Friday, September 29, 2017

The Changeling Barber of Windermere Parish

Campaign: Krevborna Open Table (Google Hangouts, 5e D&D)

Characters: Marek Miazga (human battlemaster fighter), Tobias Rune (human pact of the chain warlock), Thane Ganymede (darakhul wizard).

Objective: Discover why citizens are disappearing in Windermere Parish.

Events: Nikolai Rodescu asked the party to help him get to the bottom of a spate of disappearances in Windermere Parish. Half of those who went missing remained missing; the other half returned with no memory of their abduction, and each was sporting freshly shorn locks.

A serving girl named Julia who numbered among the returned was examined. The party determined that her hair had been cut by expert hands, as it was quite stylishly arrayed. She told the party that she had been planning on getting a haircut anyway, and that she sometimes went to a local barber named Jorge.

The party paid Jorge's barbershop a visit the next morning. The man had a strange iron tooth and curly, but coiffed, blonde hair. While Marek posed as a country boy in need of a trim, Tobias had his imp Malphas scout the barn out back. The barn held a strange fey approximation of a cow, its udders multicolored and odd. Malphas also scouted the upper floors of the house and discovered Jorge's daughter playing at marbles with a blue-skinned faery with a head much too big for its body and bulging, yellow eyes.

As Marek's haircut and shave were completed, the questions he put to Jorge elicited an untoward response: the barber-surgeon pressed a button on the back of the barber's chair that sent it rapidly descending into the basement on a mechanical track. Marek leaped out of the chair in time to avoid being whisked down into the depths. Jorge attempted to run down the stairs underneath the trapdoor, but Thane incinerated him with magic before he got very far.

The party heard murmuring just beyond the landing that was in view from the trapdoor. They soon found themselves in melee with horrible, shaggy fey creatures. After slaying the evil fey cohort, the group explored the basement beneath the barbershop, discovering a gruesome chamber for dentistry (including horrific drills and pliers), a strange throne made of twisted and knotted roots, a number of preserved human heads sporting wigs made of real hair, a chamber lined with shelves of bottles, and a door--behind which they could hear the sound of rhythmic snipping.

The magical nature of some of the jars inflamed Thane's greed, but attempting to retrieve them led to a battle between the party and a massive, thick strand of hair that protruded from the back wall of the chamber. Marek kept the powerful strand focused on him while Tobias and Thane blasted the malefic hank with spells. 

Marek found himself in the unenviable cyclical position of having his head entangled by the hair, only to break free and be re-ensnared moments later. When Marek's strength failed him, the hair began to crush his head--sending him to death's door. Luckily, Tobias's magic felled the vicious lock of hair. Unfortunately, the "death" of the hair caused the back wall of the chamber to collapse on Marek, but he was soon revived with a healing draught.

Deciding it would be best not to have to fight their way through foes should they need to retreat later, the party opened the door they had heard the snipping sounds coming from; they found another Jorge, this one giving a haircut to a murderous redcap--the redcap's bloodstained hat lay at his feet. After killing this other Jorge and the redcap, the adventurers decided to venture down the crude stone steps that had been revealed with the collapse of the wall after the previous battle.

As they ventured down the twisting steps, they saw more impossibly-long hair snaking its way into the gloom; at one point the hair rose up and beckoned like a finger to lure them onward. The hair led them to a chamber in which an imperious woman sat upon another throne of roots and brambles; the woman's resemblance to a witch the group had slain in a previous adventure was unmistakable: this was Baba Maela, sister of hag Bonnie Maedra!

There were further disquieting sights in the room: a cloven-footed fey man with a huge shock of unruly hair and beard was manacled to the wall, yet another Jorge stood by the side of the witch, and a human-shaped figure lay at the Jorge's feet--wrapped in a cocoon of white-blonde, grizzled hair. As the party had guessed by now, Baba Maela was behind the  disappearances in Windermere Parish; it was all a ruse to draw the group into investigating this strange crime so that she might get revenge upon them for killing her sister!

The battle was hard fought, and the party got more than a little-lucky--the supernaturally strong Baba Maela was clumsy in her lunges, so the group managed to largely evade her crushing grasp. However, the party did not manage to finish her off; she wiped blood on Marek's face, saying "This isn't over," before dissolving into ash.

The party freed the captive fey creature--a korred that Maela had enslaved for sinister purposes. They also freed the real Jorge from the cocoon of hair in which he had been confined. Jorge vowed that he would pack up his things, and his daughter, and move far from the horrors of Piskaro. Perhaps his daughter's fey playmate would accompany them to parts unknown.

