Monsters and Manuals

Giant Koi Carp

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 09:49:00 +0000

There is nothing alive on this planet that is as ravenous or as stupid as a koi carp. To gaze into the eyes of one as it opens its maw at you with blind hunger, thinking only of filling its grotesquely distended belly, is to gaze into the eyes of gluttony itself. Their baleful rapacity is unmatched.

Here's a picture of one I took yesterday, to prove it.

Giant Koi Carp

Armour Class: 4
Hit Dice: 6*
Move: 180' (Swim)
Attacks: 1 bite
Damage: 2d6+2, special
No. App: 2-40
Save As: F3
Morale: 9
Treasure: V (in belly)
Intelligence: 0
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 650

On a hit which does more than 10 damage, a koi will swallow its victim whole. The unfortunate will then die within 2d6 rounds from a combination of drowning and stomach acid unless the koi can be killed.

No Shoes, No Shirt, No Dice

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 07:46:00 +0000

I play a bit of Play-by-Post and Play-by-Email, so I'm no stranger to its advantages and disadvantages. The chief of the latter is well known: it's godawfully slow. This makes detailed planning and complex inter-character interactions (the most fun aspects of RPGing, to me) very difficult if not impossible.

I've been thinking recently of using diceless systems as a way around this. Amber DRPG and (if I understand it correctly) Nobilis allow the player to take far more 'narrative control' than dice-lead games. In Amber, player-characters automatically succeed in any given task unless they are opposed by another player-character. In Nobilis, the spending of tokens achieves a similar effect.

This does away with one of the major stumbling blocks to progress in a PBP game, namely, the Everybody Waits for the DM Song and Dance Routine. This will be familiar to anybody who's tried a game with this format - whereas in a tabletop game the DM can give the players instant feedback on the success or failure of proposed actions, on the net the process becomes attenuated by log-in times, typing times and time zones, making creative thinking and problem solving a frustrating process at best. However, with a game like Amber, where success in many situations is guaranteed, this problem fades to insignificance unless two players are in conflict against one another - rather than the usual "Can I climb that wall/open that chest/break that vase" sort of questions that get posted in a trad PBP game, instead you get stuff like "I climb the wall, then at the top I open the chest and then break the vase". Hey presto, things are moving faster than the pace of a snail on barbiturates.

This only works for a specialised type of game, and part of the fun of traditional RPGs is that failure is a big possibility in most situations. But in the glacial world of PBP it may be a better option.

(There's a good thread on diceless games here at rpg.net. Occasionally that site does throw up something useful.)

Using My Blog Like an Amusement Park

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 02:37:00 +0000

So a New Year is upon us, and it's time to do one of those year-in-review things. God knows this blog is enough of a self-indulgence as it is, so a little more mental masturbation can't hurt. Here are the top 10 most-commented upon entries for Monsters & Manuals in 2009, in descending order.

Joint 9th - Gaming Advice #1: Don't Be a Dickhead and Metal and Gaming (25 comments). The former a summation of my gaming philosophy and the latter a short musing on the association between musical genres and RPGs. I've since decided that though I declared that "I hate metal" in the second of these entries, there's a good case to be made I don't. I like hardcore, I like grunge, I like desert rock/stoner rock, I like space rock, and I like alternative metal, so perhaps I should have just said "I hate Metallica".

Joint 7th - Cool Cultures (26 comments), in which I (among other things) wonder why in geek culture Japan is cool but Poland isn't, and U-turning on Tolkien, where we have a love-in with China Mieville on how great Tolkien is, which puts entry number 1 into perspective.

6th - Bummed Out on Fantasy Lit (27 comments), a "pitiful whine" about the dearth of quality in the fantasy genre, which seemed to touch a nerve. I wish I could update the entry with pleasent news about some great new discovery, but the major foray into new territory for me things year (Erikson's The Malazan Book of the Fallen) ended in disaster after some early promise. Since then I've stuck to Gene Wolfe, GRRM and Mieville.

5th - On Warhammer, British vs. American Fantasy, and Pessimism (30 comments), in which I compared the bleakness of British approaches to fantasy with the quintessentially Optimistic Individualist American D&D.

Joint 3rd - The Children are our Future! and Top 10 Things that have Pissed Me Off about Roleplaying This Year (31 comments). Two rather depressing entries - about the hobby's future and its current state of play, respectively. Why do I play RPGs, again?

2nd - This is all very Ridiculous Shaped (36 comments). I managed to cut down on all the ranting this year, I feel. Here's one of the rare blasts that got through the net.

1st - No Revolutionary Socialism, Please, I'm an Escapist (87 comments). When I penned this rant about China Mieville I had no idea it would turn into an epic debate about art, socialism, nerdrage and war. Just goes to show.

