Not much today except this excellent but brief paper on illnesses in the Middle Ages and various folk cures.
I've extracted them from the paper itself and list them here for your benefit:
Fever: Violets in Whey
Constipation: Dulse (seaweed) in water flamula jovis
Insomnia: Linarich or nettle tops and egg white applied to forehead and temples
Worms: Tans, Whiskey
Diarrhoea: infusion of nettle leaves
Dropsy: Infusion of broom tops and nettle leaves
Nausea: Infusion of dandelion root
Cough: Hart's tongue and maidenhair, yarrow or coltsfoot
Scurvy: Dulse
Headache: Dulse and linarich applied to temples
Sciatica: Fat of catara fowl applied to thigh, blistering over thigh with crowfoot in an oyster shell
Toothache: Green turf heated with embers applied to side of pain
Cough: Bathe feet in warm water then apply deer's grass
Conjunctivitis: Blades of fern with egg white applied with flax
Epistaxis: drop key down back
Burn: Place burnt limb near fire
Haemorrhoids: Sit on pail with smouldering leather
Ring Worm: Apply ink, butter, or sulphur, rub with gold ring
Eczema or abscess: Cow dung poultice
Here's the full paper.
Ruminations on fiction, roleplaying, and assorted irritants.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Monday, October 28, 2013
Green Ronin's Black Company Books
I hate d20. I hate 3rd Edition. I hate adaptations. I hate, I hate, I hate.
I love Green Ronin's d20 Black Company RPG adaptation. I love it with all my heart. I played it for an extended period with Frank and Jason (Keir and Cain respectively, in the Hounds) and we all enjoyed it thoroughly. There's just something about Green Ronin's products that I can't help myself but love. Their d20 Medieval book (complete with rules for disputation and "social" combat wherein scholars send letters to each other and refute philosophical treatises) is also just fucking great.
Writing rules to resemble a book is hard as hell. I threw out their Black Company setting stuff because I always have to design my own settings. So instead we played in a pseudo-Black Company world that included lots of things that "felt" like the Black Company but weren't actually. The Company of the Crow was our stand-in and Nah'Khud, the infamous mercenary leader who had etched on his breastplate "Enemy of God, Mercy, and Mankind" the Captain. Sergeants like Dealer, Hammer, and Sand led the platoons and the desperate, nearly destroyed, betrayed, and ruined Company battled its way out of the Valley of Drown (after the disastrous engagement at The Saw, a series of narrow canyons near the edge of the Red Lands) and towards the ancient city of Torch.
This gave us a chance to use the platoon fighting rules. Frank played Diver, a mercenary picked up in the ruinous land of Drown, while Jason played one of the sergeants: a veteran archer named Twitch. Together they led one of the platoons breaking out of the Valley of Drown (by fighting the notorious knights Crouch and Tyle). The medium scale combat rules (the game has skirmish, platoon-scale, and full battle scale rules) worked smoothly and with little calculation. They reminded me, in fact, very much of the Birthright skirmishing rules.
Once that was done and the Company's rag-tag remnants safe in Torch (where they signed up with the councilar family of the Sabines, serving Sabius Lutrius) most of the gameplay devolved to street level encounters with rag-tag elements of the Qualaeine conspiracy. We got a chance to test the magic system (the Company wizard, Smoke, traveled with Twitch and Diver on several occasions—this was before I'd read the Books of the South and met the ACTUAL Smoke of the Black Company novels) and it worked... beautifully.
The permanent crippling affects caused by CON damage, the maximum hp cap, and the CON damage on surprise rounds worked together to create real memorable play as well as that feeling of gritty down-to-earth combat. Sand, a huge Obsidian Lander, was crippled forever in an ambush by the Qualaeines; his knee was sliced from behind and his movement rate permanently reduced by a hitch-step limp. This is the kind of stuff that games need. Desperately. Less glowing swords and super-high-jumps and ten-thousand-arrows and more of this low to the ground fighting. This is the where the magic happens.
I love Green Ronin's d20 Black Company RPG adaptation. I love it with all my heart. I played it for an extended period with Frank and Jason (Keir and Cain respectively, in the Hounds) and we all enjoyed it thoroughly. There's just something about Green Ronin's products that I can't help myself but love. Their d20 Medieval book (complete with rules for disputation and "social" combat wherein scholars send letters to each other and refute philosophical treatises) is also just fucking great.
Writing rules to resemble a book is hard as hell. I threw out their Black Company setting stuff because I always have to design my own settings. So instead we played in a pseudo-Black Company world that included lots of things that "felt" like the Black Company but weren't actually. The Company of the Crow was our stand-in and Nah'Khud, the infamous mercenary leader who had etched on his breastplate "Enemy of God, Mercy, and Mankind" the Captain. Sergeants like Dealer, Hammer, and Sand led the platoons and the desperate, nearly destroyed, betrayed, and ruined Company battled its way out of the Valley of Drown (after the disastrous engagement at The Saw, a series of narrow canyons near the edge of the Red Lands) and towards the ancient city of Torch.
