Playing Alignments - Chaotic Evil

Chaotic Evil, I'd imagine, is not a common alignment to play. Why? Well, it's generally interpreted as "Kill anything you see all the time without any regard to anything", which doesn't really allow for much in the way of joining a party. To me, that's idiotic.

Sure, someone who did that would be chaotic evil, but not everyone who is chaotic evil is like that. Orcs are listed as 'usually chaotic evil', in 3.5. In 4e, if it lists alignments, they are probably the same. With the above interpretation, no orcs would exist, because they would be too blind with rage to even mate. Yet, orcs have functional tribes and occasionally armies. Why?

Chaotic evil just means that you care little for rules and less for altruism. A single orc, coming across a single unarmed human, with no witnesses in sight, would probably kill him. Why? Why not? The human has stuff, maybe some of it is worth something. The orc doesn't care about sparing his life; there's no reason to.

However, let's say a single, unarmed human approaches an orc tribe. He's approaching in the open, not hiding, and wearing the colors of a local citystate. The orc chieftain, or at least his advisor, would order that the human be left alone, as he is obviously a messenger. Yes, they are evil, and yes, they don't respect law with regards to killing messengers, but they are also likely self-serving and know that mercenary work can pay well, even for orcs. It's rare that someone is so devoted to creating chaos and death that he won't act in his own self interest when he can.

How do tribes of Chaotic Evil creatures even form? They form on the basis of self-preservation and greed. A big gnoll can beat up a smaller gnoll. The larger gnoll is now a leader of a tribe of two. He keeps his lesser kin in line with beatings and harsh treatment, and he slowly brings in others of his race, or other races, by the same methods. The larger gnolls in his retinue get power to control the smaller ones. On occasion, some gnoll will become powerful enough to kill the previous boss, and thus will show that he can control the group. There will be constant infighting and working to get ahead in the positions, but the tribe itself is still cohesive. Self-preservation is a powerful tool for chaotic evil races. Besides, gnolls know that a single gnoll has a hard time raiding a human trade caravan, but a pack of forty can do it easily.

What, then, about Chaotic Evil PCs? Assuming we are discussing a party of chaotic evil PCs, they are probably using the latter justification for the gnolls: power. Together, they can do more than they can separately. They can make more money, get more food, sleep with more women, whatever. This is what a good number of bandits do. Bandits are evil people, the occasional Chaotic Good Robin Hood not withstanding. They band together in order to have the combined strength needed to achieve their goals. In a party of Chaotic Evil PCs, all of the players should both be expecting the others to grab the loot and run, and planning their own way to grab the loot and run. They don't feel allegiance to their compatriots, and if they have enough money to achieve their goals, they are as likely to run off with it as to actually stay. Is this disruptive to a campaign? Yes. Does it immediately provide a possibly awesome adventure chasing down the now DM-controlled former PC, with that guy that you just met in the tavern (a new PC from same player)? Also yes. Bonus points to the PC that sets up a stronghold during play, documents it as a full dungeon with traps and henchmen, and then scampers off with the loot. Now there's an entire dungeon of enemies, topped by a suddenly more powerful and well-armed ex-PC!

What about introducing, preferably secretly, a new chaotic-evil PC into an established neutral/good party? You have to do this knowing that it will result in conflict eventually, and you have to know your players can handle this sort of pseudo-betrayal. Still, this can make for a lot of interesting roleplaying hooks.

Let's say you have a fairly typical "good" party. A Chaotic Neutral rogue, a Neutral Good Fighter, a Neutral Good Cleric, and maybe a Chaotic Good Wizard. The fighter dies in a dungeon, and does not respond to resurrection. The group, for some reason knowing that someone else exists that will join their group, goes looking and finds another fighter in a tavern or somesuch. The man seems a capable combatant, isn't a cringing sociopath, and agrees to join on for a full share. The new fighter introduces himself, talks about his past fighting injustice, etc etc. The DM perhaps requires a few secret bluff rolls, or just wings it if the party seems to believe the guy. The new fighter is Chaotic Evil, and is basically just joining up for the loot and chance to kill some things.

Does this new party member have to attack the other PCs? No, he doesn't have to. In fact, he shouldn't. He knows how powerful they are, and he knows that as the odd man out, he'd get slaughtered. What he wants is money and magical items. Maybe he stays on for a while, studying them, keeping track of their safeguards and their wealth. He might make a move to steal everything at some point, but he'd be sure to have an escape ready. More likely, the party would eventually see what he is, and force him out. The player signed up for this character to be lost the moment he put "Chaotic Evil" on that character sheet, but hopefully still had fun doing it.

If the Chaotic Evil fighter wasn't killing the party, how would they find out that he was chaotic evil? He's evil. No matter how hard someone tries to hide their moral core, parts of it slip out on occasion. He's unnecessarily abusive to captured monsters or people. He taunts injured foes, and takes great pleasure in dealing pain to his enemies. He verbally assaults NPCs, and occasionally runs into trouble with the city guards. Perhaps he even runs into the occasional law officer who recognizes him from some old crime, and has to talk his way out of arrest. There are a lot of things that can make for some interesting party dynamics here. The guy might even be worth keeping around after being revealed, just for his efficacy in combat.

Anyway, give some thought to Chaotic evil characters, and you might be surprised that they can be as nuanced as any other alignment. You may even consider playing one, just for fun. Game on!

RPG Carnival - Transformations

A new RPG Carnival is up this month, dealing with "Transitions and Transformations". I intended on writing for last month's "Religion" theme, but never got around to it. Anyway, there are all kinds of Transitions and Transformations in RPGs, to be sure, and that leaves me a bit spoiled for choice.

I think I will go with a literal transformation that most RPG players are at least passingly familiar with: polymorphing. This can be either lycanthropic, wild-shape, or magically induced, among probably a thousand other varieties. I will focus on the above three. They are each fairly different processes, but I think they share enough to talk about in one post here.

More than it might seem by conventional thought, people associate with and define themselves by their physical shape. When you look in the mirror, you expect to see a certain figure looking back at you. If you notice a new pimple, or a few extra pounds, it's worrisome or at least annoying. Cutting your hair drastically or shaving off a raging neckbeard can immensely change not only your physical looks but also your self-image, confidence, and even personality, in one way or another. One of the most horrifying things imaginable would be to look in the mirror and see someone else entirely looking back. It would lead to a terrifying loss of identity, as well as any sense of permanency in your own existence.

How, then, can people take polymorphing so casually in gaming?

As a lycanthrope, the physical change is, at least in the beginning, unwelcome or even unexpected. Suddenly, your body twists and contorts, your bones snapping and reforming as a lupine or ursine shape, your flesh prickling and growing wiry fur, your teeth extending quickly and violently, your fingernails stretch and tear, becoming vicious claws. Is it any surprise, after this monstrous transformation, that your mind would tend to snap? You have become an abomination of nature and foul magics, a dangerous half-breed of animal and human. In the depths of your mind, the animal encroaches, hungry and violent. The wolf or bear in you doesn't recognize this wooden structure, filled with panicking, hairless apes and the strange, chemical smells of alcohol and lamp oil. Your human mind, with it's capability for higher reason and concepts such as reciprocity and civilization, fades in the face of this new, predatory will. No longer capable of knowing why you are here, why these tattered strips of cloth are hanging off of you, or why those apes are now holding implements you dimly recognize as dangerous. Of course you would lash out in violent anger. When you awoke after the night of slaughter, your mind and body once again human, is it surprising that the memory of your deeds would be wiped away or suppressed? You awoke in the woods, with a splitting headache and no clothing. Perhaps you just... maybe you just got drunk last night. Yes, certainly that's what it was. You would never do any of those things that you half-remember from your dreams, even if evidence is shown that points to the contrary.

