The Old and Dear

Given my preoccupation with bemoaning blog content that flits away into the ether, here's a blogging “movement” worth supporting: Old Stuff Day. Basically it's a chance for bloggers to show off the old blog posts that they feel have become neglected with time or are particularly fond to the blogger.

Here's my own run down starting backwards chronologically in the misty past of 2009:

The Discreet Charm of City Ruins

This was my first post to break the blog out of its role as merely a campaign hub for players. It was the first time I combined broader tones and personal story into a post and it just felt right at the time. Rereading it today makes me want to keep fleshing out that melancholy, besieged city lurking just off the southern map of the Hill Cantons.

Empire of the Petal Throne, the“Gamist” Early Years

This post kicked off the HC's long love-affair exploration of M.A.R. Barker's world. It also served as a manifesto of a casual sort, guiding my own approach to gaming in Tekumel. Best of all it put me into accidental contact with Jeff Berry, the old Petal Throne salt that I only half-jokingly refer to as the HC's resident Tekumel expert. The four-part interview with him (very much worth checking out in its own right  kicked off my interview series and really deepened my insights into that world.

Tony Bath's Hyboria

This post kicked off a multi-post exploration of the truly marvelous “worldgame” that miniature wargaming titan Tony Bath ran in the UK in the 1950s-70s. The series rooted around in the kind of big-stage roleplaying gaming that predated D&D and what people now refer narrowly as RPGs. It also opened up a number of domain-play themes that I started to explore later.

Follow the “Tony Bath” label if you want to read the whole thing.

Taking Domain Play Out to the Edges

The stirrings of the Domain Game and more importantly the attempt to not just recycle and extend “beancounter” domain-play but take it back to old-new areas in D&D that were dropped as the game developed.

How Jack Vance Almost Kicked GloranthaOff Its Runequest Pedestal

First time I really remembered to use a few tricks I learned from my old day job journalism work to write a good, compelling story.

Do RPGs Have to Be Cooperative?

More exploration of how some of the interesting holdovers from wargame play got dropped out too early in the development of RPGs in the 1980s. Should be read with this one, if you are interested in that theme.

Fantasy Fucking Vietnam

Far and away my most solid writing on the blog has been the personal entries. This one details my relationship through my combat vet father to the Vietnam War and how it colored D&D play back in the day. Read this one if you read anything today.

How Much of this Free Crap Do You Use?

This morning my Kindle Fire finally graced my office doorstep and I have been busy making the Great Leap Forward. Moving the small mountain of electronic gaming data from my hard-drive into a format that I will actually read has been mostly painless but the sheer volume—we're talking a jaw-dropping 3,000+ PDFs--of it all has got me thinking about my own and others usage patterns.

It has been asked before elsewhere, but I am remain curious. It's not great secret that our hobby is saturated to the gills with published and electronic material. Adventures, settings, rules settings pile up at an astonishingly high rate, enough that I could safely say you'd never be able to process, let alone game with in a single lifetime.

Through the haze of that infoglut, what do you actually use? What free resources—let's leave out rule sets here--do you find yourself using the most that have come out of gaming blogs or forums? Do you find yourself using those freebies less or more than published material you've paid for?

Enquiring minds want to know.  

The Overking Needs You

Excerpt from the interview with Three-Eyed Pavol, headman and sole survivor of the border colony of Trnova. As recounted by the scribe of Bohdan, under-senschal to Raugraf Androj Animachus the Younger.

Bohdan: Again from the beginning of the attack, itself. Surely, man, you can't still be drunk? It's been over a day since you've received the hospitality of my most puissant and gracious master.

Pavol: Dzzeruphenated.

[Bohdan slaps the hollow-eyed beet-red headman soundly across the face with the handle of his horse-whip.]

Pavol: Sweet jabberin' black goat of the thousand hills, you overshtufed popinjay! I tolds you what I knows.

Bohdan: Again or I shall reapply the supplications of my whip.

Pavol: It twas earl in the morn and I was sounding out the sturdiness of my tuber-cellar.

Bohdan [impatiently cuts in]: yes, yes you were inebriated and passed out from the debauched rites of your borderlands pagan rites of the night before. [Shudders and makes a two-fingered counter-swirling sign of the Sun Lord as practiced by the Reformed Orthodox Seventh Lodge.] Just what happened man.

