Bronzing the Game

There's no question that paraphrasing history is something of a drug for me.   Since my post on the 18th, I've worked on the chalcolithic period and started the early bronze age, with supportive work on separate Egyptian and Mesopotamian pages.  There's no need to go look at those unless you have some knowledge of history and are interested in how I might have described it all.  Rest assured it's a lot of work ... but of course, it's nothing compared to what a complete history before 1650, the time of my game world, would require.

'Course, I could just stop with the early bronze age and chuck my present world, building a whole new one that took place in, say, the year 1224 BC.  Ramses II has just died, the Kassite Babylonian empire and the Hittites are on the skids, the Mitanni kingdom's in ruins, and the Hebrews are but scattered hill peoples.  It's a great time for a campaign, as bloodshed and chaos are reigning all over, while there's just enough government left to allow trade and some order in places.  It's not nearly as bad as history gets a hundred years later, after Egypt's completely collapsed.

Let's see, what would I need to consider?  Starting with character classes ... there'd still be the fighter of course.  Some kind of "priest class" is possible, as the gods have made their presence known by then (remembering, the gods are real).  The concept of "holiness" hasn't been invented, so the paladin's out; we might replace the ranger with a "hunter" class, stripping out any druidic elements, especially the ranger's perceived identification with animals.  That ditches the druid class too, obviously.

All the introspective religions haven't come into being yet so there goes the monk too.  We can keep thieves (I said "thieves," not rogues).  The assassin's arguable either way.  I'm absolutely not considering any of the nonsense junk classes introduced with the UA or anything after.  That leaves the mage and the illusionist.

I've argued the magic is a technology, something that has to have been developed over time, with various researchers building up the spell list one item at a time, just as player characters are encouraged by the books to invent their own spells.  Given that the early bronze age already lacks quite a lot of those classical scholarship traditions that haven't been invented yet, magic has to be awfully crude and limited.  It think it'd have to be an entirely rebuilt system, perhaps focused on making large-scale things happen at precise moments in time, according to astrological star charts or some such.  An "astrologer" class, if you will.  Imagine the astrologer and the rest of the party organising materials and acquiring a specific space for an astronomical event about to take place 7 months from now ... but if everything is set up just so, and the astronomer is able to "cast," then the effect is causing some sort of environmental change (a disaster, the transformation of desert into a land of milk and honey, whatever) or acquiring unnatural creatures as minions or some such.  Day to day, however, the astrologer's "magical" powers would be for the most part rather, um, weak.  So that most of the time, the astrologer is some kind of intellectual thief, stealing "intelligence" about the world from other people's minds.

How about weapons?  These are bronze, naturally.  The specific gravity of iron is 7.85, while for ancient bronze it's 8.76 ... so about 11% heavier for everything (obviously, I'll still be using encumbrance).  Bronze weapons ought to break or bend out of shape more frequently, so that a fair part of the game for fighters involves reforging or acquiring new weapons a lot of the time.  I'll make the heavier swords do slightly increased damage, adding a +1 to each hit (instead of 1-6, 1-8 and 2-8, it'll be 2-7, 2-9 and 3-9).  That's in addition to strength bonuses, which don't need adjustment.  A spear will cause the same damage and last about the same amount of time as the medieval game, so players will keep spears as back-up for those periods when they're looking for a good bronze blade.

Shields are heavier but they give the same effect.  Armour is a combination of leather and bronze metal components at best, with "scale bronze" being the best possible armour (AC 5), the heaviest and the most durable.  Leather & bronze might give the same AC, but it would tend to more readily fall apart in battle.

Still plenty of opportunity for  mythical beasts and such; in fact, the whole lexicon can still be present, except that any non-human races would have to be really, really remote, so until the players actually explored into distant realms (and it's a long, long way to Scandinavia, Russia or Central Asia), I'd insist on human player characters only.  Later, if they actually went to a place with gnomes, elves, dwarves and such (and those races are in my world in 1224 BC) for anyone to actually start as one of those races.

That's how I'd play it, anyhow.

I think that as an imaginative DM, I'd be able to produce a very different experience for persons in Egypt versus Mesopotamia.  The former would be a patient, structured setting, filled with criminal activities but generally intellectual and problem solving.  Adventuring emphasis would be on exploring surrounding areas, encountering what was out there, trying to secure some valuable from them and establish a sharing of technology and trade.  Dungeons, I think, would be very few and far between, and highly driven by the discovery of some creature the players might let loose on the world for the very first time.  Say, for example, there's no such thing as a ghoul anywhere in Africa ... until the players unearth a bunch and fail to kill them all.  Imagine being responsible for unleashing ghouls on the world.

Mesopotamia would be a much looser campaign, with any sort of travel being fraught with danger from other human groups, from other city-states.  Brutality against the lower classes would be much more common, along with the presence of slaves, with the players being constantly threatened of this fate if they don't win this battle or convince this group of "true believers" that they're believers too.  Strong parties would organise gangs of supporters and set out to dominate others, in a world where being smart means very little if one isn't also pretty strong and untouchable.  It's great if you can get this small area under your heel; it helps keep you from being under the heel of other slightly larger areas.

