Comedy of Errors

I haven't posted any campaign updates in a while, though not for lack of playing. Indeed, I continue to referee three different campaigns, as I have for many years now. Since the end of my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign last year, Dolmenwood is now the longest-running game of the three (the others being Fading Suns and Metamorphosis Alpha). Consequently, it's actually the campaign about which I have the most to share, but, rather than focus on the big picture of the campaign, I wanted to share some specific details from this week's session, which everyone involved found humorous and fun.

I've written before about what I've come to call the "high adventure and low comedy" aspects of roleplaying games. I actually think it's a topic worth exploring in greater depth and perhaps I'll do that at some point. For my present purposes, know only that I'm not talking about intentionally comedic roleplaying, which is a different matter entirely (and probably also worthy of discussion). No, what I mean here is the way that, no matter how serious one intends to be while playing, there's simply no way to ensure a session will cooperate.

In our most recent session, the characters were planning a jailbreak from a village called Cobton-on-the-Shiver. The village is home to little anthropomorphic animal-people raised to sentience by the whimsical and malign Nag-Lord. The Nag-Lord's favored minions, the crookhorns – bigger anthropomorphic goat-men – rule over and abuse the cobbins, which doesn't sit well with some of them, who have formed a resistance movement to oust them from their town. That's where the player characters came in: they were hired to rescue a rat cobbin named Hackle Kingsley from the jail (or gaol, since Dolmenwood is unrepentantly British in its sensibilities). Hackle's important to the resistance and needed to be freed before he was hanged in the town square.

The characters decided to use trickery, not outright violence. Marid, a grimalkin enchanter, suggested that he stride into town, pretending to be the executioner hired by the crookhorn's leader, Baron Fragglehorn, to deal with Hackle. After all, who better than a fairy cat to deal with a rat? Coming with Marid was Alvie Sapping, a teenaged human thief, who posed as his apprentice. Much fun was had as Marid attempted to convince the crookhorns at the jail about his credentials, eventually succeeding. 

The crookhorn guard, Sergeant Scrag, led the pair to the cells, where Hackle was being held. Alvie was eventually allowed into the cell with him so that he could "measure" the cobbin for his hanging tomorrow. In actuality, he was surreptitiously unlocking the leg iron that held Hackle. Meanwhile, Marid talked to Scrag about his work, which interested the crookhorn. Scrag asked if he needed another apprentice, because he thought being an executioner would be "a lot more fun" than being a guard. 

Marid saw this as a perfect opportunity to further his own ends. He told Scrag that, yes, as a matter of fact, he was in need of another apprentice. If Scrag were interested, he should enter the cell with Alvie and he would instruct him on the niceties of the job. The crookhorn was enthusiastic and did so. The young thief got Scrag to look closely at Hackle and, while he did so, he tried to stab him in the back – and failed. Needless to say, this didn't sit well with the crookhorn, who rose to attack him. 

As an enchanter, Marid has access to magic powers called glamours. One of these, forgetting, causes a mortal being to forget what they had witnessed in the previous round. Thanks to Scrag's failed saving throw, he forgot the failed backstab. Whew! Alvie then positioned Scrag a second time with his back to him – and failed his backstab a second time. Scrag turned quickly and prepared to attack him, but Marid intervened once more, explaining that Alvie was just a stupid human who didn't understand that the crookhorn wasn't stealing his job. He made use of another glamour, beguilement, to ensure Scrag believed what he had just said. Thanks to a failed saving throw, he did.

Even so, the crookhorn guard still felt Alvie deserved some retribution. Marid agreed and asked them both to leave the jail cell. The grimalkin then offered Scrag his personal scepter to beat Alvie with. When he turned to leave the cell – yes, you guessed it – Alvie tried to backstab a third time and, once again, failed. Scrag was even angrier now and reached for his weapon to attack, but Marid stopped him, asking, "Don't you want to use my scepter?" When Scrag turned to take it, Alvie made a fourth backstab attack, which also failed.

