I did this using Gimp. Not great, but I think I'm getting a little better with practice. The most onerous task is without doubt the coastline, which I was far too lazy to do a proper job of.
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
Map of the County of Leon
The Western part of the County of Leon, including Brest, the seat of Guimarch of Leon:
I did this using Gimp. Not great, but I think I'm getting a little better with practice. The most onerous task is without doubt the coastline, which I was far too lazy to do a proper job of.
I did this using Gimp. Not great, but I think I'm getting a little better with practice. The most onerous task is without doubt the coastline, which I was far too lazy to do a proper job of.
A Hexmap and a Kernel of an Idea
I downloaded and installed a fun little freeware map-making program called Wilderness Mapper the other day, and decided for my first project that I would map out the old Duchy of Brittany, circa 1066 AD. At the time Brittany was a powerful independent polity which had defeated the Kings of France in several wars, and was strongly allied to the (also) independent Duke of Normandy - who would shortly take the English crown. It was still almost entirely Breton-speaking, and so should be more properly rendered the Dugelezh Vreizh. Its vassals included the Counts of Naoned (Nantes, in French), Gwengamp (Guingamp), Kernev (Cournouaille), Poher (Poucher), Roazhon (Rennes), Gwened (Vannes), Leon and Penteur (Penthievre).
The map isn't finished yet and it looks nothing like as good as the ones Alexis posted here. (Alexis is an ornery individual, but his world building entries are nothing short of inspirational.) Nevertheless it took me bloody ages last night to get even to the stage I'm at now. The basic framework is in place now, and the next task is to populate it with villages, hamlets, towns and adventuring locales. Each hex is 4.1 miles across; the dark green is deep forest, while the lighter green is just 'forest'. (In the early Middle Ages, Europe was still almost entirely forested.) You'll notice that the Eastern section is mostly untouched - that's because it's France, not Brittany.
Of course, the history of Brittany needs a bit of D&D-izing. My first impulse was to include elves in the mix somewhere (if elves are going to be based on a real-world culture, it's pretty much always going to be Celtic or Latin types). But elves bore me, and I think I've already written before about doing something different with demihuman races vis-a-vis real world cultures.
No, the people of the Dugelezh Vriezh and its environs are humans and dwarves, and I think it would be an interesting twist to have the dwarves be culturally 'French'. Indeed, the populations of modern day France, Northern Spain and Italy, Slovenia and Romania are all varieties of dwarf; they represent the gothic barbarian races who supplanted the celts in those areas and became latinised during the latter period of the Roman Empire.
Brittany, like Wales, and Galicia and the Basque country in Spain, is an area where humans remain dominant. The population is almost entirely monolingual in Breton, although there is some 'bleed' of dwarven French culture into the nobility, and some intermarriage resulting in a subculture of half-dwarves living on the outskirts of society.
Brittany is covered by thick forest and its population is almost entirely coastal. Inland, roving hunter-gatherer bands of gnolls can still sometimes be a threat, and monsters of various kinds inhabit the deepest and thickest glades. But the main dangers to the Bretons come from overseas - trollish viking raiders from Scandinavia and half-orc pirates who set sail from the southern coast of Wessex. (England is a melting pot mix of orcish Angles, Saxons and Jutes and human celts; interbreeding has resulted in a race which blurs from the fully human to the fully orc - with everything in between represented.) While relatively powerful, the Dugs of Vriezh find themselves threatened from on all sides - as the peace with the dwarven Kings of France is always uneasy.
I'll expand on some places of note in Brittany later.
The map isn't finished yet and it looks nothing like as good as the ones Alexis posted here. (Alexis is an ornery individual, but his world building entries are nothing short of inspirational.) Nevertheless it took me bloody ages last night to get even to the stage I'm at now. The basic framework is in place now, and the next task is to populate it with villages, hamlets, towns and adventuring locales. Each hex is 4.1 miles across; the dark green is deep forest, while the lighter green is just 'forest'. (In the early Middle Ages, Europe was still almost entirely forested.) You'll notice that the Eastern section is mostly untouched - that's because it's France, not Brittany.
Of course, the history of Brittany needs a bit of D&D-izing. My first impulse was to include elves in the mix somewhere (if elves are going to be based on a real-world culture, it's pretty much always going to be Celtic or Latin types). But elves bore me, and I think I've already written before about doing something different with demihuman races vis-a-vis real world cultures.
No, the people of the Dugelezh Vriezh and its environs are humans and dwarves, and I think it would be an interesting twist to have the dwarves be culturally 'French'. Indeed, the populations of modern day France, Northern Spain and Italy, Slovenia and Romania are all varieties of dwarf; they represent the gothic barbarian races who supplanted the celts in those areas and became latinised during the latter period of the Roman Empire.
Brittany, like Wales, and Galicia and the Basque country in Spain, is an area where humans remain dominant. The population is almost entirely monolingual in Breton, although there is some 'bleed' of dwarven French culture into the nobility, and some intermarriage resulting in a subculture of half-dwarves living on the outskirts of society.