This gave us a chance to use the platoon fighting rules. Frank played Diver, a mercenary picked up in the ruinous land of Drown, while Jason played one of the sergeants: a veteran archer named Twitch. Together they led one of the platoons breaking out of the Valley of Drown (by fighting the notorious knights Crouch and Tyle). The medium scale combat rules (the game has skirmish, platoon-scale, and full battle scale rules) worked smoothly and with little calculation. They reminded me, in fact, very much of the Birthright skirmishing rules.
Once that was done and the Company's rag-tag remnants safe in Torch (where they signed up with the councilar family of the Sabines, serving Sabius Lutrius) most of the gameplay devolved to street level encounters with rag-tag elements of the Qualaeine conspiracy. We got a chance to test the magic system (the Company wizard, Smoke, traveled with Twitch and Diver on several occasions—this was before I'd read the Books of the South and met the ACTUAL Smoke of the Black Company novels) and it worked... beautifully.
The permanent crippling affects caused by CON damage, the maximum hp cap, and the CON damage on surprise rounds worked together to create real memorable play as well as that feeling of gritty down-to-earth combat. Sand, a huge Obsidian Lander, was crippled forever in an ambush by the Qualaeines; his knee was sliced from behind and his movement rate permanently reduced by a hitch-step limp. This is the kind of stuff that games need. Desperately. Less glowing swords and super-high-jumps and ten-thousand-arrows and more of this low to the ground fighting. This is the where the magic happens.
Friday, October 25, 2013
Mind the Gap
There is something I dread more than anything else in gameplay—that is the gap. When we have a scheduled session that fails to materialize a certain snowball effect can occur. We can miss one, two, three sessions. Without notice suddenly a month may have gone by without our regularly scheduled game. When that happens the game becomes dangerously easy to abandon forever. That's happened to so many of my games that I can't even begin to count them.
I don't know any way to keep them when it seems that the lack of play is causing them to fail and sputter. I'm not sure if anyone else experiences this in their games, or if there are tried and true methods to keep them on track. That's all for today. My musings are grim and faltering.
I don't know any way to keep them when it seems that the lack of play is causing them to fail and sputter. I'm not sure if anyone else experiences this in their games, or if there are tried and true methods to keep them on track. That's all for today. My musings are grim and faltering.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Subrace and Subculture
Birthright does something interesting with humans. It divides them up into cultural groups and gives them bonuses as though they were separate races. The bonus modifiers for the Cerilians are the following:
Anuirean, +1 Wis, -1 Dex
Brechtian, +1 Dex, -1 Wis
Khinasi, +1 Int, -1 Con
Rjurik, +1 Con, -1 Cha
Vos, +1 Str, -1 Int
On the one hand, I really like this. On the other, I have some reservations about it. These single point perks and flaws are meant (I'm sure) to represent the various inclinations, cultural leanings, values, and training amongst those populations. That's neat, because cultural norms SHOULD be reflected in the game.
And yet... cultural norms shouldn't, to my mind, be as decisive a factor as the blatantly inhuman nature of demihumans. That +1 Dex, -1 Wis is no different from the dwarven alteration from the PHB (though to be fair, in Cerilia, dwarves get a +2, Con, -2 Dex which sort of addresses the problem). I almost want to adopt the more dramatic adjustments from Birthright for my own demihumans (almost, but won't).
I really like cultures and subraces. I really like stat adjustments. I really like when they work together. I think Birthright, alone amongst the AD&D supplements, solves this issue in the best way (eg, exaggerating the inhuman qualities of demihumans). Things such as the Complete Book of Dwarves tend to blend the idea of distinct subraces and distinct cultures—in fact, the notion of non-cultural subraces is something that might not make sense, though that's a debate about genetics in a primarily fantasy setting which is a road we probably don't want to go down.
Anuirean, +1 Wis, -1 Dex
Brechtian, +1 Dex, -1 Wis
Khinasi, +1 Int, -1 Con
Rjurik, +1 Con, -1 Cha
Vos, +1 Str, -1 Int
On the one hand, I really like this. On the other, I have some reservations about it. These single point perks and flaws are meant (I'm sure) to represent the various inclinations, cultural leanings, values, and training amongst those populations. That's neat, because cultural norms SHOULD be reflected in the game.
And yet... cultural norms shouldn't, to my mind, be as decisive a factor as the blatantly inhuman nature of demihumans. That +1 Dex, -1 Wis is no different from the dwarven alteration from the PHB (though to be fair, in Cerilia, dwarves get a +2, Con, -2 Dex which sort of addresses the problem). I almost want to adopt the more dramatic adjustments from Birthright for my own demihumans (almost, but won't).
I really like cultures and subraces. I really like stat adjustments. I really like when they work together. I think Birthright, alone amongst the AD&D supplements, solves this issue in the best way (eg, exaggerating the inhuman qualities of demihumans). Things such as the Complete Book of Dwarves tend to blend the idea of distinct subraces and distinct cultures—in fact, the notion of non-cultural subraces is something that might not make sense, though that's a debate about genetics in a primarily fantasy setting which is a road we probably don't want to go down.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
The Ubiquitous Tavern
Everyone needs to relax from time to time. Adventurers probably need this more than anyone. Professional adventurers, that is a certain type of very specific mercenary who completes single jobs in small groups without generally engaging in large scale warfare (generally confined to the fantastic worlds of D&D and other such games where adventurers are the classical Other), spend a huge amount of down time drinking, eating, and resting. Like war, adventuring is essentially long periods of boredom punctuated by intense excitement.
