A bit of housekeeping

Happy New Year!

I'm going to use the fact that time is arbitrarily (though conveniently) marked in the Gregorian calendar in such a way that this time appears special to noodle on about this blog for a bit.

I seem to have continued writing decently regularly, much to my surprise. I think part of the reason is the start of grad school; despite having significantly less time to think about these kinds of things, now I'm also on a schedule and exposed to new people. Gaming is a social activity, after all, so meeting new people could easily get the gaming juices flowing. Maybe it also has something to do with the Tuesday-Thursday schedule (that evolved from my class schedule), which is much more manageable than the absurdly over-ambitious daily or semi-daily thing I first tried for when I started this blog.

I'm hopeful that my regular posting will still continue into the new year. After all, I still have a lot of work to do on the Desolate North and for gaming in general. I want to come up with a framework for figuring out the resources for settlements of various sizes, including how the PCs interact with them. (I'm thinking changing the markets by spending money, their militaries, how easy it is to find what kinds of items, and a domain-level view of what kinds of resources they possess and exploit, all without needed to turn this in to Spreadsheets & Secretaries. Something a little like AER, but lighter weight and in some places less abstract.) I have a whole bunch of hex contents ideas I want to flesh out on this here blog. I'm still writing that megadungeon, and I want to post what I can about how it's shaping up without revealing enough to spoil surprises for the players. And at some point soon hopefully there will be some play reports coming in as I get a group together.

All that said, I re-iterate that this blog is not a commitment for me. Posting might drop off again with no notice whatsoever due to life changes or a lack of interest. Take all this as a good sign, but not a promise.

Bisociation as dungeon device

Let me share something with you.

I committed to building a megadungeon for the Desolate North a while ago. Quite a while ago. The first thing I started with was an idea of what kind of place I wanted and a tie-in to the campaign. I decided on an old dwarven fortress, abandoned for centuries. I promptly made a side-view map (pretty cool, too, and pretty detailed, if I may say so myself)...and then got swept up in real life. This was back before my recent spate of posting, mind.

When I came back to it, I had this great side-view map, and some of the entrance to level 1 mapped out. And...it sat there. I knew I should work on it, but it sat there. Why?

I just wasn't enthused about the idea. First, there was the setting idea - Oh, great, another dwarven fortress dungeon, just like other classic dwarven fortress dungeons! how original and wonderfully evocative! - and then there was the fact that, even if I liked the setting idea, I didn't want to play with it for a whole megadungeon's worth of space and effort. It sat there.

Until, talking it over with my wife one day, I came upon the solution. See, I still like the idea of an old dwarven fortress. It fits in very nicely with the Desolate North, as the first clue that this is actually an area of ancient history instead of virgin territory. But I didn't want to stick with it for the whole dungeon. So what to do?

Bisociate. The dungeon is two different things at the same time in the same place. (Hat tip to Kenneth Hite. Suppressed Transmission is a big part of my gaming bildungsroman.)

So at the same time as the dungeon is indeed an ancestral homeland for a civlization of dwarves that was never supposed to be here and is only in the crackpot theories of some discredited sage, it is also so much more, weirdly layered over it and shining through it and competing with it. Which set of myths is true? What exactly is the dungeon? Is it inside out?

This has a bunch of benefits. Firstly, I feel less like I'm leading the players on by the nose if I shove in discoverable bits about the lore. After all, through the bisociation they can come to their own conclusions about the history of the dungeon and the Desolate North, and I can't even say that they're wrong.

Further, it allows me to throw in a bunch of stuff that's interesting and Weird and cultish and oh-so-appropriate to what gets my creative juices flowing without feeling tied to the dusty and tired theme of 'underground mountain fortress for short people' that's just, by itself, missing that je ne sais quoi.

What this isn't is an excuse for the dungeon to not make sense or go 'gonzo.' I could use it that way, but I don't want to. ASE is all well and good, but I don't want to play it. Besides, Mr Wetmore is better at it than me by miles, despite sharing a first name.

But it does feel freeing. I can draw rooms without worrying overly about whether or not they fit with the dwarven theme, or (especially on lower levels) even if it exactly made sense for someone to build them this way. I can include whole other themes if I want without breaking stride, so long as I can tie them all together into the larger bisociative picture.

