The Village of St. Chanan's

I am active on the RPG Pub, my gaming forum of choice.  There's a topic about usable gaming content in blogs, and I figured I'd take up the challenge and work something up.  So here 'tis!

The Village of St. Chanan's

 

HISTORY

St. Chanan’s is a sometime-castle, situated in a border hill country.  In the most recent war, it was invested by a force far greater than its lord and the inadequate garrison could withstand.  The attacking general ordered an immediate escalade, which was badly botched, and while successful sustained far too many casualties.  In any other war, between any two other nations, the ensuing massacre would have been a tale of horror on the lips of minstrels continent-wide; in this war, it was one of all too many.

Intending to render the fortification unusable, the raiders murdered almost everyone they could catch, pulled down the donjon, turned the villages in the valley into smoking ruin, and was about to start on the walls when they were recalled, leaving an empty shell save for the (however much looted) church in the courtyard.  The war has been over for three years now.  The castle was not reclaimed, what with the lord’s heirs carrying on a pitiless war of their own in the courts, over its possession.

TODAY

No one’s sure who made the suggestion, but the several dozen villagers who remained moved in within the walls, to what they now call St. Chanan’s, after the church to the Moon God that still – miraculously – stands.  The outer wall remains in usable condition, and the villagers live inside the towers.  Every day the villagers head out to tend their fields and herd the goats to pasture; every night they come back within the somewhat-dubious safety of the walls.  The fortification is not terribly defensible as it stands, but the towers themselves are fairly secure.  Should PCs find themselves inside, the dwellings within are furnished catch-as-catch-can, with furniture and goods either salvaged from the depredations in the area, or from the donjon itself – it’s by no means unlikely to find a rich, embroidered tapestry serving as a family’s quilt.

The border country was exhausted in the war, and with nearby towns razed and pillaged, St. Chanan’s has become a trading post.  Cross-border traders are treated with nothing beyond bare civility, but without trade St. Chanan’s dies, and they are not targeted.  The area marked with asterisks is where peddlers set up stalls or wagons.  A cut of all sales goes to the villagers, but they are more interested in goods useful to them than in coin, and are downright resistant towards gold, preferring to be paid in silver – gold is too easy to steal, they feel.  They are not very interested in things they cannot use, and offering them jewels, weapons or magical items in trade will fall flat (“Pretty necklace.  Can I eat it?  Will it plow a straight furrow?”), believing that they cannot resell such items without being cheated or robbed.

Beyond that, St. Chanan’s doesn’t produce much beyond local crafts, goats’ wool and goat cheese.  These are of good quality, and cheese is available in bulk – typically aged in caves, those weren’t pillaged by the invaders.  The local goat cheese is a white cheese similar to feta, and aged in large balls about 6" wide.  (They have thick rinds and will travel well.)

St. Chanan’s has no leader, and the villagers govern by consensus, meeting as needed.  They are otherwise a sober lot, and aren’t wont to chatter with outsiders without a good reason to do so – law and order has broken down throughout this stretch of the border, and strangers who aren’t obviously traders are suspected of being bandits until proven otherwise.

The fortress is built on a leveled-off hill.  It isn’t all that high – though it has good sightlines for the region around – nor all that steep, save for the bluff just north of the walls.  It has the one well, large and delved by a sorcerer in days gone by.  Travelers are welcome to camp inside the walls, in the center of the compound between the ruins of the donjon and the garden at #9.  The grass is cropped short enough to be unsuitable to feed mounts, however, although one can obtain hay from the villagers for about double the going rate.

CUSTOMS

The builders were pious, and sigils of the Moon God – a chevron of seven different phases of a moon – are over every stone doorway and the gatehouse.  The inner door of every tower has a niche with a devotional statue in it (only a few were desecrated), and locals touch their foreheads and lips to the statues when passing by.  It is an inviolable custom to have oil lamps burning below each statue, but also the source of much contention: a large sum of money dedicated in better days as an “oil fund” is administered by the priestesses of the Moon God, and felt by them to be beyond touching ... no matter how many villagers think there are far better uses for the money than to keep lamps burning beneath eighteen statues.

The villagers hold to several other folk customs.  Adults bear a small wooden or leather tube on their sashes, inside which is a ribbon embroidered with the words “If the Moon Lord does not keep the watch, in vain do mortal sentries do.”  The same phrase is painted over or etched into every lintel.  It is also the custom to ring bells in order to drive demons away, and to wear animal masks into religious ceremonies; a great grief to the villagers is that most of the elaborate carved and painted wooden masks they used to have were burned by the invaders.  Those who rely on crude workarounds feel an inchoate sense of shame (and no small amount of anger) out of the loss of their heritage.

The villagers frequently burn incense or potpourri in their tower dwellings, even down to sweet grass or foraged herbs if that is all they can get.  (They won’t discuss why readily, but in the aftermath of the massacre, the stench was so great that they needed the incense to be able to get a decent night’s sleep, and can’t collectively shake the habit.)  New scents are a trade good that interest them highly.

 

LOCATIONS

1) Blacksmith: Kenesh the smith (Smith-13) runs one of the two interior shops, and lives on the first floor as well.  A burly, easygoing man, he is a perfectly competent smith and a good farrier, but has no experience in armoury beyond knifemaking, forging arrowheads, and basic repairs.  One quirk of his is that he sings while he works ... constantly.  It is always verses from the locals’ epic poem (see #10), and to a tune he makes up on the spot.  Kenesh isn’t a bad singer, mind, but the habit does grate on some nerves.

2) Gatehouse: The gatehouse is in good repair save for the gate itself.  That was smashed by the invaders, and all repairs managed was to make it able to keep goats from straying out at night; it will not deter a determined assault for more than minutes.  The gatehouse remains well stocked with coal, sand (much cheaper and convenient than boiling oil) and weapons that the invaders were unable to cart away.  The invaders smashed the fortress’ artillery, but the villagers repaired two ballistae, one for each of the gate towers.  Not being siege engineers, the degree to which the reconditioned ballistae are safe to operate is anyone’s guess.

Four mercenaries live in the gatehouse, and serve as the village’s guard, keeping an eye on the traders, loitering around the compound during the day to give the illusion of it being patrolled.  The mercs are combat veterans (around 90 pts, on the average), but are either too old or too battered to serve in the line any more.  They are what the villagers can afford, and some locals grumble at scraping up the wherewithal for that much.  They are at least well-supplied from the stores in the fortress, with good swords and mail.  The villagers ignore the detachment as much as possible (the traders, at least, exchange greetings and news), and the mercenaries leave them be.  This is a decent retirement gig, and they’re disinclined to jeopardize that.  

Pereval is the leader of the unit, who call him “Sergeant,” a term at which he himself sneers.  He’s not yet old, and not yet crippled ... he’s just been in too many battles over too many wars, and is past it.  Pereval’s method of peacekeeping is intimidation, backed up by his glaring, orange-gold eyes; it is rumored that he has demon blood in him, something he carefully does not gainsay.  Of course, he talks a far better game than he can back up these days, but he is veteran enough to gauge the prowess of potential foes, and neither he nor his men fight with any degree of chivalry.  They will keep the peace within the walls, but aren't up for pursuing marauders who get away.
                                    
3) St. Chanan’s Church: While the invaders thoroughly looted this small temple, they shrank from destroying it.  The only remaining decorations are the padded kneeling cushions, overlooked by the invaders, and painted murals depicting the saint, purportedly the bodyguard of the Moon Lord as He walked the land.  (In fact, “St. Chanan” is apocryphal, and the organized authority of the moon faith does not recognize his existence.)  A tapestry from the old donjon now serves as an altar cloth, and services and ceremonials continue here.  It is also the closest the locals have to a community hall, and is used for meetings and gatherings.

Learned Elena Macardry is the embittered priestess (Theology-14, various scholarly skills/ Public Speaking-13, Physician-12).  Once the respected (and well-supported) chaplain of the castle’s lord, she heavily resents her now-straitened conditions.  While the villagers still support her out of piety, they do not love her, for she arrogantly treated them as simple clods who were beneath her before, and their memories are long.  No longer young, gone to fat, she is prone to rages and lashing out at everything – the tallow candles which replaced rich beeswax, the humble fare which replaced dainty imported viands, the traders still offering her books she can no longer afford to buy, old grievances both real and imagined ... and, secretly, the god she is sure betrayed her.  Only two teenage acolytes still serve her, and that for a roof over their heads and a decent meal – she has driven the others away.  The Learned is a lay priestess without supernatural powers, but is a skilled scholar and theologian, a good public speaker (when she doesn't lose it and harangue her congregants for their failings), and a fair physician.  

4) Statue Seller: Industriously, Sabek (Merchant-11) salvaged numerous small statues and busts from the ruins, and peddles them as antiquities to credulous buyers.  Most are quite fine (barring the occasional chip, scratch or fracture), and a number are made of valuable materials such as porphyry, jadeite, alabaster and the like.  He emulates the perceived manner of the itinerant traders, and believes that he is a champion hustler.  The traders, in return, treat him with bemused condescension.

