Every hero a legend

 "When the legends die, the dreams end; there is no more greatness."

--Tecumseh (apocryphal)

If the world is a tree, its roots are legends. We cannot see them, but the sap rises. We cannot know they are real, but the tree sways in a storm. The world is grounded by faith in things unseen.

Here, belief makes the imaginary real. So be careful: when I tell you about a hero, you imagine who they are, what they are capable of. The feats of daring and might and mercy, you put yourself in their place. You give them a gift.

But so it is, with legends and heroes. We all believe in what our heroes do, even it is not true. Especially if it is not true. We do not know them, we have not seen these deeds, so our faith is weak. But we are many.

And for every resonance between the legend, and who they truly are--it ties them to us. We make them more Real, tougher to kill, stronger, world-shaking.

Achilles killing an Amazon, a scene from the lost epic Aithiopis, the sequel to the Illiad (precursor of the Odyssey).

This is the power of tales, this is the power of song, of love and tragedy and memory. Saints draw faith down like a river, heavier and heavier, personal. But Legends? They are wound round by blind threads of faith, thin, hard to escape, a net binding.

Here.

The path of a Legend calls many: warriors, charming thieves, swashbucklers, monster hunters, performers, and local heroes like yourself. If you would truly become one, ask yourself: what have you done? And more importantly, what do folks believe you can do?

Physical might and force of will are what a legend needs: the first to do great deeds, the second to be a compelling tale. You don't need to be strong, just dangerous and unforgettable. Some might call it charisma or magnetism, but I have seen enough sheep to know that a goat stands out. If you would be a legend, go your own way, and spread your story.

When you come to town, spend your gold and carouse and tell your boastful tales. Hire a singer to sing your praises in the taverns, or do it yourself. Live life to the hilt: let all envy you, but most importantly, let all talk about you.

The power will come as your fame grows.

Your name will no longer be your own. All heroes and villains are given new names by the people, often followed by an epithet. Already in the streets, they are calling you Brin the Bloody, and that is a dangerous one indeed.

What, you don't like it? If you want power, young Legend, you will live the stories they tell about you. It is not every day an Ogre dies to a lone spear.

But be wary: you are caught in a web. Fame is a dagger at the throat. If you become a villain in the eyes of the people, either lose your power or become a villain in truth. And yes, in this way, legends can become monsters. If we let them, stories can trap us in weakness, in error, in endless regret. What is an Ogre or a Dragon, but a thing caught in a myth it no longer tries to escape?

Legends never truly die, if their story lives on. Tyrants, heroes, killers, singers--all linger here, and if killed, wait just beyond the Veil to return. We are stones that history flows around, fires that refuse to go out.

So go forth, young hero, and may your deeds be told to children a thousand years from now. Burn bright.

-- A translation*, from Tradespeak, of Teller's counsel to Brin the Bloody in a quiet tavern, overheard and recorded by the scholar Raman, several years before Teller's Deathsong.

*For other entries in this collection, see 'Every Cleric a Saint'.

Every cleric a saint

 "I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.

 But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes."

--Psalm 82

Folk here talk to things, and they become real. If they give their faith, the receiver has power. Worship makes godlings and spirits. There are thousands of them, and they live a very long time, even after the worship ends and memory fades.

Belief is how each river has a godling. Forgetfulness is why the Chimera is so bitter.

Faith is like gravity: gather enough of its weight, and you are a god in truth. As a god you are not wiser, but rather more powerful, deeper, more Real than real. You gain the Sight. Gods and spirits have one foot here, one foot in the Realm Beyond.

No one knows why ascension occurs: that is the central mystery of faith. Faith is a sword that beheads the world. Numberless are the myriad powers of gods and spirits, for faith can accomplish miracles.

Clerics do not pray for power: we are on the journey to ascension. Every cleric is a minor saint. Our names are invoked by farmers to bless a meal, or protect a lamb.

Wisdom and Charisma are a cleric's core attributes: the first to sense divine opportunity and danger, the second to convince others to believe in our heroism and piety. We clerics have a divine patron to be sure, but waiting for miracles is chancy. If we want to change the world through our will, through 'spells' and rebuking the undead, we need faith. We need followers.

Maybe we started out the hero of our village or the last hope of a family of bandits. Maybe we spun tales so well in school that their lies hemmed in power, drawing in friends like flies.

A few is enough, if the faith is pure.

When clerics come back from the dungeon, cash in hand, we go looking for folks to hear our legend. We share our money, share our tales, use our power to empower and heal people. Every mended bone is faith that this holy magic works, a blessing returned tenfold over time.

"Faith is acting on what you believe in."

You are a young cleric, St. Agwen. If you want to acquire more powers, survive greater perils, discover new spells? Evangelize yourself. Get more believers--spend your silver on the poor, the faithful, above all the needy and the gullible. Don't hide your light: tell them who is saving them, and how great you are. If they first hear of your patron through your sermons, all the better.

Be the saint they want to see in the world. Their expectations are your morality, their lies about you, reality. Become a legend, and pray your followers continue in good health and happiness. Defend them from all ills.

With enough time, you will become a demi-god, standing by your divine patron in the minds of many. Powerful clerics only die when the faith of their followers is broken. Every cult leader is Rasputin.

Godhood is within reach. With enough faith, you will move mountains.

