New Beginnings

This is a week for new beginnings, a time of both excitement and terror. Today is the first of March, which means that my pleasant post-Stonehell rest period has officially ended and it’s time to get back on task. Work officially begins on the sequel as of now. You will hopefully be seeing the finished product around November, which is the same time the first book was released last year. I know what goes into writing a book of that size now and that knowledge will help cut back on the production time—I hope.

My return to Stonehell actually began earlier this week. In preparation for the Eldritch Frontier campaign, I’ve done a little remodeling and rewriting of the surface and first level of the megadungeon. Two of my future players own copies of the commercial release of the dungeon, so I’ve put the kobolds to work rearranging the place and ordering new monsters. I’m obviously not redoing the entire dungeon, but the tweaks will create something the substantially different from the book. For those of you keeping tract, this means I’m now on the third iteration of the dungeon.

Speaking of Stonehell, rmckee78 of the Circle of Dar Janix is running his players through the dungeon using OSRIC. He’s been posting session reports on the blog and this week his players finally started poking around the Gates of Hell. As much as I enjoy it when people take the dungeon and run with it, as the designer I also get a kick out of when things happen as you imagined they might—which is exactly what happen to this crew.

Still, the biggest beginning of the week is that it looks like the Eldritch Frontier campaign is a go. Yesterday’s meet up resulted in the group reaching a total of three players—the minimum I was requiring before starting. On top of that, I’ve got another player joining up in just a couple of weeks. Four is a nice number but I’m still keeping the “vacancy” sign lit for now. Next Sunday will be game session #1, meaning that I’ve got some work that needs to be done on top of the Stonehell sequel launch.

Ever since we confirmed the start of the campaign, I’ve been thinking a lot about the tone of the campaign and my referee voice. Perhaps it’s my literary background but finding one’s referee voice is as important as an author finding his or her writer’s voice. Every referee needs to do their damnedest to cultivate a unique style, atmosphere, setting, and method. To create both a way and a world that is easily recognizable amongst the many. Humorous, unsettling, or gonzo—it doesn’t matter so long as you find it. Since it’s been awhile since I’ve spent more than a few brief moments behind the screen, it’s going to be interesting to try and find mine again. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this hobby of ours over the last year-and-a-half and I’ve personally undergone a lot of changes since I last did a steady ref’s gig. My new voice is likely to be very, very different from my previous one. The quest to find it anew will undoubtedly be exhilarating and downright terrifying.

I can’t wait.

The Eldritch Frontier Wiki

I've gone ahead and made my Obsidian Portal site for the forthcoming Eldritch Frontier campaign open for viewing. There are still a lot of little details that need to be added and the whole thing needs to be gone over with an eye for typos, but my goal was to have it up today.

Looking it over, I get the impression that it doesn't quite convey all that I have in mind for the world and seems a little too vanilla in places. The spice will have to wait because I'm certainly not going to tip my hand before the campaign even begins. A lot more will be revealed in time and the campaign's atmosphere will certainly be much more palpable around the table when dice start clattering.

Wiki is here.

Obligatory Alignment Post

There seems to be an unwritten rule that every blogger writing about D&D must at some point discuss alignment. What it means, why it works or doesn't, and the pros and cons of the ninefold system must be featured in at least one post before your cease to blog. I've made it almost a year and a half without mentioning the "a word," but now my time has come.

The following was prepared for the Eldritch Frontier wiki after the topic of alignment came up briefly at Sunday's meeting. It's not the end-all-be-all solution for what some folks call "the alignment problem," but it will hopefully give the players a better understanding of what the threefold alignment system of early D&D means in the context of the Eldritch Frontier campaign setting.

Law vs. Chaos

What exactly “Lawful,” “Chaotic,” “good,” or “evil” means in the context of a D&D campaign has been debated for more than thirty years with various degrees of success. I’m not going to attempt to provide a definitive answer that solves the debate once and for all. Instead, this page defines what alignment means in terms of the Eldritch Frontier campaign.

