Meditating on How I Play the Game

Having read JB’s thoughts on the matter and some of the rants that inspired his post, I want to share some of my thoughts, but not in a philosophical, ranty kind of way. Like others, I find the video that started off this whole series of posts to be rather a waste of time and largely mistaken. To explain how, I want to tell the stories of several seminal moments in my experience as someone who plays RPGs:

Moment the First

When I was a wee high-school baby, I was introduced through some of my older friends to a cigarette smoking college student who wanted to start running a D&D campaign. The premise was simple. He showed us a map of where our characters were and asked us what we wanted to do. I remember how eye-opening it was to be at the steering wheel of the campaign: “You mean this whole campaign can be about us trying to hunt down and kill that blue dragon you told us about!? YES!” And, indeed that was the entirety of the campaign.

It was also the first and last time I played a Chaotic Evil character. While I remember the campaign fondly, I do not remember my fellow players that way. Since all the players knew my character was Chaotic Evil (and therefore a threat, although what kind of danger they expected out of a 1st level Illusionist, I don’t know) and therefore they were always trying to kill my character. The DM, however, always had my back. Even when I blatantly explained how my actions were rather Chaotic and Evil, he always made the players explain to him how their characters would know. When they failed (because I was VERY careful that my actions could be interpreted as helpful) the DM would disallow every attempt to kill me off.

In other words, the DM did a really good job of being a DM. He gave us a bunch of freedom to do whatever we wanted within his world, but very strictly enforced parameters around that freedom. There were certain things that were just not going to happen (like using player knowledge to screw with other players at the table). This actually made the freedom we had as players more valuable. For example, I knew I could get away with certain CE-like acts because the DM made sure that players couldn’t abuse their player knowledge and, in a way, I think he enjoyed how much I toed the line so that being CE never actually overtly hurt the party.

Moment the Second

Like many players in the 90s I played a lot of White Wolf products, and believe it or not I really appreciated these games. They actually taught me a lot about how to play a game. When my friends approached me about playing Vampire for the first time, for some odd reason they wanted me to be the…was it Storyteller? is that what they called the Referee/DM/GM? The reason I say odd, is because I rarely sat in the DM’s chair when we played. In retrospect, it might have been the few times I ran Call of Cthulhu one-shots that inspired them to ask me to take the reigns of a horror-themed RPG.

If I am honest, I rather didn’t waste a lot of time reading up on “how to play” essays littered throughout the industry. I learned by doing and this was the first real opportunity I had to put into practice what I had learned from my experience in Moment the First. I presented my players with a world: Boston. I informed them of that world through their various clans and then dropped a McGuffin into the whole mess where everybody wanted the McGuffin for different reasons. I then allowed my players to do what they wanted to do (within the parameters set by the game and by the setting).

In many ways, it was one of the more thoroughly satisfying campaigns I have ever been a part of, because I was surprised every time we played. My players refused to be predictable and as a consequence, my world had to react in ways I never imagined. It all culminated in a rousing three-way battle in the middle of Cambridge which left the players catching their breath in disbelief that they had actually survived. The best part: one of the players decided that it was in the best interest of everybody that the McGuffin be destroyed. I remember the player asking me if he could talk to me in private, because he wasn’t really sure that what he wanted to do was allowed. When I said, “Sure, why not?” I saw in him myself when that cigarette smoking DM asked our party what we wanted do to. He suddenly realized how much power he had over his own character and the campaign. The reaction around the table when the McGuffin shattered to pieces was one of the best moments I have ever had at an RPG table. I wasn’t responsible for that reaction, but I set up the freedom and the parameters for its possibility. I have been trying to duplicate this atmosphere for my players ever since and every campaign has a moment just like this, where my world interacts with a group of players that have taken the reigns of the campaign to create something that I could never manufacture on my own, even if I tried.

Moment the Third

In another White Wolf campaign, the group I played with decided to give Mage a try. We all toiled over character creation and painstakingly crafted the characters we all thought we wanted to play. Then our Storyteller? Referee? did something rather surprising that we all found shockingly fun: once he had introduced the fundamentals of the campaign, he handed us our characters’ counter-parts in the Technocracy. I ended up with a chick in a wheelchair. At first we all were not very happy, but then as we started to play we all realized that playing these characters that we had nothing to do with the creation of was actually more fun than playing our actual characters. I had no time invested in this character at all so I seized upon some of the things I saw on the character sheet and began playing her personality to the hilt without any fear of having this character die or be harmed or of even being liked. Other players followed suit and we soon found ourselves clicking as party, playing off of each other and outdoing ourselves when we had those carefully crafted characters we spent so much time creating. We were actually disappointed when we had to go back to our own characters.

Playing wheelchair chick made me realize that unfettered creativity isn’t all that creative. Left to our own devices, we human beings are kind of boring. When we start putting limiters on where we start with our creativity, whether those limits are playing a character we had nothing to do with creating, using random tables, rolling attributes in order, using only the Fiend Folio or Monster Manual II, using B/X or the original three LBBs as a starting point or whatever, the choices we make are going to surprise us and lead down paths we would never have thought of otherwise. This was yet another example of complete freedom within a set of strict parameters that just exploded with creativity and good fun. I have used random tables ever since.

