Building a Picture

The notion is to begin with a single orc, or any humanoid, and see its place in the world.  The party encounters this one orc while afield in the wilderness; it flees, and before the party can take hold of it, the orc rejoins the war party of which it's a part.  This group of "braves," to borrow the Native American term, is an advanced group that is scouting out an area ahead of their clan, a group of 20-50 orcs living as hunter gatherers or perhaps herders.

It's hard to see numbers larger than this; for example, we might have a vast territory that has comparable numbers to various human kingdoms, say 200,000.  How we get our minds around this relates to how we organize this number.  For example, we can easily grasp the clan described above.  Suppose we imagine 3-6 such clans, which would be somewhere between 60 and 300 people.  That is not such a large number; most of us have gone to school with populations larger than this.  We can give this number a name: let's call it a tribe.  That cognomen is often given to much larger groups, but in lieu of another label, for the present the name is a convenience.

The tribe would be led by a chieftain, who would have several sub-chiefs in his or her counsel.  Each tribe would have a number of war parties, each made of different clans, who would work in unison when the tribe was gathered together -- which might only be a certain times of the year.  Usually, when the tribe did meet, it would stay in one place; perhaps to winter the coldest season or to take advantage of a yearly food supply, like thousands of birds returning to roost near the seashore or a salmon run.  In such cases, there would be so much food that the tribe might spend a month gathering and feasting, before breaking apart into its separate clans again.

More rarely, 3-18 tribes would gather together in "chiefdoms."  This might happen yearly or it might happen only when a new senior chief needed to be chosen from the lesser chiefs of the tribe.  A chiefdom may be tiny -- conceivably only 180 persons -- yet it might be huge, as many as 5,400 persons, enough to launch a small military force out of its combined war parties.  Such meetings would be significant moments in a single orc's memory; they would remember each one and who was named the chieftain; the calendar would be drawn upon such meetings, described as the year when so-and-so fight that guy to become the great chieftain of our 12 tribes.  That sort of thing.  The reader can see how this helps a lone orc find his or her place in the world.

This is still far short of a really vast number of orcs.  For that, we have to imagine each chiefdom occupying a wide territory; the hundreds of miles along a particular river, or a single wide plain around a body of water dozens of miles across.  What we need do is assemble 2-12 chiefdoms together into a "nation" - a group with between 360 and 64,800.  That former number seems far too small; but I rush to point out that the odds against rolling so many 1s to determine the size of a nation is as tiny as the nation itself.  Also, there were many nations like this throughout the Americas before the Europeans; a nation is not necessarily determined by number, but by the land it occupies and how much food that land yields.  9 clans, 6 tribes and 2 chiefdoms might very well comprise a single entity.  Each of the terms used here are mutable, intentionally so.  Just as it is intended that the same title -- "chief" -- can be used to describe the leader of a tribe, a chiefdom or a whole nation.  To such peoples, organized in a culture that is more fundamentally "of the land," the title of the leader is less important than who the leader actually is.

I feel that by dividing up a kingdom of 200,000 this way, we can easily imagine it as "the fourteen nations" comprising one "people."  On a map, we can arbitrarily draw lines along the geographical features of our choosing, deciding that this nation occupies these forests, and that shore, and this river basin.  Then, if we want to go further, we can zoom in to create a map of chiefdoms -- and give each the characteristics we like.  This one is warlike, that is not; this is agricultural, these others are herders; this chiefdom has an arrangement with the nearby humans; this one doesn't.

By parcelling out the organization, we are dealing with much smaller numbers; and yet we are still able to envision a single orc, or a small group, and see how they fit into the much larger picture.

It's a Jungle Out There

Question: how many bad artists does it take to draw a hippocampus?

Answer: apparently, all of them.

I did not have much fun finding a good picture for the hippocampus entry below.  Nor was it easy to find good material.  The hippocampus has largely disappeared from D&D, and was never well covered back in the day.  There are almost no legends about the beast, except about it's shape; if you look it up on wikipedia, you get a litany about where it's been depicted and how, but nothing about the nature of the beast.  Ultimately, I had to dig up the Dragon Magazine #273, The Ecology of the Hippocampus, by Margaret and Ramsey Lundock (one of which is, or was, a terrible fiction writer), which gave some meaty information, most of which I disagreed with or ignored, but the structure of which gave me ideas to write.  As far as I know, this page on the Authentic Wiki is now the only extant, freely available description of hippocampi that is not mostly about what they look like or where they live (hint: in the water).  Enjoy.