Pavol: There was a screamin' and a yellin' something fierce. I armed myself fir battle with an over-large chleb-root and bravely strode out to meet the enemy.

But them was a quick buggers—and furry. A pack of wolves I tell you but like men. They were up on two legs and all a hollerin' and a hootin' between their big wolf fangs. And they were making a right bloody mess o' the colony village. Killin' and a hackin' away. If it hadn't been for that Svat-cursed malplaced cellar beam, I would have whip 'em a-plenty.

Bohdan: yes, yes, you craven drunken imbecile, you knocked yourself senseless running into it. But how do you account for a complete massacre of every inhabitant? And the failure of them to lift away the pay coffers and other valuables from Trnova? Are the Brazonians that daft and bloodthirsty?

[End excerpt]

Such, such is horrific nature of the adversaries we face in the coming war. Who are you to refuse pushing a pike to defend our stalwart border cantons?

Wanted: bellicose men and women to command bands of men in this war beyond measure. Your every wit will be put to test by the play to come.

Interested parties should inquire over the ether at kutalik dot gmail com. An appropriate recruitment bounty of 200 gold suns and higher will be released to you upon the swearing of your oath of service to the Overking in the presence of our Most Puissant and Resplendent Sun Lord.

A Rashomon Effect of our Very Own

Nestled somewhere in the misty reaches of the ether there is a chart so nefarious, so utterly corrupting in its influence that I shudder at its mention.

How many souls—and livers—were gutted by a seemingly frivolous lark amongst its random probabilities? How many buildings burnt and fleckless innocents beaten to feed its soulless agenda? I write, of course, of Jeff Rient's infamous Carousing Mishaps, the table that launched a thousand FLAILSNAILS tall tales.

This is such a story.

Back up to a little over a month ago when one of several new additions to the player cast of the Hill Cantons, a mountebank by the name of Manzafrain the Mirthful (pictured above as drawn by that scamp Jeremy Duncan), is making a bid to gather those wee few extra experience points to push him over the next level hump. He doubles down and decides to put the maximum he can—all of the hard-earned swag he has minus a hobbit-carried sedan chair—and naturally just as promptly blows the roll.

Amusingly, the table dictates that he has found himself in a shotgun marriage in his binge haze. I promptly up the ante by explaining to him that his new bride, the eldest daughter of a local guild master, is an utter terror and nag.

Marzapan, an aspiring Flashman on psycho-tunes steroids, calls my hand and instantly embarks on a crazed and anti-social plan to kidnap his wife and ransom her back to his father-in-law. He then precedes to bug me for five weeks straight on running this escapade as a session.

Jeremy Duncan's own HC mountebank, "The Colonel"

Truth be told, dear reader, I was artfully avoiding the reality of actually running said session for the simple fact that it sounded boring as all get out to me as a GM.

Yeah, yeah I know I am one of those player-driven campaign preachers--and, yes, my big break from the West Marches model came when town adventures could be explored—but it's just that it clashed with one of my other foundational principles for the campaign. That is that most normal NPCs inside the bounds of civilization are...well...utterly normal unless there is a plausible and established connection to the Weird. In other words the affair smelled of dull little cake-walk.

But then it dawned on me, why not break the fourth wall and just ask the player outright? Fortunately Robert's desire to make good on his obsession trumped any objections to “sexing this session up”.

Poof, the faceless random entry spouse becomes Elishka, the closet sadist with a fondness for sharp cutting tools. Poof comes Drogo, her half-ogre manservant. Poof comes the scheming and Machiavellian father-in-law. And poof this menacingly letter is sent to Robert's inbox:

My Dearest Vagrant-in-Law Marzapan,
It has come to attention by my dear sweet daughter that you have not paid attention to your filial duties throughout the month of the Black Goat—indeed it is nearly Dapper Demagogues month and we have seen neither hide nor hair of you around our town home. I must take you to task, sir, for such negligence.

And it has come to my august attention that you are still seen gallivanting around town with a band of otherworldly ruffians. This simply will not do. 

I urge you to reconsider my offer for employment as an underscribe at my guild offices and to return to the matter of your familial responsibilities.

Or simply I will be forced to take matters into my more than capable hands. I will be meeting with my good friend and dearest boon companion, Jahoda the Sweetly-Scented. You might know him in his capacity as a journeyman in the Brotherhood of Slayers.

