Lyonesse Maps

Hopping around the ether today I found some wonderful maps of Vance's Lyonesse on French fan sits. (Apparently like Jerry Lewis, that trilogy plays well in Francophone countries having produced the one and only rpg in the setting and several quality fan sites.)

This beauty of a South Ulfland map, naturally, had me a-twitter. Interestingly it places Fian Gosse (the barony I'm using for the Medieval Hack mini-campaign) almost exactly where I did working from the Lyonesse novel map. Scale fits too. 

Click to enlarge.

And here's North Ulfland ruled by the good King Gax (Gygax reference?)

Here's a nice one placing the Elder Isles in their European context.

Vance lovers be sure to check out the rest of the maps and the site in general. Google Translate actually does some semi-passable work with the translations.  

The Ulfland Playtest Mini-Campaign

Yesterday I pulled back the current on my recent medievalist game project. I mentioned that I was running a mini-campaign that "ports elements of 13^th century Brittany into the strife-torn South Ulfland setting dress of Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy." 

For spectators and those interested in getting into the playing pool for one of the Google Plus playtest slots (or face-to-face if you fancy a drive to San Antonio), here's the background run down and starting situation on my little barony. 

Ulfland Mini-Campaign Notes

The mini-campaign is centered on Fian Gosse, a petty barony on the marches that divide South and North Ulfland. The region is a somewhat remote and wild place of rugged, grassy hills punctuated by wood-choked vales, lush river-bottom meadows, heather-covered moorlands, weathered megaliths and ancient, time-worn ruins. Arable plots are small and divided by dense bocage (hedgerows often overgrowing a crude stone wall) and herds of lean, rangy cattle and wooly mountain sheep dominate the wider open pastures.

Local Male Names
Local Female Names
Medieval Nicknames (note such wonderful entries as “Catherine de' Medici Jezebel, the Barren Wife, the Black Queen, the Eclipsed Consort, the Italian Duchess Without a Duchy, the Maggot from Italy's Tomb, the Merchant's Daughter, the Monstrous Regiment of Women, the Mother of the Modern High-Heeled Shoe”)

News
Hoel, Lord Bodwy’s last remaining son was found a fortnight ago nailed to the old Roman watchtower two hundred paces from the boundary stones of Lord Govran’s demense. His corpse was so riddled with arrows that it was difficult to identify the teen heir. Lord Bodwy remains bedridden and despondent to this day. Sir Paol, Bodwy’s castellan, is looking for “rough men” to help revenge the honor of the baron.

The Hot Fair of Maure will begin next week. Already the village is packing in wine merchants, harlots, pedlars, vinters, thieves and other ne'er do wells.

Sir Gralon and Sir Taran, twin nephews of Bodwy’s currently serving in the court of King Gax in Xouges are said to be on the road to Fian Gosse. Their mutually-contested status as heirs to the barony surely is prompting their sudden sense of homesickness.

Sir Paol has offered a one Libra (240d) reward for the slaying of the dreaded Hound of Blacken Moor. A shepherd had his throat torn out near the moors just a night ago.

Sir Kavan, the more martial of Bodwy’s bannerets, is looking for the fleet of foot and stout of arm to help in a return of his prize bull from a local banneret. Interested parties should seek him at Three-Pines Hall.

Jakez the Woodward has been breathlessly spreading in the village a chilling tale of coming upon a black rock altar deep in the center of Kaugh Forest. The blood staining in it was hot and fresh to the touch and he could hear the howls of Hell itself when he lifted his hand. The tale grows in the telling.

NPCs of Note
Lord Bodwy, the petty baron. Bed-ridden and despondent since the deaths of his three sons

Sir Kavan “Rooster”. Strutting proud banneret of Bodwy’s.

Sir Ranulf “the Cuckolded” (weak chinned and fat) and his wife Ysabel of Konche, raven-haired beauty of an “amazon”. Bodwy’s other banneret.

Sir Paol, Bodwy's Castellan. Old lean and a bit myopic.

Sir Tristan, knight bachelor holding a small manor two miles NE of Maure Keep. Two household knights and mercenary leader are PCs.

Surrounding Baronies:
Lord Govran, sadistic fucker who holds the barony of Caroth to the northwest.

Lady Mebille of Gelsme. Stewarding the barony to the south for her son. Eerily depopulated fief with bramble-covered ruined villages and wood-choked fields. Dark rumors abound about the lady.


