This Henchman Thing Gets Out Of Hand

I have a couple of times referred to my Henchman system, here and here ... and I play the system exactly as written.  In brief, all characters except the druid receive additional characters at 5th level and every second level thereafter, that they are allowed to play as nominally fanatical henchmen (basically, additional player characters).  Druids get henchmen at 5th level and every 3rd level thereafter, because they receive an animal friend who behaves somewhat like a henchman at 4th level and every 2nd level thereafter.

This last running on Saturday, it was necessary to put together an account of who exactly is the henchman of whom, and who is running in who's campaign (we have three ongoing campaigns, one run by my daughter and two run by me).  And here's what it looks like:

This looks like I have more people running in my world than I actually do.  Three of the characters who do not have henchman 'trees' - Dael, Echorian and Theo - are being run by the same person, one in each different campaign.  He started late, and hasn't brought any of his characters up to the level where they could have henchmen.  The two players who control Falcon and Lorell don't have enough characters to run in three campaigns, so they play Feela and Daniel, respectively, in my daughter's campaign.

The four main characters on the top have been running in my world the longest, and as such have the largest trees.  The mage Garalzapan has the largest tree, because the Druid needs to be 11th to get a third henchman, and both the monk and the ranger go up levels more slowly.  However, the druid Pikel chose a thief as his first henchman, while Garalzapan took a paladin as her first ... because of that, Pikel's henchmen have a greater total in levels (24) than Garalzapan's (20).

What isn't shown here are the 16 followers of the ranger Fayln, who aren't fanatical but still present a formidable group, that make up the ranger's full complement ... since the ranger has hit 8th, and therefore name level.

As the reader can see, the four big trees at the top are set to expand very quickly, as various henchmen his fifth and seventh level.  Virtually every really big treasure gained in the campaign sprouts new henchmen ... whom the players then roll ... all over the place.  The huge battle we fought last year ended in almost every player getting one new character; which pushed for me to run a second campaign, in order to keep the party from playing a massive battle force every time they took on an enemy.

For me, it makes sense that people would come out of the woodwork to 'join' a party that just wiped out 350 goblins, hobgoblins, ogres and drow elves.  And its fun for the party to have new people to play, to decide to put some characters on the back burner for a running or two (or more), while pushing to get the lower leveled henchmen up.

The danger is that a tree could become seriously broken ... something that hasn't happened yet, mostly because henchmen who have been lost were of lower level.  The rule is, however, that you can't continue to run henchmen that are not 'your' henchmen.  Let me explain what I mean.

If I may expand Pikel's tree, thusly:

Ivan has, on four different occasions, come within 1 hit point and within 1 round of death.  He is both the unluckiest and luckiest character running in the campaign.  His nickname, "Ivan the Pincushion," comes from an odd quirk of the dice.  If I have NPC's firing missiles at the party, and I roll to see who the missile will be directed against, Ivan always presents as a target.  This is declining, as often I can't add Ivan to the possible targets because he's hiding in shadows.  But if he fails to hide, you bet the die will say the crossbow bolt is bound for him.

Now let's say Ivan dies, and that he either can't be resurrected because they can't find the body, or he fails the resurrection survival roll.  According to the rules, Pikel is entitled to roll up a new henchman to replace Ivan.  But ... and this is a very large 'but' ... Pikel is not entitled to go on running Lyrial, Lovi or Urlgen.  They don't die, but they revert to ordinary NPCs ... people who know Pikel and who might have a certain fondness for him.  But while Lyrial and Lovi were fanatical towards Ivan, and Urlgen is fanatical towards Lyrial, to them Pikel is just Ivan's boss.  They might hang around, get on the payroll, or they might wish Pikel well and go on their way.

Moreover, Lovi is not bound to Lyrial, nor Lyrial to Lovi.  They were bound together by Ivan.  And now that Ivan is gone, it's unlikely that Lovi will feel any necessary kinship with Lyrial, apart from the fact that they knew each other.

In exactly the same way, if the player who controls Pikel decides to retire the druid indefinitely, Zephan and Ivan can't be run together.  The player must choose one or the other and move forward.  Granted, Zephan would probably go on running in my daughter's campaign, and Ivan in mine - but they would never run together again, unless Pikel came out of retirement.

As such, all the players in my world are always considering what would happen in so-and-so died.  If a major character or one of the major henchmen dies, it's a great loss for the player.  It's a harsh rule, but them's the breaks.  The rule encourages the players to cultivate their henchmen with some respect, and not treat them casually - at least, not after those henchmen have reached fifth level.

I just wanted to throw out some general observations today, to get the tree up on the system (for the benefit of the players, really, who will no doubt tell me that I have some of the levels wrong) and throw out some of the rules about controlling so many henchmen as they accumulate.  I don't expect there's much room here for comment.  I may write another post later today, just to give people something to talk about.

You're The Straight Man

It will not settle well on the stomachs of many a gentle reader if I make a religious anaology between D&D and the Catholic Church, but nevertheless here we are.  If not for the mummery that is the priest speaking and the assembly moving soberly forward to take their place at the altar, the eucharist is only cheap bread and poor wine.  It is not chance that invests religion with magic; it is the steadfast belief that magic must exist, or else the whole practice is foolhardiness.

I want to write this post today to convey the understanding that in D&D, too, there is mummery, and that it is more important than is generally believed.  The matter struck me as I was laying myself down to sleep last night - and being hit suddenly by an answer to a blog post written about a hundred years ago by James C., which I swear has not been in my forward consciousness all this time.  I think I have an answer.  Not that I mean to pick upon James or anything ... I quote his blog as representative:

"I used to require all ability rolls to be made in my presence, if for no other reason than to watch the craning necks and sour faces. When that was consistently applied, the player characters all had remarkably similar scores in terms of the net sum. Of course there was the lucky or unlucky outlier, but the curve was predictably bell-shaped.  But we are adults now, and worthy of the benefit of the doubt."

Agreed.  We are adults.  And if accuracy were the only important element of the DM watching a character roll a particular die, I would have to give James his due.  But ...

Drama, and the creation of tension, requires an application of mummery that cannot be dismissed.  The understanding that player have that they can't roll dice to determine the stats of their character without my go-ahead creates a sense that THIS is a more important roll than the hundreds of other rolls that are made.  The show of having the game stop so that the character is rolled up while everyone's eyes fix on the process creates tension, as people wait for the 18 or the 3 to be rolled.  Because I treat it as a matter of great import, so do others ... and everyone gets their moment as they pick out the dice and roll, the number being pronounced out loud each time.

Yes, it is bullshit.  And the Eucharist is stamped plastic-tasting wafers and vinegry wine.  That doesn't matter.  It's the pomp and ceremony that matters.

