Spellbooks

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the occult and esoteric roots of early science fiction and fantasy. The response to that post was enthusiastic, which got me thinking that perhaps it’s time I returned to writing more regularly about fantasy literature. Not long after, I happened to watch an old television episode in which a character mused that a writer’s deepest desire is to affect others with his words. That line stuck with me. Something about it lodged in my thoughts and, when paired with my recent reflections, stirred up an old connection I’ve often found fascinating: that the word grimoire, meaning a book of spells, as every D&D player knows, is merely a corrupted form of the word grammar. This, perhaps inevitably, led me to think of Alan Moore.

Now, Alan Moore has long had a reputation for being, let us say, an eccentric. From his decision to worship an obscure Roman snake god to his renunciation of the comic industry that made him famous, Moore has never shied away from holding – and expressing – unusual opinions. Among his more intriguing ones is the notion that writing is a form of magic. This is not a metaphor, at least not entirely. Moore has argued, quite seriously, that the act of writing, of using symbols to influence the thoughts and emotions of others across time and space, is indistinguishable from what the Ancients understood as sorcery.

Strange though it is, I must admit there’s something compelling about this idea. Even if one doesn’t share Moore’s larger worldview, as I do not, it’s hard to deny that writing can have a powerful effect on the human mind. Through the arrangement of words alone, a writer can make his readers laugh, weep, tremble, or dream. He can transport us to faraway lands, real or imagined, and introduce us to people we’ve never met but whose lives we come to care about deeply. In a very real sense, writing is a kind of conjuring, one that requires no candles or pentagrams, only ink and paper (or a keyboard and computer nowadays).

Consider, for example, the word spell. In modern English, it refers not only to an act of magic but also to the construction of words. To spell something is to put its letters in the correct order. Both meanings trace back to the same Old English root, spellian, meaning to speak or to tell a story. Similarly, as I alluded to above, the word grimoire originally refereed in Old French to a book of Latin grammar and only later came to mean a book of magic, in part because of its obscurity to later generations who no longer studied or understood Latin. Similarly, during the Middle Ages, the word grammar (or gramarye) was used as a synonym for occult knowledge. To be “learned in grammar,” meaning to be a sorcerer, is found in both Spenser and Tennyson, to cite two famous literary examples.  

My mind continued to dwell on these and related thoughts. Like many gamers my age, my first experiences with the hobby were less like reading an instruction manual and more like poring over an ancient tome whose true meaning was just out of reach. For example, Gary Gygax's AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide is notorious for its impenetrability in places. It's dense, baroque, and often bafflingly arranged – but it's also weirdly compelling. When I first encountered it, sometime in 1980, it felt charged in a way I could scarcely articulate at the time. Its pages were filled with the promise of discovery and, yes, even power, if only I could fully unlock its secrets.

The parallels with magic are not hard to see. A rulebook, especially one from those bygone days, isn’t just a guide to playing a game. It’s a grimoire, a book of hidden knowledge that, when properly understood, allows one to reshape the world. In the case of an RPG, that world is imaginary but no less real in the moment of play. The referee becomes a kind of conjurer, invoking the words of the text and combining them with his own imagination to create something new. Dice are his ritual tools. The rulebook is his spellbook. A well-loved module might as well be a scroll, its battered pages whispering of dungeons never fully explored and treasures never claimed.

I can still remember the first time I cracked open the D&D Basic Rulebook edited by J. Eric Holmes. I had just turned ten years-old a couple of months prior and, try as I might, I didn’t entirely understand what I was looking at. Nevertheless, the effect was immediate. The words, the terse descriptions and evocative names, the crude dungeon map at the back, all hinted at something larger, something just beyond my grasp. It was like standing at the edge of a forest and seeing strange lights flicker between the trees. I didn’t need to know everything to feel the pull. The rulebook was already working its magic.

That’s the heart of it, I think. The magic doesn’t reside solely in the words themselves, but in what they evoke and the spaces they open in the reader’s mind. A good RPG rulebook doesn’t just tell you how to play; it helps you see something, to imagine people and places and situations that didn’t exist before. It grants you the ability to summon worlds. That’s no small thing. When I look back on the early designers of RPGs, there's a real sense in which the word "magician" is apt to describe them. Their words conjured entire settings, systems, and styles of play that still persist decades later. Through their books, they reached into the minds of people across the world and sparked curiosity, wonder, and creativity. They transmitted dreams, wrapped in game mechanics and monster stats.

