Mining - Metals & Minerals

Ever since I wrote this post about ornamental gems, I've been thinking about what else I could do.  I have a number of substances, commodities, products, services and so on that I've made reference to regarding my train system, and I've been making unconscious plans (the best kind) to eventually describe them all.

The problem has been that the task is tremendous in scope ... the gentle reader just cannot imagine.  It's not something I can do in an afternoon.  Moreover, I don't want to wait for the whole thing to be finished before getting feedback.  And I want to be able to rest.

So this will be a series, and it will get done in sections ... but since each section I plan is still considerable in scope, I'm going to be posting this in the middle of working on it.  That is, I'll update the post daily until I'm ready to move on ... so check back from time to time, there will be new stuff.

So here goes.  I'll start with mining - though this particular grouping does not include ALL the mined substances in my world.  Some are included elsewhere, because of their peculiar industrial application.  However, most are included here.

I carve them up into sections to make easier reading.  Where helpful, I'll add a picture.  Overall, I'm going to keep descriptions to a minimum.

NATIVE METALS

Gold.  What can I say about this that hasn't been said?  It is the most important commodity in D&D and in any medieval economic system, useful in it malleability, reliable nature and its ease of smelting.  Gold ranges in color from bright yellow to white gold, and in Medieval settings is found mostly in placer deposits, or as 'native' gold.  I've often thought that a logical advantage for dwarves would be their ability to 'mine' gold, which was not generally done except in the New World, where said deposits were easily worked.  This is not to say it wasn't done ... but panning was much easier than mining.

Silver.  Like gold, this too was more commonly found in native form - significant mining operations for silver in Europe began in Saxony and Silesia in the 14th centuries, when silver was the relied-upon economic standard.  The 'taler' was a silver-coin, and the word that gives us 'dollar.' 

Copper.  Far more common and less precious than either silver or gold, copper has historically been considered a precious metal due to its potential lustre for ordinary objects and jewellery.  It too is found in native form, but copper ores like chalcopyrite (copper-iron) or cuprite are so common (and easily smelted) that copper mining was common even in periods going back to the Phoenicians and Mesopotamians, 5-6 thousand years ago.

native platinum

Platinum.  For ages platinum has been mistaken for silver and white gold ... so that even though its been mined since ancient times, its actual 'discovery' - when it's nature was understood - did not occur until the 17th century.  The Spaniards kept coming across it, considering the platinum to be a 'nuisance' to their gold mining, that sparked the investigation.  It's easy enough to understand the error - platinum is wildly rare, occurs in similar circumstances to silver and looks like silver.  It is more lustrous, however, and has other unique properties.  'Platinum coins,' therefore, never existed (it's too rare a metal anyway).  I only have the metal in my world because my present takes place in the 17th century, and I use a rule that any metal 'discovered' prior to 1800 would be known to the mage profession, who are better alchemists than those of Earth ever were.

ANCIENT METALS

Gold, silver and copper along with lead, tin, iron and mercury (quicksilver), were known in prehistory, and have since been described as "the Seven Metals of Alchemy."  Each were assigned to 'planets' ... silver with the Moon, gold with the Sun, iron with Mars, quicksilver with Mercury, tin with Jupiter, copper with Venus and lead with Saturn.  They're included here in order of their rarity.

Iron.  I've written about iron before, and I don't need to go on about it here.  It is the most common metal, has endless applications and is pretty nigh useless until it is founded and forged.  The most common ore is hematite, but pyrite and others are also widespread.  Iron also occasionally turns up magnetized, as 'lodestone.'

Lead.  While tremendously dense (heavy), lead makes a poor metal for the fabrication of most everything ... plus the fact that it is poisonous.  Lead dust can be breathed into the lungs, lead can rub off into the skin, it can be transferred to water when used as a container - yes, lovely stuff.  But used extensively in the Medieval world for anything that could be heavy and didn't need working parts - bullet stones, goblets, water pipes, cisterns ... and because of its low melting point it made good soldering for window glazing.

Tin.  The inordinate value of tin is largely overlooked ... in fact it was a very rare metal, and very expensive.  The English economy was founded upon it (but they had conveniently conquered the world before the supplies irrevocably ran out).  A considerable portion of the world's present supply comes from parts of the world (China, Malaysia, Zaire) that were beyond European tradesmen until the 16th century.  Silverish, it is much too soft to be mistaken for silver, and does not occur natively.

Mercury.  Or quicksilver, as it was known for most of history, due to it's splendid habit of remaining a liquid at room temperature or lower.  Almost as poisonous as lead, which didn't keep it from being used as a medicine to heal a wide variety of diseases, where it was introduced directly into the body.  it was included in medicines as late as the first half of the 20th century.  Your grandmother was probably fed some as a child.  Which might explain a great deal.  In a D&D world, it seems a natural additive to everything magic.

LATE METALS

Presented in order of identification.  Many of these were used long before the nature of the metal was identified ... mostly because the ore was recognizable and could be used in the smelting process, even if the metal was not.  The ores served as chemical agents, to enable copper to become brass, or to harden iron, or to otherwise change the cohesive qualities of recognizable metals such as those above.

sphalerite



Zinc.  The principal use of zinc was for the manufacture of brass, the most common ore being sphalerite.  The triangular crystal of the ore is instantly recognizable.  The metal itself was not identified until the 14th century in India, and the 16th century in Europe.  While zinc has some marvellous uses as spelter - an alloy that allows hard soldering or brazing, such uses were not widespread until the 19th century.  However, it might be a talent elves, or some other races have for the use of zinc.

Antimony.  Isolated in the 16th century, the metal increases the hardness of lead, has practical applications in the coloration of glass, as a substitute for tin (when tin is present).  It's highly toxic, similar to arsenic poisoning ... read the link for more about that.  It is a soft metal, and although it has been used for coinage the coins do not last.

Bismuth. Lustrous silver in color, the ore was used in cosmetics, medicines and as a substitute for poisonous lead ... though it is by no means as common. The metal was known to the Incas. It was often confused with both tin and lead in ancient times, but became a distinct metal in its own right in 1546.

Cobalt.  Used as a pigmentation in jewelry, glass and paints since ancient times to give a deep, blue color; the isotope cobalt-60 is radioactive ... something I use to justify cobalt's importance in the making of magical ink.  Curiously, the word comes from the German kobalt, or the very familiar 'kobald,' which was an appellation used to describe the bent over miners of the ore.  The isolation of the metal was accomplished in 1735.

Nickel.  Used as a hardener for many metals (gold is soft and useless for jewellery without it), the red mineral from which it comes, nickeline, was commonly mistaken for copper.  Since the mineral would beset copper (make it unmalleable) when mixed, or so German alchemists discovered, they blamed a mischevious sprite who was believed upon occasion to inhabit instances of copper ore.  Nickel wasn't identified as a metal in its own right until 1751.

Manganese.  As an agent Manganese (manganesum or pyrolusite) was used primarily to decolorize glass, as 'glassmakers soap,' thus cleaning it and making the glass clear.  As manganese dioxide it was used in experiments for centuries, tht the actual metal was not identified until 1774.  It would later become useful in steel production.

Molybdenum.  Yet again a silvery metal, with a very high melting point, it was formerly known as molybdena, which comes from the Greek word for lead - with which molybdenum even today is often confused (and with graphite, too).  The Japanese used it to alloy with steel as early as the 14th century (though rarely).  It produces superior armor plating.  The metal was isolated in 1781.

Tungsten.  Remarkably dense, heavier than lead, the metal was known better as an ore than a metal - wolframite, which in German is lupi spuma, or "wolf's froth" (froth being a clean word for 'sperm'), the name suggested by Georgius Agricola.  The ore had few historical uses, but at present it is importantly alloyed with steel.  It was not isolated until 1783.

Chromium.  A highly lustrous metal, it's speculated that the ore was used as an anti-corrosive - however, the metal has very little history at all until the 18th century, and was not identified as an isolated metal until 1798.

FANTASY METALS

I don't dare to list all the fantasy metals that are out there.  I use only two: adamantite and mithril.  all my magic items are made with the latter ... and I don't play adamantite as a substance that 'breaks down in daylight' as suggested by the fiend folio - merely as a kind of intensified iron that doesn't break (which I believe was the original concept.

The correct term is adamantine, as described by Virgil describing the gates of Tatarus.  Cronus, or Saturn, was said to have castrated his father Uranus using an adamantine sickle.  The term 'adamantium' was invented for use by the Marvel Universe.  Adamantine had developed a reputation by the middle ages for being as hard as diamond, and it was believed to have the power to block the effects of a magnet (something I've never seen proposed in a D&D campaign).

Mithril was invented entirely by Tolkein, and as far as I know it has no historical precendents whatsoever.  But it's such an accepted metal, I've always included it.

ABRASIVES

An abrasive is a substance that is used to shape or finish a workpiece by grinding, polishing, buffing and a variety of other means.  Abrasives are added to gemstones for tumbling, and made adherent to paper as sandpaper or incorporated into polishing cloth.  They're also used for cleansing and scraping our own bodies.  But when does a player buy a nail file?


Emery.  Used most often in crushed form, emery is a very hard rock that can be crushed to form various sizes of grains, from coarse to fine, each of which can be used to smooth to a differing degree.  The island of Naxos has been a source for emery for over two thousand years.



pumice



Pumice.  A volcanic rock that is solidified in a frothy condition, trapping air and making pumice a rock that floats in water (makes a good 'magic stone' and with a string, as an aid to detect movement in apparently still ponds).  Although it is soft, it makes an excellent abrasive.  It can also be added to cement, and a particular variety, pozzolana, can be mixed with lime to make concrete.

