Map Making as Gateway Drug: The Creation of a World

When I first got back into RPGs in, I suppose, my mid-late 20s (I had taken a bit of a break after becoming too cool for school in my teenage years) it was map-making that did it.

I can't remember exactly why, but one Saturday evening I found myself alone in my flat without any sort of social event to go to, and with my girlfriend out at work. And I suddenly remembered that when I was younger I had spent a lot of time making maps - just drawing them freely on sheets of A4 paper and making up cities, countries, and so on. I got a sudden urge to do it again. So I bought a book of graph paper at the convenience store and spent the evening creating a world.

I then remembered that this map-making urge had been closely connected to playing D&D and other RPGs (which was itself, I suppose, connected to abortive attempts at writing fantasy novels in my adolescence) and this was what spurred me to re-involve myself in the hobby. 

Having had an extended break from RPG activities proper (I have been focusing on various publishing projects, the main one of course being Yoon-Suin 2nd edition) I now find myself with a strong hankering to do some gaming. But this has brought with it a more primal desire to just get out paper and pens and make and key some maps.

(I can also lay some of the blame at the door of the author of Rise Up Comus, who has been slowly keying a very large 12-mile hex map of Middle Earth, itself derived from the excellent Idraluna Archives, itself an almost obscenely useful and interesting resource containing, for example, downloadable hexmaps of Antarctica.)

If drawing maps of made-up places is itself rewarding and pleasing, then keying hexmaps is almost...I was going to say orgasmic, but that might be pushing it too far. You get it, though, I think. It is a license to just sit there and imagine things, of course, but also an opportunity to play God - to exercise complete discretion over what is before you. All acts of sub-creation are like this, obviously (what is writing a novel if not playing God?) but the careful cataloguing of an imaginary world over which you have sole control does it in the most direct way possible.

What is the correct way to go about creating a hexmap? I would say that the world is divided into three, mutually hostile and rivalrous camps, each of whose members would not hesitate to exterminate those in the other camps if they gained full control of the levers of power. 

The first camp are the bottom-uppers. They start with a 1-mile hex map of a small campaign region, and fill it in. Then they ascend to a 5-mile regional hex map. And so on.

The second camp are the hex-by-hexers. They start off with a standard scale (6 mile hexes, let's say) and then just dive in, filling in contents hex by hex.

The third camp are the big picturers. They start with a world map, using 20-mile or even 50-mile hexes, and chart out kingdoms, empires, and so on, and the connections between them and the continent-scale geographical features. Then they burrow down, to continents and then regions and then to the lowest scale of all. 

Thought the members of these different camps harbour maniacal, genocidal hatreds of one another, the final ideal is the same: an entire world, catalogued, from the biggest scale to the smallest (25-mile hexes; 5-mile hexes; 1-mile hexes perhaps being the ideal). One done, the designer is entitled to a seventh day of rest as he surveys what he has created and is pleased. But such a task should not be undertaken lightly, for it is a life's work. Like the climbing of Everest or trekking the Appalacian Trail, it is a feat that requires careful planning and extreme commitment and dedication. Many are seduced by the romance of the task - far fewer attempt it, and almost none succeed.

I dare you to try, for those who succeed are entitled to Great Honour the likes of which ordinary men dread even to dream of. 

The World on the Other Side of the Glass

 

Yesterday I took the bus to work. I noticed that the woman in the seat in front of me was taking a photo of something, so I impulsively took out my phone and photographed the same thing. I didn't know what it was originally that she was interested in, but when I looked at the photo itself I decided it had to be the reflections of the chairs in the bus's interior, visible in the window, like a separate ghost-world laid on top of the real.

It made me think about the trope of having other worlds appear in mirrors, through which they can be accessed - mostly likely begun by Lewis Carroll in Alice Through the Looking Glass, though readers may know of other earlier iterations - and I started to wonder about the alternative scenario of other worlds appear in reflections in glass. 

You may have had the experience of looking into a window, perhaps the front of a shop, and suddenly finding yourself distracted by what is happening in the reflections in it (i.e., of the world behind you) rather than the display. I expect everybody has at some point; in the high street in Newcastle upon Tyne there is even a Gregg's which flips its sign the wrong way round during the Christmas period so it will be reflected the correct way round in the windows of the large department store opposite:

The reflection-in-window world is different to the mirror-world: diffuse, distant, somehow aloof. Its colours are pale; it is cloaked in shadow; its details are only really glimpsed and resist close study. Things in the mirror-world are like the evil twin of the real. Things in the reflection-in-window world are more like memories or dreams, revealing themselves secretly and shyly - you know they are there, but they only give you a hint of their real nature.

I picture an 'urban fantasy' setting in which adventure happens within the reflection-in-window world. There are those who are able to slip out of the real world into the glass, going not through it but within it, into the reflections themselves, and who can thereby go adventuring in the hidden reality that the glass only very partially reveals. Naturally, of course, there are also entities from the world of reflection who emerge from within the glass to wreak havoc - or realise aims more mysterious or even benevolent - in the real. Perhaps there are even kidnappers who slip out from the reflections and steal away children to their ghostly world.

Nuances immediately suggest themselves. Reflections tend to be stronger or more visible at different times of day and in different lighting. Does this have an effect on the accessibility of reflection world? Is it easier to go through at night time when lights are blazing? Is it easier to make the passage from inside a well-lit room, looking out into the night, when reflections are at their most vivid? 

Also: does it have to be windows? Can one enter reflection world through a puddle, or a screen, or even another person's open eye? 