In the earliest days of the hobby the tavern was also the de-facto place you could find someone looking for work, specifically adventuring work. What is the truth of this in history? Well, taverns (public houses before a certain time period), classically served as cultural and recreational centers. Generally, each evening in a village or town one person's house would become the "public house" and they would sell their own ale and this is where people would spend the fading hours of their nights before going to sleep and working from sunup to sundown the following day. The tavern continued this tradition while also serving as a stop-over place and eventually giving birth to places like Coaching Houses (which is what the traditional old school road-tavern-inn resembles more than anything).
My players constantly ask me where and how they can hire up hirelings and it only occurs to me now that I have a simple answer for them that doesn't rely on them sending heralds throughout the cities. Not that this isn't a good solution, and one that I heartily endorse. However, another answer might be: scope out the cities' taverns. The dissolute, in need of money, unpleasant, and dangerous hang out in taverns just as do all other members of the non-noble social strata. While I am really not in any position right now to do serious tavern research, I'm going to go out on a very tenuous historical limb and say that they are, in the 10th Age at least, equivalent to the classical Agora (confusing perhaps, since Milean cities and some cities in the East retain that open public sphere so taverns AND the Public Spaces can serve as cultural meeting points).
If there is a natural habitat for adventurers (outside of the ruin, the dungeon, and the goblin cave) it must assuredly be the tavern. They have no real place in civic public space outside of the Milean law courts. They belong to the dark interior of the burgeoning service industry or to the dangerous wild roads. The inn is an urban campfire around which adventurers may gather.
In the earliest days of the hobby the tavern was also the de-facto place you could find someone looking for work, specifically adventuring work. What is the truth of this in history? Well, taverns (public houses before a certain time period), classically served as cultural and recreational centers. Generally, each evening in a village or town one person's house would become the "public house" and they would sell their own ale and this is where people would spend the fading hours of their nights before going to sleep and working from sunup to sundown the following day. The tavern continued this tradition while also serving as a stop-over place and eventually giving birth to places like Coaching Houses (which is what the traditional old school road-tavern-inn resembles more than anything).
My players constantly ask me where and how they can hire up hirelings and it only occurs to me now that I have a simple answer for them that doesn't rely on them sending heralds throughout the cities. Not that this isn't a good solution, and one that I heartily endorse. However, another answer might be: scope out the cities' taverns. The dissolute, in need of money, unpleasant, and dangerous hang out in taverns just as do all other members of the non-noble social strata. While I am really not in any position right now to do serious tavern research, I'm going to go out on a very tenuous historical limb and say that they are, in the 10th Age at least, equivalent to the classical Agora (confusing perhaps, since Milean cities and some cities in the East retain that open public sphere so taverns AND the Public Spaces can serve as cultural meeting points).
If there is a natural habitat for adventurers (outside of the ruin, the dungeon, and the goblin cave) it must assuredly be the tavern. They have no real place in civic public space outside of the Milean law courts. They belong to the dark interior of the burgeoning service industry or to the dangerous wild roads. The inn is an urban campfire around which adventurers may gather.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
The Metaphysical Weight of History and Memory
This is a sort of companion post to the Life of the City. Unlike that post, this one is focused on the role of memory and history in the conception of the city.
Geographic locations act as memorial cues and assist in building civic memory. Networks of memory attach to loci, forming complex layers of inter-connected meaning. For example: the Roman empire erected civic memorials throughout their urban centers; the physical accretion of these memorials describe maps (the main procession route through which triumphs and other political processions would proceed) in their cities. Arches of triumph and the great pillars (such as Trajan's Column) are the most well known of these memorial accretions. An Arch of Triumph, for example, serves as a cue to remind the citizens of several things at once. The power of the empire is proven by the imperial ability to organize labor and material, reiterated by the triumphal military engagement memorialized on the arch. The soldiers depicted there are generic any-soldiers. Many fathers, husbands, and brothers served in the imperial military machine; seeing these generic soldiers was a way of allowing the memorial to function across all members of Roman society and to join the citizenry together as a sort of single body.
These powerful networks of meanings were intensely important to the ancient world. They were plied by the Greeks and the Romans, the Egyptians and Persians, the Sumerians and all the ancient peoples. They are still applied today: Mary Carruther's great example of the Lincoln Memorial which has become filled with meaning beyond Lincoln as it has survived in collective and architectural memory of Washington DC. It signifies Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, Equality, and has the marches of time written upon it, perhaps most significantly the "I Have a Dream" speech of Martin Luther King.
