Knaves of Hisagol – An OSR Mosaic of Retrospective and “Reviews”

May 11, 2024 auguryignoredLeave a comment

I recently finished a campaign of Knave Second Edition, and I think there’s stuff to say about it. This isn’t a review per se – neither of Knave 2e nor of the material that saw play during the campaign. Rather, it’s a retrospective at how the various bits and parts that contribute to a campaign metastasize and create emergent situations and game/fiction situations.

The campaign began when the usual Friday group (me, Paul and John) were looking for stuff to play before John planned on launching us in the Reft Sector in a game of Traveller. I had recently received the PDF of Knave 2e (the physical copy should come by soon!), and wanted to make use of some of the piles of OSR and OSR-adjacent stuff I’d collected over the years. Frankenstein them together for a fun game, set on the planet of Hisagol in the Tapestry. Hisagol has pretty much become my quasi-Renaissance, chaos magic-infested adventure-friendly setting.

There were two major modules I’d wanted to run for a quite a while: Charles Avery-Fergusson’s Into the Wyrd and Wild Second Edition and Sean McAnally’s Times That Fry Men’s Souls. The former is a comprehensive and highly modular source for running adventures in a hostile and weird woodlands setting, while the former is an OSR take on the New York theater of the American Revolution. Times’s setting was tweaked to remove it from the specifically North American context and into the quasi-Renaissance, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay-inspired sensibilities of Hisagol. The premise was straightforward: the players would start at one end of Times‘s excellently stocked hex map with a map to treasure on the other end – and those hexes would be part of a wilderness based on Into the Wyrd and Wild. Lastly I wanted to use some beasties from Fire on the Velvet Horizon.

A kind soul on Mastodon helped me create a blank and modifiable version of Times‘s hex map, from there, it was just a question of skimming through the hex keys, adjusting as need, and peppering in other material. That part was a lot of fun, and relatively little needed major overhauling. McAnally’s work here is superlative; practically every hex is stacked with adventure material that is neither convoluted nor contrived. Threads connect various hex contents, to be pursued by the players if desired. While I filed off some of the specific details on North America of circa 1777, even that couldn’t take away from the potent situations seeded across the map. I peppered in some dungeons and other more customized encounters and locales without much friction at all.

*A region on the continent of Elatri, with the locals currently rebelling against the colonial power of Sargave (think Rome meets Renaissance London meets New Crobuzon of the* Bas-Lag *novels by China Miéville.*

Setting Off

The implied setting of Knave 2e is one of gritty, dirty adventure. Adventurers aren’t clerics, paladins and wizards; they’re ratcatchers, pit fighters, highwaymen and itinerant musicians. While the systems allows for a tailored character, the tables are just too fun to not roll. And so our heroes Pascal (played by John) and Leif (played by Paul) were born. Paschal was a botanist and cultist, sole survivor of a mass suicide ritual gone wrong, and looking to strike it rich in Elatri. Leif was an astronomer and musician, a suave and largely level-headed and sensible man who did not share Pascal’s enthusiasm for the occult and the magical. They were a great pair, and the banter between them, courtesy of John and Paul, was fantastic. To keep with the slight Renaissance theme of the setting, we imported some rules for gunpowder weapons from an issue of Carcass Crawler too. The flintlock gun quickly became a treasured item, not least because shooting it triggers morale rolls in nearby animals and beasts unacquainted with the horrors of modern human weaponmaking.

Knave differs slightly from its predecessor and from many other OSR games in that it has very streamlined and clear processes for exploring and traveling in both dungeons and hexes. The game knows what it wants, and it delivers with confidence; its procedures are neither intrusive, prescriptive nor overly detailed. If more detail is desired, it is intuitive and easy to add. But the system fundamentals are rock-solid. They are not simulationist in the traditional sense. Time is broken up into discreet units that can be spent on sundry adventuring actions, but after each time slot is spent, a hazard die is rolled. The hazard die is a d6, and the roll can inflict a variety of adventuring miseries and mishaps – or it can inflict nothing at all.

The hazard die table in this game is a masterpiece. Much of it is for one very specific reason: it presents plausible thematic outcomes and results, but lets the specifics be dictated by the fiction and the context of the adventure and the situation at hand.

I think Knave solves one of the bugbears of OSR procedure design this way. Many similar tables and procedures fall into one of two traps: They either try to account for everything and become bloated, tables within tables, subsections within subsections, subject to modifiers and so on; or they become so general and bland that they don’t actually inspire anything the Referee couldn’t come up with on their own in the moment.

Where Knave‘s procedures triumph is that they are always impactful and they interface with whatever adventure or module you’re running incredibly smoothly. Chances are most overland regions and dungeons come with an encounter table – and it slots right in. Special conditions about weather, wild magic, roaming airship pirates, the lot? They too combine smoothly with the Knave hazard die results. What doesn’t refer to the module specifics are easily recognizable as sensible dangers or events that might hit adventurers; food going bad, torches going out, fatigue. It’s a positively brilliant piece of design, and it makes running Knave a breeze. Low prep too!

Furthermore, the hazard die ensures that the Referee is always playing as well. I never quite knew what was going to happen, but was aware of the general scope of possibilities. It was wonderful.

And what made it even more wonderful was how packed with content the hexcrawl of Times That Fry Men’s Souls is. Sean McAnally does several very clever things in writing these snippets; there are evocative (but not intrusively poetic or abstract) descriptions of situations that can go any number of ways depending on player decisions. And there is a lot of “at the Referee’s discretion” sprinkled in, ensuring that A) no two crawls will ever be quite the same; and B) there are blanks to fill out if the Referee desires. I certainly did so in a fair number of situations. Sometimes the text will refer to other tables in the book, but again, it’s very easy to slot other content in and out as needed. For instance, I used the module’s weather tables, but random items were sourced from the Knave rulebook’s set of tables. No trouble at all.

*Maybe the best hex descriptions known to humankind.*

The PCs plodded along, adventuring and even delving a bit, to gather resources and coin to hire extra muscle for their trip into the Weald of Spite, where they knew of a treasure spot. I got a chance to employ one of my favorite beasts from Fire on the Velvet Horizon by Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess – the potemkinmen. Wonderful little weirdoes that make mocking simulacra of the human world they observe, peppered with traps, but beyond that, possessing little true intelligence. They are a joy to spring to bring to the table. Monsters with great intelligence in some areas and very limited intelligence in others are always a hit with me, as they tend to create situations where normal logic is bent, but not broken. Potemkinmen are great fodder for OSR-style challenges of lateral thinking and in-fiction puzzle solving and cleverness.

The Woods Do Not Care For You

Eventually Pascal and Leif arrived at the outskirts of the Weald of Spite with hirelings in tow. They had gathered quite a little entourage of torchbearers, cooks, and sundry hired muscle. And upon the threshold of the woods, we shook things up a little bit.