Brittany is covered by thick forest and its population is almost entirely coastal. Inland, roving hunter-gatherer bands of gnolls can still sometimes be a threat, and monsters of various kinds inhabit the deepest and thickest glades. But the main dangers to the Bretons come from overseas - trollish viking raiders from Scandinavia and half-orc pirates who set sail from the southern coast of Wessex. (England is a melting pot mix of orcish Angles, Saxons and Jutes and human celts; interbreeding has resulted in a race which blurs from the fully human to the fully orc - with everything in between represented.) While relatively powerful, the Dugs of Vriezh find themselves threatened from on all sides - as the peace with the dwarven Kings of France is always uneasy.
I'll expand on some places of note in Brittany later.
Sunday, 28 September 2008
Size
The world is a big place, you know. It's easy to forget that point, in this age of air travel and instant international communications, where a man who grew up in a suburb of Liverpool and now lives in Yokohama can write blog posts read by people from the US, France and Australia while simultaneously chatting on msn with a friend in South Africa.
But it is. It's bloody enormous. From my home town to the place I live now is approximately 5,916 miles; if I had to rely on my own legs for transportation, as human beings did for the vast majority of our history, it would take me around 296 days to travel that distance assuming a rate of 20 miles per day. That's ignoring mountains, impenetrable forests, uncrossable deserts, wide rivers, two seas, and other natural obstacles which would obviously make the whole thing take much longer. It's also ignoring the searching for food which I would have to do on the way. And by the time I arrived I would have seen comfortably less than 0.01% of the world's land surface area.
The world isn't just geographically big. It's culturally big too - another thing that it's easy to forget, in the modern world of nation-states. For most of human time our planet has been a patchwork of myriad different cultural, linguistic, religious and ethnic groups, each with its own unique history. In New Guinea over 1,000 languages are spoken; in the Caucusus mountains there are three entirely unrelated language families of dozens of languages each; in North-East India there are a group of Tibeto-Burman people called the Bnei Menashe who believe they are one of the lost tribes of Israel; at the time of the Reconquista there was an emirate of Basque-speaking Muslims near modern day Pamplona in Spain; in 1984 a group of nine Australian aborigines who had never encountered Western civilisation were discovered in the Gibson Desert: the world is a huge place full of weird and wonderful things, almost beyond cataloging.
How do you go about making a homebrew campaign setting which goes even a tiny way towards representing all that variety? Moreover, how do you represent the wonder of demihuman variety which must surely exist in equal measure on top of all that?
The answer is that it's an impossible task which you shouldn't even try. Part of me - the masochistic part - wants to, though.
But it is. It's bloody enormous. From my home town to the place I live now is approximately 5,916 miles; if I had to rely on my own legs for transportation, as human beings did for the vast majority of our history, it would take me around 296 days to travel that distance assuming a rate of 20 miles per day. That's ignoring mountains, impenetrable forests, uncrossable deserts, wide rivers, two seas, and other natural obstacles which would obviously make the whole thing take much longer. It's also ignoring the searching for food which I would have to do on the way. And by the time I arrived I would have seen comfortably less than 0.01% of the world's land surface area.
The world isn't just geographically big. It's culturally big too - another thing that it's easy to forget, in the modern world of nation-states. For most of human time our planet has been a patchwork of myriad different cultural, linguistic, religious and ethnic groups, each with its own unique history. In New Guinea over 1,000 languages are spoken; in the Caucusus mountains there are three entirely unrelated language families of dozens of languages each; in North-East India there are a group of Tibeto-Burman people called the Bnei Menashe who believe they are one of the lost tribes of Israel; at the time of the Reconquista there was an emirate of Basque-speaking Muslims near modern day Pamplona in Spain; in 1984 a group of nine Australian aborigines who had never encountered Western civilisation were discovered in the Gibson Desert: the world is a huge place full of weird and wonderful things, almost beyond cataloging.
How do you go about making a homebrew campaign setting which goes even a tiny way towards representing all that variety? Moreover, how do you represent the wonder of demihuman variety which must surely exist in equal measure on top of all that?
The answer is that it's an impossible task which you shouldn't even try. Part of me - the masochistic part - wants to, though.
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Chaos Patrons! (Blatant Plagiarism Alert)
[Disclaimer: First of all, I should say that I'm stealing this more or less entirely from the old roguelike computer game Zangband. Please view this as a D&D-isation of an aspect of an old favourite, not something I've come up with myself. (The relevant document, if you want to see the source material, is this text file.)]
Chaos Patrons
The layers of the Abyss are infinite, and so are its Powers. Endless multitudes of dark gods throng its depths, scheming of ways to attract more mortal followers and thus gather power. Every so often one of them finds a way to dominate some foolish individual on the prime material plane, usually through striking some kind of Faustian bargain. These chaos patrons are capricious and flighty, however, and they are just as likely to curse or bless their unfortunate worshipers.
A player can choose for his character to follow a chaos patron at character creation, or he might decide to follow one during the course of the game should the opportunity arise. (The DM should come up with a suitably painful and tortuous ritual for a PC who wishes to take up the worship of a chaos god.) The only requirement for a PC who wishes to worship a chaos god is that he be willing, and that he be Chaotic Evil or Chaotic Neutral in alignment (or willing to shift his existing alignment to either of those positions).
