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Wednesday, 12 December 2018

Expanded Medieval-Authentic Prior History Tables

This week Precis Intermedia publishes RPGPundit Presents #58: Expanded Prior History Tables! 

If you have Dark Albion or Lion & Dragon, you're already familiar with the prior history tables, which you roll during character creation as a great random method for generating an interesting element of backstory.  These vary from relatively mundane personal stories to unusual events to supernatural situations. In those books, the prior history tables had 30 entries.



In Expanded History Tables, this is expanded into 80 different entries, divided into four tables in order of increasingly unusual events. Your character could have an animal companion, suffered tragic heartbreak, have fought in a rebellion, have been a foundling orphan, have a false identity, have been the only survivor of an earlier party, engaged in a scandalous romantic affair, studied the healing arts, have survived an encounter with the living dead, or with elves from the fae realm, have somehow saved the life of a Lord, have survived a death sentence, worked as a smuggler, or as a child thief, have survived lycanthropy, have a famous relative, joined a secret fraternity, been the subject of a prophecy, or have inherited an item of great power. Or many, many other options.

The background events in the book are Medieval-Authentic, but can be easily applied to any OSR, D&D or other Fantasy RPG campaign. Some of them just provide roleplaying opportunities, while others grant bonuses, skills, penalties or disadvantages, or any combination of the above.


So be sure to pick up RPGPundit Presents #58: Expanded Medieval-Authentic Prior History Tables from DTRPG, or from the Precis Intermedia webstore!


And while you're at it, be sure to pick up the rest of the great supplements in the RPGPundit Presents series:


RPGPundit Presents #1: DungeonChef!

RPGPundit Presents #2: The Goetia  (usable for Lion & Dragon!)

RPGPundit Presents #3: High-Tech Weapons


RPGPundit Presents #5: The Child-Eaters (an adventure scenario for Lion & Dragon!)









RPGPundit Presents #17: The Hunters (an adventure for Lion & Dragon!)




RPGPundit Presents #21: Hecate's Tomb (an adventure for Lion & Dragon!)































RPGPundit Presents #54: Medieval College Adventures (compatible with Lion & Dragon)




Stay tuned for more next week!



RPGPundit

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Tuesday, 11 December 2018

DCC Campaign Update: The Catboy is Going Commando



In our last adventure, the PCs had returned from the Realm of Fire to the material plane, arriving in the middle of some swamp, they knew not where. They were approached by a tribe of primitive country-bumpkin fishmen, who had begged them for help to destroy a pair of Giant Gators who were terrorizing their people. The PCs said no, until the fishmen offered them a bag of gems in exchange. Then they immediately agreed.

Now:

-"Oh, right, the Sky-Sailor was the guy Lenny originally wanted to eat on the Superfly II!"
"Yeah."
"That was before the player decided the sky-sailor was a sky-mexican."
"Yes, it was before you had surrendered the real possibilities of profound character growth in exchange for a silly accent."



-"Maybe G.O.D. can make him lose the accent?"
"I think that's beyond his powers."
"Maybe Sami could get him to give the Sky-Mexican a different accent?"
"Why?"
"Just to fuck with the player. Like, if he likes accents so much make him have to try playing a character with an Indonesian accent or something.."

-"Changing a dude's name slightly to make fun of him is like, 2nd grade humor."
"Were we supposed to be aiming higher than that?"
"Apparently not."
"Why change what works?"

-"You're great heroes, you could take on the gators!"
"I think he's talking to you..."

-"You can come back to our village. We'll give you food!"
"Wait, what kind of food?"
"Swamp Cabbage, mostly."
"Ugh. Don't you have any fish?"
"What? We're fishmen! We're not cannibals!"
"Oh yeah, neither are any of us!!"

-"Let's take their offer. What's the worst that could happen?"

-"Hey wait, where's Bill?"
"We lost him in the swamp."
"We're free! Yay!"

-"He'll be back, I suppose."

-"Zeke is the heart of the party."
"Yeah, and we need a transplant."

-"Fishmen, who are your gods?"
"The good ones are the frog god and the goddess of the swamp gas..."
"She gives us visions!"
"And the bad one is the Gator god, for obvious reasons."

-"OK, so imagine that your god is actually a greater being called G.O.D."
"So wait, god is god? Hold on, you're going way to fast for me."



-"Jesus Christ, you guys spend 5 minutes away from Bill and you're reduced to this?"
"Oh shit, Bill is our new Roman!"
"The side quest!'

-"I'll cast Food of the Gods... I failed."

-Sami casts Food of the Gods and succeeds.
"Wait, you did divine aid for supper?"
"No, Food of the Gods."
"So you  have that spell?"
"Yeah, but I've never used it until now."
"Wait, so that time we ate sand??"
"You were the only one eating sand."

-"The food created by the spell is spongy, grey and bland."
"See? This is why I never cast it."
"Zeke seems to like it."
"It's the holy food of the Lord, and it's the ideal flavor: bland!"



-"So how many gators are there, fishmen?"
"Two."
"Just two?"
"But they're really really big!"
"How do you know there's two?"
"Because only one of them has a hat!"



-"These fishmen are so stupid that maybe this side-quest will only end up wasting 4 minutes of our lives."

-"Heidi grabs the Mexican cleric and starts flying in the direction the fishmen said the gators were."
"What? No! Why me?"
"Shut up."
"He's bait!"
"The cleric pees himself a little."