BUILDING STONE

There are four primary building stone types that I use: granite, limestone, marble and slate.  Each has a variety of forms, as described below.  Following those four are three additional kinds of 'hard stone,' which are much rarer in occurrence.

GRANITE.  Forms I call 'granite' include basalt, porphyry, sandstone, syenite, trachyte and tuff.  I know better, but I enjoy being able to use the simplicity of Renaissance catagorization in order to lump most volcanic materials together.  Hey, any way I'm willing to simplify this system is good, right?

Basalt is an extrusive volcanic rock (meaning that it's formed from magma), forming a variety of interesting rock formations, including the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and pillow basalts on the Pacific seafloor.  It is used to make building blocks, cobblestones and statuary.

Porphyry is a large grained igneous rock, purplish-red in color, prized for monuments and projects in Rome.  The Hagia Sophia made extensive use of porphyry.  Roads, columns, stone decorations and sarcophagi are among the stone's uses.

Sandstone is a long way from granite, being a sedimentary rock and not igneous.  But it's red (or reddish) - remember, Renaissance period science.  In any case, as an easily carved or cut stone, it has a variety of building uses.  Sandstone includes brownstone, popularly used throughout America and parts of Europe.

Syenite is granite-like, with ancient quarries in Upper Egypt (Syene, from where the name comes).

trachyte



Trachyte quarries have been exploited in a considerable number of places, however unfamiliar the name sounds (most everything gets ascribed to 'building stone.'  To the layman, it is often indistinguishable from porphyry.

Tuff is formed from lava and tephra (solid material ejected from the volcanic cone), pressed into stone.  It is fairly soft, useful for carving, and was used for portals and key points in cement buildings for strength.  The term 'tuff' is used loosely, and sometimes applied to tufa (which is a limestone) ... and often contains trachyte, andesite, basalt and other minerals.  Basaltic tuffs were used to fashion the heads on Easter Island.  Artyk (mentioned in my encyclopedia but not in wikipedia) is a common form of tuff used in Armenia.

LIMESTONE.  Forms I call 'limestone' include dolomite, gypsum and tufa.  Limestone is a sedimentary rock, very common, and often associated with stalactites and stalagmites in caves.  It's available in great amounts, cheap, and therefore excellent for massive structures.  The Great Pyramid at Giza is made mostly of limestone.

Dolomite is a carbonate rock common to the Dolomite Alps of northern Italy, ranging fron yellow to brown tint, even a rosy pink color.  It is sometimes used as an ornamental stone, as flux for making iron, an aggregate for concrete and of course for construction.

Gypsum is common stone, central in the production of cement, concrete and plaster, occurring naturally in crystalline form (unsuitable for gems, but used in ornamental work).  It isn't actually a limestone, I only lump them together due to their mutual use in making concrete.  Other uses are extensive, as indicated by the link.  Alabaster is a remarkably white gypsum, commonly used for stone household articles and decoration.

Tufa, often confused with tuff, and sometimes called travertine, is a precipitated limestone commonly associated with springs, waterfalls and other bodies of water ... wherever bits of calcium are allowed to build up in the form of reefs or stromatolites.  It's used for stone articles and as a mix for concrete.



A particular form of limestone that I've found references for is lithographic stone, a hard limestone sufficiently fine grained to use for carving printing plates.  Lithography is in fact a late invention (1796), but Earth did not have the benefit of magic.  As I said above, anything before 1800 is a potential technology, and so I include the use of stone-based lithography (albeit used rarely).  Wood-block printing is far more common.



MARBLE.  Marble is a metamorphic rock commonly made from compressed calcite or dolomite, used most commonly for sculpture and construction.  For colors (and there are a lot of them in the real world) I willingly provide prices for black, brown, crimson, green, grey-pink, white and yellow (this isn't as hard as it sounds).  No doubt the gentle reader is familiar with many of the different colors, and with veins in marble, of varied color.

SLATE.  Slate is a metamorphic rock that cuts so that natural, smooth flat sheets of stone are produced, suitable for flooring, roof tiles, wall coverings and so on.  Slate can be split from the quarry in very thin sheets.  It appears in a variety of colors from green and grey to black ... but unlike marble, I don't give separate costs.  It makes excellent tombstones.

That wraps it up for building stone; I don't have prices for gravel, sand or ordinary clay in my world because I consider them so common in a Renaissance economy that the only worthy mention for construction cost would be paying people to dig it up.

HARD STONE

Flint.  A non-gem form of the mineral quartz, useful in making cutting tools and crude weapons, such as those used by primitive man.  The flint edge is also useful in the production of fire, sinde striking a flint against steel will produce sparks.  Flintlocks were fashioned so that the hammer, holding a piece of flint, would strike the 'frizzen' and produce a shower of sparks which, hopefully, would ignite the powder of the weapons.  Flint, when available in great supply (as England has), has been used to build stone walls.

Magnesite.  This has few Renaissance applications, the chief among them being its use in making fireproof bricks for kilns, as the stone has a high melting temperature.

Obsidian.  Naturally occuring volcanic glass, generally black in color and potentially sharp to the touch.  It was used to make weapons and edged tools throughout history, and has ornamental applications as a gemstone, objects and for floor tiles.  It can be polished and rounded with abrasives.

SOFT STONE

This are a collection of minerals that have other applications than construction.

Chalk.  A soft white sedimentary rock, resistant to weather and useful in the making of quicklime (a component of cement), as a writing (tailor's chalk in particular) and artistic tool, as a restorative for soil and for the making of putty.  The application of powdered chalk to the hands is an aid to climbing (but when does a thief ever buy it?).

Coal.  A black or browning sedimentary rock used chiefly as a fuel - it is falsely believed that coal was not used extensively throughout history, but evidence of its use reaches back up to five thousand years.  The dependence was on outcroppings of coal.  Deep coal mining, on the other hand, occurred with the start of the Industrial Revolution when easy sources of coal quickly played out.  Dwarves would certainly mine coal for their furnaces.  Hard coal, or black coal, is called anthracite, with a high energy content.  Brown coal is lignite, which has a low energy content.

Kaolin.  A hard clay material, chiefly mined for the purpose of making porcelain, dependent on the higher quality clay.  It is soft, earthy and usually white, though iron oxide will color it pink, orange or red.  Beyond its use in ceramics, it has been used in medicine, cosmetics and in the production of paper and smoking pipes.  It has been used to fashion masks, and believe it or not, eaten for pleasure or to suppress hunger.



floating meerschaum

Meerschaum.  One of the more bizarre productions I've found, meerschaum is a soft white mineral which is found floating on the Black and Aegean Seas (and elsewhere), suggestive of sea foam.  If you're ever looking for a justification of the Aphrodite birth-from-the-sea myth, in which she was created from the sea and her father's ejaculate, the existence of meerschaum is probably the source (in Sweden its called aphrodite).  The material is hard enough to carve into pipes and other objects (it hardens when allowed to dry in the sun).

Salt.  A mineral essential for human life, of great value in tropical and deserted parts of the world (where the inhabitants sweat a great deal), and yet with world-wide distribution.  It is useful in curing food and in the processing of animal hides and skins.

Talc.  A soft metamorphic rock used in paper making, paint, cosmetics, ceramics and otherwise, and for ornamental carvings.  It is widely used in the glassmaking industry.  The rock is soft enough to be scratched with a fingernail, can be cut easily with a knife, and is not soluble in water.  Soapstone is composed primarily of talc.

BIO DEPOSITS



guano deposit

Guano.  The excrement, both feces and urine, of seabirds, bats and seals, collected for its nitrogen content for the regeneration of soil.  Guano is an important gunpowder ingredient.  The accumulation of thousands of years of deposit creates significant collections of guano for economic recovery.  The Inca civilization mined guano extensively.  By and large, however, a cart full of guano is not an ordinary party's idea of treasure.



peat brick

Peat.  Forming in wetlands - bogs, moors, muskegs and peat swamps, peat is harvested as a source of fuel.  Once compressed to remove water and allowed to dry, it forms bricks sufficient to heat kilns and everyday firepits.  It is formed by the thick layer of plant growth and decomposition of the lower levels - in effect, a short term form of the same sort of energy that over millions of years eventually becomes oil.

ALCHEMICAL MINERALS

Hooray ... this being the last section for this post.  These are minerals chiefly mined for their chemical properties.

Alum.  Obtained from a mineral called alunite (among others), this is a terrifically useful substance which was well known to the ancients.  It mades an astringent that stops bleeding in small cuts and canker sores, a flame retardant (and a component of baking powder) and the purification of drinking water.

Arsenic.  Known first and foremost as a poison, arsenic is a metalloid (qualities of both a mineral and a metal.  It also hardens bronze and lead alloys (good for sling bullets).  Like lead, arsenic was once used in a variety of products without the users being fully aware of its inherent danger (even in very small amounts).

Niter.  More familiarly known as saltpeter, niter has been known since ancient times.  It is a principal component of gunpowder and was likely used as soap (or at least as a bathing additive).  It has been famously attributed to suppress the sex drive, but according to snopes it's pure fiction.