Before we begin, I’ll state outright that the concept of alignment in the Eldritch Frontier is extremely human-centric and does not take into account the philosophies and outlooks of most of the other (fictional) races, nor does it necessarily reflect the attitudes of me, the referee. The following alignment descriptions are also specific to this campaign setting and do not represent a one-size-fits-all definition that can be applied to any D&D campaign. Please keep this in mind before you choose to argue with my depictions.

Like in original Dungeons & Dragons and its descendent Holmes/Moldvay/Cook/Mentzer Dungeons & Dragons, Labyrinth Lord features the threefold alignment system of Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic alignments. According to the descriptions given in the Labyrinth Lord rulebook, Lawful is equal to being a “good” person, Chaotics are “bad” villains, and Neutrals are wishy-washy individuals. Simplistic but useful when deciding what sort of moral compass your character has. Since I’m looking to run the Eldritch Frontier campaign in a style closer to its historical hobby roots, I’ll be keeping the threefold alignment system. The definitions of each alignment, however, are somewhat different from those given in Labyrinth Lord (and earlier versions of D&D). A better explanation of the threefold alignment system in the Eldritch Frontier campaign is presented below.

The underlying theme of the Eldritch Frontier campaign is “civilization vs. the wilderness.” At the beginning of play the player characters find themselves in a settlement on the edge of the frontier. To the east lies the civilized lands, while the west contains tracts of wilderness occasionally punctuated with areas of law and order. The alignment of each PC generally determines where they stand in the conflict between civilization and the wild lands beyond the River Ahkyl.

Those characters who align themselves with the forces of Law are working to bring order to the wilderness beyond the frontier, usually by way of introducing civilization. The farmer who clears the woods abutting his land so he has more arable fields for his crops is Lawful; the warden ranger who patrols the frontier and fights the humanoid tribes who dwell in the wilderness, thereby protecting the farmer and his family, is also aligned with Law. The local lord who collects the taxes from the farmer to pay for soldiers to patrol the streets and hunt down bandits works to maintain civilization and is thus a Lawful ruler.

However, not all who seek to impose civilization on the wilderness have the best interests of everyone in mind. The despot warlord who carved a barony out of the wild lands and now maintains his holdings through crushing taxation, slavery, and sacrifice to blasphemous godlings would also be considered a Lawful creature in the context of the “civilization vs. wilderness” theme. The assassin who ruthlessly slays the opponents of westward expansion into the wilderness would also be serving the cause of Law in the Eldritch Frontier. “Lawful” and “good” are usually synonymous but not always.

In short, if the character is generally looking to leave the world a somewhat better place than he found it (for himself, his allies, or descendents anyway), he is considered to be of Lawful alignment.

At the other end of the axis is Chaos, which seeks to prevent civilization from expanding into the wilderness—and not through passive resistance. The forces of Chaos put the “wild” in wilderness, actively seeking to thwart the goals of Law and civilization at every turn. The goblins, orcs, and other humanoids who ride out under darkness to burn down a farmer’s croft and put him and his family to the sword serve Chaos. The bandits and brigands who prey upon merchant caravans and stifle the growth of free trade work to advance Chaos. The undead whose very existence defies both the natural law and the concept of orderly cemeteries where the dead remain unmoving are forces of Chaos.

As with Lawful creatures, not everyone who opposes the spread of civilization does so for personal gain or because of antipathy towards men. Some are enemies to civilization because of the threat it poses to the wilderness. In the Eldritch Frontier campaign, the druid—long the poster child for Neutrality in D&D—is considered to serve Chaos since he seeks to defend the wild lands from the forces of law and order. He is an enemy of progress as far as Law is concerned, placing him firmly on the far side of the alignment axis. Some militant elves and hurgs are also aligned with Chaos solely due to the fact that they wish to keep civilization from taming their forest homes and will pick up arms to deter pioneers from entering their lands.

If your PC actively—that’s the key word here—seeks to oppose the spread of human civilization, he serves the forces of Chaos. He’s likely to be in the minority along the frontier so secrecy should be his watchword.