From there, things devolved into a confused melee, with Alvie nearly dying and Marid having no choice but to assume his wilder form – think the Tasmanian Devil mixed with the Cheshire Cat – to take down Scrag. However, the fight attracted the attention of yet more crookhorns, which, in turn, alerted the other characters that the jailbreak had not gone as well as anticipated. Sir Clement, astride his warhorse, lance at the ready, rushed into to save them, with Fallon and Waldra following behind. 

Alvie's player calculated that the likelihood of his failing four backstab attacks in a row was 0.16%, which is remarkable but not without precedent. After all, that's the nature of dice. It's also why I actually like and appreciate the mechanical "swinginess" of Dungeons & Dragons and its descendants, like Dolmenwood. This week's session, though not doubt frustrating for Alvie's player, was nevertheless a blast. With each improbable failure and Marid's quick-witted responses to distract from them, the session became more and more unintentionally humorous. The end result was a session I expect we'll all remember for some time.

"Call Me Ernie"

Perhaps it's a side effect of my immersion in Lovecraft's Dreamlands, but the other night I had a very vivid dream whose contents I remembered when I awoke. That's quite unusual for me. Though I do dream regularly, I rarely remember the details for long (and I don't keep a dream journal to write them down before they fade from my memory). 

In this dream, I was with a group of my friends – real friends who looked like they do in real life – and we were, for some reason going to Michael Moorcock's home. When we got there, we let ourselves in and proceeded to a large room that appeared to be a dining room or maybe a meeting room. There was a large, long table with a lot of chairs around it.

My friends and I sat down at the table, each claiming a spot. I claimed one near the head of the table, putting down my books and other belongings in front of me in order to secure my place. I did this so that I could be close to Moorcock's seat when he finally arrived. Though my friends filled many of the other seats, there were also a lot of empty seats remaining at the table.

When Moorcock didn't show up immediately, I grew impatient and told my friends I'd go look for him. I then got up and began to explore the halls of his home. I came across a number of rooms, all of them filled with books and works of art that I spent time examining. Then, I heard the sound of a door opening and I rushed back out to a hallway, where I saw Michael Moorcock heading toward the dining/meeting room. He saw me, smiled, and told me to follow him, which I did.

When I got back to the dining/meeting room, I discovered that my seat had been taken by someone else, someone I didn't know. In fact, all the seats at the table were now full, the only empty seats remaining were located at the edges of the room. I was annoyed that my friends had not saved my spot and even more annoyed that my books and other belongings were nowhere to be seen. I scanned the room, hoping I could find them but did not. 

I reluctantly sat down at the edge of the room in one of the empty chairs as Moorcock took his place at the head of the table. He looked at me, seemingly knowing that I was distressed. I said, "Mr Moorcock, can you help me? I have a problem." He smiled and said, "Please, call me Ernie." He then pulled out a drawstring bag. Opening it, he pulled out an old cellphone with lots of accessories and then asked those arrayed around him, "Who'd like to buy this? I'm asking $70 for it but I'm willing to negotiate." I became even more annoyed.

That's when I woke up.

Gah

As you might have noticed, I've lately been working my way through Alan Burt Akers's stories of Dray Prescot, a sword-and-planet series that began in 1972 with Transit to Scorpio and then continued through 52 volumes for the next quarter-century. The books aren't deep, but they're fun, engaging yarns of the sort that used to be commonplace in fantasy and science fiction. When I talk about "pulp fantasy," these are precisely the kinds of tales I mean. They're the stuff on which the hobby was founded.

Early on in Transit to Scorpio, the protagonist, Dray Prescot, a Napoleonic era English sailor, is in the "swinging city" of Aphrasöe, home of the technologically advanced Savanti who are responsible for bringing him to the planet Kregen. While there, the Savanti instruct him about Kregen and its various continents and the peoples who dwell on them. One of those continents is called Gah.