Phosphorus.  The first form of phosphorus was isolated in 1669 by Hennig Brand, an alchemist who was working with urine under the mistaken belief that the golden color of that fluid would somehow lead him to the distillation of gold, ala the 'philosopher's stone.'  In the process he distilled out phosphorus.  The element burns super-brightly, but not for very long (the reader can find films on youtube).  It a feature in explosives, nerve agents and fireworks.



Danikil Depression, Ethiopia

Sulphur.  A bright yellow crystalline solid, an essential element of life and a component of black gunpowder, matches, poisons and fungicides.  It would be effective like holy water against a wide variety of monsters: green slime, violet fungi, shriekers and yellow musk creepers, to name a few.  It is abundant in native form, and whole landscapes (the Danikil Depression) are composed of it.

Witherite.  A colorless, milky white, grey, pale yellow, green or pale brown mineral - and shades in between.  It is found in low-temperature hydrothermal vein deposits, particularly the shorelines of alkali lakes.  it's primary use is in the manufacture of glass.

Random Map Generator - Elevations

About the same time that I was deciding to use the Voronezh Oblast as a start for my campaign (see previous post), I was playing around with a system for the random creation of topography.  Initially, the first map I did for the County of Voronezh included some of this system ... but then I came across the data on falling rain and didn't have to rely on random generation.

However, I thought I'd include this idea here, because it may be of use to some people.  The idea for it came to me literally before falling asleep at night - I do much of my thinking in the dark - and it works something like this.

Suppose we begin with a single hex, and we set the lowest elevation for that hex at a given number.  We use the 'lowest' because it becomes relevant later on.  The starting elevation can be anything from zero (sea level) to, well, whatever number above sea level you'd like.  Tibet averages between 16,000 and 19,000 feet above sea level, for reference.  For the purpose of this example, we'll start with a nice round number: 3,000 ft.

(I use imperial for D&D because it seems more folksy.  You can use metric if you'd like)

We then mark our center hex as 3,000.  We're going to determine the elevation of the adjacent hexes using 6d6 ... which gives an average overall of 21.  You don't have to use 6d6 ... 4d6 or 2d6 will do as well, but I prefer a greater number of dice because it allows for more variation while maintaining a strong bell-curve average.  You'll see what I mean as we go forward.

If a '21' is rolled on 6d6, then the elevation of the adjacent hex being determined is the same as the origin hex.  For each number above 21, the elevation increases.  For each number below 21, the elevation decreases.  The amount of the increase/decrease is up to you.  It can be quite a lot, anywhere from 400 to 1000 ft. per point above or below 21 ... or it can be very little, like 5 ft. per point.  The former will give you wildly varying terrain, like mountains; the latter will give you a flat plain.  But the jist of it is that if, say, you designate the change to be 250 ft. a point (which I will use), and you roll a '24', the next hex over will be 750 ft. higher than the origin hex.  24 is three points above 21.

All right then, let's generate the six hexes around the first.

There, nothing complicated.  We have three hexes with a higher elevation (B,D,G), and three hexes with a lower elevation (C,E,F).  You will note that I've added a blue arrow that points from A(elevation 3000) to C (elevation 2250).  This is meant to indicate drainage.  As a rule of thumb, wherever three higher hexes surround a lower hex - as we have here, as A is surrounded by the three higher hexes, B, D and G - then that hex becomes a 'source hex' for the formation of a creek.  The direction of the creek is then designated to flow into any other hex which is lower than the source hex.  I rolled randomly, and found that it flowed into hex C.

Typically, I like to apply this system so that the creek flows into the lowest adjacent hex ... but in this case that is both C and F.  However, there's no real reason why it can't flow into hex E, or even into hex E and then into F.  But for this table we'll have it flow the direction as indicated.

You can see already that you have a feel for the origin hex, A, even though all we have are a group of numbers.  We can put into the hex anything we like, from a city to a town to a small cluster of houses.  Even one lone farmhouse ... whatever works as an origin for your players.  We can make the hex as wide as we want, too - this hex could have a diameter of one mile or twenty miles.  Obviously, if it is a 1-mile hex, then G is an imposing mountain, looming over the players.  If it is a 5 mile hex, G becomes a high group of hills, dominating the northwest.  Remember that the elevation noted for G, 4,750, is the lowest elevation of that hex ... the highest elevation could then be determined separately, rolling 6d6 again and determining the highest elevation as 250 times the deviation from '21', either positive or negative ... and if a '21' is rolled, then G becomes a bluff, a high plateau overlooking the valley, even a gigantic mesa if it turns out that this hex is higher than all those around it.

Moreover, the origin hex is a kind of 'pass' between the heights of G & B on the one side, and D on the other.  Travellers would thus move over the hump from F to C, passing through A, making A a chokepoint between the SW and the NE.  It would be a natural place for a fort or larger military outpost, not to mention a meaningful trading gap and tax & toll generating opportunity for whoever rules over this place.

Let's extend our small world then, by following the river out of hex C.  This hex now becomes the origin hex for H, I and J.  Before I show the increased map, I want to throw in a curve ball.  We want our mountainous region to spread out into plains (because that's what happens), but we don't want to keep things as random as possible.  Our elevation deviation was formerly 250, which is 1/12th of the origin hex's elevation of 3000.  For these next three hexes, let's use 1/12th of 2250, which is 187.5, or 188 ft. per point.

Also, one of the three hexes being generated must be equal to or lower in elevation than our origin hex, as the river must go someplace ... so let's roll randomly, 1, 2 or 3.  I get hex J, so for that hex, the change is the deviation from '21', whether higher or lower.  Bringing the gentle reader into the equation, I'll reveal here that my three 6d6 rolls were 20, 22 and 22 ... which gives results as follows:

Hex J, you'll notice, deviates 1 from 21 and is therefore 188 ft. lower, exactly as hex H.

I'm adding something else to the above map.  You will notice a blue text-box in both the A and C hexes.  This is the relative flow of the stream.  As an ad hoc rule, I tend to think of it as equal (in a 5-mile hex) to 5 cubic feet per second per point.  Thus, as an example, the 9-mile-long Woodbridge Brook in England has a flow of 20.5 cubic feet per second.  I've never seen Woodbridge Brook, but this is the idea.  If these were 10 mile hexes, then they would be equal to 20 cub.ft. per second per point.  A higher rate than the aforementioned example, but that brook is down by the sea, while this water course is in the mountains.

The point system is assigned by the number of adjacent hexes which are higher that the river hex.  Thus, B, D and G are higher than hex A, giving the stream 3 points.  As well, B, D and I are higher than hex C, adding 3 more points.  Note that both B and D are able to add two points to the stream ... this representing water runoff coming from two different points of those hexes.  A central, high hex is able to generate up to six points of water overall.

We still have little more than a group of numbers, but the overall terrain is starting to assert itself.  Let's add more detail.  We can do so by going in any direction ... but I use a rule-of-thumb that I generate all the hexes outwards in a widening circle, in the order of 1) the river hexes; 2) the lowest non-river hexes; and 3) the remaining hexes.  Thus, before I can determine H, I will do F, E, D, B and G, in that order.  Mind you, there's nothing that says I can't work off G first, or H, or follow the river J until it literally reaches the sea.  If I work consistently on the highest hexes, I'm likely to get a more topographically varied map.  And if I follow the river all the way to the sea, I'm going to have to keep calculating the flow over and over, as other rivers will be found to flow into it as I go.

For example, let's say the three hexes around H are all higher.  In that case, H becomes a source hex (with 5 river points), which has nowhere to flow except into C.  The second source would then increase the river's flow in hex C to 8 (5+3), so that it would quickly become a fair stream.

One of the interesting and annoying things about this system is that as you go, you have to keep reassessing the rivers ... but nothing is perfect.  It is for this point that I prefer to widen out from a specific location.

So let's add from hex F.  Before I do that, let me ask, what if the other three hexes above F are all higher than 2250?

Noting that this doesn't occur in topography (depressions right next to river sources), there are a couple of choices.  One, the hex could be raised to the level of A, and used as the actual source for the river flowing into J.  Two, one of the new randomly generated hexes could be determined as the necessary outflow to F.  Three, the bottom of F is the depth of an existing lake, while the surface of the lake is even with hex A (this being my favorite).  Or four, this is D&D and so what?  Hex F then becomes a deep, swamp-filled depression, full of ghoolie monsters.  In any case, three of those options force a considerable rethink on the status of the former pass that we designated for hex A, right?

Like I say, more information tends to change things around.  Let's generate and find out what happens (remember, 1/12th of 2250 still gives us a change of 188 ft. per point).  On 6d6 I roll 23, 23 and 14.  Note that I've lettered the hexes in clockwise order:

Well, that drop-off into hex M is startling, isn't it?  I'm not muffing these rolls as I go along, I'm just making them to see what happens and then explaining each element.  There's room for plenty of strangeness, such as having that marvellous 934 elevation hex M right next to G's 4,750.  Turns out the gap at A appears to be pretty significant, and an excellent place for a town.  Of course, hex E suggests that it too could become a river source (if both one higher and one lower hex is generated) ... which would make A, E and F a comfortable little plateau, even the start of a Barony or a County, depending on the width of the hexes.

The terrific drop into hex M could mean waterfalls along the course from hex F, and would also mean that the sea could be potentially close ... although the system I'm using the elevation change for adjacent hexes from M would only be 78 ft.  You can see from this map how it makes a big difference whether M or G is used next to determine the next hex over.

Of course, you can use an average of adjacent hexes to determine future hexes, but I have found that tends to flatten the map, and thus reduce the potential for significant features.

