Gather Data

On the subject of trade and trade systems.

After due consideration, I believe that I have made a mistake about what I've chosen to highlight in the past.  I have consistently presented the economic angle - the production of goods and services, their distribution and most ponderously their value.  I've used these things to demonstrate how they can be fitted into the framework of a world and how aspects of the distribution can add dimension and substance to that world.

Yet, after all that, I've failed to direct my attention to the place where a DM might begin with their world.  I've sought primarily to show by example, expecting that the problems that started my system are the same problems that everyone has already encountered.  Perhaps, however, I made a connection where others did not.

Allow me to correct that error - as I've only realized in the last day or so that I've made it.  I'll go back to my mindset before building any sort of system at all.

I know that most of you are unfamiliar with the AD&D Player's Handbook, so I'll ask you to insert the game required equipment list of your choosing.  I think most suffer from the same issues.  The Player's Handbook, for example, had two columns of print dedicated to equipment.  About forty percent described armor and weapons, the latter easily being the biggest section.  Half again as much gave prices for what amounted to dungeon equipment and food, most of which was designed for either drinking at the tavern or eating in a dungeon.  Then there was a section for animals - with four kinds of horses.  Tack took up another section. Then there were vehicles and ships, a few things for clerics and a few herbs.  The book did not include any descriptions, but later editions and other games made up for that.

I had three basic problems with the equipment list that, I remember, left me feeling that there was something fundamental lacking in the game.  First and foremost, that no matter where the players went, no matter how far they travelled, no matter what culture or climate or size of city they entered, a long sword was always the same price.

Secondly, there weren't enough items.  That was fixable by simply adding more items to the list, but that would inevitably lead to the third problem:  the price for everyone had to be pulled right out of the air.  There was no logic for why one weapon that did a certain amount of damage costed more than another that did the same damage, nor why banded mail, for example, was 5 g.p. more than splint mail, when they both offered the same armor class.  Why even have two different armours for that amount of protection?

Solving these three problems would not be an easy solution.  Most, I know, simply accept the book as written dogma, arguing that at least its a bullshit number that they themselves didn't invent, and so solves the problem.  Of course, players were always asking for things that did not exist on the table, meaning that I was forever inventing a price for something - leading to complaints that my made up price for one thing did not fit a pattern in the player's head regarding the price of something else.  I had only been playing the game for six years and I was already sick of it.

I had been considering various solutions based upon the weight of things and how much of different types of metal went into different objects, but I really could not decide on any method that didn't begin with at least two or three hundred half-assed judgement calls.  This was precisely what I wanted to avoid.

The problem at the time wasn't that my world needed an economy, it's that it needed some sort of logic for pricing things.  I felt that since things ought to be of a different price in different parts of the world, somehow this pricing system ought to account for that as well.  At the time, I remember being completely flummoxed.

I had been working as a statistical clerk for an oil company and had just taken a stats job with the 1986 census that would keep me busy for most of 1985.  I had seen the lengths to which companies and the government will go in order to amass data, organize it, interpret it and then use it to create policy - all in a world that had not yet invented excel or even windows.  Having done it myself for these companies, I wasn't afraid of a project that would take years - I did not care how long it would take, so long as whatever I came up with solved my issue.

See, I really hated those equipment tables.  I hated them with a stone cold passion.  After the first two levels, the players had literally nothing to spend their money on, while at the same time there was no reason whatsoever to travel from one part of the world to another.  I had recently decided that I needed to give up on making my own world and adapt the real earth to my system . . . a decision that only exacerbated the problem.  A sword costing the same amount of money in West Africa as in Spain?  Ridiculous!

The year my parents married, 1958, they had a visit by a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman that convinced them that they should buy a set of encyclopedias for their children.  My mom was pregnant with my brother at the time and so they were thinking about such things.  The salesman succeeded in selling them a '1959' set of Collier's Encyclopedias, as everything was identified as next year's in those days.  I would arrive on this earth six years later, in 1964; those encyclopedias would be central to my education before I grew old enough to start hunting through the city's university library.

It seems strange to me that some salesman managed to affect my life so much six years before I was born, but that's how things go.  I knew those books intimately - but they belonged to my parents and they stayed with them when I moved out of the house.  In 1986, as I struggled with my pricing problem, what existed in those books never occurred to me.  That is, until one day I was at a used bookstore and an entire set was available for $25.

My parents paid $600 for their set over a period of five years - in 1959 dollars.  The ones I would buy were much cheaper and were from 1952, not 1959.  I remember I had to come back to the store in two trips (I didn't have a car), as the total set weighs 90 lbs.  That didn't matter.  My brain was on fire.

I realized then that the descriptions of cities, regions, bodies of water and so on included descriptions of things that were made there.  That meant I could read the books, take notes, then somehow organize the location of those things into a pricing table that would account for things being a different price in different places.  As far as the actual price of things, I would somehow then compare the total production of things with the production of other things, so that I could use the scarcity of things to produce a price that wouldn't be invented.

How I would do this I had no idea.  But the principle was sound.  Gather data.  Organize data.  Interpret data.  Apply data.  I knew going in that it would take years.  No matter.  I was comfortable with that.  ALL statistics take years.

Here is the lesson from all this.  If you're reading this and thinking about making an economy, you're thinking about this backwards.  For that, I apologize.  That's all I've paid attention to on this blog.  The real issue is deciding, first, what things are going to exist and be available in your world.  THEN, decide where those things come from.

I used an encyclopedia to decide where things come from.  And because the encyclopedia was written for other agendas with other purposes, I discovered the origin of things I had never remotely heard of - which started me on researching the processing of such things and how they fit into an economy.  That last came about as an after effect of my solving the problem.

So we want to give your world an 'economy.'  We'll start by giving your world things.  You need to just make a list of everything you ever wanted your players to be able to buy.  After that, you'll need to decide how many places produce each of those things.  You don't need to do it as I did, with raw materials combined together to make developed goods.  You can just say, "I want fifty places in my world making swords."  We can make that work.

This is the place my course will start from.  I hope you're ready.

Changeup

At last, I may be hitting the end of this series.  I think I may have one more after this, but then it will be time to move onto other things.

The party, one might remember, will have gained a sense of relief from having just killed a group of giant ticks.  They're still hunting for the party of goblins that took away two women.  I had spoken of 'softening' up the party.

Let's look at the possible options for the adventure going forward.  The most obvious would be that the party finds the goblin village, kills all the goblins and rescues the two women.  This is how almost every module would write it.  The party gets their share of combat, the women are rescued, there's treasure and everyone is happy, yes?

As Scarbrow asked yesterday, however, where is the maintenance of tension or threat?  Once the village is destroyed, the rescue managed, the air is let from the bladder and we're back to square one, yes?

