Guns & SWCL (St. Haralmbos the Hieromartyr)

Yesterday was the Feast of St. Haralambos, also known as the man who would not die. He was a 3rd century priest when he was arrested at the age of 103 or 113 depending on the source. He was subjected to multiple tortures: flesh stripped from his skin, dragged by horses, iron spikes driven into his flesh, flames, etc. He not only endured it all, but miracles poured forth from him convincing many who witnessed these things to become Christian. Admittedly, I struggled to find a way to apply St. Haralambos’ story to RPGs.

Yesterday was also a very busy day for me, so in the end a gave up and let my Saintly Saturday post pass. Then, as I was going to sleep, a thought came to me about Damage Resistance. This then led me to think about my own attempts to use it (despite my negative experiences with it while playing 3.5) in an attempt to remedy D&D’s weakness for simulating why armor disappeared from the battlefield once guns were introduced. I playtested DR and guns and it was not fun.

The impetus for this is a campaign that keeps boiling up every now and then as a consequence of meditating upon the lives of the saints: a fantasy version of Alaska.

As folks who have been reading this blog for the past several months know, my Gamer ADD has been surprisingly focused upon SWCL its possibilities. I have been pleasantly surprised by how forcing oneself into the minimalism of SWCL how easy it is to express really complicated ideas and worlds.

So, my tired, Haralambos-addled brain started to wonder what would happen if I were to apply SWCL’s minimalism to guns in an attempt to emulate the transition away from armor that happened when guns became prevalent?

The problem is Armor Class. D&D’s combat is all about over-coming armor and guns made armor largely irrelevant. Thus, there has to be a minimalist way that guns can ignore AC. As far as I am concerned, the simplest mechanic to use would be the Save.

In other words, guns would operate much in the same way that a Magic Wand works in SWCL:

Magic Wand: cast one 1st level magic-user spell (chosen by referee), 3 times per day.

The one 1st level spell that does damage is Magic Missile:

Magic Missile:
Range: 250 Duration: Instant.
A magic dart unerringly strikes a single target for 1d6 damage.

This, of course, bears little resemblance to a muzzleloader: the range is off as well as the accuracy; however, this allows for some fiddling to make this "Magic Wand" function more like an 18th century musket or pistol.

SWCL gives bows a Range of 100 ft. Of course, this seems historically inaccurate. An English Longbow probably had a range of around 400 yards. Two things to remember, however:

• Bowmen did not fire at individual targets in battle, they fired at an area in volleys.
• The Range given in SWCL can be interpreted to be either short range or point blank range and therefore its effective ability to target individuals could be increased to upwards of 300 ft. which seems reasonable given combat conditions.

Napoleonic era tactics had 100 yards as the outside effective range for a volley of musket fire. This would place an effective SWCL range for targeting individuals at 25ft. Given the classic image of the 18th century duel, this sounds fairly reasonable.

Muzzleloaders are infamously inaccurate, so targets should be able to make a Save in order to avoid damage.

In terms of frequency (given the short range and the Save) and given the time to reload, it could be ruled that a gun may be used once per combat.

Thus, what we are left with is the following:

Muzzleloader:
Range: 25 Duration: Instant.
A gun that may be fired once per combat. Target must make a Save or take 1d6 damage.

Meditating on Firearms in D&D

So, following up on my recent thoughts about firearms, here are some simple concepts that could accompany the idea that the main defense against firearms is not armor but saving throws.

All firearms have three ranges:

• Short: full damage, save for half-damage
• Medium: full damage, save for no damage
• Long: half-damage, save for no damage

Cover (and the Referee gets to decide what is Cover and what is not) makes all ranges into Long Range.

Therefore, there are two main ways to modify how aspects of a gun function: adjust the Range or adjust Cover. This allows a huge variety of mechanical ways to express various “tech-levels,” barrel lengths, calibers, accessaries, etc. For example:

• Shortening or lengthening ranges is an easy way to express the relative effectiveness of a gun. A muzzle-loader would have a much smaller range increments than a 21st century sniper rifle.
• Different saving throws (if one uses the saving throws from B/X, LL etc. instead of the “one-size fits all” approach of S&W) can be assigned to different calibers. For example: "Poison or Death" could be used for the smaller end (.32 or 9mm) and "Breath Attacks" could be used for the higher end (.50 cal) and/or shot guns.
• Armor Piercing rounds could reduce Cover to Medium Range
• Scopes could reduce ranges to Short and Medium (Medium = Short, Long = Medium)
• Sci-fi weapons like plasma guns could only have a Short Range (however long the Referee wanted the range of a plasma gun to be).
• etc.

