It’s now been four years since the Triffid Ranch first set up at the Dallas Oddities & Curiosities Expo, and three years since the first road trip to Austin’s Expo, and I have only one concern. Right now, the Expo … Continue reading →

Spend any time here and you know there is one thing that is always true. I LOVE monster books. I can fairly say that monster books, bestiaries, and the like are not just my first love of RPGs but are largely why I am into RPGs, to begin with.

So I knew that even if I never bought anything else for the Pathfinder Second Edition game I was going to buy the Bestiary.  And much like it's Great-Grandfather AD&D, I picked up the Bestiary first. I grabbed the Core Rules (that I discussed yesterday) based entirely off of what I read in this book.

I guess I really should have done this one on Monday instead of a monster, but I wanted to do the core rules first.

So what does this book have and why did I like it so much?  Well, it has a lot going for it.

Pathfinder 2nd ed Bestiary

For this review, I am considering the Hardcover version I purchased at my FLGS.  For Pathfinder 2e I have been going with the Special Edition covers. My oldest gets the Special Ed covers of the D&D 5 books and I get the regular ones since D&D 5 is "His" game.  I normally like to get the Special Ed covers since I am a sucker for a book with a ribbon in it.  Plus he has no plans to play PF2e and we even combined our PF1e books into one collection and sold off the rest (which is how I can buy these!)

The book is 360 pages with full-color art. You know when you walk into the floor of the Gen Con trader hall and the smell of new books hits you?  That's how this book smells. Like Gen Con, but in a good way.

This book contains about 415 different monster stat blocks.  Before I get into those blocks I want to speak about the layout.  The PF1e Bestiary worked hard to get monsters down to one page per monster. Sometimes there were variations, but it was obvious the Paizo crew (and many others of the d20 boom) liked the presentation of one monster per page as in the AD&D 2nd days.  PF2e takes this design strategy and extends it to the next level.  Sometimes we get one monster per page. Many times we get a monster type (for example the Alghollthu) that extends across 2-, 4- or more pages (always an even number) that are facing each other. So in this case the Skum and Faceless Stalker.

This continues throughout the book. The practical implications here are 1.) finding something is easy IF you know the group it might be under. 2.) you can lay your book flat and have access to everything you need for the monster.  There is of course one other.  While I love my special editions, if I went to the Paizo website and got all of these as PDFs I could do the exact same thing I have done with the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendiums and the various S&W Monster books, I can print them all out and organize them all into one large folder.  Note you can do the same things with the D&D 4e Monster books too.  Maybe this is something I should consider when doing my Basic Bestiary. 

Continuing on.  The stat blocks are easy to read and honestly understand if you have played any form of D&D form the last 20 years.  There is the Name, it's level (which replaces HD and CR).  Under that there are the descriptor tags, this includes Alignment, Size, and Traits.  So our faceless stalker is a Chaotic Evil medium-sized aberration and it is level 4.  There are some basic "monster stats" such as skills, perception and abilities mods, and what items if any it has. It's Defence block is next with AC, saves, HP and resistances, immunities, or vulnerabilities.  It's attack block follows.  The feel is very much like that of D&D 5e.

The block is smaller than that of PF1e (thank goodness!) and all the important bits are readily visible,

Like the Core Book this features sidebars with more details. This often includes rumors, mentions of other types, and more.

About the Monsters

Most monster books take a LOT of cues from the 1st Edition AD&D Monster Manual. Many feature the same set of monsters. Enough that I often refer to the Demons Type I to VI and the Succubus as "The Usual Suspects."   Does this Bestiary follow suit? Almost, the Hezrou (Type II) and Nalfeshnee (Type IV) are missing but the others are here.  

Either due to space or to make the the stat blocks come out right there are a lot of creatures here that you do not normally see in a "core" monster book and some that I expected are missing. Nothing game-breaking mind you.  In fact it gives a great flavor to the book. There are many you expect, all the dragons for example, and some I didn't, like the gug and lillend. 

One of the neatest things about this book is reading over what are classical monsters too many of us and seeing how they are different not just through the lens of PF2e, but from different creators and a different world.  I have already talked about how much I enjoy Pathfinder's goblins, but they really do feel different here. This change is then reflected in other creatures like the barghest. Some are quite different, like the kobolds, and others are largely still the same, like orcs.

Speaking of orcs. A while back I did a post discussing what should be part of a universal stat-block and I used orcs as my example. The reasoning was that orcs are one creature that has appeared in all versions of D&D (yes there are others, but they are ubiquitous) and they are a good typical foe for 1st level adventurers.  How do the Pathfinder (PF1e and PF2e) orcs stack up?

Orcs in D&D 3.x were (are) CR ½.  This meant they were a good, but not necessarily deadly, challenge to a party of 1st-level characters. In Pathfinder 1e they are now CR ⅓, so even easier really.   Pathfinder has the Orc Brute at Creature 0 and Orc Warrior at Creature 1 with 15 and 23 hp respectively.  Still something a group of first levels could take on, but maybe slightly harder. 

How does this book stack up to my Monster Manual test?

My Monster Manual Test is how I feel when I first open a game book. While this book can't reasonably live up to the hype of when I first picked up the AD&D Monster Manual it does do the exact same thing; It made me want to buy the system so I could know more about it.  Like PF2e Core this book is gorgeous and just wonderful to read through. The designers have made me invested in their world and I want to know more.

 Enough that I have more books to cover!

The middle of June in Texas, anywhere in Texas, is always a pivot point for culture in the state, and it always depends upon the weather. Contrary to popular opinion, while “hot, sunny, and dry” may be the default, that … Continue reading →

Andy Prisbylla / June 22, 2022

Like it or not, we’re all casualties of the cola wars. What began as a pissing contest between beverage barons PepsiCo and the Coca-Cola Company in 1902 eventually became a cultural phenomenon in the mid-1980s. With Coca-Cola’s sugary supremacy challenged in a series of blind taste tests, combined with Pepsi’s subliminal marketing of American patriotism through its red, white, and blue branding, New Coke was introduced in early 1985—a new formula engineered to replace the original company recipe. Within three months, the product was pulled due to overwhelming backlash from the public, the original formula reinstated as Coca-Cola Classic. This led to a boost in sales, with industry insiders speculating that the “great new taste” was nothing more than a marketing scam used to generate renewed product interest. Whatever the motive, the original Coke was here to stay—even if it never really left. Now it was just a matter of selling it back to the young audience who dominated ‘80s consumer culture. While previous promotional campaigns focused on virtuous Americana, marketing mavens now needed something more radical and irreverent. At the time, a certain computer generated media personality created solely to showcase music videos was becoming quite popular. Only this image wasn’t computer generated at all, and it was born from a distinctly anti-corporate sensibility. In 1986, Coca-Cola launched its “Catch the Wave” campaign: the new face of Coke belonged to Max Headroom. 

The subversive paradox created when Max Headroom turned pitchman for corporate cola is just one of many in the career of Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel. While the creative duo had nothing to do with the Coke campaign, their creation was now leaving an imprint on the consumer landscape. As post-punk pioneers with a heavy situationist bent, Morton and Jankel took being on the cutting edge of pop culture seriously. But the method of their engagement with the Spectacle might have turned off Situationism’s founder Guy Debord. While culture jammers like Craig Baldwin and John Law fought the consumer wars from the trenches of the underground, Morton and Jankel were performing hand-to-hand combat with mass media marauders in the corporate arena: a dangerous place to be. The deconstruction that Morton and Jankel utilized in their commercials, music videos, and films was not only satirical but self-reflexive, the kind of artistic-expression-as-critique that can prove problematic within a capitalist society. 

The term “culture jam” was coined by Mark Dery in the post-punk climate of 1984, right where Morton and Jankel made their bones. Hailing from working-class British backgrounds before studying film and animation—Morton worked on the famous marching hammers in the 1982 feature film adaptation of Pink Floyd’s The Wall before being fired—the duo would embrace the eclectic, avant-garde fusion that followed traditional three-chord punk. Jankel’s older brother Chaz—who would go on to score the couple’s 1988 neo-noir deconstruction D.O.A.—played guitar and keyboards in Ian Dury’s band the Blockheads, and served as an entry point for his sister to enter the scene. What Chaz brought musically, Morton and Jankel complemented visually with an assortment of videos and promos created through their innovative production company Cucumber Studios. 

Culture Jam logo created by Tolga Kocak in 1996

Cucumber Studios Animated Logo

Based out of London, the production house soon burned bright in the post-punk/new wave scene as the de-facto stop for commercial record companies looking to merge their tunes with dynamic visuals. While traditional analog animation was utilized—evident in their early promo for the animated adaptation of Marx for Beginners and their music video for the Tom Tom Club’s “Gangster of Love”—the pair also employed experimental computer graphics. In a hybrid mix of analog and digital, their 1979 music video for “Accidents Will Happen” by Elvis Costello & The Attractions combined rotoscoping techniques with early computer generated imagery to create a vector readout of Costello in an early instance of CGI used in a music video. These innovations with the medium eventually led to the duo writing and curating 1984’s Creative Computer Graphics, which chronicled pioneering achievements in CGI while introducing new digital technologies to a wider audience. 

Image excerpt from Creative Computer Graphics by Morton and Jankel, 1984

The success of Cucumber Studios caught the attention of programming purveyor Peter Wagg of Chrysalis Records, who was looking to package a series of music videos within the framework of a television talk show. Wagg turned to advertising creative George Stone, who took this idea and subverted it. Car parks in Britain at the time were outfitted with yellow-and-black-striped safety signs labeled “Max Headroom,” and Stone believed the term would not only make a great title but also allow the program to use the parking signs as a form of subvertising. Morton and Jankel, meeting with Stone, suggested that something more was needed than just generic graphics to introduce each video. The media landscape of 1980s television was saturated with talking heads, and at the same time the MTV VJ was coming into prominence. Bored by the idea of just another flesh and blood huckster, Morton, Jankel, and Stone thought a fully formed computer-generated figurehead would work better. The only issue was that this technology hadn’t been created yet. Predating the bait-and-switch tactics of his future Coca-Cola overlords, the CGI aesthetic of Max Headroom was faked using prosthetics and opticals—inadvertently constructing a situationist prank and fooling the public at large.

Actor Matt Frewer in Max Headroom make-up created by John Humphreys

When Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future premiered in the UK on April 4, 1985, the hour-long cyberpunk telefeature not only served as backstory to Max’s forthcoming Tonight Show-style talk program The Max Headroom Show, but also spawned an ABC Network television series in the US that continued the original film’s story. Morton and Jankel had no involvement with the ABC series and criticized it for its homogeneous approach to the material and lack of credit to the creators. Set in a dystopian future, the original telefilm showcased a world where television programming is the leading commodity and society is controlled by a cabal of networks run by a ruthless media oligarchy. Within this framing, Morton and Jankel simultaneously used the character of Max Headroom to spotlight the mechanisms of corporate greed while allowing said greed to thrive. Max existed between these two worlds and created a paradoxical paradigm. Not only was he a figurehead for the music and soda-pop industries; he was also a symbol of radical intervention—which would later be displayed in the infamous broadcast signal intrusion of WGN-TV’s newscast on November 22, 1987.  

The dichotomy devised during the Max Headroom years would continue to follow Morton and Jankel into their feature film career with 1988’s D.O.A. and 1993’s Super Mario Bros. The concept of remix theory is paramount in understanding these films and how it affected the duo’s time in Hollywood. Remix culture encourages the transformation of derivative works through a mash-up mix of one or more media, and as remix expert Eduardo Navas suggests, there are three types of remix methods to explore. Extended remix is a longer version of an original work, while selective remix consists of adding or subtracting elements from the work to create something new. Reflexive remix allegorizes or transforms the aesthetic and ethos of the original work—challenging the original intent and claiming autonomy. 