And what does one bring back? What are reflection world's treasures, and what does one do with them when one has them? Or does one simply use reflection world as a kind of portal, entering a department store window and then emerging from a puddle in a forest a dozen miles away?

Paul McCartney's Zionist-Anti-Fascist-Hard-Right-Woke Clone, Who Also Assassinated Charlie Kirk, is Shadowbanning Monsters & Manuals!

No, he isn't really. He'd probably be too old for that by now.

I do nonetheless ask for help from readers who Know About Computers.

About ten days ago, I noticed that reader figures for this blog had unexpectedly declined by about 66%. I also noticed that my own RSS feed for the blog doesn't appear to update in a timely fashion. 

I went to Google Search Console to investigate, and discovered that a large number of the blog's pages are not currently indexed on Google, and that most of these are not indexed because of reason='Alternative page with proper canonical tag', and others because of reason='blocked by robots.txt'. I wondered if this might be something to do with it. But perhaps it is not.

Anyway, I expect this is just a glitch that can be somehow fixed. If you are reading this and have insights, however, I would appreciate your wisdom and guidance. 

Alternatively, you may comment to post praise, abuse, special requests, suggestions or recommendations of any kind whatsoever, in respect of anything.

The Joy of Rolling Up Characters; Or, I'd RATHer Be Doing it the Old School Way

Does the name Rath ring any bells with you?

If it does, welcome to the club, one of the most exclusive of all: those who actually read the 2nd edition AD&D Player's Handbook and took it seriously enough to have remembered its contents. For those not in the know, Rath was an example of a PC with mediocre stats (implicitly generated in the traditional 'roll 3d6 in order' iron man fashion), provided by the authors as an illustration of how it was possible to get good roleplaying opportunities out of a set of not-very-good dice rolls.

Rath's stats were as follows:

STR 8

DEX 14

CON 13

INT 13

WIS 7

CHA 6

'It is possible,' the authors declared, 'to turn these "disappointing" stats into a character who is both interesting and fun to play.' There was no need to become 'obsessed' with good stats. Rather, it was better to embrace mediocrity. 'View it as an opportunity to role-play, to create a unique and entertaining personality in the game,' they concluded.

And they gave two different iterations of Rath to show what they meant: 

1) Although Rath is in good health (Con 13), he’s not very strong (Str 8) because he‘s just plain lazy - he never wanted to exercise as a youth and now it’s too late. His low Wisdom and Charisma scores (7, 6) show that he lacks the common sense to apply himself properly and projects a slothful “I’m not going to bother” attitude (which tends to irritate others). Fortunately, Rath's natural wit (Int 13)and Dexterity (14) keep him from being a total loss. 

Thus you might play Rath as an irritating, smart-alecky twerp forever ducking just out of range of those who want to squash him. 

2) Rath has several good points-he has studied hard (Int 13) and practiced his manual skills (Dex 14). Unfortunately, his Strength is low (8) from a lack of exercise (all those hours spent reading books). Despite that, Raths health is still good (Con 13). His low Wisdom and Charisma (7, 6) are a result of his lack of contact and involvement with people outside the realm of academics. 

Looking at the scores this way, you could play Rath as a kindly, naive, and shy professorial type who’s a good tinkerer, always fiddling with new ideas and inventions.

I remember taking this advice very seriously as a kid, even while in practice my friends and I tended to implement a de facto 'roll the dice as many times as it takes to get what you want' method of character gen. I liked what the PHB authors were driving at. And I still do - to my eye it is a fun and interesting exercise to approach character generation in this way, even while recognising that there are some occasions when it is genuinely better to let a player re-roll his or her stats. (There was a time when I would insist on an absolutely ironclad basis that the only method I allowed was to roll 3d6, in order. I still require this, but I do allow optional re-rolls when a PC is produced who is self-evidently terrible, for instance because he has no stats above 8, or because he has a 3 for STR or CON and will therefore struggle to meaningfully contribute.) 

The proof of course is in the pudding, so let's give it a whirl and see what we come up with, rolling 3d6 in order the way God intended it (i.e., STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON, CHA), and deploying the fantasy name generator to come up with a name. Toss a coin for sex, M/F. Choose whatever edition you like, though I'll go with BECMI. 

Character One: Harlex the Red

STR 6

INT 10

WIS 10

DEX 14

CON 7

CHA 8

Harlex is a magic-user who is unusually lithe and whippet-like in his frame, but diminutive and bookish - a feather-weight with little physical fitness. He never excelled at his studies and, while he would like to think that he has gained what little success he has obtained in life through bloody-mindedness and mental toughness, the truth is that he has rather coasted along. He appears introverted but the truth is he simply doesn't like people very much. He is hoping that adventure will redeem him.

Character Two: Cyna of Gawold

STR 8

INT 12

WIS 11

DEX 5

CON 8

CHA 10

Plump, squat and ungainly, Cyna is hamster-like in appearance and hopelessly clumsy. But she is clever enough to have mastered the elementary skills required for magic use, and is above all good-hearted and reliable. What she lacks in ability she makes up for with perseverance and motivation. She does nothing spectacularly well. But at least she is game for doing whatever needs doing in the first place.