I think I'll stop here.  I could go on with the determination of hex E, but I've made enough of my point here to get you, the reader, experimenting.  Let me know what problems turn up, and I'll try to give suggestions for how they could be solved.

As I've been saying, remember - these are only numbers.  But they suggest where to put the little bits of civilization, what hexes would be logical for shrines or dungeons, how the farmland might spread outwards or where you would plant orchards as opposed to cereals.  Contours are only numbers ... and in mapmaking, elevation is king.

The Start

I feel sometimes I get run down for having a 'realistic' approach to the game of D&D, mostly because there is an implication that realism is all I want.  It gets missed that I clearly use magic in my campaigns (I blew up Dachau with a demon during my online campaign, while offline I've posted about my party making a tour of the first level of the Abyss).  That rankles me.

If I spend less time posting and creating profound magical aspects to add to the game, it's because I believe that these parts of the game actually work, as opposed to that which I do post about.  I like the spells from the books, I don't feel the need to add new spells (except for the bard), I like the magic items list and on the whole I am happy with the degree of magic employed by monsters and other entities.  Because I do not bitch and moan about these things should not be taken as an indication that I do not use them.

That said, I am of the opinion that a world based on ALL-MAGIC all the time soon becomes unbelievably dull, as it is hard to relate to.  Magic is cool and all, but we are ordinary human beings playing the game and we are naturally affected by things that are familiar.  It is not the magic that makes the game, it is the interweaving of conflict into the ordinary day-to-day pursuits.  A plethora of magic tends to make things too easy (why bother ... the magic will do it) or too hard (why bother ... the wizard will kill us anyway).  Worse still, everything ultimately devolves into the last scene from Dark City, where the wizards duel, the world is shredded, all purpose is obliterated and the character's either dead or promoted to godhood.  All very well for a movie, but it quickly destroys an ongoing campaign.

So while I appreciate the excitement of places such as the City of Brass or the profundity of the Black Gate and the Land of Mordor, my tastes tend towards a surface reflecting the very mundane.

I did begin my world back in 1986, but the present incarnation - the maps I use, the approximate time-period, the economic structure and the forces at work, began in September 2004.  Believe it or not, the beginning was a very small part of the world, chosen primarily because it was a fairly long way from the sea, in a semi-populated region.  I wanted a land-locked area for no reason except that I had no practical rules for seagoing combat, or even random weather tables - and therefore did not want to get caught up with buccaneering adventures.  Land was easier than water.

As far as civilization went, I went with an old standby - some bastion on the 'borderlands.'  I had worked previously on deciding where humans resided in my world as opposed to other races, and I knew that there was a dividing line down the middle of Russia - where the humans on the west had retained the country against orcs, haruchai, ogres, gnolls, goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears ... each of whom held kingdoms in various parts of Siberia and on the near side of the Ural Mountains.

So I picked a province on the dividing line - determined by population estimates I'd made.  If the territory had a population density of 1 person per square mile or better, it was human controlled - if less than that, non-human controlled.  For many, I know this seems unnecessarily deliberate.  Why bother making calculations at all?  Why not just make sweeping gestures at maps?  Well, let's put this down to my nature, my long-time experience playing with almanacs and my experience working professionally and non-professionally with statistics.  I like statistics.  If I can find an application for them, all the better.

That dividing line, as it happened, ran northward from the eastern end of the Black Sea - specifically the Sea of Azov - including a large portion of the lower Volga River and then veering both west and then east through lands that, then, I did not know very well.  The gentle reader, I'm sure, will have heard of the Volga River, but probably not the Kama, the Vetluga, the Oka or the Sukhona.  Moskva is familiar, but perhaps not Khlynov, Nizhni-Novgorod, Chernorech, Samara or Tsaritsyn.  I'll give their names as they are known (and not the 17th century) during the period of Soviet occupation: Kirov, Gorkiy, Dzerzhinsk, Kuybyshev and Volgograd (or Stalingrad).  That last, of course, is always very familiar.

One small territory, or oblast as it is in Russian, that I landed on was Voronezh.  The city is, in the modern period, well over 400 thousand in population; my calculations gave it 5,000, making it a fair sized town but nothing immense.  It was - is - 20,000 square miles, making it a bit bigger than Vermont and New Hampshire combined, half the size of Tennessee or about the size of Oregon's orchard country.  There were no other comparable towns, only a dozen villages with a few hundred people each.  A small hamlet, Borisoglebsk (got to love these names) had 52 permanent residents but swelled to over a thousand in the summer as it was a trading junction ... something I discovered entirely by accident.

The oblast of Voronezh was managed by a Russian count in 1650, so it became the County of Voronezh.  My first hex maps of the area had a 5-mile diameter, allowing me to be quite precise.  The principal river was the Don, that flowed through the center of the County on its way to the Sea of Azov.  Another river, the Khoper, passed through Borisoglebsk before meeting the Don in the rolling lands to the southeast, out of the County.  Most of the County was open prairie with hills - steppe.

To the west of the Don were the foothills of the Central Russian Plateau - which I'd never actually heard of before starting to map it.  These are hills five hundred to eight hundred feet above the bottom of the Don Valley through the County.

The hills cover a huge area of European Russia and form a substantial barrier to travel.  Most of the travel is northwest towards Moskva and southeast towards Tsaritsyn on the Volga.  A large area on the east, near Borisoglebsk, is controlled by orcs; a large area on the south is controlled by outriders, the Don Cossacks, whom the Russian government was unable to control - they existed for a century as a sort of client-kingdom, paid by the Russians to attack their enemies, like mercenaries.

I saw this as a strong area to start a party.  Both the cossack raiders and the orcs promised good adventuring; the hills were there to offer caves and isolated valleys for investigation.  Voronezh made a good homebase for purchasing goods and Borisoglebsk was bound to be a source for violence and passion, full of caravans, gypsies, humanoids of every nature and foreigners from both the distant south and the north, all dwelling in tents and wagons.

As time went on, I added bits and pieces in an outward spiraling circle.  I reduced the size of my map by using 20-mile hexes, mapping out the Don river from where it started above Voronezh all the way to where it entered the sea.  I sketched out the Cossack lands, and then the orc lands, where the party ran for a time, merrily slaughtering their way across the country until getting involved in a seige at Saratov on the Volga.  I worked northward and mapped out the hills west of the Volga, and then the small Gnome Kingdom of Harnia, which occupies the hills and forests of modern day Penza.  From there I began to follow the course of the Oka River, which empties into the Volga, but starts in the Central Uplands west of Voronezh, near Kursk.

As I went, I researched, learned, discovered new things, got a feel for the land and a detailed sense of how it went together.  This naturally influenced my long-suffering trade tables, as I realized how goods needed to be moved and how the land would affect the 'distance' between trading cities.  History I had read for years began to have new value to me as I discovered - hex by hex - why Kiyev was able to remain an independent duchy for so long, and why the Greeks never expanded north of the Black Sea coast (the hinterland is too dry, the rivers largely unnavigable).

So please understand, if I emphasize overmuch on this blog the realistic characteristics of my world, it is because I am fascinated with the actual world as it exists.  I am not merely inventing a world, I'm discovering one - and in the process presenting it, with magic and all, to my players.  If the end result seems more granular than the ordinary world out there, it is because I'm not inventing it.  This was the reason for my choosing to run in the real world in the first place.

But I still have dragons.

Launching T +15

I've been quoted a tentative start date of November 16, 2010 for the launch of this database I proposed  15 days ago.  That is by no means written in stone ... at best you might say its scrawled in sand, and not that high above the tide.  But things are moving pretty fast.

I think it needs to be pointed out that most everything I've been a part of that mattered began with someone saying, "we should do this" and getting an answer, "yeah!"  It is really the answer that matters.  I could sit here bitching and moaning all day and if I don't get an answer, nothing happens.  The rant fades into the past and I go on posting maps, tables and further opinions.

I much appreciate the answers.  I want more.  I don't want anyone to feel that they've been left out of this process.  Yes, I did make the argument that quality must be the principal consideration - but in my experience quality has the potential to come from every corner, and not just my own.

I have been an editor, twice before, and I have been responsible for viewing, editing and printing other people's work, and that often being their first paid-for published work in a magazine.  That, I can tell you, is a great feeling, to give a writer his or her first cheque.  Now, I know I don't have any of the credentials that have been thrown at me lately - I haven't won any awards, I don't have three million hits monthly on my site and I'm not making money at this.  My blog has been what it has been.  Not a business, but a calling.  I don't measure its success by the number of viewers I have or by the number of viewers I stroke.  I measure its success by the amount of material I can get on it that I'm proud of.

So here's what I suggest.  I'm going to be looking material initially along the lines of this template.  For any launch that is to occur, I won't be interested initially in anything about rules or different ways of playing.  That is something that can be gotten to once we get the thing off the ground.  The primary focus has to be getting worlds other than mine on the database.

DON'T send me reams of material.  I will look at whatever you have, written in the template above (any of the six topics, not necessarily all of them), but DON'T write me more than 1,000 words.  Make it interesting and be brief whenever possible.  If I find myself nodding off after three paragraphs I'm not going to read any more.  The first presentation isn't what's important.  Just write me enough to get me interested.  If I like it, we'll talk about you writing more and getting it on the database.  But first write me a query.

Send it to alexiss1@telus.net

Feel free to use attachments, and please concentrate on how your world is different from other worlds.  Please remember that if you use an existing published template, such as the World of Greyhawk, we will only be able to publish embellishments of that world, and not pre-existing images.