Now, obviously, wild shape is pretty far removed from lycanthropy. As the form is assumed intentionally, and through communion with and understanding of the natural world, the transformation itself is less violent and painful. Simply put, you might be human one moment, feel a tug as your body shifts, and then become a bear the next moment. Now, as a druid in wild shape, you generally maintain your own mind. Still, with your new shape and power, certain effects have to manifest. Imagine, as a human, being mugged by some punk in an alley. You're under his power, in a sense, as he holds a knife to you threateningly. Suddenly, you triple in physical strength, grow to twelve feet tall, gain claws and teeth capable of tearing flesh nearly effortlessly, and lose your ability to speak, cutting off diplomacy as an option. His knife is no longer a threat of any real scope. Certainly, your new and powerful position makes you feel a bit feral and violent. Power corrupts, and physical power is included in that. Of course it would be easy to bat the mugger thirty feet across the street, then jump after him and maul him to death. As a human, you would never bite into another person's flesh, but after changing, it just feels... natural. So, as a druid, think about how powerful being a bear would feel, how fast and nimble you would be as a cheetah or panther, or how invisible you could be as a fly on the wall. Put some thought into your animal forms, and how you act within them.

Compared to wild shape, Polymorph as the spell is simply a matter of scope, as are variants such as Shapechange. However, they are also a different sort of approach. Druids can become animals due to their connection with nature. They already empathize with the creatures, and becoming one physically is just an extension of that. As such, their minds are likely easier to recover when they shift back. With magic, you are bending the rules of the world, changing yourself physically and possibly mentally (if mental stats are changed by the given spell) into another creature. Instead of growing to twelve feet and gaining claws, you suddenly go from a physically weak, wiry human to a colossal Red Dragon. Your senses are a dozen times more acute, your slightest movement shakes the ground itself. With a breath, you can devastate huge areas of the landscape. Your very appearance causes terror and fear all around you. Your mind expands to that of an ancient beast, and the most difficult concepts and theorems for humans to grasp suddenly become child's play. Your mind, to an extent, begins to know the lust for treasure, for the glitter of gold and the tinkling of coins, that all dragons feel. Your greatly expanded size shows you that your former companions are just ants. They are only playthings; petty nothings before your great might and ancient power.

If a shift to a dragon would be so powerful, a shift to an outsider would be even more disruptive mentally. Consider changing into a Balor for the purposes of combat. This requires Shapechange or the like, a ninth-level spell. Extremely powerful magic, challenging the gods themselves with your control of reality. Anyway, you still have all the changes of a physical variety, but also something a bit more disturbing. In your new form, in every beat of your six hearts, with every twist of your warped muscles, and with every thought in your wracked and altered mind, is geared towards evil and malice. You have dozens of powers and talents now that exist solely to destroy and torment. Without any conscious effort, your hands twist when you strike, adding extra tearing to any wound, causing excess pain and blood loss. Holding back and trying to take prisoners becomes difficult, if not impossible. Treating a prisoner humanely is beyond your imagining. He is weak. He should suffer. All mortals should suffer, and you finally have the strength, intelligence, and supernatural powers to make them do so. It should be no wonder that wizards are known for going mad with power. Who wouldn't?

This post is just intended to get you thinking about transformations as more than just skill and ability changes. Think about how different you would feel and act if your entire form were suddenly changed to another. Think about the animal or magical influences on your mind, whether lycantrhopic, animalistic, or supernatural. Make transformations such as these more interesting your campaigns, and it will pay off in your roleplaying.

Handling Human Encounters

Humans, it would seem, would be the easiest sort of encounter to handle. Certainly, everyone who plays D&D with any real capability is at least human in some regard, feykin and furries included, if it's that sort of group. I mention folks like fey and furries because I want to illustrate that humanity has a great range of people. Any characteristic of a dwarf could be that of a human. The same goes for elven, fairy, halfling, pixie, draconian, and just about any other racial or animalistic characteristic outside of physical ones. Humans are generally the only race in most settings that are described in any way other than a monoculture, and I look at that as a statement towards the variety they are capable of.

Thus, human encounters can be a great deal more difficult to handle than, for instance, dwarves. When a PC approaches a dwarf, he has a general idea in his mind about how the dwarf will act. A dwarf is a dwarf in most settings, after all. He is probably a stoneworker of some variety, and if he isn't, he is probably a metalworker. He is probably either drinking now or waiting until his next drink. He's probably a bit gruff, but trustworthy in general. Avoiding such monocultures might be another post.

Now, when a PC approaches a human, what can he assume? Basically, a PC expecting to talk to a human in a D&D setting can expect that the human speaks common. That's about it. Humans don't tend towards law, or towards chaos. Towards good or evil. They don't favor one class over another. They can be abject liars, sociopathic killers, saintly priests, or demonic servants. They don't necessarily favor living in any particular environment, aside from the concerns of comfort and survivability. One human may cherish the natural beauty of the forest, while another may look at that same forest and see nothing but thousands of gold worth of logging to be done. In OD&D, humans are also the only race capable of the highest levels of power and advancement. Humans are always shown as adaptable as well, thus meaning that the same human might not act anywhere near the same way from encounter to encounter.

How then to handle them realistically? Be a human. Don't just be yourself though, but become the NPC. Think about his or her circumstances. Think about his or her history, even if it's only fleshed out so much as "A farmer born near Woodvale." What does a farmer, used to defending his home against bandits and raiders in these troubled times, think when he sees five heavily armed adventurers approaching, backed with a dozen hired mercenaries/porters? I'll tell you what he's likely to do. He'll shout to his family to get into the house and lock the door, and he'll run off to ring the town bell. If an alarm system is too far away or not present at all, he'll pick up his father's old sword and ready it. He will be tense at least.

What if, instead of a farmer, you have a nobleman? Well, put yourself in the nobleman's shoes. He probably defines himself by his title. Let's say this guy is a Count, currently being visited by the PCs in his estate. A Count holds a very prestigious title, and a great deal of land. He was almost certainly, by necessity of his rank, born into his nobility. This man has never done a day of work in his life. He dismisses peasants and other callers as unworthy of his presence. When told that his vassals have no bread, he suggests they eat cake instead. What then when a group of commoners, having the gall to call themselves adventurers, approach his estate for a meeting? Well, if they aren't called for, they won't even be allowed in. If they are called for, they won't be allowed in with weaponry of any sort, and not in armor either. They must show proper respect, to the point of not speaking unless spoken to, keeping their head and eyes lowered, kneeling in respect before being told to rise, and other such humilities. The Count will likely speak with a haughty, apathetic tone, and be extremely incensed at what might be considered a very minor faux pas to those of lesser station. By no means would he allow contradictions of his statements by commoners visiting his hall. Secondly, he holds awareness that if he had his guards kill all of the visitors, no one would ever question his word that they had caused the fight in the first place. To the players' advantage, he might respond well to obsequiousness, or perhaps respond even more so to a commoner with a knife at his throat. Deprived of guards that are able to save him, he will likely be very compliant with attackers, as he has no capability of defending himself.

What about a foreigner? A stranger in a strange land? Perhaps he would identify in a way with the adventurers, as both of them are outsiders to the common people around him. Perhaps he speaks common with an accent, or a heavy dialect that makes him difficult to understand. Perhaps the lingua franca in his land is Orcish, due to centuries of oppression. Maybe his society puts less emphasis on personal liberties and the accumulation of wealth, and he finds the adventurers' "be mercenaries; kill and loot" policy to be completely abominable. Maybe in his culture, people go to great lengths not to show any of their flesh aside from their eyes, and he is extremely uncomfortable with the women parading about in their pauper skirts that are little more than rags. He may think little of lying for personal gain, or he may see it as tantamount to murder in severity. It's possible that in his country, carrying weapons in full view in the middle of a metropolis is common practice, and he is unnerved by having his sword taken from him at the gates. Perhaps his nation is at war, or has a history of war, with the nation he is now visiting. A PC approaching an obviously foreign-born NPC has no idea what to expect, and that can be an important part of the encounter.