Character Three: Ealkmulf, Priest of Nocri

STR 13

INT 11

WIS 15

DEX 10

CON 10

CHA 12

Ealkmulf knows that it would be churlish to complain about the curse of being above average, so he does his best not to dwell on the matter. But the truth is that, while he tends to be more intelligent, more physically capable, and better looking than is ordinary, in every respect he falls short of exceptional. He is too able to be satisfied with a low station in life, but not able enough for a high one. His main virtue is that he knows this to be the case, and this helps him not to dwell on his frustrated ambition. He is as a consequence an exceptional second-in-command or deputy in almost any setting.

Character Four: Perva Boffin, Halfling 

STR 11

INT 10

WIS 8

DEX 11

CON 11

CHA 14

Perva Boffin is a halfling of a long line of Boffins and has all the traits of her father's clan. In no respect remarkable, and rather foolish and dreamy to boot, she has one virtue: she is exceptionally cute, and has learned how to deploy her big brown eyes as a powerful weapon to melt hearts.

Character Five: Iffip, Burglar

STR 12

INT 11

WIS 12

DEX 13

CON 13

CHA 11

Iffip is quick, tough, athletic, and clever. This provides him with a solid foundation for his thieving skills. Though he comes from the kind of rural background that produces chiefly slack-jawed labourers and mulish, incurious dullards, he was blessed with qualities that in that context stood out like miraculous gifts. This provide enough to motivate him to leave his dead-end village and attempt to make it in the big bad world. But he has also never lost his sense that life is unfair and injust, and that the job of those who succeed is to help those less fortunate. He is, then, something of a putative Robin Hood.

Character Six: Nellotie Ipromiseididgenuinelyrollthesestats

STR 11

INT 16

WIS 14

DEX 15

CON 9

CHA 18

Nellotie is a stunningly beautiful elf maiden, charismatic and graceful, a born leader who women want to be and men want to be with (and sometimes vice versa). Though she is capable with the sword, her emphasis is on the power of her magic; if she has one weakness, it is that she is not even arrogant enough to inspire bitterness or envy, and as a consequence simply has too many friends and followers to be able to keep them all pleased. 

What do we learn from all of this? I'm not sure - I actually enjoyed the exercise, and it reminded me that one of 'old school' D&D's unsuing virtues is that random character generation is genuinely fun in itself. The worst type of character, in a sense, is the one who only has stats in the 9-12 range, as this on its face always appears bland. There, a little bit of creativity is needed. But I think the AD&D 2nd edition authors were hitting on a truth - it is actually more interesting to have a stab at fleshing out a group of 3d6-in-order stats than it is to spend hours carefully crafting a pre-invented character concept. 

Have a go in the comments!

At the Start of a Great Adventure

There is I think a formative period in the life of a young reader when certain ideas about what fiction 'should' do, or what good fiction looks like, become relatively fixed. I would locate this around the age of 9-11. This is the period at which one is beginning to develop taste. Prior to that, one basically has no discernment - just a vague sense that some things look boring and some things look appealing. Gradually, as one approaches adolescence, one gets a sense that one likes certain things, and these tend to crystallise into habits of mind. One begins to get an idea that X is good and Y is bad, as opposed to simply being attracted to whatever one is attracted to.

Alternatively, you could think of books read during that phase as being a little bit like heroin. They give you a high and you spend the rest of your life chasing it.

I would like to present myself as being much more interesting than I am, but I confess that I (and, I suspect, you) am an exceptionally conventional nerd and read The Lord of the Rings around that age and was indelibly affected by the experience. No work of fiction I have read since has been quite as important to me. But it is important to me in a slightly unconventional way.

The first reason for this is that I read The Two Towers first. This was for the simply reason that another boy in school (whose name I can still recall, though I won't publicly out the swine) had already got The Fellowship of the Ring out from the local library. I was eaten up with envy and decided to plough on ahead with The Two Towers, with the idea in mind I would come back to The Fellowship at a later date. 

My experience of encountering The Lord of the Rings was therefore pretty unusual - it began for me in exactly the opposite to the way Tolkien intended it, in media res, with Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli charging around looking for orcs to kill and also trying to find Boromir. It was sink or swim for a 10 year old and it turned out I could swim. I pieced together what was going on and, although a huge amount remained a mystery (for a very long time I thought that the hobbits were old men, for some reason), knew that I loved what I was reading. It was a hundred times more grown-up and weighty than anything I had read before.

The result of this is that I developed a taste, which I still have, for stories which do not take the time to explain things. I like to be confused and to struggle a little to figure out what is going on. I like a narrative which doesn't take prisoners. And I despise exposition of any kind; I would rather not know what is going on than to be told. The funny thing about this is that it is most certainly not Tolkien's doing - if anything he spends an inordinate amount of time on setup at the start of The Lord of the Rings - and is purely an artefact of having read the books in the wrong order. 

The second reason is that, having read The Two Towers, I then went back and read The Fellowship of the Ring. And I was completely enchanted by the smallness and innocence of its opening chapters. It is easy to overlook The Two Towers, but I would go out on a limb and call it the most exciting of the three books. It is full of grandeur and derring-do, and has the best (I think) battle sequences. To go from that to The Fellowship is to take a huge shift down to a much lower gear. But that, perhaps counter-intuitively, gave it great appeal. It felt warm and comfortable. 

More importantly, it had an enchanting air of discovery about it. It was like encountering forgotten lore that explained what had come afterwards, allowing me to unlock many of the mysteries that had puzzled me in making my way through The Two Towers. This gave it a much more intoxicating atmosphere than I think it would if I had encountered it 'cold'. The feeling was presumably close to what it would have been like if the Star Wars prequels had been good films. 

