No Fear

This is not intended as a redress against A Paladin in Citadel, who wondered in a comment on my last post if books would give players “some skill, level or ability boost.”

That, right there, is the video game market talking.

It’s all part of ‘Mario D&D’ ... eat a mushroom, crush the monster, move on to find more mushrooms. Paladin only asks the question, how is a book a mushroom?

This is just an excuse, actually, for me to bitch about players. Players have been on my mind most of the weekend, ever since one of the two online campaigns I’m running pretty much imploded for lack of interest/posting. I’ve been asking myself since the middle of last week, is it my fault?

How easy it would be to blame the players, boost my own ego and move the fuck on. Hey, one campaign is working out fine, right? I must be okay.

That is not the way I look at it. I am the sort of person who must patiently deconstruct and pull apart the guts of the thing to try and understand it – to perform an autopsy, if you will. All for the purpose of identifying just what went wrong, and how to avoid it going wrong again.

The fault, I know, is the sandbox campaign. Not so much that players are free to do anything, but that my insistence that there will be no railroading usually winds up with me being in a place where I have to railroad the players just to get some kind of response from them. Which frustrates the living fucking shit right out of me.

In both the campaign I ran last spring and in this one that has crumbled in the last three weeks, I have principally encountered caution (described as ‘sitting hen’ by one player). An unwillingness on the part of players to take action ... usually explained by the players themselves with such phrases as, “ ... he didn't really want to make himself too obvious in his interest and possibly draw unwanted attention ...” This describing the player’s unwillingness to risk a 1st level character with zero X.P.

I’m baffled. What, exactly, does the player have to lose? Maybe someone out there in Mario land can explain why first level characters aren’t expendable. Are DMs giving out electric shocks to players who die at first level?

Granted, the player is a mage. Mages die easily. And as it happens, for the campaign, I’ve had four players join and every player has rolled up a mage (if you only count three players in the posts, it’s because I have one more player waiting to join once the campaign gets sorted out). All told, one pure mage, two mage/thieves and one mage/assassin. This, I think, happened because all four individuals made their characters independently. At a table where we were all playing offline, I think someone would say, “We can’t all be mages! Someone has to play a fighter.” And someone would answer, a bit unhappily, “All right, I will.”

But this is online, and I didn’t tell them to what they could and could not make. No railroading, you see. If they all want to be mages, fine. I will invent a campaign that a party of mages could participate in. No up front fighting, something with an investigative quality, something they can piece together with their brains ... after all, if they have to go toe to toe with someone, they’ll die.

Only trouble is, no one showed any interest in investigating jack shit. I presume they were waiting for me to tell them what they needed to know, failing to recognize that in a sandbox campaign, I’m under absolutely no obligation to tell them ANYTHING. I am a world. I am not a novel. I run people operating in a world. These people can, if they want, do whatever they want. But the world does not revolve around them, there are no preset characters to step out of the bushes in Scene 24 and tell them exactly what they have to do next. They are players ... they are not fucking heroes.

I’m sorry if that hasn’t been made clear by this blog in the previous 281 posts. As a DM, I feel I am under an obligation to provide details, to describe in reasonable detail where the players are, to design obstructions, to create NPCs and monsters, to make them believable, to map out the world, to adjudicate on the practicality of various strategies and possibilities, and to assess damage and provide rewards. But you know what? ... that is it. That’s a lot and that’s enough. If players want more, if they want to have me outline in detail how to move their feet and open their mouths and what drivel to produce with their tongues, lips and teeth, they can go the fuck somewhere else.

Sorry. Lost it there for a moment.

I was saying, no one investigated. Which is fair, which is fine, it’s a sandbox game, no one has to search the body or grill the NPCs with question after question if they don’t want to. That’s what I tell myself. I say it over and over until I begin to realize that no matter how accepting I am, I’m bored.

Bringing me back to the autopsy, trying to gather together some kind of theme regarding this rambling, ranting, shotgun-like post. Bringing me back to the question that has haunted me all day, and which led to this post ultimately inspired by Paladin’s question. I want to thank you, Paladin; you got my brain going, even if it is in every direction. Give me your email, we’ll go get coffee some time.

Why did the three people in the campaign all want to play mages?

My first instinct is to assume that there’s something appealing about the way I’ve talked about mages on my blog. Or that there’s some unknown prejudice against players playing mages in other campaigns. Or that this is some enormous coincidence (remembering always that the fourth person, who’d had a chance to see three mages playing in the campaign, still wants to play another mage with them). And of course, there’s the argument that mages are fairly powerful.

In my offline campaign, the party is engaged in a massive fight against an intelligent foe that is manipulating goblins and dire wolves against them. Although the tools are fairly weak, the unidentified foe clearly has magic use; that and the tactics I’m using has already killed party members (2 first levels) and has come very close to killing others.

The deciding factor on the player’s side has been the influence of two spellcasters, the 8th level mage and the 6th level illusionist. The 9th level druid has just conjured up a treant, so the balance is shifting. Spellcasters are powerful.

They are also, at low level, very weak. The aforementioned mage, Garalzapan by name, spent most of his first three levels throwing daggers at the enemy when his spells ran out by round four. The aforementioned illusionist, Pen by name, was the party joke until he reached fifth level ... the first thing Pen always did was ‘run away’. And the aforementioned druid, Pikel by name, was bailed out so often at low levels by the rest of the party that they still feel Pikel owes them protection money. These are common stories, they pretty much fit into any campaign.

So, are the players so entranced by their dreams of great power someday that they forgot they have to run low-level characters first? Low-level mages who, reasonably, can expect to live by their wits, their cunning and their guts?

Since they don’t have any guts (cautious), they don’t trust their wits (they might offend people), and I’ve seen no signs of cunning, what the hell are any of these people doing running magic users?

Oh, I forgot. They have cool spells.

As DM, I presume, my job is to set up targets for them to knock down with their cool spells - targets who never quite get close enough to, you know, threaten them. Can’t expect them to take enormous risks like asking strangers questions or searching nearby bodies – at least, not until they get that terrific mushroom which allows them to stomp hell out of their enemies.

Now listen ... I’m being pretty nasty here, and I know it. I’m not sure if this post is going to kill the campaign, or get people’s heads in the right place. One way or the other, I can’t let myself be affected by the outcome. I feel from time to time that I have to defend this game, and at this particular time that means being a mean little bugger.

If we ARE going to play a particular race and class, PLEASE, can we have a better reason to do so than that the character throws spells and gets to be powerful by seventh level? Can we think a little farther than, “I like to steal things”? Working at the world that I work at, I’m choked when I find myself faced with kindergarten behavior when it comes to picking the goddamn game pieces. Damn, it’s like fucking monopoly where everyone wants to be the car, ‘cause it goes vroom.

And because I can’t let it go, role-playing games exist to provide a means of obtaining the sort of dangerous, provocative thrill that comes from risking one’s ersatz, avatar existence – while being able to get up for coke between die rolls. People, seriously: NO FEAR.

Nope.  Post didn't work.  I still feel I'm to blame.

Books

For a long time I had wanted to give books as treasure, but the foremost problem that occurs is the title and subject matter of the book.  There's no material out there to give you a list of books to bestow upon your players, or even how such a list might be constructed.

In my 57-year-old encyclopedia the index provides a bibliography of books used to create the Encyclopedia.  So I decided to count them, and list those counts here, along with the categories as identified (and slightly modified for D&D) by the encyclopedia.  The principle modifications are the removal of materials too modern for the game (my world, remember, takes place in 1650), and the reinterpretation of some subjects as magic.

Note that the number does not necessarily describe the importance of the topic, only the number of books that one might find regarding that subject.  The encyclopedia is Anglocentric and highly Christian, but you and I should be able to ignore those faults.

This will no doubt annoy the hell out of the anti-Simulationist crowd, but I find it fascinating.

