Killing Gods, Part 4

All right…that’s a long enough break since my last post on “killing gods.” More than enough. 

As a precursor, I need a moment to talk about the relationship between clerics and deities; I realize this will seem yet another digression, but it’s pertinent to the conversation. You see, this whole subject came up because I was unsatisfied with the way I feel (many) adventure designs of recent years have been unreasonable with their treatment of gods…but it’s quite possible that this trend (and my preferences) come in part from learning different styles of play. 

I will elaborate.

I’ve written before about the shift in perspective of What Exactly A Cleric Is that came about in 1983 with the publication of the Mentzer version of Basic. As I’ve recounted (often enough) this was NOT the brand of D&D by which I learned the game. The clerics in my first campaign (which I ran up till circa 1988) didn’t receive their spells from “the strength of their beliefs.” No. Un-uh. Spells come from the gods they worship…they are divine favors, pure and simple, miracles granted by higher powers. 

This is, of course, EXPLICIT in the text. The 1981 Moldvay Basic set described it thusly:

Since clerical spalls are divinely given, they do not have to be studied; the cleric need only rest and pray for them.

"Divinely given" is the key phrase here. I can understand if there is some confusion caused by the actual description of the cleric class in Moldvay; its text ("...they are trained in fighting and casting spells. As a cleric advances in level, he or she is granted the use of more and more spells...") could be interpreted as meaning that their magic is separate from their deity, that magical training is something only those who are initiated into the cult's higher secrets are taught. But unless Moldvay is speaking metaphorically (I don't think he is), the phrase divinely given in the Spell section makes clear just who is "granting" access to clerical magic...not higher level priests and patriarchs, but the god or goddess whom the cleric serves.

And Gygax is even more clear in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide:

It is well known to all experienced players that clerics, unlike magic-users, have their spells bestowed upon them by their respective deities.

The DMG text (page 38) goes on for more than half a page detailing exactly how clerics receive their magic directly from their gods, either by being divinely empowered (1st and 2nd level spells), bestowed upon them through intermediaries (saints, angels, demigods, etc. for 3rd through 5th level spells), or granted by direct communication with the deity itself (6th and 7th level spells). It is not a cleric's "inner strength," "strong beliefs," or "mystical training" that allows the character to create miracles...it is the god itself. A cleric with no god receives no magic. Period.

As said, Mentzer changes this in his 1983 Basic rulebook...a book I never owned until the 2000s, and certainly not the book I learned to play with. But a subtle shift in thinking is evident in TSR's publications as early as 1982. I refer here to two classic modules published that year: N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God and B4: The Lost City. I imagine both modules might be held up as inspirations for the works of recent designers I cited earlier, examples of "sword & sorcery" style adventures featuring "godlike beings" who are nothing more than actual (non-divine) monsters needing to be killed...respectively a spirit naga named Explictica Defilus and the tentacled monstrosity known as Zargon. These false gods, whether through longevity and fear or powerful mind control, have created cults of worship around themselves, followers who hold them in awe and carry out their "divine will, much as one might expect of followers duped by a charlatan.

And yet both modules include actual cleric followers of these monsters...clerics with the ability to access clerical magic. N1 has multiple clerics of Explictica using spells of up to 4th level (7th level clerics). B4 features Darius, a 6th cleric (also with access to spells up to 4th level) of the "cult of Zargon" as one of the Big Bads of the adventure. None of these characters make sense under the rules of the game; none of these characters should have ANY spells whatsoever.

Contrast this with the backstory found in the 1980 module C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan:

Eventually a new Archon mounted the throne in Pontylver, one who claimed [lawful neutral] Alia as her patron. The Temple of the Correct and Unalterable Way grew in followers and prestige, and as time passed, Myrrha noticed that her peers and superiors were becoming increasingly arrogant and arbitrary....Myrrha saw they were falling into the heresy of believing that law is concentrated in the individual and not the community. Investigating, she discovered a well-kept secret: many members of the ecclesiarchy were no longer able to cast high-level spells, thus proving their estrangement from their deity!

If N1 was properly designed (that is, written to follow the instructions laid out in the rule books), neither Abramo nor Misha would have access to clerical spells above 2nd level (and maybe not even those) and Gareth Primo would have no magic at all because a spirit naga is not a god and, thus, not capable of granting spells.

That is the game, folks, and I honestly don't think it's "open to interpretation." But...perhaps because of "satanic panic" pressure over the pretending to worship strange gods (see the 1982 Mazes and Monsters where Tom Hanks plays a batshit-crazy cleric)...TSR started to move away from its own rules. Started to say, hey, being a cleric isn't really about worshipping a god, it's about your character's training and "strong beliefs" manifesting powers...you're just a magic-user in priest's clothing and it doesn't matter whether you're worshipping the One True God or some tentacled space slug that crashed on the planet a thousand years ago. We aren't teaching children about the worship of strange pagan gods...heavens, no! There is no god except God, these are just strangely deluded fantasy priests. Pay no attention!

And you see that carried all the way down to today's designers. From Jason Sholtis's magnificent Operation Unfathomable:

...clerics operate under the delusion that their deities actually exist (they do not!). In truth, clerics are merely a distinct variety of magic-user, devoted to one or more of the ten thousand Gods of Order. Clerics manipulate chaos to achieve their results through the mental constructs of their religious practices, rather than rote memorization of arcane mummery.

From 2017's Lamentations of the Flame Princess (James Raggi):

Cleric magic is divinely inspired, and is granted to Clerics through prayer. Whether these powers are granted to Clerics by higher powers, if these higher powers are what the Cleric believes them to be, or if all Cleric spells are merely ritualized forms of sympathetic magic, are all subjects frequently debated...

