Alignment and Lawful Clerics

This is the third in a series of web log posts where I describe what “alignment” must mean in the Perilous Realms, based upon our group’s tone and play-style, and its cumulative rulings so far.

Lawful Clerics and Alignment

Lawful Clerics are members of the Church of Law who have made vows and joined some order of religious (which is to say, monastic) knights. Regular, everyday priests and prelates are not “Clerics,” in this sense. Should a Lawful Cleric willingly break any of the Laws of Noe his or her clerical powers would be removed until repentance and restitution are made. That said, those who become knights of religious orders (the so-called “Clerics” of the game) have additional rules they must follow as a part of the vows that set them apart and grant them their authority to call on miraculous powers. Willingly breaking these vows also result in the removal of their special authority until repentance and restitution is made. These are the Seven Vows of the Crusade of the Orders of Religious Knights (Clerics):

The Vows of Crusade

1. Worship the Most High alone

2. Observe Sabbat, fasting, alms, and prayers

3. No shedding of blood

4. Show honor

5. Show mercy

6. Shun falsehood

7. Shun vanity

The first vow, monotheism, sets Clerics apart from their coreligionists. Other Lawful men may “worship” many gods, angels, and saints, including the offering of sacrifices and oblations, so long as these Powers are recognized members of the Council of the Most High and the rituals themselves do not involve the worship of idols. Clerics, on the other hand, may only engage in the ritual worship of the Most High, alone. That said, Clerical powers are mediated by saints and angels whom the Cleric adopts as a patron. But the Cleric does not worship such patrons.

The second vow commits the Cleric to certain religious and ascetical disciplines. These include a day of rest every week – Saturn’s Day, or the Day of Kronos. Kronos is closely associated with the Most High. (But there is debate as to whether or not Kronos is the Most High!) Weekly rest and daily prayers are necessary for the restoration of miraculous authority, Clerical “spells.” If a Cleric does not rest to pray once a day, and rest entirely once a week, Clerical spells are temporarily unavailable. In cases of evasion in the wilderness, this may prove dangerous to a party.

The third vow, no shedding of blood, is where we get the Clerical prohibition on the use of sharps as weapons. The blood is the life of the animal and belongs to the Most High. This means that Clerics are “vegetarians,” in the sense that they do not eat the flesh of mammals. Other animals and milk are not off limits. But won’t, you might ask, a mace “shed blood”? Well, yes. But here is where a little beautiful casuistry enters (and how could a game be “medieval,” without a little casuistry?). The shedding of blood by means of blunts is not necessary and is often a deleterious but unintended consequence of their use. But by fighting with sharps the means of subduing or killing an opponent depends upon cutting, and therefore the shedding of blood is inherent to their use. So: “no sharps,” but not “no killing,” see the commentary on the Fourth Law.

The fourth vow, honor, is directly related to obedience, something inherent to any form of monasticism or membership in a religious order. But it also includes the encouragement of subordinates and things such as respect for the dead by putting them to rest, etc. Clerics rarely tolerate the abuse of a corpse and must never participate. The Clerical war against the Undead is not that of corpse mutilation, but all attempts must be made to free the corpse from this unholy abuse and restore the body to rest through proper committal to the elements. This includes burial, proper, in the earth, but also burial at sea and cremation on pyres. When Clerics gain the authority to dispel the curse of Undeath, this does not cause the undead victim to disappear or disintegrate. It rather immediately restores the corpse to a state of rest, laid and in a position ready for committal to the elements.

The fifth vow, that of mercy, means that all Clerics are expected to do whatever they can to defend and, if necessary, provide for widows, orphans, pilgrims, the oppressed, etc. They are expected always to grant subdued foes the chance to convert to Law, repent and be saved. Fell races and Chaotic monsters are incapable of conversion and repentance, so mercy does not extend to them.

The sixth vow, the prohibition of falsehood, means more than simply not lying. It also demands that a cleric use no disguise, nor engage in any “sting operations” or subterfuge. Nevertheless, a Cleric may tolerate other party members who do so, they simply may not directly participate. If directly questioned in such situations, Clerics may, however, tell the truth in a “creative” way.

The seventh vow, the rejection of vanity, means avoiding the pomp of the world. As a virtue, this includes not coveting the wealth, title, or power of others. As a practice, it includes the requirement to tithe any wealth obtained through adventuring. This corresponds to the traditional monastic vow of “poverty.” It also includes the monastic vow of “chastity.” Remember, this is a medieval fantasy, so marriage in the medieval world was often a means of glory, the making of alliances, and the maintenance of worldly society. Think “trophy wife,” and you will get the picture. Although marriage is lawful and to be esteemed for those not involved in the religious life, for a Cleric, all spouses would be merely worldly “trophies,” for those who have answered the high call of Crusade.

Next: Alignment and Evil Clerics

Chaos in the Perilous Realms

This is the second in a series of web log posts where I describe what “alignment” must mean in the Perilous Realms, based upon our group’s tone and play-style, and its cumulative rulings so far. The first was on the Law of the Perilous Realms.

Chaos in the Perilous Realms

Okay, so a character is on the side of CHAOS. But what does that mean?

It means you defend moral sentiment and basic instincts as all that is necessary to guide behavior. It means you believe that human culture, customs, and traditions often subvert basic human sentiment and instinct and should thus be shunned and overturned.

The above sounds rather noble. And the highest philosophers of Chaos indeed hold the above in very high esteem and may wax rhapsodic about it from time to time. But mainly folks who choose Chaos just choose it because they don’t want to obey law, or perhaps just anyone at all, so Chaos suites them just fine, whatever its philosophers may or may not say. What are the basic sentiments?

The Seven Sentiments of Chaos

1. Honor

2. Loyalty

3. Reciprocity

4. Affection

5. Purity

6. Pity

7. Liberty

Honor may well be honorable, but it can also turn into a shame-based culture and an almost gang-like vibe of constantly worrying about and accusing others that they have “dissed” them. Think gangsters or the 47 Ronan story.

Loyalty can be honorable, but it can also turn to cruelty when the demands of the superior are not fair to the inferior, but the threat of accusations of disloyalty forces obedience.

NOTE: the combination of honor and loyalty means that, in the main, Chaotic parties, and even Chaotic members of a mixed party, may, generally, be expected to be helpful rather than harmful to the party. In other words, having your character behave poorly towards other members of the party because the player claims to be playing “in character,” as someone on the side of Chaos simply will not fly. So, no Trolls, no Griefers, no doing it “Just for the Evulz.” In the main, this includes even non-player characters, at least towards their own companions.

Reciprocity means fairness and justice, but it can just as well turn into a zero-sum game of retribution. Seeking one’s self-interest can always be justified as demanding justice in the form of mere retribution in the style of a moral “tit for tat.”

So, obsessive concern for the above can turn to their opposite. A sensitivity to dishonor and betrayal, together with a strong commitment to the demands of reciprocity (render as rendered) may lead to retribution and vengeance. This is especially intense as Chaos shuns courts of law as a merely human custom that gets in the way between two parties having the “freedom,” to “resolve” the dispute on their “own terms.” So, duels, feuds, assassination, and lynching are de rigueur for Chaos.

Affection can be a beautiful thing, like a mother’s love of a child or two fast friends. It can also be the affection a master has towards his slave, or, in turn, the “Stockholm Syndrome” generated in the hearts of the kidnapped towards their captives.