There are infinite chaos gods, and the DM and player are encouraged to be as creative as they like when coming up with their patron. Alternatively, they can roll 1d20 and consult the following table of example gods:
A character with a chaos patron who advances in level is given a boon or a curse at random. This either takes effect at the moment of advancement, or at the first combat after advancement, or at another time defined in the text. When the character levels up, roll 1d30 and consult the following table:
Chaos Patrons
The layers of the Abyss are infinite, and so are its Powers. Endless multitudes of dark gods throng its depths, scheming of ways to attract more mortal followers and thus gather power. Every so often one of them finds a way to dominate some foolish individual on the prime material plane, usually through striking some kind of Faustian bargain. These chaos patrons are capricious and flighty, however, and they are just as likely to curse or bless their unfortunate worshipers.
A player can choose for his character to follow a chaos patron at character creation, or he might decide to follow one during the course of the game should the opportunity arise. (The DM should come up with a suitably painful and tortuous ritual for a PC who wishes to take up the worship of a chaos god.) The only requirement for a PC who wishes to worship a chaos god is that he be willing, and that he be Chaotic Evil or Chaotic Neutral in alignment (or willing to shift his existing alignment to either of those positions).
There are infinite chaos gods, and the DM and player are encouraged to be as creative as they like when coming up with their patron. Alternatively, they can roll 1d20 and consult the following table of example gods:
1. Slortar the OldEffects of worshiping a chaos patron:
2. Mabelode the Faceless
3. Chardros the Reaper
4. Hionhurn the Executioner
5. Xiombarg the Sword Queen
6. Pyaray the Tentacled Whisperer of Impossible Secrets
7. Balaan the Grim
8. Arioch, Duke of Hell
9. Eequor, Blue Lady of Dismay
10. Narjhan, Lord of Beggars
11. Balo the Jester
12. Khorne the Blood God
13. Slaanesh, God of Pleasure
14. Nurgle, the Rotting God
15. Tzeentch, the Lord of Change
16. Djobidjoba, the King of Grubs
17. Azathoth, the Devil's Bannerman
18. Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies
19. Dusty Miller, the Mad Baker
20. Bindapaparabba, Mistress of Waterlilies
A character with a chaos patron who advances in level is given a boon or a curse at random. This either takes effect at the moment of advancement, or at the first combat after advancement, or at another time defined in the text. When the character levels up, roll 1d30 and consult the following table:
Boons and Curses
1. "Thou needst a new form, mortal!" - The character is Polymorphed into a randomly determined race without chance of saving throw (1-2: Human, 3-4: Gnome, 5-6: Dwarf, 7-8: Elf, 9-10: Halfling; roll again if the character is already of that race).
2. "Well done, mortal! Lead on!" - The character is awarded a 10% experience point bonus.
3. "Thou didst not deserve that, slave!" - The character loses 10% of his experience and is relegated to the previous level.
4. "Use my gift wisely!" - A randomly determined magical item is created on the floor beside the character.
5. "Thy deed hath earned thee a worthy blade!" - A randomly determined magical weapon is created on the floor beside the character.
6. "Thy deed hath earned thee a worthy reward!" - 1d3 randomly determined magical items are created on the floor beside the character.
7. "Behold, mortal, how generously I reward thy loyalty!" - The character is granted a limited wish.
8. "Thou art grown arrogant, mortal!" - The character loses 33% of his experience.
9. "My pets, destroy the arrogant mortal!" - 2-6 randomly determined tanar'ri (with HD equal to the character's level) are created next to the character at the beginning of his next combat.
10. "Thou needst worthier opponents!" - 1d100 dretches appear next to the character at the beginning of his next combat.
11. "Death and destruction, this pleases me!" - An earthquake occurs, centered on the character the next time he kills an opponent.
12. "Stay, mortal, and let me mold thee!" - +1 to prime requisite.
13. "I grow tired of thee, mortal!" - -1 to prime requisite.
14. "Thou needst a lesson in humility, mortal!" -1 to all stats.
15. "Receive this modest gift from me!" - +1 to all stats.
16. "Rise, my servant!" - The next time the character is reduced to 10% of his hit point total, all his hit points are immediately restored.
17. "Suffer, pathetic fool!" - A ball of chaos, 12' in radius, blast the character and anyone within its range for the character's level x4 in damage at the beginning of his next combat.
18. "Thou reliest too much on thy weapon!" - Has the same effect of a scroll of curse weapon.
19. "Thou reliest too much on thy equipment!" - Has the same effect of a scroll of curse armour.
20. "Now thou shalt pay for annoying me!" - All the effects of items 17, 14 and 10.
21. "Die, mortal!" - The character immediately takes level x4 in damage.
22. "Let me relieve thee of thine oppressors!" - Immediate Power Word: Kill on the character's opponents as soon as the next combat begins.
23. "Let me relieve thee of thine oppressors!" - Immediate banishment of the next group of undead or daemonic monsters which confront the character.
24. "Thou shalt not die yet, mortal!" - All monsters threatening the character are immediately hit for the character's level x4 in damage as soon as the next combat begins.
25. The patron ignores the character.
26. "Let me reward thee with an undead servant!" The character gains a randomly determined undead servant, of any kind with HD equal to or less than his level.
27. "Let me reward thee with a demonic servant!" The character gains a randomly determined tanar'ri servant, of any kind with HD equal to or less than his level.