I would include the 2018 adventure The Red Prophet Rises in this mix of confusion, in which a heretical priest (Khazra), mistakenly worshipping an ancient vampiric entity, still (inexplicably) retains access to the spells of a 6th level cleric of "the Bull God." Why? Is the Obelisk that Thirsts a divine entity? No. Does it serve the Bull God? No. One would think spells would be withheld from the priest, if only to inform him of his delusional apostasy.  Guy uses a sword in combat anyway.

These authors (and others) seem to have been influenced somewhat by these later (post-1982) influences when it comes to explaining the relationship between clerics and their gods. Which is to say, there is little relationship, if any. Any failure of clerical magic can simply be attributed to the cleric losing faith in herself: it is not the deity that withholds magic, but the cleric's own psychological barriers to accessing a purely internal mechanism. 

I'm not a big fan of that interpretation. It doesn't jibe with the D&D I learned to play. It is not the AD&D of Gygax; it runs counter to the DMG and the information found in Deities & Demigods. And while I'll be the first to admit to being a stodgy, groggy, grumpy old man when it comes to my D&D, I'd even say that it's not very "Sword & Sorcery," either...despite what (many of) these authors hope to emulate.

Because as discussed in my first post on the subject, much of D&D is inspired by fantasy fiction of the pulp variety...and in pulp fantasy you see PLENTY of deluded cultists following charlatans and false gods, but they aren't getting any magical powers by doing so. False priests don't get spells: they use tricks and psychoactive powders or rule through fear and tradition and superstition. Real magic linked to worship is generally called sorcery and rightly so, as it is linked to the favors granted by demonic entities...but such infernal divinities are still "divine," supernatural and extra-dimensional. Only divinities grant divine powers: when Jagreen Lern or Elric conjure in the names of their chaos gods, THEN magical stuff happens. 

But maybe I need to rein in a bit and bring this all back around to the subject at hand ("killing gods"). There is, I think, a certain prevalence or attitude or orientation in the Old School Role-playing circles that has wandered far afield from the game as it was originally envisioned. Maybe. Maybe I'm wrong. But here's how I see it:

• As Mike Mornard writes, the original designers "made up some shit they thought would be fun." It involved exploring strange environs, finding treasure, building worlds. It was inspired and influenced by adventure fiction, much of it "fantasy" in nature.
• As a game, D&D has a system; it has rules. It models something (a fantasy world of adventure) and the rules are applied to the thing it models (the fantasy world of adventure) up to and including things like "how/why a cleric gets spells" and "how many hit points a god like Zeus might have."
• That divine architect that Elric is always searching for? The supreme being that orders the lives of even the gods of his world? D&D has that, too: it's called the Dungeon Master. And just like Elric's "supreme being" (who would be Michael Moorcock...duh), the DM is not a creature to be encountered by the protagonists (in D&D's case, the player characters). The DM creates the world but is not OF the world. What will be encountered are game constructs, up to and including the gods that inhabit the game world.
• As a constructed fantasy world D&D has a cosmology. As a game that models a fantasy world, that cosmology can be exactly and minutely defined...right down to just how much damage Thor can do with a hammer blow, or how many greater devils inhabit the 3rd layer of the Nine Hells...should such info ever become necessary for play.
• The game (D&D) has parameters (structure) of play. It has assumptions and expectations of how play resolves.  These expectations of play resolution are determined by 1) the rules, 2) the way the rules model the world, and 3) the fiction that inspires the game...in that order. Don't (for example) tell me "well, Gandalf used a sword!" The inspiring fiction (#3) comes behind the rules (#1) and the modeled fantasy world (#2).

As originally conceived, Dungeons & Dragons was never about "telling stories." It was about playing a game of exploration and survival (adventure!) in a fantasy game world. However, some folks were quite unimaginative with how they worked within those parameters, creating murder-hobo funhouses of the poorest variety and this caused pushback in the form of front-loaded drama. We shall not wait for a story to emerge from our adventures! We shall make sure there is MEANING to these characters' (fake) lives!

Combine the success of that front-loaded drama (through company supported publications like Ravenloft and Dragonlance) with an imperative to cut anything perceived as controversial (i.e. impacting the bottom line) from a game now being marketed to children (this being the shift that began circa 1982), and one can readily see the consequences: we don't kill gods. We kill demons. We kill immortal liches. We kill creatures masquerading as gods. We kill surrogates in order to have our high stakes, high drama, emotionally invested play.

Because, originally, emotional investment in a character was mainly found in long-running (i.e high level) characters. And high level characters, by necessity, required greater challenges to stay engaged...tackling gods (modeled as part of the cosmology) and godlike beings (that giant ape from WG6) are a natural evolution of challenge for characters of the highest echelon, because lesser challenges don't cut it anymore. If you want to run a high level campaign, you're going to want to study up your copy of Sailor on the Seas of Fate because that's about "par" when it comes to suitable challenges. Good old Demogorgon has been a part of the D&D tapestry since 1976...and for good reason. 

[hell, I used to fight Demogorgon...on the playground...waaaay back before I ever laid eyes on ANY D&D book. Before I even opened my first box of the Dungeon! board game, even]

Not low level characters (I'm guessing).

Outside of WotC's latest-greatest editions, D&D designers have (mostly) moved away from front-loaded drama and railroad story arcs, but they've still passed some sort of threshold from which they can't seem to return. They want high stakes, high challenge, high weirdness in their adventure...but they don't want high level player characters. They want their players to continue playing "small ball" forever after, retiring (I suppose) should they ever, somehow, reach 8th or 10th level of play. "Too superheroic," is the refrain I hear. "The game is no fun after around 5th (or 6th or 7th) level."