To this day, when I pick up an old TSR module or GDW product, I feel a flicker of that same enchantment. By today's standards, their production values may be modest and the prose often obscure, but their spells still work. That probably explains why I've never left this hobby behind, as so many of my childhood friends did. There’s something undeniably magical about it, something that goes beyond nostalgia. These books are more than just artifacts of a bygone era. They’re vessels of imaginative power and those who wrote them were, knowingly or not, practitioners of the oldest art of all.

The art of making something from nothing.

The art of words.

The art of magic.

Retrospective: Shadowrun

One of the things that's easy to forget in our hyper-connected age is how we used to discover new roleplaying games in the days before the Internet. Back then, the most reliable way to learn about an upcoming release was through an advertisement in the pages of whatever gaming magazine happened to be on hand. In 1989, I wasn't reading any of those magazines with regularity and the few I did pick up were mostly issues of Challenge, published by GDW.

I can’t recall exactly which issue it was, but one from late 1989 (or perhaps early 1990) featured a full-color ad on what I think was the inside back cover. It was promoting an adventure titled DNA/DOA for a game I’d never heard of before: Shadowrun. The only reason I paid it any attention or indeed remember it now, nearly four decades later is that the ad prominently noted the adventure had been written by none other than Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons. That odd little detail stuck with me, not only because of Arneson’s name but because it hinted that this Shadowrun might be more than just another entry in the growing library of cyberpunk RPGs.

That was my first encounter with FASA’s Shadowrun, a game that seemed unusual from the outset.

Released in 1989, Shadowrun appeared just a year after R. Talsorian’s eponymous Cyberpunk had helped define the genre’s tabletop presence. With its street samurai, megacorps, and jacked-in netrunners, Cyberpunk set the tone for what most people came to expect from a game inspired by the dystopian futures of Gibson, Sterling, and their peers. And yet, more than 35 years later, it’s Shadowrun that has endured. With multiple editions, a series of novels, video game adaptations, and a fiercely loyal fanbase, it remains a living game line, unlike most of its "pure" cyberpunk contemporaries, which have faded into semi-obscurity or niche reverence.

Why?

The most obvious reason for Shadowrun’s enduring success is the same one that raised eyebrows back in 1989: it isn’t just cyberpunk. It’s cyberpunk with elves. And orcs (or orks, if you prefer). And dragons who run multinational corporations. In Shadowrun’s timeline, magic returns to the world in 2011(!), mutating humanity and transforming a familiar dystopian near-future into something far stranger (and, from a publishing standpoint at least, much more resilient) than the genre that inspired it.

This wasn’t just a gimmick. By blending fantasy tropes with cyberpunk conventions, Shadowrun did something genuinely clever: it created a setting with depth and layers. On the surface, players could engage with the game as street-level mercenaries wielding neural implants and SMGs. But beneath that were shamans communing with spirits, dragons manipulating global markets, and ancient conspiracies stretching back to the Fourth World. Players who might have bounced off the bleak, tech-saturated grit of Cyberpunk could instead be drawn in by magical lodges, the emergence of metahumanity, or the social and spiritual upheaval that followed the Awakening.

In short, Shadowrun broadened its appeal and, in doing so, expanded the possibilities for adventures and campaigns. 

It’s also important to recognize how this hybrid design has helped Shadowrun weather the passage of time. Cyberpunk as a genre hasn’t aged gracefully. Its once-speculative technologies – cyberlimbs, virtual reality, hacking over phone lines – often feel more quaint than futuristic today. However, Shadowrun’s fantasy elements aren't so bounded by the decades. Magic, dragons, and spirits don’t become obsolete; they remain today much as they were decades ago. Ironically, Shadowrun has proven more adaptable than its “straight” cyberpunk peers precisely because it was never just a game about a decaying high-tech future. It had a mythic layer that lifted it beyond the limitations of its moment.

That elasticity of focus has undoubtedly contributed to the game’s remarkable longevity. Each new edition – I've lost track of how many there have been – has updated the rules and revised its vision of future tech. Yet, the game's setting has remained fundamentally intact: a strange, compelling fusion of chrome and sorcery, where megacorps rub shoulders with magical traditions and the shadows are always alive with danger.

Another reason for Shadowrun’s staying power is its strong esthetic identity. The original game’s art direction and tone were memorable, with neon-lit sprawls, chrome-and-leather runners, magical glyphs scrawled on alley walls. The world felt lived in and visually distinct. The idea of a troll shaman arguing with a street samurai while a decker jacked into a corporate node in the background was somehow evocative in a way that pure cyberpunk rarely matched. Just as important, Shadowrun encouraged a specific kind of play, consisting of caper-style runs against megacorporations, betrayal, shifting alliances, and messy consequences. It was heist movies, urban fantasy, and cyberpunk noir rolled into one big, messy ball.