28. "Let me reward thee with a servant!" The character gains a randomly determined monstrous servant, of any kind with HD equal to or less than his level.
29. "Let me reward thee with a henchman!" The character gains a henchman of his own level (1-2 Fighter, 3-4 Mage, 5-6 Cleric; all henchmen are Chaotic Evil in alignment).
30. "Mortal, bore me no longer!" The chaos patron abandons the character.
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Rants Elsewhere
I'm cutting down on my own ranting and focusing on positivity: i.e. pumping out idiotic nonsense ideas for other old school players to use. But that doesn't mean I can't link to rants elsewhere, and there's pretty good one over at The Core Mechanic today. It also relates to a recent rant of my own.
The important bit is this one, I think:
And that last bit is the rub: the internet changes everything. I can read tonnes of good stuff on blogs and forums, and if I want to I can cheaply or freely partake in fan-produced materials like Fight on! or Labyrinth Lord or a million and one others. (3e and 4e equivalents are also out there, if that's what floats your boat.) Who needs to buy materials the traditional way when you can download a .pdf, print it out and bind it (because it would be better to pledge your soul to satan than try to read them on an electronic format) within minutes - and when moreover there won't be the built-in redundancy which trying to keep up with new editions of the game brings?
I really wonder where WotC will go from here. I'm nowhere near churlish enough to argue that they couldn't continue to make fun versions of D&D from here until kingdom come if they had the money to. But there are only so many times you can say "Here's a new better version than the one you've been enjoying for the last few years!" before your customers start to smell rats. Role playing games are not like computer games, where graphics and processor speeds are continually evolving: there is a point at which a set of rules are good enough and require no more refinement. (Which is why nobody has successfully produced a new version of the Monopoly rules, for example.) This is especially true of rules for role playing games, whose point is not rules at all, but the concept of a shared world, which is free.
The important bit is this one, I think:
[WotC], in my opinion, is addicted to publishing new shiny things that were already printed before. After all, PUBLISH OR PERISH is the mantra for people in my field and for publishing companies. They HAD to make another edition of D&D to stay profitable - otherwise they were just going to run out of expansion products and ideas.
What they really need to do is completely change their business model (DDI doesn't count - that's vaporware). More and more gamers are turning to the internet and not to published hardback books for their materials. The RPG bloggers network alone provides me with enough material for more campaigns than I could ever run in my lifetime!
And that last bit is the rub: the internet changes everything. I can read tonnes of good stuff on blogs and forums, and if I want to I can cheaply or freely partake in fan-produced materials like Fight on! or Labyrinth Lord or a million and one others. (3e and 4e equivalents are also out there, if that's what floats your boat.) Who needs to buy materials the traditional way when you can download a .pdf, print it out and bind it (because it would be better to pledge your soul to satan than try to read them on an electronic format) within minutes - and when moreover there won't be the built-in redundancy which trying to keep up with new editions of the game brings?
I really wonder where WotC will go from here. I'm nowhere near churlish enough to argue that they couldn't continue to make fun versions of D&D from here until kingdom come if they had the money to. But there are only so many times you can say "Here's a new better version than the one you've been enjoying for the last few years!" before your customers start to smell rats. Role playing games are not like computer games, where graphics and processor speeds are continually evolving: there is a point at which a set of rules are good enough and require no more refinement. (Which is why nobody has successfully produced a new version of the Monopoly rules, for example.) This is especially true of rules for role playing games, whose point is not rules at all, but the concept of a shared world, which is free.
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Turning Undead and Sumo Clerics
I've been thinking about turning undead today.
Turning undead is one of the weirder D&D tropes, I think. The concept of a warrior-cleric striding forward with hiscrucifix holy symbol held aloft to banish the spirits of the evil dead is an image straight out of Hammer Horror; it has some precedent in the scenes in The Lord of the Rings when Frodo and Sam at various stages frighten off bad guys with items of Galadriel's bric-a-brac, but it seems like an oddly stark piece of Christian iconography in what is after all a resolutely heathen game.
I also find it odd that nobody I've ever played D&D with before has come up with a unique or interesting method of turning undead. Everybody, without exception, generally just says something about...well, striding forward with their holy symbol held aloft. It seems horribly mundane.
By coincidence, I've also been thinking about Sumo quite a lot, mainly because of the current broohaha which is dominating the sports news in this neck of the woods. Sumo is a sport first and foremost, but it also has some very vague quasi-religious relics from its milennia-old history - mainly purification rituals involving throwing salt and stamping. These days those rituals have the effect of building up suspense before a bout (they're really just like WWE wrestlers trash-talking their opponents on the mic before a fight) but in days past they were enacted to frighten away evil spirits from the ring.
And that's where turning undead comes in. So without further ado, I bring you:
Turning undead is one of the weirder D&D tropes, I think. The concept of a warrior-cleric striding forward with his
I also find it odd that nobody I've ever played D&D with before has come up with a unique or interesting method of turning undead. Everybody, without exception, generally just says something about...well, striding forward with their holy symbol held aloft. It seems horribly mundane.
By coincidence, I've also been thinking about Sumo quite a lot, mainly because of the current broohaha which is dominating the sports news in this neck of the woods. Sumo is a sport first and foremost, but it also has some very vague quasi-religious relics from its milennia-old history - mainly purification rituals involving throwing salt and stamping. These days those rituals have the effect of building up suspense before a bout (they're really just like WWE wrestlers trash-talking their opponents on the mic before a fight) but in days past they were enacted to frighten away evil spirits from the ring.