"You were telling me about Gah," said Maspero, walking up with a wine goblet for me. He drank from his own.

Again Golda laughed; but this time a different note crept into her deep voice. "Gah is really an offense in men's nostrils, Maspero, my dear. They delight so in their primitiveness."

Gah was one of the seven continents of Kregen, one where slavery was an established institution, where, so the men claimed, a woman's highest ambition was to be chained up and grovel at a man's feet, to be stripped, to be loaded with symbols of servitude. They even had iron bars at the foot of their beds where a woman might be shackled, naked, to shiver all night. The men claimed this made the girls love them.

"That sort of behavior appeals to some men," said Maspero. He was looking at me as he spoke.

"It's really sick," said Golda.

"They claim it is a deep significant truth, this need of a woman to be subjugated by a man, and dates right back to our primitive past when we were cavemen."

I said: "But we no longer tear flesh from our kill and east it smoking and raw. We longer believe that the wind brings babies. Thunder and lightning and storm and flood are no longer mysterious gods with malevolent designs on us. Individuals are individuals. The human spirit festers and grow cankerous and corrupt if one individual enslaves another, whatever the sex, whatever specious arguments about sexuality may be instanced."

Golda nodded. Maspero said: "You are right, Dray, where a civilized people are concerned. But, in Gah, the women subscribe also to this barbaric code."

"More fools them," said Golda. And, then, quickly: "No – that is not what I really mean. A man and a woman are alike yet different. So very many men are frightened clean through at the thought of a woman. They overreact. They have no conception in Gah of how a woman is – what she is as a person."

Maspero chuckled. "I've always said that women were people as well."

In case it isn't obvious, this section is intended as a rebuke of John Norman's Gor series, the first volume of which was published a few years before Transit to Scorpio. For some reason, I didn't remember this section of the novel. Reading now, though, it's quite striking, especially when one considers that the Gor books were contemporary with the Prescot novels, so Akers's critique was very much of the moment. So far as I know, Prescot never visits Gah in any of the novels. Whether this is the only reference to the continent and its barbaric customs I can't say.  

An Amusement

Last night, a friend shared with me his "rebuttal" to my recent assertion that Traveller was "obviously" the best science fiction roleplaying game. 

I should add that, despite my devotion to Traveller — and, of course, Thousand Suns — I actually have genuine affection for Universe and would happily play in a game using its rules. It's an odd game, to be sure, but, much like its sibling, DragonQuest, it's got some interesting ideas buried within its complex rules, hence my continued fascination with it after all these years.

The Shape of the Heavens

Sing, Muse, of the noble dodecahedron, twelve-faced and true, 
So oft neglected in the clattering chorus of polyhedral dice! 
Raise now a hymn to the least loved of gaming’s solids.

Pity the poor d12! Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. The d20, that lumbering golf ball of chance, sees far more use, while even the d4, a caltrop in disguise, is remembered (if only by the soles of our feet). But the d12? Forgotten. Neglected. Dare I say underappreciated?

Yet, what a die it is! Twelve equal pentagonal faces, each meeting at broad angles. Indeed, the dodecahedron is the shape Plato associated with the heavens themselves, the cosmos rendered in acrylic or resin. According to some ancient sources, the gods used d12s when rolling for Fate. Who needs the Pythia when you’ve got precision-milled polyhedra?

Physically, the d12 may be the most satisfying die to hold. Substantial without being bulky. Perfectly symmetrical. It rolls with purpose. It doesn’t skitter like a d4 or overdo it like percentiles. The d12 knows what it’s about. It rolls once and rolls well. There’s something reassuring in that.

But what is it usually asked to do? Calculate long sword damage against large opponents. Serve as the hit die for the barbarian. It's the gaming equivalent of being called in to move a couch. Even the d10, that irregularly-shaped interloper, has muscled its way to the top of the pile, if only for percentile rolls. The d12? Banished to the edge of the table, like some exiled aristocrat.

