Another blogger post about wondrous magic

Since I wrote my post on the missing wonder of magic, we have had another post on the subject of making it weirder. Go check it out, over at Troll and Flame!

Gaming and food - a memory of trolls

When you think of gaming, do you think of food? At most gaming tables, snacks will be consumed. The availability of snacks are even codified in many rule books, which state what equipment you need to play the game. Eating and gaming go hand in hand.

I've read that in order for a memory to get stuck in your brain, it helps to have many different senses involved. Just imagine when you take down that big monster, and the pizza you were eating at the time. Big monsters always makes you think of mushrooms. I also have a memory of food and gaming, but not food I've ever eaten.

Back when I was a teenager we didn't eat that much while gaming. Usually we did take a break for some food, but snacks at the table were scarcer. Now when I have gotten older and my metabolism is getting slower, it's far more common with some eating. I figure I'm doing it wrong.

But, I don't have any specific relationship between food and gaming, no must-have snack. I haven't even ever used the pizza matrix on my excellent D&D screen from Kenzer Co! Maybe one of these days. But, I do think of eggs when trolls are mentioned.

Lodged in my memory is an encounter with a troll, when I was far younger than today, at the beginning of my career in dungeon delving. Tingling with anticipation I had bough the Fighting Fantasy solo game book The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and I was taking the first steps as a novice adventurer. I explored caverns deep beneath the earth and marvelled at the wonders found underground. There was a troll in one room, and he had a larder. When I had dispatched him, I no longer remember how many tries it took, I searched his storage and found eggs.

Eggs are nothing special, I eat a few every week. But, there was something highly mystical about these eggs. They were pickled. To my young mind nothing could be more exotic and weird than pickled eggs. Are they uncooked? Are they still in their shells? I tried to imagine how and why. Among the food I ate with my family, there were no such things as pickled eggs. They were purely in the realms of fantasy. The wonder of eggs.

Many times have I read about sense of wonder, which in science fiction is that sense that you're not in Kansas anymore and that wide vistas of possibilities opens up in your mind. I still like a good book giving me that feeling. In all the literature of the fantastic that "sensawunda" can be found if you are lucky, and for me the most wondrous thing fighting monsters under a volcano was pickled eggs.

Imagine my surprise when I decades later one day visit my local Loblaws supermarket and found a jar of pickled eggs! I just stared at them, barely believing that they existed. It almost made me want to buy them, go home and start digging a dungeon! Naturally I couldn't buy them. Pickled eggs are Fantasy, and only available as treasure after fighting trolls.

Magic items as mystery and wonder

Today I read something which got the gears turning, over at Inkwell Ideas. For some reason magic potions seem to be a constant source of wonder and mystery in magic, which sadly are missing way to often. Magic items have, at least in D&D, become something more mundane than wondrous. Sometimes the potions start bubbling and boiling, and some fun stuff pour over the rim.

In my old D&D3 campaign I decided to try to make magic items something more than just "another cloak of invisibility" which everyone who ever cracked open a D&D books knows about. My players had to use Detect Magic, Identify and do some experimenting. Guess what happened when I found tables of potion mishaps and odd effects in some gaming magazines? Chaos ensued. I loved it.

Over at the Inkwell, my idea have gotten some sturdier legs. Sadly I never managed to keep track of which potion it was that was green and sparkling, and which was clear and tasted of raspberries. Personally I think it's a marvellous idea not to tell the players what they got, and instead say how it looks, smells and taste.

Long time readers of my blog know that I have bemoaned the fact before that magic items have become less magic than they should. When the first supplement to D&D was published that suddenly became a shopping list, instead of a source of inspiration for new creations. I really resent that. I realized when I started my campaign that since everyone who have played the game for any time at all knows all there is to know about the iconic items, and the only way to make it interesting was to refuse to say what they had found. As always there's a balance between making it hard for the players and making the game fun and run smooth. My biggest disappointment was when they found a staff, radiating powerful magic, but of a slightly twisted and chaotic kind. Naturally they never dared to use that wand, and I never had any use for the d% chart I had with cool random magic effects. I almost feel like sulking, just writing about it.

