The Dungeon: Never Done With You

This is the first part of a series about the The Prison, by John Schutt, a dungeon locale set high above the seas off the coast of Loaerth City.  The Prison will be found in the upcoming adventure setting Loaerth & Feywyrd for the Savage Worlds Roleplaying Game.

by John Schutt

A cave complex. An ancient citadel. A mansion long forgotten. A demiplane hidden in plain sight. What do all these things have in common? They are dungeon crawls, usually, with a lot of checking for traps and cautious listening, the occasional monster fight and a lot of loot. The tradition of dungeon crawls goes back to the beginnings of the hobby, and remains a good way to cut one’s teeth in the design business. The thing is, though, dungeons, with over 30 years of history, the burgeoning debate on their realism and its importance in the game, and the sheer number of them out there, and you have a recipe for boredom and even disdain.

I do not disagree with this sentiment. Not only is the idea of a dungeon rather absurd, its idea having roots in the prisons of old and moldy cellars filled with supplies, among other things, but they are stagnant things. You can’t just clean out a dungeon and expect it to go away. As a place outside the common people’s eyes, degenerates of all kinds quickly flock to dungeons, and all manner of foul things appear in their cobwebbed, darkened halls. The process repeats itself endlessly so long as there is a ready supply of baddies and an equally sizable number of adventurers willing to kill them. The best dungeons, those that affect the world around them, tend to be filled not just with muck and small evils, but demon lords and archdevils and liches and aboleths and whatnot. Still, though, the dungeon itself remains rather static, never truly changing its form barring some major worldly event like an earthquake or the passing of time or a major magical catastrophe. Did the Tomb of Horrors become a completely different complex of rooms after the PCs cleared it of whatever lurked within? I don’t really thing so. Indeed, the only real modification I’ve ever seen to a dungeon has been puzzle hallways that move at the will of the villain. These too are limited to the determined settings in the maze-like structure. What I want, and what I plan to make, is a truly dynamic dungeon. Not only in its occupants, but in its design and function in the world around it.

I call my creation The Prison, for no other name truly fits. A floating mountain off the coast of Loaerth, ever circling, no map of The Prison exists, because the rock itself is always shifting, always flaking away. Having appeared suddenly after the Helfay ritual went awry, it is a quiet place that seems to have been irreparably damaged by the huge magical backlash the ritual caused.

And that’s all I’m willing to say about it now. What I want to talk about is how I plan to reinvigorate the dungeon crawl genre of adventure. Where Monte Cook’s DungeonaDay.com goes back to the roots of classic dungeon crawls and perfects them, I want to experiment and invent a whole new system of crawling through mortared stone and steel barred doors. This post, and the one to follow, should lay out, without too many spoilers, how I want to do that.

My first topic for discussion is The Prison’s location itself. It is not grounded in the planes outside the Material, nor is it in the ground or within the earth at all. It sits a thousand feet above and a half-mile out from the Loaerth coastline. To make it visible, I decided to make it the size of a small mountain, carved into the rough shape of a prison, castle or cityscape, perhaps a dark mirror of Loaerth City itself. What I like about making a floating dungeon is the difference that creates with the idea of actual dungeons. Classically, such places existed below the ground or within something large or anchored to some place. In challenging these assumptions, I’ve taken a risk. First, because low level characters usually can’t fly or even acquire the means with which to do so, I have seemingly removed them from the equation. Second, I may step on the toes of long held beliefs and loves about dungeons. Third, how does one escape something that high up without flight, compounding problem one.

In addressing the first issue, I thought, why not have low level characters trapped inside The Prison itself, in the highest reaches where the threats are lowest? Whoever or whatever controls the dungeon might find them, for whatever reason, particularly interesting and decide to give their prisoners a little sport. Another answer might be making a campaign arc that entails somehow getting to The Prison in the first place as well as establishing a good, low-level reason to do so.

As for the second issue, all I can really say is that when something needs to change, some people won’t be too happy, and I can only hope my work makes them at least condone what I’ve tried to do.

The third issue, that of escape, is perhaps the hardest one for any level character, seeing as whatever holds up a small mountain must contain some potent magic of its own. Is there a dimensional lock on the entire facility? Is gravity different in and around it? Could anything even fly to it in the first place? Given these questions, and a few other factors I won’t reveal yet, I added the flaking of the rock or whatever material makes up The Prison’s walls. Different in its construction and composition than almost anything in the world today, or at least, the known world, the flakes sometimes don’t fall like giant stones. Sometimes they float, other times they drift, and some of them even sit in the air and wait, resisting the pull of the planet below as if it were not there. Is there a way to control which stones do what? If so, how and where is it? Could the stones have minds of their own, and if so, how do you talk to what was once very much a wall or floor? The questions on this matter are endless, and endlessly interesting to boot, and to all of them the answer might be, “Yes, but you don’t know yet. Go find it.”