I am not an Adventurer by Choice but by Fate

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:49:00 +0000

I'll continue with the Duchy of Liverpool stuff tomorrow, but wanted to jot down some thoughts arising from comments by Kelvin Green here:

I think there's a tendency nowadays to think that being able to play any kind of character you like is an innate good, and anything less is self-evidently wrong. Such a viewpoint tends to ignore the very useful focus you get from "restricted" games like Pendragon; when you sit down at the table, you know what kind of thing you'll be playing. There's no humming and hawing, and party conflict becomes something more interesting than alignment clashes. All on the same page, as you say.

Regarding the lack of interest in a generic Pendragon, I've noticed that the game as a whole is rather overlooked. We're playing it in my current group, and only myself and the GM have any prior experience of the game. Some of the group had never heard of it before. For such a very good, and old, game, it isn't particularly well known. I'd imagine the lack of interest in a generic ruleset stems from the same anonymity. Bear in mind that the game itself is currently out of print, and that the most recent two editions/printings bounced around a number of publishers. It's just not considered a big name game, much as it should be.

To which I replied:

Perhaps the two things are not unrelated. Restricted focus makes for better gaming but doesn't win you many friends in "the marketplace of ideas" or whatever you want to call it.

I learned this in the D&D 3.5 era. A large majority of people really want the billions of class, feat and skill options offered by all the splatbooks, even though it's probably detrimental to actual play.

When I got back into D&D in my early 20s the group I joined were like this. They were obsessed with character generation and the many dozens of different options available at every step. (The DM in particular seemed to have an entire shelf of splatbooks that he would refer to when offering friendly advice to us players - all of them stuffed to the gills with new prestige classes and superduper feats. The flipside to this was the advice you would get not to take this or that feat at character generation. "Don't take toughness. It's useless." Sage nods from the others around the table.) It was great to have all those choices and it would be churlish to criticise something that offered them so much pleasure, but it sometimes felt as if the WotC people, in allowing this horrendous unbridled growth of options, had turned character generation into a monster. Arguments would break out over what was or wasn't the best starting feat for this or that race and class combination; newbies (like me) were left confused and disillusioned when told for the third time that they shouldn't have gone for this or that skill... and it all seemed to get in the way of playing the actual game.

I see the benefit of the Pendragon approach more and more, for the exact same reasons that Kelvin gives. And yet this advantage it offers is its Achilles Heel, because I'm sure that "restrictiveness" is something that most players (most people, actually) are intrinsically prejudiced against.

The Duchy of Liverpool (I)

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 09:54:00 +0000

Following on from last night's post, I present the Duchy of Liverpool, a campaign location for Pendragon/Changeling. Today is the overview. Tomorrow I'll write up adventure locations, and the day after I'll produce a list of seeds of conflict.

The map above details the lands of Donnchad mac Briain, Duke of Liverpool and Earl of Lime Street, and those who owe him (and the hose of mac Briain) fealty - the Barons of Waterloo & Litherland, West Derby, Knotty Ash, Wavertree and Mossley Hill, and the Earls of Docklands and Bootle.

Also on this map is shown the independent County of Knowsley, and the Cantref of North Wirral, which is ruled by Lord Llywelyn ap Owain, mac Briain's great rival and oft-warred against foe.

Most of the nobility and knights and ladies in the area are of course Sidhe. Those in Liverpool trace their heritage to Irish Sidhe, while those on the Wirral side are of Brythonic origin. The exception is the Earl of Docklands, Ezekiel Blythe, a troll who was knighted and later granted the Docklands title by the King of Dublin.

All of the kiths are represented in the area, though nockers and eshu are particularly common thanks to the maritime flavour of the city. Redcaps and satyrs are everywhere in the streets around Concert Square, and in the sewers and old railway tunnels lurk Sluagh and much, much worse.

We are Loathsome in the Eyes of Those Who do not Worship Us

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 10:02:00 +0000

Today I will mostly be talking about Pendragon and Changeling: The Dreaming.

Much as I loathe the rpg.net obsession with "doing" unspeakable and transgressive things with games which have no earthly business "doing" it (e.g. using Dark Heresy to "do" a Western) it does strike me that the Pendragon rules are rather narrowly defined given how good they are. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want to change the game one bit, but I do think that Mr. Stafford's opus has the potential for a far greater scope of application than just knights in Arthurian Britain. There's this Japanese variant, for one thing, which appears to "do" The Blossoms Are Falling better than The Blossoms Are Falling, and neo-feudalism in space a la Dune for another.