NPCs: Nikolai Rodescu (watchman of Windermere Parish), Jorge (a barber who made a disastrous pact with a hag) and his daughter, a boggart (who watched over the daughter in her father's absence), a korred captured by Baba Maela.

Foes: Jorge changelings, xvarts, corrupted korred hair, a redcap, Baba Maela (witch-hag, sister of Bonnie Maedra).

Loot:
835 gp and 8 cp each in coin and saleable jewelry

Potion of Poison Resistance

Potion of Fire Breath

Iron Tooth of Baba Maela - allows you to communicate with Baba Maela over any distance

Assorted monster teeth - can be implanted in someone's mouth, giving them a 1d4+ Str bite attack

Comb - Combing your hair with it will cast Evard's Black Tentacles; after using, it crumbles into dust

Grotesque Skin Mask - placing the mask on a restrained creature subjects it to Tasha's Hideous Laughter

Green Vials (4) - when rubbed into hair they give the user the effects of jump and spiderclimb spells for seven hours, but each time you use the abilities granted by either you take 1d4 acid damage

Blue Vials (3) - when rubbed into hair your body emits loud sounds (fail all Stealth checks and disadvantage on Perception checks for seven hours, but you can cast a thunderwave once in that seven hours)

Purple Vials (4) - When rubbed into hair your mouth functions as a decanter of endless water for seven hours

Vial of Gelatinous Substance - when rubbed into your hair, your hair cannot be mussed by anything until you wash it

Spellbook - contains sleep, hold person

XP: 1773 each.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

The Power of Yes

One of the great mentors I've had in life explained to me the Power of Yes. Before going into teaching full time, he had run an independent bookstore. He said that the most rewarding part of the job was the various ways he could say "Yes" to a customer to make their lives a litter easier, a little better.

"Do you have any books on...?"
"Yes."

"Can you recommend a book for my grandmother?"
"Yes."

"Can you point me to the history books?"
"Yes."

Of course, all of this presumes saying "Yes" only to reasonable questions and requests made by people asking in good faith. Saying "Yes," is accommodation and the affirmative of a comrade; it makes things easier, it fosters fellowship, and validates yearning. It satisfies both parties, where possible. Saying "Yes" is mostly good--by a wide margin.

It turns out that saying "Yes" to reasonable requests in my D&D games also feels nice. There are definitely things I'd say "No" to in terms of fairness and setting mood, but mostly you lose nothing by being accommodating. Here's some Things I’ve Said Yes To in 5e D&D:


Can I play a warlock that uses their Intelligence for all their class-based abilities instead of Charisma?
A warlock who uses their wits instead of their force of personality to bargain with an otherworldly horror for arcane power? Faust-as-lawyer? Dope, let's do it.


What do you say to a pact of the blade warlock who can manifest two finesse weapons to dual wield? Or, like, a pact crossbow?
People love their two-weapon fighting. Neither of those options is strictly better than manifesting a two-handed weapon, so nothing breaks there.


Would it be okay if I swap my eldritch knight’s access to evocation spells for access to necromantic spells?
You've got a cool concept for an eldritch knight experimenting with poisonous magic? Excellent.


Can I have a weapon like X that does damage type Y instead?
There are a couple holes in the combination of damage type and properties, though. It's not a big deal, but if we're going to add stuff to the game we might as well add stuff that's actually not there yet. Here are some armaments I've made available to purchase in my games:

New Martial Melee Weapons
Weapon Cost Damage Weight Properties
Greatspear 30 gp 2d6 piercing 7 lbs. Heavy, two-handed
Polehammer 20 gp 1d10 bludgeoning 6 lbs. Heavy, reach, two-handed
Saber 25 gp 1d8 slashing 3 lbs. Finesse *
* If a character is proficient with rapiers, they are also proficient with sabers.

Can my character to suffer complications for the injuries they’ve sustained?
Wait, you want me to fuck your character up even more? Umm, sure, if that's how you get your rocks off.


I’d like to play as a plant person or an insect person, can we find a race for that?
Yes! I don't own these supplements with weird-ass races in them for no reason.


Can I use Deception or Sleight of Hand to make a sneak attack?
Yes, and I made a full house ruling about how I handle that sort of situation.


Can I use the playtest versions of the mystic, artificer, or revised ranger?
Yeah, let's see how those playtest versions shake out.


Will you tell me more about this facet of the setting for your game?
You actually want me to blather on about my dumb special snowflake setting? Settle in, for I will a tale unfold.


This polearm feat doesn’t apply to spears or pikes, can I use it with them too?
Yeah, it's dumb that it doesn't work with those weapons. I dunno what they were thinking.

