In Arneson’s Blackmoor, as described in the First Fantasy Campaign from Judges Guild, there are “fighting machines”, “water machines”, “flying machines”, and “teleportation machines”.

For those unfamiliar with the First Fantasy Campaign, it is largely comprised of the raw notes Arneson was using to run his campaign. Very little effort is made in the way of explanation, and the notes are also frequently (and frustratingly!) incomplete. Or confusingly combine notes from different, incompatible eras of the campaign. No explanation is given for what any of these “machines” do (although PCs are able to build flying machines and there’s also an “ancient war machine” in a Dark Lord’s throne room which he uses to communicate with his subjects).

Everyone basically assumes that they know what the “teleportation machine” and “flying machine” are. (Although that’s an assumption that you might want to challenge: It is very easy to casually interpret these early documents through the lens of what we know Dungeons & Dragons would become, while forgetting that D&D didn’t actually exist yet when these documents were written.) “Water machine” and “fighting machine”, in any case, have proven more elusive.

Some have postulated that the “water machine” is a boat. That its entry on Arneson’s treasure tables is identical with his description of this magical item:

Skimmer: Can cross stretches of water at great speed, 50 mph and greater, as well as marsh and short (10 yards) stretches of low unobstructed land. Hitting a snag will wreck the Skimmer and cause the occupants one Hit Die in damage per 5 mph of speed. Chance of hitting a snag is about 1% per 100 miles of water, 5% in marsh, and 5% every time any land is crossed. All encounter chances can be ignored due to its speed.

This, however, appears doubtful to my eyes. To explain why, let’s talk a little bit about where these “machines” appear in Arneson’s notes. The Water Machine appears in two different treasure tables, one for Loch Gloomen (where it’s on the “Information” sub-table):

Crystal Ball 9, Teleportation Machine 4, Flying Machine 3, Fighting Machine 10, Water Machine 11, Special Devices 12 + 2, Ancient Books and Manuscripts 8 + 5, Stores of Normal Weapons 7, Clothes 6, etc.

And the other for Bleakwood (where it’s on the Equipment sub-table):

Crystal Ball 1-5, Illusion Projector 6-10, Teleporter 11-12, Flyer 13-17, Skimmer 18-20, Water 21-30, Dimensional Transporter 31-32, Time 33, Transporter 34-39, Borer 40-44, Screener 45-46, Communicator 47-51, Tricorder 52-56, Battery Power 57-66, Medical Unit 67-72, Entertainer 73-82, Generator 83-87, Educator 88-92, Robots 93-98, Controllers 99-00

Note that “Teleportation Machine, Flying Machine, Fighting Machine, Water Machine” has become “Teleporter, Flyer, Skimmer, Water” on the latter list. It’s possible that Water Machine does mean Skimmer, and Arneson simply repeated the same entry twice in a row on the table, but that seems unlikely.

On the other hand, this isn’t the only seeming repetition on the table: Note that “Teleporter” (i.e., Teleportation Machine) and “Transporter”, which one might immediately assume to be the same thing, are listed separately. I, however, suspect that these are not the same thing, that the “Transporter” is based more literally on Star Trek and is a large facility which you can use to beam yourself to other locations (but not take the equipment with you).

And, similarly, I think that the Skimmer and the Water Machine are two different things (albeit perhaps grossly similar in function).

One option for the Water Machine would be a submarine.

Another option I’ve considered is that these “Machine” entries are actually triggers for sub-tables that no longer exist. (This wouldn’t be the only example of missing sub-tables in the First Fantasy Campaign.) Looking at Supplement II: Blackmoor, we find a number of water-related magical items: Ring of Movement (Swimming), Manta Ray Cloak, Necklace of Water Breathing, Helm of Underwater Vision. These could easily be re-characterized as “Water Machines”, perhaps suggesting that the other Machine types are also sub-categories. One could imagine similar sub-tables for other Machine categories.

Something else to note, however, is that you’re more likely to get a result of “Water [Machine]” on the Bleakwood table than literally any other type of treasure except the “Battery Power”. The function of Battery Power is also unexplained, but it seems quite likely to be way of recharging Arneson’s science fantasy “magic” items. Is it possible that the Skimmer is the Water Machine of the Loch Gloomen table and the “Water” entry is some similar resource that could be used in conjunction with the other items? Could it actually be some form of liquid fuel that could be used to power vehicles like the Skimmer?

While potentially cool, there’s no question that it’s a fairly large reach. Supplement II also includes another water-themed item which purifies 10 square feet of seawater. If that’s all that a Water Machine does, it could explain why they were so ubiquitous.