-- A translation*, from Tradespeak, of an excerpt of a letter to St. Agwen, from the Matriarch of Nomon, 12 Nightsmonth

*For the next entry in this collection, see 'Every hero a legend'.

Landsharks, pirates, and the Appendix N jam

 Right now my brain is jetlagged between thinking it's 8 am and 2 pm, I haven't played RPGs in a month, and writing words is honey on a cold day, drip drip drip. But the more I stare at this screen, the faster the honey drips, so here goes.

I wrote an entry to the Appendix N jam ¹ using the title i was given, "The Opal Griffon Rises!". Today I want to tell you about the Pirate Borg adventure that resulted, which I think kicks ass and was fun to playtest. It's free for the next month on my Itch page, and afterwards I don't plan to charge more than a cup of coffee for any adventure.

Landsharks, Ash, a sandy isle: a deadly one-shot for Pirate Borg.

The hardest part

By far the hardest part was deciding what the hell to do with the random title I was given. First off I petitioned to change Griffin to Griffon, because while there are many great spellings of griffon (e.g., gryphon), "griffin" is the only wrong one. It's a majestic animal darnit, not a hiker on the Appalachian Trail with smelly socks.

Second...well. Blank pages are hard. I had an idea for an adventure involving a pyramid scheme, but I couldn't make it fit the title in four pages--to much backstory was required. What was this rising opal Griffon? That's a verb and an adjective to explain, and I wanted an adventure that fit the name and didn't require a paragraph of backstory to torturously explain. I want plug and play.

The more backstory an adventure has, the less likely I am to run it, because who has time to explain to players how their current understanding of the world they are playing in is incomplete. I want to say, "Turns out there are magical monkey with guns in this world, just roll with it." not "In the beginning, the Monkey God screwed his sister by accident, causing the ice dragons to rise against the purple giants..." This preference comes from the fact that I am running a weekly sandbox campaign, where players can go anywhere and encounter modules I slot in, much like this game of UVG or this ultimate OSR map or this wavecrawl campaign.

Someone on Discord suggested something involving different factions of a city, because Griffon suggests heraldry and rising suggests victory. That was a good idea. But the Opal Griffon? That sounded like a ship name to me, and more, it sounded like a ship's figurehead. And rising? Whoa, I had just designed and run a pirate-themed 5e one-shot that involved rising...so yeah, there was something there I could use that was short enough to pack into a few pages. Sometimes, Rosebud is just a...well, from this point onward there are SPOILERS, so if you want your GM or Harbormaster to run the adventure for you, please stop reading.

What the adventure is (blood and death and treasure)

In this Pirate Borg adventure, you are going to investigate a missing ship, the Opal Griffon, and retrieve their smuggler's stash of Ash (magical cocaine) hidden on a island. You arrive, map in hand, facing one main beach and low red cliffs around the island, with a central copse of palm trees hiding the buried stash. You enter in to get the stash with your mules, and maybe on the way, if you are unlucky, encounter annoying sand lice that try to suck your blood and take an action to fling off. You arrive at the central palms, and encounter castaway kids and angry, perched gulls. The kids attempt to warn you about the gulls (and their addiction to Ash) and show you a way to avoid their attacks, but they haven't used language much lately and run away once you fling open the stash basement doors.

You find a terror-maddened smuggler down there, muttering about monsters, and, on a large fin of rock, a carved opaline griffon figure, the inspiration for the name of the ship. Once you emerge with Ash, the Ash-addicted gulls attack, trying to draw your blood. If your blood touches the sand, Landsharks come to feed. They can be outrun, but they are hard to outfight. If you run to the wet sand to the south to escape the landsharks, murderbees assault your mind to make a you a killer. If you flee to the swamp to the east for safety, red leeches attack those stuck in the quicksand. If your players are smart, they could bind their wounds and hide in the basement, or drop the heavy Ash and hide up in the trees while fending off angry gulls, or use some Ash to distract the gulls and distract the sharks by killing the mad smuggler, etc. You have infinite hard choices: this is a sandbox trap.

But if and when you make it back to their ship, watching pirates will spring an ambush, attempting to steal the Ash. And if the you don't boldly flee, and instead hide on the island or dither at the shore in battle, the resulting pirate cannonfire will wake up the island, a giant kaiju landshark named Mother, and cause a tsunami. That Opal Griffon was carved on her back, and it is RISING!

Adapting this adventure for other systems

Definitely--just swap out Monster stats and you are good to go. Everything is weak and annoying, doing minimal damage, except the landsharks (well, or if you get too close and get a murderbee swarm to the face). Landsharks need to be terrifying and, depending on how strong and combat oriented the system is, either slow or fast (slow for weak OSR characters, fast for 5e-style heroes). Level-wise, I would say you could dial the difficulty up or down easily by simply changing how challenging and speedy the landsharks are. Level 1 characters could face baby landsharks, and the adventure would be equally scary.

Ash is a Pirate Borg thing, and I think every setting needs magical cocaine, but if you disagree, just make it rum or whatever illegal edibles pirates are smuggling in your setting. Rum is sweet and easy for magical seagulls to get addicted to, but if you are running this for kids, you could make it a stash of magical salt--gathered from the beaches of this very island. Mother sweats when it gets hot, ya know?

A friend asked how I decided to make this Pirate Borg adventure. The answer is, it evolved. So here goes, my first design-process breakdown.