BOOK LIST

I. Philosophy (300)
   A. Collections of Philosophical Writings (6)
   B. Introductions to Philosophy (17)
   C. Systematic Philosophy (114)
      1. Logic (11)
      2. Theory of Knowledge (5)
      3. Metaphysics (11)
      4. Cosmology (5)
      5. Mind & Body (4)
      6. Ethics (53)
         a) Introductions (10)
         b) Problems of Daily Living (10)
         c) Theories and Philosophies of Ethics (15)
         d) State Ethics (6)
         e) Peace and War (12)
      7. Aesthetics (25)
   D. History and Systems (138)
      1. General Histories (10)
      2. Oriental Philosophy (8)
         a) General Works (2)
         b) Confucius (the Analects) (3)
         c) Islam (1)
         d) Mencius and Laotse (1)
         e) Radhakrishnan (1)
      3. Greek Philosophy (39)
         a) General Works (14)
         b) Aristotle (9)
         c) Socrates and Plato (15)
            i. Socrates (Socratic Dialogues) (1)
            ii. Plato (Dialogues, the Republic) (5)
            iii. Works and Commentary (9)
         d) Demosthenes (1)
      4. Hellenistic, Roman and Alexandrian Philosophy (10)
         a) General Works (2)
         b) Epicurus, Epictetus and Lucretius (1)
         c) Marcus Aurelius (Meditations) (2)
         d) Philo (2)
         e) Plotinus (1)
         f) Proclus (1)
         g) Seneca (1)
      5. Early Christian and Medieval Philosophy (15)
         a) General Works (3)
         b) St. Thomas Aquinas (5)
         c) St. Augustine (City of God) (4)
         d) Boethius (1)
         e) St. Bonaventure (1)
         f) William of Ockham (1)
      6. Modern Philosophy of the Western World (56)
         a) General Works (23)
         b) Philosophical Systems (26)
         c) Philosophers (7)
            i. Francis Bacon (Advancement of Learning) (3)
            ii. Rene Descartes (A Discourse on Method) (4)
   E. Occultism (25)

II. Religion (566)
   A. Philosophy of Religion (16)
   B. Religion and Science (7)
   C. God (14)
   D. The Bible (136)
      1. General Works (14)
      2. Versions of the Bible (20)
         a) Whole Bible (11)
         b) Old Testament Only (3)
         c) New Testament Only (6)
      3. Commentaries (25)
      4. Biblical History and Geography (14)
      5. Biographies (27)
         a) Persons of the Bible (8)
         b) Lives of Christ (19)
      6. Lessons of the Old Testament (13)
      7. Lessons of the New Testament (20)
      8. Apocrypha (3)
   E. Miracles (1)
   F. Christian Beliefs (19)
   G. Immortality (7)
   H. Christian Morals and Personal Religion (12)
   I. Spiritual Life (19)
      1. Devotional Books (12)
      2. Prayer (7)
   J. Religion in Action (59)
      1. Public Worship and Liturgy (16)
      2. Hymnology (14)
      3. Pastoral Work (19)
      4. Sermons (10)
   K. Temple and Temple Society (30)
   L. Missions and Missionaries (22)
   M. Religious Art and Literature (3)
   N. Religious Education (33)
   O. History of Religion (50)
   P. Christian Churches and Sects (53)
      1. General Works (22)
      2. Roman Catholicism (24)
      3. Anglicanism (3)
      4. Lutheranism (1)
      5. Presbyterism (3)
   Q. Comparative Religion (18)
   R. Mythology and Primitive Religion (25)
      1. General Works (13)
      2. Greek and Roman Mythology (10)
      3. Norse Mythology (2)
   S. Buddhism and Hinduism (8)
   T. Zoroastrianism (2)
   U. Judaism (18)
   V. Islam (6)
   W. Religions of Asia (8)

III. History (683)
   A. The Study of History and Current Events (13)
   B. World Histories (11)
   C. International Relations and Events (21)
   D. The Ancient World (80)
      1. Early Man (14)
      2. General Ancient History ( 8)
      3. Greece (24)
         a) Contemporary Accounts (6)
         b) Later Works (18)
      4. Rome (17)
         a) Contemporary Accounts (6)
         b) Later Works (11)
      5. Egypt (7)
      6. Other Regions (10)
   E. General European History (320)
      1. General Works (3)
      2. Middle Ages (54)
         a) Contemporary Accounts (17)
         b) Later Works (37)
      3. Renaissance (11)
      4. Reformation (9)
      5. Modern Europe of the 17th Century (17)
      6. England (34)
         a) Personal Histories (14)
         b) General Works (20)
      7. Scotland, Ireland, Wales (17)
      8. France (24)
      9. Germany (16)
      10. The Low Countries (19)
      11. The Balkans (26)
      12. The Hapsburgs (4)
      13. Poland (13)
      14. Hungary (10)
      15. Italy (22)
      16. Scandinavia, Finland and Iceland (24)
      17. Spain and Portugal (17)
   F. Russia (28)
   G. The Near East (30)
   H. Africa (19)
   I. Asia and the Pacific (79)
      1. General Works (12)
      2. China (24)
      3. Japan (13)
      4. Korea (1)
      5. India (19)
      6. Australia and New Zealand (10)
   I. New World Regions and Nations (82)
      1. General Works (16)
      2. Middle America and the West Indies (28)
      3. South America (15)
      4. French Canada (8)
      5. Colonial New England, New Holland, Virginia and the Carolinas (15)

IV. Geography (205)
   A. Atlases (19)
   B. A World View (17)
   C. General Works (11)
   D. Regional Geography (91)
      1. Colonial North America (21)
      2. The British Isles (9)
      3. Europe and Russia (20)
      4. Africa (5)
      5. Latin America (13)
      6. Asia and the Pacific (23)
   E. Economic Geography (8)
   F. Geopolitics (5)
   G. Explorers and Exploration (37)
   H. Travel (10)
   I. Cartography (7)