Ultimately, though, it passes the best test of all: I'm actually drawing it. I have the first (of four) sections of level 1 nearly completed (on graph paper, not keyed) despite the fact that my only time to work on it is in snatches and starts. (Mostly in the morning while waiting for my professor to come to class.) And I'm excited about the place, about drawing it and keying it and putting it all together and letting PCs loose to wreck it. Ask my wife; I won't shut up about it.

That's nice for you, but what can I do with it?

That's a valid question. After all, you're here reading for ideas about your own gaming. Here's the thing: you can do it too.

Let's say you have an idea for a dungeon. For the sake of an example, we'll go with 'ancient Greek with animal men' in the tradition of Jacquays. That's a good theme, but if you want (or if you're struggling) you can bisociate (the italics are traditional). The dungeon has another theme. Not a complementary one, a completely new one that's sufficient unto itself. Going with our example, you can also have 'original touch-down spot and temple to the Elder Things'.

How does this work? That's up to you and how far you want to take it. Maybe different levels are on different 'planes' or places and interpenetrate. Maybe the dungeon changes from visit to visit (making restocking potentially very interesting, if a lot of work). Maybe if you're on drugs you see things differently - not more or less true, just differently. Maybe if you go right at the fork, you find one thing, but if you go left, you find another. Maybe there are different groups of monsters in your factions that only make sense in one of the idioms but not the other.

The possibilities are endless.

Try it out.

Lessons from real adventurers

I've been reading books by real world adventurers lately. These are people who actually did what we pretend around our tables to do: these men went out into the deep and untamed wilderness, crawled around the hexes, and even in some cases descended into dungeons.

I'm really not in the mood for more introduction today. Too much other stuff to get done, and my creativity wears thin along with my sleep schedule. So I'll skip the coy insinuations about 'verisimilitude' and 'howling empty wilderness' and so forth and get straight to the potentially gameable lessons about what their expeditions have in common and how they work. (Note also that I don't have any interest in claims about whether or not these adventurers were representing themselves and there adventures accurately. That way lies politics.)

Caravans

Adventurers travel in caravans. For one thing, there's safety in numbers, but for another, for
any serious length of time you need to bring a caravan to carry all the stuff you need. Food, (sometimes water), tents, gifts, weaponry, various utility supplies (rope, lights, etc.), clothes, gifts (see below), feed for the animals, etc. Caravans will slow you down, since you have to deal with drovers and animals and all the little inconviences that crop up, but without a caravan you're just heading out into the bush to starve to death.

One further advantage of a caravan is that it gives you a disguise. You can travel as a merchant instead of an adventurer (or foreign conqueror).

Finally, bringing a caravan allows you to set up a base camp (see below).

Lots of hirelings

This is part and parcel with the caravan. Caravans need lots of people. At the bare minimum, if you're just bringing a feed pony and a gear pony along with your own mounts, you'll need a drover, a varlet, and a guide. With an actual caravan you need drovers, packmasters, servants, and possibly guards.

A decent rule of thumb is that you need roughly twice the number of (non-combatant) followers as you have pack animals, and if you need guards you need at least half that many. This doesn't include guides, retainers, or camp followers.

Settlement to Settlement (or well-to-well)

Caravans generally move from settlement to settlement. Cities and towns are few and far between, but small villages (mobile or otherwise) are more common. For one thing, paths are more likely to lead you that way, so unless you're blazing trail it's going to happen naturally. For another, native settlements are places to rest, resupply, and learn about the country. You can hire on more people (or animals) if you lost some. You can recover from sickness. You can set up a base camp to see local sights or hunt the local animals (or monsters). You're unlikely to be able to replenish food at a village, though (depending on temperment) the villagers may very well feed you.

Native guides

Central Asians have the best hats

You will want to hire native guides to the territory. They know the paths and the dangers, at
least until over the next hill. They also know the local people, which can be an advantage or a disadvantage. A native guide will probably steer you safely where you want to go, but he might think you're crazy for wanting to go there. He might have ulterior motives for trying to convince you to go somewhere or leading you along a particular path, like wanting to bring you to his home village so his family can sell you horses (and fleece you). He might be from a tribe with bad relations with another tribe in the area, and so want to avoid particular paths or settlements. (You might even get bad relations with that other tribe by being seen with him).

Still, a native guide is all but indispensible. Otherwise you're just wandering around in the wilderness.

Specific purpose (usually provided by external agent)

It is exceedingly rare for adventurers to just wander off into the blue to see what they can see. Burton was looking for Harare. Livingstone was looking for the source of the Nile (and Stanley was looking for Livingstone). Cortes was looking for El Dorado, which was supposed to be a specific place. Burnaby was looking for Khiva. Marco Polo was looking for a trade route. Examples go on.

