I'm very leery about music at the game-table, as it can be a distraction if not handled well, but many people love it. I do tend to listen to music when designing settings and adventures, and the Dawnlands is no exception. Over the years, I've put together a collection of Youtube videos that I think of as the "soundtrack" to the Dawnlands. Some of it resembles the kinds of music the inhabitants make, and some of it is purely thematic. Here's the current listing:
Thematic
Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time
The themes from A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Buraka Som Sistema's Sound of Kuduro and kuduro more generally (especially for the Orthocracy)
Three Rules and Eight Notices
Pseudo-Diegetic
On the plains:
Enkh Jargal
Khoomei
This unnamed Mongolian throat-singer
Kyrgyraa and this related piece of shamanic music (I think these are by Huun Huur Tu)
Mongun-ool Ondar performing
Altai by Bolot Bayrishev
Kongar-ol Ondar (this link is to his performance on David Letterman)
Tibetan throat singing
In Dwer Tor:
The stasimon from Euripedes' Orestes
The Song of Seikilos
The Theban Banquet Song
The Hurrian Hymn
Sappho's Wedding Song
The works of Synaulia
The works of De Organographia
Mar 4, 2012
Mar 3, 2012
The City as Dungeon: The Orthocracy of Kaddish
I'm going to start posting districts from the Orthocracy of Kaddish, one at a time. The city of Kaddish itself is intended to be a giant open-air dungeon of sorts, rather than a traditional homebase for PCs. It has farmers, stores, teahouses, all that sort of thing, but it's also filled with horrible monsters, vampire cults, slave pits, etc. Dwer Tor and the Kadiz nomads are intended to be somewhat comprehensible places for PCs. For all their faults, they can come to understand how these places operate, and having learnt the logic of them, feel safe there. Not Kaddish. I want something weird, horrible, incomprehensible or alien to be going on every time the PCs enter the city. The entire city is a sort of megadungeon, although not sketched out in quite the same way.
As a prelude to the actual districts, two pieces:
What a First-Time Visitor to Kaddish Would Notice
It's massive. Kaddish is incomparable in scope to the rest of the Dawnlands. It is three times larger than Dwer Tor, itself perhaps fifty times larger than any other settlement in the Dawnlands. It is almost 15km across and 12km wide, and takes half a day or more to cross on foot (a few hours by canal-barge). It has a population of 750,000, about a third of the entire population of the Dawnlands, living within city limits or on surrounding farms that stretch out for several days walk.
It is crowded. The nomads stand out of arms reach of one another when they talk. The Dwer stand just within (dwarven) arms reach. The Kaddish crowd around one another, shouting, gesturing, packed by the thousands into open spaces. Because of their polygamous families and correspondingly high birth rate, there are thousands of children roaming the city in wild gangs. They live in crowded tenements, piled on top of one another in hollowed out heaps of rubble and hunched over in the halfling-sized factories of the Greyward. The entire city smells like dung fires whose fuel is dredged from the canals that serve as open-air sewers.
It is grandly patchwork. Buildings are concrete (a Kaddish invention) poured over wood frames that can't quite bear the weight. The grand temple of the Red and Blue Snake Cult towers hundreds of feet into air while shacks bunch around its outer garden wall. Even the cheapest lean-to is painted with intricate designs and every wall has some grand scene from Kaddish history on it in faded paint and scored with fresh graffiti. Every building is coated with ivy to burn, grapes to eat or other useful vines.
It is supremely weird in its customs. Human sacrifice is not common throughout the Dawnlands - except in Kaddish. Enslaving your fellows is not done - except in Kaddish. The nomads have no organised cults, the state handles religious matters in Dwer Tor, and yet the cult allegiance is one of the guiding stars of Kaddish life. There is no one in charge to negotiate peace with, no one to blame for what its army does or reign it in, no one who speaks for the Kaddish as a whole. Entire districts of the city seem to be at war with one another. Clan, college and cult allegiances are impenetrable to the outsider.
It is new, incredibly new. Magic with a distinctive Kaddish flair and unique rituals. Alien monstrosities - the products of the soulforges - that have never been seen outside the city. Secret technologies like steel, concrete and paper that are not found elsewhere in the Dawnlands. The Kaddish are constantly building, rebuilding, demolishing and redemolishing every stone in the city. Stores, banks, and temples are unique institutions of Kaddish found nowhere else in the current Dawnlands.