And that's where turning undead comes in. So without further ado, I bring you:
Asaouryu (Morning's Yellow Dragon) Proxy of Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun and Weaver of the Gods' Robes
11th Level Specialist Cleric/8th Level FIghter (Dual Classed)
Alignment: Lawful Good
STR: 17
INT: 12
WIS: 18
CON: 16
DEX: 9
CHR: 17
Magic Items: Belt of Protection from the Elements +5, Gauntlets of Giant Strength, Robe of Animal Control
Spell Spheres (Major): All, Animal, Creation, Plant, Sun.
(Minor): Weather, Elemental, Protection, Healing, Combat
Granted Power: Sunray 3 times per day
Asaouryu is one the mightiest servants of Amaterasu, a great warrior and greater cleric, who has fought evil the length and breadth of Yamato and beyond, spreading the light of Amaterasu's sun wherever it is needed most.
Asaouryu turns undead by stamping his feet. He plants both feet firmly on the floor and slams them up and down while slapping his thighs in an elaborate ritualistic display. The force of his footsteps sends shockwaves of Amaterasu's power blasting through the spirits of the evil dead.
In a fight, he uses no weapons other than his fists and physical strength and size. He relishes a physical duel and will often issue challenges to single opponents so he can wrestle them one-on-one.
Saturday, 20 September 2008
Pet Hate #486; Or, I Really Must Stop Visiting rpg.net
Of all the internet arguments that I hate with every fibre of my being, the one that takes the biscuit is the one that runs something like this:
The thing is, it's utterly ridiculous. It's like saying: "Don't like the 'influencing play' clause of the offside rule? Play another sport." Or: "Don't like the death penalty? Move to another country." Or: "Allergic to caffeine? Don't drink coffee." Patently stupid, and yet endlessly recycled in the lower reaches of places like rpg.net.
I should really stop spending time on that site, because all it does is make me want to Break Stuff. My wife once said "The only thing you change by posting on that site is your blood pressure." Pretty much. Although perhaps that's part of the addiction.
You don't like [rule x]? Play a different game!It's most often seen when somebody criticises some aspect of D&D and the knee-jerk brigade leaps to its defence. For example, from a recent thread about demihumans and optimisation:
You missed a solution: play a different game. In D&D the important character creation decisions are all about optimization. There are other fantasy games with Elves and Dwarves and similar races where race is not a character optimization. It's up to you as to which game you play.I always picture the poster typing away with a smug smile on his face, as if he's come up with the most wonderful, brilliant destruction of any criticism to the game ever put forward.
The thing is, it's utterly ridiculous. It's like saying: "Don't like the 'influencing play' clause of the offside rule? Play another sport." Or: "Don't like the death penalty? Move to another country." Or: "Allergic to caffeine? Don't drink coffee." Patently stupid, and yet endlessly recycled in the lower reaches of places like rpg.net.
I should really stop spending time on that site, because all it does is make me want to Break Stuff. My wife once said "The only thing you change by posting on that site is your blood pressure." Pretty much. Although perhaps that's part of the addiction.
Thursday, 18 September 2008
The Two Towers of Fantasy
I think my post yesterday might have been misinterpreted, so I feel a clarification is in order: although it is true that half of me wants to have no playable races other than humans, the other half of me recoils at the thought. My position is entirely more ambiguous than the tone of the rant suggests.
I think the problem is that the fantasy genre is really two rather different genres which have somehow become entwined because of superficial similarities. (This is at least partly because the literati despise fantasy and know nothing about it other than "Isn't it all to do with swords and magic and goblins and other childish escapist stuff?") I like both of these genres equally, and want to represent them in my D&D gaming, and this is where the irreconcilable conflict between the banalifying systematiser noisms and the romantic mysterious dreamer noisms is fought out.
What are the two genres? You might call the first, loosely, the Scientifiction tradition and the second, just as loosely, the Romantic tradition; or, to summon up the spirit of Robert M. Pirsig, we could perhaps summarise it as Classicism vs. Romanticism. (In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Pirsig describes how his Romantic friend flatly refuses to study mechanics because he prefers to live with the mystery of how his strange BMW works, whereas Pirsig himself, the Classicist, likes to apply reason and rationality to his motorcycling hobby and spends much of his time studying mechanical engineering.) Let's expand on what I mean by these.
Classicist Fantasy, or the Scientifiction Tradition
Classicist Fantasy concerns itself with rationality, where made-up worlds work along logical and reasonable lines. It is the fantasy of people like George R. R. Martin, Dan Simmons, Phillip Pullman, Robert Jordan, Guy Gavriel Kay and Steven Erikson - writers who concern themselves with creating worlds which make sense on a rational level and where everything is ultimately explainable and explained (even if of course they contain such nonexistent things as magic and monsters). It isn't about making fantasy scientifically accurate - that would be a nonsense - it is rather to do with internal consistency. People behave as they do in 'the real world' and interact with things around them - boats, swords, dragons, wizards - in a holistic way, the same way in which we in our world interact with boats, guns, cars and aeroplanes. The human beings in A Song of Ice and Fire behave like human beings in our world, technology is roughly contemporaneous to that of England at the time of the Wars of the Roses, and we can easily imagine a person transported from York circa 1485 to Westeros feeling completely at home there. The fantasy is based on a rational view of the universe, in which everything makes sense to the people within it.