Decisions, Decisions ...

And now there are two offers on the table.  The one from Alexander of The Escapist, and by proxy Zak of I Hit It With My Axe and Playing D&D With Porn Stars; and the other from my friend Carl and his friend Kyle from Three Hams Inn.

Alexander,


I can see the appeal. The Escapist seems to be a significant force online, as several people I've spoken to these last days have heard of it, without my having to even give the context. The question has been, "Have you heard of a website called 'The Escapist,' " and the answer as been, "Sure. Gaming site. What about it?" So Alexander, you can feel good that up here in Western Canada they've heard of your work.

So here's a recognizable platform, plenty of expertise, experience in creating an online presence, and opportunity to launch the proposed 'association' with a bang. No doubt, once it was started it would gain a lot of attention, what with eyeballs being driven there from your site - membership would take off within the first six months, I have no doubt, and there'd be significant opportunities to take advantage of that membership to do all kinds of things ... perhaps increase my own notoriety and even find my way into the Escapist family somehow, as Zak has done. Zak’s blog is booming and I Hit It With My Axe is an obvious success. I feel an honest temptation to reach out and grab on, however that might work between you and I.

However, and here I have to be honest … I really dislike the look of the Escapist website. I found I had to explain to several people that those weren’t ads on the site, those were links to articles and reviews. Unfortunately for me, upon reading those articles I found them trite and juvenile, as well as pandering to the industry you’re representing while at the same time purporting to slap it around. As a money-making venture I have no doubt as to its success, but where the very nature of the site badly taints your proposal. It light of the website, how can I take your word that commercialism and ultimately merchandising a D&D database is something in which you have no interest?

You may very well be sincere. All the worse for you, since you’ve chosen to present your sincerity side-by-side with this eyesore. I’m unable to correlate my expectations with what I’ve seen there. I see it, and because it exists I just don’t trust your word.

I recognize that I may be creating an enemy. For that I apologize. I feel that you may be reassured that the idea I advanced in my blog is not unique, and as such you are free to pursue it to your heart’s desire without my involvement. I don’t feel that I would be of any help to you in that regard. I am too academic, too particular and too prickly. Frankly, I don’t wish to wallow.

Carl,

I should like to repeat my belief that I am in no way the appropriate face for any organization of this nature. People read this blog mostly to see just how far I’ll go towards alienating nine tenths of the community while trying to figure out how a frothing lunatic is still capable of churning out good work.

I shall try to demonstrate.

For those gentle readers who may still be reading this post …

If I rescind my challenge that you provide any capital at all, but provide an opportunity to present your world in context with other worlds, who reading this would step up and make an effort to provide me maps and descriptions of that world, to go on afore-described database?

Who would be prepared to produce thoughtful (not opinioned!) material comparing specific rules of various fantasy gaming platforms, such as D&D (all editions), Tunnels and Trolls, Rolemaster, S&W and what have you?

Who would be prepared to develop tables and methodologies for practical use regarding dungeons, encounters, treasure, combat, adventure, NPCs, magic, world design or otherwise?

Would you be prepared to submit to my judgment on whether said material was worthy of being published?

Alexis' World

This week I have this database on the brain.  Don't lose faith with me, in a week or so I'll settle down and start churning out random material again.

In the meantime, I've been giving some thought as to what would qualify as 'world design' in the big picture.  If there were a database or an organized wiki, how could the subject matter be divided?  Mind you, I'm thinking along the lines of the world itself, and not rules or charts intended to run the world. 

Rather than produce a large number of headings, I've tried to limit the number to six general categories.  No doubt there would be material that didn't fit, but additional categories could be created as needed.

I don't think I'm entirely out to lunch with these six.  They correspond to most of what I see people doing on their blogs through the system.  Whatever the world the gentle reader is making, these questions are bound to come up.  I've written the questions in blue, and an outline in black.  I could write a great deal, but I'll keep my comments general.

Heirarchy of Existence & Power:  what relative status do characters - and by extension, intelligent humanoids or alternative ecological organisms - have in relationship to real or unreal 'gods' or other perceived creatures of greater power?

I see a three tiered system of power.

1) Most creatures are mortal, without any comprehension of the world around them.  Those with higher intelligence have, in almost every case indirectly, come to recognize the existence of gods.  They have created a variety of explanations, often incorrect, for how the gods interact with the world, and how the gods may best be served.  I like the conception that the power of the gods hinges upon the number of believers they possess, so the proselytization of a particular god's agenda and the destruction of other god's agendas acts as the fuel that runs many people's lives.

2) Between the lower orders and the higher gods are a group of entities that possess some immortal characteristics and a much clearer perception of the workings of the world.  These would be entities or intelligences who have divine knowledge of the gods, who might in fact be in communication with the gods ... but who continue to have corporeal structure.  This includes a great many whose power and fame has won them the title of 'god' with the lower orders, but the appellation is incorrect.  Creatures that might fit this level would include many of the non-human's deities (such as Lolth and others), titans, hecatonacheres, muses, certain heroes and such that fall under the status of demi-gods and so on.   All these entities have substantial 'bodies' and could be killed - but it is so difficult and these creatures have lived so long that there is a pervasive belief in their status as divine beings.

3) Actual gods.  Entities that are immortal, have no corporeal existence - in the usual sense - and capable of widescale destruction or creation by means not generally covered by the magic described in the game.  Acts of this sort do not occur except according to set agreements or arrangements as established by a 'pecking order' among these greater entities.  The very function of the world and the universe - such as the turning of the world, the forces that bring out weather, annual flooding, the growth of plants, knowledge, procreation and so on - works according to these agreements in a manner that is largely incomprehensible to the lower orders.  At any given moment, any of these presumed arrangements can be suspended - which creates a momentum among the ignorant not to challenge the gods, though appeals through prayer and ritual ultimately have little effect.  The gods hear everything, and bring forth their beneficence generously, but that would not stop them from plunging a meteor into the world if it suited their ultimate and incomprehensible goals.

History:  what events have transpired in order to create the world as it is now?

Most of the history of my world is in some way recognizable with that of the Earth - except that in many cases certain peoples, cultures or migration patterns have been distinctly altered.  For example, humans in my world never slipped across the land bridge into North America some 25,000 years ago.  The pre-history human cultures from Asia that would have done so were stymied by the presence of pre-goblin cultures that dominated the mountainous regions of Siberia, so that northern migration and the development of human polar tribes never occurred.  In any case, elves evolved from uncertain beginnings some 300,000 years ago in the lower Mississippi valley, and prior to that lizard, snake, cat and bird people cultures developed throughout the Middle and Southern American continent.  My world has Mayans, Incans, Olmecs and Toltecs, but none of these cultures were human.

Thus, while human cultures still developed in the four primary basins - the Hwang Ho, Indus, Tigris-Euphrates and Nile - in every direction upon expanding out of these basins they encountered non-human tribal cultures of various intelligence that had to be overcome.  When speaking of invasions of the Saracens, the Semites, the Aryans, the Huns, the Parthians, the Mongols and so on, I am speaking of non-humans.  But at the same time, there were many human-tribe invasions also: the Dorics, the Slavs, the Magyars, the Turks and the Vikings.  It gets complicated, and I've never sat down to specifically define which invader fits which race ... in part because in many cases, the race is mixed, as would be the case with the Khazars and the Uighurs.  Overall, I use the guideline that if the race continues to exist and occupy lands which are now considered human in my world, then that invader was human (the Bulgars still occupy Bulgaria); but if the invader was ultimately destroyed by the present inhabitants, then that race was non-human (the Avars have been elimated from Europe's Balkan region).

Beyond this, I still had the Romans, the dark ages still occurred, and the medieval period followed.  But without the new world and a helpless Africa to give Europe energy, and without expansion into Asia by the Russians (the Mongols, being haruchai, have proved too tough to destroy), the medieval period has been extended into the 17th century.

Geography:  what is the physical nature of the world?

Substantially unchanged from the existing Earth.  I have accepted this for the granular quality it offers to my campaign, the simplicity of having weather and other features easily researched and incorporated, and because human beings playing in my campaign have prior associations with specific places.  Thus, when I say the party has arrived in Ireland, they can visualize the country, the people, the dress and the general culture without my having to explain all this from the beginning.

While my blog spends a lot of time discussing this aspect of my world, and the maps, that is mostly because I've always had a fascination with maps, which predates D&D for me by 9 years.  Consider that I started playing D&D at 15.  I was actually given my first almanac as a Christmas gift when I was 8 years old.  When I first started playing D&D, I saw it as a way to feed my pre-existing geographical fascination.

So, always been crazy.

Technology/Magic:  what technological potential has the world achieved?  What forms of magic exist?  Have all parts of the world reached equal status in both magic and technology?

Discussing magic, first: in most every case this is where I and the AD&D books maintain the closest association.  I have no problem with the magic formats of the Player's Handbook, and I use about half the spells from the Unearthed Arcana, along with cantrips.  I haven't seen any other spells on any site, magazine or source that I think is worthwhile adding to a campaign.  This is not to say that there aren't decent created spells out there, its only that I don't see the benefit in giving dozens and dozens of extra spells for characters to use.  The rules that allow characters to make their own spells is a fair principal, and when I've had characters approach me about this, I've always tried to be accommodating.  The same thing can be said about magic items and artifacts.  I've added a few of the latter, but for the most part I'm happy with the offerings in the DMG.