BY WAY OF FIGHTING MACHINES

Let’s leave the Water Machines aside for a moment and talk about the other enigma here, the Fighting Machines. One suspicion is that these are, in fact, robots. (Note that there is no “Fighting Machine” entry on the Bleakwood treasure table, but an entry for “Robots” has been added.)

Here, however, is what the phrase “fighting machine” would have almost certainly conjured up in an SF pulp afficionado’s mind in the early 1970s:

The fighting-machines of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds are, of course, vehicles. But they also have a robotic aspect to them.

I’m actually drawn to the idea that all of the Machines are autonomous robots – some of which might also function as vehicles – specializing in the listed functionality. Thus:

• Fighting-Machines are Wellsian tripods (with some perhaps at a smaller scale, and the larger suitable for giving their controllers a huge advantage in Blackmoor-style war games).
• Teleportation Machines as robotic entities who, upon request, will teleport you to a location of your desire. (Or use the same function as a devastating offensive capability or means of flight.)
• Flying Machines as UFO-like objects guided by sentient intelligence. (I’m anachronistically thinking of the ship from Flight of the Navigator; although, again, at various scales.)
• Water Machines as submersibles? Perhaps.. Or perhaps simply water-proofed robots.

This also suggests the possibility that the “ancient war machine” is, in fact, a robot through which the Dark Lord speaks.

Looking again at seemingly duplicated entries on the treasure tables, I’ll note that teleport-type objects actually show up three times: Once as a Teleportation Machine, once as a Transporter, and once as a Teleportation amulet. If the Teleportation Machine is just a magic device allowing for teleportation, than its utilitarian function is basically identical to that the of the Teleportation amulet. But if the amulet is an item you can carry, the Transporter is a largely immovable facility, and the Machine is an autonomous robot/tripod… Well, you can see how these all become distinct items.

Weighing against this interpretation is the fact that you’d expect some of Arneson’s original players to have recounted running into Martian tripods or teleporting robots. On the other hand, there are truthfully very few accounts of those early adventures, and those accounts have very rarely (if ever) included mention of any robots. Or tricorders. And those are right there in black and white.

With that being said, I’m not claiming to have definitively revealed holy writ here. There’s simply not enough information preserved for us to ever recover definitive answers. But this is one of the cool things about exploring these ur-texts of the hobby: That first generation of GMs may have collectively never figured out how to effectively transmit what they were doing in writing, but in puzzling our way through the fragments they did leave behind, I find there’s an amazing alchemy of closure that takes place, prompting creative insights that would never occur in simply reading a more authoritative text.

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IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 15A: THE LABYRINTH’S MACHINES

January 12th, 2008
The 5th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Taking another turn down a hallway led them to a complex of three large chambers. In the center chamber, a massive apparatus of machinery had been built up in the middle of the room. Nearly ten feet across, it extended from the floor to the ceiling.

The far wall of this chamber was inset with a large, ten-foot wide sheet of smoky, opaque glass flanked by two doors.

To the left and the right, the other two chambers of the complex lay down short halls. In each of these rooms, short flights of stairs led up to large, coffin-like boxes of metal lying on the floor. To either side of these boxes were thick, metallic rods thrusting up from the floor with large, bulbous ends.

For now, Tee skirted around the machinery and checked out the doors. They were unlocked, leading to a small side chamber from which one could look through the smoky glass and observe the outer chamber. The northern all of the side chamber was covered in a morass of machinery – wires, glass tubes partially filled with liquid, convoluted gearworks, and the like.

Ranthir was fascinated. He had never seen anything like it before. It quickly became apparent that both the equipment in the side chamber and the main chamber was actually sunk into the floor, and probably connected to each other.

Tee moved to the coffin-like metal boxes. She discovered that their lids could be rotated to one side, revealing an interior surface coated with twisting tubes of glass. These formed coccoon-like depressions – one apparently shaped for a humanoid; the other for a large dog or wolf. Both were outfitted with manacles.

Ranthir, meanwhile, believed he had puzzled out the strange activation method used by the equipment: Several metallic spheres would need to be “spun up” by hand and then, while those were still in motion, three levers would need be flipped, and, at last, a button pushed.

“Should we try it?” Elestra asked. Read more »

Nefarious noble scheming has long been a staple of fantasy fiction, and it quite often makes the leap to space operas and the like, too. (Herbert’s Dune, for example.) Figuring out what the local nobility is up to in your campaign, therefore, can be an endless font of drama, intrigue, and scenario hooks.

A great deal of effort can be spent trying to get it “right”, but this is often an illusory goal. If you’re running a specifically historical campaign, then there will be a “true” version of how nobility worked for your chosen place and time period. But beyond that point, the historical norms of noble titles are so utterly varied by region, country, and time period that anyone insisting that there is, for example, one “correct” relationship between Dukes is, at best, deceiving themselves.