The major complaint I had from my players in my 3rd ed D&D campaign was that the Identify spell took way to long to cast. In T&T the spell to have, The Omnipotent Eye (have you seen that name somewhere around?), is quicker and easier to cast. Still, even if it's cheap and easy it's a decision if you want to spend the slot/spell points. I like that. It don't have to be expensive, but it should not be free to know all about something like magic. That surely is the way to make it loose any touch of mystery.

Anyone who still haven't figured out that I like to add drawbacks to magic items as well? As an analogy I decided to think about magic like an electromagnetic field. It radiates, and have particles doing the interacting with the rest of the world. Thinking like that and radiation damage is the next logical step. You find a powerful item? Cool! Carry it a while and the longer you do, the more weird shit happens to you. That's magic to me!

How to define your game as the anti-D&D, very differently

For those of you who know about John Wick, and keep up with his designs, it's no news that his game Houses of the Blooded is intended to be his "anti D&D". Looking at the core story of Houses of the Blooded, it's crystal clear that this is not the same as in D&D. Maybe John did have managed to design the "anti D&D". I'm going to talk more about that game at a later date, since John is a smart guy, and writes not only eloquently about game mastering advice, he also writes a lot. Not only that. He also writes about player advice. Like I said, I'll get back to that at a later date. Keep watching this blog! Now I'm going to talk about Old School, and anti-D&D.

There is a game, called The Burning Wheel which I long have been curios about. Thanks to a dear friend who lent me his copy, I have read most of it, and feel like I can talk about it a bit more. BW is designed by Luke Crane, and if you have ever listened to a podcast with (or met him) Luke, you know he is a passionated individual! When you visit the BW web page, the title of the page say "Fight For What You Believe". Ok.

Most of us have hear scary stories about this or that game, how crunchy it is, and how hardcore those people are that play it. BW is that game. Even though much of it is written in a chatty tone, it clear that this is a game designed with the idea that everything is taken care of the rules. As soon as you do anything, like expressing feelings or acting "in character", there are rules for rewarding, managing and otherwise just handle the situation. I realize I'm not making this sound very fun, but Luke is a very talented individual, and you realize that this game is a machine of cogs and wheels that works together like a machine, and a machine of sublime beauty.

I did say I was going to talk about Old School, wasn't I? Ok. Most of you have probably heard by now that Back In The Old Days, dungeon masters were less constrained by rules, and had to fly by the seat of their pants. Mostly because the games were less about detailed rules for everything. While I have some problems with that view of history (have you seen a game from FGU? They sure are from the 1970-ies and they sure aren't New School. Not Rules Lite either, at all) there are some merit to that view of things. Also, since so many bloggers today can be found who find retro clones like S&W liberating, I guess authentic or not, rules lite is perceived as the preferred way of doing things.

Since so many people think everything start and end with D&D, let's indulge them a bit and take a look at D&D. Is it rules light? Well, if OD&D is, and AD&D is if you squint, then 3rd ed sure isn't and 4th ed probably not either. So if you want to make an anti-D&D, which one do you oppose? Well, I did talk about core stories in the beginning. Maybe we can say that that element have been consistent throughout all editions. I think it might be true. Then Houses of the Blooded is the anti-D&D, no question about it.

If the true heart and soul of D&D is the rules light game about exploration of worlds of fantasy, then I think Burning Wheel must be the anti-D&D above all. It's about your character's believes and passions, screw the world. It's driven by rules and game mechanics while tell you how to act at every step. I'm pretty sure Luke didn't set out to design the anti-D&D, but maybe that was what he did.

