Knave and Kin (aka Races/Ancestry/Species)

The school year is starting up, and the "D&D" group at the town library has grown past my ability to run it solo. Unfortunately, our library in the year of our Lord 2024 can't do what my childhood library did in 1983 and just set aside two tables in the children's area every Saturday from when they opened until 1:00 for we little chaos goblins to do what we wanted with the funny dice: there needs to be an adult involved, preferably running the game, so that parents can feel reassured that their little chaos goblins are being supervised and the library can track their usage metrics. 

Fortunately, another grown up has stepped up and is willing to run. With 17-20 kids on the contact list, we're dividing it up so each grown up (and I use that term in the loosest, most biological sense) is running 2 games, alternating weeks. I'm continuing my 13th Age game for one, and for the other, I'm introducing Knave. Ben Milton explained that he designed the game for 5th graders to immediately start playing, and while I am running for rising 7th graders and up there have been kids who had consistent problems with their character's mechanics and crunchy bits: a problem Knave solves by not having any. 

But Knave is also designed for easy modification, and while the game itself is classless and raceless, I figure there's a good chance kids will ask about playing elves and dwarves and so on. I could go into a long discussion of the humanocentric nature of the pulp fantasy stories that inspired the earliest versions of D&D, but... naah. Give the kids what they want (this is why I have a Centaur Fighter/Wizard in my 13th Age game and one PC being the wizards cat familiar in my D&D B/X game). 

So here is what I have wacked together for Kin. Why 'Kin'? Because I'm willing to entertain the complaints against 'race', despite being an old white guy myself, but I really don't care for 'species' as it sounds too scientific to my ears. Is that perhaps a Tiffany Problem when it comes to language? Perhaps. But Kin feels right, so I'm running with it. Here's the two pager I put together for this. 

(and are all my rules mods written on landscape paper with four columns designed to be folded into a digest sized book? Do you even have to ask?)

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Kin Basics in Knave

Being an ultralight, classless OSR design, Knave does not have default kin. However, I know my young players are likely to ask for something, given how integral it is to the concept of contemporary D&D. To accommodate this, I have developed the following rules for playing non-human PCs.

Abilities: Kin may have ability penalties or ability minimums. Ability penalties make it possible to start play with a negative ability, applied in the same cases as a positive score; negative CON reduces items slots and wounds before death. An ability minimum means you must dedicate 1-3 starting points to that ability to play this kinfolk.

Kin Enemies and Allies: Most non-humans have kin enemies. Entire parties of that kin make reaction rolls (p. 19) with that enemy with 2d4. When not all of the party is that kin, reaction rolls are made with 1d6+1d4. Some kinfolk have allies for whom reactions are naturally positive. Any parties where some member has a kin ally rolls 1d6+1d8 for reactions. Treat results of 12+ as 12. Otherwise, this is an advantage or disadvantages on social tests.

Senses: Many Kinfolk have minor sensory advantages over humans. This is never darkvision but may include low-light vision, that doubles the visible radius of candlelight. Otherwise, senses are treated as an advantage on a check involving the sense. (Hearing is the sense used in surprise tests p. 19)

Size: Kin may be small or, rarely, large. If not listed, they’re Medium, encompassing everything from dwarf to just under ogre sized. (Andre the Giant was large; Arnold Schwarzenegger? Medium.) GMs will adjudicate non-standard sizes as an advantage or disadvantage as circumstances require. In general, size will apply to stealth, hiding, fitting through small spaces, and for feats of general strength where mass and leverage can be brought into play. (Size lets kin with a minimum of ability changes.)

Combat: My ruling is unarmed melee does 1d4-2 damage (0-2 pts). Some kinfolk have natural weapons that do 1d4 damage unarmed. It is not possible to power attack with natural weapons. No kin gain bonuses to hit in combat (that is covered by minimum STR/WIS).

Careers: Some Kinfolk replace one of their careers with a kin-career, which will provide 3 pieces of starting equipment and advantage on checks for things associated with their kinfolk’s culture.

Magic: Kin that tend to magic use have a minimum INT and use spellbooks as per normal. Some races have an inherent ability to create magic. This is treated as having a permanent Chaos Spellbook (p21) and is always paired with a negative CON, so the lost equipment slot balances the effect of having an extra spell per day that can’t be lost to wounds. Roll 1d6 for spell formula (p. 27) so wizard names aren’t involved.)

Blessings: Some kin are culturally tightly tied with the divinity of their people. Such kinfolk always have an ability minimum of CHA 1, and the player may decide at the start of play if their character is in favor or disfavor with their kinfolk divinity. Being in favor means they begin play with a blessing but need to align themselves with their patron’s goals to keep it. Being in disfavor means that the PC not only loses the blessing, their kin become a Kin Enemy until they are back in their patron’s favor. (p. 32)

Humans: Humans have any additional advantages, but they also do not have any disadvantages. In the original versions of the game was based on the idea of worlds where humans were ascendant or dominant, with social and level restrictions to enforce human primacy. It’s up to the GM how humans interact with other kin.

Dwarves

Short of stature but broadly built, their society is at least partially subterranean with a focus on mining and craftsmanship. They fought ancient wars with goblins and kobolds for resources underground.

Hill Dwarf: spending as much time above ground as under it, these are cosmopolitan and versatile dwarves. Kin Enemies: Goblins, Kobolds; Senses: low-light vision; Careers: pick Miner or a craft career.

Mountain Dwarf: living almost entirely underground, where war against the goblins and kobolds is constant, these dwarves have a strong common guild culture Abilities: minimum STR 1; Kin Enemies: Goblins, Kobolds; Senses: low light vision; Careers: Dwarf (pickaxe, lantern, carving kit)

Deep Dwarves: abiding deep in the earth, they survive on their faith and their clan ties Abilities: Minimum STR 1, CHA 1; Kin Enemies: Goblins, Kobolds; Senses: low-light vision; Careers: Deep Dwarf (pickaxe, religious tract, clan amulet); Blessings: Mordin, god of Gold and Survival (can always retrace steps even in total dark, as long as they’re good with Mordin).

Elves

Long lived, slender of form, possessed of keen eyesight and a gift for magic, elves are one of the last ancient races, with a deep, and mutual hatred of orcs.

Wood Elf: living in deep forests, they are exceptional hunters Abilities: Minimum INT 1, WIS 1; Kin Enemies: orcs, dark elves; Senses: keen vision; Careers: select hunter or some other woods-based career.

High Elf: having dedicated ages to the study, these elves are inherently magical and broadly experienced. Abilities: Minimum INT 1; Penalty CON -1, Kin Enemies: orcs, dark elves; Magic: one Chaotic spell

Dark Elves: Living in the spaces underground, they are a cult for a demon goddess Abilities: Minimum WIS 1; Kin Enemies: other elves, deep dwarves; Senses: low-light vision; Careers: Drow (spider amulet, 50’ rope, lantern); Blessings: Lolth demon queen of spiders and mazes (advantage on climbing and rope use while they are good with Lolth).

Little Folk

Not so much a race as a category of fair folk that can be found in pockets around the world, secretive and shy, and possessed of their own enemies.

Halflings: short, stout, agrarians for whom anything seldom happens until everything happens Abilities: minimum DEX 1, Size: Small

Gnomes: an offshoot of dwarves who have the innate magic of elves Abilities: Penalty CON -1; Kin Enemies: kobolds; Senses: low-light vision; Size: Small; Combat: none; Careers: tinkerer (magnifying glass, tweezers, gears); Magic: one Chaos spell, always illusionary.

Surrah: cat people who are loathed by other magical animals. Abilities: None; Kin Enemies: magical animals; Senses: keen hearing; Size: Small; Combat: claws and bite do 1d4; Careers: cat (ball of string, several dead mice, catnip);

Nature Spirits

Not so much the embodiments of the natural world as the things that routinely dwell in it, these entities combine magic and the outdoors in impressive ways

Centaurs: Half human, half horse, have wild, half wise. Abilities: Minimum CON 2; Size: Large; Combat: 1d4 hooves

Satyrs: half man/half goat nature spirits, musical revelers Abilities: Minimum CHA 1 Penalty CON-1; Careers: Musician (pipes, paper, pen and ink); Magic: one Chaotic spell

Dryad: women born of trees, they go on walkabout before laying down roots Abilities: Minimum CHA 1, Penalty CON-1; Kin Enemies: spirits of other groves, Senses: sense plants; Careers: herbalist (herbs, sickle, herb manual) Blessings: the spirit of the groves (can disappear into trees/travel through when in their own or neutral groves).