-The rest of the party gets on the hoverbikes.
"So Zeke and Lenny are on one, the Catboy and the halfling on the second?"
"Yes."
"So you're riding with the halfing at your back? Brave."

-"The Minstrel and the Inquisitor are on the third hoverbike together?"
"Yes."
"OK. Neither of them have the slightest idea how to pilot a hoverbike. Roll an agility check to pilot."
"I got a 1."
"You ride for 20' and slam into a tree at high speed. The hoverbike is destroyed."



-"The newbies survived! But the bike is totaled."
"Should we go back for them?"
"I don't know, Lenny, are you peckish?"
"Not really, I'm good for now."

-"The catboy shoots his grapple-gun and swings up to the tree, but with style."
"Oh god."
"I am the night!"
"At most, you're the early evening."
"True."

-"Sami, can you lend me money?"
"What is it with you and your obsession with money?"
"I'm a Cleric."
"I'm a Cleric!"
"I'm a newbie."
"You came here to take my job!"



-"The halfling's spotted the giant gator print in the swamp."
"Thank god the halfling is here, with eyes."

-"That halfling is a sassy little bitch! I like him!"
"You can say a lot of things about the halfling, but at least he doesn't have a stupid accent."

-They spot a giant gator, huge, wearing a huge straw hat. He speaks, in a thick hillbilly accent.
"My name's Enus!"
"LOL, he's called Enus.."
"And I live in these here parts, with my brother, Anus."

-"I think we've somehow entered into a Disney movie from the 1940s."
"Yeah, all that's missing is the racist crows."



-It turns out that Enus, and his brother Anus, claim that they have been abused by the Fishmen.
"They ain't real swamp folk! They're a bunch of hipsters that moved in, took their land, and took our bag of gems!"
"Yeah, and they took my hat!"
"Yeah, they took Anus' hat!"
"So that's why only one of you has a hat."

-The PCs are inclined to believe the giant gator brothers.
"So could we maybe mix things up a bit and not do genocide?"
"Hey, genocide! That's a good idea, Catboy!"

-"So gators, if we got rid of the fishmen, could we keep the bag of gems?"
"Well, OK, but only if you get us back Anus' hat!"

-"OK, let's vote: who wants to kill all the fishmen?"
"It's 4-3."
"But does the halfling count? He's a newb."
"While they're talking, Heidi is already flying away back toward the Fishman village."



-Heidi gets to the village.
"Hey, did you kill the gators already?"
"Well, I have news. Everyone come really close around me, all around me, that's it.."
"What's the news?"
"Heidi uses the energy blast from his sword."
"Oh! OK... you killed most of them, there's like 4 of them still alive."
"Then I use it a second time."
"OK, now the entire tribe is dead."

-The rest of the PCs arrive.
"Way to hog the XP points, Heidi!"



-"OK Lenny, do your thing!"
"Sure... where's the minstrel? He looks delicious."
"No, I mean the fishmen!"
"EWW.. you guys would eat those??!"

-Searching the huts, the PCs find a bunch of thrift-store clothes, vinyl records, and mustache wax.
"Shit, the gators were telling the truth. The Fishmen WERE hipsters! They lied to us!"
"Yeah, if only we could interrogate one of them.. oh but Heidi killed them all!"
"Heidi had to be Heidi."

-"I think Heidi's gotten worse since Bill came back."

-"the gems in this bag of gems are all just glass!"
"We committed genocide for glass?"
"No, Heidi did."
"I'm fine with that."

-"Do we find the minstrel and the inquisitor?"
"No, you have no idea where they are."
"Do we find the minstrel's accordion?"
"Yes."
"Whoops, I just accidentally stepped on it several times until it's ruined!"

-"Why do you hate me, Sami?"
"I don't hate you Catboy, I just like Lenny more."
"Oh. OK, I can understand that. I like him more too... I mean more than you, not more than myself!"
"Too late, you already said it!"

-"I fail using divination to try to find these guys, and now my disapproval is a 2."
"I see you like to live dangerously!"

-"I like how we instantly found the fishmen's craft beer, but have completely failed at our half-assed attempts to find the minstrel and the inquisitor."



-"Wait... you guys, you know how we keep hearing faint cries for help that sound like their voices?  What if..they're in the Neutral Zone? You know, like Bill?"
"None of them are in the Neutral Zone!"

-"I think I can vaguely hear their voices nearby..."
"We're right under you, you idiots!"

-The party pulls out the fake terrain they were standing on, and find the two missing newbs, and they were actually buried alive in more hipster junk, all of which had been piled in the overturned Giant Gator hat.
"Thank god!"
"yeah, you rescued us!"
"What? No, I mean we found the gator's hat!"
"The gators were furious at our not finding it. Some of our party could have been in danger!"

-The hat's contents included some jewelry.
"I guess you're adding it to your collection, blingbae?"
"No I don't wear any of that stuff anymore, I put it all in the Briefcase of Holding."
"Now he's The Artist Formerly Known as Blingbae!"

-"You dumbasses destroyed my hoverbike!"
"Why did you let us drive it?"
"I didn't!"
"Who's the leader here?"
"Sami."
"Yeah, Sami."
"Definitely Sami."
"I knew insisting I was the leader was going to bite me in the ass. Damn you, +1 Intelligence bonus!"