Well, not quite.  My book, How to Run, speaks of the importance of triumph, that being one of the best emotional states in the game.  Triumph allows treasure to fund new opportunities, to buy new toys, to expand the player's investments or interests, etcetera.  It also helps bind a party together.  There are lots of good things that triumph brings, even if it does release the tension.  Tension should be released, now and again, in order to change up the challenges and troubles a party faces.  After all, a new hook can always be created.

One of the worst things about a story arc - and certainly television has taught us this lesson - is the need to milk and milk the same damn conflict or narrative until it is a sickly grey bag of thin, putrid bile.  Too often the players are forced to pursue some enemy or mcguffin forever and ever, simply because the DM won't allow a resolution.  Many a campaign has died for lack of a change.

Moreover, it can be greatly beneficial to let things evaporate now and then, for it eliminates the party that is SO sure of how the immediate future is going to play out.  For example, what if they don't find the goblins?  Does that ever happen in the worlds we play in?  It is always assumed that, sooner or later, whether the women are alive or not, the party is guaranteed to find the village.

Why?  Surely its believable that the party will be left staggering around endlessly in the wild, until they have to give up.  How long would they keep trying?  They don't even know for sure that they're looking for a village - perhaps what they need to find is a small, hidden hole in the ground, concealed beneath a shroud of huckleberry bushes.  Hell, the party could have walked straight past it four or five times.  Even if the ranger does find a path, what is to say the path doesn't just lead straight out of the wilderness to some other road?  It would be very easy to miss a side path, or if the goblins had turned down one of the little brooks the party had passed, hiding their tracks.

Then again, suppose the players simply found the corpses of the women and no goblins?  What then? They don't know these women - would the party really feel a sense of revenge, or is it more likely they'd think the DM expected them to feel that?  What does the party feel like if they discover the dead women and no goblins - ever?  What message does that send?

Depending on how it is played, I don't believe it has to send the message, 'adventuring is pointless.'  Typically, the DM trying something like this will rush the sequence of events, saying something like, "Many days pass and you don't find anything."  Blah.  Two or three false trails would be better.  A bit of cloth, a broken weapon in the grass, something to suggest that the party is not out there alone.  The distraught, painful cries as Mazonn screams at the wood, perhaps as he tries to kill himself over the bodies of the women.   There's plenty of opportunity to create a moment that is poignant.  There's lots of opportunity to tease.

Helplessness is a discomfort too, and there's nothing more frustrating that being loaded up with equipment and ability and power, only to find yourself impotent because you can't find the enemy.  Then, worse, that melancholy in knowing that you've failed.  The women are dead, the goblins are nowhere to be found.

The classic trope of finding the village and taking the treasure is more 'fun' . . . but ask yourself if the party always needs things to go predictably.  There will be plenty of time for hack and slash later; here is a chance to give the party something else.  Tragedy.  Pathos.  A message that the world doesn't present itself as expected.  Nothing - not even battle - is certain.

I urge the reader to seek other ways to resolve adventures - not in every case, of course, since hacking and hauling are intrinsic to the game's acquisitional format.  The players need that, or else they'll quit playing.  But even a baseball pitcher throws a changeup now and then.  Something that alters the speed, confusing the players and mixing things up.

Doesn't have to be something bad.  Suppose that the two women, alone, come stumbling into the party within half an hour of their leaving the road?  They're filthy, but they haven't had time to have all their clothes stripped off.

"Eliska hit one of them," breathes the sister Marta.  "Right in the face!  The others were so surprised, they didn't see me grab this stick on the ground."

"Yes!" adds Eliska.  "Marta hit the biggest one on his shoulder and he howled!  I pushed one down and shouted that we needed to run.  I saw Marta throw the stick at one of them and then I grabbed her and we took off together."

"They were right behind us," says Marta.  "We jumped over bushes and ran around trees, not even looking.  They were a lot smaller than us but they were very fast.  Then I came to this ditch -"

"I saw Marta jump it so then I did too."

"I heard Eliska hit the ground and then fall down, so I turned around."

"I hurt myself a bit, scraped my leg, but that's all.  I was terrified, though, and when I looked up I was sure they would get me!"

"Then we saw they were gone.  They weren't anywhere!"

"We've been walking ever since.  We're so glad we found you!"

What does the party do then?  How does that change the dynamic of who wanted to go into the forest and who wanted to continue on to the next village?  What does the party decide to do when there's no one to rescue?

Will they even find the damn goblins?


 

More Sea Routes

My apologies for not putting up a video on the weekend for the trade course.  I did not want to rush into it, feeling that more thought and organization was needed.  Plus, I suppose, I felt strongly inclined to work on my world rather than describe it.

I do have something to show today - additional seagoing trade routes that I've worked out.  Excellent versions can be found on the wiki, but I'll put up the images here so blogger can make them fuzzy.

I finished the seas around Arabia and India a week ago - easy stuff, really - so I'll put those up first:

The reader will have to open these in another window even to get a sense for them; they're just too darn big.  Like before, lines are based on shortest distance routes between trade ports that are able to import from markets up to 10x their own trade number.  The trade numbers shown on the map - ignore the red/yellow coloring, it means nothing.  As I did trade ports, I generally changed their color just so I'd know they were done.  This isn't consistent and nothing should be read into it.

Here's the one that took me all week (finished it yesterday.  Wasn't quite as bad as the Mediterranean, but Northern Europe was complex nonetheless:

The series of straight lines across the North Sea shows the relationship between specific Belgian and French ports and their Norwegian counterparts - no doubt this is not coincidence.  I suspect the placement of these port cities reflects the relationship between shipbuilders and their supplies of timber and pitch.

Obviously, this map will get a lot more complicated whenever I get around to adding England/Scotland to the system.  That's another day, however.

Feeling the Threat

I had been thinking I had come to the end of this series, but as I'm getting praise I'll apply myself and see what's left to discuss.  This would be the sixth post: following Setting the Scene, Groundwork for Dialogue, In-Party Indecisions, Setting Forth and Evil.  I don't typically carry a series on this long, as people lose interest and views begin to decline - but just now the blog is riding a high (consistently 1,200+ page views this week), so I might as well continue.

To my mind, the women wouldn't be dead.  If the goblins simply wanted the pleasure of killing them, they probably would have done it on the road - or a few hundred yards into the forest.  It's too much trouble for them to drive the women forward, even if there are four to six goblins for each woman (which would be my guess).  Any more than 12 goblins and that settlement of 30 goblins would be left vulnerable.

Now, when I say '30 goblins,' I mean combat capable.  Goblins in my world have one hit die with 1d6 per die; the balance of those attacking the road would have 5 or 6 hit points - the ones back in the settlement will have 1 to 6.  I believe that goblins know perfectly well how healthy and strong they are, how durable in combat - and at any rate, balancing out the tribe in this manner improves the threat the goblins offer.

While yes, I know that some just want the goblins to be nothing more than sacks waiting for the sword, that's not my viewpoint.  If the players are turned back by the goblins, if they find themselves overwhelmed or unable to win - and they're too stupid to retreat and all die - then that is a very good thing.  In the short term, it may be unpleasant for the player - but it is beneficial to the world.