For example, depending on where and when you’re standing in history, a marquis could be:

• A nobleman who controls an Imperial territory
• A ruler of a border area (originally because those were the ones under Imperial control; but later simply because they were border territories)
• A noble more powerful than a count and less powerful than a duke
• A noble more powerful than a count and less powerful than a duke, but specifically because in this country dukes have to be members of the royal family
• A synonym for “count” because the distinction between “count” and “marquis” has been bureaucratically blurred out over the past several centuries
• A noble subservient to the king, but whom counts consider their liege
• A courtesy title, often assumed by the cadet lines of noble familes
• Any number of completely unrelated things in Asian cultures for which the term was used in translation

Once you realize that there is not, in fact, an ultimate truth to be found here, you’re freed up to make up you own noble traditions and relationships that are peculiar to the fantasy realms you choose to create.

This can often include making up entirely new titles. For example, in my D&D campaign world, the title of Syr dates back to a pre-historical empire. In addition to being a noble title (usually of regional leadership), it’s also the faux-etymology behind a male knight being referred to as “Sir” and female knights being referred to as “Sera”.

(And if you’re thinking, “Wait… aren’t female knights referred to as Dames?” That’s right. You’re starting to get it.)

A TANGLE OF TITLES

We have a tendency, when creating fictional worlds, to create things which are altogether too tidy. In the real world, things get messy: The Gregorian calendar, for example, is a hodgepodge of historical kludges and political compromises piled one atop another.

To make your world feel real — to make it feel like a place where people actually live — you’re going to muck it up a little bit.

For noble titles, you can achieve this with a three-step process:

1. Create a system which makes perfect logical sense.

For example, there’s the King. They’ve got a bunch of powerful Dukes who have sworn allegiance to them, and each Duke has either Counts (who rule inherited lands in the interior of the country) or Marquises (who rule over inherited lands on the border of the country) who have sworn allegiance to them.

2. Create just two exceptions: One grandfathered in from some other system. Another that’s newfangled and recent.

For example, in addition to the Counts and Marquises, there are also the Atabeks, druidic lords who swear fealty directly to the king, but who rule over nomadic tribes rather than specific pieces of land. More recently, Harald IV disbanded the duchies of Baudore, Hensfelle, and Ramsey fifty years ago because their dukes were possessed by demons. The Counts and Marquises who once swore fealty to those dukes now swear their oaths directly to the king, with no intermediary.

At this point, you’re done for now. Put your noble titles aside and either continue worldbuilding or get back to playing.

The goal here is to introduce a few cracks into your perfect system. Marring the perfection from the beginning is important because you’ll tend to want to preserve something that’s unbroken and “makes sense”. Once you’ve broken it a little bit, though, you’ll find yourself more open to the next step…

3. Whenever the current system doesn’t quite work right for your current adventure… add an exception.

For example, maybe you discover that the Free Cities were founded by Atabek-led tribes who settled into an urban life, resulting in some Atabeks functionally being mayors. (Because the PCs went to a Free City and you needed to figure out how their government fit into the existing system.) Or you discover that some counts are actually religious men who act as liaisons between religious land-holdings and the royal government, and that these noblemen are given the title of Vicomte. (Because you thought the imagery of an evil religious nobleman who rules out of a gothic cathedral was cool.) Or maybe it turns out that the marquises weren’t always inherited titles and, technically, the king can still create non-hereditary marquises, and will do so sometimes as a way of elevating knights who have proven worthy of greater reward. (Because you wanted a foppish city-born noble to act as a foil for the PCs… and then later realized that a title of Marquis would be a cool reward for the PCs to receive after saving the kingdom.)

In other words, don’t try to lay down all the messy complexities of life in one fell swoop. Layer it in as necessity requires.

That’s the way it happened in the real world, after all.

The Infinity universe is a glorious science fiction kitchen sink. A panoply of unique cultures and cool technology is all smashed together, and opportunities for adventure and excitement explode out of every interaction.

I’ve found that the incredible richness of this setting, however, can pose a unique challenge: When you’ve got Chinese and Korean and Arabic and Germanic and Scottish and Russian and Malaysian cultures all splayed out across a dozen alien worlds, it can create a real strain on even the most well-developed cultural literacy. And the leading edge of this challenge, at least for me, are the names: When the PCs seek contact with a new NPC and I’m put on the spot to create a name on the fly, that’s when the rubber hits the road. Years of practice with improvisation have given me a lot of confidence when it comes to Western European and/or flat-out fantasy names, but when a scenario calls on the distinction between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cultures in the riven enclaves of Shentang, I just don’t have enough depth.