Of course sessions occur where the jokes get so rich, bouncing one after another, that players are on the floor, in pain, from laughing.  I find that happens a lot ... and I don't think that's chance, either.  The best comedy is born out of solemnity and tension.  Increase the drama, add to its thick, palpable presence in a room, and people will find comedy in the cracks.  But how to create the tension?  How do you inculcate drama to the degree that people start to sweat?

I shall endeavor to explain.  The assignation of importance to things such as die rolls is a protocol - a means of making 'official' something that is merely a group of friends sitting down to play a 'game.'  They are the dividing line between where something is casual and where something becomes serious ... though protocols must be used judiciously, or else the whole point is lost.  If a game is nothing but protocols - particularly ones which appear to make a mockery of the players, such as forcing them to stand up and announce in a loud voice whenever they cast a spell - the tension will be lost in the wells of dissatisfaction.

Protocols should be mostly aimed at the DM, and not at the players.  It is the DM that must restrain his or her actions in order to create the needed feeling that something important is going on.  The priest does demand solemnity from the congregation.  The priest IS solemn, and the congregation feels compelled to respond in kind.  It is a performer's trick.  It can be accomplished very easily, if you have faith.

Take a laughing, ribald audience.  Dressed as a clown, set foot upon the stage.  If the audience has been suitable warmed up, they go on laughing.  Walk to the front of the stage slowly, holding a stony expression, staring at your audience.  Say nothing.  Stop and remain absolutely immobile, but continue to fix the audience with your eyes.  Watch them calm down.  Hear the room get quiet.  In all, it takes about 30-60 seconds, but at the end of it every person in the room will be absolutely in the palm of your hand.  Silence is a terrifying, intimidating thing ... but timing it suggests that something magnificent is about to be said.  The longer you wait, the more magnificent the thing you're going to say will be.  If you wait too long, you'll blow it, but if you wait just long enough, you can make the audience feel anything.

I saw a clown come out and do that once, and ten seconds after an audience of two hundred grew so quiet you could hear a pin drop, the clown started to cry.  It was ... amazing.  The crowd was imprisoned.  We sat there together for more than a minute, doing nothing but watching a clown cry.  Then he said, his voice unearthly in its infancy, "My monkey hates me."  And the room erupted.  There then proceeded a lot of innuendo jokes, making it clear what he meant by 'monkey.'  One of the funniest things I've ever seen.

Fundamentally, the clown was his own straight man.  He set the audience up and then delivered the punch line.  In D&D, the DM is the straight man.  It's up to him - or her, I am not sexist - to encourage the audience, or players, to buy into the reality of what's going on.  The players will not believe until the DM does ... and once the DM finds the key that will allow the manipulation of the party towards the emotional state desired, everything is possible.

My game face does convey a great deal of seriousness, though my voice may be relaxed or I may be chatting about things that don't matter.  The hardest time, for me, to retain my face is when a player asks point blank about something that the player has guessed correctly about.  The jig is up, the truth behind the facade has been guessed and it would seem, right then and there, that the guts of the adventure are on the open table.  Every DM has felt this moment.  The tendency is to grin, giving away the truth, and admit that the player has got it.  Sadly, it means that for the rest of the adventure, a lot of what may have contributed to a lot of tension has now been exchanged for going through the motions.  Sadder still when its realized that the player's question in the first place had been a pretty uncertain guess, without much expectation that it was the right answer.

I got pretty sick of ruining my own adventures this way, and eventually I did develop a game face that was absolutely rigid.  It is a face I can hold - without so much as the tiniest discoloration - even when I know the death of a character is at stake.  It has taken practice.  It has come with the recognition that the drama is more serious than my desire for relief - the relief I used to get by letting the cat out of the bag that the evil baron was the princess's brother ... or whatever plot point was relevant.  It is the same deadpan look a priest gives you if you ask anything about the real existence or purpose of god.  The priest may have his or her doubts about the truth, but you, the lay person, will never, ever see it.

They are taught this in seminary, and they learn to hold themselves to a standard that is expected of all priests.  I'm not advocating quite the same level of reservation, but a DM, too, must hold himself or herself to a standard that compels the players to buy into the world as it is presented.  Not, as some people think, but dressing up as a fucked up boob for the games (though if the clown could do it, the DM can), but by seriously internalizing the imposed world with which the players interact.

If you as the DM can't buy the premise, you're players certainly won't.  They will attach exactly the same degree of importance to something that you, as DM, attach.  If you blow off the character rolls, so too will the players.  If you offer the Big Bad as not a particular threat, the players will take their cue from you.  If you introduce an adventure with the words, "This isn't much, but ..." the players won't find it's very much.

As the straight man, it's up to you to sell the bit for the players to knock down.  Abbott's genius is to convey the absolute reality of a completely ridiculous baseball team.  He's the funny one, but the audience identifies so strongly with Costello they don't even know it.



That's what a DM wants.

Words From An Older Man

In September of 1991, I filed into a classroom at university to start a creative writing course.  The course required that all applicants submit a portfolio of material, to prove their worth.  Other than being a student of the university, there were no other course requirements.  I would learn later that more than a hundred students tried to enter.  There were 19 of us that were accepted.

The 'prof' entered, a flamboyant woman whose teaching credentials were that she had won a prestigious national writing award for a post-colonial novel about pigs.  I would get to know her very, very well over the next year.  She had no understanding whatsoever of science.  Her comprehension of history was completed with her last year of high school, and not very well remembered at that.  Her sense of politics revolved entirely around litany associated with government support of the arts.  She was quite clear about what sort of fiction she did not read, namely science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, horror, romance, epics, mystery and anything written by anybody prior to 1950.  In the space of a year I did not hear her recommend anything that either did not win an award, or was not written by someone she personally knew.

That first class, we were told that we would be writing five short stories during the course of the year, one every five weeks, which would be critiqued by the remainder of the class.  There were rules.  None of the stories could contain a weapon of any kind.  No one could die in any of the stories.  No one would be allowed to fight.

And then we were informed by this marvellous, flamboyant paragon of knowledge that nothing -repeat nothing - was original.  So we should all stop pretending that there was any possibility that we would write anything that was original.  She, we were told, had seen it all.

It was a quintessential moment for me.  A point of contention that I knew was going to rise again and again in that class.  A point of contention that continues to rise, as I continue to find people who argue vigorously that it has all been done, it has all been tried, there are no new angles and we should only make the effort to embrace what we have already discovered.  The best we poor citizens of the world can do is repeat the efforts of those who have come before, and perhaps improve upon them.  We can dandy them up.  We can make them neater.  We can reorder them on the shelf of life.  But that's it.  You may have an idea that you think is new, but believe me my brothers and sisters, it ain't.

This tune has a name.  It is the marching song of mediocrity.  It is the song that starts with the refrain, "I had a dream, I tried to see it through," and ends with, "I failed, and you'll fail too."  It is sung by great hordes of tramping middle aged men and women in every field and every endeavor, but most loudly in those subjects of discovery, namely science and the arts.  It is the bitter anger that one fosters against the youthful certainty that things would be different, and it is leveled most harshly towards those who are still young and still certain.  The song carries hard verses about why everything will eventually turn to dross, and mournful choruses about how good things were in the beginning.  The only good things are old things, and every new thing is just an old thing in new clothing.