-The gators finally catch up to the party, attacking on account of having gotten a bag of fake gems.
"Wait! This was all just a misunderstanding!"
"My ass!"
"No, hold on now, let's hear him out Anus!"

-The gators seem satisfied when the party returns the hat.
"So what's yer name?"
"Catabra."
"Haw haw haw! Did ya hear that? His name is funny-sounding, Anus!"

-"Those gators could have been tough."
"Yeah, but we have a Heidi."
"He's like our version of the Hulk."
"Puny daemons! Heidi smash!"



-The PCs now have to figure out how to get out of this swamp and back to civilization.
"Do you gators know any way out of here?"
"Well, if you go north, east, or west you get to the beach and then the big water. South you get to some dense mountains."
"Are there any towns nearby?"
"Not really."
"What about outsiders? Do they ever come this way?"
"Sometimes to the beaches, some pirates get here."
"Yeah, they come from an island called Port Pirate."
"Port Pirate?"
"Yup, they's the Port Pirate Pirates!"

-The party gets ready for bed.
"Hey Lenny.."
"Yeah Catboy?"
"...are you going to kill and eat one of the newbies tonight?"
"I... I don't know."
"Well, if you're planning to..."
"...yeah?"
"Use my dagger OK? I want a potato."

-Lenny brutally murders and eats the inquisitor.
"Hey Heidi, keeping watch?"
"Yeah, Lenny. You have something in your teeth."
"Oh, thanks!"

-"Catboy, you wake up when you feel Lenny very tenderly putting your dagger back by your side, and a hot potato in its foil."
"Aw, I love Lenny! And my potato dagger."



-The next day, the party makes their way to the beach.
"How hot is it?"
"It's pretty hot, like Florida."
"Yeah, but we just came from the plane of fire."

-They travel for several days along the beach, finding nothing. Finally they end up in a cove which shows some signs of ships having disembarked in the past. They decide to wait there to see if a pirate ship arrive. Finally, one night.
"Who's keeping watch?"
"I am."
"Roll perception."
"I fail."
"OK, then you don't notice the steamship until it's right by the beach, and a band of Gorillas jump out and come at you with nets."
"Oh shit, are they pirates?"
"I think they're slavers."
"Damn dirty humans!"

-The party gets into a fight with the Gorillas who want to enslave them.
"Catboy sneaks up on one and backstabs."
"You do damage, but don't kill him."
"A potato came out, that's the important part."

-Most of the party was sleeping and unarmored.
"Heidi takes a hit."
"Sami, armor me!"
"Sami casts divine aid."
"It succeeds.  Heidi goes through a sailor-moon-style sequence where his armor flies onto his body."



-"The mexican cleric backs away, and gets on the hover bike."
"Is he going to do something clever?"
"Yes. He's running away as fast as he can."

-"Sami is going to do something crazy and attack someone, for the first time in ages."
"Natural 20"
"Jesus, she was saving up!"

-Catboy tries to sneak onto the Gorilla's slave ship.
"I get a natural 1."
"Captain Gorilla, First Mate Gorilla and Helmsman Gorilla all see you."
"Shit."



-"Guys.. I need help! I fucked up."
"Heidi thinks about helping Catboy while he moves to help Sami."

-"Heidi thought about helping Catboy, while going to help Sami, and ended up helping absolutely no one."

-The Sky-Mexican Cleric continues to fly away quickly on the hoverbike.
"Adios, cabrones!"



-"The minstrel feels disrespected that the gorilla didn't even bother to hit him but that's OK."

-Lenny emerges from the water and stabs a gorilla in the throat.
"Oh shit, Sami's guy she criticaled is deaf, Lenny's guy is mute now, we just need a blind guy!"

-"This session lays to rest the theory that we're only evil because of Bill."
"Yeah, we've gone full Walter White."



-"We're casual evil."
"That's our alignment."

-"Catboy is a Neutral Freak."
"What makes me a freak?"
"Everything!"

-"The Sky-Mexican is Lawful."
"Yeah, Lawful Coward."
"No, his player is Coward alignment. All his characters are just reflections of that."

-"These gorillas are going apeshit!"

-Heidi had his sword knocked out of his hand by a lucky gorilla shot, it falls into the water. Catboy dove into the water.
"You find the sword."
"OK, I don't touch it. I grab it with my underwear."
"Did he just pull his underwear out of his body?"
"I assume so, yes."
"The Catboy is going commando!"

-"Heidi wears a jetpack, that's sort of like underwear."
"No it isn't!"

-"I always imagined the catboy wears a t-shirt and no pants."
"Like a cartoon character?"
"Yes, but anatomically correct."



-"Heidi throws a flash grenade."
"You only did that so we'd have a blind gorilla!'

-"Sky-Mexican Cleric, what do you do?"
"I hold my action."
"Right, because you've been Action Jackson in this fight so far..."

-"I'm 300' away so I have a buffer."
"300' isn't a buffer, it's desertion!"



-"I'm trying to heal Lenny, but I got a natural 1"
"What did you do for G.O.D. to not want to heal you, Lenny?"
"I don't know! What could I have done??"

-"Heidi punches a gorilla so hard in the head he's left blind, deaf, and reduced to a gurgling mess, and falls off the ship."
"He's still alive."
"Technically."
"Do not piss Heidi off."

-"So we were waiting for pirates, found slavers, took their ship, and now we are the pirates!"