V. Linguistics (19)

VI. Literature (601)
   A. General Literature (100)
      1. History and Criticism (33)
      2. Anthologies and Indexes (57)
         a) Poetry (21)
         b) Light Verse and Humour (5)
         c) Prose and Poetry (9)
         d) Prose (11)
         e) Drama (11)
   B. Classical Literature (86)
      1. Classical Stories and Fables (5)
      2. Classical Poetry (6)
      3. Classical Drama (12)
      4. General Criticism of Classical Literature (5)
      5. History and Criticism of Classical Greek Literature (15)
      6. History and Criticism of Classical Latin Literature (10)
      7. Individual Classical Authors (33)
         a) General Works (2)
         b) Homer (The Iliad, the Odyssey) (5)
         c) Sappho (2)
         d) Aeschylus (2)
         e) Sophocles (4)
         f) Euripides (2)
         g) Aristophanes (2)
         h) Plutarch (1)
         i) Lucretius (1)
         j) Cicero (Offices) (2)
         k) Catullus (2)
         l) Horace (2)
         m) Vergil (The Aeneid, The Georgics) (4)
         n) Ovid (2)
   C. Medieval Literature (5)
   D. English Literature (164)
      1. Anthologies of Poetry and Prose (32)
      2. History of English Literature (34)
         a) General Accounts (18)
         b) The Early Period (3)
         c) Sixteenth Century (9)
         d) Seventeenth Century (4)
      3. English Poetry (19)
         a) General Criticism (5)
         b) Beowulf (2)
         c) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Piers the Ploughman (1)
         d) Geoffrey Chaucer (Canterbury Tales) (4)
         e) Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queen) (2)
         f) John Donne (1)
         g) John Milton (4)
      4. English Fiction (17)
         a) General Criticism (15)
         b) Thomas Malory (Le Morte d’Arthur) (1)
         c) John Lyly (Euphues; the Anatomy of Wit; Euphues and His England) (1)
      5. English Drama (36)
         a) General Criticism (20)
         b) Pre-Elizabethan Drama (4)
         c) Everyman (1)
         d) Christopher Marlowe (1)
         e) William Shakespeare (5)
         f) Tudor Plays (2)
         g) Benjamin Jonson (1)
         h) Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (1)
         i) John Webster and John Ford (1)
      6. Other English Prose (Essays, Journals and Stories) (26)
   E. French Literature (26)
      1. History of French Literature (12)
         a) General Accounts (9)
         b) The Early Period (1)
         c) Renaissance Period (2)
      2. French Prose (4)
         a) General Works (1)
         b) Pierre Abelard and Heloise (Letters) (1)
         c) Michel de Montaigne (Essays) (1)
         d) Francois Rabelais (1)
      3. French Poetry (9)
         a) General Works (6)
         b) The Song of Roland (1)
         c) Francois Villon (2)
      4. French Drama (1)
   F. German Literature (20)
      1. History of German Literature (16)
      2. German Poetry (4)
         a) General Works (3)
         b) The Nibelungenlied (1)
   G. Italian Literature (32) 
      1. History of Italian Literature (12)
          a) General Accounts (8)
          b) Renaissance Period (4)
      2. Italian Poetry (14)
         a) General Works (5)
         b) Dante Gabriel Rossetti (The Divine Comedy) (6)
         c) Petrarch (Sonnets) (1)
         d) Lodovico Ariosto (Orlando Furioso) (1)
         e) Torquato Tasso (Jerusalem Delivered) (1)
      3. Italian Prose (5)
         a) General Works (1)
         b) Giovanni Boccaccio (The Decameron) (1)
         c) Baldassare Castiglione (The Book of the Courtier) (1)
         d) Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince) (1)
         e) Benvenuto Cellini (1)
      4. Italian Drama (3)
   G. Hispanic Literature (46)
      1. History of Spanish Literature (12)
      2. Spanish Poetry (8)
         a) General Works (5)
         b) Lay of the Cid (2)
         c) Alonso de Ercilla (The Araucaniad) (1)
      3. Spanish Prose (6)
         a) General Works (1)
         b) Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote) (4)
         c) Lazarillo de Tormes (1)
      4. History of Latin American Literature (5)
      5. Latin American Poetry (4)
      6. Latin American Prose (2)
      7. Portuguese Literature (5)
         a) General Works (4)
         b) Luiz vaz de Coes (1)
      8. Hispanic Drama (4)
   H. Flemish and Dutch Literature (6)
   I. Scandinavian Literature (23)
      1. History of Scandinavian Literature (12)
      2. Scandinavian Poetry (8)
         a) General Works (5)
         b) Edda and Saga (1)
         c) Norse and Icelandic Sagas (2)
      3. Danish Prose (1)
      4. Norwegian Prose (1)
      5. Swedish Prose (1)
   J. Russian Literature (23)
      1. History of Russian Literature (12)
      2. Russian Prose (9)
      3. Russian Poetry (1)
      4. Russian Drama (1)
   K. Eastern European Literature (17)
      1. History of Eastern European Literature (9)
      2. Prose of Eastern Europe (5)
         a) General Works (4)
         b) The Kalevala (1)
      3. Poetry of Eastern Europe (3)
         a) General Works (2)
         b) The Diana (1)
   L. Oriental Literature (48)
      1. History of Oriental Literature (8)
      2. Chinese Prose (6)
         a) General Works (5)
         b) Wu Ch’eng-en (The Adventures of Monkey) (1)
      3. Chinese Poetry (9)
         a) General Works (8)
         b) Shih Ching (The Book of Songs) (1)
      4. Chinese Drama (2)
      5. Japanese Literature (4)
         a) General Works (3)
         b) Murasaki Shikibu (The Tale of Genji) (1)
      6. Egyptian Literature (5)
      7. Indian Literature (6)
         a) General Works (5)
         b) Hindu Scriptures (1)
      8. Persian and Arabic Literature (8)
         a) General Works (6)
         b) Firdausi (1)
         c) Omar Khayyam (1)
   M. Jewish Literature (5)

VII. The Arts (738)
   A. General Art (79)
      1. Theory and Appreciation (16)
      2. Art History (44)
      3. Primitive Art (7)
      4. Modern Art (12)
   B. Archaeology (69)
      1. General and Introductory (8)
      2. Old and New Stone Age (4)
      3. Asia Minor and the Bible Lands (12)
      4. Egypt (7)
      5. Crete and Greece (10)
      6. Rome (6)
      7. Britain (5)
      8. Pre-Columbian America (17)
   C. Architecture (118)
      1. Theory and Aesthetics (18)
      2. History of Architecture (32)
      3. Ecclesiastical Architecture (13)
      4. Domestic Architecture (19)
      5. Commercial Architecture (23)
      6. City Planning and Housing (13)
   D. Painting (91)
      1. Appreciation (11)
      2. History of Painting (31)
      3. Collective Studies of Artists (19)
      4. Techniques (30)
   E. Sculpture (32)
      1. Theory and Appreciation (26)
      2. Techniques (6)
   F. Design and the Applied Arts (21)
      1. General Design (7)
      2. Fashion (5)
      3. Interior Design (9)
   G. Prints and Illustrations (22)
   H. Minor Arts and Crafts (32)
      1. General Works (6)
      2. Ivory and Jade (1)
      3. Pottery and Porcelain (5)
      4. Glass (2)
      5. Metal Plate (2)
      6. Lapidary and Jewelry (1)
      7. Rugs and Carpets (2)
      8. Tapestries (2)
      9. Antiques (8)
      10. Furniture (3)
   I. Arts and Crafts Techniques (14)
   J. Music (143)
      1. General Introduction (12)
      2. Criticism and Effects (19)
      3. History of Music (29)
      4. Modern Music (7)
      5. Orchestral Instruments and Music (17)
      6. Vocal Music (4)
      7. Opera (20)
      8. Folk Music (10)
      9. Children and Music (6)
      10. Collective Biographies (19)
   K. The Dance (11)
      1. General and Historical (6)
      2. Modern Dance (5)
   L. Theatre (106)
      1. General Works (13)
      2. History of Theatre (26)
      3. Theatre Management, Producing and Directing (17)
      4. Staging, Scenery and Lighting (16)
      5. Acting (10)
      6. Make-up and Costume (9)
      7. Mistrels, Circus and Vaudeville (8)
      8. Masks and Marionettes (7)

VIII. Sociology (112)
   A. General History of Sociology (17)
   B. Anthropology (20)
   C. Population and Migration (9)
   D. Urban Society (14)
   E. Rural Society (11)
   F. The Family (8)
   G. Social Problems (9)
   H. Criminology (16)
   I. Housing (8)

IX. Political Science and Government (72)
   A. Political Theory (37)
   B. Comparative Government (20)
   C. International Relations (15)

X. Economics and Business (270)
   A. General Principles and Theory (20)
   B. International Trade, Exchange and Finance (19)
   C. Economic Organization and the State (37)
      1. Production Organization (10)
      2. Corporate Finance (11)
      3. Government Regulation (9)
      4. Agricultural Economics (7)
   D. Public Finance (21)
   E. Comparative Economic Systems (9)
   F. Transportation (26)
   G. Marketing (7)
      1. Wholesaling (2)
      2. Retailing (5)
   H. Guild Management and Methods (77)
      1. Organization (12)
      2. Member Selection (33)
      3. Quality Control (4)
      4. Building Management (7)
      5. Correspondence (11)
      6. Credit (7)
      7. Decision Making (3)
   I. Bookkeeping, Accounting and Auditing (13)
   J. Labor (23)
   K. Insurance (14)
   L. Real Estate (9)
   M. Personal Budget, Finance and Investment (13)
   N. Consumer Guidance (3)

XI. Education (118)
   A. History of Education (14)
   B. Education Society (7)
   C. Principles and Philosophy (22)
   D. Child Tutoring (19)
   E. College and University Education (16)
   F. Education Administration (10)
   G. Libraries (17)
   H. How to Read and Study (20)

XII. Communications (127)
   A. Writing and Speaking (40)
   B. General Printing (50)
      1. General Works (4)
      2. History of Printing (11)
      3. Printing Practice (9)
      4. Methods of Printing (7)
      5. Printing Fonts (10)
      6. Master Printers (6)
      7. Papermaking and Bookbinding (3)
   C. Book Publishing (37)
      1. General Works (6)
      2. History and Reminiscences (10)
      3. Book Collecting (4)
      4. Book Production (12)
      5. Distribution (5)

XIII. General Science (69)
   A. History of Science (14)
   B. Achievements of Science (13)
   C. Scientific Principles (13)
   D. Scientific Experiments (6)
   E. Science and Man (23)