Lastly, there is Neutrality, the center of the alignment axis. In the Eldritch Frontier campaign, Neutrals simply do not care one way or the other whether civilization grows. Instead of seeking to advance or thwart order, they simply live amidst it, usually with no larger goal than daily survival or fattening their purses. Tomorrow will bring what it will and the best way to meet it is by looking out for oneself. It’s best not to get involved with bigger ideals.

If your character is only concerned with himself and how he can best make a buck, he’s in the middle of the alignment axis and serves neither side.

John Dee Would Have Approved

Yesterday, I met with the two guys who will likely form the nucleus of my proposed Eldritch Frontier campaign. We all seem to share similar gaming backgrounds and expectations for the campaign, which is a good thing for this soon-to-be referee. Trying to organize a gaming group from scratch is hard enough without personality and goal conflicts coming into play.

As we left the store, I was asked if I could put together a background sheet for the campaign so that the players would have a handle on the setting before play began. Uh-oh. It’s amazing what you forget to do when you’re doing the pre-game shuffle and juggle, isn’t it? I hadn’t thought of putting such a PC prep sheet together, even though I’ve done so in the past for other games.

I got home and started to try and arrange something that was at least moderately informative without being akin to a dry collegiate thesis. Unfortunately, I discovered that although I know a lot about the campaign setting, I don’t have it all that well organized in my head or in my commonplace books. I know where everything is, but, unless you’re me, it’s difficult to access. I started to go off on tangents while writing the prep sheet, making the damned thing much too long and overburdened with information for my purposes. I deleted the whole thing and decided to start anew.

However, before I began again, I suddenly remembered Obsidian Portal. I had looked half-heartedly at the site in the past, but, since I wasn’t running a regular game, it didn’t capture my attention at that time. Now it might just serve my purposes.

After a little hesitation, I’ve since created an account over there and I’m in the process of putting together a bare bones wiki that contains the necessary player background for the game. Having never had any experience working with a wiki, I’m discovering both the allure and the danger of putting one together for a campaign. The world-builder in me loves it, especially since creating one on Obsidian Portal is turning out to be such a snap to do. But I can also see how some game masters can burn themselves out by trying to create the ultimate campaign world reference wiki before the first dice even hit the table. Having had my brush with overbuilding the campaign world, I’m not likely to fall into the same trap twice, yet it remains something to be cautious of.

Once I get the basics in place, I’ll be publishing the wiki for public viewing. When that happens, I’ll post a link here so that those of you who are interested can check it out and play along vicariously from home.

I will admit that I remain somewhat hesitant about committing too much campaign information to the web. I am a Luddite of minor repute, having lost enough of my writings over the years to power failures, corrupted data, and the like to be 100% at ease with the wiki being the sole repository of my game notes. I’m composing everything on my home PC where I can back it up before cutting and pasting it to the web. Obsidian Portal has no reputation for losing data as far as I know, but I’m simply too paranoid to do otherwise.

Save vs. Paralysis

There is a phrase that gets kicked around my house from time to time: “Analysis leads to paralysis,” which is one way of saying that when tasks become too numerous or problems seem insurmountable, it’s easy to get caught up wondering how to approach the problem and therefore never make any progress. I’m going through such a period at the moment, which explains my negligence in posting. To compound matters, the “what if?” switch in my head kicked on like an oil burner in the dark of night, leaving me with a new idea to contemplate when I should be concerned with more immediate matters. Let me try an organize things a bit so I can move forward.

First off: The Dungeon Alphabet. I know some of you are no doubt tired of hearing about the damned book, but, let’s face it—it’s my book and my blog, so of course I’m going to talk about it. Especially when you consider that the PDF is currently #2 on RPGNow.com’s list of Hottest Items and that the book itself is the best-reviewed product that Goodman Games has ever released. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical as to how people were going to receive the book. It’s not your traditional supplement filled with stat blocks, new monsters, and concrete concepts, and I was worried that people might feel cheated by the book’s format. I wrote a book that I would want to have as a reference source and, luckily, it seems that I wasn’t alone in this regard. Having such a stellar cadre of artists and Zeb Cook adding to my meager prose, all with a $9.99 price tag, took the book to places that I couldn’t dream of doing alone, so as proud as I am of the book, I know I’m but one member of the remarkable team that ensured its success.