It is a song about making people feel better for having nothing to feel better about, and it works for that purpose because there are so many others singing along at the same time.  So many others, in fact, that the song can get into the heads of people who have no reason to sing it.  And because the song is pervasive and emotional, it can fool many people into accepting its sincerity as proof of things that make no sense whatsoever.

"We only want to play the kind of roleplaying we were playing when we first started out, when the game was fun."

Does it not imply the game isn't fun?  Does it not imply that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, who are only going through the motions, having no fun at all?  Otherwise, why sing the tune at all?  Why do we still play?  In the hopes that somehow we will be made young again?  Was the purpose of the game, ever, to stay young?

I laugh, I feel a bit of nostalgia for a few notes about things bought by a young man in junior high school, written down and kept for 29 years, so that it can be looked at and smiled over.  I was a young man too, 15 years old, still 12 years away from silly creative writing professors and their insistence that there was nothing new in the world, excited and thrilled because I had recently found something new in the world.  I felt angst for the cost of things, and I struggled to draw out maps and little dungeons to run my little friends through.  The kitchens of friend's parents, wedged on stools between the stove and the sideboard, rolling my little dice and killing nasty things.  Parents coming up the stairs to tell us - again - to keep it down.  Walking home late Friday nights, past midnight, to get home before curfew, chatting about the things the game could be or do for society, walking across schoolyards and down empty roads with chums we'd lose track of after high school, only to meet twenty years later and learn they stopped playing the game nineteen years before.

Nostalgia, yes.  I understand nostalgia.

But it's a dull, dead song.  And sad, because there is lots and lots that's new in the world.  Hard to find, yes, even when we're looking.  So much of what we see does look like the same old junk, repainted to look new ... and we habitually turn away from it.  I go to the very large gaming store in my city, I see the hundreds of gaming systems on the shelves, and I poke about among them.  I pull down the books, I gaze through it, I convince myself to buy it - thinking, I'll find something new, something that will solve some problem of mine.  But I'll be disappointed, and I'll be angry that I bought that thing, and I'll resolve not to do it again.  Year after year will go by, and games will come on the market, games whose names I don't recognize anymore, espoused by young people who love them ... but old and crotchety am I, it is hard to believe.  It is hard to trust.  It is easier to just sing the song.

I don't sing, though.  I'm not ready.  I don't believe in the other gaming systems either, I confess, but I haven't accepted yet that there's nothing new in the world.  My brain still functions, it still churns out things that are new to me, mixed from the materials I read and pounded out on my own anvil.  I've lost touch - I may be turning out things that have already been made - but I can't find the things I'm inventing, and throwing out the things I'm making seems to have some impact on the net.  The ripples that flow outwards suggest people are finding new things here, so I take heart from that.

I don't think the game was ever meant for us to hold onto our youth.  There are things I can create now, conceive of now, that I was far too simple-minded and inexperienced to have ever created in my youth.  I was a child when I stumbled across this game in 1979, and I was a young fool when I fell under the influence of that stupid woman in 1991.  I'd carve her up for breakfast now.  I am a sharper, more talented blacksmith today than I was years ago ... and I intend to go on pounding out new things for some years to come.  D&D isn't about how young I feel.  It isn't about the fun I had all those years ago.  It's about what I'm doing today, and how I'm going to make the performance I give - the game I'm running - this Saturday that matters.  I have people coming over and I owe it to them to make their session the manifestation of new, rich adventures that they will remember.  I am better at doing that today than I was twenty years ago.  I am better because I've practiced, because I have learned a lot of new things and because ... well ... because I see life differently than I did when I was a young man.

I did have fun when I first started playing.  I don't think that was because the game was of a particular nature.  I think it was because we were young, and what we were doing was enough for being young.  I'm older now.  And I still have fun.  Only now it is because what I am doing is enough for a middle-aged man.  What was good enough for me in 1979 wouldn't cut it now.  Which is fine.  I've had 31 years to prepare.

Speaking Of Things I Don't Do Often

I'm going to prove the value of commenting on other people's blogs.  I got my first comment from Donjon Master this morning; popped over to his blog and found a post there that rips bare the honest, legitimate feelings to be found from an old school gamer in that long, far off year 1982.  The gentle reader must read it.

I had almost forgotten.

More About Conflict!

Locked within this post, after some initial commentary, is a broad overview of how my card-system works.  It must needs be broad, and there are elements deliberately left out.  But I'm at a point now where I would like to create a little more interest.

The playtesting for Conflict! continues.  I have one more session set up with a group of strangers, which should prove interesting, but I don't think the trouble will be with the system.  I am hoping this last group are rabid rules lawyers ... it's what I need right now.  People who will pick apart the precise wording on the cards and give me trouble for it.

In play, the interactive system is proving to be very simple to play - not quite too simple, though often the resolution comes down to one quick die roll.  The better moments are events when the conflict rages back and forth for several minutes ... which seems to happen about once a session.  These moments are fun, a little frustrating and difficult to swallow when a player loses.  But overall the players have come to accept that sometimes things are beyond their control.

Some card ideas have been retired, others have been put on hold until - at some point in the future - a later set of the cards are invented.  In all, it looks as though the game will feature 50 distinct cards, divided into cards for swaying the actions of NPCs and cards for defending against those who wish to sway your actions.  A distinct benefit to the system is that players CAN use them on each other.  It is generally frowned upon, the way that using weapons on each other is, but the point is that being a player doesn't provide an exemption from the system.

In my last game, my regular players (who are now comfortable with the cards) demonstrated a willingness - without being encouraged, mind - to organize their adventuring with the card tactics in mind.  Rushing across the countryside to catch a boat in Hamburg, they found themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to wetback their way across the border between the Ottoman Empire and Hungary.  Following some dealings with beggars, a company of guards posted upon the frontier, and a customs officer who was won over ... but dispite a proferred bribe, not quite made a friend ... the party was faced with a gentleman adventurer on the edge of no man's land.  What was particularly interesting about him was that, so long as the party did not ask of him something he did not desire to give, there was no conflict and therefore no need for cards.  Roleplaying continued apace in and out of the use of cards all evening.  Thus, where the party was happy to chat with someone, no need for cards; but if the party wanted harder information or to cause an NPC to commit some actions, cards were then employed.  The back and forth worked beautifully and convinced me once and for all that I have got the thing in hand.