In hindsight, FASA’s gamble proved remarkably wise. In a market soon crowded with gritty cyberpunk dystopias, Shadowrun chose to be weird. It paid off. The game is still here. Cyberpunk is fondly remembered, but it needed a video game revival a few years ago to reach a new generation. Shadowrun, meanwhile, kept chugging along through decades of changes. While I never really got into the game, despite have friends who were huge fans, I always respected it for what it was: a bold, imaginative departure from the RPG norms of its time. It dared to be strange, to blend genres in ways that shouldn’t have worked but somehow did. That willingness to be more than just another cyberpunk clone gave it a vitality that few of its contemporaries could match. Even now, decades later, Shadowrun remains a fixture in the hobby, not because it played it safe, but because it embraced the chaos of magic and machine and built a world unlike any other.

The Petal Throne Has Thorns

Recently, I sent a message to the players on our House of Worms campaign Discord server. It was, in essence, a warning.

This is not meant to frighten anyone.

Now that I've succeeded in frightening everyone, here it is: From this point on in the campaign, the gloves are off. 

By that I mean, we're nearing the End and that means anything can happen, including characters dying. Obviously, there are means to bring them back cough, *cough, cough Aíthfo* but there's no guarantee of that, especially given how things are going. I bring this up only because I'm committed to the campaign's conclusion being a tense and uncertain one in every way. Though I've never held back in letting the dice fall where they may *cough, cough, Aíthfo*, things may nevertheless get even nastier than they ever have before and I feel an obligation to remind everyone that no one has Plot Armor.

Have a nice day. 😊

It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the underlying message is serious: after more than a decade of weekly play, the House of Worms campaign is approaching its conclusion. The characters, most of whom have been in play for years, are not guaranteed a happy ending, let alone a heroic one. They can fail. They can die. They might even die pointlessly, offhandedly, from a bad roll at the wrong moment.

That’s all par for the course in a proper old school RPG campaign, of course, but I felt compelled to remind the players. As I’ve likely said many times over the years, House of Worms is light on dice rolls outside of combat and combat itself is rare outside the underworld. Most sessions consist almost entirely of roleplaying in one form or another and the players are very good at it. More often than not, they resolve their problems through conversation, manipulation, and clever schemes rather than through swordplay or spellcraft. Much as I love that – and I do, given my longstanding dislike of combat – I sometimes worry it’s made them a little too comfortable. A little too safe.

From what I read online and have sometimes even observed "in the wild," there's a tacit expectation in a lot of contemporary gaming circles that player characters are protagonists will, therefore, reach the end of a campaign. They might suffer, they might be scarred, but they'll get there. There's an implicit contract between referee and player that, so long as you show up and play your character, you'll at least survive to the final scene. Old school play usually doesn't work out that way and, at least in my interpretation of it, Tékumel especially doesn’t work that way.

Tékumel is a setting where the gods are real, inscrutable, and often indifferent. It's a place of Byzantine scheming, hidden pacts, and ancient horrors. A misplaced word or an ill-advised alliance can unravel everything you've worked toward – and that’s glorious. As I conceive it, a Tékumel campaign should end the way it began: full of mystery, danger, and unpredictability. There's n script; there’s no "true ending." There's only what the players do and what the dice say about it.

I've always tried to referee the House of Worms campaign in a way that respects the players' choices – as well as the consequences of those choices. That doesn’t mean I'm out to kill their characters for shock value or for sport. However, it does mean that no character is safe just because they’re "important." If anything, being important only puts a larger target on a character's back. Indeed, that's been the pattern of this campaign since its inception in March 2015: each time the characters succeed, there's been an escalation in the stakes and the strength of the opposition. Where once they contended with local matters of small moment, now they're at the very heart of an imperial succession crisis, one that involves not just earthly power politics but the machinations of gods and demons. 

In playing House of Worms, what I’ve come to appreciate most about it and, by extension old school RPG campaigns more generally, is their fragility. There’s no safety net, no rewind button. The stakes are real and when the players realize that, when they know the character they've played for literally years could disappear into the void at any moment, the impact on play is considerable. That’s when the game transcends mere mechanics and becomes something else: a shared experience of genuine risk and reward.

So yes, the gloves are off, but they were never really on to begin with.