B&W turns to color in Morton and Jankel’s 1988 remix of the 1950 film noir classic D.O.A.

Morton and Jankel’s tinseltown rebellion is one of a reflexive remix and deserving of reappraisal—something both D.O.A and Super Mario Bros have received in recent years. The wave of irony that dominated the Hollywood filmmaking aesthetic in the early ‘80s was soon on the wane, and both films were met with derision from audiences and critics alike, with Super Mario Bros receiving the most volatile response. Where D.O.A. won positive reviews by some for its colorful neo-noir deconstruction of Rudolph Mate’s 1950 classic, Morton and Jankel’s dissection of the popular Nintendo video game opened to nearly universal disdain. Regardless of the behind-the-scenes drama and production hell that has been unfairly presented in the press, the cultural zeitgeist shifted from a pop sensibility of kitsch experimentation in the 1980s to a cynical worldview of uniformity and stasis in the 1990s. The duo’s Max-inspired interpretation of the lovable plumbers taking on King Koopa to save Princess Daisy was too esoteric for children to understand or adults to enjoy. Script revisions and loss of creative control at the hands of the studio didn’t help matters much, and Morton and Jankel’s Hollywood career was over before it even really began. They would return to the world of commercial advertising, where their radical tendencies were more (illicitly) successful—such as using subversive sex to sell fast food for Hardees. Soon after, they formed the highly successful commercial production company MJZ, which represents a host of acclaimed filmmakers like Craig Gillespie, Harmony Korine, and Mike Mills. Within time the duo would dissolve their partnership—both creatively and romantically. Jankel would move on to direct more features after a long hiatus—such as 2009’s Skellig: The Owl Man and 2018’s Tell It to the Bees—while Morton continues to produce commercial campaigns for numerous corporate clients. 

As ‘80s eclecticism gave birth to a 21st century postmodern world, where reality is fluid and nothing is free, the careers of Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel seem to suggest that the only response to late capitalism is through disruptive action. When corporate interests seek legitimacy on the backs of creative originals, sometimes the only recourse you have is protest by insurgency. Each project during their partnership, whether intended or not, has acted as a media virus whose effects continue to alter perspectives both old and new. If there’s one lesson to be learned from Morton and Jankel, it’s that infiltration is key.

Andy Prisbylla is the nucleus behind a series of pen names for underground filmmaker and media theorist Psycho Gnostic of Steel City, PA. Connect with them on Twitter.

All month long I have been talking about, but more appropriately around, D&D. For the rest of this week I want to talk about D&D's, now adult, younger cousin. Pathfinder 2nd Edition.

This won't be a full review. The Pathfinder Core book is massive and absolutely packed. Plus there are plenty of reviews out there.  Instead, I am going to look at some of the changes, updates, and innovations of the game and compare and contrast it to Pathfinder 1e, D&D4, and D&D5.

A bit of history first. Pathfinder 1st Edition was published by Paizo Publishing in 2009.  It was an immediate success with the core book selling out at it's appearance at Gen Con.  Don't quote me, but I think it was some sort of record.  Since then Paizo has always had a huge presence at Gen Con.  Paizo had been one of the 3rd party publishers of choice back in the 3.x days 2000-2008. It had a license to publish Dragon and Dungeon magazines and its support products for 3e were some of the best on the market. When Wizards of the Coast shifted direction and released D&D 4th Edition with no OGL backing, Paizo saw their opening.  They released Pathfinder to a huge public beta testing and took in all sorts of feedback. The Core Rules, which combined what had normally been the Player's book and the Game Masters' book into one massive tome.

It is hard to appreciate just how successful Pathfinder was.  When sales of D&D 4 spiked, but then dropped suddenly, Pathfinder took over the throne of best-selling fantasy RPG from D&D.  D&D didn't just sit on that throne, they built it, often from the bones of vanquished enemies like DragonQuest. So successful that many people began to call it D&D 3.75 and even the rightful progression of D&D 3.x.  

Pathfinder was a success and really would have been a success even without D&D4 underperforming (make no mistake D&D 4 still sold better than pretty much everything else combined). 

Fast Forward to 2012-13. Wizards announce they are holding public playtests for what they are calling D&D Next. The playtests are similar to Pathfinder's.  In 2014 D&D 5e is released to critical and commercial acclaim.  D&D retakes its throne and stays there.  Meanwhile by 2014 Pathfinder is moving along with a 14-year-old system (the 3.0 OGC). It survived the d20 boom and glut and still is the game of choice for many.  But sales are low and the true money maker of any RPG are the core books.  So in 2018 Pathfinder releases their 2nd Edition Playtest book.

It does not go over as well as the first playtest, this is the third time the market has seen this from the Big 2, but it is enough that Paizo releases Pathfinder 2nd Edition at Gen Con 2019.  That brings me to today, Pathfinder 2nd Ed in 2022.

Pathfinder Second Edition

Pathfinder 2nd Edition (PF2e here on) is the update to the best-selling, award-winning Pathfinder RPG. For this review/overview I am considering the Special Edition hardcover from my FLGS.  The book is 640 pages with full-color art.

Let's just start from the top. This book is gorgeous. The art is what you have come to expect from Pathfinder and this one does not skimp on it. 

There is an evolution here that is very interesting. It is something I call my "Modula-2 Experience."  Back in my undergrad days, I learned to program in Pascal. Not uncommon really, lots of people did that then. But later on I picked up other languages. I had already learned BASIC and Fortran so I picked up C and Modula-2.  C is very different than Pascal so keeping the syntax straight was an issue at first but then became easier. Modula-2 is almost identical to Pascal with some odd bits here and there. Picking up the syntax was a lot easier, but became harder to keep them separate as I went on.

Pathfinder follows the Modula-2 path from D&D's Pascal.  To extend the metaphor more, D&D 3 is Pascal, Pathfinder 1 is Modula-2, D&D 5 is Object Pascal/Delphi and Pathfinder 2e is Oberon. To extend my metaphor to breaking Original D&D is ALGOL.

Exploring PF2e is fascinating. There is a game here that I easily recognize and yet looks new at the same time.  All of the same abilities are here, many of the same races (now called "Ancestries & Backgrounds), and classes.  In fact, the first 240 or so pages read like D&D 3 or 5 or Pathfinder. It's when you delve into the details that differences become apparent.  

1 Introduction

This chapter introduces us to RPGs in general and the Pathfinder 2nd Edition in particular. It (and the rest of the book) features the main text and sidebars to explain the text or put it into context. For example, the text on page 7 mentions dice and the sidebar shows a picture of dice with the standard die nomenclature. 

This covers the basics of character creation such as deciding on your concept, rolling or assigning your six abilities (the classic six), figuring out your character details, and more.  We have six ancestries and twelve character classes.

Now I will say this. While I appreciate a good character sheet breakdown, the PF2e sheet is ugly as hell. For all the great art in this book that is one garish sheet. Wow. I'll stick with the black & white one.

2 Ancestries & Backgrounds

Modern RPGs are moving away from the concept of "race" and instead are going with Ancestries. I rather like this approach, to be honest. While "race" might be a good term, there are enough negative connotations to it (see my discussions of 19th Century Race Theory) to make it less than desirable. Plus Ancestries and Background help parse out what you get via your parents (eyes, pointy ears, and more) and what you get growing up in a culture.  

Ancestries are what older games call "race" it helps determine your ability score bonuses and sometimes penalty, your size, your speed, and what languages you might know. It also gives you "traits" and who well you see in the dark.  Heritages are sub-specialties of the Ancestries.  My favorite ancestry for PF2e right now is Goblin. Yes, you can play a Goblin in this game! The heritage I like the most is the Ironguy Goblin. You can eat anything.  I love Pathfinder goblins. 

Each ancestry gets an ancestry feat (PF2e is crazy with feats) at the first level. This helps define your character. For example, one feat is Goblin Song where you sing annoying goblin songs to distract your enemies.  You can get additional ancestry feats at 5th, 9th, and 13th levels. Some have pre-requisites. So you can't take "Very, Very Sneaky" at 13th level unless you took "Very Sneaky" before.

An interesting note here. Half-elves and Half-orcs are not an Ancestry. You take Human as your ancestry and then half-elf or half-orc as your heritage. The rule implication here is clear.  You can have mixed ancestry and heritage as the rules allow, you just need your GM to be ok with it. 

Backgrounds are chosen like a feat but are akin to the Backgrounds of 5e.  Akin, not the same.  These usually give some sort of skill, skill boost, or feat. 

Languages come from your Ancestry, heritage (sometimes) and background (sometimes).  

Your HP at level 1 is based on your Ancestry and not your class.  This is a good change since it can also apply to monsters and level-0 NPCs.

3 Classes

Here we get the classes we know from 3.x, more or less. There is the new Champion class, which replaces the Paladin (a Paladin is a type of Champion) and the new Alchemist. 

Each class has an ability boost, HD for leveling up, saves, attacks, and what skills they have access to. They are constructed very similarly to D&D 3.x/PF1e classes. Each class also has a series of feats they can take at various levels. These include Class Feats (specific to class) and General Feats (used by all). You take a Class Feat at 2nd level and every even level after. General feats are taken at 3rd level and every four levels after. There are also skill increases, ability boosts and other powers/abilities so that there is something happening at every level for all classes.   There are also sample variations on each class; these are done with the choices you make in powers, skills, and feats.  For example a Paladin is a Lawful Good Champion and Dancer is a Bard that takes ranks in Acrobatics and Perform (among others).  So customization is through the roof and no two characters of the same class need to look or feel the same. 

To add to this there are even Archetypes to define your character or at 2nd level you can take a multiclass feat to add some abilities of another class to your current one. Much like D&D 4e used to do.  There is just so much to do with these classes.   No surprise then that classes take up almost a quarter to a third of this book.

I do miss the Prestige Classes from 3.x/PF1e though. Though with this level of customization they can be "thematically" folded into the existing rules here with no issues.  Want to be an Arcane Archer? I am sure there is a good skill/feat options that allow you to do that. 

4 Skills

There are 17 skills for PF2e. They are well described and include things you can do untrained and things you can do trained. There are also specific examples of things you can do with each skill and whether or not these are move actions, require concentration or other modifiers. For example, Climbing is a type of Athletics check and it is a Move action. 

5 Feats

Pathfinder isn't Pathfinder without Feats. Love them or hate them they are baked into the system here more than D&D or PF1e. And there is a lot of them. Again though great for character customization, bad for GMs needing to keep track of everything.

6 Equipment

Covers the shopping list. But also has premade Class Kits you can buy which have all the basic gear a class is likely to take. 

7 Spells

The next largest section (about 120 pages) is Spells.  All the same, schools are here, but now magic is divided into Arcane (Wizards), Divine (Clerics), Occult (Bards), and Primal (Druids) Spells.  So seeing a bit of PF1e's later material and D&D4e DNA here.  There are Spell Slots from 0 to 10 (yes 10th-level spell slots) and spells of level 0 (Cantrips) to 9. So you can heighten a spell to higher slots or sometimes a spell might need a higher slot depending on a feat. Similar to 3.x certainly but also a little feel of 5e's spell slot system.  So for example there is no Monster Summoning I to IX. There is only Summon Animal (or Construct or Fiend or Fey etc.) and you can heighten the spell at higher spell slots. So taking Summon Animal at a 7th level Spell Slot lets you summon a level 9 or lower animal. 