Charles Avery-Fergusson’s Into the Wyrd and Wild is a fantastic, and I mean fantastic, book. It is written in a system-agnostic fashion that makes it easy to use in rules-light games, but might require some more fiddling and prep if employed in a crunchier game. For Knave, it was perfect. Upon entering the accursed, strange, hostile, borderline eldritch woods, we discarded the travel procedures from Knave and cracked out those from Into the Wyrd and Wild. Here, things are harsher. Fatigue and foraging mean more, and the conditions of fatigue, thirst, delirium and madness you can accumulate are more punishing. Travel is done in a point-crawl kind of way, with trails of various kinds connecting places of interest in the woods.

This change in rules framework worked as I’d hoped. It hammered home the point that the Weald of Spite was part of the capital-W Wilds. Here, things work differently. The hunger is worse, the wind is more bitter, the rests less safe. The characters had left the relatively known and entered into something like an otherworld, and that otherworld did not care them in the slightest. The players had been sensible enough to do some proper preparation and were spared some of the worst vagaries of what Avery-Fergusson’s nightmare wilderness could have inflicted upon them, but the mood was still palpably different.

Just a snippet of all the good stuff in this beautiful book!

Into the Wyrd and Wild presents a lot of modular options that all reflect its overarching theme of “nightmare fairytale eldritch woodland”. It encourages you to pick what you need from its menu, and I can see myself using some of its survival rules, its monster-hunting minigame, and some of its monsters in other contexts. But the entire thing is such a cohesive experience with such a clear vision that it almost seems a shame to cherry-pick. I did, of course, cherry-pick, but overall I didn’t take anything from outside the book. Because why would I? This book packs a punch in terms of content. The monsters are wonderful and creepy; the point-crawl generator is wonderful and the huge menu of things to encounter and interact with all come together and represent the book’s vision so eminently. I did change some things, added and embellished, tailored and customized as needed, but that’s the whole point of emergent play anyway. The kernel of everything that happened during the players’ trip into the Weald of Spite was Into the Wyrd and Wild.

On future adventures on Hisagol, I’m definitely going to keep using this book to flesh out the spots of strange and horror-tinged Wilds that dot the planet’s geography.

The Moral of the Story

I sometimes find that a lot of online discussion of OSR and RPGs in general emphasizes the tangible products of our hobby. Adventures, settings, modules, rulesets. The emergent and transformative aspects of actual play shouldn’t be afterthoughts – they are the magic that bring all these wonderful items to life. I think it’s important to emphasize the non-theoretical and non-product-oriented sides of our hobby as well. Actual play, with the people we care about, in games we that love, is where the promise of all that good stuff on our shelves get actualized and realized. It’s where the game is. And a what a game it can be when all this material created by a wonderful community of imaginative souls coalesce in new and unexpected ways. I think that’s pretty cool, honestly.

Beginnings Suck, and That’s Okay

April 16, 2024 auguryignoredLeave a comment

One session into a campaign of Hero’s Banner, which my gaming pal Hans introduced me to and which I’m knowing GM’ing for a small group. It’s a neat game, hot from the fires of the now-defunct Forge community, and I encourage you to check it out. It’s all about tragic heroism in a faux-medieval settings, full of passions and self-destructive melodrama. Good stuff.

But starting a campaign in it made me reflect on one of my least favorite parts of campaign play: the beginning. The start. Episode One. Why? Because roleplaying games fundamentally differ from practically every other kind of medium in what beginning-relevant information is conveyed and how it is conveyed. More traditional linear forms of narrative media have a whole library of methods and devices for this kind of stuff; the opening crawl, the in medias res, the exposition dump, and many far more refined but less codified methods. When watching a film or reading a book, there’s a certain assumption that what the audience needs some kind of narrative hand-holding to be properly introduced to the story and characters. More often than not, powerful opening draw their power from clever interaction with both audience knowledge and audience ignorance. At no point in a story is it more important to balance the audience’s expectations with what’s delivered.

Thus, we get establishing shots. We get the first moments where characters set precedent for our future expectation of their behavior. All that good “show, don’t tell” stuff creative writing instructors make a (justified) fuss about. Beginnings get a lot of attention from storytellers, audiences and analysts alike because of the simple fact that they matter.

Yet one of roleplaying’s idiosyncrasies is exactly its interactive nature, and the fact that we don’t actually have an identifiable audience who are consuming the story. What even is the “story”? I think beginnings clearly illustrate that as far as roleplaying games are concerned, the “story” is merely the fiction as it unfolds at the table in strict narrative terms. If that were the case, where do the pages of character background, the worldbuilding notes, the collaborations that occur before dice are even rolled fit in? They don’t really, is the issue here. A lot of exchange of information takes place before the proper narrative begins to unfold. And a lot of it is exactly the kind of stuff we’d see worked into opening crawls, exciting action openings, or any other of the previously-mentioned devices. In roleplaying, they are redundant. Everyone at the table already knows what such sequences would convey.

What we want to get to in roleplaying is how player decisions, GM (if there is one) decisions, and the system drive play. Many of the traditional building blocks of edited storytelling fall flat. Their assumptions don’t hold true at the gaming table. So obviously the game’s “beginning” should dive into some exciting moment that facilitates, well, roleplaying. That’s what we’ve all shown up for.

The inaugural session of a campaign can, obviously, be exciting and engaging. It better be, in fact! But younger me’s frustration was in how my roleplaying games seemed to lack that punch, that narrative finesse, that exciting feeling of being drawn into a new world. When looking at the story (taking the story here to be mean “in-fiction as it occurs due to play”), beginnings looked stale and stilted, even outright undramatic. And for good reason – all the important stuff a book or film needs to establish has already been made clear to all relevant parties involved! I felt my campaign openings were weak because I didn’t realize this distinction before far too late in my gaming career. It killed my enthusiasm for a few games back in the day. Because when looking at it, from the lens of conventional narrative wisdom, most rolepaying game campaign beginnings do appear to suck. And suck bad! They are arbitrary, random, often borderline nonsensical, confusing and convoluted. Or at least, they appear so.

Because roleplaying doesn’t actually use the same vocabulary of narrative content and devices. In so many ways, it’s its own thing, and that thing is an amorphous interaction that blurs the line between author, audience and participant. If its beginnings appear awful by the criteria of other media, so be it. Let your beginnings “suck” as much as they need to. The campaign will most likely still be awesome.

The Tribunes of Caradocia

November 19, 2023 auguryignoredLeave a comment

“There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints.”
– Glen Cook, The Black Company

The Tribunes, the heirs of the False Rohins, are among Adosaye’s most principal antagonist. They are the result of the Council of Five’s sorcerous and depraved experiments in creating lieutenants and soul-vessels, and so they are all marked by the dark legacy of their forebears. Aside from this shared general origin, which itself is wrapped in much mystery, the Tribunes have few unifying traits. Some were fashioned much as golems and constructs are; others were powerful mortals subjected to rituals and experiments; others still may have been conjured from great beyonds. Great creativity, malicious as it was, was applied in the creation of the Tribunes. Their powers exceed that of most creatures on Adosaye, for they carry in their being twisted fragments of the Red Soul itself. Walking blasphemies, their predations are a prominent theme of Adosayean history since the Council’s demise; for the Tribunes have dark wills and dark ambitions of their own.