Merfolk: with the blessings of their god they can walk among us for a time Abilities: Minimum CHA 1; Kin Enemies: elemental spirits, Blessings: the god of the rivers (become half fish when wet).

On the Nature of a Cruel and Uncaring Universe

An ongoing topic of discussion amongst fantasy gamers - well, mostly D&D players - has been the concept of "evil races" or even "evil monsters", and the belief that such things are socially, historically, narratively, or ethically impossible. It's an interesting discussion that often turns vitriolic as people on both sides dig in, especially around the idea of evil races where there's just so much space to talk past each other in the various play styles and types of fantasy. How much of it is narrative, how much of it is simulation, how much of it is gameplay, to look at the old Threefold Model. 

Lets say your want your heroes to be facing an existential threat to their civilization. So you take Nazis, you reskin them as Orcs to make it fantasy, and bang. It's always ok to punch Nazis, and always ok to kill them when they start the war. There's no appeasing them; only the complete destruction of their ability to threaten anyone around them will be sufficient. In a gameplay sense you have introduced adversaries that provide moral clarity to the combat. In a narrative sense you have actualized the threat of fascism into a physical form for you to engage and (hopefully) defeat. But in a simulationist sense, well, are all the orcs fascists? Are there good orcs? Why is orc culture like this? Underlying it all is the belief that there must be a way to engage past the wartime footing and get to the root causes of why the orcs are fascists, undo that, and convert them to "good"; you can't just kill all of them. 

Well... yes and no. In wartime the goal is completely destroy their ability and willingness to make war. And that means a LOT of collateral damage. Many accounts exist of, even as the Allies were rolling into their territory and the war was clearly lost, 'good' Germans bemoaning the fact that Britain was supposed to have given up before the USA entered the war, sparing the Germans all this strife. Rooting out fascist ideology required the obliteration of the German state, de-Nazification of its politics, and a generation of work that's outside the scope of a fantasy adventure role playing game. At best, the PCs would need to deal with the combat aspect of the threat, and then leave the complete reconstruction of Orc society to the kingdoms that they act as heroes for, if you want this to be a simulation of that reality. This is, of course, a complete back projection of contemporary morals onto the ostensible 'age' of D&D, but that's a minor concern compared to the deformation of 'history' caused by active divinities, various arcane magic, and dipshits claiming there were only white people across Europe before the age of colonization, so run with it if you like.

But if you don't want to deal with that, it's why you make them Orcs, and not people. Orcs aren't real. Orcs are the actualized threat. They are monsters. They are endlessly cruel and completely uncaring because that is their narrative and gameplay function. And that's OK.

This a roundabout way to get to my main point: You are allowed to actualize threats into things that can be fought and killed. These things are monsters. They don't need a real world reason or explanation or tragic backstory. They are embodiments of real threats. You can have dire wolves stalking the deep dark forest as the actualization of the fear of starvation, or of getting lost and dying in the forest itself. You don't need to explain the circumstances that caused this particular wolf to turn to human predation. It is there because the woods are scary and dangerous. 

Because deep dark woods in an era before human action had wiped out most of the apex predators, and there wasn't contemporary medicine, and accurate maps were hard to come by, and food identification was a hard won skill, ARE DANGEGEROUS. Big Bad Wolves in European fairy tales are the embodiment of that. 

There's a great bit in Larry Niven's Beowulf Schaffer stories (Collected in the book Crashlander) where Schaffer is berating an Earth born companion for his ongoing terran-centric worldview, because the cold of space absolutely does not give a shit about you. Earth is your kind and loving mother where the gravity, air content, temperatures, etc. are all inside your tolerances, as are the pathogens and foodstuffs. In SF, Earth loves you and keeps you safe because you grew up inside it. But that's not the case in Fantasy.

In Fantasy, myth, faerie tale... Earth is dangerous. The woods are dangerous, storms are dangerous, the ocean is dangerous, food is dangerous, the very soil under your feet is dangerous as earthquakes can't be predicted or ameliorated. In the pre-science world, mythologies were invented to put a scaffolding around that chaos, to give us some hope of understanding it and transmitting what we learned about it from generation to generation. And in those myths, threats were actualized into Monsters. Things the heroes can defeat with stealth and cunning and steel (or bronze, or really big clubs...). 

If you have actualized the earthquakes as trolls, then when the trolls rampage through they cannot be reasoned with, any more than the earthquake can. Sometimes they come, and destroy the village. But we're in myth, maybe there's a god of the earthquake/trolls, and really the issue is he's angry because we... STOP! Stop centering humanity. The universe isn't cruel, but it is uncaring. The earthquake/trolls didn't happen because you cut down the magic tree, or moved into this area, or whatever. It happened because earthquakes happen. The god of the earthquake/trolls just likes having trolls attack places, sometimes, if it's in the mood - better than the NFL, and it's bored. It is chaotic, and maybe evil. 

Yes, Myths are built around the belief that surely something we can do will stop the earthquakes! In this model, you can stop the the earthquake by killing the trolls, as the trolls are the earthquake. That's the something you can do. 

Not everything is simulation. Sometimes in gameplay and narrative things that are ethically OK to fight and kill is good design. Fantasy is like that. Sometimes let yourself have the fantasy.

Scornbul by Midnight Act II Scene II

"Make a sound and I'll kill you," Melas hisses.  He closes the door most of the way and approaches the man warily, gripping his sharp wood splinter.  He stops about six feet away and whispers, "Who are you?"

The man stammers soundlessly at this insane apparition - Melas can see in the mirrors that he is in quite the state, with tattered, mud stained clothes and the bruise on his temple a livid mark - but follows instructions and closes his mouth with an audible snap of his teeth.

When Melas speaks again, the man's response is quiet and rushed, trying to hide the look of obvious fear of the repercussions of an unacceptable answer. "Antonio. Antonio Andres. Signor Andres." He recovers some of his bearing as he tries to ingratiate himself with his new visitor "I'm a merchant captain, taken by pirates, much as you likely were."

"No, I was fool enough to walk into this house.  But now I must walk out again.  Why are your hands wrapped?"

"Bound?" Antonio looks at his hands and begins to giggle in a way that gives Melas sever concerns about his companion's sanity. That turns into wracking sobs as the fellow struggles to control himself. Ultimately he does so, managing the stammer out, "My... the signora of the house does not... want me..." the giggles start again, but he suppresses them, "to do myself an injury." 

"Well," says Melas as he undoes the bindings, "if I were you, I'd be more interested in doing some injuries to those ruffians upstairs.  Indeed, even though I'm not you, that's what I'm interested in anyhow.  I'm Melas Beliseca, by the way; delighted to make your acquaintance.  Now let's get you out of here.  Is there anything heavy, sharp, or otherwise dangerous in here?"  He looks for oil lamps or volatile perfumes -- and for something sustaining to drink.

The bindings prove remarkably resilient - it takes the use of his small pocket knife to cut them off, and the bandages were literally sewn into his wrists to prevent them coming free. The rope around his neck collar proves somewhat easier to deal with, weak as it is at the junction point.

"N...No, no weapons in here." Antionio shakes his head forcefully, then falls into a reverie looking at his hands, atrophied as they are from disuse. Melas cursory search of the room reveals a pair of storm lanterns - both full, one lit - and, gods be praised, a decanter of port with a pair of glasses. The perfumes, he notes with an expert eye, are not flammable, but - as he knows from sad experience with his cousin - that if sprayed in the eye will do more harm than good.

He fortifies himself with a couple of glasses of port, and takes up the storm lanterns.  Not only will they offset the blind pirates' advantage in the dark, but they pose a fire hazard.  The perfume he leaves behind after reflecting that spraying perfume in the eyes of eyeless men seems deeply pointless.

When he feels suitably fortified, he recorks the port and hands the bottle to Antonio.  "Can you hit someone with this?  Your wife, perhaps?"

Antionio takes the bottle in one hand and almost immediately drops it. He bends down to grab it again, this time getting a firm grip on the neck with both hands. His face jerks up in surprise at Melas' comment concerning his wife. "N...n...no, you can't...can't fight her. Too strong. Flee. We have to run far away, hope she never sees..." he sobs for a second, "finds us again. Inland. Mountains. You can't...I won't...Better to die."

Melas decides that Antonio, mad as he is, has a point.  Even his own opinion of his abilities doesn't suggest he's capable of taking on a  whole houseful of armed men, especially when he still doesn't quite know what's going on. The prudent course is to get Antonio to safety and come back in force.  He takes up the lanterns and his improvised wooden dagger.