This shop, as well as #5 through #8, are exterior stalls, made of scrap wood and felted overhangs and drops.  The degree to which they’re open is weather-dependent.

5) Tailor/tentmaker: Melev (Sewing-14) is a young fellow, lean, pious, bespectacled and diligent, sure that if he just works hard and keeps on working hard, he will Get Ahead, and so be allowed to marry the agemate of his dreams.  While he sews the simple caftans, vests and peaked hats of the area, and will copy non-local garments if he’s allowed to take them apart for templates, where he really shines is in tentmaking, using felt from the goats.  Melev’s pyramid tents are sturdy, warm and shed water admirably – if you don’t mind the weight – and it only takes him a week to make one.  (However, the itinerant traders value his tents highly, and one might have to pay a surcharge to bump one in the queue.)  He will also add colorful abstract appliques or embroidery to the tents, and indeed works in one set up in this location.

6) Provisioner: Sonsy and middle-aged, Khautyn is the friendliest, most outgoing local the PCs might encounter, short of Kenesh.  She prepares sausages (Cooking-13, Merchant-12) from goats, from game the hunters bring in, and from other sources best left unmentioned.  The sausages are of good quality for what they are, and keep well on the road – the more sensible traders scoop up as many as she might have available.  If she lacks sausages, what she also has available in profusion is Good Advice, which she’ll dole out to patrons asked for or not.  Her eldest daughter Indigo is a goatherd, and the light of Melev’s (#5) eye, affections she reciprocates.

7) Leatherworker: Alpa is a slender young woman (Leatherworking-13, Artist/tooling-15), with fierce hawk-like features and an intense manner.  Her work is in saddle- and tackmaking, and she readily does repairs of trail gear, which occupies much of her time.  She can do other work – and does very nice tooling in abstract patterns – but only slowly, and the other calls on her time interrupt.  Apparently deeply affected by the burnings, she’s manifesting an odd syndrome: an inability to draw inferences or conclusions from a statement.  For instance, you can tell her, “I’m down to my last dozen silver sinvers,” but she won’t be able to get from there to “... and that means I can’t pay you much for the work.”  The other villagers are aware of the issue, and try to look out for her as best as they can; Khautyn the sausage maker especially will keep an eye out.

8) Cartwright: Labrys and his two teenage children (all that survived of his family) are kept busy repairing the wagons of the traders; he is skilled enough and honest that traders will stagger well out of their way to cadge a repair (Carpentry-14).  They are also available for general carpentry as needed, but if they’re otherwise idle, they’re busy making a wall-sided wagon, sturdy and sound.  (If the PCs need a wagon, the gang is within a day of finishing it, and while Labrys himself has no more use for gold than the average St. Chanan’s local, the traders will willingly take the gold and play middleman, delivering to Labrys such goods as he might find useful.)  Not quite to the point of sullenness in dealing with outsiders, the cartwright will only talk about business, and that in little more than monosyllables.

9) Several small canvas-and-scrap stalls are arrayed from here to the gatehouse, and reserved for villagers who have anything to sell: mostly produce, in season, but also cheeses, handcrafts, gathered herb bundles, and the like.  For anything that would be sold in bulk, the villagers negotiate directly with the traders.

10) The Moon and Goat: The settlement’s tavern has a crudely painted sign depicting a goat taking a bite out of a moon.  Its interior is a jackdaw’s mix of furnishings from the old donjon and crudely fashioned tables and chairs from scrap wood; the bar itself is the high table from the old Great Hall, of wrought mahogany and baroquely carved.  It would be worth a great sum if it hadn’t been cut in half, lengthwise, for the purpose, and the usual reaction of traders seeing it for the first time is a pained groan.  (They groan a fair bit harder upon hearing that the rest of the table was chopped up for firewood and table legs.)  The Goat is a relatively convivial place, where the traders take their meals and swap tales of the road.  Any villagers patronizing it of an evening are likely to have a looser tongue than usual.

The story above is divided into living quarters for the proprietor’s family, as well as four small private rooms for rental.  Only two have windows – arrow slits, really – and all are equipped with rope-frame beds with mattresses stuffed with goat’s wool, nightstands, water jugs and chamberpots.  Simple locks (+2 to pick) were salvaged from elsewhere within the fortification.  There is a small copper bathtub, but hauling and heating water takes some doing, and baths are pricey.  

The fare is relatively simple: goat cheeses, goat stews with root vegetables, sausages, barley flatbreads.  The one leavening in the mix is that the hill country produces culinary herbs in profusion, so the stews are well-seasoned, and they can be seasoned to taste if the tavernkeeper is warned in advance.  Barley beer and herbal teas make up the great majority of the drinks; wines and spirits must be brought in, and at a stiff premium.  Stews are served in stoneware bowls salvaged from the donjon, and eaten with the flatbreads – the bowls were once valuable, with fine glazes and decorative scenes – but are chipped and cracked from constant tavern use.  (If magically repaired, they could fetch a fine price.)

A couple times a week, locals provide entertainment.  Instrumentalists include goat-skin hand drums, wooden flutes, and a fretless five-stringed instrument resembling a guitar.  Otherwise, there is an epic poem revolving around the heroic deeds of the locals’ forebears.  Most villagers have memorized some of the poem, and a couple pride themselves on knowing all of it: there are over ten thousand verses, and getting through it all would take months.

Beyaza is the tavernkeeper (Innkeeper-13), a quiet middle-aged woman with a talent for unobtrusiveness and blending into the background.  She will tend to a customer’s needs with little comment, and respond laconically and evasively to questions.  Her family are cooks and servers, and in case of any trouble, the one closest to the door will slip out and – in order – roust the mercenaries in the gatehouse, the blacksmith, and any other villagers available.

Talo has rented one of the rooms for a couple months now.  He dresses simply, openly carries long knives (Knife-15), and is a short, wiry fellow with abrupt, jittery mannerisms.  Talo doesn’t have any visible profession, isn’t interested in work, but pays his tab every week in good silver ... or else goes out to the traders’ row and buys something the tavern could use in lieu of the same.  He’ll engage in jocular, neutral conversation, but reacts angrily to any personal questions, including when he’ll move on (“None of your damn business”) or whether he intends to stay indefinitely (“You hear me the first time, pal?”).

11) Ruined Donjon: What’s left of the donjon is a stub, consisting of the first story – the rest of the rubble was sold off as building stone and carted away.  The practical villagers use the ruin to pen up their goat herds during the night, toss them garbage generated within the compound to eat, and use the droppings to manure their fields.  The goats are used for dairy and their wool, and excess kids are slaughtered for meat.

12) Garden: The broad oval space is a tightly landscaped community garden, where the locals grow vegetables and herbs.  There is barely enough space to walk between plots, and the villagers are intolerant of outsiders breaking the perimeter (fenced by large stones from the donjon).  A couple youths bearing switches are tasked with keeping goats and other draft animals out.  The fortification’s well is at the southeast corner.

PERSONALITIES

The villagers generally have a reasonable spread of crafts (generally at skill -12/-13), for PCs who want to avail themselves of the same: basket weavers, tapestry/quiltmakers, charcoalers, cheesemakers, fletchers, brewers.  They’re usually willing to hire out for it, as long as it doesn’t impede the work of herding or farming.

Bekova (Area Knowledge/Crossbow-16, Survival/Traps-14) is a representative hunter and trapper, who brings in meat for the locals, and trades hides and furs to the itinerant peddlers.  She is lean, quick, good in the field, a crack shot with a crossbow, and mingles as little as possible.  All know that she’s the one to speak to as far as knowledge and conditions of a 15-mile diameter area around St. Chanan’s, but pinning her down is hard, and she’s seldom interested in dealing, unless a party has magical aids to hunting they can offer her.

Dastan is the local cunning man, a masterful forager, and the one to go to for medicinal herbs (Magery/1 (ceremonial), Naturalist-14, Herbalist-15).  He is a sardonic, sometimes sarcastic aging fellow with little tolerance for fools, but is one of the only villagers willing to take gold or valuables as payment.  Dastan also has magical powers on the hedge-witch level, mostly in simple illusions, communing with animals, finding lost items and minor scrying, but doing so takes a lot out of him.  The locals hold him in a superstitious awe, for they fear his curses.

A representative trader is “Master” Argelle (Merchant/Intelligence Analysis-14, Fast-Talk-15), who passes herself off as an alchemist, selling a medicinal tonic of her devising. Argelle’s Famous Tonic is touted to help what ails a person (although she doesn’t make specific, explicit claims that might come back to haunt her) and to promote general health and growth.  Her sales patter is masterful, entertaining and popular, and her demeanor is warm and caring.  Argelle runs a circuit, moving around the region in a loop taking about a season; she stops here at St. Chanan’s to rest up for a week at a time, not being as young as she used to be.  The Tonic is bitter herbs and honey with a stiff alcohol content, but her real purpose is as an agent of one of the warring border nations, scouting around the area, and bearing confidential messages for the nation’s intelligence apparat.