I think, however, that players would feel compelled to leave all civilisation behind ... at least at first.  There's a vast wilderness in 1224 BC ... not so much full of treasure but certainly with food and equipment hard enough to come by that seizing both could be transformed into an experience-giving benefit.  Apart from killing Polyphemus with a spear in the eye, there's all his sheep to take as booty, which is enough meat to feed a whole tribe ... who, grateful, might grant the characters special status and therefore a small army of tribesfolk to play with.

Bits of artwork, too, like bead necklaces, figurines, pieces of blown glass, decorated pottery and such could also count as experience-giving treasure.  Remember, this is the bronze age; there are no coins, no yet, anywhere.  They haven't been invented yet.

I think that by balancing a certain historical accuracy, along with the players still maintaining their agency in deciding what to do and where to go, the bronze age could yet be a very captivating game experience.

If that's the way I wanted to go.

The Dungeon's Front Door

Yes, I have a book with this title.  Yet it seems appropos for this post.

Our party has come to the entrance of the dungeon they were seeking in the last post.  This is a critical juncture in the player's experience.  The moment of committing, as it were.  We would do well to examine what happens within the game at this point, and how best to exploit it as a dungeon master.

Let's review first.

1) It's the players' agenda.

2) The player's agency is constrained by what the players have control over, and what they do not.

3) Everyone is bound by the rules, players and DM alike.

The player's are here at the dungeon's door — whatever it looks like, we'll come to that — because they wanted to be.  They asked to be here.  They deliberately sought out the entrance ... and because we've identified this as something that's within their control, they have a right to be here.  Let's give some thought to point 3.

There is a trust issue here.  The players don't know what's behind the door, yet the game dictates they must commit.  The DM ought to know what's behind the door ... and knowing it, properly should respect that content just as rules are respected.  If I imagine the entrance way leads into a forward guardroom of some kind, with three goblins whose role it is to warn the rest of the community if something bad comes in the door, then I'm resolved to put three goblins there and not seven or nine or fourteen.  The only reason to change the number of goblins would be if the players killed them "too easily" — which shouldn't matter a damn to me because I'm impartial.  It shouldn't matter any how, because the other goblins in the lair are also there, anyway, no matter how easily the front three die.  Frankly, I don't understand a lot of what motivates a DM to mess around with dungeon contents, but the principle should be that whatever's there is there.  The party can always find something else to kill later, if they still have an appetite.

To be clear, I'm not saying this dungeon starts with a three-goblin guard room.  That's just an example.

In any case, as long as the party is outside the door, there's another bit of duality at play.  There's a distinction at this point between what the party believes and what's true.

Moving back in time a moment, the party ought to have been given some information about the dungeon before starting out for it.  We tell them there are goblins in these mountains, or that the dungeon was originally sought 25 years ago because a princess was kidnapped and taken there, and though there was a rescue planned, no one of the rescuing party ever came back.  We don't know what became of the princess, or the rescuers.  We know there have been other parties who set out for the dungeon, but the party doesn't know if any of those groups even found the entrance — as none of them came back.  These bits of information are floating in the party's consciousness, and we can be sure some of them are going to be hashed out by the party before they commit themselves to first finding the dungeon, then entering it.

Physically, the dungeon entrance takes space.  This space is exception in the game setting.  It's the doorway between two worlds: civilisation and, as I said in my book The Dungeon's Front Door, a dystopian unreality that exists below ground.  How we depict the crossover matters.  It's best if we don't make it look like a traditional Gygaxian front door, which might just as well have a neon sign out front stating, "Dungeon, -- Vacancy," for all the ambience most modules offer.  And note, giving the entranceway "ambience" matters to the player's mood when they arrive at this point, before crossing the threshold.  We can do better than a plain little hole in the mountain fastness, or a benign little concealed door.  Early D&D subscribed to the "less is more" motif, which may have worked when the game was new and the players unjaded, but we've got to do better.

We can provide ambience by fixing the players' imaginations with intense flavour text, as James Raggi perceived and had a great deal of success with.  Of course, that's become a trope also, and in reality there's only so much that text can accomplish.  It's been over-used since the mid-00s and is apt to leave any experienced party cold ... though it probably will still enjoy effect if the players have only 2 to 3 years of gaming experience.

A better approach is to mix said text in moderate doses with the visual qualities and aesthetics of film.  The strongest benefit of film is that it shows movement ... and so, when introducing the entrance, try to think of some element of the scene that's shifting, stirring or flowing.  Drift snow into the scene, which greater distinguishes the outside, where the players are, from the inside, where it's dry and perceivably warm.  Roll steam or cold air out of the entranceway, with an explanation the players can't know without investigation.  Allow voices, or noise of some kind, to drift out; perhaps unseen creatures are having an argument, or there's an inexplicable rattling or booming sound.  Have a creature actually step out of the entrance, then go back inside before the characters have time to fully react.  Tease, tempt, taunt the players with such.

It's fully in the rules to make the entrance seem more dangerous than it is.  Although the party wanted to be here, it's in our interest to make them question that intention as much as possible ... to force them to push past a legitimate reason to fear and actually BE brave.  In all the various make-believe elements of the game, one thing that is not made up is the real emotion possessed by the players.  It's this real emotion that makes the game so satisfying.