"Very well," he says.  "Do you know the way out?"

The man shakes his head. "N..N...No. This isn't our house. Up. Up. Away from water."

Melas himself, by virtue of playing possum, knows that they were moved through the interconnecting house structure of Scornbul, and Antonio is almost certainly right that they are now underground. With luck, he Melas might be able to backtrack to at least an above ground area, or striking off in another direction might prove fruitful.

"Well, then, let us search.  Can you walk?  Because I must confess I cannot imagine we will get far if I have to carry you."

Assuming Antonio is mobile, Melas leads the way to the corridor and tries to guess which way might lead to the stairs.

Antonio shuffles after him, his tread sounding more like that of a ragged monster in a 'Pierre and Pedro" production than a human but Melas' need for quiet lets the weakened man keep up. Lacking any other clues the hunchback heads back the way he had been carried - it might be more dangerous, but it will get him back to the surface.

With the light off the storm lantern Melas can confirm his original assessment - he is in the basement or sub basement of what was once a fine home. Given the lax building codes of Scronbul the home was likely surrounded on all sides by other structures and ultimately consumed, a fine ship run aground and encrusted with barnacles and reef. The chamber that held Antonio was original construction, and judging by the door so was the one next to it - it shares a very similar lock, and would likely be opened by the key he currently holds -  while those on the other side were a crude subdivision of an unfinished storage space. Further along he can see where the wall had been knocked out to provide access to the next buildings basement, and to his left, past whatever finished room lay behind the locked door, was a set of open wooden stairs heading up.

The stairs are very shallow, nearly a ramp (as was the fashion centuries ago) with a landing after 12 steps, doubling back towards the center line of the house. The banister separating the two has finely carved dowels whose paint is all but faded and flecked away. Melas can make out the tread of heavy boots - he has had close contact with the blind pirate's footwear - heading in this direction, and his stomach rumbles as his gourmand's nose detects a whiff of what is no doubt foul stew used to keep the prisoners alive. Lunch, perhaps, but for his body to crave such disgusting nourishment he must have lost track of time, or perhaps slept in the mud of the second cell, at least until evening. The scent gets closer, and the hunchback revises that - breakfast the next morning. Or perhaps the next month.

His stomach rumbles again, loud enough that there is a real fear of alerting the approaching pirate. Fortunately Antonio stands struck dumb with fear, and therefore does not give away their position.

Melas yanks Antonio into concealment next to the staircase, so that he can leap out upon whoever comes down the stairs.  He grips the splinter dagger-style and waits. 

Antonio lets out a squawk at the sudden movement and Melas is certain that the addled man has cost him his one opportunity, but the blind pirate appears not to notice - the man is singing a vile sea shanty to himself as he goes about his rounds! Melas holds his breath, waiting for the sightless jailor, whose hands are full of a tray with three large bowls of slop, to pass them - the fiend is unaware of either the light or his impending demise. 

When he sees his opening Melas moves. He drives his makeshift wooden dagger into the man's back, so that he might pierce his lung and thus silence him. Unfortunately the splinter is snagged by a padded doublet under the man's highly inappropriate valet's garb. The blow does overbalance the fellow, his forward tumble freeing the nobleman's desperate blade along with a trail of threaded woolen padding. Antonio, but accident or design, falls in front of the staggering pirate, bringing both men and stew onto the ground, their collapse partially muffled by Antonio's thin frame. Melas tries again, grabbling the man's hair with one hand and silencing his song forever with a splintered thrust into his neck. 

Dying but not dead the blind pirate hurls himself free from Antonio's ineffective grapple, and, using the wall for support, shoves himself back to his feet. One hand holds his neck wound closed, the other sways a long knife into the hall to ward off further attacks, grasping at the thin reed of hope that the muted sounds of the struggle might summon assistance. 

It would require more willpower than Melas possesses not to kick the wounded blind man.  Remembering his beating at the hands of the villains upstairs, he Puts The Boot In repeatedly until the fellow stops moving. 

That task done, he snatches up the pirate's knife to replace his splintered blade. During this time Antonio regained his feet and the pair ascended the shallow stairs to the next level. The absence of any other light in the hall is indication enough that there are no sighted folk on the floor, but there is also no indication of windows or any other sign that they might now be above ground. Once they have gained the floor they have two options - another stair of similar construction begins directly opposite them, or the building's central hall runs to their right. 

Melas knows that the wall to their left is flush with another building, given how the passage had been expanded to another basement on the floor below. He is also familiar enough with houses of this type, as they were common enough on the southern shores centuries ago and his family owns more than one: these distant stairs are intended for the guests, when even such a minor wasting of space would be considered ostentation. The tradition of the time had showing rooms for artwork in the basement, opposite the wine cellar, both as a protection against thieves and against harsh daylight muting the paints (plus, such rooms had to be carefully maintained to avoid the damp, further evidence of wealth). Melas estimates that the wall to his right is between one third and one quarter oriented towards the sea. There would be no door on that wall, but there would once have been several large windows, both on the wall itself and on the seaward landing, to impress the guests. Perhaps the seaward windows would still open to air, even if they are no doubt covered, but the house might actually be surrounded on all sides. 

The other option, the central hall, would run the length of the house on all floors. If they were on a ground floor it would open to a central entry hall. If not, it is a mass of servants quarters with a tight stairwell behind one of the doors. Melas recalls being carried down such a stair, but it might have been in the Andres residence rather than this one. Cursing the denizens of this madhouse he decided to risk trying to retrace his original path rather than ascend these stairs with no guarantee that they would still contain an exit - the central hall it is. 

The servants stair is found with little difficulty, and as Melas ascended his keen ears could make out voices ahead. Turning down the wick of the stock lantern lest their light reveal them to the lady of the house he motioned for Antonio to stay silent but keep moving - the latter more difficult for the crazed man than the former when the croaking laugh of Signora Hurea echoes down the stairs. Still, the two are able to climb two stories in the circular stairwell until they are in a room whose natural darkness has bee turned to dimness by an occluded light in the direction that Melas considers to be the exit. That light is partially blocked by one of the swinging doors installed to make the day too day work of the blind pirates easier, and beyond it he can hear Signora Huera speaking to. . . no one? 

Melas risks a glance, and in so doing spies a large room that must have once been more than one chamber - all the walls having been taken down to turn a shared fireplace between library and dining room into more of a brick fire pit. The signora's veil was off, but mercifully her gaze was directed into the cracking and blazing tinder. 

"Noooooo," she says before issuing her croaking laugh, "the fool Reme has botched it, no doubt. Oh, he's fulfilled his payment too join the Red Tide, and those fools will take him sure enough, but he's not half so cunning as he thinks. One of our converted heard the paladins raid on the actor's little magpie's nest last night, and their questioning, and one of the new factors asked about Reme and Sebastian." 

There is a moment where the only noise is the cracking fire, and Melas realizes that the Signora is not looking at the fire, but at something she is holding in her hands - an amulet perhaps, or a ring on a chain. Her speaking again makes him jump, and elicits a whimper from his companion. "Like I said, botched it. Still, every little bit helps, and the old thirteen cursed elven bastard is dead." Another croaking laugh that seems to almost echo from the object in her hands. "Now I just have to have a discussion with that misshapen popinjay who stumbled in yesterday, to see if Reme has betrayed us further. How go things in the towers? " 

This line of talk was severed when Melas felt a corded arm wrap about his head, yanking him backwards! One of  the blind pirates had managed to sneak behind him while that fool Antonio neither did nor said a thing in his stupefied terror! Had the man been sighted surely Melas would be dead in moments from a crushed throat, but by great good fortune the man's arm had caught the hunchback's chin instead. Not above dirty tricks in a crisis, the noble dug his teeth into the pirates arm, drawing blood and a scream from both the pirate and Antiono, whose silence had now turned to total panic. 

Spinning madly to keep himself from seeing the Signora's inhuman features again, Melas struck out with his long knife, opening a gash on the blind pirates arm that began to bleed freely. The pirate drew and attempted to return the stroke but his blood slicked hand slipped on the hilt, letting Melas swat the attack away and drive the poniard home through waistcoat, doublet and sternum. Behind him he heard a loud crash, and turned to see the Signora effortlessly holding up her husband with a single arm, forcing him to meet her gaze, his desperate, weakened thrashings overturning one of the room's chairs and a small table. 