Make no mistake, the surest way to make someone love your game is to be passionate about it. Would I love to play Burning Wheel? Right now? Cool! Would I love to play Houses of the Blooded? Sure! Old school D&D with rulings, and 1 hit point? Give it to me! I love how all these games are so furiously trying to be something different that "that game", and by that passion I get hooked, all the time, and buy a new game that I "have to" play at once. This is why I love this hobby.

Reading T&T 7.5 - Monsters and Monster Rating

Now we have come to an interesting section in the rules, monsters. In some other games, it's well known that stat blocks take up quite a lot of space. In T&T the space needed to describe a monster is minimal, thanks to the very elegant solution of Monster Rating, MR.

From one single number you get the dice a monster will roll in combat, its combat adds and its stamina or CON. Now, while the procedure is simple, it still involves an element of confusion. To get the dice you have to round down, and to get the adds you have to round up. Why? I know that some people have made fun of this tendency in rpgs to spend silly amount of time on dictating rounding. Sometimes I think the criticism is valid. Why on earth can't we just assume everyone learned rounding in school? Well, it's not a fault of T&T, really.

One thing is different enough from former editions to warrant a note in bold letters. The dice rolled for a monster never decrease, like they used to. Now only the adds whittle away as the MR decrease. Small changes in how this have worked, with e.g. full MR only used on the first combat round, have been tested. I think the present system works just fine, and the beauty of it all is that it's dead simple to use any way, in concert.

On thing I really like is that Ken gives us some idea on how to scale the MR of a monster to the strength of the delvers. Some gamers in the OSR contingent sometimes rage against the "decadence" of 3rd ed D&D, where Encounter Ratings and similar calculations play an important part of encounter planning. Personally I find the idea of encounters scaled to the strength of the player characters to be a complex subject. If the players start to expect everything to be beatable, or "fair", I groan and long for the bygone days. But, I also think that having some kind of way to know when you send in certain death is nice, at least it will give me the opportunity to drop hints of the danger before the first character bites the dust. But, back to T&T. I think the advice Ken gives is good, but one of these days I'm going to collect hard data on the importance of combat adds. The characters in my campaign had totally brutal adds, but could sometimes roll quite bad, which changed a lot.

After telling us all about MR, the rulebook talks about monsters. The list of monsters we get in the rulebook is just a list of names, and MRs. Frankly, it's not very useful. I will now turn to one of the other volumes in the boxed set, Codex Monstrum, since it's actually referred to in this section. The monsters in this book is described, are illustrated and have notes about special defences, attacks or magical abilities. The neat thing here is how sixes rolled for attack (which I'll talk more about later) trigger special effects. This is a new addition to the T&T system which I find very inspired. I used similar effects on magic items of my own design, and it worked very fine. The CM is a fine addition to the 7.5 rules. Now I once again wonders a bit about the organization of the rules. Having described the MR system, and how it can be used, I wonder why the idea of spite damage or triggers for special effects isn't mentioned until you turn to the monster book? A list of monsters take up most of a page in the rules, and it could have been better used to just describe all the rules about monsters and how to design them.

There's another thing which I think deserves mentioning. More than once on these three pages we can read how fun it is to create your own monsters, and how the creativity of the individual GM is a fundamental part of monsters. That's the spirit!

Considering how I wrote a few days back about how the world of Palladium fantasy is presented in the rules, I find it notable that the monster section in these rules actually mention Trollworld, and gives us some glimpse of it's fauna. I kind of wish there was more of that in the rules. I will probably write more about that later, though.

Next we will write about fighting all these monsters, in the Combat Rules!

Opinions on the classics, take two

My post yesterday about how some fans relate to the classics seems to have stirred up some feelings. That is good. I sometimes like to stir the pot a bit, and try to be a bit subtle or a bit outrageous. Quite dangerous on the web, I know. More often that not, nobody really get want you want to say anyway. Yesterday wasn't bad, but I think I actually was less focused than I would have wished, so I'll add some to it.