An interesting peculiarity to human encounters is that they may not be human at all. Humans are by far the standard, most populous race in most fantasy worlds, as well as the most naive. If a doppelganger, changeling, were-whatever, dragon, angel, demon, or any other sort of camoflagable race were to fake being a particular core race, it would probably be human. How can one non-magically sort demons or dragons faking being a foreigner from a violent society from the actual humans? One might not be able to, which allows for even more variety for 'human' encounters.

So give some thought to how humans react in your games. They shouldn't be blasé, mechanically helpful, or generally bland and boring. Every human is an entire person, with his own hopes, dreams, culture, upbringing, moral core, and dozens of other characteristics. Make each person a person, and your world will feel more true and alive.

ODnD Searching and Traps

It's been a few weeks since that OD&D game that seems to have caused a huge, albeit temporary, flush of traffic to my oft-neglected blog. I don't doubt that RPGBloggers and an apparent link in a OD&D forum helped as well. Anyway, this post is an exploration of something that caused a bit of confusion for me, as DM, in that OD&D game: searching and traps.

The problem, stemming no doubt from my D&D 3.0 roots, is the matter of searching and the efficacy of such. I get that in OD&D, having a room with traps that exist as part of the room is important. Rather than "roll to disarm", the party should have to figure out a more physical and 'real' way to disarm the trap based on logic and reason. That's fine and dandy. The issue is thus: In 3.x, 4e, and possibly other earlier editions, you roll to search for traps. Rogues in particular, and others to a much lesser extent, can search a room for traps by rolling a die. "I search for traps, I get a 18+8 for skill, so 26". Then, you compare 26 to some DC, and there you go. They found it or didn't.

In OD&D, there is no such mechanic. How then to respond to "I search for traps"? The primer, linked in the previous post I believe, suggests requiring very specific things to look for. "I search for traps" is then insufficient, requiring something more akin to "I search for a tripwire across the hall" or "I look for cracks in the floor which might be indicative of a pit trap". The problem that arises from that is twofold: One, the players, if sufficiently paranoid/trained to expect traps everywhere, will spend hours in each room, checking every brick and cobble to be certain that flaming death doesn't await them. The second is that players will feel cheated if they search a room and miss something that they feel should be obvious. "What? How could I miss a tripwire? I said I searched!"

How to remedy this issue? Well, firstly, it might not actually be an issue that isn't already solved. Part of my reasoning for writing this post is to hear other people's rules on such things. Do you just list traps as part of a room's decor? Do you accept "I search for traps" and list them then? Require ever more specific phrases to be able to find better traps? Improvise/houserule/steal a mechanic to handle it by a die roll? I'm curious to hear your ideas.

For me, sans any exterior input, I think I will continue making traps effectively invisible unless a player specifically searches for that type of trap, or is searching a sufficiently small object, such as a chest. Searching an entire room "for traps" is laughably difficult, with a clever enough trap inventor. Hell, there could just be a poisoned barb on the back of the door handle to the next room, that a casual adventurer would grasp and pierce his hand on. Who would even think to look for it? A chest, however, is small enough and simply operated enough that one can search for trigger mechanisms at the least. Trapped chests, of course, are almost reason enough to devise some alternate method of opening them than just standing in front and kicking them open like one is Link.

The issue is that, from a 3.x/4e/videogame aspect, these sorts of decisions seem like DM arbitrary damage. Those rules effectively only exist so that the DM can't just "Rocks fall, everyone dies". If there are search and disarm rules, then it's less based on the DM's fiat, so that players don't take umbrage when they are injured. In OD&D, by design, the DM is the final arbiter on everything, superseding rules when desired. How do you avoid looking like you are just smacking the players around? If they search for tripwires, and you decide that they miss one, or miss another kind of trap, how is it not just you smacking the players around?

Anyway, sorry for the post with fewer answers than questions, but it's something I'm curious about and would like to hear the gaming community's opinion on.

Dynamic Dungeons and Spellcasting

I am in the middle of thinking about crafting a megadungeon for OD&D, and the idea of a more dynamic place came to mind. I'm trying to walk a line between overly boring and confining realism and the completely gonzo nonsense that a lot of old modules seem to show to an extent. This got me thinking about spellcasting and how mundanely it is handled in a lot of games.

Think about it like this: you have a party of PCs in a dungeon. This dungeon began as a human crypt, expanded over time as it happens in your world. The PCs are possibly on level three of five, having fought their way down through the groups of goblins and orcs that live in an uneasy peace in the abandoned structure. The druid (we'll say 3.5e) is irritated by the prolonged combat, and casts "Earthquake" under a group of goblins. Now, as a GM, you are probably tempted/expected to have the spell do exactly as it says; knock the goblins down and possibly injure them from debris (been a while since I looked at 3e, I assume it did this). The way I see it, you should have the dungeon act like a hole dug out from living rock. That is, an earthquake affects it more strongly than, say, a fireball.

When the cleric casts earthquake, the room shakes and the spell's normal effects happen. Goblins fall down, some rocks fall from above and mash a few. Still, those rocks came from above. How far above was the next level? Realistically, a few dozen feet at least, as otherwise the stone would collapse by itself. Honestly though, in most dungeons it's assumed to be more like "a foot". Anyway, you are casting earthquake underground. The rocks fall, but it destabilizes the ceiling. More rocks fall the next round, and a rumbling noise reverbates around the place. The next round, the floor breaks out and the PCs fall down a level, into a twisted and broken mass of stone, worked marble, bodies, coffins, and dust.

Does this sort of thinking allow for some screwy spellcasting to completely wreck your dungeon? Yes, of course it does. Spells like Stone to Flesh make things even weirder. (Wall of Stone, Animate Object, Stone to Flesh in that order make a living, animate wall of flesh, a weird thing to encounter in all locations) However, you players start to realize that their hugely powerful high-end effects, are, in fact, hugely powerful high-end effects. This is also notable for the idiots that think they can cast Fabricate on a block of iron a few dozen times (easy for mid-level wizard) and create a hundred longswords to sell. What? No. No town has a use for all those swords. Even aside from that, you are flooding the market, driving down prices. The local smithing guild would be all over you, and probably violently. If you are too high level to confront directly, they'll probably just hire assassins. You are destroying their industry and wrecking up their livelihoods.

Anyway, back to dungeons.

How can you, as a DM, handle this sort of thing? Make your dungeon literally 3d, with defined structural components and rock hardness, add supports and engineering data, make sure it all works together in a real setting...

No, don't do all that. That sort of thing will kill you. Ad-lib it. If the party casts Fireball in the woods, the trees catch fire. If the party casts firewall in a sealed cave, the fire burns away oxygen. If the party wants to 'cheat' and go down a level in the dungeon by casting Disintegrate on the floor, let them! However, keep in mind that effects like this are more fun if the PCs didn't intend it to happen. PC plans to disintegrate the floor cause problems. Perhaps they breach a lava pipe (though the floor should probably be warm, as a hint. Don't just kill PCs randomly), or perhaps they cause another cave in. If the PCs cast Flamestrike in the sewers of a city, nothing seems to happen. However, the column of fire coming from the sky did successfully smash into a person's house up above, and when the party comes out of the dungeon two days later, they learn of the gods' judgment raining down on the city, starting a series of violent fires in the slums of the city. Casting anything at all in the middle of the city certainly causes a general suspicion of distrust of the party. Also no charming shopkeeps, they figure it out after you leave and you end up with a warrant out for you. This also means that previously fairly useless spells (Plant Growth?) become interesting again! Plants have been breaking up stone forever. It's part of their function in the world. When your cleric casts plant growth in a dungeon, the floor cracks and splinters from the new roots. I can see it being a bit more interesting.