"Thought you'd get away, dear? We're bound until death, you and I, remember? And I shall never let you die." The foul mockery of a woman croaked, and she then began laughing her shuddered, coughing laugh as Antonio wheezed, whimpered and fell still. She dumped him in the upright chair before turning to face the bedraggled, blood stained nobleman. 

Melas, too canny an opponent to make the mistake of looking at the signora's features, kept his eyes centered on her abdomen as he hurled the storm lantern. It flared as it spun, and Melas could see that his aim was true, when the Signora uttered a word and the wick died. The lamp found its mark, shattering and drenching the hag's clothes in a useless gesture - perfume in the eyes would have been more effective. "Every sea witch in the fleet learns how to extinguish an errant flame, my broken popinjay." 

Her stride was unnaturally fast, her limbs freakishly long, and Melas had no time too counter as her iron-hard nails batted aside his knife and her long fingers latched like a fistful of hungry leaches around his throat, pulling his feet off the ground and his face closer to hers, where her enervating, accursed state might work its awful power on him yet again. 

Night Chalice and the Dragon Waiting Syndrome

Last week I promised to look at the Night Chalice game as an example of the Dragon Waiting Syndrome. If you're not familiar, the Dragon Waiting is John M Ford's World Fantasy Award-winning novel, where the central characters are: 

• Gregory, a German vampire mercenary skilled at siege engines; 
• Dimi, the exiled heir to the Byzantine throne; 
• Cynthia, a young physician forced to flee Florence; and 
• Hywel, a Welsh wizard, nephew of Owain Gly Dwr,

So naturally the action takes place in Wales, and the characters "wage an intrigue-filled campaign against the might of Byzantium, striving to secure the English throne for Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and make him Richard III." 

Ever since I finished the book, I've referred to the tendency of player groups to make PCs that are not necessarily opposed to the GM's plotline, but disconnected from it. 

This is subtly different from what we in Alarums & Excursions used to call "Special Snowflake Syndrome", before Snowflake took on it's current internet meaning. Back then it was "all snowflakes are unique, but I want my snowflake to be specially unique!" and referred to players who deliberately built characters at odds with the GMs instructions: the canonical example was my saying that the campaign was built around the PCs being officers of a Roman Legion (ala Turtledove's Misplaced Legion books) and one player deciding they wanted to play a camp follower. When quizzed as to why, it was "because I think Roman legionnaires are boring but I still want to play." There was a lot of discussion around this "I don't like the idea but I want to play so you as GM should deform your idea into something I do like" as a valid player response and the conversations that need to be had around it. 

Dragon Waiting Syndrome isn't that. All the players in a DWS want to play with the game premise. None of them are doing passive aggressive campaign rejection. They just waged way further afield in the GM's stated "alternate history Europe with mild magic" in their designs than the GM anticipated. 

This is sort of what I ran into for the Night Chalice. I told the players we were in Eversink, and that they were the last remnants of a thieves guild. I expected some con men, burglars, pickpockets, maybe a legbreaker, and I got. 

• A former inquisitor turned smuggler who can see ghosts (which is discussed here)
• A professional duelist who assassinates under the cover of quasi-legal challenges
• A street physician who patched the gang members up, and dabbled in magic
• The dead guild leader's pet sociopath, his Luca Brasi, but secret and a nebbish. 

Now, all of these are perfectly legal justifiable builds. Just none of them lend themselves to short or long cons, caper style robberies, or any of the other things that I thought the group might be doing. This has completely re-tooled the sorts of adventures they're getting into without changing the "Hey we're a thieves guild!" premise. I could have done a lot more work on my end creating, say, 8 templates the PCs had to choose from that would have resulted in things more like I expected. I'm not sure it would have led to the players being as engaged. 

We play to learn. 

Weekly Book Recommendations (August 23)

The Hidden Halls of Hazakor by Scott Fitzgerald Gray: This is a sizable softcover tome, some 70 pages, full of what can only be described as what The Keep on the Borderlands would be if it were written today, but someone without Gary's prose stylings. I bought the book to read and then pass on to the teen library RPG section, as this is designed for 12+ year olds to read and learn to run their first dungeon. In that it is very well done, providing a fleshed out 'home base' with some internal mysteries for the PCs to work from and the Tomb logically divided up into key-access areas so the PCs don't get in over their heads and the GM knows what's accessible and what to prepare for in any given session, with scattered GM advice on how to handle the sorts of table problems likely to arise in this bit. In general I like it, for all that I'm not a fan of the 5E mechanics its built on: this is an adventure with training wheels on, and we need those. It is fascinating to compare it to the Tomb of the Serpent King, which is the OSR take on the same concept and so much more spare in the verbiage and not looking for teachable moments between players so much as teaching the players how a dungeon works. Now the library has both; it will be interesting to see what the kids do with them. 

Weekly Cooking Report August 22: Frittatas of various shapes and sizes

Things have been busy around the house hold, and also I've been in the mood for finicky cooking, so there haven't been as many things for me to highlight here. Still, we had teenager guests here last weekend for the annual in person 13th Age Game/Ren Faire weekend that let me pull back out this classic - great when you've got gluten free or vegetarian guests. (Or whenever, I'm not the boss of you.)

The biggest problem with cooking eggs is that they are so finicky in when they are done, but a frittata has so much egg volume that it's much easier to control. The Frittata is great because it can use pretty much anything you have in your fridge (just ask Harrison Ford) and is probably going to taste good. So here's the ingredient list. (I pulled the base recipe for this from Cooks Illustrated and made it less finicky, because, well, CI.)

12 large eggs (I used 8 while eggs and 4 egg whites to cut the calories a bit, I wouldn't go lower than 6 and 6), ⅓ cup whole milk, Salt and 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil. 

Plus anything you have in the fridge. The prep shown above is 1/2 cup each of sautéed onions, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, and pulled pork. You'll also need a 10-12" oven safe skillet. The recipes I found call for 12", but my 12" isn't necessarily over safe so I went with my 10" sauté pan and it worked fine. 

To prep, get the oven rack to middle position, set oven to 350 degrees. Whisk eggs, milk, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a bowl until it's combined. set it aside as you get everything else ready.

Heat oil in skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Now, if you're not working with pre-cooked veggies here's the bit where you cook them a bit, do your general liking, with 1/4 teaspoon of salt and keeping . Broccoli is great in these - that takes about 7-9 minutes to get crisp tender - and you can also cook your mushrooms, onions or peppers about that long to get them to soften. Tomatoes, scallions, etc. you can toss in a few minutes before, along with any cooked meats to warm them through. (For mine the tomatoes, onions, and pork all hit the pan together because the pork and onions were pre cooked.)

Add any cheeses and the set aside egg mixture and cook, using rubber spatula to stir and scrape bottom of skillet. You want large curds to form and the spatula leaving a trail through eggs, but eggs are still very wet, about 30 seconds in a 12" pan, but a little longer if the pan has less volume. Basically you're making everything fluffy here and then you smooth it out and let it cook without stirring for about half a minute before chucking it in the over for 6-9 minutes. Check every minute from 6 on to see if it's slightly puffy and bounces back when lightly pressed. 

Once it's ready, loosen it with the spatula, take it our of the skillet and give it 5 minutes to rest before serving to a grateful family. My teenage guests went back for seconds, so I'm figuring it came out OK. 

The End of an Age

In the summer of 2019 my daughter and two of her friends were attending a summer theater camp, and then coming over here on Thursday afternoon to "play D&D" (actually 13th Age). They told me what they wanted to play in broad strokes and I made up a default Half Elf Bard, Human Cleric, and Wood Elf Ranger in advance and them them know that they were the newest acolytes of a druidic circle in Brinham Wood, left behind to keep an eye on things while the others dealt with a catastrophe elsewhere. They fleshed out these PCs during the first session, becoming 

• Lyria: Having played in, and been chased out of, every port city in the human lands, this former member of the elf queen's court is versed in elvish sagas and has a voice so pure it makes plants grow.
• Maria: Possessed by a demon as a child, the monstrosity was exorcised by bathing Maria in, and feeding her, silver dragon blood. Blind and prophetic, she has an innate connection to Birinham Wood and its Sidabras River, as that is the sleeping body of a great silver dragon.
• Hosiery: Having lived several human lifespans, she is currently a member of the Elf Queen's order of Hamster Knights, who fight against cruelty (and constrain Drow rapaciousness), riding their giant hamsters to battle. She invented socks. 

