IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Prelude 2B: The Awakening – Dominic

In this installment of the campaign journal, you’ll find some custom-made, Latin-esque spell names and a prayer to Vehthyl, the God of Magic. Both of these were created by Dominic’s player, who simply spun them out of wholecloth during our PBeM sessions.

I really appreciated him doing this.

I know from personal experience that releasing some of your control over the game world can be difficult for a GM to do. But this type of player-initiated world-building should be encouraged for a number of reasons.

First, getting the players to care about the game world is actually quite difficult. Lectures rarely get processed. And even the focused world-briefings I hand out before a campaign rarely make much of an impression. (In the case of Ptolus, I have — on multiple occasions — been able to treat information from the pre-campaign handouts as mysteries that the PCs have to track down information about. The players haven’t noticed. In another instance, events in the same handouts were effecively retconned when I realized it would be more interesting for the PCs to play through those events. At this point, I would actually prefer it if the players didn’t read this and try to track down their copies of those handouts.)

But if the player creates the information themselves? That’s something that they’ll remember. That’s a thread that you can weave into the wider tapestry — and if they follow that thread that they’ve created, then they’ll have a chance to see part of the bigger picture.

Second, you can use this material as a pretty solid indicator of what the player cares about. If he’s designing rituals and heraldry for the order of knighthood his character has joined, you can pretty quickly identify the order as being important. That means that hooks and scenarios involving the order will be effective.

Third, no GM has an infinite amount of time on their hands. If your players are willing to be a resource, you should be willing to take advantage of that. Someone has mapped out the floorplan for their liege lord’s castle? Awesome. When assassins break into the castle, the player has already designed the scenario maps for you.

And won’t he be surprised to discover that there’s a secret passage in that castle that neither he nor his character ever knew about!

Which leads me to my next point: In most roleplaying games, it’s still the GM’s world. And for a large variety of reasons, the GM still needs to be able to exert some control over it. Which means that some ideas may need to be vetoed.

But I’d recommend using a “soft veto” if at all possible. If someone cares enough to put the time and the effort into creating something original and unique, then I think it’s worth your time to try to figure out how you can make it work for them. I have two varieties of soft veto:

THE SOFT VETO: “This looks good, but can we change X and Y?” For example, I remember a campaign from years ago where a player wanted to run a Scottish highlander. Now, my D&D campaign world at the time didn’t feature anything even remotely resembling the Scottish highlands. We took an underdeveloped kingdom on another continent and worked it over until it gave her what she wanted. She didn’t get the kilt that she wanted, but she was able to play the character that she wanted to play.

THE SOFTEST VETO: Sometimes I allow a “questionable” element into one campaign only to drop it from the game world after the campaign has been completed. This is for stuff that doesn’t quite mesh with my vision of what the game world looks like, but isn’t so problematic that there’s any good reason to reject it for a player who wants it.

But the truth is that player-created content is often pretty awesome. At some point I’m going to be able to properly utilize the element-worshipping Talbarites — a religious sect given its genesis entirely by a PC named Talbar (who, in a different campaign, was played by the creator of Agnarr the Barbarian).

First Principle: Any story you can tell in any other genre can be told in speculative fiction.

Second Principle: … and a whole bunch more.

Let’s take Spider-Man, for example. You can probably find other ways to explore the central theme of “with great power comes great responsibility”, but it would be comparatively difficult to invest that great power into the hands of a teenage boy with whom your audience can so readily identify. (See, also, Ender’s Game.)

Similarly, love stories are ubiquitous… but it takes speculative fiction to create the specific type of dynamic that exists between a 17-year-old Vampire Slayer and a 400-year-old vampire (particularly when the vampire loses his soul as a direct result of experiencing true happiness with the Slayer). Which isn’t, of course, to say that there isn’t clear metaphoric content there that can be applied to mortal relationships.

Or take a look at the absolutely brilliant exploration of character in the new version of Battlestar Galactica. The clone-like, resurrecting cylons are a Pandora’s Box of sociological, cultural, and psychological problems that simply do not exist in the real world… and thus make possible compelling and powerful stories that you won’t find anywhere else.