Monday, September 25, 2017

Under the Poppy

Although perhaps best known to BBfBP listeners as an author who helped redefine the horror genre in the early 1990s, Kathe Koja has written novels that span numerous genres. Her 2011 novel Under the Poppy is a romance set against the backdrop of the Franco-Prussian War, featuring a band of demimonde survivors whose activities and intrigues influence goings-on at the highest levels of society.
When is a hooker with a heart of gold character more than just a hooker with a heart of gold? What are some of the interesting things contemporary writers can do with a historical setting? Does this book contain the secret XXX origin story for Bojack Horseman? Find out in this month's episode of Bad Books for Bad People.
Intro: "I'm a Marionette" by ABBA / Outro: "I'm a Marionette" by Ghost
Find us at BadBooksBadPeople.com, on Twitter @badbooksbadppl, Instagram @badbooksbadpeople and on Facebook. You can discover where to get all the books featured on Bad Books for Bad People on our reading list.

Friday, September 22, 2017

Aeon Flux and the New Weird

I've read a lot about the New Weird "genre" in my explorations of the evolution of the "Weird Tale" at the end of the twentieth century, but at this point I'm mostly convinced that it isn't a clearly definable approach, style, aesthetic, or set of literary conventions. This isn't unique to the New Weird; generic definitions are almost always more about marketing than they are about descriptive utility. You might reach the same conclusion if you read:

Working Definition of New Weird (Jeff VanderMeer for the New Weird anthology)

What is the "New Weird" - and what makes weird fiction so relevant to our times? (Michael Moorcock, New Statesman)

The new world of New Weird (Damien G Walter, The Guardian)

New Weird (TV Tropes)

Cross-Crafting with a Vengeance: The New Weird (Karen Ostertag, New City Library)

Basically, all I've learned is that:
a) If a book is described as "New Weird" there's a better chance I'll enjoy it over books that are just described as "fantasy" or "science fiction."
b) M. John Harrison seems like a really grumpy guy.


My unpopular opinion: the "New Weird" started with Dune.

Anyway, what I'm most interested here is what media typically gets excluded from the umbrella of the New Weird. In contrast, the Gothic is a migrating genre--it started off as a descriptor for fiction, but it quickly adapted itself to stage drama, film, comics, etc. You get a little migration and adaptation with the New Weird; TV Tropes identifies some comics and tabletop games that seem within the bounds of its generic reach. But it's unusual to find film or television described as New Weird, which is interesting given the genre's supposed propensity to mash up disparate forms and mirror the transmedia state of modernity. 


So I'll make a case for a something that is either a hidden precursor of New Weird or perhaps even an early example of the form: 

Aeon Flux.

Here's how it stacks up:
Urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place (VanderMeer): The nations of Monica and Bregna are not of our world, or at least not recogniably of our world. And yet, the tension between the two is set-up as a space to explore modern anxieties without the romanticization of place found in fantasy fiction; while the two are analogs for fascism vs. freedom, both are irreducible to the category they supposedly represent. Both nations are urban and industrial (if not post-industrial).

Often uses elements of surreal or transgressive horror for its tone, style, and effects (VanderMeer): Tonally and stylistically, Aeon Flux does not adhere to traditional narrative devices; it remains purposefully obscure by short-circuiting narrative expectations by way of surreal or transgressive elements such as the recurring death of its protagonist, disconcern for additive narrative continuance, Gnostic and philosophical elements, existential horror, allusions to fetishistic practices, et al.

It's a specific genre of Scifi/Fantasy/Horror literature that does not follow the conventions of derivative Sci-Fi, Fantasy or Horror, without being an outright parody or deconstruction (TV Tropes): Aeon Flux combines aspects of science fiction, pulp adventure, philosophic horror, cyberpunk, literary decadence, and fantasy, but the intention of the admixture is to avoid the derivative concepts of any of those genres. Although the show has elements of humor, parody, and deconstruction, those are coexisting elements rather than the point; the show is also serious, existential, and "academic" in its approach when the amusement wears thin.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Game of Fangs

The Lamashtuan Intrigue Campaign aka "Game of Fangs"

Premise: the characters are all in service to the noble House of Rhiannon in vampire-ruled Lamashtu; they engage in politicking, intrigue, spying, and occasional violence to advance the cause and position of their house--but they also each have a secret agenda they are covertly pursuing.

Feels like: the talky bits in Game of Thrones, and occasionally the violent bits, but with vampiric feudalism.

Rules hacks: lots of 4e style skill challenges based on social skills, social encounters handled a bit like combat, definitely tracking Renown and making it matter.