Bull. Crap. But that discussion is for another post.

Throwing high level challenges (like godlings) into low level adventures is an attempt by designers to have their cake and eat it, too. It's an attempt to inject Elric-levels of amazeballs fantasy into the lives of grubby, Warhammer Fantasy-level adventurers in order to draw out low-level play while still keeping long-since-jaded players engaged with the game in front of them. Is that as bad as playing pre-generated snowflakes traveling the Dragonlance railroad? Absolutely not. But it's got to be grating after a while. It would certainly bug the shit out of me.

All right, that's it. I lied about this being the concluding post...just had too much more to say. The NEXT post will definitely be the conclusion to this series. 

Killing Gods, Part 3

All right, let's get this finished up...I've got other things to blog about: secret D&D languages, the uses of audible glammer, maybe even a run at "reviewing" Ravenloft (that was a pseudo-request). Buckle up, folks...this entry might be a looong one.

; )

When it comes to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game, there are two inspiring sages that act as my guiding lights, two pole stars by which I steer my ship. They are Alexis Smolensk and Anthony Huso. There are other blogs that I read (and podcasters I listen to), but in the main, these two are the only external forces shaping my outlook on the game. If I had to name one more, Gary Gygax would, I suppose come in a distant third place. 

[does it seem strange to folks that Gygax isn't the brightest star in my AD&D firmament, despite being responsible for the game's existence? There is some precedent. I have it from strong authorities that Jesus is only the third-most important figure in shaping the Roman Catholic Church; the main individuals responsible for our religion (and, thus, all other Christian denominations descended from the western Church) are St. Paul (not even one of the Twelve!) and Thomas Aquinas]

Anyway, don't shake your head at me, Dear Reader; I have my reasons.

Longtime readers of my blog are surely well-acquainted with Alexis, I've mentioned the guy often enough. Huso, on the other hand, has a small enough presence on the internet (his web site has only been around since 2018) that while I'm certain I've mentioned him, he may have well fallen through the cracks of people's perceptions. He is an AD&D aficionado of the deepest stripe, and his blog deals at great length and fair eloquence with that specific rule set, the edition of D&D he's been running for his table since 2014 when he chucked his Pathfinder game for good. It is excellent reading.

However, that's not the reason I mention the man. In my last post on the subject of killing gods, I cited several published adventures of recent years that involved physical confrontations with gods, godlike beings, and pseudo-godlings, all of which were aimed at the low level adventuring party. I explained that I don't find these particularly reasonable, given the parameters of the D&D game as designed. My feeling is that D&D provides at least some guidelines (based in both instructional text and example adventure modules of the earliest origin) for how one ought to proceed with such scenarios and, baby, these ain't it. For me, it's a grating trend and, perhaps, even a disturbing one...there seems to be an aversion to high level D&D play while (at the same time) a longing for high stakes, epic adventure of the type that rightly belongs in the realm of high level characters.

Mr. Huso doesn't share this aversion (he's blogged his thoughts on high level campaign play...more than once) and has demonstrated how one might actually write a "god-killing adventure" with an absolutely exquisite book, a masterwork entitled Dream House of the Nether Prince. It is a lavish piece of art, as well as a fiendish, evocative adventure. It is, as far as I can determine, the single best gaming product I've purchased NEW for D&D since the reissue of the AD&D manuals a few years back. It may be the coolest pre-written adventure I've purchased since the 1980s. Certainly the best since Bruce Cordell's Return to White Plume Mountain (that was published in 1999), making it my favorite for at least the last 20 years.  

Yet I can't...well, I won't...review the thing. Because I haven't played it...I haven't experienced it. I can review a movie or a piece of music, but I can't give a true review of an adventure that I haven't run, because until I do run it, I can't say for certain if it's excellent or horrible or lost in translation from text to table. And there's just no way for me to run the thing at this point.

Huso's Dream House wasn't written for me...or (probably) for you, either. He wrote it for his own players, as a capstone adventure to finish seven years of AD&D play. It is a suitably epic dungeon, a mission to a massive fortress located in the Abyss, a refuge and "vacation palace" for Orcus, demon prince of the undead. The adversaries present in the adventure are truly staggering. The treasure to be looted is absolutely mind-blowing. The final confrontation might see PCs battling Orcus or Demogorgon or (perhaps) both. It is beautiful to behold. It is a pleasure to read (if, like me, you're "into demons"). It is suggested that no less than six characters of 14th level even attempt the adventure; Anthony's seven player group brought a party of ten, and many of them died, some in very permanent ways...you can read a summary of their venture on his blog.

It is an excellent example of what is possible with the D&D rules. A 135 page tour-de-force that puts H4: The Throne of Bloodstone (it's closest comparison) to shame. I really, really mean that. Dream House is a masterpiece created more-or-less by a single person, and it makes the entire Bloodstone line of TSR look paltry and hackish by comparison. The difference, however, is understandable when one considers Huso's book to be something lovingly created for his own group of players, not something churned out for the masses at a time when the company was just trying to stay afloat business-wise. I suspect a lot of people will balk at spending $50 (the price of its POD hardcover) for a niche product of a niche hobby, especially given its limited use in many (most?) campaigns.