My latest idea is to use it to "do" what Changeling: The Dreaming always should have been about but lacked the wherewithal to focus on - namely fae, living among us in the real world, with a feudal system all of their own. C:tD had the trappings (Sidhe nobles, courts, aristocratic houses, kingdoms, knightly oaths, etc. etc.) suggesting this, but its execution was so incoherent and so burdened by that White Wolf need to dress everything up as a "story" that it never came out and said it outright. Instead, the overwhelming sense reading through its rulebook is that the atmosphere is great but it isn't at all clear what you're supposed to do with it. What the game was crying out for was the sort of robust character generation system and graceful mechanics for things like Traits and Passions and winter phases that Pendragon possesses.

What C:tD also needed was the kind of focus that Pendragon offers in its core rules: as a player character you are taking on the role of a young knight from a minor family and that is it. My C:tD's scope would essentially be the same thing - newly knighted fae of whatever kith, trying to make their way in the world, slaying Chimerae and beating up redcaps. Exercising ghosts. Fighting dragons. Travelling to other realities. Questing for ancient and powerful magical swords.

And I would set it in Liverpool, natch.

Give Me Your Art

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 10:22:00 +0000

Hope you all had a good Christmas and Boxing Day (do people in the barbaric wastes of North America know what that is?) finds you well.

Doug Easterly, of Savage Swords of Athanor fame, has put his setting materials into pdf format and offered them for sale on Lulu. If that isn't a kick up the backside for the likes of me I don't know what is. I've been fiddling around with Yoon-Suin stuff for what feels like forever, without any genuine progress. That's about to change.

Anyway, you all know how regrettable and criminally poor my artwork is. So I thought I'd throw out a plea for contributions. If you are in some way artistically talented, would like to see your work in a two-bit pdf cobbled together by an incompetent hack, don't mind working for free (the pdf release of Yoon-Suin will be free, maybe with a paypal donation button if I'm feeling particularly whorish), and if the idea of slug people riding around on giant house centipedes turns you on, then send me an email and we'll talk. I'm envisaging a scenario in which I send you bits and pieces of inspirational text and you send me something vaguely appropriate which ends up in the final product. (I want to maintain at least some standards, so let's introduce the proviso "if it's better than what I can do and there's space".) My email address is jean DOT delumeau AT that gmail thing.

All the Yoon-Suin related posts can be found by clicking here.

Saint Nicholas' Unholy Hymn

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:11:00 +0000

Lord save us from Christmas music. You can't even escape it in Japan.

Saint Nicholas' Unholy Hymn (Level 2)
(Enchantment/Charm)

Range: 120 yards
Duration: Special
Area of Effect: Special
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1
Saving Throw: Neg.

When a wizard casts Saint Nicholas' Unholy Hymn, he causes a hideous uncontrollable urge to sing to come over his victim. Once taken by this urge the creature affected can do nothing else other than bellow a cacophonous dirge; he cannot fight, eat, sleep, or walk, though he does remain standing. The spell affects 2d4 hit dice of monsters; monsters with 4 or more hit dice are unaffected, and targets must be within 30 feet of each other. Creatures with an intelligence of 16 or more are permitted a saving throw.

Singing creatures can be attacked as if prone. They continue singing until they are wounded, or shaken and slapped repeatedly - they will eventually starve or die of exhaustion unless this occurs. Material components are a sprig of holly and a small silver bell.

Wherein Swedish LARPers Get All Political

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:55:00 +0000

Perhaps I should be all morally outraged about the game which is the subject of this thread, but I must be mellowing in my old age, because now I mostly find it amusing. I mean, this stuff is so close to a parody it's practically indistinguishable from one: "a short, game masterless jeepform game centred around the idea of using fiat as a means for oppression", "the game mechanics were conceived for the purpose of playing gang rape, but are equally useful for any form of oppression, like for example bullying/mobbing" (woohoo, not only gang rape, which is my favourite form of oppression to explore, but I get bullying and mobbing too? But wait, no, now I'm disappointed - there doesn't seem to be any racist lynching involved), and, best of all, "don't play this game unless you're in a good place mentally, and really think you are up to it. It is not meant to be fun to play."

Ah, Swedish LARPers, where would we be without you?

Anyway, I've written before on the futility of this sort of thing (let's all get together and explore flavour-of-the-month-political-issue-[x] via the medium of role playing games), but this example strikes me as even more redundant than most. I mean, is there anyone out there, and I mean anyone at all, with the possible exception of genetically predetermined sociopaths, who needs to be reminded that gang rape isn't very nice? Least of all who needs to be reminded of it through a LARP? If you do know such a person, it's nothing a sound slap to the chops and a trip to a psychiatrist won't fix.