Let the world building commence!

Saintly Saturday: St. Vladimir, Equal-to-the-Apostles of Kiev

Today is the Feast of St. Vladimir of Kiev who is given the moniker Equal-to-the-Apostles, which is given to those saints that aren’t normally seen as apostles (such as monarchs and women), but whose life declared the Gospel of Christ in such a way that led many to baptism. In the case of St. Vladimir, the Rus followed their monarch to Christianity.

Born Volodimir and a pagan, St. Vladimir was not unfamiliar with Christianity as the grandson of St. Olga. Nevertheless, there are many histories of how brutal Volodimir was. For nine years he reigned in Kiev before he got involved in a civil war within the Byzantine Empire. He came out of that experience as a baptized Christian, with a marriage to the Emperor’s Daughter Anna and with the title Tsar (meaning Caesar).

Nonetheless, he diligently spread the Christian faith and ordered idols (which he had made of the pagan gods he once worshipped) scourged, dragged through the city and thrown into the Dnieper River. The history of the Russian people as Orthodox Christians in many ways begins with St. Vladimir. He died from illness in A.D. 1015.

One of the primary gods that Volodimir famously made an idol of silver and gold for (one which he shortly thereafter destroyed) depicted what could crudely be described as the Slavic version of Thor — Perun. As the highest god in the Slavic pantheon, Perun was understood to be the god of thunder and lightening. Unlike Thor, however, he did not have a slavic version of Mjolnir. Rather, he had a bow with which he shot “thunderbolt stones” which could be found buried in the earth. Weapons and devices made of these thunderbolt stones were believed to provide protection from various calamities such as bad luck, evil magic, disease and (of course) lightening.

Accepting the premise that Perun was, in fact, just an idol made by human beings to explain natural phenomena, these “thunderbolt stones” must have a different origin. Indeed, according to modern science, they are fulgurites and belemnites. In context of a FRPG, this opens up the door to some good old fashioned science fiction/fantasy mash-up world-building. In ancient times, for example, there could have been a massive war between aliens and what are popularly known as “the ancients.” Artifacts from this era litter the land. One could even tie in the existence of magic to this event: thunderbolt stones are the source of all arcane magic in the world.

This, of course, leads to the possibility of introducing things like “Thunderbolt Guns” into the game. As I have mused in the past, D&D doesn’t do firearms very well. This is because its combat premise (better armor makes you harder “to hit”) does not reflect what happened historically once firearms are introduced. The logic of D&D would assume that plate mail would still be a viable option for soldiers on the battlefield because they wouldn’t get hit as often with bullets as someone who was simply wearing combat fatigues.

I have yet to see any house rule that allows for guns that completely satisfies me. I did play test the Leather = DR1, Chain = DR2 and Plate = DR3 where guns get to ignore the DR. It just didn’t flow like I hoped it would. The implied tactical choice wasn’t as interesting as I hoped and in the end the extra mechanic just slowed things down enough that I am not really interested in playing with that house rule any more.

Thus, I am still interested to see if there is a simple system that can help introduce guns into D&D that can easily emulate the tactical realities of the 18th century when armor had mostly disappeared from the battlefield because firearms happened.

The idea of Thunderbolt Stones being the source of arcane magic in a FRPG world, the old musings of Aos at The Metal Earth as well as my recent delving into the world of Swords & Wizardry Light got me thinking on a completely different tangent: why not treat firearms like fireballs?

Armor in all its forms is ineffectual against guns. Thus, on average, someone using a gun only needs to hit an AC 9 to hit your average guy clad in plate mail; however, just like when that same plate mail-clad guy gets hit with a fireball or dragon’s breath or a charm person spell, he gets a saving throw. Depending upon the type, range and caliber of the weapon this save could be for half-damage or no damage at all. For example, due to the inaccuracy of muzzle-loaded firearms, anything beyond point blank range might be a save for no damage, but anything close-up would at least do half.

I think this ticks all the boxes for me: it doesn’t radically mess with the D&D combat system, it uses extant mechanics everyone is familiar with, it doesn’t over power guns and yet emulates why on a field full of guns no one bothers to wear any armor.

Saintly Saturday: St. Lazarus and St. Tikhon

I must admit that I am torn in several directions today. While many of you are enjoying Easter weekend, I am readying myself for the marathon that is the Orthodox Christian Holy Week. Blogging will be spotty this coming week, if I manage to get in front of the computer at all. Thus today is going to be a bit of a smorgasbord.