I call it 'Scientifiction' because it comes from the same impulse which drives the Science Fiction of people like Isaac Asimov. Asimov created imaginative other realities, but they were firmly grounded in reason: robots do this, because this. There was no mystery to proceedings, despite the fact that it is entirely imaginary. And I suspect this sort of fantasy appeals to people in the same way that Star Trek does - there is wonder and escapism there, but you can catalogue it and analyse it in terms of internal consistency and logic. It is fantastical, but comprehensible.
Romantic Fantasy
The Romantic Tradition, on the other hand, doesn't try to present us with a holistic, rational world; as with Pirsig's friend in Zen..., the point is not to understand, but to revel in the unknown and unknowable. Once you begin to comprehend, you destroy the fragile magic and weirdness, and shatter the mystery. You make it mundane. It is the fantasy of writers like Lord Dunsany, M. John Harrison, John Crowley, Michael Moorcock, and Mervyn Peake; writers for whom strangeness and other-worldliness is as much the point as are the plot and characters, and in which there seemingly is no internal logic or rational world. In Viriconium, the city and characters change from story to story and yet stay the same; in Little, Big the fairies are one thing and then they're another; in Time and the Gods the universe is governed by capricious beings whose true motives can only be guessed at. You're not supposed to bother approaching such books expecting them to make sense; you're supposed to revel in the fact that they don't - except perhaps on some intuitive, emotional level. They are about incomprehensibility and that is why they are fun.
For whatever reason, it's the Classicist tradition which seems to have come to dominate "D&D fantasy" as we have come to know it. I believe this is at least partly to do with the nature of gaming itself: there needs to be rationality in order for there to be a game with agreed rules. But I also sometimes think it is to do with gamers, because it is undoubtedly true that there is something within the nerdish, the bookish, and the dorkish (and I include myself in this) which seeks comfort in statistics and charts and tables and lists. Such things speak to our insecurities and anal retentive tendencies. We like control, and order. Many of us are socially inept, and bad at functioning in a group without the sort of guidelines and regulations which rulebooks provide. Classicist fantasy is more comfortable than the Romantic kind for people like us.
I like both traditions, and think there's a place for both. My recent posts have mostly been about trying to redress the balance slightly in favour of Romanticism, but there is value and worth in the other and I'd hate to imply otherwise. I like George R. R. Martin and M. John Harrison equally and couldn't choose between them.
(As an afterword, I don't think it's an accident that the greatest fantasy author - Tolkien - had his foot firmly in both camps. His linguistic creations and his obsessive chronicling were unquestionably Scientifictionalist. But his myth-making and his delight in Tom Bombadilesque mysteries point towards a dyed-in-the-wool Romantic. Maybe that's part of the weird chemistry that makes his books so enjoyable.)
I think the problem is that the fantasy genre is really two rather different genres which have somehow become entwined because of superficial similarities. (This is at least partly because the literati despise fantasy and know nothing about it other than "Isn't it all to do with swords and magic and goblins and other childish escapist stuff?") I like both of these genres equally, and want to represent them in my D&D gaming, and this is where the irreconcilable conflict between the banalifying systematiser noisms and the romantic mysterious dreamer noisms is fought out.
What are the two genres? You might call the first, loosely, the Scientifiction tradition and the second, just as loosely, the Romantic tradition; or, to summon up the spirit of Robert M. Pirsig, we could perhaps summarise it as Classicism vs. Romanticism. (In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Pirsig describes how his Romantic friend flatly refuses to study mechanics because he prefers to live with the mystery of how his strange BMW works, whereas Pirsig himself, the Classicist, likes to apply reason and rationality to his motorcycling hobby and spends much of his time studying mechanical engineering.) Let's expand on what I mean by these.
Classicist Fantasy, or the Scientifiction Tradition
Classicist Fantasy concerns itself with rationality, where made-up worlds work along logical and reasonable lines. It is the fantasy of people like George R. R. Martin, Dan Simmons, Phillip Pullman, Robert Jordan, Guy Gavriel Kay and Steven Erikson - writers who concern themselves with creating worlds which make sense on a rational level and where everything is ultimately explainable and explained (even if of course they contain such nonexistent things as magic and monsters). It isn't about making fantasy scientifically accurate - that would be a nonsense - it is rather to do with internal consistency. People behave as they do in 'the real world' and interact with things around them - boats, swords, dragons, wizards - in a holistic way, the same way in which we in our world interact with boats, guns, cars and aeroplanes. The human beings in A Song of Ice and Fire behave like human beings in our world, technology is roughly contemporaneous to that of England at the time of the Wars of the Roses, and we can easily imagine a person transported from York circa 1485 to Westeros feeling completely at home there. The fantasy is based on a rational view of the universe, in which everything makes sense to the people within it.