Then again, this last quote is really the genesis for all adventures, and dungeons are just the tip of the iceberg.

Nevermet Press Now the Official Publisher of Open Game Table

As of September 1st, 2010 – Nevermet Press, LLC will become the official publisher of the Open Game Table: Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blog book series. I previously published the books as a quasi-independent project (with oh… 100+ volunteers helping out), but it was never something that I formally associated with Nevermet Press. The reasons were simple. The company was started by three bloggers – myself, Michael Brewer, and Quinn Murphy – so it never made sense for me to roll OGT into NMP since I had two partners who were not involved as publishers of those books (although they both contributed as authors).

In 2009, before our website went live, Quinn stepped down as a partner shortly before our website went live – but Michael and I continued to herald NMP as its two leaders. In that time we have brought one eBook to market, which has received positive reviews thus far, published over 125 blog posts on a wide variety of topics and genres, and formed a formal LLC for the company. Unfortunately, however, due to family and work constraints Michael Brewer has also decided to step down from Nevermet Press – leaving me as the sole owner of the LLC.

I know that, as a fan of Nevermet Press, you may be reading this and wondering where NMP is “going” and what changes are ahead for us. Well – I’ll say that we aren’t going anywhere but forward! And what changes are coming down the pipe will aim to move us towards being more productive while maintaining that “indy” streak in everything we do.

What about Open Game Table then? Well, with any potential issues moot at this point, it makes sense now for Open Game Table to be part of Nevermet Press’s official catalog. My time is fairly limited, and doing all my RPG publishing adventures under one roof makes much more sense than two. Hopefully (again time permitting) I’ll be able to add Open Game Table to the Nevermet Press store page. Stay tuned to that change, and some other updates to our website in the near future.

That’s it for now – but hopefully I’ll be posting another update on The Hidden Kingdom and the Dead Queens of Morvena development very soon.

Cheers,

Jonathan Jacobs

Expand This Idea

by John Payne

Jeff Rients posted this last week on his website. It is about the mythical island of Antilla drawn on maps from medieval times through the early 19th century. In his article, he quoted an idea pitched in Dragon Magazine #34.

Here’s a different idea that encompasses four islands that can be dropped off any coast in your campaign world. Some specifics are given, but to fit in the size of this post, there’s only thumbnail information. There is lots of room to expand and plenty of unanswered questions. Feel free to expand it if you like. If you do, let me know.

Background

A little over five generations ago, followers of the twin gods of virtue disappeared. In some cases, entire villages were abandoned. Cryptic messages were found in the religion’s main temple detailing a mass exodus to ‘consecrated isles’ in an untamed, but idyllic world.

Today, a local port is hiring crew and adventurers to sail to newly discovered islands given the name, The Twelve Temple Isles. The stationmaster will tell anyone interested about a set of civilized islands marked by the virtuous inhabitants and twelve large temples.

Once on the two main islands, would-be adventurers will discover twleve larger cities hugging the coastline. Each city contained a very large, ornate temple dedicated to one or the other of the twin gods. As described, the cities are quite clean with little to no crime.

What is striking is that the cities are over 98% human with an apparent lack of any elves. The townsfolk will react with almost childish wonder to any elf or half-elf. The other striking thing about the two main islands is that the interior is entirely unmapped and rarely explored. Although the local townsfolk will not express interest in visiting what they call the Heathenlands, they will do what they can to support anyone that wants to go.

The two smaller islands each serve as a benefice for each of the high priests. The islands are elevated about 1000 feet above sea level and appears to be a completely flat plateau covered mostly with grass. On the northwest corner of each island will be the residence of the high priest. Although large for a home, the structures are not ornate. The interior will have the barest of furniture.

For Explorers

Characters that are just starting on their adventuring career can find plenty of challenges exploring the interior of the main islands. Most of what lies within is unknown. Since each of the large islands are roughly the size of Portugal, there is plenty of room for lost cities, hidden civilizations, victims of the church’s colonization of the islands and more.

Those characters that decide to stick around, especially those that wish to purchase land, will be pressured to convert. Demands of the church will be particularly light, especially if the characters have cleared out a section of land in the interior.

Cities will not have very much crime and the local officials are not inclined to engage in political intrigue. Anyone with any real authority is a priest of the church. A bishop usually serves as spiritual leader and mayor of the town. Other priest perform other civic duties ranging from dealing with sewage, acting as police chief, or managing city markets.

No character can visit the benefice of a high priest without an express invitation. Each of the smaller islands have a small town just above sea level on the southeastern corner of the island. Anyone can visit the smaller islands, but interlopers that openly discuss exploring the rest of the island are forcibly removed, by death if necessary.