Saturday of St. Lazarus

As I noted last year, the Saturday before Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Calendar celebrates St. Lazarus, the Friend of Christ who is called back from the tomb four days dead. Though I mentioned several things from his life, one particularly interesting detail from his hagiography that I did not note last year is that he never smiled after being brought back to life. There is a clue as to why in one of the hymns sung during the week leading up to Lazarus Saturday:

Lazarus is now two days in the tomb; he sees the dead of all the ages. There he has witnessed strange horrors, a numberless throng held fast by the bonds of Hades. Thus his sisters lament bitterly as they look on his tomb. But Christ comes to bring His friend to life, that a hymn may be raised by all in unison: "Blessed are You, O Savior, have mercy on us."

In other words, what he saw was so harrowing that it marked him for life. I will grant, this is before Christ Himself went down into Hades to break open the brass gates and preach the Kingdom to the dead, but it still is a very interesting image, particularly for those whose campaign worlds do not have (yet) Christ or a Christ-analogue.

For those who have qualms about Raise Dead and its affects upon their campaign world, the story of Lazarus gives a fascinating limiting factor — those that come back aren’t quite the same. Depending on how severe these consequences, a Referee could assign physical change (loss of Con, for example) or mental change (please roll on the insanity table, please). Such consequences would make some players think twice about using Raise Dead on their favorite characters.

St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and Enlightener of North America

Born in 1865, in the Russian region of Pskov, St. Tikhon was a monk who became bishop of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands at the end of the 19th century. In 1900 his see was extended to include all of North America. He did much for the Orthodox Christians across the United States, including the consecration and establishment of several Churches, including St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York and St. Nicholas Church in Brooklyn.

In 1917 he was elected as Patriarch of Moscow, just as the Bolshevik Revolution was about to sweep across Russia. St. Tikhon stood steadfast in the faith despite the utter destruction that followed in the wake of the communist revolution. He fell ill in 1924 and died today in 1925. Due to his sufferings, he is also considered a Confessor.

It seems that the saints are insistent that I continue to work on my campaign based on a fantasy version of 18th century Alaska. Last week, I differentiated different types of magic in terms of pseudo-science. I mentioned that found magic would likely be alien technology.

Colonial powers normally fight over territory not just for land, but for the riches that the land provides. Alaska is famous for both its gold and its oil; however, neither had been discovered until later into the 19th century. For the purposes of having something for Ruthenia and Albion to fight over, I think an interesting twist might be akin to a post earlier this week by Desert Scribe over at Super Galactic Dreadnaught — The Starship as Megadungeon.

As I mentioned in the comments, this is an idea that I have been trying to implement for years, having been deeply affected by Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Therefore I have a plan: in a remote region of fantasy-Alaska, there is a valley created by the crash of a huge space ship. Much of the regional conflict is centered around control of the valley and its access. Scattered throughout the region are also various escape pods and smaller vessels also involved in the crash.

One candidate for these aliens are the Tuniit/Tunijuat or maybe they were slaves of the aliens who controlled the ship. Regardless, I plan to have a huge spaceship as the tentpole megadungeon of the campaign.

For those that worry about mapping such a dungeon, I offer a solution. Being an old Traveller Fan, one of my favorite aspects of the Traveller universe were all the various war games that helped form what became known as the Third Imperium. Among these board games is Azhanti High Lightning which is a game about combat scenarios aboard a huge space dreadnaught. The beauty of this game is that it provides fourteen full color deck plans. Even better, GDW has it available as a .pdf!

Thus, all you need to do is figure out what kind nasties a group of adventurers will encounter therein, once they sneak by whatever fortification is protecting the valley (depending, of course on whether or not they are aligned to whoever happens to control said fort at the time).

Saintly Saturday: St. Innocent of Alaska

Today is the feast of St. Innocent of Alaska, also known as Equal-to-the-Apostles and Enlightener of Alaska. He was born in the Irkutsk region of Russia where he studied at seminary. He married, became a deacon and later a priest. When missionaries were needed to go to Alaska, he and his family volunteered.

After arriving in 1824, St. Innocent realized he had a gift for languages and shortly mastered six of the local dialects and even translated the Gospel according Matthew into the most wide-spread dialect — the Unagan of the Aleuts.

After his wife died, he was tonsured a monk and ordained as a bishop. Eventually he was elected as the Metropolitan of Moscow in 1867. He died 12 years later in 1879.

This marks the third Saintly Saturday post dedicated to various American saints who made their mark in Alaska. Each time, it has inspired me to work a little more on one of my Gamer ADD projects — a fantasy campaign world based upon this period of Alaska.