This post will be read today or perhaps tomorrow by a player who lost her 6th level mage permanently six days ago, when we ran Saturday.  The party had slipped into an open jungle temple (four pillars and a roof, surrounding by a high grass clearing next to a large pond), in order to lift the ridiculously heavy teak lid off a teak chest in order to seize five idols contained therein.  In doing so they aroused the attention of a slaad in the grass - which had been described to them by the locals as a 'purple frog.'

Since late in the 1980s, I have played slaad quite differently from the Fiend Folio.  In my game, they are trans-dimensional beings from a future culture that infiltrate the prime material plane in order to seize magic - typically religious magic.  There is a larger reason for this, but as I don't want to give away spoilers about my world, the larger reason shall remain in my mind.

Thus, once the party aroused the slaad from its light slumber, it began firing at them with an semi-automatic rifle, taking four shots per round.  In the second round of firing, as the mage announced that she was going to cast Melf's acid arrow, the slaad fired at her, hitting three times.  One of these was a critical, double damage.  Each bullet caused 1d8 damage; I rolled an '8' for the double, then another '8' and then a '5' . . . for a total of 29.  The mage had been hit before in a combat with guards, and dropped to -11.  Dead.  She should have ducked before casting, but in the panic it didn't occur to her.

The idols seized, the fifth level cleric began reading (from behind cover) the plane shift scroll they had along, the fighter opened the mage's eversmoking bottle and the party evaporated from the scene, idols in their possession.

Then the cleric attempted death's door with the mage.  The mage blew her 96% resurrection survival roll (throwing a 98) and died permanently.

A shattering experience all around.  The mage, Demifee, had been running in my world for two years - about thirty sessions, as this group could often play no more than once a month.  Thirty sessions translates into about 200 hours.  For those paying attention, Demifee is one of those names listed on the How to Play a Character's dedication page.

I apologize for the war story, but I need it to make a few points.  It would have been so easy to fudge the die and not direct all four shots at the mage.  It would have been easy to lower the damage (except that I was throwing the die right in front of the party).  And it would have been easy to hand wave the resurrection roll away.  At any point I could have said to the mage, "Did you want to hide before casting the spell?"  There are a number of ways that I could have mitigated or reduced the stress, making it possible for her to take more time to make her decision - but I didn't.  I pushed her by describing the situation quickly, speeding up the moment-by-moment pace and causing her and the rest of her party to feel compelled to answer as quickly.  If they had not, they know that I will cut them off and make them lose their turn.

(I typically allow a player about a non-specific, not-timed minute to decide what their character does during a 12 second round - but this is surprisingly not very long.  Since the minute isn't timed, I use my gut instinct to take note that the player is indecisive and - therefore - stuck for the round)

If I had done any of those things, however, while the character would have lived, the campaign would have died.  A threat has to be real.  It has to be possible for the character to die.  They knew the risk.  They knew the 'purple frog' was freaky dangerous.  They knew the idols were magic.  They had opportunities to defend themselves and get out safely.  They also knew the whole time that one of them dying was absolutely a possibility.

So the next time there's a running, and I say, "I hope I don't kill anyone tonight," a chill will run through every player's backbone.  Those words will mean something.

Earlier this week, the point was made by Barrow that 15 minutes seemed a long time for my description of the forest.  It isn't my description that runs 15 minutes, it is the nervous chatter of the party as they wend their way between the trees and over the deadfall on their way to their goal. They're feeling the tension.  They're planning, looking for a way to deal with these goblins that doesn't involve a direct attack, since direct attacks are dangerous.  The party above had a good plan - get in, grab, smoke up the place and get the hell out.  Never mind killing the slaad, never mind what else might be lying around.  Fuck all that.  Combat is fun and rewarding, but that slaad was definitely out of their depth and they knew it.

The players don't know what the hell is out there in that forest.  We know its only 30 combat-capable goblins, but the players are making themselves ready for 300.  They're building themselves up, they're talking like football players before a championship game.  It doesn't matter what they're saying, or that they're mostly talking shit - they're talking because they have to talk!  It's all they can do to reduce the stress.

As a DM, that's what I want.  The party babbling, the forest holding them in, the space beyond the next screen of trees invisible - that way, when one of the party stumbles across the old trunk of a 200-year-old yew dead on the ground, awakening a cluster of four giant ticks, each a foot across their backs, they'll jump and then kill those ticks as dead as they can.  Because a bit of combat at that point will be a relief.

Of course, I'm only softening them up.

Evil

Now, where was I?

I'm rather enjoying the opportunities offered through presenting an adventure this way - explaining the motivations of the npcs, strategies for providing detail, expressing the patterns of tension and so on . . . and today, discussing the ambiance of the campaign, or rather it's 'mood.'

The party has set out in the forest searching for two women kidnapped by goblins, very likely with the husband of one of the women - Mazonn - coming with them.  Mazonn's son and his brother Vasile, the reader may remember, are taking the wagon forward to the next town.

Regarding these women, we should be asking why the goblins would take them.  What purpose would they serve?  They're human women, so they're much larger than goblins and therefore they would be a lot of trouble.  Yet before I can properly answer that question, I find I must speak first about the principles of evil, as it occurs in role-playing and as it occurs in reality.

D&D 'evil,' as it typically manifests, is really a sort of namby-pamby evil, or Disney evil, the sort of evil where bad things are spoken of in vague terms but never candidly.  The princess in the tower is restrained and mocked and fed poorly, but she keeps all her clothing, she never gets dirty and no matter how evil the villain is, sex never actually occurs.

Ordinary Evil, on the other hand, would be the sort of thing we would expect if two women were kidnapped by monsters in the real world.  To illustrate this, allow me to propose that the evil goblins, so designated as the book, are of like mind to several of the sadistic, merciless organizations that run rampant over Africa, Asia or Latin America.  Here I'm speaking of the unimaginable brutality that we think of when considering the atrocities perpetrated by armed groups in Rwanda, the Congo, Burma and elsewhere:

""Women are gang-raped, often in front of their families and communities. In numerous cases, male relatives are forced at gun point to rape their own daughters, mothers or sisters. After rape, many women were shot or stabbed in the genital area, and survivors told Erturk that while held as slaves by the gangs they had been forced to eat excrement or the flesh of their murdered relatives." - CNN

"Men throw acid on us because men are angry with us for ending relationships and for refusing sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, proposals of marriage, demands for dowry.  They throw acid on us for attending schools, for not wearing Islamic veils, for not behaving well, for speaking too much, for laughing loudly."  #SAAfacts

"Over 500 Muslim villages have been incinerated. Tens of thousands have been murdered. The persecution and killings of the Burmese Muslims at the hands of the Burmese government and its collaborators is in full swing." - the spiritual UN

We don't have to make up ordinary evil.  We only need to open our eyes.