Moment the Fourth

I will end with a bad experience. It was the first time I played D&D 3.5 with a DM that pretty much resembled the fellow in the video that started this mass spilling of virtual ink. Our party found ourselves in a time-crunch. We couldn’t retreat for fear of the evil we had uncovered getting away and becoming more powerful. So we pressed forward through the dungeon we were in despite not being prepared in the way 3.5 expects its players to be. When we got to the boss fight, it should have been a TPK. We couldn’t afford to retreat, but we couldn’t do damage at a rate that would allow us to survive the encounter. In fact, my character was completely incapable of doing any damage. I was out of spells and was only good as a meat shield. When the DM realized the situation, he started fudging die rolls and inexplicably changed tactics so that our party could actually start doing the kind of damage we needed to do in order to survive.

I actually felt cheated. My character should have died and I was robbed of a(n in)glorious death. We missed an opportunity as a group to re-think our party make-up and the way in which we approached the campaign to start anew and having to deal with all of the consequences of our previous party’s failure. Instead, we were all slaves of the story. The campaign never really recovered for me, but the upside is that it created an opening for me to introduce this group of players to Labyrinth Lord and the Lost Colonies were born. Although I have been sore tempted to fudge a die roll now and then, I have done my best to keep myself honest by rolling all my dice in the open ever since. As a consequence, even when those die rolls have resulted in the death of a beloved character, I have never felt cheated.

Saintly Saturday: St. Simeon the Elder

Today is the feast of St. Simeon the Elder. From childhood he took up the vocation of a hermit, living in a cave in the Syrian wilderness. Having heard of his holiness, people began to flock to him. Therefore, he withdrew even further into the wilderness by going up into the mountains of the Aman range. Still, people travelled from far and wide to see him. Finally, he withdrew to Mt. Sinai.

After struggling at the place where Moses received the name of God, St. Simeon was directed to returned to Aman, where he founded two monasteries. He died around the year A.D. 390

I am tempted to once again point out the way the hermit’s life is an allegory for the wilderness adventures and end-game of D&D. The pattern of St. Simeon’s life is repeated over and over again throughout the history of Christianity. The hermit goes into the desert (where demons reside according to Scriptural geography) in the same way that mid-level adventurers begin to wander the Chaotic Wilderness. People would brave the desert and the wilderness in order to gain wisdom from these hermits in the same way that adventurers begin to make the Wilderness safe for travelers. The hermit, feeling that they are not yet ready or worthy of such attention, goes deeper into the desert, in the same way adventurers seek greater and greater challenges.

This pattern repeats until the hermits are ready, at which time they come out of the wilderness and come back (in the case of Simeon to a place he was famous at before) to build a monastery or serve in some capacity within Civilization. Similarly, the end-game of D&D has the adventurer build a stronghold within the Wilderness that they have made safe for Civilization.

Intriguingly, the monasticism that St. Simeon took part in on Mt. Sinai is recorded by the pilgrim Egeria sometime in the A.D. 380’s and is the earliest evidence of monasticism on the mountain. Eventually, the Monastery of St. Catherine was built in the sixth century and produced some of the greatest pieces of Christian art ever, including one of my favorite icons of Christ:

This brings me to what I’d rather write about today, especially in light of what happened in the hobby this past week. We live in a society obsessed with what is new. We line up around the block for the latest movie, video game, phone, computer or whatever because it is new. We live under the illusion that progress is not only good, but inevitable. Any serious study of history demonstrates that wisdom and knowledge are always being lost because civilizations rise and fall because we are repeating the same mistakes again and again.

In other words, new does not always mean better and we must always ask ourselves what we are progressing towards. The monastery at Mt. Sinai, and others like it, are beacons that illumine the world about the old and ancient that are not only worth preserving, but emulating. Last week, WotC gave all of us who participate in this hobby a very pleasant surprise by releasing part of the old ways of D&D for consumption again. Personally, I was extremely gratified to see that, at least in this small part of the world at large, the folks in this hobby have learned this glorious lesson — we not only want to preserve our past we want to use it.

Old School Feats

Forgive me, but I just cannot find the original quote that inspired this post. Someone, somewhere observed that 1e, with its insistence on high stats in order to “not suck” was the first (and only?) edition to cater to those who want to do character builds (because all of the various methods for rolling up characters in the DMG all end up there) as well as those who want the dice to roll where they will and play with it.

Since I play with both kinds of players, this got me thinking about ways to update this characteristic of 1e so as to be able to scratch the character build itch without affecting either the streamlined nature of old school play or the ability to let the dice roll and play whatever comes up.

In order for this to work, every characteristic needs to have a combat bonus/penalty associated with it. I postulated something along these lines here. These, of course, would affect all classes.

