Fighting Ogres Has Never Been so Unpleasant

Where have I been, you may well be asking? Work's gotten pretty crazy. So in lieu of some half-baked essay, here are adventure logs written by two ACTUAL PLAYERS from the Hounds of Aros game:

(OLOZ, the now-satyr former-half-orc)


Whatever the fuck day we arrived:

We have come to Tyrma, the great stone in the crown of the elf-kingdom of Silversong. I can feel the call of the woods that shoot through the city like roots through soil, of the elf-maids in their meandering marble houses - I burn to be acquainted more closely! If Thurayn was a nightmare, then Tyrma is a dream. I cannot shelter myself in dreams. Nightmares still exist all around, outside this magical place. Thurayn still waits. I cannot forget that. I still have more to do before I can take to the woods and to the women. I must never forget. Essad and all her slaves must be set free.

Avaunus, 2nd Longing

Though I have been on a few now, I am forming no great love of boats - and this one less than most. We have only the night before spoken with the Seasinger here in Tyrma, and found him in need of our aid - an island temple nearby has been taken by some ogaritic force, with, perhaps, gigantine aid, and so I have paid for the help of this easterner cog, bedecked as it is in scorpions and catapaults, to take us there, and help with their machinery where they may. The goblin manservant Thembo has a lurid quizzicality about him that puts me in mind of Takal, and his snaggletoothed sneer is almost more than I can stomach. Still, it bears us toward the isle where we will take back Meri's temple, and with arms most useful for the task - if its captain can be trusted.

The Tyranny of Labels

"I want to play a merchant," "I want to play an archer," "I want to play a vagabond." What classes are represented in those statements? Can you tell? The proper answer is: no, you can't, because classes aren't occupations or descriptions, they're just bundles of abilities that belong to certain types of people. They're archetypes, not jobs. Imagine a system that had to build a separate class for every job in the universe -- what would a baker class be like? Why would every baker follow the same general progression? You can see where this is going: eventually the classes would become infinitely granular to the point where EVERY INDIVIDUAL would need their own class (or at least every conceivable job in every conceivable culture viewed through every conceivable lens).

Character classes in AD&D are not jobs. They do not describe what you do, but rather what you have in common with certain other people. Indeed, AD&D takes the somewhat war-gamey point of view that essentially all people are, at a certain level, interchangeable. The skills of one fighter are not really all that different than the skills of another. Perhaps one favors a different weapon, or the other is just plain stronger. Perhaps one is more skilled, which is an important distinction to make in a roleplaying game.

What doesn't AD&D model? It doesn't model knowing "techniques" very well. It assumes a common canon of combat knowledge between characters. Getting better happens in general, not specific. You don't increase your ability to, say, trip someone without also increasing your ability to fight in general.

Back to the first question: what would the classes be to represent those first three characters I mentioned? Well, you could go a number of ways. A merchant could easily be a low level fighter or a thief. An archer goes either way there too. A vagabond could be a fighter, a thief, a bard, or even a wizard. Why? Because these are ciphertitles. Classes don't describe what you do, they describe how you do it.

I don't understand the hypergranular and yet completely non-intuitive class system of 3.x. I don't like the straightjacket classes of 4e. Classless systems are actually pretty alright by me as well. But if you're going to come and play AD&D, don't complain that all fighters are the same. They're not, they just have similar skill sets. It's what happens when a man learns to fight instead of, say, steal.

Grenade-like Missiles

This came up last night in our gaming session and I think a new alternate rule (or maybe a duplicate of some homebrew rule somewhere) was proposed that could be of great utility.

The situation was this: a small island-shrine dedicated to Meri, Lady of the Waters, had been overrun by ogres and their enslaved cyclops. The Hounds, deciding that since they intended to sail across the Cloud Sea to the farthest north, went to curry some favor with the Pale Lady and get her blessings (perhaps to counteract the ire they had raised from her husband, Vodei, the Old Man of the Deeps). It helped, to be sure, that one of the Hounds is a cleric of the sea-goddess.

Medieval Hack: Carrockshire and the Earldom of Llancar

Between Hereford and Shrewsbury lies the small earldom of Llancar (known to the locals as the Carrockshire). The town of Llancar, once a Roman settlement, was occupied by the Welsh until the coming of William the Conqueror when the region was conquered by one of the Beaumont brothers and given, during the partitioning of England, to Robert Beaumont as Earl. He was installed in Llancar and now, in the year of our lord 1130 his descendant Roger de Beaumont rules as Earl from that same seat.

The river Severn divides the march into Welsh and English sides, with power projected along the Welsh border from both the stronghold of Carak and Faldun Tower, which are jointly administered by the castellan Guilliame fitzWalter, Roger's close confidant and ally. Roger himself was one of the first men to meet King Stephen when he first crossed the channel to claim the throne and is a strong supporter of his claim.