I've done my part to rectify this injustice in Thousand Suns, where the d12 takes its rightful place at the center of the action. Why? Because it deserved better. Because it felt right. Because when I picture futuristic exploits in a sprawling interstellar empire, I don’t want to roll a pyramid or a cube. I want a Platonic solid whose geometry is touched by the divine. I want the Golden Ratio embedded in plastic.

So, here’s to the d12: noble, overlooked, and elegant. May we find more uses for it at our tables – and more excuses to hear its satisfying clatter. After all, if it's good enough for the heavens, it ought to be good enough for us.

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. 😊

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.

42nd-Level Demigod

When I was in the seventh grade, I won first prize at my school's science fair and so was sent, along with a classmate, who'd won second prize, to compete in the state science fair. I was understandably very excited about this, but also a bit nervous, too. I thought my project – a Newton car – good. However, I didn't think it stood much of a chance of winning an award at the state level. I wasn't completely right about that. I won an honorable mention, which is only a couple of steps up from a participation trophy, or so I thought at the time. Meanwhile, my classmate, who was also my best friend, won an actual award. I was happy for him, of course, but also a bit jealous. 

During the state science fair, my classmate and I spent most of our time in a large auditorium, waiting with our projects so that we could talk to the judges that roamed the place throughout the day. For reasons I've never understood, he and I were not placed near one another, so we couldn't talk. Fortunately, I'd brought some books to read while I waited, one of them being the AD&D Monster Manual. I spent much of my time perusing its pages to pass the time, as there were often large gaps between when I spoke to one judge and when I'd speak to the next one.

The kid whose science project was next to mine – it had something to do with plants and photosynthesis, the details of which elude me – took notice of my Monster Manual and recognized it. Turns out he was also a Dungeons & Dragons player. This perked me up quite a bit, since, if I couldn't talk to my friend and classmate about D&D, at least I could talk to someone about my favorite pastime. I sometimes look back with envy with how easily my younger self could carry on enthusiastic conversations with total strangers simply on the thin basis of a shared interest. Nowadays, I can scarcely imagine doing such a thing.

During the course of the conversation, this kid let slip that his current character was "a 42nd-level demigod." I asked him to explain what he meant by that. He then launched into a lengthy accounting of the events of his campaign, in which his character had done all manner of over-the-top things, including slaying a significant number of the deities in Deities & Demigods. His character, as a consequence, had risen not only to the lofty level of 42, but had also stolen a portion of his vanquished foes' divine power and ascended to the level of demigod, gaining the standard divine abilities listed in that book (among other things, like many of the artifacts and relics in the Dungeon Masters Guide).

I did my best not to be rude or roll my eyes at this, but it was difficult. I asked lots of probing questions about his campaign and why his Dungeon Master had allowed this. I suppose it's good that the kid had zero self-awareness. He didn't pick up on my concealed tone of disdain. Instead, he answered all my questions and recounted, in some detail, not just the epic battles in which his demigod character had fought, but also the fact that his DM had been restrained in rewarding him, since, despite all his victories, his character "still only a demigod." How does on respond to that?

I was reminded of this memory yesterday, when I read some of the comments to my post about Dolmenwood. I was genuinely pleased – and a little surprised – that people enjoy reading about the characters and events of the various campaigns I'm refereeing. "Let me tell you about my character" has long been a phrase to send shivers down one's spine. I recall that, at the one and only GenCon I attended, the employees of a game company (White Wolf?) were all wearing shirts mocking this, for example. Consequently, I've long been somewhat reluctant to post too much about what I'm doing in my games. As fun as RPG campaigns are for the people actually involved in them, they're frequently both impenetrable and a little boring for those on the outside.