XIV. Mathematics (100)
   A. Histories of Mathematics (8)
   B. Introductory Books (12)
   C. Introductions to Advanced Mathematics (13)
   D. Branches and Methods (33)
      1. Arithmetic (2)
      2. Plane Geometry (8)
      3. Solid Geometry (2)
      4. Analytic Geometry (4)
      5. Higher Geometry (4)
      6. Algebra (6)
      7. The Slide Rule (3)
      8. Trigonometry (4)
   E. Mathematical Recreations (9)
   F. Applied Mathematics (25)
      1. Handbooks (1)
      2. Rapid Methods (2)
      3. Business and Finance (5)
      4. Aviation (3)
      5. Electrical Work (2)
      6. Mechanical Work (5)
      7. Plumbing and Heating (1)
      8. Engineering (6)

XV. Astronomy (65)
   A. General Introductions (13)
   B. Star-Gazing (13)
   C. Telescopes (6)
   D. General Works (8)
   E. The Sun (5)
   F. The Moon (1)
   G. Comets and Meteors (4)
   H. The Planets (3)
   I. The Stars (6)
   J. The Universe (6)

XVI. Physics and Magic (125)
   A. General Introductions (10)
   B. Elementary Books (14)
   C. Classical Mechanics (5)
   D. Modern Physics (18)
   E. Sound (8)
   F. Heat (7)
   G. Electricity (13)
   H. Light (4)
   I. Optics (9)
   J. Laboratory Studies (7)
   K. Alternative Realities (30)

XVII. Chemistry and Magic (186)
   A. History of Chemistry (7)
   B. General Books (18)
   C. Introductory Works (13)
   D. Chemical Mathematics (3)
   E. Inorganic Chemistry (7)
   F. Organic Chemistry (13)
   G. Analytical Chemistry (30)
   H. Physical Chemistry (15)
      1. General Works (5)
      2. Diffusion Magic (5)
      3. Electrochemistry and Magnetochemistry (5)
   I. Applied Chemistry (83)
      1. General Works (8)
      2. Formulas and Potions (15)
      3. Paints and Varnishes (4)
      4. Ceramics and Glass (5)
      5. Leather (3)
      6. Transmutation (11)
      7. Explosives (2)
      8. Waxes (2)
      9. Perfumes and Cosmetics (6)
      10. Food Technology (8)
      11. Demonic Expugation (2)
      12. Textiles (2)
      13. Adhesives (4)
      14. Sulphur (1)
      15. Agriculture (1)
      16. Pulp and Paper (1)
      17. Printing and Inks (2)
      18. Oils and Fats (3)
      19. Soap (1)
      20. Drugs (1)
      21. Cleaning (1)

XVIII. Geology and Geophysics (106)
   A. Introductory and General Works (13)
   B. History of Geology (4)
   C. Physical Geology (12)
   D. Structural Geology (3)
   E. Historical Geology (3)
   F. Fossils (11)
   G. Earthquakes (6)
   H. Volcanoes (2)
   I. Rocks (11)
   J. Marine Geology (2)
   K. Mineralogy (18)
   L. Economic Geology (13)
   M. Geophysics (8)

XIX. Plant and Animal Life (244)
   A. General Biology (50)
      1. Introductions (26)
      2. Biological Anthropology (11)
      3. Microscopy (8)
      4. Biophysics and Magic (5)
   B. Botony (67)
      1. Introductions (15)
      2. Textbooks and Manuals (15)
      3. Geographical Distribution (7)
      4. Flowers (10)
      5. Trees (11)
      6. Flowerless Plants and Grasses (9)
   C. Zoology (95)
      1. Introductions (14)
      2. Marine and Freshwater Animals (16)
      3. Reptiles (8)
      4. Insects and Spiders (17)
      5. Birds (20)
      6. Mammals (7)
      7. Butterflies and Moths (2)
   D. Scientists’ Observations and Expeditions (11)
   E. Nature Study (32)
      1. Introductions (12)
      2. Nature Writers (20)

XX. Medical Sciences (192)
   A. History and Research (28)
   B. Anatomy and Physiology (33)
   C. Mind and Body (21)
   D. Public Health and Hygiene (20)
   E. Hospitals (6)
   F. Personal Health and Hygiene (10)
   G. Ailments and Diseases (24)
   H. Problems of Old Age (7)
   I. Nursing (14)
   J. Biographies (29)

XXI. Engineering Sciences (251)
   A. General Works (11)
   B. Applied Mechanics (11)
   C. Hydraulics and Fluid Mechanics (10)
   D. Engineering Materials (22)
   E. Civil Engineering (75)
      1. History (3)
      2. Surveying (11)
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      4. Building Construction (36)
         a) General Works (18)
         b) Estimating (2)
         c) Carpentry (5)
         d) Masonry (11)
      5. Soil Mechanics and Foundations (6)
      6. Road Construction (7)
      7. Dam Construction (3)
   F. Sanitary Engineering (11)
   G. Mechanical Engineering (73)
      1. General Works (13)
      2. Mechanical Drawing (20)
      3. Foundry Work (6)
      4. Metalsmithing (14)
      5. Tool Design and Toolmaking (7)
      6. Mechanism Design (6)
      7. Golem Creation (7)
   H. Heat and Power Engineering (33)
      1. Thermodynamics (6)
      2. Steam Engineering (6)
      3. Fuels and Fuel Burners (6)
      4. Heating (9)
      5. Refridgeration (6)
   I. Chemical Engineering (5)

XXII. Mining and Metallurgy (96)
   A. Mining (24)
   B. Physical Metallurgy (16)
   C. Extractive Metallurgy (23)
   D. Powder Metallurgy (4)
   E. Metallurgy of Iron (15)
   F. Metallography (5)
   G. Alloys (9)

XXIII. Aeronautics (68)
   A. History (16)
   B. Creatures (13)
   C. Riding (18)
   D. Principles of Flying (7)
   E. Gliders (3)
   F. Rockets (5)
   G. Flight Field Management (6)

XXIV. Military and Naval Affairs (104)
   A. Military History (21)
   B. Military Strategy (27)
   C. Naval History (14)
   D. Naval Tactics (21)
   E. Air Warfare (3)
   F. Weapons (18)

XXV. Agriculture and Gardening (344)
   A. History (11)
   B. Farm Economy (12)
   C. Farm Management (30)
   D. Rural Life (15)
   E. Soils and Conservation (26)
   F. Pests (10)
   G. Vegetable Growing (8)
   H. Field Crops (16)
   I. Fruit Culture (12)
   J. Animal Husbandry (17)
   K. Dairying (7)
   L. Poultry (19)
   M. Bees (7)
   N. Game Birds and Fur-Bearing Animals (9)
   O. Forestry (23)
   P. Fisheries (8)
   Q. Gardening (114)
      1. Planning and Design (24)
      2. Garden Manuals (19)
      3. Growing Individual Flowers (17)
      4. Shrubs and Trees (16)
      5. Lawns (3)
      6. Vegetables and Fruits (10)
      7. Herbs (5)
      8. Indoor Gardening (8)
      9. Plant Diseases (7)
      10. Decorative Gardening (5)

XXVI. Food Making (75)
   A. General Works (6)
   B. Cookery (52)
      1. General Cookery (26)
      2. Regional Cookery (26)
   C. Wines and Liquors (5)
   D. Food Preservation (6)
   E. Service and Entertaining (6)

Alphabet

Before getting into the meat of the post, I feel I have to take a moment to clarify the difference between ‘writing’ and ‘alphabet’ as I understand it from the Civ IV tech list. In my post on writing I was clear about it referring to the symbolism that was developed to represent concepts – both physical and abstract. In this post, I persuade the gentle reader to remember that an alphabet is a series symbols meant to represent sounds that are a part of language, and that the combination of these sounds produce words.

The confusion arises with the verb ‘to write’ ... as I will be using that verb throughout this post to describe the use of the alphabet. I don’t wish to confuse the reader and make him believe that I am referring to the technology writing. It is only that it is easier to say that the world being influenced by the development of the alphabet was carried forward by ‘writing,’ rather than my having to say ‘alphabetizing’ ... nyet?