Then, there would be a series of feat-like bonuses attached to each characteristic depending upon class. Players would be able to pick one or two of these feats, the effectiveness of which would be tied to the characteristic. Thus, they can only be taken advantage of if the characteristic has a bonus.

For example, here is a rough draft for feat-like abilities that can be associated with the B/X; LL magic-user:

• Str = 1, 2 or 3 spells cast per day by the magic user have their durations doubled.
• Dex = 1, 2 or 3 spells cast per day by the magic-user with an area effect have that area doubled.
• Con = The magic-user may use 1, 2 or 3 weapons or armor chosen at character creation that they are not normally able to use. In the case of armor, leather must be chosen first and chainmail is the heaviest armor a magic-user can wear and be able to cast spells.
• Int = 1, 2 or 3 spells per day with variable effects cast by the magic user have maximum effect.
• Wis = The magic-user can store 1, 2 or 3 spells that can be spontaneously cast in place of a memorized spell of equal or greater spell level per day.
• Cha = 1, 2 or 3 spells per day cast by the magic user require two successful saving throws to save versus the spell.

This could be done with every class. Assuming that a typical character has two characteristics with bonuses, there is a huge range of options combining combat bonuses with feat-like abilities, thus offering plenty of different character builds per class for those that like to scratch that itch. It also gives more variety of surprise for those who like their characters to be random. Finally, these feat-like abilities can be tailored to campaign-worlds if Referee so desires.

Thoughts?

R is for Old School Wisdom

I am not ashamed to say that I do not have a whole lot of disposable income for the purposes of purchasing material for the hobbyist in me. There are other folks in my life that are more important to me than the games I play. That being said, I do allow myself a purchases now and again. I mostly indulge in .pdfs because I can stretch my money more and they don't take up any room on my already overflowing bookcases; however, occasionally I do put a physical book on my wishlist. One such book was Michael Curtis' Dungeon Alphabet because this one of those resources that I felt I would get more out of by holding in my hands as opposed to being a bunch of electronic data (my instincts were correct). Unfortunately, this also meant I had to wait until such time I could give myself enough of an excuse to shell out the extra dough in order to get it.

Thus, I only received my copy this past weekend; however, its arrival came with it a funny story wrapped up in a little wisdom. When I opened the package containing the Dungeon Alphabet, my 6-year old son was immediately drawn to Erol Otis' cover art. He was especially enthralled by the fact it was so obviously an alphabet book (much cooler than anything he has seen at school) and very proudly started to identify the letters on the cover. Having not yet gone through all the illustrations to make sure they were age-appropriate, I stuck to the familiar cover art and started playing "A is for ____." We started at the bottom, because it was the first that entered by brain:

W is for Weird
V is for Vermin
U is for Undead
T is for Traps
S is for Statue

At this point I drew a blank. Therefore, I decided to see if my son could come up with anything surprising. So I asked him what he thought the R was for. His response was just awesome:

Run Away.

Out of the mouth of babes (Psalm 8:2; Matthew 21:16). It just goes to show that there is an inherent wisdom in at least some the ways we old school players expect to play our games...

Lost Colonies Sessions 33, 34 & 35

You might have noticed that I haven't posted any Lost Colonies session reports for awhile. This is primarily because I've been fairly busy and the party has been doing virtually the same thing for the last three sessions. Thus, I've waited until now to write it all down.

I took (what I thought was) a big risk with my campaign. Dn. Goram was Geased to find and return the Two Swords to the Lost Temple underneath the Monastery of St. Urheim. Ahkmed the Dwarf has a map to some kind of dwarven treasure/lost colony (actually a slightly modified version Mr. Raggi's Hammers of the God). I had also recently bought Realms of Crawling Chaos and was eager to integrate ideas from it into my campaign. As a result, I decided to give Dn. Goram a clue to lead him in the direction of the Dwarves (who live in a mountain range to the southwest of Headwaters) and happily placed elements from RCC and Hammer of the God in the area. The risk: the Two Swords had been placed into another dimension by some monastic dwarves in order to protect them. That other dimension happened to be a spaceship.

Thus, the dwarven monastery occupied by white apes and their minions was full of RCC-derived stuff and sat upon the mountain where I placed Hammers of the God. The party succeeded in clearing out the dwarven monastery of its ape-like occupants, fended off an attack by some harpies and their slaves and proceeded to manufacture the formulae that would allow them to dimension hop. This required some uncomfortable ingredients — some of which they were able to find in the monastery, others they had to procure.

After quaffing the first dose of the formulae, the party found themselves in a spaceship (though it took awhile for them to realize this, given my method of trying to describe things like plastic and computer screens). When it dawned on my players what I was doing, one gleefully exclaimed "We're playing a little Gamma World today!" Despite my trepidations for so blatantly breaking genre, my players had a terrific time. They encountered a number of slime-like creatures with a variety of special abilities and immunities (and proved to be quite a challenge for the party). The party was quite shocked when one such creature swallowed Dn. Goram whole. Fortunately for him, the four-hour-dimension-hop ended before he was digested.

