Prognardia: Rock 'n' Roll Moorcock

In the chronicles of the long, bong-bubbled affair between fantasy literature and rock 'n' roll, no writer has plunged deeper in than Michael Moorcock. At three five-year intervals - 1975, 1980, 1985 - his hero Elric phased through hi-fi speakers to the delight of nerdy teens, brought to life by the legendary bands Hawkwind and Blue Öyster Cult, through lyrics penned by Moorcock himself.

Hawkwind and BOC, actually, have a lot in common. Both were born in the late 60's, early 70's rock scene. At that time many questions that were later to incite bitter civil wars were being tried out from both sides, sometimes by the same band and sometimes in the same song. One such question: loud and fuzzy and sludgy, or precise and artistic and clean? Before the Sex Pistols and Ramones squared off against Pink Floyd and Yes, the early albums of Hawkwind and BOC pitted psychedelic reverb and science-fictional lyrics against the guitar crunch that would go on to fuel generations of punk, metal and grunge.

Hawkwind: Urban Guerrilla (1973; later covered by Mudhoney among others)

BOC: Cities on Flame (1972; later covered by Iced Earth among others)

Between the two bands, BOC's advantage is that their lyrics and approach always hit that fine point - gonzo, but not silly, a kind of controlled, knowing over-the-top. If they were roleplaying sessions, BOC would be Expedition to the Barrier Peaks with Erol Otus GMing, while Hawkwind would be Middle Earth RPG run in costume where the big reveal is that Tom Bombadil is an evolved life form from the Cygnus Nebula.

(Then again, the Cult's music eventually dead-ended into a kind of optimized, Jim Steinman,  album-oriented rock. Hawkwind has had the more illustrious influence - their bassist, Lemmy, would go on to found Motorhead, leaving an indelible mark at the boundary of punk and metal.)

Anyway, Moorcock's first outing with Hawkwind came on The Warrior On The Edge of Time. Apart from the title reference to the Eternal Champion, Moorcock himself intoned relevant-themed poetry on three of the album's tracks, like this one:

Hawkwind - The Wizard Blew His Horn

Best of all was when the gatefold opened up, a flap fell down and it was revealed that this seeming innocent record album cover was actually a shield ... The Shield of ... hold on, I think it's got letters on it ... The Shield of Chaos!

Fast forward to 1980, where Moorcock writes the lyrics to "Black Blade" on BOC's Cultosaurus Erectus album, first person from the point of view of Elric himself. And the band goes wild with sound effects, Vocoder and Hammond organ:

Moorcock also contributed a couple of lyrics to other BOC albums, but "Black Blade" is tied the closest to his fantasy works.

Now it's 1985. Most of the prog class of 1970 is reinventing themselves. Floyd have broken up, Yes, Tull and Genesis have gone radio-friendly, King Crimson have followed Fripp into the experimental guitar maze. For Pete's sake, This is Spinal Tap came out last year! Yet oblivious to the mockery, Hawkwind and Moorcock thunder down the rails. They crank up the earnestness of their sword-and-sorcery stage show to 11 with an entire concept album about Elric called The Chronicle of the Black Sword.

Ah! Where now is the will to wretched excess? Where now are the swooping Elric mimes? Lost, my friends, smothered beneath the sands of irony. I love this stuff, but I can't really recommend it to the coming generations (although there's every chance a smart 11 year old kid would really dig BOC.)

Ultimate Wilderness Encounter Table 1

Well, here is the first of six wilderness tables to be completed.

This is not everything you can encounter in a civilized area, but rather all the "civilized" themed encounters - humans, other friendly kindreds, and a raft of shapechangers and oddballs. The idea once more is to have a priority of types you can encounter (so that the priority 2/1/4  puts chart 1, civilized, in the middle) and then roll 3 or 4 d6 and take the highest die in the priority that comes up.

Working off that, you consult a chart that matches the terrain - for example, a road going through forest would give you:

1-2 Woodland
3-4 Woodland (or Road if civilized encounter)
5-6 Any

I'll have a set of terrain charts at some point.

