Miscellany and Update: 11/15/2011

1. If you're not playing in Jeff Rients' Caves of Myrddin game, you're really missing out. Odds are, if you're reading this, you're reading his blog already and have heard the wild rumors and speculations of this dungeon haunted corner of Cornwall. If the schedule (Jeff starts at 4:30 am CST) is putting you off, take a chance and sign up anyway. I'm not a morning person in the slightest, but it's been more than worth it, every time. In addition to being some of the most fun I've had at a gaming table, virtual or otherwise, each session doubles as a master-class in how to run a challenging, compelling, and satisfying game of Old School D&D (we're using B/X).

2. Jack Shear, author of 13 Flavors of Fear: Weird Setting Sketches for Lamentations of the Flame Princess (yer humble narrator has some material in the appendix) has just come out with a new blog: Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque. And he starts it off with a bang -- 100 strange and phantasmagorical things to happen to your players when they miss a session. Check it out!

3. After a lengthy hiatus, I've started breaking out the art supplies again over the last month. I'm still experimenting and re-learning how to draw, but it's very satisfying to get ink and graphite (I haven't tried painting again yet) on paper. Here are a couple of recent attempts:

Beyond Good and Evil: "Charming" and "Tedious"

I was thinking about this Oscar Wilde quote the other day:

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious." *

At the risk of being tedious myself, I'd like to propose the following as an RPG thought experiment. It's not particularly profound, but it might be amusing. Strip out the "Good" and "Evil" from the standard AD&D alignment chart and replace it with "Charming" and "Tedious" -- so you end up with Lawful Charming, Chaotic Tedious, and so forth. I can't remember the number of "fictional character alignment charts" I've seen, sifting everyone from different iterations of Batman to the cast of Family Guy into the classic 3x3 grid, and I'm curious to see what such a chart would look like with that substitution. Take a character from real life, comics, books, TV, etc,, and drop them in. Take a character you're currently playing, and see where they fall on the grid. Just off the top of my head, Special Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks would occupy one end of the spectrum at Lawful Charming, while the late Muammar Gadaffi and, say, internet trolls typify Chaotic Tedious.

*Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Gods of Galbaruc: Seppophis the Huntress

I posted this to Gorgonmilk's blog a little while ago, and thought I'd put it up here, along with a sketch. At this stage, Galbaruc is less a coherent, codified setting than a dumping ground for stray D&D ideas, but its slowly taking shape as its own thing.

I have a rough idea of that the city-state looks like, some of its institutions, even the way people dress, but there's no map yet, and not much of a detailed history. It was originally a mercantile and naval hub of a now-extinct empire. Like Haiti, it was born out of a slave revolt, the uprising swiftly joined by those aristocrats who saw where the tide was turning and switched sides while they still could. The fact that their descendants still retain a considerable amount of power and influence in the modern Republic is galling to some, but too much harping on this point is generally seen to be in bad taste. As a result of its origins, slavery per se is absolutely forbidden in Galbaruc and its territories, though there is an elaborately detailed system of indentured servitude.

Anyway, that's about all I've decided on for the history of the city-state. Future posts will deal with imported religions such as the Cults of Urizen and Orc, monsters, electoral fraud, coffeehouses, the Island Princes, piracy, drugs, conspiracies, the variability of goblins, and the cursed bloodlines of the Struldbrugs.

I talked about one local goddess (and one of her festivals) here. Here's another:

Seppophis the Huntress, Mistress of Snares and Entanglements. NE.

Usually depicted with the body of a nubile dancing girl holding aloft a length of rope and a dripping, barbed javelin. In place of her head is a mass of long spider's legs, extending in an irregular nimbus past her shoulders. She is the patroness of all who earn their living by pursuit and evasion, by enticement and sudden surprises. Thieves and other scofflaws on the run attempt to propitiate her with substitute sacrifices (she is believed to be partial to trapped, but uninjured flies) while watchmen, bounty-hunters and and frustrated revengers hope to secure her blessing as they pursue their quarry. Brigands and pirates offer prayers and sacrifices for wealthy, unguarded victims. Prostitutes, jewelers, and perfumers give her reverence, as do all manner of mountebanks and swindlers.