Some players of the 'game' are, at present, pressing their fists into their ear and chanting, "NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA" rather than remotely considering that any of the above might have a place in their fantasy make-believe.  Disney evil is much more tolerable and much easier to sell.  No one ever needs to feel uncomfortable.

Tension is discomfort.

The reader should truly and carefully think about that relationship.  Tension, or stress, is the accumulation of chemical responses to situations that require effort to overcome or interpret.  Even as we read the brief accounts I've included above, we immediately grasp that our body has begun producing hormones that, in turn, produce tension.  We're frightened; we feel inadequate; our equanimity is thrown askew and we're suddenly forced to reconcile our Disney world view with the world view that actually exists.  People are suffering and dying - and though we're unable to do anything about it, our bodies shove us onto a defensive stance, readying us to fight or flee.  Our bodies make this decision for us.

Now, were we in Somalia or any one of these places, and we had just learned that seven soldier/warlords had kidnapped two women and driven off with them into the desert, none of us would be surprised to find them the next day, raped and hacked to pieces.  Horrified, angry, helpless, yes - but our worst fears about what was about to happen would be based on what we expected from power-wielding, lawless, evil men living in that place.  Understanding that, and understanding what it would be like to climb into a jeep and set off into the desert to try to find those men before they were able to accomplish those acts, what should we think of when someone says that 'goblins' are evil?

Disney evil or ordinary evil?

Do try to understand that the tension that exists in a Disney movie - or any Hollywood movie where the average audience member doesn't want to look directly at ordinary horror - comes from how close we dare come to the real thing.  The writer's words are carefully chosen and ordered to allow the tiniest bit of ordinary evil to leak through a crack in the door and no more.  We want just enough to get the audience to squirm in their seats without actually giving them PTSD.

What is 'just enough' is a question you must ask yourself when presenting your world.

For my players, who are used to seeing the very worst, they wouldn't be surprised to discover both women a half mile into the forest, disemboweled and the blood and organs partially eaten.  My goblins are pretty evil.  At best, they might expect that the women are being taken somewhere so that someone more important in the goblin tribe will have the opportunity to disembowel them and eat them.  At the very least, the women will be stripped naked.  Stripping them naked makes them more vulnerable, less likely to flee (since they have no protection whatsoever against the environment), weaker (from their body temperature dropping) and easier to grasp with clawed hands.  Additionally, a whip or belt works better when applied to bare skin.  How are these short, light-weighted creatures going to move their prisoners along?  The same way we move other unwilling animals that are much bigger than us - with prods, spurs, whips and rods.  What, you think the 'evil' goblins are going to nicely ask the women to walk along?

Because I like the little abominations of ordinary evil to make a good showing, the 'sign' the ranger will almost certainly use to find the goblins will not be their tracks, but the smell of blood as well as the urination and defecation of the women.  If the women are found, alive or dead, they will not be clean with their hair coiffed; they will be filthy and stained with their own feces.  I don't like to pull punches.

My players get used to that.  They even get to like it, because the logic fits so much better with their personal experiences and the noise they hear from the real media.  They - both men and women - know perfectly well what it would mean to be seized and taken prisoner in Somalia.  Fuck, they know what it would mean to have their home invaded, late at night.  Like any sane person, when locking their front door or taking other precautions when moving outside after midnight, they're already running the motion picture camera in their minds of what being attacked will involve.

How could you expect me to make a modern city dweller feel uncomfortable by having these women kidnapped by Disney goblins?   Ridiculous.

Reasons why your world isn't building the tension you hope for?  Begin with the formula I've given:  tension equals discomfort.  Then realize, if you're going to make the players uncomfortable, you must first deal with that discomfort yourself.  If you can't do that - if you can't overcome your own tendency to stick your fists in your ears - you'll never be strong enough to push your players to the wall.

Done Deal. I'll Do It.

Very well, I shall make the videos.  Apparently, there ARE quite a few of you out there interested.  I'm actually quite happy to hear it - so I shall do the best job I can with the material.

I feel that rushing would not be the best tactic, so let me warn all of you:  I'm going to pace myself and try to cover every little detail down to the bottom of the well - I hope you don't find it gets to be too much.  Sometimes I really wonder about myself.

Yesterday I set up the map for the port cities along the French, Belgian and German coasts and felt a little green at the work involved in making the trade routes - but, after all, it's still less than the Mediterranean was.  It's all just a matter of digging in and doing it.

I shall strive to have the first video ready to launch come the weekend.  Thanks to all of your for your terrific support!

Retrospective, October 2010

These retrospectives are a good opportunity for me to look back.  I do mean to write more about chasing the goblins into the forest, but it's the first of the month and I'd like to interrupt that for this.

Four years ago the big post was my review of James Raggi's module Death Frost Doom.  My players still speak of it and shudder.  I had promised Raggi that if he sent me a copy of the module, I would run my players through it - which I did, at least until my players refused to continue any farther.

A couple of months ago I spied this post that hearkened back to my "fucking up royally" when I ran the module.  Apparently, James Young, writer of the post, has no actual idea how a 'review' works.  The point of a review isn't to change or alter the material to make it work for you - the point of a review is to give a frank, unbiased reading of the material as it appears, so that others may view the review as a baseline for their own opinions.

Given that my players grew so bored with the module, run as written, that they eventually rose from the table and refused to continue playing, I felt that this was indicative of the quality of the actual material.  Regardless of my ability to massage that material to make it 'fit' in my world.

Of course I could have made it work!  Of course I could have shaped and shifted the rooms around, getting rid of those that were pointlessly empty, softening the heavy-handed obvious tropes surrounding how 'terrifying' it was supposed to be (my players could not stop rolling their eyes every time I read another of Raggi's descriptions), etcetera.  But that wasn't the agreement.  The agreement was a review in exchange for free material - the same agreement I've made with many a theatre producer, filmmaker, bookwriter or presenter in days when I once worked as a journalist.

On the weekend, I happened to catch Jon Favreau's film Chef, a film about a chef who gets a very, very bad review and is in turn forced to review the way he is pursuing his own passion.  The message is plain - very often a bad review is indicative that something is wrong.  At the same time, the error will most likely not be in the creator, but in the thing that is created.  If I write a review of Raggi's material, or anyone else's, that describes my players quitting because they're bored out of their minds, in addition to being pissed at the obvious manipulation and cheesy descriptive text, that isn't an attack on Raggi or all that Raggi stands for, that's an attack on one piece of material that Raggi produced.  If Raggi wants to look at that review and ignore me - or if other players love the material and ignore me - so be it.  I don't expect to change the world with a review.  I wish to express what I saw, what I experienced, the reactions I received and so on - so that others who read this blog and know my stand on role-playing can be forewarned.

