I Am Afraid Now

What is this?

What are its stats in the game of your choice?

Affection for Shit Characters

A phenomenon that I have noticed, over my gaming career, is that people tend to view randomly generated characters with more affection than ones they have built and predetermined, for instance through point-buy or allocation of stats.

It is important to distinguish what I mean, here. I don't mean that people don't like characters they create when they have full control over the process. I am talking specifically about affection - that feeling that you get for something that may be flawed, annoying, stupid, weak, imperfect, insipid, and so on, but which you come to like despite, and perhaps because, of those problems.

It's a feeling you can't get with non-random character generation; you can deliberately weaken your character in some way, but for some reason it just doesn't replicate that feeling you develop for your randomly rolled STR 7 fighter who survives to Level 2, or for your utterly uninteresting cleric whose stats are all in the 9-11 range but you make interesting anyway.

Why should this be? The parallels with human society are obvious: we don't create our family and friends. They come to us as they are and we develop bonds with them over time. Characters in games are a bit like that, it seems.

Medieval England Did Not Have Dragons

What's new, Monsters & Manuals? How's the world been treating you? You haven't changed a bit. Lovely as ever, I must admit.

Apologies for the hiatus. This has been the busiest summer for me ever - my PhD thesis is finished, I have a flash new job in a flash new city (well, Newcastle), and things are very much looking up, but it has been a time-sapping experience and I have done very little gaming and very little thinking about gaming. I've missed the blog, though, and it is good to be back.

Today, my topic for discussion is history. On a forum I frequent there was recently a little to-and-fro-ing about true population figures in medieval England, the number of manors and parishes in the Domesday Book, and so forth, and it made me think, with a strange clarity, what a bizarre pursuit historical research is when it comes to fantasy gaming. Why, as a DM creating a D&D setting, would you care what the population density of medieval England was as something relevant for your game, when medieval England did not have dragons, orcs, elves and magic in it? How can we possibly believe that the existence of such factors would not make a D&D world very, very different from medieval England in almost every respect?

The need for historical accuracy is one that I understand, but like almost everything else in gaming, it is an odd impulse when you think about it. If you are running a fantasy game, it actually makes more sense not to think about historical accuracy at all - the furniture of high fantasy requires a pseudo-medieval society which superficially resembles our own, but that resemblance must by necessity be entirely superficial. The moment you start thinking about accurate population figures and densities, trade routes and pricing, natural resources and so forth, you immediately have to consider: How would the existence of dragons affect this? What about magic? What about orcs? And suddenly you are not so much creating a fantasy setting as you are considering speculative, academic questions which lead to interesting pub or forum discussions but not much in the way of game-able content if you take it seriously.

To illustrate, think about what farms would look like if there were giant flying predators like dragons, griffins, hippogriffs and so on in the world. Nobody would keep cows or sheep, because they would be being eaten all the time. No cows or sheep means no leather or wool. Good luck trying to extrapolate a setting from that which you could base a game on. It's an interesting thing to think about while you're staring out of the window of the train on your daily commute, but it isn't something you could really play D&D with.

Fantasy gaming rests on a fiction: that you could have a society like England in 1200 AD which also has supernatural beings, magic, and active deities. That fiction, in turn, rests on the understanding that nobody thinks about it too hard.

Scenes from a Merseyside Gaming Emporium

I was moseying around Liverpool city centre today on the way to my office, and decided to head into Forbidden Planet - a chain of shops which sells mostly stuff that I don't think self-respecting adults should be interested in (action figures, Dr. Who DVDs, comics), fantasy and SF books, and - increasingly rarely - RPGs.

Before I went to live in Yokohama, way back in 2002ish, I remember Forbidden Planet's RPG section as being pretty extensive. It had, in large quantities, GURPS, old WoD, Call of Cthulu, MERP, D&D, RuneQuest, Shadowrun, Rifts, and so on, as well as more obscure stuff like Continuum. (Some of the books they had may have been out of print by that stage.) The shelf space was probably about 3 yards wide and a yard and a half high with two or three racks.