The emotions offered by a video game are frustration, exhaustion, sometimes boredom, occasionally relief and, after a long time, a sense of accomplishment, self-esteem and even triumph.  But rarely can a canned experience, like a pre-programmed game or a movie, or a book, offer an emotion like bravery.  It doesn't make you "brave" to willingly sit through a movie, or buy a game, or finish a book.  Deliberately choosing to enter a dungeon run by another human being who is under no obligation to make that dungeon "popular" to a vast audience IS a legitimately courageous act.  For myself, I carefully cultivate the attributes of a demented, somewhat unwholesome sociopath who could conceivably put something in his dungeon that would be, well, very wrong.  My players sense that about me.  They know that whatever's lurking in there, it doesn't need to sustain itself against a focus group, it doesn't need to answer to a market's whims and it definitely doesn't have to fit a politically correct model.  I might very well include something so upsetting that it takes a few sessions to get over it.  It's one of the reasons why my partner Tamara has decided to stop playing.  She prefers to hear about it, before I unleash such a scene upon the players.

And so, as the players stand outside the entrance, remembering the stories of other parties, remembering how long this dungeon has been "known" without anyone properly cleaning it out ... and knowing that once they commit, getting out might not be so easy — it stands to reason that they'll hesitate.  I want that.  The more time it takes to screw up their courage, the more satisfying it'll be, for them, when they marvel at their boldness to take this chance.

For that's what this part of the game is.  Commitment and chance.  They've invented stories, letting their beliefs get the better of time ... but it's the truth they'll find, that they can't know without first finding it, that really discomforts them.

It's ridiculous when some director like J.J. Abrams makes an argument that what we don't see is the more frightening thing.  What a soft, pampered life Abrams has obviously had.  Numerous film directors have shown us things plainly on camera that shake us to our core ... because we're SHOWN these in their full horror.  Abrams makes scary films for children.  Scary films made for adults are terrifying.

I run adults in my game.  For adults, the yawning maw of a waiting entrance is a passage to hell.  Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Stock Characters

This is a western from 1957. Some readers will recognize which. I'll give a hint: it's the opening scene. The main character is dead center, moving from left to right.  He's the good guy.  The others are background characters ... they're here because it matters that this not be an empty saloon; the plot requires lots of witnesses.  These characters have no lines, however, because the story is told through visuals — meaning these other unimportant people are extras.

The good guy is the player character.

This is a bad guy.  He's not "the" bad guy, he's "the" bad guy's brother ... but he's here to commit a murder that sets up the film's plot.  In film parlance, he's a stereotypical fictional person of a specific type, age, social class and motivation.  He's a stock character.

In D&D parlance, he's a plot hook.  He's there to taunt the party and get them inextricably invested in the adventure, which must be resolved before the party's safe.  Note the mocking gaze, the mottled leather vest, the low gun-belt, the flashy wide-brimmed hat, the choice to buy a full bottle of liquor.  These are the tell-tale cliches that rush to the front of a DM's imagination — every time.  But we can talk about visuals another day.

The stock character is a problem.  Savvy players recognize him immediately: because typically he's the only NPC that notices or addresses the player characters.  Or, to be more accurate, he's the only character the DM describes in the room at length.  "There's a room full of people; one of them is wearing a big brimmed hat.  He's standing at the bar, watching you as you enter; his lips curl in a smile."  The message is obvious: the DM wants you to address this guy.  I can do this set up all day long and every time the players will dutifully do their part.  It's like a monkey hitting a lever to get grapes.

But turn on the DM and say, "Describe any other person in the room," and almost certainly the DM will launch into a general description of everyone, and not the one person asked for.  "Uh, they're cowboys, having drinks, wearing basic cowboy clothing and, uh, there are a few women at the table with them."  This is because the DM doesn't want us to talk to these other people; they're not relevant to the DM's story and therefore of no use to the adventure, except as set dressing.  Quite quickly we'll be back with the man and his black hat, conscientiously moving the adventure, um, "forward."

This happens without anyone's noticing it.  We're forcefully brainwashed from a young age to recognize how these people appear on film as opposed to those people.  There's a deep, intensive science involved in grabbing our focus and directing it, one that we're unconscious of.  Look again at the first picture.

To get a good, clean screenshot, I waited until the character, moving through the crowd, pauses; as he does, he turns his face away from the camera.  His waist is framed neatly between the girl and the two cowboys at the bottom, with the vertical candle pointing upwards to force your eye to look up.  His head is likewise framed between the lantern and the vertical seam in the wall ... while the adobe brick is horizontal.  There's a lone cowboy on the right, who's looking up at the character, turning your eye away from the darkness on the right (which will be used to frame the actor again later on in the shot), while the one fellow who's standing is gently leaning towards the shot's centre.  None of which, I promise, you'll notice when you watch the film; the moment is less than one second long, probably about 21 frames, and your thoughts are full of the lead actor (whom you'd have recognized in 1957, like recognizing Brad Pitt in a film now).  Some readers who don't know the film have figured out who he is by now, and are looking him up in IMDb to figure out which movie it is.

