Watching the Election

I like statistics.

The Guardian has a nice site.

UPDATE

9:25 Mountain Time and this is turning out to be a real nail-biter.  I figure She has to take three of Michigan, Nevada, Iowa and Arizona . . . though just MI and AZ would be enough.  I would far rather this had been won at a walk, but not so much.

Damn, the pollsters all year have had it so wrong.  Polling is a dead art.

UPDATE #2

10:51 Mountain Time and I feel that I have to say something.  Pennsylvania is going to be called for Trump any moment and when that happens, this is over.

I have a lot of readers who are Americans . . . and I know that for some of them, this is going to be a very hard time.  As such, I am prepared to make a pledge: or, if some would prefer, to take an oath.

I won't talk about Trump.  I won't express my opinion on this blog or on any site connected with this blog or with Dungeons and Dragons.  I will just let it go.  Whatever comes of it, whatever the consequence, I won't discuss the matter, not obliquely or in any other capacity.  I so vow.

White Males

This is not a post about the American election.

I have a wise friend who warns me not to enter any public discussions about politics ~ in this he has my interests at heart.  It is simply too easy to offend people who might be instrumental in assuring my greater success, who may happen to have strongly held opinions different from those I could express in a moment of inspiration on the blog.  Better, it is suggested, to keep quiet on the subject; to focus on what is really important: role-playing and my writing.

Today, I had a discussion with a white male co-worker who quite candidly told me that "racism doesn't matter" and that it "isn't important," given that we're having our freedom of speech and equality stripped from us by feminists who have so many more rights and privileges that it's obvious the system is broken.  Though expressed as a rant, there's no question in my mind that the fellow's purpose was to educate me with the best of intentions.  Unquestionably, my being a male and white was relevant to his rant.

On several occasions, the fellow explained that he was very liberal in his outlook ~ however, he had begun to feel that his party, the one he had supported and even worked for to get them into power here in Alberta, had changed "out from under him."  That party is the NDP, an unquestionably socialist party . . . yet one that has fallen prey to political correctness, telling us what to think and how to think, threatening the free exchange of ideas in favor of an ideology that has been perpetrated upon us: namely, the slow and steady decimation of male rights.  This, see, is why racism doesn't matter - he was much, much more worried about the damage being done by feminists.

Most strangely of all, he was educated, sincere . . . and, I think, highly concerned about his country.  The angry rhetoric came far more from fear than from hate ~ easy to dismiss, if we will not look past the fellow's words.  It was clear to me, as we shot conversation at each other for an hour, that there was nothing egregious in his motives.

I listened, I pointed out facts as we went on but I suspended expressing any judgement for what he said.  A judgement would have been wasteful.  He was undeniably intractable.  He's been caught in his thought processes for a time and it was clear he feels under siege.  I've run into that before . . . but on this particular occasion, I found myself coming to a small realization about white males who find it so unfair that the courts overly favor women in divorce or in situations of marital violence; who resent the laws that have been passed in favor of "fair and equal treatment"; who resent the little rules about speech or the panels that decide on university campuses what's a subject for legitimate discourse.  Several of these things deserve examination, just as everything does, as that is the whole point of living in a political world . . . but what astounds me is the particular ire expressed towards the pains and troubles of university professors being expressed by males who do not attend university, or who have not been forced to pay alimony and child support because they have not been married or become parents, or do not work in occupations where they are subjected to how an inter-office memo's language is expressed.

I don't mean to say that they don't have a right to an opinion on these things . . . but it does seem strange that this particular passion is being expressed by people who have, by and large, managed to avoid the parts of society where they would be forced to submit.  Then again, perhaps they haven't "avoided" ~ perhaps they have been pushed out.

I think it is fair to say that for some white males, they have grown up being told that they are unfairly "privileged" and "specially compensated" for being this race and this gender, only to see for themselves that nothing about their lives feels anything like how it is described.  They see themselves without any power, without any status, without compensation ~ and at the same time, they see everyone else getting the attention: they see rich black sports stars and musicians crying about "Black Lives Matter" and they see rich, pampered women screaming on the internet about their misery and it causes these white males to feel they're getting the short end of the stick.

It is a question of perspective.  There are liberals who feel, "It's enough that I treat others equally; that's as far as any of us have to go.  What has happened in the past, what continues to happen, that hasn't come from me; I'm haven't asked for anything from them, therefore they're not entitled to ask anything from me."

This is "equality" for them.  This is enough for them.

I personally don't feel it is enough.  I don't feel anything can be enough, ever.  People get too wrapped up in measurements, in deciding who gets how much and who's entitled to what, who needs and how much we're supposed to give.  I can't find too much fault with women who feel threatened on university campuses, as I've lived on campus and there is legitimate reason for them to feel threatened.  I cannot find fault with peoples who are angry about what their fathers and mothers were forced to do because of race.  I am more ready to find fault with those who want to draw a line, who want to say I'm willing to do this much and no more, I'm willing to concede this suffering but not that suffering, I'm willing to define, according to my standards, what degree of comfort you're entitled to and I expect you to deal with it.

Screw all that.  If it is in my means, I will try to help.  If I see others helping, with greater resources than mine, I will join in or get out of the way.  I won't fight for a cause that says "freedom of speech" argues that racism doesn't matter or that women aren't entitled to legislated protection.  I believe in my government, even the government I didn't vote for.  I feel strongly that if the majority argues for a thing, votes for a thing, continues to support a thing for decades, that is fundamentally helping people, that is not stripping me of my rights.

My rights are not dependent upon what other people are given or how other people are viewed.  My rights depend upon how freely I'm allowed to express what I want to express and do what I want to do.

I'm 52 and living in Canada.  The government in this country has never gotten in my way.  They have caused me trouble from time to time . . . but as it happened, all that trouble came from my making a mistake, my taking the wrong action, my failing to act as I should.  I was penalized because I deserved to be penalized.

Rarely, I find, are others prepared to admit the same.  I wish they would, however.

"I'm half naked, surrounded by the other sex . . . and I
feel protected, not intimidated. I want the same for them."

Thoughts Before a Wedding

It is my daughter's wedding this Saturday, the 12th.  That has certainly been a long time coming - but as the actual date approaches, a mere six days away, it is certainly much on my mind.