As regards technology in my world, it is mostly swords and armor.  I have black powder, and even cannon, but these things are dangerous to use and are easily affected by magic.  It's a brave individual who carries gunpowder when any magic fire attack is going to make you dead very quickly.

In any case, there really are no limitations on what additional technological possibilities could be incorporated into a game.  I have always been a fan of Fineous Finger's 'wand of magic missiles' (M-16 rifle), and I actually had party members in a prior campaign stumble across a tank and fuel for it.  Made for some interesting gaming.  Multiple universes linked together through the astral plane allows for a lot of possibilities.

But still, I stick to the ordinary combat equipment because, overall, it makes the game most playable.

Biology:  what creatures, intelligent or otherwise, exist?

Once again, I'm close to the books, at least with regards to what monsters exist.  This last couple of years I've made some significant changes to monster hit points and combat, changes I intend to carry forward in the next few years as things occur to me.  I want to create some encompassing table to identify how much damage creatures do according to battle technique (claws vs. horns vs. club-like limbs and so on).

My problem with new monsters is that they are almost always just rehashes of old monsters.  I'm not looking for any new humanoids, golems, dragons, demons or undead.  I am looking for completely new kinds and classifications of creatures, but those ideas aren't out there, as far as I can tell.  I use virtually every monster in the Monster Manual (the only exceptions are psionic creatures) and about a third of those in the Fiend Folio, plus what I've incorporated out of the Deities and Demigods.  I have between 30 and 40 monsters of my own construction, mostly large versions of Earth-creatures.

Culture:  how is population distributed, what municipal groupings exist, what are the principal civil organizations, what laws and customs are observed and what is considered socially acceptable behavior?  How do these vary between intelligent species?

Here, again, I fall back on Earth norms, but I'm not married strictly to that formula.  Still, I have massive cities, huge countries and empires, mixed with tiny duchies and city-states.

Beneath the predictable Earth cultures that we're all familiar with, I have a wide range of organized counter-culture groups, some human (Illuminati-like) and some non-human (like the doppelganger conspiracies that are impossible to number ... there's always one more).  I draw heavily from movies and literature for my imagination in creating these groups.

Primarily, my chief motivation for most of the creatures in my world are survival first, and money and power after.  Those who have grown comfortable and reasonable ensured of their survival will tend towards exploiting those around them, sometimes honestly and very often dishonestly.  If I were to point to someone as a template for what a player would expect, I would recommend the gentle reader pick up a copy of Voltaire's Candide or De Sade's Justine.  I don't say that life is always a parade of people offering kindness with one hand and a knife for the back in the other (I do believe honor and justice motivate many people in my world), but it is hard to tell those who do employ this two-faced method from those who are legitimately kind.

For the game, I see culture as a motivator for events and interactions affecting the characters.  There are lots of rules, which are much harder on foreigners (who don't know what they are) than on locals.  Rules are mainly there to keep down the weak and poor, while promoting the wealthy and strong.

Plan B

People said they were looking at me, and I vanished. Not so much – I’ve taken three days out and I’m back now.

I’m pleased that towards the end of last week I was able to make a few points that received some positive reaction ... but it’s no wonder, since I was selling a database, and what D&D-phile does not want another database?

But where I have people asking to be ‘counted in,’ and where we come down to the question of ‘who would be in charge,’ I want to make this most clear: I’m not a candidate for president. I wouldn’t be running for the position. And most of the people here wouldn’t want me.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I would like to build the database (along the very competent suggestions made by Symeon), IF I could find someone who had the necessary technical skills to make it work and to make it accessible. Contrary to Zak’s assertion, I don’t have to be in charge. I’ve worked on a lot of projects with other people in charge – most of them creative – and I am quite capable of working with a team of other people who agreed on a common goal. This is not at all impossible. I have worked on magazines, I have been part of theatre, I have worked in film and it IS possible to gather a large number of contrary people together and produce a final product that is innovative and even astounding.

But ... I am an elitist. I will make things for common, ordinary schlubs, but I won’t work WITH them. Moreover, I have no interest in creating anything in which everyone is entitled to representation. It may have been misunderstood that when I suggested an ‘association of players’ I specifically intended that said association would be highly limited in its representation.

You can’t raise the consciousness of anything by catering to the lowest denominator. Suggested databases would be presented to ‘raise the bar’ and provide a standard which, hopefully, the greater community would wish to emulate. Once that standard was established, membership in the association would be open to all – who measured up. Not by my standards or Zak’s standards, or by any single individual ... but certainly by those who had worked hard on their worlds and who felt they had something to lose by diluting that effort.

So when people talk about an endless list of house rules and hundreds of worlds, they’re really missing the mark. I’m talking about a lot of house rules being thrown in the dustbin, and worlds with them.

And this is why I say, you wouldn’t want me to run this.

Now I have to come back to the subject of money. If I could have it my way, I would fund this entire thing out of pocket. If I could hit on a project that earned me some phenomenal sum (a book made into an ‘A’ film, say), I might do it. That would neatly get rid of the subject all together.

At the moment, however, I’d have to opt for Plan B.

Plan B recognizes that money is necessary for any venture. I have approached people and asked straightforwardly for marvellous sums of money. On one occasion in my life I managed to start a business which succeeded in losing capital for eight different investors ... none of whom, after the fact, blamed me for the failure. I blamed me for the failure. Either way, they declared their losses on their income tax forms and I made a mental note not to put myself in that situation again. It’s more fun borrowing money from the bank.

The bank is out, and investors are out. Option three would be to raise money from the masses, and this specifically I referred to in the last post when I said I had no intention of asking anyone for money. The masses can keep their five dollars for their morning coffee. The very idea of trying to sell any created product to eyeballs for paltry bits of money sounds like a helluva lot more work than it’s worth.

This brings me back to pocket money. People want to know how serious I am. I’ve given it thought over the weekend and I think that I could reasonably commit $500 right now. Which isn’t bad, since I don’t have a thing to spend it on. It’s not enough money to pay a programmer to design anything, but it might buy some substantial bandwidth – if that was the sort of thing needed. I don’t know, I haven’t asked anyone any questions yet. But if you want to know the level of my seriousness, you can measure it from that. Would that I had more money. I find it likely that I will have more money.

If it seems a sad amount to some of you, I tell you right now that I could probably fund a stage play, do rehearsals, advertise and make money on the venture, enough to split seven ways between the cast, myself and the two technicians I’d hire. We’d make enough money to get really drunk on a Friday night. It’s all a question of sensible decision-making.

And if I may continue this digression for another paragraph, I have found that most times, in starting a business, any time you ask for advice you’re going to hear the same four words: “You have to buy ...” This is nonsense. Most anything you have to buy is, right now, sitting in someone’s basement, taking up space that the homeowner would rather have for some other purpose. You only have to show up and haul the thing away.

Finally, to wrap this up, I am the sort of person who believes in the practice of increasing the cost of things in order to keep out the riff-raff. I’ve already said that is my purpose. Here I’ve outlined two specifications.

I said that I was in no hurry, but if anyone wants to take a step forward, I’ll make this offer: If you have a world that you think deserves notoriety, and you are prepared to kick in as much as me ($500), then we can talk. You can keep your money in your pocket (I don’t want it), but if we get enough interest going we’ll arrange to meet in Seattle (how you get there is your business) in about six months. Someone who knows how (perhaps JoetheLawyer) can set up a non-profit and we’ll sign on as partners (after our own lawyers look at it, naturally). We’ll spend a weekend hashing out what we want to accomplish, how to build the site and how to keep it funded. We can elect a president (gawd knows I won’t be running) and establish rules of entry and responsibility.

If that’s not good enough for anyone, then I’m done with this for the time being. I figure, if it falls down, I lose less than a week’s pay. I can live with that.

Dirty, 11-Letter Words

In the wee hours of this morning, Ben Brooks got a handle on what I was going to write today, scooping me.  His words were, simply, "Conditions won't improve until we do."

There are a great many out there who will have as their argument that there is nothing wrong with the present conditions.  These are the same people who are heavily invested in things as they are.  People with products to sell, People who are getting their thrill out of managing bulletin boards and encouraging the endlessly violent dialogue, People who depend for their importance or their credibility on the appearances they make at conventions that are there to exploit players.  Opposition to any sort of change is expected, it's natural and it is - admittedly - sometimes positive.  Conservatism helps restrain the headlong rush into stupidity.

I want to make it clear, as I did in the last post, that a great many people are unsatisfied with the present state of the game and of the community that promotes it.  They are sick of the game being defined according to its marketable qualities, they are sick of the cruddy, maintained-by-troll backrooms of gaming stores being the only affordable places they can play, and they are sick of watching slap-fest after slap-fest engaged in on the internet.

But no one thinks this can change.  Beyond those who don't want it to change, there is a huge mass of people who simply believe that change is impossible, this is the only option, and they don't give a shit any more.  I can't blame them.  There's no force for any kind of alteration in the pattern.  Every time a new entity pokes its head above the covers, it is something like TARGA, which was more interested in promoting its own importance than in accomplishing anything - and predictably, it collapsed under the weight of its own squabbling bullshit.

Zak asked me, "Do you see no advantage in having a thousand different variations on the game run in different styles by different DMs?"

And the answer to that is NO.  At least, not the way its being done now.