Here, then, is the general concept.  Based upon a player's innate being (intelligence, wisdom and charisma), combined with the player's experience, certain cards are obtained.  The player's stats are important, but the player's class has influence as well as things the player has accomplished.  For each relevant characteristic, a card is obtained.  As above, some of these cards can be played to influence others.  Some can be played to 'win over' opponents; others can be played to intimidate opponents.  Other cards, once obtained, can be played to defend against efforts to influence ... overall, defense tends to be stronger than offense early on, while offense marginally increases in balance as a player's level improves (defense increases too, but at present offense seems to increase a bit more quickly ... this is due largely to the selection of the cards available).

Players can start with a great deal of offense and defense, but this usually occurs in cases where that particular player has actively chosen a character with little strength, constitution or dexterity.  Obviously, a player who has a high total in all stats would remain dynamically dangerous.  Charisma is the most important stat for offense.  Wisdom is the most important stat for defense.

However - and this is very important - players with a low charisma can play for cards that will enable an intimidating or underhanded influence, or anyone can play to increase their influence through the application of bribes and spending.  An option also allows individuals to play a sexual gambit.

This post is a starting place for the daunting task I have of writing out the rules for this system so that anyone can understand them (without my being over their shoulder).  As I say, I feel the game methodology is worked out that that's effective, even over multiple games being played.  In fact, multiple games creates a pattern whereby roleplaying and NPC/player conflict is enhanced and even sought after, since the rules of the interaction are more clearly understood by all involved.  Which was, after all, the point of the system in the first place.

Now, I will be in a better position to produce this game and get it onto the market if I can raise some capital.  I cannot at this time reasonably offer to pre-sell copies of the game (I won't do that until I have the artwork), but if anyone wants to donate some small amount of capital to start the proceedings I won't turn it down.  I'd be happy to credit the money to your account if you wish to buy the game once it is produced.  I foresee the artwork process being three months of hell commencing April 15, and to be able to have a full, complete game kit by September 1.

Hey, I hate having to ask.  The money is going to come from a lot of places - that is part of the plan.  Take your time, weigh the pros and cons and get back to me.

A Rare Review On This Blog

From the Urban Dictionary:

"Easily confused with a punch defined as a 'bitch move' a true sucker punch is quite a bit more complex than a simple unanounced attack.  It primarily involves a closed fist contacting the soft underbelly of a person (beneath the rib cage) at a high velocity, causing the ensuing force to press upward on the victim's diaphram, leading to a sudden expulsion of air from the victim's mouth and lungs. This opening blow leaves the victim open to various other attacks, often leading to what would be called 'bitch moves' because of the defenseless nature of the victim."

The reader may have heard that the film Sucker Punch is a terrible, awful film.  Don't believe it.  The film has a premise.  The viewer must buy the premise, or the viewer will be left out to lunch.

I predict that vast numbers would dislike the film because A) there is a really heavy-handed point that's made to conceal the deeper issue; B) certain plot elements seem unbelievable to macho-nerd elements when performed by women; and C) the nested elements of the setting suggest an unacceptable ulterior motive on the part of the director that will bother women.  Finally, the nested quality overall will mean that a substantial portion of the population will just plain not get it.

If, on the other hand, the reader can remember Heavy Metal magazine from its hey-day circa 1978-1982, in the period that featured Moebius, Caza, Berni Wrightson and Angus Mckie, when it served as better adventure fodder than the Dragon Magazine, the reader will be better prepared than most to enjoy Sucker Punch for what it offers.

But understand, this is a chick flick.  There's more than one woman character.  The women characters talk to each other for more than thirty seconds, and they talk about things other than men.  It thankfully dismisses chatter about having babies, but the motivations are women's motivations, not men's.  Although the women perform, battle or sacrifice as men would, a great many nerds will find it all somewhat disquieting ... even just wrong.  The movie was not made for nerds who are uncomfortable with their sexuality.

There is a great deal of porn.  Battle porn, sexual porn, film-maker porn.  But the slant is not traditional.  So many will disparage the porn as cheap, tawdry, purposeless and commercial.  Pay no attention to them.  The porn was made for other people.

So, if you have a traditional perspective on the world; if your perception of men and women fits comfortably into the mainstream; and if your experience with complicated film art forms is limited, then I recommend not seeing Sucker Punch.  You will seriously not like it.

Speaking for myself, I still feel like the movie was somehow jacked into my arm, and that I am writing this while high.

For Call Of Cthulhu Fans

The small box is in an empty house, most likely on the second floor. Upon looking in the right room, the box can be seen at once, sitting on the floor across from the room’s entrance. It is nine inches by eleven, and three inches high. The box is rather flimsy, perhaps made of heavy cardboard. There is a lid. The box is not heavy, and as it’s lifted, a slight bit of shaking indicates the presence of small objects in the box. There is something ... unpleasant ... about the sound. Something that can’t be expressed.

Upon opening the lid, the box will be found to contain the pieces of a puzzle. Most of the pieces are black or deep blue, some with specks of yellow. The backing of the pieces is a hard, hospital green.

There will come a strong compulsion to put the pieces together. There will be no chance whatsoever of the box, or its contents, being left in the room. The need to remove the puzzle from the room, to be sure that it does not come to harm, will be overwhelming. A strong sensation of needing to protect the contents of the box will pervade any decision about where the box is taken, or where it is put. If the box is not placed where it can be easily seen, it will be felt that the contents are not safe. Sleeplessness will result if the box is not safe.

All who see the box will lightly feel interested in opening it. Those who see the puzzle will want to put the pieces together. This will seem to be something that is very much a correct thing to do.

A sizable area will be needed to lay out the pieces, a very large table. It will be difficult to estimate the total number of pieces, and distractions of thought or of things happening about will serve to cause anyone counting the pieces to lose their place, or mix sorted piles together. Eventually the mind will settle on the comfortable belief that there are certainly more than a thousand pieces, and cease to worry about it.

Upon seeking out the edge pieces, the fitter will find they come quickly to hand, but this ease will be dismissed as luck, or chance, or perhaps even skill. Thus the frame of the puzzle will take shape almost at once. It will be evident that one long edge is the sky, while the other seems to be the hardly-lit pavement of some street.

It will be easy to discern the pieces that make up the sky, so the fitter will likely place those together first. A skyline of distant buildings, a collection of steeples, stacks and towers. The fitter will be pestered of a vague recollection that suggests the skyline is familiar, but the name of the city will not come past the tip of the tongue.

Having now some experience with the colors of the pieces, the fitter will move onto to street ... and will detect that the yellow specks are bits of light – from windows and street lamps. The details of these lights, the shadows now evident which the lights can be ceased to cast, will surprise the fitter, as prior they seemed but splotches. But now here it can be seen that this is the light to a distant living room, wherein the occupant’s hand can be seen pulling the curtain closed. Here is a street-lamp where the lamper is lighting the wick.

Overall, there is a great deal more detail than was first witnessed. The street is put together, showing the curbs sweeping in a gentle curve to the right, with gray iron fences and houses shrouded behind the trees in the front yards. The street ends some inches up from the bottom of the edge of the picture, at a curb and a low stone wall that the fitter conjectures must surround the house at the picture’s centre.