At least three Tribunes maintain notable presences in Caradocia and its environs, and their shadows are long and dark. Much to humanity’s fortune, the Tribunes work poorly together. Plans, schemes and not least egos clash, and they tend to be resentful of their “siblings” more than anything else. Some rivalries between Tribunes are the stuff of legend. Tribunal alliances, even temporary ones, are threats of the greatest magnitude. A coordinated offensive between two Yric the Glaive and the Leveler almost brought Caradocia to its knees.

*Art by Wayne Reynolds for the Black Company d20 book by Green Ronin Publishing.*

Tribunal power has its luster for some mortals. And it is true that the Tribunes have access to lore otherwise forgotten. They are no teachers like them when it comes to dark and blasphemous sorcery and adjacent “arts”. Some mortals even recognize the Tribune’s religious mandate as legitimate and hail them as true prophets and genuine successors to the Red Soul. Such talk is considered offensive, heretical and malignant by most faithful Synodists. Many Tribunes actively cultivate an image of mystique and power; human pawns are part of the Tribunal modus operandi. The exact relationship between the Tribunes and the fragment voices of their creators carried through the Witchstorms is unknown and assumed to be fraught and complicated.

For the past half century, the Tribunes in Caradocia have been mostly quiescent – mostly. The Tribunes are no strangers to schemes and shadow games, after all.

Inspirations and Thoughts

The Ten Who Were Taken from Glen Cook’s The Black Company series; the awnsheghlien of the Birthright campaign setting; the Nazgûl; villains post explicit and implicit in Kevin Crawford’s Godbound TTRPG; bosses and creatures from the Dark Souls series of video games.

Villains! Villains are cool because they create story almost just by being. I like the idea of the scattered, bitter, and powerful heirs of the former Dark Lord(s) still making trouble out there, and it seeds some adventure material both on the political/Company level and the personal level. They represent the option of slightly more fantastical, larger-than-life threats and opponents – or allies of unscrupulous characters. I think that settings with a lot of potential for moral greyness and moral ambiguity benefits from human (or at least, relatable to us humans) villains are almost, almost entirely purely evil. Depending on what mood the campaign swings, the Tribunes can individually be irredeemable Sauron wannabes, or they might turn out to be slightly more complex. We’ll see.

Yric the Glaive

Strategist and general par excellence, Yric the Glaive represents the apex of the Council of Five’s genetic tampering to create a dispassionate corps of bodyguards and lieutenants. When Yric’s helmeted visage overlooked the battlefields of Caradocia, she wrought tremendous destruction – but for now, she is planning and cultivating alliances with the yuan-ti warlords who may despise her, but see great potential in her battlefield skills and strategic insight. Yric is a scourge to northern Caradocia in particular, and seems to have a particular affinity for the Witchstorms. Her pocket domain is well-guarded, but she has at least surface respect for the pleasantries of diplomacy, etiquette and some semblance of decency outside the battlefield. To her detractors, she is a principled but ruthless and dangerous warlord; to those who take a disciple’s view, she is the embodiment of perfected military discipline and an inspiring leader who can remake society into something strong, mighty and orderly.

The ArchEidolon

The ArchEidolon has, as far as the stories tell, little sophistication of mind, but it is a colossus in stature, a veritable walking apocalypse. Most are glad it is currently dormant, supposedly somewhere in the Dawnlands. Those interested in seeking out the ArchEidolon are less interested in serving or allying with it, and more interested in its uses as a weapon. It is known that the ArchEidolon is not unintelligent, and in its dormancy it can still extend and project its will in esoteric ways. But its exact nature remains a mystery. A handful of cultists seek to reawaken it, believing it would usher in some doomsday event alluded to in apocryphal Synodist texts and prophecies.

The Leveler

Said to be a tall hierophant with a head ever sheathed in ruby flames, the Leveler by all accounts, believes that he is truly a righteous prophet and genuine successor to the Red Soul. His cult is one of the most active Tribunal religions, where their dark whispers of power and ancient magical lore ensnares those of little faith. His sorcery focused on the fire, the forge and the fiendish, and he is an accomplished crafter and summoner. Cruelly, he seems to have mastered a less sophisticated version of the Council of Five’s Tribune-creation rituals, and a cadre of twisted wraith-lieutenants do his bidding. Rumor has it that he is in love with a human. The Leveler’s library is supposedly the stuff of legends.

The Knight of Brass

A particularly vicious and mad Tribune, though an indisputably brilliant fighter and Witchstorm adept, the Knight of Brass once ruled a sizeable domain after conquering most of the realm of Bezent, southwest of Caradocia. The locals’ call for help were largely ignored by the Denevs to the south, who were preoccupied with calamities of their own, but an alliance of Caradocian knights, mercenaries and petty nobles pooling their resources (and aided by Synodist champions) launched an assault to counter the Knight of Brass. The Tribune was defeated and destroyed, and the Bezentian March was established – in other words, the liberation would have unforeseen consequences and be a source of future conflicts all on its own.

Worldbuilding for Multiple Systems

November 16, 2023November 16, 2023 auguryignoredLeave a comment

One of the principles of the FKR (Free Kriegspiel Renaissance/Rediscovery/Revival/Rambunctiousness) is the principle that we should “play worlds, not systems”. It’s a sentiment with some kinship to the OSR idea that the established logic and lore of the setting and simulated world should precede, inform and help consistently adjudicate the game as it is during play. The FKR maxim is, in a sense, this taken to its powerful extreme – the notion that game systems are strictly speaking not necessary to the authentic roleplaying experience.

I quite like systems. I like learning and “mastering” systems, not with the intent of showing off just how much I can theorycraft, character optimize (EEK!), or exploit it, but because fluency in a rule system allows a smoother transition between idea and gameable experience – and because a good system that lead play in directions beyond those expected.

But I heartily empathize with the FKR attitude of setting and world primacy. Like so many other nerds, I enjoy daydreaming up impossible (or sometimes, all too possible) alternate realities that can serve as the framework for the roleplaying experience. What I’m starting to reconsider is the idea that of worldbuilding for one, and only one, system.

Systems as Building Blocks(?)

It is quite intuitive to set out with a system as the gameable framework for a setting. The two inevitably inform one another, and are in some cases nigh inseparable, at least without some legwork to extract and reflavor mechanics. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Shadowrun and any given game system built on a licensed or borrowed property are by design tightly connected to one and only one intended setting. On a more abstract level, games are clearly built with certain archetypes of settings in mind, and it can seem tricky to transplant them. Dungeons & Dragons is geared towards a certain type of fantasy setting for a reason: because that type of fantasy setting is conducive to the game experience of Dungeons & Dragons.

Similarly, people (including myself) often talk about building a setting for a particular game. “I’m generating a sector for Stars Without Number“. “I’m creating a sandbox for my Old-School Essentials game”. This is sensible; if we’re playing a particular game, we’re obviously creating a setting with that particular game in mind. Systems can be powerfully leveraged as building blocks, and building blocks have particular shapes, sizes, and go together the best in certain constructions.