-Lenny teleports everyone onto the ship and Sami teleports all the gorillas onto the shore, except Captain Gorilla.
"So, Captain Gorilla, is this day going the way you expected it to?"

-Captain Gorilla has locked himself in the bridge, and has it rigged to blow.
"I'll scuttle this goddamn ship before I hand it over to you damn dirty humans!"
"What's scuttle?"
"Sink."
"What's sink?"
"I'll blow up the damn ship!"
"ohhh. Damn."

-"Sami prays for the door to open."
"Heidi readies."
"Catboy eats his potato."

-The door opens! Captain Gorilla activated the self-destruct, but Catboy manages to disarm it with the sonic tool, before it goes off.



-"Heidi faces Captain Gorilla and says 'look at me, I am the captain now'."
"Captain Gorilla blows his brains out with his own gun."

-"OH SHIT! My sword! Heidi dives in the water to find it!"
"Should we tell him that Catboy found it and hid it in the Briefcase of Holding?"
"Definitely no."

-"Captain Gorilla is dead, how will we pilot this thing?"
"The Sky-Mexican cleric can pilot it, because he used to be a sky-sailor."
"He was a sky-sailor, then a cleric, now he's a seaman."
"Hehe, semen."



-"Heidi, stop looking. The sword is lost."
"Nooo!"
"It's in sword heaven."
"It's gone to a farm, where it gets to run around with other swords!"

-The PCs find a map on the ship, showing an area of coastline near the humanoid badlands, with a spot marked with an X.
"Treasure!"

-"The current name of the ship is the SS We Love Slavery, so you'll probably want to change that."



-"We should name it the SS Sidequest!"
"I want to call it the HMS I Want My Sword Back."


That's it for this session. Where's Bill? Will the PCs find treasure? Will Heidi get his sword back? Stay tuned next time to find out!


RPGPundit

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Monday, 10 December 2018

Wild West Campaign, Side Note: The Virtue of Long-Term Campaigns

So the other day I was just looking at my very first  Wild West Campaign play report, and came across this description of the characters:


"Anyways, we ended up with a Cuban, two Kentuckians, a pair of guys from Illinois, and a Mormon. The Mormon, incidentally, is a gambler by profession, but he doesn't drink alcohol or coffee and doesn't stay up late nights. Probably the most awesome wild-west character imaginable.  We actually have a lot of archetypes filled: there's the one guy who is stupidly awesome at gun-fighting (or will be as soon as he gets a little bit of experience), the oddly straight-laced gambler, the Cuban guy who is a total outsider with crazy notions, the punk kid from a broken home who ran away to become a bounty hunter, the guy looking to make his fortune opening a butcher's shop, and the mostly-normal guy who is slightly better educated than the rest of them and will probably end up being their leader."

So that was 6 years ago, in game time, which must be close to 3 years of real time.

In that time:

-The Cuban left town (his player had to quit) quite early in the campaign.
-The Mormon Gambler was absolutely awesome, but he ended up marrying a sweetheart (who converted to Mormonism) and staying behind in Dodge City to run a hotel when the other PCs took off.
-The mostly-normal guy ended up dying; and his replacement ended up being Other Miller, who was also a relatively normal guy, but apparently better at not getting himself killed. He's a lawman in Tombstone now.
-The guy looking to make a fortune opening a butcher's shop was Crazy Miller, who certainly made a fortune (at this point in the game he's ridiculously rich), but it took him 6 years to open his butcher shop. He finally did, just now, as one of the half-dozen businesses he owns in Tombstone.
-The guy who was stupidly good at gunfighting, Jeff Young, still is. He's become a well-known shootist and is currently a Lawman in Tombstone. Along with Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo, he's considered one of the three best shots in the west.
-The punk kid was Kid Taylor. He ended up going from a near-cowboy to marrying a judge's daughter and becoming a lawman and a doctor. He's still a bit of a punk though.

It's one of the virtues of playing long campaigns. It's fascinating to see how far they've come. Backstory is nothing. Development of deep characters through long term play is all.

RPGPundit

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Sunday, 9 December 2018

Lords of Olympus Campaign Update: Zombie Strip Club!


Here is the next Lords of Olympus campaign update from one of my players: 



In the Sad Forest
Helena continued on her epic quest and found a black leprechaun, apparently struck by the deep depression prolonged time in the woods causes.



After fighting a few haunted trees and convincing the black leprechaun, she found the clue that followed, leading her to the Dead Ocean. With Toilette and a ship that helped them, they found a buoy that had another small offer with the following clue “10000 feet in the Graveyard of the Mouth” and a note, seemingly from Prometheus, asking to not free up the creature in this buoy. She continued her quest, now thinking someone is just making her waste her god damn time.


On Mount Parnassus.
Arrit left Parnassus, controlled by Corey, who tried to bring her up to Hera, yet Prometheus appeared ready to stop her with his Dr Who-like Gadgets. Prometheus used his Daemon form, sprouting chaos tentacles similar to those of Doctor Octopus, and a fight soon begun. But Corey was too tired to defeat him, being encumbered by Arrit, and had to let go of her hand, cutting her mental link with her. They discussed, and Corey left the choice to come with her or Prometheus to Arrit. She decided to go with Prometheus. Powerless to stop her target, Corey decided to return to Hera and report her failure, who was disappointed but understood that Prometheus would have been too great of an enemy. She decided to teach Corey a bit about Olympian culture, her allies and enemies, before receiving a message to come towards the palace of Olympus for a talk with Zeus.