It was thirty years less three days that I married my daughter's mother, on November 15, 1986.  That sure feels like a long time ago.  I remember my state of mind: confident, sure of myself, no concerns whatsoever that I was doing the wrong thing.  I loved Michelle and I had no doubts whatsoever about wanting to spend the rest of our lives together.

I do remember the night before.  There was a terrible storm.  I was resting, wide awake, in my best man's basement apartment.  The window was over my head and I could hear the sound of sleet pounding against the glass.  I was pondering the absurdity that I was doing something so "adult" - I was all of 22.  I did not feel like a kid but I definitely did not feel in the least way like my father and mother.  I supposed at the time that it was like that for everyone . . . that the fact of doing something big and final is a sobering moment, especially those moments that have the social consequence associated with tradition, the law and such.

Now I find myself in the equally strange place of being the Father of the Bride.  The process of walking the daughter down the aisle, giving the daughter away ~ and naturally the speech.  I've been working on the speech in my head for months now.  I haven't written a word, not yet ~ and as yet, I don't know how that speech is going to end.  I'm at sixes and sevens with it, my mind is all over the place and I find that I am waiting, as ever, the epiphany that will pull it together.

That is in part what drives me to write this post.  Epiphanies often help those who help themselves . . . and writing about wanting a moment of clarity is doing more than merely hoping it comes along of its own accord.  So all of you, O Gentle Readers, are caught up in this moment as I argue with myself.  This makes a strange post for a D&D blog, but surely the readers must notice that the vicissitudes of life must interfere from time to time with the writing process.  Choose to stay and listen, or feel free to await the next post.

My thoughts have gravitated towards "requited" love.  "Unrequited" is more commonly the adjective associated with love, but this being a wedding we are dealing with the antonym.  The word itself is interesting, as it does not refer to love.  It refers, specifically, to debt.  Middle English defines "quite" as to pay up, and "requite" as to pay back.  In effect, to be quit of the debt that is owed, which my etymology dictionary describes as something that is done "for good or ill."

An interesting phrase, unquestionably, given the phrase more commonly being for richer or for poorer.  But while I do find amusement in it, I wonder if a wedding is really the time and the place to be speaking of debts, given the negative association we make with such things and the unquestionable desire to express joy on the day of a wedding and not the crass elements of pecuniary obligation.

Over the decades, I have been to many a wedding and heard the speeches of many brides' fathers.  We will talk of young people finding their way, we will talk of learning to get on with one another, we will talk of the difficult times and the better times, we will advise, we will subtly threaten, we will be funny.  I've heard it all.  I could stand up and give a cookie-cutter speech like that, I could steal lines from all over, I could punch the patently obvious buttons of the reality-show addicted rabble that passes for my family, channeling the mix of Barney the Dinosaur and Real Wives of Orange County into a sappy confection that ~ provided I am able to hold my gorge in check ~ will bring on tears.  That would be the smart route.  The friendly route.  The route most likely to surprise these people who have known me a long, long time.

I am the black sheep of my family.  My daughter is as black as me, to boot, but being a girl she gets away with far more than I did.  Besides, she looks quite charcoal grey standing beside me.  Were it possible, if my daughter would agree to it, I'm quite sure that my family would be happy to hire a father to stand in on Saturday . . . so we have a sense of what I'm up against, standing up to give a speech about what I think a marriage is, my supposedly last chance to weigh in.

Ridiculous, of course.  My last chance to weigh in came something like 13 or 14 years ago, when she was still in Junior High School ~ that's the reality most of us don't want to face.  Only there's no grand ceremony for the "last day your daughter takes Dad at his word" . . . that day just sort of passes without fanfare.  It would be nice if we had a little warning, but it's up and gone before the chance comes to think a little longer about what should have been said when the chance was still there.

But . . . we pretend that the speech is going to mean something, we pretend that someone in the room is going to remember it a year hence or that any of the advice is going to be taken.  We pretend, because it is nice to pretend, it is sweet, it plays into the whole "joy" thing and hell, why rock the boat?

So there I am, thinking about debt, thinking about a room full of discord (thankfully, they almost hate each other as much as me), thinking about my daughter already being long past Daddy's advice, thinking that I'm glad of that.  I like that she does it her way, takes names and kicks ass, without any help from me.  That was the plan from the start, after all.

She has a t-shirt that says, "Personally, I think Romeo and Juliet could have handled the situation better."

There's a speech in there.  Somewhere.

More Work on Poisons

If there is a part of the game that I wish I could wave a magic wand and eliminate, it is the use of poisons.  It isn't just that they're potentially super-powerful and able to unbalance a game in the extreme (as a many a DM has discovered if the poison rules don't effectively restrain an assassin from causing havoc), it is also that the actual detail involving poisons is exhaustive and extremely difficult to define.  Pliny the Elder describes over 7,000 different poisons, not to mention that anything has an LD50 level if enough is ingested.  Add to this the difficulty in defining the game effects of each kind of poison, it's specific lethality and consequent difficulty in manufacture and it gets even harder.  Of course, many incredibly deadly poisons are obviously very easy to make, if someone difficult to get someone to swallow willingly.

I have never liked the "save or die" option.  Poison simply doesn't affect people this way.  Many poisonings give plenty of time for people to get to the hospital and be saved, as we well know.  A person could easily spend a full year building up a very complicated system and set of rules to describe all the variable forms of poison, but for what?  A method of killing that is, frankly, somewhat dull compared to hacking people to death with a sword.

Still, poison has to exist so waving it away is not an option.  I've been steadily working up my own rules to deal with poison, partly on the wiki and partly in my head.  I've gone an extra step today (in keeping with

working on medicine/physician rules) to codify these rules further. I include part of the relevant wiki page below:

Poison Damage
Because poison attacks a creature from the inside, the amount of damage that is done is PER hit die or level, meaning that creatures with a high number of hit dice or levels are no safer from poisoning than creatures with less. A 1st level character, therefore, has as much chance of surviving being poisoned as a 10th level creature. This keeps in line with my rules defining biological units (see Hit Points). Most poisons range from a lethality of 1 to 10 points per hit die or level.