This is, as mentioned, perfectly sensible, but when talking to people about their homebrew setting awesomeness, there’s an odd side effect related to sunk cost thinking. After all, you’ve built this cool world for, say, Traveller, and obviously you’d like to play Traveller in it. That’s obviously great, until there’s another system you or your gaming group are excited about and it’s, GASP, a post-apocalyptic game! Well, darn, there goes all the hard work fleshing out a Traveller sector; since it was built explicit not just with the flavor but the rules of one system it mind, the system’s logic has also become the world’s logic and so permeates its design on more levels than might be immediately obvious. For people who like the sense of a persistent world, this is an issue, and it can lead to doubling down on sticking to the system that so deeply informs their favorite homebrewed world.

(Sidenote: None of this is inherently bad, I think. I don’t think fluency or gaming in a wide spectrum of systems is necessary or even expected. Some of the most awesome roleplaying maestros I know have only ever really stuck to a system or two throughout their gaming.)

Worldbuilding Elasticity

I find myself wanting to play a lot of different systems, but I also find myself comforted and enriched by the sense of a persistent setting. (My own experiment of the worlds of the Tapestry is an attempt to satisfy these apparently competing sentiments.) One of the major components of this is simple: I think worlds grow in their verisimilitude and their strength from being explored from multiple angles. Rehashing a cliché here, but the real world is such a genre mess in itself! Heck, its emergent stories are arguably the blueprint for all genres of storytelling ever. If the real world can encompass little stories of tragedy, comedy, cowboy action, high-speed chase scenes, sexiness, court dramas, tales of knights and love gone wrong, and so on, it seems to me that our fictional worlds can too – and can even do so in much more heightened, genre-satisfying ways. Constructed worlds can be multifaceted beasts.

The events of a game of Trophy Gold might trigger a tech revolution in the setting; one timeskip and shift to Stars Without Number, and we’re following the descendants of Trophy Gold‘s PC’s exploring space. A campaign might start out as high fantasy gamed with Fabula Ultima, but that doesn’t mean the intrigues of a particular city-state wouldn’t be a good fit for Burning Wheel. The events of one game of Bleak Spirit can become a far-off myth in a later game of Old-School Essentials. The connections can be subtle, they can be barely detectable – but I, at least, find that sense of persistent worldbuilding immensely satisfying.

The logic I’ve increasingly been trying to apply is this: Find out which part of the setting is about to be gamed, and leverage the system that supports that the best – but don’t assume the system in question must be able to cover all conceivable games the setting could lead to. A fun challenge in that regard is to pick two system you like at random and think about how to conceive a setting that can support both. It’s both easier and more rewarding than you think. And crucially, there’s no point in trying to get one setting to fit all systems either – that’s a fool’s errand from the beginning, obviously.

And at the end of the day, don’t overthink it. Build what you enjoy and what you need and have some damned good gaming fun.

Caradocia in Broad Strokes

November 9, 2023November 9, 2023 auguryignoredLeave a comment

Continued from the previous post about worldbuilding the world of Adosaye.

Caradocia, a region in eastern Suru-Terre, will serve as the springboard sandbox for the upcoming game of Reign 2e. It is a fractured land of petty feudal domains, grim wilderness and uncertain future. Some bits won’t really be set in stone before the players properly set up their Company; the plan is to give them the reins of a noble house’s petty domain, and it seems quite appropriate to let them have a say in generating and fleshing it out. Other than that, the goal is, in true sandbox fashion, to create a place seeded with possibilities, threats and potential rewards. This means that a lot will still be vaguely defined. Gaps are inevitable. But they can be pretty cool to have too. Some details may change, or even some major elements – but at least this is a chance to know Caradocia in the main.

(Note: I originally wrote quite a lot more in unplanned creativity spurts. This is the abridged and edited version, because lore is great, but lore that gets to the damned point is even better.)

A Story of Exile and Toil, Abridged

*Art from* Artesia, *courtesy of Mark Smylie.*

The myths of Caradocia’s founding revolve around the figure of Daeglos of House Sullan. A complex figure whose nuances are lost to history but storied in myth, Daeglos was lord, knight and religious leader all rolled into one. He was a potentate of the Urrbean Empire, but left the realm of his birth with a following in tow, and he traveled to faraway Caradocia. And there, he founded a kingdom, integrating his Urrbean expatriates with the local tribes.
Daeglos was a highly religious man, and brought to his new kingdom a variant of the Synodist faith – a religion that revered the Incarnates of the Scarlet Soul.
Under House Sullan, Caradocia and grew, very much at the expense of the Malor elves. Bloody campaigns were waged, but the terminally declining elves could not withstand Caradocian settlement and intrusions – nor could the Caradocians always withstand the well-coordinated vengeance of the Malor.
House Sullan itself would eventually fall. So it goes for all dynasties, the poets say.
Eventually, Caradocia’s origins came full circle when the expansionist Urrbean Empire finally came knocking. Shocked to find a population that was like themselves and yet very different, the Empire’s pride would not allow a nation like this to usurp Urrbe’s good name and prestige! Ironically and in spite of some early successes, the Urrbean invasion provided an impetus for renewed unity and shared pride in the Caradocians at a time when they were poised for internal strife. The Urrbean invasion was repelled. Many died.
Caradocia’s subsequent fortunes waxed and waned, but on the whole, it endured with pride. Quite often clannish, fierce, zealous pride.
But the rulers of Caradocia were finally humbled by the Council of Five. Many Caradocian worthies died in the battles that would form the magic-blasted wilds west of Caradocia today.
The land bent the knee to the Council, who installed favorites and sycophants of their own in key positions. Caradocia chafed, as all lands under the Council’s tyranny did.
When the coup against the Council was launched, Caradocia was quick to rise. Coucil loyalist suffered terrible fates, and when the yoke of the False Rohins had been thrown off, the lords of Caradocia set to rebuild. They institute the Restoration Accords, a series of agreement sealed by the oaths of lords, that recreated the political landscape in the image of pre-conquest Caradocia, at least as the present imagined it. Much seemed well.
But oaths can be broken, and often at terrible cost.
Though the Restoration Accords remain a political rallying cry, Caradocia has, like so much of Suru-Terre, descended into fractious strife. The past three centuries have seen a destructive dance of alliances, betrayals, blood feuds, squabbling and sundry trouble. And the emergence of Tribunes and strong Witchstorm seasons have not made things less messy. Far from it.
The future is uncertain. Threats press the land and the people from every corner. The Houses of Caradocia may fall – or they may rise again, reborn and glorious.

Around Caradocia

*The landscapes of Wales have been on my mind lately. By Lukas Hartmann through Pexels.com.*

The political geography of squabbling Houses of Caradocia overlays a rough but majestic land of great moors, rock-crowned hills, lofty mountains and foreboding woodlands. The Caradocians tend to have a certain fearful respect for the world that surrounds them – and anyone who’s seen the native beasts, the mighty Witchstorms, or high winter in this land can understand this attitude.

Caradocia can be roughly divided into a handful of sub-regions.