Why limited? Because, despite a lot of excellent info on demons and a lot of new/unique monsters and treasures, the adventure is written for the type of adventuring group that most DMs simply don't have. There are no pre-generated characters included with the thing, and I can see why: because just handing someone a character sheet with a 15th level paladin or wizard won't make the player a savvy veteran of the kind needed to navigate this level of challenge. A group with years of experience working together in cooperation would find it a rough go of it...but then, they ARE tackling a unique demonic god in its lair. Such scenarios should be limited, niche, and incredibly difficult. 

Gygax was the first person to put encounters with gods into published adventures: the Elder Elemental (in G1 and G3), Blibdoolpoolp (in D2), and Lolth (in D3). There are two things that all these have in common:

1. These encounters are all potential in nature; none of these encounters with godlings are mandated, and all may be avoided. 
2. The adventures in which they are found are the pinnacle of what I call "hard core" Dungeons & Dragons. The novice ("N") series are clearly for beginning players. The intermediate ("I") series are fine for any group already versed in the game (i.e. players that know how to play and cooperate). The special ("S") series are random, rule breaking adventures, that provide enough weirdness to stymie experienced players or give novices a "puncher's chance." But the six modules that make up the G-D series are absolutely punishing adventures, any one of which will TPK a party that fails to operate at a high level of strategic play. 

And I find it fascinating how those godling encounters "ramp up" over the course of the series. In the G modules, the most a party might expect to encounter is an eye or tentacle that will drive a PC insane or drag them screaming to oblivion. In D2, a PC might actually encounter the goddess (on her own home turf) and might be able to treat with or bargain. In D3, the party has a chance to confront a goddess on their own plane, with the potential for actual combat and the possible destruction of her avatar. This is no naga masquerading as a god (as in N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God)...Lolth is the real deal. 

These scenarios work within the parameters and expectations of D&D play. A party of mid-level adventurers...and to me, 8th to 10th is still only (high) "mid-level"...should not be confronting creatures of godlike power. The encounters in G3 and D2 are more in line with "traps:" really rough traps that are best avoided.  Only in D3 (an adventure for characters of level 10-14) should a confrontation with a demon queen be possible, and only in the most limited of circumstances: outside her home plane, away from the bulk of her power base. Again, Lolth is not the point of the module; exploring the Vault and dealing with the threat of the Eilservs clan is. The goddess might even be a potential ally given the transgressions of Eclavdra and her ilk, though this is not an explicit suggestion of the module.

But again, it is in adventures like these that we see the power and majesty of the D&D game. In the first part of this series I wrote how, of all the sword & sorcery fantasy that influenced D&D, only Leiber and Moorcock display their protagonists in actual interaction with divinities. PCs allying themselves with Lolth, bargaining for leniency from Blibdoolpoolp, or being used as pawns by Orcus (in Huso's book) all exemplify scenes one reads in those S&S fantasies...and while a divinity being willing to treat with mortals speaks to the fallibility (and vulnerability) of the divinity in question, it is really only those characters with world-shaking power (like Elric) who have the capability to bring actual destruction to such entities.

And this is of particular importance to the default setting of Dungeons & Dragons, because under the terms of the game, these are no "false gods." These demon queens and princes are gods that are worshipped, that are followed by devout clerics, and to whom they may bestow spells. And yet they are not safe from destruction! Player characters thus have the power to alter the cosmology of the campaign  setting and impact the reality of the game world in drastic ways. What happens to the Drow clerics of Lolth if Lolth is destroyed on her home plane? Do they cease to be a threat altogether? Doubtful, but her death (if achieved) will surely change Drow culture at a fundamental level.

That's the opposite of de-protagonizing players. 

And that, perhaps, is what I find lacking about some of these other OSR offerings that involve encounters with deities, quasi- or otherwise. There's a certain sort of "enforced smallness" that comes along with placing PCs in situations in which they are absolutely, hopelessly outclassed by a power beyond mortal comprehension. It should be hard for the PCs to even encounter such a being. Barring a long and arduous journey through miles of hostile environment and unnumbered foes to the god's most sacred (and well-guarded) temple, nothing short of a complicated ritual/sacrifice should allow access to such a being on the Prime Material Plane. And as bodily travel to the outer planes is generally outside the reach of low-mid level characters, such encounters should be an extremely rare and wondrous thing...if possible at all.

Okay...perhaps one more post on the subject (to conclude) is needed.

Tiefling Sorcerer: New B/X Class

[funny story; I had every intention of writing a post about the Drow -- don't ask -- and instead I ended up reading up on the whole damn tiefling species. To be blunt, the idea of a devil-blooded line of humanity only makes sense in an astral plane-hopping setting, and one that doesn't take itself too seriously (something akin to the late Robert Asprin's humorous MythAdventures fantasy series, for example). Looking back at the origin of the tieflings, I do see that they first appeared as part of the Planescape campaign setting, and that jives, but they take themselves O SO SERIOUS in a way that tries to copy the pseudo-edginess of early 90's World of Darkness. And why would they not? Planescape was published in 1994, and probably wanted to cash in on some of that angsty role-playing vibe.

[however, the "morph" that occurs between 3rd and 4th edition, making the tiefling a part of the Core character classes, is Not Good and I can only see it as having been directly influenced by the World of Warcraft, a popular MMORPG whose influence is all over 4E. Even the new look of the tiefling species in 4E (since carried over to 5E) directly apes the draenei character race of WoW, while keeping the blood elf character template's wardrobe and style sense. Is this any wonder when both the draenei and blood elf were released as a WoW expansion pack in January 2007 (WotC first announced the development of 4th edition D&D in August of that same year)? Is their any chance that the 4E brain trust looked at financial returns from the uber-successful WoW and said, hey, we need to put something like THAT in the new edition? Maybe? Regardless, the race has been part of the "core races" ever since, and has gone from a character who might have a single infernal stigmata (or even NONE!) to an obviously inhuman creature with fucking horns and flexible tail and pupil-less eyes. 