Have a nice day. 😊

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Special Skills, Special Thrills"

Of all the iconic classes of D&D, the cleric is the one that sticks out like a sore thumb. Whereas the fighting man, the magic-user, and even the thief are all pretty broad archetypes easily -- and non-mechanically -- re-imagined in a variety of different ways, the cleric is a very specific type of character. With his heavy armor, non-edged weapons, Biblical magic, and power over the undead, the cleric is not a generic class, recalling a crusading knight by way of Van Helsing. There's thus a distinctly Christian air to the cleric class, an air that increasingly seemed at odds with the game itself, which, as time went on, distanced itself from its earlier implicit Christianity and embraced an ahistorical form of polytheism instead.

For that reason, there were growing cries among some gamers to "fix" the cleric. In this context "fix" means change to make it less tied to a particular religion, in this case a particular religion the game itself had eschewed. The first time I recall seeing an "official" answer to these cries was in Deities & Demigods, where it's noted that the clerics of certain deities had different armor and/or weapon restrictions than "standard" clerics. A few even got special abilities reflective of their divine patron. This idea was later expanded upon by Gary Gygax himself in his "Deities & Demigods of The World of Greyhawk" series of articles, which I credit with giving widespread attention to this idea. I know that, after those articles appeared, lots of my fellow gamers wanted to follow Gary's lead and tailor their cleric characters to the deities they served, an idea that AD&D more formally adopted with 2e in 1989.

In issue #85 (May 1984) of Dragon, Roger E. Moore wrote an article entitled "Special Skills, Special Thrills" that also addressed this topic. Moore specifically cites Gary's articles as his inspiration and sets about providing unique abilities for clerics of several major pantheons. These pantheons are Egyptian, Elven, Norse, Ogrish, and Orcish – a rather strange mix! Of course, Moore intends these to be used only as examples to inspire individual referees. Likewise, he leaves open the question of just how to balance these additional abilities with a cleric's default ones. He notes that Gygax assessed a 5-15% XP penalty to such clerics, but does not wholeheartedly endorse that method himself, suggesting that other more roleplaying-oriented solutions (ritual demands, quests, etc.) might work just as well.

Like a lot of gamers at the time, I was very enamored of the idea of granting unique abilities to clerics based on their patron deity. Nowadays, I'm not so keen on the idea, in part because I think the desire for such only underlines the "odd man out" quality of the cleric class. Moreover, nearly every example of a "specialty cleric" (or priest, as D&D II called them) still retains too much of the baseline cleric to be coherent. Why, for example, would a god of war be able to turn the undead? Why should almost any cleric wear heavy armor and be the second-best combatant of all the classes? The cleric class, even with tweaks, is so tied to a medieval Christian society and worldview that it seems bizarre to me to use it as the basis for a "generic" priest class. Far better, I think, would be to have individual classes for priests of each religion or, in keeping with swords-and-sorcery, jettison the class entirely.

War!

As you can probably tell from both of my earlier posts today, there are soon going to be some large, pitched battles in my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign. This isn't something I'd imagined some months ago, when we began entering the final stages of the campaign, but here we are. This turn of events makes sense, of course, given the way events are unfolding. However, I can't deny that this prospect fills me with a bit of apprehension. As I've said on many occasions over the years, I've never been a wargamer of any kind, despite my fascination with and some knowledge of military matters. I say this with some regret, both because this lacuna in my game education has no doubt skewed my perspective on certain things and because it leaves me somewhat at loss in knowing how to handle occasions of mass combat within a RPG.

That's why I'm turning to you, my readers, for thoughts and suggestions on how you have handled wars and large-scale battles in your roleplaying game campaigns. What rules or approaches did you use and how well did they work? Did they mesh well with the RPG you were playing? I'm honestly curious about every aspect of this question, since I have such limited experience with it in my own campaigns and would appreciate learning from those of you who've successfully incorporated mass combat into yours. 

That said, I should make a few things clear about my own preferences as a referee. Between my dislike of combat as an activity in itself and my feeling that most RPGs have too many rules, I have a natural aversion to any kind of mass combat system that plays out like a wargame. If I wanted to play a wargame, I'd play a wargame. What I want – and this may be impossible – is a solution that doesn't require me or the players to learn a whole new set of rules to simulate their characters' involvement in a big battle. Additionally, I'd like for what the characters do to have an effect on the outcome of the battle, even if they're not directly involved in everything that happens. I realize this is likely asking a lot, but I have lots of smart and knowledgeable readers, so maybe one of you can point me in the right direction.