The characters:


Magnus
Race: Dhampir
Class: Mastermind rogue
Level: 3
Background: Noble
Str: 9 Dex: 18 Con: 11 Int: 13 Wis: 10 Cha: 18
Personality Trait: Flatterer
Ideal: Power
Bond: I must forge alliances in my house's favor
Flaw: I hide a truly scandalous secret
Magnus is a bastard son of a minor vampire noble of House Rhiannon and his mortal concubine. He sees his service to the house as a way of proving his worth. His goal is official recognition by the house's elders through acts of <redacted>.


Florian d'Targan
Race: Half-elf
Class: College of lore bard
Level: 3
Background: Entertainer 
Str: 8 Dex: 14 Con: 12 Int: 16 Wis: 15 Cha: 19
Personality Trait: Insulting
Ideal: Creativity
Bond: I sympathize with the downtrodden
Flaw: I once satirized a noble who still wants my head
Florian poses as a mere musician attached to House Rhiannon, but in truth he is as much a collector of arcane secrets as he is a collector of songs. His goal is <redacted>.


Orest
Race: Human
Class: Divination wizard
Level: 3
Background: Seer
Str: 9 Dex: 14 Con: 14 Int: 16 Wis: 14 Cha: 10
Personality Trait: I must make people heed my visions
Ideal: Manipulation
Bond: I will have revenge on the man who destroyed my family
Flaw: I loathe charlatans
Orest's origins are a mystery, but he has proven useful to House Rhiannon because of his gift for accurate prophecy. He has glimpsed far enough into the future to know that it is his destiny to <redacted> House Rhiannon.


Maria Marzistrada
Race: Human
Class: Oath of the crown paladin
Level: 3
Background: Cloistered scholar
Personality Trait: I am awkward and stiff in social situations
Ideal: Power
Bond: I have been searching for knowledge about the fate of the gods
Flaw: I would sacrifice anyone or anything to gain information
Str: 18 Dex: 11 Con: 13 Int: 12 Wis: 14 Cha: 13
Maria was a foundling, reared in a nunnery and prepared for a life of military service to House Rhiannon. Her ambition is to claim <redacted> in the name of her masters.


First Session
The party has been sent as a diplomatic mission from House Rhiannon to the court of Baroness Maylak, but they come with knowledge and a purpose. They know that there is a plot within the court of House Maylak to assassinate the Baroness; they have been sent by House Rhiannon to expose the plot, not to the benefit of House Maylak, but rather as a ploy for House Rhiannon to gain power over House Maylak.

Traveling with the party is the dour, raven-haired Emelda Rhiannon, a minor noble of their house. Strangely, Emelda seems uninterested in bringing House Maylak under House Rhiannon's heel. 

After settling into their appointed rooms in the ancient, crumbling Castle Maylak and paying their respects to the Baroness, the party split up and began to pursue rumors they had heard circulating during their reception (and the later feast) at the Baroness's court. Florian and Maria had heard of an unorthodox cult posing as a scientific society (The Society for Celestial Inquiry is a cover for the Cult of the Solar Truth), and managed to find their meeting place and infiltrate their ranks. Maria's attempts to draw them out by debating spiritual matters was a dead end, but Florian's pointed mockery managed to throw the secretive cultists off just enough to reveal that they were expected allies to arrive in three days, at dawn, at the Traitor's Gate of the town surrounding the castle.

Meanwhile, Magnus barged into Emelda's rooms within Castle Maylak to sound her intentions and true allegiances. Magnus's approach was a peculiar form of seduction--he wanted to reawaken her loyalty to House Rhiannon. This exchange ended in something of a stalemate; Emelda is clearly hiding something, but she pledged to stay out of the group's way as they went about the business of foiling the plot against Baroness Maylak's life.

Orest found time to explore the frigid catacombs beneath the castle, and was able to determine that what the party suspected was correct: there are a number of secret passages hidden within the ancient tombs that lead outside the castle's grounds to various places in town. Orest's magically exploration also discovered that fiendish spellcraft had been used recently in the castle's dungeons. However, Orest found it difficult to navigate his way back--the corridors and rooms in the lower depths rearranged themselves for an unknown purpose.


On the appointed day, the party hid themselves near the strangely unguarded Traitor's Gate to intercept the Cult of the Solar Truth's allies. The allies arrived hooded and cloaked. The party ambushed these new arrivals and discovered that they were devils, fiendish beings of ash and ice, not men and women! Two of the diabolic cohort were slain in the melee, but the rest managed to escape by conjuring a wall of wintry storm that held back their would-be pursuers. 

Monday, September 18, 2017

Azurth Adventures Digest

The first volume of the Azurth Adventures Digest has been released! Pdfs on drivethrurpg, hard copies available directly from the author.

