Flying Casual

I am so in the mood to play D6 Star Wars right at this moment. Ah, to relive those last pleasant memories before I completely fell out of love with Star Wars...

OK, back to work.

In Order to Discover New Places, You Must First Throw Out the Old Maps

My Labyrinth Lord campaign recently experienced a complete party wipe, which can happen if you decide to let events unfurl naturally rather than guided by a firm yet biased hand. I look upon it with mixed emotions. It puts a damper on campaign momentum, but also allows me to introduce a few changes, ones I was lamenting over in my yearly review not so long ago.

In retrospect, I realize that I made an error in introducing material from the Advanced Edition Companion. Not because the supplement is flawed, but because it essentially undermined my whole purpose for going back to the roots of the hobby for this campaign. The campaign began to resemble AD&D in rules and style, and if that was the case, why wasn’t I just playing AD&D? It was time to chuck all the extraneous material and go back to basics and cultivate anew.

One of my primary goals in keeping to the basics and building from there was that I was hoping to create a game that was uniquely my own and not just another standard D&D world. This has been a mental hobgoblin of mine for quite awhile now, one which gets aggravated every time someone decides to expand the types of playable classes and wanders into the same old paladin, ranger, bard, druid, etc. territory. Having seen some of that appear in my own world, I had had enough and was seriously looking to break out of these same old variations on a theme.

It was a route I had taken before with both my Mule and Octopus class—solid, yet unorthodox player classes that explored what you can do with a class-based fantasy RPG—and one I plan to continue following. So, instead of adhering to the classic fantasy archetypes, I’ve become more inspired by other driving forces: “Is it something I’d like to play?” and “Is it something different?” The answers to these questions so far are indeed inspired.

As an example of where my mind had been wandering, an instance I’m most proud of, I’d like to present you with my latest class: the ghost. That is not a metaphorical name; it is a dead adventurer who continues to practice his former profession, unwilling to let a little thing like kicking the breathing habit slow him down.

I’m continuing to tinker with a trader class, one that relies more on role-playing than combat and avoids the granting of magical powers, which is a route I’ve seen before, but never quite understood. There are a few other classes (or races, rather) in the stew pot and I’ll either debut them here or submit them for publication as they come to completion.

The ghost may not be for everyone, and it is certainly not for all campaign worlds. My vision of what D&D continues to change, even more so after a year-plus of old school playing. It is unlikely that I’ll ever return to what I once considered its default settings, and I’m looking forward to what this new territory contains.

Download the ghost class here.

Robert E. Howard Days

I’m going to break ranks a little with the old guard and admit that, although I respect his work and creations, Robert E. Howard is not my “go to” literary figure for swords & sorcery and high adventure (Leiber likely holds that title for me). Nevertheless, when I come across something such as this, I cannot help but wish that I was not roughly two thousand miles away from Cross Plains, Texas.

Robert E. Howard Days is a wonderful yearly get-together of fans, scholars and friends, all gathered to celebrate the life and work of Ol’ Two-Gun Bob Howard, a true Texas and American original. It’s an open-air-under-the-Texas-sun informal meeting of folks from all over honoring the Legacy of Robert E. Howard with fellowship and friendly conversation, and you can do so on the very ground where he walked and wrote his wonderful works.

[from the website]

Between the North Texas RPG Convention on June 2nd-5th and then Robert E. Howard Days on June 10th and 11th, Texas is the state (of both geography and mind) to be in for June. Anyone care to subsidize a Yankee blogger looking to head for the wide-open plains this summer?

Cauldron Spirits

Some magic-users eschew the traditional familiars and homunculi for another form of servant: the cauldron spirit. These beings are traditionally recruited from the ranks of the recently-deceased and bound within the mage’s primary cauldron, crucible, forge, or alembic. A cauldron spirit is part-magical item, part-living creature, and can only be created by magic-users or elves of name level or higher.

The creation of a cauldron spirit begins with the mage making contact with a dead soul. Usually this is accomplished with the assistance of the clerical spell, speak with dead, but negotiations with cognitive ghosts is another possibility. The soul to be used in the creation of a cauldron spirit must be willing to serve the mage, and will likely barter for a limited duration of service or some reward that might be of use to the spirit (assistance to living relatives, providing resurrection for the spirit after service, destruction of a hated enemy, etc.). Truly desperate or evil magic-users have employed trap the soul to gain the spirit they need.