There’s only so many times the players run into Jing Li before it becomes a problem.

So I put a little elbow grease into it and created a tool that I think you might find helpful, too: A grand list of NPC names for Infinity.

GENERAL NOTES

Basic Use: Pick a name.

For Variety: Mix-and-match first and last names. (For example, take “Shing Bao” and “Tong Jun”. You can name a character “Shing Jun” instead.)

Disclaimer: Anywhere I’ve butchered local naming conventions, you can assume that it was a totally deliberate decision representing cultural drift over the next two hundred years. (Innocent whistling.)

ARIADNA NAMES

These have been split into four separate lists, one for each of the major cultures/political units on Dawn. All names are pulled from the appropriate cultural background.

• Rodina Gendered Surnames: The Western-style last names shown in the name list are gendered. Remove the –a suffix when using female last names for male characters (and vice versa).

NOMAD NAMES

Nomads are a chaotic mish-mash of disparate people. The list here includes Italian, German, Romanian, and Lithuanian names, mostly as a selection of names not found on other lists.

Nomad characters will also commonly pull from the USAriadna and Rodina (i.e., Russian) lists. Yu Jing and PanOceanian names are also not unusual. Mixing first and last names across multiple lists is encouraged.

PANOCEANIA NAMES

The PanOceanian name list is drawn from Brazil, Chile, the Philippines, Malaysia, and India.

Each name is culturally distinct (insofar as that distinction exists in the real world), but mixing-and-matching is consistent with PanOceania’s neo-melting pot (so don’t worry about crossing the streams).

PanOceanian characters could also use the Caledonian and USAriadnan lists (usually representing an Australian background).

YU JING NAMES

Mandarin, Korean, and Japanese names are Last-First. (Keep this in mind for characters who are related.)

Vietnamese names are Last-Middle-First. First and middle names can be freely interchanged when mixing and matching, however, so you’ve got a lot more options here than it might look like at first.

HAQQISLAM NAMES

Even in the real world, Islamic names are a pan-cultural mixture of local tradition, bureaucratic decree, and linguistic exchange. Haqqislam is an even more thoroughly mixed Islamic melting pot plus all the disruption entailed in a planetary exodus and colonization. In addition, the following notes are simplistic in the extreme. Basically: Feel free to mix-and-match with these names as much as any other.

Al Medinat Caliphate names are Arabic.

• Nasab: Arabic names often feature a sequence of patronymic names tracing an individual’s lineage; ibn meaning “son of” and bint meaning “daughter of”. (For example, Laila bint Miraj ibn Iqbal.) In the Human Sphere, it’s become more common to see matronymic bints rather than defaulting to the male line. (For example, Kinnia bint Jandira bint Adriana.)
• Surnames: Arabic surnames follow a dizzying array of cultural traditions. Historically, it wasn’t unusual for Arabs not to have any surname. (A practice which hiraeth culture brought back into fashion.) Honorific laqab are also possible, but beyond the scope of this cheat sheet. Nisbah surnames indicate where the individual comes from (or is associated with), and in some cases end up being an inherited surname instead. For this cheat sheet, roughly half of the Arabic surnames are nisbah for Bouraki locations. (You can kludge your own by looking at the map of Bourak and, generally, just adding “Al-“ at the beginning and an “i” at the end.)

Funduq Sultanate names are Turkish.

• Surnames: Used In a purely Western style (although often have an Arabic derivation, so stealing from the Arabic list can work well).

Gabqar Khanate names are Afghani and Kyrgyz. (Each listed name is culturally distinct.)

• In Gabqar, naming traditions have blurred, so you can freely mix-and-match the Afghani and Kyrgyz naming practices described below.
• Subordinate Names: Afghani MALE names often have two parts, with one usually a subordinate name. These subordinate names can appear first or second, but the other half is always the character’s “proper name” regardless of position. (You can create these by using the sample list of subordinate names or by mixing-and-matching from the list).
• Sample Subordinate Names: Mohammed, Abdul, Gholam, Ali, Khan, Jan, Shah, Din, or attaching the suffix –ullah to the other name (e.g., Kanatullah).
• Gendered Surnames: The Western-style last names shown in the name list are gendered. Remove the –a suffix when using female last names for male characters (and vice versa).
• Patronymic Surnames: Kyrgyz alternatively uses a more traditional patronymic surname. These are –kyzy (son of) and –uulu (daughter of) and can be constructed by combining them with any first name (e.g. “Ensar” becomes “Ensarkyzy”).

Iran Zhat al Amat Shahnate names are Persian/Iranian.

• Surnames: Although originally constructed similarly to Arabic nisbah, Persian names are inherited in a Western style.

(click for PDF)