As civil spaces acquire these sorts of connections and networks they become further integrated into the life of the city every single square, location, and façade is entered into an endlessly complicated conversation about the history of the locale. When designing cities, these types of stories are important to note. The steps of a temple aren't just "those steps over there." They were created for a specific, often rhetorical, purpose. Those steps are were countless zealots have assembled, the same place where public orations where given and perhaps where traitors where hanged. While PCs and readers can't necessarily be aware of these distinctions (at least not all at once) those who truly inhabit the city earn their spiritual citizenship by being aware of these sometimes conflicting but always overlayed histories and meanings.
In any culture that relies heavily on public ceremony to form memory, and on memory to form collective culture, the steps in constructing civic memorials are probably well-attested and understood. For example, no ancient culture would simply demolish something they wanted the citizenry to forget (or if they did, their strategy would not be complete) because instead of being forgotten it would be remembered as both complete and constructed AND destroyed. The ruin of the building would be a memorial cue that reminded the viewer of the building as it once stood. Instead, semantic networks are changed and overwritten, new buildings can be raised on the foundations of the old, one temple may be consecrated into the religion of another, etc. Semantic change is far more important a tool than the pick or the axe.
Geographic locations act as memorial cues and assist in building civic memory. Networks of memory attach to loci, forming complex layers of inter-connected meaning. For example: the Roman empire erected civic memorials throughout their urban centers; the physical accretion of these memorials describe maps (the main procession route through which triumphs and other political processions would proceed) in their cities. Arches of triumph and the great pillars (such as Trajan's Column) are the most well known of these memorial accretions. An Arch of Triumph, for example, serves as a cue to remind the citizens of several things at once. The power of the empire is proven by the imperial ability to organize labor and material, reiterated by the triumphal military engagement memorialized on the arch. The soldiers depicted there are generic any-soldiers. Many fathers, husbands, and brothers served in the imperial military machine; seeing these generic soldiers was a way of allowing the memorial to function across all members of Roman society and to join the citizenry together as a sort of single body.
These powerful networks of meanings were intensely important to the ancient world. They were plied by the Greeks and the Romans, the Egyptians and Persians, the Sumerians and all the ancient peoples. They are still applied today: Mary Carruther's great example of the Lincoln Memorial which has become filled with meaning beyond Lincoln as it has survived in collective and architectural memory of Washington DC. It signifies Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, Equality, and has the marches of time written upon it, perhaps most significantly the "I Have a Dream" speech of Martin Luther King.
As civil spaces acquire these sorts of connections and networks they become further integrated into the life of the city every single square, location, and façade is entered into an endlessly complicated conversation about the history of the locale. When designing cities, these types of stories are important to note. The steps of a temple aren't just "those steps over there." They were created for a specific, often rhetorical, purpose. Those steps are were countless zealots have assembled, the same place where public orations where given and perhaps where traitors where hanged. While PCs and readers can't necessarily be aware of these distinctions (at least not all at once) those who truly inhabit the city earn their spiritual citizenship by being aware of these sometimes conflicting but always overlayed histories and meanings.
In any culture that relies heavily on public ceremony to form memory, and on memory to form collective culture, the steps in constructing civic memorials are probably well-attested and understood. For example, no ancient culture would simply demolish something they wanted the citizenry to forget (or if they did, their strategy would not be complete) because instead of being forgotten it would be remembered as both complete and constructed AND destroyed. The ruin of the building would be a memorial cue that reminded the viewer of the building as it once stood. Instead, semantic networks are changed and overwritten, new buildings can be raised on the foundations of the old, one temple may be consecrated into the religion of another, etc. Semantic change is far more important a tool than the pick or the axe.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Another Mongtrav AD&D Chargen
This is the germ of an idea that I'm working on. I figured I might as well share it as I think about it. Playing Feudal Anarchy and Mongtrav recently has convinced me that I still really like the idea of an AD&D character generation method that is in line with the mini-game feel of Mongtrav generation.
This is not complete, sensible, or well thought out yet. But I've been staring at it for a week and I don't have any ideas on how to proceed yet.
Race
01-70 Human (start with a 3 in every stat)
71-80 Dwarf (start with 8/3/11/3/3/3)
81-90 Elf (start with 3/6/7/8/3/8)
91-93 Half-elf (3/6/6/4/3/3)
94-95 Halfling (7/7/10/6/3/3)
96-00 Gnome (6/3/8/6/3/3)
Human Upbringing
01-60 Rural
61-80 Urban
81-00 Noble
Human Rural Upbringings
01-70 Farmer, gain +1d4 str, +1d4 con, +1 dex
71-80 Rural craftsman, gain +1 str, +1 con, +1d4 dex, +1d4 int
81-90 Cotter or laborer, gain +1d6 str, +1d4 con, +1d4 dex
91-95 Rural cleric, gain +1d6 wis, +1d4 int
96-98 Innkeep, gain +1d4 wis, +1d6 dex, +1 int
99-00 Wizard's Apprentice (skip to wizard chart), gain +1d4+2 int
Wizard's Apprentice (Master Disposition)
01-30 Kindly, gain +1d4 to all stats
31-50 Cruel, gain +1d6+2 to str, +1d4 con
51-60 Detached, gain +1d4 int, +1d4 wis
61-70 Insane, gain +2 int, +1d6 wis, +1d6 con
71-80 Sagely, gain +1d6 int, +1d6 wis, and either a Sage proficiency or another +2 int
81-90 Elf (roll on the elf master chart)
91-00 Doddering, gain +1 to all abilities, +1d4 int, +1d6 wis
This is not complete, sensible, or well thought out yet. But I've been staring at it for a week and I don't have any ideas on how to proceed yet.