Is this sort of spellcasting consequence limiting to spellcasters over fighters? Yes and no. A fighter just doesn't have the same kind of abilities, though I suppose he could buy a pick and just dig downwards instead of disintegrating. Also this means that spellcasters are now much less capable during barroom brawls, but if your casters were throwing around Horrid Wilting in bar brawls before, then you need to put a stop to it anyway. Another side to this is that it marginalizes fighters and their ilk in dungeons. If the druid can nuke half the level by casting Earthquake, then what good is a barbarian's greataxe? Well, for one thing, it's more controllable. I'd actually expect non-stupid (read: Long-living) PCs to lower their use of major spells in dungeons after they start seeing effects from it. What it allows, however, is more of an old-school dynamism and interestingly non-rules-based sort of environment.

So consider it. Next time your wizard is fighting off a few muggers in town by casting "Summon Earth Elemental", consider that a towering, twenty foot tall elemental is probably going to cause more trouble than a few muggers ever could. If your evil cleric starts casting Contagion on creatures, consider that many of the diseases are airborne. If the goblin collapses, coughing violently, then the players should be aware that they are in the same 20x20 room, enclosed underground, and thus are probably breathing the same Creeping Crud (or what-have-you). If the druid's pet (not spellcasting, but still) is a tamed lion, he probably shouldn't bring it to the inn. Honestly, it needs to stay in a kennel somewhere in town, if any exist that can handle such a creature. Walking around with it would likely attract the guards' attention. Have fun with it, and make magic interesting again!

Strongholds and Serfs

Player-run strongholds and castles are sort of a waning art these days. At least, I perceive it that way. Does the 4e PHB or DMG even mention the possibility?

In OD&D, the books for which I've been poking through lately, PCs had the ability to buy land whenever they had the cash. Once reaching a certain level (Nine or ten, I think), they could become nobility, and begin collecting taxes on their newly granted land. There were specified costs for walls, crenelations, towers, gates, and all sorts of other things. There were methods and information about finding specialists to join your work there, as well as hiring large bands of mercenaries to defend the place. It was an assumed endgame for the party to get into, once they had gone through the adventuring life for a time.

I've had a couple campaigns where the players became invested enough in the world to begin constructing fortifications and castles. It's certainly possible with 3.5 rules, and reasonably possible with 4e, if you don't feel overly pressured to stick to the treasure distribution in the book. However, be wary of allowing players to make a huge castle on a big land grant right away. Such a change in the campaign requires a lot of forethought, as well as raising a great number of issues in fairly short order.

Firstly, you have to consider how nobility and land ownership worked in older times. One, in most feudal societies, land was all owned by the king outright. However, he had the ability to grant land to noblemen, and possibly to non-nobles. Nobility is a virtue of birth. Your fighting-man (heh) can't become a baron by virtue of owning land and building a castle, unless he is adopted into a noble family, or the king just feels like granting him nobility outright. The latter is dangerous, as it disrupts social order if every Tom, Dick, and Harry can become a nobleman. Though to be honest, 'Baron' is such a weak title as to mostly hold the status quo while being given to erstwhile commoners. It was created for this purpose. Thus, either the PC gaining nobility and land has to be adopted into a family that will doubtlessly require more service of him than they would a blooded relative, or he must be extraordinarily lucky. I suppose he could also constantly serve the king, give him everything he wants, and exalt him everywhere he goes. That might curry enough favor also. Just up and buying a large enough plot of land to place a castle on is right out. The land isn't for sale, as the only person with the real rights to sell it is the King, and he does not care for the pittance the PC has to offer. Besides, any non-noble building a castle would be seen as, at least, pretentious. At worst, he would be seen as seceding, and declared a traitor to the crown.

Once made a low-ranking nobleman and granted some presumably derelict and near-lawless land, the new Baron must first see to the security and well-being of his people. Of course, living on 'his' land means that they all owe him fealty. However, if they have previously been ignored by the crown, harassed by bandits, and generally having a rough time of it, they won't bow to any nobleman coming in without good reason. They may not openly revolt, but they won't work willingly, and what work they are made to do will be slow and low quality.

Note that "I can kill everyone in this village in less than a minute" is not a good reason for gaining loyalty.

Anyway, at this point, the campaign likely takes a turn towards above ground work. The party will have to either patrol the PCs' new land themselves, or hire others to do it. They need to root out threats, kill dragons, slaughter or drive off bandits, genocide the orcs, make the roads safe, and generally raise the standard of living noticeably. How long does this take? It depends on how dangerous the land is, how large the fief is, and a million other factors. The best course of action would likely be to hire mercenaries (respectable ones) to come the land, and report problems they can't handle alone. Then, the PCs can go clean those special issues up.

Once the land is safe and good again, and perhaps the people are better provided for, they will be much more willing to swear fealty and vassalage to the new lord. Of course, the vast majority of the population is comprised of moronic peasants and serfs. They know little but what their lives consist of, which is farming and breeding. There may be a small village, with a few folk who are wealthy enough to actually own the building that they live in, and thus are able to ply a trade. Blacksmiths, alchemists, tanners, brewers, coopers, fletchers, bowyers, etc etc. There are dozens of trades available. At the least, there are those who can construct sturdy buildings of either wood or stone, a couple of people capable of making at least simple farm tools from metal, and perhaps a few more advanced trades.

Good, now the PC has some lands that are slowly (read: over a few years) becoming profitable again. Now he must see to a more stable and, more importantly, visible hold of power and security in the region. That means a fortress or castle of some variety.

Castles are commonly depicted in a number of works as lonely forts up on a mountain island or somesuch. While certainly possible, and incredibly defensible, this is not the most convenient or even effective place to build a castle. Fortresses are built to help slow the destruction of the populace and goods of the fief during times of war. The common people (some of them, the most worthwhile) will retreat to the castle when times are exceedingly bad. A castle must therefore be capable of being reached by a large number of people on fairly short notice. Secondly, it must be able to store a great deal of food and water, as to withstand a siege until help can arrive. It also needs to actually be possible to construct in a single lifetime, if the PC wants to ever see his work done. Thus, it's not a good idea to place the thing on the edge of your lands, on an island off the coast, or on top of a mountain.

Now that you have chosen a nice flat, well-grounded, and reasonable place for your fortress, how do you build it? Certainly, large structures like this are not short-term constructions. It will take years upon years for normal humans to fabricate a structure like this. Of course, your players probably want to go adventuring again at this point, and don't care to stand around directing laborers for years of game time. One will assume the DM allows the players to have access to a quarry, as well as transport for the stone, wood, and hundreds of other materials required.

Thankfully, D&D makes castle building a bit easier, since there are mages and clerics that can help. Hiring a high-level caster (or being one) can shorten construction easily. Spells to consider are Mass Haste, Wall of Stone, Fabricate, Polymorph Other, and numerous others. Let's say you have a typical mason/stoneworker. He's able to craft a rough rock into a usable stone block in perhaps a few hours, if he's skilled and the work goes smoothly. Now, you have a level five cleric cast a few spells. Your typical STR, DEX, and WIS buffs. Suddenly, the mason is twice as capable as any other. He's gone from a master craftsman to a legend in his own time. You have to consider than a master craftsman still has 10's or 11's across the board as abilities. This guy suddenly has 13 or 14 all over. He works twice as fast, and his products are ten times as good. He has less waste and doesn't tire as quickly. These spells have "Mass" variants, in some splats, and can be extended to day-long duration. Of course, mid-level clerics aren't free. What the PC can do to make it easier, of course, is to include a chapel in his fortress. Doing such due service to the gods can make working with clerics of the same god a lot cheaper, though by no means free.

With magic and whatnot, one can have a reasonable fortress built rather quickly, probably on the order of just a year or two. This will leave your serfs and craftsmen exhausted, but a good deal wealthier (with your money) than their neighbors in adjacent lands. This makes them happy, but also attracts banditry. Opposition is good! It fuels adventures! Also it gives players a reason to start hiring men-at-arms to watch the walls and patrol the roads.

