I've Got Your Dervish, Right Here

Well, I went and did it. Here is the Dervish class for Dungeon Crawl Classics. I've take from a variety of sources, for inspiration, including the Ranger class from Crawl! #6, the Thune Dervish from the I-series of modules (thanks, +Jon Hershberger!), but mostly I was trying to figure out what kind of skillset an implacable hunter of men might have, particularly if that hunter was on a holy mission or quest.

 This would be an interesting class to play, but its applicability is somewhat narrow. It would not, for example, fit in well with your gang of murder-hobo tomb raiders. It would, in fact, have to kill them for defiling holy ground. That said, I think that having a whole crew of these guys hunting a powerful necromancer would be a hell of a fun romp.

Give it a look and let me know what you think.

The Dervish

A Player Character Class

for

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG

The Dervish is, at heart, a warrior; but it shares some aspects of the ranger and paladin classes, and even a bit with the monk class, for it is a, most importantly, a holy warrior. The dervish is on a quest for perfection of self, through addition of those traits that are praiseworthy, and purging of those that are corrupt. They believe that all gods are but aspects of a unified godhead, and that through study, diligent practice of bodily disciplines, and asceticism, they may attain unity with the godhead in life. It is of no small consequence that such an attainment leads to extremely long life (for a human), and perhaps, it is said by the greatest dervish master, Larkun Ba'Davi, immortality. However, dervishes are best known to outsiders as implacable holy assassins, men and women who track and bring to justice any who transgress against the godhead, in any of its worldly aspects. Those who defile a holy site, destroy a holy artifact, or loot a tomb on hallowed ground (no matter what weird cult might consider it "holy") should be careful to remain anonymous, lest a dervish band undertake a geas to bring the miscreants to account for their blasphemies.

Hit Die: A dervish gains 1d10 hit points at each level

Alignment: Dervishes are of Neutral alignment in their dealings with those outside their orders, but that's only in matters of religion. They have a very strict code of ethics regarding the sanctity of religion, worship practices, and things and places considered holy, by whatever religion they are considered to be so. Should anyone desecrate, destroy, or otherwise defile something holy (including any burial places), a dervish from the order will swear an oath to bring that person to account. In that sense they are Lawful.

Weapon Training: Dervishes may use any melee weapon, but specialize in the weapon of their particular order. Swords are most common, but some orders use axes, spears, polearms, or even whips or nets. They may use a Deed Die when using this designated weapon, but not when using any other. However, they shun missile weapons, as ranged weapons separate the dervish from the visceral experience of divine justice. Dervishes may wear any armor.

Holy Rite: Each dervish order (there are many) has a particular Holy Rite sacred to its physical disciplines. Some engage in self-flagellataion, some in martial practice with holy weapons, some dance their sacred dances, and some seek the Divine through musical performance. Any player who decides on the dervish class must designate such a physical discipline has his or her Holy Rite.

Lay on Hands: A dervish may Lay on Hands as a cleric, once per day, per level. If the attempt fails, the dervish may not use this power again until he or she conducts a Holy Rite for an hour. Successful attempts will always be applied as if the target is the same alignment as the dervish. However, a dervish also may do so for him- or herself at will, but must take an hour's time to perform his or her Holy Rite (see above). Doing so allows the dervish to heal 1d6 damage per level, or restore 1 point of ability damage per level.

Thieving Skills: The dervish may choose two Thieving Skills from the following list: Sneak Silently, Hide in Shadows, Climb Sheer Surfaces, Pick Lock, Find Trap, Read Languages, Handle Poison, and Cast Spell from Scroll. When attempting these skills, the dervish character applies his or her Deed Die to the roll.

Tracking: A dervish is adept at tracking, and may add the Deed Die to any roll to track a target of divine retribution. Such tracking may involve a physical search for tracks and traces of passage (Intelligence mod applies), but it also might involve inquiries among those who might have seen or encountered what the dervish seeks (Personality mod applies). Tracking doesn't just apply to attempts to track down a defiler of something holy, but to any attempt to seek out a place or thing.

Survival: Dervishes are adept at determining location, finding shelter, starting a fire, and seeking out food and water, even the most desolate and inhospitable climes. They may add their Deed Die to any attempt to do so.

Asceticism: A dervish cares little for material possessions, and what possessions they retain are of a utilitarian nature, usually their holy weapon, some useful equipment, and simple foodstuffs. They do not retain wealth beyond what is required for sustenance, at a meager level, and give away any surplus wealth to those in need (e.g., the poor, an impoverished temple or shrine, a library or repository of knowledge, etc.). A dervish who covets wealth will have his or her Luck reduced by 1 per day until he or she is able to dispose of the treasure in question, and may not simply give it to another party member.

Languages: Dervishes are found in every land, and are renowned travelers. As such, they are able to learn 1d3 additional language per level, beyond those granted by their Intelligence.

Table D-1: Dervish

Level	Deed Die	Crit Die/Table	Action Dice	Ref	Fort	Will
1	d2	1d8/III	1d20	+1	+1	+1
2	d3	1d10/III	1d20	+1	+1	+1
3	d4	1d12/III	1d20	+1	+2	+2
4	d5	1d14/III	1d20	+2	+2	+2
5	d6	1d16/IV	1d20+1d14	+2	+3	+3
6	d7	1d20/IV	1d20+1d16	+3	+3	+3
7	d8	1d20/V	1d20+1d20	+3	+4	+3
8	d10	1d24/V	1d20+1d20	+4	+4	+4
9	d10+1	1d30/V	1d20+1d20	+4	+5	+4
10	d10+2	2d20/V	1d20+1d20+1d14	+5	+6	+5

Dervishes do not use titles, though each is a student to someone who is his or her master. He or she will call that person by the title "master."