Now, to play devil's advocate, it appears the game creator isn't only trying to remind us that gang rape is bad, he's also making a political comment - "One thing that has been severely bugging me the last couple of years is that (at least in Sweden), it seems nearly impossible today to get convicted for rape or gang rape." (Well, I'm sure like me you try to get convicted for rape and gang rape in Sweden all the time, so you don't have to tell us twice!) Zounds, the razor-sharp political insight, eh? I mean, whatever next - "One thing that has really been annoying me recently is climate change - what are we going to do about all those nasty emissions?"; "Recently I've been getting really pissed off about all the murder and stuff going on in those African places, colonialism was such a bad thing, I'm really cheesed off about it"; "These days the big issue that really gets my goat is whaling, man, those sea cows are like the most beautiful and intelligent thing that has ever lived, they even discuss the general theory of relativity in those sea songs and the evil Japanese are just committing genocide against them and stuff".

For the record, I don't need game designers telling me what is or isn't bad. I don't need to LARP away my inner demons. I have a moral compass, thanksverymuch. Now let's get back to rolling dice and killing orcs. And kids, remember: don't do gang rape, mobbing, bullying, racist lynching or use fiat as a form of oppression of any kind. (Other uses of fiat are probably okay, but check with your local branch of the Jeepform LARP Society all the same.)

Atomic Rockets

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:12:00 +0000

I'm going all hard science fiction crazy at the moment with this blog, I know. Bear with me. I just wanted to link to the excellent site Atomic Rockets, an attempt to create a lay person's guide to rocketry and the science behind hard science fiction. (Aside from its contents, one thing you have to love about the site is its eccentric layout. As with all internet sites created by amateurs and which have been around for a long time, it truly feels as if it harks from a bygone era. I wonder if one day there will be an Antiques Roadshow of old websites?)

Anyway, browse through it and enjoy. Some particular favourite passages of mine, from the "common misconceptions" section:

Rockets Got Wings

If your rocket has a multi-megawatt power plant, an absurdly high thrust thermal rocket propulsion system, or directed energy weapons it will need huge heat radiators to purge all the waste heat. Otherwise the rocket will melt or even vaporize. Radiators look like large wings or arrays of panels. The necessity of radiators a real problem for warships since radiators are pathetically vulnerable to hostile weapons fire.

...

Rockets Don't Got Windows
Spacecraft have no need of windows or portholes, for much the same reason as a submarine. (No, the Seaview doesn't count. Strictly science fiction. There are no panoramic picture windows on a Trident submarine). Windows represent structural weakness, and there really isn't much to see in any event. Unless the spacecraft is orbiting a planet or docking with another ship, the only thing visible is the depths of space and the eye-searing sun. And unlike submarines, windows on a spacecraft also let in deadly radiation.
Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica to the contrary, space battles will NOT be fought at a range of a few feet. Directed energy weapons will force ranges such that the enemy ships will only be visible through a telescope. Watching a space battle through a port hole, you will either see nothing because the enemy ships are too far away, or you will see nothing because a reflected laser beam or nuclear explosion has permanently robbed you of your eyesight.
The navigation room might have an astrodome for emergency navigation. But for the most part windows will be omitted in favor of radar, telescopic TV cameras, and similar sensors.

...

Fuel Is Not Propellant

In a rocket, there is a difference between "fuel" and "reaction mass." Rockets use Newton's third law of Action and Reaction in order to move. Mass is violently thrown away in the form of the rocket's exhaust and the reaction accelerates the rocket forward. This mass is of course the "reaction mass." It is sometimes also called "remass" or "propellant."

The "fuel" is what is burned or whatever to generated the energy to expel the reaction mass. For example, in a classic atomic rocket, the fuel is the uranium-235 rods in the nuclear reactor, the reaction mass is the hydrogen gas heated in the reactor and expelled from the exhaust nozzle.

There are only a few confusing cases where the fuel and the reaction mass are the same thing. This is the case with chemical rockets such as the Space Shuttle and the Saturn 5, which is how the misconception started in the first place.

Automobiles, airplanes, and boats are sizable vehicles with relatively small fuel tanks. Not so rockets. An incredibly powerful rocket might approach having half its mass composed of reaction mass and the other half structure, hull plates, crew members, and everything else. But it is more likely that 75% of the mass will be reaction mass. Or worse. Most rockets are huge propellant tanks with a rocket engine stuck on the tail and a tiny crew habitat stuck on the top.