I was led to believe that Death Frost Doom was special, that it was dark, that it was in some way more exciting than other role-playing modules.  On the contrary, I found it was very flat, virtually a one-note symphony, with overwritten description, underwritten content and a tendency towards the mastubatory.  The players described the experience of running through it as "the puzzle that enables you to reach the next puzzle," an experience they equated with 1990s video puzzle game culture.  I, personally, found it anything but scary.  I must believe from the descriptions online of its fright-factor that bloggers are remarkably unimaginative, naive, terribly over-protected mamma's darlings who have never really experienced anything in their personal lives that was, in fact, actually scary.  For those of us who are jaded, the room and context descriptions were campy and forced.

The television series that inspired this post from October was much darker.  It is one of my favorite posts.  I did not include it among the How to Play Essays, as it would have been out of context and probably misunderstood.  I highly recommend the series The Nazis and the Final Solution.  The youtube link on the site years ago is dead now, but a vigorous search on google videos can turn up copies.  The show helps to emphasize the very real truth that terror is not something created from cheesy descriptions of strange walls, pictures, rooms and so on.  Terror arises from the mundane, from our lack of control as we see completely ordinary things emerging and swelling until we realize that there's no escape.  Present justifications, for example, to once again initiate the same war in the middle east that proved fruitless and destructive for more than a decade, to fight an enemy with a lot of press that is in fact no different from hundreds of other 'terrorist' groups presently controlling parts of Zaire, Liberia, Colombia, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Somalia, Burma and Indonesia.  Those groups, however, do not stand on ground that Halliburton would like to control, so we don't get news stories about them - that is, until they kill 200 children in a school somewhere.

The mundane, the ordinary life of the ordinary American, as the country moves steadily towards a more imperialist foreign policy, exchanging the lives of children for territory to support the avarice of wealthy autocrats.  Walls and rooms designed in poor pseudo-Baroque scenes of disgust only serves to distract from those things in this world that well and truly lift us from our beds at night, forcing us to pace in the small hours.  "Where is my son?  Is he safe?  Why hasn't my daughter written?  What am I going to do once the company lets me go?  Will anyone hire me now that I'm sixty?"  And so on.

Freaky paintings only hold a fascination for the wide-eyed innocent.

There were a lot of other things I wrote that October.  Reading the texts, I feel I must have felt driven. I wrote some good stuff on alternative magic, here and here; on rolling dice, here and here; and on history, here.  I looked long and hard at the Pressure post for the Essays book, finally deciding against it due to its reference to someone else's material.

I also think that, with the review and the other things written that month, I began to cement the perception that I just didn't give a shit about people who did not hold my point of view.  That was certainly how it was interpreted.  I had been writing this blog a little more than two years and I remember feeling that the message wasn't getting through.

I'll state is clearly now, as I know most of the readers here already know it well.  The way that most people play D&D is utter shit.  It is dull and repetitive and reflects a shallow easiness in design that fails to meet the standards that I feel the game deserves.  I do not care that others find this adequate.  I do not.  This is why I do not play in worlds run by other people.  Those worlds bore me.  It would be very hard for me to give support to such worlds or for such play as I've witnessed, because I don't respect it.  Were I to use phrases such as, "Everyone should run the world they want to," it would lip service to a philosophy I don't embrace.

I feel no camaraderie with people whose only defense of their world is that it's 'fun.'  That sounds empty and dull.  It sounds like a world without detail, without ideals, without imagination.  It sounds like the same crappy world I've seen hundreds of people run.  Given the choice of running in that world or spending the evening doing anything else, I would do anything else.  Where that world and I are concerned, I might as well not play D&D at all.

I hope that's clear.  If that world were the only sort of world that existed in the game, I wouldn't play!  I would go find some other pastime, something deserving of my attention.

Saying that this or that world is "good" isn't enough.  I want proof that your world promises a well-spent evening.  Looking around the blogosphere, however, I'm not seeing that.  I'm seeing dunder-headed repetitions of design features that were advanced in the early 1980s that still fail to address the real issues of role-playing - managing players, enabling agency, establishing tension, world design and social relevance.

I'm looking for an engineering department and all I see are used-car lots.

3 Left

The number has reached 17 where the trade system course is concerned.  Felt you'd like to know.

Ship Routes - Mediterranean

At my last count this morning, I have received 14 positives - looking good, and I thoroughly appreciate all the support thus far.  Now come on and get out those last six.

As a bit of inspiration, I've been working on this project about ten days now - I've finished the biggest, below, as well as the seas around Arabia.  Almost have the seas around India finished now, then its the Sea from France to the Baltic to the Barents Sea (a big one, but not quite as big as the one below).  Here are ship routes for the Mediterranean and Black Seas:

Typically, blogger doesn't manage the image very well.  Thankfully, I've put the map up on the wiki, where it can be seen in strong detail.

This map wasn't meant to be especially pretty, and I'm noticing now I've left a few notes on it.  Ah well.  Primarily it was meant to be serviceable.

In principle, the map is intended to show the shortest routes between port/market cities of various sizes.  Take note that the size is listed next to the city - thus Palermo, on the top of Sicily, is rated at 6, Corfu is rated at 2, Marseille at 5 and so on.  Most of the cities are rated at 1.

I began with Genoa, rated at 18 (found at the left top of the map).  This was determined by the number of references I found for Genoa being a commercial/trade/market/port - which turned out to be many.  I have reasoned that Genoa is able to import goods directly from a distance up to 180 hexes, or 3,600 miles.  A port with a rating of 1 can only import goods a distance of 10 hexes, or 200 miles; thus, small ports are dependent upon other small ports to obtain goods from a great distance.  Each time that goods pass through a trade city, a cost is added (which I would cover in the trade system course, if I get those other six positives) - thus, direct shipping decreases cost.

The next part, however, is complicated.  The reader will notice, very near Genoa, to the west, is the port of Savona (rated 7).  IF it happens that an outbound route from Genoa through Savona is the same distance (always counted in hexes, without fractions) as it would be without going through Savona, then Genoa declines the direct trade to any ports in that direction and they fall to Savona.  This is worked out because Genoa's route through Savona is the same distance as Genoa's route would be without Savona.  Therefore, if we look at Oneglia (further west from Savona, the 'n' obscured by the large red 1), Genoa is 3 hexes away.  Genoa is also 2 hexes from Savona and Savona is 1 hex from Oneglia, so Genoa does not import directly from Oneglia - or, at least, the price of goods from Oneglia is considered to be increased in price due to tariffs owing to Savona.  Savona, in turn, does not import from San Remo, west of Oneglia, because Oneglia controls that trade and so on, down the coast.

Now, if it happens that the next city down the coast is limited in it's imports (Oneglia is rated as 1), then the origin city skips the intervening city and imports from as far away as it is able.  Savona, for example, goes through Oneglia's hex to import from Algiers, far from the south.  But Oneglia hasn't the economy to import from Algiers (max. 10 hexes), so Savona imports from Algiers directly.  Genoa then imports goods from Algiers through Savona.

This is infinitely more complicated than most anyone in the world would do it, I know - and it wasn't the way I started.  I began by assuming that anywhere could import from anywhere.  The result, however, meant that every port had to be compared to every other port for the prices table, and this was simply getting out of control (too much to manage).  As well, this new method vastly cuts down on the possible trade routes - and this leaves empty hexes.  While making the Mediterranean map, I considered what I might do with those hexes.