There are a variety of alphabets in existence – systems which represent phonemes (as this alphabet I’m using now does), logos (as Chinese does) and syllables (as those incorporated into Chinese and Japanese). I’m not big linguistical man, and am hopelessly mired in the English language. I am vaguely familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet, and less familiar with the traditional Greek system, and I have no knowledge whatsoever of a single logo from China, except that I know the popular symbol used to denote ‘red dragon’ actually means ‘center tile’ in mah jong.

I am usually concerned with alphabets, generally, only so far as I know the one I use very well, as I use it a lot. That, for me, is as far as it goes.

As I understand it, the technological innovation represented by the alphabet derives from the realization that a sound, rather than an object, could be represented by a symbol. The process by which this was realized did not happen overnight – it took, by most accounts, more than two thousand years. Alphabets were proceeded by proto-alphabets, that combined various symbols, syllables and phonemes into increasingly sophisticated language representations, what we call the Sumerian writing system. This would later be improved by the Phoenicians, into an alphabet that represented many of the sounds we would recognize with symbols that most people would not.

According to Jared Diamond, of Guns, Germs and Steel, the difficulties in creating a unique alphabet were superseded by the ease with which Sumerian and Phoenician alphabets could be adapted (a process called ‘blueprinting’) to other existing languages. For this reason, every phoneme-using language in the old world corresponds to the same alphabet I’m using now, whatever symbols might be used for ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’ and so on. The principle exception is Mayan, which could not be influenced by Sumerian at any time prior to the 16th century.

Every would-be creator of a language for D&D, fantasy or science fiction indulges in blueprinting – from Elvish to Klingon. Those created languages still use a fabricated alphabet that still represents consonants and vowels – it merely changes the symbols and compresses certain combinations of sounds together in order to create an ‘alien’ aspect. There are plenty of languages which use our alphabet that do the same thing. The combination of letters commonly used in Polish names, written as ‘szcz’, represents the sound ‘sh-ch’, pronounced after a certain fashion. Accents in French, Norwegian, Swedish and Turkish produce moderate changes to the length and emphasis of vowels or consonents, but the principle of the alphabet remains unchanged. You can add a ‘letter’ to the list, but you will still use the existing list for virtually every sound you intend to make in your conceived ‘orcish’ language.

Whatever sound you think to invent, some human on the planet has already invented it and defined a symbol for it. It might be fun to make languages, but you are covering old ground.

I remember that as a player I never found much playability in foreign languages. I certainly don’t as a DM. If I have something that is not written in common, and I do have from time to time, it is enough for me and my players to simply say, “It’s in a language you don’t recognize.” When one player says, can I read it, it serves the plot well enough to say yes, no, or you can understand such and such a word. Of all the things I conceive working on, reproducing language isn’t one of them.

But to each their own. There’s a certain pleasure in speaking and writing languages which cannot be readily understood by outsiders. It produces a kind of superiority – a social class-structure between those who know Klingon and the noobies at the convention who haven’t committed the time to learn it. We Klingon speakers can thus create jokes and laugh at such pathetic, unworthy wannabes who think they have the right to breathe the same air as ourselves.

Which brings me to the next point.

The written word has long been used for the purpose of defining a greater class from a lesser. The Catholic Church jealously guarded the Latin Bible for centuries, disallowing any but the truly worthy to be instructed in Latin, upon pain of death. That is, if you understood Latin, and you chose to use it to undermine the Churches authority by telling people what was actually in the Bible, we killed you for it.

Clearly, you weren’t worthy.

The Torah has been guarded even more jealously, going so far as to disallow any but truly holy men from even seeing the scrolls upon which the words were written, much less being privileged to read the words. This is a practice which precedes Judaism, reaching back to the time when language was first adapted to matters more important than mere bookkeeping.

Early written language has been shown to be largely representations of transactions between persons. For business, symbols are enough – it is still enough for accounting to identify the object, how many are needed or possessed, and how much is paid for it. The reason to develop an alphabetic system beyond this derives from the need to convey abstract messages important enough that the reader comprehends exactly what the writer intends.

Messages of such importance fall under two categories: management and religion.

By management, obviously, I mean chiefs and kings, who need to convey policy. Policies such as laws, orders, proof of ownership, proof of importance and so on. As the commander of my king’s troops, I need to have some proof of my legitimacy as commander; that the orders I carry out are in fact the king’s orders; and that if I execute someone, the law by which they are executed is clearly understood by everyone before the fact.

The alphabet allows for the creation of such written policies – as specific as they can possibly be. And because language is never as specific as we would wish, the alphabet creates the need for lawyers.

In small societies, such written words are never necessary. But there is a limit to how many people a human being can be expected to recognize and remember details about ... and as it turns out, that number is between about 150 and 400. After that, however good your memory is, as a local leader you’re going to look at someone in your war party and ask, “Who the hell is that?”

As the number of people in a culture increases, you become more and more dependent on someone close to you, whom you trust, answering you, “Don’t worry about him, Big Kahuna. That’s Grunk; he’s good people.”

With the increases in population going on in areas like China, Egypt and Mesopotamia, there came a point where thousands of people began to congregate in cities – testing the limit on how many advisors you could rely on to recognize all the people you were seeing. Human societies found themselves facing a situation they never had before ... that that guy there, that stranger, isn’t known by me or by anyone I know, but he isn’t a threat because he seems to serve some purpose in being here.

When you have more than 150 people keeping track of 150 people each, you have problems.

The alphabet was produced primarily as a management tool – a method by which messages could be conveyed not merely to one other person, but to hundreds of other persons. Who could then respond positively or negatively, allowing kingdoms to operate in spite of the existence of strangers. The alphabet was the response to the demand for bureaucracy, which in turn demanded a more sophisticated alphabet. We are still in the same loop – while we’ve largely fixed the alphabetic method, we have never stopped restructuring the written word as it becomes necessary.

This bureaucracy had two unforeseen, civilization building impacts: the first, that commands and information could be conveyed over an unlimited distance; and second, that they could be conveyed over an unlimited time.

I say ‘unlimited’ because there are no absolute limits on how far a message could be carried (there still aren’t), however long that takes, and because we don’t know for certain how long a message can last. True, most messages have been lost, but we can never be certain we won’t dig up copies in the desert someday, can we?

The alphabet allowed empire building on a grand scale, for the first time. The Phoenicians carried their message to hundreds of locations throughout the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, promoting both their language and their policies, preempting existing cultures which were afterwards modified along the Phoenician model. Mythologies, religious ideals and laws became commonplace in east-west patterns from Spain to China. Where once there might have arisen thousands of unique cultures along the Star Trek Prime Directive pattern, that ideal was blown asunder. As the King in Tyre, I send a few cartloads of messages to my representative in Scythia and that stuff gets done – or else someone I trust writes back to me. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never seen Scythia – I have accounts about the region read to me all the time. What’s more, I may never have met the King of Scythia, but I’m told by people who dwell there that he’s a real sweet guy.

And now I, the King of Tyre’s son, am King ... and how did my father want things done? Why, its written everywhere. And no matter how many tablets I try to destroy, it always seems there is one more, affecting people in my kingdom and how they view me. So I am forever haunted by my dead father. No longer are we limited to memory. History exists, and what happened before matters. What happened before tells us what to do now.

So some thoughts for D&D:

Various religious groups will possess written words which are more than merely ‘lost books’ for the players to find. There ought to exist cults who manifestly obey these lost books, either augmenting or tearing down the existing structure all around. Even seeing the words written there is impossible for all but the truly blessed – if the unblessed look at them, they will melt like Nazi made of wax.

Multiple cultures will interact according to their language relationships more than they will according to their race or their class. The nearly black Afro-Asiatics of the Sahel in Africa related perfectly well to their Turkic brethren because they read the same books and believed in the same religion ... the Sahel-dwelling blacks did not relate to other blacks who were Bantu or West African, who did not read. Moreover, those peoples, along with the Indonesians, were all Islam not because they just liked the religion, but because there were written materials to convey the message. The same is true for the spread of most every religion, allowing for local modifications to the texts. In comparing black Ethiopian Coptics to white English Catholics, the tale of Prester John describes more similarities than differences.