Romanticism and Classicism Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:18:00 +0000

A while ago, in fact, Christ, it was more than a year ago, I wrote a post about Romanticist and Classicist approaches to fantasy. It seems unusual that at the time, and since then up until this point, it never occurred to me that a similar dynamic applies to science fiction too. Just as you have the romantic fantasy authors (M. John Harrison, Lord Dunsany, Michael Moorcock) and the classicist fantasy authors (George R. R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Phillip Pullman) there exist romantic and classicist science fiction writers too. And just as in fantasy, the distinction comes in the approach taken to mystery.

Broadly, romanticist fantasy writers celebrate mystery (think of The Wizard Knight or Time and the Gods) while classicist fantasy writers attempt to nullify its effects (a key aspect of A Song of Ice and Fire is that its characters do not see the world as being somehow beyond their ken). In science fiction the dynamic is slightly different. The romanticist science fiction writers do not celebrate mystery so much as they rely on it - the reason why Star Trek technologies like transporters and warp drives can exist is that both we as the watchers and they as the writers accept that by necessity the way these technologies work has to remain a mystery. Classicist science fiction writers (Arthur C. Clarke, Alastair Reynolds, Kim Stanley Robinson) on the other hand are all about smashing mystery, about casting off its shroud and creating a knowable and understandable vision of the universe which stands up at least in theory to scientific rigour.

As with my thoughts on romanticist and classicist fantasy, I'm pretty conflicted about science fiction too. The handwavium of Star Trek is what allows it to do what it does. But there is something to be said for the sheer technical skill and intelligence it requires to create a classicist vision of the future.

Hard SF

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:37:00 +0000

Following on from yesterday's post I've been doing some thinking about hard SF. In principle I like the idea, you see. It's just that it's all so bloody difficult if you're a non-scientist like me. (My three GCSE Grade B's in Physics, Biology and Chemistry don't exactly stand me in good stead. What I really need to do is take a degree in Astronomy or something.)

There's also that old chestnut, the Player Investment Problem, or as I sometime think of it, the "a-realistic-game-set-in-ancient-Babylon-would-be-really-cool, but-only-1%-of-gamers-would-invest-anything-like-the-necessary-time-to-make-such-a-game-a-success problem." Which is to say, Pendragon and Harn are tough enough sells to most players. Don't even talk about a game in which you have to deal with lagrangian points and parsecs.

Transhuman Space looks interesting, were it not for the fact that I find the idea of transhumanism kind of laughable and revolting at the same time. It may be worth investigating to see if I can excise that part of it completely. Then again, that really probably just boils down to a very hard SF version of GURPS.

The Solar System

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 05:28:00 +0000

[Had a busy couple of weeks socially, academically and business-ily. (Can't think of an appropriate adverb to do with business for that sentence.) Will be back to daily updates from now on.]

From Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything:

Now, the first thing you are likely to realise is that space is extremely well named and rather dismayingly uneventful. Our solar system may be the liveliest thing for trillions of miles, but all the visible stuff in it - the Sun, the planets and their moons, the billion or so tumbling rocks of the asteroid belt, comets and other miscellaneos drifting detritus - fills less than a trillionth of the available space. You also quickly realise that none of the maps you have ever seen of the solar system was drawn remotely to scale. Most schoolroom charts show the planets coming one after the other at neighbourly intervals - the outer giants actually cast shadows over each other in many illustrations - but this is a necessary deceit to get them all on the same bit of paper. Neptune in reality isn't just a little bit beyond Jupiter, it's way beyond Jupiter - five times further than Jupiter is from us, so far out that it receives only 3 per cent as much sunlight as Jupiter.

Such are the distances, in fact, that it isn't possible, in any practical terms, to draw the solar system to scale. Even if you added lots of fold-out pages to your textbooks or used a really long sheet of poster paper, you wouldn't come close. On a diagram of the solar system to scale, with the Earth reduced to about the diameter of a pea, Jupiter would be over 300 metres away and Pluto would be about two and a half kilometres distant (and about the size of a bacterium, so you wouldn't be able to see it anyway). On the same scale, Proxima Centauri, our nearest star, would be 16,000 kilometres away. Even if you shrank down everything so that Jupiter was as small as the full stop at the end of this sentence, and Pluto was no bigger than a molecule, Pluto would still be over 10 metres away.

In light of that, and the fact that the solar system contains 8 planets, 5 dwarf planets, 335 moons and millions of asteroids, minor planets, comets, trojans, centaurs and the like, you really have to wonder why science fiction has obsessed for so long about interstellar and intergalactic empires. Isn't the solar system big enough?