So, Gygaxitis was my word for when some people seem to be so smitten by the words of Gary that they loose a sense of perspective. Now, there are many reasons to respect Gary Gygax. He was a visionary, and a talented scenario writer with a very personal style. I was very sad to hear of his passing, and did even cry. I am a fairly emotional being. It's also true that for those who are interested in an older style of play, like myself (!), it's not only fun but also instrutive to read old rules like those Gygax wrote.

But, when I first encountered the idea of retro D&D, it was mainly on Dragonsfoot, and I felt that the atmosphere there was sometimes just silly. One thing I felt was weird, and after a while even repulsive, was the venom spewed upon some elements of gaming. Most notable was Dungeoneer Survival Guide and its companion piece about the wilderness. You could very easy get the idea that some persons would benefit from playing something else, at least once!

Now, James gave a very good and far more sensible rejection of DSG in my comments yesterday. I have seen far to little of that. Part of the reason I wanted shake up the wasps nest a bit was to get some good feedback, which I got. Once thing he said was that it felt tiring to hear that those who value Gygax get ridiculed and accused of being blind. Frankly, sometimes it's true. That might be why that accusation pops up once in a while! But, there's more than one way to skin a cat. I personally think a lot interesting can be learnt by studying the "ways of old". It don't have to turn into hagiography, and most often it doesn't. When it does, it's very easy to make fun of.

Maybe I should also mention something about ToEE. I started my post by talking about the Temple, but it was just my way of introducing the idea of how expectations differ. I have absolutely no idea at all how impressions of ToEE differ depending on attitude towards Gary. I don't think I care.

One of these days I'll try to say something simple, straight and easy, instead. I have some ideas on game design percolating. We'll see how much sense that'll make when I have put down some words on screen.

How to look objectively at the classics

Over on grognardia there have started a discussion about The Temple of Elemental Evil. I posted an observation of my own, that most critics of the module seem to have loved T1 as kids and waited with baited breath for the second coming of T2. Now, that's not earth shaking in itself. It has made me very vary about people talking about T1-4, though. Is he thinking the module a failure? Hm, what a coincidence. He is one of those who waited for T2! Those guys just aren't trustworthy witnesses. I don't think they're out to twist truth, I just think they have to much emotion invested in the thing.

Following this train of thought, I come to the next station. I'm thinking of the reviled AD&D sourcebooks Dungeoneer's Survival Guide by Douglas Niles and Wilderness Survival Guide by Kim Mohan. If you read what people at Dragonsfoot write about them, you start to wonder if their favourite dog ate it and died when they were a kid. I have the books myself, and while I can surely see their problems and limitations I find that hatred spewed upon them to be a tad excessive. Are we seeing something like the ToEE phenomenon here?

I probably wont win any friends by saying it, but I have the hyphosesis these people suffer from an overdose of Gygaxitis. It's a common enough affliction caused by expose to High Gygaxian writing at an impressionable age. The symptoms are usually a tendency to consider anything written in High Gygaxian as holy writ, and a stubbornness and inflexibility of the grey matter. No question they get enraged then when someone who is not The Prophet adds things which Was Not Meant To Be, like skills, to the Holy Writ.

So having caused three cases of spastic fits I will stop there. Everything is a matter of perspective, isn't it? What? I have those irrational idea myself? About something else? Nah, don't think so. I'm flawless.

For those who need some help to entangle a big stick of Irony, out of that last paragraph, I'll tell you that I'd love to start a AD&D game myself if I only had the players for it. There you go, now you have something to whack me over the head with.

A Tunnels & Trolls convention scenario

Back in spring there was a local convention in Kingston, ON. The convention was called KingCon, and the con site is still available. I was running a few event, most of which never happened due to low interest. But, the T&T session was popular enough! The adventure I used was one I had written myself, and developed a by my friend Todd. It's fairly linear, and not very big. But, it worked decently as an introduction to T&T. Everyone seemed to have had great fun. "Say yes, or roll the dice", and we rolled dice and had fun.