There is simply nothing else like it. It is an alien, dangerous place for the first-time visitor, and many never make it back out again.
The city of Kaddish is organised into roughly 25-35 districts or wards at any given time. The boundary of a given district is fluid, but the canals serve as rough borders. The number and nature of districts change relatively rapidly - new buildings rise up, old canals silt over, a gang leader might seize three old districts and build bridges between them, uniting them into a single area. Typically, districts are organised around a landmark. In the absence of canals to organise boundaries, the ability to see a particular landmark or building indicates which district one is in, as well as giving it its name.
Broadly speaking however, there are three main areas of the city into which districts might fall.
Inner City: The old city of Kaddish. This was the city of Kaddish in the time of the Dawnmen, and in the kingdom of High Kaddish. It is surrounded by an irregularly maintained wall, and has seven districts in it, most of which are stable. The fewest number of canals can be found here, only three running parallel from east-to-west. They are heavily silted, and bridge traffic is in the hands of gangs of the Burnt. The current districts are the Granary, the Spire of the Screaming God, the Forgetower, Capitol, Third Ward, Glasshall, and Sharp Alley.
New City: Mainly the south and western sections of Kaddish, except for Greyward, which is the northernmost (and largest) district. The foundations were built after the end of the last war with the Hill People, but it was only after the revolution drove the peasantry into the city that the New City became important. The orthocrats have built up the various districts to display their prestige and status, and to erase the memory of the old regime. The New City is the largest section of Kaddish. The most stable districts include Greyward, Snakes, Pit, Grave, the Guardhouse, King's Head, the Square of Justice, Old Market, Makar's Ward, Thrancastle, Stable Street.
The Outer City: There are three districts of Kaddish that are outside, or slightly separated from the rest of the city. The citizens of these places still part of the urban life of the city, with the furthest district a mere 5km. away from the city. The three districts are the Reservoir, Muster Bastion, and Exile.
Kaddish is surrounded by a web of small farming villages and slave plantations that produce most of its agriculture. Plantations tend to be closer to the city, while farming villages can be found along waterways between the city and the Birth and Death Rivers.
As a prelude to the actual districts, two pieces:
What a First-Time Visitor to Kaddish Would Notice
It's massive. Kaddish is incomparable in scope to the rest of the Dawnlands. It is three times larger than Dwer Tor, itself perhaps fifty times larger than any other settlement in the Dawnlands. It is almost 15km across and 12km wide, and takes half a day or more to cross on foot (a few hours by canal-barge). It has a population of 750,000, about a third of the entire population of the Dawnlands, living within city limits or on surrounding farms that stretch out for several days walk.
It is crowded. The nomads stand out of arms reach of one another when they talk. The Dwer stand just within (dwarven) arms reach. The Kaddish crowd around one another, shouting, gesturing, packed by the thousands into open spaces. Because of their polygamous families and correspondingly high birth rate, there are thousands of children roaming the city in wild gangs. They live in crowded tenements, piled on top of one another in hollowed out heaps of rubble and hunched over in the halfling-sized factories of the Greyward. The entire city smells like dung fires whose fuel is dredged from the canals that serve as open-air sewers.
It is grandly patchwork. Buildings are concrete (a Kaddish invention) poured over wood frames that can't quite bear the weight. The grand temple of the Red and Blue Snake Cult towers hundreds of feet into air while shacks bunch around its outer garden wall. Even the cheapest lean-to is painted with intricate designs and every wall has some grand scene from Kaddish history on it in faded paint and scored with fresh graffiti. Every building is coated with ivy to burn, grapes to eat or other useful vines.
It is supremely weird in its customs. Human sacrifice is not common throughout the Dawnlands - except in Kaddish. Enslaving your fellows is not done - except in Kaddish. The nomads have no organised cults, the state handles religious matters in Dwer Tor, and yet the cult allegiance is one of the guiding stars of Kaddish life. There is no one in charge to negotiate peace with, no one to blame for what its army does or reign it in, no one who speaks for the Kaddish as a whole. Entire districts of the city seem to be at war with one another. Clan, college and cult allegiances are impenetrable to the outsider.