Also, in furtherance of my own, personal holy mission, I give you another Zappadan miracle: This fantastic guitar work from that dervish of American music, Frank Zappa.

This is what my dervish character would look like.

Clerical Error?

I was listening to the latest installment of the Spellburn podcast, this morning, as I was taking a run. If you like DCC (or think you might) and aren't listening to this podcast, start. +Jeffrey Tadlock, +Jobe Bittman, and +Jim Wampler do a bang-up job on it, and I've learned a lot from listening. It's also pretty entertaining, so there's that as well. Anyway...

This episode features DCC RPG artist (and new Metal God), +Doug Kovacs. He said something that got me thinking, about how he's been playing his clerics (to the hilt, up to eleven, pick your own metaphor). Basically, he plays his cleric as if that cleric actually gives a shit about his god, and wants to advance his god's agenda. Zealously. No matter what the situation. No matter the consequences. His clerics are True Believers, and expect no less from everyone else. Doug observed that playing a character that way makes the rest of the party begin to wonder whether or not its really worth having a cleric in the party.

Here's a fun example. Sister Crack (priestess of the Gravel God) is committed to overthrowing social hierarchies. She's like a bomb-throwing anarchist, and she's not what you'd call subtle about it. She's the sort of character that, if the party was trying to slip through a guarded gate, in disguise, would call the guards "fucking pigs" or "tools of The Man." Totally in character. Totally correct. Totally NOT HOW YOU WIN THE GAME. I must say, I love that stuff. My character, on the other hand, is like, "What the hell, woman? Shut it! You're gonna get us killed!" Friar Tuck, she ain't.

Now that I've seen it happen a few times, I find it kind of fascinating, because playing a cleric like that is so very unusual in many games. It seems like, for most people, a cleric is pretty much like a wizard with some healing magic. That's probably at least some of the reason some folks suggest that clerics aren't needed in an RPG, and should just be another kind of wizard. People don't embrace their gods, and they don't believe in the ways that True Believers do. It's kind of self-defeating, if you think about it. What priest of a god doesn't really want to be a priest, or do priest stuff, or get other people to follow the god and its teachings, or... you know... be a cleric? In my experience, most people who play clerics, don't play their clerics as zealots.

The reasons they don't, in metagame terms, are pretty obvious. Zealous clerics are a pain in the ass. They're you're uber-religious aunt, come to dinner. You're trying to eat your meal, get your drank on, and whatnot, and she can't shut the hell up about Jesus (or crystal magic and how "spiritual" yoga is, for that matter) for five fucking minutes and just have some fun. Worse, she wants to bully you into sending your kids to church. She questions whether you, as an unbeliever, can ever really be happy, or even have a real sense of morality. Her world begins and ends with her religious beliefs (whatever they might be). She thinks everyone else's lives should be like hers, as well, and she ain't gonna go quietly about her business and leave everyone else alone. Unbelievers ARE her business. Making them into True Believers is her vocation.

Add to that equation the fact that there's a financial/power side to religion (looking at you, TV preachers), bringing in more True Believers means having fuller coffers (and having to buy even more coffers to fill). It means competing for power on par with kings, princes, and pashas. It means dominion over daily (secular) life. It means holy armies. It means holy war. It means this:

We came down the Avenue, ten thousand strong, filled with the Bloodfire, swords flashing in the light of dawn. And there they stood, the hated, the blasphemers, the vile and filthy Medicari, arrayed in their pristine bandages and aromatic unguents, and bearing caducei. In their wickedness, they bind the flow of the Sacred Wine, denying it to Gorus Na'al. Such audacity could not stand. We slew them to a man, though thousands of our brothers and sisters fell that day. Each of our martyrs died smiling, for Blood ran in the gutters where they lay, ran in torrents like the runoff from a summer storm, and the Medicari learned well that true cleansing can only come from opening wounds, not from binding them. (The Bleeding of the Medicari by Primate Jacurus of Gorus Na'al.) LINK HERE

 Yeah, so Doug knows how to play a cleric: You know, like a cleric.

I played a cleric like that in my friend Kyle's D&D game, back in the early 1990s, and that campaign started with us getting abducted and sold into slavery (after we spent like two hours rolling up and equipping characters. Haha, Kyle. Really funny.). His name, like my current cleric, was Kormaki. He felt compelled, because of that experience, to (1) kill lots of slavers, (2) convert lots of slaves, (3) establish shrines and temples with the help of his new followers. It was a great campaign, one of the best I've played in.

Strangely, I'd sort of forgotten how to play a cleric, since then, though I did a creditable job in my buddy Jason's Dark Heresy campaign (but that's canon). I think I needed another reminder how it's done. Thanks, Doug!

You know... it would really fascinating to play a party made up only of the clerics of a single god, and maybe few True Believer templars, to add a little buckshot to the bucket of spit, so to speak. They'd probably end up getting killed, simply by pissing off too many of the wrong people, but if they found the right congregants... boy would that be fun. To paraphrase Archimedes (I think), given a lever and a place to stand, they could move the world.