Race
01-70 Human (start with a 3 in every stat)
71-80 Dwarf (start with 8/3/11/3/3/3)
81-90 Elf (start with 3/6/7/8/3/8)
91-93 Half-elf (3/6/6/4/3/3)
94-95 Halfling (7/7/10/6/3/3)
96-00 Gnome (6/3/8/6/3/3)
Human Upbringing
01-60 Rural
61-80 Urban
81-00 Noble
Human Rural Upbringings
01-70 Farmer, gain +1d4 str, +1d4 con, +1 dex
71-80 Rural craftsman, gain +1 str, +1 con, +1d4 dex, +1d4 int
81-90 Cotter or laborer, gain +1d6 str, +1d4 con, +1d4 dex
91-95 Rural cleric, gain +1d6 wis, +1d4 int
96-98 Innkeep, gain +1d4 wis, +1d6 dex, +1 int
99-00 Wizard's Apprentice (skip to wizard chart), gain +1d4+2 int
Wizard's Apprentice (Master Disposition)
01-30 Kindly, gain +1d4 to all stats
31-50 Cruel, gain +1d6+2 to str, +1d4 con
51-60 Detached, gain +1d4 int, +1d4 wis
61-70 Insane, gain +2 int, +1d6 wis, +1d6 con
71-80 Sagely, gain +1d6 int, +1d6 wis, and either a Sage proficiency or another +2 int
81-90 Elf (roll on the elf master chart)
91-00 Doddering, gain +1 to all abilities, +1d4 int, +1d6 wis
Friday, October 18, 2013
Progress on the 10th Age
I must admit that I've not made much headway with the setting as of late. That doesn't mean that no more is coming... far from it. Sometimes, though, I need some time away from it so I can return with fresh eyes and a renewed passion. The Lamp Country setting supplement isn't anywhere near done and I need to return to it.
However, a number of things have been conspiring to keep me from working on the 10th Age. Firstly, Keir's player Frank was in Hungary for two weeks which meant that Hounds games were postponed until he returned. Secondly, the natural cycle of my manic work has reached an ebb in the 10th Age currently. Thirdly, some friends and I decided to start a theatre company to highlight our own writing and then I wrote a play. We're called "Grandma Doesn't Like It" and we're based out of Wallingford, CT. We have our first staged reading on November 10th, so that takes up a lot of time. Fourthly, I've been writing a lot. With the acceptance of two of my short stories into the Librum Mysterium of Pulp Mill Press I've decided that maybe there really is an audience for what I'm writing. I've gone on a sort of miniature spree, producing a number of sub-par short stories and a few (I think) prett-ay prett-ay prett-ay good ones.
Sixthly, it's October. That's fall, which is the season for two things: the return of Myth: Soulblighter (every year we get back into it) and the return of Call of Cthulhu. I'm really excited about CoC because for the first time in like 10 years I don't intend to run it as a one-shot but rather as a full campaign which means I don't have to make a module that will fit in the course of a single night. I was always rather bad at that anyway, it invariably ran from about 4pm to 4am which was just way too fackin' long as it were.
So, that's what's on the horizon. There will be some new 10th Age news soon, I promise, but not very soon.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Play Report: Be Prepared
I harp on this a lot. I know it's the thing that I tend to talk about most. But I keep seeing signs of it in play, and I refuse to let a good opportunity for proselytizing go by unused. That is: the game with the most deadly challenges should be the one in which preparedness is the secret to success. Whether that preparedness is a good escape plan or a good attack plan or just a wealth of information so you can formulate the best ideas, the necessity of acquiring information is key. My players are becoming better and better at doing this.
The Hounds had decided to make an exploratory mission into the dangerous Troll Crags to the west of Tyrma along the Tyrman Peninsula. The Crags have swallowed innumerable ships in the history of Silversong and yet another recently went down there: the Iron Arrow, owned by the Free Captain Tuigalen, which was carrying some kind of ancient staff that he was very interested in. This particular Free Captain was willing to let the rest of his ship's cargo go to any party who recovered the staff and pay on top of that a five hundred sun premium for the return of said staff.
Additionally, Keir son of Erlend had spoken in detail with the exiled Master Smith Galdri Harnmr son of Egil, who had promised to fashion him magical weapons in the style of the ancient dwarvish art. He tasked Keir with retrieving certain specific items to allow him to craft these weapons. The first, drake's blood, was gained in great volume when the Hounds wiped out the pesky sea-drakes encamped near the lands of another Free Captain. The next was a fragment of troll bone. Seeing a chance to do two jobs at once, Keir convinced the company to take their clay pots of air-ignited drake's blood to go into the Crags and look for the staff.