It is new, incredibly new. Magic with a distinctive Kaddish flair and unique rituals. Alien monstrosities - the products of the soulforges - that have never been seen outside the city. Secret technologies like steel, concrete and paper that are not found elsewhere in the Dawnlands. The Kaddish are constantly building, rebuilding, demolishing and redemolishing every stone in the city. Stores, banks, and temples are unique institutions of Kaddish found nowhere else in the current Dawnlands.
There is simply nothing else like it. It is an alien, dangerous place for the first-time visitor, and many never make it back out again.
Overall Municipal Geography
Broadly speaking however, there are three main areas of the city into which districts might fall.
Inner City: The old city of Kaddish. This was the city of Kaddish in the time of the Dawnmen, and in the kingdom of High Kaddish. It is surrounded by an irregularly maintained wall, and has seven districts in it, most of which are stable. The fewest number of canals can be found here, only three running parallel from east-to-west. They are heavily silted, and bridge traffic is in the hands of gangs of the Burnt. The current districts are the Granary, the Spire of the Screaming God, the Forgetower, Capitol, Third Ward, Glasshall, and Sharp Alley.
New City: Mainly the south and western sections of Kaddish, except for Greyward, which is the northernmost (and largest) district. The foundations were built after the end of the last war with the Hill People, but it was only after the revolution drove the peasantry into the city that the New City became important. The orthocrats have built up the various districts to display their prestige and status, and to erase the memory of the old regime. The New City is the largest section of Kaddish. The most stable districts include Greyward, Snakes, Pit, Grave, the Guardhouse, King's Head, the Square of Justice, Old Market, Makar's Ward, Thrancastle, Stable Street.
The Outer City: There are three districts of Kaddish that are outside, or slightly separated from the rest of the city. The citizens of these places still part of the urban life of the city, with the furthest district a mere 5km. away from the city. The three districts are the Reservoir, Muster Bastion, and Exile.
Kaddish is surrounded by a web of small farming villages and slave plantations that produce most of its agriculture. Plantations tend to be closer to the city, while farming villages can be found along waterways between the city and the Birth and Death Rivers.
Mar 2, 2012
Abolishing Money
I have to admit that I cringe a little whenever I see the substructure of the modern consumer economy replicated in settings where it is totally inappropriate, whether post-scarcity science fiction settings or fantasy settings that should by all rights be cash-poor economies founded on the ownership of real and movable goods. In particular, the abundance of cash, the commodity fetishism in trade systems, and the catalogue-like nature of gear lists all tend to be things that I wish it were easier to do without.
I don't blame game designers for putting these structures in, since they operate on an already-existing understanding of value, particularly cash. Getting cash is so much a part of modern existence that it can be placed into a game world as an obvious motivator for PCs to do things. This is true even in later editions of D&D, where the fungibility of cash is extended to magical items so that there is no discontinuity in the value of things. Unlike a lot of other people, I am not opposed to the purchase and sale of magical items, as I can't see a logical reason they wouldn't be absorbed into the economy, especially if they can be created in any sort of reliable way. I think that it's a natural extension of another problem, the abundance and value of cash, rather than the core of the issue itself. If you want to get rid of magical item shops, get rid of cash.
I think there are two possible ways one can go about this, at least if history and political economy are any guides. The first is a gift-based economy, the second is a debt-based economy. Neither is exclusive, either with one another or with a cash-based economy, so it you can experiment with overlapping them until you find the balance that best suits you. For the rest of the post, I'm going to discuss possible ways of using gift-based economies and debt-based economies in your games and settings.
Gift economies are oriented around the accumulation of social prestige by the production and distribution of goods. This usually takes the form of ritualised gift exchanges like potlatches whereby individuals or collectives (like families or tribes) offer gifts to one another under a principle of escalation, where simply meeting the gift given to one is insufficient for satisfaction - one is obligated to outdo the gift. Homeric and other ancient Greek literature is filled with these kinds of exchanges, though often the gift exchange goes beyond material goods into favours, services and quests. In societies where this kind of economic system is practiced, reciprocity is extremely important - individuals in the historical record have committed suicide over being given gifts that they felt could never repay.