In the Underworld
Frank and Guillermo were hanging around in the underworld looking for footwear, and since shoes weren’t really the new fashion for legless spirits, they decided to go to a zombie strip club.



They talked for a while , and Guillermo contacted with Prometheus, asking how they were doing about Arrit. Meanwhile, Ralph decided to free Uncle Roman and contacted with Prometheus as well, telling him to help them both run away from the Underworld. This was because Hecate seemed to know about Ralph's past, but refused to tell him in any way. He created a scrying portal and tried to take them both out, just as Hermes arrived to pick up Paneb (who was going to find his mother with Frank in their world) and Guillermo (Who was going to Olympus in hope to contact the fates and know the identity of his Primordial Father). Sadly for Ralph, Dou-mu, the Goddess of Death and girlfriend to Paneb, saw him leave with Roman and alerted both Hecate and Hades.
Guillermo parted with Hermes, and Paneb decided to detour first, going to Hades, and asking his father for an artifact to protect himself against mind reading from Hecate. While he thought that his son was a bit paranoid, he offered a brooch that would give him immunity to mind reading. His second stop was going to the River Lethe, whose waters are capable of erasing anyone’s memories.
On Olympus
Aetos returned with his new servants, the Minotaur Minos, and his son Flavius, to his palace, giving them strict instructions to ensure their safety in Olympus. He spent some time with Hephaestus socializing and practiced magic. Knowing that turning in his favor with Zeus to make Flavius immortal too soon would be a bit controversial with the other Gods, as he is relatively new to Olympus, he decided to wait as he got the gossip about Arrit coming in to Olympus.
Fito arrived to Olympus with Triton and Brontes, while he was waiting for Arrits arrival, he went to a bar and met Thor. They talked for a while and Fito learned that Thor didn’t like Aetos, mainly because he was dating Aphrodite and Aetos had offended her by almost ignoring her in all of their interactions. They had a few (hundred) drinks and spent the night.
Arrit arrived to Olympus with Apollo after having gone to slay a giant snake, a giant eagle, and a giant giant (Apollo figured one of these would be enough but she did all three), and a great discussion ensued in the palace of Olympus. Brontes, Fito, Triton, Athena, Aetos, Apollo, Corey, Hera and Zeus were there. While Zeus argued that it was illegal to try to kill Arrit, Hera said that she needed to find out who had stolen the Apple of the Hesperides, and said that this was an affront to Olympus itself. As it was now almost  certain that it was Prometheus, and that he crossed the boundaries of Olympus, which he was not meant to cross, Zeus declared that Prometheus would no longer be protected by the law of the Gods, and anyone would be allowed to hunt or kill him without reprisal. Apollo was spared, since he didn’t work for Prometheus, but rather tried helping Arrit. Ares, on his side, was merely captured by Apollo and trapped in a small world. As for Arrit, she was named officially as one of Zeus’s children.




Why Paneb hasn’t collided with anything today? Does Guillermo’s dragon like Yerba Mate?
ONLY FATE KNOWS!
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Saturday, 8 December 2018

Classic Rant: "Real Magick" in RPGs: Chaos Magick



After Aleister Crowley, probably the most significant shift in 20th century western magick was the development of what can be called "chaos magick", starting in the late 70s. I've talked a little about this before; they were/are kind of magickal-hipsters who try to incorporate post-modern ideas into magick, show general disdain for scripted ritual, and like to mix "science" with their magick (or more aptly, butcher popular scientific or mathematical theories about everything from quantum mechanics to game theory to try to fit in with or justify their magical world view).



At their worst, these are guys who go around trying to invoke Superman by a free-form ritual of running around in a cape, rather than, say, invoking Horus with a modified version of a 2000 year old invocation. Many of them tend to believe that all magick is purely a subjective, almost "artistic" thing, where you can make up just anything and if you believe in it strongly enough it will work. That's "magick as placebo", basically.





But there is one thing that has to be said for them. Of all the groups of magicians, they're the ones most likely to actually try to perform some kind of magick. Way more, in fact, than the average Thelemite or old school ceremonial magician, most of whom prefer to spend a lot of time reading about and talking about magick rather than actually trying any. Unfortunately, the chaos magicians only really have one form of magick that's popular with them that they regularly use, which is "Sigil magick", and they usually do that poorly. They have a great ratio of practice to bullshit but their practice is a half-assed performance of a one-trick pony.


You see, the reason why they actually do their one-trick magick act so much is because it's very easy to do; it doesn't require any great effort to use sigil magick. And a chaos magician might explain it like this: you pick some kind of intention, you summarize that intention as a phrase (ie. "I will get the job"). Then from that phrase you reduce it to core letters, some chaos magicians just take out repeated letters, others take out vowels and repeated letters. For simplicity's sake let's remove both; in our example you're thus left with "w l g t h j b". With those remaining letters, you then try to draw them all together in a kind of jumble, all connected to form one single drawing, and then you can optionally abstract that drawing until the original letters aren't even recognizable anymore.

Then you have to "charge" the sigil somehow; there are several popular methods of doing this, from the very vanilla version of just staring at the sigil intensely while repeating your intention, to the more risque version of masturbating onto the sigil while thinking about your intention. There are other ways too, of varying degrees of weirdness.