The Elves of Ur-Hadad

I just noticed how long it's been since I posted something. I'm technically on vacation right now, but have had to go into work a couple times already this week. I'm chairing a search committee for two positions in our department. Deadlines don't care about no stupid vacation. I've also been working on a couple of adventures, on short one (zero-level funnel) and one longer one, both for Dungeon Crawl Classics. It's been distracting. I don't like to go more than a week without a new post, usually, but here I've gone and done it. Well, it's time to fix that.

+Adam Muszkiewicz and I have been batting around ideas for a long time about the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad setting. We agree on most everything. Even when we disagree, it's more like he has a story about something and I have a story that's different or even contradictory. Our solution is to say, "Well, probably there's truth in both of these, or maybe they're both bullshit" and we just roll with both versions. It works pretty well, because it grants us a lot of freedom in how we approach our individual installments to the Metal Gods campaign. Even more fun, each of us tends to use what we write to introduce new... complications, shall we say... to the setting. Even the bullshit can have permanent effects, in-world. It's pretty neat. It also give me more impetus to write more stuff, as it can become a real part of the story that our group is busy telling through the adventures we have together.

The longer adventure I've been working on deals with reprecussions of the history of elves on Planet Ore (where Ur-Hadad is found). In this history, the elves had enslaved the humanoid races for their own purposes. They were cruel masters, but they reaped a bitter harvest in the end. Here's a bit of that history. It mixes the elves, their political battles, Lovecraftian Old Ones, the reptiloid races, and the peculiar iron allergy affecting the elves metabolism.

I've been meaning to post it for a while, but have delayed doing so for a variety of reasons, some to do with the subject matter, discussed in this post. At this point, I'm not sure how much I want to play elven characters when I'm not GM. I'm weirdly affected by my ideas about them, to the extent that I asked last night if I could play a different character in one of Adam's other campaigns, instead of "a stupid elf." Very strange.

Anyway, here it is:

The Elves of Planet Ore

What we now refer to as "Elfland" isn't just on another plane. It's on another planet, orbiting a binary star, and is impossible to reach from Ore without arcane means. However, the elves of the Old Kingdom were masters of arcane magics and amazing technologies capable of bridging the distance between the realities.

The race known as Elvenkind first came from out of space and time, bent on the conquest of Ore. Man only recently threw off their Dominion, ironically with the help of other elves, sent by the King of Elfland. The conquering elves of Ore were the Dominionists. They were part of a faction of elves within the Old Kingdom who were in favor of expanding the dominion of the elves into a universe-spanning empire.

This Dominionist contingent was also pushing back against the elven caste system. They came from all walks of Elven life, and believed that Elven culture had stagnated to nothing but tradition and formality, and that even those things were hollow and symptoms of a culture in decline. They saw the ruling caste as infected with malaise and ennui, and unable to see beyond the narrow confines of their particular obsession with cataloging and reproducing, with narcissitic abandon, the relics and practices of the past. The Dominionists wanted remake the world in a new image, in which a new way will emerge, and one's position in life will be according to merit and not birth. They believed that their Elven Dominion would be the greatest empire in the history of everything, everywhere.

The elves of the Old Kingdom, and especially the Dominionists, were students of other, less savory technomancies, and these allowed them to dabble in manipulating the very stuff of life itself, breeding sentient starships and a variety of servitors and subject-races. The mainstream elven civilization now regards these as abominations, as they are machineries animated by magic and by the souls of the dead, who are thereby enslaved.

The elves arrived on Ore in two waves. The first consisted of Dominionists who did so in an ark ship (others of which went to other, unknown locations). They arrived hundreds of millennia before their planet-bound brethren of the Old Kingdom would.

Upon their arrival, the Dominionist elves found themselves locked in a savage war with the Old Ones of Ore, a race of god-like creatures and their various minions and subject races (including the serpentkin and lizardfolk, and various other reptiloids). The Dominionists also had a hand in creating humans and other humanoid races to be their slaves, and to build their armies. After many milennia of war, pretty much their Vietnam, the Dominionists sent the Old Ones packing, and the Old Ones fled Ore to find refuge among the stars or into the depths of its hollow core. The Dominionists, now trapped on Ore, set about securing the Dominion, and their bloody rule would last for many more milennia, up until the rebellion of Mankind.

While the first-wave Dominionists battled with the Old Ones, civil war broke out in the Old Kingdom of the elves, between the Perfectionist and the Dominionist factions. The war went on for milennia, resulting in the fall of the ancient elven empire, and effectively leaving the Dominionist Elves of Ore to their own devices. Eventually, the Perfectionists won the war, but it would be many thousands of years before they recovered from the conflict. By this time, they had developed new means of transport by way of arcane gateways, but had made it the highest of treasons to dabble in the technomagical manipulation of life essences, punishable by death of the body and soul.

The Perfectionist doctrine was another casualty of the elven civil war. The Elves of the New Kingdom, as they were now called, for the most part did away with the traditional caste system, but another hierarchy quickly replaced it, one based on power. Those who were the greatest warriors and the most powerful mages now ruled as a confederation of warlords and their retainers, all vying for position. Secret societies also emerged in the New Kingdom, some of which were offshoots of the Dominionists. Most of those secret societies had little real power. However, an extremely powerful group emerged very early in the history of the New Kingdom, a secret society of the most powerful magic users. This group had membership in other secret societies and in mainstream society, using their involvement in civic affairs to mask their actual activities. In truth, this group, the Coulara Mak'Shi (Winds of Eternal Change) controls the direction of the New Kingdom's activities and politics. However, they seem (so far) to have little interest in the poisonous planet of Ore.