This instilled in me an abiding love for that mood of discovery, and it remains the case that the section of The Fellowship of the Ring before the arrival at Rivendell is not only my favourite portion of the books, but probably my favourite 200 pages or so of fiction in general. It is by no means perfect. But whenever I read it, I feel the same sense that I did more than thirty years ago, encountering it for the first time, and feeling though I was gaining access to privileged information that would make everything that I had previously read clear.

The sum of this is that I have a very strongly developed taste for books that do not explain themselves, and which one has to figure out as one goes along with minimal exposition, and also for beginnings which take their time building up to the 'plot' proper. Many of my other favourite fantasy series (The Book of the New Sun, Stone Dance of the Chameleon, and even A Song of Ice and Fire) have this kind of quality to them. No doubt it is partly Tolkien's influence on the genre that has resulted in these types of stories proliferating, and no doubt if you are reading this you have drunk from the same well. But I am curious as to whether readers of the blog have had other experiences in their 'formative fiction reading' years and what kind of tastes this endowed them with.

The Wikipedia Trawl as Campaign Generation Device

One of my favourite lunchtime activities is to trawl wikipedia looking at obscure geographic locations. This is not a complicated task. What one does is select a country from looking at a map of the globe (say, Chad), clicking on the 'Geography' subheading, and then taking a peek at whatever looks interesting - in this case, I am going to select the Tibesti-Jebel Uweinat montane xeric woodlands, which we then learn is an 'ecoregion cover[ing] 82,200 square kilometers (31,700 sq mi) in the volcanic Tibesti Mountains of Chad and Libya, and 1932-m peak of Jebel Uweinat on the border of Egypt, Libya, and Sudan'.

We learn that 'the climate is arid and subtropical, but can reach 0°C at the highest altitudes during the winter', and while 'rainfall is irregular' it is 'more regular than the surrounding desert, and many of the lower wadis are watered by rain which falls higher up'. It is something of a mountainous oasis for animal and plant life and its wadis have an 'important role' in the lifecycle of the locust, as it is where eggs are laid. This makes it the source of locust plagues throughout the Sahara and as far as Europe.

And from a few mouse clicks I now have in my head a lost realm of high mountains, surrounded by desert but sustained by rainfall (even snowfall?) and harbouring all forms of strange life, not to mention (naturally) lost temples and ruins of an ancient civilisation, and weird insect gods that give rise to great plagues. Great place to set a campaign, no?

Three other examples that have been occupying my mind recently are Socotra, Lençóis Maranhenses National Park in Brazil, and the Kerguelen Arch. 

Socotra is an island in the Indian Ocean, south of Yemen; its geography alone is enough to inspire rabid, hallucinogenic imaginings of fantasy landscapes:

Socotra is riddled with deep caves, many of which contain prehistoric art and petroglyphs, as well as script written in the 'Indian Brāhmī, South Arabian, Ethiopic, Greek, Palmyrene and Bactrian languages'. The source of the - wait for it - Dragon's Blood resin, it was a major trading destination in the classical world, visited by the Greeks, Indians, Persians, and so on. Later influxes of Ethiopian Orthodox Christians and Arabs, layered on top of the existing, indigenous population (perhaps descended from the mysterious Oldowan culture) can be readily imagined to have produced a complex polyglot and multicultural society on the coasts - clustering around a mysterious, ancient, relatively untouched interior, dominated by strange monsters, lost tribes, isolated ruins, and so on....

The Lençóis Maranhenses National Park meanwhile is a vast area of sand dunes, 380,000 acres in size (with 70km of coastline) situated in the far north east of Brazil. Rainfall collects in the dips and hollows between the dunes and forms semi-permanent lakes:

It is no stretch of the imagination at all to imagine this landscape, increased in size and scale, representing a landscape dominated by maritime civilizations semi-isolated from one another by brutally hostile arid desert (itself roamed by dragons and giant sandworms and whatever else one's heart desires). Or, if one prefers, it could maintain its current size and simply represent what remains after a civilisation has been swept aside by a great flood - with those pools harbouring strange ghosts and submerged ruins (not to mention mysterious and powerful artefacts...). 

The Kerguelen Arch, meanwhile, well, what can one say?

Kerguelen itself is one of the most isolated spots on Earth - an archipelago floating about as far away from anywhere else as it is possible to be, marooned in the Southern Ocean. The arch was once an actual arch, but collapsed at some point in the early 20th century:

It is of course entirely natural, but....come on. Is it really? 

More Can Go Wrong

The other day I happened to be sitting in a hotel restaurant listening in on the conversation (as one does) of a youngish couple sitting nearby. It was evidently at an early stage in their relationship and presumably their first time away together (hubba hubba, honk honk, nudge nudge, wink wink, phwoar, suits you sir, etc.) and they were in that nice, warm, gushy phase of wanting to share their thoughts and opinions about life, the universe and everything. 

I found myself nodding along in quiet agreement when they started to discuss the type of books they liked to read. The man was explaining why it was that he tends to read non-fiction, specifically history books, and why he tends to eschew fiction and, even more so, poetry. This was because, when it comes to fiction, and especially poetry, 'more can go wrong'. One can forgive flaws in the prose, structure, and composition of a non-fiction book more readily than in fiction, because often the substance is intrinsically interesting. A not very well written book about a period of history one is interested in is far more likely to get finished than a not very well written novel. 

'More can go wrong' in a novel because one can dislike the pacing, the plot itself, the prose, the dialogue, the characters, and so on. And so while a great novel is great, and more enjoyable than a great non-fiction book, the bar for passable non-fiction is lower. 