We've had chaos.  And it has created this ... chaos.  One of the principal reasons why I have no interest in playing in any stranger's game comes from the reality that I haven't a fucking clue what I'm sitting down to play.  I have no direct experience with later editions, and even if I did, how am I supposed to know what game I'm playing?  Whenever I've tried to play these last twenty years in someone's campaign its been a lot of fresh rules that everyone at the table seems to know except me - and the other people at the table always seem to be the sort of people who are smug pricks who think its fucking funny that they know and I don't.  There's no percentage in it for them to explain the system they're playing, and so they drive off player after player ... this being the standardized process for people at a convention.  Whenever a game goes well at one of these things, a blogger comes online and says, "I was amazed by how well it went ..." thus indicating clearly how often in their experience it has gone like total shit.

Now for guys like Zak and me and a fair number out there, who dwell in our islands of play, who have had the same players for years, this isn't very annoying.  Zak and James C. and others can fairly say, "Well, I've got my game -" and they'd be right.

But I'm not satisfied with that.  To begin with, I'm not convinced like so many others that this is the ONLY way the community can run.  I believe that conditions can improve.  And judging from some of the later comments from people on the last post, I'm not alone.

And here is where we come to the dirty 11-letter word:  Monoculture.  It sounds ominous.  It sounds like proto-nazis are going to break into your D&D session and throw your dice into solitary.  When I see it in context, it seems to me almost as though players spit - from habit - when they use the word.

All right, big sighs here.  Yes, I am proposing a 'monoculture.'  I'm also telling the opposition to get a goddamn grip.  I am not advocating that everyone must play one particular edition or one particular world.  Give me some credit, all right?  I don't want to compromise my world or my efforts for anyone else, either.  But I would like to outline a strategy that my gentle readers can at least think about.  It doesn't cost anything to think.

And I want to be very clear about this - I don't want anyone's money.  I have no interest in forming any incorporated entity of any kind.  You can give me donations if you want, but that's because you like me, and not because of any goddamn solution I'm proposing.  I am not, repeat NOT, proposing a solution.  When I say a 'strategy,' I mean a strategy.  If there is a monoculture that will form out of the maelstrom of isolation and bullshit that is the present community, it isn't going to happen this year, it isn't going to happen next year.  I wouldn't expect to see anything comprehensive for at least a decade.  So for now, your world is safe.

3 Points.

Develop an association of players which is not based upon any existing marketable edition, nor upon any specific game-playing ideology, nor upon the promotion of an event.

Even the use of the word 'association' makes me bristle.  I thought about 'confederation' but I'm not sure that Americans would know what the hell I was talking about.  I am merely thinking along the lines of a collection of players who are capable of expressing respect for - as is constantly repeated to me - the way other people play the game.

Look, I don't like 4e.  I think its a bloody joke.  Everyone I play with thinks its a joke.  But if a fellow sits down at my table and says, I've never played anything but 4e, it's my responsibility to respect that he has a base comprehension of role-play, that he's open-minded to playing in my system, and that a supercilious superiority has no place here.  Whatever I may say about the system he's been playing, it's inappropriate to paint the player with the same brush.

Of course, if the bastard sits down and my table and every third sentence begins with, "We do it this way in 4e," then he's the one being inappropriate.  The mutual respect must cut both ways.

I would like to see more proponents for this kind of thinking beyond just the use of the words themselves, and I'd like to see this kind of thinking built into some sort of agreed-upon entity that could devise a bulletin board where one screed of insult was enough to get the individual banned - not by a single moderator, you understand, but through some kind of wiki where hundreds of members would potentially flag an individual.  If the individual hits fifty percent of the flags possible, he or she gets a warning and a suggestion that they should write something immediately to encourage members to remove their flags.  If the flags don't drop back below 50% within, say, a week, that's it.  You're gone forever.

Understand, this is coming from me.  I'm one of the most likely people to get flagged.  I'm crude, nasty, impatient, intolerant and yes, I spit.  All this is tolerated because I also have something to offer.  I would like to see THAT be the standard.  Not what modules I have for sale or how many people have personally met me at a convention, or how many people in the industry I know or even how long I've been online.  This sort of nonsense that there are some who have a proprietary (another 11-letter word) ownership of the game that some seem to adopt (because they've played a long time, because they personally knew Jackoff Jerkface) has got to go.  Are they contributing?  Fine.  Let them stay.

I can't begin to explain how important it is that this imagined entity has no market interests whatsoever.  It must exist upon the same line as thousands of leisure organizations run by volunteers for the sake of the participants.  The moment that any of these groups begins to charge a fee for entry, and another fee for participation, and then starts to sell tee-shirts and ball caps at a concession, the political strutting of the few in charge over the money quickly sucks the the life from the whole venture.  And yet there will always be those who will see the money-making potential, who will leap upon it with both feet, giving not one wit for the organization's ideals but thinking only of their own greed.

There's no defense against it.  At the moment, we are all running these blogs, providing entertainment for each other and doing it free of charge.  We're not miserly about the effort to write and debate issues - and perhaps because we do it with this degree of flexibility we have a chance of creating a unified perspective.  Perhaps not.  But I keep an open mind.

But back to Zak's perspective.  To what end?

I feel there are two helpful, practical tasks that a generalized group could undertake:

One:  Create a reasonably complete list of common rule variances by which the game is played.

Right off, there again is that 'impossible' argument.  What, ALL the rule variances?  Seriously?

Since wikipedia has managed to take a rather impressive shot at comprehensibly piling together all the world's knowledge, I don't see that it would be beyond reason to compile an RPG database ... one that was NOT controlled by money interests.

Oh, I don't mean a reprint of the rules, you understand, but just a general outline of how, say, this combat system works.  Ultimately, we could have a list of two or three hundred combat systems, all in one easily viewed list, organized as a wiki so that any member of the above group could clean up the crap as it appeared.  The wiki could be limited to those individuals who were part of the group, and changing the wiki could include an individual's avatar ... so that changing the wiki for the worse would pile up those flags mentioned above.

Yes, I can hear the doubt, the derision, the laughing ... but please, consider.  I'm not saying this could be slapped together by Christmas.  I'm saying, how absolutely awesome would it be to be able to look at an overview, several hundred or even several thousand words, describing how this game treated levelling vs. that game; or alignment, or weather or travel or economics or whatever the hell you'd want it to include.

Wouldn't it be more convenient to have access to a singular source for those millions of ideas Zak is harping on about, rather than in the form of thousands of poorly organized blogs?  If we must have multiple ideas, let's have them were they can be picked over and compared, immediately, so that a DM can go through one idea after another in a fact-finding effort.

And then, perhaps, in some future idealistic sense, bloggers could have a complete outline of which generalized system that their worlds participated in.  I use this combat system and this character generation method and this means of experience.  Right now, if you haven't read the damn box set or the 89th issue of the dragon, no one else knows what the hell you're talking about.

Hey, look, Wikipedia is already doing this, except the pages are low on data.  I'm suggesting that gamers do the work ... hell, even if all we're doing is creating links to created pages on Wikipedia, its better than the jumble we've got now.  Isn't it?

Two: Do the same thing, but do it for people's worlds.

Look.  My world is scattered through the various posts of my blog, and Zak's world is scattered through his, and James C.'s world isn't online at all.  If we're going to talk wikis, why not a database where the worlds can be organized, where the maps of each world can be put in this area, and the descriptions of the worlds can be put in that area.  As it stands right now, if I don't happen to run across, say, David's World from the RPG Corner, because I don't know his blog is out there, how the hell do I know it exists.  Even if I find his blog, where do I start?

Is it so hard, people, to comprehend having a system by which your world could be catalogued, ordered, explained and even co-opted by participants reading the wiki?  Hey, here's Italy.  And here's my city data.  And here's a outline of ruins and such, or here's all the links on Wikipedia you'll want to look at.  And here are descriptions of the countryside.  And here's the weather.  Good, now you're ready to run it.

No?  Well, how about the page is potentially open to those who know Italy better than I do, who can write their own descriptions.  Or what if someone, having a good look at Zak's world, wants to run it  for his own campaign and for which he has some ideas ... that he can then run by Zak, and ultimately ADD to Zak's world as it appears in this database.

Impossible, you say?  Nonsense.  It is a question of getting out of this dumb-ass anti-cooperative headspace because we believe we're the only people good enough to work on OUR world.  If it happened that the new stuff was shit, what difference would that make?  Zak or others could go clear it out, Zak's world or my world could grow and become unrecognizable to either one of us ... but it would be a source to turn to anyway.  My world will always be on my computer.  What do I care what happens to the version of my world that gets played with and hacked on said database?

I could always just create another file, "My World Traditional," and watch it all happen again.  And again.  And again.

I lose nothing.  I continue to run my world with my people.  And others get the benefit of seeing what happens when others make use of my world for their own purposes.

This is what I call monoculture.  Not the suppression of knowledge, but the healthy distribution of it.

If I die first, fine.  I'm not in any hurry.  But perhaps we could try moving in an particular direction.  Perhaps we could take these three ideas of mine and scrap them for better, more practical possibilities.  But it would still be movement.  It would still be better than what we have.

Yes, Sorry, I Care

I see. I understand now.

• Although excellence is stymied by the huge flexibility of the game, flexibility is too important to be restrained.
• In fact, there are large numbers of editorials promoting excellence – I’m simply incapable of recognizing what excellence is.
• Excellence is restricted only to those with social skills, and social skills can't be taught.
• I shouldn’t give a shit about other people who aren’t excellent.
• As long as I am excellent, no one else matters.
• No one is as excellent as me anyway.
• Since it is impossible to satisfy both teacher and student, don’t bother.
• I’m drunk.
• Grants take effort.
• All of this has something to do with someone named Joesky who can’t spell on his blog.