The party did the wise thing: they hired a shitload of help. In addition to buying two wagonloads of tar and mules to carry it, they hired six drovers, a wizard's apprentice, a troll-hunting ranger, and a gnomish thief. Upon entering the Crags after wading through salt marshes and reedy hill-lands along the coast, the ranger Loronia went to work. This is where the information gathering began: because they had no natural scout of their own, they used Loronia to gain knowledge about what was ahead. Additionally, she acted as a sort of minor sage: having fought trolls before in the Low Marsh she could impart a number of insights about their behavior, the general size of troll nests, and how they regenerate (sea trolls requiring the moisture of the ocean, for example).
Her scouting turned up a pair of idiotic trolls waiting to ambush the party and she warned them in time. Instead, the party waited them out until they (the trolls) could wait no longer and rushed them, gibbering. They were easy work: a fireball from Naur ate through most of their hp before they clashed with the front line and were dispatched before they could do much damage. Loronia commanded them to burn the trolls at once (they were "still wet" and beginning to regenerate).
As they advanced into the Crags towards the sea, Loronia warned them of the spoor of a nest ahead. They paused: she reported that between five and ten trolls would be laired there. Myndil the Merry, the Heimiran monk, used the time to chat with his bird-friend Havuca (a goshawk enchanted by Animal Friendship with the use of a Speak with Animals) and sent him off to survey the situation. They learned of a "sea-house" which they figured was the Iron Arrow, mired in the shallows and filled with large eels capable of devouring a man. They also learned of "one, one, one" cave entrance and the various sizes and dispositions of these three "one" caverns.
This is where the game stopped, but I think anyone can look at this situation and realize that the party (average level 3 with some outliers—a few level 2s and 1s, a level 5, etc.) would have been easily torn apart if they had blindly wandered into the Crags and just stumbled into whatever groups of trolls there were around there. Instead, by playing carefully and making use of their resources to gather information, they have already had one successful engagement. They may now decide that the troll nest is too tough for them (a legitimate call) or they can use their still-unexpended tar and whatever other tricks they can muster, to defeat the trolls, recover the staff, and take whatever goods are on the Iron Arrow.
All of this was made possible by the combination of two clever plays that seem to be at a decline (or utterly missing) from non-OSR play. Namely: the acquisition of hirelings to supplement the party's base skills and the acquisition of information with which to make intelligent decisions. Flying by the seat of your pants can only get you so far, especially when you're likely to encounter such horrors as trolls.
The Hounds had decided to make an exploratory mission into the dangerous Troll Crags to the west of Tyrma along the Tyrman Peninsula. The Crags have swallowed innumerable ships in the history of Silversong and yet another recently went down there: the Iron Arrow, owned by the Free Captain Tuigalen, which was carrying some kind of ancient staff that he was very interested in. This particular Free Captain was willing to let the rest of his ship's cargo go to any party who recovered the staff and pay on top of that a five hundred sun premium for the return of said staff.
Additionally, Keir son of Erlend had spoken in detail with the exiled Master Smith Galdri Harnmr son of Egil, who had promised to fashion him magical weapons in the style of the ancient dwarvish art. He tasked Keir with retrieving certain specific items to allow him to craft these weapons. The first, drake's blood, was gained in great volume when the Hounds wiped out the pesky sea-drakes encamped near the lands of another Free Captain. The next was a fragment of troll bone. Seeing a chance to do two jobs at once, Keir convinced the company to take their clay pots of air-ignited drake's blood to go into the Crags and look for the staff.
The party did the wise thing: they hired a shitload of help. In addition to buying two wagonloads of tar and mules to carry it, they hired six drovers, a wizard's apprentice, a troll-hunting ranger, and a gnomish thief. Upon entering the Crags after wading through salt marshes and reedy hill-lands along the coast, the ranger Loronia went to work. This is where the information gathering began: because they had no natural scout of their own, they used Loronia to gain knowledge about what was ahead. Additionally, she acted as a sort of minor sage: having fought trolls before in the Low Marsh she could impart a number of insights about their behavior, the general size of troll nests, and how they regenerate (sea trolls requiring the moisture of the ocean, for example).
Her scouting turned up a pair of idiotic trolls waiting to ambush the party and she warned them in time. Instead, the party waited them out until they (the trolls) could wait no longer and rushed them, gibbering. They were easy work: a fireball from Naur ate through most of their hp before they clashed with the front line and were dispatched before they could do much damage. Loronia commanded them to burn the trolls at once (they were "still wet" and beginning to regenerate).
As they advanced into the Crags towards the sea, Loronia warned them of the spoor of a nest ahead. They paused: she reported that between five and ten trolls would be laired there. Myndil the Merry, the Heimiran monk, used the time to chat with his bird-friend Havuca (a goshawk enchanted by Animal Friendship with the use of a Speak with Animals) and sent him off to survey the situation. They learned of a "sea-house" which they figured was the Iron Arrow, mired in the shallows and filled with large eels capable of devouring a man. They also learned of "one, one, one" cave entrance and the various sizes and dispositions of these three "one" caverns.