I found a very simple adventure in an old issue of Dungeon Magazine (The Fountain of Health by Ann Dupuis: A straightforward ruined building turns into a labyrinth in the jungle setting, which might be re-skinned a little for a collapsed chaos estate), updated it for 13th Age and they spent 2 weeks completing it. There were then another 2 weeks following up on the various plot threads in it. And then camp ended and we were done. Everyone had fun.

The Covid hit, and to keep the kids from never seeing each other outside of school I restarted it: every Friday afternoon from when I finished work until dinner we played on Roll 20, eventually adding two more players and three more characters:

• Amy Packsister: daughter of the local bakers, she frolicked in the woods with wolves as a child before being captured by slavers, sold to demon worshipping pirates, and eventually escaping to home with a reservoir of rage but boundless optimism. Human Barbarian. 
• Azeroth: A human wizard, trained at the Archmage's academy, and solider for the Crusader in the defense of Harrowdale, this stalwart eventually died and trapped his soul in hell to defend the people of the sinking tower-city of Quag. 
• Axar: a Star Elf, wanderer of the Overland, duelist, vitalist, and master of the magic of the concordant spheres, the Priestess foresaw that his path lay with the Guardians of Brinham Wood.
• (This is not counting the time the party split up during the Quagmire adventure and we ran a chunk with Amy and Lyria and Hosiery with two other temporary PCs, and then Maria and Azeroth with 3 other temporary PCs, one of whom is also in Hell, or the Demonweb to be more specific.)

Last weekend we ran our final session of this game before the kids, now adults, go off to college. It's been 5 years of mostly regular play: vacations, drama programs, and other things kept us from playing every week but I figure we got 25 sessions per year on average, in fits and starts. I may have had games before that clocked more hours total (these games were almost all 2-2.5 hours, aside from the half dozen times we got everyone in person for an afternoon, difficult since Amy's player joined during Covid and was 90 minutes away), but none lasting this long, and it has been amazing. The session ended with their spelljammer, bereft of power, tumbling end over end into the Tannhauser Gate, a Star Elf artifact to bridge dimensions, on their way into the Demonweb to affect a rescue of their lost allies. 

We will not play again until holiday break. It is my hope that we can meet 3 times a year (once in December/January, twice in the summer) until everyone graduates. 

James Maliszewski has several pieces up at Grognardia about the need for lengthy campaigns, citing the aggregation of events that make a campaign unique, give it its motive force, and make it feel real and alive. 13th Age is very much not an old school game of the sort that James is discussing, and it is designed for a "change the world at the end of level 10" campaign.  But since I had no idea this would last that long, nor did I have any real plans for what SHOULD happen, I was just grabbing content that had been lying around for a while - sometimes as a personal challenge to make something out of modules I owned but hated - and strung them together. (Matt Coleville has a nice discussion on the values of that here.) I went from The Fountain of Health to something I just made up on the spot to trying to salvage one of the all time stinkers The Terrible Trouble at Tragidore to the Siege of Harrowdale adventure that Pelgrane put on Roll20 for 13th Age to more stuff I made up surrounding the coven of Hags who were their nemesis before putting in The Wayward Wood by Leonard Wilson from Dragon Magazine, which I had hoped to use because it's built off the Brinham Wood joke, and finally more stuff of my own creation. This took them from levels 1-4, and they made significant changes to the politics of their central woods and it surroundings.

They finished this in August, 2021, completing the Adventurer Tier in 13th Age.

Once that was done, I had years pass, asked the players what the characters were doing, and picked what was next from that. Quagmire, another of the highly uneven TSR adventures was next, modified to build on the players choices till now to make it feel organic, took them off their home island and radically changed the campaign, upping the stakes and seeing a PC death. They returned having to deal with the politics of where they started, and a simple task of apportioning healing from the Fountain of Heath took them into a war in the Underdark, and from there to the desert-landscape of the Hollow Earth from which dwarves originated, using the Dungeon Adventures module The Kingdom of Ghouls by Wolfgang Baur as a foundation. Returning with their political problems solved, having upended the religious practices of the Dwarf King's court, and and carrying eggs holding the blessings of Blibdoolploop, they became the agents to avert the resurgence of the hag coven as I finally made use of Rahasia, one of the first modules of the Hickman revolution. 

These trials completed, they realized they has wasted enough time... their friends in the Demonweb needed rescuing. Their research turned up three possible paths into the Demonweb and the settled on Tannhauser Gate, the artifact that was the core of the Star Elves phyrric victory over the Grievance of Eden (this is all from Axar's players provided backstory, though I gave it the name Tannhauser Gate because none of them have seen Blade Runner yet....), giving them a reason to enter the Overworld, which in this game was Wildspace and I used Steve Kurtz' module The Sea of Sorrow, again from Dragon Magazine back in the day, as the baseline. 

They finished this last weekend, completing the Champion Tier in 13th Age, they are now Epic 8th Level heroes. 

Am I gonna use Queen of the Demonweb Pits next? It's another famously uneven module, so I might - I recall some parts as being quite good. I doubt that it was prepared for the PCs to enter with a flying ship and a small mercenary company of Giff eager to claim land in Hell. 

The linking thread from session 1 to now is... their choices. The aggregation of individual decisions to pursue this or that thread, deal with this or that enemy, until they found themselves here... Diving into hell with a mercenary company of Hippo-Men warriors at their back on a mission of mercy. And what thy do once they are in the Demonweb, directly facing Lolth's minions and her manipulations of their world? I have no idea. We play to find out. 

Last session the after doing a deity impersonation to convince a colony of former Drow on the dark side of a distant world to follow them to a recently revitalized colony on the light side and ignore the 'divine commands' of the broken communication array of the destroyed castle on the moon overhead, they remembered that the colony was settled to contain a deep evil inside the planet. 

Maria: "Whelp, running away from our problems has always worked before!" 

Hosiery: "Like when I decided to not check out what that cambion assassin was doing and it killed the princess? that worked out great!"

Lyria: "Hey her ghost on her ex-fiancee's ship eventually forgave you!"

This, these exchanges, with someone in 2024 recalling something that happened in 2021, and everyone remembering what happened, and what it lead to, is why they play. To see what happens next. Their not remembering that they maneuvered the cambion assassin to drag the hag responsible for the princess' death to the Demonweb where she will be waiting for them is why I play....

Because according to them I am a bad person who does bad things.

Scornbul by Midnight Act II Scene I

 His captors, not able to see him, had underestimated the suppleness of Melas' arms - not to mention their abnormal length. With a few moments quiet effort he was able to shift his bound wrists from behind his back to under his legs and from there to his front. Once that was done escape was inevitable - it took him longer to undue their sailors knots with his teeth than he would have liked, but eventually they give way to his concerted efforts.

The darkness in the room is total, but the silence is not - he is apparently not the only occupant in this dungeon, as there are

maddened cries coming from his right and fractured sobbing emanating from his left - though how far away it is impossible to discern.

His arms free, Melas waits a bit for his strength to return.  He feels around the room to get his bearings, and tries to peer throught he crack of the door.

The room is not large - some eight feet square - with wooden walls and a mud floor. Feeling along the base of the walls shows that the room is a subdivision of a larger chamber, and the mud means he still has to be near the river for water seepage to have done such damage. There are spots of obvious mold from the slime on his hands, and some areas of the wall feel weaker from rot.

Eventually he locates the door on the sturdiest of the walls. The door is also thick, but not well fitting - the subdivision must have required punching through the wall to make an extra entrance. Melas can not, alas, locate the hinges on this wall, but there are gaps, in some spaces wide enough to admit his little finger, between the inch thick door and the heavy wall.

All of this is accomplished in the total darkness of the room and chambers beyond. The blind pirates obviously have the area memorized, and any other visitors must bring their own light into this dank place. After peering through a crack for some time Melas thinks that he can make out some infinitesimal limning of the passage's opposite wall to his left, from whence the sobbing continues. Perhaps the door to another, lit, chamber?

The only indicator that time has passed comes from the aching of bruises on his body and the beginnings of hunger. It has clearly been an hour at least since he started his careful evaluation.

Melas tests the door, then inspiration strikes and he feels his way around the walls again until he finds the wettest part of the floor.  His desperate fingers seek gaps in the rotting wood, and, bracing his legs against the wall he pulls with all his strength, trying to break apart the weakened boards.

Even as he begins to strain the image of the Signora's horrific visage rose in his mind again, expanding in the darkness to encompass the whole of his being. His fingers lose their strength for a moment and the nobleman finds himself sprawled on his backside, panting from the exertion and hearing the echoing sounds of the Signora's laughter in his mind.