There are a number of possible ways to make this work. The first is to play on the PCs' desire for respect from others. While not everyone has this motivation, many people do, and it's common enough that it forms a workable basis. PCs should understand from the get-go that they will receive items from others as gifts, and in turn will be expected to give items to others. Refusing to give something to someone who asks makes the PC look poor and weak, while giving gifts even when not request makes them look powerful and rich. If NPCs act appropriately based on PC choice here, one can get pretty far. You can tie this in with independence as well - PCs in gift economies who constantly take and never give will be seen as and treated as the dependents of the people giving the gifts to them. If they wish to become mature adults worthy of respect in the eyes of others, they must give far more than they take.
The second element is to give the PCs things that are not directly useful, but are valuable. For example, a PC probably doesn't need 20 blankets, so if they are given them as a gift, there's an obvious incentive to pare it down to a manageable number by giving them to others. Enforcing encumbrance, especially on highly mobile PCs without a home to store all this stuff at, will help them to decide what items are essential, which are useful enough to put up with the hassle of transporting, and which should be given away. Food items and other consumables are particularly common gifts in real gift economies, often combined with a cultural injunction to consume the items once given. Spoilage and rot encourage the PCs to then share the food with anyone they can and get gratitude for it rather than hold onto it.
Another way of dealing with this is specialisation of function. This is extremely common in groups with specialised religious and technical personnel (priests and smiths). One gives gifts to the specialist even when one doesn't require their services, so that when you do need them, you are a high priority (for magical healing, for getting a new sword, etc.) over everyone else making the same request.
The third element is to emphasise the distance between barter and gift-giving. In gift economies, barter is usually reserved only for complete strangers and antagonistic groups. By insisting on a barter-like exchange in societies like this, you are telling the other person "You are a stranger, possibly even an enemy, in any case certainly no one with whom I can have a relationship with". Gift-giving is a fundamentally temporal relationship. It says "We have known one another long enough to trust and care about one another, and will continue to do so in future". To reinforce this, recurring NPCs to exchange goods with are key. PCs in a gift economy should belong to a community, whether a tribe, manor or village, with recurring individuals who they can develop these kinds of relationships with.
The game mechanical tools you need to track this are varied. I encourage the use of something like a dice map to determine what any subgroup within the overall community the PCs belong to has at hand at any given moment. My own nomad starting gear dice map and nomad family generation dice map are intended for just this purpose.
Debt-based economies are somewhat similar to a barter-economy, but often involve a formal tracking system that allows for temporal distance between one side of the exchange and another. In the real world, our modern debt-based economy relies on credit scores, loans asset to liability ratios and other complex financial tools to track how much one is indebted to others, how likely one is to repay the debt, and when one must repay it. In ancient times, this took the form of a centralised tracking authority, often the servants of a king or local warlord, who operated a common market to which various individuals and groups would come to obtain goods like metal tools or weapons, livestock, seedcorn, luxuries, etc. that they couldn't produce themselves. Usually this is combined with taxation in the form of labour, where individuals who use the common market must offer compensation for it to the authority, though sometimes goods may be exchanged instead as well.
Without claiming to be an expert on it, I'm given to understand that Mesoamericans and Mesopotamians both used variations of this system, as did medieval manors for their internal peasant economies. In this kind of system, the PCs bring back the haul from their adventures, hand it over to middlemen, and in exchange have an open line of credit for the goods they want without ever touching money. The reliability of this system requires the trackers to be upright and honest, which may or may not be the case. The debt-based economy still avoids cash, and leaves PCs relying on barter whenever they are dealing with situations outside the market operated by the authority. There may even be multiple such markets in operation by different authorities which they must deal with.
This kind of debt-based economy requires a home base the PCs return to, or at least a site for a market which will recur in the game. It also requires some sort of enforcement mechanism, either guards or magic or something else of similar threat, so that PCs don't simply break its laws constantly by taking what they want and fudging the records. Otherwise, I think this system is similar enough to modern ones that PCs will have an easy time figuring it out.
I don't blame game designers for putting these structures in, since they operate on an already-existing understanding of value, particularly cash. Getting cash is so much a part of modern existence that it can be placed into a game world as an obvious motivator for PCs to do things. This is true even in later editions of D&D, where the fungibility of cash is extended to magical items so that there is no discontinuity in the value of things. Unlike a lot of other people, I am not opposed to the purchase and sale of magical items, as I can't see a logical reason they wouldn't be absorbed into the economy, especially if they can be created in any sort of reliable way. I think that it's a natural extension of another problem, the abundance and value of cash, rather than the core of the issue itself. If you want to get rid of magical item shops, get rid of cash.
