A Question of Scale

In my last post, in which I gushed over the Swords & Wizardry Legion Pack (SWLP), I nitpicked about the scale of the map provided on the back of the folder that comes with the pack. I still maintain that 50 miles per hex is WAY too big, especially if this packet is intended for use as an introduction to FRPGs. Now, as an experienced Referee, I might want to erase all the villages and towns and then focus in on one 50 mile hex to make it my own, but such an exercise makes the map provided rather useless.

While still in full-on Gamer ADD mode because of this gorgeous little package, I stumbled across this map via the internet:

This, I believe, comes from the Necromancer Games adventure Shades of Gray designed for 3e. Note two things:

1. It depicts part of the map provided with the SWLP.
2. According to the scale of this map the distance between Darnagal and Potter's Field is about 50 miles.

According to the map provided with SWLP, the distance between these two towns/villages is around 6 hexes or 300 miles. That translates into travel times of just less than a week on the older map to a travel time of over a month on the SWLP map.

To put this in context, I looked up my old stomping ground on Google Maps and planned a trip from the Boston Convention Center in downtown Boston to Fenway Park. This morning, the fastest route was 7.7 miles. If we did to Boston what Frog God Games has done to their world, that distance would now be 46.2 miles. A trip of about 17 minutes is ballooned to a trip of over an hour. At that distance, the Boston Red Sox really aren't in Boston anymore.

I have no issue with Frog God Games trying to make their world much bigger than what it has been is the past, but not only does it make the map provided in the SWLP useless, it also radically changes the material previously provided by Necromancer Games and Frog God Games. If I ever wanted to run Shades of Gray, for example, I would either have to ditch the map from the SWLP or re-write significant portions of the adventure to fit the new scale.

Or, as I mentioned in my previous post, I can just drop the '0' from the '50' and use the map as it was originally designed.

I Like Things Black & White

It is ironic, really, that under normal circumstances “life” would be intruding upon my “RPG time” but now that my circumstances are anything but normal, “RPG time” seems to want to intrude upon “life.” That I am writing this at all is an indication that my less than normal circumstances are less dire, but I certainly do not have the time to make this a habit, yet.

There are several things that have wormed their way into my attention: Dwimmermount, Basic 5e, various controversies and a survey by Frog God games asking me for my opinion on whether or not they should go full color or not. All of these have made me feel nostalgic and I have occasionally pursued the blogverse. Therefore, I found a nice little piece at Hack & Slash On the Visual History of Illithid that allows me to, somewhat, easily address the last of these issues.

You will find an interesting comparison of Githyanki art by Russ Nicholson:

and Wayne Reynolds:

Whereas one can lose yourself in the Nicholson piece, the Reynolds piece is a bit, well, boring. This, despite all its cool color, detail and action.

Given Frog God Games’ interest in going Full Color, I got to thinking. I found myself wondering why I find that the static pose and details are better in Reynolds than in Nicholson, but I want to look at the Nicholson art, not Reynolds. So I decided to see if it was the color that got in the way (BTW, for a more philosophic take on my opinion about F/C vs BW art look here). So I did a little Photoshop on Reynolds and found this:

Yes, the color did get in the way. Suddenly, here is an illustration that seems to move. It draws me in and I am trying to fill in details of why, where, what and how. I am sold.

Black & White is what dreams and fantasy are made of.

An Example of a Story Emerging from Play Part 3

When Hamlen died and the party wanted to investigate ways of getting him raised, the party demonstrated a considerable amount of anti-elf prejudice. This afforded me an opportunity to explore the ways of the elves (what they think about bane weapons, etc.) and thus scratch an itch for Ahkmed's player. One way I intended to do this was have the Winter Queen bound to a bane weapon and the Winter King obsessed with finding a way to get her out.

When this campaign began, it was an experiment. I had no idea if a bunch of 3.5 players would be at all interested in playing the game in an old school style using a retrocloned ruleset. I therefore was not particularly interested in spending a lot of time creating a sandbox. I therefore placed Lost Colonies on one of the maps from the Wilderlands by Judges Guild. It has served me very well — it is sketchy enough to allow me to make the world my own but filled with enough detail to fire the imagination.

One of the few places where elves are dominant on the map I chose to use had a little blurb about the locals being very interested in finding out why undead were coming out of the ocean. I figured that the Winter King's obsession had gotten so bad that his own experiments were the reason for the undead incursion against his own kind.

About this time I had also picked up Frog God Games' Hex Crawl Chronicles: Valley of the Hawks. I have to admit, I have been hesitant to pick up anything they've done because I was never much impressed by any Necromancer Games product other than some of their Judges Guild conversions. Since the Hex Crawl Chronicles seemed to ape those conversions, however, I decided to pick this up (well worth the money, by the way).

Therein, the elves of the valley were divided between Summer and Winter courts. What inspired me, however, was that all of the Winter Elves were wights. This got me thinking about the life-cycle of the elf.

If one assumes that an elf's lifespan is measured in centuries and that they have something akin to a vegan diet (where fruits, leaves, saps etc. can be harvested without killing the source) than death would be virtually unknown culturally and mythically. Since it would be such a rare occurrence (as opposed to its daily presence in human life), there wold be no real need to explain it or incorporate it into the cultural/mythic landscape.

Elves are mortal, however. This mortality manifests as an inability to extract nutrients from food commonly consumed by elves. Thus, as the elf grows older, their diet becomes more and more exotic (possibly giving rise to the elven adventurer). When the diet of an elf results in the death of another creature (as in meat), they become a member of the Winter Court. Thus, the Summer Court is almost entirely made up of younger elves and the Winter Court is almost entirely made up of older elves.

Eventually, the elven system can no longer gain sustenance from food. This would be the natural end of the life cycle; however, since elves do not intimately know or understand death (outside of battle) they tend to fear it. Thus, they have spent centuries figuring out ways to cheat it. For example, many in the Winter Court have willingly become wights — they feed on the very life essence of other beings.

More importantly, the Bane weapons were one of these ways to cheat death. Elves of a certain age willingly had their souls tied to these weapons in an attempt to bring peace to the races in a kind of magical detente. Unfortunately, separated from their bodies, the elves went into a kind of torpor. The only way to wake was to find someone willing to give up their own will and allow the elf to act in and through the wielder of the weapon (as Ahkmed has done). In addition, the dwarves abused the bane weapons and brought corruption and death to the races instead of peace.

The Winter King is the oldest living elf. He has cheated death over and over again in a myriad of ways — including some that are truly heinous. He has made and broken deals with demons. He has killed innocents by the thousands. He is unwilling to die until he frees the Winter Queen from her torpor.

As a result of my players' interpretation of events, his latest cheat has had the unintended consequence of infecting others in the Winter court. While he is somewhat content to live as a half-shadow, he fears that once the Winter Court succumbs, it will affect elven kind as a whole. Currently, he is racing against time to find a way to work around this affliction. He has yet to find a cure.