Undeterred, he catches his breath and tries again. After repeated attempts and some small snaps of the moldering wood by the floor he manages to yank free a long piece of weakened maple. Judging by touch Melas expects he will be able to get through the space with some wriggling and giving up any hope of salvaging his outfit. He is also now armed with a board whose length and width are about equal to his forearm - the wood is unwieldy, but tapers to a sharp, potentially lethal splinter. 

Melas tests the tip and smiles.  Suppressing his distaste, he probes behind the rotten boards with his free hand. Beyond it is nothing - an open space that is most likely the next cell to his left, both silent and dark.

A few more minutes of pulling widens the gap a little more - enough that Melas is confident he can get through without injury - but by this point the hunchback is shaking and sweating with exhaustion. Still, the enforced effort is having a beneficial effect - the more he works the more he feels his muscles and his mind shaking off the enervating aspects of the Signora's horrific visage.

Keeping hold of his improvised weapon Melas manages to make the escape from one cell to another. The final push through causes his knees to buckle underneath him and he again falls into the deliciously chill embracing mud of the floor. In the pitch black room time has no meaning: it could have been half an hour since he'd been thrown down here, or half a day, but the urge to sleep is almost overpowering.

He slaps himself to stay awake and starts feeling along the wall, hoping to find a door or other exit.  It takes two tries to get back to his feet, but with the wall as support he is able to keep moving. This cell is laid out much the same as his, so locating the door is no difficulty. Holding himself upright when that door begins to swing outward is slightly more difficult - obviously his captors don't bother to bar the doors of cells that are not in use. The creaking sound of the hinges feels impossibly loud in Melas' keen ears.

The passage is nearly pitch black. The only exception is the rectangle of light coming from the wall opposite his cell door. Obviously another doorway, even without light Melas can tell that it is of sturdier construction than the ad hoc cell doors, and is probably original to this building. With just a few moments his hand finds the cold metal doorknob, but the room is locked.

At the sound of even this quiet exploration, the voice behind the door breaks out into another round of hysterical sobbing and begging to be allowed to die.

Melas tries to peek in, wondering who this fellow prisoner is. Alas, the door's construction is too sturdy for him to make out anything other than light - there is scarcely more than a hairsbreadth of space between door and sill. What is is able to discern from his other senses is that the prisoner is male (based on the sounds of the voice) and the room must be better kept than his cell, given the scent of potpourri and bathing oils detectable through the cracks.

Seething with resentment, Melas tries to find an exit. Based on his remembrance of his ignominious path down here, the hunchback turns to his right. Beyond that, however, he has no clue what path would lead him back to Signora Huera's house.

Keeping his hand on the wall not just for guidance but balance, he has not gone two steps before that hand bumps into something - a string with a metal weight on the end. Once his hand closes around the weight it is clear to him that this is a key - most likely to the locked room directly behind him.

For a moment he considers pocketing it and leaving, but his curiosity gets the better of him and he turns back.  He approaches the door and tries to unlock it quietly.  After just a few seconds of fumbling the Melas finds the keyhole. The door opens with a small push - unlike the other cells this door's hinges are on the inside, further evidence of it being part of the original construction - and it is certainly quiet over the rising shrieks of panic emanating from inside the room.

The brightness of even the single lamp is enough to bring tears of pain to Melas' eyes after this time in total darkness, but he is still able to take in the confusing scene - the wooden floor, the high backed chair, the four poster bed, the walls festooned with mirrors, and the wide eyed gape of the now silent prisoner. The man is thin and battered but not in obvious ill health, his neck has a collar which is attached to the wall behind the bed by a thick rope, he is covered by a worn cotton nightshirt and - most peculiarly - his hands are wrapped in enough layers of heavy cotton that they are nothing more than large featureless lumps. 

Based on his sudden silence and the look of utter confusion on his face, Melas was not who he expected to open the door.

Night Chalice, Swords of the Serpentine, and Default Settings

I am not, in general, a fan of the pre-made milieus (yay, it's fantasy, I can use milieu! The Gygax duck falls from the ceiling and I get a prize!) that come with most RPGs. That being said I have been doing more with them lately; for example, because the game at the library is for lots of random kids I wanted the game to mirror the source material the library had purchased for the kids to look at, so the Dragon Empire it is. That ones great because it's got lots of empty spaces in the campaign for you to fill in, and there's a nice detailed color map for the players to look at as they run hither and yon across the Empire. 

(It becomes problematic as 13th Age 2E comes out and they've, for reasons unfathomable to me, advanced the timeline of the "we are leaving lots of this unfilled for you to use and we won't add much to mess with it" specifically to remove the Icon who was the Big Bad of my ongoing campaign. So that's useless. But there's a lot in 2E that baffles me...)

Anyway, I'm also using Swords of the Serpentine more or less as written, which is something I didn't do in the playtest (which I ran in Ankh-Morpork). Again, it's because the players have very little time, I have a readily screen-shot-able PDF of the rulebook (and now after the Pelicon sale I think all the PCs own their own PDFs), and also because the players are huge fans of Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastard series, which is such an influence on the setting Lynch is name checked twice. Since I've long wanted to run a game where the PCs were a thieves guild, Eversink makes a good place for that. 

Still, this means the milieu has stuff it that I wouldn't have put there: the existence ghosts and Spirit Sight as a default PC ability, for example, is really changing what I originally had in mind for the game. The importance of True Names in the setting I could skip - and almost did because they don't work quite the way they do in the Gentleman Bastards so there's a little confusion we had to get over (though I understand why because players would loathe the loss of agency in that magic system) - but didn't because it felt linked to the ghosts and spirits. These things make Eversink unique, but directly tying one of the class skills to those mechanics, and that class skill to one of the city factions, makes it feel difficult to genercize the rules set for other places. 

Which generally irks me. Eversink is fine. It's clever, it's colorful, it's got a nice flavor, its internally consistent. But would I be happier running this in Lankhmar? Or Shankill, my own prime milieu? Maybe. I just wish the system made it a little easier to do so. 

That being said, the rules for Laws and Traditions, or Forgotten Lore, where spending a point lets you define things about the setting and the setting being built to withstand that, is a wonderful thing. So there are plusses and minuses. Everyone's having fun! Next week, it's the Dragon Waiting Syndrome!

Weekly Book Recommendation (August 16)

Hellboy Omnibus, volume 1 The Seed of Destruction by Mike Mignola (John Byrne scripted the first arc): I do nothing to hide my deep love for Atomic Robo, but there's no avoiding the conclusion that without Hellboy there's not an Atomic Robo. I bought this volume for my Robo-loving daughter but she was never able to get into it because of the creepy horror aspects. Not so much a concern for me. I need to get the other 3 omnibus volumes on my "please buy me for presents" lists. The artwork is so distinctly Mignola and so vibrantly alive while still being cloaked in shadows. The plotting has this strange sticatto beat that is also distinctively Mignola, with minimal dialogue that acts as connective tissue between the stories while crisply defining the characters. There really is nothing else like it. If you haven't read it, you should. 

Castle Mordha, Knave 2E and Magic Items

I'm quite enjoying noodling with Knave 2E and will be updating the old Castle Mordha old school dungeon crawl to Knave, with the goal of using it for one of the two games I'll be running for the kids at the library over the coming school year. (the other game will remain 13th Age and boy howdy will that be a dichotomy!) 

I've been working on Castle Mordha in one way shape or form for over a decade. Originally for B/X when I first got interested in the OSR, then ran it VERY against design for 13th Age before I realized that 13th Age is horrible for that, and now bringing it back to its original concept with Knave. Since there's so much work already done in and around this my goal here is a kickstarting a Zine for Castle Mordha as a Knave supplement. We will see if time permits. 

One of Knave's deliberate lacuna is magic items, not taking up space in the book for things that you can find in abundance in prior OSR and AD&D games. Still, given Knaves love of d% tables I am bookmarking these pages at 1d4 Caltrops for their d100 magic item lists. I do think I'm going to build something a little more Knave-like for my own use as well, but these are good to have. 

The one immediate hack I plan to add is that Knave gives you the option after a hit to do double damage but have your weapon break, as part of the resource management style of the game. But I don't like the idea of magic weapons easily breaking (and I think once players have magic weapons they will not chose this option for fear of losing them). So I think I'll apply the following rules: 

Magic Weapons have a bonus to hit (+1, +2, or +3) and do one die type higher damage than normal weapons (so one-handed weapons do d8, and two-handed weapons do d10). 