Gemilla

Gemilla (pronounced ge-MEE-yah) is the largest of the four main islands that comprise the Twelve Temple Islands. This island is devoted to Mdedro, the female of the twin gods. Each of the seven cities on the island are named for the seven virtues she espouses: generosity, wisdom, longevity, dignity, beauty, wealth, and honesty. In the local language, the names are, in order,Galenki, Sibradze, J’veli, Lishup-Leba, Silimazi, Samdedron, and Patzneba

Each of the seven cities are laid out on a simple plan. The main road (chardil) begins at the northeastern corner of town and runs to the southwestern corner. It is crossed by the other main road (samkret) that runs from the city’s two opposite corners. In the middle of town, where the two streets cross, is the city’s main market and temple.

Other streets run in the same directions in grids throughout the city.

Padare

Padare is the small island that lies southwest of Gemilla. It serves as the benefice of the high priestess of the Twin Gods. The town of Bude on the southeast corner is known for its botanical gardens.

Didige

North of Gemilla lies the other large island in the Twelve Temple Isles. This island is devoted to Namro, the male of the twin gods. Each of the five cities on the island are named for the five virtues he espouses: truth, charity, friendship, devotion, and duty. In the local language, the names are: Simarde, Savelmok, Mesatvis, Ergula, Morige

Unlike their kinsmen on the southern island of Gemilla, citizens here do not find acquiring wealth very important. An unstated belief on this island is that duty and friendship are best learned through military discipline. As a result, almost everyone on this island is trained in the use of a sword and bow.

Although mages are uncommon on the Twelve Temple Isles, they are especially rare on Didige.

Ymana

Ymana lies north of Didige. It serves as the benefice of the high priest of the Twin Gods. The town of Chmala on the northeast corner is known for it’s metal working. Metal is mined from rich veins of iron. As a result, there is a large network of tunnels running throughout the island.

Barrateb Ku

The Barrateb Ku, or Islands of Evil, lie between Didige and Gemilla. There are dozens of tiny islands that serve as bases for pirates, or places of refuge from the church. Both of the big islands send out missionaries every year in efforts to purify these islands.

Other Ideas

For those that play games that stick close to the SRD, priests of the twin gods may have alternating domains.

The bishops of each of the twelve towns may have psionic power. The bishops use their power to keep crime down in their locales.

The high priest and priestess are mystic theurges, able to wield divine and arcane magic. They may limit the use of arcane magic on the islands in order to prevent others from becoming more powerful that they are.

The high priest and priestess died during the original colonization. This fact is unknown to the citizens of the islands.

For a darker, more Orwellian feel, there can be notices about the virtues posted throughout the town. The names of the twin gods can be featured in civic art declaring their love for their followers.

The Barrateb Ku contains the original inhabitants of the islands. They were forced here when they could not resist the colonists.

Other humanoids, friendly and evil live in the central parts of the two large islands. They are unaware or unconcerned by the human cities.

Bibliography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antillia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royllo

http://www.mssanmarino.com/Images/Maps/tms2-pareto1.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Albino_de_Canepa_1489.jpg

Editor’s Note: For more mythical islands from history – check out The Antique Prints Blog

Where’s the Love?

Emotion in RPGs

by John S.R. Schutt

While the world RPGs is filled with abstractions and simplifications, from the hit point system to the alignment system, one thing that remains constant, at least while sitting at the table with other people: the emotion that goes into a session.

There’s anxiety, joy, sadness, anger and even surprise when the unthinkable happens at the right (oftentimes wrong) time. The players experience a myriad of emotions in the course of a game, adventure, campaign, whatever, and it should follow that their characters do as well. I mean, they wouldn’t be roleplaying games if the emotion given out by a player didn’t come through in the character.

What’s always bugged me, however, is the seeming lack of emotion from the world at any given moment. One can make the case that the overworld reacts to the actions of the PCs, and good GM’s make sure that it does. Indeed, a static world of stock characters who care nothing for the living, breathing landscape around them would be subject to a constant yawning from the players. I think what needs to happen is that the adventurer, and perhaps even the adventure, should take less from the roleplay and the combat and dig into the emotion of life.

Allow me to set the scene. An entire town is massacred, torched and salted by a roving band of…something bad, let’s say. The adventuring crew, our PCs, are outraged, perhaps because they grew up there, or they had friends or companions or mentors who are now naught but scorched bones and withered clothes. In a fit of righteous (or malevolent) fury, the band sets off in search of revenge, justice and good old fashioned loot. They adventure across many lands and find the end boss who orchestrated the whole thing. They defeat him and take his stuff, avenging their fallen comrades or what have you, set out to restore the lost location to its former glory. The adventure ends with the doling out of XP and a sincere feeling of accomplishment for the characters and, by extension, their players. From there the PCs perhaps spend a few in game months to years making sure the town remains strong and that they know their loved ones did not die without memory. They then set off for the next big adventure.