Now, there is only about a yard of shelf space on one rack. It contains, to my recollection (I may have missed something):

• Pathfinder stuff (Christ, that rulebook is thick: do people actually read that?)
• D&D 4e stuff, including the Red Box rip-off/revamp which I forget the name of
• Mongoose Traveller (one copy of the core rules, nothing else)
• the AD&D 1st edition core rulebook reprints for the Gygax memorial fund
• Mouse Guard 

I find a couple of things quite surprising about this. First - no World of Darkness. I'm surprised that line has tailed off. Since I don't really play those games I can only speculate, but did the new WoD alienate old fans and fail to replace them, a la Dungeons ampersand Dragons?

Second, almost everything is either D&D or a D&D spin-off. The great alternatives of old - Rolemaster, RuneQuest, etc. - might as well not exist, for all you'd guess. This is doubly true of the other heavyweights like Call of Cthulu, GURPS, Shadowrun, and the like. When people say that it wouldn't matter if D&D went away, I have my doubts. Other games may fill the void, but it seems just as likely that the hobby would simply die as a going concern.

Third, Mouse Guard?

And finally: if you assume that shelf space maps perfectly to the number of players (which it probably doesn't) you would have to conclude that the number of RPG players in Merseyside has declined in the last decade or so by what, 90% or something?

Tuesday Night Yoon-Suin: Session 8

Adventurers Present:

• Marich, Level 2 Magic-User [played by David]
• Anil, Level 2 Cleric of Manpac [played by Patrick]
• Manjeet, Level 1 Fighter [played by Nathan]
• Retainers: Nagendra I, Nagendra II, Lokendra, Sinba

The session had ended last week with the adventurers hiding out with two Quaggoth sisters while invisible hounds roamed outside. After the hounds had gone they spent some time discussing the layout of Sangmenzhang with these sisters, but Manjeet managed to annoy them and a fight ensued: they were both killed. The players then ransacked the room and discovered a silver belt, studded with aquamarines. 

Anil, however, had disobeyed and angered his god, Manpac, by going against his command to ally himself with the Quaggoths. Manpac commanded him to clear Sangmenzhang of the undead dwarfs which infested it, to appease his anger. 

What followed was an extended exploration of the flooded area of the first level of the citadel, as a way to work around and find dwarven ghosts. This was largely unsuccessful, but a larger portion of Sangmenzhang was now mapped, a shaft down to another level discovered, and some more of its history made known - the group found what seemed to be an old chapel, with grooves worn into the floor from generations of dwarfs praying before the altars to the Yak and Scorpion gods. They also hit upon the good idea of scooping up some of the luminous jellyfish in the flooded area in a wine bottle and using them as an alternative light source, which came in handy tied to a rope and lowered into holes.

They also encountered giant exploding snails, another giant cave locust, and more flesh-eating maggots. Eventually they came across a barricade, which they dismantled, and discovered another adventuring party hiding in a room. Three of these four were dead, and one dying. They were emaciated, pale, and with blood and mucous pouring from their noses and mouths: suspecting disease or gas, the PCs and their retainers covered their faces as they explored the room. They found some treasure in chests - over 700 gold pieces - that these adventurers had apparently recovered. The one man still alive, apparently a magic-user, was barely able to communicate, but he managed to utter dire warnings about strange demonic hounds roaming Sangmenzhang and breathing poison gas.

The group decided to leave, taking the treasure and the dying man with them. Some efforts were made to heal him, but failed, yet he managed to cling to life [DM's note: he kept rolling 20s on his saving throws versus poison]. They decided to take him to the Walung monastery - the headquarters of the strange holy order who practice self-mummification - to see if they would heal him.