Every year, in Galbaruc, an elaborate ceremony takes place on the Street of Crushed Petals in which a fantastically costumed and masked troupe of stolid, upright citizens and officials representing Law square off against their opposite number, representing Chaos. Through a series of competitive dances, recitations, songs, and feats of strength and cunning, two opposing champions are chosen -- suitors to the goddess, and these are led in a winding parade to the outskirts of the city, to the cave believed to be the entrance to Seppophis' lair. Both champions enter the cave, though only one will emerge in the morning, maddened and screaming. The other has been taken as the Consort of Seppophis, and is never seen again. His faction will enjoy a bonus to all activities relating to their trade for the remainder of the year.

When Seppophis deigns to take human form, it is either in the guise of a slim, dark-haired girl, smelling faintly of cloves and cinnamon, or of a gaunt, silver-haired matriarch of no known family line. She is attracted to scenes of intrigue and hopeless entrapment.

State of the Dandy: 10/08/2011

Some of you may have noticed that posting frequency has dropped significantly of late. I originally intended to update the thing at least a few times a week. That later dropped to once a week, and from there, it's gone steadily downhill. The main reason for this is that I've taken on a second job. While this has improved things on the "being able to pay the rent, start paying off student loans, and not having to stockpile ramen" front, it's definitely thrown a damper on things as far as rhapsodizing on the theory and practice of pretending to be an elf goes.

"Believe me that's the last thing I'd like to throw."

But anyway, I'm hoping to get things moving again, with more frequent posting, and more interesting content. Here's what's currently in the works:


1.

I'm planning to run a regular "mini-sandbox" campaign on Google + set about a generation after the death of Alexander the Great. While this is set in a specific historical context, I'm going for a looser, sword-and-sorcery feel than a strictly historical one. I'll be using Paul Elliott's excellent Warlords of Alexander along with a custom version of BRP consisting of elements swiped and modified from RuneQuest 2nd ed., Stormbringer, Elric!, and Call of Cthulhu, as well as bits of Pendragon and WFRP. This mutant hybrid, under the working title "Hellenistic FrankenQuest" is my current pet project. Luckily, a lot of the work has been done for me, and what I'm left with mainly consists of choosing which parts to scrap, which to tinker with, and which to keep whole. I'm definitely keeping hit location, for instance, but replacing the multiple rolls with the WFRP method, which reduces to-hit and hit location to one percentile roll (you roll under your score to hit, and then flip the number to find the location).

The nice thing about using BRP is that Elric! and Call of Cthulhu spells (of which there are a great many) can be freely inserted into the game with minimal fiddling. Pendragon's Glory rating (here renamed Kleos) charts your PCs growing fame and importance. Eventually, a character with high enough Kleos can achieve godhood, though your sphere of influence may revolve around a particular city and might only take effect posthumously.

I intend to make this campaign based on a location, rather than a consistent party, as Jeff Rients is doing with his Caves of Myrddin game. This means a lower commitment from those involved, and an ever-shifting cast of characters, with perhaps a couple regulars. The city of Trapezos, on the Black Sea, is the most tempting candidate right now. There are pirate raids at sea and along the coast, monsters in the hills and ruins outside the city, all manner of intrigue within, and innumerable petty kingdoms to the south.

2. The Tekumel- LotFP conversion is temporarily on hold, as I'm still waiting to hear back from the Foundation re: some questions I had. Also, I'm having a blast running and playing EPT right now, so I'm a little less interested in rules- tinkering with this particular setting at the moment. The next Tekumel thing I do will probably be the Jakalla Encounter Table.

3. City- State of Galbaruc - This began as part of an entry for Chris Kutalik's Nautical Contest, but the more I thought about it, the more potential I thought it had for a setting of its own, and the perfect place to bring together a lot of setting ideas that had been bouncing around without a fixed abode for some time. I ran an IRC game several years ago set in a city I half jokingly referred to as "Venichmar" (Venice + Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar). Eventually, it became something a bit more interesting and complex than the derivative name would suggest, but the game folded before I had an opportunity to really work out much of the detail. I'll deal with more of the particulars in a future post, but here are a few of the influences I'm drawing on, here:

- Mediterranean islands like Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia
- Over the Edge's Al Amarja
- Ahistorical, but leaning toward an Early Modern period feel (16-18th centuries) as opposed to Medieval.
- William Blake's cosmology and pantheon (Los, Urizen, Orc, etc.,) intermingled with other strange local gods.
- Pirate Havens
- The Saragossa Manuscript
- Ancestor-worship among traditional nobility
- Jacobean revenge tragedies

4.