Often this is further enforced by some other external factor that makes that goal worth attaining outside the simple personal notch-on-the-belt experience for the adventurer.  To use the above examples, Burton was looking for Harare because he was speculating and spying for the English crown. (The area around Harare later became the English colony of Rhodesia.) Livingstone was looking for the source of the Nile because the Royal Society put him up to it.

Knowledge of places and things therefore becomes important. External agents will offer rewards (or, if you're reputable, fund you beforehand) for specific pieces of information, such as the location and defenses of cities, the sources of rivers or other important geographical features, cultural knowledge from remaining artifacts, decryption of local languages, etc. Each power that wants something will want something specific, though (depending on the nature of the place) they might be happy with something else. The King is going to want military information, but the College of Sages might be overjoyed to gain mummies and surveys of a burial mound when they originally sent you to learn a new language. Or they might not.

Hirelings (and natives) are not equals

Generally speaking, hirelings are going to be hard-working or lazy. In either case, they expect you to be in charge of the expedition and act like it. We're not running a democracy here; you're the guy in charge. The lazy and duplicitous ones especially take a firm hand. An example from Burnaby: his drover didn't want to load up the pack animals at the proper times, because he didn't like the pace Burnaby set. Further, he would pack up sloppily, and when the burdens fell apart use the excuse that Allah wills all things, so what can we do? to which Burnaby replied by kicking and beating him soundly. When the drover protested, Burnaby replied, 'Allah wills that you be lazy, and Allah wills that I beat you for it, so what can we do?' After that, he never had another (large) problem with the drover.

The same goes for natives, although less so. When you first come upon a native tribe or village, the members are going to either assume you are higher status than they, or they will test you to see, sometimes to the point of aggression. If you try to be overly accommodating, that may be a sign of weakness. Of course this varies from people to people; knowing how to behave is earned by experience and good counsel.

What people like can be surprising

This is best illustrated with an anecdote from Sir Richard Francis Burton.

Crossing the Fiumara we ascended a hill, and found upon the summit a large kraal alive with heads of kine. The inhabitants flocked out to stare at us and the women uttered cries of wonder. I advanced towards the prettiest, and fired my rifle by way of salute over her head. The people delighted, exclaimed, Mod! Mod! —“Honor to thee!”— and we replied with shouts of Kulliban —“May Heaven aid ye!”

Bring gifts, lots of gifts

You aren't going to get anywhere with natives or others without bringing things to give away as a sign of your magnanimity and good-will. Even among those who prize generosity to strangers, if you're constantly taking without giving back you'll quickly sour your welcome. These don't have to be expensive, but they do have to be valued. At the same time, if you show yourself to have too free a hand, you're setting yourself up to have a train of beggars and thieves. Recognize who's in charge and be generous to him and his people.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, the original inspiration for this post

Gaming without minis

I don't have a miniatures collection. This is probably one of my biggest hang-ups when it comes to running a game.

I like minis. I enjoy the tactical and tactile aspect of setting up the battle-mat. I like the sight of them on the table, and I like the focus they give to the game. You break out the miniatures and everyone pays attention.

Problem is, I just don't have the money or time to build a collection. (And, unlike Gary, I don't have kids with their own toys I can steal and kitbash. Besides, kids are going more with video games these days.)

I get around this with a bunch of kludges, but I don't really like any of them.

Often I just don't use the tactical map at all. Especially for older versions of D&D, it's often unnecessary. You can discuss tactical positioning and make rulings on the fly all without positioning little figures. It can get difficult with areas of effect, however, and it can be difficult to keep moment-to-moment cohesion of vision and communication, especially in larger skirmishes.

I have in the past experimented with using paper minis, mostly for the PCs. This can work well for the pure representation aspect, but it always feels cheap. There's just something tactile and pleasing about small three-dimensional figures, and especially so with the added weight of pewter. It's the difference between playing chess with a cherry-and-marble set vs. the Milton & Bradley plastic version. It just doesn't feel the same, and it doesn't draw me in.