In Stern Disdain,
Hurloj  Kladivo
Master of the Guild of Accipitraries, Ankle Beaters, and Drovers

The session did not disappoint. In fact, it perhaps was the most crazed (and thus wonderful) in my three year run. But don't take my word for it, embrace the full Rashomon effect of the experience here, here, here and here. (It really is worth taking the time to read each, trust me.)

Three Years of Madness and Mayhem

I almost missed it. Yesterday compiling all my old campaign notebooks I chanced on the notes from the first session of the Hill Cantons campaign. Turns out today is the three year anniversary for the campaign proper (it predates the blog).

Now, I'm not one for the self-congratulatory post about this or that silly blog achievement, but I am so proud of reaching that milestone that I believe—as we say here in Tejas--the sun came up this morning just to hear me crow.

Because, see, in the first page of that dog-eared spiral notebook is a list of goals and point one is: “Go for the long game. Keep focused, don't dump it at the first distraction and let it evolve from the bottom-up bit by bit.” Having successfully (if narrowly) avoided death by distraction—I did manage to run a host of other side campaigns from Tekumel to Hyboria to both phases of the Domain Game—I feel a certain amount of victory and vindication.

The campaign also managed to survive through a number of big real life changes and its own evolutionary jumps. It went from its first year in Austin as an unholy marriage between 15th-17^th century Central Europe and a radical plotless West Marches-like experiment (running Castles and Crusades) in Austin to the stranger beast (running LL and a large heap of its own homebrewed variants) it is today. Currently the campaign balances inter-connectedly between a tight (if infrequently-meeting) San Antonio home group and a wild and wooly weekly Google-plus crew, the so-called Nefarious Nine.

Here's the snapshot “Harper's Index” of campaign factoids:
Number of sessions: 58

Number of adventure site maps designed: 141

Large-scale “dungeons” explored (6-8 levels): 2

Medium-scale “dungeons” explored (2-5 levels): 11
Mini-dungeons and lairs explored: 25
"Squares" in the pointcrawl map explored: 128

Furthest distance from the center of the map traveled: 62 miles

Number of other dimensions visited: 3

Total number of people who have played in the HC: 35

Countries of players (thanks G+): 5

Number of children that have played: 8

First-time players that have played: 9

Most players at a single session: 12

Number of PC deaths: 5

Times that PCs have rolled on the Death and Dismemberment table: 13

Hireling deaths: 27

Longest living NPC follower: Demetrios the Silent

Longest surviving PC: Mandamus

Most successful first-time player: Uma the Thief

Highest level achieved: 6^th

Most potent enemy bested: Qvix, Demon of the Anti-Ziggurat

Biggest haul from a single session: gold bars worth 6,000 suns (gp)

Most potent magical item obtained: the Terminaxe (+3 vs. giant insects) and/or four pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts

Least exp per player awarded in a full session: 10

Least amount of swag per player lifted in a session: 1 sun

Most popular PC class: Thief

Least popular PC class: Paladin

Most popular HC-unique class: Mountebank

Least popular HC-unique class: Lankhmarian White Wizard

Worst-acting participant: me

I raise a glass of slivovice—it's five o'clock somewhere—to all the players. Without you it would all be a Billy Idol song.

The Hill Cantons are at War

A Message from Our Overking:

“In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in the history of the Overkingdom, I send to every household of my underlings, both at home and in other pocket universes, this message, spoken with the same lack of regard for each one of you as if I were able to cross your threshold and commander the services of your spouse.

For the forty-third time in the lives of most of us, we are [dramatic pause] at war. 

The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the end of a landsknecht's pike, but we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to the Sun Lord Invictus. If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then with the World Turtle’s help, we shall prevail.”

The playtest gauntlet has been tossed and all able-bodied men of lead in the Cantons are mustering to the deafening rhythmic beat of the drums of war. You might remember that I have been working on sections of the humbly-titled CompleteGuide to Fantasy War.

The fine (if deranged and sybaritic) Emperor Don of our northern neighbors, the Brazos Evil Empire,  has mobilized his forces for a couple months of fighting out a border war with my fledgling abstract mass combat rules and campaign rules. The expected grand finale will possibly be a face-to-face battle royale at the second New Braunfels mini con we are chit-chatting about for late April or May.

To commemorate the war we have jointly see up this new blog to chronicle our machinations.