Purity is an honorable sentiment, leading to the shunning of things that might degrade human dignity. It can also lead to self-righteousness, a sense of superiority, sexism, racism, bigotry –looking at another member of a free race – or even a free race as a whole – as if they were less-then. Cruelty can always be justified as simply following the human sentiment of “moral disgust” towards the “inferior,” or “vermin.”

Pity can lead to mercy, kindness and even defense of the helpless. Pity can also be condescending and humiliating. Pity is not necessarily compassion or empathy. Conan often shows pity and provides kindness and defense. He would not even know what “compassion” means, and “empathy,” would simply be meaningless to him.

Liberty cannot stand that free races should suffer any compulsion, but it can also just be a freewheeling, “don’t fence me in,” “get of my lawn,” attitude that justifies flouting any law that seems inconvenient in the moment. Liberty is often cited by the chaotic as the very reason why universal Law must be rejected. Universal Law is seen by the chaotic as a trick by which the “weak,” have figured out a way to limit the power of the strong and worthy (think Nietzsche here). (Lawful, on the other hand, sees the Law as the means to freedom. Lawlessness is dangerous and oppressive, not only to the weak but the strong as well. Law guides creativity and reasonable action, and thus true freedom.)

A note about the relationship of Chaos to being a “good” character:

You can certainly have a fundamentally “good” Chaotic character. But there are simply more evil Chaotic characters because evil folks will almost always choose Chaos as it can easily be manipulated to justify their lawless behavior.

Up next: Lawful Clerics and Alignment.

Law in the Perilous Realms

This is the first in a series of web log posts where I describe what “alignment” must mean in the Perilous Realms, based upon our group’s tone and play-style, and its cumulative rulings so far. I am coming to realize how essential to the game alignment is. It defines so many things: the cosmos, the setting, the characters, the classes, especially clerics, monsters who are intelligent, and whether they are free, language, and whatever counts as “religion” in a given setting. This shouldn’t be surprising, I suppose. It is a wargame, after all. And wars have sides.

The Law in the Perilous Realms

So, a character is on the side of LAW. What is the Law? Well, since you asked, they are the Seven Laws of the Prophet Noe, revealed from heaven, through the great prophet who survived the cataclysmic ancient flood of Tiamat.

The Seven Laws of The Prophet Noe

1. Thou shalt not worship idols

2. Thou shalt not curse the Most High

3. Thou shalt establish and hold courts of justice

4. Thou shalt not murder

5. Thou shalt not dishonor the wedding vow

6. Thou shalt not steal

7. Thou shalt not show cruelty

The first law, no worship of idols, rules out a lot of behavior common to a lot of people and free races in a low fantasy setting. This limitation really stands out as something that distinguishes the Lawful from the crowd. The second law, no cursing the Most High, represents a kind of vague blasphemy prohibition that can be interpreted and enforced more or less leniently or strictly depending upon the local community, Church or otherwise Lawful leadership.

The third law, due process, is important and, in many ways, defines Lawfulness, setting Law in stark contrast to Chaos. Due process is essential to the Law. It is the key to establishing safety, order, and civilization. It forms an absolute prohibition against lynching, feuds, unlawful duels, revenge killings, and the like. Punishment may still be “cruel and unusual,” by modern standards. But they must at least seem to fit the crime. Duels may be authorized by the court as an appropriate means of settling a suit. But it must be court decreed.

An exception that is often, but not always honored by courts of Law (that is to say, by this referee) is that of “Wilderness Law.” In cases where adventurers find themselves far away from Lawful civilization, Lawful characters may declare “Wilderness Law,” and, well, let us say, “exact justice,” as the Lawful party understands it. In this case, the Lawful party (or the subgroup of Lawful members thereof) becomes a kind of de facto court of Law, likely to be recognized by the Church or a lawful civilization. So, for example, if it is dangerous to haul a captured Evil High Priest all the way back to a settlement with established Lawful courts, the party may just decide to “try, condemn, and execute” the “obvious offender,” right then and there. As the referee, I would usually uphold this if the reason were obvious and not simply a sham for making things easier on the party.

The fourth law, the prohibition of murder, may seem a little tough to uphold in a fantasy wargame. But note that what is prohibited is murder, not killing. Killing in defense of the defenseless and even in self-defense is not murder.

Capital punishment after due process is not murder. It is the removal of an individual from a corporate body, by that corporate body, through its authorized and Lawful leadership, to maintain safety and order for the whole. The court may just as well choose exile or gulag instead.

War, when declared just by the appropriate authorities, and conducted in a holy and chivalrous fashion, is about two people groups (or a people group against another free race) fighting one another. The death of individuals is a necessary and unfortunate by-product, not its goal. Thus, war does not technically count as murder.

Furthermore, you can only murder members of the free races: men, elves, dwarves, halflings, and intelligent lawful beings. Monsters, especially Chaotic monsters and fell races are not murdered, they are exterminated. Fell “races” count as monsters in the Perilous Realms. Remember, this is just a game – a medieval fantasy game based on the philosophy of Alchemy. Fell beings arise by abiogenesis. So, they don’t have spouses or children to worry about. Monsters are archetypes of our nightmares, ulterior motives, vices, passions, skeletons in the closet, etc. Try not to over think it or “deconstruct” it.

The fourth law, honoring the vows of marriage, establishes the basic unit of human order, the family, and thus ensures the safety and rearing of the next generation. This would include most traditional mores around such things, as understood by most traditional human societies. But it also includes things like the defense of widows and orphans, etc.

The sixth law, prohibiting theft, ensures the basic property rights necessary to maintain a free and orderly (medieval fantasy) society. This is an imaginary world before the industrial revolution so there is no “Capitalism.” And if wealth is not defined as the means of production, then we don’t yet need some medieval fantasy version of Marxism informing us that “property is theft”!

Finally, the seventh law, prohibiting acts of cruelty, maintains the humaneness of Law. Although there are plenty of Lawful characters who rule with an iron fist, if they cross a certain line, they may no longer be regarded as truly Lawful. The prohibition on cruelty includes not only the usual things associated with cruelty but also a wider gamut of behaviors such as: no corpse abuse, no animal cruelty (the actual prohibition of the seventh law of Noah, In Real Life) and no eating meat without humane slaughter and thanksgiving rendered to the Most High for the animal’s life.

A note about the relationship of the Law to being a “Good,” character:

You can imagine an “evil” Lawful character, one who hides behind the law in cowardice, for false motives, or who imposes the Law on others with forced conversions and an iron fist. But, in general it is “good” folks who will choose law, because they can see its obvious benefits to the oppressed and also its general benefits due to its role in the development of human civilization.

Up next: Chaos in the Perilous Realms

Dungeon, exploration and the title: "Dungeons & Dragons"

This is the second post in a two-part series of posts on the title of Dungeons & Dragons as a means to empower hobbyists to start their own medieval fantasy wargames campaigns.

The last post was on level of scale and the incorporation of role play. This post is on how the one-to-one level of scale empowered character exploration -- giving birth to the supertitle, "Dungeons & Dragons."

Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor

Before the publication of Dungeons & Dragons, its co-author, Dave Arneson, was already a wargamer involved with his group of friends in running wargames campaigns. He and came up with a wargames campaign for his friends that was a full-blown medieval fantasy wargames campaign that came to be called Blackmoor. Arneson had already encouraged his players to look at their relationship to the wargame in a different way. Inspired by things like Diplomacy, and by Baunstein and other such campaigns before, Arneson encouraged wargames-style role-playing as a significant aspect of the birth of Dungeons and Dragons.