After your sigil is "charged", you put it away, and stop thinking about it. This is known to be an important step, because you now want to let go of the attachments that keep you worried about the issue and would block your Will's ability to get stuff done, energetically. 

And that's it. In theory, your desired change should come to pass.

The reason Sigil magick became so popular was threefold:
First, because it takes very little actual work, no memorization, no ancient languages, no kabbalistic correspondences, nothing strenuous.

Second, because some people report a very high success rate with it. For those people for whom it works, it works very well. Note that it does not in fact work very well for everyone, or consistently, but when you're looking for cheap low-labour-intensity magick, you go for whatever has even a halfway-decent success rate.

Third, because it was basically invented by Austin Osman Spare, a counterculture artist who lived in the early half of the 20th century, that many chaos magicians latched onto as promoting some kind of easygoing alternative to all the pomp-and-circumstance (and hard work!) of Aleister Crowley's system of magick. Long after Spare was dead, he was credited (because of sigil magick) with being the "grandfather of chaos magick".



(Osman Spare: Male Cat Lady)


Now, sigil magick does have its downsides. The chief among them is that in fact it is not nearly as easy as the above explanation implies. You see, most chaos magicians didn't actually read Spare or read about his history; if they had they'd have known that he was in fact a student of Aleister Crowley's, that he was largely concerned with the same issues of personal transformation and transcendence, and that for him sigil magick was a relatively minor part of a much larger body of work that had to be taken on holistically. In Spare's "Book of Pleasure" (a sanity-loss-inducing ramble of a book that presents a very wordy and jumbled explanation of Spare's philosophy) Spare makes it clear that the REAL goal of his magick is the achieving of what he called "Kia", the state of non-duality, and the vast majority of his writing is not about the sigil magick but about how to undertake a discipline of practice to achieve that state.

And the reason why sigil magick doesn't actually work as well as advertised is largely because most people do it in a very half-assed way (drawing a sigil, metaphorically or literally wanking over it, and then dropping the whole thing); when in fact the efficacy of sigil magick depends on whether or not a magician is engaging in a dedicated daily regimen of practice and spiritual exercises to focus his concentration, and to achieve trance states. Its not surprising that those chaos magicians that reported amazing success with sigil magick were also those who were very serious in their pursuit of magick; they usually failed, however, to report the connection between being disciplined and doing sigils successfully; they tended to say "its easy" either as a selling point to get people into it or because they honestly didn't make the connection that maybe their sigils were working so well because they were doing a bunch of other shit at the same time; a routine of exercises in concentration and trance-work that they took for granted, but that 99% of the people reading them did not and would not do, because it feels too much like work.

In game terms, a chaos magician is most likely to be a young hipster of some kind, into all kinds of fashionable theories (lots of chaos magicians are very into psychedelics, counter-culture, cutting edge science or pseudo-science, singularity predictions, AI, virtual reality, UFOs and conspiracy theories, etc. etc.). Many of them tend to be artistically, dramatically, or musically inclined, and see that as part of their magick.

The average chaos magician tends to rankle at anything smacking of formal ritual, magical orders, hierarchy, authority, tradition, or at the idea of objective rather than subjective archetypes. Many of them to the point that (as per my "superman" example above) they try to incorporate pop culture into their magick (usually with less-than-stellar results). Many of them will have very... let's say "broad" definitions of magick, and of "success" in their magick. They're the kind of guys that will try to convince you that just thinking really hard is magick, or that playing Xbox for 12 hours straight while high is a transcendent experience. The problem about half of them have with magick is that they don't really believe in it; the other half's problem is that they DO actually believe in it and suffer from serious doubts about their own lack of seriousness. In both cases, chaos magicians have a tendency to completely freak out when they get actual REAL results, because they just don't expect that sort of shit to go down. A Chaos Magician NPC will be able to tell you all about what's hip and new and what's out of style, and may be able to show the PCs some tricks (mainly how to use sigils) but if they end up facing some kind of spiritual entity that the chaos magician realizes is not just explainable as a conversation with himself, or have an experience of an altered state of reality or travel to a dimension that is clearly not just a flight of fantasy, he'll probably go through a serious spiritual meltdown.

They're not all bad, of course; I'm describing the typical suspect above; and there are many more serious people involved in it: The main proponents of the movement, people like Peter J. Caroll or Jan Fries are very studious and regularly push the frontiers of their own experiences and perspectives, and are often highly critical of their own scene and the lack of seriousness some people show. Others, like Alan Chapman, have recently begun to come to a kind of revelation which might be the start of yet another new movement in magick: they've decided that post-modernism and pop-culture in magick is a dead end, and have instead tried to take some of the lessons they learned from the best of chaos magick, but go back to the more orthodox models and apply their practices to Thelemic or other ceremonial magick structures. Chapman described how the initial appeal of going from standard magick to chaos magick amounted to the question "why ponce about in robes when I could be a stoned wanker"? That was pretty much the sentiment of a large number of chaos magicians; but he continues from there to say, "a few years later, however, and the novelty was wearing off".





In particular, more and more chaos magicians have recently got the feeling that there might be something more to explore in magick than just making sigils to get stuff in the material world, and have begun to think about how there might be something to this whole "experiencing other levels of reality" or even "self-transformation/transcendence" stuff after all.

RPGPundit

(Originally posted January 6, 2012)
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Friday, 7 December 2018

New Dark Albion Review!