And I think this anonymous individual was even more correct about poetry. I love great poetry but great poems are not at all common, and most poetry is tripe. An awful lot can go wrong.

This spurred me to reflect on the life of a designer or writer of RPG materials, and a putative ranking on the basis of 'go wrongness'. 

At the top of the pyramid, in terms of the likelihood of things going wrong, is I would say at the level of the rules. The hardest task is writing very good rules that will satisfy most players, which achieve a purpose, and which people will not quibble over. This is, I suppose, in large part because rules are not intrinsically interesting or fun to read about. Making an accessible, workable, understandable and enjoyable ruleset is tough. Most rulesets fail. 

On the next wrong, in terms of the number of things that can go wrong, is the adventure module. It is extremely easy to write bad adventures. It is only slightly less difficult to write mediocre ones. But the art of writing an adventure module that works, 'out of the box', is exceedingly difficult. It can be pitched at the wrong level; it can have too much or too little treasure; it can strike the wrong tone; it can have too many illogical elements; it can be too one-paced or too varied; etc., etc. There are not many good ones. Most are dross.

The next step down comes campaign settings. Here, it is easier to get things at least tolerably right. Even a fairly unimaginative warmed-over version of Middle Earth will do, as long as it has nice art - and there are enough examples out there to make this abundantly evident. Most campaign settings are not very good, in the grand scheme of things, but they do well enough out of it and are at least readable.

Below campaign settings are bestiaries. It is hard I think to write very, very bad bestiaries. At worst, the contents will be boring but functional. Even a little bit of imagination will go a long way. And this is because in the end even monsters which are merely aesthetically distinct have a value - they break up the monotony. A seagull-man who wields Aztec-style weapons is in itself worth having, as a concept, even if mechanically it is the same thing as an orc. It is something a bit different. And this is often enough in itself, again if accompanied by nice art.

At the bottom of the pile are splatbooks. People will purchase by-the-numbers splatbooks. Indeed, there are entire publishing companies which make a cottage industry of churning out fairly low quality fluff for people to relatively unthinkingly consume. I do not understand this but I don't really have the FOMO gene when it comes to RPG materials; many do, and I don't judge them for it (I do have it in relation to whisky, stationery, and secondhand books). 

It follows that when it comes to the designers/writers of RPG materials, God-Emperors are those who write good rulesets, Kings are those who write good adventure modules, Princes are those who write good campaign settings, Barons are those who write good bestiaries, and Peasants are those who write splatbooks. 

And it follows from this that one should only call an RPG designer great when he has written at least one good ruleset. The rest of us are also-rans.

Paladin Kits - Ranked and Reviewed!

First there was The Complete Fighter's Handbook. Then there was another one of it. It was called The Complete Thief's Handbook. Then there was another one of it. It was called The Complete Priest's Handbook. Then there was another one of it. It was called...

OK, to cut a long story short, eventually there was a Complete Paladin's Handbook. And by this point the exercise had become somewhat perfunctory, somewhat by-the-numbers, somewhat phoned-in. There are only so many times it is possible to think up variations on the theme of 'Paladins have to be lawful good', and only so much that can be gained from discourses on how to find holy mounts or on the physical manifestations of paladins' detect evil intent abilities (tingly fingertips? toothache? migraine? excess wind?). 

Nonetheless, the authors - as with all the other 'Completes' - did attempt to come up with a list of paladin sub-classes ('kits') to provide some variation on the bog-standard paladin theme. I have to confess that, while I nowadays have little patience for either complicated character generation or optionality for its own sake, as an adolescent I lapped this sort of thing up, and spent hours and hours alone in my bedroom coming up with PCs based on the various kits in the different Complete books. As I remember it the Druid and Ranger handbooks were the more imaginative; I had few memories of the Paladin kits, but recently took another look at that book in connection with the Paladin Project and refreshed my memory. I thought it would be fun to write up some reviews and rank the various options.

The way this works is as follows. Each kit is given a rating (out of 5 Lucerne hammers) for distinctiveness, gameability and flavour. Distinctiveness means how much of a USP the kit has in comparison to the other kids (or other character classes for that matter). Gameability means how, well, gameable the kit is - would it actually be fun or interesting to play. And flavour means how interesting and imaginative the concept is to begin with. At the end, all scores are averaged and the kits ranked accordingly.

So, here goes, in alphabetical order.

1. True Paladin. This is the archetypal Paladin as described in the PHB, 'pious and forthright...serv[ing] as the conscience of the party, setting an example of high moral standards and nudging them back on track when they stray from their mission'. It's hard to imagine that this concept could ever be done non-insufferably in practice, isn't it? The True Paladin does what Pladins do - riding about on a horse looking knightly and Lanceloty, and with the abilities one would expect. This is bland, but I suppose the Distinctiveness mark benefits from the fact that it is at least distinct in respect of being the original idea.

Distinctiveness: 3 Lucerne hammers; Gameability: 2 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 1 Lucerne hammer

2. Chevalier. This is, we are told 'a gentleman warrior' who is 'modelled on the knights of the feudal age', being more along the lines of a knight-proper than a knight-who-does-priestly-things. Admittedly, though, the distinction between the Chevalier and the True Paladin is really wafer thin - the main difference being that a Chevalier is definitionally noble by birth, whereas a True Paladin could be anybody ('an orphan whose abilities were granted by a benevolent deity', for example). The other main distinction is that a Chavelier has various duties and rights arising from the fact that he has a lord and is part of a feudal structure. This is lazily done, although it does improve the Gameablity score, as it does open up possibilities for different modes of play - the Chevalier having to operate within a particular social milieu. 