Inordinately stupid races, with low intelligence, cannot possibly have alphabets of their own. There would be a fair argument to suggest that, once suffused with written words pronounced according to foreign principles, languages such as goblin or troglodyte (intelligence 5-7) would lose their uniqueness completely in favor of hobgoblin or orcish. Goblin could not rationally be more than a dialect. Moreover, in order to make themselves understood, orcish would be steadily broken until it became a mere dialect of the language spoken by ogre mages. And so on. Question whether or not most of these independent languages would really differ in more than in local flavor.

Finally, in terms of the social relationships in the world you’re devising, don’t create individual cultures according to their geographic setting, but according to the distance such cultures are from each other in terms of time of travel. Celtic Scotland is vastly different from the heartland of Austria in terms of its geography, but both regions shared a cultural heritage for thousands of years, simply because the sea enabled ease of travel throughout the length of the British Isles and up the rivers of France and Germany into the interior of Europe.

Two seafaring nations a thousand miles apart may share agreeable perspectives, such as Zanzibar on the East Coast of Africa being organized similar to the Rajah states of Cochin India. The problems of Zanzibar are similar to the problems of Cochin India, and they have learned from one another, encouraging the spread of ‘approved’ writings. Physical distance does not guarantee cultural diversity.

More Technologies, More Posts

It comes that time to post the next segment of Civilization IV technologies, columns 5 through 8 of the whole tech tree from the game.   And it would indicate that the next post is meant to be 'Alphabet' ... which I'll get started on forthwith.

As you can see, these subjects take us up pretty much to the end of the Roman Empire.  I'm still more or less on top of the subject matter, and I have my classical education to thank for that.  I don't expect to be really out of my depth until quite some time yet.

I know that many of my gentle readers have enjoyed these posts, and I thank them for the compliments.  I do usually have to do some research into each topic, usually to 'wake up' parts of my memory about things, to remind me how such and such started or what effects the technologies have had.  But of course there are matters I don't take into account - there are spins and ideas I don't touch on, frankly because I didn't think of them, and sometimes because I chose not to follow that particular perspective.  It is much appreciated that the gentle reader has, from time to time, made the effort to fill in the gaps.

I encourage you to do so more often, as the subject matter is going to get wider and more complex.  Some of the subjects listed below could start three or four posts, quite easily - and I may do that, if the mood strikes me.  After all, there's no rule that I made of one technology, one post.

We'll just see how it goes.

Standardized Sheets? Phooey!

On the left, I include the character sheet front page of one of my players, running a mage/thief.  I only chanced to see this a few days ago, as it is on my player's computer - and she hasn't had access to her computer for a few months.*

The character sheet is of her own design, created on power point.  It has a definitely feminine appearance, but no matter - it suits her personality and it suits what is important to her about her character.

I hate standardized character sheets.  In a world like mine, where there are many house rules, and where many of the rules that have been imposed by the establishment in the last three decades are ignored entirely, bought or downloaded character sheets are a total waste.

To begin with, I do not have any alignments.  Nor skills.  Nor feats, electrum or platinum pieces, nor multiple spoken languages or a number of other features.  But I do have excessive details about the character's past, knowledge fields and specialties and other things which a character must take account for.

The thing is, as a character develops in my world, one sheet is never enough.  I tend to introduce a lot of NPCs that have only a passing acquaintance to characters, plus many details about the world and a considerable amount of highly diverse objects to be found.  By fifth level, most of my players find they are keeping at least five to seven sheets of notes, designs, maps and so on.  They find they have to divide their equipment up between what's stored at their keep, what's on their horse, what's hanging on what belt and what is in what pouch, since I care about things like that.  It gets complicated.

And since most equipment sheets are busy with lines and boxes and extraneous shit, they're not very flexible when it comes to anything except a cold, lifeless list.  Besides, anything kept on paper needs to be rewritten and rewritten, over and over.  Annoyingly.

So again, thank you for computers.

Most of my players like to have a computer generated sheet that they can print off, scratch all over the page making notes, then go home and update.  Virtually every standardized sheet I've seen is full of black ink which can't be comfortably written over and which reduces, considerably, the space for notes.  Note that the character sheet in the example above has tons of white space.

In most ways, a character sheet is like a player's home.  Sometimes messy, sometimes clean, but always very personal.  It defies standardization and it should defy standardization.  I am always arguing that players need to think outside  the box.

Giving them more boxes to fill doesn't help.

* The cantrips are missing from the sheet because somehow in the computer being down that data was lost.  We didn't have time our last running to generate new ones, and the character wasn't in the combat we were running.

D&D. The Game is Called D&D

So now it's, quote, "Arneson's Game"?  What the fuck.

I realize the man is dead now, and that there's a growing sentiment that follows a lot of dead people, mythologizing the person's character and accomplishes ... but I really have to draw the line at indentifying D&D, which honestly has been designed, influenced and modified by literally hundreds of people, by the misnomer of one individual's contribution.

Yes, I know a lot of you out there met him personally.  Yes, I know a lot of you liked him.  I remember the outpouring of grief when he passed away.  And that some of you need to feel a panegyric is in some kind of order.  I feel your pain.

But let's just call it D&D, all right?  Let's not give it a synonym that's really just a fraud.  Let's not create a fucking cult here.

Settings And Abuses Of Settings

Rusty Battle Axe left me this query on the last post, and I finally have time to take a swing at it:

”I'm always struck how much easier it is to create once a campaign starts moving. I always found that there is this essential tension between creating a world that exists apart from PCs and also being conscious of the fact during creation that this is a campaign setting that is meant for players. It is both "indifferent" and "all about them" at once. I'm curious to know your thoughts on that.

I do beg to differ, though it's really a quibble. I don’t believe that the campaign ‘setting’ should reflect the players at all – as Axe says, the world exists apart. I see it that way for a couple of reasons. For one, there are too many possible players with widely different personalities for the world to cater to everyone, and for another, I am used to a world that is largely indifferent to me. I feel that a D&D world should be likewise – that it shouldn’t ‘cater’ to the players in terms of its construction or how it functions.

But, on the other hand the campaign itself, the weaving of enemy motivations and encounters that formulate the sessions – this should very definitely be ALL about the players.

I told you it was only a quibble.

What does ‘about the players’ mean, exactly?

I have never liked the term ‘referee’ where it is applied to RPGs, fundamentally because I’m not one. Whereas I have on occasion interceded on a player’s behalf to defend them from another player, I don’t do this as an authority figure, but as another person in the game. My players learn from experience that I never take any opportunity to ‘punish’ players for wrongdoing, either for their behavior as players or as human beings. If someone offends me, I demand an apology. But my role as DM doesn’t include spanking bad players.

Now and then, a player’s own actions will incur the wrath of NPCs ... but I usually try to mitigate that wrath by giving players repeated opportunities to mend their ways. I’ll have the bad guys threaten them, and then I’ll have the bad guys break their thumbs, and only after the player repeatedly acts like a bozo will I actually have the bad guys kill.

In very rare occasions a player will incur an assassination attempt. I don’t invoke assassins lightly, and I usually make the assassin the same level as the player when the player committed the offense – which usually means by the time the assassination actually occurs, the player is one or two levels higher than the assassin. But not always. Sometimes a player is very arrogant and very deserving, and the assassination happens very quickly.

Sometimes a player will raise some evil spirit that comes looking for payback. This usually involves a one-on-one combat for about three rounds before the player gets help (I like to be fair). It takes a fairly blatant act of blindness or stupidity to create this scenario.

In almost every other situation, I will give my players a chance to run ... even when circumstances dictate they really shouldn’t get that chance. This, too me, is intentionally arranging world events to suit the players. It doesn’t change the setting, however. It may be that the only place for the players to run is straight out into the desert, where they can expect to die soon without a lucky encounter roll. But I will make the roll.

Life and death is only the most obvious situation. There are hundreds of less obvious things that I do, that I am very careful never to tell the party about.

Running even a sandbox campaign requires that certain details are worked out in advance of the party. Strangers must have motivations and plans which the party will not discover until a later date. There must be a room designed on some level, even if it only in my head, beyond the door that is yet unopened. And I’m a human being – I am not above subtle changes in the next room based on what is happening at a given moment.