The elves of the New Kingdom arrived on Ore to find that several of the Dominionists' servitor races (Dwarves, Men, and Halflings) had banded together to fight both their Dominionist masters and the remnants of the Old Ones' most loyal minions, the lizardfolk and serpentkin. The newly arrived elves of the Old Kingdom joined the fight, but not as part of any stated alliance with the humanoid races. They had a grudge to settle, but were not particularly pleased at the rise of these primitive races, which they considered abominations of the highest order. Subsequent generations of Ore-born elves have become more tolerant as they've been assimilated into the dominant human culture. Still, there's a healthy streak of elven supremacism among even the "nice" elves.

The presence of iron, unknown on the elven homeworld, was the downfall of the Dominionist elves of Ore. Iron changed and corrupted elven magic, driving elves with particularly weak constitutions mad from exposure, causing low birth rates and terminal birth defects, and occasionally producing outright mutations among the children born to elves. These iron-mutated children and their descendents are a long-held secret of the elves, and their ancient shame. Some of these creatures escaped into the wilds of Ore, and are hunted relentlessly by elvenkind, but they are a more prolific race, and not as prone to iron infection. They have thrived in their new environment. Some call them Orcs.

Some Thoughts about Alignment

I was talking with +Adam Muszkiewicz and the rest of the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad crew the other night, and talk drifted to the notion of alignment. We were trying to figure out, using DCC's Turn Unholy rules, whether or not a particular creature could be sent packing by one of our clerics. As it turned out, it could, but the roll was not successful. So, of course they just killed it the old-fashioned way.

Here's the thing: I've never really liked alignment. It's stupid. (Oh, look, now I'm reduced to calling it names like an 8 year old. What does that say about my alignment?) Here's why. We human beings have certain things about ourselves that we like to think of as permanent, intrinsic, and essential elements of our being. One just is a kind person. He just is a fucking bastard. Those things that one does are the things that one is. But that ain't really how it works.

We are what we are... for now. We have elements of personality that are relatively enduring, certainly, but those things don't much matter until they come into relationship with other things that exist in the world, independently of ourselves. So, one's "kindness" isn't something that one is. It's something that becomes consequential because of one's affiliation and interaction with someone else. One is kind to children and animals, for example, but a complete shit to... creatures that are not animals and children. He is a complete bastard, because he loves money more than he loves you.

So, Item the First: Alignment is a process and involves interactions with other people and things. It is about one's dispositions and motivations toward those people and things.

Also, when we speak of alignment (and this is explicit in the cleric and paladin classes), we're talking about culture. My culture. Your culture. That other guy's culture. I love my culture and wish to celebrate and preserve its awesomeness (lawful). I hate your culture and want to see it destroyed (chaotic). I'm not sure about that other guy's culture, but largely don't give a shit (neutral). Cultural belonging comes along with affiliations with other people, groups, and ideologies, taken as a package. It is filled with contradictions and nonsense, ludicrous ideologies asserted to be the bedrock of The Truth of Things.

Item the Second: Alignment is about affiliations with natural groups and ad hoc collections of people, artifacts, ideologies and other various manifestations of Culture.

Very importantly, culture has a past, a present, and pretensions toward a future. Consider that word, "pretensions." Something is poised, waiting, ready to tend toward some particular outcome. Alignment is about pretensions, expressed and/or internalized, that become the stuff of one's motivations. Motivations about the world and the people therein. Motivations concerning groups and people near and distant in geography and time. Motivations concerning one's place in the world, and whether or not that place is desirable and if it might be changed by some agent or agency. For example, if I am oppressed in some way, I am on some level cognizant of that whether as a well-measured and expressible manifesto or as a less expressible sense of well-being or outrage. It's a measure of one's desire to navigate the world, to act in ways that make sense to us and bring us closer to what we seek, for our own purposes.

Item the Third: Alignment is about one's motivations and how they are manifested toward particular ends, over some period of time.

Given that the motivations I reference above may result in words, deeds, or some other happenings in the world, they have the potential to have effects on oneself and on the world itself. Also, the expressions of our motivations tend to put us into relationships with various others in our worlds. What we do will come back to haunt us, for good or for ill or simply by chance. Others will do the same. The result of our actions is culture, as I've said, but it's also a very, very chaotic system, and natually productive of change and transformation. The world doesn't sit still, because we won't let it do so. We're constantly mucking about with it, and with each other, our actions causing waves or ripples or sinking without trace.

Item the Fourth: Alignment is changeable and is affected by things outside of oneself over one's life, to a greater or lesser extent. Much of this is outside of one's direct control.

Finally, alignment means that we are making moral judgments about the world. That thing is good, and that one bad. This makes my happy, and that makes me sad. Because we are positing a set of relationships between ourselves, each other, and the things (philosopical and material) that exist the world, we impose a moral framwork on those people, things, and happenings (and/or our beliefs about them). We work toward particular ends, sometimes with or against others. But we do so in a way that pursues whatever we consider to just, right, correct, or otherwise in sync with our particular outlook and idiom. We seek to express that outlook/idiom upon the world around us in ways that are thought to "improve" it.

Item the Fifth: Alignment concerns the righteous use of power.

Now, I guess it remains to figure out a way to express this as a mechanic. I'm not certain that needs to happen, however. Again, I will, as that's how I'm aligned, put this into the frame of narrative. This is the story of a particular character and his or her relationship to all of that stuff I just said. So, I'll drag one of my favorite theorists into this: Kenneth Burke, and American scholar of language and power. He developed something called the Pentad to unpack various linguistic expressions of what he called "motivations." His project filled several books, and has been subtle and or vague and/or contradictory in its genius to be more philosophy of approach than actual core, mechanical description of how language or psychology work. In the end, I'm not even sure if Burke "finished" that work. Nonetheless, it's useful here.

Burke's Pentad

Act: What happened.
Scene: The situation
Agent: Who did it.
Agency: How it was done.
Purpose: Why it was done.

Burke called this system, "dramatism," and for him it was an attempt to create connection between what was in the mind and how that was expressed in the world. It was his attempt to see how, in some sense, people turn their lives into stories and make sense of the world in the ways that language allows (i.e., by expressing a narrative of some kind with actors, scenes, agents, agencies, and purposes), in ways that are centered on the things that we care about (good or bad): The Neverending Story of the Eternal I.

A teacher of mine, Michael Calvin McGee, once told me that Burke's dramatism, indeed his whole approach to language, was his attempt to reconcile the works of Marx (political economy) and Freud (subjectivity), an intriguing notion and a daunting task. In any case, he did his best to think about how we are consciously/unconsciously motivated to do and express things in the world, and how we do so and think about doing so in ways prefigured by how we use language. Our use of language provides a more or less narrative structure to our understanding of lives and life-worlds.

Witness, for example, tabloid magazines or reality television. They take everyday activities and subject them to scrutiny, unpacking and examining the acts, circumstances, people, means, and purposes of everything from celebrity actors to child-prodigies of incredible redneckery to trophy wife/hosebeasts. Notice, however, these sorts of media not only "document the atrocities," if you will, but also frame them in ways that provoke us to adopt an attitude toward them. Honey Boo-Boo (I want to punch myself in the face for having typed that) is a child-prodigy of incredible redneckery. This is a facsimile of a  person who exists in the world in particular ways. These ways may be similar or dissimilar to my own (Reveal: Not very similar). They may or may not provoke a reaction from me (Vague disgust and desire to become a Canadian citizen instead of living in Georgia). In any case, the depiction of this child (and it's a carefully edited and selective depiction of this child and her particular milieu), provokes a reaction in a lot of people. It may be disgust and anger, or maybe it's a sense of identification with the kid and her family. More importantly, it tells a story. That story provides a moral lesson, the current version of the medieval morality play, forcing each of use to pick a position, even if that position is "I don't give a shit. This stuff is stupid" (an expression of neutral alignment).

Also, it's important to notice how each one of us makes sense of his/her actions and their effects on the world. For example, many people tend to react to everything in the world as if it was specifically targeted at the person in question. That guy cut ME off in traffic! What a dick! Or, maybe we wonder why the weather would ruin OUR plans. Shit doesn't just happen. It happens to me. To make me happy or cause me grief. To afflict my enemies and aid my friends (or vice versa). It's about me, me, me, me, ME!

But how else is a person to view the world. We're all trapped in this awkward meatsacks, separated from each other, longing for connection, and we can only achieve such connection through the intercession of messy, imprecise, and inherently dangerous means of symbolic communication. So we simplify. We cut corners. We narrate order to the world, holding back the uncertainty with hardened ideology and pithy catchphrases, with fashion choices and iconic jargon, with friends and traditions, with all of those things that symbolize US and not THEM.

So, yeah, I think alignment is a bit more complicated than what we usually do with it. I don't have a hard and fast way to put your PCs in their boxes. I don't want one. I'd rather just keep a list. Start with a few things on that list that describe the character and his/her motivations, affiliations and enmities, and so forth. Then let the story make those more or less consequential as they come into play, or get pursued in some way. Keep track of that stuff. It will tell you how your character is aligned.

Oh, and about "alignment language"... *sigh* This makes very clear what I mean when I separate ontological "alignment" from narrative "alignment." Oh, I speak Chaotic Evil. What the fuck is that? Every person of a particular alignment just speaks this language because... what? That doesn't work. I have language because of culture, and subculture affects its particularity of application. For serious, an example: I don't speak with my droogies because of what I am, in terms of alignment. I govreet with these chellovecks because of the particular instance of nadsat culture we are part of. We like to crast pretty polly and engage in a bit of ultraviolence. Cross me, and the red, red kroovy will flow. There's your alignment language. Notice, though, that it's not about belong to an alignment group, but about aligning oneself with a set of particular others, with people, cultural trends, etc. That's what dynamic alignment is.

The People in Your Neighborhood

My frequent collaborator, +Adam Muszkiewicz, and I have been emailing back and forth about Golden Ur-Hadad, The First City of Men. My first impulse in that discussion has been to try to draw maps (and boundaries) around the First City, while his has been to make it inclusive of... well... anything and everything. It's led to some interesting discussion, and it's been very productive for me. One of the more interesting things that's come out of it (for me) has been a reconception of what exactly is the basis of a campaign location. In this post, I'm going to discuss a somewhat different way to talk about the development of campaigns and the locales where they unfold.