Another thing I do is to use dice to represent the monsters. This actually works well, and I like it. Dice come in enough different shapes and colors that you hardly ever have trouble remembering what's what, and instead of having to mark the bases they are themselves the markers. Rather than 'that hobgoblin mini in front' you're tracking 'red six' or 'white eight', which is nice. Plus, it gives large groups of monsters a more cohesive effect than if they're all represented with minis, even similar ones. A tribe of orcs is a bunch of six-sided dice, and visually - even with different pips showing and different colors - there's a sameness about them that marks them as 'together' and 'different from the PCs' in a way I like. At the same time, if you want to mark off some monster or group thereof as 'same but different', e.g. these hobbos are carrying polearms instead of swords, that's really easy - use different colors or numbers, but the same shapes. Also, there's the effect of pulling out the d100 or d30 for something truly Big and Nasty, which I like better than pulling out some custom mini for the Balrog or whatever-it-is. Using a die adds to the mystery: the monster is more of a cipher in the players' minds, rather than a concrete representation, and that adds to the fear and tension.

There is one big problem with this, though: it doesn't work well with paper minis. With paper minis it just takes the 'cheap' feeling and emphasizes it. If you have a few boxes of painted pewter to represent PCs and important NPCs it's different, because you have those nice figures there on the table in contrast, but without it just attenuates the link even further.

I'm not going anywhere concrete with this. There is no solution, per se, except for me to buy and paint some, or pony up even more to get them pre-painted, which isn't going to happen. At least not anytime soon.

Broadly speaking, gaming without miniatures is certainly possible, and even in some cases (or partially) preferable. But having a collection of painted and ready-to-deploy is definitely a luxury that I'm missing, and I think it's part of why I'm a little reluctant to put myself out there as a person actually willing to run an actual game.

I should get over that and run anyway.

My brain is melting

We're entering crunch time in the Halter household, what with the end of the semester coming up, along with the impending occupation of various (mostly in-law) relatives for the holidays. On top of that, my mind is beginning to wander: I was eaten by Factorio for a few days (an addiction that thankfully wears off quickly) and other such things.

On top of that, I'm starting to run into the question of how much to put here, on this blog. I have a bunch of cool ideas I want to flesh out, but how much setting-specific info do I want to publish? After all, while it's unlikely, a player might stumble upon this blog (once I have any).

I'm probably going to publish a lot of it anyway, since this space is primarily geared toward getting my head on straight and my ideas past that vague beginnings stage where, without sufficient impetus, I always keep them, because I'm bad at content production.

All that said, I have made some (slow) progress on my megadungeon. I have an entryway that's five different entrances disguised as one, and I'm about halfway done mapping the first section of Level 1. By the time you see this post, I hope to be a good bit further along. When I'm done I might post the map for criticism and to talk about some interesting things I've run into as a newbie mapper.

At the same time, whenever I start thinking about the Desolate North and what I need to do to get to play, my mind stubbornly refuses to stay on task. Instead I think of hex contents, weird history and hidden stories, other settlements, how to handle tribes, new rules for expeditions, what kind of monsters I want stocking my wilderness, and on and on and on. These will probably make it into this space, subject to the caveats above.

The more I dwell with it, the more I like the Desolate North. It started out as a kind of Great White North/Nanuk thing, purely because I like the cold. But that quickly becomes boring if you stick to it too hard. So over time it's morphed into a kind of Alaska meets Central Asia schtick, giving me more room for varied environments, other settlements, and possibly even (depending on interest) a fantasy version of the Great Game focused more on colonization instead of vassalization. Still, at least at first I want to avoid town adventures and political intrigue - at least until I and my players are comfortable with the decor and want to move the couch and paint the walls a bit.

A lot of the way my thinking has evolved is due to +Hill Cantons. I've already borrowed his concept of the Weird and given it my twist. I'm hopeful that Queen's Landing will slowly twist into something strange and beautiful layered over that Cold Botany Bay core I've set out. We'll see.

I'm hopeful that through the holiday season I'll be able to keep up my enthusiasm and my impromptu twice-a-week schedule. Wish me luck.

So you ransack a wizard's laboratory and find a bunch of 'potions'... or: wizards don't use GHS

One of my other hobbies is rockets; specifically, the history and eccentricities of liquid-fueled rockets. (Don't worry, all you solid afficianados - I appreciate a tonne of PSPC just as much as the next guy.)

I don't remember how, exactly, but this got crossed the other day with thinking about D&D and potions.

D&D has potion mixing and potion tasting charts. Often they do nothing, or create a poison, or mix effects, or whatever. In any case, it seems like the common thing to do with strange bottles of weird liquids recovered from a wizard's study is to try them out. I imagine the conversation going like this:

DM: You've slain the basilisk standing guard out front, and you open the door to a crowded laboratory. Bottles, flasks, and retorts line the walls and teeter precariously on a large wooden table, covered with illegible notes and scratches. Everything is covered in dust.