I can't give you an unbiased review of the book because I did some editing work on it, but I can tell you that the adventure contained in it saved my ass a few weeks about when I ran out of prep time in my Scarabae campaign. I switched out the aesthetics to fit with what I already had mapped out, but I can also say that, as written as a place to explore, the adventure works really well and generated a great session; you can read about it here

And you don't have to take my word for it, Anne Hunter played in that session and did a great write-up of it here on her blog DIY & Dragons. I love all the commentary she has about her character's motivations and shifting emotional landscape. 

I've been super lucky to play with great people like Anne on Google+, and we're all super lucky that people like Trey are adding fun stuff to our games.

Friday, September 15, 2017

Old-School Heresies

I don't think druids and bards are lame at all.


* * *

So I'm fine with druids and bards, yeah? But you know what I do think is kinda lame, though? Greyhawk. I've never been able to find anything really, truly interesting about it, and worse yet when I ask fans what is interesting about it they can never seem to articulate a reason. Sometimes I get a list of Proper Names as the reasons why it's a cool game setting, but when I press them on what's neat about those things I get back "Oh, those guys are an evil order of assassins." O...kay.

I've also noticed that Greyhawk fans also don't seem to even agree about the basic feel of the setting. I've had people swear up and down that Greyhawk is the epitome of D&D sword & sorcery...but then someone else will pop into the thread and tell me that it is D&D's best medieval society simulator...which the cover image above does do a lot to support, but come on, which is it?

I even think the names in Greyhawk tend toward the embarrassing. Fuckin' Wee-Jas, you know?

It turns out, for the record, that the official D&D settings I tend to like are the ones least rooted in traditional fantasy:

  1. Ravenloft
  2. Planescape
  3. Dark Sun
  4. Eberron
  5. Dragonlance

Yes, that's right, I think Krynn is way more interesting than both Oerth and Faerun. Don't @ me.


* * *


Arguments about character skill versus player skill often seem silly to me because the "old-school tactics" held up as examples of player skill seem more like ritualistic behavior than inventive strategy. Maybe the first time lard and marbles were used to make a hallway tough to traverse was a novel event, but by the twentieth time you've seen that particular deployment of "player skill" it's just going through the expected motions. It's a lot like making the same fucking Monty Python jokes every game.

I also suspect that there is a certain type of old-school game master who prefers light, stripped-down rules just because it limits the stuff that characters get as they level up. Some people have a weird "But what if they get abilities that interfere with the adventure I wrote?" or "What if they break my precious dungeon?" or "What if they have fun I have not personally sanctioned?" vibe about them. If you're overly worried about the other players having too much fun, I admit I don't really understand your orientation toward gaming as a hobby.


* * *


I honestly think this is the least appealing cover I can remember seeing on a game book. Yeah, there are probably some worse ones made with poser art that date back to the d20 glut, but that stuff is like Teflon...it doesn't stick in mind at all and once seen it is quickly forgotten. I feel bad saying that this is unappealing because someone obviously sank time and effort into making it, but, man, I just do not like that image. 

Chubsley the Cleric, those Escher Lite stairs, that masked elf archer...no no no. I do sort of appreciate the "someone touched my bottom" look on the dwarf's face, but even that can't save this one for me.


* * *

Anyone who says that old-school D&D isn't concerned with balance is lying--if only to themselves. Old-school D&D is obsessed with balance; you can tell because it uses a ton of different ways to try to achieve balance between character classes: mechanical differentiation (this class gets a d10 hit die, this one gets a d4), advancement rate (this class needs less XP to level up because it's weak but you'll get more hit points quicker), mechanical restrictions for gear (this class can wear plate mail, this class can't), roleplay limitations (paladins get tons of powers but they are constrained by these moral restrictions or they get punished), etc.

So it isn't that older editions of D&D aren't concerned with balance, it's just that they're pretty kludgy in the way they go about the business of a balancing the game. 


* * *


When a game reviewer associates themselves with a particular community or small niche within the gaming world, I find that I can't trust their perspective. The politics of minor difference and tribal thinking creep into everything. 

But then you realize that the "luminaries" in any small niche of the hobby will have an impassioned defense mounted for them no matter what they say or do, so it becomes harder and harder to even sympathize with the kind of sadness that lets these cults of personality flourish in the first place. People, by and large, seem to crave the intersection between authority and validation in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable.

Related: I don't trust any manifesto or primer about "how games were played back in the day" written by someone with books to sell. As a wise man pointed out to me, the "old-school" way of playing games presumes a way of playing that has probably never held a majority stake in the hobby anyway. 

Similarly, I think there is a certain type of gamer who makes a show of trying games from outside their "camp" only to crap on them performatively. "We gave it a shot, we played their game, and look how bad it was!" is such an obviously disingenuous move.