One day I'd like to see a science fiction setting in which humans have colonised the solar system, but nowhere outside it - perhaps because travelling at the speed of light, or faster, simply hasn't been invented. This would be a fractured, multiethnic star system, where travel between planetary bodies takes weeks, months or years and communication is carried out by radio, and where military conflict is a projection of warfare on planet earth. In other words, a little like the era of European colonial expansion around the mid-18th century, except probably more likely dominated by countries such as China, India and Brazil.

Perhaps this setting already exists, and I just don't know about it. If so, its creators just haven't done a good enough job of getting it out there, dammit.

The Military Game

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 12:17:00 +0000

The good thing about all-night drinking on a Friday night is that it means you can legitimately spend all day on Saturday being hungover and doing self-indulgent things. Yesterday I spent much of the day playing Steel Panthers: World at War!, a freeware remake of an old PC WWII tactical wargame, and probably the most realistic and accurate of them all. Like all wargame junkies I have graduated from the marijuana of fighting the AI to the pure heroin of PBEM against human opponents; I've found that this game is just about the best online experience you can get, offering just the right level of playability and challenge - you can take your World of Warcraft and shove it.

It's got me thinking about role playing in a wartime setting. I've not played in many modern-era military-set games (I suppose Twilight 2000 is the only really noted example of the genre); I'm reasonably sure that their relative paucity in the hobby is that people assume that the Chain of Command takes away from player freedom.

This needn't necessarily the case and I would argue that many of the major wars of the last two centuries (especially the Napoleonic wars, the American civil war, the Russian civil war, the Chinese civil war, World War II) offer plenty of opportunity for adventure, primarily if the group of PCs are set up as either deserters, brigands or guerillas. For example:

The Kelly's Heroes campaign (or Three Kings campaign, if you will), in which the PCs go AWOL from an armed force to find fame, fortune, or something else.
The The Ants campaign, where a group of soldiers (the PCs) are left behind deep in enemy territory after an armistice.
The Russian-or-Chinese-civil-war campaign, in which the PCs are a band of mercenaries in a gargantuan country splintered into different political entities.
The Sharpe campaign, in which the PCs are ostensibly members of an army and have to follow orders, but seem to spend most of their lives somehow contriving to go off on special missions and generally buckle their swashes.

I like the idea of the Kelly's Heroes and Sharpe campaigns best, myself.

Tag Lines

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:43:00 +0000

I just grabbed myself a box of about thirty pulp SF books from the special archive at my university; not bad for £10. Lots of Pohl, Zelazny and Farmer, plus one or two Heinleins.

What I love about pulp fiction are the tag lines. These are very much a dying art; nowadays books tend to be festooned with comments from gibbering reviewers, which I always think are designed to tell you more about the reviewer than the book itself. It was more interesting when the publisher made more of an effort to get you excited about the contents.

Some choice examples:

From Tongues of the Moon by Philip Jose Farmer: "The explosive epic of a conspiracy that could free mankind - or destroy the stars!"

From My Name is Legion by Roger Zelazny: "He could be anyone he chose to be...wherever and whenever he wanted. Not a bad cover for a confidential agent on assignment!"

From Coils by Zelazny and Saberhagen: "Can a man unite his mind with the soul of a machine - and survive?"

My particular favourite, though, is from an obsure Farmer title, Lord of the Trees: "Was he man, beast, or a puppet of the world's oldest conspiracy?"

I don't know, but I can't wait to find out.

You've got to love those 1970s SF covers, too. Take a look at this one, for instance:

Tell me you don't want to know what in Christ's name that is all about.

A Milestone of Sorts

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:14:00 +0000

Wait! Stop the presses, batten down the hatches, and roll out the barrel! Monsters & Manuals has 100 blogger followers; the d20s are on me!

Thank you everybody for following this ludicrous blog. Long may it continue: ad-free, opinionated, inconsistent and downright silly.

Introduction to the Yellow City Trade Tongue

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:47:00 +0000

It's raining and miserable outside; typical North of England November day. So I'm sitting at the kitchen table with a nice cup of tea working on an old idea - the Yellow City Trade Tongue. Here's an introductory primer.

The Trade Tongue arose out of the need for a common language which could be spoken by both humans and slug people. Slug people, lacking teeth and having only a rudimentary palate, cannot form many sounds which humans find easy to produce. Humans, on the other hand, cannot produce the pheromones which slug people use to augment their spoken language. This created a need for a simple language accessible to both races, and over centuries the Trade Tongue has evolved as a means to fulfill that need.

Consonants

There are ten consonants in the Trade Tongue, corresponding to the sounds p, b, q, g, ɸ, ʝ, χ, ɰ, l, and h. In the roman alphabet these can be reproduced as, approximately, p, b, k, g, f, y, x, w, l and h. x is never produced as in 'xylophone' or 'extra', but always like the French r, the Spanish j, or the Portuguese rr. f is extremely light and is pronounced only with the use of the lips, not the teeth.