Yet most of the pieces continue to be black in color. As they are sorted and resorted, the fitter is able to steadily find piece after piece that makes this little bit of the puzzle here, or up there ... but the overall picture is denied. But still, there is a sense of moving towards something, of making one’s way inside.

A piece that hasn’t been seen before, with half a visible face, is now discovered.  For a long time, and with much searching, the other half the face is found.  Together the two pieces fit into a place along the wall.  Looking at the completed visage, the fitter notes a distinct likeness in the face, and feels amused by it.  The face is atop a person who is standing behind the wall.  Another piece shows the person is pointing at something.  Something further away.  The fitter leans in close ... the artwork of the figure’s hand is astonishing.  The hand appears to be almost shaking ...

At once the fitter will realize something is horribly, awfully wrong.  A terrible comprehension suggests that the puzzle must be dismantled, and at once.  But the hands remain lax.  There is no energy to undertake the task.  Hundreds of pieces have been fitted together.  To take them apart again would be an exhausting proposition.

The fitter's eyes cast over the remaining unattached pieces, and sees a dozen at once that would fit into various places of the puzzle that have been studied throughout the afternoon ... or has it been the evening?  The fitter looks outside and sees that it is dark.  The room about is lit by lamps.  Was it not day when the task began?  It could have been the early evening.  The fitter cannot remember when last food was eaten, or anything else that has been done since waking except to construct the puzzle.

Suddenly its realized that in wondering about the time, some five or six pieces have been absentmindedly added to the construction.  The fitter vows not to add another.  With enormous effort, the chair is pushed back, the body pulled to an upright position.  The gaping hole in the center of the puzzle draws the eye, and the hand reaches back for the chair.  But with resolve, it is pulled up instead to cover the eyes, and a few staggering steps are taken backwards.  In panic, the room is abandoned, the door slammed closed on the vexatious, fragmented thing.

The house is empty.  A rapid search produces no one, only a note that the other occupants have left on some errand.  Staring through the windows at the outside darkness, it is wondered what foray could have taken them into the night.  Moments later, the matter is forgotten, shelved, as something that can be dispensed from the mind and not taken up again until their reappearance.

Some distant thought of eating or drinking is quashed in the sudden need for sleep.  Moving past the door holding fast the room containing the puzzle, the body is taken up the stairs to bed, undressed, dressed again and laid between the sheets.  The eyes are closed.

But sleep does not come.  Not in the complete and certain understanding that the puzzle must be taken apart.
Sweat rises from every pore.  An ague grips the body, as a chill accompanies the understanding that the stairs will have to be descended and the door to the room opened again.  The very idea breeds exhaustion in the blood.  With exhaustion ought to come sleep, but there is only the fever and an acute awareness of the body's weight, its pressure upon the mattress of the bed, the effort it will require to lift it from its place of rest, a place where it desires to remain.

A strenuous exertion brings the legs to the side of the bed and hangs them over the floor.  The hands follow, gripping the mattress and pulling upon the torso.  Somehow the mechanism is made to stand, and standing, made to lurch towards the bedroom door.  The dressing gown is abandoned, the feet left bare.

Beyond the door, the stairs are a black well, like that in the center of the picture.  Without a light comes the descent into the blackness.  Shadows from the main floor windows tell the whereabouts of the door that must be opened.  Feet shuffle across the hall floor.  A shaking hand grips the doorknob.  The door comes open.

Inside, the lamps continue to burn.  They have not been put out.  The puzzle remains where it was left.  It asks to be put together.  Obedience suggests a great comfort.  But stalwart, resolved, the puzzle is approached to do battle with the puzzle's will.

Clumsy fingers claw up the first piece and drop it with the unfit others.  A second piece is added to the pile, and then a third.  It cannot be done with both hands.  One hand must gain strength from the table where it grips, holding the body steady.  A fourth piece, and then a fifth.  And steadily the destruction steadily continues.  The wall is dismantled, the street is torn up, the skyline broken and the sky obliterated.  With the breaking of the edge comes strength.  At last, with both hands, the last two joined pieces are separated.  The pieces are loaded into the box.  The box is closed.

Something must be done with it.  The first thought, to build a fire in the yard and burn it, is put aside at once.  Whatever lives within must not be released.  The box must be put somewhere.  Somewhere safe.  Somewhere that no person will feel compelled to open it, or commence upon the puzzle's completion.  Others are not as strong.  Others will fail to return from the brink.

It must be hidden.  It must not be found.  The mind fixes upon a vault.  A vault that will not be opened.  And then, upon the thought's heels, the understanding that when one dies, vaults are opened, and the contents put in the hands of descendents.  One's children, who will not know what it is.

It will not be safe if it is hidden, thinks the mind.  But it must be hidden, thinks the mind.  But it cannot be hidden.  But it must be ... but it cannot be ...



Post Script

Virtually all of this above results from the dream I had last night.  I wish I could say it was unusual ...

Noodling Around

This comes in the middle of the week, but starting Monday I've been working to make the new commodities pages I linked earlier more accessible - or more meaningful - to the DM and player.  So have another look at the following pages:  banking, markets, antimony, bismuth, chromium, cobalt, copper and gold.  The gentle reader might find them more interesting now.

There are a lot more pages under Commodities, too.

Whiteboards

My daughter has been running her campaign intermittently these last eighteen months, making an attempt to get a hold of my system and learning better how to run a sandbox game.  Still, up until the weekend, it has been a dungeon campaign.  She's been clever in setting up combats, keeping the interest going and creating some political intrigue along the way ... but the time had come that we succeeded in finding our way out, enabling us to get back to the nearby town and finally purchase some much needed supplies.

Now, this isn't a what-we-did-in-the-last-session sort of post.  It is only that the party decided to quit the dungeon, opting instead to make our way to the edge of human-civilized lands and start border raiding on the far-off orc empire.  Like young people who have a dream of adventure, we've loaded up the party's donkey and draft horse, and we're on our way.

My daughter's issue with this is a common one: what in hell does she do with us as we make a thousand-mile journey to the edge of civilization?

Let's have a look at the situation, since it is something every sandbox DM is faced with from time to time.

1)  Because we're low-level players, 2nd to 5th level, and because we've been dungeoneering, we haven't left a lot of enemies still left alive.  Intrigue level is therefore pretty nigh zero.

2)  The journey isn't a straightforward one.  To get where we're going, we have to cross a range of mountains (the Carpathians) in a somewhat wild section (Ruthenia, in Western Ukraine), while skirting the edge of the Ottoman Empire, and thence crossing from Poland into Southern Russia, a land filled with hills and cossacks.  This suggests plenty of possible tensions.  Naturally, one would not wish to snap one's fingers and say, "You're there."

3)  Being not me, however, the experience and knowledge she has with the various elements of the journey are not great.  This is an enormous obstacle to her running us as players.