Spells are all listed alphabetically and tagged with various descriptors like "Cantrip," "Divination," or "Mental" and more. The description also lists what tradition(s) they belong too, Arcanes, Divine, Occult and/or Primal. 

There are also "Focus" spells that are unique to a particular Class.  Bards, Champions, Clerics, Druids, Monks, Sorcerers, and Wizards all get their own lists unique to them. Yes monks get "Ki" spells.  

Like past versions, but mostly like D&D 4e there are also Rituals. these take longer and have certain requirements that need to be met. 

8 Age of Lost Omens

This covers the very basics of Golarion, Pathfinder's game world. It includes a little history, the lands, and the gods. 

9 Playing the Game 

This is mostly the Game Master's section but there is still plenty here for players.  Covers all the rules needed to play with an emphasis on the basic d20 roll and checks. Note there is no "Natural 20 = critical hit" here, BUT score 10 higher than their DC/AC then you do have a crit! So that is kinda cool. 

10 Game Mastering

This is the Game Master's chapter. Lots of advice here on how to run PF2e games (and some of it applies to any d20-based game.)  There is a lot here yes, but obviously more could be said since there is a Game Mastery guide out as well. 

11 Crafting & Treasure

Modern gamers love to make things. I blame Minecraft. This chapter covers making things (great for the alchemists) and treasure. This is also a fairly large chapter.

We end with the Appendicies. 

--

This book is huge and it is packed with information.  The index is great and very useful. In fact, the entire design of the game allows ease of access to all information. This is one of the things that made 4e a well-designed game (not the same as "playable") and we see it live on in OSE as well. 

Who Should Play Pathfinder Second Edition?

Anyone who loves to play D&D in its myriad forms and also loves deep character customization.  In fact, if you love building characters and don't have a game going at the moment then Pathfinder has a lot to keep your character-building hobby very busy.

It is not a lite game. It is very, very crunchy.  While the differences between PF1e vs D&D4 were very pronounced there is less obvious differences between PF2e and D&D5 at least in terms of the types of games you can play.  I will say that if you were to play something like "Keep on the Borderlands" the differences in play between D&D5e and PF2e would be minimal and all resting on the mechanics of the game. Still, you are going to roll initiative, roll to attack an orc, roll a d20 to see if you hit, and then roll damage as indicated by your weapon type. At higher levels, these mechanical differences will become further apart, but essentially they both still have the same DNA linking them back to D&D 3 and before.

There is a lot to like about this game. There is a lot of game here too and that might not be to everyone's taste.

I can something like the Ancestries, Heritages, and Backgrounds making their way to D&D proper. It is so useful and gives so much more customization that looking back it seems like a no-brainer.

Today I want to delve a bit more into an idea I had been playing around with a little while ago, the combined pantheon of Greek and Norse mythos into a Roman-Norse syncretism. Both groups have many common features, but one that sticks out is the use of a race of giants that predate the gods that represent the forces of chaos.

In my syncretized myths these creatures are called Die Hüne, (plural. Singular: Der Hüne).  This is what I said about them before:

Die Hüne are the Titans and the Giants of both myths. Primordial beings of great power that the gods defeated but still trouble them. In this myth, the Gods fought Die Hüne and brought order out of chaos. These are not just giants and titans, these creatures are the demons of this mythology.

In my mind, they are something of a combination of giant, elemental, and demon. The Gigantes of Greek myth (not AD&D) were more monstrous creatures.  The jötunn of Norse myth likewise were more demonic. As time goes on these titans and jötunn become more and more human-looking till we have something like the giants of D&D. 

My goal with Der Hüne is to get back to those older, more monstrous giants. Given that this mythology is half-Roman, these people will have been familiar with some of the tales of Goliath, the Anakim, and others from Jewish mythology.  So maybe some of those tales entered into their thinking.

Here is how they will be used in my various D&D/OSR/FRPG games.

Erde Hüne

These creatures are also known as Earth Giants.  They are the forebearers of the Hill, Mountain, and Stone giants as well as ogres.  They stand 12 ft tall and are said to have bones made of stone.

These creatures are Chaotic Evil and have the most dealings with humans. While some certainly are stupid brutes, others are sufficiently intelligent and sophisticated enough to lead human armies. They have a taste for human flesh; both in the culinary and carnal appetites. There are some very tall, very evil humans that can trace their ancestry to one of these creatures.  We get the word "Hun" from "Hüne."

Note: These take the role of the "evil giants in the bibles and other tales" giants like the Anakim.  Though I covered some of this ground with Gog and Magog. I had Gog and Magog as a type of Balor or Baalor in my games.  Maybe I could turn up the demonic influences on them and make Gog and Magog the named Erde Hüne.  Balor are also 12' tall.  The myths about Gog and Magog certainly have them more human-looking. This would also bring them closer to the Ogre idea I originally had.  Worth thinking over to be sure and it would give me the demonic influences I want. 

I think just to be "that guy" I am going to make them 13' tall.

Meer Hüne

These giants are found in the oceans to the far north. They are related to the Frost and Sea giants. They are not the progenitors of these creatures but are the offspring of the Rime Jötunn along with the Frost Giants. Sea Giants are the offspring of the Meer Hüne.  

These creatures avoid humans but are no less evil. They have been known to wreck ships where they keep all the treasure and eat the humans aboard. In my myths, they would also be the forebearers of the Viking raiders that would swoop down and raid the villages of these people. 

Note: On Earth, these giants populate the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Norwegian Sea. In my desire to have my cake and eat it too I would picture these guys looking like the stereotypical Vikings. Including "Hägar the Horrible" horned helmets, though no idea how they make such helms. 

Feuer Hüne

These creatures are made of pure living fire.  They are the generation after the Inferno Jötunn and the "older brothers" to the Fire Giants.

Note: Right now these creatures are not significantly different enough from either the Fire Giants or the Inferno Jötunn to merit another distinct monster entry.  

Äther Hüne

These creatures are massive with some towering as high as 36 feet tall. It is said their bones are made of clouds and their muscles are made of storms.  They are the progenitors of the Cloud, Storm, and Fog giants. 

Note: This is my "Jack and the Beanstalk" Giant (though in truth an evil Cloud Giant covers that readily). 

Though anytime I work on giants this image comes to mind.

This image comes from the Creationist idea that there were giants in biblical times. This speculation all grows out of Genesis 6:4 "There were giants in the earth in those days", meaning the fallen angels or Nephelim or whatever.  I spent a lot of time talking about this on my old Atheism blog, The Freedom of Nonbelief. 

Here is how I use that image above.  These are closer to AD&D heights than D&D 5e. 

1. Human
2. Stone Giant
3. Troll
4. Ogre
5. Hill Giant / Erde Hüne
6. Fire Giant
7. Frost Giant
8. Cloud Giant
9. Storm Giant

There. That is far more useful. 

How do I work through the Square-Cube Law?  Magic!

Of all these creatures I think I will develop the Erde Hüne (Earth Giants) and the Meer Hüne (Sea Giants) more. Fire and Frost are already covered well in the various jötunn of Norse myths. The progenitors of the Storm and Cloud Giants I think are also handled well by the Greek myths.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, th Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—

What is it?
The Lifethief is a scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in which the adventurers come to the aid of a shaman of the Impala tribe in a highly testing location.

It is a possible sequel to the earlier Stone and Bone and The Gifts of Prax scenarios.

It is a forty-seven page, full colour 112.04 MB PDF.

It is cleanly and tidily presented and some of the artwork is excellent.

Where is it set?The Lifethief: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is set in the Dead Place in Prax, northeast of Pimper’s Block.
Who do you play?
There are no specific roles necessary to play The Lifethief, but martial characters will be needed as combat is involved. In addition, a Shaman should prove useful, though will be greatly challenged.
What do you need?
The Lifethief: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary will be useful for details of some of the encounters.
What do you get?The Lifethief: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is a short, simple adventure which takes place in the barren, Chaos wastelands of the Dead Place where the dust itself forms angry spirits and is injurious to the health of anyone who breaths it in. Here, Maserelt, a shaman of the Impala tribe, has set up camp and been monitoring a thing of horror coming out of the Dead Place—something that lived and actually had a spirit, but twisted and warped by Chaos. She cannot face it alone and has reached out for help. In answer, Erhehta, her rival from the Bison Riders, the shaman previously met by the Player Characters in the scenarios, Stone and Bone and The Gifts of Prax, sends them out to render her the assistance she needs. (If the Player Characters have not met with Erhehta or played through either of the earlier scenarios, The Lifethief includes advice and plot hooks to involve them in this scenario.)
The most obvious challenge that the Player Characters will face in the Dead Place beyond the extremely barren nature of its environment is the fact that magic does not work. There is simply not the connection to the spirit world for it to work and the likelihood is that there is no connection to the gods either, so Rune magic may or may not work. Chaos features are another matter. The combination means that The Lifethief is a physically grueling affair which will force the Player Characters to rely upon their innate skills.
Fortunately, the Player Characters have a chance to learn about they are going and gain some skill bonuses in the process in a pleasing little social scene which contrasts with the desolation they will later face. The Lifethief is not the only encounter that the Player Characters will encounter in the Dead Place, being tested by a band of Broo—inventively and vilely designed as you would want with a band of Broo, but it is the main one. Its actions and abilities are decently described, but the illustration of it is bland and uninteresting, especially given the fantastic pieces of the Broo a few pages earlier.
Notes are included as what happens if the Player Characters fail or need to retreat and come back again, along with several plot hooks which can be run after it. Full stats are given for both Maserelt and Erhehta as well as of the latter’s Straw Weaver clan of the Bison riders, which is useful if the Game Master has not run either of the previous scenarios. Beyond the details of the adventure, The Lifethief includes two sets of encounters—Praxian and Dead Place encounters. These take up almost a third of the scenario and range from the mundane to the weird, but are all nicely done and never less than interesting. They include a trapped and angry rhino, an ancient ghost with a hatred of beast riders, Morokanth traders, lost spirits, and more. The Dead Place encounters can of course be used to supplement the scenario and the Praxian encounters used to supplement other adventures on the plains of Prax. Overall, they are a nice edition with the Praxian encounters otherwise could have formed the basis of a supplement of their own.
Is it worth your time?Yes—The Lifethief: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is a useful and easy addition for any campaign set on the plains of Prax, especially if the Game Master has run Stone and Bone and The Gifts of Prax, and wants an extra set of encounters.No—The Lifethief: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is setting specific to the plains of Prax and even if the Game Master is running a campaign there, it may be too challenging a scenario for some players as it takes away their characters’ magic.Maybe—The Lifethief: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is a short but useful filler combat focused adventure, but not much more than that. The extra encounters are inventive and easy to add to a Prax set campaign.

The Big Crunch has begun. The constant expansion of the universe has halted and gone into reverse. The universe is shrinking, grinding down into an inevitable nothingness. It came at a point where civilisation neared a great revolution, but destroyed its potential in a flurry of greed and conflict. In the bleak and dreary Tenebris system, explorers had discovered gemstones which grew naturally cyst-like in the soils of the system’s barren moons and planets. The refractive qualities of these gemstones led to technological advancements such as the giant bridger ships which tore through the fabric of spacetime, as well as a Gem Rush. Individual prospectors and corporations raced into the system searching for gems to mine, the inevitable tensions and confrontations escalating into the Gem War which lasted decades, spread beyond the Tenebris system, disrupting central control and leading the isolation of system after system as the war ended. That was a decade ago. In the Tenebris system, survivors cling to life aboard the outposts and spacestations, aligned with one faction another, trying to get by even as technology breaks down and is recycled again and again… Static seems to emanate from any and all electronics. From the Void between the stars come strange and portentous whispers of things to come, even as it reaches out and corrupts and mutates those it touches.

This is the set-up to Death in Space, the blue-collar Science Fiction survival roleplaying game published through Free League Publishing following a successful Kickstarter campaign. It is from the same design team as Mörk Borg, the pitch-black pre-apocalyptic fantasy roleplaying game which brings a Nordic death metal sensibility to the Old School Renaissance. Inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Fistful of Dollars, Alien, Blade Runner, Escape from New York, The Expanse, Firefly, IO, Moon, Outland, Prospect, Sunshine, Total Recall, and The Warriors, it is a game of desperate survival and building and relying upon the your reputation, of creating a home or refuge in the face of an unknown future as the universe winds down…

A Player Character in Death in Space has four abilities—Body, Dexterity, Savvy, and Tech. He has an Origin, and details such as a Background, Trait, Drive, Looks, Past Allegiance, and Hit Points and Defence Rating. He also has some starting gear and starting bonus as well as a personal trinket. Each ability is determined by rolling a four-sided die and then subtracting the result of another four-sided die roll from the first. This gives a value between +3 and -3, which is used as the modifier for Player Character actions and dice rolls. The six Origins include four humans—Punk, SolPod, Velocity Cursed, and Void. The Punk is a rebellious non-conformist; the SolPod spends years in hibernation; Velocity Cursed, who have begun to lose their connection with reality and shift and flicker and glitch; and Void are berobed and mask-wearing nihility shamans who visions at the edge of the universe. The other two are artificial, the Carbon being short-lived exo-womb grown androids who prefer to live in an EVA suit, and the Chrome is an ancient A.I. turned cyborg. Each Origin has two benefits. To create a character, a player rolls the dice for his character’s abilities, chooses or rolls for an Origin, picks one of its benefits, and then rolls for Background, Trait, Drive, Looks, and Past Allegiance as well as starting gear and bonus plus the personal trinket. He also determines Hit Points and Defence Rating. He also has some starting gear, and possibly a starting bonus if the Player Character’s abilities are all negative, as well as a personal trinket.

Jameson
Body +2 Dexterity +1 Savvy+0 Tech +2
Origin: Punk
Benefit: Green Thumb
Background: Moon Outlaw
Trait: Cynical
Drive: To never show weakness
Looks: Trucker Cap with Patch
Past Allegiance: The Winning Side
Hit Points: 3
Defence Rating: 13
Holos: 16
Equipment: Nomad Starting Kit

Once the players have their characters, they jointly create a Hub, their home and base of operations which can be a small outpost on a moon, a module attached to a larger space station, or a small spacecraft. Each has a power source and a set of core functions, the latter consisting of a command centre, crew quarters, life support, and a mess. This Hub has a Background and a Quirk, both of which are rolled for. During play, the Player Characters can add further modules, but need to maintain both power and oxygen supplies, and this is a major drive within the game.

XR-3A-29 Hab Bloc
Defense Rating: 11
Max. Condition: 5
Fuel Capacity: 4
Power Source: Standard Industrial Generator (OP 3)
Background: Site of a Holy Pilgrimage. Pilgrims still show up.
Quirk: Interior is painted in luminous colours, charged by UV light.

Mechanically, Death in Space is simple. If a player wants his character to act, he rolls a twenty-sided die and applies the appropriate ability to the result. If the total is twelve or more, the character succeeds. If the situation is combat, the target number is the target’s Defence Rating. If the Player Character is at an Advantage or Disadvantage, his player rolls two twenty-sided dice and applies the higher or lower result respectively.

However, a failed roll grants a Player Character gains a Void Point, to a maximum of four. These can be expended to gain Advantage on an ability check or attack roll, or to activate a Cosmic Mutation. A Cosmic Mutation can be a ‘Code Generator’ which converts part of the brain into a computer that can write programs—encoded with the character’s DNA—and then be transferred by skin contact or ‘Feedback Loop’, which enables them to leap back in time ten seconds at the cost of an important memory. (A Cosmic Mutation can be gained at character creation, though this is unlikely, and instead is usually gained through advancement and then randomly.)

Further, if a Void Point is spent to gain Advantage on roll and that roll is still failed, there is the possibility of the Player Character gaining Void Corruption. This can include suffering daymares and nightmares about a suffocating darkness, a part of the body being surrounded by cloud of darkness, seeing through someone else’s eyes when you sleep, and so on… They are in the main weird or odd and personalise the strangeness of the Big Crunch.

One aspect missing from the rules in Death in Space is anything covering fear or sanity. This is because it is not a blue-collar Science Fiction horror roleplaying game. It is a blue-collar Science Fiction survival roleplaying game, its focus is so much on this that you barely notice the absence of any sanity or fear rules. Then when you do notice, it feels refreshing, to not have to roll for either, to leave that entirely in the hands of the players and their roleplaying as needed.

The technical aspects of Death in Space being a Science Fiction roleplaying game are kept relatively simple in keeping with the lightness of the mechanics. They highlight how everything is wearing out and that repairs are often a necessity. They also highlight how important it is to maintain or obtain supplies of both oxygen and power. Similarly, the rules for combat are kept short and brutal, even those for spacecraft combat.

In terms of a setting, Death in Space begins with a number of principles—that nothing is new, communication is limited, that the scars of the war remain and have not been forgotten, travel takes time and little is known about places or stations at the edge of or beyond the Tenebris System, and whilst it is possible to live beyond the normal human lifespan, typically through cryo-sleep, the result is often a life of loneliness and loss. The actual given setting is the Tenebris System, the focal point of the Gem War, home to seekers, scoundrels, and miners, as well as various cults, all doing their best (or perhaps their worst) to survive. Several planets and moons across the system are described, but the starting point is the Iron Ring, a dilapidated structure consisting of thousands of old space stations and spacecraft shackled together and surrounding the yellow moon, Inauro. The ramshackle structure is divided into numerous irregularly sized sectors, connected to each other, but not always easily accessible, some inhabited, some not. Life is harsh, the inhabitants typically needing to ally themselves with or join one faction or another to get by, often relying upon their word and their reputation as the ultimate currency.

The Iron Ring is the setting for the starting scenario, ‘Welcome to the Ring’. The Player Characters have arrived with their Hub, towed into place and attached at a convenient docking port at Aurum 80 in the Aurum sector. They are low on supplies, and they owe a debt for the docking fees. How they pay this off is up to them, but perhaps they can involve themselves in the growing feud between two gangs which between control the subsector’s main resources. Both the set-up and the areas of Aurum 80 are described in some detail, but there is no one solution to the situation given. How their characters become involved in the situation and how they resolve it is entirely open and up to the players. What is notable about this is that perhaps the most obvious solution—the application of violence—is not immediately available. Player Characters in Death in Space rarely enter play armed, and whilst it is certainly possible for them to obtain weapons, initially it will be down to their wits and their persuasiveness to make any progress. This is indicative of the roleplaying game’s genre, the blue-collar Science Fiction of space as a working environment.

Beyond ‘Welcome to the Ring’, Death in Space provides the Game Master with table after table of ideas and inspiration. These include tables for Iron Ring locations, but deep space nightmares, obstacles, and space encounters, as well lists of modules and spacecraft and more. The Game Master is free to refer to these, but also encouraged to accept player suggestions too. Notable amongst these table are the only mention of aliens in Death in Space. These are a mixture of tools and threats and oddities that add to the unknown of the end of the universe. Their inclusion here also moves them away from being the focus of the game, and they could even be ignored all together if the Game Master wants to keep her Tenebris System wholly humanocentric.

Physically, Death in Space is black, a lot of black. Or rather, rather it is primarily white text or line art on black, with the occasional spot of colour as contrast. It is stark and elegant, befitting the vast loneliness of space and the Tenebris System. At first glance, it does look like the layout of Mörk Borg, but it is far more subtle and less in your face upon further examination, and therefore, may be easier to read. At least visually, the only connection between the two might be the coloured cross motif used on the chapter pages. The artwork is excellent, and the book is well written and engaging.

Death in Space is a roleplaying game about survival in the face of nihilism and an uncaring universe. It is a roleplaying game about hope and co-operation in the face of nihilism and an uncaring universe. Where in Mörk Borg, the Player Characters can be darkly and often humorously adversarial, this is not the case in Death in Space. The Player Characters have come together and need to work together to survive what is a starkly brutal and often unknown future, a future which can see them radically altered, and ultimately, this is what sets Death in Space apart from other blue collar Science Fiction roleplaying games.

What We Give To Alien Gods starts in an odd fashion. It starts with advice as to how to use the module, introduces a new optional rule for Conviction—a Player Character’s belief in an idea or concept; discusses the nature of the Triathal language, its trifold glyphs which combine into layers to form sentences and concepts and used by an alien species which did not vocalise; the Xenoconstellations of star patterns used by a cosmic entity as a form of communication; and examples of both the Triathal language and the Xenoconstellations. Certainly, both are brilliantly alien and both will hopefully help the challenge of the Warden imparting the stellar strangeness of What We Give To Alien Gods to her players and their characters. Yet nearly a quarter of the way into the module and the Warden has no idea as what is going on, what the module is about, and what the significance of anything she has just read is.

Which means that What We Give To Alien Gods breaks one of the cardinal rules of a roleplaying scenario. Which is…

Tell the Game Master what the scenario is about upfront.

What We Give To Alien Gods is a scenario for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game, the roleplaying game of blue collar Science Fiction Horror, inspired by films such as Outland, Dark Star, Silent Running, and Event Horizon, as well as Alien and Aliens. Hyperspace anomalies, reports of an alien structure, a missing contact, a seemingly telepathic cry for help, or even an inexplicable urge all hook the Player Characters into travelling Gaelar XII, a distant magellanic nebula. Once inside, they must negotiate dense pockets of cosmic dust, ionised gas storms, ship debris, thermal spikes, and more before alighting before a strange structure. Consisting of three immense pillars with a massive cube suspended between the three, which all together rotate as one, this is Maerkithelth, an unfathomably ancient temple to alien god. The Crew can enter any one of the pillars and begin to explore, finding signs of an alien civilisation—tools and devices left lying about, as well as extensive patterns of glyphs. They will also find indications that someone has already beaten them to the temple.

Discovering both the temple and the existence of aliens can have a profound effect upon a MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game, depending on whether or not they exist in the Warden’s campaign. However, even if they already exist, the presence of the Triathals and what they have left behind—especially the Triathal language, will have a profound upon the members of the Crew. This is intentional since the Scientist in the Crew, in particular, one with the Xenoesotericism, Xenomysticism, and Xenolinguitsics, will be translating the Triathal language and learning more and more of just what Maerkithelth contains and is protecting the universe from. Or even protecting the universe from which the Triathal came. There is such an emphasis upon the Triathal language and upon the role of the Scientist in the scenario that it is not like other MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game scenarios, and whilst the author describes it as a “A dungeon-crawl through an alien temple”, it is not that either. Rather, What We Give To Alien Gods is a puzzle crawl, an exploration of an environment that requires elements of a language to be learned in combination with skill rolls and the clues left behind by other explorers. Which obviously places a great deal of emphasis upon the player with the Scientist role. This is not say that the other roles in MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game do not figure in the scenario—and What We Give To Alien Gods does advice to that end—but the Scientist predominates.

Much of What We Give To Alien Gods is devoted to describing the interior of the three pillars of Maerkithelth and the almighty cube which hangs between them. It is only after this that we read of a major threat to both the Crew and possibly the universe. Doctor Aislin Grahm has an obsession with the cosmos and Xenomysticism and is driven—or possibly pulled—by whatever Maerkithelth actually contains (or keeps contained). However much like the explanation of what the plot to What We Give To Alien Gods, this does not really become obvious to very later in the book, over two thirds of the book in the listing of the NPCs, and it applies to her as much as it does the other, often very alien NPCs the Crew is likely to encounter.

Which means that What We Give To Alien Gods breaks one of the cardinal rules of a roleplaying scenario. Again. Which is…

Tell the Game Master what the scenario is about upfront.

Yet these are not the only issues with What We Give To Alien Gods and to be fair, they can be overcome as part of the Warden’s preparation. The real issue is with the extra element of preparation. For not only does the Warden have to prepare the scenario, she also has to learn how its puzzles work and learn the Triathal language, enough to be able understand and if not teach it to her players, then guide them through their learning process. In effect, the Warden has to play through aspects of What We Give To Alien Gods in order to really grasp what is going on. Then once prepared, the scenario—as the author advises—requires a lot of buy in upon the part of the players and their characters.

Physically, What We Give To Alien Gods is a solid little book. It has a sense of the ineffable and the alien in its look and use of art, of a place that is not quite like ours, and it is lovely booklet to look at. However, the writing is often succinct and there are no maps of Maerkithelth which might make it easier for the Warden to visualise and then impart that to her players.

Inspired by films and television such as Event Horizon, The Expanse, Interstellar, and Arrival, there is no denying that What We Give To Alien Gods is an ambitious treatment of Cosmic Horror for the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. It is conceptually brilliant and the result is fantastically weird and creepy and unsettling, but the effort to get that to the table, that is where What We Give To Alien Gods does not quite deliver.

The Woodland is a world is one of strife and conflict in the wake of first the Grand Civil War between the avian factions of the Eyrie Dynasties, then the Interbellum, when an army led by the Marquise de Cat invaded, and lastly the return of the resurgent Eyrie Dynasties and the rise of the Woodland Alliance in response to the feline invaders. This has left Clearing after Clearing, or settlement, across the Woodland rife with factions wanting to ally with one side or the other, facing problems caused by conflicts across the forest, and their inhabitants at loggerheads with each other as to what solutions they should apply to one problem, situation, or another. Into the Clearings slip the outsiders and travellers known as Vagabonds, often outlaws who wander the Woodland without a home, and although no upstanding member of a Clearing’s community would trust a Vagabond, together a band of Vagabonds, might have the nous, the chutzpah, the slipperiness, and the skill, to solve the problems that beset a Clearing and tip it one way or another. Often this will mean that the Vagabonds will do so in favour of one faction, for they have their own biases, which means that there is even less reason to trust them! So bands of Vagabonds slip out of one Clearing and into another, sometimes changing the situation they discover, sometimes not, occasionally to the acclaim of one faction and the dismay of others, but rarely ever trusted even as they are barely tolerated.

This is the set-up Root: The Roleplaying Game, the game based on Root: A Game of Woodland Might And Right, the anthropomorphic asymmetrical boardgame from Leder Games, published by Magpie Games. The players take the roles of the Vagabonds, but it is up to the Game Master to create a network of Clearings, each with interesting NPC denizens and general conflicts and issues rather than ready-to-play plots. Root: The Roleplaying Game includes a set of tables to help her design her first set of twelve Clearings, including their denizens, the paths between the Clearings (which themselves can often be difficult and dangerous to travel), and which faction controls each Clearing. Since this is done randomly, the resulting Woodland will differ from that created by another Game Master and had there been a pre-written set of twelve Clearings proscribed by the authors of Root: The Roleplaying Game, it would have differed from that too. Root: The Roleplaying Game does come with an example Clearing called ‘Gelilah’s Grove’ which neatly shows off the concept. However, if the Game Master is short on inspiration or ideas and wants further examples or wants a Clearing which can be run as a one-shot, then there is a ready set of Clearings in the supplement, Root: The Roleplaying Game – Clearings Booklet.

Root: The Roleplaying Game – Clearings Booklet provides a quartet of Clearings ready for the Game Master to add to her Woodland. The format for each entry is the same. This includes a ‘Description’, ‘At First Sight’, ‘Conflicts’, details and stats for ‘Important Residents’, ‘Important Locations’, ‘Special Rules’, and ‘Introducing the Clearing’. The latter provides advice and guidance, whilst the ‘Conflicts’ starts off with a ‘Core Conflict’ and adds several more, all of whom come with a ‘How It Develops’ section which examines what happens if the Vagabonds never get involved. Each of the Clearings in the supplement comes with four such Conflicts, and though the listed playing is two to four hours for each Clearing, the likelihood is that it will take more than one session for a band of Vagabonds to deal with all of them. Either way, whether the Vagabonds involve themselves in a Conflict or not, there are consequences to their actions or their inaction respectively.

The first Clearing in Root: The Roleplaying Game – Clearings Booklet is ‘Hookfoot Bog’, the name of a swampy, smelly settlement best known as a source of peat which the local Hookfoot Clan of mice dig out using harvesting machines and which the Marquisate governs as an important resource. From the off, it is clear that the Marquisate is not necessarily the bad cat here. The local commander governs with a light paw, but its now monopoly on the digging out and sale of peat has led to increased prices and tension, as well as changes to the Clearing as the Cats and their allies have constructed wooden buildings and homes in the settlement centre. This has divided the settlement into the old town and the new town, between collaborators who welcome, if not a newfound wealth, then at least job security. However, some within the Hookfoot Clan resent the Marquisate’s presence and are finding ways to resist, including purchasing weapons from smugglers who in turn smuggle out Nip, a powerful narcotic regulated by the Marquisate, which requires peat to manufacture. The Conflicts are all nicely interconnected, and supported with details of the Clearing’s important NPCs, interesting locations, special rules—the latter covering the swampy, peat fuelled smoky environment and peat harvester operations, and guidance for the Game Master on how to get the Vagabonds involved in the Conflicts in Hookfoot Bog. The latter includes the governor asking the Vagabonds to infiltrate the resistance; a local merchant wants them to stop the vandalism on the peat harvesters, but others want to help it; they might be recruited by the resistance or tested by the smugglers to see if they support or oppose their operations; and more. Plus, there are tips on how to escalate the situation and keep the action going.

The other three Clearings follow the same pattern. ‘Sixtoe Stand’ is named for a hero who drove off a wolf attack many years ago, but a more recent wolf attack has left it ill-prepared to survive the winter. So, it needs an ally, but which faction will it side with? ‘Limmery Post’ details an ancient fortification on the edge of the Woodland occupied by the Marquisate much to the dismay of the inhabitants, who want the invaders gone, but camped outside the settlement is a contingent of the Woodland Alliance, ready to lay siege to Sixtoe Stand. Some in Sixtoe Stand want to keep the peace with the Marquisate, others would welcome their being driven out by the Woodland Alliance, but many want to remain in isolation as they have for many years. Which of course is not possible given the situation. Lastly, ‘Coolclaw Mine’ details an important iron mine under Marquisate occupation, but ill prepared to deal with the influx of soldiers and refugees and so the threat of starvation looms. Here the Marquisate Lord Scowl is much more of an openly oppressive presence and so is closer to the classic rebellion versus authority set-up, although it does throw a rival Vagabond group into the situation.

Physically, Root: The Roleplaying Game – Clearings Booklet is well presented, well written, and of course, illustrated with the same great art as with Root: The Roleplaying Game and Root: A Game of Woodland Might And Right. The worst that could be said of it is that there is not enough!

Root: The Roleplaying Game – Clearings Booklet is a solid supplement for Root: The Roleplaying Game. It complements a Game Master’s Woodland, whether of fully worked Clearings ready to add to her campaign or bring to the table as a one-shot. Or simply as a book of examples to take inspiration from and develop Clearings of her own.

By the time you read this, the whole shebang will be relocated for the weekend in scenic Austin, Texas for the Oddities & Curiosities Expo at the Palmer Event Center. If you’re in the vicinity, head by to say hello: … Continue reading →

The Silver Road is a rules light—a very rules light, minimalist storytelling. It is so light that it does not even have its own integral setting, although it does include a scenario and a set of sample Player Characters. Designed to be played by two or more players—though four is the perfect number, plus a Game Mediator, the types of stories The Silver Road is designed to tell should be ideally composed of discrete scenes, whether arrayed along a narrative or organised into a flowchart. Each scene should involve one or more problems with potential consequences. The example given in the book involves a child attempting to pick the lock of her bedroom, the consequences being that if she fails, she will get frustrated, stamp her feet, and so attract the attention of her stepmother downstairs. The story could be the exploration of a dungeon or an escape room, a fairy tale, a race across Europe to escape with information from behind the Iron Curtain, or the infiltration of the moon base home to a gang of space pirates! Whatever the story, the mechanics are designed so that ultimately a character will always succeed, but will have to suffer the consequences of their initial failure, and as a storytelling game, provides scope for a player to add elements to the scene beyond whatever their character is doing.

The Silver Road is published by Handiwork Games, best known for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes, and requires a single six-sided die each for both the players and the Game Mediator, and some pencils and paper. A character is simply defined. He has a name, an important fact about them—such as a job, role, or what he is, two things he is good at, two things he is bad at, and lastly, a Magic Number. The latter ranges between two and five, and is unique to the character. Character creation can be done as a group or separately, but ultimately, the players should have as a group a reason to stay together and face the hostile situations designed and presented to them by the Game Mediator.

Tiddles
I am a Cat Who Belongs to No-One

Things I am Good at
I am good at getting people to trust me
I am good at sneaking

Things I am Bad at
I am bad at meowing
I am bad at dealing with children

In terms of play, the Game Master will have ready a series of scenes containing obstacles and consequences, which when one is overcome will lead to the next and so on and so on. She will present the scene and then in turn, each player will narrate what his character will do (it need not be in turn order round the table, but that is the default). To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls his die. If it is something the Player Character is good at, he will nearly always succeed. If it is something the Player Character is bad at, he will nearly always fail. If he fails, there will be consequences, but if it is something the Player Character is good at and he fails, there will be consequences also, but he will succeed on his next turn.

There are no rules for combat in The Silver Road, the outcome of any direct conflict being already built into the rules through the effect of consequences. In conflicts, these can be that the character is hurt—or depending upon the story being narrated, actually killed. The former is more likely than the latter though, and even if killed, a character could return as a ghost—depending upon the story, of course.

In addition, if the result on any die roll is equal to a player’s magic Number, that player can ‘Butt-in’. This gives him the opportunity to add to the current scene or action within the scene—even if it is not that player’s turn—with his new narration having to begin, “But…” The Butt-in’ interjection can be used to bring in the player’s own character, or that of another player, to add something to the scene (even to warp it to make it even more challenging for the current or next player!), and so on. The narration thus switches from player to player to the Game Mediator and back again, with the interjections happening at random.

The Silver Road could be criticized for being too simple—and arguably, given the size of the book and the extent of its mechanics, it is. After all, they have been developed from one page of rules. Nevertheless, their simplicity makes them easy to learn, teach, and use—such that this roleplaying game could be run with children—and further, what that space allows is advice for the Game Mediator on organising and running the game, handling consequences, getting hurt and more. The roleplaying game also comes with a set of example Player Characters and Obstacles, as well as a scenario or story, a sort of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five affair which spirals into a fairy tale.

The Silver Road is well written, easy to read, and ready to run in five minutes. In addition, the simplicity of The Silver Road expanded into a booklet-sized roleplaying game has the advantage of allowing space for fantastic artwork on every page. This has an ethereality to it, suggesting something lost or over there on the edge where figures, often in odd or period garb, slide into the mists, doors stand closed in hedges, buildings crumble atop rises, and ghosts linger in the morning light. The implied nature of The Silver Road is liminal, somewhere between the modern and the past, a step or two’s way from somewhere further back or elsewhere.

Finding it hard to post on a Friday when it is so nice out!

So some updates.

We had some really hot days this week so I took advantage of it and went out to get my TRS-80 Model III case and give it a new paint job.  It now looks like a TRS-80 Model 4.

That is the first coat of primer. I primed it in flat white and used a glossy white top coat.  It's dry but I might put on another coat. 

For this "Retro-Build" I really wanted to use a Raspberry Pi 4 based system again, but I also have this motherboard just laying around. I have not idea if it will fit save for my quick and dirty measurements. I have a new hard drive for it and the keyboard.  I need to cut the bottom of the case to fit the keyboard in, but that is no big deal, and I already have my support.  Going with some industrial foam this time instead of 3D printing one.

If I stick with Windows on it versus the Pi I can run all the Gold Box D&D games on it.  Make this nothing but a D&D-related computer. Just like the 1980s. 

My DragonQuest post went over rather nicely. I am going to be checking out the fan revision of 2nd Edition, called Version 2.19 soon.   I am not entirely sure what, if anything, I will do with it but I do love the idea of mixing in bits of the SPI Demons game and calling it "DemonQuest" instead.  Maybe I take some notes from DragonRaid!  This is only a passing idea.  Maybe something I can pick at every now and then.  I do have some ideas though that I like.

July is coming up.  I was talking with my friend Greg this week and the topic of Superhero Games came up.  I might spend some time with some supers games and maybe even get to some Sci-Fi stuff I did not cover in May and some D&D stuff I now know I won't get to this month.  At the end of July (or rather the last ⅓)  I have something special planned that should be fun.  No details yet, but here is a spoiler.

Next week, either some Castles & Crusades or Pathfinder and how they relate to D&D!

Wizards are known for their eccentricity, none more so than Riblerim the Unsure, Master Diviner, for when he set out to create and build a theme park, it was not only wondrous and whimsical, but it was also actually constructed in an ultra-dimensional realm woven into his cloak. It consisted of several themed islands floating in a golden sky connected by a winding monoriver plied by cute animal-themed boats and Giant Flying Galapagos Turtles. It was both a private refuge and somewhere to receive guests, known to its creator as Riblerim’s Interesting Place, but then it became something else—a sanctuary! During the Great Needle Pusher Purge, all seamstresses and tailors, long suspected of sorcery, one and all, were persecuted and driven into exile, which of course, led to the Great Wearing of Nothing but Rags. That is, naturally, all forgotten now, but the question of what happened to all those fleeing needleworkers and clothcutters and more, remains one of much debate… What happened though, was that Riblerim the Unsure came to their aid. Refusing to watch the seamstresses and tailors be persecuted and driven out, he established ‘Costumiers with Latent Arcane Magicks Refuge Initiative & Motivation Scheme’—or CLAMRIMS, for short—and sought the exiled, freethinking clothiers and modistes, and offered them shelter in what had previously been wholly a sanctum for just himself and his guests. A sanctum that he drew about himself and thus carried with him everywhere he went. Then Riblerim the Unsure disappeared. That was fifty years ago…

In more recent times, Cambros, the sari-draped Warbot, has been seen wandering the land, wrapped in a great cloak, said to have belonged to his friend, Riblerim the Unsure. He wants to find his friend, whom he is sure can be found in the cloak. In return for the Player Characters’ aid, he offers adventure unlike any that they have been on before and great treasures to be found, and with his uttering of the Passcode, they are whisked into the cloak and the weird and wonderful world of Riblerim’s Interesting Place. They find themselves in the Welcominarium, an island complete with a wizard’s tower in classic style, a large orientation map marked with ‘You Are Here’ and an arrow, the Slips aYe Olde Gift Shop shaped like a wizard’s conical hat, and a dock on the monoriver, at which the animal themed boats—the horsey, the rocking pony, the seahorsey, the unpiggie, the pegaswan, and naturally, the teacup too, all sit ready to transport their passengers elsewhere. That elsewhere consists of several islands floating in the sky, around, above, and below the Player Characters. They include the feudal mini-kingdom of Avalon; the springiness of Bouncy Island, complete with white pellet rafting; the constant end of day Sunset Island; the benighted and lovelorn Adult Island; and the ostentatiously studious Island of Special Interests.

This is the set-up for Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park, a highly detailed, but systemless sandbox scenario whose sense of wonder and whimsy combine the classic funhouse style of dungeon with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is published by Mottokrosh Machinations, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, a publisher best known for Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, an Old School Renaissance adjacent roleplaying game of retro science fantasy. Numerous suggestions are given to get the Player Characters to and then inside the cloak—or rather into Riblerim’s Interesting Place. The default arrival point is the Welcominarium, but the Game Master is free to have them end up wherever seems the most appropriate, or fun. From there, the Player Characters are free to go wherever they want, or at least wherever the animal themed boats (or the teacup) will take—including up stream as well as down. Each island is a realm of its own, consisting of three or more adventure sites all following a particular theme. For example, Avalon is home to a fairy tale castle where tourneys and jousting are held to appease the self-appointed queen, Moronoe, nearly surrounded by dark forest lush with game and the domain of secretive druids. There is a seemingly endless cosplay closet at the dock where the Player Characters will alight, one which they can enter and select a suitable outfit for their time on the island. In comparison, Bouncy Island seems all but deserted, yet it does have its ruler, an Elfin figure whose cloak appears to mimic his moments and who can often be seen frolicking up and down the White Pellet Rafting route. Like many of the inhabitants, he knows many secrets of the Riblerim’s Interesting Place and might be persuaded to share one or more if the Player Characters are willing to brave the dangers of The Plastic Gauntlet—which like the rest of Bouncy Island, has definite springiness to it.

All of the adventure sites in Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park are nicely detailed—its interior spaces more so. These include both the floorplans for locations such as the Museum of Divination, as well as dungeons like the Tomb of the Last Knight and The Plastic Gauntlet. These are also neatly arranged so that the maps and map keys are opposite each other.

Mechanically, Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park is designed to be systemless. Or rather, written to be used with any roleplaying game, for it does actually have a system of its very own. This is the ‘HAWK’ structure, which stands for ‘Has’, ‘Acts’, ‘Wants’, and ‘Knows’, which is used to describe and define each of the major NPCs who appear in the scenario. The lack of numbers though, has its upsides and its downsides. Obviously, the Game Master can adapt Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park to the roleplaying game of her choice, whether that is 13th Age, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, Hypertellurians, or Old School Essentials. All would work. The downside is that all together there are a lot of NPCs and monsters to provide stats for, but that is offset by how succinct the design of the individual islands is. The Player Characters are likely to be exploring one island at a time, so the Game Master need not necessarily adapt the whole of Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park in one go.

Given the nature of its setting and many of its inhabitants, it should be no surprise that most of the main treasures in Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park consist of cloaks, mantles, shawls, stoles, and the like. For example, the Dwarven War Cloak is made of thumb-sized iron bars which can interlock to form a personal fortification whilst the Concordant Cowl of Teeth, consisting of an array of molars, incisors, and canines strung together with silver chains, is simply an intimidating—and sometimes—an enraging sight. The other treasures to be found in Riblerim’s Interesting Place are much less detailed and generally simpler in nature, like the Ruby Opera Gloves, enchanted by vampires to make the wearer unnoticeable to humans or the carved soap, a heavy cake of rainbow tulip and hope-scented soap into which has been artfully scratched a trigonometrical formula. Decipher the formula and the Player Character casts Venusian magics with greater power. As with the rest of the content in Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park, none of these items have stats, but their simplicity makes them easy to adapt to the roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice. Also included is a guide to making the studying and use of grimoires more interesting than mere spellbooks, which could also be adapted to the whatever rules the Game Master is using.

Physically, Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park is beautifully presented, done in retro-lush colours that add to the sense of unreality of Riblerim’s Interesting Place. The cartography is also excellent. If there is an issue with the presentation, it is that the layout is too tight and the text a little too small in places, making the book slightly difficult to read. There is advice though for both Game Master and players on how to handle the tone and some of the scenario’s content, which is clearly marked for each location and includes spiders, demonic summonings—under mostly safe conditions, cannibalism, and more. This is through the use of lines and veils, and the X-card, although the self-contained nature of the scenario’s varying islands do help to separate this more adult content.

As a sandcrawl, Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park differs in that its individual locations, its islands floating on the fabric of Riblerim’s cloak, are discrete and there is relatively little to connect them narratively. This is because this is not really a sandcrawl with factions and the power and influence of its NPCs do not extend beyond the confines of their respective islands. Here perhaps some advice or a table listing what each of the NPCs want and how those wants crossover could have been useful. However, there are threads which run right across the theme park that is Riblerim’s Interesting Place. In particular, a lot of the NPCs that the Player Characters will encounter are the equivalent of staff or actors. They look the part, and they play the part, but their lack of competence in comparison to the Player Characters adds to the sense of unreality of the already strange realm. Similarly, the fact that Riblerim’s Interesting Place has its own currency—Aesopian Rupees—exchanged for whispered secrets, also adds to the unreality as well as driving the players to come up with increasingly interesting confessions for their characters to pay for anything!
With Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park, Mottokrosh Machinations does that ‘thing within a thing, within a…’ just as it did with Brutal Imperilment in the Bag of Infinite Holding. However, rather than being constrained by being in a bag upon a bag upon a bag, there is an openness to Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park. The whole of its robed realm is presented to the Player Characters, and they are free to visit any one of its discrete, individual islands however they want, encountering something different on each one, whether that is a genre, a theme, or a tone—or a combination of all three. Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park is sumptuously strange, ornately odd, and richly ridiculous, a campaign within campaign, a robed resort of wonders and whimsy.

For this post, I am moving further outside of my original purpose of One Man's God but certainly still within the spirit of why I was doing it.  In truth one of the seeds of what would lead me to do One Man's God to start with was planted while flipping through the AD&D 2nd Edition Legends & Lore and my complaints about it. 

A brief recap. My series, One Man's God, dealt with going through the original Deities & Demigods book and working out how various gods, monsters and/or heroes would work in the cosmology of AD&D 1st Edition demons.  I took each myth/pantheon and looked at them through the lens of AD&D demons. Not Christian demons, though that can inform my view, and not Ars Goetia demons, or any other sort. Just AD&D ones.  I went through the book and took on some ancillary topics as well like Syncretism and how to build my own myths. 

AD&D 2nd Edition though is a different sort of creature.  For starters, we didn't even have demons or devils at the start. Secondly, the cosmology of the Outer Planes or the "Great Wheel" became something of its own setting in Planescape later on. So a lot of assumptions going into One Man's God are called into question in this new cosmological viewpoint. 

Though I think I could make the argument that I can take the Legends & Lore book and look at it independently of later developments and certainly Planescape and still apply the rules I was using for OMG.  I am going to cover a lot of ground in this one, but it is very familiar ground.  Sometimes very, very familiar.  But before I do that maybe an overview/review of Legends & Lore is in order.

Legends & Lore, AD&D 2nd Edition

For this review, I am considering the hardcover book published in 1990 and the files from DriveThruRPG. 192 pages. Color cover and inserts, black & white and blue interior art. 

My history with Legends & Lore is a complicated one. Deities & Demigods was my very first AD&D hardcover purchase.  I was playing a Cleric in D&D B/X at the time and wanted to expand his role in the game. I thought a book of gods would be a great in. Plus it was mythology that got me into D&D to begin with, so it was a natural choice for me. 