For example, a 5th level fighter and a 1st level fighter are each poisoned by a substance with a lethality of 5 hp/HD & Level. Because leveled creatures do possess 1 HD in addition to their levels (see Hit Dice), the 5th level will suffer 6 x 5 hp (30 damage) and 1st level will suffer 2 x 5hp (10 damage). In my game, an average 5th level NPC fighter would have 32 total hit points: a d8 (for mass, counting as the character's 1 HD) + 5d10. The 1st level NPC fighter would receive a d8 + 1d10, for 10 hit points. Each would suffer an amount of damage that would seriously threaten their survival, particularly if either had already suffered damage from other means. Any constitution bonus would greatly increase their chance of survival.

Likewise, we might compare an Indian elephant with 10 hit dice to the above, encountering the same poison. The elephant would suffer 50 total damage - but because the elephant weighs about 5 to 6 tons, it has an average of 9.5 hp/HD, or an average of 95 hit points.

Time of Effect

The damage caused by poison does not affect the victim all at once. To begin with, the poison must have time to enter the bloodstream and spread through the body: this alone will require 1 to 3 rounds, during which time the poison will cause no damage of any time. Once this time has passed, the actual damage caused by the poison is then a random roll from round to round, according the following formula:

• Divide the total damage caused by the poison in half: this indicates the potential maximum effect (PME) of the poison per round.
• Each round, roll a die equal to the PME and remove the damage that has been done from the initial total.
• When the PME is less than the total damage remaining, reduce the PME to equal this remainder for each round that remains.
• Continue to roll each round until all damage has been suffered.

For example, consider the 5th level fighter described above (we'll call him Ethan). We begin by rolling 1d3 to determine how long it takes the poison to take effect, with a result of 2. This will mean that Ethan begins to suffer damage in the 3rd round. We calculate the PME at half of 30 damage, a total of 15. In the 3rd round we roll 1-15 to see the damage and get the result of 4. This isn't enough to stun Ethan, so although he doesn't feel "well," he is able to continue acting freely.

With the 4th round we roll a 2 and Ethan's free action is still unaffected. In the 5th round, however, we roll an 8 and Ethan is now definitely stunned. He has taken a total of 14 hit points so far, so in the 6th round the PME is unchanged: Ethan takes another 6 damage and is in trouble. Thankfully, however, he is probably past the worst: because he has taken 20 damage so far, the PME is reduced to 10 points. In the 7th round we roll 1-10 and Ethan suffers another 5 damage. We reduce the PME again and in the 8th round, we roll 1-5 and Ethan suffers 4 more damage. This leaves only 1 left, so that in the 9th round he takes this last damage and the poison has run its course.

While this does impose a more complicated procedure where calculating the damage done by poison, it does increase the game's tension where it comes to the character being unsure of how bad the poison really is. There is also time to give aid, allaying the damage caused by the poison with spell, potion or salve while it is happening, casting slow poison or neutralize poison if possible. Therefore, it is possible for a character to suffer more damage than initially possessed at the start of being poisoned. It also means that multiple poisonings (from monster attacks or consuming more than one dose before realizing the poisoning has occurred) could produce multiple PME rolls per round.

Saving throws against poisoning will reduce the total damage of the poison (and the PME as well) by 50%. Recognizing that a substance is poisoned before drinking is not considered part of a saving throw, but is a sage ability in its own right.

I intend to add this last (the ability to be able to smell/locate poison) to the assassin character's poison study ability.

Bring Enough for Everyone, Did We?

Of course, the first thing that most role-players think when finding rules for practicing medicine without the use of magic is, "why bother?"  After all, magical spells are much faster and less problematic, yes?  What party doesn't have a regeneration scroll just kicking around?

Well, my parties, for one. Regeneration is a 7th level spell and requires a 16th level cleric to cast.  16th level clerics are ridiculously rare and invariably very busy.  Think of it this way: the pope can easily lay his hand on your shoulder and bless you . . . but given that there are a billion other people who want the same thing, the simple act of receiving a personal blessing is probably not going to happen for you.

In short, even if the party in an everyday munchkinish game has enough of every kind of healing spell available to ensure never having to worry about getting their hands dirty with ~ shudder ~ surgery, most of the other people filling all the towns and rural countryside of the world probably have little choice about it.

But why should that matter?  Why concern ourselves with what the simple people do ~ we're busy adventuring here!  We can't worry about what limbs or diseases the common folk care to die from ~ right?

This thinking expresses a kind of bubble that most campaigns simply ignore, one where the setting is built wholly upon the party's specific needs.  If a member of the party catches a disease, no problem: we have a spell for that.  If a member loses a limb, boom, here's another.  If a member slips and falls among a patch of razor cactus, we have a handy rod of resurrection right here.  The important thing is that we survive, we keep going, we get the adventure done.  Other people don't matter.

Suppose the party, having just come from killing off an otyugh in some slime filled trough five miles into the forest, returns to the nearest village, all safe and sound.  Quite by surprise, by the middle of the first night, half the inn's residents are mysteriously down with some sort of malady.  The party is awoken by the tramping of twenty pairs of feet going up and down the stairs and with doors opening and shutting, because all of these poor souls have the trots.

The next day, finishing their breakfast, the party notices the bartender and the barmaid are clearly pale and in poor shape.  As they collect their horses from the stables, they see signs of a spreading ailment everywhere: there are slop buckets full of vomit and rumours that half the village has been infected.  As the party is saddling their horses, the chief magistrate approaches them, saying, "Within a single night, there are more than a hundred people who have some sort of disease!  You must have brought it with you, you're the only outsiders here!  What are you going to do about it?"

Well?  What are they going to do?  There isn't enough disease-curing and resurrection to go around for everyone, is there?  And since the party are clearly carriers, as they are unaffected themselves, are they really going to go to another place and spread whatever they've got there, too?  If they leave this horror behind, someone is going to have to deal with it.  Sooner or later, someone is going to have to deal with the party, too, before their selfishness kills half the kingdom - just how hard do they think it will be to identify them and follow the trail of disease and death they leave behind them.

But this sort of thing never happens in most campaigns, because DMs don't think of it.  Evil is something that happens to the party, not to the innocents . . . and the party is never at fault, never put in a position where their clumsy indifference to the world where they live eventually turns up some consequence they can't wave away with a single cleric.

