Clerical Issues

Real quick: JB over at B/X Blackrazor has been talking a bit about clerics. Mainly its about how they really don't work given the source material that D&D draws on, and how the game might work better if they were removed. Delta figured this out way back in 2008. And his reasoning was my main inspiration for banning the cleric in my own OD&D house rules.

Its odd that we both were thinking about cleric banning at the same time. I was revisiting my decision to answer the question of "what 5 things would you change in D&D if you could only change 5?" I have said before that we live close enough to each other that we are drinking the same water.

The really interesting thing here is that JB is coming very close to the same line of conclusions as Delta but I am pretty sure he is completely unaware of Delta's work and reasoning. Maybe not. But including this blogger, that makes three guys in the OSR that have outright removed clerics from the game. Which makes me think we are on to something here. Both these guys make the points for me so I won't put them up here. Check out the posts linked above and draw your own conclusion. For me, I think the Thief has more right to be in the game than the Cleric. So I think we should kill the cleric. And take his stuff. Delta chose to just nix the cleric spells all together. I chose to give them to the magic-user since he was now going to be pulling insane priest duty for the foreseeable future.

What I realized reading JB and rereading Delta was that my solution for what to do with turning made sense but was inelegant. I gave everyone the ability to turn. It made sense, if you thought about it. Turning is based on vampire lore and more specifically Van Helsing's use of a cross in Dracula. Note however that Van Helsing is not a priest. He is not ordained. He has a sum total of 0 supernatural power. So in my book that means that everyone can turn. The mistake I made was that I gave everyone access to the chart. What a mess.

First off the turning mechanic is really clunky and a little fiddly to apply. This obviously varies with edition, but you catch my drift. Secondly applying it to everyone made it even more clunky in that you had to figure out how to determine at what power level the characters turned undead. Work. Work. Work.

Here it is: If you must be rid of that meddlesome priest, make vampires superstitious.

Holy symbols of any faith keep Vampires (and only Vampires) at bay. Anyone can hold up (or wear while facing) any symbol of a god and the vampire won't touch them. However the symbols are directional. So while Count Dracula in front of you is held at bay his minion vampire behind you is not.

This way you get the ability exhibited in the source material but you don't have to worry about clunky mechanics. What about the other undead? There is no pre-D&D precedent of priests holding other undead at bay, and undead are meant to be feared. Turning is really powerful and thus it is like healing: it is something a party can't go without if it is available in the game. Take out turning and the fear of undead returns.

A Book of Wands

Recently there has been some talk about wands.

Timrod over at Unfrozen Caveman Die-Chucker fired the first salvo sometime going into the holiday season with Degrading Wands. Its a good idea that follows one of my game simplification axioms (reduce book keeping) to go against one of my others (reduce die rolling). The comments are good as Brendan and 1d30 offer up some cool alternatives that work if you are alright with adding more rolls to your game.

Speaking of Brendan the keeper of Untimately- He entered the mix with his post entitled Basic Wands just a bit ago. His post is full of pretty cool ideas. Initially I didn't think I would go with the elemental thing- then he cites a darn good post by Delta, but the target rolls a save to avoid 1d6 damage is complete gold. It gives MU's some kick in a fight. Somewhere the complexity gets out of hand but that's okay as you can pick and choose what you like here.

Next up was the first "unification post" by C over at Hack & Slash. Lots of good ideas there. Some decent stuff in the comments. The fact that he missed Timrod's post is pretty much the reason this post exists.

Now class, turn in your copy of Playing at the World to pages 198 and 199 for a description of the source material for wands and staffs from sources in Appendix N. The most interesting thing here is how Sword and Sorcery literature in specific and Fantasy literature in general does not really distinguish between a wand and a staff. They are simply sticks; with sticks being a requirement for working any magic.

This is something I would use as part of the argument that magic items should not be classed by form, but rather by function (a.k.a. the hat/cloak of invisibility problem from 3e). That is a history and argument for another time. 

Since ideas are free here are some more ideas about wands from our labs here in the steam tunnels:

• Wands permit a MU to cast the last spell cast using the wand indefinitely.
• Wands permit the magic user to cast any spell memorized without burning a slot.
• Wands associated with a spell (like a wand of fireballs) can be used by any magic user that has learned that spell, and the magic user does not have to have memorized the spell.