The First Dungeon

Dave Arneson stumbled upon a scenario over the course of his Blackmoor campaign where his players’ characters, while laying siege to the castle of one of their enemies, decided that they would mine, that is to say, dig under the walls to try to break the siege. When Arneson moved the scale down to the level of skirmish so that each figure on the table was one to one in scale, then you have not just a soldier in front of you, but you have what is going to be called a character, and you're going to be playing not as the general of an army, but as that one character in a medieval fantasy setting.

This gave Dave Arneson an idea. And what he decided to do has made history. He set up a situation where once the players’ characters had successfully dug under the walls of the castle, they would suddenly find themselves tunneled right into the crazy labyrinthine dungeons underneath the tyrannical lord's castle. 

Instead of just coming up in the castle yard, they found themselves down in the dungeons. And instead of the normal dungeons of history that just had normal prisoners, Dave Arneson populated this dungeon with the fantasy denizens of the underworld: monsters and creatures that the characters had to steer clear from so that they could come up, find the bad guy, take him out, and win the day.

Exploring the Unknown

Arneson conducted this scenario such that the players’ characters did not know exactly where they were until they had explored the dungeon and created their own map of the dungeon. They could keep track of where they'd been, where monsters were to avoid. They were playing in such a way that they were not simply laying out a battlefield and playing a pitched battle with miniature figures on a one to one scale, but instead they were imagining exploring down in the darkness of a deep dungeon and they had to create a map of what they'd discovered as they were going along.

This is not unlike other games that were popular at the time and still are, such as Battleship and Stratego. Both Battleship and Stratego are simple games where something is concealed from the player, and through play you slowly begin to reveal what's concealed, and those revelations and guesses made on those revelations help lead the player to victory. So this was already a concept that existed in gaming, and Arneson was able to grab it and use it at a much more complex level of scale where instead of it simply discovering whether you've sunk someone's battleship, or whether you've found someone's flag in a battlefield, now you got a whole labyrinthine dungeon underneath an evil tyrannical castle.

Dave Arneson's players found this so exciting and fun that they said, "Hey, we've really got to do this again sometime." We now see the birth of the first dungeon for what would come to be called Dungeons and Dragons.

Everything in place for the Title: Dungeons & Dragons

Arneson had stumbled upon the joys of dungeon exploration with his players. Dragons are the quintessential monster of medieval fantasy. At the time in the wargaming hobby community, there were a lot of “something & something” titles. Fill-in-the-blank and fill-in-the-blank titles were popular at this time of hobby wargaming. So there is a story that says that Gygax as sitting at his kitchen table with his daughter and a list of words. He would go through the list, adding two words together with an “and” in between. When the combo “Dungeons & Dragons” finally came up, his daughter said, “that’s it, that is the one.” And it has stuck ever since. At least that is the story!

So now with this post in this series, and with the posts of the previous series on the subtitle, we have in place what a wargame is. We have in place the tradition of Free Kriegspiel. We have in place what a wargames campaign is. We've talked about how things move down to the skirmish level or one to one scale of play. We've talked about role playing in early war gaming, such as the game of Diplomacy. We've talked about how Arneson added the discovery of hidden things through careful play, such as we find in games like Battleship and Stratego. When all of these things come together, then Dave Arneson together with Gary Gygax were able to put together the first published rules for setting up and conducting a medieval fantasy wargames campaign: Dungeons and Dragons.

Summary so-far

So to sum things up, Dungeons & Dragons arises when we have a referee (Free Kriegsspiel) with an extensive knowledge of both wargaming (hobby) and medieval fantasy literature (fidelity to outside source) who moderates a generally skirmish scale (level of scale) medieval fantasy wargames (wargaming) campaign (campaign-play) that connects wargame sessions involving exploration of unknown spaces and areas (exploration) through skillful role-play (role-play). I would add, anyone playing a game with these elements in place, because they are playing a fantastic medieval wargames campaign, they are therefore playing "Dungeons & Dragons," as originally presented by the authors, whatever that particular group happen to call it, and whatever is currently being published with that name printed on the cover!

Fight on!

These two series of posts are now tied up. Now I can launch a follow-up series of posts where I will look at a couple of miscellaneous things that haven't quite fit into a previous post but that now begin to make sense in light of what we have discussed so far: things like Experience Points and gold, etc.

Scale, Role-play, and Dungeons & Dragons

I recently published a four post series reflecting on the subtitle of Dungeons & Dragons to help make sense of the original publication. Here are those links:

Wargames and Dungeons & Dragons

Medieval Fantasy and Dungeons & Dragons

Rules and Dungeons & Dragons

Campaigns and Dungeons & Dragons

With those reflections in place, I can now move on to reflect on the development of the supertitle itself: "Dungeons & Dragons"! In doing so I hope to empower hobbyists to start their own medieval fantasy wargames campaigns.

This will be the first post in a short two-part series of posts. This post will be on level of scale and how the move to one-to-one scale empowered things such as the abstraction of hit-points and the ability to role-play.

Scale

Wargaming allows for play at different levels of scale. So on a given war gaming table, an inch might represent 10 feet, 10 yards, 100 yards, etc. One miniature soldier might represent as many as, say, 10 soldiers, 20 soldiers, 100 soldiers, depending on the level of scale that you'd set up in the beginning. For most historical miniature wargaming, the level of scale is what is called tactical. So tactical warfare is one given battle between two armies where two generals or colonels can direct the activity fairly obviously over the course of about one battle day.

This makes a lot of sense in, say, Napoleonic warfare, which is again, one of the reasons why Napoleonic warfare is so attractive to historical wargamers. But there are other levels of scale. If you jump up to a higher level of scale, you can have strategic wargaming. This is where you might start getting into what you call hex and counter wargaming, where you've got a map divided into many different hexagons, and those hexes might represent 5 miles, 6 miles, 25 miles of distance across. Instead of miniatures representing soldiers, or 10 soldiers, or 100 soldiers, you have a more abstract piece that represents an entire legion, battalion, or perhaps even an entire army.

At the highest level of abstraction you have board games like Axis and Allies, or Risk. Some miniature wargamers question whether those should count as wargames, because they're at such a high level of abstraction that they're not very far away from a game like chess or checkers. But the typical scale of war gaming for miniature wargamers is tactical. You can abstract it to a higher level like strategic. But you can also move down to a tighter level of scale.

Skirmish

You can go down to a level of scale called skirmish warfare. This is where you're really talking about individual soldiers, head to head with each other. In this case, each one of your miniature figures actually represents one soldier. So the ratio or the scale becomes one to one. Every miniature figure is exactly one soldier.

Chainmail, for example, has a section dedicated to skirmish or man to man combat for the resolution of this level of medieval wargaming. So its fantasy supplement had to address this level of scale as well: how would fantastical creatures and armies match up in not just tactical, but also skirmish level warfare.

Hit points as abstract

One-to-one level of scale helps make sense of the roots of some of Dungeons & Dragons core mechanics, such as, for example, Hit Points. The rules of combat resolution have to be different at such a tight level of scale. The statistics, the way that you match results of combat up to dice, the things that a referee would need to judge all change when you get to that smaller, tighter level of scale.

In a tactical level wargame, when two enemy troops come in contact with each other, generally, if one side is successful and the other fails, the side that fails is removed. If you have those rules exactly at a skirmish level, playing only one character, then every time you went into combat, your character might die the first time he or she was hit. This hit-equals-removal way of playing that works at a tactical level doesn’t directly map to a skirmish, one-character-per-player level of scale. So instead Gygax and Arneson developed hit points. Hit points are the number of points your character can take from successful hits before the character is finally removed. Hit points are an abstraction for the relative resilience of your character and so, in general, as your character increases in level, your character is going to increase in this resilience, represented by hit points.

