alone in a city of the dead. There were howlings that belonged not to man or woman, nor wild beast; that no gnomish slave or elven scholar could make and they echoed along the stone alleyways and between the slate rooftops. There were shadows racing through the streets, liquid-fast, stripping bark from trees and the flesh of the dead from their bones.

The city was a mausoleum, a graveyard. Alone I had survived, and alone I must wander Arunia with no homeland to return to. Malvek Askor is dead, and the Shadow Wizards are dead, and now Caruel is a curse and not a name, for it is a land haunted by ghosts and demons. Do any still dwell there? I think they do not. In the same night, Deshen the Sorcerer and the Shadow Mages worked their most powerful magics against one another... and so has ended the rivalry of the twin empires. So has ended the pride of Caruel and the hubris of Soloth.

Maybe it is best for such empires to breath their last. As for me, I stay up of nights, wondering when the shadows will find me. They have eaten my countrymen, they have eaten my family... they will someday come and close around me and I will have no way to ward them off. I have spent twenty years buying amulets and scrolls, twenty years burning incense and making offerings to your southron gods but even your Hammerer cannot protect me. For each night I hear their howls grow closer, and I smell the moist earth that must claim me. I am the last of Caruel, and as Caruel's last I shall die.

The Work Continues

Text of the Miles book is completely done (but not edited) and is in the process of going through InDesign for transformation into a real manuscript that people can touch and download for free. I have got to finish the adventure before the deadline so DMs can have something to run in Miles, which means I have precious little time for musings on the nature of fantasy and Dungeons and Dragons and the like.

Hopefully, this week will slow down after Thursday (once all the art is in) and we can get the Lulu books up and going. Until then, my coverage is going to be somewhat spotty and I cannot guarantee any articles will be forthcoming. On the up side, I've been developing some interesting short story material that will hopefully be apparent after GenCon.

Shine on, my crazy diamonds, until I return.

Treasuregasm

This week the Hounds (my most steadfast party, the ones that play once a week, generally without fail) managed to open an ancient elvish treasure vault and get a look inside. They were certainly surprised, as this was the largest haul that they've ever seen in a D&D game. While they eventually sold it all, even the coins (for reasons of "historical interest" to the captain of a local elvish merchant's compact), it remains a list to be awed by. Oh, those ten thousand gold Dorlish readers ain't too shabby, neither.

A gold belt made of interlocking leaves and carefully etched.


A circle of wrought silver with plating of jade depicting a crown of waves and a slender elvish ship above the brow, thought to belong to an elf captain during the Fourth or Fifth Age.

The Ever Changing Appendix N

I've been thinking recently about the sea-change in pen and paper attitudes that marks the difference between the old, hard, "realistic" games from the 70s and the newer, shinier, "fun" games from the now. Since the OSR blogosphere is abuzz with additions to, discoveries in, and reviews of things from Appendix N, my thoughts recently turned to what exactly is going on here in the pen and paper world. Games have certainly changed, and they have changed because the people who play them have changed. Gygax was 36 when he and Arneson released the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons (or so my rapid and poor calculation skills tell me). He certainly wasn't in high school, and he already had a lifelong dedication to wargaming.

But that's not the big difference. The difference between games of today and games of yesteryear are their Appendix N. What sources do they draw on? What the are they trying to be, trying to emulate? What's the feel that inspired them? It's different now than it used to be, in large part because the intended audience of D&D keeps getting younger. Like a cigarette company, Hasboro wants to hook 'em young, hook 'em strong, and keep 'em stringing along. TSR had bad penetration into the very young demographics, probably because of the language of their books and the relatively strenuous weight placed on simulation.

Excerpt 2: Miles and more Miles

Since this is what I'm working on at the moment and because its consuming every spare moment of my time, this is what you guys get to see. Today, it is Hamish writing about the history of Miles.

Ancient History

Miles was originally settled in the late 3rd or early 4th Age by southmen fleeing from the jungle-land of Zesh. The first settlers founded their hilltop town on what is now Pillar Hill. The artisanal class from Zesh built the original Faberlaine wall which girdles the central hill.

In those days it was the only city for rods and rods around, and it commanded a view of the river-fords as well as the great Gigantine lowlands. The original city was very small, composing only the narrow lanes of the hill. It wasn’t until the middle 4th Age that it began to expand, spilling its boundaries. It was during that time that the Tour Wyrmais was built. If you can believe it, this ancient Milean tower was constructed on a hill outside the city, though it is now well within the outermost set of walls.