Distinctiveness: 1 Lucerne hammer; Gameability: 3 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 1 Lucerne hammer

3. Divinate. The Divinate is a warrior-priest type: a smiter of evil who is a 'raging avenger' in battle but a friend to the disadvantaged and impoverished when not. Again, it is difficult to discern what is really all that different about this concept from the True Paladin - the main distinction appearing to be that the Divinate lays more emphasis on theology (his stronghold has to be a monastery, for example). Hence we can indeed probably conceptualise there being a spectrum from Divinate-True Paladin-Chevalier, with Divinate being at the point at which a Paladin shades into a Cleric, and a Chevalier being at the point at which a Paladin shades into a Fighter. Did I mention that the Complete Paladin's Handbook had a feeling having been phoned in?

Distinctiveness: 1 Lucerne hammer; Gameability: 2 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 1 Lucerne hammer

4. Envoy. This is a skilled diplomat who is sent on missions by his lord or monarch to perform various tasks - delivering a 'banquet invitation to a friendly monarch' or 'opening hostage negotiations with a tribe of cannibals' or even 'representing his country in treaty discussions' or 'venturing into unexplored territories to scout for new trade routes'. I actually quite like this idea - even while wondering what exactly is particularly Paladin-ish about it - and I think a campaign of PCs-as-Envoys would be a lot of fun. Can't quite get 'The Syrians are mad at the Lebanese' out of my head now though. 

Distinctiveness: 4 Lucerne hammers; Gameability: 4 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 2 Lucerne hammers

5. Equerry. This is a 'master horseman with a natural affinity for mounts of all species'. This can apparently include more or less anything (giant lizards, giant owls, griffins, etc.), though the rules specifically say that male equerries cannot ride unicorns. Somebody should tell Gene Wolfe! I suppose this is at least a distinctive concept, although it would be annoying to have an Equerry in the party if being played with somebody keen on the rules-as-written, as they are not supposed to like going underground or indoors. 2nd edition was full of this sort of stuff - passably amusing in a character in a novel but only really likely to be irritating in a PC.

Distinctiveness: 3 Lucerne hammers; Gameability: 2 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 2 Lucerne hammers

6. Errant. The Errant, as you might expect, is, well a knight-errant - an independent warrior who 'roams the countryside searching for adventure and offering his assistance to any good beings in need'. Again, a campaign of PCs-as-Knight-Errants is one I could see working well as an exemplar of a 'good guy sandbox'. Again, it has to be said, though, that it's difficult discerning what the difference is between this and a True Paladin.

Distinctiveness: 1 Lucerne hammer; Gameability: 4 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 1 Lucerne hammer

7. Expatriate. The Expatriate (who I think should really be called an Exile) is the converse of the Errant - a Paladin who has been forced to leave home, rather than having taken an oath to go off adventuring. This, we are told, happens when a Paladin is betrayed by the corruption of his lord, patron, order, etc., and therefore has to go ronin in order to stick to his principles. There are role-playing tips agogo here: 'Expatriates are often moody, cynical and bitter...he has little patience with most neutral characters, finding their lack of commitment insipid and contemptible...he crushes his enemies without remorse.' Admit it, as a teenage you would have loved this. Again, as with the Envoy and Errant, this concept would work well if the entire group took on the role, but the Expatriate is one of the few Paladin kits that would fit in with a normal party of PCs doing normal rogueish adventuring things.

Distinctiveness: 3 Lucerne hammers; Gameability: 3 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 3 Lucerne hammers

8. Ghosthunter. The name of this kit says it all, really. Yes, it's that Hugh Jackman film with Kate Beckinsale swanning about in tight clothes. A decent idea, although trite, and faces many of the problems associated with these specialised AD&D kits; why is the ghosthunter hanging around with the PCs when they're not hunting ghosts, given that this is what he is supposed to do as his calling? An everything-is-ghosthunters campaign would be eminently achievable, though.

Distinctiveness: 4 Lucerne hammers; Gameability: 2 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 3 Lucerne hammers

9. Inquisitor. The Inquisitor, like the Ghosthunter, specialises in fighting evil magicians. Many of the same comments could be made, but I actually like the idea of this kit a lot better. First, it envisions something actually rather different from the standard Paladin model, but second, it also envisions a campaign style that is very attractive - something more investigative and cloak-and-dagger than is normal; one even imagines the PCs inhabiting a city filled with behind-the-scenes demon summoning, cult-formation and evil alchemy.

Distinctiveness: 4 Lucerne hammers; Gameability: 4 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 4 Lucerne hammers

10. Medician. This is a Paladin sub-type wo has 'decided she can best uphold her principles by fighting injury and disease'. Expert in herbs, medicines, anatomy and diagnostics, she 'treats the sick, alleviates suffering, and saves lives'. Your patience with playing this concept in a normal PC party will be about the same as that of playing a medtech in a Cyberpunk 2020 party, and the overlap with the cleric is obvious; I suppose it was inevitable that somebody would invent this conceot as a way to fill out a list, but - really?