At this point, the player is receiving taxes from his vassals and serfs. Taxes, especially in the early medieval age, were not only money. They were produce, meat, crafts, wood, metalworks, and numerous other things besides. Still, for D&D, it's probably easier to abstract this as some percentage of money generated by the lands. This money should probably be poured largely back into the land itself, maintaining roads, irrigation if it exists, security, and military. The player of course can feel free to keep a percentage of it, but he has his obligations now. Of course, other people can be hired to manage things.

Here, you must make a decision. Depending on your players and what they enjoy, they may get really into running their lands. They might want resource counts, population information, abilities to form mining groups and lumber camps, all kinds of intricate taxation and tariffs, etc. etc. That's certainly possible, but starts to move the game rather quickly away from D&D, in a large sense. If your players tend to hand-wave working on the fort, then let them hire people for a monthly/yearly wage (depending on how time flows in your campaign, they may instead ask for pay upfront). These people can be trusted as much as any civil servant, to manage the lands to the best of their ability. They have a vested interest in keeping it running well. This frees up the players themselves to go dungeon-delving again, or to go finish the plot of the campaign, or whatever else. Of course, the less supervision a paid administrator has, the more likely corruption sets in. Either route is fine, just try to see what your players enjoy.

I hope this sort of very limited scope essay at least makes you think about permitting or encouraging castle usage in your campaign. Though yes, it's largely incompatible with a heavily plot-driven campaign, it can add a lot of flavor and interesting adventure hooks to a more sandbox sort of deal. Good luck!

How the Heck do you play OD&D?

This post is less advice and more a request for advice. It's also reasonably short for my posts.

How do you play OD&D? I've purchased the PDFs of the books, and I'm working on a way to print them without burning through ten ink cartridges. Still, I've read (skimmed) through them, and the rules seem so nonsensical and alien. Weird charts everywhere, strange attack progressions, different XP rates for everyone, strange book layouts, and numerous references to Chainmail (which I also purchased, but I haven't read through yet)

How did anyone ever figure this stuff out by themselves? Was D&D always passed master-apprentice style, with an experienced player going DM to teach others how it worked? Was this system intentionally designed (as it seemed to be stated in the books themselves) to be houseruled to hell and back? Did anyone play the same game? There are weird omissions for all kinds of rules that would be required to be houseruled in some way, or else powergamer folk will beat the hell out of it. Were powergamers not extant in Gygax's heyday?

Traps seem neat in the sense that they should be physically arrayed objects, and not just "roll to defeat" spots, but then how do you determine if someone can do it? Anyone can say "I put a table over the spike in the floor, so when it goes up again it get stuck in the wood" or something, but how does a DM (sorry, 'Referee') figure out if that would work? Fiat? Are there even proper rules for how much a trap spike damages a table?

The game seems interesting in theory, and some of it makes sense. A lot of the weird differences in spell and other behavior when outside as opposed to a dungeon seems a bit gamey and breaks suspension of disbelief, but hey, that's how it goes. What is with listing range in inches? I vaguely recall reading that an 'inch' of range in spell descriptions translates to something else in-universe, but I don't recall where, and I can't seem to find it offhand. Not to piss anyone off, but with this sort of thing as OD&D, where do people get off complaining about 'squares' in 4e? Replace "5 squares" with "5 inches" and you still have the same focus on miniatures.

Anyway, any folks who currently play OD&D or are old enough to have played it in the 70's have any advice on wrapping my head around this system?

Prejudice in Fantasy Worlds

I was thinking today, while bored at work, about human history with regards to prejudice and war. Yes, I think about topics that are a little overly complex when I'm bored.

Anyway, this got me thinking about aliens and also fey races. Humans, over history, have used almost any excuse to make everything a situation of "us vs. them". It's commonly referred to as outgroup Bias. Currently, in the US, you find a lot of this directed towards Muslims, or worse, Arabs in general. I've heard numerous people say that all Arabs "want to kill everyone", whatever the hell that means. They are basing their outgroup prejudice on nationality, skin color to an extent, and certainly religion. Humans use these flimsy excuses to hate people that are, in all the ways that really matter, just like them.

Now take that knowledge of basic human nature, and think about a world where there are sapient races that aren't human at all. Elves, Dwarves, Halfings, Orcs, Goblins, Angels, Demons, etc are all intrinsically different than humans. Many D&D worlds, sort of the 'standard', in fact, has a largely dominant human culture. Humans breed more quickly than elves or dwarves, have shorter lives and thus strive harder to get things done, etc etc. So you have a world where humans are the dominant military and social power, and you have major philosophical, psychological, and physiological differences between the sapient races. Think about how much effort, money, time, and creativity has been wasted in humanity's past just on killing people with a different skin color or creed, and think about how much different fantasy races are from humans. Is it really at all reasonable to assume that the D&D world is that much more tolerant? Tolerance and acceptance have never been the norm in any society, not even today.

What does this all boil down to? I think it might be interesting to think about having more prejudice and general... speciesism(?) in D&D. We don't really have a word for it, since we don't know of any other sapient species, but the idea fits. Call it racism I suppose. Humans deal with other races, sure, in a trading sense. However, it's entirely possible that the tavern you are dining at just doesn't serve nonhumans. "Not that we don't like you, y'see, but we know how Dwarves like to hoard gold, and we've got a bit of it as decoration. Also, we know the Elf might flinch at us having killed all those trees to build the place. Eh, there's a bar a few streets over that might serve your kind, gents." Maybe the elven wizard that runs the local scroll shop, or what have you, doesn't like half-elves; he doesn't like the idea of the proud elven line being sullied with human blood. Dwarves have a sort of traditional antipathy with elves in high fantasy worlds, but what if a recent raid on a dwarven settlement by a rogue group of elves has put the relationship on edge even more so? Suddenly, when an elf and a dwarf pass one another on the street, both of them have a hand on their weapons. It's not attack-on-sight, but there's tension. Your fighter, aiming for membership in the Blades of Ammeron, a knightly order local to this town, finds himself rejected for membership due to his traveling with a half-orc. In an extreme case, Tieflings or such may be entirely hated in common society. Tieflings can't own property, have next to no rights as people, and have to cover their more telling racial identifiers. Dragonborn have to wear muzzles to keep their weaponlike teeth and breath weapons "sheathed", or might be arrested for brandishing a lethal weapon in the city. I think it might add a bit of diversity to the world to have people in it that don't care for diversity.

That being said, this sort of thing is easy to offend people with. Know your players. If you've got a group with a few people that are going to get all offended over fantasy racism, it's certainly not worth losing a friend over. However, if everyone can handle it, it might be an interesting sort of spin on the normally happy go lucky sort of world.

Grimy Dungeons and the PCs That Are Covered In Them

This article is much less high-handed than my norm. It's just a thought that amused me.

A post over at Trollsmyth, as well as couple of preceeding posts by the same, got me thinking about the effects that the kind of insane pyrotechnics, cryotechnics, and... electrotechnics(?) would have from the way wizards tend to spam spells all over the place in D&D. Now, in a place like a dungeon, where there is frankly little to burn, it's not a big deal. Scorch marks on the stone wall only mean so much to the future orcish occupants. That's not what this silly article is about, but it's still fun to think about. However, thinking about spell effects got me thinking about the lingering effects of combat and adventuring in general.

Let's set a short scene here. The party, having delved into the ancient system of tubes and pits used as a sewer, comes back up with the Eye of Gruumsh or whatever other thing they went down to get. They've flung spells back and forth with the death cult down there, slaughtered dozens of orcs, and are also lightly carrying the forty thousand gold they found. Fine. So they come up from the hidden entrance to said sewers, behind a building, and promptly walk to the royal castle to turn in their quest item.

Imagine, for a moment, how patently ludicrous these people look. For one thing, they are wearing adventuring gear, and associated dangerous weapons, to an audience with a noble. To be certain, they wouldn't even be allowed in the castle. You'll show proper respect by wearing nice things, not that patchwork of random magical items and armor you've found as you tromp through the underworld. Also, you'll be leaving that axe behind, thank you, and that 'parting an old man from his walking stick' bit isn't going to fly either.

Secondly, and this is something that gets glazed over pretty often, the party would be covered in goop, blood, scorched clothing, sewer matter, and numerous other horrible coverings that no one wants to see. One does not go wandering through a sewer for hours on end and not pick up at least a smell. The fighters of the party have been hacking apart animals, monsters, and sapient beings with their swords. They are drenched in blood and viscera. They have open wounds on their bodies that have not only other people's bodily fluids on them, but also the general rot and filth that a sewer accumulates. The wizards have been flinging spells, and their hands are covered in bat guano and diamond dust from their spell component pouch. The party was hit by a Flame Strike spell by an opposing cleric of Nerull, and though the magic armor they are wearing is still fine, their clothing underneath is little but scorched rags. Even ranged combatants and/or noncombatants like bards still have the general grime, sweat, and sick all over them that comes from such an expedition.

These are the people that are strolling through town, carrying the fifty axes they looted from the orcs. Saying that people would recoil from them is putting it beyond lightly. They would likely be arrested, explainations would have to be made back at the station, and they'd likely be required to clean their idiot selves up before they step out again. They certainly can't just drag a cart full of weapons to the blacksmith without generating a few questions. For God's sake, they look like mass-murderers.

Now granted, cleaning up is a relatively trivial matter, and probably should be treated as such. As long as the party goes and finds some water source to wash in, and gets some decent clothes for their audience with the Count, things should be ok. There's no real reason (excepting story or silly points) to make them roll a "Knowledge: Court Fashion" roll or anything. (Profession: Noble?) Still though, describing the effects of their ridiculous profession might add a bit of color to your typical dungeon crawl. It's at least valid to make the castle guards refuse to admit mercenaries wearing non-pretty armor. A full suit of plate mail with matching shield and tabard? Sure, that's reasonable, you look the part of a mighty knight. The +3 studded leather you picked up off a dead bandit the other day, a buckler that you've been carrying but ignoring since level one, and your Helm of Fireballs? You look like a fool and would be treated as such; go home and change.

Anyway, just a few thoughts that occurred to me.

Handling Dwarven Encounters

Ok, so, Dwarves. A favorite of many, many players. What's not to like? They are stout defenders of their race, heavily akin to the stone they live in. Sturdy, strong, gruff, and drunk half the time, dwarves are all around fun for player characters. However, as NPCs, they often end up being passed off as drunkards and half-lawful humans. They seem to rarely have their own feeling in diplomatic and friendly relations. I think different races of people are different races because they are different.

Dwarves are generally portrayed as Gimli from The Lord of the Rings. A mountaineer sort of people, short of stature, but broad and powerful nonetheless. A society based heavily on law and tradition, which is slow to change but quick to anger in times of need. They are normally stalwart allies of humanity, and despite a slight antipathy, tolerant of elves. Dwarves are also commonly portrayed as holding an extreme hatred to the savage races, since they share their mountains with orcs and goblins. Giants in particular are hated. Dwarves seem to favor the drink a bit, which suits a people with such hardy constitutions. They are also usually shown with a flaw of greed. Dwarves value alliances and friendship, but things like that tend to crumble when glittering gold and shining gems are involved. See Thorin and the Arkenstone. See the reclaimants for Moria, who basically marched into certain death for the possibility of leftover mithril.

I think that these qualities should show through in more than just roleplaying an NPC as gruff, or mentioning that he has a beer tankard in hand. I think that one should consider dwarven culture when dealing with dwarves. Let's place an example scenario here. The PCs are all non-dwarven. Let's say that they are humans for simplicity's sake. They are headed to a dwarven city in order to establish trade relations. Perhaps this is a fairly newly founded city, a few deep tunnels dug, and some basic amenities. This means that the dwarves are more than hopeful that their human neighbors will find them worthy of a proper trading partner status. There are many goods that humans make with more proficiency than dwarves, and if nothing else, the humans will provide decent allies against the inevitable goblinoid raids.

Of course the humans would be treated with preference. Greeted warmly, not gruffly, and escorted through the nicest parts of the halls. The dwarf assigned to helping them around would likely be the most congenial, and more importantly, most tolerant of the dwarves' number. Because the humans are probably like modern day Americans in foreign lands. The average human, and probably even the party, doesn't bother to learn the culture of the place they are visiting. They don't bother to research the rules that society as a whole there just understands intrinsically.

For instance, our party here is invited to the Steelfist Alehall. Now, the humans probably think "Eh, a tavern" and don't think any more of it. With a culture that values alcohol, particularly ales and lagers, however, this may be a great honor. How many non-dwarves are even afforded such an opportunity? This is a grandiose display of respect, and the humans brush it off as nothing but an idle waste of time. The diplomat escorting the humans grits his teeth but leads the way for the uncaring humans.

Everyone arrives at the Alehall. There are a few dozen dwarves there, sitting at stone tables and drinking heartily, while laughing and talking as friends. It's a lively place, full of companionship and cheer. The mood dampens slightly as the humans walk in, and perhaps a joke or two gets interrupted. "So a human and an elf walk into an alehall, and.. uh... I'll tell you later." Anyway, the people recognize the diplomat and know that the visit is for the purpose of impressing visitors, and so return to carrying on, in a perhaps somewhat subdued sense, with a focus on looking like good people and wealthy enough to justify trade. The diplomat leads the party to the bar, and the owner of the hall comes over. Not just a barkeep; these visitors are too important. The owner warmly greets everyone, and reaches for five mugs, each easily able to contain a full quart. "Aye, welcome, 'umans! Fer sech honored guests, I'm wellin' to give you a q'ert on the house!" Apparently he's got a touch of an accent, and a more home-ish and rambunctious personality than the diplomat. Not all dwarves are the same person, after all.

Then, the party monk, somehow slipping in from the days before 4e, waves his hand dismissively. "Thank you, kind dwarf, but I do not drink alcohol."

An innocuous comment, to be certain. Polite as well, even overly so for most human taverns. In such places, the barkeep would likely laugh amusedly and fetch a water or milk for the man of temperance. The player of the monk is roleplaying his character, which is a good thing, and the other players probably see no issue with him refusing a drink. It's never been a problem before.

However, this time, the noise in the room quiets noticeably, with many of the closer dwarves looking at the monk in half shock and half annoyance. The gregarious smile immediately drops from the alehouse owner's face, as he pauses mid-turn. The diplomat coughs pointedly in the sudden quiet, and speaks with a certain emphasis, hoping to allay this faux pas.

"Honored visitor, you are in a dwarven alehouse, and the owner has offered you a quart. Perhaps you should accept his generosity."

This is how I think such a visit should be. Just being gruff and beer-fond humans isn't enough. Dwarven culture is a different culture. Just like eating a pork chop with your left hand would be offensive in Tehran, refusing a gift, particularly a gift of the hall's finest ale, would be a grave error in judgment in the dwarven halls. If you hitch hike by sticking your thumb up and out in some countries, you are likely to get attacked for giving an obscene gesture. If you angrily throw your fist into the crook of your elbow and show your middle finger in Tokyo, you will get little but confused looks. In a dwarven city, offering your host a gift of wine and bread might be considered strange. However, if you arrived and presented your host with a finely carved granite coffer, inlaid with a sparkling ruby and etched with gold, he would be overjoyed and consider you the very pinnacle of what humanity had to offer. It doesn't matter how fine the wine was, or how fresh and warm the bread was. It just wasn't the right gift.