One of the benefits to having maps that are blank, featureless hexes is that blank, featureless people are not sorely tried in rising to the occasion.  They merely need to announce that the players have crossed the blank, featureless plain and are now on the other side.  There is none of that inconvenient history, geography and culture to get in the way.  No, there are no special peoples who dwell on this particular plain hex (in fact, there's no people whatsoever except for a few farmers), they don't have any sentimental hatred of foreigners, the weather is Hollywood-perfect and as long as a 1 on a d6 is not rolled, the party might just as well be crossing a whiteboard.  A string of six or eight perfectly blank hexes only means the d6 must be rolled six or eight times, and once that occurs, the party is safely on the other side, potentially without any incident at all.

This is the way my daughter ran a world when she did so with her friends from school, before she came to be into my universe - something she put off doing for years, which I respected.  I've said before that I feel children ought to be fully sentient before being allowed to play D&D - age 11 or so - or else they will build bad habits in terms of perceiving what the game is about.  By the time my daughter was 11, my particular world was highly unstable ... and by the time she reached 13, and my life had returned to stability again, she was unsure that my serious way of playing was for her.  Three years of playing with high school students convinced her otherwise, and she (her partner, and some of her friends) have been playing with me for six years now.

She wants to play a better campaign than just a whiteboard.  But now that she has found herself faced with the grim reality of filling in that blank, featureless space, the pressure is on.

Let me explain the point of this post.  If you, the gentle reader, were to produce a night's running without any thoughtful preparation - i.e., you did not expect the party was going to suddenly strike out in an unexpected direction - you couldn't be blamed for producing a campaign that suffered a little from cliche.  We all do it.  For example:

• The party is walking along the road and finds a crisis is going on:  an Inn is on fire.  The chances of this happening at the exact time the party is wandering by are ridiculously tiny ... but the Gods play for convenience, not for odds.
• The party is walking along the road and are met with others who desperately need help.  Good thing the party is here.
• The party is walking along the road and are randomly attacked.
• The party is walking along the road and fall in with others going in the same direction, who have an interesting story to tell about some feature nearby.
• The party is walking along the road and the weather forces them to seek shelter in some potentially awful feature nearby.
• The party is walking along the road and are met with people who accuse the party of being someone else.
• The party is walking along the road and find a person who is dead, unconscious or otherwise harmless and unable to convey any information, and find clues as to what happened.

And so on.  Story after story, film after film, these same patterns are followed.  But let me go on record that there's nothing wrong with the cliche.  It has worked effectively for eight hundred years or more, right back to the Song of Roland and Le Morte d'Arthur.  People walk along roads.  Things inhabit places next to roads, or also walk along roads, or just wait for people who walk along roads.  The 'road trip' is a time-honoured story device.

What's important isn't the initial set-up.  What is important is the quality of the character one meets on the road.  Letting Rutger Hauer into your car gets pretty freaky.  No matter how implausible, it makes a better horror film than picking up Jessica Tandy (some would disagree).  The real question isn't "What happens?" ... it is, "HOW does it happen?"  How do we get the players to agree to help out the fellows who need help?  How does the dead body look when it is found?  How really odd are the other travellers going the same way as the party?  How awful or strange or unexpected is the terrible disaster taking place along the side of the road?  Just how bad or extraordinary or disturbingly personal is the weather?

Hollywood is a terrible story teller, and yet it has the inconvenience of being all-pervasive as an influence on D&D sandboxes.  Hollywood features a group of assholes sitting in a room talking about where this story is going to take place, and what products will be in the story that can be sold.  It talks about the jobs the characters will have, and the relationships the characters will be in, and then casts actors on the basis of those designs.

If somehow a great character is born out of those conversations, it's pure chance.  'Cause Hollywood doesn't care about character.  They're still trying to figure out why Indiana Jones was popular.  They've been trying to repeat Indiana Jones for thirty years and their efforts have been mostly a dismal failure.  They think Jones is tough, fearless, resourceful, handsome, correctly dressed and so on.

It is a complete mystery to them that Jones feels pain ... so they make Indiana Jones character after Indiana Jones character that doesn't.  They are oblivious to the moment that Jones hesitates with visible fear before he does something insanely dangerous, so they make Jones characters that don't hesitate.  They fail to realize that really, and for the most part, Jones doesn't know how to do a lot of things - he can't fly a plane, he has trouble starting boats, he makes a lousy purser and a lot of the time he does stupid things that get him into trouble - but Hollywood goes on making amazing characters who look like Jones who instead can do everything.  What he looks like isn't that important, but Hollywood thinks it is.  It's the sweating from working hard and the eyes desperately seeking a way out that appeal to a woman's instincts to clean him and help him.  If the actor sweats and can look simultaneously scared and determined like Harrison Ford, women will think he's attractive.

I guess what I'm saying is that character is a lot more than what somebody does or how someone is dressed.  "Barbarian" isn't a character.  The Greeks used the word to describe people who were not Greek.  If your NPC Barbarian's behavior is based on how you think a 'Barbarian' behaves, congratulations:  You've just invented Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

You've got to think more deeply about these characters that are standing by the road asking the players for help.  You've got to consider how they got where they are, how they came to be covered with little nicks and scars or how it happened that they lost a leg.  Don't hold back in giving this information.  Make it clear that the lost leg is directly involved in what the characters are being asked to do.  Make it clear that the NPC would willingly lose the other leg, if he could go, only that then he couldn't get back.  Create a character foible or habit, an abiding opinion, a vicious streak or whatever, and then squeeze all the juice out of it that you can.  One decent cold-hearted bastard who keeps kittens in his bag for his morning meals - for a REALLY GOOD reason - is worth a thousand interesting settings.

The problem with these posts suggesting this or that for the DMs out there is that they are necessarily vague and abstract.  There isn't any table I can offer for the creation of characters.  I can provide a hundred lists for products and hit point comparisons and region statistics, but there's nothing that can be done to infuse you, the DM, with the knowledge of how to make a good character.  It can't be done with rows and columns.  You have to be the sort of observant creature who watches the way a character's cheek flutters or how flexing their hands in a particular scene helps establish the tension.  You've got to be able to pick out from the order of the words in a sentence just how the author is attempting to manipulate you into believing that this guy is a dope and that guy has it all together.

I can't remember saying this on this blog before, but it's worth repeating.  It is an important guidepost for determining whether or not you are able to see what's really there, or if you're only deluding yourself.  For a number of computer programs, if you make a picture frame, and then import a picture into it, you'll be asked a question:  Do you wish to change the shape of the picture to fit the frame, or do you wish to change the frame to fit the picture.

In observing anything, the goal is to make yourself change your frame to fit the picture you're given.  This is the only way to see the picture clearly.  If you change the picture to fit your frame, you distort the picture and you'll never really see it.