[oh, yeah...and so in writing this up for folks who want tieflings in their B/X game, I have to admit I really don't know how you'd use it. I mean, the idea that there are just small pockets of infernal-descended creatures hanging out in human towns (on the Prime Plane) is just so utterly ridiculous. It's a box of stupid. I can only imagine it working in some sort of gothic-horror fantasy world, where vampires, werewolves, and necromancers are accepted parts of society. Something like planet Nostramo (home of Primarch Batman) in WH40K, or some other world where "it's always twilight and/or foggy" (Ravenloft?). Still, I'm sure someone will figure out a way to do it. I mean, why not, right?]

*sigh*


TIEFLINGS

Tieflings are demihumans whose distant ancestors consorted with demons, devils, or similar creatures from the nether planes. Though they appear outwardly human, all tieflings bear some physical mark of their infernal ancestry: small horns, a vestigial tail, a cloven hoof, or oddly colored eyes, perhaps. Lawful creatures feel uncomfortable in their presence. Tieflings tend to be sneaky and underhanded; the world never gave them a fair shake so why should they return the favor? They are innately magical although their sorcery (described below) is different from that of a magic-user or elf. A tiefling's prime requisite is Intelligence; they earn a +5% bonus to experience points if their Intelligence is 13-15, and a +10% bonus if it is 16 or better.

RESTRICTIONS: Tieflings use four-sided dice (d4) to determine their hit points. They may advance to a maximum of 13th level of experience. Tieflings may wear leather armor, but do not use shields. Because of their slight build, they may wield only one-handed melee weapon and cannot use long bows. Tieflings use the same attack and saving throw tables as a thief of the same level. A tiefling character must have a minimum Charisma score of 9.

SPECIAL ABILITIES: Because of their infernal nature, tieflings have fire resistance (like the magic ring). Lawful characters are distinctly uneasy around tieflings, and reaction rolls with lawful NPCs are always made with a -2 penalty. They have infravision like elves and dwarves, allowing them to see 60 feet in the dark.

All tieflings are innately magical, automatically learning spells as shown on their advancement chart; these spells are chosen from the same list as magic-users. Unlike magic-users, tieflings need not memorize their spells; they draw their power from their own infernal nature and their sorcery is limited only by what their life-force allows, as determined by their level of experience. For example: a 5th level tiefling knows only seven spells, but may cast up to ten spells per day (a maximum of four 1st level spells, four 2nd level spells, and two 3rd level spells). Tiefling sorcery is powerful, but they lack the versatility of a magic-user.

Tieflings are solitary wanderers by nature. They never build strongholds or establish dominions, and they do not have clans like other demihuman characters.

				Spells Cast Per Day
Level	Exp. Points	Hit Dice	Spells Known	1	2	3	4	5	6
1	0	1d4	3	2
2	2,400	2d4	4	3
3	4,800	3d4	5	4	2
4	9,600	4d4	6	4	3
5	19,000	5d4	7	4	4	2
6	38,000	6d4	8	4	4	3
7	76,000	7d4	9	4	4	4	2
8	150,000	8d4	10	4	4	4	3
9	300,000	9d4	11	4	4	4	4	2
10	450,000	9d4+2*	12	4	4	4	4	3
11	600,000	9d4+4*	13	4	4	4	4	4	2
12	750,000	9d4+6*	14	4	4	4	4	4	3
13	900,000	9d4+8*	15	4	4	4	4	4	4
* Constitution adjustments no longer apply.

***EDIT: Had to change the table color because it wasn't showing up on the mobile device.***

Demon Feces...

...polluting tributaries can cause spontaneous mutation downstream in even the most righteous followers of the True Gods. It is important to pack your purify food and water spells (and iron rations! lots of those!) when adventuring in the wastelands (areas that have succumbed to chaos blight).

As if you didn't already have enough to worry about...

How many wineskins did you bring?

Channeling My Inner Nurgle

I'm about 30 pages into my 64 page campaign book for B/X which means I'm a bit ahead of schedule, considering my personal deadline of March 29th. Of course, I haven't nearly the talent or confidence in my own artwork as some of the participants, so who knows how long it will take me to get illustrations drawn and scanned...this thing might be one ugly, ugly book when all's said and done.

Which is fine, actually. I need something easy-shmeezy, something I'm not too terribly invested in, to try this whole illustration experiment. Waiting on art (whether paid or volunteer) is probably my least favorite part of self-publishing...it is, in fact, the main reason Cry Dark Future wasn't published upon completion (though I'm somewhat glad in retrospect...waiting gave me time to see I wasn't tremendously pleased with certain aspects of the book. Don't worry...it'll be out there someday).

B/X is very "easy-shmeezy." Especially for doing a knock-off / adaptation fantasy setting, it's incredibly comprehensive in scope. Which is to say: it doesn't need much more than "re-skinning" to make something that feels "new," yet doesn't break the system. The scaling between spell levels is pretty accurate (with the exception of sleep), and pretty easy to follow, for example...you can color hold person into any sort of "non-death-target-elimination" spell, and level it up or down depending on changes in range, save, and number/specificity of creatures affected. That's a real plus, and nice when you're tasked with adding 40-50 setting-specific spells to the game.