I'm steadily coming to the conclusion that "simple rules" work for most campaigns because the adventures ~ and the problems ~ are kept as two-dimensional as possible.  Simplistic adventures don't demand many rules.  On the other hand, complicated situations and catastrophes can't help but challenge the magic parachute most parties depend upon, because usually they involve more than a population of just three to five persons.

Yes, I do know about the ridiculous healing rules that have been included in the Pathfinder system.  They have been explained to me.  Even those, however, falter when dealing with thousands of people suffering from large scale disasters and holocausts.  No party, ever, has enough resources for everyone.

It's a question of how hard do we want to bring this home for them.  It's hard to feel like a hero when we're lambing it out of town to avoid admitting that we'd rather just let people die rather than risk contracting the disease ourselves ~ even as we make excuses for our behaviour.  Excuses, however, are a lot easier than performing ordinary, mundane, non-magical surgery for 42 hours at a stretch because we are able . . . long after the spells have run out.

Just for a little perspective:

Amputation

A procedure in which a part of the body is removed, possibly resulting in death. Amputation is sometimes used to control the spread of disease or necrosis moving outward from an affected limb, such as malignancy or gangrene. It may also be necessary to separate a creature from a limb if the creature is trapped and cannot otherwise be freed.

When performed by any person without sufficient medical knowledge, the chances of a creature surviving the loss of a limb is extremely low. To determine if a creature survives an amputation, the creature will need to roll on the amputation shock survival chart (see below). If survival occurs, the creature will also suffer a severe injury.

Shock

The amount of shock a creature suffers from an amputation depends upon the limb that is severed. For the purpose of this system, amputations have been broken down into five categories, from the least invasive to the most extreme, from the least likely to result in death to the most likely:

• Incidental: fingers and toes, ears, nose and teeth. 
• Minor: partial hand or foot, tongue or eyes. 
• Major: wrist or ankle, through the forearm, at the elbow, below the knee, at the knee. 
• Radical: above the elbow, at the shoulder, above the knee, at the hip, removing the genitals or the breasts. 
• Drastic: cutting through the torso or decapitation (remembering that many creatures have more than one head). 

It must be noted that the success or failure of the procedure is not always one that can be determined in a matter of minutes. For that reason, there are two stages in determining the survival of the patient. The first is where the chance of surviving the initial surgery is checked on the amputation shock table below:

This indicates the patient's chance to survive the procedure. Note that these numbers are unchanged even if the amputation is performed by an ordinary person - so long as every possible measure (with or without the use of magic) is made to reduce the bleeding and care for the patient's welfare. If the roll is made under the percentile shown, the patient has not died on the table and is very likely to survive (see post-surgery infection, below).

If the patient has failed the amputation shock roll, however, and the operation was performed by an unskilled surgeon, then the patient will be dead in just a few minutes. Note that nothing can be done to save the patient short of a heal spell. Because the amputation was bungled by a physician with less than an authority medical knowledge, the patient will bleed out or die from shock no matter what other cure spells or procedures are employed.

However, if the amputation was performed by a character with a medical knowledge of at least 30 points (amputation is a medical sage ability for authorities), then there is still a chance of saving the patient. If this is the case, the patient is assumed not to die immediately, unless the amount of knowledge needed is greater than the medical skill of the physician. To determine this, the DM rolls a d100 in secret. If this number is greater than the number of knowledge points possessed by the physician, the patient will still die - but they will linger for a time before death occurs.

For example, a character with a 15 constitution, Bertrand, has a hand removed at the wrist by a physician with 46 points of medical knowledge. With a 71% chance of surviving outright, Bertrand rolls a 74. The DM then rolls a d100, with the result of 37 - meaning that Bertrand will survive, as long as he continues to receive care from a physician with at least 37 points of knowledge. At this point, we consult the Survival Time table to see how long Bertrand's life remains in jeopardy:

Bertrand's amputation was major, so he will need 2-5 weeks of recovery. If it proves that no physician of sufficient knowledge can look after him, he will die at the end of the period rolled - it is simply a matter of course that his body fails in some manner to adjust to the damage done. On the other hand, if he gets sufficient care, he will absolutely survive once the time period has passed.

Note that if the original roll of d100 resulted in a number that an amateur (or even less than an amateur) had enough knowledge points to look after Bertrand, he would not actually need an authority physician to ensure his good health.

Infections

Regardless of who performs the amputation, all patients must make a constitution check against acquiring a disease of some kind. This is a random roll, determining the area of infection, nature and degree of the ailment; the amount of time necessary to survive this disease is then added to total recovery time for both disease and amputation survival. If a disease is contracted and the patient failed their initial amputation shock roll, they will need the care of a physician, with the necessary knowledge, for the combined recovery time. And, of course, there is always a chance that the disease might end in death.

Injury

Naturally, the amputation is in itself an injury, meaning that hit points are lost and the amount of time to heal is greatly increase (see Injury rules). For the amount of damage suffered, consult this table:

Returning to Bertrand, imagine that he has a maximum total of 36 hit points at the time of the amputation (always use the character's full health as the guideline when determining the amount of damage). We'll remember that Bertrand had his hand removed at the wrist. Because the amputation was major, he suffers a total of 32 damage from the removal of his hand. Of this, 18 of this damage will be injury damage, meaning that he will need to regain a total of 196 hit points before he is at full (180 from the injury and the additional 16 ordinary damage he suffered. This damage can be healed by any form of spell, magic item, healing practice or rest to which the character has access.

Note that where 105% of total hit points is indicated, this will mean that the character is reduced to negative hit points (Bertrand would take his full 36 hit points plus 1.8 more - rounded down to 1 additional hit point, putting him at -1 total).

If the number of hit points caused by the amputation is sufficient to kill the patient, then no amount of medical care can help the patient survive the procedure. Somehow, the patient's hit points must be raised sufficiently to allow the patient to survive the amputation.

See Medicine

3/4 of Britain

Woah.  I spent WAY too long working on that British map.  Here's a teaser of what it looks like now (Google Drive has been updated):

As a matter of bad luck, Britain spreads over four different map
plates, each 30-34 hexes wide and 35 hexes high.  This is the south-
west corner of the four maps.  Later, when all of these are done,
I'll put them together; they overlap as needed to form a single
complete map of anywhere.