I think there are two possible ways one can go about this, at least if history and political economy are any guides. The first is a gift-based economy, the second is a debt-based economy. Neither is exclusive, either with one another or with a cash-based economy, so it you can experiment with overlapping them until you find the balance that best suits you. For the rest of the post, I'm going to discuss possible ways of using gift-based economies and debt-based economies in your games and settings.
Gift economies are oriented around the accumulation of social prestige by the production and distribution of goods. This usually takes the form of ritualised gift exchanges like potlatches whereby individuals or collectives (like families or tribes) offer gifts to one another under a principle of escalation, where simply meeting the gift given to one is insufficient for satisfaction - one is obligated to outdo the gift. Homeric and other ancient Greek literature is filled with these kinds of exchanges, though often the gift exchange goes beyond material goods into favours, services and quests. In societies where this kind of economic system is practiced, reciprocity is extremely important - individuals in the historical record have committed suicide over being given gifts that they felt could never repay.
There are a number of possible ways to make this work. The first is to play on the PCs' desire for respect from others. While not everyone has this motivation, many people do, and it's common enough that it forms a workable basis. PCs should understand from the get-go that they will receive items from others as gifts, and in turn will be expected to give items to others. Refusing to give something to someone who asks makes the PC look poor and weak, while giving gifts even when not request makes them look powerful and rich. If NPCs act appropriately based on PC choice here, one can get pretty far. You can tie this in with independence as well - PCs in gift economies who constantly take and never give will be seen as and treated as the dependents of the people giving the gifts to them. If they wish to become mature adults worthy of respect in the eyes of others, they must give far more than they take.
The second element is to give the PCs things that are not directly useful, but are valuable. For example, a PC probably doesn't need 20 blankets, so if they are given them as a gift, there's an obvious incentive to pare it down to a manageable number by giving them to others. Enforcing encumbrance, especially on highly mobile PCs without a home to store all this stuff at, will help them to decide what items are essential, which are useful enough to put up with the hassle of transporting, and which should be given away. Food items and other consumables are particularly common gifts in real gift economies, often combined with a cultural injunction to consume the items once given. Spoilage and rot encourage the PCs to then share the food with anyone they can and get gratitude for it rather than hold onto it.
Another way of dealing with this is specialisation of function. This is extremely common in groups with specialised religious and technical personnel (priests and smiths). One gives gifts to the specialist even when one doesn't require their services, so that when you do need them, you are a high priority (for magical healing, for getting a new sword, etc.) over everyone else making the same request.
The third element is to emphasise the distance between barter and gift-giving. In gift economies, barter is usually reserved only for complete strangers and antagonistic groups. By insisting on a barter-like exchange in societies like this, you are telling the other person "You are a stranger, possibly even an enemy, in any case certainly no one with whom I can have a relationship with". Gift-giving is a fundamentally temporal relationship. It says "We have known one another long enough to trust and care about one another, and will continue to do so in future". To reinforce this, recurring NPCs to exchange goods with are key. PCs in a gift economy should belong to a community, whether a tribe, manor or village, with recurring individuals who they can develop these kinds of relationships with.
The game mechanical tools you need to track this are varied. I encourage the use of something like a dice map to determine what any subgroup within the overall community the PCs belong to has at hand at any given moment. My own nomad starting gear dice map and nomad family generation dice map are intended for just this purpose.
Debt-based economies are somewhat similar to a barter-economy, but often involve a formal tracking system that allows for temporal distance between one side of the exchange and another. In the real world, our modern debt-based economy relies on credit scores, loans asset to liability ratios and other complex financial tools to track how much one is indebted to others, how likely one is to repay the debt, and when one must repay it. In ancient times, this took the form of a centralised tracking authority, often the servants of a king or local warlord, who operated a common market to which various individuals and groups would come to obtain goods like metal tools or weapons, livestock, seedcorn, luxuries, etc. that they couldn't produce themselves. Usually this is combined with taxation in the form of labour, where individuals who use the common market must offer compensation for it to the authority, though sometimes goods may be exchanged instead as well.