Perhaps that scene is exaggerated, but my point is this: adventures and those that undertake them are creatures of moment, where emotion takes a backseat to action. The best adventures try to meld them and some even succeed.

In my eyes, the emotion needs to drive the action.

Players, and the NPCs and world around them, should act not because of the metagame, or out of a single set of negative emotions, but in response to a full gamut of feelings and emotions. A tall order? Perhaps. But I’m going to share a little secret with you, and hope that our friends in the editorial department don’t mind (if you’re reading this, they didn’t).

We here at Nevermet Press are attempting something quite akin to that. You may have heard of our newest project, the Dead Queens of Morvena. In it, we’re tackling horror, and I myself am spearheading a graphic novella project to truly give the feeling not just in words but in pictures and thought and feeling. In the Dead Queens, one of the prime ways we’re tackling the problem of emotion is the idea of helplessness. Certainly the setting might be played as an action packed undead hunt using the Pathfinder or 4^th Edition rules, but it might be better served played by PCs without all that power. The world around them collapses, wracked constantly by supernatural forces and evils beyond imagining. The darkness of the night is something to dread with one’s own soul, and every step might mean a fate worse than death. What I want, and I hope the others do as well, is that glimmer of hope in the distance. The best horror does one of two things: first, it shatters the perceptions and leaves one powerless; or two (and my personal preference), it shows one his own insignificance while allowing him the opportunity to understand himself on a deeper, more powerful level than before.

What I’m really trying to get at here is that life, real life, is a conflicted set of chaotic occurrences that make no sense even after countless explanations and wherein hope might be the only path to sanity. In RPGs, something like this is hard to find. There’s a really bad thing going down and as the party grows in power and influence through a set of carefully crafted circumstances, they learn about this very bad thing. Because they’re adventurers, they instinctively seek it out and end it in some way. What I want, and what I hope Nevermet Press can deliver to you, our readers, is an adventure setting that defies this conception and allows for situations of the darkest sort, while still allowing for little bits of joy to shine through. I don’t want a real life simulator. We get enough of that through living and The Sims. What I want is an adventure where life intrudes and breathes energy into the action. Where helplessness gives way to empowerment, and where, if you’ll indulge me in the cliché, the little guy saves the day.

The Chaos of Game Night

Immersion, Interaction, and Organic Worlds

by Charles Dickey

When I engage in a role-playing game, whether as a player or GM, my highest priority is immersion. A few defining points of immersion for me:

• Detailed settings including but not limited to
  • Environment – cities, forests, deserts, floating cubes of iron, islands of salt, or whatever else can be dreamed up.
  • A Calendar – seasons, cycles, weather, holy days, festivals, days of historic remembrance all hold within them the seeds for quality RP interaction and/or adventure.
  • Factions and Causes that the PCs and NPCs can align themselves with
• Player Characters who drive the story, impact and develop the world around them, and develop in complexity as play continues

As a young boy, RPGs—specifically the Red Box D&D set and sprawling out in tens of directions from there—had me at their cover art. I still remember the wonder at which I gazed at Larry Elmore’s sketches of the basic warrior character in that Red Box player’s book, and the sheer awe and increased wonder I felt as I delved into the text of both of those books. There were worlds more exciting and alive with experience than my hum-drum, air-conditioned suburban home could offer, and part of me, at that young age, stepped deeply into these fictional fantasy worlds.

In the past several years, I’ve been pouring my imagination into fantasy again: short stories, a draft of a novel, notebooks packed with a mess of illustrations and concepts, a homebrew campaign setting, a smattering of online games. In all of these endeavors, immersion, cultivating the illusion of reality, is key.

As a GM, I’m learning the value of thinking big and letting go. In running my game, I started with a fairly polished urban setting. I gathered my players and guided them in developing characters to insert into this setting. I carefully set up an adventure plot for them. On the first game night, I opened up with my carefully crafted scenario, then turned it over to them. They considered it all for a minute—from six different perspectives, mind you—and began to engage the world. They ignored key elements of my finely-crafted plot, or missed them altogether. Their characters fought with one another and made an art of belligerence. One character bullied a powerful NPC and almost got killed a few hours into the campaign by a swarm of enormous rodents powered by that NPC’s anger. A key building burnt to the ground. None of this was scripted. At the end of the night, I was frustrated and felt that nothing had gone right. Most of the plot points I had counted on them engaging, and most of the details I had scripted, were passed over, unused. For the GM who had spent hours of time preparing the adventure—set in a game world I had spent even more time crafting—this was a disappointing game session. Yet as time passed and I sat with the events, I began to love them. This chaos was better than anything that I could possibly script!