* * *


I think Gary Gygax got lucky when he captured lightning in a bottle with the creation of D&D rather than it being the results of skillful game design. None of the games he did after are noteworthy, and there's a lot of badly explained concepts in OD&D and a megaton of cruft in AD&D. 

Bonus outrage fuel: I think the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide is a disjointed mess of boring random tables, poor advice that might make your games worse if followed, and amateurish writing.


* * *


Attempts to make 5e D&D "old-school" almost always seem misguided to me, especially since actual old-school versions of D&D have never been more available. Sometimes it feels like people need a game to be tagged as explicitly "old-school" in order to feel like they have permission to enjoy it.

Also, repackaging the free basic rules for 5e as "old-school" and asking money for them is the opposite of a sound old-school ethos, just sayin'.

But when someone writes the history, that will be the shape of the narrative: when people smelled blood in the water after a couple successful Kickstarters made bank, something was lost in the old-school gaming community in the transition from homo reciprocans to homo economicus at the drop of a few stray coins. History repeats itself, I suppose; consider the Jekyll to Hyde transformation from the Gary of OD&D ("Don't let us to the imagining for you!") to the Gary of AD&D ("You must buy official AD&D products to really be playing the game.")


* * *


I truly believe that some of the best advice on how to run a D&D game is found in books that don't say D&D on the cover. Check out the stuff on fronts in Dungeon World, the advice on failure on Fate Core, the general principles outlined in Apocalypse World (first edition, haven't read the new one) and Blades in the Dark.

Note: I'm not saying that these newer games invented better ways to play. I am saying that they offer clearer explanations of good practices that people have been doing since the beginning of the hobby than we have had in any edition of D&D.


* * *


Many dungeon-based adventures, hexcrawls, and "sandboxes" strike me as railroads in the sense that none of the options presented in them ("Do we go left or right at the intersection of these fairly featureless corridors?") represent meaningful choices for the players to make.

Funny thing about actual sandbox wargames: they weren't completely open "you can go anywhere" scenarios. A sandbox has hard limits because it has walls to keep the sand in the box. There's a good metaphor in there if you want to find it.


* * *


Yeah, I don't think wands look silly either. 



Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Campaign Reference Sheets

I've made myself a couple reference sheets for my D&D campaigns (one for Krevborna and one for Scarabae), and they've really helped me maintain focus on how I want to run my games. Let me walk you through what's on these sheets and why they've been so helpful to me--perhaps they might inspire you to make similar reference sheets for yourself.

The leftmost column has three sections: Goals, Principles, and Actions. 

The Goals section is there to remind me, at a glance, what I want my campaign to be about. For Krevborna, this means that the text there steers me toward monster hunting in a Gothic setting. For Scarabae, this means skulduggery in an urban setting. This section is helpful to me because if I feel the game is straying off focus or we're losing site of the campaign's purpose, I can nudge it back into its lane.

The Principles section is there to remind me to keep involving the players (via what they take an interest in) and their characters (via the world-building the players have done to make their characters). When things are stalled out or feeling a little flat I can look at that section and draw on something the players are gravitating to and interject it into the game to get things back in motion.

The Actions section is there to remind me of the things I most often lose sight of during play as well as that D&D can support more than a binary pass/fail system of action resolution.

The center column of both sheets is simply a list of genre-appropriate Names. If there is one thing I find myself grasping for during play, it's a name for a NPC I hadn't counted on needing to name. As new contacts, antagonists, and allies emerge, I need to put names to faces; this column gives me a grab bag of names that I can quickly scan and choose from. I've italicized feminine names so that I can narrow down my scan to get the kind of name I'm looking for. (I tried color-coding the names with blues-for-boys and pink-for-girls, figuring that a little gender essentialism would add visual cues, but it ended up being too "loud" instead of adding utility.)

The rightmost column gives me lists of descriptors. 

I have a section for Looks that's helpful when I need to describe an NPC I haven't spent any prep time on; the Looks section is broken down into a subsection about physical appearance and a subsection about what clothing and items the character might have. 

I also have a Setting Descriptors section that gives me general aesthetic notes about the campaign worlds' look and feel that I can draw on in play. 

This section ends with a list of names for Public Houses (or taverns, or inns, or tea rooms...) because, like NPC names, I often find myself scrambling to name an establishment when the players seek one out and I hadn't planned on that.

(All of this was inspired by the references sheets for John Harper's Blades in the Dark.)