Suppose we consider all the hexes with lines in them to be patrolled by naval ships.  However, hexes empty of trade routes are not.  That would mean that pirates would keep out of the trade routes, but they would deliberately haunt empty hexes next to the trade routes, waiting for a ship to fall off course.  In turn, any hex that was two hexes away from a trade route would logically be empty again, since it was too unlikely to find an off course ship there.

Now look at the map again.  See those empty three hexes directly west of Corsica?  Prior to the making of this map, those hexes weren't very important.  Looking at it now, however, there is an incredible amount of trade going back and forth past those three hexes: Marseille, Savona, Livorno, La Spezia and Genoa are all big, big ports with incoming and outgoing traffic going right by those hexes - and the shelter of west Corsica to hide in, assuming the patrols between Ajaccio and the Italian ports can be avoided.

Or consider Malta.  Without my design, Malta turned out to be not on any shortest route between anywhere.  The sea all around it is empty, unpatrolled, but on the edge of the routes going past Sicily.  How well does this fit in with the legends of the Maltese Knights preying on shipping?

Sometimes, we set out to achieve one goal and we stumble across something completely different.  For example, consider now that there is a strong reason to be a really good navigator - since the routes where the patrols run change direction abuptly in mid-sea in order to match up with the next port city.  If you're running a ship and you simply plow ahead, you're going to run right out of the lane.  You may still be the same distance from your destination, but now you're vulnerable to attack, where otherwise attack would have been very rare.  You've probably increased your chance of being attacked by pirates 16 or 20 times, just because you're a poor navigator.

Setting Forth

Following up on last Friday's post, let's assume that the party has worked out their differences and decided to enter into the forest to see what's what.  We know as the DM that the goblins are a village of about 30, with 4 dire wolves, about five miles into the wilderness.  At this time, I've been generally assuming that the wilderness will be trees - because this was originally supposed to be a scene in eastern Transylvania I was going to run for one of my offline parties two weeks ago - but the running was cancelled on account of illness.  No matter, I'll come up with something else for the party.

From my perspective, that is what I do where it comes to choosing what happens to the party.  I 'come up with things.'  Initially, it won't be anything more than what we've done so far - scene, dialogue and the expectation that the party will make a decision.  Describing the scene and waiting for the party to approach will typically take about 15 minutes.  The dialogue - mixed with the party talking among themselves, about another half hour.  The decision to enter the wood or move on - well, that can take anything from two minutes up to an hour.  I don't see the time as 'wasted.'  The party will discuss the matter, strategies, take stock of their equipment and so on - about the same actual amount of time one might expect a party to spend if it really were preparing itself to head off-road into an unsure situation.

I'm not bored while this is happening because I'm listening to the party, taking stock myself, answering questions and keeping the tension level up by keeping information to a minimum.  The party will ask all sorts of questions that are designed to make me 'show my hand.'  They'll come up with some idea and one will ask me, "Does that sound good?"

To this I will answer, "How would I know?" - while both player and I know damned well that I do know exactly whether it will work.  The player's goal isn't to get an answer, its to get the facial expression they're hoping for, the reveal in the poker face that tells them they're good.  I disappoint them, however.  The practice itself develops from playing DMs who wear too much of their game on their sleeve - and I don't.  It is what I meant when I spoke on Friday about indifference being a tool.

What, then, is in the forest?  Have I spent hours carefully detailing the goblins?  Have I sketched out a map of the forest?  Do I have the entire adventure planned?  The answer to that is yes and no.

On one level, I am improvising.  I am not, however, 'winging it.'  That would suggest that I've made no preparations and that's patently false.  I have carefully designed an extensive series of maps.  I have detailed information about the topography and what sort of forest this is.  My understanding of the domain (or region) is thorough and precise - and I am operating on certain principles that I have operated on time and time again.

The goblins do not live in a cave.  The forest is set among a bunch of low, gentle hills in an empty hex near the cobbled road, and as the hills are made of granite there are few significant caves.  Food is easier to raise in the outdoors, and these are only 30 goblins.  Set 5 miles from the road, they might just as well be on another so far as they concern the local authorities.  Everyone knows those hills are wild; they have no significant economic value, so no one cares if a group of goblins take up residence.  Goblins, human cotters, what the hell difference does it make to the lords of the domain?

As we drive around in cars most of the time, we have a piss-poor understanding of how far five miles is.  If you set out right now, walking on paved sidewalks laid out in a straight line, you'd manage five miles in about an hour and a quarter - presuming you were in good enough shape to keep up a strong pace.  If I replace the sidewalks with a well-cut pathway, wide enough for two or three to walk abreast, where logs have been laid down on soft places and across banked streams, figure about two hours - perhaps more, as the path won't be straight, adding distance to your walk.  Now make the path two feet wide, with roots, without any logs and through the slopes created by even moderate hills.  Better call that three hours now - with a needed rest, probably around three and a half.  If you're not in good shape (and the mages won't be), your feet will hurt, your back too from the pack, you'll be sweating and somewhat grimy from the march.  But at least you'll feel confident you're getting there.

But are you?  We tend to think of the 'wilderness' as a place where we drive out to the mountains, unload at the parking lot and take the trail along Boom Creek, through the Black Rock Mountain or on to Walcott Lake with the understanding that we know where we're going and approximately how long it will take to get there.  Here, however, we're walking into a thick forest with no idea whatsoever!  We don't know how deep in the goblins are.  How far do you walk in before you quit?  A mile?  Two?  Ten?

Now get rid of the trail.  Why would there be a trail?  What, the goblins cut a trail to take them specifically to this place in the road, so they can hit people as they ride through what, once every 12 days?  There's no way there's a trail!  Maybe there is deep in the forest, back a mile from the road, but which direction?  You and your party could wander two to five miles in the wrong direction (veering off by 20 degrees would be enough) and go right past the goblin trail, the goblin village and right out of the hills on the other side three days later.

Even if you find a trail, how do you know its the right one?  How will you know which direction to walk?  You could lose hours taking the trail until it up and dies some several hundred yards from a completely different human village, way off road.  Or to a hunting blind, used by - how would you know?

Well, the answer is always the 'ranger,' isn't it?  So let's presume you have a ranger, and you're tracking the goblins through the forest with no path.  Naturally, this is easy, because the goblins pack close together in tight formation, destroying the undergrowth as they go . . .

Except they don't.  I've walked through some very empty wilderness with no specific pathway and from experience, I can tell you that an untrained party tends to drift apart.  Four or five people will break up as they cross deadfalls, seek what they think is the easiest path and generally scout their way forward.  This is actually better, if you don't know precisely where the creek is and there's no path to get there.  The best fishing places on Boom Creek, which I linked above, sit about 2000 yards below the trail following the north ridge.  At some point, early afternoon, if you want to fish those places, you turn off the trail and drop into the wood.  There's no path because most who take the trail are merely heading up to Boom Lake for the sake of the hike.  The fishermen turn off the trail depending on where they personally like to fish.