For those of you who were not able to make it to Kingston, or maybe want to have a short and easy scenario to run yourself at a convention I hereby present it: The Tomb of Dipsom Dints. In the tradition from the Greyhawk campaign it is not totally free from word play, puns and general silliness. 

Enjoy!

Many thanks to Flying Buffalo Inc, who have kindly given me permission to use their trademarks and given the FBI blessing on the Tomb. Go and buy yourself a T&T rulebook from them!

How to present a world - the old way

Having been really ill for a while, I'm still not sure I'm on the home stretch yet, but let's hope so. I have started to comment on some blogs in boredom, and now when I can string text together again I'll try to get posting going here again.

So, since I had nothing better to do, I grabbed my copy of Palladium off the shelf. Having read the Rifts rules and chuckled at the over the top silliness, I wasn't sure what level of gonzo to expect. Frankly I was pleasantly surprised by the welcome lack of gonzo. I'm talking about revised 1st ed, if that matters for the details further on.

The first time I really became interested in Palladium was when a friend answered the question about what imaginary world he would like to live in with "Palladium fantasy". I thought it sounded a little bit to adventurous, but at least now I know a little bit more about the place.

Contrary to some newer games where you get a section on the world with just rambling text on the world, totally separated from the rules, you here get it mixed in. I looked in the table of contents and saw that there was a section on the Palladium world, but when I looked I was surprised. Sure, there was a map of the world, and there were short descriptions of all the regions of the world. But, the descriptions were, like, ten lines at the maximum. While I can see the use of that in a product which covers a country or something similar, we here get ten lines describing a major part of the continent!

Those of you who have read older games might want to argue that there are always setting information in the rules. Even the sparse and terse Men & Magic thus can be said to contain "setting". Personally I never liked that. I have always skimmed rules, learnt enough how to roll the dice and get to the fun part. Seeing what is hidden, implied and factored in just isn't something I'm good at or enjoy. Postulating a 200 page tome where 100 of those pages are just text to digest a bout some imaginary lands as the other end of the spectrum, I can clearly see why that isn't popular either. Palladium did something in between, surprising me.

So, not only are there a short section on areas of the continent. There are also in the description of monsters, creatures and playable races a lot of short descriptions and referencing to things like an elven-dwarven war, dead cultures, lost artifacts and just descriptions of how and where these creatures live. It sure works in unison so create a patchwork of images, adding up to a fully imagined world without getting drowned in pages upon pages of dry prose.

Dozens of readers while now, maybe, howl with laughter and say that is not something new, is it. Well, maybe it isn't. But, take a look at AD&D. It's monster book is a separate volume, and maybe (probably) your DM wont even let you open it. Other games from the elder days sometimes also is very heavy on the rules and nothing else. While you might argue that that makes it easier to use the rules as generic rules and the world as something you build yourself, it is an argument that forgets that even those rules have setting ideas in them like I mentioned before.

I no longer own any edition of Runequest, but now I've become curious about how much of Glorantha there actually was in those rules I once read. Tunnels & Trolls is another old game, and one that I think would have benefited from the Palladium approach.

If rules and setting should be tightly coupled or not have been argued to death before. For me this is not a new revelation in that respect, but it was amazing to see how the rules opened up for me, becoming "common sense" and somehow fitting the more the world opened up beneath my eyes. I really didn't expect to like Palladium fantasy as much as I did. I still haven't read it all, we'll see if there are more gems hidden there!

Conan - doomed to drown in mediocrity

Having gotten, and read, this link from James Maliszewski on Facebook, about the new Conan movie I was about ready to tear out my eyes. While I know that Fred Malmberg who owns Conan don't care a bit what is done to the poor barbarian, as long as he gets paid well for it, I still kind of wish there was some kind of quality filter built into that license.

Conan seem to be cursed by mediocrity! Ever since the hacks Carter and de Camp started to deface his memory (and absurdly also saving him from oblivion) it seems only morons and hacks without any sense of style get near enough to make movies or pastisches. It's just so sad.