Finally you roll 2d10 and take the lower, to give you an encounter. Here's how to use this on the fly.

The top entry in the encounter is the approximate distance in 5 mile hexes from lair (L = always in lair; 0 = 1d6-1 miles away; 1 = 1d10-1 miles away; 2 = 1d20-2 miles away) and time of day the encounter is active (ignore an inappropriate encounter unless you have found the creature's lair). This means you will almost never stumble across a creature's lair by chance.

An X here is a being without a lair; a T means the creature will only be encountered in its native terrain. This last one is more relevant for the hexmap stocking and encounter method I've described before.

The top bold number is the number of creatures in the lair, and the non-bolded number below it is the number of creatures in the encounter. Obviously the number encountered is a maximum for the number in lair. A roman numeral (III, V, X) refers to the number of standard beings you have to have for each higher-level leader-type to exist, and these go up in a pyramid of two (that is, with two basic leaders you get an even higher level leader and so forth).

A "Settle" lair means the beings can be traced to a settlement in range, or if you have not mapped any settlement, a small community of fewer than 100 people.

Some unusual encounters: Homesteaders are just farmers; Wanderers are gypsies, tramps, refugees, or your world's equivalent; Hermits are clerics of that level on a d20 roll of 1-10 and just eccentrics on 11-20; substitute froglings, rabbit people or whatever if you hate halflings; Trickster animals are from my Varlets and Vermin collection; Swanmays and Selkies are from Monster Manual 2 but quite traditional benevolent shapechangers.

I'll let you know when the new silhouettes are added to the zipped download file. Fairly pleased with my werewolf, werebear (based on some long-legged prehistoric bearoid), doppleganger (somewhat distorted from a public domain chupacabra) and swanmay.

Old School As A Gamut Of Emotions

What's the essence of Old School style GMing? noisms thinks it's in being a dispassionate, deistic god who lets the world have its own reality. Telecanter weighs in with a comment: it's all about letting the players have fun.

I don't think it's about control, or fun. Simply put, it is to run the game so that the players can have a chance of feeling as wide a range of emotions as possible, vicariously through their PCs. Not just pleasure or mild challenge, but grief, anger, remorse, fear, side-splitting laughter. On a higher level, this experience translates into more than just the fun of completing an easy crossword puzzle, and evolves into the deeper enjoyment of engagement with serious literature or drama.

The autonomous world then becomes a necessary adjunct to this goal.

• Sometimes it hands the players the fruits of their actions - pride, remorse, satisfaction.
• Sometimes fate throws undeserved misfortune their way, whether they can see it coming - fear - or have to pick up the pieces afterwards - sorrow.
• Sometimes they get more than they deserve - joy! 
• Sometimes the world gives enemies - anger, hate - and other times allies - gratitude, respect, concern. 
• Sometimes the universe lets them know just how enormous it is - opening up the twin feelings of awe and terror. 
• Sometimes it's the people underfoot who get to them - pity, compassion, contempt.
• And it's only against the serious backdrop of all these concerns that the true release of world-shaking laughter can come ... not the continual, gassy snickering that some hope to engineer through a relentless parade of ridiculous characters and cheap puns.

If you are fudging things or setting them up in the first place to make the game's outcomes fall within a certain range of cautious success, you are denying your players these experiences. If the players suspect that you are fudging things, you are denying them even the stage-managed satisfactions you intend for them to enjoy. If the world is not autonomous, it cannot inspire these emotions.

But also, the players must keep their feelings within the world in order to have the higher-level enjoyment that comes from experiencing even painful feelings as "theatrical emotions" or rasa (see here for an explanation of the Hindu concept). They must be mature enough to respect the separation of the world from the person of the Game Master.

If their grief is aimed at the dice, their anger at the GM's rules or interpretation, their gratitude at the module designer, then they are missing the point. Equally so, it is the GM's responsibility to demonstrate that all his or her choices are made out of necessity, drawing on the logic of the rules system and the logic of the imaginary world.

That, I think, is what distinguishes the old school GM from the balance-gamer who is trying to keep everything fair and manageable, and from the rail-greasing story-gamer who is denying the emotions that come from confronting meaninglessness or exerting true agency within the world.