They carried him on a platter into the mountains, following what they hoped was the way to the monastery, along a hill path through thick cedar and bamboo forest. The path eventually forked, leading NW and SW; they went NW and the next day came across a strange, walled garden set away from the path. This was overgrown, and the gate long locked and rusted, but still contained chrysanthemum and rhodedendron bushes, and a strange, purple-breasted peacock and some peahens. The PCs elected to spend the night here, and push on the next day. 

But the next morning they asked the dying man - whose name, they found out, was Madhav - if he knew where the Walung monastery was, and he told them that, actually, it was to the SW. [DM's note: tee hee] On a whim, Anil decided that "rather than having wasted a day coming all this way" it was worth investigating the garden further. Famous last words. On entry to the garden, the peacock revealed itself to be something else entirely - with its tail, it hypnotized and paralyzed all except Manjeet and Nagendra I, who charged it and found themselves pecked and slowly petrified to stone. Things could have gone terribly, but the hypnotized ones managed to escape the garden after a time and set up a shooting gallery on top of the garden wall, correctly surmising that the peacock could not get up at them. They gradually shot it to death with slings and arrows, taking turns climbing onto the wall top to fire, and helping each other get down when petrified by the thing's tail. 

They were now faced with the conundrum of what to do with the petrified Manjeet (and Nagendra I). He would be too heavy and awkward to move, but they hoped that the Walung order might be able to save him. They decided to go back on themselves and head SW as quickly as possible. 

This they did, and the next day came across a clearing in the forest, containing a grassy mound covered in flowers. This was inhabited by an (apparently) friendly witch called Omrita, who told them that the peacock thing was actually a peacockatrice, owned by an ancient wizard called Chokgyur who had died centuries ago. Anil immediately - and quite logically - jumped to the conclusion that this was an undead wizard, in which he was entirely correct. The witch told him that Chokgyur was probably dormant at the moment, if the garden was overgrown, but one could never be sure when he would wake. She also said that the Walung might help them, but would probably demand a geas in return. 

In return for helping gather hallucinogenic mushrooms, she also agreed to read the slate book written in Late Sangmenzhang Dwarfish that they had discovered in the secret chamber in the citadel. She told them that it was a journal, and an account of the latter days of the citadel. The dwarfs had apparently divided into two hostile groups, one worshipping the Yak god, the other the Scorpion god, and they had fought a bitter civil war, committing horrible acts of torture against each other and summoning demons to fight alongside them in battle inside the mountain. The dwarf who had written the journal had left "the secret way", but did not detail how - this explained how the chamber the journal had been discovered in had been locked from the inside, with no apparent way out. 

The witch Omrita also told the group about a temple to the Scorpion god high in the mountains, where the necklace of the dwarf king Tenzin II could be found - though she heavily implied this would be very dangerous. She speculated that the Scorpion god and the Yak god were not really deities, but ancient spirits of the mountains which had been there even before the dwarfs had arrived. 

She allowed the group to try her hallucinogenic mushrooms. Marich and Sinba partook. David, Marich's player, rolled the reaction dice and got a mischievous/crazy face, which he interpreted as a bizarre trip showing visions of himself riding a raptor around the mountaintops. Sinba got a happy face, which Patrick interpreted as involving her father sitting her on a ledge above the valley and explaining to her that all of creation belonged to her. Marich would be able to cast Charm Person as a one-off, for one day only, the next day. Sinba would be able to cast Faerie Fire. 

Thoughts: A mixed session. There was a little bit of friction at the beginning, because - for some entirely unknown and unjustified reason, Nathan got the bizarre impression that I was trying to kill all of the PCs. Amazing, I know. At one stage there were also allegations of fixing dice rolls, from a number of parties. It was generally good natured, but still...tensions rose. The second half of the session went much better - though Nathan was again unfortunate to have a character removed from the action, not by death this time but by being turned to stone. 