Four “Founder” Saints of Ulfland (each grants specific powers under our divine magic system):
St. Tudwal
St. Christopher the Lesser
St. Padarn
St. Kaourintin 

Click to Enlarge

Places
Barony of Fian Gosse
920 Serfs (15 square miles of cultivated land)
110 Freemen (2 square miles)

Maure Keep
An old pink-granite Shell Keep with 25-foot walls. Seat of Lord Bodwy. Currently houses five knights (including the Castellan), 14 sergeants, and 47 footmen. The demense is also backed by the two fortified manors of Bodwy’s vassals, Sir Kavan and Sir Ranulf.

Maure
Large village of around 750 that holds a royal market charter (and is thus growing into a town). Three mills, a smithy, two weavers, a tannery and most recently Kernun’s Antler, an inn.

Three Pine Hall
Venerable oak-trunk manor house known for the three massive ancient pines in its courtyard thought to have once been used in the worship of a pagan god.

Abbey of St. Christopher the Lesser.
Premonstratensian abbey run by the Abbot Fransez the Fat, a venal and grasping man.

Avessec
Village of 238.

Ruminail
Village of 258.

Molac
Sinister little hamlet of around 50 herdsmen near Bracken Moor.

Teach tac Teach
Mountain range, three closest peaks are called the Cloudcutters.

A Hardcore Medievalist RPG of Our Own

Like most of my fool gaming projects, it started so casually. Restless on leave, I threw out on Google Plus the idle thought that I was suffering through a perverse, masochistic urge to play a hardcore medievalist rpg like first edition Chivalry & Sorcery or Harnmaster.

For some reason the resulting discussion just clicked something in my head and low and somewhere in there it morphed into “let's make a game.” I trotted out a wish list of design goals for a dream game:
1. Low-to-no magic rpg. Magic and fantasy elements are rare and wondrous or terrifying.
2. Set roughly from 1190-1250 in a Northwestern Europe, but can support low fantasy or semi-historical fictional settings that are similar.
3. BRP-like percentile game as a baseline but with simple mechanics that are custom fit for the period.
4. Game feel inspirations: real world history, Averoigne/Jurgen weirdness and a splash of Howard Pyle-like romanticism.
5. Indirect "magic" (saintly, alchemy, sorcery/summoning, and herbal) that is well-researched and fits into the workings of the medieval mind.
6. Folklore and legends are often "real". Prester John may well live at the edge of the world in a land filled with strange wonders. The black hound may indeed hunt the moors and Woodwoses in the deep dark recesses of the forest. Faith and folklore have real weight.
7. Background, institutions and social class matter, but opportunity through social chaos/adventuring.
8. Interesting, painless chargen (career based with clear easy choices).

A mad writing rush of two weeks opened up with heavy-lifting help from Evan from In Places Deep  and Mike from Sword+1 and other mensch in our DIY corner or the hobby. Forty manuscript pages later and “Medieval Hack” (a working title) was a-born.

A good many ideas I've been long harboring for character generation minigames were sharped and found a home, you can guide a character through a large range of childhood class backgrounds along a vocation path of almost 50 different realistic vocations (with lots of strange events and related character development along the way). Long-tinkered, beancounting-minimal domain-level rules are finding a place too.

While we have a lot more tightening up and thinking out to for our evolving-bottom game, the punchline is we already had enough in place to start the real fun: hot-housing in several play-test mini-campaigns on Google Plus hangouts.

Evan is running one such game in the Languedouc region in the late-12^th century. I'm running two sessions a week now of a mini-campaign that ports elements of 13^th century Brittany into the strife-torn South Ulfland setting dress of Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy (see here for the full campaign description).

If you are interested in the game—and more importantly want to drop in and swing a virtual sword in one of the playtests--drop me a line. Half the fun is building a game organically from the bottom up with the discerning and devious minds of our wee hobby.

News and Ephemera from Kezmarok

A round-up of things particular to the Hill Cantons campaign proper.

And now the news...

A bizarre riot of pugilism near the Gate of 900 Eyes last Sagday night has municipal issues in a state of almost concern. A bo stick-armed delegation from The Ring-Tailed Circle of Kezmarokies for Prosperity and Weal, a rumored front for Wellsprings of the Crowd, marched on the Municipal Palace yesterday demanding immediate suppression of the “fight cult.” The High-Marshal has stated that a round-up of the “usual suspects is already underway.”

Dromons and cogs pulling in from the waters of the Cantons are spreading word of a slow and massive accumulation of storm clouds in the seas of the northwest. The stormheads have been eerily piling up for weeks now, occasionally looking like they will burst though into a gigantic squall—only to dry up inexplicably. Some say that the supernatural storm-to-be is the Celestial Lady beating the Sun Lord with her silver chains again, others around the chaotic cult of Storm Child whisper of the birth of a “One Other”.