The old school systems allow these heights and depths, but - like a psychedelic drug - can also go horribly wrong if not experienced in the right company. This is why they are and always will be an underground phenomenon.

The Great Dwarf Roll

So the party goes carousing, and Shakira the male dwarf (don't ask) rolls 16 on my carousing table:

I take a few minutes to visit the excusado and tell the players to come up with some suitable dare.

It should be noted that we are in the town Kaserolle, renowned for its annual cheese-rolling competition. It should also be noted that Australians are fond of spectacles involving the rapid transit of dwarfs. I'm not going to say it was our Australian who suggested it, but when I came back, the gauntlet was thrown. The dwarf was dared to roll down Cheese Roll Hill inside a great hollowed-out wheel of cheese.

The cheese was made ready, the dwarf lodged within. The rolling through the streets, out the gate, and to the summit of the hill began. Numerous saves vs. nausea had to be made and the dwarf ended up losing a few hit points along the way.

Cheese Roll Hill, as it turns out, is no bunny slope. Perils include the precipitous Great Gorgonzola Leap, the sharp rocks known as the Grater, and a lethal old pine tree in the middle. The aim was to roll the dwarf-enhanced cheese through the town gates. If you hit an obstacle, you take the damage on the die, and the concussion from the Leap was worth d6.

Thanks to Mike for taking pictures

Using analog simulation principles, the cheese-plus-dwarf was represented by a one pound coin.

Mike, the dwarf's player, angled the cheese-coin just right and wound up rolling off the Leap, taking damage but missing all the obstacles ... and the gate ... in fact, missing the walls altogether ...

What was on the south side of Kaserolle just beyond the walls? Why, a river and some washerwomen's huts. I set up the ramp again, laying down huts using regular d6 (representing damage) and emotion dice (representing attitudes of inhabitants if hit... both angry ...) The cheese missed all the huts and went into the river. I said, what the hell, roll d6, on a 6 there is a fresh water encounter. 6 comes up, and after some more rolling on my under-construction encounter table ...

What better beast to bedevil a Canadian? The beaver, of course, starts gnawing at the cheese that is keeping the dwarf afloat. Clutching to the last chunk, Shakira gives the critter a sharp elbow. "Intelligent but docile" - the beaver, annoyed, tail-slaps the dwarf out of the river and onto the bank, doing more damage and taking him down to 1 hp. The beaver climbs up, but the approach of the rest of the spectators and Rex the dog quickly chases it away.

Thanks to Lui for this stirring portrayal in Photoshop

The spectators, cheering and fist-pumping, take the dazed Shakira and toss him in a blanket. Coins get thrown into the blanket until he has recouped all the money he had spent on ale and the cost of the cheese. The tale of the dwarf is told and retold all the next day and will no doubt become a legend of Kaserolle.

I was actually thinking of making my carousing table more matter-of-fact, giving results that can take effect instantly, so that players can carouse at the end of a long session without more fun and games. I'm not so sure about that any more ...

Another Consolation Class: The Dilettante

Last weekend I had a player roll up another character with no bonus-giving ability score. Although he happily took on the role of the gnome I have set aside for such an occasion, I realized I was getting a little tired of gnomes. So I started thinking of another profitable class choice for the old-school 3d6-statted PC who has nothing.

A common theme in adventure fiction is the city slicker, coxcomb noble, pretentious artiste, or other product of civilization whose social advantages are stripped away in harsher surroundings. Brom Garrett in HBO's Deadwood and a million dudes before him, the Sayers missionaries in The African Queen, or the various European functionaries in Heart of Darkness come to mind. With such a character in tow, dramatic and role-playing opportunities abound. There is high comedy when they happen to save the day, low comedy when they bumble, and black comedy when they buy the farm or the party decides to frag them for their loot.

At the same time the concept has a limited shelf-life in play, so I came up with the idea to have the dilettante character be a kind of chrysalis. If you can make it through first level with him, he retires and sends in someone better with all the experience he's earned (and it's a good idea if you're playing in a system with variant xp advancement to be very generous, leveling him up by, say, 1000 xp).

