Tyo-tomat

Yet more glorious Secrets of sha-Arthan art from Zhu Bajiee, this time a Ga'andrin tyo-tomat (or "elixir master"), a kind of sorcerer who supplements his natural magic talents by the regular ingestion of mutagenic chemicals. 

Fantasy ... Taken to the Edge

One of the earliest advertisements for Planescape I remember seeing was this one, which appeared in issue #203 of Dragon (March 1994). Depicting the ruler(?) of Sigil, the Lady of Pain, it certainly piqued my interest. Even now, I think it's a pretty intriguing and evocative advertisement.

Retrospective: Planescape Campaign Setting

When I first acquired the AD&D Players Handbook – this was sometime in early 1980 – one of my favorite sections was Apprendix IV: The Known Planes of Existence. Taking up only a couple of pages, this appendix was the first time I'd ever encountered Gary Gygax's bizarre, mysterious, and wonderfully baroque ideas about the multiverse of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. What made Gygax's vision so weird compelling was its obsessive orderliness, which didn't simply tie the Outer Planes to each of the game's nine alignments, but to every conceivable shade in between. That's why, for example, the Seven Heavens are described as being "of absolute lawful good," while the planes of Elysium are "of neutral good lawfuls." 

Objectively, this is bonkers stuff, but I adored it and spent a lot of time thinking about the Outer (and other) Planes, aided no doubt by my fascination with the demons and devils of the Monster Manual. Despite Gygax's precise distinctions between the alignments of the Planes, AD&D didn't have a lot to say about them for a long time, aside from the occasional article in Dragon, like the ones about the Astral Plane (by Roger E. Moore) and the Nine Hells (by Ed Greenwood). And, of course, we later got Gygax's own developed thoughts about the Inner Planes, which were every bit as eccentric and persnickety as what he wrote in Appendix IV of the PHB all those years ago.

What I always wanted was a better sense of the Planes as a place and, more than that, as an adventuring locale. What sorts of adventures could AD&D characters have among the Planes? What made the Outer Planes different from the Prime Material Plane and how would this impact the kinds of adventures to be had there? The better Dragon articles, like those of Greenwood, did this well, or at least better than did Gygax, whose own ideas, while fascinating, remained largely in the realm of the theoretical. I wanted something more "down to earth," if you'll forgive the phrase. Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes was a good first step in that direction, but I wanted more.

As it turned out, I'd have to wait until 1994 to get that, in the form of the Planescape Campaign Setting – and it was not at all what I had expected. As imagined by David "Zeb" Cook and brought to visual life by Tony DiTerlizzi, the Outer Planes were indeed weird, though quite different from how they'd been previously portrayed. Instead of being presented as primarily the dwelling places of gods and demons, the Planes were instead a battleground between various factions of "philosophers with clubs," each of which hopes to remake reality according to their own idiosyncratic perspective. These factions, each associated (in some cases loosely) with an alignment or Outer Plane, were the driving force behind Cook's vision for Planescape. More than that, they provided an easy buy-in for player characters looking to involve themselves in the cosmic struggles of the setting.

"The setting." That's important. One of the clever things Cook did with Planescape was that he made the Planes a setting. They weren't just a place you could visit for a brief time; they were a place you could stay. Further, they were a place where even novice characters could stay, not merely high-level ones with access to potent magic. Further still, they were a place with its own native inhabitants and players could easily take up the role of one of them. Planescape gave AD&D's Planes a life of their own, divorced from the Prime Material Plane where most campaigns were set. Planescape made it possible to play entire campaigns where characters never once set foot on the World of Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, or any other "normal" campaign world. 