The exploration of the ship required three separate trips. They found a variety of tools and food-stuff that was the equivalent of treasure as well as the remains of the crew that apparently died some time ago in a mysterious manner. In addition, they found a type of prison where a number of strange creatures were being held in stasis (including a shocking number of mind flayers). They found what they believe to be the Two Swords and managed to retrieve them both, but not before messing around with the ship's nuclear reactor. Their actions caused a meltdown which was going to destroy the ship and everyone on it. Fortunately, the party was prepared and cast a Dispel Magic to pull them back into their own dimension before the whole ship went boom.

These three sessions ended up being some of the most rewarding I've had during this whole campaign. It combined some of the things I like best about old-school play: exploration driving plot, deadly combat, genre bending locales and player freedom and creativity. My players really enjoyed themselves and wanted to know more about the mystery of the ship and what it was all about.

As a result, they decided to find the dwarves and report to them what they found. In process, they discovered that the Dwarves blame one of their own for the fall of the Thassalonian Colonies, of which the appearance of the Golden Masks was a consequence. They warned the party against pursuing Ahkmed's map (much to my own disappointment). The party did some trading and began to establish some economic ties to the Dwarves (who were extremely interested in some of the technology the party brought back with them from the ship).

Finally, Ahkmed found out he is now what the dwarven loremasters call a Bane-Bearer. His sword Hornet was forged along with several other weapons. Each is a bane of a specific race. They were created in an attempt to keep peace between the various races; however, an evil dwarf managed to collect them all and wreck havoc upon the races. Since his defeat, these Bane-Weapons had been lost — until now.

One final note: when I began doing these session reports, one of the things I was interested in observing was how a bunch of players who came into the hobby with 3.5 would react to old-school rules and play. After 35 sessions I can now report that all of the guys in my group have officially dropped 3.5 in favor of a variety of older rulesets (primarily AD&D and LL). Interestingly, one of them has gone out of his way to buy a bunch of Judges Guild stuff (having been introduced to their existence through my campaign). As he was excitedly reporting to me some of his finds, he exclaimed, "The old stuff is so much better than the new stuff!" To riff off ye auld bard, the play is the thing.

A Poem

I was out of town again this week, during which time a priest friend of mine brought the poet Scott Cairns to my attention. I subsequently found a collection of his poems entitled Love's Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life. He writes poems inspired by the words of history's greatest Christian mystics. The following is inspired by one of my heroes, St. Irenaeus:

Capable Flesh

The tender flesh itself
will be found one day

—quite surprisingly—
to be quite capable of receiving,

and, yes, full
capable of embracing

the searing energies of God.
Go figure. Fear not.

For even at its beginning
the humble clay received

God's art, whereby
one part became the eye,

another the ear, and yet
another this impetuous hand.

Therefore, the flesh
is not excluded

from the wisdom and the power
that now and ever animates

all things. His life-giving
agency is made perfect,

we are told, in weakness—
made perfect in the flesh.

I share this mainly because I find it to be so moving, but it does speak to the way I play RPGs in a round about way. This poem expresses my firm belief that all matter can be used to glorify God and be used in a positive and fulfilling way. Thus, the only way D&D and other RPGs are demonic and evil is if we allow them to be used in that way. I endeavor to give rise to a way of using and thinking about our hobby as an expression of my faith. Secondly, one of the more powerful memes found in this poem and in Irenaeus is the idea that God finds and creates strength in and through weakness. Is it any wonder that I love how the old-school style of play is so comfortable with player skill and character death? We test ourselves with randomness and the weaknesses that are derived from character generation systems that spit out "hopeless" characters. In these weaknesses we find our strengths as players and, personally, I find great pleasure in seeing a "hopeless" character grow strong and ultimately succeed.

Lost Colonies Session 15

One of the risks that you run as a Referee when undertaking a sandbox campaign is that the work put into creating dungeons can go for naught if players interests take them elsewhere. Personally, I deflect much of this by copius use of random tables — they severly cut down on prep time and not only offer up an interesting concoction for my players, but challenge me as a Referee which makes things interesting for me.

One of the curiosities of this campaign has been the way my group has largely ignored the tent-pole megadungeon (as James over ar Grognardia likes to call them). Although the campaign started out with several forays into the megadungeon, they have gone out of their way to avoid it ever since they delved too deep and ran into some things beyond their capabilities. This has resulted in making the place even more dangerous (sans an adventuring party to keep the forces of Chaos in check, they have slowly been able to accomplish their goals and grow in power). Instead, this campaign has largely been outdoor exploration with the occasional dungeon delve when lairs are found.

I find myself asking whether or not the megadungeon concept is at fault, that this group (having largely learned the game with 3.5) just isn't used to the idea, or if my version of a megadungeon just doesn't hold together very well.