If you are an artist, you want to force your audience to change their frames.  You want to create a picture so compelling and profound that even after they've changed the picture to fit their frames, it will disturb them and they'll go back to find out what the picture really looked like.  This, to me, is the definition of great art - that when it is deformed by the blank, featureless minds that refuse to see it, those same minds find they MUST return and see it properly, the way the creator wanted.

It isn't impossible.  It's hard, it's very hard.  But it can be done.

Let me finish, for the benefit of those who think that I am just a collection of complicated tables and insane, unnecessary details in a painstakingly 'realistic' world that feels as though it wouldn't be much fun.  You suffer from a great misconception, demonstrated brilliantly by this recent effort by a brilliant creator.  My world isn't boring because it is filled with tables.  My world has tables because I am struggling to create a gigantic frame which will encompass the impossibly complex world I find myself having to handle.  I know it is an impossible frame to create.  I don't worry about that.  I'm only looking for a place where I can stand and look at the magnificence of a world I did not create, but from which I obtain an indescribable awe.  This blog, and these many tables, and this hopeless attempt to describe the potential of this game to capture an ever greater bit of this world, are all intended to force the gentle reader to fix their frame, whether they want to or not.

Why Don't They Throw Rocks?

About three weeks ago I made a comment on one of the combat simulation posts about how there are ways to foil the old "falling back to defend the doorway" trick that has been part of the dungeon strategic lexicon since the beginning of time.  I never did say how ... nor did anyone online ask.  But DMs must know why it wouldn't work.

Let us set up the usual scenario.  A party enters a dungeon.  It then enters a room, such as I had in my simulation, finds a group of creatures, and then falls back to the doorway in order to reduce the number of possible attackers.  The fighters 'hold' the doorway while the mages cast spells and the cleric keeps the fighters whole ... and when the enemy starts to dwindle, the party moves forward and mops up.

There are a couple of assumptions being made here - first and foremost being that the enemy has any reason to force their way through the door.  Why shouldn't the enemy, as soon as the party retreats to the doorway, simply move to a place where the party can't see them?  After all, its the party doing the invading here, not the enemy.  Logically, the enemy should have their lair set up so that A) the party in the doorway is vulnerable to some trap which can be sprung at will by the enemy; and B) the party in the doorway isn't a threat until they leave their comfortable, safe doorway and venture across the prepared, open surface to where the enemy is lodged in their own defensive location.

Just look at what is typically used as a "guard room" the party would likely encounter at the front of a creature's lair:

Lot of thinking went into this one.   Typically, it's all of 20' across - why would you make it bigger, it's only the forward defense for all your stuff? - so of course the enemy gets wasted.  The thieves with bows and the spellcasters can see every corner of the room, and a torch can light everything, so even if the enemy does pull back to the corners they're still vulnerable.  The players can assess the strength of the enemy and implement their spells/attacks accordingly.

Note that the combat simulation I provided gave a wide expanse with places to hide.  This above is just a death trap ... for the defenders.

Why not this?

Much better.  Even if the party does stick to the door, the enemy can line up behind the wall on the opposite side and keep a barrage going with arrows and crossbows.  There are spaces for unknown numbers of enemies to stand where they're protected.  If the size of this is forty feet deep and sixty feet wide (and we assume more arrow slits in the defending fortification than just three), there's plenty of room in the far corners for additional troops, equipment and so on, for when the party tries to enter.  And when they do, the 20 degree slope leads them down, where they become increasingly vulnerable as they move forward.  So what if the party defends the 'door'?  Whoop-dee-do.  You want the treasure, you're going to have to get in.  The enemy has no reason to come to you.

This isn't particularly clever.  Even goblins with an 8 intelligence could have been shown how to do this by a passing stranger of potentially any race.

All right, what if it is just any door?  What if the enemy does have a reason to push past the party?  It happens.

Missile weapons, anyone?  I might not be able to get more than two hand-to-hand attackers in the space the doorway provides, but I bet I can fit quite a number of thrown missile weapons into it.  I recognize that often humanoids don't have missile weapons ... at least according to the books.  I didn't give the goblins in my simulation missile weapons - but I could have very cheaply.

What if, throughout my lair, I pile up small cairns of fist-sized stones?  As the party moves through the rather empty dungeon area, these piles are everywhere.  Being stones, they're not convenient to collect or otherwise remove, and even if the piles are broken apart, what matter?  When the enemies find the party, there should be more than enough missiles around.  A fist sized stone may not travel very far, it may not do the damage of a long bow, but I'll bet the party runs out of arrows before my fifty or a hundred kobalds run out of rocks.

And if we're fighting something a bit brighter than kobalds and goblins, how about a little lamp oil, hm?  Doorways are nice, cramped spaces, excellent for fire attacks ... lots and lots of splash damage.  And just how long is that fighter going to hold the doorway when he's suddenly covered in burning oil?  2-12 damage may not be much, but it isn't the sort of thing you can just ignore and go on fighting.  It is the sort of thing you react to by breaking ranks, falling to the ground and quickly rushing to put the fire out - and needing aid.  Gee, that doorway doesn't seem like such a good defense any more.

It takes a fair while (in combat terms) to prepare a new burning flask of oil (even if you have the flame and the flask ready), so there's time to run, slam the door ... or rush the room.  The last thing you want to do is stand passively in the doorway until the oil is thrown.

Incidentally, I haven't ever found any real military tactical manual, ever, which has a chapter on the benefits of fighting in doorways.  If someone wants to send me a link, I'll have a look at it.  I'm guessing this is just a long standing D&D canard that has somehow gained the status of being tactically brilliant because its hard to believe a goblin can throw a rock.

Wiki, March 28, 2011

I didn't even do one of these posts last Monday.

I confess ... the Wiki does not fit my world-designing nature.  I was supposed to work on spells.  I was supposed to work on describing my combat system.  I did my best to guilt myself into working on these things.  For three weeks I wrote here on the blog that I was going to work on these things, with the expectation that if I said it in the public sphere, that would ramp up my guilt to the point where I would work on spells and the combat system.

It didn't work.  It just didn't.  My headspace was someplace else, I found myself bored by both prospects, I was tired after a long, spectacular weekend and really, I wanted to work on other things.  So I did.  I worked on things that did not translate to the Wiki, I worked on things that had nothing whatsoever to do with D&D (I have, in fact, other projects) and I hid.

So here it is a new week, and I'll come clean.  I haven't worked on any of the things I said I would.  As it happens, I am nearly always working on D&D or something related to it, but I work on various projects, switching from project to project as I feel in the mood.  Sometimes, I will leave a given project for up to a year, or even two, to work on other things.  Steadily the various aspects of my world build up.

But the Wiki has been making me feel for a couple of months like a ball and chain.  Gotta put up something the people will like, I keep thinking.  Gotta astound them.  That is how magazine writing works - every month you trouble yourself to think of interesting visual or tantalizing gimmicks that will blast people off their seats and make them talk about the magazine.  And having been in publishing for as long as I have, its a habit to think that way.