Designing the 5e adventure (version 1)

The original 5e adventure involved an abandoned rum stash an empty sandy isle--a hex in Secrets of the Black Crag, lifted in turn from Pirates of the Caribbean and other pirate stories. But by itself, a simple retrieval mission is boring--there's a reason Fetch is a game for dogs. So what if there was a complication, other pirates waiting to attack once the rum was liberated, who might maroon our heroic crew? Better. But wait, why would the pirates be waiting to attack, not just taking it themselves?

Well...there's scary monsters on the island? Yes! But I figured my crew would just run away if they immediately encountered terrifying monsters on the island right away--this is a money mission, not one they will care much about. They fight, they retreat immediately, either way boring. Even if I made the pirates attack them as they retreated, it would seem like a forced encounter, a railroad pre-planned by the GM. I needed a driver, something to force an interesting decision.

So...the monsters and pirates both wait to attack? The crew was asked to retrieve the rum, so I expect they will go in, put some of the rum on their ship, go back for a second load. Their CHOICE will be going back for seconds--that is the greed fear hook I planned. I know my players well enough to know they are fearless greedy gits, and that they will take the hook and regret it. Anything after that point, it's on them. And if they decided to only take half the rum and flee, then they could have a random pirate encounter and defend their take in a battle, good enough for a session.

So yes, after they choose to go go back for seconds, then I decided to have the monsters awake enough to strike. They will start to retreat to their ship, and then the pirates, fearing they will get away with the rum, come out of hiding behind a nearby islet, and fire upon them. They will be caught in a tactical bind with competing objectives at the water's edge, fighting on sea and land at the same time and faced with hard choices. Do they retreat to the ship, fighting off the pirates and abandoning the rum and mules? Do they fight off the monsters first, and risk being marooned?

It helped that my weekly crew had a favorite mule, so they would fight to defend it from the monsters, so there are stakes...and that led me to bulettes (landsharks), because what better monster to hide in a sandy island and want to eat horseflesh? But to maximize their panic, I didn't want to start with the big bulette right away or have it face them alone in a way that let them gang up on it. To follow the trajectory of fear as laid out by Ash Law:

Unease: I described the island as oddly silent and still, just sand plains and a central copse of palms.

Dread: How to make them uncertain about a certain attack? I could have shown them a bullette, but honestly 5e players love combat against solo foes. Best to have them face uncertain numbers of small bullettes--enter the dolphette from the Book of Extinction, a beastiary of endangered species (it is one of the few recent D&D purchases I have made and it is awesome--I will review it soon). They turned to fight, not knowing how bad it would be.

Terror: When the big bullette showed up and revealed its ability to attack and retreat underground without opportunity attacks (Bulette Landshark from Conflux Creatures), the players started to run (convincing 5 level 6 players run from 7 CR 2 dolphettes and a CR 6 Bulette Landshark is good GM fun). Enemies that can strafe them, disappear, and do massive damage tend to do the trick.

Horror: This was tricky to land, I had to get the timing just right to maximize tension. The arrival of the pirates to block their retreat would be scary, but the horror aspect needed more. Well, since I had big and little bulettes already, why not have the whole island be a titanic kaiju bulette? The scary foreshadowing would come when the island shook from pirate cannon fire, knocking them down if they didn't save, slowing their escape. I borrowed from Star Wars here, with the monstrous cave in the asteroid, but all i wanted to do was have them marooned on a marching kaiju or washed away by a tsunami as it rose.

So yeah, it being 5e, the session went really well and was combat-heavy, and they risked death to save their mule and take the pirate fleet for their own, so I can't complain. But were they afraid? Slightly, I think--but mostly just loving the different bulette sizes, the close calls, and the surprise attacks.

Designing the Pirate Borg adventure (version 2)

I picked Pirate Borg because this is a pirate adventure and a rules-light system is easier to stat out in four pages. On top of that, I wanted more atmosphere and less tactical positioning.

From the get-go, I knew there needed to be less combat: Pirate Borg characters are not meant to fight landsharks toe to toe, they are meant to run. That meant I needed to make the island more interactive and interesting to run around. Instead of combat, the landsharks would follow blood, and instead of me deciding when the landsharks struck, I created interactive, terrain-specific monsters (the addicted gulls, the murderbees, the sand lice) that drew blood and did very little damage. Combat as a literal fail state, because the landshark is coming once blood is on the sand.

To make the island more interesting, I created more terrain types as refuges to flee from landsharks. In addition to the underground smuggler's stash, which had thick wooden walls (with some gaps for lunging maws), I added the southwestern pools, the eastern swamp, and the wooded central ridge. Each of those refuges came with other problems (murderbees, leeches, sand lice, addicted gulls), but these were solvable if players were careful or paid attention (murderbees hum, quicksand can be spotted, and flying gulls attack sticks held over your head (true real life fact, from experience with a nesting gull colony).

The monster design was in two categories: nuisance monsters with learnable weaknesses or tells, and the big scary heavy, the landshark, which can only burst-run once and otherwise moves at a walking pace to up the terror. I kept the original island-size landshark, Mother, and added a tsunami table to liven up the original hurricane procedure from Secrets of the Black Crag. Finally, to make the island more interesting and survivable, I created NPCs to interact with and impart helpful clues on how to survive (the castaway kids, the mad smuggler).

From there, it was just a matter of explaining how the titular Opal Griffon related to landsharks. And there, well, I had inspiration. I started out with an old Amazing Tales cover (see below) and drew over it in Procreate to make the landshark (above). And somewhere in there, I made the landshark opalescent. Of course Mother would have thick back plates, to support all that sand and edible Mother-clay that feeds her babies. The whole ecosystem is dependent on her massive back. And if a set of smugglers, digging a stash basement through the sand, scratched her back plates and discovered an opal-like rock? Why, they would carve a griffon in their spare time, wouldn't they?

This is where I started: a lot of great advice from the Prismatic Wasteland and Explorers Design Discords made the cover happen

Mistakes made, lessons learned

Making this adventure taught me the very basics of layout and printing, all in about 72 hours. I used the excellent Explorers Design template to make it happen in that short time, and I still have a LOT to learn but I now feel like I have gained a zine-making superpower. Next time, I do not plan to wait that long to do layout, that was stupid. But I am glad I followed advice and wrote directly into layout, because limited space is the mother of creative writing and re-writing everything would have been a pain in the bum. In order, I first finished the cover, roughed out a map and layout in pencil on paper, drew the map in Procreate, and then started layout and adventure writing at the same time.

The zine feedback from other creators in the Appendix N Jam has been incredibly helpful and positive. It's great to know they like the adventure, but also that I mixed up two numbers (6s and 8s should swap), and the font size is too small. That last is because A) the Pirate Borg font (Blackbeard) is tiny and cramped by nature and B) I left too much empty space around my main text (a leftover of the template). So when the jam is over, I plan to update the font size to be readable on small screens. It prints fine, but I want to not make folks squint.

I have little idea, still, about how best to display a four-page zine on itch without simply giving it all away via high-resolution pictures. The blurry map below is my best compromise so far, but if you have advice, please leave them in the comments. And if you play the adventure, please let me know what you think on the Itch page!

Blurry version! I am not a trained artist, but this map was drawn by a half-literate, half-drunk pirate, so I think my style fits

_________________________

1 In case you are not familiar with the Appendix N jam, participants are given a random title that sounds like it could have come from the AD&D Appendix N collection (something old fantasy/sword-n-sorcery/scifi-ish) and a limit of four A5 pages (think a sheet of paper, front and back, folded) to create an RPG adventure. ^↩

In one round a lifetime: round 2

In many old school games and AD&D, you hire retainers to help you in the dungeon, which can give a player lots of actions (see my last post). Does that mean tactics and consequences are more varied and fun in OSR retainer play than traditional (trad) RPG play, like D&D 5e with its multiple actions per round?

For many games, I am going to say yes*.

Why is there a darn asterisk by my yes? Well, please read on if you really want to know. But before I get started, I want to dedicate this post to three people:

• bankuei, who made an excellent Discord comment about interesting tactical play.
• The Knight of the Opera, who closed up their blog this week but has inspired so many good conversations over the years.
• Ravenwing, my OD&D level 1 elf wizard, who fell in Thracia last week. She drowned in the river, fleeing a pack of stirges she foolishly attacked.

From the standpoint of a player in many OSR games, there are three phases in PC life:

Phase 1: You are a single low-leveled character in a small party. You should run, not fight, a pack of eight stirges!

Phase 2: You finally hauled enough treasure back to town to hire retainers. You now command 1-4 henchfolk and could survive those stirges (potentially with losses).

Phase 3: You struck it rich and have leveled way up¹, and now you are ready to hire a bunch of minions and take over a domain. You could send a battalion in to curbstomp those stirges.

In the first phase, you are weak and have only one life to lose. Later, as you gain strength, you gain additional lives to command (and lose). This phased progression, created in the 70s and 80s in the first couple of editions of D&D, follows the video game traditions of the time, where you started off with three lives and got more if you did well².

That's right, a retainer is a 1-up!

In phase 1, a trad game, with its reactions, bonus actions, etc, can give a player more tactical options than an OSR game. That's partly why I put an asterisk up there, and because I am a pedant, I am putting another caveat here³. A game oriented around combat should allow tactical infinity, but I am going to stipulate that both OSR and trad games can allow that sort of play. What I am focusing on here is the basic game rules, and the diversity of tactical choices and consequences they offer up for combat.

But once we get to phase 2 and mid-levels, OSR games are far more interesting tactically. A trad game allows you to attack twice, sure, but consider the massive tactical options created by commanding a wolf-pack of varied retainers. Your fighter retainer advances while the mage casts a spell, and you order your thief retainer to slip up behind and hamstring the minotaur!

With a pack of 1-4 retainers, you (the player) can literally attack from several different directions at once, with sword, spells, and flame. You are a multi-armed, multi-attacking death machine. Your adventuring party is in awe of your combat might.

That is, until something goes wrong. In trad play, your player takes a mighty blow from the minotaur's axe and loses half their health, falling back and calling for healing. Moments later she will be back up to full and in the fight.

But in OSR play, your fighter retainer is now down on the floor, dead from that axe blow (you never should have made a frontal attack). As a player, you are permanently weakened (at least until you get back to town to hire another fighter), and there are lasting consequences—current retainers have to save for morale to keep fighting, whatever the fighter was carrying may be lost or too heavy for you to retrieve, and back in town, prices go up for new retainers given your track record!

Comparing the two: starting at Phase 2, mid-level OSR play gives you more tactical options than a trad game, and you face real consequences for poor tactical choices.

So yes*, tactics and consequences are more varied and fun in mid-level OSR play than traditional (trad) RPG play. One can hire a retainer as early as level 2 or 3, so mid-level includes low-levels is one is lucky and/or clever in acquiring lucre.

Why is that asterisk still there? Well this sort of "troupe play", where each player commands a small tactical group, is common in many OSR games: Ultraviolet Grasslands even has a badass species option, the Porcelain polybodies, that is a crowd of humans with one mind. But retainers are not universal across OSR games--thus the asterisk.

Porcelain polybodies are so freaking cool. This mask available for purchase. The 176-page amazing-creative-rocket-fuel Vastland Guidebook? Free.

Shadowdark is a noted exception. It omits Phase 2 altogether, by design, to emphasize the actions of the main heroes. Adding back retainers breaks the math of Shadowdark monsters: their low HP and damage output is built around facing small parties, not masses of angry retainers.

To be fair to Shadowdark, that's a conscious design choice in a game that was very thoughtful in its rule curation. For many players, teamwork is more fun with others, instead of with your own private wolves. A pack of retainers can be boring for others, like waiting for a 5e sorcerer to take three actions and 5 minutes to destroy half the battlefield. Teamwork across a group often leads to lots of high fives and memorable saves—and it goes very quickly if a single player cannot do much on their own.

But although it is quite speedy and promotes teamwork, retainer-less OSR play in Shadowdark leaves PCs with both the spotlight and a paucity of built-in tactical choices relative to other OSR and trad games. Is there a fun middle ground between solo players having few options and retainer-burdened players being over-powered spotlight huggers? I think so--that's why I have been playing with my Shadowfeats and my Shadowfight rules, to spice things up (but that's another post). I have also been exploring games that offer interesting tactical options for individuals and groups, and I think Mythic Bastionland is top-tier in the current OSR pack for tactics. Such good, intuitive tactical options for individual knights, and it all flows at a rapid clip. Whether to attack singly or as a group is the very first tactical choice!

I return to Thracia with d4 hp magic-user tomorrow, the wizard's apprentice Crowfeather⁴ having avenged his master by destroying that stirge swarm. This time, he and his friends brought fire…ain't teamwork grand?

---

1 Phase 3 domain play is a different game, and many modern OSR games omit it altogether. ↩

2 I never had the ability to survive long in Galaga as a double-ship, sadly. ↩

3 OSR games with Mighty Deeds are tactically interesting even at low levels, especially compared to fighters in trad games. ↩

4 Crowfeather is a dwarven fighter with NO magic, and black-lung to boot. ↩ How he became Ravenwing's apprentice is a whole nother story.

In one round a lifetime

How many things can one do in a round, and how does it change the feel of the game?  I am playing OD&D this week, running through Thracia with the amazing d4 hp magic-user, and I love being able to attack twice from range (if I don’t move).   The OD&D rules for actions, fresh from wargaming, are odd and a touch fiddly.

If we look at the action economy of a few different games, trad games tend to have more actions per round, and OSR games have fewer actions (for B/X based games like Shadowdark, 1 action and 1 move).  I originally assumed this was a simplicity/aesthetic thing: OSR games made combat simpler so that less of the game was spent doing it.  Combat is a fail state, yadda yadda. 

By contrast, trad games have 2-3 actions (bonus actions, reactions, pre-actions, alteractions, underactions, etc) because acting more often is fun (for the individual) and “heroic” because one person can make a bigger difference!  Yawn.  Let me know when your turn is over and I will stop playing Candy Crush or something.

But this post over at Fail Forward made me realize that simpler combat had its origins in hireling and henchman play.  In B/X and OSE, unlike in Shadowdark, you are expected to hire help in the dungeon.   You are supposed to surround the monster and wail away on it as a crowd in D&D and AD&D 1e.  And if every PC and NPC with a sword has an action, bonus action, reaction, free action, etc. it gets unmanageable quickly.   Instead, each individual is simple to run (1 attack/spell, 1 move), and smart/rich/charming players manage multiple NPCs alongside their PC starting at level 2. 

So rather than see the old-school action economy as distinct from the trad action economy, it’s really the same.  Nimble gives each player three actions.  If a player has one henchman, Old School Essentials gives the player four actions!   Individually, each PC and NPC has a quick set of actions in OSR games, but collectively, I suspect turns in Nimble 2e are comparable in speed to those of an OSE PC with 1-4 henchmonkeys. 

Trad heroes are really two to four kobolds in a trenchcoat.

Where some games drag in terms of the combat action economy, I believe, is when the action choices are complicated.  D&D 5e has the worst of both worlds here, with a fragmented action economy that is hard to remember for both PCs and DMs: actions, attacking twice, bonus actions, reactions, opportunity attack, movements, free actions.  Players go down that list of action-boxes, ticking them off and often forgetting one each combat.  Similarly, DMs do the same for monsters, all the while trying to select from a menu of monster options a page or more in length.  It’s stressful, and increasingly slow as the number of choices balloons at higher levels and monster difficulties (parallel-processsing initiative can only do so much). 

This is why Nimble 2e combat works nimbly, I think, with:

•        three standard actions and freedom to choose from a simple menu of choices (it’s a lot simpler to count to three actions then go down a list of 6-7 action types). 
• radically simplified monsters, to B/X levels of complexity (every monster has only 1-3 special things it can do). 

Complicated action choices are not the only things that can slow down games, of course.  There’s a lot to be done, system-wise, in terms of speeding up action resolution (limiting which spells/powers require saving throws, making it easy to run the game without looking at hit-location or weapon-armor tables, simple spells that don’t need to be looked up, etc).  But simple action choices and simple monsters go a long way towards speeding up combat. 

What this means, I think, is that Shadowdark (and other OSR games without minion rules) are overly optimized for combat speed.  With 1 action and 1 move and no minions to slow things down, they are American pronghorns leaving wolves behind in their 55 mph dust.   We could restore a few interesting combat options and the game would still be quick enough, as long as we kept the options simple.

I personally want more options than the standard:  Move, then either Attack (sword or spell) or make something crazy up.  The last is good fun, and can be the best fun, but sometimes you want to just be defensive, or guard a friend, or heck, attack twice because you didn’t move this turn.  I want tactical choices, and while fast combat is great, I think Shadowdark has room for choices that don’t slow things down too much.

Which is why I am making a drop-in combat system for Shadowdark and other OSR games, once inspired by both Nimble 2e and Perils and Princesses.  The goal is something fast, easy to remember, and easy to run at any reasonable party size.  I have been playing it with my weekly group, and they like it very much.  Stay tuned, folks—it’s not a three-action economy, it’s neater than that imho.  If you are not familiar with Perils and Princesses, go check it out!  It’s a good teaser—and I will update this post once my system is out.

So, next time someone tells you that a PC in an OSR game can only have two actions per round, at most, and they have to be 1 action and 1 move, ask them—what about henchpeople?   

My Children's Appendix N: a fantasy book list

I just spent a lovely, hectic summer week chasing fulltime after my kids.   They have grown so much, and I wanted to share a small part of their arc, the one where my partner and I introduced them to one of our joys—reading books.

We both love to imagine other worlds through books.  When our kids finally started reading in earnest, we wanted to pass on our  love of fantasy to them, without dictating what they read.  So we cast books like breadcrumbs in their paths, and tempted them closer.  

Picking the right breadcrumbs was hard, iterative work, and I wanted to share some of the books that have resonated thus far with my elementary-school age kids.  Success has been listening to them construct their imaginary worlds from a rich scrapheap of stories: I hope they will write an inspiring Appendix N one day. 

Here are the fantasy books that are still in their library, a partial but hopefully helpful list for those transitioning to chapter books and novels and wanting to fantasy-pill their kids.  We read some to them, others they read themselves, and many a bit of both—my mom long ago taught me the fine art of falling asleep mid-read, forcing a poor kiddo to finish the chapter if they want to know what happens next. 

In this list, all the books were enjoyed, but the ones that didn’t make a big impression on me personally are grouped with an | symbol.  The // symbol denotes titles by the same author I couldn’t fit on the dining room table.  And I highlight series that make great kid-RPG transitions.

Starting with the younger books (grades 1-3+).  Examples from series are shown (e.g., Baldwin the Brave is not my favorite Mouse Guard book, but that made it easy to find)

Nobody Likes a Goblin (and other books by Ben Hatke): a great picture book, funny, and makes kids think twice about the assumptions fantasy books make about monsters.  Ben Hatke is a national goddamn treasure.

Dog Man series by Dav Pilkey.  Super hero dog-hybrid: graphic novel.  So good.  

Max and the Midknights by Pierce: fun fantasy graphic novel.

Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey.  Super hero in a diaper: what’s not to like? mix of illustrations and text. Hilariously great transition book, highly imaginative storytelling.  Also on Netflix if you want to pull in reluctant readers.  A reader’s choice award from my kids.

Hamster Princess by Ursula Vernon (T. Kingfisher).  Cracked fairy tales in a land of intelligent animals. Wonderful and funny and charming, great illustrations and medium text density.   Great Mausritter transition.

Dragon Masters | Kingdom of Wrenly: all good chapterbooks for kids that want some illustrations mixed in with their text.  Interesting stories for young readers and were devoured. 

Notebook of Doom (chapterbook series): Very engaging stories—a touch older than Kingdom of Wrenly.  It’s monster hunting in a weird small town, and is beloved by my kids. 

The Magical Unicorn Society: my daughter loves this ‘nonfiction’ book.

D'Aulaires Book of Norse Myths // Greek Myths: two illustrated books of myths that are just wonderful—kid appropriate and fascinating and well-told.  I grew up with them and they are FANTASTIC.  They regularly borrow them to re-read.  

Mythical Beast and Magical Creatures (DK): a great nonfiction collection of creatures for kids--has real variety across cultures.

Continuing with the younger books (grades 1-3+). 

Dungeons & Dragons: Behold!: a well-done seek and find across busy magical scenes.

Agents of S.U.I.T (Graphic novel): Quirky secret agents combating mysterious threats (a spinoff of Investigators). 

Hilo series (Graphic novel):  Boy superhero from another dimension, with a real twist (he’s a cyborg!).

Dragon Kingdom (of Wrenly) (comic book series): follows the life of a dragon and his friends.  Spinoff from a chapter book series, and quite good, with characters making poor choices and learning from mistakes.

The Mouse Guard series (graphic novels, start with Fall 1152): gritty heroes come small--about mice defending, and sometimes dying for, their homes.   Great Mausritter transition.

Cardboard Kingdom (graphic novel series): kids imagining a fantasy adventure. Emotional.

Mighty Jack // Zita the Spacegirl series (graphic novel series) by Hatke.  Strong male and female leads, stories intertwining as worlds collide.  Imaginative and well written, a favorite.  Great Amazing Tales transition.

Hilda series (graphic novels, also a Netflix show): incredibly imaginative and quirky.  Also a Netflix show.  A young girl faces Norwegian creatures and magic, some dangerous. 

Dreamjumper | My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish | Lightfall: All enjoyable graphic novels and mixed words/pictures. 

Dragonbreath (by U. Vernon): The book target is a bit older than Harriet Hamsterbone but is a boy lead, if that matters to your kids.  The first book has a joke about potato salad that still makes my son laugh, years later.

Now a bit older books (grades 2-4+). 

Ordering them approximately by maturity level:

Return of Zita the Space Girl by Hatke (graphic novel): just out of order here, should be in previous section.  great book they read and re-read it.

Monsters Beware! (graphic novels) by Rosado and Aguirre.  A deeply wonderful and funny trilogy about a plucky girl and her amazing family and friends, fighting monsters in a French-flavored medieval world.  Amazing and beloved.  Great transition to Amazing Tales.

Dungeoneer Adventures // Rickety Stitch series by Costa and Parks.  Rickety Stitch is a graphic novel; Dungeoneer Adventures are mixed words/text.  Both series are gripping stories for young tweens, well plotted and written, set in the Land of Eem.  Great transition to Land of Eem (no surprise, given the authors).

Avatar the Last Airbender (comic books): These books answer questions the animated series leaves behind, like what happened to Zuko’s mom?  The original animated series was fine for my kids starting around 6-7, provided I stayed nearby for the scary parts.  Series is great for adults and kids, INCREDIBLY well done—features one of the best character arcs I have encountered. 

Quest Kids (mixed words/text book):  Good humor, a quest, and kids facing hard choices. 

Greeking Out (nonfiction): Greek myth book, nice depth and engaging, also a podcast.

Minecraft books (nonfiction and fiction): honestly, if your kid gets into Minecraft, it's great.  A video game that encourages them to create, memorize, and play together?  And the books around it are uniformly solid—they will get pulled in and read.

Fart Quest (mixed words) | Lightning Thief (graphic novel): both of these skew a bit older, but have been liked.  I don’t think Lightning Thief the novel is right for kids until middle school—just a very angry young man at first.

More a bit older books (grades 2-5+), with some things we read to them, to right

Things they read:

Wings of Fire (graphic novels, novels): Young dragon rebels.  The story is a bit brutal in terms of violence, but my eldest elementary schooler loves it.

Beasts and Behemoths (D&D gamebook): The entire young adventurer’s guide series is beloved: we started with this one.  DnD boiled down to the good stories.  Great Quest transition.

Tomb of the Everstar Sisterhood (CYOA) by Sersa Victory: A good introductory choose-your path RPG playbook, with great dungeon design.  Hints are obvious and non-diagetic early on, but quickly gets harder. 

Complete the Quest series (CYOA): Pick your party, and use their skills to imagine your way around illustrated obstacles.  Great re-playability, hours imagining.

Mystery Under Magi-Mart (CYOA): Absolutely adorable, hilarious, and tricky choose-your-path book.  Everyone in the family liked it, and the catalogue of creative magic items for sale I got from kickstarting it was poured over by my youngest.  The physical is pocket size and I highly recommend.

Amulet series (graphic novel): Don’t ask me what these are about, my kids devoured them and then we bought all of them from the secondhand store because they insisted they wanted to re-read them.

Witches of Brooklyn (graphic novel): My tween daughter loves this graphic novel series about young witches mastering their powers (and emotions).

Hooky | Okay Witch (graphic novels): I grouped these because my daughter reads these, there are so many good young-witch series out there and these hooked her.

 

Books we read to them (at first, at least):

The Wizard of Oz (novels):  Still amazing after all this time, and fresh in its strangeness. 

The Tale of Despereaux (novel): One would think a story of a mouse and a rat torturer would be completely inappropriate for young kids, but the author deftly threads the needle and what results is an enchanting story that has been read and re-read.  Great Mausritter transition.

Tuesdays at the Castle (novel): A Castle that changes by the day, the series kept going and we had happy weeks of reading.  Has not been re-read however. 

My Neighbor Totoro (novel): I think Totoro is my daughter’s spirit animal.  This book is worn from my wife reading it to her and then her reading it.

The Superpower Field Guide: Moles (nonfiction series): These books convey amazing natural history at a level that is incredibly engaging to kids as young as 4 or 5.  Deeply fun, well-illustrated, and now being read by them all over.  Never look at moles, beavers, ostriches, or eels the same way.   It shows the normal for what it is: fantastic. 

Dragonsinger by A. McCaffery) (novel trilogy): When your tweens are ready for a heroine who runs away from uncaring parents, this one is a charmer.  Pet fire-lizards, songs, and finding your home. 

Ms. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh (novel): Unlike the movie, and very well written, the best books about alien intelligence for kids.  Great Mausritter transition.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (novel): Despite the religious overtones, which are easily ignored, story pulls them along.

I ran out of table, so I moved some over…

More things we read to them:

Howl’s Moving Castle (novel): Unlike the movie, a gentle engaging magical mystery with little violence.  Great series, but space them out if you start young, ends at tween-age.