Right now, I'm considering how I want to handle a particular magical disease. B/X has four different forms of contagion hardwired into their rules (not counting green slime):

• "Hideous wasting disease:" Causes -2 penalty to attack rolls, prevents magical curing, and doubles natural healing time. Illness is fatal in 2D12 days. Contracted by cause disease spell and failed saving throw. Treated by cure disease (explicit).
• Lycanthropy: changes victim into a were-creature after 2D12 days. Contracted via severe HP loss (>half) to wear creature. Treated by "a high-level cleric (11th level or higher...)."
• Mummy "rot:" prevents magical healing and wounds require 10 times as long to heal. Contracted via damage from mummy. Treated by "magical curing" (though unclear how as rot prevents magical healing).
• Rats (any size): one-in-four chance of death in D6 days; otherwise, bedridden for one month. Contracted via rat bite (1 in 20 chance per bite) plus failed save versus poison. Treated by cure disease spell or bed rest.

That's not a bad spread, though it's interesting that the spell cure disease is only explicitly useful for half of the system-specified illness. In the campaign setting I'm writing, cure disease should be much more useful (there's more than a few disease spreading monsters and magic items), but I'm wondering if I shouldn't be creating my own form of infection rather than simply "re-skinning" the stuff listed.

Nurgle's Rot is a fairly iconic piece of (dark) fantasy gaming; from the Warhammer universe, you can find its page long description in GW's 1990 book, The Lost and the Damned:

Nurgles Rot, often known simply as the Rot, is a terrible contagious disease which affects the victim's mortal body and his shadow-self or spirit. A person who dies from Nurgles Rot is turned into a Plaguebearer and becomes a servant of Nurgle himself. Nurgles Rot epitomizes the core of Nurgle's ethos: suffering and overcoming suffering by great bravery and resolve. Those who contract the Rot often slay themselves in reckless battle, hoping to die quickly and cleanly and by this means to avoid becoming a Plaguebearer.

A plaguebearer is a lesser, humanoid demon of the Chaos god Nurgle. The text states it takes "several months" for the Rot to kill its victim; mechanically, this is modeled by each battle on the tabletop slightly altering the profile of the victim. After participating in seven battles, the victim dies, birthing a new plaguebearer. Oh, yeah...and the Rot "cannot be cured or its progress halted in any way."

[apologies if the original (1986) WFRPG has a description of Nurgle's Rot; I know there is a sample scenario that includes a champion of Nurgle in the book, as well as a number of descibed illnesses; however, I don't have my copy with me in Paraguay]

Typical plaguebearer. No, I didn't draw this.

Tempting as it is to include an incredibly contagious magical disease that cannot be cured and that gradually transforms its victim into a demon, I don't think that's what I want to do. After all, it's hard to see how such a plague wouldn't wipe out the entirety of the planet's population...imagine a "zombie apocalypse" in which the zombie were immune to non-magical weapons. That's a pretty shitty scenario any way you look at it (and the focus of the campaign is NOT some sort of D&D World War Z).

No, it doesn't really sound fun...though I like the idea of contagion. And I like the idea of gradual decrepitude...of individual's being diminished over time. However, it would have to be pretty fast-acting to have any impact on gameplay, seeing as how PCs have fairly easy access to magical curing (cure disease is available to any cleric beginning at 6th level).

Anyhoo, that's what's on my mind this morning.
: )

Cacodemon

What do you think of, what image comes to mind, when you hear the word "wizard?"

Is there some iconic character of the silver screen pops into your head? A classic illustration of some sort? Merlin? Gandalf? A video game persona you've been running on your favorite MMORPG? A medieval woodcut?

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that more than a few of my readers have their images of the “magic user” informed by RPG art, especially that of Dungeons & Dragons. Depending on how young you were when you were introduced to the concept of D&D, it’s quite possible that much of your mental pictures of “fantasy” were informed by D&D…or informed by art inspired by D&D.

My iconic wizard.

My own mental image goes back to something different, though. I usually picture the wizard off the cover of the Time Life Book, Wizards and Witches, which was one of my favorites as a child…despite not owning it.

[I don’t know if Time Life Books still publishes these types of series books. They used to be advertised in TV infomercials all the time…volumes on the Old West or WW2, for example. I knew a couple people who collected the “fantasy” series growing up and had a chance to peruse these books…later on, I was fortunate enough to pick up Wizards and Witches, the first volume of the series, in a used book store]

Wizards and Witches provides a lot of good, fun information on the magic users of folklore and mythology, collecting a number of stories from different cultures, not to mention containing many beautiful illustrations. Published circa 1983, this was the first place I discovered Baba Yaga and Vainamoinen and Faust, despite being a (young) veteran of D&D. But then, I was always drawn towards fairy tales as a child (even before D&D) and stories of knights and dragons and wizards and unicorns, etc. would get me amped up faster than a two-liter bottle of Coke. It’s probably why I read so much as a child…back then, books were the main place (or only place) to find such stories, which I devoured when I could get my hands on ‘em.

Anyway, wizards (as depicted in W&W) were pretty much always shown as older gentlemen with long beards and fantastic headgear…miracle workers, with a penchant for flamboyant garb, if an otherwise, respectable and learned “elder” air about them. And I daresay that one will find a similar theme running through the illustrations of the older D&D editions. Whether you’re talking Easley’s painting of “Ringlerun” on the re-vamped PHB (my go-to book for many years) or the Otus drawing on the cover of the Cook Expert set, the robe-and-beard chic instantly identifies an image as a person of sorcery.

Who are these geezers?

THIS is Dungeons & Dragons.

Take a look at the original cover of the AD&D PHB…beautiful and iconic and probably the best depiction of “what D&D is all about” just in terms of the action portrayed. Yes, we have a number of adventurers depicted doing “adventurous stuff.” Can you spot the wizard in the illo? My guess is you’d be drawn to this geezer here:

Withered much?