This was a bold approach and not at all what I or, I imagine, most AD&D players at the time were expecting. Not everyone warmed to Planescape's vision of the Planes. Indeed, I recall quite a few old hands who scoffed at it as taking too many cues from White Wolf's World of Darkness RPGs, which were very popular at the time. I can certainly appreciate the shock and surprise they probably felt upon reading Planescape and seeing DiTerlizzi's Dr Seuss-like depictions of the denizens of the Planes. This was not Gygax's Planes; it wasn't even Grubb's. It was something quite unique, filled with the strange, the odd, and the occasionally silly, and suffused with a punkish vibe that came through most strongly in its use of Planar Cant drawn from the criminal slang of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Many people, even fans of the setting, loathed the Cant, but there's no denying that it helped give Planescape a distinct flavor of its own.

Me, I enjoyed Planescape. It was not at all what I expected, but I enjoyed it for what it was: a strange, whimsical, wondrous take on world-hopping fantasy, with "worlds" in this case being other Planes of Existence, each with its own individual rules and style. And then there's Sigil, the City of Doors, located at the very center of the multiverse – if a series of infinite planes can truly be said to have a center. Home to the various planar factions and serving as a crossroads of the Planes, Sigil could serve as the basis for an entire campaign in itself, but it was also the perfect "home base" for planar characters whose adventures took them across the realms of the Great Wheel and beyond. Like Planescape itself, I really enjoyed Sigil and had a lot of fun with it.

I have lots of thoughts I could share about Planescape, both positive and negative, but my overall feeling for it is one of affection. I first made use of the setting as an adjunct to an ongoing Forgotten Realms campaign I ran in the mid-1990s. Later, I ran a "native" campaign among the Planes in the early days of Third Edition. Both were very well received by my players. Indeed, we still occasionally talk about some of the adventures they had in the setting. That's my usual measure of whether a gaming product succeeds – did I have fun with it? – and by that standard, Planescape is one of the greats.  

The Articles of Dragon: "Old Dwarvish is Still New to Scholars of Language Lore"

I promise this is the final article from issue #66 of Dragon (October 1982) that I'll talk about! However, since I'd already posted about the others devoted to languages in Dungeons & Dragons, I felt I'd be remiss not to do so for this one as well. 

"Old Dwarvish is Still New to Scholars of Language Lore" by Clyde Heaton is short in length and unusual in its approach. The piece purports to be the notes of "that illustrious pursuer of knowledge," Boru O'Bonker concerning the ancient language of Old Dwarvish. The language is no longer spoken regularly by dwarves, but exists as their ceremonial and traditional language. It survives mostly in poetry and religious rites and occasionally in old expressions and colloquialisms. The framing device of the article suggests that knowledge of the language is kept from outsiders, which is why O'Bonker is now on the run from "very short, heavily armed gentlemen" who had "a professional interest in him."

What then follows is a brief discussion of the phonology, grammar, and vocabulary of Old Dwarvish. When I say "brief," I'm not kidding. For example, here's the entirety of the vocabulary presented with the article. 

The grammar presented is similarly limited, presenting only the basic structure of Old Dwarvish sentences and the structural relationships between nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Within the context of the framing device, this is because O'Bonker is focused on unraveling the mystery of this ancient tongue. He doesn't yet have all the pieces, so his notes are, therefore, incomplete. That's a clever explanation, but one is then left with a question: Why? What's the purpose of this article, if not to provide the reader with a reasonably complete Old Dwarvish language to use in his adventures and campaign?

I have long suspected that the purpose of this article was, in fact, to show how little of a language a referee needed to create in order to make use of it in an adventure as a puzzle to be solved. In my youth, it was not at all uncommon for an important clue or piece of information in a dungeon to be hidden through the use of a cypher or an alphabet the referee made up. The players had to figure out a way to understand it and doing so was vital to moving forward. Most often, these cyphers used substitution or a similarly obvious method of hiding its information. More industrious referees would employ more elaborate methods. That's what I think Heaton is doing here, but I really can't say for certain.