To date, the only RPG I've ever played that had a decent set of mass combat rules was Pendragon and, even there, I wasn't wholly satisfied with the results. The main virtue of Pendragon was that the participation of the player characters still used the standard combat rules and the results of their individual battles had some impact on the final outcome of a larger fight. I didn't have to keep track of lots of wargame-y rules to adjudicate the battle satisfactorily. That's more or less what I want here, though, as I said, I may be asking for too much. 

Your thoughts on this matter are thus greatly appreciated. 

The Battle of Béy Sü

From an address by Prince Eselné Tlakotáni to his legions on the steps of the Palace of War just prior to commencing their assault on the Temple of Sárku (13 Fésru 2360 A.S.): 

 "I will not lie to you. This path I have chosen leads into fire. There will be war. Blood in the streets. Temples razed, banners burned, clans shattered. I do not deny it: I expect it."

"But we must walk it anyway."

"For too long, we have whispered that Tsolyánu is 'eternal,' not because she is strong, but because we fear what will happen if she changes. We call her 'timeless' when what we really mean is stagnant. We call her 'harmonious' when what we really mean is choked. We call her 'pious' while we let the temples devour her from within."

"We have smoothed over every fracture with ritual. Buried every danger beneath scrolls. We’ve let the high clans rot behind lacquered gates and the bureaucrats nest like syúsyu-lizards in the rafters of the Golden Tower. And when the choosing of an emperor becomes not a moment of clarity, but a pageant of manipulation, then we are no longer ruled by 'tradition.' We are ruled by cowardice dressed in antique finery."

"I am not a reformer. I am not a philosopher. I am a soldier. I know what war looks like — and still I choose it."

"Béy Sü is nearly four hundred years overdue for Ditlána. Every brick in this city knows it. But perhaps it is not just Béy Sü that must be razed and reborn. Perhaps the whole Empire must be broken, so it can live again."

"If that is madness, then better a madman with clean hands than another schemer who calls ruin peace."

Campaign Updates: Two for the Road

That "real life" thing that I'm sure everyone has heard of does indeed exist and it's been keeping me busy over the last few weeks. It's apparently been doing the same thing to a lot of my players, too, hence my current campaigns have convened fewer times than I had hoped. Nevertheless, we did play several sessions of both Barrett's Raiders and House of Worms. Dolmenwood, alas, remains in a brief stasis; with luck, it will resume this week. In the meantime, here's the latest news from both Fort Lee, Virginia and Béy Sü, Tsolyánu:

Barrett's Raiders

Armed with Specialist Huxley's confession, Major Hunter decided that now was the time to approach both Lt. Nolan Bennett in logistics, along with his superior, Captain Reginald Tolen. She started with Bennett, who attempted to obfuscate the issues at hand, claiming that any irregularities could be chalked up to simple "clerical error" and the stress of trying to operate a military base "under difficult conditions." Hunter then confronted him with what Huxley told her, which cause Bennett to take a different tack. He admitted that Tolen probably had a hand in what's happening, but assured her that it's because "the captain's a good guy" who's "just trying to help people anyway he can." There's nothing sinister in it and it'd be a mistake to expose Tolen, since it'd probably land him in the stockade.

Hunter suspected this still wasn't the whole truth. She used other evidence she'd collected from paperwork and reports to demonstrate that Bennett himself must have been involved too. Bennett made a few more attempts to weasel out of these accusations before admitting that, yes, he'd used both Tolen and Huxley for his own betterment. He'd been contacted by a New America adherent who made him an offer: funnel war materiel from Fort Lee to him and he'd ensure that, when the time came, Bennett would be given a meal ticket and a position of safety "out west." Bennett claimed he didn't care about New America's ideology, only that he had a future. "Look around. Open your eyes. USMEA doesn't have what it takes to put this country back together again. I decided to back the winner."

When confronted with these facts, Captain Tolen was appalled. He openly admitted that, yes, he had made arrangements, through Bennett, to send "extra" supplies to civilian communities in need of them – but he swore he did not authorize the sending of war materiel to anyone, let alone New America. He felt betrayed, though he made no bones about the fact that he was ultimately to blame for this situation. Tolen took full responsibility and offered to turn himself in to the Provost Marshal, Colonel Kearns. Major Hunter said that she would speak to Kearns first, but, in the meantime, he and Bennett would be placed under guard.

Kearns was not surprised to learn that Tolen was involved. He said that the captain was a "naive bleeding heart" but not a bad a man. Fort Lee owed a lot to his work to keep it together, but that did not excuse his "reckless" behavior. Ultimately, though, the fault lay with General Summers, the base commander, who "cared more about looking good for Norfolk than doing his job." Summers, he explained, was a desk general, who had never seen combat and now, with all the soldiers returning from Europe, was worried he might be replaced "by someone with actual military experience." Summers always preferred to paper over problems rather than deal with them.

Hunter confirmed some of what Kearns claimed when she and Lt. Col. Orlowski presented MLG-7's report directly to Summers. The general praised them for getting to the bottom of the problem and that they had done so quietly. Summers then said that they were probably keen to leave Fort Lee and continue on their journey. He asked several times when they planned to leave and if there were anything his office could do to speed them on their way. This suggested that Col. Kearns had been correct in his assessment of the general: he wanted to be sure no one in Norfolk got wind of this serious breach of security that had happened under his watch.

Hunter and Orlowski explained they'd be leaving tomorrow, which pleased Summers. He thanked them again and sent them on their way. Of course, Spc. Huxley was scheduled to make another supply run the next day, too. Now that he had been found out, New America would realize something had happened and they might change up their local operations. That didn't sit well with Hunter and Orlowski, who decided that, as part of the departure the next day, MLG-7 would look into this dangling thread personally.

House of Worms

The characters made their way to a safe location known to him through Nebússa's contacts in the Omnipotent Azure Legion. There, they took stock of the artifacts Míru had left for Kirktá and opened the chest of the topaz god to remove the priest of the One Other they'd place in stasis there. Normally, a living being struck by the beam of an excellent ruby eye is held in suspended animation unharmed until he is struck again. This time, though, that did not seem to be the case. When Míru was released, he appeared lifeless – not dead exactly but certainly not alive either. It immediately occurred to Kirktá that, having lived a double life within the Temple of Belkhánu for so long, Míru had undoubtedly learned one or more spells that would enable him to transfer his consciousness from one body to another. He had probably done so moments before he was struck by the excellent ruby eye. If so, he was still alive and working toward his own purposes.

This was unfortunate as Míru knew not only more about Kirktá's early life and purpose but also about the seven items he'd gathered for him to use. The items consisted of: a small, uncut piece of onyx; a small wooden statue of Halúb, "the Knower of Hidden Truths," an obscure aspect of Belkhánu; a polished disc of gray metal framed in bone; a thin leather scroll, warm to the touch and slight pulsating; a mummified finger; a funerary mask with a single eye slot in the brow; and a golden statuette of an ancient ruler whose face has been erased by time. Using the spell seeing other planes, Kirktá determined that the onyx, the disc, and the mask all showed strong connections to the Planes Beyond, while the others were much less potent.

Kirktá set about examining the statue of Halúb first, soon discovering that it was actually a reliquary inside of which was a scroll wrapped in silk. The scroll was made of a sturdy, thin material that was completely black. When viewed in darkness, however, the blackness "fell away," revealing dense text written in Classical Tsolyáni. The text turned out to be the terms of the pact entered into by the First Tlakotáni with the One Other. According to those terms, the emperor-to-be offered the souls of his line to the One Other in exchange for the eternal protection of the fortress of Avanthár against all external threats. So long as the Tlakotáni continued to offer the souls of princes defeated in the Kólumejálim, the One Other would ensure Avanthár never fell.

As an expert demonologist, Keléno scoffed at the pact, calling it "sloppy." He explained that, among other things, there were too many loopholes in the text, specifically that it did not spell out the consequences if one party breaches it. He said he would never enter into such a contract with a demon, let alone a pariah god. Clearly, there must be some details that were missing, because it's difficult to imagine that the pact would have held up for more than 2000 years without either side failing to live up to it. That's when Nebússa began to wonder whether or not it was already in a state of breach, which might explain why Dhich'uné was so keen to establish new terms for it.

Speaking of Dhich'uné, because he had offered protection to many priests of Belkhánu fleeing the razing of their temple, Eselné turned his sights onto the Temple of Sárku. He had ordered his legions, including the cohort led by Grujúng into position to attack it. This concerned the other characters, who worried that such an attack might well play into Dhich'uné's hands. They rushed to the Palace of War, seeking an audience with General Kéttukal to bring their worries to him. As it turned out, Kéttukal had been looking for them. He explained that Dhich'uné had made a formal request for a parley and asked that Kirktá be the one to receive it.

Kirktá, along with Keléno and Nebússa, made their way to meet the Worm Prince. There, he delivered his ultimatum: call off the attack or else he would raise an army of the undead to defend him and turn the capital into a tomb. Additionally, he tempted Kirktá to join him so that he might finally learn the truth of who he is and why that truth was hidden for so long. Kirktá did not give in, despite his intense curiosity. Instead, he and the others returned to Eselné and Kéttukal to prepare for all-out war.