This is not how I spent most of my day.  Creating monsters creates a need to discuss where those monsters live, pages which I am calling "ranges."  Today's page to be created was Jungle, which proved difficult because I like to include details about what sort of features one is likely to encounter in these landscapes.  Jungle is, unfortunately, rather devoid of these features.  I read through several book descriptions that waxed on about the unchangeableness of the jungle, and how this is one of the characteristics that drive people mad when they're forced to live in them for weeks or months at a time.  Much of the description of the jungle came from a book on "military geography" which was quite useful to steal from, because I'm a completely human without any compunctions or shame where it comes to good, solid plagiarism.  I'd feel a little worse about it, if it didn't come after searching for texts about jungles all day only to find source after source plagiarizing one another.  Why should I hold myself aloof?

The quest got so extensive that I learned there was an escape-from-the-worst-conditions-possible Australian movie made in 2017, called, sensibly enough, "Jungle."  With Daniel Radcliffe.  I watched it between other duties this afternoon, having plenty of time for some reason, and it follows the pattern of most such movies that have been made in the last ten years.  Person drops into environment, gets into trouble that really ought to mean their death, person survives when they absolutely should not.  The film is ... dark ... which should be expected.  It is a true life story, that apparently remains honest to the facts, if the internet is at all trustworthy.  Radcliffe clearly suffered to make it and the film deserves more attention than it received.

That said, with a strong desire to squeeze as much drama out of a jungle as a film can, the results were that jungles are devoid of features and are horrible because of their unchangeableness.  Oh well.  I managed to contrive a very short list of "interesting" stuff to see.  It would be hard to run a jungle effectively, with players sitting around comfortably drinking pop and coffee.

Each page is a hill to climb, but I feel good at the end of the day.

Clantasy Role-playing

Consider a table on which we've rolled up kobalds, and it says, "3-12 appearing."  So, we decide to concede to the dictum, we roll 3d4 and get an eight.  We roll up hit points for each kobald, recording the numbers.   We sort them out on the battle map, randomly, or perhaps we assign those with the most hit points to the center or the wings.  The party makes a sign that they want to parley; we roll a die; the kobalds agree.  So it goes.

Non-descript kobald speaks.  Doesn't matter which.  There's no personality, no means of differentiating the kobalds, even to ourselves.  Perhaps we have a collection of different kobald figurines.  These three have a spear, this one has an axe, that one has a yellow helmet, this one a blue.  Everything is random, everything is a number.

Okay, so we try to assign a personality to this group of kobalds.  Or dwarves, maybe, that are going to follow along with the party for a time.  This one is Oin, he's fat; and Gloin is his brother.  We've got Bifur and Nori, Dori, Dwalin ... well, you know the list.  And then, two months later, the party runs into another group of dwarves, and now these dwarves are going to follow along with the party.  What are we going to do?  Call them Oin and Gloin again?

Creating personalities for hundreds of potential NPCs is dull, purposeless work, and it absolutely doesn't help to slap a name label on everyone.  We put up with the faceless, interchangableness of the bland wooden stick figures that move around the party because every alternative is a crushing labour that never succeeds in paying for itself.  For one thing, the party just doesn't care that this bartender is sad because his wife has left him, or that another bartender is an asshole because, as it happens, he's slowly dying of the gout.  These things aren't personal, they don't actually apply to the game and, worse, they're overdramatic and boring.  The players and I would rather have stick figures.

So ... what?  What's to be done?  That's the game, leave it as it is, stop worrying about it and accept that there are limitations to things.  End of post, you've made you point.  Walk away.

For a long time I've stubbornly equated an NPC's class, hit points, level and so on to specific roles that these individuals occupy.  I don't believe in a "king" who has less than 10 levels.  The reason for assigning a regent is to ensure the kingdom is being run by a 10th level character, until the prince or princess can be raised to become a 10th character.  We teach them weapons, we train them to fight bouts and practice drills so that they take damage and deliver damage; we organize jousts and tournaments, and hunting expeditions where we flood the landscape with animals so the young royal can practice shooting and raking in hit points, all summer long, for five to six hours a day if need be.  It's dull, patient work, ensuring the royal get those experience without seriously getting hurt, and most of the time the future monarch doesn't like it much.  But that's the price and responsibility of the monarch.  Being crowned means, you've accumulated 10 levels.