As I have stated before, I would likely use B/X or LL as my base rule set; however, due to the nature of the setting I would have to do some heavy house ruling. I thought I would take advantage and summarize some of the ones I have come up with so far:

Firearms

A fantasy setting set in 18th century frontier Alaska, unfortunately, needs to have firearms. Both colonial powers involved in this region of the world rely heavily on black powder. Therefore, I need to come up with a way to make them interesting without overpowering them; however, they will be much more expensive than standard weapons (I am thinking by a magnitude of around x10).

Armor

The main way I intend to simulate firearms is to have armor reduce damage rather than making a PC harder to hit. What is traditionally called AC will, in fact, be a target number based on a PC’s Dex score. Heavier armors reduce the maximum effective Dex score — plate armor will make you easier to hit, but tougher to damage.

Firearms don’t do any extra damage; however, they can ignore DR depending on the size of the weapon. This realistically simulates why armor eventually gets abandoned.

As per the B/X and LL rules there will be the three standard armor types:

• Leather — representing the hide-type armor favored by the Natives and cloth armor sometimes used by colonial regulars. DR=1; Max Dex = 15
• Chain — representing bone armor sometimes used by Natives and chain shirts sometimes worn by Albiones officers. DR=2; Max Dex = 12
• Plate — representing breastplate and grieves worn by both Ruthenian and Albiones officers and cavalry. DR=3; Max Dex = 9

At the moment, I am inclined to not include shields because they had largely fallen out of use by this time.

Alignment

Since this world does involve touchy subjects like colonialism, nativism and a missionary church, I am much inclined to dump the traditional D&D alignment system for one that harkens back to the days of Chainmail. In other words, there will be three different sides that PCs can choose to align themselves with — Ruthenia, with its claim to be the Third Rome and their close association with the Church (roughly akin to Lawful); Albion, with their claim to be the most powerful empire in the world, mostly due to their use of arcane science and possibly a few demon pacts along the way (roughly akin to Chaos); and the Natives who may or may not cooperate with the two colonial powers (roughly akin to Neutral).

Magic

Since this setting sits at the cusp of the industrial revolution, I want all magic to have a pseudo-science feel to it. Arcane spells are akin to devices powered by hellfire or bound demons. Divine spells are akin to objects powered by the breath of angels. Native magic will be akin to alchemy using the natural ingredients passed down through the generations. Found magic will most likely be ancient alien technology.

This may have some significant affects on how spells function. For example, I am inclined to have CLW function as it did it 0e — it takes one full turn to “cast.” Rather than being a miraculous healing during combat, it is the bandaging up with various medicines after combat.

Races

There will be humans only; however, that doesn’t mean I won’t be using the race-as-class abilities of demi-humans — they’ll just be recast as humans (see below).

Classes

I am seriously considering having different versions of each of the three core classes based on alignment. I say three because I don’t want to mess with the Thief. I am inclined against the class in the first place and (at least at the moment) can’t think of a good way to make it fit thematically.

Here are some initial thoughts:

Cleric

• Ruthenian Demonhunter — less emphasis on healing spells (see the implementation of CLW above) and more emphasis on fighting (leaves a lot of room for non-clergy PCs).
• Native Medicine Man — uses the druid spell list, representing local knowledge of natural phenomena and tricks. 
• Albiones Possessed — something akin to Stewart’s take on the anti-paladin

Magic User

• Ruthenian Haykar — a mad scientist-type that sees theology as the mother of sciences. Instead of a spell book, they would have several one-use devices that could then be repaired/reset.
• Native Windweaver — uses the illusionist spell list, representing an intimate knowledge of local hallucinogenic plants and techniques to mislead and obfuscate.
• Albiones Battle Mage — this is where I get to the use the elf race-as-class recast as a human playing with hellfire.

Fighter

The base fighter will be available to all alignments. There will be specialized versions, however:

• Ruthenian Grenadier — this is the dwarf recast as human. Grenadiers are basically the biggest and toughest infantry men used to fighting in the trenches and functioning as sappers during siege combat.
• Native Hunter — some version of the ranger (which one I have yet to decide).
• Albiones Musketeer — this is the halfling recast as human. These are soldiers imbued with hellfire in order to make them tougher and better marksmen (remember, Halflings get +1 with missile weapons). This also limits their potential (the reason they only get to go to 8th level).

Saintly Saturday: Synaxis of All Alaskan Saints

Today is the Synaxis of All Saints of Alaska (where Synaxis means gathering). On this day in 1794, Russian missionaries first set foot in Alaska. Today specifically remembers the two protomartyrs of America: St. Peter the Aleut (the first American martyr) and St. Juvenal (the first martyr on American soil). Those of you who have read this blog in the past may remember that I wrote about St. Juvenal a couple of months ago.