Like many at the time I also, rather immaturely, chaffed under the name change of "Deities & Demigods" to "Legends & Lore" feeling that TSR was bowing to the smallest, but loudest, contingent of people criticizing the game. But I would later buy a copy so my collection of AD&D hardbacks would be complete.  Fast forward a couple of years and now AD&D 2nd Ed is the new game on the block and there is a new Legends & Lore out.  This time I did not mind the name, maybe because I was now in college and saw that it fit the content better. I recall sitting in the apartment of my old High School DM and his cousin was there (he lived in the apartment below) and we were discussing the new L&L book. I can't say the discussion was very favorable towards the new book.

Before I delve into that, let's look at the book and I'll bring up that discussion as it pertains.

Legends & Lore was written by James M. Ward (who gave us Gods, Demi-gods, and Heroes and Deities & Demigods) and Troy Denning. This book has the advantage of being the one that is most in common with three different versions of the D&D game.  The book is called revised and updated, and it is certainly that, but there are plenty of similarities between this book and the 1st Edition one.

This book contains 11 different mythologies, down from the 17/15 of the previous edition.  This was one of my first points of contention with the book back in 1990.  Where were the Babylonia and Summerian? The Finnish or the Non-humans? One could have easily combined (and made a good argument for it) the Babylonian and Sumerian myths.  Combined they still were not as long as the Egyptian myths cover. 

My second point of contention, and even then I knew this was a very weak leg to stand on, is that the stats were gone.  Oh sure there were brand new stat blocks for worshipers and what the gods can do and there were the stats for their "Earthly" avatars, but the long, and let me just say it, Monster Manual-like stats were gone. Yes. These are not supposed to beings you can, or even should, hunt down to kill.  

My last complaint, and again this one is weak, is that so much of the art was reused for this edition.

Granted sometimes the older art was used to great effect.

Other times, less so.

Thelb K'aarna art for Cú Chulainn? Nope. Not buying it. They would have been better using Moonglum.

The book does though do a very good job to laying out the powers of Greater, Intermediate (new to this edition), Lesser,  and Demi- Gods. Power common to all gods are discussed and powers they grant to their clerics, in general, are discussed, with the details of each god.  Ok. So this means each god takes up more space. That explains some of the loss.  

There is a solid human focus here and that is by the design of the book since they are drawing more from history. 

Each of the pantheon/myths is presented in more or less of the same format. We get a covering of the myths and an explanation on where they come from.  There are some new spells listed and some new magic items.  We follow with the Gods, usually the most powerful first working our way down to demi-gods and ascended heroes.  Where appropriate there are also monsters and sometimes maps/plans of centers of worship. Pyramids for the Aztecs and Egyptians, temples, and so on.

Also included with each god are the duties of the priesthood and what their requirements are. These will include alignment, ability score minimums, Weapons the priests are allowed to use, armor restrictions, what spheres of clerical magic they will have access, what other powers might be granted, and whether or not they can turn or command undead or even have no effect on them at all. This is the forerunner of 3rd Edition's Channel Divinity power for Clerics. 

The myths include American Indian, Arthurian Legends, Aztec, Celtic, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Indian, Japanese, Newhwon, and Norse.

One Man's God

Now I want to look at each of these and see how they would fare using the lens of One Man's God. Or, to put it easier. Are there any demons here?

American Indian

Covers some similar ground (as all the myths do) as the original Deities & Demigods. No monsters here, but a lot of heroes.

Arthurian Legends

No gods at all here, despite how important Christian mythology, especially around the Holy Grail, is to these tales.  Only a note that "Authur's deity remains distant and unapproachable."  The Grail is mentioned as a magical relic, but not much more about it. There are only two monsters here, The White Hart and The Questing Beast.

Aztec

Aztec myths are full of demons and demon-like creatures. What does 2ne ed give us?  A paragraph about how the mythology is lacking in fantastic creatures. Sorry, not buying that one. 

Celtic

Now Celtic myths have monsters, and I have talked about many of them before, but only a very few could be considered demons in the AD&D sense of the term. Here we get a lot of gods and only one hero, Cú Chulainn.

Chinese

Again China has tons of creatures that could be called demons in the AD&D sense. The Neglected Ancestral Spirit could be considered demonic. But are they AD&D demons? I am going with no. 

Egyptian

Not sure I am liking that blonde-haired, green-eyed version of Isis here. It is likely that our first concept of demons came from Egyptians. Well.,, I would argue they came from the Sumerians who would then influence the Egyptians. Also, Egyptians have a ton of gods, so no monsters at all in this section. Not even Apep and Ammit. 

Greek

Many of the primordial titans of Greek myth would get new life in Roman myths and then get ported over to Christian mythology. Geryon is one notable example. As far as Greek myths go this one has the gods a bit better organized.  The Furies or Erinyes are now "Lesser Gods" which tracks with some myths and here their alignment is Neutral. Among the monsters are Cerberus (NE) and the Gigantes (CE) which are bit like the primordial versions of the giants. These work great for my Hüne which are bit like demons. 

Indian

One of Kali's great powers is her ability to scare away demons. It's why she is put at the head of armies. Does this book give us any?  Sadly no monsters are mentioned here.

Japanese

This one feels a bit more research than the original D&DG. While no demons, the god Amatsu-Mikaboshi would make for a reasonable devil or some other type of fiend; a unique, Prince level one. He is a rebel god and would not submit to the other gods, so there is a bit of Lucifer in him. That and the fact he is called the "Dread Star of Heaven."

Nehwon

Our odd one out since it is not a world myth but rather the creation of Fritz Leiber.  Again Tyaa could pass for a demonic queen in many settings along with the Birds of Tyaa. 

Norse

The Norse gave us fire and frost giants and many of those primordial giants are quite demon-like. Lots of heroes here, as to be expected, and some monsters. Garm and Fenris Wolf could both be considered to be like demons as well.

In the end this book represented a paradigm shift that was not just part of AD&D 2nd Edition but happened along with it. Even future books that dealt with gods handled them a little different than this, but along the same paths of evolution. 

What was the outcome of my story about talking with my friends about this book?  Well if you see the image of the cover I used, well that is my own book. I didn't buy it right away, in fact it was many years later before I picked up a copy of Legends & Lore.  Strange that a book that was really one of my first purchases for AD&D would in the very next edition become one of my last.

Technically, summer doesn’t start until June 21. As is usually the case, North Texas didn’t get the memo. June 11 was the beginning of what promises to be a very long and very dry summer, which is part of the … Continue reading →

I have a history with DragonQuest. Not a complicated one or even an interesting one, but history all the same.  Back in 83 or 84 or so I would head to Belobrajdic's Bookstore in my hometown every weekend. There I would get a new edition of Dragon or whatever sci-fi novel piqued my interest and then check out all the new RPG materials.  One I kept going back to time and time again was DragonQuest.  This was the 2nd Edition softcover and looked really different than anything I had played so far.  The barbarian proudly holds the severed head of a dragon. 

The game intrigued me so much. I flipped through it many times and even it got to the point that I annoyed the owner, Paula Belobrajdic, that she told me I should buy it.  In retrospect, I wish I had.  Though had I I likely would not have picked up the great-looking first edition boxed set next to me now.

My history with the first edition is not as long or as storied. I bought it a while back and it has sat on my shelves for a bit. I did do a character write-up last year, Phygor, for DragonQuest and I really liked how the character came it. 

For this month of D&D, I figure a look into the game that tempted me so much would be neat to look into.

DragonQuest, First Edition (1980)

This game was published by SPI in 1980.  SPI had been a wargame publisher and decided to get into the RPG market. I am sure they were seeing their market share being eaten away by RPGs, and D&D in particular.  This is important since this game does feel very wargamey. This includes how the rules are presented and even how combat is run. While D&D/AD&D at this time was open to minis and terrain maps this game requires them. Or at least chits and the included maps. 

The boxed set I have contains three soft-cover books. Some chits. Some ads, a comment card, and a tactical hex map.  My set does not have dice, but I also don't think it originally came with dice.  I added two d10s myself.

The First Book of DragonQuest: Character Generation, Combat

Our first book is the smaller of the three at 32 pages.  The format is three-column and the rules are all presented in "wargame" style.  So Adventure Rationale can be coded as II.1.A.1.  I won't be using this much but it does make it easy to find any rule. A little cumbersome at first and then it gets really easy. 

This was an interesting time. The Introduction (I.) and How to Play the Game (II.) don't spend a lot of time with the "This is a Roleplaying Game" and instead gets down to business. Requirements for play are discussed as well as Game Terms (III.).

We get into Character Generation (IV.) This is not a completely random affair as D&D was at the time.  You roll and get a pool of points. Though with a high number of points, your maximum is low, likewise a small amount in a point pool will give you a higher maximum.  The traits are Physical Strength, Agility, Magical Aptitude, Manual Dexterity, Endurance, Willpower, and Appearance. Scores are 5 to 25 for the human range.  So you roll a 4d5 (1d10/2) which will generate a score from 4 to 20.  Compare this to the table under 5.1. This table gives you your point pool (82 to 98) and a Group (A to G) These groups refer to the maximums. A = 25, B = 24 and G =19.-

There are even some rules for developing other types of abilities if the Game Master desires them. After this other details are figured out; Gender (or even genderless), handiness, human or non-human (such as Dwarf, Efl, Giant, Halfling, Orc or Shape-changer), various Aspects, and Heritages.  It can be a complex character system all for what is nominally an 18-year-old.   This all covers the first dozen pages.  There are no classes (rather famously so) and more to your character from the next books.

The last half+ of this book covers combat. All movement and combat is done on a hex grid, not a square one. Gives it an interesting twist and again a holdover of their wargame roots. Plenty of diagrams and examples are given. Combat rounds are 10 seconds and can be made up of an undefined increment of time called a Pulse. There are Strike Zones, Fire Zones, and all sorts of fun bits.  I am reminded of combat in D&D 3rd Edition here to be honest. 

Damage is an equally detailed affair with damage affecting Fatigue and Endurance. When Fatigue is 0 damage starts happening to Endurance, there is a similar idea here in D&D 4th edition. Maybe when TSR bought SPI DragonQuest didn't entirely disappear.  There is also Grievous injury which is much worse. 

Personally, I feel any D&D player could get a lot out of reading this combat section, at least give it a play-through once.  

The Second Book of DragonQuest: Magic

Ask anyone that has ever played both DragonQuest and D&D about what sets the two games apart the most and you are likely to hear "Magic."  In 1980 DragonQuest took an approach to magic that would not be seen in other games until much later.  What made it different then? Three pretty good reasons. Mana, different kinds of spells, and Colleges.

Mana in DragonQuest fuels the magic an Adept can use. Spell casting can be tiring and there is never a guarantee that the spell will work. It could fail or backfire. Even when it works the target can be resistant to it.  And Adepts can never wear metal to top it all off. This notion is pretty commonplace now, but then it was new and exciting. I have lost track of how many "spell points" and "mana" systems I have seen applied to AD&D over the years and that is not counting systems like Mage and WitchCraft that use some form of Essence or Quintessence. Ass expected Magical Aptitude is important here, but so is Willpower and even Endurance. 

The different sorts of spells the adept has access to. Nearly every adept has access to at least one magical talent (I'll get to that). These talents can be thought of as a power that can always be used and they are related to the Adept's college.  Then there are "normal" spells. These are the most "D&D" like and each college has its own lists and there is very little crossover, though each college has something going for it. The limiting factors here are how many spells you know.  Finally, there are rituals. These are like spells that take longer, usually much longer, require more components but have a far better chance of success.  