This session I got burned a little bit. Ever since the party left Xerxes, the NPC Magic User, behind when they travelled to Trisagia, I have been planning a betrayal, a theft, a murder and a fun house dungeon. Upon returning to Headwaters, the party found out that Fr. Taggert had been murdered, the Golden Mask being kept at the Church had been stolen and the Eye of St. Gabriel had been gouged out of Fr. Taggerts' eye socket. The prime suspect is Xerxes, since he hasn't been seen since the murder and thefts.

The party went to his room at the inn to investigate, only to be welcomed by a taunting magic mouth informing them that if they wished to get the Eye back, they would need to follow a map buried under the corner stone of Hamlen's father's barn (which happened to lead to a good 'ol fun house dungeon I've been piecing together for several weeks). However, the party decided to go (yet again) in an unexpected direction.

Earlier, they had encountered what they thought to be a dragon (which had killed one of the PCs). In its possession was a vial of a silvery liquid they needed in order to give Grak an artificial arm. Thus, instead of puzzling through my fun house, the party decided to take on a dragon and forced me to take out a map I'd drawn a couple months ago which at that time was ignored. What ensued was a brilliant use of a Shrinking Potion and a Bag of Holding.

Unbeknownst to the party (and to their great benefit) the said "dragon" isn't a real dragon, only dragon-kin. It has no breath weapon, though it is poisonous and regenerates like a troll. After getting its attention by massacring a number of its goblin minions in an ambush, the dragon killed the party's horses and dogs and then proceeded to roll horribly and get itself "killed" (by the Halfling, no less); however, the regeration meant that the party could not kill the dragon with conventional weapons. Thus, when they had knocked the dragon out, they forced a shrinking potion down its throat, tied him up and threw him inside a bag of holding. I was stunned. I thought the move so brilliantly cool, that I allowed the maneuver. Now the party has a dragon stuck inside a bag of holding with no way out (the potion has since worn off and it can't fit through the small opening of the bag) and it is starving. It will be very interesting to see what the party manages to do with it.

As an aside, I was pleasantly surprised by one of my players (Arkmed the Dwarf) who thanked me for running Labyrinth Lord. He confessed that he liked the system better than 3.5 — it was quicker, freer and allowed the party to accomplish a lot more in a shorter ammount of time. It seems that you don't have to be a grumpy old man who's played since the 70s to appreciate the old ways. Thank God.

Lost Colonies Session 12

Having destroyed the "Gate" last session, the party reported their success to Bishop Iova; however, they feared that more evil lurked beneath the Necropolis. When the bishop mentioned putting out a call for adventurers, the party immediately begged for a first crack at the job (thus far, their exploration of the dungeon beneath the Necropolis has yielded a lot of combat, but very little treasure). The bishop gave them a week head start. Healed and with shields bought and repaired, the party set off to finish the job they started.

At this point, I have to make an admission. This dungeon did not turn out the way I originally planned it — at all. When I first loosely planned this campaign, I took existing dungeon maps, modules and adventures and placed them on the campaign map in order to be prepared for any whim of the players. Originally, I placed the castle of Ravenloft in The City (now Trisagia), knowing it to be a decent dungeon crawl if handled correctly; however, I forgot just what a major headache the map was.

Thus, after being frustrated for much of a session trying to decipher which part of the map led to which and what was supposed to be there, I abandoned the map and started making things up on the fly. At my earliest convenience, I grafted an old school map onto what had already been explored and went from there. This session saw yet another unplanned shift. My family has been beset with a lot of illness recently and, though I was loath to admit it, I was physically exhausted. As we began our session, I quickly realized that I was mentally exhausted as well. I was not going to be able to run an entertaining session if I had to do much thinking — handling monsters, running combat, etc. So, I pulled out some puzzles, in order that my players could do all the thinking. As the party made its way through unexplored sections of the dungeon, I placed puzzles in rooms instead of monsters. When the party got something wrong, they would get gassed, zapped, spiked, etc.

The end result was interesting and fun, tainted by a small amount of tragedy. While experimenting with one puzzle, Hamlen's favorite spiked club failed its saving throw when it took the brunt of a lightning bolt and was burnt to a crisp. I set each puzzle up in rooms that had mosaics on three walls. The left wall had visual instructions, the right wall contained a clue and the opposite wall had someone holding a chest. When the puzzle was solved, the chest could be opened like a drawer. Needing a future explanation as to why there were little or no monsters left, and a way for them to escape with little or no detection, each "chest" contained one of a series of keys needed to open another portal (as well as some other treasure).

Thus, the party ended up exploring much of what remained of the dungeon in an entertaining way that literally opened a whole new and unexpected door for further adventure. This is why I like the old ways as much as I do. When we allow ourselves the freedom to make stuff up on the fly, it can be awesome fun.