While you don't consciously recognize all this, the cinematographer is paid serious money to set this up; hours and hours are spent on this framing; good actors learn to hit their marks perfectly so the work isn't wasted (one reason why a seemingly popular actor stops finding work, while some other tiresome actor gets three movies a year).   You don't see it but your brain does.  A scene like this and you instantly, habitually ignore everyone; you know none of these people will matter, so you don't look at them (unless, of course, you're a youtube doof with hundreds of hours to pick over films frame by frame looking for someone's wristwatch).

So when the DM tells you to look at the character at the bar with words alone, your brain filters the scene through a hundred thousand film hours, scrubs out the extras and spotlights the relevant NPC.  The bar might as well be empty.

This is generally fine for most worlds ... but the system breaks when it meets with a sandbox.  The difference between the film above and you actually walking into a random western 1875 American saloon (recognizing it wouldn't look like this saloon, which I covered yesterday) is that there are no extras or stock characters.  The saloon is full of people, actual beings who haven't read a script, aren't told where to stand, don't dress like stock characters and have reasons for being there that have nothing to do with you or a film audience.  They'll respond to you exactly as any group responds to you in the real world right now ... and without the cues you need to tell which of them are of such-and-such a social standing, an experience level or of a particular motivation.  The good guys and the bad guys look alike.  And none of them care a whit about you.

They're not necessarily there to advance a story line or a plot.  Oh, yes, of course I can have one of them be a plot hook if I want, I've written about that before.  But it's important to understand I don't have to.  AND it's important to understand that every person in the room has a story; every person is potentially a plot hook; every person might be be beneficial, or malevolent, towards the party.  A roomful of people are like 40 dungeon doors waiting to be opened ... with any number of them leading to nowhere except a home and kids.  But you don't know; and I'm not going to definitely tell you.

Therefore, if someone starts a conversation with the party in my game, that might be a plot hook.  It also might be a local being friendly, with no agenda whatsoever.  If a local trips over the player's chair, that could be totally innocent.  People in saloons trip over chairs all the time.

But a genre savvy player that's been weened on everyone-that-talks-is-a-stock-character, this gets a bit ludicrous in short order.  Every NPC who offers to help the party is a suspicious, dangerous character; every comment is an invitation to a saloon fight; every glance is loaded with intrigue and overthinking; no one is taken at their word; this is obviously a set-up for a dangerous fight that's definitely waiting outside the front door.  And as the players drift conclusively into rank paranoia, I'm forced to adopt William Goldman's strategy in the Princess Bride: "She does not get eaten by the sharks at this time."

"I give you my word," I explain, "that when this guard says he intends to help you, everything your character knows having lived 25 years in my world, and the nature of guards, and the expression you see on the guard's face, that the guard is being genuine and is not a random plant in the employ of the bad guys at this time.  You can trust him.  As a DM, I'm not going to fuck you on this."

It has to be made extremely plain, you understand.  Otherwise, it still won't be believed.

My face-to-face campaigns were easily purged of this illness, perhaps because of my body language and because my family and friends know my character and recognize I get zero pleasure from "gotcha D&D."  It just isn't my game.  I enjoy offering odd, ordinary, loyal, dutiful or lackidaisical characters as potential resources for the players to use ... not as false fronts hiding mastermind criminals.  What I said about my game being "political" is relevant here.

Greater success in my game, above that of surviving and advancing the character's ability, lies in reconciling oneself with the natural and cultivated elements of the game world, such that the faithful are rallied together as allies against the unseen, as-yet-unmet holders of power, who jealously hate to lose any of that power to newcomers.  To survive a dangerous world, the players will need to bring some of it under their control, to ensure a safe refuge against the outside; this will be seen as a challenge to others who also hold spaces of their own.   These will see the players as a threat; and they will use their minions to test the players, and if possible, eradicate the players.  The players alone, being relatively few in number, cannot rely on themselves alone.  They will need friends; they will need support networks and goodwill.  They will need to play a long game to obtain these things.  They will need to trust NPCs.

This requires seeing every NPC as a potentially rich, motivated character ... which I can make of them, step-by-step, as the players deliberately seek to know them better.  Faithful NPCs can be retained; questionable NPCs can be reconsidered or ejected.  But none of them are necessarily as simple and bald-faced as a stock character made for a two hour film.  A D&D setting sustains itself for hundreds and hundreds of hours; there's time to let the actors be people.

Disasters

Intrinsic to being a DM is the self-knowledge that we're making stuff up intentionally to mess with the players.  For example, the decision to implement a flood, or catch the party in the open with a blizzard.  It seems difficult to justify the random occurrence of an earthquake, without a pre-created table that allows the DM to say, "See, I rolled it!"

However, we don't hesitate to make something intrinsic to the world that's harmless.  No one says, "How dare that DM arbitrarily place a house here, by the side of the road?  The bastard!"  We expect houses.  They happen every day, unlike scenery-wrecking earthquakes.  And yet arguably, we have much evidence to show that earthquakes are inevitable.  In many parts of the world, a mild earthquake does occur with such frequency that a small one is treated blithely.