Regardless of the author's actual intention, I was inspired by it to create my own partial languages for use in my Emaindor setting. I created fragments of Elvish (two varieties), Almerian (a Latin analog), Emânic, Tulikese, and more. I was no linguist, just a kid with an interest in foreign languages and a lot of time on his hands. So, I did my best to try to choose distinct sounds for each language and then a basic structure for sentences and enough vocabulary to name places and characters, as well as to, occasionally, make use of little phrases for color. I still have most of them in a binder my mother gave to me years ago, just before she sold my childhood home. They're nothing special but they were among my earliest attempts to create a coherent, "realistic" fantasy setting, so I retain an affection for them, which is why this article, despite its limitations, is one I look back on with similar affection.

Bafflement and Intrigue

Something I remember very vividly about growing up is that I'd sometimes find evidence of a popular culture I'd never encountered. Take, for example, Judge Dredd. 

Until I started reading White Dwarf, I don't think I had any real understanding of who Judge Dredd was. I certainly had never read any comic book in which he appeared and, even if I had, I'm not sure if I'd have understood and appreciated the cultural context out of which the character arose. Consequently, whenever I did brush up against Dredd, I was left feeling both baffled and intrigued – baffled, because what little I had gleaned about him made little sense to me and intrigued, for precisely the same reason. I wanted to know more, if only to make sense of all the fleeting references to him on this side of the Atlantic, but it wasn't easy.

Perhaps it's just a consequence of getting older, but I miss the days when I would feel baffled and intrigued by an artifact of some far-off sub-culture. That almost never happens anymore, thanks to the Internet. Assuming I even find something weird from a foreign land – an increasing rarity in the global village in which we're all now imprisoned – it doesn't take much time to find an explanation online. Long gone are the days when I'd be forced to puzzle out who some comic book character I'd never heard of was. Enlightenment is almost instantaneously within reach.

You'd think I'd be happy about that. My younger self would probably have loved to have had access to the Internet. Back then, I didn't enjoy being in the dark. I wanted to know everything about everything, especially when it came to nerdy matters, like science fiction or fantasy. Now, though, I find myself looking back wistfully at the days of my youth, before the emergence of the pop cultural beige slurry seeping into every nook and cranny of our wired world. I miss the days when not everywhere felt the same and I could luxuriate – and occasionally be frustrated by – the differences wrought by distance. 

The past is a foreign country that I'll never again get to visit.

Amalaric the Ill-Tempered

When I attended Gamehole Con this year, I decided I wouldn't referee any games, but would instead play in several. I did this for a couple of reasons. First, I'm usually the referee, so having the opportunity to play is a treat (even though I'm actually quite bad at it). Second, I intend to run some sessions at future Gamehole Cons – and perhaps some other cons, too, if I can decide on others to attend – and wanted to do some "field research" on what these games are typically like. Though I'm a pretty experienced and, if my players are to be believed, good referee, I'm nevertheless quite self-conscious about my abilities. Seeing how others handle the referee's duties at a con thus provided me with some very useful information. 

The very first game I played at the con was Hyperborea. I've been a fan of the game since its original edition, released more than a decade ago. It's a delightfully game, inspired by the greats of pulp fantasy, like Howard, Lovecraft, and Smith. Rules-wise, it's pretty much a rationalized and house ruled version of AD&D and, like AD&D, Hyperborea is baroque and idiosyncratic. To tell the truth, that's a big part of why I like the game so much. I appreciate it when a designer imbues his game with himself – his likes and dislikes, his philosophy and worldview – that's just what Jeff Talanian did with Hyperborea. That's a welcome break from recent attempts to sand down the rough edges of our popular culture to make it appeal to everyone, in the process making it appeal to no one in particular.

Like most con games, this one had a four-hour time slot and featured six players. Entitled "A Tale of Crows and Shadow," it was, so far as I know, an original adventure by our referee. Before we began, he passed out a stack of pregenerated characters from which to choose. I selected a warlock – a fighter/magic-user, more or less – named Amalaric the Ill-Tempered. After everyone had chosen their characters, the referee then asked if we all had dice. Embarrassingly, I did not. I was sitting next to the referee and, as I explained that I had no dice, he turned, looked at me, and asked, "Are you sure you're in the right place?" He meant it humorously, of course, but I can't deny feeling a little sheepish at his words. Fortunately, a player seated across from me tossed me a bag of dice and told me to keep them. "I always carry extras for times like this."