Role-play

One-to-one level of scale also helps us make sense of what the original players understood "role play" to be. Role-play existed before Dungeons and Dragons. Role playing is something that's done for example, at professional development training sessions, in training for therapists and counselors, or in other contexts where a mentor is trying to teach a student. A concrete situation with a client, or a patient, or even a more dangerous scenario, where you would say, "here is the situation. We're going to pretend that this situation is real, and we want you to role play what you think you would do in this situation."

One of the chief examples of role-play in wargaming would be the famous game, Diplomacy. Diplomacy is a wargame at the highest possible level of abstraction that could still really count as a wargame. You have a map of Europe, right on the edge of World War I, and you represent one of the major European powers at that time, such as Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Russia and the like. You are going to play the military forces of this particular national power. And in each turn, you can move your armies or navies, and you can attempt to take over other regions. But the most important part of this game is in its very name itself, which is Diplomacy. In Diplomacy, in every game turn, there's a phase at which you are allowed to enter into diplomatic negotiations and form diplomatic relationships with other players. You might form alliances against other players such that it is almost impossible to win the game of Diplomacy if you are not talking to other players, forming alliances, breaking alliances, and the like.

In Diplomacy, you as the player would ask yourself, “given this situation, and given the capacities that this nation has to achieve victory in this war game, how would I, as its leader or ambassador act? I want to play out what I would do to survive and achieve victory in this role within this situation.” Thoughtful role-play becomes a way to invest in the success of the game. Role-play in Diplomacy is a skillful means of engaging the game.

Role-play can work at any level of wargames scale, but it seems to draw-out at the more extreme levels of scale: strategic on the one end, with games like Diplomacy, and skirmish at the other end, with what is going to become Dungeons and Dragons. When you're playing a skirmish scale wargame, and where, instead of playing an officer over a squad you are playing only one figure on a wargames table, then you have an opportunity to role play that figure.

Understanding the wargaming roots of Dungeons & Dragons helps to make sense of the kind of confusion about what is going on in play between what is sometimes called "old school" styles of play and more recent Role-playing Games that emphasize the building of a story. What is clear is that role-play meant discerning what you would do in a given wargames situation if you were actually in this war and you actually had the capacities granted you by the game. Role-play meant playing the role of a leader in a war campaign. It did not, at the time, mean something like playing a part in a play or story - although plenty of players loved to ham it up, even from the beginning, if what I have heard is correct.

Next in this short series: Dungeon, exploration, and the title: "Dungeons & Dragons"!

Campaigns and Dungeons & Dragons

This is the fourth post in a series of post where I explore the subtitle of Dungeons & Dragons as a means of empowering hobbyists to start their own Medieval Fantasy wargames campaigns.

The previous post was on "Rules," this post is on "Campaigns," or, wargames campaigns.

Wargames Campaigns

Napoleon didn't just fight one battle. The Napoleonic wars were not won by one battle. In actual warfare, often, many battles are pitched as part of an overarching war to attain victory. And not until many battles are fought does a victor emerge. A general, or a king, goes on a war campaign. And this campaign consists of a series of battles that are strategically designed and carefully operated in order to gain victory.

This series of connected battles, towards the end of winning the war, is called a campaign or a war campaign. Likewise, wargamers who are interested in playing out historical wars also become interested not just in playing-out one given battle but in putting a series of related, connected battles together where the outcome of one battle affects the setup of the next battle. They're going to string these battles into a campaign. And this is what is called a wargames campaign.

The key feature of a wargames campaign is that more than one battle is set up and run as a game. But these separate games are connected to each other and the conclusion of one wargame has an affect on the setup of the next wargame much like how, in a real war, multiple battles are pitched before victory is clear.

Wargames campaigns can be done at very high levels of abstraction or at a very detailed level depending on the interest, time and energy of the wargaming group. But wargames campaigns require a different set of rules than those needed to resolve battles with miniatures on a table. You need one set of rules for how to determine the outcome of one given battle on a table of miniatures. But in order to connect the outcome of that battle with the next battle you need an overarching set of rules that logically and coherently connects disparate battles together. You need a set of campaign rules.

Map Campaign

There are many different ways to set up a campaign but I'm going to explain one particular kind called a "map campaign." Map campaigns are one of the first and earliest forms of wargames campaigns. In this kind of campaign you take your wargaming table and let's say that it is four feet wide and eight feet long. And you use it on, say, a scale of one inch for 10 or even 100 yards. Then you get out a very large sheet of paper, and a ruler, and you divide along the top every four inches. Then you divide along the side, every eight inches. So you’ve divided this very large piece of paper into separate rectangles, four inches by eight inches. Then each four by eight-inch rectangle represents one battle ground on which you could set up a wargame.

Now you take this sheet of paper, that has been divided into four by eight rectangles and you either overlap that on top of an actual historical map, to scale, or you invent your own situation and imagine an area and some terrain.

You might start one army in one town, and the other army in another town, and then the referee would ask the players for their orders. The players give very detailed written orders to the referee. This is a complex situation where ideally a given player is unaware of the other players’ orders until executed. This is a case where it not only helps but might possibly be necessary to have a referee. The referee reads the orders and determines for example, whether any two armies have sighted each other.

If two opposing forces have met, then you set up your game table for a miniature wargames battle and resolve the conflict using the rules for a wargame that your group had already been using. Upon the conclusion of the conflict you note the outcome of the battle and decide what that means going forward as the campaign continues. This map, then, becomes the means for piecing together all of these different possible battles that could be pitched on your gaming table.

Dungeons & Dragons as a Map Campaign

In Dungeons & Dragons, in the third Little Brown Book, “The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures,” Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson suggest that you need a map of the immediate terrain surrounding the entrance to the underworld. That map of the overall area would have suggested to fellow wargamers something like a map campaign.

Keeping this in mind helps us to remember what the subtitle meant when it said that these were rules for a wargames campaign. The word "campaign," has taken on new connotations in the on-going growth of Role Playing Games (RPGs). But the original sense of the word was that of logically connecting wargame battles into a single campaign. The rules for the resolution of combat were one game. The rules for connecting the wargames together and including things like supply chain, economics, population, recruitment, leadership, political powers, espionage, diplomacy, and the like, were a different game or even set of games. Remembering this clears up some confusion for folks that come to the original rules only familiar with RPGs that see themselves as a single unified rule-set.

The rules for resolving an individual battle are different from the rules that connect particular battles to one another in a coherent campaign. If your group were conducting a wargames campaign, just as your group over time may have developed its own rules for resolving individual battles, so too over time your club might have developed rules for a campaign so clear and coherent and so seemingly realistic to the historical period you were trying to game, that you might think, "Hey, this is shareable too."

So sometimes wargamers would publish not just rules for resolving battles but they would also publish rules for how to set up a war games campaign. One of the most famous of these is by Donald Featherstone. Another good example is C. S. Grant’s Wargames Campaigns. One really famous set of rules for wargames campaigns relevant to the topic of Dungeons and Dragons is Tony Bath’s, "Setting Up Wargames Campaign." Tony Bath deliberately chose a fantastical medieval wargames setting for his campaigns for the simple reason of not having to worry about getting the history perfectly correct. Wargamers were used to these two aspects of their hobby, battle resolution and campaign organization, being published separately from one another.