Monday, September 11, 2017

Red Spectres

Red Spectres, translated and edited by Muireann Maguire, collects examples of a rarely-seen side of Gothic literature, tales produced in the early days of Communist rule in Russia. These macabre stories have many of the elements familiar to Western readers including ghosts, evil doubles, and mad science, while representing a worldview unique to the time and place in which they were created.
How well do totalitarian regimes and fantasy stories mix? What were some of the very real dangers faced by the authors of these works? Is there an audience for nihilist Top Gear? Find out all this and more in the latest mini episode from Bad Books for Bad People.
Intro/Outro music: "Тайна при жизни [Secret during the lifetime]," Isa [Purchase the album on Bandcamp]
Find us at BadBooksBadPeople.com, on Twitter @badbooksbadppl, Instagram @badbooksbadpeople and on Facebook. You can discover where to get all the books featured on Bad Books for Bad People on our reading list.

Sunday, September 10, 2017

Abandoned Grace


Tracklist:
† Cadaveria - Spell †
† Haggard - De La Morte Noire †
† Peccatum - Speak of the Devil (As the Devil May Care) †
† Moonspell - Dreamless (Lucifer and Lilith) †
† Tiamat - Forever Burning Flames †
† November's Doom - In the Absence of Grace †
† Emperor - Ensorcelled by Khaos †
† Electric Wizard - We Love the Dead †

Friday, September 8, 2017

How To Unsell Me on Your Games

Promote your game by shitting on some other game. I don't really care how boring or banal or vanilla you think the other game is, but I do know that as soon as you draw an unfavorable comparison between your game and another I begin to suspect that your game isn't a worthy effort on its own merits.

Present your game as edgy, boundary-pushing, or irreverent and then claim outrage as soon as your intentionally/potentially offensive product is deemed offensive. Courting controversy also reads as not having much faith in your game's value. Also? I lived through the 90s, I already know how hollow 'tude is as a marketing tactic. Yes, it works on rubes, but what doesn't?

Fail to make your game open source if your game is based on open source material. If other folks were good enough to give you the basis to make the rules for your game, I think it's ethical to pay it forward by also putting your rules work under the same umbrella if possible. And if you're just copy/pasting an already extant game into a new format with shittier art--get lost.

Tout a mechanic as revolutionary when, in fact, it's been around forever. This makes me wonder if you have played many games that aren't D&D. There is a wide world of games and game systems out there, I hope that anyone doing game design work is at least conversant with it.

Emphasize your game's "structured play" (turns, phases, procedural generation, etc.). Most games that game-ify the flow of play end up making it feel mechanical and abstract in a way I don't care for. This is purely a personal taste thing, but I like things to be more free-moving and open rather than either rigidly defined or randomly generated on tables as the guiding principles of play. I don't even like B/X's Order of Events in One Game Turn or Combat Sequence.

Bring up your game material (with a link to where it can be bought, natch) in threads and conversations only remotely (or not at all) connected to your game's premise. Pushy people suck, and so do people that treat others as wallets to be rifled. There are games I'd probably like but there is no way I'm checking out because the author made a nuisance of himself.

Try to sell me on a game I already own. When I see Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma on the character sheet for your game, I assume I could approximate your "retroclone" or "hack" with a page of house rules applied to the books I've already got. Seeing the OSR logo on the cover is sometimes a red flag. Similarly, calling your narrative game a "love letter" to another game that already exists isn't exactly a deal-breaker, but it does give me pause.
Your list, of course, may vary.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Mord-Stavian

Paul V. recently started a thread on Google+ that got me thinking about Dark Sun again. That thread, combined with Aos's usual enthusiasm for the setting, put me on the path to write my own Dark Sun-inspired mini-setting for Scarabae. I had been meaning to flesh-out the "western frontier" mentioned in the main Scarabae setting document for a while, and this turned out to be the right confluence of influences, even if I went more in the direction of a volcanic desert plus wild west plus colonial adventure than what you typically find on Athas. I had help with the volcanic bits: shout outs to Jeremy Murphy, Jez Gordon, Clint Egger, and Wayne Snyder for their conceptual assistance. A nicely formatted pdf of the information that follows is available here.

A VOLCANIC DESERT
The majority of Mord-Stavian's land is devoid of vegetation due the the activity of its volcanic mountains. Although Mord-Stavian receives regular and plentiful rainfall, very little grows there due to the acidic tephra that covers the land, resulting in deserts of ash and jagged rock. A relatively thin band of lush jungle at the outer rim of Mord-Stavian is the exception to the rule; this verdant zone is at least partially the result of powerful shamanic magic.

THE COLONIAL ADVENTURE
Scarabae has begun to colonize Mord-Stavian and establish mining and prospecting operations to extract valuable quartz, gold, and silver from its mountains and riverbeds. The three largest colonial outposts on Mord-Stavian are Fort Madyan, Halak, and Gulgata—fortified enclaves protecting newly arrived colonists and the much-needed supplies brought by ship from Scarabae. Lawlessness is common in these towns, as are rampant vice, gambling, and gladiatorial contests.