Let me start by saying that good campaigns, like good stories, are not about where you are, but about whom you are with. In most RPGs a tavern is just a tavern, for example. The things that make a particular tavern unique or interesting has a lot more to do with who owns it and frequents it than where on a map it is. For example, if we want a tavern that's the proverbial "den of scum and villainy," the first thing to do is think about where to put it. However, where it is does not matter. It could be anywhere. It's not a den of scum and villainy because of where it is, but because of who you find when you enter it. It is what it is because of who is there and what those people do.

So, the cantina at Mos Eisley is not interesting because of where it is. It looks to be a pretty nondescript area. Once you enter, though, there's the band, the bartender, the various NPCs (both named and unnamed), and--very importantly--the relationships they establish (or already have) with the PCs. The guy whose "friend doesn't like you" is an interesting character because of his interaction with you, and the brawl that ensues as a result of that. The interaction itself revealed the presence of the Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi. The fact that Greedo was there (and did not shoot first) is why Han Solo became a fugitive, and he got caught up in the rebellion because of who he met there (e.g., Luke, Leia, etc.).

Do you see where I'm going with this? With interesting people in your neighborhoods, you don't need to think so hard about the places. They are certain kinds of people, with motivations, tastes, affiliations, etc. Those facts of character tell us a lot about what the particular places they inhabit will be like. Mos Eisley is not a den of scum and villainy because of its location (an out-of-the-way agricultural planet) but because of who is there. The cantina is a rough place because of who frequents it. The droids are important to Luke because of the Jawas. Luke becomes important to Obi-Wan because of the Sand People.

This goes back to an earlier set of posts I did about Factions and Domain Play. In retrospect, though, I'd like to amend my thinking. Domains matter because of Factions. Factions matter because of characters. Story emerges from the interactions of characters in light of their essential natures, their affiliation with factions, and only later does domain/location even become a concern.

So what do I do with this? I begin writing a setting by ensuring that there are interesting people there, and then let the rest of it unfold as it will. Sure, it's fine to have a sense of place, but putting place first is a mistake. Putting the people first is a better way to go.

The Character Class Conundrum and the Axes of Awesome, Part 2

In my last post, I explored, in general terms, a mechanic for flexible character generation, one that makes the assumption that the basic character archetypes each descend from either Fighter or Magic User. Now, for my next trick, I will try to figure out how it might be implemented.

I suggested the virtually any playable character could be conceived across three axes: Power, Skill, and Divinity.

The Power axis is about how the character does what he or she does to achieve in-game effects in large terms. That is, it's the character's ability to use force(s) of some kind(s). At one end of the spectrum, I put brute force (i.e., combat) and at the other I put arcane power (i.e., magic), because I'm thinking in terms of fantasy RPGs. Arcane power could, though, be changed to something else if need be.

The Skill axis is about the character's adoption of in-game knacks or capacities to do routine, in-world tasks (e.g., thieves' skills, any other skill checks based on the assumption of practical knowledge and ability). This would not apply to things that just about any character should be able to do--things based on ability scores like lifting heavy things (Strength) or jumping out of the way of a charging yak (Dexterity/Agility). Instead, these are "advanced" skills like lock picking, blacksmithing, animal handling, things like that. They are useful skills that are separate from the character's core damage mechanic (Power axis), but which could, conceivably be used to supplement it at times.

The Divinity axis is about the character's connection to the forces of the Unseen World, to gods and patrons, to the aether, to Nature, or whatever. This is, for me, the trickiest one to define. It's tricky because in some cases it seems to get into the first axis (Power) when we're dealing with arcane magic, but that problem is avoided if we make the assumption that part of what this axis brings is a way for the character to relate to the universe, rather than to his or her own personal power. Even with something like Nature or the Winds of Magic, for example, the character must commune in some way with an external power or potential. This is more clearly evident when we make that external power or potential a deity or supernatural patron of some sort.

So, then, how do we make this work? I think at the lowest levels, it would be something like a generic modifier in that category. At higher levels, it would be more powerful, and potentially better defined. Maybe it would apply to what I said in a post I wrote a couple months ago, which proposed creating a DCC character "menu" off of which one could select powers or capacities (e.g., spell casting or thief skills or ability to use a Deed Die in combat). I think that's a good framework for this purpose, but we needn't tie it to DCC characters, certainly.

Now, to be clear, the way I'm thinking about this system for character generation only really applies at the time of creation. We're talking about characters' basic potential. Advancement through levels (if that's what is determined to be how characters get better, and if that's something that we are concerned about) would require additional thought and development. I'm not going to tackle that here, at least not yet.

So, here's my first stab at using this mechanic. At character creation, the player would have a pool of points to spend (say, for example, 4 points). He or she may spend up to 3 points on any one axis. Those points could reflect more generic advantages (i.e., modifiers to rolls in that category of abilities) or more specific skills that are members of the category captured by that axis. The player needn't spend points in every category, but would be required (if there are 4 points available) to pick two axes to which to assign points. Another assumption I have here is that the number of points used would not result in a linear result. That is, spending 2 points in something is worth more than twice as much as spending just 1.

Let's take a stab at creating a character in this way. Let's say I want to make an assassin with some arcane powers and some fighting ability.

The Power Axis: This is fighting skill and magical powers. Let's say I decide to put 1 point in fighting and 1 point in magic.