ADVENTURE HOOKS

* There are credible rumors that the war is about to resume.  Having accepted a few too many of those otherwise unsellable pieces of jewelry, weapons and magical trinkets, the villagers seek to hire the party with them as short-term mercenaries to stiffen the defenses.  The value of the goods they offer are roughly twice what the going rate for the mercenary work would be ... if the party survives to cash them in.

* One of the heirs approaches the party.  There’s been nothing to indicate that the secret vault beneath the donjon was ever found, either by the invaders or the villagers.  The heir is sure there’s portable treasure in there, and is willing to hand over a blueprint of the donjon indicating the right spot for a 50:50 split of whatever’s found.  How the party pulls it off is their business.  (How they will manage with the fact that the heir doesn't have an undisputed legal right to the goods, and that the other heirs will be on the warpath if they find out, is also their business.)

* The lawsuit’s been settled; the castle has a new legal owner.  While the new Lady of the manor wants to get her fief in order and is not unwilling (within her finite means) to help the villagers rebuild, they are all squatters and she wants them out of the fortification.  She offers to pay the party well to drive them out and keep them out until she and her entourage arrive.  A city-bred agent of the Lady will travel with the party to do the talking, and will prove supercilious and dismissive of “country folk” and their customs.

* A villager is dead certain that one of the party was in the attacking force that torched her home, laughing as her screaming family burned to death inside.  She means to make certain the PC is dead ... as cruelly as possible, however she can manage.

* A band of slavers/bandits thinks St. Chanan’s would make a very handy base of operations, and that they can just scoop up traders.  They’re either there and in control when the party arrives, or strikes when the party is there.

 

Designing A Fake Cult

As I’ve said before, RPGs generally suck at portraying religion.  My quote from seven years ago is that all most RPGs give us are variations of "Bunsgrabber is the God of Partying Down.  His alignment is Chaotic Horny.  He is depicted as a young man with a great tan, wearing cutoffs of purest gold.  His priests always wear sunshades and strange caps with horizontal visors pointing backwards, and his High Temple is at the coastal fort of Lauderdale." 

Don't forget the cool outfits and at least one hot cult leader.

Then you have the bullshit concept that latter editions of D&D pushed that it's possible to be a legitimate cleric, with legitimate healing and blessing and clerical powers, just by hooking up with a "philosophical concept" – in other words, a cheapass dodge for players who wanted to have the cool powers without having to follow any of those boring roleplaying constraints, follow any doctrine or dogma they didn't write themselves, or take a stand on anything.  And this goes a fair bit back: a player in M.A.R. Barker’s campaign in the early 70s reported that how his fellow players handled the religion-soaked environment of Empire of the Petal Throne was to throw gold at the temples and otherwise ignore them.

So it was surprising when a forum thread asked how one would go about designing a fake cult in a fantasy setting, and so many of the posters reacted with shock and horror.  Impossible! they said.  Everyone would Know!  Nonsense, said I.

I don't see, for instance, a single bit of difference, observable to a casual onlooker, between a priestess waving her hands in the air, shouting "May the great god Mitra grant us light!" and the room filling with light, and a wizard dressed in clerical vestments, waving her hands in the air, shouting "May the great god Bunsgrabber grant us light!" ... and casting a light spell.  If the paradigm of the common folk is that the gods grant their priests supernatural powers, well, a wizard can wear pseudo-clerical vestments, stand in a "temple" and work supernatural powers.

But, you say, how is the fake priest going to turn undead?  Easy.  "The great god Bunsgrabber is not a *weak* god, and He does not cowardly hope that the Unlife will just run away!  This is how Bunsgrabber deals with the Unlife!"  Cue fireball hitting the zombie dead center.

But, you say, how is the fake priest going to heal people?  Easy.  For one, you deter the casual and the unfaithful.  "The great god Bunsgrabber is not a whore god like all the rest!  He grants healing only to His sincere worshipers!"  There in one fell swoop you take care of 90% of the supplicants.  For the handful you genuinely want to heal -- or the rich folk you want to think of themselves as True Believers -- just to make the scam look good, you invite them to drink from the Sacred Chalice upon which the Great God Bunsgrabber has breathed His mighty breath.  (Cue wind spell.)  That's the chalice you spike with a healing potion.

But, you say, how is the fake priest going to raise the dead?  Easy.  You don't.  "What is this blasphemy you speak?  Do you not know that the great god Bunsgrabber has vouchsafed your beloved dead a seat on His Great Comfy Waterbed, attended by the requisite seven Angels In Spandex?  How can you be so wicked as to wish them to return to this world of suffering and pot bellies?"

But, you say, how is the fake priest going to bless people.  Hm.  Pretty much the same as clergy bless people today worldwide, however much we have no objective proof that gods exist.  Nonetheless, billions of people seek out those blessings, and believe in their efficacy when they receive them.

But, you say, won’t the other gods object?  I don’t see it, myself.  The frequently parroted shibboleth of omnipresent, interventionist deities bears surprisingly little resemblance to common gameplay, even in D&D circles. Honestly, how often have you seen gods physically appear in your own campaigns?  And in how many campaigns are there two dozen, three dozen (... more?) gods?  How many schmuck peasants keep track of them all, and how would they do so in any event?  Not like they could try to pull up an article for Bunsgrabber on Wikipedia ...

And even so, speaking of that: here’s an example IN the modern age, where factchecking is at everyone’s fingertips.  Take a look at the whole Church of Satan deal and its offshoots.  Many really do believe in them.  Yet Anton LaVey said openly in The Satanic Bible that to a degree, it was all hooey: "Satan" really didn't exist as a real being, LaVey wasn't shy about admitting it, and all the mysticism and trappings LaVey put in the book was pretty much out of his entirely defensible position that mankind has a demonstrable love for mysticism and trappings.  A philosophical concept, huh?  Guess LaVey would've made it as a D&D cleric.  But I digress ...

Nah, this'd be a slam dunk in most any realistic fantasy setting.  (And if fantasy settings were somehow immune to grifters, how do thieves manage to survive?)

Tidbits: Game Of Thrones

And in another one of my rants from the forums ...

(ForumDood: Of course, the TV version decided to at least double the apparent size of it, AND make it scalable by random men with no particular training or experience scaling sheer ice walls of ridiculous height (LOL). Of course, the TV show also likes to show impossible castle/tower/city heights of crazy exaggerated height. "The throne room is a day's climb up...")

Well, but think about it.  If you follow Game Of Thrones, you just have to take suspension of disbelief and kick it into the holler.  Railroad very obviously didn't give a damn about logistics, distances, common sense or a lot of things.  

Gives a damn about the T-shirt sales, though, I bet!

They march gigantic armies across continental distances without giving the slightest thought to how long that actually takes or the logistics train one needs.  They have twenty guys actually capture and HOLD Winterfell, even when that force could be rolled by local peasants with hunting bows and grain flails and Northerners aren't described as being cowardly bunnies.  Why the North needs to conquer King's Landing (thousands of miles from their center of supply) is never adequately explained, when they just need to hold the Neck.  There's not enough game in all that ice and snow to feed Mance Rayder's army, not by a factor of 50.  100 grain wagons a day to alleviate the hunger in King's Landing?  Never mind the distance from Dorne to KL (which makes the notion absurd on the face), a city that size polishes off five hundred tons of food per day.  (And a little slip of a 10-year-old who's just had her ribcage caved in takes out an undead giant?  The Mother of All Critical Hits, to be sure.)

And OMG, the Wall.  I would cheerfully undertake to defend the Wall with 200 guys against the massed armies of all the world.  They can starve below while we drink tea and play pinochle, because that's a formidable technical climb for expert mountaineers (and where in the merry hell did the wildlings get that expertise AND the steel crampons?), and with the level of exhaustion that would involve, one ten-year-old with a good head for heights and a baseball bat could deal with everyone who made it in a quarter-mile's worth of wall.

Sport in campaigns

(Trust me, this will get to roleplaying.  Bear with me.)

Following the exchange with one of my kind readers in the previous post ... I joined an APBA dice baseball league in 1981.  For those of you unfamiliar with such sports simulation games, there are companies – most notably APBA and Strat-O-Matic – that every year put out a set of cards, based on their private algorithms, that seek to duplicate the performances of individual players from the previous season.  This is primarily done with baseball, which lends itself well to the approach, but has been done for other sports – you use dice and charts to determine the results of individual plays.  Some play solitaire replay seasons with the original teams, but the league I was in had the players draft new teams, and we’d keep them year after year, drafting new players and holding trades and suchlike.  I took over my team in mid-season that first year after another player dropped out.

Anyway, Jim was one of the managers.  He also happened to be an Empire of the Petal Throne GM who decided to base his team on Tekumel and out of Jakalla – the so-called “Jakalla Saints” – and did a good bit of roleplaying during his games.  The crowd would chant "Vimúhla!  Vimúhla!" – the “evil” flame god of the pantheon – if a pitcher was doing poorly and about to be pulled, and instead of placing players on waivers, Jim would say that they were impaled on one of the three impaling stakes in center field, pour encourages les autres.  (M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel is not your bog-standard D&D "lawfulgood" setting, not by a long chalk.)