There were some good creative episodes. Using the luminous jellyfish as a light was a great idea, as was correctly concluding that the peacock was in a walled garden for a reason - it couldn't get up on the wall, and hence the worst it could do to somebody on the wall-top would be to hypnotize them with its tail for a brief period. Eventually it would die from missile fire. I was also pleased with having Patrick and David narrate hallucinogenic visions for Sinba and Marich after eating the mushrooms.

I am going to have to think of a way to punish Anil, Patrick's PC, for failing to obey Manpac. He should have been forced into a difficult dilemma - to do what Manpac wanted and banish undead dwarfs, or leave Sangmenzhang for the Walung monastery to help Madhav, and risk further wrath from his god. Instead that got forgotten about in the heat of the peacockatrice fight and its aftermath. I owe the peacockatrice idea to Melan, regular poster at rpg.net and therpgsite.com, finest gamer in Hungary and author of the infamous "Tyranny of Fun" posts (see e.g. here and here; for some reason I can't find the original enworld post). 

Stranger in a Strange Land

Do you have a strange, special snowflake campaign setting that steers away from D&D tropes? Would it make more sense for the PCs to be "strangers in a strange land" than natives, given that the players aren't going to get to know the setting well enough to behave like they're indigenous? There is plenty of historical precedent for groups of adventurers stranded in foreign lands of which they know nothing, with no way to get home. For instance:

The Russian Expeditionary Force in France was a brigade-strength unit sent from Russia to the Western Front to fight alongside France in the First World War. A considerable portion were Estonians. In one of those bizarre twists of globalization in which the First and Second World War abounded, a group of them ended up serving with the 1st Moroccan Division: Russians and Estonians in France, fighting with North Africans against Germans.

The Czech Legion was formed from Czech and Slovak volunteers and served with the Imperial Russian Army; after the revolution in 1917 they began to trek Eastwards through Siberia all the way to Vladivostok to get on board ships bound for France. On the way they tangled with the Bolsheviks and became involved in the Siberian Intervention, when Japanese, American, French, Canadian, British and Italian troops landed in Vladivostok to support the Whites against the Reds in the Russian Civil War. It is also said that, on the way, the Legion ended up in possession of 8 train carriages of gold bullion from the Imperial Reserve. It is also said that some of the Czechs remained in Siberia into the 1920s, and helped the Koreans defeat the Japanese at the Battle of Qingshanli.

After the surrender of the Emperor in September 1945, thousands of Japanese troops remained in China fighting alongside the nationalists against warlords and communists. Some were there for years afterwards.

The Blue Division were Spanish volunteers in the German invasion of the USSR in 1941. In total 286 of them were held captive after the way until 1954, when they were repatriated to Spain.

Basques from Northern Spain were fishing cod off Newfoundland from the beginning of the 16th Century; some even argue the Basques may have discovered North America before Columbus (though after the Vikings, obviously). Some of the earliest trade jargons in the New World were mixtures of Basque and local Native American tongues.

The notion of a bunch of rubes fumbling their way around a weird place they know nothing about, then, is remarkably common in human history. There isn't much of a better excuse to set players loose on a hex crawl than "you are stranded here for reason x, now what?"

Tuesday Night Yoon-Suin: Session 7

[I promise this blog isn't going to become just actual play reports after 4 years of studiously avoiding them. I just have almost no time to devote to RPGs at the moment except the weekly session.]

Adventurers Present:

• Marich, Level 2 Magic-User [played by David]
• Anil, Level 1 Cleric of Manpac (eunuch) [played by Patrick] 
• Manjeet, Level 1 Fighter [played by Nathan]
• Retainers: Binod, Nagendra I, Nagendra II, Fat Sanjam, Lokendra, Sinba

Marich, Anil and Manjeet began plotting ways to placate the wizardess/whore Jharanda, and also get their revenge on Marich II, who they suspected of stealing from them. Eventually Manjeet and Marich decided to write a message which they sent to Jharanda through the daughter of the owner of their lodgings, a girl called Tyree. In it, they promised to tell the wizardress about one of the clay creations of the archmage Gulvedra, which they had encountered hiding at the Old Watchtower in the South, as a quid pro quo for letting Anil off the hook for annoying her. As yet, they have not received a response. 

Marich II was dealt with expediently: when the hirelings gathered together the next day he was exposed and humiliated in front of all of them, told to hand back the chain mail and weapons that had been bought for him, and removed from the PCs' employ. [DM's note: I was amazed that they didn't take him into the forest and beat him up or worse, which would have been far more in keeping with their escapades so far.] To replace him, and also Padma who had been slain, they hired a tall thin spearman called Lokendra, and a rather ugly teenage girl called Sinba, to fill out their ranks of underlings.

They then went to the Guild of Sages: Anil had decided that his god, Manpac, had preordained his previous encounter with the galeb duhr in the forest, and he wanted to know more about the galeb duhr and their origins. He agreed to provide a partial map of the first level of Sangmenzhang to the sage Man, in return for information on the galeb duhr. He learned that it was very unusual to see one in the forest, and that they usually inhabited the high mountains where men found it difficult to breathe. They wanted above all to merely survive - to exist in the face of adversity, like a mountain itself. Man speculated that the Yak Folk, the malevolent slavers of the peaks, would know more of them. The PCs left with curiosity piqued.

They decided to make their way to Sangmenzhang. On the way they encountered a group of pilgrims heading to the nearby Walung monastery; they later learned that the Walung were an order of meditative healers who practice the art of self-mummification to gain eternal (un)life. 

They entered Sangmenzhang through their secretly-discovered back entrance, from which they had ejected the Feathered Men. Here, they set about constructing an elaborate set of barricades from bamboo, allowing them to use the Feathered Men's cave as a kind of base of operations in the old citadel. From there, they set about exploring the immediate chambers. Almost instantly they encountered a group of hideous, flesh devouring maggots, which nearly killed Manjeet, Sinba and one of the Nagendras by released burrowing worms into their bodies which had to be cut out with knives and much loss of blood; but in the maggot chamber they recovered 8 big clay pots containing 784 coins of blended silver and gold. While they were busy dragging their wounded and the money to their base, they were set upon by a giant cave locust which they cornered and stabbed to death.

They stayed in their base for a few days, licking their wounds, although the fights had taken Anil to Level 2, and he was now able to use the power of Manpac to aid with healing. While resting in the cave they were forced to drive off or kill four pandas which ate their mule, tied up in the bamboo groves below; they decided to try to sell the panda bones and skins in Silaish Vo next they were there. They also, at night, heard something big and humanoid moving through the forest; the next day they found big footprints and a path of broken canes of bamboo, but decided to press on deeper into Sangmenzhang instead.

They came across a small chamber with the door barred from the inside, which they hacked down with axes, to discover what had once apparently been a bed chamber. It was a mystery as to how it could be barred from the inside with nobody in it. They discovered an ancient book made out of slate hidden in the wall, covered in strange circular script, and decided to take it with them.

They also discovered a group of strange gibbon-men, who they quickly slew; exploring further, they discovered another chamber in which they found many branches and twigs and broken egg-shells: they surmised that this was the place where the Feathered Men had been rearing young, and they speculated that the gibbon-men may have smashed the eggs.

Pressing deeper, the party came to a narrow corridor with a door at the end. While decided whether to open it, they were set upon from the rear by strange creatures: shaped like large dogs, they were nearly invisible and perfectly transparent, with only a vague outline indicating their presence. Bunched up in the corridor as the party was, things looked bleak: these strange dog-things killed Binod, in the rear, and then tore out Fat Sanjam's bowels, filling the corridor with blood and faeces. Manjeet, at the front by the door, had no choice but to open it and try to escape that way - but discovered the chamber behind was already inhabited by two very large, very intimidating female humanoid creatures of indeterminate origin. Desperate, the PCs begged to be allowed to shelter from the dog-things, while their remaining hirelings kept the hounds at bay with spears. Eventually the two female creatures allowed them to enter the chamber and shut and bar the door. 