The adventure began with all of the characters awakening aboard a slave galley headed out to sea. Our food and drink had been drugged after a night's debauchery in the metropolis of Khromarium. Below decks and chained to our oars, we first had to find a way to escape. The first half of the scenario involved us plotting to free ourselves and then take control of the vessel. After many extraordinary feats of Strength (and Dexterity) and much combat, we were successful. Now in command of the ship, we had to pilot it back to land without quite knowing where we were. Once there, we trekked through the wilderness at night, while someone (or something) was following us. Eventually, we discovered that our stalker was a vampire – and a child vampire at that. Dealing with her was creepy, unnerving, and surprisingly difficult, but we eventually prevailed.

I had a lot of fun playing this adventure, which felt very picaresque in its structure. This wasn't a scenario in which everything that happened in it was directly connected. Instead, one thing happened after another, each being a kind of mini-scenario of its own. It was a bit like a series of pulp fantasy vignettes, all sharing the same cast of characters, but not having any overarching plot or theme. I was quite fine with that. Not only did it suit Hyperborea, but it also gave the session a "light" feeling. We weren't following some grand storyline or trying to achieve anything beyond saving our skins and escaping the latest danger we stumbled upon. 

Not being a veteran of con games, I'm not sure how typical my experience was. One of the most notable things about it, to my mind anyway, is that the players were frequently willing to take chances on harebrained schemes and reckless gambits. That might be a function of the fact that everyone knew this was a one-shot. Our natural self-preservation instincts were blunted. If our character died while trying to bowl over a group of guards, Captain Kirk style, so what? We were having good, pulpy fun and that's all that mattered. As I think about the possibility running my own games at a future con, I'll bear this in mind. I think a good convention adventure is probably its own thing, distinct from the kind of adventure that works well in a campaign situation.

Anyway, Hyperborea's a fun game. I should play it more (and so should you).

High Adventure and Low Comedy

Free League publishes not one, not two, but three different fantasy roleplaying games at the moment – Forbidden Lands, Symbaroum, and now Dragonbane. Each one is quite distinct from one another, not just in terms of rules but also in tone. For example, Dragonbane, the latest iteration of the venerable Swedish RPG, Drakar och Demoner, sets itself apart from the other Free League fantasy RPGs by its willingness to embrace lighter, even sillier moments, as designer Tomas Häremstam points out in his preface:

Though a toolbox for allowing you to tell fantasy stories of all kinds, Dragonbane is a game with room for laughs at the table and even a pinch of silliness at times – while at the same time offering brutal challenges for the adventurers. We call this playstyle mirth and mayhem roleplaying – great for long campaigns but also perfect for a one-shot if you just want to have some quick fun at your table for the night. 

Dragonbane is quite an interesting RPG for a number of reasons and I hope to get around to discussing it at some point, but there are several other games and gaming products ahead of it in my review queue. However, the "mirth and mayhem" tagline really caught my attention, in part because it reminds of a phrase my friends and I have used for years – high adventure and low comedy.

I can't quite recall precisely when we coined this phrase, but we did so as a way to capture what the experience of playing most RPGs was actually like at the table – not what its designers wanted to be like, which is quite a different thing. This is an important distinction. With a handful of exceptions, like Paranoia or Toon, whose stated intention is to be humorous, most roleplaying games are written and meant to be played seriously. "Serious" doesn't mean utter devoid of humor, of course, but the humor is accidental, a natural consequence of the unpredictability of playing any game, especially one where player choice and dice rolls contend with one another.