I was charmed – go ahead, say it, you know you want to – and the next season moved my team into one of the cities on my gameworld.  The "Warwik Dragons" were born, playing in the city's gladiatorial arena (thus insuring short porches down the foul lines).  A PC wizard begged to be added to the team's staff, so Larindo the Witherer became (then as now) the Team Necromancer, who helped out materially when I made a waiver wire pickup.  The cards were based on the previous season of play, and in 1980 J.R. Richard – a star pitcher for the Houston Astros – was having a magnificent season before he had a stroke.  He would never pitch in the majors again.  

So, while in 1981 Richard's card was excellent, we all knew he was damaged goods, and the Jakalla manager cut him during the stretch run for a prospect.  I promptly picked him up off the waiver wire.  Since Richard had been "impaled," Larindo reclaimed the body and raised him as a zombie during a gaming session (which took some doing, since creating Unlife within the kingdom's boundary was illegal) for the team.  The following quote during an APBA match was repeated down the seasons:

    JR's Zombie:  "I ... pitch ... good.  I ... live ... again?"
    Warwik Manager:  "No, sorry, J.R., you're still dead."

PCs have attended games down the years (matches are social register events), and one got singed for being too close to the edge of the outfield wall, which erupts in a sea of magical flame every time the Dragons hit a home run.  Anyway, I was in the league until 1988, when I moved out of the area ... but I did win the championship that season, with the best record in league history (50-14), averaging ten runs a game, and racking up the single most dominant game imaginable (27-0, where my starting pitcher, the aforementioned Nolan Ryan, pitched a one-hitter; those readers who are baseball-conversant will understand how mindshattering that is).

For other sports on my gameworld?  Shinny's also a popular game in winter time: in effect early pond hockey.  There’s also a sport, not for the faint of heart, played by rock trolls.  Since they’re pretty much RuneQuest trolls, they play Trollball, and at least one party has seen a Trollball match.  Freaked the party pacifist out, too, especially when one enterprising troll spiked the “ball.”  (No, I’m not explaining further – look it up!  Consider yourself warned.)

So, given that mortalkind is given to sport, I’ve done up other sports.  Village football’s a favorite, and soccer is as low-tech as it comes – one just needs goalposts and a leather ball.  Warwik City, in Byzantine fashion, has “factions” operating out of the gladiatorial arena, competing not only in arms but in racing, athletics, martial arts and, well, baseball – the standings for the combined sports are the talk of the town, as well as a major venue for betting.  The party's about to be in an area where the local popular sport is a type of polo, played on sleeths (riding lizards that pretty much have the size, configuration and gait of Star Wars taun-tauns), and using effectively lacrosse sticks. 

Heck, if we stick to Tekumel, there's a custom known as Qadàrni, where a full-scale battle is held to settle a score, satisfy a point of honor, or adjudicate an intractable dispute or legal case.  The competitors can be any entity – private individuals, clans, temples, societies, and even political polities.  Honor demands that the sides start (nominally) even, and it gains little honor if one’s forces are known to be a great deal more capable than their foes.  Cheating, treachery or otherwise dishonorable acts are not allowed.  Such a battle begins at dawn and takes one hour, or when one side is either disabled – or slain – to a man or concedes.  These matches are major spectator sports, and occasions for a great deal of gambling.

Adding sport to your setting gives just that extra bit of local color, and also serves to divide locals into factions that have nothing to do with the hoary old RPG classics of religion and race.

Tidbits III: Convert-sations

This may just be me, but I've never considered converting supplements to the system I use from a system I don’t the horrible, barely-possible chore a lot of gamers think it needs to be.

I'm not a RPG rookie, and I'm pretty confident in my ability to pick up a game, thumb through the rules, and figure out quickly enough what means what.  "Might 80" means you're a strong dude, "6th Circle" means you can kick the ass of anyone not named Conan, "Evocation of Violet Tumescence" appears to be the system's list of temporal spells, and "21 XYW" means you're an outstanding fireballing pitcher with control issues ...

(Oh, wait, I just lapsed into APBA baseball speak.  Anyway ...)

Converting this isn't tough.  I know, in GURPS, what a strong dude looks like: he's got ST of 13-15.  I know what someone who can kick the ass of anyone not named Conan looks like; we're talking maybe 350-400 pts.  I know how to make up a wizard with a good command of temporal spells; that'd be a dozen Gate spells, say.

(Alright, I might need to take some time to replicate a 21 XYW pitcher.  Hrm.  The guy led the league in ERA that season by a giant whopping margin, as well as strikeouts/inning, but he also led the league in wild pitches by nearly twice as many as the 2nd worst.  In short, you're screwed if he hits you with a thrown missile, but he's not the most accurate guy in the world.)

I refuse, and always have refused, to worry about whether I get the equivalencies "exactly" right.  The guy who wrote the original supplement isn't running the adventure, I am.  If the original NPC could beat down three starting characters in that system 75% of the time (not that anyone's particularly run the numbers), and the eventual NPC in my system could do it 50% of the time, who's to know, and who's to care?

What would be my favorite setting?

One that feels genuine.  I got tired decades ago of the JRRT-standard Shining City In A Sea Of Empty that seemed so beloved of setting designers: you just cannot have glittering civilizations that give way to hostile wilderlands and howling orc hordes a bow shot from the capital's walls.  I don't want a terrifying war fleet without the maritime infrastructure to support it, or jackbooted legions without the secure farmlands to feed them, or hundred thousand person cities in the middle of a desert with no particular sources of food, water or trade.  I don’t need Good! Vs! Evil! to be the motivating factor behind every international, intraurban or internecine dispute; good old human motivations will do nicely.                   

One that isn't set up as a Potemkin front for the care and feeding of PCs. If there are five wizards in town, they're not sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for the PCs to put in enchantment orders.  I'm happy to see one working for the Baroness, one working for the town's richest merchant, one playing communications relay for the national military, and one being a drunkard no one with alternatives trusts any more.  (The fifth one can fit them into her schedule, sure, if they pay her enough to bump the waiting list down a bit.  They're cool with her being an earth specialist whose work is mostly in creating and shaping stone, right?)  If it's a 500-person town, there isn't unlimited gold available to buy the party's loot, and the townsfolk are only interested in buying things they can actually use.  Why would the local knight want to empty his treasury to buy that magic sword?  He's got a perfectly good one already, and he's got bills to pay, retainers to feed and the annual taxes to cough up.

One that isn't set up as a Potemkin front to oppose the PCs:  The party was trying to break into this three-story building that housed a jeweler.  Not someone who stashed the Crown Jewels, not a great enchanter, just a small-town jeweler.  And there were no windows or chimneys in the building.  No magics for light or air circulation.  No explanation as to where the smoke from lamps went.  No windows-but-heavily-barred.  No rhyme or reason, no sense to it.  No rationale beyond "haha, this building is designed to thwart PCs and force them to do a frontal assault during business hours."  (You may safely conclude that I was done with the campaign after that session.)

One with detail work in the right places.  I don't need the full gamut of combat stats and skills for the twenty lead figures in the royal court -- what are the party's chances of dueling the palace chamberlain, unless she’s really the Big Bad?  I don’t need a trap on every chest and every cabinet in every room of the palace -- good grief, the chambermaids and scullions will all be wiped out by Saturday -- and I don’t need detailed maps of the dwellings of the blacksmith and the chandler and the apothecary.  Put that work into the NPCs (and the items) with whom the party interacts at that level.

One where “it’s magic” isn’t the blanket excuse for everything. You won’t let me snuff the Big Bad or whack out her minions with no more effort than a snap of my fingers just because I say “I’m the hero,” would you?
 

Filing off the serial numbers

1) You discover a human skeleton, one hand wrapped around a shining spear with a brilliant silver head -- plainly magical -- the other grasping a crumbled ball of deerhide. What's left of his clothing is badly raked and bloodstained, and one leg stretches out at a very unnatural angle. A moldy backpack is nearby, but not much in it is intact, although you find a hunting knife and matching hatchet that’s only slightly rusted and a handful of slightly tarnished silver pennies. Not too far away is the skeleton of a mountain lion. Unfolding the ball of deerhide, there are crude letters written in charcoal on it. "Hey stranger," it reads, "Being of sound mind and bust legs, I will all to whatever finds me.  Gods hope it ain’t no orc.  I gots the creetur what got me.  Hope I died game.  Buy the boyz down at the Post a drink on me. Anyway I am dead.  Yours, Hatchet Nath."

2) A vast crashing upslope ... and the startling sight is of a person screeching and waving a big sword, chasing a large bear, both whom dash past you without a second glance. Even more startling is about a half minute later, when you see the bear chasing the person back uphill!

3) There's a human head, at ground level, in the middle of the trail. Only it still seems attached to a living body, but ALL you can see is the head ... buried up to the chin.  The person sings out to you, cheerfully, as if lacking a care in the world.