Once an arrangement with the spirit has been made, the magic-user performs a ceremony to bind the spirit with its focus object. This rite takes 1d4 hours to complete and costs 5,000 gp in materials. Any interruption before the ceremony’s completion negates both the rite and the components involved, requiring the magic-user to start from scratch.

Each cauldron spirit has a loyalty score as determined by the spell-caster’s Charisma. This score can rise or fall depending on how the magic-user treats his spirit or abides by the agreement struck with the ghost prior to its employment. Any command the magic-user gives the spirit which goes against its nature requires a successful loyalty check for the spirit to comply and assist its master. A cauldron spirit who refuses to comply with its master’s command may be forced to follow directions. In order to compel the spirit to abide by its master’s orders, the magic-user must spend two complete rounds forcing its will upon the spirit. The cauldron spirit must then make a save vs. spells or concede to the spell-caster’s wishes. Each time a magic-user successfully compels the spirit to obey reduces the ghost’s loyalty score by one point.

The physical destruction of a cauldron spirit’s focus item or a successful dispel magic cast against the same releases the spirit from its bonds and negates the item’s ability to house another such ghost. For this reason, most magic-users keep their cauldron spirits safe at home. The creator of a cauldron spirit can free its ghost at any time by conducting an hour-long rite that employs 500 gp worth of materials.

The benefits of having a cauldron spirit are threefold. Firstly, all spell-casting times (if used) are reduced by half. Secondly, the cost of creating magic items and researching spells are reduced by 25% as is the time required to create them. Thirdly, a cauldron spirit can “store” spells as if it were a magic-user equal to half its master’s level rounded down. These spells are typically utilitarian (detect magic, read magic, dispel magic, etc.), but some spellcasters trust their cauldron spirits enough to allow them to hold offensive magics in case their laboratories should come under attack. These spells are cast as if by the magic-user, himself. There are no innate restrictions keeping a cauldron spirit from turning its stored magic upon its master, however, and magic-users are advised to keep this in mind before gifting their magical servants with powerful, destructive spells.

“You awaken in a cold sweat…”

The dream your PC had last night was:

1-Your comrades were sitting around the campfire, gnawing on cooked human limbs. Their meal interrupted, they looked up at you with eyes that shone like a cat’s. Putting down their gruesome meal, they began crawling towards you as you struggled to free yourself from your bedroll. Wound as tight as a shroud, your arms were pinned as your friends stalked ever closer…

2-You were lost in the fetid halls of an ancient dungeon, one you’ve never encountered before. A thunderous rhythm, like a demonic heart, filled your ears as the shadows gathered about you. Turning a corner, you found yourself confronting the leering skull-face of the first companion you ever lost. With a rictus grin, he beckoned you to join him down into the dark…

3-You were enjoying a lavish banquet meal in the hall of a strange king. The provender was good, the wine excellent, and the companionship superb. A tickle in your throat interrupted your dining, stubbornly resisting all attempts to clear it. Then, the first of many small, hairy spiders began to climb from between your lips and onto your plate. This trickle quickly became a torrent, followed by your skin splitting as a horde of skittering arachnids broke free from their nest inside you…

4-You stood alone on a rocky strand, the waves breaking against the unnaturally sharp rocks that lined the water’s edge. A clump of pallid kelp rocked on the tide, coming closer with each breaking wave. As you watched, the kelp rolled over, revealing it to be the water-logged and crab-picked visage of your mother. Her dead eyes stared at you accusingly and her sodden lips worked silently, mouthing accusations of your past faults and failures. Soaking arms grappled you from behind, spinning you about to face the barnacle-spotted face of your father, his beard strung with dead anemones and jellyfish. He leaned in to kiss his favorite child…