The two creatures revealed themselves to be sisters, Quaggoths from the mountains, who had fled their clan and were hiding in Sangmenzhang. They explained that they had encountered the invisible dog-things before, and thought them demons who the ancient dwarves of Sangmenzhang had disturbed from the depths of the earth shortly before their downfall. Anil managed to strike up a relationship of a kind with these two Quaggoth sisters - mostly by abject begging - and they agreed an arrangement with the PCs, that they would cooperate to try to drive monsters from this area of the citadel and make it a more safe dwelling place for them. 

Thoughts: A fun session, with plenty of derring-do, some secret doors, some retainer death, and pandas. Patrick also seemed genuinely chuffed about making level 2 and finally being able to cast Cleric spells. The final tense crescendo - a perfectly timed random encounter - just goes to show that it isn't always all about bathos.

Tuesday Night Yoon-Suin: Session 6

[No session last week, because of work-related business. Unperturbed, we picked up where we left off, with Eki Ulele dead, and Marich and Anil camping alone in the forest, hiding from bandits and giant bees.]

Adventurers Present:

• Marich, Level 1 Magic-User [played by David]
• Anil, Level 1 Cleric of Manpac (eunuch) [played by Patrick]
• Manjeet, Level 1 Fighter [played by Nate]
• Retainers: Padma, Binod, Nagendra I, Nagendra II, One-toothed Marich ("Marich II"), Fat Sanjam

On character death, I am usually very quick to bring a replacement in for the player concerned, as soon as their new character is rolled-up. So we had Manjeet, Eki Ulele's replacement, appear as if from nowhere. He is a human fighter and son of a tea plantation owner, and Nate rolled a ridiculously luck set of stats, with a 16, a couple of 13s, and only one score under 9. He also got 8 on his hit point roll. Manjeet was travelling through the mountains on the way from his family's plantation in Sughd, with the aim of delivering some papers to the Baburam family, a clan of minor oligarchs in Silaish Vo. He more-or-less immediately threw in his lot with Marich and Anil when they promised him gold and glory, as one would expect. 

The three made it back to Silaish Vo unscathed and unmolested by bandits. It was pretty clear that return to Sangmenzhang was off the agenda for now, and revenge against Manesh and his bandit clan top of the 'to do' list. (Another benefit of character death in a game: it pisses the players off and adds that extra emotional bite.) After some rest at the Madrassah of Arcanea, where the PCs have their lodgings, they immediately began investigating Manesh's history, and were introduced to Jhalak Dorji, one of the Oligarch's factotums, who told them that Manesh was known to the authorities and wanted. He promised the PCs 500 gold pieces for Manesh dead, and 1000 for him alive. They immediately set about hiring goons to aid them in bringing him down.

This time they meant business, and not only recruited 6 underlings, but kitted them out with chain mail, shields, and various weapons, spending a sizeable wedge of their gold hoard to do so. These 6 were Padma (long beard, short bow), Binod (midget, dagger), Nadaraja I (red hair, javelins), Nadaraja II (no nose, spear), Sanjam (fat, spear), and Marich II (one tooth left, sabre). While in the market, however, they were stopped by a woman who had noticed their large expenditure. This was Tara Dev, a tax collector for the Oligarch, who told them that in future any amount of gold they gained for themselves would have to be taxed - at 50%. This was in return for the safety and comfort offered by the Oligarch to all those living in Silaish Vo. 

They set off into the mountains, heading back to Manesh's cave under the waterfall. They hatched a plan to, essentially, lie in wait by the cave to ambush people coming and going. Eventually five bandits appeared with a mule and a cow, heading towards the cave - they were obviously returning from a raid. After a brief skirmish the bandits were all slain to a man, with minimal harm to the PCs and their motley crew. But one of the bandits managed to run into the forest and yell to alert those in the cave to intruders before he got an arrow through the gullet. 