So spend some time thinking about your dwarves. Think about what they are genetically and culturally predisposed to thinking is proper. Think about what they like, what they dislike, and what they could frankly care less about. Think about the differences in human and dwarven etiquette. Drinking on the job in human lands is generally enough to get you fired. In dwarven culture, it's absolutely the norm. An axe in human culture is just a tool, either for hewing logs or raiders. To a dwarf, and fine axe is worth more than all the elven wine and human paintings in the world. Nothing quite matches the beauty of that shining adamantine weapon, with the line of glittering emeralds down the haft, and the goblin-leather wrapping on the hold. It's an astonishingly valuable treasure. A human adventurer would look at it, shrug, and say something like "I use swords, not axes."

So yes, when you voice a dwarven NPC, feel free to play Gimli. Enjoy your beer, but also make a point to say and do things that are slightly outside the norm, because you aren't just a short human, you are a dwarf, proud and true.

Give it some thought.

Taverns and Clichés

There's been a bit of talk recently about the good old fashioned "Tavern" cliché of D&D. I figured I would share some thoughts on this one.

My first game of D&D was in my sophomore year of college. I enjoyed the idea of D&D and so had proposed it to a few friends. Consequently, it was my first game, two or three others at the table as well, and then a couple vets, with a DM who I assume had played but not DMed before. All told, a pretty normal group I suppose. Anyway, We all rolled people up, which of course took hours since it was 3.0 and half the table had never played. Before we got started, one of the vets said something that interested me and still sort of defines D&D in my mind.

"Ok now forget the D&D videogames you've played, because now you can do anything."

Honestly I forget if it was Buddha or Shawn. Doesn't matter.

Anyway, that was sorta exemplified in the first scene we all played out. Speaking of "played out", it was a scene where everyone met in a tavern. Starting a D&D campaign in a tavern is by far the most horrendously cliché beginning possible. I can't say the result of the tavern meeting was exactly atypical either. Everyone was playing somewhat chaotic stupid, and we ended up with a barfight during which the level one gnomish sorcerer cast Burning Hands an ended up leveling the building with a fire. I don't recall how much trouble, if any, we had with the town guard after that. I do recall that the DM hadn't planned on all that happening. That's what cemented my interest in tabletop gaming as a whole. We broke the plot.

If you aren't a videogamer by default, that probably doesn't mean much to you. D&D plots get cracked all the time. Nothing ever really goes the way the DM wants it unless it's forced that direction. Forget all that freedom and put yourself in the shoes of someone who has only played videogame D&D, like Neverwinter Nights and Icewind Dale. In NN, you can't choose not to save the Waterdhavian creatures. You can't choose to kill Aribeth in the beginning of the game. You can't ingratiate yourself to The Chimera in Icewind Dale 2, and sack Targos. It's the same as trying to ally with the ghosts in Pac-man. It just isn't in the code.

That's all sort of off topic, but leads to my point in this shortish sort of article. Many of my favorite experiences in D&D occurred in taverns. Barfights, fires, Horrid Wiltings, Dark meetings with strangers, plot givers, goblins, whatever. The tavern is overplayed, sure. Every adventuring party has been in one and picked up quests. I mean, my blog is named "The Verbing Noun" because I ran out of tavern names at one point and used it.

Of course your games need variety. I'm not saying the party should always spend their money on ale and whores. They shouldn't always be smashed off their arses with beer, mead, wine, or any other drink. The tavern doesn't have to have anything to do with everything the party does. My point is this: taverns are fun. They offer fun things to do. Don't close your mind to them entirely. The freedom of D&D means that nothing is ever played out.

Make them fun again!

Handling Angelic Encounters

Angels here meaning 3.5 and previous edition angels. The 4e angels look like confused fire elementals.

Angels, and their diabolic/demonic counterparts on the other side, have been around since the beginning, or darn close to it. If you are beginning to recognize that statement from post to post, then you can attribute it to the fact that I want to put out statements that can (possibly) help grognards as well as those newer to the hobby.

Anyway, Angels are always there. Usually they only show up at higher levels, but nonetheless, they exist in the game world. They are, of course, paragons of good. Even aside from that, they are, in most campaign settings, lawful as well. See my previous admittedly rambling post for my thoughts on extremism in alignment, but let's think about angels. If anyone had a reason to be strictly good and lawful, angels would be the ones. As much as demons are always chaotic evil, angels are always lawful good. Holding the line, as it were.

This means that in many campaigns, angels will do what they can to help the party, if the party is at least neutral and not currently doing an evil act. Drop his one use of Resurrection today to rez that fallen rogue? Sure! Hand over some heavenly raiment to help the PCs combat the demons? Why not? Act as a glorified paladin/cleric multiclass tanker/healer? Of course!

I don't see this as reasonable. Think about 'good' and 'law' from an angel's perspective. I would reason that most angels don't have much experience with paladinal humans. The humans they typically see, if they typically see them at all, are probably the ones they are trying to stop from summoning demons.

So lets say you are an angel. In your society, in your homeland, everyone typically does the right thing. Charity is an unknown word because it's the default. If your neighbor is hurting, you help him. You know that he would do the same. If there is an invasion, everyone does what they are best able to do. You don't cheat on your spouse, and she won't cheat on you. You don't think about demonic or evil magic. There is no crime; it's unthinkable. No thieving, no murder, no arson; nothing evil happens.

Now, take that angel, who has lived in such a society, and place him in a human town. For some reason, he can't go back to Celestia right off. Imagine the culture shock. At first, he would be strikingly naive. On request, he helps every beggar he can. He gives them money, or food, or whatever else they need that he can provide. He believes sob stories from people, and helps if they say their mother is sick and they just need money for medicine. He heals the injured and refuses reward, thinking that when he is injured, they will do the same out of inherent goodness.

Now what happens when he sees the consequences that humans take for granted in the above scenarios? The beggars he gives his gold to spend the money on drink and worse, dying from their excess. His offer of Remove Disease makes the person speaking of their sick mother nervous; their mother has been dead for ten years. An accident injures him, and people demand money to heal him. He turns to get it, and finds his coinpurse missing. He's been robbed. The cleric demanding payment says he's sorry, and that he'd heal him for free if it weren't for those church regulations. The angel knows from his powers that the priest is lying. The cleric doesn't care about altruism, he just wants the divine being's money.

Even these relatively petty wrongs would seem repulsive to him. Lies? Gluttony? Indulgence in drink? Self-destruction? Greed? Theft? These things are anathema to everything he's ever known. Humans suddenly change from a meek race that needs protection from demons, to nearly demons themselves. Unsavable. Corruptible without effort. Untrustable. The small good acts and few random acts of kindness don't even start to make up for the moral failings of mortals as a whole.

Is this angel likely to trust your chaotic neutral party? Is he even likely to bother speaking with you? He certainly wouldn't provide you with assistance, since he would half expect you to stab him in the back as soon as he turned to leave. Even a paladin isn't neutral compared to what the angel sees as default behavior.

This isn't to say he wouldn't help the party if they were combatting demons and one of them fell. Of course he's willing to raise someone who fell in such a noble battle. But he won't give you money. He won't give you information on how to get to the heavens. He won't help you in any way that leaves him less able to retreat or hold his own against you. He knows how your kind works. You are all sinners and murderers. He can probably look at you and know that you've slain innocents and that you rarely help anyone who can't pay you. You aren't as good a person as he is. You never can be, and he knows it.

So don't make angels some glowing beacon of light that trusts the party implicitly. Make them terse, stern, and unforgiving of sins. They are still good; they still help where they can. But they won't be suckered into giving you the chance to use their gifts for evil, or for your own hedonistic pleasures. They won't attack anyone that isn't inherently evil, but they won't trust anyone that isn't inherently good.

As a closing note, for players: If you play a half-celestial, consider making part of your backstory having been raised on the celestial plane. You wouldn't be accepted there: your capacity for deceit and underhandedness is appalling compared to others there. But you arrive on this plane, and see that other mortals are far worse. Creates some interesting roleplay hooks.