Ataskia

Located in central Caradocia.
An expanse of shrublands, rolling hills, pockets of forest, verdant moors, and farmlands.
The most arable and cultivated, and thus most contested and war-torn, part of Caradoca.
Studded with trappings of ruined decadence (holdovers from the Council’s regime).
Considered Caradocia’s heartland, especially in the eyes of its natives – it is a claim that seems less true every year.

The Southern Fiefs

Lies southeast of Ataskia.
Borders Heryndor Bay, an important body of water.
Splendorous but heavily forested land of rough hills, vales, dells and rocky shores.
Many settlements hug the coast, ever careful of Witchstorms.
Dark things dwell in the woods, they say. And not just brigands and outlaws.

The Bezentian March

Southwest corner of Caradocia.
An arid place of shrublands, winding rivers, low hills, and gorges. Was once a yuan-ti stronghold.
Traditionally a battleground between Caradocians and Denevs; the region fuses its dual heritage in idiosyncratic and irregular ways.
The people here are starting to reconsider their relationship both to Caradocia, the Denev lands, and themselves; perhaps it is time to become a distinct people of their own?

The Hengelands

Lies north/northeast of Ataskia.
Woodlands coating low hills and valleys dotted with fetid wetlands. Lingering fogs obscure the moors.
Studded with dolmens and henges of ancient make.
Many stories are told of the elves who were fought to settle this land, and of the secrets and legacies they left behind.

The Dawnlands

Lies west of Ataskia.
Stunted forests among rugged highland plateaus interspersed strips of moors and wetlands.
A barely tamed hinterland, victim to decline, invasion and monstrous influences.
A precarious and dangerous place, but also a place for second chances – and a relative tabula rasa for those looking to carve out a new domain.

Faith and Loathing in Caradocia

*Interior art from* GAZ1: Grand Duchy of Karameikos.

The dominant religious factor in Caradocia is the Synod of Souls. In essence, the religion honors the teachings of the Red Soul in their various Incarnations, conceiving them as messengers and agents of the Holy Above. A widespread faith on Adosaye in general, the Synod can easily be divided into a number of denominations, not least in Caradocia. Mainstay Synodism is mostly associated with the legacy of the Urrbean Empire, but Deaglos Sullan brought his own favored faith with him to his new kingdom. Caradocia’s Synodism thus developed into its own separate branch. A religion of morality, it could be described an Axial Age faith in our terms. Within Caradocian Synodism, several interpretations of what the “proper” faith means exist and compete, but in-depth theology is in the eyes of most people the domain of learned men. By and large, the Caradocians are, despite their zealous ethos, quite amenable to syncretism and localized traditions. In essence, Synodism in Caradocia tends to emphasizes purity of intent over purity of formalities.

Another dictum the Caradocians operate by is that priest advise, but do not rule. Clerical domains are highly limited in nature, and established priestly institutions are almost always auxiliary to the local worldly power.

The foul heresy of Enlightened Tribunalism has a foothold in the dark corners of Caradocia. In essence, this faith argues that the Tribunes are the legitimate heirs of the Red Soul and should obeyed. Tribunal cults operate with promises of power, dark favor and a hierarchy of tomorrow where its adherents are privileged.

Magic and the Arcane

*Left: Saruman, obviously. Right: Interior art from Green Ronin’s d20* Thieves’ World Player’s Manual.

Harnessing the Ether Winds of Adosaye is a hard and dangerous prospect. The human art of magic can be placed in two camps: High Magic and Low Arcana.

High Magic is the purview of what might be called “true mages”. It is the magic of the Ether Winds; it taps into their raw, primordial energies through spells. Wizards and sorcerers are largely solitary, idiosyncratic figures. Not many exist, if truth be told – they are significant characters, not least because of their inherent potential to be Persons of Mass Destruction. Not that High Magic must be destructive (it just often is). Wizards are mysterious, often warped by their art; they are subtle and quick to anger. Every wizard tends towards their own version of their craft, and many cultivate distinct reputations around their personas. High Magic is personal, volatile, and eclectic. Wizards are respected. They are feared. They are cloaked in mystery. But ultimately, they are (mostly) human, with human passions and interests.

Low Arcana refers to a more widespread, but less powerful, aggregate of magical arts. The Low Arcanas refer to any traditions that wield the emanations of the Ether Winds in specialized, highly specific ways. Essentially, this covers all magical arts that are not High Magic, but still incorporate rote cants and rituals to wield less volatile mana concentrations. Low Arcana adepts cannot tap into the Ether Winds to the same extend High Mages can, and cannot learn beyond their chosen art. In Caradocia, the traditions of the Oathbrands is an example of Low Arcana – warriors who through rituals solidify their personal connection to their weapons.

The Witchstorms and the Stormspawn merit mention too. The Witchstorms, the terrible legacy of the Council of Five, are chaotic and disruptive examples of “wizard weather”. Their winds whisper forbidden and dark lore; their rain mutates and changes living things; their lighting opens up rifts and disturbances. Witchstorms in Caradocia are most prominent among the coast, but are a mainland concern as well.

The Stormspawn is a colloquial name for those born or conceived during a Witchstorm. Given that Witchstorms can last days or even weeks, Stormspawn are all but inevitable. Stormspawn show abilities of erratic and magical nature; some obvious, some less so. Local paranoia and prejudice sometimes disagree. It seems that Stormspawn powers are, to some extend, hereditary as well, and some Houses have become known as “Witching Houses” due to their Stormspawn tendency. Synodist theologians are divided on whether Stormspawn are anathema to the Red Soul’s teachings, or as capable of its glories as anyone else.

Factions and Groups, or Vultures and Wolves

*Thematically elevant loading screen from* Crusader Kings 3.

The Noble Houses: The clannish families of Caradocia rule the feudal domains and polities that make up the divided kingdom. Lineage is important to the Caradocians, but so is action – to be born to a mighty House is to be born to great expectations. Houses are expected to govern and protect their vassals, and Caradocians see feudal oaths and relationships as bilateral. An abusive liege invites doom upon themselves. There is much scheming and plotting and betraying to navigate these precepts. Caradocian succession follow a loose logic of “ruler’s child inherits”, but which child is often decided by the ruler. Additionally, other offspring are expected to receive other inheritances, or at the very least fine positions in their sibling’s court.
Synodic Priesthoods: The Synod has no singular head of the faith in Caradocia, and the fractured political landscape has made the country’s religious landscape more heterodox and friendly to smaller Synodic sects and offshots. Still, faith remains a unifying factor, if a decentralized one.
Guilds: The artisanal societies of Caradocia guard commercial and industrial interests. In the more urbanized areas such as Ataskia, they can command great sway over resources.
Tribunal Cults: They seduce with promises of great magical power. And they ultimately serve to funnel servants and lieutenants to the Tribunals. Wide despised, yet hard to extract completely.
The Psentient Order: A quasi-religious brotherhood trained in an esoteric discipline of memory mastery. Their mental capabilities make them highly desired courtiers and advisors. The Order expects loyalty from its members, who are encouraged to take merely advisory roles out in the world and ensure that the intelligence they gather makes its way back to the Order. Essentially comparable to the Mentats of Dune and/or the Maesters of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Rebels, Brigands and Outlaws: A common problem for the Houses.
Mercenaries: In Caradocia’s current situation, sellswords can (and do) thrive. A few adventurous condotierres have even landed themselves cushy positions and land.