It isn't the earthquake itself that produces that sense of unfair use of godlike malevolence, is it?  If the setting takes place where earthquakes can happen (or floods, or forest fires, or whatever disruption you like), then we must assume the event depends on the DM's word, eventually.  Nyet?  The real contention is not with existence, but with timing.  This earthquake seems to have occurred awfully conveniently.  Wasn't it thoughtful of the DM to impose this flood just at the time we have to get across this particular river to reach this particular castle.  Hm ...

Even if we do build a table, to get around this timing issue by perhaps rolling on the table everyday (in game), the chance of something occurring is still arbitrary, isn't it?  And just how small should that chance be?  What is the chance of a 7.5 earthquake in downtown Los Angeles, as opposed to Memphis?  [yes, Memphis]  Is it the same?  What is the chance of a spring flood on the Mississippi, in a time before there were levees?  What about Holland?  No doubt, very high.  But how high?  Are you able to judge?  And what if you say there's a 2 in 3 chance ... is that fair to your players, just because you made the determination ahead of time?  That is still arbitrary.

We can go crazy trying to make sure that floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, plagues, famines and other catastrophic events only occur when they're not a part of the narrative; but in game, when would that be?  Never, I should think.  Which I'm guessing is close to what you've decided, particularly if you've ever tried implementing any of these moments.  A second, or a third big event like this is going to seem, well, a bit coincidental, don't you think?

Personally, if it suits the campaign, I say fuck it.  Have an earthquake.  Wreck the city.  Drown a countryside.  You could start every session by selecting two twenty sided dice, like a big ritual, rolling them both in front of the players and saying, "If they both come up 1s, some pretty bad shit is going to come down."

That's fair, isn't it?

RPG 201, Lab #3 ~ Setting

Welcome to the 3rd Lab.  Our goal is to discuss player experience, development and expansion, in such a manner that the players grow from being common, ordinary adventurers into entities that have the power to affect and redesign the setting to satisfy their needs, enabled and supported by the Dungeon Master.  And while the game rules do not change, the power the players gain over their environment does.

Most participants never experience this aspect of role-playing.  For them, the game is a linear model that resets itself with every adventure.  As we discussed in the last class, the players equip, venture out, achieve the goal ... and then repeat this process with the next adventure.  Each adventure differs in detail and as the party progresses in power, the adventures progress in potential threat and value of the reward.  However, the structure of the adventure does not change; each element is repeated until the players either achieve a level that denies further promise of adventure or tire of the setting, the game form or the Dungeon Master.

Clearly, the linear model offers success in game satisfaction, for a time; and it offers a structure that can be sustained by a single individual preparing for adventure after adventure.  Further, the structure can be pre-designed, enabling the individual to bypass much tedious preparation ~ and enables the same pre-designed module to be employed again with a different party at a different time.

But while the linear model is much praised among many participants of role-playing, it is limited when the consequences of the players' adventuring is ignored ~ which they usually are, because most DMs prefer a closed linear model.  Let us, instead, speak of an open linear model.

At the start of the campaign, game play begins just as we expect.  The players Discover the adventure, either through information they receive or circumstances they observe ~ what is usually called a "plot hook."  The adventure needs to be sufficient to draw the players in, but we have plenty of examples of that so we need not expand here.

The plot hook will inherently give the players reason to Pursue a course of action AND a viable reward.  Within the heroic model, this includes the vanquishing of malevolence and the preservation of innocents, but it also includes the acquisition of things, with the accumulation of wealth and power.  There is also the novelty of doing something new and different.  But here we add three additional rewards that do more than expand the ability of the players: status, purpose and enlightenment.

Briefly, Status not only rewards the players with additional privileges and access to benefits and help, it makes others positively aware of the players ~ that is, persons of power see the players as beneficiaries to the kingdom, as persons worthy of giving advice, as allies and as friends.  Purpose addresses specific player interests in righting widespread wrongs, not just in this particular adventure, but in other potential adventures.  As the player examines their purpose, whatever it might be, this purpose ~ and not the next journey there and back ~ becomes the driving force behind the players' actions.  Enlightenment, in turn, expands what the players understand and know about the setting, allowing them to refine, or even change, their initial purpose.  With comprehension of the big picture of the setting, they begin to realize their sense of worth. They matter.  In time, they will not be easily restrained in their purpose, once they know what they are able to accomplish.

With these things in mind, we need to understand what Effect the adventure has on the game setting.  In the closed linear model, none.  The adventure is over.  In the open model, however, the adventure itself causes something about the game setting to change.  There is a consequence.  The removal of a powerful entity creates a power vacuum.  Persons beyond the party gain something from the goal the players did not expect.  Thorin is placed successfully on the throne but the one ring is found.  The course of events do not cease when the adventure is finished; the adventure gives birth to new developments, new threats, new challenges.

With the open model, we encourage the players at the end of the adventure to understand that the setting has Changed, and that the change is irrevocable.  We draw a direct line between their actions and the change ... whatever has happened, the players are responsible.  They can face their responsibility, taking the next step to better the situation, or they can flee their responsibility, the choice is up to them.  They cannot, however, pretend that the responsibility was not theirs; they chose to adventure; they creating the consequences; and now the consequences, for good or ill, will play out regardless of the players' involvement.  This after-shock is critical in providing enlightenment and purpose to the campaign; and to the players benefit, having accomplished the adventure, the DM provides them with status and aid that will enable them to address the consequence of it.