Now tell me: exactly what retirement home did the party knock over to get this guy on the team?

In my D&D games, I can’t ever recall seeing an “old” wizard. After all, nothing in the rules requires you to create a character that is anything other than a young adventurer in the prime of life…and considering the fact that most campaigns will see you starting at a low level (i.e. “with little magical knowledge”), who would want to play an old coot that’s still “learning the ropes?”

Even if you use the aging tables in the 1^st edition AD&D DMG (we always did, back in the day), a first level magic-user has a maximum starting age of 40, and an average age of 30 or so. The guys on the cover of the PHB seem to about the right age for a group of adventures (20s and 30s that is)…except for the geezer with the staff and the long beard. How is that representative of D&D?

Answer: it’s not. But it IS representative of the iconic figure of the “old, bearded wizard.”

But those iconic wizards with the bent back and long beard are also miracle workers, full of might and power...or at least well versed in magical knowledge. If anything, the rules of D&D allow you to create a young magician and tell the story of how exactly he got to the old age, long beard, and powerful wisdom so often depicted in images and folklore.

Except to do so would make the other heroes likewise old and decrepit. Heroic adventurers (other than wizards) are supposed to be hale and hearty individuals in the prime of their lives…and unless there’s some sort of carry-over from campaign-to-campaign (with old, high-level wizards being “grandfathered in,” no pun intended) you’re never going to see that stereotypical geezer hanging with the young Turks. Well, maybe after an unfortunate run-in with a ghost.

But, okay, let’s forget the whole “geezer deficit” thing for a moment. Let’s ask WHY the archetype is typically portrayed in this way?

My guess (or theory or whatever) is that it has something to do with these individuals being wise and learned individuals. Knowledge and lore is, for the most part, only acquired with time and experience and wizards, having excessive amounts of knowledge (compared to the average person) must have been around for a long time.

[yes, there are some pretty young thang sorceresses to be found in folklore, but the really powerful witches – like Baba Yaga – tend to be portrayed as ancient crones, and more than a few of those female mages are said to augment their appearance with their magic. The main vanity of the male wizard appears to be the length and flow-yness of his beard]

I mean, I suppose they could all be half-demons aging backwards like Merlin or Benjamin Button…but then wouldn’t the stories be littered with child-size archmagi?

No, I think that wizards are supposed to be old and stooped due to the time it takes them to acquire and learn the magical knowledge that sets them apart from their fellows. In a pseudo-medieval world (like your typical D&D campaign) there’s no internet and a near total lack of libraries and “centers for higher education.” Knowledge…especially occult knowledge…is scarce and hard to come by. There’s a reason why your average villager isn’t learning a handful of crop-growing spells. It’s not that there’s a limit on magical talent in the fantasy world…it’s that there’s a dearth of learning opportunity.

And trying to get that learning is going to COST you, too. Being a scarce resource allows wizards to charge a pretty penny for their knowledge…and keeping that price high means keeping a lid on the supply. If the village does happen to have a hedge wizard or wise woman, they’re unlikely to want to train any new apprentices…at least not until they’re ready to retire as the local potion-maker of the region. Any type of “wizard school” is likely to only enroll the wealthiest of students…and knowledge will probably only be doled out by the spoonful, as the majority of an apprentice’s time will be spent doing chores around the tower or recopying ancient, decaying tomes…not to mention working in the gardens, cooking meals, satisfying the wizard’s more carnal desires, etc. Basically paying an exorbitant amount of gold for the privilege of being a slave; all for the promise of learning magic. Only the most intelligent of nobleman’s children are going to learn much of anything anyway…and only after a long time (and probably only after taking the initiative to do their own extra studies in snatched, spare moments).

Is it any wonder when sorcerers turn to supernatural means of acquiring knowledge? Including diabolic sources?

The idea of learning magic from Satan or his minions isn’t a new one, of course. Even outside of fiction, the Christian prohibition on working magic is in part based on the premise that its knowledge is procured from hellish sources (the other part of the prohibition comes from the separation from God that occurs when one attempts to acquire powers that should only be available to our Divine Creator). The word occult simply means “hidden,” and there’s a school of thought that such knowledge is hidden with good reason. The Faust story, retold often over the last several centuries, is the prototypical illustration of this.

Faust is an aged, learned guy who, being jaded and getting on in years, decides to make a pact with Satan to live out his last years with all the decadence that magic and hell can provide. Of course, this costs him his eternal soul…but then, that’s why it’s a morality tale. You learn Faust got the short end of the stick and you shouldn’t make his mistake (even in the Goethe version, BTW…Faust is only saved because of his actual repentance, and the kind of divine intervention no one should expect).

But D&D is a game, not a morality tale. I don’t kill people and take their gold in real life…my normal approach to “conflict resolution” usually involves establishing a dialogue and using a little empathy. Part of the fun of a fantasy game is gleeful immersion in the role of a “scurrilous rogue;” why wouldn’t you make a Fasutian bargain if it was available?

Assuming your character isn’t some do-goody paladin-type, of course.

Now, personally, I don’t think the concept of demon summoning goes very well with the Vancian magic of D&D. The pseudo-scifi-weirdness of Vance’s Dying Earth is…well, it’s a different animal compared to the spell working and conjuration found in many folklore tales. A character in Vance’s DE imprints a spell in his brain through memorization (duh) and “fires” the incantation like a chambered bullet, taking immediate effect. There’s no gathering of ingredients, no waiting for the right stars, no chanting and dancing and ritual…all things associated with magic in tales and literature (the only “instant” spells being…usually…associated with magic items, which themselves may have taken time to prepare)…unlike D&D’s Vancian magic.