Metaphors

Every year, it seems, the beginning of Lent brings with it trials and tribulations. This past week I've been to the emergency room, everyone in my house has been sick and my youngest has been admitted into the hospital twice, once to the ICU. Thank God everyone seems to be okay, but I am always amazed at how the metaphysical plays itself out in the physical. With this in mind, the following hymn, sung at the cusp of Great Lent, caught my attention:

The stadium of virtue is now open; those who wish to compete, enter therein, girded for the good contest of Lent, for those who compete according to the rules shall receive their laurels rightfully. Taking up the full armor of the Cross, let us do battle against the Enemy. As an impregnable wall, we have the Faith, prayer as our breastplate, and acts of mercy as our helmet. Instead of sword, there is fasting, which cuts every evil from the heart. He who does this shall attain a true crown from Christ, the King of all, on Judgment Day — Lauds for the Sunday of Forgiveness

This hymn is based upon the words of St. Paul from his Letter to the Romans:

Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day — Romans 13:12-13

This reinforces my own understanding that the language of Scripture and the Church is full of metaphors. This allows us the freedom to plug in moments and events from our own lives, times and contexts into the stories and poetry of the Bible. For my own part, this freedom allows me to apply these metaphors to the way I game. Once again, I marvel at the genius of the early versions of RPGs — at how wide open and inviting they are to metaphors and applications of all kinds. I could play more modern games and apply Scriptural metaphors to them, but why go to all that effort when I can do the same thing with such ease when playing with older rulesets and the retro-clones that emulate them?

At any rate, for those who are about to undertake that great journey known as Lent, good strength and good travels.

On d6 Weapon Damage

This morning I followed a link from James at Grognardia to this very reasoned argument for all weapons doing d6 damage. Even though I use d6 damage for all weapons in my own game, I find myself disagreeing with this argument for much the same reasons.

Combat in OD&D is abstract. Thus, we as players are free to interpret various elements of the combat system as we choose. In other words, whether or not we use d6 damage, variable dice damage, weapon vs. AC tables, critical hits, ablative shields, or any number of combat rules is all aesthetics.

In my own experience I love universal d6 weapon damage and I hate it. So far, my love has outweighed my loathing. Having d6 damage has given my players the freedom to use weapons that they wouldn't otherwise use. The main party fighter uses a spiked club, which he is very attached to. Once variable weapon damage is introduced (especially as written in AD&D) fighters almost always go for swords — why settle for club at d4 damage when the long sword does d8? In practice, the universal d6 damage has resulted in creative play — since everything does d6 damage, advantage in combat comes from tactical choices outside of weapon choice. As a gamer, I've really enjoyed this creativity — aesthetics.

At the same time, I have noticed that it has reduced the number of cool shaped dice in actual game play. Over the course of a night, my players will only use d6s and d20s. Since one of the reasons I started gaming all those years ago was the ability to use all these cool shaped dice, I miss them in game play — aesthetics.

My group uses a house rule where shields are ablative and can absorb a hit by being destroyed. I have really enjoyed this in game play — it adds a level of tactical choice that increases tension in combat at the same time that it increases survivability. It is powerful enough, however, that there is little incentive to use two-handed weapons. They get used, but only in very specific tactical situations like bracing for a charge. I am not happy with this, but not enough to scrap d6 damage — aesthetics.

All of this demonstrates, I hope, that d6 weapon damage and variable weapon damage are both perfectly legitimate choices in play. I actually like both of them, for different reasons. The wonder of old-school style of play is that it gives us the room and freedom to play with both. It all comes down to what we find most entertaining to play with — aesthetics.

Our Deracinated Hobby

One of the great things about reading Grognardia is the wonderful vocabulary that James pulls out every now and then. One such wonderful word is derancinated. I was as shocked as James when this etymological gem from Middle French garnered the reaction it did. It got me to thinking about a guy named Marcion.

In the second century, about A.D. 140, this guy named Marcion showed up at the church in Rome with a hand full of cash. By 144, however, Marcion's theological system was revealed. His money was returned and he was excommunicated.

Marcion believed that the Hebrew God of the Old Testament was not the same God that Jesus came to reveal. He could not reconcile the jealousy, wrath and legalism of the OT God with the love of the NT God. Thus, he insisted on the very first canon of Scripture in the Christian era: the Gospel according to Luke (the only Gentile of the Evangelists) and ten of the Epistles attributed to St. Paul. He tried to strip Christianity of its Hebrew roots in order to understand it.

The Church insisted on retaining the OT with all its warts, all its inconsistencies, and all its historical inaccuracies knowing that its primary purpose was revelation. All those warts, inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies had to be reconciled if one was to be able to answer the question, "Who is God?" and more specifically that most important question, "Who is Jesus Christ?"

Despite the problems that arise from all these books, written by different people, edited and redacted by others from different times, in different places, in different languages and in a variety of genres, the Church knows more about God and more about Christ from the OT than it does from the NT. Without its roots — Hebrew Scripture and Judaism — Christianity is rendered meaningless.

Let me be clear: I am not trying to place OD&D on some kind of biblical plane without which D&D's later editions are rendered meaningless nor am I trying to declare that anyone who prefers to play later editions of the game are heretics. I am trying to say that the endeavor to understand the roots and history of this hobby is not only something that we in the OSR enjoy doing, but it is good for the hobby as a whole.
Christianity left behind many liturgical practices and traditions from its Judaic past; however, it also holds onto some practices that modern Judaism no longer uses. Knowing the whys and the wherefores not only makes the Christian liturgical life richer, it makes all of life more meaningful.