Manesh and 8 of his men sallied forth, and a lengthy battle ensued. But the players seem to have learned their lesson: combat is war, not sport. They had stacked the odds heavily in their favour by properly kitting out their underlings, and they used pretty smart tactics, with spear-wielding troops using their better reach over machete-wielding bandits, to take down Manesh and a few of his men; the rest fled. In return, only Padma was killed. 

The PCs left Marich II to search the bodies of the slain bandits, while they searched the cave and discovered a sizeable treasure hoard, including two scrolls. One, Anil discovered, contained a prayer to ward against the undead. The other was magical, and Marich would have to wait to return to Silaish Vo to discover its properties. Triumphant, they headed back to the city.

On the way, burdened with treasure and slowed by their captured mule and cow, they entangled with some giant centipedes and also came across a strange boulder-man in the forest: a galeb duhr. He was not violent, and simply insisted on being alone, offering the view that, rather than kill bandits, one could simply wait for them to die. He revealed himself to be thousands of years old.

Back in Silaish Vo they left their cronies to their own devices while they went to get their reward, which Jhalak Dorji duly paid. This, along with the treasure trove they had recovered from the cave, was enough to push Marich up to Level 2. This was the first level-up of the campaign. He got 1 extra hit point for his trouble, and the kudos of being the only PC who is still alive from the start. At the Madressa of Arcaneum he managed to persuade friendly Sujan, one of the instructors, to look at his scroll - it turns out it is a charm offering protection from beast who can become men, and men who can become beasts.

Anil decided to hire a replacement for the slain hireling Padma. On discussion with Liangyu Hui, the desert troll tea-shop owner, he learned that the hireling Marich II had been spending gold in sizeable amounts at the nearby whorehouse. This, Anil immediately (probably correctly) surmised, was because Marich II had been left alone with the bandit corpses after the battle, and had pilfered their gold for himself. He summoned  Marich and Manjeet to help, and went to the whorehouse to lay down the law.

The whorehouse is a pyramid structure, and is owned by a madam called Jharana. The PCs tried to get her to reveal where Marich II was, but she proved uncooperative, maintaining that she did not like to tell strangers information about clientele. Anil threatened her with his club and she became annoyed and asked them to leave, threatening them with powerful friends and emphasising things would turn out badly if he persisted. He ultimately left, with the idea of preaching against prostitution outside and scaring away all her clients until she cooperated, but Marich decided discretion was called for and slept him. 

Manjeet then went to ask Liangyu Hui about Jharana, to ask how he might make good and apologise. Liangyu Hui told him that Jharana had many extremely important and powerful "friends" in the city, and that Anil's life was probably in danger now he had annoyed her. But he also revealed that Jharana is also a wizardress of some repute, and is always interested in new knowledge, magicks, strange artefacts and documents, and so on. Such a gift might ameliorate her.

Some thoughts on the session: it was nice to see Marich level up, and good to see the players get revenge on Manesh, who was after all responsible for some amount of heartache. The players are also learning a bit more about the setting now, interacting with some of the more important NPCs in Silaish Vo, and getting to know the lay of the land. They are also probably getting an understanding that generally, there is no such thing as "excessive force" in D&D and only fools fight fair. 

They came up with some creative ideas, too. Marich used his only sleep spell in the first bandit encounter, and after that came up with the notion of using his mirror to reflect sunlight in the eyes of the enemy to distract them, which I ruled would reduce a bandit's effective AC to 10 and put them at -2 to hit for one round if he scored a successful hit. Anil's idea of preaching outside the brothel was also a nice attempt to work around a botched situation, after the players realised they'd probably bitten off more than they could chew with Jharana.

Finally, Patrick, Anil's player, has come up with the notion that his cleric continually prays to Manpac for guidance; whenever he does this, Patrick rolls an encounter dice he has, which is a d6 with a face on each side (smiley face, frown, sad face, indifferent face, etc.). He then uses the result to indicate what Manpac's view on the situation is, and acts accordingly. What started as a humorous idea now seems to have taken on a certain amount of meaning, and it is amusing to watch Patrick attribute fortunate turns of events to Manpac's guidance.