Conceptually, look at a work like the original Foundation Trilogy. Or Vinge’s exploration of perverse ethical structures in A Deepness in the Sky.

None of which is to say that other forms of fiction need to pack up their bags and go home. There is clearly a power in the historical narrative of Roots, for example, that cannot be captured by any fantastical restructuring of slavery and racism. Contemporary romances can feature a closer identification between protagonist and reader than a novel starring someone from the 31st century. And so forth.

Nor is it to say that all SF is innately awesome. Sturgeon’s Law (“90% of everything is crap”) naturally still applies.

But it is to say that SF removes the walls.

Which brings us to our conclusion: SF is awesome because it has women wearing brass bras and spandex.

… wait, no. I seem to have gone astray somewhere.

I’ve written about dissociated mechanics before. But it’s notable that WotC’s designers began unleashing these immersion-shattering monstrosities before the release of 4th Edition. The latter days of 3rd Edition are riddled with them, as well.

For example, I was trolling my way through Monster Manual V this afternoon when I came across the gadacro demon. These creepy little customers “relish their victims’ eyes, preferably plucked from the skull of a victim that sill lives”.

A little demonic creature that plucks the eyes from your head sounds pretty horrifying. Just the type of thing that can really instill a true sense of demonic terror in the hearts of your players. So I took a peek at the mechanics they’d given us for modeling this…

Eyethief (Ex): A gadacro can forgo its sneak attack damage or extra damage on a confirmed critical hit to instead blind its opponent for 5 rounds. A creature that has been blinded in this way cannot be affected again until it has recovered from the current effect. Creatures that lack eyes are immune.

Yup. They’ll steal the eyes right out of your head and then, 30 seconds later, your eyes will miraculously regenerate and you’ll be just fine.

Wait… what?

A mechanic that allows for the true theft of an eye needs to be carefully balanced because it can be so devastating, but this ain’t the way to do it.

Here’s a better way, one that’s actually associated with the game world:

Eyethief (Su): When scoring a critical hit, a gadacro can be choose to forego all damage from the attack and instead attempt to pluck out the eye of its opponent. The victim may make an immediate Fortitude save (DC 10, based on Strength). If the save is successful, the gadacro’s attempt has failed.

If the save is failed, the gadacro has seized the eye. The eye is immediately damaged, imposing a -2 penalty on Spot checks and ranged attacks. If all of a victim’s eyes are damaged in this way, the victim is blinded. (This damage is permanent, but can be repaired with a remove blindness spell.)

If the gadacro suffers any damage or if the victim succeeds on an opposed grapple check before the gadacro’s next turn, the gadacro’s attempt comes to an end.

However, if the gadacro is undisturbed, on its next turn it can attempt to complete the theft of the eye as a full action. The victim must make another Fortitude save (DC 10). If the save is successful, the gadacro’s attempt has failed.

If the save is failed, the gadacro has plucked out the character’s eye. (The damage to the eye can no longer be repaired with a remove blindness spell. It requires regeneration or a similar ability to correct.)

It should be noted that there’s nothing mechanically wrong with the ability as presented in the rulebook. The only problem is that the mechanics are, in no way, a faithful represenation of what they’re supposed to be representing. A demon that can mystically steal the power of sight from your eyes is otherworldy, strange, and evocative.

(Although I’d probably be tempted to go one step further and allow the demon to actually see through the sightless eyes of its victim. Such a demon would feast on its experiential theft.)

Coming off of Jhereg, I had very high expectations for Yendi, the second book in the Adventures of Vlad Taltos. In fact, having finished Jhereg in a late night bout of reading (inspired entirely by the fact that I could not put the book down), I promptly went out the next day to track down the next book in the series.

This actually proved surprisingly difficult. The early books in the series apparently went out of print a few years ago and were recently released in a series of trade paperback omnibus editions, starting with The Book of Jhereg (which actually collects the first three Vlad Taltos books — Jhereg, Yendi, and Teckla). But I’m not a big fan of trade paperbacks (which lack the durability of hardcovers and the convenient size of paperbacks), and it didn’t make much sense to spend $16 on a collection when I already owned a third of it. (My decision was also being heavily influenced because I already had a used copy of Teckla for $2.50 in my other hand.)