4) The hamlet -- there were only a few homes -- was attacked and burned out yesterday, it seems. Pretty much everything portable was looted. There are no survivors, save for a child who's something like six or seven, numbed and mute with the things the child saw.

5) You encounter a small tribe of backcountry hunters, who despite a significant language barrier, have indicated that the hunting is good, that they're settling down for the evening, and you're invited to dinner. If you accept, there's no chicanery or ill-intent, and there's a pleasant feast and some singing (it turns out that you know a couple tunes in common, even if you have different words for the lyrics). When you wake up in the morning, you're informed that your own contributions to the feast require recompense.  You are now married to this cute nubile teenager (of your preferred sex, at least) over here, huzzah! Glowers and snarls are the result of any reaction on your part short of unqualified delight ... ("You turn down this gift, they'll slit you, me, Caleb and the horses from crotch to eyeball with a dull deer antler!")

6) Your path takes you through a sacred burial ground of the local indigs, where their deceased are exposed on platforms for so-called "sky burial" with their weapons and treasured possessions.  Frontier rumor informs you that your presence here is sacrilegious, but tall defiles make going around difficult, and near-impossible if you've got mounts.

✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵

Now.  While this could be the start of a list of interesting wilderness encounters (and it comes from a forum thread of the same), the punchline is that I took the inspiration for all of them from a TV movie I saw in my youth: Jeremiah Johnson, starring Robert Redford as a mountain man in the Rockies in the mid-19th century.  Something of a labor of love on the part of Redford and director Sydney Pollock, it’s very evocative, well-done, and faithful to the hardships great and small of wilderness life.

It also had a bunch of pretty nifty “encounters,” which happened in the order I’ve put them, and drove a fair bit of the plot.  #6 set up this next encounter:

7) Your path takes you back through that sacred burial ground, a few days later ... only there’s a new addition.  A necklace and other trinkets, all of which you know full well: you gave them to the teenage spouse you acquired in Encounter #5.

This turns out about as well as you’re imagining it did.  Cue the plot of the whole rest of the movie.

Unless your players saw the movie (and the oldest of my players was 7 years old when this movie aired in 1972) you could just about run those encounters straight and they'd never know the difference.  The way #6 actually spun out in the movie is that Jeremiah’s asked to lead a cavalry detachment to Point B, the way goes through the burial ground, Jeremiah knows that it’s a bad idea, knows that the Crow will take deep offense, but the cavalry officer is insistent and wants to waste no more time breaking trail around the site.

Easy enough to file off the serial numbers, though, which the encounter as depicted above does.  And for what movie or book couldn’t you do that?

30 Generals

(These were written for a gaming site, and each of the following is a real or fictional general.  Feel free to steal!)

"Wait till you see the greens of their eyes!"

1) The McClellan:  A meticulous planner and an expert in logistics, the McClellan wants to be prepared.  Thoroughly prepared.  He’s the sort who’ll visit individual units to check their kit, ask the troopers what their needs are, eat in their messes to ensure the food is well cooked.  He’s also a sound theoretical tactician, and wrote the army’s tactics manual.  Somehow, all this doesn’t translate onto the battlefield, where he’s hesitant to risk the army he loves so much, skittish and easily convinced the enemy’s forces are far larger than they really are.  He’s never commanded a decisive defeat, but he’s never come close to gaining a decisive victory, either.  While he wins few battles and his superiors are fed up with him, he has the staunch support of his soldiers.

2) The Scott: He’s the nation’s greatest living military legend.  He’s served on active duty longer than any general ever has, and he's been a general longer than any general's ever been.  He was a general three wars and nearly fifty years ago, and in the last war the Scott was both the army’s general-in-chief and the cunning strategist who led the national army to victory against impressive odds.  Decades later, he’s still the general-in-chief, and still a sound strategist.  But now there’s a new war, and the Scott is an old man: sick, obese, unable to take the field.  It doesn’t help his cause that he’s a bit hidebound, still prefers the field tactics of an earlier day, and is increasingly fussy in his dotage.  For the first time, younger officers mutter that he ought to be superseded.

3) The Massengale: All his career, he’s been a political animal.  He had the right education, the right social lines, the handsome features, the brilliant smile.  He started as the aide-de-camp to an important general, parlayed that into a high staff position in the national military establishment, and leapfrogged up the ranks of the peacetime army.  He’s an ace at making his superiors look good and himself look better, and is the fellow you want on the dance floor, in the banquet hall, at the conference table.  Amoral, smooth, he has no qualms about backstabbing anyone who’s no longer of use to him, the road to military oblivion is paved with the skins of his enemies, and common soldiers are beneath his notice.  Now that the next great war has come, his chance to do what he must to become general-in-chief one day has finally arrived: to have operational command of troops ... something he’s never done.

4) The Stuart: A belle sabeur, he’s the very image of the dashing cavalier.  He goes into battle wearing silks, sashes and plumes, and he’s a popular hero to many.  He’s also a brilliant cavalry general, famous for daring and successful raids behind enemy lines.  He’s lucky, he’s good at what he does ... but the Stuart has a dangerous problem with ego and distractions.  He may well pause in his duty to throw an impromptu gala ball (which he loves) or to wear out his troopers with parades and reviews (which he also loves), and he’ll freelance to rack up some new and impressive feat at the risk of his command.

5) The Giap: His nation is weak, and faced with powerful enemies who’ve occupied large stretches of the land.  Self-trained as a soldier but an avid student of tactics, he has been forced to become a master of guerilla warfare.  While secretly he yearns for a great decisive set piece battle, his patience and iron will prevent him from such a foolish mistake, and instead the Giap channels his intellect into developing unorthodox and asymmetric tactics to counter the enemy’s military might.  In particular, he will push his men into doing things thought impossible, like maneuvering through purportedly impenetrable jungle.  His only weaknesses are off of the battlefield; he is ruthlessly authoritarian if in charge of civilians, and his love for the ladies offends the rigid moralists of his culture.

6) The Damon: A decent, honorable soldier who came up from the ranks after winning the nation’s highest military honor, he spent many years in hardship posts before gaining general’s rank.  He makes friends easily, but he’s no politician, won’t compromise for barracks advantage, and has his share of enemies in the hierarchy.  The Damon is also plain and outspoken, and has views about warfare and patriotism which offend glory-loving civilians with no notion of the horrors of war and even less desire to hear about them.  Another trait that offends people is that while he scrupulously follows the codes of war off the battlefield, he sees no reason to hold back on the battlefield, advocating tactics and weapons his culture finds inhumane in the belief that anything which shortens the war is humane.

7) The Tserclaes: He’s been a commanding general for decades, and has an impressive record of victory: he has never lost a battle in which he’s enjoyed sole command.  His men revere him for that, and would follow him anywhere.  He is no innovator – although he has mastered the time-honored battle tactics associated with the infantry he commands.  His approach to combat is straightforward ... march to where the enemy is, and pound them head-on until they yield.  He’s known to be extremely loyal, and will never betray or cheat his nation. As against that, the Tserclaes has gained a reputation for battlefield brutality even by the standards of his brutal era, having butchered more than one army in retreat and engaging in more than one infamous sack of a captured city.

8) The Gars: A man who sees further than other commanders of his day, he hasn’t invented any new tactics, but is the master synthesist, and melds ideas into formations and tactics that have proven startlingly effective.  (Moreover, he has an unparalleled record for training his lieutenants to be great generals in their own right.)  Notable for piety even in a pious age, he will not permit blasphemy in his army, and has curious renown for writing popular hymns.  What endears him most to his men is that the Gars asks nothing of his men he shrinks from himself, and leads from the front: he is in his own right a deadly warrior.  But he has taken more of his share of wounds over the years – which hasn’t at all curbed his reckless desire to fight – and some worry that the next battle could be his last.

9) The von Clausewitz: He’s had a long military career, and has been in a number of battles, but he’s usually held staff positions – chief of staff, inspector-general and the like.  The largest unit he’s led in battle was a brigade, and that as subordinate to another.  His reputation rests on his being a notable military theorist.  Even there, his views are somewhat heretical, for he’s less concerned with the minutiae of mathematics and drill than with the philosophy of battle and on war itself, and he’s deeply skeptical of a number of long-cherished military shibboleths.  Nonetheless, many generals swear by his writings, although to the von Clausewitz’s irritation, they tend to “interpret” his views to support their own prejudices.

10) The Ewell:  He’s a profane eccentric, a hypochondriac fond of bizarre diets and whacky non-sequiturs, with more nervous tics than many a trooper cares to count.  He’s also been a brave general for years, operating as the loyal and effective subordinate to one of the most renowned commanders of the day, and despite his quirks, his men have always followed him with a will.  But his superior has just died, and the Ewell has been promoted to run his old army.  Without the old general’s firm hand on several willful subordinates that the Ewell must now command (or, as to that, directing the Ewell himself), it’s anyone’s guess how he’ll perform at his new elevated rank.