If you're anticipating problems with your hardened adventurers eyeing the dilettante's purse and fancy armor covetously, you can hint at social consequences should the well-connected adventure tourist perish. These might include having the higher-level character that was waiting on deck for the PC become a sworn enemy.

A Better System-Neutral

Frank Mentzer & co. at Eldritch Ent have been drawing some flak for the "system-neutral" descriptions in their products. Apparently, to avoid being beholden to the Open Game License, they have decided to express key stats in terms of percentages so a 6 HD monster has 30% "Power" and so on.

Ever wonder why Esperanto never caught on? No matter how illogical its grammar or spelling, a universal language will only work if there are already lots of people who speak it. Now, a plurality and maybe even a strict majority of roleplayers run some kind of D&D. From that, conversion to a system without levels, armor class and hit points is going to be laborious and inexact anyway. So if you want to be free of the OGL, why not just go with D&D standard and make up your own names for the usual stats? As Flavor Flav would say, y'all can't copyright a number ...

Ghoul
Power: 2
(is there really a reason to list hit points in an adventure? Most times I just roll them up in the dicebox with my bucketload of d8's)
Defense: 4 (add to 11/subtract from 10 for AC; you can even break this down into physical, active and magical defense)
Attack: 3/3/6 (die maximums will do, you can figure out whether it's 2d6 or d12)
Speed: 3 (x30' for D&D movement)
SA: Paralyzation (give duration in minutes, maybe just let the DM work out the save or use synonyms for Fort/Ref/Will)
SD: undead blar blar

My previous thoughts on old school statblocks.

Social Set Pieces in Campaigns

Although mapping and exploring and figuring and fighting are all lots of fun, the best campaigns also mix in a different kind of action in a less dangerous social setting. I've been doing this in all my campaigns, and noticing a spectrum of the kind of interludes I run. Most of them are heavily improvised with the help of various tables, player input, and off-the-cuff inventions. Many of them stem from the carousing and gourmandising rules, or from attempts to buy services or sell loot. Some are just generated as random encounters.

1. The expository set piece. Sometime's there's just sheer fun in kicking back and entertaining the players. You might play this out as the characters watching a religious ritual that explains a mythic story, a procession in which the major social forces in a city each represent themselves, an overheard gossip conversation between two washerwomen. In my Trossley campaign this role was played by the gourmandising feast of the henchman Cordoon. In the current Kaserolle epic I spent a good half hour relating the rhyming play performed by a troupe of traveling players that was commenting on the current action and giving intimations of connections to larger events ... somewhat inspired by Gene Wolfe's similar use of a theater troupe in the Book of the New Sun.
2. The interactive set piece. Here, there is more of a conversation, although the interaction is not exactly free; it follows set rules or is bound by an interrupting event. Your players might be wagering with the patrons on either side as they watch a horse race, conversing with the other passengers as a ferry barge glides past the main sights of a river city, discussing all the reasons why the long-winded merchant should buy their carpet for fifty silvers as he lists all the reasons why only forty will do. In Trossley the players had their individual questions for the lammasu Saheedra; in Kaserolle last week a gourmandising session turned into a feast at a cheese restaurant that alternated conversational opportunities with several NPCs and lavish descriptions of the courses of the meal.

In short, I find it good to have a structure of some kind for audiences and parties so that the players make every word count and the event doesn't drag or fade.

3. The fully gamified set piece. I hadn't really done anything like this before today in the Kaserolle campaign. It's a set piece where the players not only interact but take part with their own mini-game. Imagine a conversation over a card game, for example, gamed out with actual cards, where the NPC grow more generous or cranky as they win or lose. In Trossley a carousing attempt led to a short knife fight and an enemy made. This time I spiced up a carouse table with  ... well, I'll really have to wait for the photos to get to me to really do it justice. This was unbelievable, one of the best times I've ever had at the table and with the full input and cooperation of the players.

Does anyone else find room for set pieces in their campaigns? What kind of techniques do you use to keep them moving along?