Rules complete as rules for campaigning

This is what Gygax and Arneson were doing when they first published Dungeons & Dragons. They were not publishing a comprehensive rule-set that included both campaign rules and combat resolution rules. They were publishing what it would take to coordinate other rules together into a campaign.

The booklets themselves often refer the reader to other rules, like Chainmail, or the boardgame Outdoor Survival. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson understood that any rule-set for resolving medieval warfare would do the trick. What Gygax and Arneson were offering were not so much the rules for running individual wargames battles, although some outlines of how to do so were suggested. They assumed that your local group had rule-sets available for resolving given wargames, so, instead, they were offering rules for how to string together a series of wargames into a campaign. The rules are not incomplete for a wargames hobbyist. They give everything needed to start one's own medieval fantasy wargames campaign as an amateur hobbyist.

We now have everything in place to make sense of the subtitle: "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns." I hope I have shown how helpful understanding the subtitle is to understanding what Gygax and Arneson were up to, and towards understanding what the original publication called "Dungeons & Dragons" has to offer -- and what it does not. I my posts inspire some readers to use the guidelines suggested in Dungeons & Dragons to launch their own, unique, medieval fantasy wargames campaign. 

Now that I have concluder this reflection on the subtitle, I am set for a two  part series on how we have come by the supertitle itself: Why "Dungeons & Dragons"? Once we have this in place even more will start to make senes about the original published rules for medieval fantasy wargames campaigns.

Fight on!

Pig Languages for Zany Fantasy Settings

I devised the following Pig Fantasy Languages for my Wildlands of Yawon Con Campaign I am developing. (Ran it at our Camp Allen Mini Con and will run it again at the NTRPGCon.)

In this sub-setting of the Perilous Realms there is common plus 8 other languages.

1. Ancient (human)

2. Barbarian (human)

3. Elvish

4. Dwarfish

5. Fell (orcs, goblins, etc.)

6. Chthonic

7. Elemental

8. Celestial

No “Alignment languages.” I've replaced them with Chthonic, Elemental and Celestial, respectively.

With regards to some of the instructions below, note that sometimes I move entire first syllables, and not just first letters, to the end, to make the word sound more like a real language or to avoid every word starting with a vowel.

I found Pig Elvish, first, with a google search. Can’t tell who first came up with it so I can’t give proper credit. Sorry! From Pig Elvish and good old Pig Latin I have imagined the rest.

Enjoy!

Pig Ancient (Human)

Igpay Atinlay

Pig Barbarian

Drop articles

Drop pronouns

No auxiliary verbs

Reduplicate first syllables of nouns

1 syllable words and verbs: append “um”

Orthography: ALL CAPS

Pig Elvish

1st letter to the end

3 letters or view: append “en”

4 letters or more: append random vowel

Change all Ks to Cs

Add umlauts to end and accent at will

Pig Dwarfish

1st letter to the end

3 letters or fewer: append “(z)ad”

4 letters or more: append “(‘)ka”

Change all Cs to Kh

Add apostrophes at will

Pig Orcish

As Pig Barbarian, above, and

appending and prefixing "(n)ash,” “(g)osh,” or “(g)ash” at will

Change all Cs to Ch, all Gs to Gh, Ks to Kh

Add apostrophes to separate excessive consonants

Pig Chthonic

1st letter to end

3 letters or fewer: prefix “(n)az”

4 letters or more: infix “(gh)ül”

Cs to Ch; Ks to Kh, Gs to Gh

Umlauts at will

Add apostrophes wherever necessary or fun

Pig Elemental

As Chthonic but

Prefix “(bo)ra”

Infix “rüm”

No other letter changes

Pig Celestial

As Chthonic but:

Prefix “La”

Infix “oo,” or “ü”

Use apostrophes to separate excessive vowels

Fight on!

(Image from link to: http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2012/08/pig-latin.html)

Setting-up a Medieval Fantasy Wargames Campaign

In a previous post, I made the point that Dungeons & Dragons (original) is an approach to setting up medieval fantasy wargames campaigns. Back in the day, folks within the miniature war-gaming hobby would share their rules for how to resolve individual combats. In addition to that, they would also sometimes share rules for how to string together a series of table sessions into a coherent war campaign. In these documents, they would not focus on rules for the wargames themselves -- they assumed they were writing to wargamers who already knew such rules and probably already had their own house rules as a local, hobby, gaming group. Instead, the focus was on how to make the games link to each other, reasonably, in order to game a "realistic" war campaign, and not just individual, disparate battles.

As I thought about these things while writing that post, I began to imagine what their pamphlets might have read like if Gygax and Arneson had written them in a more colloquial style that showed very clearly that they were talking to other wargamers about what had worked for them, what they had found to be fun. Because that was in fact what they were doing. It is just that it can be lost on many of us when we come backwards to the pamphlets from complete-rules-style RPG books rather than forward from their actual wargame hobby context. I offer my imaginings, below. The actual work would be a bit more detailed, but still short enough. I leave a lot that would be fleshed out as parenthetical summaries of what I imagine they would include in the actual text. Who knows, maybe someday I'll write this whole thought experiment up?

________

Dungeons & Dragons, or
How to Set-up a Medieval Fantasy Wargames Campaign

These booklets are a set of ideas for how to turn an ordinary wargames campaign into a Sword and Sorcery wargames campaign! As with any suggestions for setting up a wargames campaign, these brief booklets give some ideas and descriptions of what has worked for us in our own campaigns. Experiment with it and have fun. Always make it work for your local group.

As with any wargames campaign, you will need to assign sides. In simple fantasy, it is usually good enough just to have "good guys" and "bad guys." But, following Anderson and Moorcock, and hints at such in Tolkien, we have named our major sides "Law" and "Chaos." Monsters, fantasy figures and characters in general fall along such lines. Of course, brute beasts don't fall along any particular line and characters may choose to "opt out" and remain neutral. (Here would follow the list of fantasy creatures by line up, or what would come to be called "alignment.")

Choose rules for resolving combat and figure out a way to factor in the fantastic. We recommend Chainmail, especially with its fantasy supplement and man-to-man rules. We tried to make combat rules and fantasy creatures match up by having monsters and characters act equivalent to a certain number of figures in a typical wargame battle. We talk in terms of "hit dice," to make sense of this. Since we assume that you are already an experienced wargammer (since you are interested in reading pamphlets about setting up an entire campaign), we trust that you are familiar with this way of thinking of these things, so you get the point. But, real quick, here is an Alternative Combat resolution to consider (here they present the "Target-20" method they introduce by means of the "Alternative Combat" tables and the concept of "Armor Class" borrowed from naval wargaming).

Okay, now here is a fun new idea: what if players not only played as "generals" over armies, but actually played individual characters within the game-world? Characters can fall into different "classes," much like then different classes of troops in a typical wargame. Make sure they are different from each other, with clear cooperative properties, so that they can work well together as a Sword and Sorcery style adventuring party.

Here are some ideas for character classes: Start with the proverbial fighting-man. Next would be magic-users. Gygax doesn't much like the idea of magic-users being playing characters, since they are usually the bad-guy in Sword and Sorcery. However, some players may want to play chaos. And you could have "good" magic-users in your campaign. So you may want them to be a character class as well. Also, we had someone who wanted to play a "Van Helsing" type character, so we introduced the "cleric." They are kind of like a crusader. They can force undead to check morale (usually, as they are "undead," they would not check morale). We call this "turning." Clerics also have some of their own kind of spells that are a bit more religiously miraculous, like healing.