Well, that’s very nice. I appreciate the praise where it was given, and I honestly appreciate that most of you were making an effort to present a fair case. And yes, I don’t need the rest of the world to run this game, and I certainly don’t need the company of stupid people. For the record, I don’t regularly come into contact with real life sucky games, and I’m not as mad as I might sound.

The editorial style implies the stirring of the pot, to draw the meat up from the bottom and encourage it to meld with the consomme at the top. The longer the stew is allowed to settle, the more clear and tasteless is the liquid that gathers on the surface. If we endlessly write out material that ‘leaves things as they are,’ the more bland the fare we have to eat. That is why, when you serve soup, you do it from the bottom, to bring up the victuals that have drawn in the taste.

It costs me no energy to do this. I am quite comfortable in the ‘rant mode,’ as it might be described. To write scathing, bitter sarcasm is as easy as writing out lines of dialogue or to explain the function of making soup. If I were going to mention writing that’s actually HARD, I’d have to say description of anything that’s not moving.

But we’re moving, so let me readdress the issue.

People suck at this game. And while I appreciate that it is the god-given right of a large number of idiots to suck at anything they want, include trailer hitches (I knew this girl in Kelowna ... but that’s another story). I could quite easily embrace the apathy expressed that these people don’t matter a wit and fuck them.

My problem with that is this: that I can’t tell the difference between those that actively want to suck and those that haven’t any choice – because they haven’t anywhere to turn. And when I think about the latter, I get passionate. I am of the opinion that if there is expertise, and there are people without it who want it, then there ought to be some fucking way to put A and B together. No matter how fucking hard it is, or how fucking unnecessary it is, or how fucking unimportant it is to every other motherfucker on the fucking net. Is that fucking clear?

Sorry. The stew on the bottom of the pot was starting to burn.

Now, in addressing Mincer’s question, “Are there that many players falling out of the hobby because they can’t find a satisfactory GMing experience?”

The answer is yes. A resounding goddamn yes. To the tune of millions of people, who tried playing this game once in high school (when it sucked) and then once again in college (when it sucked) and then one more time when they saw their children playing it (when it STILL sucked). If you’re going to embrace the suck, then you earn the derision of every person familiar enough with the game to have seen it played.

Frankly, it bothers me somewhat that a thing that I love deeply and passionately is seen as a freaking joke – and with good reason. The way that a great many other people in the world play, it is a goddamn joke.

Everytime I sit down at this blog to write another post about my investment with the game, I have to restrain myself with both hands and a virtual reality doberman to keep from simply lifting posts from other D&D blogs and cutting them up line by line. That disturbs me. I ought to be able to stretch out for a few hours and read about the good work that’s being done, the practical efforts to tackle issues or solve lingering problems, like what to do about that rancid list of NPC attributes on page 100 of the DMG, or parsing out the dungeoneering style of most players and how one might raise the bar for one’s players ...

You know, the way its done with every other hobby on earth. Holy shit, do you think fishermen give a rat’s ass about the ‘flexibility’ in methods to hold a fishing rod? People sit down and work out methodological ways to hold a rod depending on the kind of fish ... and if you go fishing, you’ll notice that everyone is holding the damn thing exactly the same way. Because it works. Because it isn’t about personalities or increasing one’s own happiness or fifty other bullshit phrases, its about NOT dropping the rod when the fish hits. This is all I am talking about. I don’t give a butterfly’s rear about whether or not the students are happy ... can they draw a dungeon that doesn’t look like it’s done with crayons by a six-year-old? Hooray, you’re competent now.

You know, where it comes to ‘social skills,’ they teach comportment, they teach public speaking, they teach acting, they teach diction and they teach psychology. Hells bells, there’s nothing in the world you can’t pony up dough to learn – every local library in the country has fifty to a hundred courses on everything. Don’t tell me we can’t teach a few DMs out there to put some marbles in their mouths.

Hey, I know.  But I care.  I’m 46 in two weeks and I have the energy to care.  Where do I get the energy to care?

How fucking hard has the world been on you that you don't?

Editor or Schoolteacher. Hm.

Writing a blog, you try to be original. You try to have new material, so that the long time readers don’t get bored. A solution to that is to stay up to date on something that’s new, that doesn’t come from one’s own brain – whatever is the latest information on the subject, new releases, interviews with up-and-comers ... or current events. In the blogosphere, this means following fifty other blogs and scanning for some event that one can vent on. You know, like the hullabaloo that went around a couple of weeks ago about stealing WOTC graphics.


Of course, if nothing’s happening, One ends up scrabbling around for something to write. After you’ve done one of these blogs for two or three years, that scrabbling gets to be dull, and the blogger simply doesn’t write anything. So a day passes, then three days, then a couple of weeks ... and six months later there’s a post saying, oh well, I’m ending this blog, thanks to everyone.

Journalism is the art of scrabbling for stories on poor news days, as well as rich ones. Any reporter can draw eyeballs if the world is nice enough to offer up a flood or a hurricane ... the real trick is to make it sound like three water-logged houses down by the local river is a huge disaster. Then it gives the editor a chance to write something about insurance companies or the apathy of the municipal politicals ... you know, things everyone can get on board with.

You can write a blog and think that you are writing the news, but mostly you’re just writing the editorial that follows the news. And as anyone knows, when an editor has been writing editorials for years and years, quite a lot of them start to sound alike.

Most editors have a particular axe to grind. They don’t like those tax-mongering bastards at the capital or they’re sickened by the greed of corporations. Those two axes in particular have labels on the handles marked right and left.

In this blog I have my axes to grind as well. I like to slap down the railroaders, I like to bitch about modules, occasionally I’ll slip something in about later editions and I am always ready to find something bad to say about alignments. I enjoy punting these things around, it makes an enjoyable rant for me (yes, I love writing these things) and I usually get a decent response. And it is a better read than hauling out some musty old from some project I was working on ten years ago. A fiery editorial gets people worked up, mostly because it contains lots of swear words, sarcastic and satire. It gets a laugh or a sneer out of the gentle reader that makes the day go by a little faster ... particularly if it’s good enough to make the reader sit bolt-upright and lash out in response.

But, of course, how many ranting articles can you write about the brainless community?

The thing is, month by month, rants begin to disappear into the bowels of the blog, where they don’t get read anymore. Post 187 gets lost in the shuffle, and even I forget that I’ve made the point before. When you pull out shit from your own life, like I do, there’s always the danger that twenty months later you’ll pull that shit out again. We’ve all had known those people who feel they must tell that same story about when their character found the dragon again and again.

I’ll be honest with you. I started this post thinking that I’d explain my inspiration to write about how discouraged I am with the Old School Renaissance being more about which freaking edition gets played, as opposed to an effort to raise the content of the game itself. I was going to talk about the stupid soft-cover redbook that bloggers get weepy-eyed about, which I picked up from the bargain bin of a games store (not even a roleplaying games store) back when I was still stupid enough to spend my money on crap, hoping I’d get inspiration from it. I know I still have the book somewhere, it’s in a box with a lot of other magazines, some of which are porn, under other boxes in the back of a storeroom, behind a lot of other crap I don’t pay attention to, all of which is behind more useful crap that only gets pulled out in the winter-time. In other words, not very important to me.

But now I’m thinking how pathetically sad it must be for people that this cheesy little booklet from thirty years ago is as far as they’ve progressed with the game – which it must be, since they talk about how they’re starting a new campaign now that they’ve found this precious book, at last, leading them to gush on and on about how good it will be to get back to D&D the way it was meant to be.

Just fucking shoot me, all right?

You know, thirty years ago, as a 16-year-old kid sitting in dull classes, I started a story about professional dungeon masters who would be respected for their art, sort of in the way that tai chi masters demonstrate and teach their art, or as chefs are invited in to prepare a meal for anxious gourmands. I perceived that as the players of the game matured and developed, the game would grow complex and inspirational, drawing to it a degree of respect from amateurs who would gaze in awe at the level of play that a professional game could ultimately provide.

How wrong, how very sadly wrong, I was.

Where are the editorials promoting excellence in this game? If it is a old school Renaissance, where in hell is the school? Where is the effort to create an institution that will upgrade the stumbling, baffled DM to an achieved level of ability? If I am wanting to be a better DM, what means are there out there to improve myself?

Beyond, of course, the crass commercialism of the softcover red book, the juvenile comic-book pictorials of endless editions and proto-editions and the sleazy, mercantile table-frog at the conventions that’s there to sell dice?

We write our blogs, and commend ourselves for sharing “ideas” ... but we share and we share and the game remains hopelessly fragmented, still driven by yet one more doofus who claims to have the NEW answer to How to Play the Game, just send $6 to this address and All Your Dreams Will Come True.  And the little rugrats crawl, gooing and gahing in the direction of the bright, shiny tin foil, predictable as the publishing industry wants them to be.

Makes me a little sick, to be sure.

But maybe I could write to my government for a $10,000 grant to start a school, and go all out and ask not $6, but $2,000 for tuition from every student to join that school (we want to keep out the riff raff); and I could hire three or four teachers to give courses on Dungeon Design, Combat & Magic Tactics and Monster Biology ... until the day would come that I could purchase three cheap acres of land outside of Omaha Nebraska (central location!), somehow getting the credentials I needed so that desirous students could collect unemployment during the six month semester.

Or,

I could write this editorial again next year.