The inclusion of status, as well as the increased resources that are common among closed models, provides a Coherence to the campaign.  The next adventure is not an isolated experience; it plays directly upon the accomplishment and rewards of the previous adventure.  The setting, far from static, moves and rolls as the players manipulate events, even through their small actions.  The players' influence the campaign just as the campaign influences the players.  Soon the players recognize that the second adventure, to fix the problems of the first, will itself have consequences ... so that rather than repeating itself, the open model expands and expands as it reacts to each thing the players achieve.

Some might imagine that the consequences of every adventure, to ensure player involvement, should necessarily be bad.  The players empty a dungeon, so something worse moves into it, so the players have to empty the dungeon again, so that something even worse happens, etcetera.  This would make a very poor open model, one that would quickly discourage the players.  Rather, we should suppose that some neutral consequence happens, that the players realize they can capitalize upon; followed by another neutral, but greatly interesting consequence, allowing more capitalization, more opportunity to expand their purpose, a chance to enlighten themselves further and establish their status to a greater degree.  Neutral opportunities are risky, dangerous, sometimes negative, sometimes positive ... but always suggestive that there is some balance the players can achieve.

As adventures pass, with consequences, status and purposes growing in number and complexity, the players should be able to sense a Crescendo in their future.  A point where the matter will be ultimately resolved; where the players' involvement alone may not be enough; a moment of true reckoning, where everything that has been fought for and everything that opposes that accumulation will come face-to-face, once and for all.  That crescendo can be put off, again and again, for a long time; or the players can actively pursue it.  Sooner or later, however, it will arrive.  All can be sure of it.

And when it does, a Resolution will be made.  Vast matters will be settled.  Powers greater than the players will negotiate and everyone, players included, will agree to respect the boundaries that are named.  Whereupon ... the players will pick up some small consequence of an earlier adventure, one too small to deserve their attention before, and begin to expand their setting in another adventure.

How is this done?  The DM must perceive that the players are entitled to a Back Stage pass where the world is concerned.  The DM provides the players with insight into how the setting's variable layers are designed.  The layers of politics, the layers of capital, the layers of religion, the layers underlying how creatures of great power, from gods to unfathomable monsters, inter-relate and intermix with one another, high over the player's heads.  With this enlightenment, we wish the players to always answer the question, how do they view the world now that they know this?  Is the world bigger than they expected?  More complicated?  Friendlier?  Scarier?  And knowing this, how do the players fit in?  Forget their petty backgrounds or problems ... in the grand narrative of the millions who occupy the game setting, where powers that clash far outweigh the players' hit points or potential damage, how will the players negotiate all so that they, too, might someday clash with the greatest of them?

This is more than a matter of letting the players accumulate upgrades and items of power.  The players will need more than their own party; they will need allies, safe places, a means to turn enemies into friends, self-awareness against their own pride and impatience and an ever greater understanding of just what they're up against.

That is as much a struggle for the DM as it is for the players, for it is the DM who must determine what this setting is!  How it is layered, how the interactions occur, what is the grand narrative and how is it made?  For the rest of the course we will be tackling these larger issues, as we introduce the setting in structure, function and behaviour.

Take care, and Merry Christmas.

A Few Notes about Cumana

The following was written for my Online Campaign, to add to this post regarding a region called Cumana. I wrote the below without first reading the linked post ... which was two years ago ... so the gentle reader my judge how consistent my world is inside my head by comparing the two descriptions. [bonus points to whomever can guess which information I deleted from the original post because it did not match up with something I decided today - writing is editing]. I pretty much concocted this off the top of my head this morning:

The orange on the left is Zaporozhia; the brown on the
right are the lands of the Don Cossacks; the olive green in the
center is Cumana.  The little bit of olive green at the bottom
left is also a part of Cumana.

The Don River is the large river that flows down through Voronezh, off map,
then again entering and flowing through the Don Cossack lands.
The Sea of Azov is at the bottom left.  The fair sized river

flowing through Cumana is the Donets.

The bright green in the upper left is Poland; the pink is all Russia; the bit of
yellow at the bottom is the Ottoman Empire.

Cumana is one of three buffer states between Russia-Poland and the Ottoman Empire: Cumana, Zaporozhia and the Don Cossacks. Zaporozhia is like something out of a Conan novel; the people are human and extremely nomadic. Although there are "cities" in that territory, these are almost wholly tent cities with a continuously changing population, as clans come in, rest or trade for a few months, only to move outwards again to be replaced by other clans. So there's always a collection of persons and tents there, but the actual persons changes seasonally. There are almost NO permanent structures, not even a palace - the only ones would be scattered churches, mostly of foreigners. The Zaporozhians are principally animistic. They also tend to be 'mad' by European standards. They're violent, prone to clan in-fighting and revenge loops, extremely traditional in outlook and proud. Families are large and xenophobic in the extreme. Marriage outside the clan is done for political reasons, and then very rarely.