Running this ongoing game has taught me, in repeated punches to the gut, the importance of sketchy, loose preparation. I’ve drawn maps; plotted probabilistic encounter tables; stocked dungeons; detailed NPCs, gods, political structures, technologies, and economics. I have two notebooks, a full yellow pad of notes, an Obsidian Portal account, and another wiki. I’ve got plans, but when the gaming group gathers, I’ve got to drop those plans and roll with their wants and needs and whims. At this point, I think the best thing I’ve done is make this giant sandbox fantasy world for my players’ characters to root around and attempt to find their own stories in.

As a content developer for Nevermet Press, I’m interested in hearing from the gaming community regarding what a good adventure setting consists of.

GMs, are you looking for crafted, polished adventures that come ready to run?

How willing are you and your players to engage in “railroading” in order to successfully accomplish the goals of a pre-packaged adventure? Also, what level of detail do you look for in setting products? Do you look for stand-alone settings with details on regions, cultures, gods, races, monsters, and history?

Or do you prefer modular settings on a smaller and less detailed scale, leaving room for the GM and players to customize and tailor the setting to fit into an existing world?

Players, what do you look for in a setting?

“You feel strangely compelled to…”

by Tony Hoffart

Have you ever heard “You feel strangely compelled to…” said by the GM during a role-playing session? I have, and I’ve probably said it myself a few times too.

It just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

Those words are a cheat in my opinion: a simple way for a Game Master to take control of a Player’s Character for an instant and yank that character in the direction needed.  The problem is that the word “strangely” is an admission that there is seemingly no good reason for the character to do this thing, an admission of guilt that the Poor GM cannot think of a way to justify how to make the PC do what’s needed rationally.

The thing is… it’s not the GM’s fault.  Even in the most pure of sandboxes – sometimes a PC needs a little nudge.  Most GM’s aren’t maliciously trying to take our characters from us and make them dance like marionettes.  GM’s are just trying to run a fun and interesting game and that requires events to occur and decisions to be made for the game to keep humming along at a good pace.  Sometimes to accomplish that, an NPC must do a bit of “diplomacy”, some social-fu to make your obstinate character go from “I-be-difficult” mode to “let’s-do-this-shite!”  The problem is that most social mojo rules in RPG’s have little in the way of justification or explanation to what went on to make the character who was just “socialized” now behave the way he’s supposed to.

With physical combat, RPG’s have it pretty-much locked.  Countless maneuvers, modifiers, powers, defenses, weapons and armor to make sure you have a pretty good idea just which pointy sharp-thing gave your character another troublesome orifice to deal with.  Social on the other hand is often resolved with a “I beat you! Now do what I say Biatch!” kind of finality.

At this point you’re probably rolling your eyes knowing where I’m going… mental hit points, which is probably sounding like the stupidest idea since the Smart Car I’m sure… but hear me out.

There is precedence for mental hit points.  In an earlier post I discussed an idea I had about personality traits as attributes.  One of those was Neuroticism, mental equilibrium.  Ever met someone neurotic?  They were probably pretty easy to get revved up weren’t they.  (I love people like that.)  Now have you ever been stressed out?  Experienced a panic attack perhaps?  Probably not the most productive time of your life was it?  Shaky hands, sweats, mind wandering making it hard to focus, its pretty tangible the difficulties associated with stress.

Now consider that some pretty well-established games are using variants on mental hit-points.  White Wolf has Willpower, Call of Cthulhu has Sanity, Cyberpunk has Humanity.

The questions we need to ask about the concept of mental hit-points is what happens when we lose them and how do we get them back?  The first question has a relatively obvious answer; penalties – the unpleasant kind that make getting good dice roll results harder.

The second answer though is a bit more tricky because there lies the reason for making social rules exist, a way to make the character take action because to do nothing is stressing him out…

In my system, mental hit points are called Calm, and I’m just dying to tell you how it works.

Any questions?

Deathscapes: Addendum

by JSR Schutt

I have seen death. Thoughts circulate in my mind of what I wrote in that last post, what I understand now I did not then, what better men than me had to say about my theory. I retract nothing, yet feel I need to clarify my statements and add to them. This is how I do that, by starting with the real life tale.

Today, my mother brought me to support her in her decision to end the pain of a horse she saved twice, at great emotional and monetary expense to herself. Bella experienced two horrid colics in the last to years. To those who don’t know, a horse cannot vomit, and so when the GI tract becomes clogged, the horse experiences a great deal of pain. Colic is a condition with no cure save surgery, and Bella went through two major surgeries in an eight week period. This last episode was by far the worst, since it took a very different initial form from the last two. Without the telltale signs of colic, it was allowed to exacerbate into a fatal condition that surgery could only hope to salvage, though it probably wouldn’t have. So I, my father and mother, along with two of her close friends, watched with tear-filled eyes as Bella died on our word and promise. I proposed my theory to my father, a more religious person than myself, and he persuaded me to take another, parallel stance to what I proposed in the last post. I present that to you now, and then return to my grieving, hoping my mother returns home in a condition conducive to relatively normal life. Let us hope.