Steelpike the Younger, purveyor of secrets and climber of social ladders, has made a great show of wanting to sell a second map of “great and valuable material worth.” Interested parties should inquire at the great hostel of Finestra.

Another round of cryptic wall posters have been appearing throughout Kezmarok (penned in a different hand from last week's fight cult ones). The posters all bear the same lines:

The World Turtle Upended

If buttercups buzz'd after the wozzle bee

If cogs were on land, sun-domes on sea

If steppe-ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows

And pelegranes should be chased into holes by the mouse

If the mamas sold their babies

To the Silent God for an aparicity crown

If summer were spring

And the other way 'round

Then the world-turtle would be upside down!

The World of the Hill Cantons. Crappy Players' Map

The travails of academic life in Kezmarok. The Great Seminar of the HCLK bubbles over into vigorous dispute over the nature of Gematria (the proper assignment of numerological significance) in Therosh's 18th Examination of the Pericyclical Evolution of the Dome of the Heavens.

Kezmarok and the Southlands.
The Weird is marked in purple.

Historical Fiction for Fantasy Readers

I have a small laundry list of failings of the fantasy genre that drive me absolutely bonkers. Sitting right near the top of that list—right after the big-tickets like cardboard, Tolkein-rip-off—is that way too-common one of characters whose world view drip with the mundane and modern. Motivations and dialogue that are so jarringly familiar and pedestrian—minus great compensation in other areas—that they invariably yank me right out of that feeling of being somewhere else entirely (one of the great points of fantasy)

What I find it so deeply disappointing about that drek is that fair-to-good novels in another genre routinely succeed in shifting that feeling of being in a different world despite it's painstakingly real-world orientation: historical fiction.

It has passed into cliché, but it's worth repeating the old L.P. Hartley quote: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” And that's what I love, the same ability--like the best fantasy--to walk around in the shoes of characters that have values, perspectives and motivations mostly different from my own.

Skipping to the chase, here's a list of historical fiction that spans the pre-industrial era that I found particularly inspiring for me as a GM:

Knight in Anarchy by George Shipway

Brutal and vivid this short novel centers on the life of Humphrey Visdelou, a Anglo-Norman small fiefholder in the Anarchy (the 12^th-century period of civil war that serves as the backdrop for Jeff Rients's famous Wessex campaign). 

It hovers close to the ground (though Humphrey becomes involved with many of the big-ticket events of the day) and is painstakingly researched with a character and period detail that surpasses the “alien test” for me.

Sadly out-of-print and difficult/expensive to find in the U.S. outside of libraries. (I lucked out and fished one of out the dollar bin of a used bookstore).

The Warlord and Saxon Chronicles, Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell

The novels of the insanely-prolific Cornwell, best known for his Napoleonic-era Sharpe books, are somewhat predictable in their choice of protagonist--invariably a rough, but honorable military man who bucks authority and religion (almost to the point of being an “Eternal Champion” of sorts). Nevertheless he writes some great adventure novels.

Worth checking out in particular are the Warlord books set in historical Arthurian Britain (with some agnostic, believable whiffs of druidic magic), the Saxon chronicles of 9^th century England and the stand-alone, recent Agincourt novel.

The King Must Die and The Bull From the Sea by Mary Renault

Renault's attempt to reconcile a more historical Theseus with the assumptions of the Golden Bough. The first book goes through his sojourn in the Labyrinth palace of Minoan Crete, the second with the argonauts attempts to capture the “golden fleece.”

It's also worth picking up her other novels oriented around the Hellenic world.

Q  by Luther Blisset

Opening up with a bang in the heat and turmoil of the Peasant Wars and Reformation in the Holy Roman Empire, this sprawling “thinking persons' thriller” follows an obsessional Inquistor and his quarry, a radical Anabaptist, through several decades and cities in western 16th-century Europe. Interestingly Luther Blisset is a coded pseudonym for a (talented) collective of anonymous Italian writers. 

Gentleman of the Road by Michael Chabon

Pultizer-winner Chabon's excellent 10^th century-adventurer tale of two Jewish swordsmen/scalawags traveling to the distant Central Asian land of the Khazars. Explicitly dedicated to Leiber's Lankhmar duo.

Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali

Ultimately depressing but captivating, this novel tells the story of an Andalusian Muslim noble family immediately after the fall of Granada. Good balance to the heavy Christian-center of most medieval historical fiction. 

His novel about Saladin is also good if a bit drier.