The people of the March have suffered badly since it was granted. Welsh raiders slip past the two keeps with ease, cross the Severn under cover of darkness, and make sharp raids against the Earl's forces to steal food, silver, and weapons. If the Earl's men ever give them chase, they can slip easily into one of the villages to find shelter, for many in towns such as Corbridge and Mordan have at least one Welsh parent and feel sympathy to their cousins over the border.

Roger is obsessed with the idea that some day a Welsh army will come to reclaim Llancar: under his watch he has restored its ancient walls and towers and spent more good silver reinforcing Carak Keep than his three predecessors combined.

His younger brother, Hugh de Beaumont, is bishop of Carrockshire and frequently involved with the important theological disputes of his day. The small house of Llangaran Abbey owes its existence to the bishopric, which maintains the right to appoint an abbot to the foundation.

Ever and anon come the Welsh and from abroad the rumors and stirrings of war. It is said that the Empress Matilda threatens Stephen's claim, but Roger laughs at this. "A woman," he is known to say, "challenge King Stephen?" And yet, in Normandy such things are not the subject of jests. Gloucester is not so far south that Hugh does not worry for his brother, for it is said that Robert, the Earl and half-brother to Matilda, is the strong arm behind her.

What the future will bring for Llancar is uncertain, but caught between the Welsh, Gloucester, and the King it cannot but fare darkly in the years to come.

...but it's a game too!

I talk a lot about how D&D simulates experiences and how unfair situations can be fun. Maybe I talk about it too much. I bring it up so often because that's the element of D&D that's been trimmed off of it for mass consumption, leaving it somewhat neutered. But if you had never played a D&D game with me, you might be of the opinion that everything is ruled by the dice (or by my own judgement) and that's not true. There are times when I make mistakes, like giving magical items to the party that are way too f-ing powerful or giving them too much money. Solving these problems takes a little cheating because, let's face it, when something is too hard it's an opportunity for challenge but when something's too easy it becomes boring, fast.

Looking to the Future

Here are the things on my plate right now, many of which will be coming to fruition a long way down the line:

Working for a company called Track180 -- eventually (eventually) we will be publishing a news app that aggregates all kinds of news sources by human hands and not by algorithm. It makes for a sort of "news conversation" with a semantic web to other news conversations. It's super neat and definitely gonna be big if we ever get off the ground.

Building the 10th Age boxed set -- Lotta folks are interested in this, I gather, and only more since I released THoD. There won't be a boxed set until sometime next year at the earliest (hopefully for GenCon Indy 2013) because this is a massive undertaking.

Meadmaking -- Mead came out. It's rough right now, but will mature. Good drink!

SCA -- being in the SCA means I have to learn to sew, make garb, and clad myself in medieval fashion, which is a ton of work.

Medieval Hack -- Beginning my medieval hack campaign (even though I'm still running 2 D&D campaigns). Set in a fictional part of the Welsh Marshes, still working out whether I'm gonna force the guy who made a pirate captain to reroll (where the hell is his ship going to hang out in the middle of the March? Maybe he's a riverine pirate? I don't know).

I'm also writing a medieval hack list for the ladies since we have a ladyplayer who doesn't like to be men who really can't be rolling up a ladysquire since that's just not how things were done.

By the by, I'm going to put a permanent link to THoD up in case you guys haven't bought a copy yet. Do it!

THoD is officially up for sale!

Come one, come all!

The Heart of Darkness

It's being reviewed by DriveThruRpg right now for sale. If you've written a review of any other 10th Age product, you can get it for free! Just make sure you email me with your account information and a link to your review.

Monstrous Foes: Battle Wraith

Burning or burying the dead is a major issue in the 10th Age; bodies must be properly disposed of lest they result in things like the battle wraith below. The soul's journey to the afterlife can easily be interfered with. It's not immortal, and the weak ties that bind it together can come undone like a linen shirt unraveling. But this is not a metaphysical dissertation, this is a chance to be ware of the BATTLE WRAITH, the result of untended battle-dead:

Wraith, Battle

CLIMATE/TERRAIN: Old battlefields

FREQUENCY: Very Rare

ORGANIZATION: Military Unit

ACTIVITY CYCLE: Any

DIET: None

INTELLIGENCE: Semi- (1-3)

TREASURE: Incidental

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil

NO. APPEARING: 2-8

ARMOR CLASS: 2

MOVEMENT: 9

HIT DICE: 3

THAC0: 17

NO. OF ATTACKS: 1

DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-8 (melee) or 1-6 (missile)

SPECIAL ATTACKS: strength drain, fear aura, con drain

SPECIAL DEFENSES: +1 or better to hit

MAGIC RESISTANCE: Nil

SIZE: M (5’-6’ tall)

MORALE: Fearless (20)

XP VALUE: 420 (melee), 650 (missile)

Battle wraiths are the spirits of those who have been slain on a battlefield and remain unshriven. Their remains tie them to this plane and the intense pain or sorrow in which they died ensures that their spirit does not loose coherence but rather forms a weak negative-energy bond. Only battles in which the most violent deaths were meted out or the most vigorous personalities were slain leave these wraiths behind. They are something like echoes of their former selves, ghostly shadows that desire nothing but to drag all thinking living things down into their own sorrow or else extinguish them forever.