Player: Cool! I look through and see if there's anything that looks valuable! Are there any potions?

DM: You grab a whole bunch of bottles and stuff them into your knapsack, but there are too many to fit all of them, so you have to leave the lion's share behind-

Player: Oh, we're definitely coming back here, with a caravan!

DM: Right, but for now you have to leave some behind.

Player: OK, OK. Are any of them potions?

DM: You don't know. None of them have readable labels. Some of them have no labels at all.

Player: Fine, how can we test them?

DM: Lots of ways. The same way you test anything, really. It's not like you're carrying a Potion Testing Kit in your backpack - are you?

Player: No. Huh. Okay...potions are meant to be drunk right? I drink one, and see what it does!

DM: Are you sure? It might have hostile effects, and you'll have used it up regardless of what it does.

Player: Okay, okay...I got it. I'll uncork it and try a little taste. That should work, right? I mean, even if it's poison, it'll only be a little bit.

The thing that struck me is that ransacking the wizard's laboratory is one of the few actual touchstones we have with real life. Arcane alchemy captures a sense of wonder and strangeness that doesn't have much place out here in Paper & Paychecks, but one thing we do have is strange arcane chymical laboratories with truly strange and wonderful things on the shelves outside normal human experience.

However, in real life, most of these things aren't exactly meant for human consumption. In real life, wizards have rocket fuel on their shelves.

The thing about these strange and wonderful chemicals is they require careful handling. Some of them are so reactive that uncorking the bottle might kill you, if you're careless about it. Almost all of them are so reactive that yes, a tiny sip is a very bad idea.

What's a thousand words worth when you can have some examples?

High Test Peroxide

Peroxide's normal, right? I have some under the bathroom sink right now! Sure, but that stuff's at 5% strength. At 40% the stuff starts getting interesting. At 70% it's a rocket monopropellant - meaning it's so reactive (in the presence of lots of catalysts) by itself that it'll violently explode.

Here's an example

I was unable to find an example of someone reacting HTP with meat, but you can extrapolate from what happens when you pour your household stuff onto an open cut what'll happen - except those bubbles will be strong enough to become an explosion.

HTP should be stored in an opaque bottle in a sealed place, else the light and heat will cause it to slowly degrade. Or quickly.

Why a wizard wants it: You mean your wizards need excuses to play with explosives? Fine. HTP can easily also be used to spark other reactions, and probably has a pivotal role in the distillation of Bloom of Giant's Eye (a solid, metallic substance that's one of the primary 'less dangerous' sources of small amounts of orichalcum, since it only involves harvesting the eyes of storm giants).

Fuming Nitric Acid

(Also all sorts of other nitric substances)

I don't really need to say much about this, do I? It's nitric acid; it's an acid. But concentrations powerful enough to be used as rocket fuels exist and should exist in a wizard's lab. (It's also useful for other stuff.)

Two 'common' variations are called White Fuming Nitric Acid (or WFNA) and Red Fuming Nitric Acid) or RFNA. These things are so nasty they're usually mixed with a 'inactivating agent' to keep them from eating away the bottle you want to store them in.

(Skip to 4:42 if you don't care about the rest.)

Why a wizard wants it: Fuming Nitric Acid is an essential tool for the distillation of just about anything. In the real world, nitric acid is an industrial chemical for a reason: it's too damn useful. Same thing in fantasy; fuming nitric acid is probably an essential reagant in many, many reactions that eventually lead to those Potions of Gnome Control that litter your campaign world. There's a reason not just anyone becomes an alchemist, and most wizards are crazy.

Hydrazine

Hydrazine is an odorless, colorless chemical that to the eye and touch seems just like water. It's also pretty stable on its own, but when mixed with oxidizers (like the nitric acid shown above, or many of its byproducts) will violently explode.

In fact, the explosion is so violent that hydrazine is still used in rockets today. The Soyuz rocket that sends astronauts to the ISS runs on hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide (one of the byproducts of a nitric acid reaction in some cases). Careful jostling it around with other potions; if a flask breaks your backpack may explode!

However, we're interested in a taste test. Unfortunately for adventurers, its reactivity is outmatched by its toxicity. A mouthful or even a sip may very well kill you.