5-You stood atop a craggy promontory, perched hundreds of feet in the air. Before you lay a wasteland of fire and ash; in the air above it, great black birds with yellow eyes and tattered feather rode sinister thermals and their hoarse cries croaked loudly in your ears. The sun glared hotly, revealing the picked bones of a thousand nations in the sand and soot below. You had the power to stop this, but your fear would not let you do what needed to be done. A shadow, like that of a titan rising from his restless slumber, blots out the landscape, shrouding you in night. SOMETHING approaches from behind. You feel its talons reaching for you, but you cannot—will not—turn to face what can only be the agent of your deserved punishment…

6-The ground gives way as you walk down a narrow forest path. A sound like ice breaking in the spring thaw hits you ears immediately before the pain explodes from your legs. With legs broken by the fall, your arms flail, struggling to keep yourself from sliding deeper into the earth as you grasped for plants that ripped free from the ground as gravity continued to claim you. Then, the first pair of fangs stabbed into your legs. You disturbed a nest of vipers in your fall. Your legs and waist became targets for their knife-like fangs as they struck again and again, pumping searing venom into your calves, thighs, and groin…

Pleasant dreams.

Dragontales: “Sir George”

The Dragontales anthology (and yes, I’m still working my way through it) does its best to appeal to everyone, no matter what their preferred flavor of fantasy might be. So far we’ve seen game fiction, pulp sword & sorcery, and second-wave feminist faerie tales; it must therefore be time to delve into the comedic to lighten things up. We get it in the form of Carl Parlagreco’s “Sir George.”

Like most of the authors whose work resides in Dragontales, Parlagreco seems to have been an unknown writer who caught the eye of Kim Mohan & company when assembling the anthology. It is possible that this Carl Parlagreco is the same one associated with The Spartacus File (the dates seem to fit in any case), but again a cursory web search reveals little about the author’s post-Dragontales writing endeavors.

What is evident is that Parlagreco has a fondness for puns, play on words, and is undoubtedly familiar with the works of Douglas Adams: “Sir George” is that kind of tale. In it, we are introduced to the eponymous protagonist, a dragon who awakens one morning to deal with both a sore throat and a bold (if inept) knight named Byron Elpus, Lord of the Pristine Lands. Yes, that makes him “Lord Elpus,” who is just the first of several outlandishly-named characters.

Lord Elpus needs George’s head so that he can marry his beloved, the glorious Maiden Form. George, being rather attached to it, manages to convince the knight errant that a solution exists that would allow him to keep his cranium while still meeting the conditions placed upon Elpus. And thus an unlikely buddy tale in the vein of Dragonheart is born.

The illustrations that accompany the story are the work of an artist who signs his or her work as “Yeehan,” “Seehan,” or “Geehan” depending on how one interprets the first letter in their signature. The pieces are all competently rendered and their style fits a lighter, funny story.

Sir George is a one of the shorter tales in the anthology and being a comedy piece (especially on that relies on a lot of puns to deliver its comedic punch), there’s not a whole lot of depth or subtext to read into. That doesn’t mean it’s a poor tale, however, although one’s enjoyment will largely depend on your own attitudes towards word play in humor. Some of the puns are more dated than others, while still others are likely to sail over the heads of younger readers. It also ends on a slightly ominous note depending on how one chooses to read it.

Wong & Boris, Culinary Masters and Chefs of Renown

When the jaded palettes of nobility grow tired of stag, peacock tongue, and turkey-stuffed-with-chicken-stuffed-with-duck, they summon the legendary chefs, Wong & Boris. Once word arrives in their Kitchen Stronghold that their talents are required, the two masters of the culinary arts sally forth with the caravan of prep cooks, mobile larders, and chest of endless herbs & spices to wherever their skills are wanted. They charge a fortune for their efforts (one banquet they prepared for the Sultan of Yugglestan resulted in the economic collapse of the county’s infrastructure), but the results are well worth it.

It should be noted that Wong & Boris provide only the means to prepare and serve a meal, and the necessary garnishes and seasonings that accompany it, not the dish itself. For that, they typically rely on their employer or any number of wayward adventurers with empty pouches, loose morals, and questionable common sense. More than one out-of-work adventuring band met their end on a quest that bean with the appearance of an apron-clad, funny hat-wearing, mysterious stranger with an outrageous accent who sidled up to their tavern table with an offer of work.