NOMAD TRIBES
Scarabae's efforts to colonize Mord-Stavian are troubled by tribes native to the land. Since hunting grounds are scarce, they see efforts to settle on the lands of their circuitous nomadic routes as a threat to their way of life. The most warlike band are the obsidian blade-wielding elves of the Broken Vows tribe, who are led by the goliath Obela Nineswords—a Scarabaen expatriate wise in the ways of guerrilla warfare.

USE ALL PARTS OF THE BEAST
The domesticated animals found on Mord-Stavian are giant insects and lizards resistant to the land's heat. Since Mord-Stavian is an iron- and bronze-poor land, the aboriginal natives fashion weapons, armor, and mundane items from the chitin, bones, and leather of these creatures. Because the unrelenting sun takes a heavy toll on those who wear metal armor, Scarabaen adventurers typically adopt the carapace armor of the natives when they arrive.

DANGERS AMID THE DUNES
The natural treasures hidden within the mountains of Mord-Stavian are guarded by Kaladrei, a sphinx served by a small army of desiccated undead and devious naga. The eternally hungry scorpionfolk who worship mad efreeti attack caravans to capture sacrificial victims. The sun itself is an enemy; a lack of shelter or potable water is a death sentence, as are the abrasive sand storms, magmatic eruptions, and flash floods that imperil explorers.

DESOLATE TOMBS
Ruins comprised of vast necropolises exist within the deserts of Mord-Stavian. These ancient burial structures house the remains of the pharaohs who ruled when Mord-Stavian was a thriving civilization. The tombs of Mord-Stavian's kings and queens are said to contain untold riches from a past age and strange magical items that take the form of black, symbiotic organisms called cyphrionts that bond with their bearers.

A MAGICAL WASTELAND
The Scavenger Lands are unnatural deserts at the northwest tip of Mord-Stavian. There are signs that this area is the result of a magical catastrophe; fallout from a cataclysmic event still permeates the Scavenger Lands, causing horrific mutations to occur in the creatures who wander its dunes of dust and grit. Scarabaen scholars believe that unraveling the cause of the Scavenger Lands' tainted nature could uncover means to transform Mord-Stavian back into an arable land.

PSIONIC BECKONINGS
Mord-Stavian is a land that awakens psychic powers. Those who possess psionic abilities sometimes receive telepathic transmissions from beings who identify themselves as the Primal Voices. These beings cajole, entreat, and demand that the psychically-gifted unlock their full mental potential by undertaking perilous pilgrimages into the land's deserts in search of lost temples, buried truths, and sleeping mentors known as the Redemptive Sisters.

MAGICAL REFUGES
Some native tribes of Mord-Stavian travel into the desert wastelands on their wanderings, which has given rise to the suspicion that they know of enchanted oases within the bleak landscape. However, no amount of coercion has been able to convince native captives to divulge the whereabouts of these respites from the harsh, ashen deserts. Some arcanists theorize that the oases are disguised by powerful illusory magic that hides them from the eyes of outsiders.

* * *

House Rules for Mord-Stavian:
  • Weapons of chitin, bone, and obsidian break more easily than weapons of wood, iron, and steel. When you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll with a weapon made of one of the former materials, your weapon has a chance to break. You can accept the result, automatically missing the attack as usual, but keeping your weapon intact. Alternatively, you can reroll. Regardless of the reroll result, a nonmetal weapon breaks once the attack is complete. (Adapted from 4e's Dark Sun book.)
  • We're using these rules for XP and level advancement.
  • Roll once on the following table to determine what psionic talent your character has gained from their stay in Mord-Stavian:
d12
Psychic Talent
1
Beacon
2
Blade Meld
3
Blind Spot
4
Delusion
5
Energy Beam
6
Light Step
7
Mind Meld
8
Mind Slam
9
Mind Thrust
10
Mystic Charm
11
Mystic Hand
12
Psychic Hammer

Descriptions of Psychic Talents can be found at the end of this pdf.

* * *

Inspirations

Games
TSR's Dark Sun campaign setting (especially Brom's art)
WotC's Eberron campaign setting (especially the bits about the Mournlands)

Fiction
K. J. Bishop, The Etched City
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
H. Rider Haggard, She
Frank Herbert, Dune
Clark Ashton Smith, "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis"

Comics
Orc Stain
Pretty Deadly
Prophet
The Sixth Gun

Music
Sleep, Dopesmoker
High on Fire, Death is This Communion
Neurosis, A Sun That Never Sets and Fires Within Fires