Case Study of Hydrazine Poisoning

---

In a 1965 correspondence from F. James Reid to the British Medical Journal, the effects of accidental hydrazine ingestion can be seen.
A young English sailor had been drinking beer during the afternoon before being placed on duty in the evening. He was considered to be fit for duty and competent until the accident. While working in his ship's engine room, the young sailor ingestion between a mouthful and a cupful of concentrated Hydrazine believing it was water.

• Hydrazine, greatly diluted, was used on board the ship to prevent corrosion in the ship's boilers by seawater.

Immediately upon drinking the chemical, the sailor vomited and returned to the deck to report to his superior officer at 11:30pm. After having been given a raw egg and milk, he vomited once more and collapsed, unconscious onto the floor.
Upon admission in a West African Hospital at midnight he was flushed, afebrile, unconscious, continent, and vomiting. His pupils were dilated, central and reacted to light; however, there were no chemical burns on his lips or mouth and he was able to swallow. At this time the respiratory and central nervous systems were normal upon clinical examination.
In response to the accident, the stomach was washed out with warm water which was partially siphoned and vomited back. He was given intramuscular chloroquine sulphate due to the prevalence of malaria in the region; cyanocobalamin, because the chemical was believed to have a cyanide-like effect; and ascorbic acid all intravenously with dextrose, dextrose-saline, and Hartmann's solution. These chemicals were given in all three liters over a period of 16 hours. The patient then passed 600ml of alkaline urine via a catheter, with the condition of his bladder at that time remaining unknown.
Twelve hours after the ingestion of the hydrazine, his condition remained unchanged with the exception that vomiting had ceased and the pupils were smaller and divergent to the right. Two episodes of violence requiring restraint by four strong African nurses also occurred.
Sixteen hours after ingestion, the patient was more flaccid and once again violent; it was decided to send him to the U.K. by air. 33 hours after the accident, the patient was flown out; however, once reaching France, the pilot of the aircraft refused to accept responsibility of the patient as his respiration became irregular and shallow.
48 hours after the accident the patient was admitted to a Paris hospital. His condition upon arrival was described as comatose and convulsive. He was intubated under anesthesia and given mechanically assisted respiration for the next ten hours; he was also given 10% dextrose and vitamin B.
The patient improved hour by hour, though the main concern was for his neurological state. His psyche, memory, voluntary motor skills, and higher functions were normal. However, he had ataxia even with his eyes open, a lateral nystagmus to the right, and a loss of vibration sense. He was unable to write, though he could draw. There was paresthesia of all four limbs at the extremities and he was unable to reproduce one hand movement imposed upon the other. Severe hypoesthesia of the hand (especially the right hand), in distribution of the radial nerve ensued. E.E.G. results were within normal limits and tendon reflexes were normal. Fortunately, the ataxia was improving to the point that the sailor would able to travel unescorted by air to England, only two weeks after leaving Africa.

• The final condition of the young man is not known.

With all that in mind, I recommend the use of a new table:


Sipping random bottles from a wizard's laboratory table: (roll 1d6)

1. The stuff explodes in your mouth. Save vs. poison or die messily. If you pass, take 1d4 damage.
2. Horrible poison. Save vs. poison or die.
3. Nefarious poison. No immediate effect, but you will die in 1d4 days and start feeling ill in 12 hours. No save.
4. Hyper-volatile! Uncorking the flask causes it to react with air. Save vs. wands or have your hand blown off, taking 1d4 damage, and everyone nearby save vs. paralysis or get splashed. Those splashed take 1d4 damage.
5. No effect. It's inert, I guess.
6. Huh, this might actually be meant for human consumption. Roll on another chart to determine what potion it is. (Don't forget to include lamp oil and 'normal' poisons.)

Don't swig random chemicals. Get an expert, or test them with objects other than your body.

Switching sytems (again): LL/BX incoming

Last post was about a bunch of things that have gotten in my way to playing recently.

One of the things I didn't mention was Swords & Wizardry not lining up well with everything I wanted.

Don't get me wrong; it's a good system. You can start playing a game in 15 minutes if you have even the most casual experience with D&D, and all the parts are well-fitted.

But it's missing a few things. Specifically, the things that bothered me the most were a lack of morale rules, reaction rules, and a lack of explicit support and guidelines for domain or hex-crawl play.

Those are both easy enough to get around. Higher-level play guides abound across the OSR and are largely agnostic about the exact system. And I could just steal ML scores off of a different version.