Hey everyone, today I've got to game in like, minutes, but let me present you with an awesome review of Dark Albion, originally posted here on theRPGsite reviews section by Headless:

Without further ado:

This is a review of Dark Albion: The Rose War, written by RPGPundit published by Dom Publishing. 

Dark Albion is a campaign setting, its tag line is "Grim fantasy England in the 15th century." It covers about 30 years of English history from 1453 to 1485. Those of you with a familiarity with English history will remember that is when the English were fighting the War of the Roses. Those of you with a passing familiarity with Game of Thrones by George Martin, will quickly realise that he was painting over the same conflict with a slightly different fantasy veneer. It's a rich period and both authors make them come alive. I'm only reviewing Dark Albion today but there may be some comparisons.


I'll start by describing the book, then its content, impressions/opinion, comments quibbles complaints. What I love what I think it's missing. Then comments on who this book is for and if I would use it. 

It's a soft cover 277 page book, color covers and generous black and white illustrations inside. It has a helpful table of contents and an index in the front, two things I always look for especially in a reference manual like this one. Then about 13 pages of introduction and overview which I found very helpful and well written both as a historical primer and to set the tone for running a game in Dark Albion. 

Pundit does an excellent job telling us what kind of a game he wrote this setting for. He tells us Dark Albion is meant to be system agnostic within the OSR (old school renaissance). OSR is a bit of a slippery term at least to me. He provides a definition, but it's mechanistic and legalistic. He says the OSR are games and systems based on earlier systems using an open gaming licence. That might help you figure out which games belong in the OSR but it doesn't help you understand the feel of it, or what kind of a game you can run with Dark Albion. I'll try to provide a bit of a description, this is my description it helps me understand how to use this book, your mileage may vary. The OSR is a reaction against two game trends. The first is the focus on story, which I am going to say has a strong example in White Wolf games. This system gives the DM (or storyteller) broad permission to fudge the system, the rolls, the rules and muck around in the back ground to get his (or her) players where he wants them to be. He has a plan and it's his job to make it happen. 

The second is and overly rule based game focused approach, which I am going to say has a strong example in D&D 3.5 and pathfinder (also D&D 4th edition I think but I didn't play that one). This approach focuses on the rules, the abilities, the powers and the cool tricks the player characters have. When that kind of a game goes badly it grinds to a halt as the players and DM dive into the rule books. 

In reaction to these twin diverging influences the OSR is an attempt to recapture the magic of older games. It focuses on simpler games, simpler rules, and freedom for the players. Magic is rare but real. Most of all I would say the game happens at the table. It's not in the DM's head just waiting for the players to say their lines, it's not in the rule books, there is little need to look things up, and often you don't even need to check your character sheet, there is nothing there that is going to help you solve your problem. 

With that understood Dark Albion is a setting for a simple, rules light, magic light, low level game. He further gives us some very specific instructions for running a game in this period. Instructions which will feel very restrictive to the fantasy genera. I will say they all have to do with essential fact that civilization is the difference between life and death. The restrictions are, social standing is ridged, determined at birth (immutable) and it is the most important characteristic about any person. The higher classes expect and demand deference from the lower classes, societies will not tolerate rudeness or disobedience, even wearing the colors or fabrics above your station is a punishable offence. Typical Player Character rudeness will get the whole party executed or exiled which amounts to the same thing (remember civilization is the difference between life and death). 

Second, Non-human even non-civilized is dangerous and threating. There will be no half-elfs in the party, not dwarves or Halflings, certainly no good half orcs. The monsters are monstrous and dangerous, pure and simple. 

Third is religion. Religion is the back bone of civilization, it's monotheistic, it's lawful and it's not really subject to alternative interpretations. If you aren't worshiping the Unconquered Sun, (or the Crescent Moon, same guy) you are worshiping a demon who will damn you and use you to destroy as much of what you love as possible before he leads you to your death. 

These 3 restriction will be quite an adjustment for most modern players. Our society is characterised by social freedom, tolerance and understanding for outsiders. We are tolerant of other religions, largely because it is impotent and completely irrelevant. That was not the case for medieval society and it will not be the case for players in Dark Albion. 

Honestly that is the core of Dark Albion, if you understand those 3 restrictions you are ready to play, the rest is details, specifics, aids and setting references. 

But the specifics are quite good so let's take a look. After the overview and introduction is about 60 pages of geography notes. Starting very detailed in London which has several entries for specific Inns and buildings and becoming less details as it gets further away. Iceland is described as an Icy wasteland which may have a volcano that is a gate way to hell. If the players stay in England the DM will have plenty of easy and useful references about what can be found, if they go further afield the DM will have progressively more work to do. The entries are well written and interesting many of which contain adventure seeds in just a couple lines. For example the Isle of Wright is inhabited by undead and Morrigaine the Witch Queen (from the story of King Arthur) lives on the Orkney Isles. The Isle of Mann is obviously the inspiration for House Greyjoy in Game of Thrones. Many of the entries in England have excellent hex maps.

After the geography reference section is a quick section on law and order. Quite helpful if your players are going to flout laws and conventions and get themselves in trouble with various authorities. Since they are player characters there's really no if. You will need this section. 

After that is a 30 year point form history of the war of the Roses with a thin layer of fantasy and horror painted over it. This section will be essential if you intend to play through the Rose war. Each year has events to help you keep track of the shifting alliances of the war, as well as events from the wider world, intrigues, rumours and some fantasy events, like attacks by werewolves or the dead rising. 