Don't forget standard fantasy races such as elves, dwarves and hobbits. Give them descriptions that match what you like from fantasy you have read and that you would like to incorporate into your campaign. Here is what we've done. (Here would follow race descriptions.)

Here is another cool idea: when you play as a general of armies, you usually start with a point-buy system for hiring your starting armies. Then, through play, you can gain more points to buy more troops, thus increasing your army, etc. Well, we thought of a cool way to make this work with players playing characters at a one-to-one scale. We call it "experience" and we measure it in "experience points." Just as armies have tactical goals, Sword and Sorcery characters have the goal of treasure extraction and "looting." So we have developed a way of matching the value of a treasure safely extracted by a character to a character's "experience points." Successful victories also grant some experience. These experience points then accumulate and grant the character advancement in the game-world. We use the term "level" to describe this game-world advancement. Each time a character gains a level they gain in the respective capacities and advantages of their particular class, just like armies growing more powerful in a regular wargames campaign. Here are some ideas. (Here would follow the tables for advancement, XP, HD, spells, etc.)

Now here are some ideas about how to incorporate magic-users and their spell-casting abilities into a wargame context that keeps things fair but still "wonderful." You will find your own way to work this stuff out for your campaign. (Here is where spell lists and descriptions would go.)

Oh, and to make sense of non-combat related eventualities, Arneson borrowed from Naval Wargaming the mechanic of "saving throws." Much like determining how much hull-damage a ship has taken from, say, an underwater mine, you can use saving throws for resolving how much damage a character takes from, say, falling down, drinking poison, or being hit by a magic-user's fireball! We have also found it useful for determining if a character or creature has been affected by a spell or not. As characters advance in level, eventually their chance to save increases as well.

Another thing that we discovered to be really fun is what came to be an emphasis on the more exploratory aspect of the game. Since we have allowed a 1:1 correspondence between player and in-game character, we can set up scenarios where characters explore an unknown, usually interior and often underworld environment. Think of this in terms of Stratego or Battleship, but even more complex and fascinating as the players will need to map a potentially elaborate underworld setting. This could be maze-like or labyrinthine. Or you could have secret spaces only discovered when they have circumnavigated it.

There are a lot of possibilities here. You can set up standard things from Sword and Sorcery that often fall outside the purview of standard wargames. For example, you can have tricks and traps and puzzles that the players can solve by means of their characters interacting with the environment. Really the sky is the limit here.

We have found that the combination of the 1:1 scale and an emphasis on underworld exploration has been absolutely amazing in giving our campaigns a real Sword and Sorcery feel!

Here are some ideas for monsters. We take advantage of the use of Hit Dice to represent relative fighting power and ferocity. Other natural and magical capacities can then be factored in. We describe below what we have developed for ourselves. Again, look at our examples and then work out what would work best for you in your campaign. (Here would follow the monster list and descriptions.)

Here are some ideas for treasure. Look to our examples and work out things for your campaign. (Here would be the tables for deterring treasure, magic items and their descriptions.)

Many wargames campaigns are "map campaigns," and that is what we suggest here. The scope of the game is infinite, but just for starting out we recommend a map of a local area with several opportunities for treasure hunting in dangerous and "underworld" environs, perhaps with one big dungeon nearby. This dungeon would comprise many subterranean levels that the players can easily begin exploring before branching out into the wider world.

Start with at least three levels to this main dungeon (in case they decide to go pretty deep from the start). As they explore, you can continue to add more levels to the dungeon and expand your map to include wider kingdoms and wildernesses -- even a whole fantasy world, eventually, if you want to.

Oh, and if you find your players suddenly want to strike out into the wilderness for an off-hand adventure, Arneson has found it really fun and easy to use the Outdoor Survival board (Avalon Hill). Here are some ideas for random encounters and what to do with some of the symbols on the board in order to render them a bit more like exploring in a medieval fantasy wilderness. (Here follows the suggestions for castles, random encounters, jousting, etc.)

Be sure to keep things fresh. This is fantasy so go crazy! For example, players might think that they have "cleared" an area only to see that a bunch of orcs or goblins have made their home there -- perhaps, very thankful for their newly cleared-out digs!

Most importantly, keep it fun and make it your own. Let us know what you come up with! We always improve as referees by hearing about what other referees are doing with their local clubs.

Fight on!
_________

If you have a medieval fantasy wargames campaign that sounds like something inspired by the above -- no matter what mechanics you are using for resolving encounters -- you are playing "original" Dungeons & Dragons. So, again, I will say:

Fight on!

Elves of the Perilous Realms

Born in the Golden Age, rulers of the Silver Age, the elves of the Perilous Realms, though diminishing, are nevertheless a force to be reckoned with. The elves were born under the gracious rule of the triumphant celestial Powers after their imprisonment of the chthonic Powers in the depths of the earth.

With the fall of the Golden Age, due to the broken watch of the Powers, the fell races rushed in, autochthonically, as part of the re-ascendence of the chthonic Powers. (From ever on the fell regenerate themselves through abiogenesis, but more on that later. We must know some of the fell to tell the tale of the elves.)

The elves experienced the loss of the safety of their Powerful rulers and fell into the disarray of fell attacks. Thus the elves organized themselves and in the name of the Powers they still loved and thus they fought off the fell and established rule throughout the Perilous Realms. This was the dawn of the Silver Age.

But they did not simply conquer the fell, they also enslaved them. Cultures, languages and bloodlines intermingled. It was at this time that men were born into the world. Just as the elves had basked in the rulership of the Powers, so now, in their youth, men rested in the benevolent rule of the elves. So long as they were their loyal subjects and grateful vassals, the elves enjoyed the company of men.

But the time came for the fall of the Silver Age as the elves fell into opulence and decadence. Thus we come to the second dark age. At this time the undead first appear and lycanthropy escapes from twisted alchemical laboratories. Men find themselves in an analogous position to their elven lords. Just as they lost the protection of the Powers, so too now men found themselves without the glorious Silver Age civilizations.

And, just as the elves had fought back and won their own empire, so too men formed the empires of the Bronze Age. As men increased, even the elves that did not retire to the uttermost West began to diminish in both magic and in number.

During this time, Some elves sided with the men as the only way to survive and the obvious heirs to their previous glory. Happy for the protection and friendship of the newly formed empires of men, these entered into loose alliances and maintained simple pastoral ways as deer herders dwelling in woodland villages high upon enchanted flets. These became known as the Wood Elves. The Wood Elves are on the side of the Law.

Most of the elves, however, fled into the wildernesses of the world into a forlorn life of hunting and gathering. As human hunter and gatherer societies usually consist of a few extended family groups meeting occasionally as entire tribes, elven hunter gatherers walk completely solitaire, meeting occasionally in small family groups. Their dwellings are stumps and ancient trees which only they know how to open and close. These became known as the Sylvan Elves. The Sylvan Elves take no sides any longer but their own. They are Neutral.

A few elves, however, resented the rise and ascendence of men. They refused to relinquish the former glory of the Silver Age, or even admit that it had ended. These elves dwell in enchanted castles and keeps, waylaying human travelers and imprisoning them. They try to continue to live lives of opulence and excess and to convince others of the same. These became known as the Gray Elves (either for their grave countenance upon meeting men, or perhaps due to their typical gray cloaks or, again, perhaps for the grayness of the stones of their castles -- when visible, whichever no one knows). The Gray Elves disdain human law and the ever increasing tide of human rule which they claim encroaches upon their rightful inheritance. They are therefore on the side of Chaos.