Counting from the point where I began plotting cities last Wednesday, adding the borders, figuring out the location of the rivers, adjusting elevations, filling in the sea coast and finally coloring the elevation hexes, I count 17 hours of work for just this map.  That doesn't include plotting in the coastlines and lakes, which was work already done before Wednesday.  I have a measure for the amount of work, because I started listening to Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything, which is posted in three six-hour parts on youtube.  I finished the above just one hour short of finishing the third part.

Mapmaking takes a long time; yet while I'm doing it, time flies by.  The above map, it should be evident, is a complicated arrangement of tiny states and provinces, a highly indented coastline, hundreds of cities (which also means carefully fitting in all the labeling so that the whole is difficult to read) and rivers that have to be "just so" since this is Britain and people know it very well.  It would be okay with people if I made an error and the Lena River in Siberia jogged the wrong way before reaching the city of Aldan in Yakutsk (face it, most of you have no idea what I'm talking about), but the Thames better damn well pass through Oxford and Reading as realistically as possible.  This meant a lot of fiddling with river bends and turns, the shape of counties and double-checking more than one of the elevations (as I found out in several instances that my original source, fallingrain, had very second-rate data for England).

And yet there is no way to be happy with the map as shown.  Twenty-mile hexes for England are simply too BIG for England.  For instance, there's a big mound of hills between Manchester and Leeds, reaching from Halifax at the top of the map down into Derbyshire county ~ the Peak District ~ that doesn't show up on the map at all because it just 10 to 20 kilometers in diameter.  Because I use the lowest elevation in any hex with a city in it, and because the Peak District is packed on both fringes with cities ~ really big cities in modern times ~ the highland (which rises above 600 meters or 2,000 feet) simply evaporates from the map.  England is such a densely populated place with a complex topography (though the hills are relatively low to mountains in other parts of the world) that a proper hex map ought to be 6-mile hexes at the most to properly convey the look of the land.

I had similar problems with the Low Countries, Switzerland and Denmark.  I suppose at some point I could make a 6-mile hex map of each of these regions but, well, let's be reasonable.  Such a thing is something that would happen only in my dreams.  As it is, I'm not going to finish the 20-mile map of the world.

I do have one small corner of England left to do ~ but it isn't as many hexes as this.  It is probably about 1/5th the work of the above.  And when it is done, I will be glad.  There isn't any other part of the world that's left (with perhaps the exception of New England in the United States) that will require this level of research, this level of second guessing the sources, this level of city-planting or this level of overall diligence in making sure that it's close to right.  Comparatively, the rest of the world is a cinch.  With Europe done (all except for the Faeroes, Spitzbergen and Iceland), I'm looking at working on places where it takes much less effort to map a mere 300,000 square miles.

Mapwork

Just wanted to drop a note to those Patreon supporters who have access to my map pages.  I'm going to follow a policy going forward that if I make any changes to any of my maps on any given day, I'll update the map before I go to bed at night.

I worked on the Britannia map tonight, map D 30, including southern Ireland, Wales and Western England.  Took me 5 hours to plot the 200 cities on the map and identify the shire boundaries.  The Google Drive page is updated, so have a look any time.

Underwater Plans

As I climb out of my cloud of recent illness, taking note that I haven't done any real work on my world in about eight days ~ a horribly long time, enough for me to feel parched for completion like a man struggling to get the top of a canteen in the desert ~ I'm looking at things I need to be doing.

Some readers may notice that I have not talked about my book in a long time.  Allow me to reassure the readers: I am still working on it.  Just now it has been difficult, as the job I'm working has been physically trying (I have lost nearly 25 lbs. of weight in just 55 days), leaving me with little strength at the end of the day for digging in and getting good work done.  At least I am earning an income.  Losing weight, however, has meant less stress on my feet, less pain at the end of the day and ~ thankfully ~ an overall better fitness that I am rather enjoying (when I'm not deathly ill).  These last two months have shown how physically fit I am, since I am feeling none of the ill effects of dropping a lot of weight, while actually looking younger for having done so.  This comes from a lifetime of never smoking, never doing drugs, drinking but not to the point of drunkedness and being blessed with having a lot of natural energy.

Steadily, the words per week on the book have been climbing, so good news there.  In time, this thing will be finished and off my back; I have no desire to rush it.  I thought I would have it done four months ago but, well, these things will be done when they are.  I apologize to anyone who feels they are waiting overlong for the results of the Spring 2016 fundraiser.

I expect to spend my less cerebral moments working on the thieves' sage abilities that got interrupted last week when I found myself laying in bed when not dragging my half-dead carcass three times to work before finally giving in and calling in sick.  I wouldn't hesitate to call in sick with a proper office job, but just now I am working among the morlocks and on this level, daring to admit the limitations of humanity is generally seen as weak and therefore disposable.  I started working on the sage abilities because of beginning my world again (cancelled this last Saturday), interrupting the creation of my British Isles map to do so.  I thought I might try a little mapmaking tonight or tomorrow.

And my thoughts are moving towards the adventure I described last week, which is expected to eventually become an underwater adventure.  Here and there for a few days I've been reading boards and blog posts about people running underwater adventures and I must say the prognosis for finding practical rules that I can steal for my campaign are not good.

See, I have never ~ in 37 years of running as a DM ~ run any underwater campaign.  This has been the result of two principle causes.  The first cause has been that there are no systematic or complete rules in existence for running underwater adventures that I have ever been able to find in all the years I've been searching.  Every single system I've encountered is woefully short on practical boundaries on movement or combat, made worse by the fact that water is a 3-D environment.  I have seen some very silly things on the net of late claiming that "water combat is just like aerial combat!" ~ a ridiculous claim, since water doesn't function like air in the least way imaginable.  Weapons in water do not work like weapons in the air, water currents are much stronger than air currents while gravity acts very differently as humanoid bags of meat tend to float, not fall.  Air movement is necessarily performed with animal mounts or magical aids to movement, leaving both hands free, whereas water movement is performed by swimming, which necessarily makes both hands useless for anything else.