Vowels

There are fuve vowels - a, i, u, e, and o, almost identical to the Spanish equivalents. These can be elongated, commonly represented as á, í, ú, é, and ó, but also sometimes transcribed aa, ii, uu, ee or oo. When elongated, vowel sounds never mutate - thus e as in 'exit', é as in 'air', but never as in 'feed'.

Sound Structure

The Trade Tongue has a highly regimented consonant-verb-consonant-verb pattern. Two consonants are never found together. It also has a strict kind of vowel harmony which means that vowels are either regular or elongated in one word, but never both. Thus aa, ii, uu, ee and oo can be found in the same word together but are never found in the same word as a, i, u, e or o, and vice-versa.

Grammar

The Trade Tongue is an agglutinative, SOV language. All the verbs are regular, and distinguished by having three past tenses (last night, yesterday, general past) and three future tenses (tonight, tomorrow, general future). Nouns and verbs are not gendered and do not inflect according to gender.

[Next step is to begin constructing the vocabulary.]

Bakak's Skinning Knife

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:52:00 +0000

This long, curved knife has a blade of bronze and a large pommel of pure black onyx. It is razor sharp and very thin, designed for cutting skin from flesh.

In combat it functions as an ordinary dagger +2. It is only when it is used to skin a humanoid being that its special power comes into effect.

A skin cut by Bakak's knife can be worn by any humanoid of approximately similar size to the owner (for instance, a human can wear a human or elf skin, but not a dwarf's). Once a skin is worn it becomes a disguise so perfect that it is impossible to discern; the wearer looks exactly the same as the original possessor of the skin down to eye colour, height and weight. It cannot be discovered by a detect magic spell or similar. The only way the disguise can be noticed is by a small mark in the nape of the neck of the wearer, which looks like a tattoo in the shape of the knife itself.

A skin can be worn indefinitely, and removed at will. However, if it is worn for more than 24 hours at a stretch the wearer will find himself beginning to resemble the original possessor in more than appearance. After 24 hours, and for every subsequent 24 hour period thereafter, the wearer must taking a saving throw vs. magic. If he fails, his alignment permanently shifts to that of the original possessor of the skin.

Moth Ghosts of Muroran

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:33:00 +0000

Inhabiting large, spherical nests of silk which float through the crepscular space of Muroran, are a race of undead giant moths. The bulbous bodies of these creatures are twice the size of a man and their broad, heavy wings are yards across; they flap through the murky air searching for living prey, from which they suck the very soul.

The tongue of a Moth Ghost is several yards long and it is tightly coiled beneath its head. Once prey is found the tongue uncoils and hangs down beneath the body; the Moth Ghost then aims to hover above its victim and touch it with its tongue. As soon as this is accomplished the Moth Ghost can devour the life force of the unfortunate.

Moth Ghosts have no society or culture and pursue sustenance with mindless resolution. They appear to be able to sense body heat, and warm blooded travellers in the depths of Muroran will sometimes be pursued by dozens of the things, as sharks will flock to a source of blood.

Moth Ghost of Muroran

Armour Class: 4
Hit Dice: 4+4**
Move: Flying 240' (80')
Attacks: 1 touch / 1 wing buffet
Damage: None (energy drain of 1 level) / 1d8
No. App: 1-30
Save As: F4
Morale : 8
Treasure: Nil
Intelligence: 1
Alignment: Neutral
XP Value : 275

Special: Moth Ghosts are immune to sleep, charm and hold spells; they can only be hurt by silver or magical weapons.

I Got My Philosophy

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:43:00 +0000

One thing I rather like about traditional, sandboxy D&D is that it firmly believes in self-empowerment. Once you've rolled up a character his or her fate is essentially in your hands; it's up to you to make things happen. You're the master of your own destiny - unless of course the bad luck of the dice declare otherwise. In this sense it provides valuable life lessons to youngsters (especially the geeky and bookish youngsters who the game attracts) - take risks, have adventures, make something of your life; even if you fail, which is a distinct possibility because the universe is a random and uncaring place, that's more interesting than staying in your comfort zone. Whether or not people learn those lessons is debatable, but I think they are there.