Neighbors to a Troubled Land

Behind the Mountains, *by Kirk Quilaquil on Artstation*

Bay of Heryndor: A body of water that was once a thriving place of trade. Lies south of the Bezentian March and the Southern Fiefs. Frequent Witchstorms and Tribunal presences have complicated that over the past centuries.
The Malordeep: The great foreboding forest where the last elf lords brood. Lies northwest of the Hengelands.
The Denev Lands: The domains of the Denev people lie south and southwest of Caradocia, with the Bay of Heryndor as the water-based frontier, and the Bezentian March demarcating a precarious borderland. The Denevs and the Caradocians have had their share of conflicts, but also of mingling and trade. The Denev, an enterprising people who put a premium on the virtues of freedom and legalism, are themselves today divided in a manner typical of the post-Council chaos.
To the northwest, beyond the mountains, lies the scarred and harsh lands of Ystral. Its people are hard-pressed rebuilding their realms after the desolation laid upon them by the Council of Five.
To west lies a stretch of mostly wild country, scarred from the destructive magical conquests of the Council.
Further west lies the principalities of the Baldovians. Subjects of first the Urrbean Empire and then the Council of Five, the Baldovians are eagerly exploring their newfound independence, despite their lack of political unity. They are a comparatively urbanized people, and competition between the petty domains has stimulated a cultural and technological renaissance in the region. Tribues with dark designs cast shadows over the lands, however – as does the prospect of invasion from fledgling conquerors eager to add some prestigious Baldovian luster to their reputation.

Worldcrafting: Adosaye

November 4, 2023November 5, 2023 auguryignored3 Comments

Gearing up for a game of Reign 2e, and a vision is coalescing. Reign, much like GURPS, benefits from a clear vision of the setting before quantifiable crunch is created. The system allows for a tremendous breadth in terms of tone and aesthetics, and like GURPS, it has a distinct creative and mechanical grammar that makes translating ideas to game material a joy. Unlike GURPS, it doesn’t overload and overwhelm my brain though!

A lot of the ideas here were the result of brainstorming and conversations with Hans, who was the player in the Korryus Burning Wheel game – and who will be a player in this game when it materializes. He has a keen creative mind and a fantastic sense of leaning into weird, fantastical vibes and stories, and he is always a pleasure to play with.

Enter the planet of Adosaye. And enter this somewhat unorganized presentation of its current state. This is a sketch, an overview, not a complete picture, merely a stew of ideas slowly taking shape.

*Photograph by Sagui Andrea through Pexels.com.*

Adosaye was conceived as a gritty, medieval fantasy world oozing with weirdness on the edges. It was also conceived as friendly to faction- and domain-play – hence how I found my way to using Reign. Who knows – other games and systems might fit other ideas for the world in the future.

The Ether Winds

The vast landscapes of Adosaye are suffused with the erratic and mysterious Ether Winds, sometimes called the Mana Currents. These mystical energies weave through the lands, unseen to most, and they are the raw material and fuel of most Adosayan magical arts. The Ether Winds are powerful, but dangerous – magic involves exposing one’s very body and soul to their push and pull, and then channeling their force through spells and incantations. Not every is attuned or gifted enough to do this, and not everyone who practice the arts do so safely or ethically. The magic of the Ether Winds has limits, both in what it can achieve and how it can be achieved, but mages can nevertheless wield it to great effect.

The Scarlet Soul

The Scarlet Soul is a central figure of human history and mythology. Their nature is mysterious, but this is known: the Scarlet Soul has time and time again returned to be reborn in a human vessel. It seems that almost every epoch have their Incarnate. The Incarnates have invariably been individuals of great wisdom and power, prophetic figures, teachers and potentates. More than once, they have been the deciding factor in a human society’s struggle against the yuan-ti. And invariably, they have at some point retreated from human affairs so their bodies could never be found.

At least until a cabal of rogue mages tracked down and recovered the remains of the Incarnate known as Rohin, a prophetess and mage of exceptional ability. From her remains, the cabal created clones, grown in obsidian vats through spellcraft foul and now forgotten. The cabal prepared these bodies for the next return of the Scarlet Soul, and when the Soul did arrive, the cabal was prepared – through a feat of fell sorcery, they sundered the Soul and infused the pieces into the False Rohins.

Unsurprisingly, this turned out Very Bad for almost everyone involved.

The Council of Five

The False Rohins were not a uniform group. There were differences in age, sex, maturity, ability and interests. But what they generally shared was a resentment for their creators, and so they quickly turned on the cabal, and after that, they turned on one another. Five of the False Rohins emerged from the ashes of the sorcerous calamity of the fighting. They allied and joined forces, less because of a shared vision and more because they knew more fighting would assure mutual annihilation. Fraught with distrust and rivalry, but all driven by a desire to leave a mark on Adosaye, the Council of Five entered the world stage.

They were conquerors. They were great mages. And they were scourges to all who opposed them. The Elves of Adosaye in particular were targeted. While some prospered under their tyranny, far more suffered. And the False Rohin themselves? They grew more erratic, more paranoid and more cruel. It was never meant that the Scarlet Soul should be incarnated for more than a life’s worth of time, and certainly not fragmented and through magic endure even longer. The Council was at its zenith in both power and madness, and almost all of the continent of Suru-Terre chafed under their tyranny.

Their downfall was, perhaps, predictable.

The Witchstorms

Forces within the Council of Five’s empire saw the writing on the wall. With overlords this powerful and this unstable, it was only a matter of time before disaster would strike. And so, a conspiracy formed to overthrow the False Rohins. And it succeeded, at great cost in lives. Much was lost, but freedom was won, at least for a time.

But the Scarlet Soul could not be healed.

The False Rohins, in their death throes, cast what remained of their power into the world, and thus the Witchstorms came into being. Straddling the line between mundane storms and the Ether Winds, these aberrations of magic would bring thunder and upheaval and strange manifestations of magic. And their winds carry whispers – whispers of the great power of spells and magic the Council knew, and which can be the listener’s too, if only they listen, listen, listen…

The Present

350 years have passed since the Council of Five was toppled, but the continent of Suru-Terre is still in a phase of recovery. The Empire of Urrbe D’oram took, for a time, the place of the Council, but its attempt at corrective and just imperialism fell into the common pitfalls of such endeavors. It too collapsed soon enough.

Suru-Terre is thus a patchwork of semi-coherent polities. The lands are divided and restive. Some areas pay lip service to legal fictions of unity and theoretical overlords, but this is more a “Holy Roman Empire” situation than anything else. The communities of Adosaye do not merely compete with one another, but with other threats as well. The yuan-ti are always lurking; there are factions of elves who would like nothing better than to avenge past wrongs on all humans; the Witchstorms cause occasional havoc and seed dark magic where they go; and perhaps most distressingly, inheritors of the False Rohins are still making trouble.