It is clear that the game universe wants to pretend that water simply does not function like water does, which mystifies me.  In an underwater adventure, water is THE obstacle.  All other obstacles are made more deadly and difficult because the players are forced to function in a watery environment for which their limbs are not designed.  They can alter themselves in a number of ways, but all of these ways change the nature of their hands, meaning they must think differently where it comes to combat and the basic function of their bodies.  And this is the big point where it comes to DMing this sort of adventure.

I know that most DMs will simply hand out buckets of waterbreathing and polymorph potions, whatever it takes to make the players feel like an underwater adventure is doable and basically like any other adventure.  I abhor this sort of thinking: "Gee, everyone gets to be a shark for this adventure, won't it be fun!"  I'm all for magical solutions, even party-comprehensive solutions, but free access to magical super-powers just because we are all going underwater are strictly off the menu.  Magic isn't there to be handed out free; if there is magic, it must have a price and I'm not talking about coin.  If the party wants the ability to go under the surface without counting rounds before dying, the deal they make is going to have to be with the Devil ~ or some D&D equivalent.  Otherwise, they're going to have to fight the all-consuming water obstacle as best they can without free samples from magic-dump-R-us.

This brings us to the OTHER reason why I've never run an underwater adventure in all this time.  I run games where the players pick their agenda.  As it happens, my players have never said, "Hey, you know what?  We'd like to go underwater and fight sea-going creatures with our land-humanoid limitations!"  I've had parties talk about the possibility of doing that ~ someday.  I've encouraged parties by reminding them that ships with gold sink to the bottom and collect there, in bigger piles than are found at the bottoms of dungeons, receiving answers like "I guess that's true" and "meh."  Apathy has, so far, kept parties from testing such theories.

So why has this party now decided to give it a try?  In truth, one of the members has been wanting to try an underwater campaign since she was a little girl.  She has only just begun to feel that the party is a high enough level to give it a try.  The rest of the party feels that they, too, are ready for this degree of novelty and so, in truth, I'm on the hook for giving it to them.

I have a strong adventure in mind, one that I might be able to produce and sell as a module, like I did with Ternketh.  I'm glad I'm giving this a try now, after this much experience as a DM, rather than 25 years ago.  I see this being a steep, steep learning curve.

Movement in combat, combat weapons, hitting and damage, adjustments to magic, adjustments to house rules such as wounding and binding of wounds, vertical movement, momentum, water currents, breathing, swimming rules ~ all of these are going to have to be considered, along with other things.  On the whole, I think the adventure as I envision it will be awful for the players.  Awful.  They will grow weary of not being able to employ half their spells because those are designed for land-based combat, they will grow weary of the movement structure, they will grow weary of fighting their way through water, they will grow weary of fighting creatures that move faster than they do, they will feel that the whole long adventure is just dragging out forever, no matter how much experience they're getting ~ and trust me, I intend to dump a lot of experience and treasure on the party to make it all worth it to them.

I will work to keep the momentum as high as possible, to keep the party feeling like they're enabled and rewarded, but the sheer change in the environment is going to test them.  It isn't that the game will be worse or slower, but it will be different in ways they don't expect and to which they won't be adapted.  Novelty is wonderful but it is also trying when experienced in abundance.  Anyone who has taken a month-long energetic vacation knows how tired it is possible to become of novelty.

Yet, hopefully, they'll survive, they'll manage the challenges, they'll climb a level or two (the lower level characters/henchmen are going to climb a lot of levels) and they'll kiss the dry ground afterwards with a sense of triumph that they will remember all their lives.  So that's worth the trouble.

I don't think, however, that they'll ever want to go back underwater again.  At least, not for more than a single combat in an otherwise dry dungeon.  So all the work I'll do for underwater action will probably not be used for my world again.  Oh well.  Writing rules is fun!

Heh, heh.

The Sweet Spot

In case some people missed it, I have been suffering from the plague all week.  I don't know what else to call it; the damn thing won't let me go.

It is perhaps because of this that I am fixated on the pickpocketing problem.  I've received a lot of helpful comments and I will be putting much of what people have said into the thief and assassin characters, when I am again able to think with a clear head.  This is the first time in days that I have felt up to writing anything.

There is a point that has been missed, however.  Several have said that in their campaigns, their thieves most often use the pick pocket skill to get hold of things, like a guard's key or a specific item from an NPC.  I must say I find this strange, since I never have players that do this.  Not that I have any problem with the idea, I think it is sound.  It is perhaps that I don't give keys to guards who can be approached in the open (logically, a guard standing outside a gate would be let through the gate by a guard on the inside, thus you would need the key to steal the key) or because I don't think to put valuable adventure-critical items in NPC pockets.  If we as DMs don't create the situation where the pickpocket can solve the problem with pickpocketing, the players don't use that as the solution.  After all, who needs a key?  Doesn't a thief open locks?

My bigger problem, which I stated on the previous post, but which was passed over, is this:

1. We can assume that pickpocketing is a way for a player character to make money.
2. How much money ought a pickpocket of varying level succeed in obtaining from a total stranger, keeping in mind that we want to make the score matter to the player?
3. How do we make the obtaining of that score difficult enough that the player can't just rob thousands of g.p. at will without risk?

Risk is, after all, the game.  Without risk, I might just as well give the thief the money and have done with it. There HAS to be a risk that threatens actual death, or it won't cause the player to hesitate.

To encourage the player not to hesitate, the score has to be BIG enough that the player can't easily forget the presence of the potential take.  It has to be mouth-watering.  It has to bother the thief.  This is the only thing that will encourage the thief to hazard the risk.

The sweet spot between these two points was the purpose for the pickpocketing table.  The sweet spot is achieved by giving the thief additional skills as the thief increases in level.  That only lowers the risk, which makes the take easier and spoils the game.  The better alternative is to increase the size of the score, arguing that the benefit of the thief's level is NOT that the thief gets better at taking things, but that the thief gets better at finding things to take.

Presumably, a 9th level thief wouldn't walk from one side of a doorway to the other to lift 20 g.p. from a target.  Why bother?  Said thief already has pockets and hoards bulging with thousands of gold.  I should have made the score size based on a die roll ~ like, say, a d10 per level.  Then a 9th level thief might feel it worthwhile balancing a point of 6 against a take of 500 g.p.  He might seriously risk rolling snake eyes again if the score was nearly 10,000 g.p.