Without claiming to be an expert on it, I'm given to understand that Mesoamericans and Mesopotamians both used variations of this system, as did medieval manors for their internal peasant economies. In this kind of system, the PCs bring back the haul from their adventures, hand it over to middlemen, and in exchange have an open line of credit for the goods they want without ever touching money. The reliability of this system requires the trackers to be upright and honest, which may or may not be the case. The debt-based economy still avoids cash, and leaves PCs relying on barter whenever they are dealing with situations outside the market operated by the authority. There may even be multiple such markets in operation by different authorities which they must deal with.
This kind of debt-based economy requires a home base the PCs return to, or at least a site for a market which will recur in the game. It also requires some sort of enforcement mechanism, either guards or magic or something else of similar threat, so that PCs don't simply break its laws constantly by taking what they want and fudging the records. Otherwise, I think this system is similar enough to modern ones that PCs will have an easy time figuring it out.
Old Stuff Day!
CKutalik over at the Hill Cantons mentioned that it's Old Stuff Day. So despite this blog having been around for one a half months, I'm going to repost a bunch of my stuff that I think was overlooked. Especially from the first few weeks of the blog, when I was posting 3 times a day. I've since slowed down a bit in response to requests from people that I not overwhelm them and give them a chance to read things.
I have a popular posts widget thing on the side, so these will mainly be overlooked ones rather than the most popular ones.
Runequest
New Uses for Culture (Own), 2, 3
Culture (Own) is one of those skills that can either be incredibly useful or a total waste based on how your DM sees it working. These posts attempt to provide specific ideas DMs can adapt to their own games.
Building Your Own Mongoose Runequest 2 / Legend Backgrounds and Professions
Someone was asking about this over on rpg.net last night, and while people seem to be reading my Openquest weapon-design system all the time, this one gets passed over despite being just as useful. I reverse-engineered this and confirmed it to be correct with Pete Nash in 2010, so it has as close to the stamp of "official approval" as any fan stuff can.
Abolishing the Common Magic Skill
I hate the Common Magic skill in RQ, and here's my strategy to remove it from play.
My Mongoose Runequest 2 / Legend Cheat Sheet
This has most of the calculations a player will need on it, and simplifies the amount of page flipping and book hunting one has to do. The cheat sheet itself is a downloadable pdf.
Swords and Wizardry
Let PCs roll for Wandering Monsters
Currently in practice in my Emern game. It's working well.
The Maps of Arkhesh, Xapoltecan and Heshtown for Emern
Maps aplenty.
Theory
The theory pieces speak for themselves
Some Ideas About Using Random Tables
Let PCs Roll for Wandering Monsters
The Long Narrative: Recurring Locations
The Long Narrative: Boring NPCs
Enjoy!
I have a popular posts widget thing on the side, so these will mainly be overlooked ones rather than the most popular ones.
Runequest
New Uses for Culture (Own), 2, 3
Culture (Own) is one of those skills that can either be incredibly useful or a total waste based on how your DM sees it working. These posts attempt to provide specific ideas DMs can adapt to their own games.
Building Your Own Mongoose Runequest 2 / Legend Backgrounds and Professions
Someone was asking about this over on rpg.net last night, and while people seem to be reading my Openquest weapon-design system all the time, this one gets passed over despite being just as useful. I reverse-engineered this and confirmed it to be correct with Pete Nash in 2010, so it has as close to the stamp of "official approval" as any fan stuff can.
Abolishing the Common Magic Skill
I hate the Common Magic skill in RQ, and here's my strategy to remove it from play.
My Mongoose Runequest 2 / Legend Cheat Sheet
This has most of the calculations a player will need on it, and simplifies the amount of page flipping and book hunting one has to do. The cheat sheet itself is a downloadable pdf.
Swords and Wizardry
Let PCs roll for Wandering Monsters
Currently in practice in my Emern game. It's working well.
The Maps of Arkhesh, Xapoltecan and Heshtown for Emern
Maps aplenty.
Theory
The theory pieces speak for themselves
Some Ideas About Using Random Tables
Let PCs Roll for Wandering Monsters
The Long Narrative: Recurring Locations
The Long Narrative: Boring NPCs
Enjoy!
Mar 1, 2012
Warrens of the Leper Queens Will Be a S&W Module
Moragne has been a troubled setting since last year, when I ran a game in it and the PCs didn't like it. Since then, I've been trying to keep my interest up in it and rework it. Some of the issues were player-specific and had to do with the style of campaign (one of the guys I was playing with didn't like the sandbox element), but they've made me much less interested in the setting. I haven't been playing any MRQ2 since, and my Runequest games going forward are much more likely to be Openquest than MRQ2.