Then 10 or 12 pages on creating a character in Dark Albion. Because this is a setting and not a system it focuses on social class and the roll various character classes play in Albion society instead of the abilities of various character classes. For example he tells us how careful wizards need to be to avoid being accused of daemon worship, chaos magic or witch craft instead of telling us how many spells or spell like abilities they get. This section also includes a couple of random tables, Names, random events from the characters history, and a random table for social class. As always you are free to roll or choose from any table, I would strongly urge choosing on the social class table. If social class is as important as Pundit insists it is, then it's not something I would want to leave to chance. First because you won't be able to play the kind of game you and your players want without the right roll. Even if one or two of your players get the right roll that will leave the rest of the party feeling like the Decker in shadow run, either watching the rest of the party or with the party watching them while they do their stuff. But also because randomly assigning one player to eat another's shit for a long term game just don't sound like fun to me. That's if you are very lucky and the dice assign the subservient role to the player that can handle it, if the dice assign roles the other way your game is going to flame out and you are going to be left with fewer friends. 

There is a helpful section of equipment and costs, which includes things like wages for a Knight, as well as things like beer and boats. Maybe I'm playing in the wrong games but I've never bought a sail boat even though every equipment list seems to include it. 

There is a section for a mini game involving managing the power and prestige of Noble houses. It's not very well detailed. If you want to focus on that aspect of the game I would advise finding some more substantial rules, but if you just need a bit of help to add some substance to your handwavium I think this section will be fine. Not something that will be used often, but might just tide you over if you need it.

Then the 3rd large reference section this one on notable people. Most just have a couple lines, birth death, allies, and class levels if any. More important figures have longer entries. This is a section you would want to spend serious time with if you were intending to run the war. There are probably over 100 people on these pages. If I was to run it I would mark up my book with notes on personality, voice and when they have met the party. 

There is a section on magic daemons and alchemy. Which could prove quite useful if the game goes in that direction.

Finally traveling, encounters complications and some sample adventures. Good stuff here as far as it goes. I could run the map bases adventures right out of the box. The social political intrigue adventures are nothing more than seeds. More could have been done here and I think more should have been. If you are going into the goblin warrens you don't need this book. While there is plenty of opportunity for intrigue Pundit hasn't done any of the work for us. He gives us a seed, "the local lord enters marriage negations for one of his children." Ok now flesh it out for us a bit, there are over 100 characters, and plenty of maps. Make some attachments; which lord, who is opposed, who is for? Are there dark forces arrayed for or against this union? A bandit lover? Sketch it in a bit for us. Setting scenes and making flow charts might be against the spirt of the OSR (maybe not sure) but there is a real missed opportunity here to get us started on realizing the potential of the setting. 

Finally there are some appendixes on adapting this setting to specific systems. They look helpful and functional. Other than that I won't say anything because I don't know the systems very well.

I've finally reached my thoughts quibbles and complaints. First off this is an excellent reference book. The three sections, People, Geography and History will be great for playing in the rose war. They are so good that I will make the same complaint I did in my review of Lords of Olympus. Pundit is a historian and he researches and writes with academic rigor. I want his foot notes. Like many people my knowledge of history comes from whatever I read or watch and I read more fiction than non-fiction. I am now fairly certain the rose war ended in 1485 and that Richard had a force of 10 000 men and some bombards, I'm less sure about Henry's Dragon. This can only be a quibble, Pundit set out to write a campaign setting and he succeeded. He is clear and readable, I think with just a couple comments a bibliography and some footnotes it would be an excellent primer on the actual history of the Rose war as well. 

Second quibble. Dominique Crouzet has done a great job with lay out and picked some really amazing public domain drawings. The book is full of them, they are large, appropriate and really well done. Honestly some of the best art I have seen in a book in a while. Every page has a line drawing, a map or an icon of some kind. But there are no notes on them. Not the artist, not the date, and not a comment. I would like to know what they are and where they come from. At the very least I would like to know if they are modern or a medieval interpretation of the setting. 

My only real complaint is I feel like I need something to attach the fantasy elements to the real history. Maybe a beastiary. The game is pregnant with fantasy adventure, but Pundit hasn't been a very good midwife and leaves the DM to birth his (or her) fantasy largely unassisted. For instance, who are the Cymri? He tells us they are the half elven decedents of the ancient elven kings. But tell us more about them, do they map on to anyone in real history? Give us some elves. He has a section on randomly generating demons, well stat one up for us. I don't need him to stat up werewolves for me, but a setting appropriate curse or cause of their affliction would help. This maybe an unfair complaint. He set out to put only a thin layer of fantasy over the rose war, and he has done that. I don't want campaign, I want a starter. A simple mission attached to the characters and time line he laid out for us. There will always be a distance between the setting and the table. It's the DM's job to absorb the material and make it come alive on his own. To bridge background to play. I just think Pundit could have gotten us a bit closer. 

This is a well written, well researched and very useable book. It's pleasant to read and as I said is full of really cool pictures. It's very specific and has limited use outside of low fantasy historical settings. Give it a read but you don't need to keep it in your collection unless you are going to be running a historical medieval game. There is enough here that I would use it for any historical game, not just ones in England or in the 15th century.

Buy Dark Albion here. 
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