So I ended up picking up the third and fifth books in the series from Uncle Hugo’s (the local used SF bookshop), and then hit up Amazon for used copies of Yendi and Phoenix (the second and fourth books in the series).

Long story short, I was pumped up and ready to go by the time Yendi arrived in my mailbox.

In terms of the actual book itself, however, I ended up being somewhat disappointed. Not hugely disappointed, but somewhat disappointed.

Most of my disappointment, I suspect, stems from the fact that the plot of Yendi is not terribly dissimilar from that of Jhereg: Vlad Taltos gets a case at street level that leaves him perplexed and fearing for his life. He bums around with his friends in high society for a bit and hears some interesting gossip about world-shattering events and historical trivia that appears to be inconsequential… until it turns out that his case, the world-shattering events, and the historical trivia are all intimately connected!

It’s a solid formula, but it ends up being like the magician who performs the same trick twice in a row: The second time he does it, it’s pretty easy to figure out how you’re being fooled.

In Jhereg, Brust had me fooled: The high-society gossip and historical trivia all looked like the type of background world-building detail that you find strewn around the better fantasy novels. My brain promptly filed them as such and, as a result, I was completely surprised when Brust pulled back the curtain and showed how everything was interconnected.

When he tries to pull the exact same trick in Yendi, however, I can spot it coming from a mile away. And since I can clearly see the information he doesn’t want me paying attention to, it’s far too easy to figure out what’s coming long before it arrives.

One of the mistakes Brust makes is in his conservation of characters. In most fiction, you don’t want any spare characters just wandering around filling up space. Those spare characters just become needless bloat.

But in a mystery, those “spare characters” have another name: Suspects.

If you’re reading a mystery and you can clearly see why all the characters are in the story… except for this one lady who just wanders through and says “Hello” every so often. Well, it doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out whose guilty.

(The better mystery authors will avoid the “spare character” problem by making sure that all of their characters have at least one legitimate and obvious reason for being in the story. That way you don’t just have faceless names wandering around, but you’re also not tipping your hand.)

In Brust’s case he kind of ends up with the worst of both worlds: He has lots of spare characters wandering around in a perpetual state of name-bloat… but they’re all part of Taltos’ criminal organization. In the circles of high society, on the other hand, Brust has an austere conservation of characters… except for the guilty party, who really does just wander by and say “Hello” every few dozen pages.

The other shortcoming of Yendi, in my opinion, is Brust’s failure to raise the stakes. Jhereg gave us a really nifty and multi-layered setting with lots of interesting and original characters. And the unique magical physics of the Dragaeran setting let Brust create entirely unique methods for conducting both crime and politics. There’s a definite sensawunda at work.

Yendi gives us a second dose of the same stuff… but not much notably new or different. The first time you show me a rocketship? Awesome. The second time you show me a rocketship? Nifty. Now, what are you going to do with it?

In that sense, the part of the book I enjoyed the most was probably the first few chapters: A young Taltos is running a small gang in the slums of Adrilankha when another crime boss decides to make a play for his territory. The evolving battle of sorcerous gang warfare, which lasts for several chapters, is frankly enthralling. Brust does a really slick job of taking a familiar archetype (“gang war”) and running it through the unique characteristics of his fantasy world to give something refreshingly unique and entertaining.

(In fact, I would have been perfectly happy if the entire book had stayed at that level of petty gang politics. But once the story moves into high society, the gang war pretty much disappears from the narrative and the cloning of Jhereg’s plot begins.)

With all these negative things being said, I think it’s important to make this point: I still had a rapacious appetite for this book. I would frequently find myself fighting off sleep in order to squeeze in a few more pages.

That’s the unmistakable sign of a book that, despite it’s shortcomings, is still extremely entertaining.

I should also note that Yendi takes place before Jhereg, telling the story of a younger Vlad Taltos at the beginning of his career. I find Brust’s decision to tell these stories out of chronological order very intriguing. It appears to be a very deliberate choice, and not one structured in quite the traditional roles of “prequel” and “sequel”. Just off of these two books, I’m left with the impression of listening to an old warrior telling tales of his youth in whatever order strikes his fancy at the moment. (An impression somewhat spoilt by the last few paragraphs of this book, but more strongly supported by the opening of Jhereg.)