Distinctiveness: 2 Lucerne hammers; Gameability: 1 Lucerne hammer; Flavour: 2 Lucerne hammers

11. Militarist. This is a battle 'virtuoso' of the Benedict-from-the-Amber-books variety - an elite soldier and general, 'shrewd and fearless', who 'naturally assumes a leadership role' in combat. I always have a problem with presenting character classes or kits in this way: shrewdness, for example, is a quality that really derives from the player rather than the PC, as does 'natural leadership' - and, in any event, doesn't this really sound an awful lot like it's just a type of Fighter? 

Distinctiveness: 1 Lucerne hammer; Gameability: 3 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 1 Lucerne hammer

12. Skyrider. This is a 'warrior of the air' and a 'defender of both the skyways and the earth'. An inevitable concept, but: a) the same thing as an Equerry, specialising in winged mounts, and b) only really workable as long as all the PCs have flying mounts and the campaign is concieved as being, as it were, an 'air war' - gadding about the mountaintops, or between giant trees, or islands floating in a void, or whatever. Not that there's anything wrong with such things. Feels like it ought to be a Ranger, though, quite frankly (and I have a feeling there was even a near-identical Ranger kit...).

Distinctiveness: 3 Lucerne hammers; Gameability: 3 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 3 Lucerne hammrs

13. Squire. This is a Paladin who serves another Paladin. A Robin figure who never gets to become Batman. Er...is there anything more to be said? Could provide for some laughs, but serves chiefly as another example of 2nd edition AD&D writers' tendency to dream up concepts for characters that would be good in novels rather than classes that would be good in RPGs.

Distinctiveness: 2 Lucerne hammers; Gameability: 2 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 1 Lucerne hammer

14. Votary. This is, in essence, a Divinate who has a much more militant, extremist attitude - 'grim, self-obsessed and quick to judge'. She 'believes her church is the only true one' and thinks that 'followers of evil faiths...deserve nothing but death'. This would be enjoyable to ham up (again, the writers' emphasis being on what would be fun to role play as) but really indicates a lack of imagination; the text even admits that the Votary and Divinate are more or less the same concept!

Distinctiveness: 1 Lucerne hammer; Gameability: 3 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 1 Lucerne hammer

15. Wyrmslayer. As the name suggests, this is a dragon-slayer. Much can be said here of what was said in relation to the Ghosthunter, mutatis mutandis. But come on. Dragonslayer? You know you love it.

Distinctiveness: 2 Lucerne hammers; Gameability: 4 Lucerne hammers; Flavour: 3 Lucerne hammers

When the kits are ranked, then, we find them ordered as follows:

1. Inquisitor

2. Envoy

3. = Expatriate

3. = Ghosthunter

3. = Skyrider

3. = Wyrmslayer

7. Equerry

8. = Errant

8. = True Paladin

10. = Chevalier

10. = Medician

10. = Militarist

10. = Squire

10. = Votary

15. Divinate

Overall, this is a poor show, I think. Here's an idea - suggest some new ideas in the comments!

The Great North Is Great

In the new year, I will be moving towards a release of a Kickstarter for The Great North, and I am confident that I have enough of a grasp of the logistics, and am at an advanced enough stage of the project (all text and art is complete) to rapidly move from there to fulfilment. 

I will be putting up some teasers in the coming months, but in the meantime I merely wanted to show off some of Tom Kilian's simply exceptional art:

Wraparound front/back cover

The Hardwater

The Map

Joyous Garde

Drummond's Quarter

Cuddy's Well

The Emperor's Meadow

Twice-Bound

Knucker with Lamprey-men

Pwca

Silky and Shelly-coat

Knight-errant

Stuck Gates

Deadyoungestson

Grindylow

Lares

One of the 'zoomed in' maps

The Last Temptation of the DM: Why a Living Breathing World Needs Systematising

Is it possible to create a sandbox that is a 'living, breathing world'?

No. It is possible to create one that to all intents and purposes resembles such a thing. But we fool ourselves if we imagine that paper, dice, pencils and a bit of imagination can actually produce, rather than create a simulacrum of, genuine complexity.

The reason this comes up is that, in a recent post, I made the claim that it was not possible to set up a sandbox in which the PCs are the good guys responding to threats posed by evildoers without a way of systematising how the evildoers behave. There was some pushback on this in the comments, but I stood by my position. If there is not a way of systematising evildoer behaviour - if one just says to oneself, 'Well, I will just treat the evildoers in the sandbox as though they were PCs and ascribe to them motives and agency accordingly' then one will end up producing what is in effect a railroad. What do I mean by this?

Picture a hexmap. And picture a campaign in which the PCs are the 'goodies' - Knights of the Square Table. Their job is to protect the weak from evildoers. They live in Bamelot, where they serve King Marthur. 

For the sake of simplification, let's then say there are three factors of evildoers which you have created. There is the Red Baron and his minions, the Purple Vampire Count, and the Yellow Nosed Dwarfs.

Everything is set up - the hexmap is keyed and populated, Bamelot is filled up with interesting NPCs, etc. The campaign now begins: it's the 1st of January. Now, you want your sandbox to feel as though it is a 'living, breathing world'. So...what happens?

Well, if it is a living, breathing world, what do the Red Baron and his minions, the Purple Vampire Count, and the Yellow Nosed Dwarfs do? They pursue objectives. What are their objectives? Well, let's say the Red Baron, er, wants to abduct King Marthur's daughter because he wants to force her to marry him. And let's say the Purple Vampire Count needs the blood of innocent children to survive. And then let's say the Yellow Nosed Dwarfs want to raid Bamelot's treasure vaults to get King Marthur's gold.