11) The Mitchell: He is a daring, tireless, committed leader, and was chosen to lead a new and promising arm of service.  He feels that he proved the new arm’s worth in battle, and indeed is convinced that this type of unit – if properly developed – will revolutionize war.  As such, the Mitchell is an unstinting advocate of the service arm, and openly derisive of traditionalist generals, feeling that they’re only interested in fighting the previous war.  He’s crossed the line into open insubordination on the subject more than once -- not helped by the fact that he's a very heavy drinker -- and a number of generals want him muzzled ... or cashiered.

12) The Baner: As a young boy, he was forced to watch his mother and aunt executed for treason for being on the wrong side of a succession dispute.  But he was befriended by the king’s son, and pledged loyalty to the dynasty when the prince took the throne and restored the Baner’s family lands and title.  But that is all the Baner is loyal to, and he respects nothing and no one else.  He will defend the new Queen now that her father, his friend, is dead, but damn all else that gets in his path.  Unsparing in his wrath, he will attempt things other generals won’t – night attacks, midwinter campaigns – despite the toll it takes on his men.  His lifelong griefs he drowns in alcohol, which is visibly affecting his health ... though not (yet) his skill on the field.

13) The Hood: Eager to lead his troops into battle, he has distinguished himself on many a field as a leader of smaller formations, mostly of countrymen of his from a remote province.  “A lion, not a fox,” as one fellow officer called him, his bravery has led to near-fatal wounds that still impair him, though he insists on continuing to wear the colors.  (Off the field, by contrast, he is personally shy, and has a diffident manner which astounds those who know only of his repute in war.)  Now he has been put in charge of an army for the first time, with his nation badly battered and nearing final defeat; while he is the youngest commanding general on either side, it is hoped that his aggressive nature will turn the tide.  The Hood hopes so, at least, and feels that he not only has no choice save to take the long chance, but that he’d rather go down swinging than survive the war not having done his utmost.

14) The Burnside: He was out of the army for years as a businessman (involved in manufacturing weapons, as to that), although he commanded his province's militia, studiously drilling with the local units.  When the next great war came, he became a general.  But even though he won a couple minor battles, he’s not a good one, and he’s the first to tell you that.  Yet somehow he keeps getting promoted, and he keeps muffing battles.  He doesn’t want higher command, and turns it down as often as he dares, but the vagaries of politics, a string of bumblers, and the chance of a rival general he hates taking the top position have thrust him into a spotlight he’s convinced he’s incapable of meeting.  He’s also patriotic to a fault (he’s very willing to throw civilians in prison for even hinting at sedition) and may not feel it’s his right to tell his superiors no.

15) The Bragg: The best that can be said about him is that he’s “touchy.”  Anything that goes wrong is one of his subordinates’ fault.  Anything that the enemy does right is because one of his subordinates failed to react in time.  He’s constantly complaining about them and they’re constantly trying to subvert him in return.  Beyond that, he’s just as likely to pick fights with his superiors, writing frequent notes about his lack of support.  (His men, who despise him as a butcher enamored of frontal assaults and viciously harsh discipline, rather wish they could pick a fight with him themselves.)  He’s been court-martialed, censured, reprimanded ... but keeps his position because of his past as a war hero and the backing of the realm’s ruler, a personal friend of his.

16) The Kilpatrick: He’s fearless, blustery and a schemer, and is where he is because of his mastery of political manipulation.  A cavalry commander, he’s notorious among his men for suicidal charges and ordering his troopers well past the point of exhaustion and breakdown, and the rankers hate his guts.  His reputation is little enhanced by his taste for peculation, his lack of personal morals – up to keeping prostitutes in his tent on campaign – and his callous treatment of subordinates.  Still, the politicians enjoy victories, and pay little attention to the cost that "Kill-cavalry" pays for his methods.

17) The Morgan: He’s actually from the future – brought back to this time and dimension through means unknown.  He has command of technologies and techniques far in advance of the primitive times in which he finds himself, and being industrious in nature, convinces the ruler to let him replicate them.  They’ve stood in very good stead on the battlefield ... so far.  But the Morgan is brash and breezy, dismissive of the customs of the realm, derisive of the traditions of the culture, contemptuous of the ruling class and their ways, and not-so-secretly believes that his knowledge and talents should have him ruling the whole land.  Those generals brought low by the Morgan’s successes thirst to encompass his ruin.

18) The Hawkwood: He’s the most famous mercenary general of the era.  Quicksilver brilliant, he always seems to be on the victor’s side on the field.  Of course, he tends to ensure that: he has no compunction about switching sides, and will often take a contract from one side and then go to the other and see if they’ll better it, keeping the payments in any event.  (His men revel in the flows of cash, more than any other mercenary commander commands, and stay loyal, ironically enough.)  The Hawkwood is no orator, and doesn’t rally troops with personal magnetism or stirring speeches – just by the reputation of a man who always wins.

19) The Boudicca: In an era and a culture where women are not soldiers, less so commanders, she is the notable exception.  She’s no great tactician, but her harsh voice and piercing glare would shame many a drill sergeant, and she prides herself on being as tough as any soldier.  What really makes her stand out is that she’s got more skin in the game than any other general: her family was among the victims of atrocities wrought by the other side, and she will never, ever, ever quit, not while she’s still breathing, not as long as she still has a half-dozen soldiers to command.  In like fashion, the laws of war mean nothing to her any more, and massacres of defeated armies – or captured cities – at the hands of her army are commonplace.

20) The Jomini: The great rhetorical opponent of the von Clausewitz, he is a military theorist who scoffs at the notion of philosophy and holds to that of geometry: that a scientific approach reveals all manner of patterns which can be brought to play on the battlefield ... if on a flat plain, as opposed to rough terrain, where the numbers aren't so neat and pretty.  His works are popular, and have led to him being appointed as a general (though never in full command, something that irks him) by more than one side.  While this has come back to bite him when one side commissioning him declares war on another, the Jomini’s diligent staff work continues to commend him.  He is, however, a sycophant, and tends to tell a ruler what he or she wants to hear to gain preferment.

21) The Van Dorn: He was a compromise candidate – the two other choices being bitter rivals, and other candidates wanting no part of the fractious command – and it was a surprise when he was appointed to the post, despite his successes as a leader of light cavalry.  Aware that he was only the fifth or sixth choice, he thirsts to prove himself, despite his warring subordinates and the shambolic state of his army.  Emotional and impulsive, he expects to gain a glorious reputation, come what may.  He also has prominence as a painter and a poet, which he practices to clear his mind of military matters, but more recklessly, he is a “terror to ugly husbands,” caring little for the status or power of those he cuckolds.

22) The Rosecrans: A skilled engineer and successful educator, he was humiliated when he was kept at his desk at the national military academy when cadets and fellow officers alike were rushed into the last war, gaining glory that the Rosecrans never saw.  Needing to support his family in a better fashion than his mid-rank officer’s pay could manage, he resigned his commission and went successfully into business.  The new war has brought many retired officers back to the colors, and the Rosecrans was put in charge of a modest force, to good effect, where he outmaneuvered the enemy without giving battle.  Now he has his own army ... but while he is good at maneuver, he is a poor tactician, given to confusing and unrealistic orders, and is wont to dive into the front lines waving his sword rather than commanding the effort.

23) The Pompey: A young, successful, ambitious general, he dismays the conservatives in the government by his rapid rise, and his cavalier approach to legality: the Pompey often gets his way by subtly threatening the government with his loyal army.  His tactics are only efficient and neither inspired nor imaginative, and he can be tricked – if only temporarily – on the battlefield.  He is unparalleled at logistics and strategy, and wins his battles largely by choosing the right battlefields, thinking two steps ahead, and maneuvering his columns to put the enemy in untenable situations.  He’ll also readily adapt strategy to the opponent’s behavior: against a larger army he’ll fight a war of maneuver, against a defensive army he’ll fight a war of attrition, against a hesitant enemy he’ll go on a swirling offensive.  Many believe he is destined to rise to the top – something his foes in high places devoutly wish to prevent.

24) The Forrest: In an army dominated by the aristocracy and the gentry, he’s a rough frontier commoner.  In an army where most of the leading generals are scions of the nation’s military academy, he’s self-taught.  In an army where the commanders all started as officers, he started as a simple recruit.  In an army where the gentleman officers despise those in trade, he’s not merely a former tradesman, but a gambler and slave-trader.  Yet his brutal and innovative methods have made him his nation’s greatest cavalry commander and a tactician of impressive gifts, and he believes in the virtues of high mobility.  In personal combat he has yet to meet his equal, and is said to have slain dozens of the enemy personally while leading his troops (as well as having a record number of horses killed under him).  The Forrest does not believe in quarter, and seldom offers it, contributing to the dread in which enemy generals hold him.  It would be a dark day for the enemy should the Forrest ever reach high command – but he is dismissed as merely a successful raider by those same gentleman generals.

25) The Montmorency: He’s the protégé of the nation’s most famous general, and now that he’s succeeded the old woman he seems fair to better his retired mentor’s record.  He’s even won a nickname – the “Tapestrymaker” – based on the number of captured colors he’s sent back to the capital.  Logistics bores him, idle camp life sends him into paroxysms of depraved excess, and he’s had a hand in at least one notable war atrocity, but on the field he’s undefeated.  Somehow, he stays loyal to the nation, despite political infighting that has had him spending time in prison on trumped-up charges ... but when the war trumpets sound, the Montmorency is always hastily pardoned and put back in harness.  A pungent humor seems to keep him sane.