The interesting thing about the afterlife in roleplaying games is that they are very humanistic. The gods of fantasy worlds, based so closely on the humans who resemble them, are creatures of passion and vice, with errors in their own judgment and fears that no other creature cares to hold. The afterlife too caters to the human. In these fantasy worlds, human souls retain their shape and go about life as they always did once they reach their final “reward” amongst the planes.

When I proposed a still more humanistic afterlife, where deathscapes are forged from the life and death of their creators, I brought all the human baggage into the mix as well. Sadness in life led to twisted paradises, pockets of shadows and depressions scattered through fields of green and skies where only happiness reigned. Storms in the distance told the story of a life of turmoil on the sidelines. The farmer and his wife were happy only if their life had been so, and the uncertainty of the afterlife if tragedy intervened brought a wealth of options to adventurers or for simple storytelling.

What I realize now, however, is that the afterlife is not humanistic at all. We humans are beings that inhabit a mortal form, and this form is imperfect, bound by our wills and our dreams and desires, hatreds and fears. We’ve created words like sadness and sorrow, happiness and joy, to describe the truly indescribability of emotion. We approximate what we feel within the limitation of language. Fantasy games, themselves based solely in the world of language and imagination, follow a very close suit in this, and we let that pass by without much of a care. The logic of the planes and the movement of souls as human shapes bound by their actions in life make sense, and so we allow it to be the foundation of the cosmos in these worlds. Again, however, I propose something different, something I will now fail to truly capture in this, the cumbersome, useless flailing that is human language and word.

When a person dies, the deathscape idea still holds true. However, rather than being informed by the actions in life and the manner of death, the ‘scape is the paradise created by the deceased’s wishes, dreams and desires. It is their Eden, shall we say. If they desired a simple existence during life, and sought nothing more than their own hands could acquire them, this idea, taken to its highest intensity and most perfect form, is where they go on death. Using the example of our farmer, regardless of his life’s trials and tragedies, he and his wife reunite in the hereafter. They live as they always did, and they wait for their children to join them someday. While they wait, they are allowed to watch the lives they created blossom, enter twilight and end. During the hard times, the parents do not feel sad, nor do they feel guilty for the actions their children take. Theirs is a satisfaction, I suppose, that cannot be easily described without experiencing it. The ideas of sadness, happiness and anger do not, in this case, transcend the mortal coil. Emotions as we understand them, are nonexistent, replaced by something purer, distilled to its most essential element and allowed to blossom into a beauty unlike anything this world offers.

For those people who valued pain and destruction in life, their paradise is a reversion of our farmer’s. Their paradise caters to their basest desires and allows them to revel in their evil and cruelty. For these deathscapes, the unimaginable is commonplace and the horrifying is tame.

What then, for the adventurer? What does he want with a deathscape catered solely to its original occupant and creator? For the “good” ‘scapes, knowledge or wisdom, for the two are subtly different; for the “evil” ‘scapes, power and the means to acquire it. Everything in between sees its place as well. The same rules would apply for entering deathscapes, as would escaping, but one final change is necessary.

These ‘scapes are alien and disturbing to mortal viewers with no conception of their fundamental element. Because each caters wholly to it original occupant, and since logic, knowledge, wisdom and emotion could very well be ideas obsolete and trivial to these perfected spirits, gaining what is sought becomes a challenge unlike any among the worlds of the universe. What do you ask to someone who knows no anger, or of someone to whom sadness it a curiosity, pain a quickly fading dream?

What do the simplest things become, when the life you once lived is but a distant memory, slowly disappearing into the mists of the Eden you always sought?

Personality as Attributes?

by Tony Hoffart

As a designer, I generally lean towards more “simulationist” approaches to games.  Not that I prescribe to much of the high-minded gaming philosophy schools that people might have heard of circling around the internet. Just that I like designing games where the mechanics can encompass virtually any gameable situation and it makes for a more fluid experience if the game resolves things roughly similar to what could occur in real-life.  Often, if a game designer can accomplish a realistic template as a set of baseline numbers for a system they can later break the game physics with magic and superpowers in a way that’s consistent and balanced for the sort of feel the setting is going for.

Now that you know where I’m coming from I’ll explain what I’ve been up-to.  About six months ago I found an article (on TVtropes of all places) about the Big Five Personality Traits.  The big five is the only type of personality profile model that’s backed up by studies in psychology, and it’s dirt simple to understand.  Five personality traits that are measured via a sliding percentile scale:

1. Agreeableness
2. Openness to Experience
3. Extroversion
4. Neuroticism
5. Contentiousness

Obviously the higher the percentile in that personality trait the more prevalent it was in the personality.