With that in mind, one of the reasons the updates on Warrens of the Leper Queens have been so slow is I simply don't know when I'll be playing MRQ2 next. It's hard to get excited about something you may never play, and I think it's a bit dishonest to release a module you've never playtested.
So, with that in mind, I've decided to reboot Warrens of the Leper Queens. I'm going to expand the dungeon itself, convert the mechanics over to Swords and Wizardry, and remove or alter the Moragne-specific material to make it more of a generic module. I think the core concept and theme of it are good, but there are specific structural elements I want to change (the size and layout of the dungeon, etc.) and the reboot will give me a chance to do them properly.
With that in mind, one of the reasons the updates on Warrens of the Leper Queens have been so slow is I simply don't know when I'll be playing MRQ2 next. It's hard to get excited about something you may never play, and I think it's a bit dishonest to release a module you've never playtested.
So, with that in mind, I've decided to reboot Warrens of the Leper Queens. I'm going to expand the dungeon itself, convert the mechanics over to Swords and Wizardry, and remove or alter the Moragne-specific material to make it more of a generic module. I think the core concept and theme of it are good, but there are specific structural elements I want to change (the size and layout of the dungeon, etc.) and the reboot will give me a chance to do them properly.
Feb 29, 2012
Coming Back From the Dead
There is no resurrection spell in the Dawnlands, but being dead is not a strictly permanent state. How you come back from the dead depends on where you go when you die and how your corpse is treated.
If you are not buried, eaten or burnt, you come back as an undead monster after a number of days equal to your POW at the time of death. If your body is still intact, your soul is still attached to it. Depending on how you died and what kind of person you were, you may become any one of hundreds of types of undead. These creatures are known as "shur" by the Kadiz and Hill People, a term that means "ghost".
If you are eaten, you are dead permanently. Your soul drifts along on the wind until it passes into an embryo, probably of an animal, whereupon you are reincarnated. Along the way it may drift into other loose souls and merge or entangle with them. You do not remember your previous life once you are embedded in a new body, and the only way to release your soul from its new home is to kill your new self. This drifting process means there are almost always animal souls around for shamans and summoners looking to bind them.
If you are burnt, your soul flies off into the sky to join the stars. The more powerful the soul, the brighter the star. The divine heroes of Dwer Tor automatically explode on death in a burst of heat and light to ensure their return to the sky. Most everyone else needs a pyre. This is most common amongst the Dwer, particularly optimates and thaumates; for priests of the Celestial Herd, and members of various stellar cults like the Leper Star cultists.
To bring someone back to life who is a star in the sky is a known process, albeit one that rarely succeeds. The summoner must know the person's real name, must build a fire, and must write the summons on a piece of paper in red-black ink made from iron and rust which is then burnt in the fire. They must then invoke and venerate the person to be resurrected. This has a chance of working equal to the POW of the dead person divided by 10 (round down). It can be performed once per person per death. A few other methods are known to exist with better chances, including the method the Dwer use to summon their divine heroes back to earth, but the exact steps and materials are secrets. The Dwer would readily kill anyone attempting to study their techniques. Most of the alternate methods are extremely bloody, and involve sacrificing and burning humanoids.
People brought back to life by this method reappear as falling stars somewhere in the Dawnlands. There is no guarantee this is anywhere near the summoner, though the trajectory can be tracked and plotted by expert astronomers. When they return, they have any gear that was burnt with them. The sins of their previous life harden and encrust around them as they return to earth, and these break off and become aberrations, often intelligent and always hostile to the returner. These slither off to cause trouble unless the returner or anyone else nearby can stop them.
If you are buried, either underground or dumped into a water source, your soul enters into the dream world (which is often also called the "underworld" for obvious reasons). This is the most common fate for people who die in the Dawnlands. Getting out of the dream world and back to life is easier than coming back from the stars, but is significantly more dangerous both for you and other people. All that is required is for a priest to cast the spell Otherworld Journey, or for a shaman to enter it through meditation. Then they simply need to find you, and take you back to where they entered from. If this can be accomplished successfully, you appear buried in the ground at their feet, and can be dug up (it helps to have a team of people prepared to dig you up so that you don't suffocate and immediately sink back into the underworld). You reappear with any gear you were buried with.