I know there are issues with certain sites having the book on backorder or with unreasonably long shipping delays. Unfortunately, this is something that I not only have no control over, but also have no information regarding. As much as I’d like for everyone to get their hands on a copy, I’m unable to assist or expedite the process. My apologies. As for reviews, Goodman Games has done a fine job of collecting online reviews of the book on The Dungeon Alphabet’s web page. One that doesn’t appear there is the review that will appear in Realms of Fantasy magazine, which hits the newsstands on February 4th. I also believe that Allan Grohe has provided a review of the book for Knockspell #4, available in the near future from Black Blade Publishing.

In the last bit of DA-related news, the winner of The Dungeon Alphabet Pre-order drawing was John Seibel of Milwaukee, WI. Congratulations, John! You’ve won yourself a copy of the book autographed by Erol Otus—something that not even its author owns.

Next up: Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls. Sales of the book and PDF have finally seemed to have plateaued. Although this was expected, it was expected much sooner and I’m extremely grateful that the book has done as well as it has—almost 220 copies have been sold when I predicted I’d move around 50. The book continues to sell, albeit slowly, and if you’ve yet to pick-up a copy, Lulu is having a 15% off sale today and tomorrow for Groundhog’s Day (of all things). Just enter the code: SHADOW upon checkout. If you’d rather not pay for a copy, you can always test your luck in this year’s One Page Dungeon Contest. I’ve donated a copy of the book to the prize swag bag; I thought it only fitting.

I intend to start on the sequel next month. I’m currently enjoying the downtime I have, but ideas are beginning to percolate in my mental stewpot. I’ve also seen the preliminary sketch of the second book’s cover piece (done again by J.A. D’Andrea) and it has gotten me excited to revisit those halls. I will be upfront about one thing: Some people felt that the first book’s format (the two-page dungeon) and the organization of the dungeon into quadrants lead to an artificiality in the dungeon and that it was the book’s biggest flaw. Although I can and do see the validity of their argument, I have no plans to change format for the sequel. There will be certain modifications—most of which were planned well in advance and hinted at by the evolution of the maps as one descends—but no gross changes. I leave that to the referee to do should he wish to.

On the home front: The Eldritch Frontier campaign and a new Long Island Meet-up group. I’ve gotten one definite player and one possible lined up for my intended Labyrinth Lord campaign. My flyer has been up a week and somebody else has taken one of the tags off it—but that means nothing, as anyone who’s posted one in a game store knows.

In an attempt to both dig up players and to determine how big of an interest there is on Long Island for old school gaming, I’ve created The Role-Playing Game Historical Society, a Meet-up group with an emphasis on older titles. There is already a Long Island Role Players Meetup group, but they seem to be mostly playing current titles and all of their meets occur in Nassau County, which isn’t very accessible to those of us in the wilds of Suffolk. The Role-Playing Game Historical Society is my attempt to determine if A) there is a dedicated old school gamer community on Long Island, and B) see how many are not located in Nassau County or willing to cross county lines to play. My lease on the group is for three months. If it dies on the vine, no harm, no foul, but if it helps some OSR people connect, I’ll consider it a success. All L.I. area old-schoolers are encouraged to join.

Speaking of Long Island-related gaming, I’ll be attending ICON 29 at SUNY Stony Brook this year (March 26-28). The guest list doesn’t do much for me so I fully expect to be haunting the gaming area for the weekend. If anyone else is planning on attending and wants to say hello or have me sign a copy of Stonehell or the DA, drop me an email and we can try to coordinate schedules.

The thing I’m thinking about when I should be thinking about other things: The Dismal Wilderness. This is the idea that sprang into my head and doesn’t seem to want to leave. While doing pre-work for the planned Eldritch Frontier game, I watched a few frontier/pioneer-themed movies and read a few books regarding similar subject matter. My intent was to inspire myself, but not in the matter I did so.