Ultimately, however, it got to be one of those roadblocks I was talking about. I wanted to go through the monster selection and add in ML scores in-line, rather than having to look them up or just wholesale use stats from somewhere else. I wanted to splice in rules for henchers/retainers/whatever. I wanted to do a few other things, and it added up to a bunch of work.

Add in that LL/BX is (are) probably the most popular system in the blogosphere, meaning you have a bunch of (admittedly low-effort) conversions if you want to use most things out there, like new classes or spell ideas or whatever, and there's a fair bit to be gained by switching over.

There were some things that were keeping me back. Primary among them were the level-system expansion from 10 to 20 levels, split saves, to-hit matrices and race as class. I'm over these, now.

I like 10 levels. It's nice and clean and doesn't bog down higher-level play. I might even keep it; PCs don't gain much by getting higher level. Or I might cut it off at 15. Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter; levels in the double digits rarely actually happen anyway. It's certainly the end-game, and I can treat it that way while still throwing you a sop for going out adventuring. Or you can retire.

Split saves are kind of a pain. They're a little silly, too, in that they don't necessarily match up well with categories that would be useful in play. That said, they're also a little attractive; there's something 'traditional' about the system. Plus, unlike with a unified save number, you won't forget you have a +2 against poison. At least, not usually.

Related to that is the fact that in LL/BX monster saves are written as 'F3' or 'C1' or whatever. This means I have to look it up on the table. That's not as big a deal as it felt at first, though; the tables are small and easy to read, and I can excise them instead of flipping through the book for them.

The big objection is Race As Class. This was a full-stop no for me for a good long while. Recently, however, I've been re-thinking things, and it doesn't seem that bad. The race/class system with multi-class elves and the like is a little clunky anyway. It's still a little weird, but I'm willing to give it a try and see how I like it.

To recap:

• Switching over gives me a fairly large set of advantages with low cost. I can more easily use a broader range of material, and it obviates a good set of work I wanted to do to make S&W more to my liking
• Plus, I have the B/X books, so I can compare and decide in any given case. (I also have the LBBs, but S&W is much more different from those than LL is from B/X, and they're hard to read.)
• There are some obstacles that were previously keeping me from seriously considering LL, but I'm over them.

If you've made it this far, you've earned an Otus Tax.

Vegepygmy is best pygmy

Things keeping me from playing and how to get around them

I've been giving this a fair bit of thought lately. I like gaming, a lot. Yet it has been a few years since I had a regular group, and that was a couple (great fun, but) sadly abortive attempts back in Wisconsin that only lasted a few sessions before I had to move.

That was years ago now, though. Why don't I still have a game? I have a few roadblocks:

1. Grad school. This one's new, but it's a bear. I'm now devoting the lion's share of my time here.
2. Other hobbies. Most of these are things like video games and other computer-based past-times.
3. Creation is stressful. I get fired up about ideas for things in play, but actually putting pen to paper and drawing up maps, keys, encounters, and even just descriptions is emotionally draining, rather than restorative. This is especially a problem because of #1 meaning I need restorative time.
4. Setting. I want my own homebrew setting with its own set of things that make it unique. This is one of the things I love about DMing. Unfortunately, coupled with #3, this can be a lot of work to pull off.
5. Regardless of everything else, recent moves mean I don't have a group.

That's a fair list. There's probably other stuff involved too, but that's the most of it.

#5 is the most important. I need to start advertising that I'm interested in playing a regional game and put together connections for folks who might be interested in giving mine a try. This should be easy once I know some people in the area, especially because I like inducting completely new players. (They don't come with preconceptions about how D&D should play.)

For #1, there's not much I can do. Grad school is grad school, and it's more important than gaming. It also takes up a large amount of my time. However, maybe I can work around it.

Instead of shooting for weekly sessions, I could go for one every two weeks, maybe one a month. Generally I get uncomfortable with this level of play, because it saps engagement from the players (and me) and it takes forever to get anything done. One way to get around this (if I can find a group) would be to run my game parallel with another DM, either as a co-op (long ways away, that) or on an alternating schedule. That could work.

For #2, something's gotta give. If I want to run a game, I need to dedicate some time to it. Plus, I probably should spend more time with the wife anyway. I'll think over some way of restricting my (non-work) computer time. Probably a schedule with a once-or-twice-a-week acceptable computer day... or something.

#3 is tricky. I am under the impression that most members of the OSR don't share this problem, and that for you guys creation is a restoring outlet that you go to to recover from the stresses of the day.