A Sudden and Unexpected Endgame

Recently I have been reading The Hobbit.  The situation of this reading is causing me to look at each sentence, and what is really said.  I am constantly amazed at how much I forget and how much I miss.  It is a dense book.

What occurred to me is how a large hoard like the one Smaug sits on is seriously a game changer.  Most referees would rule that even after you discover one; or kill or remove the guardian of a hoard you have to get it back to home base before you collect the experience.  Now, what happens if you turn the dungeon that you are in into home base? This is pretty much what happens with the lonely mountain.  Thorin and Company don't have to transport the treasure anywhere once the battle of the five armies is over, and given the description of Thorin and the other dwarves as they join that battle, it seems like they have leveled up a bit as their eyes are glowing red!  

The thought here is that it no matter what the circumstance, the endgame can show up quite suddenly as dice are involved and players are clever.  Wise use of a hoard might be what allows a party to truly convert a dungeon into a legitimate home base.  Interestingly a megadungeon that can never be settled helps to prevent this.  And while something is statistically unlikely, it does not mean that it can't happen ever, or that it can't happen many times in a row.  A party could get lucky for example and find a +3 Sword in their possession after a lucky lucky victory.  How you handle that may determine what kind of DM you are.

I'll Swallow Your Soul!

Charisma has a lot to offer. While it often comes up as a person's charm or personality I think it should be more than the limitation on the meat-shield purchase plan. Charisma can also work well as a measure of your soul. Think about really charismatic musicians- they share a part of themselves in their art. Performers and speakers often are said to tap into their soul to convey their pain or idea. What is it that so inspires people to follow a particular leader? Why not have charisma measure how big that soul is? Getting more resistance against level draining monsters certainly will kick it out of the dump stat category.

Charisma indicates the maximum level for a character in any class. Monster powers that drain levels no longer drain levels- they drain Charisma. Charisma is now also a measure of your soul. When you run out of Charisma you die. Ignore Charisma damage when dealing with hirelings, followers and henchmen.

Addendum: I have just looked at the monsters that do level drain. Seems in LL and S&W level drain is the standard undead big bad power. Vampires drink blood and I would tie blood to Constitution rather than levels. Perhaps they also have a level drain? I would be hesitant to give them both. I am fond of stat damage as a measure of capacity for damage, but not a fan of recalculating things as the stats drop, hence the last line of the above rule. I should probably make my next post a treatise on how stat damage can be your friend.

Addendum addendum: Thinking about it I would remove the vampire's level drain and replace it with the ability to drain blood on an incapacitated or charmed or willing target, and say they can drain their attack damage points of Con per turn. This fits with the Dracula image better. As for the shadows I would say they drain life force so rather than Str, Dex, or Con I would have them drain just Con. If I did this I would not require a recalculation of hit points and abilities. And replacing level drain with Cha damage helps you avoid recalculating also.

Monkey Scribe

Monkey Scribe

Level: 1
Duration: Instant, until written work is completed
Range: Touch

It is known that monkey scribed scrolls are the most potent.* This spell allows a magic-user to use a monkey (specifically a non-human great ape) to scribe mundane and magical writings. For spell books, a monkey scribe will copy the spells from a spell book to another as if they were the magic-user themselves, freeing the magic user for other tasks. The monkey becomes capable of understanding and speaking to the caster (with the casters intelligence and 25% of the time the casters personality and memory) for the duration of the spell and will calmly and diligently pursue his duties until finished. For scribing scrolls the monkey counts as the caster by proxy. The caster must be able to make the scroll himself without the help of the monkey for the monkey to be able to scribe the scroll. Scribing the scroll in this way makes the scroll more powerful as they max out any variables and offer twice the volume, range, duration and area of the spell. A factor of the spell is not doubled if it is already maxed out (for example in the case of variable duration, the max duration is used, and is not doubled). Variant: A GM may decide that humans do count as great apes for this spell.

*This idea came from the comments over at this linked post over at Telecanter's Receding Rules.

As I submitted this to Raggi for his spell contest this sucker is OGL so feel free to read and distribute with credit due.

Yost the Boastmaster

Yost is the god of bravery, drinking, and boasting. Often refered to as the "Yost the Boastmaster" or simply "The Boastmaster", he typically appears as a human or very tall dwarf in a horned helmet with a very large scraggly beard. His principle weapon is a battle axe but he has been known to show up with a sword or hammer. He is revered by all Dwarves and most humans who live in the north, have beards, and prefer to travel by long ship.