Wraiths resemble the warriors they were in life, clad in the same armor and arms, whether or not these armaments are still present at the site of their demise. Their “flesh” is worn as though from constant exposure to the environment, and close at hand it is clear that it is in fact vaporous or wraithlike. Battle wraiths are normally invisible, only manifesting fully when their tombs are disturbed. 

Battle wraiths have no minds, having been driven insane by their imprisonment in Arunë. They will not parlay or talk, for they prefer to simply destroy. Unnervingly, they fight in whatever formation they used when still alive, though they clearly do not have the intelligence to do so. They will keen horribly as they draw near to their foes, generally completely silent until within 5’ of their targets.

It is possible that, upon discovering a site with battle wraiths haunting it, one may be witness to the last moments of that unit. These ghostly dramas do not end when the soldiers are slain, for the simulacra rise again as wraiths and immediately turn upon those who dared intrude upon their misery.

Combat: The spirits of the battle-dead are terrifying to fight in a stand-up battle. Merely approaching their grave site will, day or night, cause them to leap forth to defend their remains. Battle wraiths are substantially weakened during the day, taking a -2 penalty to-hit (THAC0 19) as well as a -1 penalty to all damage dealt. They are clearly transparent in daylight, and cannot use their constitution draining attacks or their keening song.

When encountered at night they are their most deadly. Every melee attack that lands from a battle wraith deals 1d8 points of damage, regardless of what spectral weapon lands the blow. Being struck by the weapon of a battle wraith causes immediate coldness and numbness to spread from the wound, resulting in a loss of 1 point of constitution. This constitu

The Hunyadi

THE origins of mankind are hotly disputed and no scholar can claim a theory which explains them sufficiently. It is well known, for instance, that black men came up from the south where they once had homes in the lands of Zesh, fleeing the oppression of their God-king. But when they arrived races of men had already been living in Atva-Arunia for centuries and it was with the tall white fellows that they interbred. There were the Eyls and Thegnari, the Llyreans and Valelans, and in the south-east there were the Khewed, Ishtrians, and Hadashi folk all of whom were really many smaller tribes of men that had been knit together by politics. Southwards there were Mugharians and in the far far east the Zhongguans (also called Dhiaojiongese).

Thus, it baffled the scholars of mannish history when, two centuries ago, a new tribe of men appeared as though from nowhere. The lands that men call "the Moon Kingdoms" lie in the east, beyond the Straits of the Moon and are generally known to be inhabited by a race of monstrous goblins much taller, and wiser, and more shrewd than Atvian goblins. The same goes for many of the creatures that live there: history tells us that pure goblins and ogres and such were driven over the straits in ancient days by the trolls when they fled and that they have remained closer to their original forms while the Atvian creatures have decayed and grown small and mean.

Innate Skills and the Level Arc, or Why Are These Things Tied Together?

Someone, sometime, somewhere down the line decided that certain abilities should be tied to levels. These abilities are not necessarily related to combat skills (which advance as a character advances, because the character practices them). They are things like Proficiencies and Inborn Character Skills that expand, are expounded upon, or become more useful as a character increases in level.

The simplest question to ask is this: does experience in combat equate to experience in all other aspects of life? The clear is answer is no. Why should only 15th level priests be made hierophants of their faith? Why should certain spells be available to 15th level adventuring priests and not their 1st level (or 0th level) administrative counterparts? For example, a priest who has never adventured a day in his life but is a politicker of great skill might run an entire faith—does it make any sense, really, that simply because he's never gone out and swung a mace that his deity would refuse to allow him access to specific and powerful magics?

While a case can be made for the administrator/leader role (and a counter case might say that no, in fact, that deity would probably grant his chief follower the spell just as if he were a level 15 priest), there is no such case for NWP advancement. Skills, essentially, are not functions of combat experience but rather experience at using that skill.

Should there, then, be a system in place that allows characters to advance skills without gaining levels? Most probably. What would such a system look like? Here's just one example:

Every six month period spent studying a skill provokes a check: roll a d20 (with some appropriate modifiers based on circumstance - additions for teachers, subtractions for lack of materials or inconstant study). If the check succeeds you learn nothing knew. If it fails, your rank increases by one point.