Oh yes, not all of the old cabal’s hideous sorcery was lost. The Council tried some soul-ripping magic of their own, and the result was the Tribunes. These soul-shredded lieutenants, each a unique horror, of the Council lost most of their power after their masters’ defeat, but also robbed of their shackles of servitude. Ambitious and wicked, they are resurfacing, promising power and glory regained – and some people listen. The domains of the Tribunes dot Adosaye, and it is lucky for humanity that the Tribunes are distrustful of one another.

(The Tribunes are absolutely inspired by the Ten Who Were Taken from The Black Company and by the awnsbeghlien from the Birthright campaign setting. No shame!)

*This French cover for the Black Company book* Bleak Seasons is awesome, by the way.

Next on the menu: Fleshing out Caradocia, the region in eastern Suru-Terre that’ll be the stage of the campaign’s drama. And fleshing out magic, rule additions, and sundry material for making this playable in Reign.

Happy gaming!

Dangerous Magic Systems

October 25, 2023 auguryignoredLeave a comment

Not to be confused with the notion that magic systems are, as a concept, dangerous. Personally, I find them quite enjoyable.

I’m in the process of falling in love Greg Stolze’s Reign Second Edition (more on that in a later post, I think), but put it bluntly it’s been a long time since reading a system has inspired and energized me this much while also ticking so, so many of the right boxes for me in terms of design sensibilities. I’ll refrain from waxing too lyrical about Reign too much right now and focus on the topic at hand…

Magic systems!

In role-playing games!

I think this has been a matter of debate in the hobby since the very first Vancian magic missile was fired. I don’t have a stake in the debate about “hard” and “soft” magic systems as such (I’m honestly not even sure they’re helpful categories), and I think like any aspect of creative and/or game design, magic systems are susceptible to both under- and over-design. No perfect one exists, in part because we have no collective agreed-upon interpretation about what “magic” exactly is, how it should act, what it should do, and how that should manifest in roleplaying games. Gnashing of teeth over the issue aside, this lack of canonical surety makes magic system design a particularly inviting creative space. With some messing about with numbers, we get to simulate and mechanize what feels magical and engaging to us, and best of all we then get to play with it.

An oft-repeated point about a magic system is the way it feels. And I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make a magic system dangerous.

*I love the illustration of the hazard mage prestige class from Green Ronin’s* Thieves’ World Player’s Manual, *a fine sourcebook from the d20 era. This is the vibe of magic I’m currently digging.*

It Began in a Storm

The world I’m currently putting together for what I hope will be a Reign game in the near future has magic. I knew I didn’t want to use the system(s) provided by Stolze in the Reign: Realms book – not that because they’re not good (they are in fact excellent) but because they reflect some particular versions of the magical arts that don’t really hold true for the setting I’m envisioning.

The core idea I’m working from is that magic stems from the Etherwinds (name subject to change, maybe), the mana currents that course through the world with varying strengths at varying locations. Winds of magic, essentially. Add to that the Witchstorms, a legacy from a war between various clones of a mage-messiah from a previous age (it’s complicated) – they whisper dark and destructive bits of magical lore to those who choose to listen to their corrupting gales.

Magic-as-windy-and-stormy is an evocative metaphor, and I don’t take it to mean that all magic must be weather-related; not at all. That’s merely the metaphysical configuration of how mortals access mana and magical power.

What I do want to keep from windy-and-stormy connotation is the association of movement, force, sweeping power, chaos, elemental potency. Channeling the Etherwinds means opening up to a force far, far beyond yourself and allowing it to course through your being. It’s tapping into the ephemera of the elements and the laws of the physical and unseen worlds both, and loosening that power again to very specific aims.

To me, that sounds dangerous as hell. (Tempting too!)

This kind of danger is hard to model, however. An obvious route is to merely make magic risky, but in effect, I’ve found that this tends to merely punish the disproportionate occasional unlucky roll. If accidentally summoning an archdemon or setting the city on fire with a bad roll, magic becomes so inherently risky that its use will be conserved for when there’s no other option – and even then the dice may decide to give a terrible roll anyway! I dislike this approach somewhat for the same reasons I dislike fumbles in combat systems; it actively disincentivizes players using the stuff that make them awesome because they always run a risk of acting foolishly for reasons beyond their control.

Risk is far more engaging, I think, when it’s optional (or mostly so at least). One my favorite approaches to this in terms of magic systems is the famous “unlimited mana” or “threshold magic” variant for GURPS. With this system, mages can safely cast spells with no adverse effects as such, but each spell adds points to a tally – and when a certain threshold in that tally is exceeded, they are at risk. Greater excess unsurprisingly spells greater risk. And that leads to wonderful gameplay moments where it is clear that the current tally is absolutely a result of the player’s choices and actions – and they always have the options of pushing just a little bit farther. I’ve genuinely not seen a lot of systems that handle this dynamic as well as unlimited mana does.

And in a Storm It Shall End

The magic systems provided in Reign: Realms are, as mentioned, fantastic. They also provide a lot of cool ideas that can be repurposed – for instance, the magic system in the book’s appendix for the Nain setting (Stolze’s brilliant and disturbing take on a world of Harry Potter-esque magic clans and houses) has a wonderful option for “giving into the dark side” type of magic.

Currently I’m pondering how to model my vision of the magic of the Etherwinds in Reign. I feel like it’s doable, but it needs direction and more certainty about the idea itself. So far, I know I want the following elements reflected in the design:

Magic involves the mage putting themselves at risk to channel magical power.
Magic is thus potentially very dangerous. (Perhaps a part of the system is all about the ways a mage can make spellcasting less risky? Hmm.)
Using “dark magic” can empower the mage in certain ways “normal” magic cannot, but at the cost of corruption (whatever that may turn out to mean).
The most dangerous manifestations of magic use are about choosing to use them.
The elemental nature of Etherwinds magic hints at some limitations (and limitations are good).
No mind-control magic (yay!).

More to come on the subject.

Happy gaming!

Musings on Multiple Worlds

October 16, 2023 auguryignoredLeave a comment

A while ago I speculated aloud on the idea of a subtle, non-imposing and (hopefully) non-awful framework for setting several game worlds in a shared context – in this case, planets in a shared galaxy or system or whatever. The idea still looms in the back of my mind, and two gamed-in worlds have already been added to the tapestry, but has been stalled for one very obvious reason.

I’m not getting a lot of gaming done at the moment.

The persistent after-effects of concussion are mostly to blame, but so is the general dread and anxiety diminished capacity tends to awaken in my head. Creativity and excitement don’t thrive on constant self-doubt, and there has been a lot of that. Irrational fears creeping into all kinds of otherwise dread-immune areas of life. When recreation becomes burdened by a sense that one must at least do this right when everything else is hard… That’s hardly recreation anymore.

So what does all this downbeat nonsense have to do with the planets and worlds of the Tapestry?