He is fond of valor and bravery, and most fond of the "heroic stupid" variety. Yost has been known to give a blessing to those that survive in situations where their worst enemy is their own bad judgment, for he believes that only the strongest can really overcome such a handicap. He is fonder of such attempts if a boast is first made about how they will overcome such odds, and even fonder if it is made while drunk. However, Yost is a god of action. In fairness he only blesses after the deed is done, in a degree to which the boast and brave deed were completed. To maintain the blessing the reciever must regularly boast about the deed that gained him the blessing at least once a day while drinking something; this is generally done as a toast to ones self and need not be an alcoholic drink. In the same fairness, Yost only permits one blessing at a time. Yost has a hate for the undead and his interests revolve around the riddle of steel, drinking, boasting, the number 7, the number 13 and the letter T.

The Blessings of Yost (1d12)
Check for blessing: When foolhardy bravery appears in your game roll a 13 on a d20, then roll a 7 on a d12, then roll d12 on the chart below.

Small chance of survival: +1
Outnumbered by 7+: +1
Outnumbered by 13+: +2
Boast made as to means: +1
Boast made while drunk: +2
Deed done while drunk: +3

1. "I can't bless that crap you carry!" 100gp appear on the person as a free gift
2. "So little to work with! Behaps it'll save ya..." +1 to all saving throws
3. "Waerin armor like that who needs enemies?!" Primary armor is now +1 magical
4. "Perhaps you should stand back more?" Primary missile weapon becomes +1 to hit
5. "You looked a little winded back there!" +5 to max hit points as long as blessing maintained
6. "Bah! Good weapons could be better!" Primary weapon is now a magic weapon +1
7. "Only a bad carpenter blames his tools..." 200gp appear on the person as a free gift.
8. "Ya got the tiniest nimble fingers!" +1 to all ranged attacks, counts as a magic weapon, +1 to AC treat any armor worn as magical
9. "Heh! Maybe this will help ya try somthin bigger!" +10 to max hit points as long as blessing maintained.
10. "What is steel compared to the hand that wields it!" +1 to all attacks and damage, counts as magic weapon
11. "Not gods... not giants... just men!" Increase Constitution to next bonus tier
12+. "This you can trust!" Increase Strength to next bonus tier

Yost is known for two magic items that appear from time to time:

The Toast of Yost (Tankard of Bravery)
Once per day when filled with a liquid and drunk with a boast or a toast to bravery, this old dusty tankard bestows upon the drinker the blessing of Yost, the god of bravery, drinking and boasting. The entire tankard must be drained for the blessing to take effect. The blessing is variable depending on what is put in the tankard. Mixing liquids randomizes the effect. Liquids not listed below have no effect. The effects last for 5 minutes:

Mead: +10 hp
Cow's Blood(and roast drippings): +2 to hit and damage
Ale/Beer: +5 more hirelings can be hired for that day while in effect
Water: +2 to turning level and all turning rolls
Milk(of any kind): AC treated as better by one armor type, +2 to ranged attacks
Wine: Speak fluently one additional language, only this ability maintained by drunken state; All checks increase by 1 in 6 or 20%; Thief skills gain by 20%;

If one drink is shared between several drinkers (many can drink but a sip) over a turn (up to 13 persons) then the effect is +1 to attacks, damage and saves. It affects all those whom drank from the tankard with the effects lasting 5 minutes.

Weight 1lb

The Host of Yost (Bread of Bravery)
The host of Yost is a slice of aromatic bread toasted to a golden brown and wrapped in a white cloth. While in the cloth the bread continues to radiate heat no matter how old it is. When the slice of bread is unwrapped and eaten it grants the eater +2 to attacks and saves, immunity to fear effects, and 10 temporary hit points for 10 minutes. When 1 slice is shared the effect is the same as the Toast of Yost but for 10 minutes.

The Host of Yost is generally made by valkyries in their free time when they are on speaking terms with Yost and it is rarely made by mortals. On the rare occasions when this bread is found, it is found in very dangerous or very odd places. Should a mortal make the bread they must make an entire loaf of 13 slices, or rolls. Additionally the white linen wrappers must be washed in holy water or the magic in the bread will dissipate after 3 days.