Why ten?  One more than the minimum lord has.  Are there nobles with less than 9 levels?  Yes; but they have lesser titles, like sir, squire or baron.  They're not called "your grace" (using English parlance), or "my lord," until they've met the requirements.  They're called "sir," "squire" and "baron."  I am most strict about these things.  A prince is "your highness" but not "your majesty."  At least, not in my game world.

By designating an individual by their title, and that title conferring a certain capability, I'm not merely slapping a label.  A "potter" has a specific, measured number of knowledge points that describes exactly what the potter does; and those points accumulate very slowly with time, or very quickly with game experience.  If you're communicating with a potter who is building his own professional kiln from scratch, and he is an old man, you can probably guess he got there through slow accumulation.  If, on the other hand, the kiln-maker is a teenager, you might want to be careful.  Naturally, there's no reason to think you shouldn't be careful with the old man, either.  He's old.  He's had time to acquire real experience.

I'd like to define every non-player character by a yard-stick that applies to every humanoid in every culture, and to every intelligent monster as well.  It's not meant to be a simple yardstick; I am thinking of something quite Holmesian, in that you notice details about the NPC that helps you put together a puzzle, to tell you how experienced and capable this individual is.  The more things you can discover about the character, the more reason you might have to bear that character respect. 

I once got into an argument with a player because he drastically underestimated a guard standing at a main castle gate, at a time when the castle expected to be sieged any day.  The castle was under the sovereignty of a 16th level cleric, which the party knew.  The guard looked like a guard ... but when the 2nd level player character decided to roust him, it turned out the guard was 7th level.

This infuriated the player.  A 7th level, I was told, would be covered with expensive armour and weapons, symbols, other evidences of wealth; he'd be obviously powerful and dangerous looking.  I failed to see why a 7th level would not, if standing on the open street, choose not to dress up as if for a parade, and why he should bring along a bunch of money in order to watch an important gate.  Additionally, I failed to see why 7th levels should be scarce in a large city, in a castle with thousands of inhabitants run by an Archbishop for a significant part of Germany.  The player exploded at me and quit the campaign.

I have a different idea of what it means to be 7th level.  Or 10th, for that matter.  Most seem to see it as some phenomenal accomplishment, something that is so rarely duplicated that surely, anyone above 6th must stand out like a gleaming beacon of magnificence.  Yet.  I've run many a party, from first level, and I notice that quite a lot of them manage to reach 7th level without ever having done anything earth-shattering.  Enter a few lairs, clean up on a few treasures, take one adventure that takes up one year of your life and don't die, you will probably reach 7th level in my world.  I have a group of players in the Juvenis campaign that haven't yet been more than 20 miles from their starting point, and they're 3rd and 4th.  One is almost 5th.  And the amount of game time that has passed?  A month.  It's taken us several years of running on line, to be sure, what with breaks and all, but in the passage of time the players have been fighting often enough to feel like they've been in a war.

Why would 7th level seem at all unattainable?

This scale that I speak of wouldn't be based on how much money the character carries or spends on clothes.  That was Gygax's thing; gawd knows where he got it from.  I occasionally meet a fellow for coffee, though I haven't this year.  We talk about his music and my writing.  He's aged 62, 1.67 meters tall, about 79 kilos.  He looks sort of like an older version of Floyd the musician from the muppets.  He's also an ex-master sarjeant, which you wouldn't guess if you talked music with him, but you might guess if you talked history.  Highly dangerous people do not wear badges that identify them as highly dangerous.  That's just idiocy talking.

Coming all the way back around to the kobald and dwarf thing.  I've long wanted some structured social explanation for the old saw of meeting a group of humanoids in the hinterland.  What are they doing, who are they, how would they react, etcetera.  All this, without needing names and personalities, but having a sensible idea of how dangerous an individual was, based on the role they performed.  That's how pages like the one below gets made, and slowly tweaked and adjusted.  Rather than try to do this individually for every humanoid, I'd like to presume that most humanoids of a certain habit and purpose would tend to follow the same precepts.

Read the full page here.