The past days, the Tapestry has become an assurance of continuity, and not in the canon-obsessed wiki-binging sense of the word. The last thing I want for the Tapestry is for it to be a burden to my fellow players, or to the game – it is there to support, not to impose, and I’m not concerned with any idea that I’m it’s sole author or owner. Such parochialism would be rather at odds with roleplaying’s collaborative nature. Nevertheless, I’ve very intentionally placed loose (in fact, mostly near-invisible) threads between my games, and not because I want to wow anyone. They’re there pretty much for my own joy and amusement, and to be picked up in the future if others desire to do so.

What these little threads add, however, is a much-needed reassurance that no matter what, we move forward. We create, we add, we reconfigure, we make, we invent. We play. In a way, it’s a very private joy; I don’t expect or demand anyone else at the table to be concerned with or care about the Tapestry at all. To me, it just provides a sense that the stories and worlds and moments I invest time, effort and joy in are part of an ever-changing, ever-expanding, ever-deepening whole that exists merely because it is fun. Life has enough tasks and projects that demand us to constantly think about long-term goals and expectations. The Tapestry has slowly become this meta-structure I can conceptualize as a counter to the pressure of always having to meet (and exceed!) expectations that may or may not actually be fair.

I’ll risk a cliché and quote Tolkien on the matter of disparate but subtly interconnected stories, because he articulated its appeal and wonder much, much better than I ever could.

But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story-the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths (…) I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.

Long live the absurd but meaningful!

GURPS and the Knowable World

September 18, 2023 auguryignored3 Comments

GURPS and I go way back; it was the second proper RPG I acquired, and I used it extensively to explore ideas the framework of D&D 3.5 couldn’t. And I had a lot of fun with it in my adolescence. Memories of fun and adventure, but also of frustrations.

A lot of GURPS’s strengths are poorly telegraphed by the rules, and it requires a GM willing to do some prep work and who is confident in their rulings and style. Younger me was the former, but certainly not the latter. Jury’s still out whether that’s changed much over the years.

And truth be told, GURPS is a pleasure to prep with. Prep leans into GURPS’s major strength: its solid system for quantifying, actualizing, and codifying. A whole cosmology and setting can be beautifully illustrated through game elements, and there’s a genuine pleasure in tinkering with all the little cogs and wheels to create a customized experience that reflects the game world to an almost insane degree. The system’s optional add-ons only expand this space – magical styles, martial styles, weapon creation systems, the plethora of options in Thaumatology, genre rules for Action and Dungeon Fantasy, and so on. It’s an intoxicating catalogue of options for fleshing out and mechanically describing a world.

The main mistake younger me consistently made was to think that if something could be deepened by GURPS rules, it should be deepened by GURPS rules. Every option from Martial Arts should be open to warriors, the town marketplace should have prices rigorously calculated based on settlement wealth and supply and demand, armor rules should involve all details about padding, layering, spikes and fluting and the whole shebang.

And this is a terrible way to run GURPS, but an awfully tempting one. So often have GURPS lured me in with the promise that it can help simulate a world that is tangible and knowable – but where to leave that power of the system behind and where to rely on looser, more instinctual, less codified approaches? After all, somewhere in those books, there is a rule for this and that particular situation…

This fractal model of rule design is tantalizingly deep. The secret is that preparing GURPS involves at least much as saying ‘No’ as saying ‘Yes’. Choose the bits you want and need and ignore the rest. Sound advice, but if one fractal recedes into beautiful patterns and others into merely bumps of shape, that sticks out. The temptation to expand and dive into every fractal is always there. And what if an element demands more elaboration as the campaign progress? Things can take unexpected turns, and suddenly the advanced linguistics rules come in handy, but they assume they’ve been used from the beginning of the campaign, so retrofitting them in will be clumsy and-

And there we go. GURPS’s major strength is, to me, very much also it’s major drawback.

Still, I find myself wanting to play it again. Wiser than young me, hopefully, and with a table open-minded, less toxic than adolescents, and less tinged by the anxieties of excessive simulationism. There’s a lot I like in GURPS, and there’s a lot younger me didn’t get to truly enjoy. Maybe one day.

The Balance of Darkness

September 9, 2023 auguryignoredLeave a comment

Darkness, bleakness, even elements of horror, tend to be a big part of my fantasy gaming and the types of fantasy media I enjoy. A lot of my favorites tend to belong to the nebulous ‘dark fantasy’ subgenre – Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, Glen Cook’s classic The Black Company (and his often overlooked but just as inspiring Chronicle of a Dread Empire), R. Scott Bakker’s Second Apocalypse, Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher, the works of Adrian Selby, and so on.

What makes them distinct from other types of fantasy isn’t really their subject matter. Almost everything depicted in these works have counterparts in other works of fantasy fiction. Scour the pages of The Silmarillion or the bleaker Conan stories or the works of Ursula K. Le Guin or The Chronicles of Prydain. Darkness haunts and looms in these stories too, sometimes implied and somestimes foregrounded. Not to say fantasy must be dark, but most fantasies that resonate strongly with me at least tend to have shadowy aspects that are deep and threatening.

It’s also a difficult subject to translate to the gaming table.

*I’ve been replaying* Dark Souls Remastered lately. And it’s quite inspiring. The great lesson of this game is that despite everything thrown your way, you can succeed and overcome and you can keep your humanity in a world that’s been largely robbed of it.

Apathy and Humanity

Gratuitous darkness, bleakness and misery is not just off-putting. It’s also quite un-fun. The turn to the ‘grimdark’ is, I think, often characterized by an overabundance of openly anti-positive themes and a nonchalance with the subject matter that ironically cheapens it and robs it of its impact. Grimdark done poorly is a road to apathy. Overwhelming bleakness and a sense that things fall apart may work in a Cormac McCarthy novel, but it’s exhausting on the gaming table.

The type of dark fantasy I tend to be drawn tends to be quite morally cognizant of the implications of its subject matter. Most of them are, in a sense, morality plays, or at least interrogations of morality and ethics, even with their cosmological morality is less Manichean than, say, its high fantasy cousin.

But dispensing with traditionally fantastical cosmic reassurances of morality does not mean dispensing with morality itself. Far from it. Dark fantasy wants to ask some nasty and uncomfortable questions and wants to depict situations that are hard, with no obvious right answers. And that’s damned good drama and story fodder.

Games like Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, Torchbearer and Blades in the Dark are well-suited for this kind of interrogation because they demand characters that are themselves flawed and not necessarily heroic in any traditional sense. They avoid the gratuitous excess of ‘grimdark’ by always remembering to focus on a human core and the agency of players. Their worlds are full of terrible things, but not empty of meaningful action. An awareness of the complexities of their imagined worlds, and an awareness of the complexities of human thought, empowers rather than diffuses the choices of the players and the stakes of the game. Glorious tragic crashing is a possible outcome (because it must be – roleplaying involves randomness and some forfeit of control), but not a predetermined one.

This is the core of why I like darkness in my games. It makes the triumphs and the victories of flawed but determined heroes all the more meaningful. Heroism and trying to do right is all the more impressive when set in a world hell bent on counteracting and undermining it. Too little darkness, and things become a bit too tame for my taste; too much darkness, and things just become miserable and pointless. But in the balance of darkness, where things can look the bleakest, the actions of people can shine all the brighter and all the more meaningfully.