What my friends and I call "high adventure and low comedy" is thus very often (though not exclusively) the result of exactly this: dice with a mind of their own. One of my most popular posts touches on this very topic, though from a slightly different angle. However, the point remains the same, namely, that it's well nigh impossible to avoid moments of unexpected levity when so many of a character's actions are determined by the roll of dice. There's simply no way to ensure that even a high-level and competent character will always succeed at the right moment. Instead of making his save against dragon breath, he might fail and be burnt to a crisp. The reverse is also possible and the all-powerful Dark Lord might, metaphorically speaking, slip on a banana peel as he attempts to menace the heroes who've dared to confront him in his lair.

Over the years, I've experienced many examples of this. In my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, the character Aíthfo hiZnáyu has fallen prey to bad dice rolls on several notable occasions. And while I used those unintended mishaps as an opportunity to introduce new elements to the campaign, there's no denying that they were also funny – so much so that the players continue to chuckle about them years later. House of Worms has never been a deliberately funny campaign. Tékumel, with its detailed history, ancient mysteries, and constructed languages is perhaps the very definition of serious business when it comes to RPGs and yet there's no way to prevent unexpected silliness from creeping in from time to time – nor would we want to do so!

Dice rolls that go awry aren't the only source of humor. Players are every bit as unpredictable as dice. Sometimes, a player might just be in a whimsical mood and decide that his character does something goofy. Other times, he might be bored and want to shake things up by choosing to act in a way that's, in his opinion, more entertaining. Or maybe someone misspeaks, calling a character by the wrong name or accidentally – or, worse, intentionally – making a pun that causes everyone to erupt into laughter. There are simply so many ways that a roleplaying game session can descend into unintentional humor that there's no point in worrying about it. Instead, it's best to embrace it these moments of levity and enjoy them for what they are.

I think that's why, when I came across the passage I quoted above, I was so taken by it. Over the years, I've read a lot of roleplaying games. Very few of them acknowledge that low comedy is very often the inescapable companion of high adventure. You can't really have one without the other, not without clamping down so hard on anything that deviates in even the slightest way from the Truth Path that, in the process, you've also sucked all the fun out of roleplaying. These are games, after all and they're meant to be fun. They're also exercises in human creativity and interaction, both of which often take us to unexpected places. 

Isn't that why we play these games in the first place?

Vague Recollections

One of the many downsides of our increasingly disembodied, virtual existence is the ease with which everything disappears into Orwell's memory hole. Anything produced online, especially on a platform you don't own – like this blog, for instance – could go away tomorrow if someone in an office somewhere decides it should be so. Those of us who can still recall the existence of Google Plus know all too well what I am talking about. Now, it's true that nothing lasts forever in the sublunary world, but I can't help but feel this is especially so when it comes to Internet scribblings.

I thought about this yesterday, as I tried to locate something I remember reading online back in (I think) the 1990s. Yes, I know: in Internet terms, the '90s might as well have been 300 years ago, not merely 30. Furthermore, the thing I want to find had been posted to one of the many Usenet newsgroups dedicated to roleplaying games, like rec.games.frp, so the odds of my finding it were never great to begin with. Still, I held out hope that, with enough perseverance, I might succeed. Since I was unsuccessful on my own, I thought I'd turn to my readers, many of whom possess far greater skills than I when it comes to locating obscure information.

I recall reading a narrative from the perspective of a Call of Cthulhu investigator. Unlike his colleagues, this investigator didn't go out into the field. Instead, he stayed safely at his home in Arkham or wherever and communicated with his comrades via telephone. In his phone conversations, he made certain that his interlocutor never told him too much about what he had seen or done, lest he have to make a SAN roll – "Don't tell me what you read in the book. Don't even tell me the title of the book," "No, I don't want to know what the creature looked like," etc. The whole thing was a meta-commentary on the way to "win" at Call of Cthulhu. I remember finding it quite amusing when I first read it.

Now, it's probably gone and I have only my increasingly hazy memories of it. Does this ring any bells with anyone else? Might anyone be able to suggest how I might find it again? I don't hold out much hope of ever reading it again, but I figured that, if anyone could aid me, it might be my readers.

Thanks!