This isn't so much a concept for a single, discrete setting as a toolkit for running sci-fi games in a trippier vein suggested by early Heavy Metal comics, Metabarons, Jodorowsky's abortive attempt at Dune, stoner metal, psychedelic rock, (Hawkwind's Space Ritual, etc.) movies like Zardoz, etc. Still really vague, but it's something I'd eventually like to do.

5. Even more nebulous at this point, but I have a broad concept for a LotFP adventure with conquistadors in not-South America called Dreams of Blood and Gold. Still needs a lot of work even to bring it up to the outline stage.

Decisions, Decisions...

Mail Call: Runequest 2nd ed.

Not much to add, really. I've been wanting a copy for a while, and it's finally mine. I also really, really like the look of the thing -- the brown ink on the cover, Luise Perrin's artwork, the maps-- all of it.

Ok, the character sheet scares me a bit.

Come Not in That Form! What the well-dressed demon is wearing this summoning.

Being creatures of spirit, demons are not bound by any physical consistency, and may adopt such forms as boredom, perversity, or personal aesthetics dictate. Here are 20 "costume changes."


1. A translucent, crystalline, perfectly proportioned male or female body filled with wriggling pink worms.

2. A laughing huntsman wearing a suit of stitched-together infants’ skin, complete with a jaunty cap.

3. A vaguely humanoid figure made of rusted and bloodstained metal implements.

4. A cloud of fat corpse-flies, buzzing as one.

5. A gnarled, stooped figure with pale green skin, branded all over with still-smoking magical sigils. Its long, tangled beard reaches to the floor. It has no visible eyes, tiny serrated teeth, and a tongue of blue flame.

6. A serpent with a flaming crown, its body folding back on itself like a Moebius strip.

7. A recently-executed criminal, with all the accompanying signs of his death.

8. A deceased close relative of one of the PCs, bleeding continually from the eyes.

9. A perfect replica of the most common popular depiction of demons – red, horns, barbed tail, pitchfork, etc.

10. A naked, faceless infant suspended in a floating sac of pale fluid.

11. A great hero/heroine from myth and legend, speaking in a voice of the opposite gender.

12. A pretty, effeminate young fop, clad in velvet and holding a peacock feather.

13. A constantly shifting riot of wings and eyes. Talks like Michael J. Anderson on Twin Peaks.

14. A wax replica of one of the PCs, slowly melting.

15. A huge, bloated maggot with the face of a beautiful young woman.

16. A kindly, care-worn cleric of the most popular local faith.

17. The last intelligent being killed by one of the PCs, as they appear now.

18. A flayed bear, walking upright and holding a fennel stalk and a flute made from a human thighbone.

19 An elongated figure made of black iron, topped with a star-shaped head orbited by tiny flames.

20. A composite creature with the head of an owl, the torso of an emaciated woman, and the lower body of a praying mantis. Carries a flail and a cup of sweet wine.

Draco qui Vermithrax Pejorative Dictus Fuit Mortuus Est.

Just watched _Dragonslayer_ (1981) for the first time. Thoughts.

1. Holy shit, that was a great dragon.

2. The amount of Latin in this movie is a delight.

3. People in this movie are actually dressed in convincing Early Medieval clothing, rather than ridiculous confections of buckles and straps.

4. If they made this movie today, it would be full of crappy CGI, the leads would all be impossibly good-looking, and it would be 3 hours long. Also, there would be a bumbling comic sidekick, and fart jokes.

5. Hey, that priest is Emperor Palpatine!

6. The dragon has some depth (its rage at the murder of its hatchlings) without getting all Dragonheart - Sensitive New Age Guy about it.

7. Have I mentioned all the Latin? This might just be a former Classics major thing, but I'm grinning like an idiot, here.

8. The villain/main henchman guy was a total bastard, but in a way I could really respect.

9. I can't believe I've never seen this one before, and it really sucks that this was a commercial flop.

10. They sure used to be able to get away with a lot more in a PG movie.

That's It-- I'm Writing My Own Tékumel Thingie.