As you drop off, the slope is about 30-degrees, with a pine-needle floor that kills undergrowth and makes it easy to keep your fellows in sight - but the forest is ancient and protected and there's a dead tree about every 15 feet.  It's a bitch to get down those 2000 yards - but at the bottom you find this:

Not my picture, found it on line - but I have fished
this exact bend.

It's a pretty meadow, with grass and soft moss.  In some places the creek is slow and five feet deep, so clear you can see the trout sitting on the bottom ignoring the spoon hook you've patiently dropped two inches in front of its nose.  Mostly its brown and rainbow trout, one to two pounds, good fighters. 'Tis one of my favorite places, though I haven't been up there in years.

A ranger is going to have a lot of trouble following one goblin's track in a forest of deadfalls and pine-needles, but let's say he's done it - and let's be Hollywood and say that the ranger can tell a human's foot is being dragged over the ground.  Let's say further that the ranger actually finds a trail and that it's one made and used by goblins (the ranger can tell).  Goblin tracks go both ways, but our ranger can somehow tell that the more recent tracks, or perhaps the greatest number of tracks, head in a certain direction.  The trail is narrow, designed for 50 lb. creatures, but the party gamely starts along it.

As I say, however, that doesn't mean they get there in the next five minutes.

If I started running at 7:00, the party started arguing about entering the forest around quarter to eight; they started in an average of let's say 8:15.  I describe the forest, the problems of the forest, and that takes us to around 8:30 - 8:45.  We can't say nothing has happened, can we?  The party is adventuring, they're blood is up, they're worried about what they'll find and every once in awhile I describe Mazonn's anguish at wanting to find his wife.

It's too soon to find the village - that would suggest it was easy.  I suggest that the party is tired and thirsty, and that they should take a break and eat something.  They discuss what to eat, share it around and realize all of the sudden they don't have that much food.

I've been running now for nearly two hours, creating almost continuously (and people wonder what I get out of it) - and now its a good time to call a break for the party so they can get up, eat themselves, stretch, use the bathroom and chatter away.  Meanwhile, I turn off the screen that shows the party what's on my desktop and I begin working on an upcoming encounter.  Now is a good time for one.

UPDATE:

Speaking of erstwhile expeditions into the wilderness, linked here is an extreme example, the 1962 Canadian short film Nahanni.

Trade Table Videos or No?

Yesterday, I got a query on my old post about building a trade system from scratch - but I have to admit that it's very difficult to answer the question because the manner in which my system works is acutely complicated.  Much of it is based on knowledge I have gained on manufacturing and resource processing, incorporated by degrees over the 25+ years I've been working on the project.

More than a year ago I made a video for youtube called Tao of D&D Trade Tables Part I.  That originated with my thinking that I could do a brief overview of my pricing tables, but the video ran an hour and 8 minutes without my finishing the overview.  It generated a very small interest for the time it took.  As a result, I never did motivate myself towards finishing.  To date, I've had no one point out that there was never a Part II.

Yet, I do have people who write to me specifically to talk about the economic framework and the trade system.  I also have people who never fail to attack me for ever daring to implement one. However, except for the one post I linked above, nothing I've ever produced at length about the details of the trade system has gotten more than minimal feedback.

So here is the question.  Do people want me to spend several hours making what would have to be some very dull videos (for most) describing and detailing every corner of the trade system?  I'm not saying just an overview.  I'm saying a detailed 'course' in the design.  Point by point, for as long as that takes me to record.

Yes or no?

Fact is, that's a lot of time and effort to do something that, first, does nothing for my players; and second, will be a complicated reiteration of something I already know cold.  So my motivation is minimal.  To do that, I'd want to feel it really was of value to someone.

I could ask for comments proving that people want it, but I have enemies.  I have people who would gleefully write a comment, "Yes, do it!" just to make me work.  Because they're haters.

If I do this, it's wouldn't be because I need to do - it would be because you, the readers, want this.  So if you CARE, here's the deal:

Use the donate button on the right sidebar and send me $1 by Paypal.  That's it.  One measly cruddy dollar.  It's never going to make me rich, it's a third of a cup of coffee and that's going to hurt no one.  And if I get TWENTY people who are willing to have their names show up in my email because they've paid me $1, then I'll make the videos.

Someone will ask if they pay $20 by themselves, will I do it?  The answer is no.  The money doesn't matter.  Putting yourself out there, proving that you want this, that's what matters.  Twenty people. That's the deal.

If you really feel motivated, you can get your 19 other friends to send me a buck.  Do that, and you can make me do this just for you.

I think it's fair.  Because for me, to explain this again is a helluva lot of time and work.  Which, to be honest, won't be fun for me.

Whattaya say?  Is it a deal?

In-Party Indecisions

As I move forward on this, I see it becoming harder and harder to explain what's going on in my mind as I draw the players into a situation.  As the reader will remember, the players have just seen the father, Mazonn, break down while trying to drive the characters off, mostly from fear.  We may assume at this time that the players are free to take this advice and continue down the road, but let's assume they do not and that - by degrees - they get the story out of Mazonn.  His wife and his wife's sister have been stolen away.  Three of his family are dead.  His brother Vasile is a wreck and his son Aulus is but 16.

Apart from that, someone on top of it in the party is going to ask, "Where have you come from?  Where are you going?"  As a DM, we have to have answers for these questions - preferably not stock answers.  It's tempting to say they're fleeing something, or that they have a great opportunity elsewhere.  Both are intended to encourage an audience's sympathy or encouragement, since we feel sorry for people who have to leave their homes and we feel hopeful for people who have a chance to become rich.  These stories, however, are tiresome.  And we don't need another reason for the party to like these people, do we?  It would be better to just have Mazonn look at his son when he gets the question; have the son shrink, turn away and hide his face; then give a very general answer.  "From the south; we heard there's new settlement in (whatever place we wish to name)."  Now we know the son has done something awful and that the family does not talk of it.  Later, there may be an opportunity to explain that - or there may never be such an opportunity.  Adventuring can very often be a matter of getting used to disappointment.

In a play, of course, we learn everything.  In an open system, however, there isn't time to learn everything.  In a play, the audience takes a passive attitude towards information they don't have - they know it will be revealed before the end.  In life, however, we know that unless we take an active stance - and all the risk that implies - we are not going to learn shit.  This passive vs. active requirement is fundamental to the difference between the 'story' game and the 'open' game - and it helps explain why stories do NOT build tension as well as personal commitment does.  In a story, we are afraid for someone else (which is how we'll view our characters).  When we have to do it ourselves, we are afraid for ourselves.