I have talked a bit about them already, but DragonQuest's adepts learn their magic from distinct Colleges. There are twelve colleges: Ensorcelments & Enchantments, Sorceries of the Mind, Illusions, Naming Incantations, Earth Magics, Air Magics, Fire Magics, Water Magics, Celestial Magics, Black Magics, Necromancy, and Greater Summonings.  Each college has its own requirements.  After the college descriptions, we get [xx.1] restrictions, [xx.2] modifiers, [xx.3] Talents, [xx.4] Spells, [xx.6] General Rituals and [xx.7] Special Rituals.  There are 30 pages of these.

This should all sound familiar. AD&D 2nd adopted the college idea in their schools of magic; though there is more overlap in spells.  D&D 4th Ed gave us at-will, encounter, and daily spells that mimic this setup.  All have been recombined one way or the other in 5th Edition. Again, this was all brand new in 1980.

Also, something that flies in the face of all things of the 1980s is the last 25 pages. Here we get a listing of demons straight out of the Ars Goetia of The Lesser Key of Solomon. Who they are and how to summon them. And the Christians were going after D&D. 

The Third Book of DragonQuest: Skills, Monsters, Adventure

Overtly the Game Master's book. 

Skills can be roughly thought of as professions or even, dare I say it, classes. You get professional skills like Alchemist, Assassin, Astrology, Beast Master, Courtesan, Healer, Mechanician, Merchant, Military Scientist, Navigator, Ranger, Spy, Thief, and Troubador.  Each one is covered in detail along with what each profession allows the character to do. 

Each "profession" skill gets a listing [xx.1] to [xx.9] that covers what is needed to learn each skill (prereqs), what it does, and how it does it. For example, according to 53.1, a Beast Master must have a Willpower of at least 15. In 54.1 we learn that while Courtesans do not have minimum scores there is an XP penalty if they don't meet certain requirements (Dexterity, Agility, Physical Beauty) and a bonus if they have higher scores.   The back cover of this book gives the XP expenditure to go up a rank in each. 

Personally. I think this should have been part of the Characters' book.

The next section is all about Monsters. They are divided by like types. So all the primates, apes and pre-humans are in one section, cats in another, birds and avians, land mammals, aquatics and so on all get their own sections. Dragons get their own section, naturally, but wyverns are part of reptiles.  The usual suspects are all here, but not much more than that. There are however enough points of comparison that converting an AD&D monster to DragonQuest would be easy enough. There are some differences too. Nymphs have the lower half of a goat, like that of a satyr. Gnolls are dog-faced. Kobolds look like tiny old men, neither dog nor lizard-like, and tend towards good.  Medusa and Gorgons are the same creatures. Not much in the way of "new" monsters, even for 1980.

The last section covers Adventure. For a game that has such tactical wargame DNA, I expected a little more here, but I guess I am not surprised, to be honest. We also get a few tables.

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There is so much packed into this box. I can really see why this game, more than 40 years later, still has such a following. While I lament that TSR (and by extension Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro) have let this IP fall into disuse, I do see where bits of it live on in nearly all the post-1990 (AD&D 2nd ed Ed in 1989 too) versions of D&D. Schools of magic, tactical battle movement, mini use, all of these became standard.  I can't say that all of these directly came from DragonQuest, but they are certainly all headed in the directions that DragonQuest started. 

My issue right now is not counting D&D and its various forms, editions, and offsprings, I have a lot of Fantasy RPGs.  Many of my favorites are more or less dead.

They are all great fun but with DragonQuest I am right where I was back in 1984; It's a great-looking game, but no one around me is playing it.  If I Am going to play like it was 1984 I am going to pull AD&D 1st Ed off my shelf.

The obvious reason to choose one over the other is how well does it play? Well, DragonQuest is above and beyond many of the others in terms of rules and playability. Also as I mentioned there is a huge amount of online support, informal as it is. 

There is also the idea that with DragonQuest, and adding in SPI's Demons, I could create a fun demon summoning game.  But again I have to ask, can't I do this with D&D now?

Maybe DemonQuest is a game I could try out!

What are your thoughts and memories about this game? 

Yesterday was my Birthday!

 My oldest spent his day off smoking ribs and brisket for me.

My youngest made me a strawberry pie with strawberries picked from my wife's garden.

I also picked up some D&D-related gifts for myself. A Hellfire Club t-shirt (from Stranger Things).

And a 6" custom Skylla figure.  She looks pretty good with the rest of my Skylla figures and minis. 

I got some other stuff too. A new hard drive for my computer project. A new Dremel for various projects around the house.

Speaking of computer projects, my new one is taking a bit longer, but I am getting there. Had to remove the old CRT faceplate so I can replace it with an LCD.

Still debating which OS to go with on this one.  I kinda want to go with Ubuntu Linux.  My CoCo uses Debian Linux, but I am betting I'll have the processing power to go with Windows.  Either way, I really want a program language IDE on it. Maybe Python.

So Happy Birthday to me!

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, th Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—

What is it?
Bog Struggles: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is a scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in which the adventurers come to the aid of the inhabitants of a nearby bog.

It is a twenty-five page, full colour 4.02 MB PDF.

It needs a slight edit in places, but layout is professional and the artwork is very good.
Where is it set?Bog Struggles: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha can be set anywhere where there is an area of wetlands.
Who do you play?
There are no specific roles necessary to play Bog Struggles, but martial characters will be needed as combat is involved. In addition, a Shaman and an Issaries merchant may prove useful, and Heler or Engizi worshippers may have an advantage.
What do you need?
Bog Struggles: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary will be useful for details of some of the encounters. Borderlands: A RuneQuest Campaign in Seven Scenarios may be useful as reference, but is not required to play Bog Struggles.
What do you get?Bog Struggles: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is a short, simple adventure which takes places in a nearby piece of wetlands where a tribe of Newtlings have made their home. Unfortunately, the village and the object of the Newtlings’ veneration, a River Horse spirit, has been attacked physically and spiritually by an unwholesome creature. The Player Characters are asked or hired by the Newtlings to come to their aid, perhaps because the Newtlings have come to the Player Characters’ village, the Player Characters have stumbled into the wetlands and the Newtlings’ village—or for some other reason. The scenario gives several. Either way, the Player Characters have to slog and slosh their way into the bog, face down the threat faced by the Newtlings, and that is that… Which also sounds a bit simple, but the scenario has a nasty sting its, well not tail, but definitely tendrils, as the scenario takes a decidedly Lovecraftian turn into tentacular horror.
At the heart of Bog Struggles is a classic ‘village in peril’ set-up, which goes all the way back to T1 The Village of Hommlet, but it does give it a nasty Lovecraftian twist with a big muddy amphibious dollop of Gloranthan lore in finding an interesting way to use and encounter a pair of monsters from the RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary. The plot is also simple and straightforward, perhaps too much so, but it is very clearly explained and it is very clearly mapped and illustrated. The map is decent, but the illustrations of the Newtlings are bright, colourful, and very much full of character—they are quite delightful. The one gripe with them is that none of them is depicted wielding a trident.
In addition, Bog Struggles provides details of the River Horse spirit cult particular to the scenario’s Newtlings. This might be of interest to Engizi or Heler worshipers, but the Game Master could also create other River Horse spirit cults based on this one. Given the amount of combat involved in the scenario, Bog Struggles should provide two sessions’ worth of play at the very most. If there is anything lacking in the scenario it is suggestions as to where it might be located, but the Game Master should be able to do that without any difficulty. Lastly, if the Player Characters are successful, the Newtlings could easily reward them with something interesting, useful, or particular to the campaign.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Bog Struggles: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is a useful and easy addition for any campaign where there is a river or area of wetland nearby, providing a delightfully strange and horrifying encounter with some wonderfully illustrated, oh so adorable, Newtlings.No—Bog Struggles: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is set in wetlands, so may not suit all campaigns and it does not work as well without a Shaman either. The illustrations are still a joy though.Maybe—Bog Struggles: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha is a useful filler adventure, but not much more than that. Have you seen the Newtlings, though? Sooo cute!

One of the things holding up my completion of Basic Bestiary I is honestly what am I going to do about Angels?  By that, I mean Good Aligned Outsiders that populate the upper planes and are the servants of the various forces of good.

I have posted a couple that are largely near-complete drafts, the Dirae and the Lunars. Here are my problems as they stand.

1. I have a large number of various angel-like begins that need to be classified and codified.
2. I want parallels between my forces of good (angels) and my forces of evil (demons) where they are appropriate.
3. I want to include angel-like begins not just from the history of D&D (and OGC) but also from other cultures.

Much like the demons had to be spawned off into a whole other book, the angels have grown.  Though I am not likely to make a whole book for them since for the most part these are not really monsters to be fought, but you could interact with them.  Oh, I suppose evil characters could fight them.

In my research (or more accurately, literature review) I also came up with a fourth problem. Though this is one that began to creep into my High Witchcraft book.

4. There is a lot of literature on Angels and their role in Witchcraft.

Just go to pagan publisher Llewellyn and do a search on Angels, you get over 350 publications.  The idea of Angels in Witchcraft is not just a new-agey one.  There are many pagan belief systems that have had angel-like beings.  I even mentioned last week that British Occultist Aleister Crowley had a pact with an angel he called Aiwass.  So for my High Witchcraft book including angels makes a lot of sense.

But which ones? And how?

And that is where I had stalled. But I think I have it worked out now. Rereading Gygax's descriptions of Devas, Planetars, and Solars in Dragon Magazine help jell my ideas.  

The Classification and Hierarchy of the Good Outsiders

It is said that demons are legion. It is true that their numbers far exceed that of the forces of good, but it is also true that "demon" is often used to describe any fiend of the lower planes, whether they are classified as a "Demon" or "Devil" or as a "Calabim," "Yaoguai," or a "Baalseraph."  Likewise, there are "angels" and there are "Angels."

angels (lowercase a) refer to any good-aligned outsider creature that serves the forces of good.  They are often synonymous with "Good Outsider" or "Celestial."  They often have both a humanoid (profane) and a divine appearance.  Their profane appearance is what they use when visiting the prime material and dealing with mortals. The more powerful the angel the more "inhuman" their divine appearance can be and often the more harm it will cause a mortal. For example, the divine appearance of an archangel can burn a mortal to ash. 

Angels (uppercase A) are a particular group of Lawful Good Celestials that serve primarily in The Seven Heavens of  Mount Celestia.  Their groupings include Powers, Principalities, Seraphim, Thrones, Virtues, and the mighty Archangels.  This is the group that the Baalseraph once belonged to before they fell.

Archons are Neutral Good Celestials that act as guardians and warriors for the causes of good. Their roles are clearly defined in their names; Hound, Trumpet, Harbinger and Gate Archons are among the many types.

Agathós (from Agathodaemon) are mostly Chaotic Good Celestials. There are some that serve forces of Law and Neutrality within Good and their alignments will be that of whom or what they serve.  For example, the Lunars are mostly Lawful Good.  These celestials include the ranks of Devas, Planetars, Lunars, and Solars. Given the image above I should also include Auroras.

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Anyone that has followed my blog over the years will not see a huge surprise here.  These are roughly the same classifications I was using when I was running my Buffy RPG I just didn't have a solid name yet for the "Independent Servitors of Good" aka the Chaotic Good ones. 

I still have some details to work out. What are the various powers common to all these types? Should I move the Dirae from Angels to Agathós? What other sorts of creatures need to be added to these groups? Are these the only groups?

Plus I need to make sure that whatever I come with they need to be able to stand toe to toe with the most powerful demons.  

I will say this, it has been a really fun experience sorting all this out.