The 1 point in fighting could be a generic modifier that affects both offense and defense (+1 to hit, +1 AC), but doesn't really provide much flavor to the character. It could, alternately, be the Warrior's Deed Die. This has, potentially, a great deal more power to hit and to damage, but wouldn't apply outside of that specific mechanic. If you chose a Deed Die, you couldn't just say, "I apply my +1 modifier to this other thing that isn't the Deed Die." So, greater power for particular effects, but more range of application for less specific effects. Alternately, something like the Deed Die might require at least 2 points buy-in, because it is very powerful, potentially.

The 1 point in magic is pretty weak, but useful. Let's say that 1 point would grant me the ability to cast a particular spell type (e.g., healing, fire, illusion, etc.), but it would be limited in some way. I only get to cast it once per day, for example, or maybe it comes at some cost (e.g., spell burn).

For my one point in fighting ability, I would get a generic +1 modifer. For my magic power, I get one spell. Had I spent more, I could have gotten a more powerful version of that ability. I'm not going to specify what that might look like in this post.

At this point, I would have 2 points remaining at this point to assign to one or both of the other axes.

The Skill Axis: This has to do with things my guy can do that are like skills. I'll spend 1 point on this. I could spend 2, but then my example wouldn't get to the other axis, and I want to do that.

For my 1 point, I would select "Thief Skills." These would be the typical skills one gets as a thief, and I would have an advantage that someone who doesn't select them would not have. That's not to say, for example that someone could not attempt to climb sheer surfaces. This character, though, would be able to accomplish routine versions of the task automatically, with no roll. More challenging tasks would require a roll, but the character would make that roll with a modifier (+1 to start, and maybe it could improve later). [Note: I'm going to assume, here, that the +1 modifier is to a d20 roll].

The Divinity Axis: This character spends 1 point on the Divinity Axis. This might mean, for example, that the character is more in tune with the universe in some way. Maybe he or she can "feel" the probabilities and potential outcomes of certain actions, or whatever. As a mechanic, that could be reflected in the character's ability to re-roll a missed to-hit roll, or to negate a successful attack against him/her. This is pretty powerful, so we'd have to limit it. Maybe that's a skill you can use once per day or once per combat (Hmm... starting to sound like 4th ed. D&D... not sure I like that). In any case, it's pretty generic and fairly weak, but it's potentially very useful. At higher buy-in, this connection to the universe (in whatever way one is connected) would have other, more powerful effects. I'm not quite ready to figure out how that might work, but I imagine this would be a bit more like having a diety or patron (as per DCC rules) or the ability to do things like lay on hands to heal (instead of using a spell), or something like that.

So, there you go. The first pass at a mechanic for the Tri-Axial Character Creation system. I'm not sure what I think about it yet, but I think it may have some potential.

The Character Class Conundrum and the Axes of Awesome

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about character classes in RPGs. Classes are useful, in that they help to codify archetypes, and those archetypes help to provide conceptual cues related to game genre, power relationships among different classes, and so forth. They are, in effect, shorthand ways to speak of the applied, practical power of any particular character. They are the character's capabilities in short form.

So, if you've got a cleric, you know his powers derive from a relationhip to the Divine, however it might be conceived. Maybe it's a set of magical capabilities (spells) or the power of faith (turning undead). It's also about the characters relationship to combat. A cleric gets armor, or example (a wizard does not), but does not fulfill "fighting man" in the same way as a straight fighter. The paladin, of course, is the bridge between them, and a bullshit class in my opinion, but that's a fight for another day.

Then you have thieves. Thieves wear light armor, creep around stealing and backstabbing and doing all kinds of special thief stuff. They advance in their thievery and get better at it. They can also do some other things well, but the thing that makes a thief a thief is his or her unique skillset. And they're fun to play, so there's that as well.

Here's the thing though. Outside of the fighter and the wizard, the rest of the character classes are kind of bullshit. Wait! Hear me out!

When we think about the power of characters, part of what we're trying to say is, how does this guy (or girl) put a hurtin' on the bad guys? Only the fighter and wizard are purely what they are, simply by doing what they do. The fighter hits things until they die, and the wizard zaps them with arcane energies to do Bad Things to them. A cleric, well, that's sort of a fighterish, wizardlike, hyper-religious dude who hates skeletons (like a lot). A thief? Well that's sort of a fighter who attacks from hiding really well, and has some tinkering skills. Oh, and after a while the thief can use scrolls. Pretty cool, huh?

Here's the thing about clerics and thieves, though. Who freakin' needs 'em? I can do the same thing with just two classes, provided that character generation and development framework provides me with a way to do it. Games like Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Stars Without Number, for example, have specialists and experts to take the place of thieves, and provide a skill-driven conception of that character class. It makes them more flexible. Some systems don't have clerics, but instead have wizards who do healing magic.

Here's what I'd like to consider: All characters could conceivably be derived from the fighter or the wizard classes. From there, we can put them into a triaxial system to vary from the purity of those two archetypes.

The first axis is a continuum of power effects, from brute physicality to arcane magic. This represents how the character does big things in the world, how he or she kills the baddies (among other things). Very few characters would be purely one or the other, but doing so should allow him or her to enjoy benefits for doing one thing really, really well.

Add in a second axis where the continuum goes from Specialized to Eclectic. This represents how the character focuses his or her skills. At the specialized end, the Archetype is very pure; at the eclectic end, it is muddied by other influences. So, a player could have a wizard who specializes in arcane magic, but also is a scholar of relgion, has some tinkering skills, is excellent and interaction with NPCs, and you have the makings of a wizard with a healthy dash of the rogue in him. That's a playable character. At the specialized end, the character gets what goes with the wizard/fighter archetype, in terms of fulfilling each of those archetypes it the expected ways. He or she would be able to do things that less specialized characters could not, but would sacrifice the flexibility less specialized characters could do. For example, a specialized wizard might be able to keep spells after casting them, or learn more of them and at higher levels, or get Read Magic and Dispel Magic more or less as a freebie. There are a lot of ways you might approach that. I'm just spitballing some ideas here.