The Bartimaeus Trilogy (novel): This book is awesome, who doesn’t like sass?

Impossible Creatures (novel): Beautiful book physically, and engaging—she read this without me. 

Just So Stories (illustrated novel): Rudyard Kipling’s story of how the Armadillo came to be is the truth, I don’t care what evolution says.  The illustrations and stories are warm soup on a rainy day.

The Hobbit (illustrated novel): This is the version that got my kids to sit through the story, which has a plodding pace at times.  What?  There’s an illustration?  Show me dad!  But they are still sad and angry about the dwarves who didn’t make it. 

Harry Potter series (illustrated novels): Giving money to this transphobic witch is like going to Disneyworld: many parents do not want to, but it's hard to avoid.  This series arrived, like many of the graphic novels above, via kind grandparent, and I try to not look in the mouths of gift horses.  But the best part?  They stopped reading the series in book 5, complaining that the book was too meandering (I explained what happens when a star author can ignore her editors, and then about her views on trans folks).  And we still have managed to avoid Disneyworld, but we will see.

The Rithmatist by B. Sanderson (novel): For f&^k’s sake Sanderson, it’s been 20 goddamn years, finish this series already.  A wonderful drawing-based magic system, a clockwork world with a mystery that pulls kids in.  There’s a special place in hell for an author who starts a great kid’s book series and then goes off to write Shardbearer books #1-209.  Dude. All that said, still worth it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blorb is not enough

They did it.  Out of curiosity or boredom or misplaced trust, they pushed the big red button.  The party gave the MacGuffin to the evil priestess, she summoned her evil god, and literal hell is about to break loose.  

Today's post is a writing exercise, because I have twenty minutes to write it.  I have some long posts queued up, but my weekend got away from me and this is what I have: my mental prep for next week's game.

So yeah, last week my players (roving crew of the good ship Murderbucket, stop reading here) accidentally summoned an angry god, and are currently trying to get the hell back to surface before she destroys the undersea dungeon they are in.  They know there is a way back to the surface in the heart of a palace in the middle of the alien city, so that's where they are now.  

At least, that was their first reaction.   Then, over our group chat, they began to coalesce around the idea of burning it all down, to stop her.  And I began to think, wow will happen next?  

Blorb would say, go with what your prep says about the world, and let the players work out the story.¹   And sure, I could do that.  There is technically a way to drop everything to the bottom of the sea.   Well, several things would happen after.  What would happen then to the evil?  I am the GM, I have no idea, I'll make something up.  That's off the map of what I expected them to get to.  

On top of that, I don't know from my prep how the neutral NPCs will react to this unexpected situation. I have to decide for them.  Yep, all the prep in the world is not a shield against GM choice.  Blorb is attempting to fix GM choice in place via prep, so players can work through a 'reality'.  In this case, how the NPCs react is critical--will they choose to blow the city first?  Abandon ship?   Attack the goddess with everything they've got?  

And here's the one thing I do know from my blorby prep--burning it all it down would likely kill the entire party, the way I set up the world in my head, with no chance of escape.   Where's the choice in that outcome?  They released a god.  They know they fucked up, and it was their choice.²   I want to honor that choice, but I also want to not make them feel like I am railroading them out of guilt into killing their entire party.  I mean, they are doing the railroading to themselves out of guilt, but I set this situation up, so...

So what's the solution?  Well, I am off the map.  Time to build some new prep onto my old prep, and build in the opportunity for more interesting choices than morally-enforced, guilt-driven collective party suicide.  Sure, it may involve a reborn Quantum Ogre or two, but I think the world needs more Quantum Ettins--times when the players face different roads, all leading behind the scenes to a restricted, manageable set of really interesting choices.  

Janus, the original Ettin

I mean, I am going to keep party self-sacrifice on the table as an option--what sort of evil, choice-manipulating evil GM do you think I am?  

No, I just want to give them MORE choices, so that if they choose to kick the bucket, they feel GREAT about it.  Thus, the Quantum Ettin--one road leads to self-sacrifice, and the other road....well, wouldn't it be funny if they had to choose between a local good and greater evil?  I may add more roads...the point is, I hadn't really considered what would happen if anyone tried to sabotage this alien city for destruction.  The exact way the machine works is up to me. So in doing this blorby prep, I am constructing a Quantum Ettin--a story where my players have a real choice, with many options.  One they will feel they selected with clear eyes³, even if they all die afterwards.  

Because Blorb isn't enough, especially if it doesn't give players choice--the heart of an adventure game.

1 To quote: "A prepper might think long and hard how many wolves are appropriate in the forest for a good and fun game play experience or a nice interesting exploratory simmy experience but once you're running, you're committed. You can't go around changing that stuff! Things can happen in the game that are too boring, too unbalanced, too easy, too hard but that's gonna have to be OK." Thanks Luke for finding the relevant section I am bending. ^↩

2 To be clear, they chose to hand over the MacGuffin and knew it was a Bad idea. They didn't know about the whole Goddess summoning (accompanied by the standard holy army) thing, just that Bad Things would happen to their mutual enemies. ^↩

3 In a super helpful discussion on the Dice Exploder discord, I think Seraphina hit the nail on the head, "Which, circling around, points at something interesting about blorb- if the players have limited information about the blorby bits they are engaging with, you can inadvertently have a world that doesn’t...feel like it has verisimilitude and instead feels like it’s on rails" ^↩