I've never really created a lot of dungeons or encounters. While I was a 'GM' for a long period of time in middle- and high-school, it was for a one-player over-the-phone game. I'm fairly good at improvisation, so coupled with a few GURPS Fantasy Yrth modules (Orcslayer anyone?) and a focus on overland travel and social interaction I very rarely got out the graph (hex) paper.

Part of the problem is also that I tend to aim too high. I want a cohesive idea to my dungeon, and that comes with specialized random encounters that draw from the local population and detailed faction maps and careful room descriptions and asking myself if this map makes sense for an old stronghold and where the privies are and how the denizens eat and and and and and... which might be great if it didn't keep me from getting things done. Finished dungeons with holes and static encounters are better than a bunch of really cool half-finished ideas.

I'm hopeful that setting myself some basic goals and meeting them will help with this. I mean things like 'This week we're going to create a three-flour dungeon with ten rooms on each floor,' or, 'Make a four flour dungeon with fifty rooms on each floor; you have to complete at least two rooms a day.' For one, this will get it done regardless of stress, if I can bring myself to prioritize it. Secondly and more importantly, I suspect this is the sort of thing where practice makes it less stressful. You probably learn to go faster, feel easier, and not sweat the small stuff.

I think I'll set myself a goal: I have a megadungeon with a side drawing already worked out. I want to get at least the first level and part of the levels above and below drawn and stocked before I begin play, since this may very well be the tentpole dungeon of the setting. In an upcoming post I'll outline my goals for this in detail with deadlines, and give a brief overview of the concept.

#4 has been a major stumbling block so far. The Desolate North setting I've been (oh-so-slowly) developing in this here space is my choice for a homebrew. I'm not exactly satisfied with it, though, which has retarded work.

For one thing, hexcrawling through wilderness is fun, but so is over-arching political tension. Native settlements, other towns (with the possibility of re-basing the PCs if they so desire), skirmishes, wars, and the like are fun. I want the world to feel alive. Unfortunately as originally conceived, the Desolate North wasn't really set up to support that. It was based on an Arctic Circle feel, which just doesn't leave much scope for the population necessary for frontier geopolitics. I've changed that by lengthening the growing season, and I'm shifting the 'feel' of the place from Alaska or Antarctica to Central Asia (with a touch of Siberia and Alaska still). I still like the cold, but I want more people.

For another, a homebrew setting makes it difficult to take tings whole-cloth from other sources, especially if you have design goals like 'no goblinoids.' Something like that is fun to think about - it helps make your place unique - but something needs to replace orcs or all your dungeons will be empty. Which means you have to work that up, with little help from established TSR/WotC support and modules.

Finally, I aim high here, too. For making my own setting, I want custom encounter tables, a grand sweep of history, hidden mysteries, fleshed-out cultures, etc. My first inclination is to go all M.A.R. Barker on the thing, but then creation-as-stress comes back to bite me.

I'm not yet sure about my solution for The Orc Problem. Probably what I'll do is keep them entirely and just call them something else with an aesthetic reskin. Men of some sort; maybe they're neanderthals or savage elves or mutated dwarves or whatever. Or maybe I won't, and I'll have orcs and goblins (but seriously, cut back on the huuuge proliferation, Gary; we don't need hobbos and buggies and and and) but have something different about them.

My solution to overcreation, thanks yet again to +Chris Kutalik over at the Hill Cantons, is to enforce on myself bottom-up creation. Have an idea for a setting element? It goes on an index card and you stuff it in a binder. Once you have players, then you can play around with the setting elements as they explore them.

Beyond that, I've set myself a strict limit: all I need to begin play in the Desolate North is the town of Queen's Landing (now done), a starter dungeon (nearly done), house rules (basically done), 30 rumours (without bothering with true or false), and a hundred rooms or so of the tentpole dungeon. At some point soon after that, I should put together a DM hexmap.

Which I guess means it's around time to start soliciting players...

The fifth and last problem is the easiest to solve. I just need to meet some new people, and either find a local group or put one together. That just means finding and devoting the time. Once the rest of these problems are solved, it'll be easy.

Afterward

Whew, that was much longer than I intended. I guess when I have something to say I really can write a large amount in a single sitting...

For the three of you who've made it down this far: have you faced similar problems? If so, how do you deal with them? If not, what kinds of problems do you face as a GM?

And do you know a gaming group in the DC metro area looking for another member?

No relevance