However, now that I've seen that people are, in fact, interested in them, I plan to talk about them a bit more. I probably won't go on about them at any length – I don't want to overwhelm you like the kid with the 42nd-level demigod – but I will make a more concerted effort to write posts about them. I might do a weekly or biweekly "campaign update" in which I keep everyone appraised about how things are unfolding. If there's a character or event deserving of more detail, they might warrant a separate post, especially if I think doing so has a wider applicability. I've done this in the past on a couple of occasions in recent years, so it's probably a worthy consideration for the future.

So, look forward to more discussions of House of Worms, Barrett's Raiders, and Dolmenwood in the weeks and months to come.

Your Safety is Our Proft Margin

As I wrote today's Retrospective post, I wanted to reference something from my Riphaeus Sector campaign, thinking I'd already posted about it earlier. However, a quick search through the archives of the blog turned up no evidence that I'd ever done so. And it f I'm mistaken about this, oh well, it certainly wouldn't be the first time!

During the campaign, the characters acted as covert agents for Imperial Naval Intelligence service of the Empire of Nagoya. They masked their activities by also operating as a genuine mercantile company they called Universal Exports. Here's a fun little graphic one of the players produced in reference to their activities. Since I'm a big fan of player-made materials like this, I thought it'd be worth sharing more widely. It's also a great memento of the campaign.

In Case of Fire, Break Glass

Nearly everyone who's read the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide remembers Will McLean's delightful comics that poked gentle fun at many of the conventions of fantasy roleplaying. Traveller had a few examples of its own, my favorite being this one which appeared in The Traveller Book by Loren Wiseman and John M. Morrison. 

Deathwish

Like Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller assumes that a new character is generated through a series of dice rolls – 2d6 in this case rather than 3d6 – for each of his six characteristics (Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Standing). The results are recorded, in order, on a character sheet. Book 1 of Traveller recognizes the possibility that these random rolls may result in "a character with seemingly unsatisfactory values." However, the text states that "nevertheless, each player should use his character as generated," since 

The experience procedures and acquired skills table offer a genuine opportunity to enhance value, given only time and luck. 

This is true. Most characters, over the course of the terms of service, will gain one or more bonuses to certain characteristics, which will raise them higher than the initially generated scores. However, the 1977 edition of Book 1 – and only this edition, so far as I can tell – does include an "escape hatch" for players who are still unhappy with the characteristics they've rolled.

Should a player consider his character to be so poor as to be beyond help, he should consider joining the accident-prone Scout Corps, with a subconscious view to suicide.

Considering the poor survival rate of Scout characters, I find this amusing. 

A Random Demon

Being a big fan of the humorous illustrations of Wil McLean, I thought I'd share this fun little comic from issue #20 of Dragon (November 1978). 

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?

25 Years Ago Today ...

... we lost the Moon in a tragic accident involving nuclear waste and a previous unknown form of magnetic radiation. Along with the Moon, all 311 personnel stationed aboard Moonbase Alpha were also lost.

Thanks to my friend and referee, Aaron, for reminding me of this important date.

The Articles of Dragon: "It's That Time of Year Again ..."

I'm sure this will come as a great surprise to longtime readers of this blog that, as a young man, I was fairly serious and earnest. Shocking, I know! Of all the things about which I was serious – and there were many – Dungeons & Dragons was near the top of the list. It's no exaggeration to say that, in the first few years after I discovered the game, D&D was an important part not merely of my life but also of my self-conception. I was a D&D player and I was sincerely proud of this fact in a way that I doubt I've ever been since.

Consequently, when I first came across issue #60 of Dragon (April 1982) and read its contents, I was taken aback. Sure, the article contained a further installment of Roger E. Moore's magisterial demihuman "Point of View" series (focusing on elves this time), along with more cantrips from Gary Gygax and other interesting stuff, but what really caught my eye were a pair of articles that played off longstanding Dragon columns, specifically "Giants in the Earth" and "Dragon's Bestiary." I say "played off," because neither installment in this issue was quite right, as I'll explain.