I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

GRADE: B-

Steven Brust
Published: 1984
Publisher: Ace
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0441944566
Buy Now!

James Maliszewski at Grognardia has spoken at various times about the Moldvay morale rules. (Tom Moldvay being the TSR designer responsible for the 1981 edition of the D&D Basic Set.) James even went so far as to say that “D&D combat only makes sense if you assume the use of morale”.

This is an interesting thought. It was one that I initially rebelled against when I first read it, but it’s been kind of churning around in my head for a few weeks now. It’s been one of those memes that just refuses to let go.

I think the reason I mentally rebel against it is that it impinges into my “zone of GM control”. When I GM, I make a point of roleplaying the monsters. Hurt a wild animal badly enough and it’ll give up… unless it’s rabid. Get a one-shot kill on the goblin chieftain and at least some of the goblins are likely to rout.

A morale mechanic has always seemed like a fairly crude way of modeling this behavior.

On the other hand, I understand James’ point: If you don’t take morale into consideration, D&D combat — particularly the classic D&D combat he’s talking about (when 0 hit points meant dead) — always ends in a slaughter. No quarter is ever given; no prisoners are ever taken. Once you start fighting, everyone keeps fighting until they’re dead.

For those who don’t have access to the 1981 Basic Set, these were Moldvay’s morale rules:

Any creature in battle may try to run away or surrender. Characters are never forced to do this; a character always reacts in the way the player wishes. NPCs and monsters, however, may decide to run away or surrender. To handle this situation, each monster is given a morale score. Good morale (a high morale score) indicates a willingness to fight on, regardless of the odds. Bad morale (a low morale score) means the monster will tend to panic and desire to withdraw from combat.

MORALE SCORES: A monster’s morale score is given in each monster description. The score is a number from 2-12. The higher the morale score, the better the morale. A score of 6-8 is average. A score of 2 means the monster will not fight. A score of 12 means the monster will fight to the death without checking morale. Creatures with a morale score between 2 and 12 will need to “check morale” at some time during a battle, as explained below.

HOW TO CHECK MORALE: During combat it is often necessary to check monsters’ morale to see if they will continue to fight. To check morale, roll 2d6. If the result is greater than the monsters’ morale score, the monsters will try to retreat or use a fighting withdrawal. If the result is less than or equal to the morale score, the monsters will continue to fight.

WHEN TO CHECK MORALE: In general, morale is checked in critical combat situations. Two recommended times for morale checks are:

1. After a side’s first death in combat (either monsters or characters).

2. When 1/2 the monsters have been incapacitated (killed, asleep due to magic, so forth).

Monsters that successfully check morale twice will fight to the death.

ADJUSTMENTS TO MORALE: Morale can be changed by situations (unless the morale score is 2 or 12). Adjustments to morale may be permanent or temporary. The exact adjustments are left to the DM. A maxmium of +2 or -2 is recommended; for example, if monsters are losing a battle, their morale score may be temporarily adjusted by -1. If they are winning, the monsters’ morale score may be temporarily adjusted by +1.

RETAINER MORALE: The morale score of a retainer is based on the Charisma score of the player hiring him (or her). Retainers must check morale after each adventure. If the morale check is failed, they will not adventure with their employer again. Retainers do not need to check morale in combat unless the danger is greater than might be reasonably expected. If a retainer is given a full share of treasure for several adventures, his or her morale score might permanently become 1 higher than the original morale score.

SURRENDER: A character or creature may offer to surrender at any time; however, the opponent need not accept the offer, nor even stop fighting long enough to listen! The DM will handle any talks about surrendering that occur between monsters and characters. Even non-intelligent creatures will usually act reasonably and try to run from hopeless battles. Surrender will usually occur when a morale check is failed, if the defender cannot safely escape. If an intelligent creature surrenders, it will usually offer treasure (from its lair or friends) as payment for its life.

(There’s one obvious error in these rules: A score of 2 actually means that a monster might continue to fight. Morale scores should be one a 1-12 scale if you actually want to design monsters that will automatically run at the first critical juncture in combat.)