Now, with the Bronze Age Collapse, in this Age of Adventure, when parties explore the wilder lands of peril, they may be waylaid or may discover the hidden homes of any of these kinds of elves. But woe to those who fall into the traps of the Sylvan Elves, and even more so to the enchantments of the Gray Elves.

In terms of mechanics, the vast majority of the remaining elves within the Perilous Realms are the hidden and secretive Sylvan Elves. But just exactly because they are so well hidden, they are the least likely to be encountered. So, 1:6 chance that a random elven encounter in the wilderness is with one of these. If so, it means that the encounter happened at night.

The greatest minority of elves would be the Gray Elves. But just exactly because they are so militant against human rule, they are always the elves encountered when a stronghold or castle is elven. Or, if randomly encountered, 1:3 chance that it is a party of Gray Elves.

Finally, a significant minority of the remaining elves within the Perilous Realms are the friendly and lawful Wood Elves. Whenever discovering an elven village, it will be Wood Elves. And most of the time, 5:6, if there is a random elven encounter in woodland regions. Otherwise the chance of encountering a party of Wood Elves is 2:3.

In terms of playing-characters, the kind of elf you play would be based upon your choice of alignment. A backstory could quickly be spun about how you choose adventure and the company of men, etc.

This allows me to blend rather seamlessly Tolkien-style, Anderson-style and folklorish elven source material. I intend this to contribute to a rich, interesting, but still thoroughly vanilla fantasy setting -- one of the main goals of the Perilous Realms campaign!

Fight on!

Ages of the Perilous Realms

I am more a rules-imaginer than a setting-imaginer. But I'm getting more into exploring my campaign setting than ever before.

There are multiple overlapping ages of rise and collapse of mighty civilizations that define the Perilous Realms and the kinds of ruins, underworlds, treasures, magic items and artifacts that may be found. Here is the myth, or legend of the various apocalypses and dark ages that led to the current state of the Perilous Realms, my campaign setting.

The Diamond Aeon

In this age, the archetypal powers were young and playful children of the Most High.

They knew their place, and, although childishly mischievous at times, obeyed the will of their Father.

They reigned over the cosmos like living stars.

In the end, the archetypal powers come of age, and conflict ensues.

They rebel against their Father and are thrown into the chaos of war.

In terms of the way we think of things now, we are talking about billions of years ago. Thus this loosely corresponds to “big bang” through cooling down of the universe. In Tolkienesque terms, this is like the Valaquenta. The key to this fall narrative is REBELLION. So whenever we see rebellion in the campaign setting it links somehow to the Powers.

The Golden Age

Law and chaos draw their lines for the first time.

The Celestials seek to establish the joy of the Diamond Aeon through Law, and often fall into rigid legalism.

The Chthonic powers seek to empower the unbridled joy of the Diamond Aeon through following the passions of the underworld and often fall into the cruelty and whim.

Many powers opt out and hide as spirits of nature and life ("neutral" elemental powers).

The war shapes much of the terrain of the Perilous Realms.

Ultimately, the Celestials drive the Chthonics under earth and imprison them there, only to serve for fertility and virility.

The Celestials establish a Golden Era of light and genius upon the earth — with unparalleled cyclopean edifices and artifacts!

At this time, the fay races are born into the wonder of direct contact with their fascinated rulers.

But the Celestials become too confident in their victory, and their watches fall into indiscipline.

In the end, the earth cannot contain the chaos that errupts.

The final war leads to total apocalypse and a dark age ensues.

 

In terms of the way we think of things now, we are talking about millions of years ago. Thus this loosely corresponds to a kind of smashing together of the mesozoic and its great meteoric (heavenly) and volcanic (chthonic) apocalypse together with the monolithic stone age. This nicely gives us cavemen with dinosaurs! This era gives a chance to engage the Lovecraft Mythos. The key to this fall narrative is COMPLACENCY.

Interlude: The Age of Darkness

The fell races are born and run free but unorganized.

The Silver Age

Out of the shadows of the Age of Darkness, the Fay races form an alliance, consulting what Powers still remain in their weakness and sorrow.

With the advice of their cosmic elders, the fay together stem the tide of the spawning hoard.

The elves rise to power over all other fay.

They establish a Silver Era under the light of their matron, Mother Moon.

They enslave the fell races, especially the orcs, to do their bidding — and on their backs they build mighty cities, towers, and palaces unrivaled by any save the powers themselves.

But the orcs and their fellow fell never forget their enslavement.

At this time, Men arrive, the fay know not from where — nor do the men! They are in awe of the elves.

But the elves in their assumption of opulence grow fatuous, weak, superficial, degenerate — and their civilizations fall into decadence.

Thus they become easy targets for fell rebellion — if they are not dragged down by their own petty divisions and meaningless wars of trumped up honor.

The collapse of the elves is a slow and painful decline, leading, ultimately, to a second dark age.

In terms of how we think now, we are talking about several millennia ago. Thus this roughly corresponds to the great pre-historic civilizations of myth. This era allows me to smash together Tolkien's and Anderson's elves. The key to this fall narrative is DECADENCE.

Interlude: The Second Dark Age

Pacts with the chthonic power, Necros render the first Undead. Alchemical and medicinal warfare fabricate the disease of lycanthropy. Monsters proliferate.

The Bronze Age

The bronze age is the first age of Men.

In the memory of the elven empires of old, and in devotion to, and under the patronage of what remains of the mighty Powers, men erect fabulous temples. Around these temples, cities grow up — Ur, Babel, Byblos, Shangri-La, Hamunaptra, Aqaba, Thebes, Indus, Eddo, Techlan, Cyprus.

These temple-cities become the center of mighty and diverse empires in trade with one another of both goods and philosophies.

At some point, men cannot remember how or why these great empires all suddenly (with decades of one another) fell into complete collapse.

It is not likely that the collapse came about either because of internal disputes or because of external wars, although these played a part, but from the evidence it seems the “gods” (Powers) no longer favored them and removed their blessings of abundance.

This is the great Bronze Age Collapse.

The human population was decimated and the survivors fled to hills and mountains to survive.

The “Ancients” left behind powerful ruins, tombs, sepulchers and crypts — of frightful aspect to the fragile humans who remained.

In terms of how we think now this represents several centuries ago. Thus this is a fantasy version of the actual Bronze Age Collapse. This allows us to engage classical mythology and legend. The key to this fall narrative is divine ABANDONMENT.

Now: The Age of Adventure

Now is the age of adventure!

Now law and chaos reenter their struggle for vast civilizations of lawful glory or unbridled passions and dominion.

Now mighty fighting-men and Amazons rise up to pit their thews against the dying of the light!

Now over-confident users of magics seek their own through initiations into the mysteries of the arcane.

Now the church proclaims a gospel of universal order under a king of heaven and sends out crusaders (“clerics”) to establish Law: by word or by fist.

Now fearless — or foolish — adventurers commit to mighty peregrinations into forgotten wildernesses and yawning openings of the mythic underworld.

In terms of how we think now, this represents about the last millennium. The Perilous Realms campaign begins in an imaginary year 990. In a sense, this is a Third Dark Age. It roughly corresponds to a mash up of the Iron Age and both the Western and Eastern Middle Ages. This age engages Leiber's universe of Nehwon. The key narrative here, is, of course, WAR and ADVENTURE.

All of these previous beings remain: powers, fay, fell, lycanthropes, undead of the bronze age— each slightly weaker than before. Each remembers and grieves the loss of their once great status. But now they are lost in wildernesses and trapped in nightmares of the underworld.