M.A.R. Barker's world of Tékumel has been all over the OSR blogosphere lately, mostly thanks to this announcement from the Tekumel Foundation. James Maliszewski's recently posted some retrospectives on Barker's novel Flamesong, the default starting campaign in Empire of the Petal Throne, and the maddening fingerprint-scape of The Nightmare Maze of Jigrésh. Chris at Hill Cantons has stepped up to the plate and plans to run Empire of the Petal Throne on Google+, which thrills me to no end. Of all the games I've read and daydreamed about, EPT is the one I never expected to actually play.

I've had the vague intention for a while now of writing up a conversion of Tékumel for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but I've become increasingly impatient with vague intentions. Up until about a month or so ago, I hadn't written anything substantial since High School. Now I'm blogging semi-regularly, producing content that I'm actually happy with, and has been generally well-received. I've gone over the guidelines for free fan projects for both LotFP and Tekumel, and there's really nothing stopping me.

Fuck it, I'm going to DO THIS. First off, I should establish some limits and guidelines:

1) First and foremost, I want this to be an accessible, user-friendly tool for anyone to sit down with some friends who've never heard of Barker, Tékumel, Tsolyanu, etc., and run a game that's fun, fast-paced and exciting, while still maintaining the vibrant, trippy exoticism of the setting. This is broad-strokes, swashbuckling, sword-and-planet Tékumel. It's the difference between the Arabian Nights and the Sinbad movies, and a scholarly examination of the Abassid Caliphate, or between The Three Musketeers and a sober history of French society under Louis XIV. I'm going for a literary feel rather than an anthropological one. While I enjoy the Guardians of Order edition, I feel that it still places too much emphasis on cultural and historical minutiae to be really accessible to a new audience. To that end...

2) ... as in EPT, the assumption is that PCs are barbarian adventurers -- fresh off the boat and on the make, taking odd jobs no proper Tsolyani would touch with a 10-ft. pole in their quest for gold, glory, and citizenship. Players more experienced with the setting could have the option to play disgraced, now clanless Tsolyani who must rebuild their new lives from scratch, and win such glory for themselves that they can once more boast clan membership. At any rate, these characters are on the fringes of society looking in, not well-established citizens of that society.

3) I want it to be short, sharp, sweet, and flavorful, with a premium placed on utility and ease of use. I'm taking my cue from Zak S.'s Vornheim, here. I see this as being 20-30 pages, tops. To that end, there will be a great many mix- and- match elements, random tables, and story hooks, but very little in the way of exhaustive canonical detail. This will be a setting-specific toolkit, not a complete game or a definitive sourcebook.

4) It will be free. I expect to stray from canon at some point, and at this stage, I'd rather not have to wrangle with the logistics and red tape needed to put out an official commercial product. I'd be open to the possibility later, which would involve getting approval from the Tekumel Foundation. On the system side of things, from what I can see, Raggi's LotFP Compatibly License Terms seem easy enough to abide by, but I'd rather leave that off the table for right now.

5) Art and Layout: While I'm starting to get back to drawing and painting, my work isn't nearly of professional quality and I have no experience with proper document layout programs or techniques. I'd like this to be aesthetically pleasing, though, which means I have to either (a) Learn to do everything myself, or (b) enlist the help of others who'd be willing to contribute pro bono (I'm embarrassingly broke at the moment).

And that's all I have at the moment. I'm expecting this to take a while, and I'll be working on other projects throughout, but this is something I'd really like to see through to completion.

Update, Upcoming Projects...

1. "Rival Adventuring Parties" and "Rural Inns & Taverns" took 2nd Place in Zak S.'s Vornheim: Hack This Book Contest, losing out to Dan Voyce's wonderfully weird "Nasty Little Idols" and "Theatre Amphisbaena".

2. I've now put up "Rural Inns & Taverns" as a 1- page pdf here. Other tables should
follow shortly.

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For this weekend and the coming week.

1. I really want to flesh out the Galbaruc setting first detailed here. I'm thinking Encounter Tables, Holidays, NPCs, Monsters, Societies and Factions, etc. I really like what Trey's doing with The City and James Maliszewski's Dwimmermount campaign (not to mention Zak S.'s Vornheim) , and I think it would be fun and challenging to do something similar.

2. Get down some details on Psychadelic Warlords. What it is, for starters.

3. Encounter table for the Foreigners' Quarter of Jakálla.

4. Some movie reviews.

5. Get to work on that YA novel.

6. Get back to drawing and painting -- especially now that I have a scanner.

7. Run something on Google +.