There are a few things these rules make me think about:

(1) How simple they are. Part of my objection to morale systems is, as I mentioned before, the crudity of them. But in some ways, if I were to use a morale system, I would prefer this kind of streamlined approach: As a DM it gives me a dollop of information (are they staying or are they going?), but lets me figure out what the information means. (Are they fleeing madly? Making a fighting retreat? Dropping their swords? Staying on guard while trying to negotiate?)

Adding more complexity to this system probably won’t make it any more faithful to reality. In many ways, it might actually make it less faithful and believable.

(2) Retainer morale. I have always been fascinated at the use of retainers in classic D&D gameplay. Despite that, I’ve only played in a single (very short-lived) campaign in which hirelings were ever a significant part of gameplay. If I ever did end up with retainers in play, I think a morale system for them makes a lot of sense: They’re sort of the players’ purview and they’re sort of the DMs’ purview, so it makes sense to use the completely impartial arbiter of the dice determine their outlook.

(3) While I’m still loathe to turn over sentient NPCs to a morale system (because roleplaying them is one of the things I enjoy about DMing), I think it would be interesting to use a morale system for certain types of opponents: Animals for example. And even petty thugs and mooks.

I’ve mentioned in the past that one of things I really love about GMing is being surprised by the actions of my players. (I probably despise railroading more as a GM than I do as a player, actually.) I enjoy seeing events unfold in unexpected ways at the game table. It seems like morale rules would help make that happen.

(4) Is there any easy way to implement a morale system in 3rd Edition? Many efforts I’ve seen in the past start by looking at some sort of mechanic based around Will saves. This has the advantage of using an existing statistic (so that you don’t have to add a morale score to every stat block that you use), but has the disadvantage that the bonus to Will saves increases with level.

Because the Will save bonus increases, you’re left with two options: Either you can complicate the rules in order to vary the DC (which, as I’ve noted, make the rules seem far less appealing to me). Or you’ve effectively introduced another save-or-die effect into the game — one which is pervasive and constant (insofar as it happens every combat).

For example, Heroes of Battle introduced a morale check which was simply a DC 20 Will save. (It was specifically designed for mass combat, but also included an optional variant for “Morale in the Dungeon”.) It kind of split the difference: It had a handful of modifiers that could effectively vary the DC of the check from 15 to 32 (thus adding complexity to the check), but for the most part it was just a flat DC 20 check.

Moldvay sidesteps this issue by using a flat scale. To mix-and-match edition terminology, a CR 1 creature can have morales from 2 to 12 and so can CR 20 creatures.

But the interesting thing about Moldvay’s rules is that, although they look like a flat scale at first glance, they aren’t in practice. Why? Because the triggering conditions are based on the toughness of the monsters. A CR 1 creature with a morale score of 8 and a CR 20 creature with a morale score of 8 might appear to have the same morale… but it’s actually much more difficult to score a “first kill” against CR 20 opponents than against CR 1 opponents.

Moldvay’s system breaks down a bit when it comes to monsters keeping mixed company — does it really make sense for the ancient red dragon to panic because the heroes have killed one of the hundreds of goblin goons he keeps around? — but that type of issue can probably be glossed over through the use of DM discretion.

And maybe that’s the solution for morale mechanics: Use a Moldvay-style flat rating system, but don’t bother specifying the “critical combat conditions” that trigger a check. The DM simply makes a check whenever it seems appropriate. Ultimately, you’re giving the DM the final discretion in how and when… but then, at the crucial moment of decision, he gives up his control and lets the dice decide.

So that, in the end, even the DM can be surprised by the result.

(I’ve also noticed that Moldvay’s doesn’t seem to play well with solo monsters. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that encounters with solo monsters were comparatively rare in previous editions, but nonetheless it would definitely be something to look at if you were planning on using Moldvay’s rules.)

Whether you use a morale system or not, I think it’s important to remember that many (if not most) opponents won’t fight to the death unless they’re forced to.

But also remember that routed opponents can also regroup, go for help, or otherwise return to the field of battle… either during the same confrontation, or later after they’ve had a chance to recover.

Back to Reactions to OD&D