This is where the game stopped, but I think anyone can look at this situation and realize that the party (average level 3 with some outliers—a few level 2s and 1s, a level 5, etc.) would have been easily torn apart if they had blindly wandered into the Crags and just stumbled into whatever groups of trolls there were around there. Instead, by playing carefully and making use of their resources to gather information, they have already had one successful engagement. They may now decide that the troll nest is too tough for them (a legitimate call) or they can use their still-unexpended tar and whatever other tricks they can muster, to defeat the trolls, recover the staff, and take whatever goods are on the Iron Arrow.
All of this was made possible by the combination of two clever plays that seem to be at a decline (or utterly missing) from non-OSR play. Namely: the acquisition of hirelings to supplement the party's base skills and the acquisition of information with which to make intelligent decisions. Flying by the seat of your pants can only get you so far, especially when you're likely to encounter such horrors as trolls.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Druids and Elves and True Neutral OH MY
True Neutral: the hardest of the alignments to play, the most misunderstood alignment (barring the fact that most people misunderstand AD&D alignments entirely), and the most important alignment for 10th Age elves and all AD&D druids.
There are two competing strands of elvishness in popular culture, the 10th Age, and fantasy. These are the sylvan elves of myth and legend and the civilized elves of D&D and most of Tolkien. Hell, they're even divided in Tolkien between the Noldor and the Avari (those who heeded the call to Valinor and those who did not). This reflects an inherent tension in the bifurcation that has naturally occurred in myth and legend.
In the 10th Age, this is reflected by the division between the civilized elves (called the Wind Elves) and the sylvan elves (the Wood Elves) who are themselves (surprise!) divided based on the original groups of elves who accepted the assistance of men and the teaching of magic and tower-building and those who did not. The two populations have crossed over throughout history; historically, many Wind Elves gave up "civilized life" and joined or created new Wood Elven tribes after great catastrophes and most famously after the devastation of the Red Plague that ended the 9th Age.
The Wood Elves live amongst the forests and do not build towers or walls; they encourage the growth of hedges and trees, live in their boles or boughs, and often live in caves. Their society is organized around a true neutral principal of balance and they are seen as preservers of the balance. Elves have two divine "parents" in Anunia (the Wind Lord) and Tulia (the Spring Maiden) even though they were physically created by Anunia himself as a gift to Tulia. The Wind Elves favor their father, it is said, while the Wood Elves favor their mother.
What does this devotion to true neutral mean? It means that they have a cultural commitment to druidism (a true neutral religion which worships Senia the Moon Maiden and Aloran the Watcher as well as Tulia) and they believe in the balance. I meandered around for a while before I remembered what the point of this post is and here it is: druids and wood elves and those who believe in the balance are NOT HIPPIES.
Certainly, nature is sacred to the Wood Elves. But they don't believe that nature must conquer mankind or even that it must be respected. They believe that there is a natural balance between man and the forest, between the races of the world. They believe in preserving the natural balance—and goblins, men, and dwarves are all part of that balance. They aren't radical tree-huggers (even though they hang out a lot with ents and Forest Giants). SO THERE.
There are two competing strands of elvishness in popular culture, the 10th Age, and fantasy. These are the sylvan elves of myth and legend and the civilized elves of D&D and most of Tolkien. Hell, they're even divided in Tolkien between the Noldor and the Avari (those who heeded the call to Valinor and those who did not). This reflects an inherent tension in the bifurcation that has naturally occurred in myth and legend.
In the 10th Age, this is reflected by the division between the civilized elves (called the Wind Elves) and the sylvan elves (the Wood Elves) who are themselves (surprise!) divided based on the original groups of elves who accepted the assistance of men and the teaching of magic and tower-building and those who did not. The two populations have crossed over throughout history; historically, many Wind Elves gave up "civilized life" and joined or created new Wood Elven tribes after great catastrophes and most famously after the devastation of the Red Plague that ended the 9th Age.
The Wood Elves live amongst the forests and do not build towers or walls; they encourage the growth of hedges and trees, live in their boles or boughs, and often live in caves. Their society is organized around a true neutral principal of balance and they are seen as preservers of the balance. Elves have two divine "parents" in Anunia (the Wind Lord) and Tulia (the Spring Maiden) even though they were physically created by Anunia himself as a gift to Tulia. The Wind Elves favor their father, it is said, while the Wood Elves favor their mother.
What does this devotion to true neutral mean? It means that they have a cultural commitment to druidism (a true neutral religion which worships Senia the Moon Maiden and Aloran the Watcher as well as Tulia) and they believe in the balance. I meandered around for a while before I remembered what the point of this post is and here it is: druids and wood elves and those who believe in the balance are NOT HIPPIES.
Certainly, nature is sacred to the Wood Elves. But they don't believe that nature must conquer mankind or even that it must be respected. They believe that there is a natural balance between man and the forest, between the races of the world. They believe in preserving the natural balance—and goblins, men, and dwarves are all part of that balance. They aren't radical tree-huggers (even though they hang out a lot with ents and Forest Giants). SO THERE.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Magica Conflictus
There is a conflict inherent in the "balanced" (more or less, in one or another form of the word) magic systems of roleplaying games and the way magic has been treated throughout the history of the European occult and cabalistic practices. The learning of spells and magic is, of course, abstracted in Dungeons and Dragons—understanding magic is linked to the level of the magic user. While many aspects of the game are reliant on player knowledge and player ability (particularly as it pertains to the OSR community), magic is one thing that must necessarily be abstracted. But there are certain things that we choose not to abstract. For example: the activation words for magical items I usually force my players to type out or say in our games.