Stuck

If you’d told my younger self that, by middle age, Star Wars, Star Trek, Dungeons & Dragons – all the things I loved as a boy – would not only still exist but would be huge entertainment "brands," I doubt I’d have believed you. I certainly wouldn’t have believed I’d no longer care about them. Worse, I never would have imagined I’d feel repulsed by what they’ve become.

And yet, here we are.

Plenty of commentators have observed a phenomenon sometimes called “stuck culture” and I think that captures part of my malaise. Contemporary pop culture seems either unable or unwilling to move on from the past. Instead, it recycles, reboots, and repackages the same "intellectual properties" – a phrase I feel unclean even typing – over and over again, as though what we truly need is just one more sequel, one more origin story, one more “gritty reimagining” of a once-beloved character or setting.

This cultural stagnation is especially glaring in the realm of the nerds, where hobbies were once defined by originality and creativity. Now? They're more often defined by compulsive repetition and the embalmed echoes of past glories.

Don’t misunderstand me: there’s nothing wrong with nostalgia. Remembering the things that once brought us joy is natural, even humanizing. However, there’s a difference, in my opinion, between nostalgia and necromancy. So much of popular culture today, particularly nerd culture, feels like it’s reanimating corpses. Bigger budgets, flashier effects, and algorithmic polish don’t bring these creations back to life. They only parade them around, lifeless and hollow, like mummified icons. The result isn’t a return to something vital or real. Instead, it’s a grotesque simulacrum, stripped of its original context, meaning, and soul.

In the age of content algorithms, our past preferences become templates for future production. Innovation is replaced by optimization – and what’s being optimized isn’t storytelling or artistry, but you. Or rather, your predictable patterns of engagement. If you once loved, say, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, they'll feed you a dozen pale imitations, each more toothless, more risk-averse, and more emotionally flat than the last. If you liked elves and dungeons in 1982, the machine will churn out endless corporate flavors of the same, carefully drained of the strangeness and wonder that once made them sing.

This is apparent even in roleplaying games. There was a time when RPGs were gloriously, sometimes chaotically, diverse. Every few months brought some new idea, some strange world, some half-baked but fascinating mechanic. Some of it was brilliant, some of it was garbage, but all of it felt alive. Today? Most major RPG products are variations on a narrow set of tropes established decades ago. Even the Old School Renaissance, of which I count myself a part, often falls prey to the same trap: remaking, rehashing, repeating.

So when did creativity give way to caretaking? When did our hobby stop being about imagining new worlds and become a museum of preserved brands?

It wasn’t always this way. Nerd subcultures were once genuinely weird – offputting, insular, and proudly obscure. They were difficult to access and defiantly uncool and that very inaccessibility acted as a crucible, forging originality and independence. But the rise of the Internet, and especially social media. has flattened all subcultures. Everything is now accessible, marketable, and smoothed out for mass consumption. Because nerds were among the earliest adopters of these technologies, nerd culture may have suffered the most from this transformation.

The result is a creeping homogenization. “Fantasy” now means elves and dragons. “Sci-fi” means space wizards. Every new game must have a "brand identity," a "product roadmap," a social media presence. Anything that doesn’t fit the mold is quietly ignored, regardless of how original or inspired it might be.

What we’re losing in this cycle of endless recycling isn’t just novelty but meaning. The worlds we once explored, whether in a galaxy far, far away or deep beneath a ruined castle, mattered because they were new. They challenged our imaginations. They opened doors we didn’t even know were there. When everything becomes a remix of a remix, that sense of discovery is lost. That may be the real tragedy – not simply that nerd culture has changed, but that it has ceased to move on. It no longer dares to venture into the unknown. It circles the same drain, hoping that the next familiar logo will somehow rekindle the old spark.

But it won’t. It can’t.

The antidote to stuck culture isn’t rage and it isn’t despair. It’s refusal. Refusal to let our cultural memory be mined for spare parts. Refusal to accept brand management in place of imagination. Refusal to mistake familiarity for worth.

There are still creators out there doing strange, beautiful, uncompromising work. There are still games being written, books being published, ’zines being assembled that don’t give a damn about algorithms or intellectual property portfolios. Seek them out. Support them. Better yet, make your own.

Let the past be the past, not a franchise.

"I Am Prepared to Teach Him the Proper Rites."

©2011–2025 Jeff Dee

“Ah, Kirktá. Sit. Not as adversaries, but as brothers, as sons of the emperor – as men who remember what peace feels like.”

“Peace. That is all I wish, though Eselné does not believe me. But is it not a good ambition for one who dwells among the dead. Who better to know the true meaning of peace?”