Once the party has gotten the information, they'll want to talk about it.  We want to encourage this. We do not want to push the party one way or another, at least not in the beginning.  Let them gripe, let them re-examine the evidence, discuss what they believe and what they don't.  Keep them on topic!  They'll start to slide off into a lot of related and unrelated content and we'll need to say, "Okay, okay, but that's then and this is now.  What do you want to do."  We'll also need to say, "Fine, but since you don't know for sure what's going to happen in the future, what do you want to do right now?"  Let them talk, but be sure they stay on topic and don't let them over-think the situation.  There's nothing wrong with saying, as the DM, "You don't know that's going to happen, you have no reason to think that's going to happen, don't over-think this."  Now and then a party will need reassurances that if you wanted to kill them, you'd put thirty master assassins behind 30 trees and let fly.

Remember that as the party is over-thinking and coming up with half-baked ridiculous notions about what might happen if they do this or that, it's a sure sign that a) they don't trust you and b) they're getting scared.  They will never admit to being scared, but the whole "something is waiting to screw us over, DM or monster" thing is proof positive that you're getting under their skin.

You've got to get them to aim that fear at a target, and you've got to get them to agree.  How?

A typical situation that people online describe would be two halves of the party who refuse to agree.  Half wants to help Mazonn regain his wife and his sister; the other half wants to ditch this and keep going.  After five or ten minutes - all you'll need if you're paying attention - it's clear the situation is becoming deadlocked.  At this point, you'll be sorely tempted to push the side you don't prefer into the other camp.

You want the party to get the women.  You know there's a little goblin village of 30 goblins and 4 dire wolves about five miles into the forest, with a few thousand gold in treasure and perhaps the +1 double-damage sword vs. white-haired villains that the fighter's been hankering for.  The two people in the party who don't want to go are the same two who never want to do anything, so you say, "Hey, look, I've designed this part of the adventure already . . ."

Gah!!!

You might say, "There's a fat purse hanging on the dead goblin's belt" . . . or, "You can see the goblin's sword has three jewels in it" . . . or some other painfully obvious bribe that really ought to be beneath you.

Or you might try, "I need the party to make up their mind, we're wasting a lot of time already." While pointedly staring at the one player who isn't doing what you want.  This subtly fixes the blame for everything on the one person you've identified with your eyes, building peer pressure against that person.  It's manipulative, it's an unfair use of your authority and you may not even be aware that you've done it.  The target will be aware, however, and they may respond quite bitterly - and if you blithely targeted them without knowing it, then you're now going to feel that the target is the problem player - after all, why is he suddenly getting bitter for no reason?

The problem begins where you or I the DM invests in one choice or the other.  We must acknowledge that, first of all, we have a great deal of power at that table; we must further acknowledge that once we begin thinking along certain lines, our subconscious will kicks into the process of getting us what we want.  We think, "I wish the party would do this" - and within minutes our monkey brains are moderating our facial expressions, the tone of our voice, our body language, the direction of our eyes when we speak and so on, all without our corresponding awareness.  If you think this isn't happening - that you control these things - then you are living in a dream world, bub.  This only makes the situation worse, as after a lifetime of total denial that you send messages without using your brain you're facing the steep hill of self-awareness.

The solution to this is not to think, "I'll have an opinion but I'll keep it to myself."  That's exactly where all this monkey shit starts.  The solution is to think, "I won't have an opinion.  And I'll mean that."

You can't control your subconscious - but you can adapt yourself to the understanding that BOTH decisions made by BOTH sides of the party have merit and that you can roll with either one when the time comes!  For many a reader out there, indifference will seem like an impossible goal.  As a DM, however, indifference will be an insanely valuable benefit for you.

Do you imagine that a professional umpire gives a shit which group of pampered, over-paid, spoiled-rotten ignorant jocks wins a particular professional baseball game?  In a world where every single pitch is going to be examined by hundreds of over-paid analysts one frame at a time?  Fuck no.  If you want to be an umpire, you have to get yourself into a headspace where it doesn't matter if Jim Bob or Bubba Jim is a nice guy or not.  No one deserves to win.  No one deserves to lose.  NO ONE deserves shit all.

You've just got to get all this shit about what players ought to do out of your damn head; it is their lives, their characters, their win or loss - you and your wishes don't enter into it.  You've created the situation; you're managing it, you're building tension and expectations - and in all truth, the less you say the better.

Think about it.  The party is arguing because they haven't got enough information to tip it one way or the other.  That lack of information is tension.  The one half is thinking, "If we go to town, we'll lose out on the treasure that is surely out there."  The other half is thinking, "We don't know what the hell is out there, I want to be more sure about what I'm doing before I commit myself."  Both of these positions are correct positions to have!

Both are strategies the players are employing to manage their uncertainty.  Some will say, "Well, we're here to adventure, they ought to be brave enough to risk it all, no matter what."  In the reality of the game, however, that is pure ignorance.  One might as well say, "Hey, fuck it, move the bishop, it's only a game!"

Thank you, no.  I'll move my bishop when it seems like a good idea.  This is where half your party is.

Any information you give at this point will tip the balance - and if the party is completely stymied, you will have to tip the balance if you want the game to continue.  However, as I've argued, you're hopefully indifferent.  So let's look at the situation again in terms of what we DMs legitimately control:  Mazonn, Aulus and Vasile.

All three will be perfectly capable of hearing the party argue - even if the party says they're moving away and out of earshot, they'll be visible (the npcs will ensure that) and the npcs will develop opinions about what's said or conveyed that they're entitled to comment on.

Well, we can have the npcs change the situation.  They set about righting the wagon and moving it off the road.  One or two of the players will probably help once this begins.  We can have the npcs ask questions of the party:  "Where are you coming from, who are you, where did that bauble on your neck come from, what does the symbol on your shield mean" and so on.  Questions that are likely to come from the father or the boy, depending.  We might have Vasile have a breakdown, seizing the spear and running into the forest, only to be caught and restrained by the father.  The father may tell Aulus to look after Vasile, bury the bodies, get themselves to the next town - while the father marches into the forest alone.

None of these tell the party what to do.  They're all part of the scene, the groundwork for which we laid out in the beginning.  If the party won't make up their mind, we just go on playing the scene out as it logically would play.  The boy would be curious; the father determined; the uncle distraught.  They'd feel all the emotions the party feels: uncertainty, expectation of failure and death, an inability to move on and leave the women behind and so on.

As the npcs play out their own drama, the players will make up their minds about who they are.  Their uncertainty will find a pale reflection in the father's apparent will to commit suicide by going it alone.  Their greed will be put into focus by the uncle's grief, the father's love for his wife, the boy's stiff willingness to do as his father asks.

And if the party still can't decide, the boy will eventually load Vasile in the wagon with all their stuff, the father will be gone into the forest and the situation will simply evaporate.

Through it all, you'll still be the DM.  You won't have manipulated anyone.  And if the party wants to fight and argue all night about what they should have done, LET THEM.  They have to learn to work together as a team - and that will mean that sometimes they have to argue until they learn how to make decisions together.

You're only making that harder for them if you intervene.