26) The Vauban: He’s the foremost military engineer of his age, and his nation has raised taxes to a near-ruinous level to rebuild obsolete fortresses and castles to his design.  Beyond that, his tactics for prosecuting a siege have proven very successful and been widely adopted, and one would imagine the Vauban’s reputation to be complete.  Unfortunately, he’s a prolific writer – and a proud member of the national academy of scholars – and a frequent critic of the government, proposing radical changes in land use (he’s advocated ceding territory he deems too difficult to defend), taxation and religious practice.  It’s increasingly felt that his military services are dispensable ... especially since they are mostly in theories already well known.

27) The Grant: (No, not the one you think.)  The “Mad Musician” is an oddball, all agree.  He’s famously laconic, speaking mostly in barked out one-word sentences.  His only hobby – or vice – seems to be music; he’s a devoted cellist and composer, and brings his instrument on all campaigns.  Indeed, it’s whispered that his army career was made only because a general wanted a cello player for a string quartet.  Inarticulate, poorly educated, rough around the edges, dismissive of scouting, what has sustained him is his iron constitution, the discipline of his soldiers, his belief in outposts, entrenchment and gaming out scenarios ... And that the Grant is the world’s deadliest fighter.  With any weapon he is the master, and he has won more than one battle by literally riding to the front and single-handedly breaking the enemy line.  His men may think him insane, but they will follow him to Hell and back.

28) The McDonald: Like the Morgan, he hails from a land in another time and space, of technology far beyond that he finds here.  He was summoned by a magical spell, but the wizards didn’t quite get what they thought they were getting.  While he’s a thoughtful, intelligent young man, he was never a commander: only the sergeant of a small raiding unit.  In command now of an army, he’s won the day by pulling out techniques and stratagems of his time unknown to those of this land.  But the enemy is not stupid, they’re learning quickly, and -- being a competent soldier, but scarcely a master strategist -- the McDonald is running out of rabbits to pull out of his helmet.  He also came here only with the futuristic weapons he could carry on his back, and those are rapidly being depleted; he has taken to learning the sword and lance, but is by no means expert.  A tendency towards impetuosity is doing him no good.

29) The Wheeler: In the last war, much the same as the Stuart, he was a general of light cavalry renowned for his raids behind enemy lines. But while the daring, slashing raids captured the imagination of his nation, his disinterest in following orders, love for frontal assaults and the laxity of discipline which seeps through his command doesn't endear him to a number of his peers. (Chief among these is the Forrest, whose disciplined nature finds no tolerance for the Wheeler's antics, and has publicly sworn that he'd rather be dead than serve with him again.) Following the conflict, the Wheeler entered politics and gained high posts, and wrote several popular books of his adventures. Now, thirty years later, it's a new war, and the luster of his fame -- that, and that he's one of the last generals from the old war still fit for it -- has led him to be appointed commander of the national cavalry.

30) The Roosevelt: Sickly as a boy and home tutored in consequence, the young aristocrat grimly pushed himself to be an outdoorsman, building up his stamina with a stern regimen of physical training. While an excellent scholar, a life of letters simply bores the Roosevelt, and he'd rather be out hunting or exploring. Still, a man of his station accepts all duties presented to him, and he's had a series of ministerial posts ... although his enemies claim that it's more a matter of boundless ambition than disinterested service. But now! Now there's a war! And to be a real man, a man must fight! The Roosevelt secured a general's commission, gathered a unit full of fellow aristocrats and riders from his estates. His command -- backed by his money -- has the best of everything, but it's yet to be seen whether his impetuosity and self-confidence will win battles.

Tidbits II: We Were Gamers Once, And Young ...

Spring 1979: While I’d been GMing solo sessions with my younger brother Mike since the previous year, my first actual campaign started later.  I didn’t start keeping my famously insanely detailed records until March of 1981.  But the timeline involved my high school classmate Laurey starting school at UMass-Amherst at the end of January 1979, and shortly thereafter I visited her out there, and we and our fellow high school classmate Marilyn got into a startup Empire of the Petal Throne game GMed by the guy across the hall from Laurey.  So ... I’m thinking this couldn’t be earlier than May 1979, the point where Laurey and Marilyn would be back home in Plymouth County for the summer.

I'd picked up City State of the Invincible Overlord and the Judges Guild core Wilderlands package; that's what I used to start.  Right from the beginning, though, I wasn't satisfied with the dungeon fantasy flavor of Random Stuff Randomly Strewn, or with the Wilderlands/JRRT standard of oases of high civilization in the middle of howling wildernesses, with orc hordes in bowshot of every town's walls.  The pen went flying fast.  (I still use the Wilderland maps as the underlying basis for my world, even heavily edited, but only out of decades of inertia; I'd create my own if starting from scratch.)

The dramatis personae, in no particular order.

My first players were high school classmates of mine: Laurey, Mal and Jackie were in my graduating class, Rick was in the next one, and we'd all been in the chorus together.  My younger brother Mike (an avid sword-and-planet reader who was a class behind Rick) made the fifth player.  Mike played Korak, a barbarian firmly in the Conan mode and with a Conanesque future; Rick played Valthor, a more Norse-style barbarian; Jackie played Alexandra the priestess; Laurey played Seka the courtesan-mage; and Marilyn played Linden the stick jock.  Classic Howard/Leiber style early RPG play, really, that was 70s gaming for you. (This also set a significant pattern for my whole gaming career; note that this was a majority-female group.  Save for a single semester at my first college's gaming club's sessions, I would never not have at least one woman at my table.  That was decidedly NOT 70s gaming standard, and it was a while before I realized that this was not merely unusual but highly so.)

I wish I remembered what the first adventure was.  (Likely it was pedestrian enough by my present-day standards that I'd cringe in retrospect.)  I do remember that I set the table with the weary party, walking on a dust-clouded road, heading for the great gate of one of the mightiest cities ever founded ...  I ran a couple of the JG published scenarios early on -- Dark Tower, Thieves of Badabaskor -- as well as a homebrew dungeon or two, and the CSO remained the home base of the party for a couple of years.

Early on, though, I got geopolitical, but that's a tale for another time ...

* * * * * * * * * *

The crew shook out fairly fast.  Mike, Rick and Laurey were in my campaigns for years, but Jackie was my first encounter with the Gamer Girlfriend stereotype; she played pretty much because the rest of us were, and she dropped the hobby like a hot potato when she and Rick split up soon after.  Marilyn was the root cause for my abandonment of random gen and journey to variant homebrew; she hated playing anything but wizards, went along only grudgingly with the STR 18 DEX 16 fighter-type she rolled up (unfortunately, I hadn't yet wrapped my head around RAW being a suggestion, not a mandate, and I cajoled her unwillingly into it), and ditched her for greener pastures soon enough.  She was only an intermittent player thereafter.  

That being said, our gang was heavily dominated by graduates from Silver Lake.  Of my first fifteen players only four weren’t high school classmates of mine: the aforementioned EPT GM and another UMass player of his (both of whom lived in the Boston area), and Rick’s martial arts teacher and his wife.  We wound up playing a lot of our games in the teacher’s home through to the end of 1981.

By 1982, Laurey and I fell out over my dating my future first wife, and Rick went career Navy  around the same time.  Mike was an occasional player for years to come, and was a regular as late as 1987; his final curtain call was in 1989, at a massive run that involved seventeen past and then-present players, and I needed two assistant GMs just to handle it.

It's odd how this underscores the longevity of my current group.  My wife and another player, Todd, have been gaming with me since 2003, and they're the youngsters of the bunch.  Andrew's been gaming with me with some breaks since 1990.  Dave's been gaming with me (with likewise some breaks) since 1987.

 But that, too, is a tale for another time ...

Tidbits: The Old Geezer OD&D Challenge

Eh, I've written enough huge rants lately.  Herewith some shorter musings:

There's a longtime forums poster who's gone by the names of "Old Geezer" and "Gronan of Simmerya."  As it happens, as a teenager he was one of Gary Gygax's earliest players, active in D&D before its publication, and furthermore he was one of M.A.R. Barker's early players, active in Empire of the Petal Throne before its publication.  He's been an invaluable fellow in discussions of gaming history and How It All Began. 

In one thread, Old Geezer opined that his biggest regret about OD&D was the lack of morale rules.  This led me to contemplate what my biggest regret was, and what -- had I been standing over Gary Gygax's shoulder and murmuring, "Dude, you really need to write this in" -- I'd have wanted to see in those rules.  