I call it 'Scientifiction' because it comes from the same impulse which drives the Science Fiction of people like Isaac Asimov. Asimov created imaginative other realities, but they were firmly grounded in reason: robots do this, because this. There was no mystery to proceedings, despite the fact that it is entirely imaginary. And I suspect this sort of fantasy appeals to people in the same way that Star Trek does - there is wonder and escapism there, but you can catalogue it and analyse it in terms of internal consistency and logic. It is fantastical, but comprehensible.
Romantic Fantasy
The Romantic Tradition, on the other hand, doesn't try to present us with a holistic, rational world; as with Pirsig's friend in Zen..., the point is not to understand, but to revel in the unknown and unknowable. Once you begin to comprehend, you destroy the fragile magic and weirdness, and shatter the mystery. You make it mundane. It is the fantasy of writers like Lord Dunsany, M. John Harrison, John Crowley, Michael Moorcock, and Mervyn Peake; writers for whom strangeness and other-worldliness is as much the point as are the plot and characters, and in which there seemingly is no internal logic or rational world. In Viriconium, the city and characters change from story to story and yet stay the same; in Little, Big the fairies are one thing and then they're another; in Time and the Gods the universe is governed by capricious beings whose true motives can only be guessed at. You're not supposed to bother approaching such books expecting them to make sense; you're supposed to revel in the fact that they don't - except perhaps on some intuitive, emotional level. They are about incomprehensibility and that is why they are fun.
For whatever reason, it's the Classicist tradition which seems to have come to dominate "D&D fantasy" as we have come to know it. I believe this is at least partly to do with the nature of gaming itself: there needs to be rationality in order for there to be a game with agreed rules. But I also sometimes think it is to do with gamers, because it is undoubtedly true that there is something within the nerdish, the bookish, and the dorkish (and I include myself in this) which seeks comfort in statistics and charts and tables and lists. Such things speak to our insecurities and anal retentive tendencies. We like control, and order. Many of us are socially inept, and bad at functioning in a group without the sort of guidelines and regulations which rulebooks provide. Classicist fantasy is more comfortable than the Romantic kind for people like us.
I like both traditions, and think there's a place for both. My recent posts have mostly been about trying to redress the balance slightly in favour of Romanticism, but there is value and worth in the other and I'd hate to imply otherwise. I like George R. R. Martin and M. John Harrison equally and couldn't choose between them.
(As an afterword, I don't think it's an accident that the greatest fantasy author - Tolkien - had his foot firmly in both camps. His linguistic creations and his obsessive chronicling were unquestionably Scientifictionalist. But his myth-making and his delight in Tom Bombadilesque mysteries point towards a dyed-in-the-wool Romantic. Maybe that's part of the weird chemistry that makes his books so enjoyable.)
More on Archetypes and Demihumans
In many ways I do rather wish Gygax and Arneson hadn't put demihumans in D&D. Although my love for dwarves is well documented, I think I would be willing to see them removed as playable races as a sacrifice so that I never have to come across an elf or halfling character ever again in a game. (I do have my tongue half in my cheek here, but only half.)
The reason isn't just the one I mentioned yesterday (the tendency towards "I want to be a good Xer, therefore I must play a member of race Y, because they are the best Xers" as Anonymous put it). I think it's also because Demihuman player characters ruin the sense of mystery that comes with the exploration of something truly weird and fantastical - which is one of the major cornerstones of D&D. They make everything mundane: Melville's banalifying systematisation, rearing its head again. I much prefer the theme of strangers in a strange land, and you can only really explore that fully with human characters at large in a world full of weird and incomprehensible things. Elves and dwarves and the like would be infinitely more interesting if they were unknown and unknowable - the alien "other", permanently present and yet never understood. Rather than, basically, humans who like trees or humans who like mining, respectively.
I've quoted this passage by M. John Harrison before, but the more I think about it the more I start to see his point:
The part of me that finds great excitement, pleasure and comfort in creating finely realised fantasy world rebels against that statement with every fibre of its being, but the other half of me - which likes mystery and strangeness and romance - finds it compelling. How is it possible to reconcile the competing desires for systematisation and non-banality? For me, it's the key question not only of D&D or role-playing but of fantasy literature. Demihuman player character races are at the exact point where those two competing desires come together and are repelled; do you systematise elves to make them playable, but in doing so make them banal? Or do you preserve their sense of magic and mystery, but in so doing make them inaccessible? Not a question to keep you up at night, maybe, but one that I think the hobby itself could do more to consider.
I suppose it should come as no surprise that OD&D is the version of D&D which comes closest to reconciling both positions: although it strays into systematisation with its statting-out of the fantastic, it keeps this to a minimum while also providing a bare-bones framework on which to hang whatever strangeness your mind can come up with. There is no Forgotten Realms-esque bloat, no endless anal-retentive cataloguing of pointless minutiae. There is freedom for the unknowable to exist. Maybe there really is more to the old gal than meets the eye.
The reason isn't just the one I mentioned yesterday (the tendency towards "I want to be a good Xer, therefore I must play a member of race Y, because they are the best Xers" as Anonymous put it). I think it's also because Demihuman player characters ruin the sense of mystery that comes with the exploration of something truly weird and fantastical - which is one of the major cornerstones of D&D. They make everything mundane: Melville's banalifying systematisation, rearing its head again. I much prefer the theme of strangers in a strange land, and you can only really explore that fully with human characters at large in a world full of weird and incomprehensible things. Elves and dwarves and the like would be infinitely more interesting if they were unknown and unknowable - the alien "other", permanently present and yet never understood. Rather than, basically, humans who like trees or humans who like mining, respectively.