Or rather, “unlike D&D’s Vancian magic as originally conceived.” Since the advent of AD&D, magic has become a bit of a hybrid, combining folklore with Vance. Spells have “casting times” often exceeding the “instant” time frame. Spells require “material components,” some of which require elaborate preparation. Whether this was done to make Gary’s world more “mythic” in feeling, or simply a matter of “game balance”…who knows? To me, the answer doesn’t really matter, because the starting point (i.e. Vance; see OD&D) doesn’t work for me. It’s a faulty foundation from which to derive the system of magic most folks now take for “D&D magic.”

Yeah, that’s the heart of the matter, and the crux of this post. I don’t play wizards in D&D, don’t much like wizards in D&D, because they don’t meet my expectations of what a wizard is or should be. How’s that grab you? I don’t want to play a 30-something dude with a sleep spell and maybe a charm spell imprinted on my brain…that doesn’t meet my world view when it comes to spell-casters. What I want are old geezers who can truck with demons and spirits and produce supernatural effects because of the occult lore they’ve accumulated over decades.

Is that too much to ask?

I mean is it? Does that wreck the “game balance?”

Let me tell y’all a story. There’s this little spell in 1^st edition PHB called cacodemon…not sure how many of you are familiar with it. It’s a 7^th level spell; its first appearance (maybe only appearance) in any edition of D&D is in 1E AD&D. It allows the magic-user to summon a single demon of the more powerful type (IV, V, or VI) and bargain with it for service…or condemn it to an otherworldly prison.

You may not be familiar with this spell…I wasn’t (even after many years of playing AD&D) until I saw it used in a game my younger brother was running for two friends. They were about age 12 or so at the time, and it was a fairly typical Monty Haul type game with high level pregens…the kind of game you run when you’re a young DM and have just gotten your hands on your older siblings supercool AD&D books. My brother’s buddy Mike was playing an evil mage (a typical character for this particular player), and when they got into a combat with some monster or other, Mike announced he wanted to summon a demon using cacodemon.

Unfortunately, the casting time is six hours so my brother (in typical young DM fashion) ruled the PC would be out of action for the duration while completing the summoning…presumably off in some corner of the dungeon. The combat proceeded with the other buddy (Brandon) in equally ridiculous fashion, and they all had a few laughs and a pretty good time. I had only been brought in for “consultation,” but having never seen the cacodemon spell in action, couldn’t really provide any great insights.

That was almost 25 years ago. It was the one and only time I’ve seen someone attempt to use the spell.

I like the idea of cacodemon, but I can’t for the life of me see any real application for it in the AD&D game. I guess it could be used like a suped-up invisible stalker, but there sure is a lot of work and effort needed considering its effect…including the need to discover a demon’s “true name?” Why go through the trouble, even to “imprison” the creature; you’d probably have an easier time simply killing the monster if you really had a bone to pick with it!

The presence of cacodemon…and spiritwrack, for that matter…is just odd to me. As I said, I like the idea of it (because, you know, Faust) but it’s a 7^th level spell, requiring a 14^th level character to cast it. And most 14^th level characters don’t have much use for a 7+7 or 8+8 hit dice servant…especially one so resentful and dangerous and so limited in scope of duration. The time to summon such creatures should be when a character is of a lesser level…when the wizard is inexperienced and naïve, and believes the reward outweighs the risk. Not when the wizard can toss around disintegrate spells and14 hit die lightning bolts! I can only assume this is Gygax’s homage to Faust and other demon summoning in literature, and that it was given as a 7^th level spell for purposes of “game balance.” Or maybe it was simply provided as a justification for high level opponent wizards to have demonic servants?

I really don’t know…what I do know is that in 25 years of play, I’ve never seen it used. In fact, I briefly considered trying to beg my way back into Alexis’s on-line campaign with  sole objective of playing a mage and trying the cacodemon spell (how many hit points would a Type IV demon have in his campaign using its size/mass?)…but upon realizing it would probably take 10+ years to achieve the required level, decided the “experiment” wouldn't be worth the amount of effort involved.

Such is the case with a lot of the “high level content” of D&D. You pick up the book and say, “hey, my character can control weather or teleport once I hit X level.” But the chance of hitting that level (and opening that content) is so remote given the normal parameters of table-top play, that you might as well save yourself the despair and skip the spell descriptions of any spell over the 4^th magnitude.

Frustrating. Give me my old geezer who can at least do a neat thing or two. I’m willing to be aged and beardy if it means I can part the sea and call rocks down from the mountains. Hell, I don’t want to play a “young apprentice;” I want to play a wizened loremaster. Forget game balance for a moment…game balance is only a “problem” due to magnitude of spell being linked to ass kickery and putting wizards in the role of “fantasy artillery.” The whole damn class needs a paradigm shift, in my opinion. Which means, from a design perspective, starting from scratch once again.

Consider the desired end result:

-        Magicians should have enough knowledge to be (magically) effective throughout a game session.

-        Magicians should be old geezers and crones by default…unless you want to play someone young and not very knowledgeable/proficient.

-        Magicians shouldn’t over-shadow the other characters. Magic cannot solve every problem.

-        Magic has limitations and/or hazards; there are reasons for not using magic all the time.

-        Magic is not Vancian.

-        Magic is not confined to individuals who possess a special “magic gene.”

-        Magic is not artillery…or only in very limited circumstances.

-        Magic use requires secret knowledge.

-        Magic use requires belief and conviction.

I’ll be building from there. More on all this later.

"Come forth, Mephisto!"