This type of "player knowledge" magic is most successfully represented in Call of Cthulhu because that mythos magic is based on (at least in form and format) the occult practices of history. Performing a wizard's spell in D&D is a mental and intellectual act; the concatenation of mental construct and expressed notions (eg, the "memory-form" and then the "components"). Performing magic according to real historical traditions (which really only begin around the Enlightenment in non-cabalistic circles) is something anyone with the implements and the book can do. I haven't examined cabalistic magic in great detail, so it is possible that there are "memory-form" elements in Kabbala. There are not (as far as I know) in the derivative Sepharitic and Crawliest magics.
This means that if you have the book, can speak the names, and can draw the signs you can perform magic. That's more or less how it works in CoC—keep the formula and be able to perform the spell. I don't know how this can be applied to make better D&D... it's just something that I've thought about.
This type of "player knowledge" magic is most successfully represented in Call of Cthulhu because that mythos magic is based on (at least in form and format) the occult practices of history. Performing a wizard's spell in D&D is a mental and intellectual act; the concatenation of mental construct and expressed notions (eg, the "memory-form" and then the "components"). Performing magic according to real historical traditions (which really only begin around the Enlightenment in non-cabalistic circles) is something anyone with the implements and the book can do. I haven't examined cabalistic magic in great detail, so it is possible that there are "memory-form" elements in Kabbala. There are not (as far as I know) in the derivative Sepharitic and Crawliest magics.
This means that if you have the book, can speak the names, and can draw the signs you can perform magic. That's more or less how it works in CoC—keep the formula and be able to perform the spell. I don't know how this can be applied to make better D&D... it's just something that I've thought about.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Memne Theo
Memne theo is a Greek phrase that was the core of a lot of Byzantine monastic thought for a while. It means literally, the "memory of God." However (at least according to my source, Mary J Carruthers --not speaking a lick of Greek myself, I'm not in any place to argue with her) memne means much more than memory as we know it in this case. It is a sort of semi-religious experience, the deep knowledge of something.
I've been thinking about how to adapt memne theo into something that can be used in the 10th Age. My current notion is that those priests who have a divine connection and can make use of sacred magic (a small minority of all priests) are accessing something similar to the monastic idea of memne theo. Thus, the actual term for preparing priestly magic can be something like "divine memory," or the "memory of the gods."
I've been thinking about how to adapt memne theo into something that can be used in the 10th Age. My current notion is that those priests who have a divine connection and can make use of sacred magic (a small minority of all priests) are accessing something similar to the monastic idea of memne theo. Thus, the actual term for preparing priestly magic can be something like "divine memory," or the "memory of the gods."
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
The Front Gate
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Here's the skinny: fresh from a random encounter with a wyvern (which they survived by sheer luck), this level 2-3 party retreat to a nearby hill to surveil the Cold Hill Warriors—the real reason they were in area to begin with. The Cold Hill Goblins are a successful raiding tribe of hobgoblins leading a great number of lesser goblin folk in soldierly order.
They've done a great deal of damage to the regions around their stronghold, having sponsored a human bandit camp (which the Blades wiped out a while back) as well as conquering smaller goblin and hobgoblin tribes to bring them under a single federated rulership.
The Blades discovered the goblin camp amongst the northern fringes of the Cold Hills: partly positioned atop the spire of stone (all the hills in the region are large spire-like formations of rust red slate and red soil, Haldera is mostly high desert) the tents were immediately struck after the wyvern attack. Exploring the hill in the wake of this, the Blades discovered a cave with a tunnel hewn in the back leading beneath the hill—thus began their assault on one of the main two gates of the Cold Hills Goblins.
It did not go well. At first things were smooth: a large portion of a patrol was slept and the rest quickly slaughtered. However, the noise brought more goblins and hobgoblins up from the deeps. Unlike the normally disunited fighting of kobolds, orcs, or goblins alone, they were organized and well drilled. The Blades repulsed the first attack with a grease spell and some swordwork, barring the way... until the hobgoblins burst through and began to force entry into the room.
This resulted in a route which would have become a slaughter had the wizard Freydun not turned around to torch the leading two hobgoblins with a burning hands and force the rest to hang back while the party made good its escape.
What's the moral of this story? That goblins can hear, and when they hear fighting they respond. That well organized enemies are much more dangerous than loosely organized enemies (if the hobgoblins hadn't been clever and defensively emerged from the tunnel into the forechamber and instead had been bottled up, or hadn't used ranks of deep spears to make the most of their attacks, the PCs would have been able to make a brutal slaughter of the 12-strong unit that, in this case, actually drove them out of the hill) and that plans are better than fly-by-night attacks.
Of course, now that the Blades know some things about the hill they'll likely not return through the Front Gate... and may in fact come back with extra sword-arms, extra firepower, or extra levels. They learned a valuable lesson today: a lesson in caution.
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