I love irony. If I can make my world a bit more ironic by changing the number or variety of monster in the next room, I will. I’ve tried running a world where I’ve steadfastly obeyed the dice on every occasion and the result is an adventure that lacks continuity, rhythm and the steady, demanding build to a climax.

In the same context, I’ve also ‘rushed’ a party through a potentially boring travelling campaign in bypassing encounters and events, just so that I can get them from point A to point B in a minimal period of time. Now and then, I’ll have someone teleport them. Most times, I’ll simply calculate the number of days and move on.

As I say, I draw the line at the world itself. I won’t move cities, I won’t have monsters die from spontaneous heart attacks, and NPCs don’t just give over magic items out of the goodness of their hearts. I will move things along to keep the campaign from getting boring, but I won’t furnish the party with a ring of teleportation just to get them out of one jam.

This sounds very much like I’m changing things all the time, whereas I’m really not. In my earlier campaign incarnations, twenty years ago, when I didn’t have maps and developed house rules, or the solid campaign design I have now, I was forced to make spontaneous changes constantly. The campaign I used to run simply didn’t hang together as well as it does now, I was not as well-versed in a wide variety of subjects the way I am now, I was not as adept at creating complicated plot weaves and so on ... and I had to take short-cuts.

And now very often I read on other blogs about how these short-cuts cause a world to be more ‘imaginative’ or ‘fluid’ ... further supported by arguments that forethought and foreplanning make a world stale and predictable. I find all this a kind of ‘praise of half-assery’ – where it makes an argument that magic and mysticism can’t been developed thoughtfully and intricately and then laid out ahead of time, on a grand scale, because it sounds like ‘work’ and this is all supposed to be ‘play.’

Creating a world is very much ‘work’ to me. When I step out of the room, I say to my wife, “I’m going to go back to work now.” I take the whole issue seriously. Players depend on me to be clever and as precise as possible, and D&D is a huge, cumbersome system that defies my attempts to take into account every detail. That’s why I love it. It is labour. It is effort. We don’t call them ‘plays of art.’ It is a Work.

It is only during the session that I refer to the game as ‘playing.’ And during the session, I apply my hard-worked world to making things as much fun as possible ... through driving my players through every emotion from fear to excitement to hilarity. For that I make changes on the fly. I’m thankful now that most of those changes are tweaks rather that sweeping shifts.

I cannot begin to imagine why every DM doesn’t want to work so hard on their worlds that their fingers bleed. I cannot imagine why, once they’ve created their worlds, they seem to treat them with such disdain. I continue to be puzzled when I see long time players announcing that they have a ‘New’ campaign they want to run. Didn’t they work hard enough on their old campaign? Couldn’t they find any respect for the things they worked on?

Are they incapable of falling in love?

Campaign Soup

It feels good to be running again, both on and off line.  Mostly for the reasons the gentle reader would expect, but also because it provides fodder for this blog.  Today I am thinking about the beginnings of campaigns.

A good campaign does not begin all too quickly.  It's good to get people on the road, or on the move - to get them equipping themselves and working out strategies in how to function together ... but I don't advocate slapping them with an McEncounter the second they've designed their characters.  This is somewhat disfunctional online, where things move more slowly; an off-line session can get a decent adventure off the ground in a couple of hours.  Online, I've found, it takes at least two weeks.

That is because of the ground that needs to be covered.  First and foremost, a strong setting.  Someplace which the players can identify, and which is not overly threatening.  Traditionally D&D has always preferred a tavern or an inn, but anywhere relatively safe and patrolled will do: a populated city square, a well-travelled road, a walled-in village or yes, a large, well-maintained ship.

I tend to start my players in circumstances over which they have no control - the inn is mastered by the innkeeper, the local church by the clergy, the ship by tough sailors - and this sometimes creates an immediate sense of distrust.  What if the shipmaster turns on the party?  What if the other guests violently plunder the inn?  What if the sun suddenly goes down and bandits attack?

I'm sure other DMs play that way.  For myself, I want my players to feel - initially - safe.  If they get into danger, it won't be on account of my putting them into a situation and trapping them.  For the first while, I want my players to feel there's a way out.

For example, consider the two campaigns I'm running online.

The party moving along the road can stop at any time.  They don't have to fulfill the 'quest.'  They can wish the cleric cheery-by and part company, and no hard feelings.  The NPC might lose respect for them - but he isn't railroading them along.

I've been very careful to allow the party on board ship a way out.  The ship will be stopping at Corfu - and if the party feels suddenly they don't want to travel to Egypt and work for the strange archeologist, again, no problem.  In the meantime, I am working up a shipboard adventure - no different, really, than a dungeon adventure or a city adventure.  Certainly a bit cramped.  The trick, however, is to make it voluntary.

How is that done, exactly?

My experience has been that parties will respond to some very definite motivations, if given the chance and if those are delivered correctly.  I list them out, to encourage other DMs to try them.  I'll begin with the most obvious:

Greed.  This hardly needs an explanation; throw out a promise of gold somewhere and people will go for it.  However ... an ordinary monster and treasure does not a good adventure make, not in my experience.  To really play on player greed, and build a long term adventure, the end 'treasure' needs to be more than merely a plundered lair.  It needs to be the gold that keeps on giving - magic or power.  Both of which corrupt quite nicely ... even if the objects or the power is clean, the players are not, and will create their own messes somewhere.

Injustice.  Ordinary injustices, such as poverty, abuse, crime - I don't find these things motivate a party very well.  DMs usually have to railroad to make them work.  But an injustice that a particular player can really identify with, something that hits them below the belt ... works every time.  Women in the party, all I have to do is have a woman beaten to death right in front of them and they are on board.  Got a bard?  Wreck an instrument ... make it a nice one.  Give a villain a rod of cancellation and ruin the chief player's +2 sword.  Have the giant deliberately target the paladin's warhorse with boulders.  Nasty.

Insult.  This always seems a bit strange to me, but I've repeatedly found it to work.  Have an assassin step out from behind a pillar and attempt to kill a player, fail, and die, and you'll get nothing.  Have the assassin say, a round before dying, "We all said when we started that you were a greasy bastard," and the player will spend four runnings trying to find out who 'we' are.  My favorite is to do the Finnegan from Star Trek thing; have thieves stand at a distance, taunt, and get away with it ... parties get very hot under the collar.

Two Camps.  This is perpetually my favorite.  Wherever the party is, whatever they're doing, have some conflict going on between total strangers ... and watch the party pick sides.  It's human nature.  The more realistic you can make the motive for the two camps, the better.  If you get a really good riff going, you can get the party switching sides over and over as new information comes in, as they won't know who they should back.  What's particularly funny is that most of the time, while the party is saying, "We're on OUR side," they are still willingly getting involved in something that never had anything to do with them in the first place.

And, of course, you can have both sides haul the party in for a 'chat.'  This has long been a standard trope for thrill plots -  Hitchcock used it, Star Trek used it, most Sci Fi / Fantasy TV uses it, hundreds of quality writers and directors have used it.  The mistaken identity, the party assumed to be helping Side A when they're not, driving them towards helping Side A because Side B are clearly such a group of assholes.

What's more, when you're ready as a DM to make it more complicated, you make it three camps, and then four camps, and so on.

You can't set things like this up in five minutes.  Like a good stew, it takes time.  It gathers strength and then melds, the rich aroma pulling the players in and holding then on the brim of the pot, while you stir and stir.

Iron Working

There is more iron in the world than every other kind of metal put together, by almost a factor of ten. Iron ore is wildly common, so common that whole landscapes are red with it. Powdered iron makes beaches and taints deserts, forms wide visible layers in bare rock and collects in layers at the bottom of ponds and lakes. It is a heavy, hard stone, twice as heavy as most gems – polished, it makes fine jewelry, and existed as jewelry thousands of years before it was founded as metal.