Finally, the third axis has to do with the characters relationship to the Divine, Spirit, the Winds of Magick, or the influence of the Hidden Realm, or whatever else you want to call it. At one end you have the Realist. This sort of character has no truck with gods, demons or other such creatures. Perhaps the character doesn't believe in them, perhaps he or she doesn't trust them. It literally doesn't matter why. As a result, perhaps the character is resistant to the effects associated with such things (effect: enhanced saving throws versus magic), or something of that nature. However, that character would never have a chance to get bailed out by those things without a significant life change. At the end of alignment with such powers, he or she is able to draw upon them in significant ways, but also is subject to the whims of whatever fates govern them. The end of the spectrum, I'll call the Idealist. So, I am in touch with the Winds of Magic. This gives my magic-attuned character the ability to detect such forces, or to more easily modulate them, or whatever. It also makes it more likely that he or she will get corrupted by chaos energies and grow tentacles, for example.

I think that there are a variety of games that take a very open approach to doing these things (SFX! and FATE are some good example systems for that kind of open approach). What I'm attempting to do here is to stay more constrained and limited to the fantasy roots of my original example. That said, there's no reason this couldn't open up into other genres, or that it wouldn't be a good way to mix up genres.

Anyway, there's a basic framework. Three axes related to Force, Skills, and Hidden Powers. Sometime soon, I'd like to develop mechanics for creation and development. In doing so, I'd like to avoid as much as possible the min/max problem. I'd also like to allow for further development of the character based on what happens in game play (i.e., development based on play, not plan). You start with a certain cluster of capabilties. Those can change over time. They can also develop and become more powerful.

DCC Characters, Ordered Off of A Menu

+John Carr  just posted something yesterday that I found interesting: various versions of the Ranger class for DCC. He didn't just put his own up. He put up others' versions of the same thing. They did have some distinct, and distinctly interesting, differences. The post got me to thinking about DCC classes, and how they might be tweaked to allow for some wish fulfillment to occur.

What if we took every power from every class in the game and stuck them into boxes. In this box over here we have something we'd call "Powers," things like the ability to use Deed Dice or cast spells or whatever. These are core mechanics that allow for doing damage or achieving large, in-game effects.

Over in this other box we have something we'd call "Expertise" (or whatever). These are supplemental mechanics, like thief skills, that allow the PC to do things other than cause damage or achieve large, in-game effects. They are incredibly useful, at times, but not really as useful as the Powers, nor as powerful in terms of their in-game effects.

In this last box, right over here, we'd have something called "Advances," which would determine how the character should improve over time. This would be pretty simple, and would depend (to some extent) on the selected Power and Expertise. So, if a PC had Spellcasting as a Power and Thief Skills as an expertise, he'd be tied to one of Wizard  or Thief as an advance. If he wanted to get better at one of those, he'd have to spend a level advancing as one of those. Everything that comes with it would occur.

Example, let's say I want to make a guy who's an arcane assassin. I'd need some thief skills in the Chaotic flavor. I'd need some spell skills to add illusion magic of some kind. Now, just thinking this through, I have a choice. Do I advance first as a thief or as a wizard? Or, alternately, do I choose limited powers from each and advance as a hybrid of both? For simplicity's sake, let's take the first version. I take thief to start, and advance as a thief. Then, when I reach 2nd level, I can choose to advance as a wizard instead of a thief. I probably shouldn't get what a 2nd level wizard gets, but I could get what a 1st level wizard gets. This also means that my hit dice at that point would be d6+d4 (or we could split the difference and call them both d5).

In the alternate version, the d5 hit dice make more sense. I advance as both a thief and a wizard at the same time, but I have to limit what I take from each class. So, maybe I get 2 spells instead of 4 (Powers), and I get half of the the thief skills (of my choice) but not all of them. Then I advance as normal in terms of XP, but my hit dice are the average of the two classes (d5). I also only get half of what I normally would from each class.

Another example of this: a hybrid Warrior/Thief. Call it a Bounty Hunter or something. Maybe if I took warrior Powers, I'd get a Deed Die. But it would only advance at half the rate of the regular Deed Die. If I took thief Powers, I'd get a Luck Die and the ability to regenerate Luck. If I took warrior Expertise, I could choose the warrior's critical hit table, but advance on that more slowly. If I took thief Expertise, I'd get thief skills, as above. If I chose to Advance as a warrior first and then as a thief, then I'd improve things like my initiative as a warrior and/or my attack bonus OR  (if alternating) I'd improve my Luck Die. If I'm doing a hybrid Advance, I'd advance with a d8 hit die, advance more slowly in my warrior stuff and with limitations on my thief skills. Something like that.

It would be important that the two boxes stay pretty well-defined and separate, because the character building process would otherwise give rise to the worst of the power-gaming tendency. I'd also require that the player who wants to do this declare the intention at 1st level. Thereafter, the choice is made. That's how your character works. You don't get to change it later.

So, Hive Mind, what do you think? Is this workable? Also, did I just replicate somebody else's idea and I'm just ignorant of it?