It has to be understood that ALL game rules are seeking that sweet spot that produces the player's dilemma.  We want the emotional rush that is produced by the sound of the ball rolling around the roulette wheel coupled with the near certainty that putting a hundred dollars on number 26 is sheer folly.  The near certainty.  There is a world of angst to be found in the word "near."

So we don't want rules that eventually guarantee a player's success.  I understand this is what most DMs adhere to when creating rules for anything, the presupposition that as a player character increases in levels, their success edges towards certainty.  No.  No, no, no.  We've got it all wrong there.  The game is designed to ensure that increase in levels assures a greater variety of monstrous foes, a greater variety of obstacles and difficulties to overcome and a greater variety of ways to die.  The game does not get easier for players who go up levels!  In most ways, it gets harder.  Much, much harder!

3.5e never learned this lesson, 4e never learned this lesson, 5e hasn't learned this lesson.  It is why most games, played the way the rules say, suck ~ but in a very subtle way, in a way that has DMs and players scratching their heads and thinking, "This is all really awesome, except for this thing I can't quite put my finger on."

It takes a very self-aware DM to overcome the tendency to feed the player's hero-fantasies and ensure that the game consistently makes the player ache and flinch at the same time.  Most DMs who can do this, I'm dead certain, don't know that they're doing this.  It goes back to what I've consistently said: we don't know when we're playing the game well.  It is such a hard game to know.  

Picking Pocket Points

Some four years ago I proposed a change to the thieves' skill, pick pockets.  I consider those rules a failure, not because they don't work, but because in four years of game play none of the thieves in my game have ever made use of them.

Now, that may seem strange to some folks, but I blame myself.  Thieves in my game just don't think like thieves in other games usually do, mostly because it is very rare that a party in my world is just farting around a town doing nothing.  They're almost always on their way to somewhere, or they're not interested in pissing off anyone in the town for a very small amount of gold, compared to what they're likely to get come the end of the present adventure.  A pouch with a hundred gold just isn't worth the possible aggravation or the potential of pissing off the locals.

This makes pickpocketing a strange non-element in my world.  It's there, deservedly so, but the rules for it are minimalist for a payoff that doesn't measure up . . . on the whole, as a sub-game inside the game, pickpocketing is a bore.

However, even though my players don't care, and won't use the rules I make for it, I'd like to find a way to make the sub-game less boring.  How to do that?

We can make the payoff bigger.  We can give access for thieves to steal bigger pouches, bigger stones and fabulous jewelry - except that we have to ask ourselves, what in blazes is all this fabulous wealth doing hanging on belts or in easily grabbed places, like fruit hanging on trees?  Too, do we want to risk making the payoff so high that the party will just hang around town rather than go to a dungeon?  There's a fine line to walk here.

As well, look at the basic system for picking pockets.  Roll a % die, win-lose, that's it.  And really, how many raucous fleeing chases do we want to run as a DM, as yet another player is chased by yet another group of NPCs in yet another town?  How often can this happen before we're just going through the motions?

Well, I wish I had an answer.  If I had an answer, I'd be writing the proposition I have on my wiki and not on my blog.  When I write things on my blog these days, it's because I'm not sure.  I'm testing the water.  I'm thinking through the problem.  The problem being, right now, that I'm working on the sage study, pickpocketing.

Let's give this a go.  I've come up with a convoluted game-like pickpocket table that works something like the game of craps.  Here it is:

The "Roll" is 2d6 for those who have never played D&D and
can't figure it out for themselves.

The above represents an attempt by a thief to find a "score" in the space of a day's pickpocketing.  Before rolling on the table, the thief must first designate a number of hours in the day that they're going to try searching.  My argument is that scores of 10 g.p. or more don't come up more than once a day, so the first penalty against the thief is that they have to waste time of their lives (and their parties) actually pickpocketing.  They can do it casually, if they wish, for an hour a day, but then the chance of any result is reduced.

Let's say Digger the Thief decides he's going to spend 8 hours hunting up a score.  He begins by rolling a d12; if he rolls an 8 or less, then it is possible that a score will be "found" ~ that is, Digger is allowed to then roll on the above table.  As well, Digger's roll on the d12 indicates how many hours passed before the possibility came up; if he rolled a "2," then the table above was consulted in the second hour.

We'll say that Digger did roll a 2 and that he does get to roll on the table above.  Now, if Digger rolls from 7 to 11, it turns out that the possibility for a score was a bust; the silvery necklace was actually cheap bone, shining in the sunlight, mostly worthless, or it turns out that the rumor that a rich ponce was going to come out of the Lost Mast's Pub on Warehouse Row was just a rumor.  The roll on the d12 be damned, Digger just spent 8 hours wandering around town, getting next to nothing.

But what if Digger rolled box cars - the "guard" result.  Well, that being the case, Digger will get hassled by local law enforcement for vagrancy, unnecessarily following people around, not having a right proper job or anything else the constabulary cares to name.  Digger won't be arrested, just moved on . . . but his face will be remembered and again, he'll lose 8 hours time since the guards and what friends they have will keep an eye on the miserable malcontent spoiling up their town.

No, to have any chance at a score, Digger has to roll less than a 7.  We'll say he rolls a 5.  His appraisal skill tells him that the item he's chasing is between 90 gold pieces (because we'll let him roll).  He also knows that the fellow carrying the score is likely between 1st and 4th level ~ I don't mind giving this information to Digger, since he's got to figure that someone carrying around a pouch with this much coin in it has to be trained in some capacity.

So now Digger has to decide, is the score worth it?  It is probably the only score he'll get today ~ but to get it, he has to roll a 5 again before he rolls a 7, 11 or 12 (see the 2nd roll column).  See?  As I said, like craps.

Now, he's not putting up any stake, but as he starts to stalk the score ~ that is, he rolls on the "2nd Roll" column ~ there's a rub.  It reads, "if not the same roll as the original score" ~ in this case, not a 5 ~ "add 1 level to the target."  In every sense, not rolling the 5 (or the "point" as it is called in craps) indicates that the target carrying the score is eluding Digger.  And as he keeps missing the number he needs (his chance), we can imagine it is because the target is staying just out of Digger's reach, likely because of good instincts.