Adventurers may stumble upon all of these different layers of civilization, languages and artifacts:

Powers: celestials, elementals, chthonicoi and their physical manifestation as giants and sylvan monsters

Fay: elves, dwarves, gnomes, and, after a fashion, even the hobbits

Fell: kobolds, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, gnolls; and

Ancient men: Aegyptian, Anatolian, Levantine, Etruscan, Mycenean, Assyrian, Hittite, Wotan, Indus, Nod, Jomon, and more.

Their stories give clues to one another and nest within one another.

Fight on!

OSR Questionnaire

When I first became aware of the OSR, I was excited about it and learned as much as I could. After discovering Dungeons & Dragons (original) and the communities that support it, I no loner feel like I am "a part of" the OSR in a straightforward way.

It seems at first the OSR was about a return to the original, wargame style of play at the time of the birth of D&D as a hobby. Part of this included a return to a more DIY approach, both in terms of setting (not relying upon someone else's published, professional, setting) and "rulings not rules" (realizing that the local referee, group and game play itself was more important for developing both the rules and the shared setting than strict adherence to a professionally developed set of rules and settings).

In other words, the OSR represented to me a return to D&D as a hobby, rather than a consumer product. The hobby approach empowers creativity. The consumer approach makes passive clients. As a hobby it comes with a hobbying community of idea-sharing and mutual support. The internet facilitates such a hobby community in a large and broad way.

Much of what I have seen the OSR become since I got back into gaming in 2013 is a proliferation of small-scale or semi-professional game-resource publication. There is a lot of really good stuff out there. But, just exactly because of my more hobby-based, localist approach, I do not find myself using other people's modules very often, however professionally slick or "old school."

However, much of the stuff published as "OSR" falls into the current cultural zeitgeist that "creative" indicates, or is equivalent to, being edgy, troubled, dark, or "morally ambiguous." A lot of talk out there is about how we need to eschew "tropes" of fantasy in order to be "truly creative." In some cases it seems that the goal is to be as edgy as possible while still playing in a new school, story-game style. "Mapping sucks." "Challenge people with a moral dilemma." Etc. I find none of this attractive.

The following questionnaire comes from a big OSR personality named Zak. I do not follow his work much, honestly. But I stumbled across the questionnaire from other folk's blog posts and google+ posts where they filled it in in interesting ways. That is a good gift to the community, so, thank you, Zak. So if you are still reading, here goes:

1. One article or blog entry that exemplifies the best of the Old School Renaissance for me:

Philotomy's Musings

2. My favorite piece of OSR wisdom/advice/snark:

My own pithy zen-like saying in the spirit of Matt Finch's "Primer":

Amateur hobby, not professional product.

Medieval fantasy wargames campaigning is a hobby, so dive in for amateur fun. Stop expecting "professional production quality," and go for the joy and creativity that comes from a community of amateurs sharing ideas and swapping stories -- hobbyists who do it for the fun of it, not for profit. Don't passively receive wargames campaigning as some product rendered to you as a mere consumer of what "experts" say you are supposed to like or agree upon as standard. Instead, Fight on!

3. Best OSR module/supplement:

Tomb of the Sea Kings

4. My favorite house rule (by someone else):

"Crits" & "Fumbles": "Natural 20" does full (not double) damage. Don't do fumbles. Fumbles punish everyone with unfun. Both rulings come from Philotomy (see above).

5. How I found out about the OSR:

In 2013 I was surfing the web and remembered D&D then I plunged into what was going on and found my way to the OSR and, through them, to the original rules for medieval fantasy wargames campaigns.

6. My favorite OSR online resource/toy:

Mr. Josh Bear's ODD Referee Tool. I use it every session.

7. Best place to talk to other OSR gamers:

Because of what I mean by "OSR," as a return to old school, war-gaming style of play, together with, but not limited to a DYI attitude:

Finarvyn's ODD74 proboard, and
The Knights & Knaves Alehouse forum.

These are old-school internet formats that actually encourage conversation and not disappearing content:

This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

8. Other places I might be found hanging out talking games:

My own blog (you are here). I just don't post very often or very consistently. Sorry about that. (I hope that it is due to the fact that most of my hobby energy goes to actually gaming weekly.)

I also hang out and talk about games with real-live people that I know. Once a year I get to go to the North Texas Role-playing Game Convention and I get to talk to even more real live people about the game.

I followed folks on google+ but just used it to share my blog posts. It is now going the way of the dodo. We will see what happens with the migration to MeWe.

9. My awesome, pithy OSR take nobody appreciates enough:

It is not my own, but Delta's Target 20 combat and save resolution, combined with my own house-ruled hit-dice approach for distinguishing classes from one another. This has recently been "historically justified" by none other than Jon Peterson himself!

10. My favorite non-OSR RPG:

Diplomacy.

11. Why I like OSR stuff:

The OSR stuff that I like, when I like it, is stuff that has come out of someone's loving, amateur DYI hobby that is full of archetypal fantasy, full of interesting puzzles to solve, and immediately usable at the table (= good, easily readable, well-keyed maps).

12. Two other cool OSR things you should know about that I haven’t named yet:

Wayne Rossi's The Original D&D Setting. Just so good.
Paul Gorman's Magic Swords.

13. If I could read but one other RPG blog but my own it would be:

Please, don't read mine if you are only going to read two RPG blogs! I don't have nearly enough content. So, I get to name two. Since I have already mentioned Delta's D&D Hotspot, Jon Peterson's Playing at the World blog, and Wayne Rossi's Semper Initiativus Unum blog, above, then I get two more:

Jeff's Game Blog.
Hack & Slash.

Dyson Logos' Dodecahedron should get an honorable mention. His mapping skill and artistry is only improving. Unfortunately, for me, the actual gameable content of the maps has become increasingly blah and unusable over time. Dig back into his earlier stuff. Less pretty (perhaps, I still think it is great), but far more usable for old school play: lots of overlapping rooms and corridors, secret hatches, passageways, doors, traps. Just more interesting and inspiring for my style of play.

Finally, Bryce Lynch's Ten Foot Pole should receive another honorable mention. I agree with his module criteria about 80%, and that is about as much as any mature adult can expect to agree with another mature adult if they are not members of a cult. My main points of disagreement are where he tends towards "realism" and "ecology," whereas I enjoy a more "funhouse" approach.

14. A game thing I made that I like quite a lot is:

My own cumulative setting and house rules. I mean not just The Perilous Realms supplement I published or the simplified version I have as a page on my blog, but all of the cumulative rulings I've tracked due to actual play in the campaign. I have it all compiled in a readable but loving imitation of the Judge's Guild Ready Ref Sheets. I call it "Campaign Aids and Inspirations." It is where I put all my generative charts, tables, and decision trees. I haven't shared that document and I may never. The point is for you to develop your own settings and rulings.

15. I'm currently running/playing:

The Perilous Realms, a medieval fantasy wargames campaign. I use my own campaign world based upon an anachronistic mash up of our own medieval and ancient past. Each particular wilderness is the Outdoor Survival board set in such a way that the river flows to the nearest major body of water. The particular wilderness right now I call the Hollow Lands. They lie underneath the Mazandarin Sea, the nearest major city being Hecatompylos along the Silk Route. I use my own house rules built upon Dungeons & Dragons (the original rules for fantastic medieval wargames campaigns).

16. I don't care whether you use ascending or descending AC because:

If I am at your table, I trust you will tell me if my attack was successful. If you are at my table, I will tell you if your attack was successful. Thank you, Dave Arneson.

17. The OSRest picture I could post on short notice:

Please see above.

Fight on!