If you decide to Power Attack with a magic melee weapon, you lose the weapon for the remainder of the combat. There is a 1 in 6 chance that the weapon becomes embedded in the target being fought and will be carried off by it if it flees. Otherwise it is wrenched from your hands by the force of the blow, becomes stuck some element of the room, is knocked skittering in the darkness by a counterstroke, etc. You cannot retrieve the weapon until the combat is finished. 

If a monster is immune to mundane damage, the GM may decide that a magic weapon will break during a Power Attack. The GM should signpost this to the players beforehand so they are making a conscious decision. Such monsters include animate stone or metal, incarnate deities, and major demons. 

I like these for being simple, for not adding flat bonuses to damage (the average damage goes up by 1 point, the maximum damage by 2), and for evocatively keeping the idea of "you can double your damage if you lose your weapon".

Scornbul by Midnight Act I Scene III

 The lady of the house gestures again to the chair, and Melas can see that its overstuffed depths are not something from which he could rise in a hurry should that necessity fall upon him. 

"Signora," Melas begins, "I think it highly charitable of you to take on these decayed mariners for your household staff.  Do they give good service?  I've yet to begin hiring any lackeys of my own and am anxious to find some chaps who'll get up before I do and not drain the cellar, if you take my meaning." 

There is another little cough at his descriptor for her lackeys. The hand that isn't holding the letter moves a tatted kerchief up under the veil for a second, being careful not to jostle it enough to reveal anything.

"Begging your pardon, my lord, but my servants are hardly decayed. I would know." another cough. "I have considerable experience with mariners of all sorts and I can assure you that they are flexible men, with strong backs. Also, once properly broken are loyal unto death." 

"I must admit I am surprised by your dear aunt's kindness in sending you with this missive. While she has always been a friend to the Erosas I had never suspected she was aware of my husband's death. Was my house your only port of call, or are you staying in town long enough to need lackeys?"

"Oh, I intend to be in Emirikol for some time.  Staying with friends for now until I find a suitable house of my own.  And, as I said, lackeys.  So this is no mere flying visit.  I'll be around, and I'd hate to defy my dear aunt's injunctions to look after her friends here." 

Returning to the ostensible subject, "So, where did you find these nautical chaps?"

As opposed to her natural fetid croak of a laugh the Signora tries a charming giggle at this. The result is horrific - like the sound of consumptive children gagging - and she quickly covers for her mistake by a forced cough, which somehow makes it worse. "My apologies," she replies weakly, "I am afflicted by a slight cold."

"As for my servants, my dearly departed husband did run a shipping company, my lord, so I have been around 'these nautical chaps' my whole life. I have, had, always availed upon my husband to find employment for all of the sailors who might be injured through no fault of their own while on our books, and were you to go downstairs you would find that some of our clerks and runners bear the scars of martial encounters." She leans in a little, as if sharing a conspiratorial secret, "You show them a path to a better life and they are so charmingly loyal."

She claps her hands rapidly three times, and before the echoes had finished reverberating through the Spartan room the doorman had returned to the top of the stairs and two more equally sightless servants entered through swinging doors from sackcloth rooms. They take up positions inside the room, one doing something at the sideboard between the shuttered windows, directly behind Melas, the other two silently flanking their employer. 

"As for these fine men, they were captured in a pirate raid in the seawall swamps to our west. The creatures there, you understand, are so much different from men, and these poor fellows came out changed by the encounter. So I asked myself, where else could they work? And finding no other answer, I brought them under my roof. And thus far they have fulfilled my every need. So if you are looking for some servants of your own, I would recommend such fellows very highly."

Melas gets to his feet.  "You've been most terribly kind, Signora, but now I fear I have another appointment which I simply CANNOT be late for.  Ta!" And with that he makes a run for the door.

"No, I insist you stay," comes Signora's voice, a now with some steel noticeable in the phlegm. Before Melas can make it very far in the dim room, she rotates the mesh over her candelabra and the room plunges into nigh-total darkness. It is all Melas can do to keep from losing his footing, and the stairs to the door are still several paces away.

Melas freezes and tries to remain absolutely silent, holding his hand on the hilt of his sword both to keep it from rattling and to keep it ready to draw.

The blessing of his keen senses keeps Melas from panicking - his eyes are already picking out the outlines of light from the window shutters which, if they do not reveal the room's contents in any way, at least serve to orient him. His ears can detect the sounds of the blind pirates moving through the room. Their speed, while slow, is unaffected by this turn of events, and there is a ponderous confidence to their steps. One of the ones that had been flanking the Signora is moving on a path that will likely block the stairwell, while the other of that pair is closing on Melas' position. The third, by the window either has not moved or is exceptionally quiet.

For the moment, at least, our hero's position has not been reached, but that appears to be only a matter of time.

There is an ominous slither of steel on leather - one of the men drawing his knife, and the Signora tuts slightly. "We need him alive... to talk, and to see..." and then comes the croaking laugh. 

"Okay, that's it.  The Signora has officially crossed the line into Bad Manners." Melas thinks. He decides on a strategy of offense.  He moves forward, towards the Signora, going as quietly as he can and waiting until the last instant to draw his sword. 

The cat and mouse game continues, with Melas just barely avoiding one of the pirates on his path to the Signora. The hunchbacked noble moves on the balls of his feet grateful for his decades of fencing training and the complicated steps of the dances used around Greensward. Both served him well here as he approached his goal, but just as he felt prepared to draw his blade to press the attack, no more than a yard or two from the Signora in her chair, there was a subtle grate of metal on metal as the seated woman rotated the candelabra mesh again, returning light to the room and bring Melas face to face with horror.

Signora Huera had lifted her veil in the darkness, and the face it concealed was one of such indescribable horror that Melas felt his knees go weak and his grip slack - had he actually drawn his sword it would have clattered to the floor; instead it slid back into its sheath like a rabbit fleeing the fox.

Melas struggled to keep his feet in the face of the Huera's poxy, bloated, squamous features and her thin, mocking smile, her lips and eyelids the light blue that flesh takes when starved of all air in the sea's depths. His recent exposures to spider venom had taught him exactly how weak he can become and still fight, and there is a twinkle of respect growing in the contemptuous look on the widow's viasge. It is alas short lived as one of the pirates grabs Melas' shoulder and, using that to help his aim, lands a punishing blow on the distraught noble's kidney.

Collapsing to the floor is a relief for it removes Huera's features from his line of sight, but that is not enough to recover his strength, so thoroughly had the image burned itself into his brain. Another blow lands - a kick to his head that, while ill aimed is made brutal by the butler's boot. As Melas felt the explosion of pain, the Signora began to laugh in her croaking cough, obviously enjoying the display of the great laid low.

Seeing no way out of his predicament the hunchback went slack, feigning unconsciousness. He takes another kick to the leg but managed to avoid any outward sign of pain. The Signora claps her hands and the beating stops. "Now bind him up and carry him to the holding room. I'm sure there is much he can tell us before we risk the conversion." 

His long arms wrenched behind him Melas felt the leather cord that was no doubt expertly tied about his wrists - these were sailors after all - and then suffered the indignity of being manhandled like a sack of meat or an old carpet out of the room, out of the light and into the darkness of the house. He does his best to count his lefts and rights, and based on the length of the travel he must have been moved from one of the interconnected houses to another - perhaps more than one - before being carried down into a basement, based on the cold and damp. Tossed into a room with a muddy floor he lamented the loss of his clothes while being grateful for the diminishment of the impact, and his keen ears are able to make out the click of the door being closed and the sliding of a bar to secure that door, leaving him utterly alone in the darkness. 

RPG a day 9 and 10

Prompt 9 was an accessory you’d like to see and nothing jumped to mind for me but two other people had good ideas: an ethically sourced AI for quick and dirty campaign art and more tools for sensory impaired players. Both excellent ideas. 

Prompt 10 is what RPG do you want to see on the TV screen and if the answer is not _Paranoia_ you are phrasing the question wrong.

Weekly Book Recommendations (August 9)

This Week's Reads

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis: This really is a grand master at the top of her powers. Willis' ability to show rather than tell, and to drive real emotional connection to the characters, come together into an amazing farce jumping across multiple time periods. For some reason it came up in conversation and then I had to explain it to my daughter and then I had to reread it and now she's reading it and giggling incessantly. It's that sort of book.

Summer's End and other one page adventures by Ben Milton: A quick 24 page zine with 12 short adventures geared for Knave 2E, this is clever and fun and will definitely be seeing some use both at the table and as inspiration. 