Ok. So what happens now? Hmm. Let's say that the Red Baron sends his flying monkeys to kidnap King Marthur's daughter. And let's say that it will take them about two days to arrive based on distances on the map. Then let's say that the Purple Vampire Count goes off to raid the village of Autumnfield, and it will take five days for him to get there. And then let's say it will take a month for the Yellow Nosed Dwarfs to finish digging their tunnels all the way to Bamelot.

Right. So, in the meantime, what are the PCs doing? Maybe 'going out on patrol'. Maybe consulting the wizard Gerlin about what his soothsaying skills suggest about the emergence of future threats. Let's say they've chosen to go out on patrol. What happens? Hmm. Well, it would be boring if nothing happened when the PCs were out on patrol. So maybe they could get the opportunity to discover clues or hear rumours about flying monkeys, which would then give them the opportunity to pre-empt the Red Baron's kidnap attempt. Or maybe they could encounter some unrelated fourth threat? Or maybe they could get the chance to uncover information that might alert them to the activities of the Purple Vampire Count or the Yellow Nosed Dwarfs...?

Do I need to belabour the point further? I hope not. There is nothing about any of the above that is illegitimate and I do not mean to suggest that this way of playing a game would not be fun, but it is not a 'living, breathing world'. It is a world in which the DM is deciding more or less everything, either on the fly, or in reference to what he has pre-planned or thought up in advance - and, crucially, in light of his own particular tastes. Yes, the PCs do have a bit of agency in how they respond to events as they unfold. But they are really just living out an interaction with whatever the DM happens to think would be appropriate at any given moment. And they will not therefore be interacting with a 'living, breathing world' but in the end reacting to the DM's own implicit or explicit ideas about how he wants the campaign to emerge. What happens does not come about organically but because of what the DM wills, even if what he is willing does take place in response to what the PCs do at a particular time. And what happens in these circumstances will inevitably be led by whatever the DM happens to think would be good, or fun - in reference to his own tastes, desires, and vision.

A little of this is inevitable in a role playing game, as we all know, but by far the more authentic and, I think, rewarding way to simulate the existence of a 'living, breathing world' in such a way as to avoid the DM simply making things up as he goes along is to set up neutral systems of generation and decision-making. Instead of beginning with a Red Baron and a Purple Vampire Count and a tribe of Yellow Nosed Dwarfs, and ascribing to them motives, one instead comes up with a way of generating evildoers and then creating interactions between them, and the world around them, through the use of random tables. One comes up with neutral ways of determining, through the use of dice or other methods, how they pursue their objectives, and when. One creates methods for determining how new threats arise. One creates ways for seasonal and climactic factors to influence events. And so on. One, in other words, systematises as much as possible so as to ensure that the players are not in the end simply 'adventuring' in the DM's own hall of mirrors. 

The result is not a 'living, breathing world' either, but it is one that is much less immediately a representation of the DM's own conceptions of what would be best at any given moment. And that is a world which, while not 'living and breathing', does at least contain space for player agency to develop.

Teaching Tricks to Lego Cars: Being an NPC talking to an NPC

At the pub the other night a friend of mine was recounting an episode from the Tired Parent Wars. Apparently, his young son has got into a routine of taking a handful of lego cars with him into the water at bath time, so they can do 'tricks' in the bath itself (jumps, half-pipes, etc.). My friend was expressing his exasperation at the fact that this has transformed into a situation in which he (the father) has to teach new tricks to the cars and has to do it in an 'in universe' voice - so that he has to talk to the cars like a school teacher and instruct them in what to do, while also being in control of them as they perform the tricks in question. (His son apparently just watches.) 

My friend was recounting what a brain-borking activity this is, and you can understand why. 'Being' a car, as it were, doing tricks, is not too complicated. Nor would it be too complicated to pretend that one is the driver of one of the cars. But there is something about the extra level of creativity that is required to imagine being an instructor of a fictitous person, who one is also pretending to be in control of, that elevates the task beyond the capacities of the frazzled father after a long day at work. 

This spurred me to reflect on what has always struck me to be the most difficult and often most inert and boring aspect of being a DM, which is carrying on a conversation between two NPCs while the PCs listen. Acting the part of an NPC interacting with the PCs is not complicated, and often fun. But to carry on an overheard conversation of any length - say, more than four or five lines of dialogue - between two NPCs and make it interesting (at least without a pre-prepared script) is tough. Generally it is dull; at its worst, it can descend into a much less funny verson of a Tommy Cooper routine:

The only exceptions would appear to be those DMs blessed with genuine acting talent and a range of voices, who are able to dramatise speech between NPCs and hold attention - not by any means straightforward.

Can this skill be cultivated? I suppose it can, and one could even imagine that, blessed with time and inclination, one could practice and hone the ability. Just consult the following table, roll the dice, and see what type of conversation comes up, and then act it out: set yourself a timer (2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes) and see how long you can keep it going. Though I recommend doing it with nobody else in earshot...

Dice	NPC 1	Wants to	NPC 2
1	Street hoodlum	Intimidate	Street hoodlum
2	Elderly sage		Elderly sage
3	Witch	Seduce	Witch
4	Knight		Knight
5	Ogre	Persuade	Ogre
6	Cat woman		Cat woman
7	Innkeeper	Trick	Innkeeper
8	Mayor		Mayor
9	Urchin	Warn	Urchin
10	Fisherman		Fisherman
11	Farmer	Plot with	Farmer
12	Tavern wench		Tavern wench