It is certainly possible to play 4th Edition and have a blast doing so without ever knowing anything about 0e-3.5e. I would argue, though, that someone who does know the history, archeology and mechanics of our hobby is not only going to be a better player, but will be better equipped to get the most fun out of whichever edition they choose to play.

Take, for example, my own experience with this game we love. I have seen the game morph the Cleric from being "humans who have dedicated themselves to one or more of the gods" (leaving room for either a monotheistic or polytheistic world-view) to being necessarily polytheistic and pagan. On their own, every edition of D&D starting with 2e is incompatible with my world-view. I am forced to choose between what I believe and the rules of the game — not my idea of a good time. However, in going back to the LBBs and the history of the game, I have discovered not only that making up rules and doing things on your own where expected elements of the game, but Clerics have their origin in Christianity. Thus, I am free to play whatever edition I choose with a monotheistic world-view knowing that I am standing squarely in the traditions of the game. That is my idea of a good time.

The Feast of St. Prokopios

A couple of summers ago, I went to Mt. Athos — a peninsula in northern Greece that is home to a score of monasteries and several sketes. At the very first monastery I visited, one of the very first icons I encountered was a soldier saint named Prokopios. Armed with sword and shield and clad in mail, I found myself captivated and wondering who this guy was.  As I visited other monasteries and worshipped in several chapels, it seemed that I always ended up next to an icon of St. Prokopios. He became a familiar face and I ended up considering him a friend. When I came off the mountain, I vowed read his story and found out that he was a martyr.

In our modern era, the word martyr is closely associated with people who die for their faith. We forget that the word actually means witness. This begs the question: what are they witnesses to? The simple answer is to Christ and all that He has done for us. However, there is more to it than that. Prokopios, much like Paul before him, was visited by Christ as he was on his way to persecute Christians. He was confronted with the reality that Truth is not a idea, not a philosophy, but a person who is both God and man.

At the center of the Christian faith is a personal relationship between humanity and God and between humanity and itself. Prokopios, by befriending me on the Holy Mountain, reminded me that the image of God in man is not complete without a relationship with our fellow human beings.

This is one of the reasons that I write this blog, why I still love this hobby, and why I prefer old school ways. Role playing is about getting around a table with our fellow human beings, enjoying who they are, and what we become when we are together. The old school celebrates our individual quirks in the way it is so easily adapted to our particular interests and prejudices. 

May this Feast of St. Prokopios be filled with many blessings, and with the fellowship of our fellow human beings (especially at the gaming table).

In Defense of Clerics

Since I started to connect with the RPG community on the net, especially those interested in old-school gaming, I have found that the Cleric is not a very popular class. This dislike ranges from the ambivalence of James over at Grognardia to the elimination of the class in Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa to Delta's outright glee of removing the class from his gaming. Now, I am not going to say that any of these interpretations of the game are wrong. In fact, I appreciate the fact that each of them is coming at the game from the perspective of the S&S roots of D&D. I even use James' interpretation of the class as a kind of Magic User when dealing with non-Christian/pagan priests. However, there is another perspective: the historical simulation in the war gaming roots of D&D.

I have to admit that I played my first war game before I ever heard of D&D and in my adult life have played as many hours war gaming as I have role-playing, if not more. I am also a trained historian. Thus, this aspect of the game's roots really speaks to me and I emphasize it in my games.

When looking at the game from the perspective of historic simulation, the Cleric deserves its place in the game. Not only has religion been central to every culture in human history, but Christianity has been a major factor in European history and culture since the second century. One need only look at the weapons and armor in D&D to realize that the combat being simulated is based primarily on the way war was fought in Medieval Europe, when Christianity was not only dominant, but assumed.

The spell list  for Clerics in D&D reflect this historic reality — they simulate the kinds of miracles that fill Christian lore. When you believe that every Christian is the temple of God Himself, in the person of the Holy Spirit, then daily miracles are not out of place.

In terms of the classic D&D paradigm of Law vs. Chaos, Christianity has historically been equated with Law and civilization in Europe. When Rome fell, it was the Church that sheltered and protected people. It was the Church that protected the vestiges of civilization — books, scrolls, etc. — because it valued things like science, philosophy and education.

History is full of Christian adventurers. Monastics travelled the wilderness — the Biblical realm of demons — in order to take on the devil where he lives. Missionaries travelled into barbarian lands to spread the Gospel. They followed the example of the Apostles, who travelled as far as India in the east, and Britain in the west. Before them, the prophets took on all manner of ancient armies and pagan gods.