"Giants in the Earth" was replaced by "Midgets in the Earth" and, rather than presenting D&D stats for characters from classic fantasy and science fiction literature, what we got instead were write-ups for goofy original characters, like the kobold dictator Idi "Little Daddy" Snitmin, Morc the Orc, and master halfling thief Eubeen Hadd. Written by Roger E. Moore and accompanied by artwork that looks like it could have been drawn by Jim Holloway, "Midgets in the Earth" was clearly intended as nothing more than silly fun in honor of April Fool's Day. Please bear in mind that I read this article long before I'd come across the regular April Fool's issues of Polyhedron, so the concept was still somewhat new to me at the time.

The issue's "Dragon's Bestiary" was in a similar vein. Instead of the usual assortment of dangerous and unusual new monsters for use with D&D, we were given entries inspired by various pop culture "monsters," like Donald Duck or Marvin the Martian or the Bad News Bugbears. Like "Midgets in the Earth," these were clearly intended to be silly, but I found them irritating – all the more so because they were written by designers like Tom Moldvay and David Cook, who could have been writing really useful stuff. Why were they wasting effort on such nonsense, I thought? I'd much rather have had more serious content that I could drop into my ongoing AD&D campaign.

Yeah, I was a little tightly wound in those days. Go figure! In time, I came to be a bit more accepting of such silliness, but it took some time – and more April Fool's issues of Dragon to do it. I never fully embraced it, but I did become less uptight about it and the way I enjoyed my hobby. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself ...

Can You Spot the Hidden Deathtrap in this Room?

While looking for the illustration of the mind flayer that appears in issue #78 (October 1983), I came across this classic bit from Phil Foglio's What's New comic. I've hidden the answer below a break.

The Bad News Bugbears

While perusing issue #60 of Dragon (April 1982), I stumbled across yet another image of a bugbear I should have brought to your attention. This one appears in an April Fool's edition of the "Dragon Bestiary" with art by (I think) Jim Holloway.

Polyhedron: Issue #29

Issue #29 of Polyhedron is another April Fool's Day issue, though it actually appeared in May of 1986. The issue features a cover by Tom Wham, which is always a delight. I wish the same could be said of its content. I readily admit that I'm not an ideal audience for issues like this, but that's not because I lack a sense of humor. Rather, I simply dislike forced humor and this issue is full of it. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy re-reading this one. Apologies in advance if my frustration gets the better of me.

"Notes from HQ" is typically ephemeral and focused on RPGA matters. The only genuinely interesting thing in it is the announcement of the Gamers' Choice Awards. "Unlike other gaming industry awards, for which the winners are chosen by manufacturers and special panels, these awards are given to those companies whose products are judged the best by the most qualified judges of all – the gamers themselves." I must be old, because I don't recall ever hearing of these awards before. On the other hand, I was never much of a con goer, so that might explain my ignorance. 

Skip Williams gives us "The Lighter Side of Encounters II," a sequel to his article in the previous year's April Fool's Day issue. Like its predecessor, what makes the article interesting is not so much its content as the origin of the content, namely AD&D campaigns run by the Lake Geneva staff of TSR, in this case Williams himself and Frank Mentzer. Williams presents two different encounters, one involving a mad dash through a dungeon and another about trying to prevent a pit fiend from regenerating, that aren't exactly humorous in context, but that seem so when presented in isolation. They're the kinds of things that happen in any RPG campaign played with friends and I love them for that reason. This article is probably the best in the issue and it's because it's the most "serious."

"The Camel's Nose" by Mike Selinker is an AD&D adventure that takes up 16 pages – half of the issue. It's a humorous scenario for six pregenerated player characters, all of whom are valley elves with ridiculous names like "Tattieboggle Spauldrocky" or "Arglebargle Collieshangle." These characters are tasked with protecting a talking camel (a cleric of the Camel Lord, Camelopardus), on his journey across the Burning Desert to a shrine of his deity. He brings with him a sacred rock called the Camel's Nose and ... well, I think you can probably guess where this is going. The adventure is filled with puns and humorous allusions and general silliness, like the Camels Oasis shopping center. I'm sure someone might find it funny, but that someone is not me.