At that time, Gamer ADD caused me to start contemplating an FRPG setting based upon 18th century Alaska, where the colonial powers of Ruthenia and Albion vied for control over Alakshaq and the various native peoples. Here is another tremendously cool map for inspiration:

My preferred ruleset for this Gamer ADD-fueled endeavor is B/X (effectively emulated via LL). There is one major problem with this, however. While armor was still in limited use on 18th century battlefields (cavalry units still donned breast plates, for example), it was largely absent. The reason for this absence was the effectiveness of the most common weapon on 18th century battlefields — the gun.

For better or worse, D&D has never been very good at emulating the impact of the gun on combat. Even as armor technology has endeavored to literally stop bullets, soldiers on contemporary battlefields choose to go sans armor because the advantages in mobility and maneuverability outweigh the advantages of wearing armor.

As written, in D&D there are two basic mechanisms that can be used to try and emulate the effectiveness of guns: the "to hit" roll and the damage roll. In my opinion, neither works.

• If guns have a bonus to hit, it incentivizes heavy armor — the opposite of what happened historically.
• If guns get a bonus to damage it unrealistically inflates the damage done by guns. Question: which would you rather take a direct hit from, a flintlock gun or a sword? I am guessing that the vast majority of us would choose the gun over the sword because we would have a much better chance of surviving.

This means that if I want to use my preferred ruleset, I'd have to do some serious house rules. One possibility is to experiment with this idea, where armor = damage reduction. This way, guns could ignore certain amounts of that damage reduction. Thus, it can function as all other weapons do — the same "to hit" and same damage — while doing what guns historically did — render armor on the battlefield meaningless.

I'll end with a pair of questions:

• What is your favorite attempt at introducing guns to D&D?
• What is your favorite ruleset (preferably FRPG) for emulating guns?

Saintly Saturday: St. Juvenal

Today is the Feast of St. Juvenal, who was originally a mining engineer in Russia; however, when his wife died in 1791, he became a monk at a monastery in St. Petersburg. After three years, he was sent to Alaska. Yes. Alaska. We tend to forget that the Russians discovered Alaska in 1741 and had a permanent settlement on Kodiak Island by 1784.

St. Juvenal was an enthusiastic missionary and was very successful with the Yupik, especially the Chugach. Due in large part to his work, to this day Alaska has a larger Orthodox Christian population per capita than any other state in the U.S.

In 1796 he was martyred near the mouth of the Kuskokwim by a hunting party. No one is certain why St. Juvenal was murdered, but the natives later told St. Innocent of Alaska that St. Juvenal did not defend himself nor did he try to run away. Rather, he begged his murderers to repent. After beating him severely, they left him for dead. He got up and started to follow them, again, begging them to repent. They beat him again, sure that they killed him. But again, St. Juvenal came to his feet and cried out to them to repent. This repeated itself several times. Finally, the hunting party hacked the saint into pieces. Thus, he became the first Orthodox martyr on American soil.

Years ago, I worked with a woman who grew up in Alaska. She wrote and drew an indie comic book that I once owned but have long since misplaced during all the moves I have made over the years. The story took place in a fantasy world inspired by the mythology of the Inuit peoples of Alaska that she grew up surrounded by. [For those of you who are interested, I cannot pull the name of the book out of my mind, nor did a Google search refresh my memory. Sorry.]

I remember thinking at the time, that Alaska is an untapped resource of inspiration for those of us who play FRPGs. Reading up on St. Juvenal only reinforced this idea. It has all the markers of a classic sandbox. There is a vast, unexplored wilderness at the edge of an empire. There is a type of Keep on the Borderland at Kodiak Island where adventurers go out and encounter natives both friendly and hostile while trying to make the wilderness safe for civilization.

To boot, Inuit mythology has just as many cool monsters to harass our stalwart adventures as anything in our hobby. For example:

• Nennorluk — a sea monster of gigantic proportions with white fur on its back, ears as large as tents and capable of swallowing people whole.
• Mahaha — long-clawed cold demons.
• Taqriaqsuit — shadow people who live in a parallel dimension.
• Qallupilluk — sea-dwelling child snatchers.
• Inupasugjuk — giants of the frozen north.
• Tuniit — the original inhabitants of the land who might not be too bright, but are very strong.

If that isn't enough to whet your appetite, check out this fantastic site.

Unfortunately, I do not have the time, nor the players to justify working on such a campaign at the moment, but this is definitely one of those pseudo-historical campaigns I've always wanted to do. For those so inclined, here are a couple of beautiful maps to get you started: