The Orcs of Benighted Ur'alek: A Tale of Tulkas

(This is a story told by Tulkas, son of Gorgas, wardrummer of the clan Kalthas-Kor. He is a half-orc bard that I play in a D&D campaign in a homebrew world)

Benighted Ur'alek beyond the sea,
whence orcs of old did keep their ancient seat,
before the orcish lives of piracy,
before the gods of old did taste defeat.

O, Ur'alek of war-cursed, night-locked coast
where no orc e'er so brave would stand to post,
How dark against your former glory bright
Beyond the southern sea on shores of blight.

When glory in your old environs shone,
when Malor sat the honored coral throne
when Malor held the silver spear of kings
when orcs knew not of deep and maddened things.

When Ebir, son of Malor, sought his fame
when Nabak, and Ibakae with him came.
With Adiok, and Dolzayeh, and Kurr;
with Vozrid, and the traitor Raldanur.

All seeking trophies from the goblin-horde
all seeking glory from the goblins gored.
Each one an orc to kill the goblin theives
and crush the vermin skulls 'neath leathern greaves.

A cave three days from Ur'alek did break
and hearing howls from darkness, orcs did quake
yet, spurred to boldness by Ebir they went,
to darkness and to madness boldly sent.

Two days they searched the cave til Nabok shrewd
did spot a loosened stone within the gloom.
Together, all the orcs pried loose the way,
and at the stench-foul darkness all did sway.

"Come orcs," cried Ebir, "No dark shall master me.
Orcs, orcs, masters of the land and sea.
What orcish youth, eater of bonemeal bread
would quake to step where goblins bravely tread?

"My spear I'll red, with blood of dead
while fainter hearts tremble a-home, a-bed.
Or did you think the battle a thing so clean,
or yourselves above a task so foul and mean?

"With strength, we'll haul the denizens of dark
to searing light of sunlight's cleansing spark.
Our rivers ours, my homestead mine,
when thieving goblins dead upon the brine.

"Come arrow," cried with beating of the chest,
"Take blood and bone, and carve ye at the breast,
I won't be held by barbs and stinging bites,
but brush away the broken goblin-mites.

"For Ur'alek, the capitol so strong,
we'll charge a slaughter days and evenings long,
and when our wounding game leaves blood-slick stone,
we'll know ourselves the heroes of our home."

His boasting cried, the orcs resounded back,
no goblin-might enough to force them slack,
they stepped into the odor-haunted dark
lighting torches by a peer-shared spark.

Down the depths, and through the cavern-night
the orcish party sought their proof of might,
and at a sound all turned to see their prize,
and hearts all melted at the sight upon their eyes.

A mass of twisted flesh and nonsense shape
gibbering foul blasphemies from mouths agape,
a hunter of an age forgotten long
a thing of darkest lore and unsung song.

The terrible and twisted bulk of ages
kept worshipped by the darkness maddened sages
a god of shape unlike the mortal beasts
a-bed in bony evidence of feasts.

Abandoned by the coward Raldanur,
Nabak and Kurr were killed by tendril skewer
the rest were left to flee before the might
of such great power couched in wicked night.

Their flight to Ur'alek could not them save,
when wakened evil broke free from its knave.
And to the sea, orcs fled the darkness foul,
and vowed revenge on that immortal howl.

And so, the war 'tween orcs and gods began
when from our precious shores we swiftly ran,
and still the orcs avoid the cursed wreck
of land and stone we once called Ur'alek.

Can We Blend Narrative and Mechanical Magic?

Hey all,

This last weekend, I had the chance to watch a pair of videos that made some really interesting points regarding magic in fiction. They were Hello Future Me's videos On Writing: Hard Magic Systems in Fantasy and On Writing: Soft Magic Systems in Fantasy

The general premise of the videos was to break down what makes a rigid and well-defined magic system work, versus what makes a more flowy and ethereal magic system work. A key principle repeated throughout the two videos was Sanderson's First Law of Magic. "An author's ability to solve problems with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic." Stated another way, the less well-defined your magic is, the less it can be used to solve problems in the narrative. As a side note to this, magic of any level of mysteriousness can be used to CREATE problems in the narrative with little or no issue.

What made me want to write a blog post on the subject was Hello Future Me's complaint near the end of the videos that few fictional worlds create a series of magical systems within a single world, all of varying levels of "hardness" and "softness". Thinking about that, it's true that there are few, but one glaring example stands out as something that attempts to work a multitude of magical systems into a single universe. It is Dungeons and Dragons (as well as derivative products of D&D).

The wizard is not a sorceror, who is not a warlock, who is not a bard, who is not a druid, who is not a cleric, etc. etc. as deep as the splatbooks go. I see this as admirable. D&D makes a strong effort to incorporate various magical systems that are all meant to simulate vastly different approaches to magic.

All of that said, I believe D&D fails in this effort. This failing, in my opinion, boils down to the core of D&D's magical system, Vancian Spellcasting. Named for author Jack Vance, Vancian spellcasting uses three basic principles.

1) Every spell is a single, distinct unit of magic with a singular effect.
2) Spells must be prepared before each use.
3) Magicians have a set list of spells which may be prepared.

This is a highly specific set of rules. I.e. all magic in D&D is hard magic. To some extent, this is difficult to break away from. To reference back to Sandersons First Law of Magic: if the magic is not specifically understood, its problem-solving ability must be handicapped to maintain drama and tension in the story. Dungeons and Dragons needs magic that can solve problems for the players, and so, it will always need the magic to fall somewhat on the hard magic side.

However, I have a thought; and that thought is Lasers and Feelings. Lasers and Feelings has a mechanic that is truly wonderful in its simplicity. You have a single stat. If you're rolling one type of check, you must roll under your score, and if you're rolling the other type, you must roll over your score. This creates a mathematically simple solution to making a character better at some things, at the sacrifice of other things.

So, we would need a system in which rolling over your score is needed for specific, scholastic spell-use. This would also include literacy, magical knowledge, and analysis of the magical use of others. Specific spells would all be custom made by the players using a point-buy system similar to what Shadowrun uses for custom spells. These would be the more powerful, less versatile spells.

On the other side, a player would need to roll under their score to cast vague, improvised, or other spells like that. These would be less powerful, but more versatile. A prepared college wizard should be a trained combatant, while a wilder should feel more like a magical brawler, employing the magical equivalent of haymakers and dirty tricks.

As players advance, they would be able to move further toward the extremes of the track, allowing them to succeed more often, and with a greater margin of success in their preferred methods, while allowing their neglected skills to atrophy.

So, what do you think of this solution? Do you think that it capture a sense that magic feels like magic for you? How have you house-ruled magic systems in your own games? Let's chat that out in the comments.

Until the next one, happy gaming, all.

Fallout Denver Session Notes 3: The Regrettable Discovery of Borealis

This is a continuation of my records of a GURPS tabletop gaming campaign. You can see parts one and two at the links.

Having irreparably damaged relations with the pharmacy's Arcade Ganon, the party set out with Brick to cross I-225 and seek out the supermutant settlement of Borealis.

En route to this new area, a small detachment of Angels tried to attack the party, although, one well-placed grenade cleared up the encounter before things had much of a chance to escalate. Drengo interrogated the one survivor of the explosion, and learned of Chance, Gadget, and Remy's past with the dangerous gang. It was apparent, the party could expect hit squads in the days to come.

As the dying member of the Angels gang breathed his last, the party somberly recollected themselves and continued onward to Borealis in Brick's company. As they approached the area, they came into a region of sparse ruins and rolling fields surrounding the town of Borealis for about a quarter mile all around. In the distance, the too-human sounds of a mutated breed of eight-legged horses gave the party chills.

As they approached the town, they were accosted by a band of three supermutants calling themselves "tax collectors". Their leader, Davis, dropped some references to working with "east coast stock" in the form of his underlings, Claw and Break. The party, through Brick's half-remembered ramblings of the Master's Army, began to see a picture emerging of a brutish east coast batch of supermutants, and a mentally and physically superior batch made somewhere out west.

The town itself was built into the side of a crater, and guarded by towers. As the party entered the town, they were surrounded and captured by supermutant guards. As they were led away to locked room, Brick slipped into the crowd in the chaos, reunited with his people and disinclined to stick around.

After twelve hours' wait in lockdown, the party was brought before Mr. Callum, the boss of Borealis. He explained a bit of the bad blood between supermutants and humans, and gave the party an option to prove their good intentions, one mission for the town, and they could have some leeway to visit the marketplace and do business in Borealis.

Drengo and Chance left to deliver a report on behalf of Mr. Callum. They followed the crater's edge south until reaching a small encampment of a gang called the Devil Dogs. They reported, as ordered, that the Star farm had lapsed on paying protection money to Mr. Callum's tax men. They took the Devil Dog's payment for this information, and, at a bluff from Drengo, collected an extra 200 caps to line their own pockets with. Upon their return to Borealis and the delivery of Mr. Callum's money, the team was given the freedom of the town, and encouraged to stock up on supplies and take on a few of the open bounties at the town office to improve their goodwill in the area. The team conferred and decided that, since they were short on leads for good settlements for the inhabitants of vault 4, a little goodwill mingled with getting to know the area couldn't hurt.

. . . and, here, we conclude part 3. Until next time, happy gaming, all.

Special question

Hey all,

This isn't a normal blog post, this is just to announce the exciting news that last Monday's post hit over 500 page views! This kind of came out of nowhere, and I think it's a big enough milestone to do a giveaway. I have a poll for what I should give away on twitter here.

The giveaway will probably be in about a month, as I'm getting together with a blogger friend of mine in mid-February to pick each others' brains, and he's got a little more experience in this type of thing than I do.

Thanks everybody who's been reading, and here's to more adventures to come!

Attribute Assignment Overdose

Hey all,

This week, I'll be talking about some of the various methods, official or homebrew, that I've heard for determining attributes in tabletop roleplaying games. We'll start with The biggest distinguisher: Point Buy vs. Roll.

A point buy attribute system gives all players an equal amount of some currency which they use to build their characters, in games like D&D, this means checking a table at character creation and spending your points then and there on attributes only. In games like World of Darkness or GURPS, attributes are only one thing these points are spent on, and balancing points between attributes, skills, feats, etc. is part of the challenge of not only character creation, but point-based character advancement.

Rolling for attributes, on the other hand, adds a little more randomness to the whole thing. Opponents of rolling for attributes point out the randomness, and the chance for characters with widely different levels of competence. Within rolling for attributes, there are two major schools of thought: Roll Down, and Score Assignment.

Roll down is a fairly archaic system at this point, and few except for the most hardcore Old School Renaissance fans will default to this method. What roll down means is that the first number you roll is the score in your first attribute, usually Strength. The second number you roll is the score in your second attribute, usually Dexterity, and so on.

Score assignment just means that after you've rolled your scores, you decide which score to assign to which attribute. In score assignment, you might roll an 18, 14, 14, 10, 8, and 6. You would then decide which of six attributes to place each of these six scores into.

There are quite a few methods of rolling the scores themselves, and we'll finish up with a quick rundown of them.

3d6: Roll three six-sided dice and add the results together.
4d6 drop one: Roll four six-sided dice, remove the lowest scoring die, and add together the remaining three.
2d6+6: Roll two six-sided dice, add the results together, and add six to the sum for the final attribute score.

Beyond this, some GMs have thresholds to reroll. Usually, I've heard is as around 70 points in all attributes added together. Anything under this, reroll. It's also possible to not only drop the lowest die in a pool, but to roll one more attribute than needed, and drop the lowest attribute score roll. So a player might roll 18, 14, 14, 10, 8, 6, 4. They rolled seven scores to use in six attributes, and will use everything but the four to make their character.

As with anything that's been in the hands of the fans as long as tabletop gaming has been, you'll find six different preferred methods among any five players polled; but, hopefully, this article is a strong basis for considering what method will work best for your game. Happy gaming, all.

Fallout Denver Session Notes 2: The Journey to Mercy Hospital, and the Questionable Decisions Thereafter

read part one here

As Chance, Gadget, and Remington stepped outside of Vault 4 for the first time, they truly saw the devastation of the war which, to now, had been an old story of a bad memory. Emerging into daylight for the first time in their lives, they could see the span of the impact crater that held their now damaged and under-supported vault. Across the gap to the crater wall, the Angels gang had built up a bridge of scaffolding, leading to switchbacks, and finally up to the crater's edge.

Atop the crater, they were met with a sight they weren't prepared for. What, at first, appeared to them to be a decayed corpse in the road, stood and introduced himself. He called himself Drengo, and explained a little about ghouls like himself. He'd been walking the wastes for some time, and was in the market for a crew to join up with to make the journeying through the Denver wasteland a little safer.

It wasn't easy to trust some unknown stranger of even-less-known species; but the heroes had very little in the way of options. The services of a guide, it seemed, merited some trust. They still held back somewhat, but did let him know that they were looking for human settlements where they could trade for goods and services, and maybe some anti-radiation medicines. Drengo suggested Vault 57, also known as Mercy Hospital.

In the olden days, Vault 57 had been subjected to an experiment wherein only those with debilitating congenital birth defects had been admitted. Few know that Vault-Tec predicted failure for Vault 57. However; the little vault pulled together, and not only did they preserve many of the medical techniques of the old world; they made some small advances. Materials being in short supply, they're still well shy of the medical miracle workers of the the pre-war world, but no better medical service can be found anywhere in Denver. Even the raider gangs are more likely to make use of their services than to risk angering the vault in an assault.

After a day's trek up the I-225 corridor, the party arrived at Mercy Hospital. Once inside, Gadget headed for the cantina, where games of chance waited for a savvy gambler with just her skills. Thanks to a few shrewd bets, the party was able to buy a few important medical supplies. She also met a (relatively) docile supermutant named Brick with glorious, half-remembered stories of his time in the Master's Army and a desire to make his way to Borealis as soon as he could find a group to travel with.

Meanwhile, Drengo was asking around about finding anti-rad medications. A young woman named Flower Daveson pointed out the way to the pharmacy where a nearly decrepit old man named Arcade Ganon was working the dispensary. If you haven't played Fallout New Vegas, that name might not mean much to you, but let's just say he was a sarcastic man in his younger days, and old age hadn't made him any more pleasant. The encounter ended with Drengo punching him in the face, and Ganon kicking Drengo out of his pharmacy.

The party regrouped and, with no real options here to help their vault find a new home, and few other options, they decided to accompany Brick, and to make their way to the supermutant community in Borealis.

. . . and so concludes part two of our journey. Hopefully I got it all right, but if any of my players are reading, they can call me out on any corrections. Session three should be a little faster in coming than session two was, wish me luck on that!

And, as always, happy gaming, all.

Setting the Hook

Hey all,

Last week we talked about how players can work through their character design to give themselves reasons to come along for the quest, and avoid the dreaded lone wolf syndrome. If you're interested, you can read that post here.

This week, as I promised to Matt in last week's comments, we're tackling the same issue from a new angle. How can you, as the game master, establish a quest worth coming along for?

Something to keep in mind as you establish the inciting incident of the story is how you're going to draw the player characters into the story naturally. There's a balancing act, here. The players should have agency in deciding how their characters behave and, to an extent, how they have behaved in the past. Still, there's merit in saying "no" to a player who wants to, say start the game as the pope, for example.

Fundamentally, the three ways you can work with your players, not only in setting the adventure hooks, but in gaming in general is in-game, out-of-game, and Semper Gumby. Some might want to argue the comparative merits, but I'd recommend keeping all of these options open just to keep as many tools in your game master's toolbox as possible.

In-Game:
Two basic things can happen in-game to guarantee, or at least strongly encourage, player characters to be involved in the world around them. There are motivations specific to the character, and universal motivations.

Specific motivations have to do with the character's backstory. Family in need, mysteries relevant to their interests, or ideological loyalties can sway a character one way or the other. This does require a fairly strong grasp of the character's motivations and backstory, but shouldn't need anything that isn't be readily available to a game master.

Universal motivations require a lot less customization, and can often help to kick off an adventure as well as bringing a team together. This is any situation where refusal of the call would be a sign that a character genuinely lacks an instinct for self-preservation. Some classic in media include the inciting incident of Farscape. A prison ship breakout immediately puts the former prisoners into an alliance. Another would be Knights of the Old Republic: the ship is going down. An NPC offers the use of their escape ship to the party if they can help bring a critical item off of the ship with them. Basically, a universal motivation just means that for the players to expect to survive, they need to team up, at least for now, to work together to fight against or escape from an immediate common threat.

Out-of-Game:
At the outset of a new campaign, there's nothing wrong with talking to your players and just asking, "What do your characters each want? What would motivate them to get involved in a quest?"

Another thing to keep in mind is that you can periodically "debrief" your game sessions. "Hey guys, what did you like? What are you hoping to see in the games to come?" Basically, touch base to find out what's working and what's not working for your players, and see if you can work any of that in in the sessions to come.

Finally, and this is a last resort option, you have the option to just say, out of character, "Look, this is what's prepared, come on the one adventure I have for you, or don't" I don't recommend this, and some players, especially those who've never GM'ed before might take exception to it. Really, I only bring it up because it can sometimes help to know there's a last resort. Even when you don't invoke the "nuclear option" in this way, knowing you have it can sometimes be what gives you the confidence to not need it.

Semper Gumby: Always Flexible
This is less of a "start of the campaign" solution, and more of a technique for a campaign in progress.

"Semper Gumby" might be what some would call an "advanced technique", but it's actually pretty simple. Prepare a handful of bare-bones adventures, let the party do what they like with little to no direction, and throw the most logical pre-prepared obstacles into their path, fleshing out the details as you go.

You'll need a bit of improv to make this one work, but it can give a great vitality to your games if you can hit the sweet spot between rigid planning and improvisation.

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So, there it is. Some tips and tricks for the game master looking to draw their players into the story. Personally, I'd suggest keeping all three fresh in your mind as you game master. Use what works when it works, and be prepared to deviate to another track when one method starts to run dry.

What methods have you used as a game master to bring your players in? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for reading, and until next time: happy gaming, all.