Simple, perhaps too simple. And yet, doesn't it make a nice compliment? Now, while your party wizard is out studying the secrets of the stars and concocting spells, you can be learning how to play the lute.

Rehabilitating the Shield Bash

First off, if you're American: GO VOTE! I'll wait for you. I'll be right here. Back? Ok.

Shield bashing in 2e is lame. Even with the Combat and Tactics rules, this is what you get:

Shield Type	Size	Speed	Reach	Damage	Knockdown
Small	S	Fa (2)	1	1d3	d6
Medium	M	Av (6)	1	1d4	d8
Large	L	Sl (8)	1	1d6	d10

That doesn't look too impressive, does it? Your small shield is as useful as a knife—not very. The knockdown on the shields is fairly good considering, but there's still little reason to use your medium shield as a punch ever unless you happen to have two ranks in TWF or your dexterity bonus completely negates the off-hand penalty.

What the hell would make shields useful as weapons? Well, after taking a look at a video from the Mosgard Museum in which viking shield-fighting is explained, I got some ideas.

With that in mind, anyone struck by a blow from a shield must save vs. paralyzation (at a +2, 0, -2 bonus/penalty for small/medium/large shields) or lose their next attack as they flinch and overbalance. Characters hit with a shield-punch also lose any dexterity bonus to their AC if they fail this save until the beginning of next round, making a follow-up blow from a sword a much more certain thing.

I think that brings some dignity to shield-punching and more accurately represents why you would ever want to do it. I have yet to use the rule in play, for I thought of it just this morning in the shower, but I am changing all shield-punching in the 10th Age to run along these lines until I determine its a bad idea.

Note: this maneuver is still more useful for higher level characters -- both because it will land more successfully and because it serves to break up a high level foe's attack pattern.

A Look Into the Future: The Atlas of Arunia

This rather long excerpt is from the boxed set that is still in production:

Atlas of Arunia Ecumenia

Arunia, the World

The phrase Arunia Ecumenia (ah-ROON-yuh ec-yoo-MEN-iya) in Varan and all dialects of elvish means “the inhabited world.” Arunia Ecumenia is made up of many parts. The easiest and most prominent division is that made by the scholars of the north: Atva-Arunia, Arunia Oriens, and Sudus-Arunia, that is Northern Arunia, Eastern Arunia, and Southern Arunia. Of course, this simplistic division does little to capture the multitudes of cultures, kingdoms, and geographic regions of the land.

Atva-Arunia is made up of a number of continents: Aquilis, Avium, Substrictus and the semi-mythical Domum Nubium which we can translate easily as Cloudhame. Aquilis, Avium, and Substrictus are contiguous land masses and one can (somewhat) easily traverse between them. Cloudhame lies far to the north, in the Sea of Clouds, unreachable save by ships stocked with months of food and a crew capable of making a dangerous icy voyage.

But Atva-Arunia has never had simple boundaries. In the east, the Straits of the Moon divide it from the Moon Kingdoms of the goblins. In the south, the Narrow separates Substrictus from Arunia-Sudus and in the south-east the Trade Sea and the Isthrian Sea divide it from the desert lands of Khewed, Ishtria, and Hadash. But seas unite more than they divide, for travel is preponderantly by sea and river: the Trident Isles and the great port of Ninfa link the desert kingdoms to the North and adventurous sailors may make their way even further south through the narrow seas to Mugharia, the steaming jungles of Zesh, or the great and open savannas of the Oruna.

Reasons why

Reasons why my blog is about to get really thin on content for the next month:

• Started the SCA
• Still trying to get Heart of Darkness out
• Novel November
• Work picking up
• Brewing Mead

Lust for Destruction

Every since we crawled out of the savannah and started building megaliths in the wilds of Africa, we seem to have dreamed what it would be like to go back there. Every civilization has had stories of the end, and our modern society is no different. We relish watching ourselves die out, seeing the carefully built mechanisms of our world collapse and fall prey to pure Hobbesian chaos. This can be seen today not only in the obvious places (post-apocalyptic fiction) but also, in part, in many smaller disaster films that don't deal with the fall of all civilization.

We are maniacal, ruthless, and determined to watch in jittery horror as things wreak wanton destruction upon our great cities. We love to see disaster, aliens, superheros, whatever you-name-it plough through financial sectors, residential blocks, and gleaming buildings of glass and steel. We, as a race, are obsessed with our own demise. No sooner do we create some new technological marvel than do we wonder how it can be used to commit mass-suicide. The atom bomb, nuclear plants, bioengineering, geoengineering... you name it and we've turned it on ourselves in our fiction.