Caveat: we're talking first gen RPG, 1974; we're leaving Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, GD&H etc out.  The same publishing constraints apply, so I might be able to talk them into bumping the first or third books up a single sheet of paper (= 4 pages), and that's it.  Also, no massive rules rewrite; I'd love to have said "skill system," and that could've fit, but that'd mean having to redo most of the first book.  So ... for what might I have asked EGG?  And this is what I responded:

* * * * * * * * *

For my own part, while I would've wanted a complete overhaul in tone, the fact is that whatever we made of the game, it was written as a wargame for wargamers.  It's not that Gygax screwed up: it's that neither he nor anyone else knew any different then.  Yet.  I could think of a lot better use for a number of those pages than exacting rules for building and manning castles, but in 1973, they hadn't.

As I said, I'd have loved for there to have been a skill system rather than class/level, but that would've been a completely different set of rules.  So given my caveats, my choices would boil down to:

1) Forget alignment.  Completely.  Absolutely.  If there was one rule that had a poisonous, pernicious, lasting and idiotic sway over the hobby, this was it.  Alignment could without a drop of angst have been left out of D&D from the start, and at any time thereafter.  (The enduring irony of the protagonist of the books contributing most to the 70s Law/Chaos zeitgeist being a worshiper of Chaos invariably working for Law, something a lot of DMs would never permit, hasn't escaped me.)  That sucks up a whole page: we can use it writing a Rogue class.

2) The bigger single rule change, though, would be surprisingly simple: fixed hit points.  Something easy, say, HP = CON + 2 or 3/level?  IMHO, the most serious bar to roleplaying (vs wargaming) is that low-level OD&D characters had the survivability of chum in the water.  Make them likely to last past the first session, and there's incentive to invest in them.  Likewise, ditch random chargen.  Use some manner of fixed system.

3) We can do SOMEthing about the tone, though.  "Warriors," not "fighting-men."  "Wizards" or "sorcerers," not "magic-users."  Take the language out of the paradigm that presumes all adventurers are male, and the only women out there are "witches" or seductresses set in opposition to the pure Galahads.  (See p. 27, pfft.)  Ditch the notion of a "Caller" in the example of play and use real character names, with different people having turns.

[2022 edit: At the time of my original post, I hadn't seen the set of OSR rules called Lamentations of the Flame Princess.  It had a "Specialist" class (what they called thief/rogue, basically), listing nine skills -- Architecture, Bushcraft, Climb, Languages, Search, Sleight of Hand, Sneak Attack, Stealth and Tinker -- and conferring 4 points at startup and +2/level to allocate among them as the player saw fit.  The result was that (say) as a 1st level Specialist, you could choose to have 2 pts in Stealth and 2 pts in Search, and you'd succeed on a roll of 1-2 on a d6 in either.  Rotten percentage chance, but it's a terribly clean and workable mechanic.  That would've worked just as well in OD&D.  Call this (4).]

Exotic Settings: Lohvian Cuisine (II)

The second part of the setting information I have for Loh is the cuisine writeup.  As I've mentioned before, serving yourself a helping of Wikipedia is just dandy for setting detail, and what's listed below is mostly from the respective articles on Malay and Indonesian cuisine.  Bon appetit!

"I'm tellin' ya, it's made with orc meat!

 Food is *never* eaten with the left hand.  Chefs pay attention to the fragrance of dishes, adding floral and herbal essences to produce tantalizing odors.  These powerful essences – sometimes only one drop is needed – are sold by apothecaries.

Elements: Common ones include nasilemak (coconut rice) often used as a base.  Other standard bases include meats stewed with thick gravy, seafood seasoned with turmeric, spicy noodle dishes, selaika (= peanut butter), serikaya (coconut jam).  Channa is the foundational fried flatbread; it looks like a crepe, spread out until paper thin usually by "tossing" it on a flat surface, and gathered into a long rope-like mass. This "rope" is then wound into a knot or spiral and flattened.  It is usually served with a vegetable- or meat-based curry, or used to eat a thick stew, and is also commonly cooked with cheese, onions, red beans, chocolate, mushrooms or eggs.

Condiments: coconut milk, lime juice, plum vinegar

    belacan (sauce with chili peppers, shallots, garlic, fermented prawn paste)
    sambalado (green chili blended with garlic, shallot, tomato, lime juice, salt, then sauteed with oil to make a reddish paste or relish)
    goreng (fried shallot, red chili pepper, shrimp paste, salt, sauteed in coconut oil)
    petai (chili, garlic, shallot, sugar, salt, crushed fried peanuts, sauteed in light oil; used for chicken dishes)
    terasi (relish made of cucumber, cabbage, shallot, vinegar and pineapple)
    kerisik (toasted and salted coconut shreds, appears dark brown)

    curries (ariaya = chicken, aridagi = prawn, arikambi = mutton, ariika = fish, arikuda = bean)

Fruits: lychee, jackfruit, tamarind,

Spices: lemongrass, basil, nutmeg, turmeric, ginger, mustard seeds, fenugreek, galangal, pepper, cardamom, clove, cinnamon, coriander, anise – all traditionally stone ground.  

    dasar (shallot, garlic, coriander, lemongrass; used with so-called “white” dishes)
    mera (red chili pepper, shallot, tomato, coconut sugar, salt; used with “red” dishes)
    kunin (shallot, garlic, turmeric, coriander, ginger, black pepper; used with “yellow” dishes)
    lawar (orange chili pepper, anise, turmeric, ginger; used with “orange” dishes)

Meats: Fish, prawns, goat, lamb, chicken

Drinks: Tea is often served with ginger, jasmine (Vydra) or other floral elements, or coconut milk

    beras (rice beer)
    dedén (potent drink made from seared cane sugar, thick, brownish, very intoxicating)
    charaya (potent 90-proof drink distilled from rice wine)
    goribon (coconut palm wine, milky white)
    hanaza (distilled 60 proof rice brandy)
    inlichi (low alcohol lychee wine)
    kinomol (pale green rice wine, with different types of rice going into different blends)
    oshikun (weak millet beer, sometimes flavored with peanut or hazelnut)
    ruoma (plum wine)
    traitha (pomegranate wine)
    uladi (ginger wine, flavored with citrus; often cut with water to make a refreshing summer drink)
    zivani (distilled and stiff plum brandy, lavender colored)

Dishes:

    ambaka (charcoal-grilled chicken marinated in coconut oil and peanut sauce, with a spice rub before)

    acari (pickled vegetables and fruit with dried chili, peanuts and spices)

    ammasak (chicken casserole with sambalado and noodles, sometimes spiced with clove or anise)

    angangi (chicken slices simmered in a tomato base with shallot, onion, garlic, galangal, pepper, and lime)

    arisa (porridge/dumpling made from coarse-ground millet, mixed with seasoned minced meat)

    begedil (rice noodles dressed in a gravy made from belecan, tamarind, cucumber and dried shrimp)

    bobotin (spiced minced meat mixed with scrambled eggs)

    gulai (goat stew with unripe fruit, turmeric, pepper, ginger, lemongrass and coconut milk)

    kankang (bean stew served with cumin, onion, garlic, lemon juice and other optional ingredients)

    kwetia (stirfried rice noodles with pork and spices)

    laksa (spicy chicken/fish noodle soup)

    maridzo (savory goat- or mutton stew made with raisins, slivers of fish fried in sugared sauce, various vegetables, and heavily spiced)

    mikari (millet noodles with spicy curry soup)

    nasibriyan (saffron rice with meat-and-vegetable curry)

    nasikato (rice, minced fried chicken, belacan, with garlic, ginger, shallow, scallion, lime juice and/or vinegar as secondary ingredients, served in savory leaves)

    tabak (channa formed into a spiraled pyramid, filled with meat, onion and spices, then deep fried)

    urlambu (savory rice porridge made with a mixture of lemongrass and meat/veggie slivers, usually eaten communally)

Desserts:

    burketan (brown rice porridge with coconut milk and sugar)

    chendol (iced thick drink containing nokdumu, coconut milk, rice flour and dried fruit)

    cucimul (thicker channa, sweetened with sugar, served with jam)

    kaludol (minced fruit, rice flour, coconut milk)

    melhdoá (thick fruit pudding, custard-consistency and served hot)

    neninél (fruit sliced very thin and layered with perfumed sugar and spices over fine pastry sheets.  Sometimes served with dreamdrowse or moondust between the layers as well)

    nokdumu (lemongrass jelly, comes out black or dark green)

Street foods:

    alèl (thin slices of meat smeared with hot spices and seed paste, then wrapped in leaves and baked in the ashes of a slow fire)

    ambuya (sticky ball of sago or tapioca starch, alternately dipped into a spicy/sour gravy and a tomato base)

    ampla (cracker made from river fish – usually mackerel – rice starch and seasonings, and deep fried)

    lekor (savory fish cake)

    lemang (rice, jackfruit and coconut milk cooked in a hollowed bamboo stick)

    mélmél (fried rice kernels mixed with salt and spices, and served in little rice paper cones. Some vendors insert a tiny metal statue, coins and other “favors” into the mix for children)

    murtabak (channa stuffed with curry gravy)

    otakota (grilled fish cake made of ground fish meat mixed with tapioca starch and spices: ginger, turmeric, galangal, nutmeg, pepper, cardamom, tamarind)