My interest in this wasn’t purely academic.  From previous work I was already leaning towards the thought that a person’s inclination to succeed had more bearing on his likelihood to do so then any raw “talent” he might have for the task.  Even the data from the big five suggested that people that registered a high Openness to Experience generally had a higher I.Q. then those in the lower percentile.  Also I wanted to focus more on what traits of the character could be measured simply for the sake of resolving die rolls rather than trying to ham-handedly justify why a player that constantly comes up with bone-headed ideas is plausibly role-playing a character with a high intelligence stat (or vice versa).

Interestingly many game systems are already using some or all of these traits in their own game stats (reinforcing my theory that gamers by-and-large are pretty smart after all .  In the new White Wolf games, Wits was identical to Extroversion, Resolve paralleled with Contentiousness, and Neuroticism was close to being the inverse of Willpower.

Openness to Experience was an interesting case, it didn’t quite fit with the usual Intelligence stats because it measured things like interest in exploring.  The thing is, all PC’s by DEFINITION want to explore.  Hell, nearly every game out there has an Experience system as a REWARD for playing the game!  I wasn’t about to start capping the amount of experience a PC could get based on a low stat so it became obvious that Openness could either be left out or some aspects could be dropped into an Intelligence stat.

Agreeableness was another sticky one.  It measures things like Friendliness and how nice someone is.  This obviously stepped on the toes of role-playing but generally every game had a Charisma-type stat so I had no problem leaving things at that.

The potential for gameability became apparent almost immediately.  Contentiousness could be used as the stat to determine the result of extended tasks like weapon smithing because it represented attention to detail and determination to complete a task.  Neuroticism; being the character’s mental/social equilibrium represented a kind of mental hit-points which could be like Cyberpunk’s “Cool” stat or Call of Cthulhu’s “Sanity”.  As a player I was finding ways to integrate stats into role-playing the character that I hadn’t considered before and it helped me discover why certain movie and TV characters felt right or wrong carrying a certain skill/mindset combination.

Overall I found the idea of personality representing stats to be quite fruitful.  In future posts I’ll explain how I used some of these ideas in a new game system and how you might be able to use them to resolve social-type actions in your games.  Perhaps you’re seeing the potential already…

Edited by Jonathan Jacobs

Deathscapes

by J.S.R. Schutt

The afterlife is not something to be taken lightly: neither here in the real world nor by characters in the fictional worlds of roleplaying games. In our world, there is no way to know what lies beyond the barrier separating life and death. Theories exist and belief systems surround the world after this one (read: religions), but no one person, no matter how powerful, loved or worshipped, can truly tell. What we believe informs what we expect. Like most things though, without having been there and seen it, there is no way to be sure.

In fantasy settings however, where magic exists to bring the dead back to life and to visit places where souls go to rest, these questions, hopes and fears find answers. Sometimes these answers are tales of wondrous palaces filled with the joys of all mortal goodness; others are a hellish abyss where every unknowable torture can take place. Death, in these worlds, is either something joyous or the greatest punishment one can experience.

I propose something different. Few RPG settings are complete without some overlying planar structure, and it is to those planes that people go when they die. My own system is radically different, depending not on the will of gods or other divine powers, but on the power of humanity alone. I say we have the power to create our own afterlives through our actions, our hopes and our desires. Our death is the opening of a door onto worlds we, and we alone, wish for.

It goes something like this: One man lives his life a simple farmer, growing wheat and corn and a few other vegetables to pay his way and feed his family. He has a wife and three children, who all do their part in the family, whatever that may be. It is a comfortable, hardworking life of few luxuries. The farmer dies within a few months of his wife after his children are grown and out of the house, doing whatever their hearts and minds have led them to. His afterlife is also a simple one. If he and his wife were true lovers, with existences intertwined so tightly that separation was impossible, then they are reunited in death and they follow a path much the same as they had before.

Add some conflict into the farmer’s life, and the afterlife changes. One year, his crop fails and one of his children falls sick, passing on the disease to his wife. Unfortunately, due to his relative poverty, the farmer can do nothing as he watches them die. He falls into a depression, having lost his lovebird, and dies himself within a year or so, leaving his children, not quite ready to live on their own, but very close, to fend for themselves. What does the afterlife look like now? Would the farmer find his wife again? Would he play with his child in fond memory of the best years, or would his death world be dark, sad and filled with unknowns? What does a man who has lost almost everything wish for, and how do those wishes fulfill themselves?

In a world with an afterlife such as this, how would religious belief systems take shape? If the world turns as I propose, they don’t. With no real knowledge of the “deathscape” created on death, people remain free to fantasize about their gods and whether or not they have a place for the humble mortals in the grand plan. Indeed, the more devout in the populace would likely believe that the gods create the deathscape for each and every one of their servants based on that god’s tenants and demands. Clerics in a world like this probably find it easy to vouch this creed and find ready listeners.