Iron is not as easily founded as copper – iron melts at a temperature 900 degrees hotter than copper. I quote from Daniel R. Headrick, Technology, A World History:

“The simple furnaces used at the time – pits dug in a hillside and lined with stones or clay – could not get hot enough to melt iron. What came out was a spongy mixture of iron and slag (or dirt) known as a bloom. To drive out the slag, blacksmiths had to heat and hammer the bloom repeatedly, a tedious process that required a great deal of time and charcoal. The result – wrought iron – was softer than bronze, cracked easily, did not hold an edge as well, and rusted rapidly. Yet iron had one tremendous advantage: its ores are found in large quantities in almost every country, often close to the surface, where they are easy to dig up.

“Gradually, by trial and error, blacksmiths improved their product. To prevent cracking, they learned to cool hot iron by dipping it in cold water. To make it less brittle, they tempered it by reheating the quenched iron several times. By repeatedly placing an iron object in direct contact with burning charcoal, they turned its surface into steel. By the fourth century BCE, blacksmiths were making iron swords with a steel cutting edge that was hard enough to cut through bronze.”

Note that we can posit from the above that although iron was being used extensively at the beginning of the classical age, bronze had not gone out of fashion in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. The fifth century Spartan hoplites were still using bronze weapons and shields, as were the Romans and Etruscans during the period of the Roman kings (prior to 509 BCE).

But cheaper, quality iron would eventually replace bronze weapons. Virtually all the weapons in Alexander the Great’s army would be iron, as would the weapons of India when the two armies met in the Battle of Hydaspes in 326 BCE. Iron had been introduced in India about 1000 BCE; long prior to that, and prior to its discovery by the Hittites, iron had been used by the Chinese. Thus, by the end of the Classical world and the rise of Rome, it was an iron world.

For those DMs out there who are working on Mesopotamian or even Assyrian campaigns, iron should exist either as a cheap alternative to bronze, both inexpensive and inferior. On the other hand, a specific race that has properly learned to forge iron as it was forged in the fourth century might have a decided advantage over others.

Apart from things I talked about yesterday, hard iron weapons might effectively destroy weapons as they strike. The same might be said for mithril vs. iron swords, or even magical weapons against non-magical. Where is the table that demands a saving throw to be made by inferior grade metals against superior alternatives? Shouldn’t there be a chance that my iron sword will split my opponent’s wooden spear?

I’ve never come up with a simple, workable arrangement that allows this ... but it seems like something that should happen – not just once in a blue moon, but with frightening regularity. Suppose that with every to hit roll that results in a ‘19’ (as opposed to a natural 20), the opponent’s weapon must make save. Would it be worth it?

I think it would have to be judged in terms of comparative materials. A quarterstaff against a quarterstaff would not incur a saving throw ... nor would the quarterstaff cause the magic weapon to have to save. This would be a one-way process – and so the saving throw would have to reflect the difference between the two weapons ... it couldn’t simply be a flat save vs. crushing blow.

If my combats weren’t already as complicated as they are, I might consider this. If I had someone who could keep track of these things, I would definitely be working on such a table. But I don’t think it very important just now. I leave it to you, gentle reader, to work on it as you will.

Metal Casting

I have a small issue with this technology, as it is indivisible from ‘bronze working’ and ‘iron working’ – since it was learned early that making moulds in sand was an obvious way to employ the plasticity of the medium. Swords, scythes, armor and so on are all made by first casting, then forging. Civ IV offers players the opportunity to install forges in cities once the technology is attained, but really, there is scant bronze or iron working without a forge.


But I will take the opportunity here to talk about metals in general.

The ancients discovered seven metals: iron, copper, silver, tin, mercury, lead and gold. An eighth metal wasn’t discovered until 1752 ... and it wasn’t identified in the old world at all, but in Colombia, South America. The metal, found associated with gold in mines, was platinum.

Fifteen more would be discovered by 1800 – cobalt, nickel, manganese, molybdenum, tungsten, tellurium, beryllium, chromium, uranium, zirconium, yttrium, antimony, bismuth, zinc and arsenic. For all these except the last four, only laboratory specimens were available. Cobalt through yttrium were not in common use.

Some of these metals had been employed by alchemists, without much understanding of why their mineral sources interacted with other substances. Calamine (zinc ore) had been known for centuries as “Indian tin” ... and was known to react well with copper – but brass was not a common alloy until the 1780s.

Separating a metal from its source is no easy task, except for the seven base metals listed above. One might wonder how mithril or adamantium fit into the periodic table – except that most DMs don’t bother wondering about such things. It’s inconvenient (described as dull) and unromantic. I do use both in my world, according to my own rules – and I don’t concentrate overmuch on how either is smelted or worked. Obviously, it must be comparatively easy compared with difficult substances like cobalt or yttrium, since we all assume adamantium is present in the medieval world. Conveniently and expressly made by cultures who live deep beneath the earth and possess no earthly means to vent fires or dump slag, of course.

It could be dumped into the Astral Plane, I suppose. Which would make the Astral Plane look like Montgomeryshire or Polish Silesia ... not at all Romantic, unless you’re a D.H. Lawrence fan.

I digress.

Six of the original seven metals can be cast into various shapes – mercury is the exception, as it is liquid in a warm room. As such, it was very often used as a medicinal tool, and in some ways is effective in that capacity. It also causes mercury poisoning. Mercury also makes a good means for purifying metals – resulting in the poisoning of streams below mining communities, and thus the poisoning of miners through their water supply. Crippled, dying miners overworked by nasty overlords who are prepared to sacrifice them for the sake of silver and gold has a long precedent in history, and still goes on today. It isn’t a popular D&D plot hook ... but it could be.

Tin mixed with copper makes bronze, which is the only comparison to iron in terms of making hardened tools – as I’ve said before, it is expensive. Tin mixed with lead makes pewter, which makes jewellery comparable with silver and gold, and could be improved in lustre when mixed with some silver. The ancients mixed and experimented with all the metals, finding how to make things beautiful or practical, or both.

The effects of this metal experimentation were far reaching. Metal was a mutable substance, like clay used to make pottery – except that metal was much harder, and could be made to take on a point like bone, or an edge like flint, or the weight of stone. It could be spread wide to make shields, or beaten paper thin and grafted onto the surface of a wall. It was ground and made into paint, drunk as a tonic (with varying effects), spun out as thread and sewn into clothing.

Most of all, it was used widely as a tool. Cultures could for the first time cut down whole forests with little trouble, which expanded homebuilding and shipbuilding, leading to exploration and thereafter to exploitation. Stone could be split easily and quickly, through the use of fewer workers, resulting in mass stone construction projects sponsored not by emperors, but by ordinary wealthy people, making private temples, theatres, walls and roads. Road building would lead to trade and solidly built walls to greater security.

Because it is far easier to found metals at a lower altitude (melting point is lower), the jump on metal manufacture was made by lowland cultures – rather than in the highlands, where much of the ore originated. There are exceptions, such as Anatolia (Hittites) and Persia (Medes) ... however, while both those cultures occupied high plateaus, they were considerable lower than the surrounding, mountainous regions.

This metal founding, affecting in turn the manner in which cultures were structured, enabled the building of empires which in turn would destroy the hill peoples, still limited to wooden or flint tools, who still spent most of their time keeping themselves alive. Ultimately, metal casting is a time-saving technology; allow me to give an example.

A spear can be used to catch fish, obviously. It can be cleverly fashioned with barbs so as to make the implement more effective, and with training a hunter can provide enough to feed his family. It does require that the hunter work fairly hard, standing at the ready until a fish appears, throwing the spear in, withdrawing it, throwing it in again ... and all the while standing in what is often very cold water. In tropical climes, the hunter is exposed to dangerous animals like stonefish, or predators.

Compare this with a fish hook. It requires no cleverness to make. It requires very little talent, particularly when the hook is used as a jig or the fishing line is tied to a float. The fisher needs to use virtually no energy in order to reap the meal. The fisher does not need to set foot into the creek or the lagoon. While nets are still used by experts to produce quantities of fish, everyone can make a small effort and feed themselves that day. Even children.

Metals changed daily behavior in hundreds of ways, just like that. Later, of course, they would change behavior in thousands of ways ... but that is down the road.

I know this wasn’t much of a D&D post. There’s little to say about how some people might better choose their equipment, or make better use of the equipment they have. I always think that’s true, but part of my pleasure as a DM is watching my players work it out for themselves. I don’t want to give them hints here.