The Don Cossacks tend to be mercenary in habit. There are only villages in the Don lands and these are almost wholly inhabited by women and children. The men do not live with the women 9 to 10 months of the year, preferring to raid in every direction. Rangers are highly prevalent among the population and the Cossacks are extraordinary raiders and horseriders. They attack and disappear, attack and disappear, and since they have no 'base' of operations, the entire land could be put under military law and STILL they would function unchanged. The main difference would be that they would descend upon someone else's village and rape those women, as opposed to returning home once or twice a year to rape their wives.

Thus, everyone pays them off, and tries to pay a little bit more than their enemies. The Russians encourage them to attack the Ottomans or the orcs of Digoria, the Ottomans encourage them to attack the orcs of the Jagatai Empire, the Digorians encourage them to attack the Astrakhan Pirates, who encourage them to attack the Cumans and so on. The Don lands consist of dry, very poor soil, cold and windy much of the year and generally of no economic interest to anyone.

These two states, then, with Cumana, form a buffer between Russia, the Jagatai Empire (that reaches all the way to the modern Chinese border) and the Ottoman Empire. Together, they are a formidable power; all three recognize that the fall of any one of them guarantees the fall of all three. None are the kind that will bargain with their enemies, therefore ... and they often break treaties. They survive on account of two reasons:

1) The Ottoman Empire is huge, and the Turk army has many, many enemies. They can't afford to move a significant army into the area to destroy any of these three states because they must keep that army elsewhere, to defend lands that are far more valuable than the steppe occupied by Zaporozhia, Cumana and the Don Cossacks.

2) Russia and Poland are ALWAYS fighting. If they could settle their differences, then Russia might have the will and the power to move and consolidate its southern border. After all, its being raided by three peoples and keeping them all under treaty at the same time is impossible. But any sign of weakness by Russia on the Polish border and Poland rushes to take advantage. There are intricacies there, but I'll save on the writing.

Poland and Russia made peace about three years ago ... but both are in an 'arms race,' and the war could start again at any moment. Russia would like to seize Polissya and Smolensk; Poland would like to seize Bryansk and Kursk. And so it goes.

This I added in reference to a question about the player character's religion:
There are few Catholics in Itoskhan or Cumana, perhaps 2% of the population; about 3% are Russian Orthodox, 5% are Greek Orthodox, 7% are Moslem. 1% would be Jewish. The remaining 78% of the population is a mixture of paganism (polytheistic Uighur/Mongol gods), Arianism (Gnostics) and animism (mysticism). Numbers for these are not available ... the majority is really a mix of all three.

And this because the player asked about the six other tribes in Cumana:

Zolozi
The Zolozi are the wealthy, powerful tribe who dominate the huge city of Mutrakan. Remember that while the Zaporozhians live in tent cities, the Cumans do not; they are the most civilized of the three kingdoms above, and it is the Zolozi 'Fatherhood' that has chosen to embrace trade and civilization in a distinctly oriental manner that has produced Cumana. There are hundreds and hundreds of shrines in Mutrakan (a city of more than 50,000 people), where people are very religious, but these shrines do not depend upon the 'priest class' that exists in Western/Aryan culture. Like Buddhist Lamas, the most devout people are those who dedicate their lives to the acknowledgement of the gods, but they do not 'lead' others; religion is a daily, common experience, where each individual gives what respect they wish without the manufacture of western guilt.

The Zolozi are the most religious, educated, worldly tribe, who produce the kings of Cumana, but this tribe also treats all others within the Kingdom like a father to a his sons - disciplining as necessary, maintaining order, but also providing food and support in times of trouble. Many a time in Andrej's youth would there arrive, in a year of drought (and there are many such years in this country) a caravan full of food given by the Zolozi that kept the villages alive for the season.

Dworka
The Dworka tribe are half-orc dwarves, whose pure-blood dwarf forefathers occupied lands along the edges of Altslok and Croft (in eastern Kazakhstan), and who migrated with the Cumans in the 11th century, who over a period of seven generations (the number is traditional) were given orc brides as tribute in exchange for weapons and armor that the dwarves provided. These orc brides were chosen by the dwarves, who it is said 'smoothed them of features unbecoming to the Dwarf eye' by magic. Now the Dworka, or Dworkin as they are sometimes called, occupy the hill country along the Donets River in the Donbass, where they keep to themselves, continue to mine and manufacture, and protect Cumana from the Don Cossacks and the Eastern steppes.

Bonyaki
The Bonyaki tribe are farmers who dwell upon the river banks south of Mutrakan, who have very little imagination or interest in the world. They are "the back upon which the weight is borne," so is the traditional pride of that people. They are resentful of interlopers "who dare to treat the land as only dirt for their tramping feet"... but can be generous to travellers who are respectful of their ways. In general they are quite poor, suffering more than most from periods of drought, but nevertheless forming the strongest piller in the strength of the kingdom, both in physical manpower and food production.

Torkastra
The Torkastra occupy the lands nearest the Sea of Azov and the valley of the Don where it debouches into the sea. They are fishermen and teamsters, as well as smugglers who operate between Cumana and the Ottoman Empire. On the whole, they are not highly respected in Cumana, but are nevertheless closely protected by the Zolozi, who of course have great use for a people with less 'character' than the Bonyaki. The Bonyaki and Torkastra are the most likely tribes to have differences, which is in no small way affected by the passage of Torkastrans through Bonyaki lands on their way to Mutrakan, they're habit of treating all Bonyaki as 'mud-snuffling pigs' and so on.