We'll say Digger is 5th level.  He isn't afraid of being exposed to a 1st to 4th level target, but now he's missed the number he needs three times and the target is probably 4th to 7th level.  Does Digger want to try again?

If he's exposed, it means that the target discovers what Digger's trying to do as Digger is doing it.  Rather than the cliche, which says the thief grabs the object, is discovered doing so and is chased through town, here we're saying that the object is in the hands of both parties, who are wrestling for it.  If exposed, if Digger wants the score, he'll have to grapple for it; that's going to mean initiative, rolls to hit and potentially his getting attacked by other people (say, guards that recognize him) if Digger gets stunned.  The only way Digger gets away with the score clean is if he makes that number he needs.  Therefore, having more levels than the target matters.

But it's okay . . . because Digger can walk away any time he wants.  He can just grumble and give up the rest of his day and say, "Oh well, tomorrow."  He's lost nothing except the opportunity.

I'm hoping players will want to play this game.  I'm hoping the score is big enough to be worth it.  A really lucky low level thief could conceivably hit a jackpot.  A high level thief might feel that it's worth possibly getting into a fist fight, if that's the worst that can happen.

What the table doesn't do is offer a higher chance to a thief that is higher level to get away clean.  I've been thinking about that.  Perhaps having the option of ignoring a bad roll, one time per 3 levels above 1st? Perhaps optional rolls replacing a d6 with a d4, when the player chooses to do so, with one substitution per level above 1st.

Also, the size of the score could be increased; higher level thieves would see bigger scores, thus we multiply the numbers shown as the thief goes up a level.  A 1st level may have to roll two 3s to get a 250 g.p. bauble but a higher level thief would only need to roll two 6s.  These are things I think are potentially viable.

Like I said, all in the thinking stage.  Perhaps it is simply too convoluted.  Perhaps it is not convoluted enough.

The Criminal Class

One of my goals this week has been to create a list of sage abilities for the thief, to add to the wiki.  Not to actually define in detail these abilities, as that would take far more than a week, but to identify what those abilities would be and to leave the details for later.  I've given up trying to introduce the sage abilities in complete form to my parties ~ it's just taking too long.  I've been banging away for several years now and it feels like nothing gets done.  If I make the framework, however, perhaps I can get the players to help and in some cases we can make rules on the spot, the precise limitations to be established by precedent.

This sounds bad but hell, right now, there are no rules of any kind for most of these things.  A proposed structure is at least a start.

So, the thief.  Now, I'm well aware that this class wound up being a public black-eye to the game company and that by the 90s everyone had chosen to adopt the term "rogue" because we are, well, all infant children and such.  For my money, if there was going to be a change in the term, we should have gone the other way and identified the thief as the "criminal class."  For my money, this is what the thief represents: not a playfully mischevious scoundrel, not a scamp, not an acrobat, but a class that embodies those skills that the criminal class DOES possess, however unpleasant they might be to encounter in everyday life: double-dealing at games, forgery, casing a building, holding a group of hostages effectively, acting as a quack or a shyster with no real knowledge of medicine or the law, putting the blade between the fourth and fifth ribs adroitly . . . these are difficult things to do and take time to learn.  I don't care, myself, that the acquisition of these skills suggests someone who ought to be in jail; my players are free to associate with whatever characters they will.  So long as the violence is directed at people outside the party, it is up to the party to decide what makes them comfortable, not me.

Therefore, screw most of the physical tricks and feats usually ascribed to the thief.  These things rightly belong to the BARD, a performer, not to someone who chooses the criminal profession because it is the easiest and least physical way to make a living (something that everyone seems to have forgotten).  I know, I know, the cat burglar is the quintessential thief, but a character doesn't need to do somersaults to climb buildings quietly and doing somersaults doesn't make a person thief-like.  In fact, the two have nothing to do with each other, except for the thin veneer of needing the thief (er, rogue) being able to do something to make the class viable.

I would rather simply admit it.  The thief knows how to smuggle, make a trap, roughly praise a valuable object, fence a stolen good and woo a victim.  If I can think of enough dirty tricks to add to a thieves' sage abilities, I will add them . . . but on the whole, I must admit, it is still fairly thin on the ground.

On one level, it should be.  The thief has the easiest amount of experience to go up a level so it is naturally the weakest, least effective class.  There are certain aspects of a thief that are useful, that can't be gotten around with the social blunderings of a cleric, the physical force of a fighter or the raw power of the wizard.  The thief is finesse.  Ruthless finesse.  This is the structure I'm going for.

No doubt about it: many of the thieves' studies are going to offer little.  I have no interest in the massive modifier bumps that show up with e3.5 and carry through to the later editions.  Basically, don't bother rolling the die, you have a +35 to any roll you care to make, where thieving skills are involved.  I've just been through the 3.5 feat rules and I can say with conviction that there was a LOT of lazy game design there.  +2 if you have this skill and another +4 if you also have this skill and add another +7 if you have THIS skill.  Criminy.

Where my system is concerned, I am on the hook for coming up with at least 8 individual abilities (no leaning on extra bonuses!) for ALL of the following studies: setting and removing traps, casing a building, hiding in cover, picking pockets, opening locks, pawning goods and like chicanery, forgery, cheating at gambling, acting as an accomplice, acting with guile (managing victims), hearing noise, sure-footedness, dirty fighting and, of course, backstabbing.

Not an easy task.  But I'm sure with time I will steadily accumulate those 120 expected abilities and probably more.  That's how the sage ability design has gone so far.

Oh, the assassin is another problem.  I've been thinking of the difference between the two, apart from the difference between backstab and assassination.  I think it comes down to this:  a thief is concerned with being liked; most of the actual criminal activities involve some kind of association, what with finding marks to cheat, victims to terrorize and customers for stolen goods.  All these things are easier if the thief is appreciated and liked.

Killers, however, are just scary.  They're not concerned with being liked.  Dillinger was a thief and had a friendly reputation.  Bonnie and Clyde, likewise.  These criminals killed, yes, but they were better known for robbery.  On the other hand, the less popular gangsters, like Bugsy Siegel or Dutch Shultz, were feared.  No one idolized them while they were alive nor did they mourn their deaths.  This is the difference, I think.  Crooks imagine that someday they'll be admired and respected for their skill and daring.  Assassins, on the other hand, just want the other guy to die.