Failure of Imagination

Like a lot of BBC Magazine articles, this one is only of the mildest interest and coherence, but I found a certain aspect of it intriguing because it's indicative of a tendency I've sometimes noticed for people to attribute works of highly imaginative fantasy and SF to the author's use of narcotics. Usually, as in the case of Lewis Carroll, this is based on no evidence other than, "Well, he must have been on drugs, because that book is really weird!"

I think that sort of assumption says more about the person making it than it does the author. If you lack a good imagination of your own, I suppose it is natural to assume that everybody is that way, and could only possibly create amazing works of imagination under the influence. It doesn't seem to occur to them that, yes, some people just are that creative.

Not that I'm against trying to be the next Philip K Dick if that's your thing. Just don't diminish the creative power of the human brain by pretending everything weird is down to artificial stimulation.

C*nt Riot

Cunt riot are a riot grrrl 3-piece, loosely affiliated with the feminist agitprop Slater-Koney collective; like most individuals connected with that body, they are also involved in various forms of semi-organised crime, including gun-running, "tax collection", and plain old-fashioned assassination. The three members are known only as Ayano, Voina, and Wei.

Ayano, Voina, Wei

Wei

Wei is Cunt Riot's bassist and, in their non-musical pursuits, its Nuclear Option: she shoots first and doesn't ask questions. She never met a problem she couldn't put a bullet through the face of.

It is some times speculated that Wei spent time soldiering for warlords in the former USSR and the the Wild West of China. This seems entirely based on the fact she likes Soviet and Red Chinese guns.

INT 8 REF 10 CL 9 TECH 7 BODY 7 EMP 7/5 ATT 8 LUCK 5 MA 7
Skills:
Combat sense +6, Handgun +6, Rifle +5, SMG +4, Melee +5, Aikido +5, Endurance +3, Heavy Weapons +4, Awareness +5
Cyberwear:
Neural processor
-Kerenzikov Boost +1
-Smartgun link
Skinweave
Usual Equipment:
Stolvoboy St-2 10mm
CCMMC Qi-15 assault shotgun
CCMMC Jinhua M-9
Nylon helmet (SP14)
Light kevlar jacket (SP12)
Light kevlar pants (SP10)

Ayano

Ayano is Cunt Riot's lead singer and guitarist. She also writes the words. In her spare time, she cracks bones, removes fingernails, and breaks teeth.

INT 9 REF 10 CL 10 TECH 6 BODY 7 EMP 4/3 ATT 5 LUCK 5 MA 6
Skills:
Combat Sense +5, Handgun +3, Rifle +2, Melee +5, Judo +7, Tae Kwon Doe +7, Interrogate +6, Intimidate +6, Awareness +5
Cyberwear:
Cyberaudio
-Voice stress analyser
-Bug detector
-Wide band radio scanner
-Digital recording link
Usual Equipment:
Sternmeyer P-35 11mm
Heavy kevlar jacket SP18

Voina

Voina doubles up on drums and illegal entry. She leaves the murder to the others.

Voina, some say, was a trained spy for the Mozambique state oil company. Others say she learned her trade in the employ of the Mumbai mafia.

INT 10 REF 8 CL 8 TECH 10 BODY 5 EMP 6/4 ATT 4 LUCK 7 MA 8
Skills:
Hide/Evade +7, Shadow/Track +6, Pick Lock/Safecracking +7, Demolitions +4, Sambo +3, Resist Torture/Drugs +5, Stealth +8, Awareness +7
Cyberwear:
Cyberoptic
-Image enhancement
-Teleoptics
-Digital camera
-Ultraviolet vision
Cyberaudio
-Amplified hearing
-Radio link
-Homing tracer
-Sound editing
-Phone splice
-Level damper