The Walking Drum by Louis L'Amour

Yep you read that right Louis “the hoary old western novelist” L'Amour. He just so happened to also write a good, if not great early medieval adventure tale that takes a slave and pirate from the coast of the Frankish empire to the splendors of Caliphate Cordoba and points east.

Name of the Rose and Baudlino by Umberto Eco

You've likely heard of the first (or seen the movie with Sean Connery), Eco does a stand up job of bringing to life the details of real life and the social/intellectual trends of medieval Europe. 

Baudlino is nowhere as accessible and gripping as Name of the Rose, but worth picking up if you have an interest in Constantinople around the time of its capture in the Fourth Crusade.

Also worth checking out:

The Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo series by Dorothy Dunnett 

With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, and Fire in the Steppe by Henryk Sienkiewicz

I, Claudius, Claudius the God, and Count Belisarius by Robert Graves

Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield

Whale Road by Robert Low

So how about you? Any lovely old favorite historical novels of interest to us fellow fantasy gamer

Post-Apocalyptic D&D: Greyhawk vs. Wilderlands

“...the Alliance constructed a fortress north of the base constructed to accommodate the large bodied elder scientists (later to be called the City State of the Invincible Overlord when nomadic barbarians settled amongst the ruins thousands of years later)...Completing the dismantling and demolishing of all tools and machines not worth transporting, the Alliance star cruiser filled up with the colonists going off-planet and the Markrabs began the Uttermost War by destroying the cruiser, all satellite probes, and the Alliance space station. The planet itself was spared devastation as neither side wished to disrupt or destroy the unique ecological cauldron of immense scientific interest.”

- Bob Bledsaw on the origins of the Wilderlands

Because I have lots of life activity with things better to do, I doggedly continue to plug away on matters that are silly, obsessional and fantastical. Still trying to wrap my brain about how demographics subtly shape the feel and tone of a campaign world I started to shift into comparative mode.

The easiest target was Judges Guild's old warhorse of a setting, the Wilderlands. Easy because unlike many other old published D&D settings, the Guild folks thought and published a good deal more (and more rigorously) about the in-game implications of all this. 

Sandwiched between the terse descriptions of hexes and settlements are these solid gold guidelines and sub-systems covering everything from population density to prospecting to semi-realistic cave systems. Helpfully a lot of that work has continued to recently (see here and here).

(Really the compilation of such little nuggets found in the Ready Ref sheets are one of the best—if worst presented—examples ever produced in classic D&D of how you can pull all the game elements together into an interesting “domain game”--but that's a matter for another post).

So let's do some number crunching. Again I'm going to focus on one area for my analysis, in this case I'm picking on Map 1, the area that covers the much-famed City State (and the most-densely inhabited place in that great stretch of wilderness.)

Trying to figure out what the square mileage of that map is a bit of a headache—with the smaller 5-mile hexes and poster-size you get a whopping 1768 hexes. I toss out all the full ocean hexes (244) and count partial water and small islands as half. That gives 1519 land hexes at 32,866.35 square miles (which incidentally makes it the size of Austria or Maine). Now because I am lazy I use a much more liberal count and count the total land areas (remember I only counted clear hexes in Veluna, a count that included the smallish wilderness areas inside its borders would decrease the population density even further by roughly 10 percent.)

Skipping to the chase (so as not to induce eye glazing):

City State area: 8.56 people/square mile, 281,667 total population.

Veluna (Folio): 4.89 people/square mile, 267,000 total population.

Veluna (3.5 ed): 12.24 people/square mile, 668,000 total population.

British Isles (circa 1300): 40 people/square mile.

France (circa 1300): 100 people/square mile.

Punchline is that the City State area is twice as densely settled as the old Veluna and not even that far off from the tripling revision of 3.5 edition (which I more and more think is likely closer to the original authorial intent).

Wilderlands though in my twisted, little mind owns up to the implications of being such a howlingly wild, post-apocalyptic place in a more explicit manner. The fallout from the Uttermost War and following calamities that happened to the former space colony of Ghenrek IV feel so much deeper and more cataclysmic when you eyeball those many maps and see the little pockets of civilizations. 

The explicit variation of technology levels from the neolithic up to late Renaissance-seeming technologies reinforces this feeling. And with the smaller scale (six times smaller than the Darlene maps remember) how fragile civilization feels all the more obvious as you see how much bigger and closer in those large swaths of forest are.

In the Wilderlands there are no overarching large-scale polities with boundaries pushed up against each other. It's a place where an overgrown city-state (nay THE city-state) lead by a Lord Humungus-sounding “overlord” is one of the most organized bastions of civilization existent.

So what does that do to our view of the World of Greyhawk?