The Hobbit 1937

Sometimes I think that if blogs in the OSR sphere were like rock bands GROGNARDIA would undoubtedly be the Led Zeppelin. It has staying power, and harkens back to older roots but presents them in a new way that is really approachable, and still rock and roll. If this is true then Jeff's Gameblog is the Jimi Hendrix of OSR blogs. This blog does things that other blogs would find difficult to pull off. Jeff plays with his tongue, pulls in weird riffs and techniques and influences no one thought of before, and then proceeds to light his gamebooks on fire. Other blogs take these ideas and run with them in a little tamer way, building out the lesser known band equivalents of blogdom. Perhaps I am the Whitesnake or Motorhead of OSR blogs, who knows.

Whats important is how I am ripping off Jeff today. Recently Jeff has been talking about the what if of Star Wars never having a sequel. What does the movie tell us about the star war world before it really got developed with contradictions and exposition in later movies. I want to ask a similar question of a just as influencial property: J.R.R. Tolkein's The Hobbit.

As an intellectual property goes Middle Earth has a lot of similarities with Star Wars. The initial product was ground breaking and really changed the game. Both have estates that are very defensive of their IP. And both have creators that retconed their work stating that it was all part of the original vision.

The Hobbit had a major revision that did not get published until 1951, almost fourteen years after it was originally published that changed the "Riddles in the Dark" chapter to better align the story with the oncomming Lord of the Rings. So... set the Wayback Machine for late 1937. The Hobbit or There and Back Again is the only Middle Earth story. That's our primary source for today's exercise. There arn't any secondary sources. Given this material, what do we know about Middle Earth back then that no longer holds true under present concepts of Middle Earth canon? What is as-yet (for '37) undefined? What can we extrapolate? Here are a few initial thoughts:

• Gandalf is just a wizard. Not an angel in disguise. Just a wizard. He has an enemy called the Necromancer who is also just a wizard. Anyone can be a wizard with enough practice. What about that Necromancer? He made the Greenwood into Mirkwood. That means that there is evil wizardry about.
• Gollum is an honorable creature, and not obsessed with loosing his ring in a game of riddles. He is not obsessed with a ring that can turn him invisible. Man, thats character. Guyges and I certainly don't have character like that.
• Elves are not always really nice. No Legolas means that the wood elves can be mean bastards. Elves make magic weapons.
  
• Orcs don't exist. Never heard of em. All we got here are goblins.

This awesome panorama comes from David T. Wenzel at http://www.davidwenzel.com/

Sufficiently Advanced...

Arthur C. Clarke penned what are called the three laws of prediction. While they are not somthing that is stated over and over in stories but rather over and over in conference rooms at science fiction/fantasy conventions you had to expect him to get his own three laws after Azimov came up with the three laws of robotics. While Azimov assured the fame of all three of his laws by making the second two dependant on the first Clarke's third law of prediction is a lot more famous than than the first or second:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This phrase has been a keystone in one of the major arches of the architechture of speculative fiction. In a way it is what anchors the science fiction to the fantasy. (Secret: Its all fantasy. Even Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum just make stuff up.) I have said that Swords and Sorcery is not a genre. In my mind its more of a color. I think saying you like Swords and Sorcery is a lot like saying you like red cars. Its just the color of the car and each car is vastly different than the next. But Clarke's quote has inspired things like Dying Earth literature, aspects of Sword and Planet, He-Man and lots of other fantasy paint jobs.

But I got to thinking about this statement. The first thing that occurs to me is that it is only really true in effect, not origin. That is to say a wizard with a lightening bolt spell and a guy with a lightening bolt gun have the same effect, but one guy is pointing and mumbling while the other is pointing and grunting. But even beyond that, we see that Clarke, for all his insight has not really looked at magic. Magic ignores rational cause and effect. Science, when you understand the natural principles it is based on does not. Anyone taking a look at the works of H.P. Lovecraft runs up against this whole debate. Is the spell that opens a gate to for the extradimensional horror just really alien technology or magic? Both?

Technology that appears to be magic is still just technology. Take for instance the D&D spell timestop. How are scientists spending billions of dollars to create a device to hold time static in a field indistinguishable from the witch doctor that waves a stick says some weird words and gets the same result for much cheeper?

Larry Nivin (and Mecedes Lacky) have tried to be cool and have come back with "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." But that is just it, big magic does not necessarily require big work and power, whereas big technology does require a bigness that magic just does not require.