I've quoted this passage by M. John Harrison before, but the more I think about it the more I start to see his point:
The moment you begin to ask (or rather to answer) questions like, “Yes, but what did Sauron look like?”; or, “Just how might an Orc regiment organise itself?”; the moment you concern yourself with the economic geography of pseudo-feudal societies, with the real way to use swords, with the politics of courts, you have diluted the poetic power of Tolkien’s images. You have brought them under control. You have tamed, colonised and put your own cultural mark on them.
The part of me that finds great excitement, pleasure and comfort in creating finely realised fantasy world rebels against that statement with every fibre of its being, but the other half of me - which likes mystery and strangeness and romance - finds it compelling. How is it possible to reconcile the competing desires for systematisation and non-banality? For me, it's the key question not only of D&D or role-playing but of fantasy literature. Demihuman player character races are at the exact point where those two competing desires come together and are repelled; do you systematise elves to make them playable, but in doing so make them banal? Or do you preserve their sense of magic and mystery, but in so doing make them inaccessible? Not a question to keep you up at night, maybe, but one that I think the hobby itself could do more to consider.
I suppose it should come as no surprise that OD&D is the version of D&D which comes closest to reconciling both positions: although it strays into systematisation with its statting-out of the fantastic, it keeps this to a minimum while also providing a bare-bones framework on which to hang whatever strangeness your mind can come up with. There is no Forgotten Realms-esque bloat, no endless anal-retentive cataloguing of pointless minutiae. There is freedom for the unknowable to exist. Maybe there really is more to the old gal than meets the eye.
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Mucking About With Classes
One of my little pet projects is a complete overhaul of the D&D class system to divorce it entirely from race. Basically, I want an alternative character creation process whereby race becomes a purely cosmetic 'role-playing' choice. You want to play an elf? Okay, be an elf, but don't expect the game to help you out with juicy free bonuses. You can be good at archery and sneaking about in forests if you want, but you're going to have to do it the same way everybody else does - by creating a character who is good at archery and sneaking about in forests. Why do I want to do this? Mainly because I've played a lot of D&D and I'm bored with things as they are. But also because I want character personality to play a bigger part in the game - I want to put a stop to "I'm playing an elven fighter/mage (zzzz....)" and encourage "I'm playing an angry elf who's really into wind chimes" (or whatever). More individualism is what the game needs!
What would characters be like in this brave new world of racial equality?
I'd like to base them on adventuring archetypes. Archetypes already exist in D&D, of course - each of the 2nd edition brown Complete series has lists of them for the relevant class, and some of the campaign sourcebooks have them too. (My favourite, needless to say, is Monte Cook's list of Planewalker Archetypes in The Planewalker's Handbook.) But they've never really meant anything before; I think they were supposed to be role-playing aids - ways to give a more concrete personality to a character - but I don't think I've ever seen them being used.
This is because they don't have any mechanical benefits. I'm going to change that. Let's take one example, cribbed from The Planewalker's Handbook:
What would characters be like in this brave new world of racial equality?
I'd like to base them on adventuring archetypes. Archetypes already exist in D&D, of course - each of the 2nd edition brown Complete series has lists of them for the relevant class, and some of the campaign sourcebooks have them too. (My favourite, needless to say, is Monte Cook's list of Planewalker Archetypes in The Planewalker's Handbook.) But they've never really meant anything before; I think they were supposed to be role-playing aids - ways to give a more concrete personality to a character - but I don't think I've ever seen them being used.
This is because they don't have any mechanical benefits. I'm going to change that. Let's take one example, cribbed from The Planewalker's Handbook:
SpivMore to come, if I'm not feeling Spivvish and lazy.
A Spiv is a character who is always on the make. Maybe he's just lazy and doesn't want to work for his bread; maybe he thinks the world owes him a living; maybe he hates other people bossing him around and telling him what to do. Either way, he's a plain wide-boy, permanently on the look out for a way to make a quick and easy gold piece - and so long as it's quick and easy he never gives a second thought to how he gets it. One week he's selling his sword on a simple job guarding a caravan through settled lands to the next city, the next he's an enforcer beating up drunks for an inner-city money-lender, the one after that he's trying to hawk a hundred silk scarves a friend stole from a countess's chambermaid the week before last. if there's money to be had, he's there with a wink and a nudge and an "I'm the man for you" - provided of course he doesn't have to work too hard. That would never do.
Archetype Bonuses
Spivs gain a +2 to their Reaction Adjustment, from their skills in fast-talking. They are also expert judges of character from their constant wheeler-dealing. At Level 1 they can Detect Alignment with 50% probability, and have a 25% chance to Detect Lie. These probabilities rise by 3% per level.
Archetype Penalties
Spivs are fundamentally lazy. They are unwilling to work unless there is easy money to be made. If ever a Spiv does any sort of physical activity (including spellcasting) for which he isn't being directly paid or isn't guaranteed payment in the future, he has to make a saving throw vs. death magic. Failure means that he falls into a sulk for the rest of the day and does nothing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)