As it stands, the Eldritch Frontier sandbox is set up to be a traditional old school setting: town, dungeon, and wilderness. But the wilderness in the EF is more along the lines of borderlands between political states, with small duchies and free city-states separated by tracts of forest and mountains—plenty of places for a PC to carve out a holding while still being able to introduce wars and political maneuvering between rulers if that’s what the PCs are into.

The Dismal Wilderness idea, on the other hand, is nothing but wilderness. Vast miles of unexplored, unnamed, and unbelievably wealthy (and dangerous) wilderness. A place where treasure is comprised of rough gemstones and raw precious metals sifted from streams or the pelts of giant lynxes and beavers that dwell in the forest primeval. A place where crumbling ruins of eon-dead civilizations still can be found in deep valleys and atop soaring mountains, guarded as sacred ground by the barbarian tribes who haunt the forests.

I’m not certain if this type of wilderness setting has been approached before, but it’s gotten under my skin. During my lunchtime walks, I’ve started fleshing out a few sub-systems and rules modifications for a pioneer-style wilderness campaign, and I’ve spent a few hours sketching out a very detailed wilderness map on a Judges Guild 17” x 22” hex map. I’d like to play test a few of these ideas, so I’ve decided that the Dismal Wilderness can be found to the north of the Eldritch Frontier. If the PCs ever want to try their fortune in the undiscovered lands, they’re free to do so. Depending on whether or not I get to play test these systems and ideas, there is a chance that I might write up a digest-sized book covering this type of wilderness campaign and the rule variants to help run it.

I also had to beat to death the desire to run a White Box Barsoom game last night. Some things are just better put down before they start to occupy the mental landscape.

As you see, that is a lot of mental inventory and it’s with little wonder that I’ve been stymied to put words together for a post. I didn’t realize myself how much I’ve been pondering, but it does feel better to get it out into full view. I’m going to try and get one of the rough ideas I’ve had for the Dismal Wilderness into a post in the next day or two, just to see if anyone salutes that particular flag. Additionally, once I take care of one more pressing real life issue, I might be a little more relaxed to start outputting some more material. Stay tuned.

Players Wanted for Labyrinth Lord Campaign

I apologize for the local business as I know my readership is international, but, as fellow gamers, I’m sure you’ll understand me using my soapbox to drum up some players for my proposed game.

With my Labyrinth Lord Society membership in hand, the time has come for me to get a game going. I play in a regular group but time and interest won’t allow me to run a regular game with those guys. And I really need a regular game to ref. I’ve got too many ideas and nobody to share them with. Plus, I might as well use some of this newfangled “Author of ‘The Dungeon Alphabet’" fame before it gets cold.

So, if you’re on Long Island and are looking for a B/X, “red box,” Labyrinth Lord game, and have either Sunday afternoons or Monday evenings free, drop me an email at poleandrope[at]gmail[dot]com. Below is the text from my FLGS flyer so you can see what I’m thinking.

Veteran referee seeks to start up a classic “sandbox style” campaign of Dungeons & Dragons using the Basic D&D rules (a.k.a. B/X, “Red Box,” or Labyrinth Lord). Players will create 1st level adventurers beginning their careers on the edge of the Eldritch Frontier, a vast expanse of wilderness teeming with dungeons, monsters, treasure, and magic. The Eldritch Frontier is an old school D&D hex and dungeon crawl, and the players will be free to choose their own paths to fame, power, and riches—provided they’re lucky and smart enough to survive!

The Eldritch Frontier will also turn back the clock on the history of D&D and present a “what if?” scenario of how the game might have developed if left solely in the hands of gamers. Although Basic D&D will be used as the rule set for the campaign, further material will be taken from periodicals and supplements dating from the early years of the hobby, as well as new additions created by the players and referee through actual play. Because of this, The Eldritch Frontier is best suited for those with open minds and laid-back attitudes. Rule lawyer-types might find themselves frustrated, but creative players will have the opportunity make an indelible mark on the campaign world and the referee’s house rules.

Game sessions will be held at Brothers Grim on either a weekday evening or Sunday afternoons depending on player availability. Regular sessions of The Eldritch Frontier will start once three or more players have committed, with an eye on adding additional players as interest grows.

I figure if I can get three, I can get four, and we’ll grow from there.