Unfortunately, it's different when there's no money involved.  I could go on guilting myself if this was my occupation.  But my occupation right now is in other projects, and they tend to sap my energy like little vampires.  And all I've had to give the wiki has been, really, the dregs.

By stages I have been stepping back.  I started posting something every day.  Then, accumulating material to post something every weekend.  And now, four and a half months after starting, I'm having to say fuck a schedule.  I'm going to post, or not post, as I feel.  This is a dangerous thing.  It tends to lead people to never post.  And then the Wiki just becomes another bloated dead thing on the Internet that hasn't been updated in the last three years.  Interesting, sure, but the same old stuff.  "How long's it been since I was there?  Eight months?  I wonder if it's got anything new yet ... nope.  Oh well."

The Wiki is at least as important to me as this blog.  It is just as important for me to post material there, as it is to post material here.  And I've been keeping this blog going for almost three years, still writing posts as long as those I did at the start.  Three years and I haven't run out of words yet.  I think, with the right attitude, the Wiki will still have new material three years from now.  But as the old material piles up, the new material will fall like drops on the ocean.  That is the way of things.

I did spend time posting this last week.  I added material that was fairly easy to pull together, which may or may not be of interest to anyone.  I began a 'Commodities' page, listing off my trade references for banking and trade markets, as well as mining references for antimony ore, chromium ore, copper ore, native gold and gold ore and iron ore.  I'll continue adding other tables in this group until I get sick of it ... and move back onto some other project.

Something I really have to do is to go about the pages that have been created and add text.  This is a goal for me these next six months.

Round 6: Darien Dead

Albrecht’s Action: Attack Goblin 6, and if successful turning on Goblin 2 to help out the Mage. (65%)

Cailaith’s Action: Attack Goblin 2 with both weapons, and if stunning on the first blow turning back to attack Goblin 5. (50%)

Brønn’s Action: Remain in place to attack Goblin 9, and if stunning turning to melee Goblin 5. (50%)

The Advocates To Save Darien failed across the board this week, though I gave all three active characters the opportunity to run and save him. It could have been Supernal’s appeal that changed the early pattern. People might be getting bored with this … most of the votes, about 85% I’d guess, came in the first 36 hours. I could set the polls faster, but I just don’t have time during the week to do the set-ups.

The combat’s are simple to run.

Albrecht rolls a 12, which is a 13 with the bless, missing. Sometimes it pays to have a strength bonus, as he missed AC 6 by 1 point.

Cailaith rolls a 15 with the first weapon, which does hit AC 6 exactly. She causes 3 damage, which doesn’t quite kill Goblin 2 … but it staggers back, stunned. And here’s where the movement bonus comes into application: Cailaith, the reader will take note, moves five because she is not in armor. It requires two moves to attack, so she uses those in attacking Goblin 2. Because she stunned the goblin, there’s no movement penalty for breaking off the combat. She turns, moves one (that’s three moves she’s used) and attacks goblin 5. She still has two moves left, so she has enough time to do so.

Sadly, she rolls a 1, dropping the dagger just like the goblin attacking Darien did in the last round. It can happen to anyone. She rolls a d6 for the weapon to see if it breaks, and it doesn’t. She rolls to see where the dagger ends up, rolls a 1 and it winds up in an adjacent hex. The wall is in the way on one corner, so there’s five hexes it could wind up. From the top, counting clockwise, she rolls a 7 on a die ten and the dagger winds up in the hex with Goblin 5. Bad luck!

Brønn rolls a 12 too. He doesn’t have a strength bonus either, so he misses.

Here’s how it looks before the goblins’ turn:

Cailaith didn’t kill the one she hit, so the goblins still don’t need to make a morale check.

Goblin 1 grabs its sword, and both it and Goblin 11 make intelligence checks. Being goblins, and having an intelligence of average (low), this is an 8 intelligence. Goblin 1 rolls a natural 20, and Goblin 11 rolls a 17 … so they both fail. They use their weapons to split the armor and chest cavity of Darien, causing an automatic critical hit each, causing a d6 doubled. Darien takes a total of 22 damage, and his chest erupts in bloody goodness. The two goblins fall to their knees and start slopping the blood and exposed body parts into their mouths.

Goblin 6 swings at Albrecht, missing with a 9.

Goblin 9 swings at Brønn, hitting with a 19. Brønn takes 4 damage, stumbling backwards either to the left or the right of Cailaith. A die is rolled and Brønn ends up in the hex between Cailaith and Englund. The goblin makes an intelligence check, succeeds and decides and both Brønn and Cailaith are more than it can handle. It falls back 2 hexes (the goblin has a movement of 4, and has used two of them) to rejoin Goblin 6 and Goblin 2, to hold as much of a position as possible. It moves into the hex next to Albrecht.

Goblin 5 swings at Cailaith, missing with a 6. It makes an intelligence check, fails, and decides not to fall back along the wall, but to stand his ground.

Well, all, I’m done with this experiment. By now it should be obvious to anyone the benefits of running this kind of system. Because of the stunning rules, combats quickly break down from organized melees with two comfortable lines of combatants to mixed free-for-alls with a wide variety of possible outcomes. While the end of Round 5 looked good for the party, the changes in Round 6 – brought about by the single action of a single goblin, Goblin 9, has suddenly got Albrecht on the ropes. Englund can’t move fast enough to attack Goblin 9, but might accomplish something with a spell. But even then, the spell won’t come into effect until the next round, Round 8 (as it is cast in Round 7).

Even if Albrecht hits and kills his opponent, he may face two attacks from Goblin 2 and from Goblin 9 (remember Goblin 2 has already missed its turn this round, so after Albrecht attacks it will be free to do so).

But it might happen that if Albrecht kills one goblin, or if Cailaith does, the others will all break off after failing morale. But if they don’t, and Albrecht misses, he will be attacked by three goblins while Brønn has to recover. If those three goblins can then rouse the Darien eaters back into the combat, the other three players will find themselves in bad straits.

It can go either way … and one more round could completely change it over again. If there’s anything that Darien’s move in the first round proves, its that the thief never had time to hide anywhere … even if he had gotten through the enemy lines. It would have only left him out there, alone, while three additional goblins were free to attack and consume the party. Darien wouldn’t have lasted long in that event.

The normal combat system for D&D is so slow, plodding and predictable, it’s no wonder intelligent people grew exhausted with it. But the attack/defense of the die rolls and the armor was never the problem. It was a good combat mechanic. It was only the insistence that the game had to be seen as either in terms of tactical perfection (Warhammer) or as something that shouldn’t need a map that created boredom-o-rama.

I hope I’ve shown that with some simple non-tactical rules, enabling things to go disastrously wrong in just a few rolls, without it seems hopelessly random, the combat in D&D can be much better. Tactically, if Darien had not divided up the party, the bad rolls could have been compensated for and won through.

Anyone convinced?