RPG a Day #7: an RPG with "Good Form" and #8 An Accessory You Appreciate

I'm kind of at a loss on #7, not sure what it means. Others have posted on the design of the product (it's physical form) rather than its rules implementation (oh, good form, chap!) so I'll take that and go with Ben Milton's Knave 2E in that is designed to be compact, clear, easily reproducible for the players, and has all the rules for each part of the game mechanics on a single page or two page spread. This carried across the rest of Milton's work.

For #8 Accessory You Appreciate, if we're looking at things that aren't games or supplement books, then I have to go with Roll20. Because without that I wouldn't have been able to run the last 4 years of my 13th Age game for my daughters and her friends. Yes, maybe I could have managed it in some other online platform, but Roll20 was easy to use and had great 13th Age support. And this game has been one of the best things in my gaming history. 

D&D 5.5, and the long shadow of optimization

Someone on Mastodon linked to this article on the rules hacks that are already proliferating in D&D 5.5 that reflect back to the Mike Mearles comments on 3E Prestige Class optimization. It's clear that the problem hasn't gone away, and likely has gotten worse. 

The concept in the article is that there's a combination of rules to carry a shield and a scimitar (which has the just the right properties for this) to attack, attack again, then switch your current scimitar for another sheathed scimitar and attack again with the dual weapon feat because the dual weapon feat doesn't specify that the second weapon has to be in your other hand and to speed play the game now assumes a 0 cost for drawing a weapon. 

This is, to be generous FUCKING NUTS. The intent of the rules is absolutely clear and that they didn't think to hyper clarify is on the player trying it, not the designer.  

The core lesson is that you can't write rules to stop someone from trying to be a jerk. No rule set can be so perfectly written to avoid any potential from abuse by the players unless it gives the players no rules to abuse. That's one of the big advantages to the older versions of the game/OSR/NSR style where the GM is constantly making rulings based on the immediate facts on the ground and not arguing with the overlapping interpretations of what Robin Laws called Crunchy Bits. And I get the joy of crunchy bits. I do. But there are reasons why my preferred systems are very low on the crunchy bits: even 13th Age - which has a ton of powers the PCs can have - is designed to limit crunchy bits in any one attack to one so they don't stack. 

This is absolutely a "the rulebook doesn't say a dog can't play basketball" level of nonsense. That there are people out there who even think that they should be allowed to do this, or that failure to stop them from maliciously misreading the rules means the rules are broken, is just sad. 

Don't do this people. And if you're a DM, don't accept this. You don't need this at your table. 

New Salem: Renaissance - Supers Modules and what did we learn

After a month spent on this I think I have a few observations on what I in particular am looking for in a supers module. 

1. If it is designed for an existing supers property...
1. Iconic: I want it to thread the needle between what is iconic for that property and its history and being portable to different heroes if that's what the purchaser needs. The MSH Modules Lone Wolves and Time Trap were both really good for this, and Don't Ask! managed in in a different direction, where your heroes had an Ambush Bog story invade their normal affairs for a while, just as he did in DC. 
2. One and Done: Since its unlikely you're playing an ongoing campaign with the the heroes in that supplement - not impossible but unlikely - it should have the assumption that this is a one shot/con game that focused people can do in 3.5 hours. You can have a bunch of optional stuff in there, recommendations for if you have more time, but the idea should be you are getting together one day to run this adventure for these heroes, and then like the Leverage crew all walk off in different directions. 
2. If this is a Scenario (rather than a Supplement, see below)...
1. Modular: You can drop it into any existing campaign as an outside event happening to the PCs, just as Don't Ask! does. There needs to be a clear on ramp for any group of PCs to enter into it - it shouldn't involve Generic Government Agent giving them an infodump and pointing them at the problem - and a reasonable way for them to skip it if t's really out of character. Now, they likely won't skip it because of table contract, but the fact that it is skippable makes it something you can insert into a sandbox game, with ramifications.
2. Clear Stakes: The stakes need to be clear, self-contained, and optimally low for the broader game. This lets the GM either drop this in as a two issue event or an annual and everyone knows the wheels are on the rails. Of the GM can easily modify it so it's a seamless part of the game, foreshadowing and integrating it as part of the sandbox. That increases utility. 
3. Classic and Clever: Scenarios should be riffing off classic tropes as a way to show the GM how to do this sort of thing and let the players experience the types of stories they love with their characters in a well presented way. They also need to not be completely generic. Terror By Night lets them fight a vampire and do the circus thing, but has some nice twists to break it up. Enter the Dragons Claw: HONOR is you fighting Ninja! But it's also 1980's high finance business politics. A scenario should always have a neat spin. 
3. If it is a Supplement...
1. A Single Book: I know this wasn't the style at the time, but if Death Duel with the Destroyers and Island of Doctor Apocalypse (or FORCE and Assassin!) had been a single longer book, with the lead in stuff that Dawn of DNA had for the hints of the organization (but which fell down on the master plan) you would have something ideal. A clearly defined villain group that had plans and fall backs and ways for the heroes to encounter them again and again, and maybe get ahead of them to give the players real agency.
2. Easily Integrated: Supplements are bigger than scenarios in that they define a larger part of the milieu...nope still feels weird to use that out of D&D... game setting and therefore they need to be pretty easy to integrate into anyone's game. The design of smaller teaser encounters before one of the big plots kicks off. A n explanation for how the group had stayed under the radar for so long or had just been created. How the villains interact with the world in a general sense.
3. Sandbox-y: This ties with easily integrated but while Scenarios should be a little sandbox in that the players can just ignore them and their limited stakes play out, supplements should be sandbox in that the seed the setting with stuff. FORCE and Assassin together present several different plots going at once under different identities and umbrellas. Make the GM aware of all of these and their respective time tables so if the heroes go somewhere they may stumble into something. Also the information on the group should make it clear how they would react to another group either from a different supplement or the GM's campaign - how would Force react to Doctor Apocalypse, or vice versa? 
4. In all cases...
1. Supers adventures need clear organization: The DC Heroes lead-from-the-front synopsis to the GM about what is going on is a huge deal, as is their flowchart and the "troubleshooting" sidebars. That being said the flowcharts need to have more options to get from A to Z, with things the heroes might skip, branches of investigation, etc. Modern mystery design from Gumshoe games are a big help here and should be emulated in the way to start ay A, end at Z, but many paths to it, and enough information for the GM to end at M if that's what the PCs do. The ideas of how the big final fight should be explained, but not made mandatory. I know the genre conventions lead to certain things, but a troubleshooting bar of "if the PCs figure this out faster than you think, alternate endings are..." 
2. Investigation needs to be part of it: Lots of heroes have detective skills or information discovery powers, and the adventure should have those. Just going straight to  When it comes to the information gathering beats, the GM should get a clear list of the names of the people who might be questioned and what they know (as MSH did in Lone Wolves, and DCHeroes did in City of Fear, and kind of needs to do with the mechanical nature of DC's interactions).The classic V&V modules only do this in the most cursory sense, but I think it's needed to capture the investigation pillar of supers. 
3. Maps are Neat but not Needed: I love the location maps for the V&V modules, especially the area maps with points of interests, but the room by room maps with descriptions feel like holdovers from the D&D design era. We don't see supers in comics doing room by room searches of places (unless it's the funhouse in Terror by Night, which is part of the plot), especially if there's a time limit. If the base matters, give it in broad stroke areas and what's likely to be in there, with where the villains are and how the base responds. We don't need every room detailed. (also there were a lot of clues in rooms that PCs might never enter, making it easy or hard to solve certain plot points based on whether the PCs tore every room apart, or it all happened off screen after the last fight? This is a place where more abstract works. 
4. Theme Matters: When you're building your villains, try to give them a coherent theme based on the setting or scenario. If your fighting Ninja they should all feel Ninja-y, your not what he seems Vampire should have similar sidekicks, etc. The useless side bit in Assassin! investigating the bio-engineering place would have been 100% better if all the security guards had powers based on the place's work rather than being hired supers guarding this isolated business. the Dr. Apocalypse series would have been better served with the Elementals portrayal of the doctor making them rather than recruiting them. If Dawn of DNA had been a Supplement you could have started with the Aberrants because that's all Doctor DNA could fine, and then newer created supers or recruited heroes could filter in over time. That the Organizer's supers in Organized Crimes are not under his control fits when the middle bit relies on that team falling apart, but the ad hoc nature of the villains in Battle Beyond the Earth does not. 
5. Don't play favorites: Please don't have a favorite NPC who centers in the module. Just don't. I shouldn't need to tell you this. 

I think that's it, but will add more if they come to me.