Another interesting aspect of early D&D is that it throws into sharp focus what I believe to be the crux of the human condition, namely: Are we bound by our genes or can we transcend them? Of course, the PHB doesn't use words like "genes". What I'm referring to is the way the character generation process, performed the way God intended it (3d6 in order for stats), etches the character's strengths and weaknesses in stone; they are his or her DNA as surely as your individual genome determines how tall you are and what colour eyes you have. On the one hand, this is restrictive: a character with an INT of 6 can't become a mage, just like a person as bad at maths as me can't become a quantum physicist. But on the other hand, stats can never restrict player freedom once the game has begun: it is never possible for a DM to say to a player "You can't attempt task x because your y stat is too low." You can try anything. This is somewhat contradictory, but it is also very human, at a basic level; it is the paradox that faces all of us. Your nature moulds you, but your consciousness fights to transcend that mould.

These are the thoughts once has after a few beers down at the pub watching England get beaten by Brazil in a meaningless international friendly.

Test Post

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:47:00 +0000

For some reason I'm not getting new posts from my blog on my RSS reader, so this is a quick test to make sure everything is working.

[Iburi System, Part VII] Tomakomai, the Flame in the Night

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:23:00 +0000

Tomakomai is the furthest planet from Iburi and it dwells in the coldest and darkest regions of wildspace. But it is not the place of ice and endless night that one might expect. It is a flat disc of lava and fire, so hot that it is almost a rival to Iburi itself, and it produces a constant red and orange light.

Elementals from the planes of fire, smoke and magma inhabit Tomakomai, leading some to believe that there are portals to those planes somewhere on its surface. If there are, no outsider has ever found one; the planet is so hostile an environment that it defies exploration. Most of the knowledge about it comes from the reports of an occasional mage who is able to protect himself from fire with spells and avoid being destroyed by the inhabitants. The elementals carve magical citadels for themselves out of obsidian and brass, and these sites pock the planet's surface.

There are four moons surrounding Tomakomai. They do not orbit it but are fixed, spinning, in place: one directly above the centre, one directly below, and two on a horizontal plane with the disc nominally at "east" and "west". They are traditionally called the Father, the Mother, the Sister, and the Brother respectively; a great civilisation or civilisations was once based on these moons, judging by their many ruined cities, towers, temples and monuments, but now they are only inhabited by pirates, outlaws and smugglers. Legend has it that the founders of this civilisation were a race of Mind Flayers who were exterminated by Githyanki long ago.

[Iburi System, Part VI] Muroran, the Haunted Night

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:44:00 +0000

Muroran is many millions of miles beyond Utashinai, separated by a stretch of space known as the Wilderness. It is so far from Iburi that light from the Primary, by the time it arrives, is dim and faint, attenuated by distance; the brightest illumination Muroran ever experiences is a crepuscular noon akin to a twilight. Because it is made entirely from elemental air, this gives Muroran the character of a ghost - dark, ethereal, near-invisible - and indeed it is often called The Haunted Night by the wayfarers who know of it. Its vast airy wastes are swept by storms and shrouded by cloud and fog.

There are many legends about Muroran; it is so poorly known that myths and rumours seem to rise up from its murky depths as if under their own volition. Many of these surround its supposed inhabitants (giant winged spiders, flying kraken, intelligent moths), but the most persistent speak of small islands of rock which float through the night and which could be mined for gold and silver if only they could be discovered.

Muroran has a single, small rocky moon in its orbit. This is known as Nopporo's Moon after its solitary inhabitant, the archmage Nopporo. So powerful that he has discovered the secret of eternal life, Nopporo lives in a tall tower at the moon's north pole, served by many varieties of magical automata which he created long ago. He has lived for thousands of years in this manner and is quite mad, as likely to be compassionate as cruel. His automata are sentient but their behaviour seems to naturally fluctuate with Nopporo's moods.

Twit Off

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:38:00 +0000

I've deleted my twitter account. I know quite a few people who read this blog follow me there. I tried it for six months and have decided I actively detest pretty much everything about it. (No reflection on the people I follow on there; just the interface, mindset and philosophy of the thing.) This is by way of explanation for those who might miss my rare and boring tweets.

More Spelljammer later.

[Iburi System Part V] Utashinai, the Verdant

noreply@blogger.com (noisms) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:41:00 +0000

Utashinai is almost equal to Rumoi in size and grandeur, though in most other resepcts it could not be more different. It is a world of jungles, swamps, deserts and lush grasslands, of crocodile people, Yuan-ti and fire giants, and of dinosaurs - above all dinosaurs, who throng its sultry surface.

Utashinai is dominated by thick bands of mountains which are the result of the constant restlessness of its tectonics. Volcanoes abound; the air is rich with oxygen and the soil packed with fertility, making it the most verdant and populous of Iburi's planets. There are countless different kingdoms, empires, sultanates, oligarchies, kritocracies, chiefdoms, and many other varities of polity patchworking its surface.

All the intelligent races of Utashinai domesticate dinosaurs and use them as beasts of burden, war and transport.