“Everything I have done — the cloistered councils, the careful alliances, the sheltering of those who now flee from Eselné’s wrath — I have done to preserve the Empire, not to destroy it. It is Eselné who fans the flames. Eselné who tears at the old ways. Tell me, Kirktá: who breaks the Concordat? Who has sent his legions to desecrate one temple in his blind pursuit of dominion and now threatens another?”

“Not I.”

“You know he cannot win, not without destroying all that Tsolyánu is. But you still stand at the crossroads. I know who you are. I know what you are. I know where you came from. I know why you were hidden.”

“Only by walking beside me will your skein at last be made whole. Only I can draw the threads together – the frayed, the hidden, the ones others tried to cut. Let me show you the pattern behind your life. Don’t you wish to know why you were woven at all?"

“But if you decline, if you cling to Eselné’s banner, then I have no choice but to act and to act swiftly." 

"You know, of course, that Eselné is not the only prince with legions in Béy Sü.”

“Though I suppose it would be more honest to say that I have legions under Béy Sü – beneath its stones, its vaults, its ancient crypts. There are soldiers sleeping there in the dust who swore undying oaths to the Petal Throne before Eselné’s name was ever spoken. If he wishes to turn this city into a tomb, I am prepared to teach him the proper rites.”

“Tell him that. Or don’t. He will learn soon enough. But you still have a choice: stand where your true fate calls you. Stand beside me.”

"Now, go."

Dragonlance at the End of the World

One of many things that doesn't always come through in my campaign update posts are the little moments of roleplaying and character development that are, for me anyway, why I continue to participate in this hobby after so many decades. Reading those posts and the supplementary ones that draw attention to larger developments within them, one might well think the Big Stuff is all that matters to me. Of course, the Big Stuff does matter to me, especially in my House of Worms and Barrett's Raiders campaigns, where political, social, and religious struggles are important drivers of the action. Even so, it's the characters who matter most to me. They are, after all, the means by which my wonderful players interact with the situations I set before them and I appreciate the added texture they can add to the game world.

An amusing case in point is Corporal Wayne "Rocketman" Schweyk. Rocketman was originally a back-up character, introduced during the unit's time in the Free City of Kraków. All the players had a back-up character, both to fill out the unit's complement, but also as insurance in case one of the "main" characters died in combat or through some other means. Rocketman, as his name suggests, had been part of a Multiple Launch Rocket System crew during the earlier stages of the Twilight War. He eventually found his way to the Free City and became part of a group of displaced American soldiers there, some of whom joined the Raiders when they fled Kraków and its Machiavellian politics. 

As a character, Rocketman has several defining characteristics. Most obviously, he likes rockets, missiles, grenade launchers, mortars, and similar weaponry. Second, he is a good driver and always volunteers to drive one of the unit's vehicles. Finally, he's an avid reader of Dragonlance novels and makes an effort to seek out new sources of them whenever it's practical. Now that the Raiders are back in the USA, this is a fair bit easier than it was in Poland. Recently, Rocketman has begun to branch out. He's expressed an interest in Forgotten Realms novels, too, a few of which he was able to obtain in trade from soldiers stationed at Fort Lee.

On the one hand, this bit of characterization is a joke, making fun of just how many of these novels TSR published throughout the '80s and '90s – and there were a lot of them. We looked into the matter and, assuming that, in the timeline of Barrett's Raiders, TSR stopped producing new Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels at the end of 1997, shortly after the first Soviet nuclear strikes against America, there'd still be just shy of 100 Dragonlance novels and a little less than 80 Forgotten Realms novels. As I said, there really were a lot of these novels, but, from what I understand, they sold very, very well, outshining even the gaming material on which they were based. Talk about brandification!

On the other hand, little details like help a character to come alive. They help set him apart from his comrades and often serve as motivations for what the character does. In the case of Rocketman, he really does spend time talking to other soldiers, learning if any of them shares his interest in fantasy novels and whether there's library or other potential source for more of them. Further, his interest helps ground the campaign in its time and place. Barrett's Raiders is presently set in December 2000 in an alternate timeline that diverged at least as far back as 1985, if not earlier. Seeing as we're a quarter century removed from its chronological date and in a different reality altogether, these small reminders have proven useful.

From time to time, I should probably devote more posts to stuff like this. I've repeatedly said that the success and longevity of my various campaigns is, in large part, due to my players, who have created some really fun and memorable characters. They're one of the things that keep me engaged week after week. Shining the spotlight on some of them might prove helpful or at least interesting to readers as well.