Obligatory Alignment Post

Alignment has always existed in D&D, in some form. In the original brown books, there were only three. Been a while since I've read them, but the options were Good/Neutral/Evil, I believe. Later on you saw the silly current model, with basically five alignments in a line. Lawful Good being the top, Good, Neutral, Evil, and then Chaotic Evil being the bottom. 3E had the nice grid system, with law-chaos being one axis, and good-evil being the other. Most of the players in my group basically said "Neat!" and then picked Chaotic Neutral. With 4e, we are back to the five option variant.

Alignment is something that bothers a great many DMs. It's not the system itself that causes issues, it's how seriously many players (and DMs) take it. They act like that "LG" scrawled on the character sheet means that your character is Jesus reborn. He saves the world every day. He pats children on the head and hands them 500 Platinum just for smiling happily. He gives all his money to charity. He never asks for quest rewards. As soon as anyone mentions any action that might construed as less than holy, he flips out angrily and qutie possibly draws a weapon.

Chaotic Evil is the same way. I'm mentioning the extreme examples of alignment here because they are the ones more commonly overplayed. I'm not even sure how you overplay neutral without just quoting that Futurama episode. Anyway, Chaotic Evil does not make you a psychopath. You are not the Joker. You don't just slaughter everyone you see out of some unending berserker rage. Being chaotic evil does not mean that you have to do your best to be evil and belligerent to everyone you meet. Chaotic Evil races often form tribes, and the tribes have to work together to do things. This is because, primarily, they know that they have to in order to survive, and secondly, they know that the first guy to turn will be slaughtered by the others. Chaotic Evil doesn't mean stupid. Your character should be aware that there is always someone stronger than he, and act accordingly.

We've all played with players like that. Sure, if you are a paladin, maybe you can justify some of it, but not to the extremes that most people play. Lawful Good does not mean you have a constant stick up your arse. You can justify charity and even hatred for evil humanoids, assuming you don't just hate for the sake of hating. Vengeance isn't much better. "Lawful Good" doesn't justify slaughter. The only real place where it might justify constant combat is against inherently evil foes, such as demons/devils.

Slaughtering orcs is not really a good act. Forming a peace agreement is closer, but not always possible. If you know the orcs are low on food and likely to raid the nearby village, you go out to talk to them. They are, perhaps, belligerent and crazy because the DM just wants you to fight. OK then, killing them is fine. I wouldn't call it a good act per se. You are probably getting paid, either in cash or in reputation, so at best it is mercenary work. Chaotic Evil characters can justify slaughtering orcs better than Lawful Good can. Hell, your chaotic Evil barbarian has been itching to taste blood for days of being in town, and when he sees the orc camp in the distance, he doesn't' want to talk to them. He understands that he can't express his inner violence in town, but these are orcs! The peasants will praise him, and he might even be able to take some of their daughters' honor before his true nature is revealed and he's chased out of town.

This is a bit rambling, but I'm just trying to convey my idea of alignment. Any time you can state that your character "Always" does this, or "never" does that, and justify it only from your alignment, you aren't doing it right. Your paladin hates orcs? Ok, why? Being a paladin isn't enough. Even if you keep the behavior of at least drawing steel on sight, you need to justify it. As a child, you saw your parents and village slaughtered by a nearby orc tribe. You were saved from the ashes of the village by the nearby fortress-temple of Hieronious, after crawling through the ashes for three days, delirious with thirst. Ok, there you go. You have a reason to hate orcs, but it's not just 'because I am good'. Hating orcs is a flaw. Hating anything is a flaw in a lawful good character. Taking joy in slaughter is a flaw. It's not good behavior to be that guy.

In short, as the tl;dr version, you are not your alignment. You are a human/whatever. Act like one. You are intelligent enough to know that there are gray areas in goodness, and that your rampaging evil can't conquer the world at level three.

So, paladins of the world, take the stick out. CE barbarians, put the axe down. Embrace sanity.

Skipping Time

Something that is fairly rare in campaigns in my group is the concept of time passing.

Now I obviously don't mean this in the sense of everything happening in the same second. No. What I mean is that from start to finish on my last level 1-20 campaign, the time that passed in the world may have been as much as one year. That's it. Go from scraggly farmer-equivalent fighting ability as level one guys, to (literally) gods among men in a year's time.

This is largely due to the mercenary kind of work most of the campaigns with my group tend to take on. As described in the previous post, it often becomes sort of a cyclical quest-money-quest-money sort of thing. The PCs spend exactly enough time in town to buy stuff, then they are out rampaging through dungeons or wilderness encounters again. There's no feeling of the town/castle/safeplace being anything more than a string of shops and quest givers.

It wasn't always this way, mind you. In the first campaign I DMed (Back in college, remember I'm not a grognard), the players interacted heavily with the town. It was a bardic town, however that works, named "Crumbsprinkle".

Crumbsprinkle had all kinds of problems once the PCs started basing there. Demon attacks, theives, orcs, goblins, svirfneblin, drow. But the PCs cared. They even built a castle outside of town with some dwarven allies they'd made. They designed the castle, the paladin placed a temple to Hieronius in there, it was neat.

Despite being based out of Abbigallen, the capital of the nation of Stark, from about level six to around twenty, the PCs in my latest campaign seemed to have a hard time even remembering the town's name, let alone giving a crap about what happened to the place. I'd chalk it up to gamer burnout, since we've been playing basically weekly for years, but still it's disconcerting.

What do you do to keep players interested?

Group Stagnation and You

As mentioned before, my gaming group is currently playing a World of Darkness game set in the Night's Dawn book series. As a whole, the WoD rules seem to fit the scenario pretty well and the first few sessions went pretty smoothly.

The problem, and I don't have a real solution for it, is that things went formulaic pretty quickly. Now, running on a formula isn't always terrible. A roleplaying game often sort of inserts one anyway, particularly D&D. Go to tavern, get quest, kill monsters, loot, sell, buy, repeat. The problem is that certain game systems aren't about loot, and playing World of Darkness with primarily combat and little RP to speak of becomes an issue.

It's a fact of my group that most of our campaigns are combat based. Few of us tend towards the character-laden backgrounds and the longwinded conversations with NPCs. Why? I'm not sure. Call it videogamer culture. Most of us seem to expect the "Hi, I'm Joe NPC. Here's a quest, come back when it's done and I'll give you money" sort of conversation. I'm as guilty as anyone in this regard. That's fine in D&D. A group like this can run dungeon crawls for weeks on end without much problem, as long as loot keeps flowing and the dungeons aren't always the same.

The problem that I see with the current campaign, and to be frank with the latter half of my previous campaign, is that it's all we do. Yeah, we occasionally hang out in town, but for real-life months on end we have weekly sessions that are just combat broken up by periods of planning for combat. Of course, as players we could affect this slightly. We could hang around 'in town' forcing our DM to come up with more NPCs while we schmooze our way to allies and bollocks up diplomacy for enemies. The problem is that the DM doesn't plan for this and the players, myself included, don't go this direction.

Again, fine for D&D, but not for WoD. In WoD, you mostly have all the guns and crap you need in the first session. Your wealth/resources stay near-constant and you don't need to buy any more equipment. Magic items are rare and scary; there aren't +5 Vorpal Swords sitting on shelves in your local pawn shop. So instead of even combat-loot-combat-loot sort of gameplay, you end up with combat-combat-combat-combat.

How to fix it? This is a bit hypocritical, since the last campaign I DMed ran into the same problem, but mix it up! Let the PCs have allies outside of the combat! Let us go to new locales that are described in interesting ways! Don't assume I've read the source material, make up new places and new planets! Have us make an enemy of some criminal syndicate that we can't just shoot to death! Have a character have a subplot that lasts for two sessions! I dunno, something other than "Hey, I'm Joe NPC Jr. Go kill that cult and here's $40,000 you can spend of stuff you don't need anymore".

This isn't an insult to the current DM. He's got a decent style and we do mix things up occasionally. The issue is that the current story arc seems to have stagnated, and it's a pity, looking back on how awesome the first few sessions were.