Selinker returns with "The Ecology of Tiamat," which is a rambling dialog between Feargall the All-Noxious and Greenhorn the dim as they "humorously" discuss Feargall's many encounters with Tiamat. It's strange, self-referential, and fourth wall-breaking and, again, I just found it tedious. Your mileage may vary. "Fractured Spells" by Rick Reid is a collection of goofy spells for all magic-using classes, from neutralize person to detect chum to continual lice and more. As you can see, they're all based on puns or misreadings of pre-existing spells. I'll give the author points for cleverness, but not much else.

"The Gods of the Gamma World Game" by James M. Ward is a very strange article. Ward presents five larger-than-life characters from the setting of Gamma World, each of which represents "a different ideal." For example, Ren – there's that name again – is the archetypal scientist, while Tobor the Unstoppable is the archetypal robot. If I squint, I can sort of see what Ward's getting at with these characters. They're more akin to "tall tales" like Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill than "gods" in the usual sense. That's kind of interesting. However, Ward saddles them all with absurd Gamma World game stats akin to what you'd find in Deities & Demigods and serendipitously provide additional insight for my recent post about that very book and the drawbacks of its presentation.

The issue ends with Roger E. Moore's "Savage Sword of Lugnut the Barbarian," another "humorous" story, this time about a mighty-thewed barbarian and his quest to save a princess from Skuzzdrool the Ultra-Necromancer. It's not very funny, even as a parody of Conan, but's thankfully short, which is more than can be said of "The Camel's Nose." I still cannot understand why half the issue was devoted to that adventure ...

Oh well. One more issue to go before this series ends, which is probably for the best. My patience is wearing thin, especially after this issue.

The Cost of Power

One of the many ways that fantasy roleplaying games differ from their pulp fantasy inspirations concerns the use of magic. With comparatively few exceptions, pulp fantasy depicts magic as, at best, wild and unpredictable and, at worst, as outright diabolical. RPGs, meanwhile, treat magic almost as a form of technology, an instrument that is neither inherently good nor bad and that, if used with appropriate training, rarely if ever presents any danger to its user. 

The most obvious exceptions that come to my mind are Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer, both of which explicitly caution against the use of magic by characters, precisely because of its inherent danger. A more recent exception is Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics Role-Playing Game. Of course, two of the aforementioned RPGs are based directly on foundational works of pulp fantasy, while the other self-avowedly looks to pulp literature for its inspiration. There may be a few other contrary examples here and there, but, for the most part, fantasy roleplaying games have followed the lead of Dungeons & Dragons in treating magic purely instrumentally – differing from safe, reliable technology only in esthetics.

Back in Dragon #65 (September 1982), Phil Foglio lampooned this to good effect in his What's New with Phil & Dixie. In this particular strip, Phil claims that the differences between medieval and science fiction RPGs can be summed up in one word: none. When Dixie objects, he then provides her with a series of examples to prove his point that, while tendentious, nevertheless contain a ring of truth. The comic even invokes Clarke's Third Law for additional support.

If you look at the history of the hobby over the last half-century, the paradigm of magic-as-technology has clearly been the most common. Whether that's because D&D set the pattern by adopting it or because it's just a simpler and perhaps even more fun way to handle magic, I can't say. Still, as a fan of dangerous magic, it's hard not to be a little saddened by how rarely it's been employed in RPGs over the decades. Perhaps it's time for a change ...

Speaking of Miniatures ...

Behold! Qualos – guardian of the Duck Temple. This is an official RuneQuest miniature produced by Infinity-Engine. Whether you use miniatures in your games or not, it's hard to deny that this one is pretty amazing.