Lets take the atom bomb as an example. Numerous scientists and millions of dollars of research went into developing the ability to blow up an entire city in one shot. Even now the bombs are expensive and labor intensive to produce and (hope not) deliver with accuracy. Yet they still require a team of people. Whereas with magic Waldorf can take out entire planets and campaign settings with a ceremony. What separates them is cause and effect. Technology has logical cause and effect based on the natural principles of the universe it occupies. Magic ignores this. Magic in its purest form is super-natural.

Clarke's law holds so long as your story is based on two things: The first is that there is no such thing as the supernatural. All the mumbo jumbo and abracadabra is simply the ability to tap into somthing that science does not understand yet. The second is that those who experience the effect interpret the event based on their experience and knowledge. The second is immutable. It is how humans operate. But the first is an assumption. What if magic operated outside of the physical world in all aspects- what if waving a rubber ball and a feather in the air while speaking latin backwards really did summon a Ferrari? There is no physical reason a Ferrari should appear. Its not even a quirk of the universe, it is beyond what is supposed to happen.

Also, the drawbacks to magic are ussually very personal. Rangeing from colds, to being swollowed by extradimensional horrors, technology is far more expensive, but much much safer. Technology allows you to settle vasts swaths of untamed land. When magic is really magic of the supernatural kind it is too fickle. Fickle magic can't hold back the monsters enough. I think this concept can be used to explain the whole points of light campaign setting. No magic is different from technology even if it is similar somtimes in effect.

Additional: The Great Hong Ooi has a great (probably more correct) corolary:

Any sufficiently widespread magic is indistinguishable from technology

The Lost Genre Part I: Never Was

Swords and Sorcery. There has been some speculation as of late as to why this genre has almost disappeared from the fantasy landscape. Erik Mona editor of Paizo's fine Planet Stories line, Howard Andrew Jones, one of the editors of Black Gate and the folks over at The Cimmerian are all wondering why this has not been a viable genre. Among the speculation is what killed it, how things changed, etc. etc.

I propose this: There never was a Swords and Sorcery genre. Swords and Sorcery is a commercial phrase. It is made up to help us find stuff in the store and keep us buying more of what we like. If anything the quesiton we should be asking is "What happened to the Sub-Genre?"

We think of the golden age of the pulps as the 30's and 40's when that really was the beginning of the end of their time. Its like someone calling the days of Rome under Constantine a golden age and ignoring the days under Agustus. Pulp went back to the 1830's with the Penny Dreadfuls. Thats a whole 80 years before Howard wore the jeweled crown of Aquilonia on his troubled brow.

And looking at those stories we see that they were filled with swords and sorcerers just as much as any Howard or Leiber tale. Robin Hood as we know him largely came out of the same publishing tradition as Conan. And while Sherlock Holmes did have respectable dig on Baker Street and in a major publication, he was still serialised, a distant relative to Hood and the Cimmerian.

The genre I believe is not Swords and Sorcery, but the long tradition of Adventure Fiction of which Swords and Sorcery was a part of. And here were enter the debate of where genre starts and ends. Largely genre is driven by marketing. We see this with music all the time. Is it Techno, Trance, Ambient, Techstep, Hardcore, Jungle, Tribal, Breaks or whatever? Sword and Planet, Sword and Sorcery, Lost World, Weird Fiction, and a lot of Detective Stories all fall into this heading simply because if you change the tropes you don't really change the story.

I think that we would see more success in Swords and Sorcery if we focused not on Swords and Sorcery as a genre but as part of the larger and ailing Adventure Tales genre.

Finally a beginning...

At least for this blog. The project covered here had its beginning in 2004-2005 with the advent of D&D 3.5's Unearthed Arcana, Castles and Crusades, and WFRP2. UA was where I started tweaking the rules of d20 and as a result came up with a some new philosophies about game design (new to me at least). C&C and WFRP2 laid the ground for some other ideas that have been gestating for the last 3-4 years and with 4e D&D they are now building themselves inside my head into a game I have decided to call Codex.


But this blog won't be just about Codex development.

Some things I plan to discuss:

1. Ideas about Swords and Sorcery Fiction as a genre as it relates to game design
   
2. Problems in Gaming - specifically mechanical problems that don't seem to go away
3. The Good and Bad of 4e
4. Developments in the RPG Industry
   
5. Discussions of other Systems
6. "Old School" Gaming and related concepts
   
7. Any other thing that I want to comment on which will usually be gaming related or a comment on someone else's comments