These adventurers are tasked with the job of locating, killing (or sometimes capturing), and returning with the carcass of creatures running the gamut from anhkhegs to dragons to purple worms to tarrasques—all of which Wong & Boris have a dozen recipes for. Those adventurers who succeed with aplomb may even be granted a seat and plate at the meal (although usually seated at a small folding table near the kitchen).

The Society will now come to order.

Yes, it’s May and the month-long A-Z meme has come to an end. At last, I feel free to emerge from my cave, blink the bright spring sunshine out of my eyes, and eat a hiker. For those of you who participated, I’m glad you all had fun. It wasn’t to my liking because I thought it was too forced and too long a meme (I thought the same about “Hot Elf Chicks” but that was only a single day so I grinned and endured it). Happily, I get to have my own opinions without caring what everyone else thinks or needing to justify them just like you do. I nevertheless hope this turns out to be a one-time experiment.

While everyone was alphabetizing themselves, I decided that it was a perfect excuse to dodge out of the blogosphere and attend to other business—and I got a hell of a lot done. I didn’t miss composing posts at all, leaving me even more certain that my decision to draw things to a close here on the Society of Torch, Pole and Rope is the right one. It’s definitely getting to be time to move on to the next thing for me. What that is, I’m uncertain, but this is the final year of the Society for sure.

April saw the near completion of the two projects that stand between me and committing myself full time to the Stonehell sequel. There likely remains a little cleanup work to be done on those, but I anticipate that in the next few weeks, Stonehell 2 will be my main concern. It’s time to finish that once and for all. More details on the mystery projects will be forthcoming when I’m allowed to speak openly about them.

Somehow I managed to fit in a sci-fi and fantasy convention during the 90k words I was writing, and I spent three days annoying the hell out of Frank Mentzer and the rest of the gaming guests at ICON 30. Having first attended ICON 7 or 8 and sporadically returning throughout the years, this was the first time I felt that I was on the other side of the wall. I was not attending as a fan, but as someone with a vested interest in the state of gaming. In the past, I’d be doing the celebrity Q & A thing. This time, I was attending workshops on the future of RPGs or how to sustain your interest and finish a freelance writing project in order to keep yourself and your publishers happy. The last one was responsible for one of those “Holy shit, I’m actually a writer” moments. Ending the convention by playing OD&D with Frank Mentzer was a nice way to bring the weekend to a close, although it didn’t really end then. I left the con to run my Labyrinth Lord game and promptly killed the entire party when negotiations with a young red dragon broke down.

Between the TPK and breaking for Easter, I think the year-long campaign has started to lose momentum, something which can be terminal for a game if not corrected. Today’s game had to end early because I was in too much pain from an old back injury to keep things going until our normal stop time. Plus, we lost 3 of the 6 replacement PCs on the first level of Stonehell (exploding flame toad & two potions of poison) so it was time to call it a night. With Mother’s Day next weekend and a playtest of something else the week afterwards, it won’t be back to Labyrinth Lord until May 22nd. That’s a long break and I hope we can recover.

A lot of my uncertainty about the future of the campaign can be blamed on the fact that it’s now spring. My long-time friends know that as soon as the weather changes, I get spring fever and go a little flaky. The last thing I want to do is sit inside and pretend to be outdoors when there are woods to be walked, beaches to be visited, and friends to see. But I can’t pretend this is the sole reason. I’ve been running hot and cold on vanilla fantasy for a while now and it might be time to do something very different. I’ll have to see how things play out in the next couple of weeks.

On the “News of the Highly Implausible” front, due to some strong suggestions by unnamed individuals, I finally broke down and got on Facebook. Some of you have already discovered this and sought me out. I’m pretty open about befriending fans and contemporaries, but don’t expect exciting insights into the mind of Mike and whatever I’m working on. I did join the Stonehell fan group though, and I might release advance looks at the dungeon through that page a week before I post them here. We’ll see.

The blog roll will be returning slowly starting tonight. I’ll undoubtedly overlook some folks, so please don’t take it as a slight if I do. There’s just so much more out there now and I can’t (and don’t) follow everyone’s work. There are more comprehensive lists than my own.

And there we go. I hope we have some fun again together before I turn off the lights and lock the door.