The problems with this method are mainly finding where the person is and dealing with the denizens of the dream world, many of whom are hostile, powerful and hungry for the souls of travelers. As well, your old body normally becomes a ravenous undead monster that attempts to dig itself out of the ground and consume your new body. All the goods that were buried with it remain there (what you bring back are solidified dream-copies of them). Souls are typically located in the parts of the dream world that belong to the gods they worship. Forest People are typically found as insects in the Hivehome, Hill People and Kadiz roam the open plains as wolves following the Stone Pack, Dwer helots swim as fish in the Great Sea, and the Kaddish can be anything, depending upon their personal beliefs.
How to Represent Skills Without A Skill System?
Since I decided to start rebuilding Swords and Wizardry, one thing I've been debating is whether to introduce skills or not. Majestic Wilderlands has them, as does D&D 3.x, and most of the games I play are skill-based (WFRP, Runequest).
Skills are useful in that they provide a clear idea about where a character's competence lies, but the downside to them is that they define the tasks a character is most competent at, giving the impression that the character is incompetent at all other tasks. This is the "thief problem" in a nutshell, where the introduction of the thief class in OD&D with its skills for climbing walls, opening locks, etc. cause non-thief PCs to stop attempting to do these things and leave them for the thief. I want to avoid this kind of specialisation if possible, while still allowing certain classes, especially non-casters, to excel at certain kinds of skills or behaviours.
I'm considering a couple of options:
1) Representing core "skills" as class abilities.
It's easiest to illustrate the idea with the following example: The "Trader" class I mentioned in my last post has, as a result of some discussion last night, before a "Smuggler", which preserves the trade-and-treasure orientation while providing a clearer sense of what skills such a character brings to an adventuring group. Smugglers will be concealment experts, who help the party set up ambushes, hide themselves when being pursued, etc. One ability I'm thinking of giving the class is to force monsters / antagonists to reroll their surprise rolls and take the worse result of the two rolls. This represents the smuggler working to help the party move stealthily.
2) Something like the Castles & Crusades prime system
All character classes have two prime requisites. Tests are roll-under on a d20. For all tests except for your prime requisites, you have to roll under your stat. For your prime requisites, you have to roll under 18 or your stat, whichever is higher. This is the system I currently favour. One problems I can foresee is a situation where it seems like something should be part of your class, but it is obviously governed by a different stat than the prime requisite. I am debating whether each class should therefore have two predetermined prime requisites, or one prime requisite for the class, and one the PC picks.
Suggestions and advice are welcome. I may end up using a hybrid of these two.
Skills are useful in that they provide a clear idea about where a character's competence lies, but the downside to them is that they define the tasks a character is most competent at, giving the impression that the character is incompetent at all other tasks. This is the "thief problem" in a nutshell, where the introduction of the thief class in OD&D with its skills for climbing walls, opening locks, etc. cause non-thief PCs to stop attempting to do these things and leave them for the thief. I want to avoid this kind of specialisation if possible, while still allowing certain classes, especially non-casters, to excel at certain kinds of skills or behaviours.
I'm considering a couple of options:
1) Representing core "skills" as class abilities.
It's easiest to illustrate the idea with the following example: The "Trader" class I mentioned in my last post has, as a result of some discussion last night, before a "Smuggler", which preserves the trade-and-treasure orientation while providing a clearer sense of what skills such a character brings to an adventuring group. Smugglers will be concealment experts, who help the party set up ambushes, hide themselves when being pursued, etc. One ability I'm thinking of giving the class is to force monsters / antagonists to reroll their surprise rolls and take the worse result of the two rolls. This represents the smuggler working to help the party move stealthily.
2) Something like the Castles & Crusades prime system
All character classes have two prime requisites. Tests are roll-under on a d20. For all tests except for your prime requisites, you have to roll under your stat. For your prime requisites, you have to roll under 18 or your stat, whichever is higher. This is the system I currently favour. One problems I can foresee is a situation where it seems like something should be part of your class, but it is obviously governed by a different stat than the prime requisite. I am debating whether each class should therefore have two predetermined prime requisites, or one prime requisite for the class, and one the PC picks.
Suggestions and advice are welcome. I may end up using a hybrid of these two.
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