If divine magic still plays a role, the gods could very well be beings of great power who reside outside the regular dimensions and apart from the deathscapes, somewhere inaccessible through mortal magic but easily (or not so easily) communicated through. Alternately, clerics may receive their spells through their devotional energy alone, so powerful is their belief in their cause. In the extreme, perhaps the deathscapes themselves, created as they are by mortal minds and spirits, grant power to those who know how to tap into them, for good or ill.

What of adventurers in a world such as this? As always, these mortals have the greatest option of them all, if magic allows it: explore the deathscapes. At one end of this spectrum, the deathscapes act as an infinite number of demiplanes, each with its own challenges and dangers, populated only by the creations of the dead. The possibilities for adventure and treasure seeking become endless at this point, for, in a setting where desire is the creator of the planes, what isn’t represented within them?

At the other end of that line is the limitation of access to the deathscapes. Reaching them becomes a campaign within itself, as only certain conditions allow for entry, and then into only ‘scape at a time. The party must be around the dying person and know the exact instant of their death, for it is only at that time that the doorway between life and death opens. And, once inside, how do they escape, as, for all intents and purposes, the adventurers are dead as well. Worse still, if they did not leave their bodies in the physical world, they all but ceased to exist. The campaign then becomes not only escaping, but also discovering how long they spent outside of their own world and inside the death of someone else’s.

The middle road, then, is where the ‘scapes are places entered only in the most dire circumstances, because interference with the fragile construction of a single mortal soul might shatter the deathscape entirely. Then where would you be? In settings like these, what warrants risking not only lives, but existences as well? And what are the belief systems in settings like this, where records show people going in and coming back, but also remaining lost to time once inside? How does a culture deal with that kind of risk after death?

Like anything involving death, the unknown is truly the most fearsome aspect.

What would you do if death knocked on your door, but it was someone else he was looking for?

Edited by Jonathan Jacobs

The Business of Religion

by Tony Hoffart

One of our talented writers,  Matthew Meyer just finished a couple very interesting posts on Alignments and the Divine in D&D, and like all good discussions about Politics and Religion, there are lots of opinions, and in the spirit of converse, I wanted to weigh in as well.

I want to discuss some aspects of organized religions and how and why they function.  Divine influence is a common theme in Role Playing, because myths make great treasure maps and gods hand out the best loot, but one thing often overlooked is what makes religions work.  A god doesn’t necessarily have to have a religion just as a religion doesn’t necessarily have to have a god.

To understand what makes a religion work you have to look at the basic transaction that occurs when a player joins a religion.  What are the PCs (or NPCs)  getting out of religion?  Guidance?  Morals?  Healing Potions?

It’s sort-of elusive, but it’s usually all about death.  See, death is a inevitability and a mystery.  We can’t control it, we can’t stop it, and without it life would mean nothing.  Death is a threshold to a great mystery that the living cannot understand. It’s incomprehensible because (barring resurrection spells) we can’t come back from it to tell our friends what it’s like.  So since the dawn of self awareness we’ve looked for some way to explain what this death-thing was about, because in doing so we can give some meaning to our lives.

Gods are the answer to that question. They’re ethereal beings that can shepherd our wayward spirits off to virgins reincarnating at pearly heaven… or whatever.  The definition of what the god likes and prefers us to live-like defines what we need to do to achieve a favorable post-life retirement package.

That’s the root of the transaction, we obey whatever rules the religion wants to apply, and in exchange we get an insurance policy.  This is what gives religions power that transcends nations and governments – because to challenge the authority of the church is tantamount to putting grandma’s chances of going to heaven into “roulette-odds” territory.  We don’t mess with our grandmothers… we just don’t, and that’s why when King Henry VIII decided to take his whole nation away from Catholicism, the English people had some… misgivings.

There is the question polytheistic deities that have themes that aren’t death.  What importance do they have?  Just as there is more than one path through life, there are multiple paths to death and gods can help to control those aspects that we can’t.  Agriculture, War, the Sea, and the Storm are uncontrollable to many and ensuring the gods of these are happy will hopefully keep them from making life miserable or unlivable.

This isn’t to say that quality-of-life boons have no logical reason to exist, because religions are in competition for followers.  When the core product is essentially the same, it’s the small differences that sway people; thus the religion that offers the most enticing cost/benefit ratio can often get the most worshipers.  Alternatively the religion can go over the heads of the fickle consumer and simply get their brand of divinity legislated as mandatory by the ruler of the land. The buy-in for such a route is understandably quite high, but yields huge dividends once the populace has gotten used to how it is.

Gods might be as different as peanuts and piranhas but religions all follow the same basic business model.  So hopefully when you’re taking that epic-level character through the threshold of becoming a god, some of what I’ve said helps him create the next Scientology.

Edited by Jonathan Jacobs

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