The Torkastra possess the largest number of Moslems, having interbred more with the Turks than any other tribe in the Kingdom, so that some Torkastrans are less than 10% Cuman (orc). It should be remember that the Cuman tribe were originally ALL orcs, but five centuries of dwelling in the midst of human peoples has largely reduced the pure orc blood, thus producing the half-orc kingdom. The Bonyaki are the purest strain; the Torkastra the most human.

Gurdut
The Gurdut live mostly in two groups, within the centers of Mutrakan and in Itoskhan. They do not have 'lands' of their own, though there are small hamlets of no name that are scattered throughout northern Cumana and Zaporozhian lands. The Gurdut are servants, mostly, who perform the lowest labor and who have the least amount of prestige in the kingdom. Gurdut children are often gathered at six-year intervals (paid as tribute by Gurdut families) and either sold abroad or occasionally made into eunichs for the Court. This is not seen as unusual, and indeed the Gurdut consider themselves to be highly blessed if the king should desire one of their children for this honor. It is said that the Gurdut "give in this world to receive in the cherished lands" ... which is a mystic belief in an Asian version of the 'happy hunting ground' that all Mongols dream of. The more a Gurdut gives in this life, the more it is said a Gurdut gains in the life hereafter - and giving a child offers great promise.

Sharukan
Finally, the Sharukan, who dwell in the city of Sumi, a tiny enclave joined to Cumana in the furthest north. The Sharukan are a small, very close tribe, who are scholars, interpreters, diplomats and teachers. In many ways they are the least religious, but the most talented of magicians in the kingdom. They see the kingdom as "Seven sticks that make a club," and are variously given to motivate the king to use the club in the wisest manner possible.

Despite their apparent superiority, the Sharukan behave in the most humble manner possible. They believe themselves to be the "least valuable of the tribes," are modest in dress and appearance, are generous, are more likely to seek peace of any of the tribes (including the Zolozi) and believe that retribution "Is the flood that destroys land and people alike." It is said that a Sharukan will never speak first when seated at a table ... and there is a myth that says of one Sharukan Hetman, Syrchan by name, "He waited so patiently for all his ministers to speak of all that required attention, that he did not interrupt for three nights and three days, and that on the fourth day when his opinion was at last sought, it was discovered that he had died."

Yetabeshi
These peoples are those who occupy the small enclave of Itossia, southwest of the main Kingdom of Cumana. The mass of the population is newly settled, having come only three generations ago. The Yetabeshi are a remnant of a people called the Nogai Horde, who until the 1570s dominated regions north and east of the Caspian Sea called Buzachistan and Mugodstan. The Nogai were Mongol and Turkic, who were part of Genghis Khan's Golden Horde, meaning they were half orc (Turks are human, Mongols are orcs) ... but the Kalmyks who supplanted them were pure-blood orcs.

Many of the Nogai peoples were scattered from the Dnestr River to Kubanistan, destroyed by Orcs and Ottomans, Poles, Russians and even Transylvanians ... but the tribe called Yetabeshi made peace with the Zaporozhians and settled in the valleys of the Vesele and Molochna rivers, greatly expanding the tiny villages of Itoskhan and Vesoi that had been founded in 1342 and 1265. Today, 90% of the residents are of Nogai descent, but there are notable minorities of Catholics, Jews and Greek Orthodox, remnants from the settlement of Greeks in the area 23 centuries ago and Roman Christians 15 centuries ago. Some Mediterranean features are distinctive in the human population of Itossia (shape of the nose bridge and hair), but there has not been time for these features to transfer into the Yetabeshi half-orc tribe.

Therefore, technically, the Yetabeshi are not Cuman in heritage, not even from the times when Cuman and Mongol tribes occupied separate parts of the far Eurasian steppe. There is, however, a communal feeling of welcome that exists in Cumana for the Itossia region - so that each of the other six tribes individually identify the Yetabeshi as lost brothers rather than unwanted interlopers.

The Yetabeshi themselves are herders, ranchers, leather workers and wool gatherers, with handicraft industries of little trading importance - but locally self-sustaining. As a people they are proud, self-directed and highly communal, as well as possessing an optomistic outlook and materialistic certainty of fate. "The world will make room," is a typical Yetabeshi saying.

A Cathedral as Dungeon

Just for fun, I've been putting together this map of the actual Sankt Paulus Cathedral in Munster, Westphalia, Germany.  The image above has it superimposed over a hex map, the hexes having a 5' foot diameter.  Sadly, because the Cathedral was bombed during World War II, I had to consider that changes that were made since 1650 (my world's existence) as accepted for the campaign's use.  I've also made a few other changes to make it more 'game-worthy.'

For perspective, you can find a tiny dot to the left of the Altar Isle in the right center of the Nave.  This is the size of an actual person.

Grey lines are stairs.  Yellow blocks indicate windows emplaced into the stone.  Two thin lines indicate doors.  The central blue space amid the cemetery is a pond.  Green spaces are outdoors.

Incidentally, this is the church used for this part of the online campaign.