I will grant that S&S often seems incompatible, indifferent or even hostile to Christianity. Given this, the Cleric seems out of place. However, S&S itself provides the answer as to why the Cleric has a solid place in D&D — the genre blending that S&S is so comfortable with. Given that one standard fantasy trope is to tell stories of earth's distant future and given that the Church is not just a human institution, but also a divine one — "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18) — the Church easily fits into any world that depicts a future earth because the Church will survive into that future. Indeed, this is the model I use in my Erimia campaign.

Whether or not you use the Cleric in your games is largely up to how much you want to pay homage to the historic simulation of war games at the root of D&D. Whereas it is possible to say that I don't want Clerics in my game, it is impossible to say that Clerics don't belong at all. I hope that some of you will explore the historic simulation roots of our hobby and learn to embrace the Cleric as gleefully as I have.

 

Picking up the Gauntlet: Random Tables for Everything

Despite the fact that I have played Champions more than any other RPG except for D&D, my favorite superhero RPG of all time is Villains and Vigilantes. The reason is simple: I love the random tables for character generation. In fact, all my best characters in Champions found their genesis in those tables. Like many who prefer the ways of the old-school, I embrace the chaos of the random table.

Meditating upon the "why" of this love affair, I propose two very good reasons to let go, roll those dice, and see what the tables have to say about life, the universe and everything:

1) It saves time.

Meticulously plotted adventure paths are extremely time consuming. Even if you've shelled out your hard earned money to pay someone else to do it for you, if you are going to Referee the thing, you have to spend several hours reading over everything to make sure that you are prepared. In contrast, with a good wandering monster table, a treasure table, and a map, you can be ready to DM in minutes. This is a particular blessing when players decide to take your carefully constructed plot and throw it out the window by doing something unpredictable. Once you've established a few things from the tables, you can use your time far more efficiently to come up with reasons why the world is the way the tables says it is. In the end, you'll have a story that not only didn't put an unnecessary burden on your time, but was primarily put into motion by your players.

2) "Assuredly, I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all those who have given to the treasury; for they all put in out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had" (Mark 12:43-44).

A priest once quoted this piece of scripture in response to the radical inequality and injustice that exists in the world. It isn't the hand that you are dealt that matters, but, rather, how you play it. The poor widow was dealt a really crappy hand, but she played it brilliantly.

In other words, random tables will test your ability as a player. Both Referees and Players will have to apply all their skills in order to make the result of the die make sense. In the end, the die result isn't what matters, but rather what you do with it. A player who can make magic with a weird result from a random table is a better player than one who refuses to make the roll.

Please note: I do not advocate being a slave to the die roll. On the contrary, using random tables takes skill and there are times and results that push my own abilities beyond their limits. On countless occasions I have thrown out results because I could not see a way to make them work. However, these unworkable results inevitably are a catalyst for ideas that I would never have thought of otherwise.

Picking up the Gauntlet: Character Creation

Over on Grognardia, James has thrown down a gauntlet, of sorts. I'd like to take up that gauntlet and meditate on a few aspects of what I consider to be old school.

First up, I would like to propose two axioms about old school character creation:

1) What makes a Fighting Man a Barbarian, a Knight, or a Gladiator is the way it is played, not the mechanics behind it.

Old school games rely heavily on player skill, imagination, and creativity. The mechanics are meant to be a spring board for player to do what ever they want. In contrast, newer school games define classes (or whatever they might be called) by the mechanics themselves. This may have the illusion of player skill, imagination, and creativity; however, when mechanics define a character, there is always certain mechanical paths that are going to take advantage of the system better than others. Thus, imagination and creativity are actually stifled, not encouraged.

For Example: Champions seems to have old school credentials, given that it was originally published in 1981. However, I do not classify it as an old school game. One reason for this is that mechanics entirely define the character in Champions. My character may be able to produce fire, but unless I've bought a power that allows me to either raise the temperature in an area or light up an area, my character can do neither of these things. In addition, virtually every character I ever created for Champions (and I played a lot of Champions) had a Dex of 23. Mathematically, this was the most efficient Dex a character could have, and it was just too expensive to do anything else.

For Example: In 3.5, Bards have the class ability Bardic Knowledge. They roll and are able to learn a random bit of info about a particular aspect of their game world. If a Bard has the skill Knowledge (History) with five ranks or more, the Bard receives a +2 on Bardic Knowledge rolls. This mechanically punishes players who want to have Bards with other specialties and virtually guarantees that every 3.5 Bard is going to have five ranks of Knowledge (History).

2) The longer it takes to create a character, the heavier the mechanical burden exists in a game to prevent character death.

Old School games are comfortable with character death. I've written on this before. One reason for this is that characters are so easy to create, that one doesn't have to spent a lot of time out of game to replace the dead character. Sometimes, it is as easy as taking over a henchman. In contrast, games that require a lot of time in character creation balk at having players have to go through that effort again.

For Example: In Champions, it is very difficult to die. Every character has both Stun and Body. The vast majority of attacks can only penetrate standard defenses to do Stun, not Body. Thus, the end of combat results in unconsciousness, not death.

For Example: 3.5 has Challenge Ratings. Every encounter is rated to help guarantee the players will not get in over their heads.