As I’ve mentioned a couple times recently, I’m in the process of playtesting some rules for hexcrawling. This is something I’ll probably be talking about in more detail at some point in the near future, but one key element in testing the system was figuring out how do characters move through the wilderness.

In most traditional hexcrawling systems, this question is resolved by navigating the hex map: You move through the wilderness by indicating the next hex you want to go to.

I, on the other hand, specifically wanted to play “hex blind”. I find the abstraction of hexes useful as a GM for mapping and keying a region, but I don’t want the players to “play the abstraction”. But once “I want to go to that hex” was taken off the table, the question became (a) how do you navigate the wilderness and (b) how can we resolve that in an efficient and interesting way? What we slowly hashed out is that people navigate the wilderness by:

• By going in a particular compass direction (“I go north!”)
• By heading towards or following a visible landmark (“We’ll take the road” or “I’ll head toward the mountain I can see on the horizon”).
• By using a map
• By aiming for a familiar destination
• By searching for a location they think is nearby
• By searching a general area looking for anything interesting.

And so forth.

Eventually I figured out that all of this could be mechanically boiled down to two methods:

1. Navigation by compass direction
2. Navigation by visible landmark

Accompanied by some guidelines on “how you find something” in the wilderness (based on whether it’s a familiar, unfamiliar, or unknown location). So far these core guidelines seem to be covering our bases.

(Of course, this assumes that wilderness exploration is the desired mode of play. If exploration isn’t desired, then there are easier/better ways of structuring a journey from Point A to Point B.)

DUNGEON vs. UNDERWORLD

I mention all this merely as a prelude for my main point of interest this afternoon: Navigating the underworld.

Let me quickly explain what I mean by “underworld” by contrasting it to the traditional “dungeon”.

In a dungeon, the players’ navigation of the environment can be handled in an essentially literal fashion: They see a door and can go through it. They see a hall and can go down it. They see a corner and they can turn it. (This is one of the reasons why dungeons are great for new DMs: They don’t need to worry about framing, transitions, or pacing.)

But this only works in dungeons because there is a certain density of cool stuff within the complex. Poke around a corner or two and you’ll find something interesting to interact with: A monster. A trap. An inscription on the wall. Strange tracks. A magical effect. Whatever.

So by “dungeon” I’m referring to any complex where the density of cool stuff is high enough that navigating the complex “room by room” is interesting. It should be noted that this has nothing to do with the size of the complex: A megadungeon can be very, very large indeed. But it’s still a dungeon, because it rewards that “room by room” method of navigation.

By “underworld”, on the other hand, I’m referring to a complex where the density of “cool stuff” is small enough that “room by room” navigation won’t be rewarding. Consider Moria from Lord of the Rings, for example: It’s a vast complex that takes the Fellowship days to traverse, but in all that time they only find a half dozen or so interesting things. Running that on a turn-by-turn, room-by-room basis would be incredibly boring.

NAVIGATING THE UNDERWORLD

Okay, so let’s pretend that we’re standing at the entrance to an underworld complex. The first question the needs to be asked is, “Why are we going in there?”

• You’re trying to find some specific location within the underworld.
• You’re trying to get through the underworld to the other side.
• You’re following the trail of someone (or something) which has gone in ahead of you.
• You’re just mucking around down there and hoping to find something interesting.

First question: Anything I’ve missed on that list?

Second question: How would you go about doing any of those things? I mean this from a purely in-character perspective, for which a few thoughts occur to me:

• You have a map.
• You generally know that your destination is in a particular direction. (For example, in Lord of the Rings Gandalf knew they needed to head generally east and up to reach the far door.)
• You can follow tracks or other signs.

Other thoughts?

This is all the foundation stuff on which mechanics can later be built. Such mechanics seem to be fairly trivial if you’re willing to remove player agency (“gimme some Dungeoneering checks to see if you find the Golden Crypts”), but more complicated if you want to let the players actually explore the complex by making choices about how they’re proceeding.

Another key element of all this is the handling of transitions to the “dungeon”-type complexes within the underworld. (See Thunderspire Labyrinth or the original D series of modules for a couple different approaches to this sort of underworld exploration.) This seems to be fairly easy if you’re just willing to fall back on the metagame and say, “Okay, you’ve reached the interesting bit.” And then transition back to the more familiar room-by-room sort of thing.

But this can be limiting and jarring. What sorts of things would “naturally” attract greater attention and, thus, provide a more natural transition between exploration modes? Finding recent tracks? Noticing a glint of gold? Encounter creatures?

This is more of a mini-reaction, but during last night’s session I was suddenly struck by something in OD&D’s description of vampires:

VAMPIRES: These monsters are more properly of the “Undead” class rather than Lycanthropes.

Whenever I read that passage, I would think to myself, “Well… yeah.”

But tonight I had an epiphany which may already be obvious to some of you: “Oh! Of course! They could be classified as lycanthropes because they turn into wolves.” (This may be because I’ve been spending a bit more time than usual around Dracula.)

Bit of a digression here: I went to see Blade II in the theater with a large group of friends and friends-of-friends. My most vivid memory of the experience comes from the car ride home, when I listened to someone in the backseat ramble on for 15 minutes about all of the different ways in which Blade II had violated the continuity of Vampire: The Masquerade.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Blade II took it’s fair share of inspiration from the milieu of the World of Darkness. But it is also self-evidently not the same setting and, therefore, not bound by its rules.

With that being said, I do think it’s interesting to note the degree to which roleplaying games encourage us to think about myth and fiction in terms of categories and quantifications.

To explain what I mean, let me digress again: We interpret all media through the lens of our previous experiences with media, a fact that I think can probably be seen most clearly when we are young (and our exposure to media limited). For example, I can remember when any new work of space opera I encountered was first understood in the context of Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy and Star Trek. Unless the author clearly established a delineation, I just sort of assumed that their universe worked like an admixture of the Federation and the Galactic Empire. This wasn’t a conscious choice on my part: It was just that my formative experiences with these works had created a lens through which other experiences were understood.

This is an effect which has been significantly diffused as my exposure to science fiction has broadened and deepened, but this doesn’t mean it’s gone away: When an author invokes the Singularity, my brain promptly plops in a whole gestalt understanding of what that means based on exposure to Vinge and Stross and MacLeod and Transhuman Space and Eclipse Phase and God only knows what else. Because it’s diffused, I think it’s easier for each work to make its unique impression upon me. But that filter of previous experience can’t be fully escaped.

So, to escape out of this recursive sequence of digressions, let me say this: Sitting in that car 10+ years ago, I could shake my head sadly at someone who interpreted all fiction through the lens of a roleplaying game. But it took this sudden epiphany regarding OD&D vampires to realize the degree to which a youth spent pouring over Monster Manuals had planted some pretty deeply rooted hierarchies into my understanding of the fantastic.

Vampires are undead.

So are skeletons and zombies. Actually, the clear-cut and categorical distinction between skeletons, zombies, and ghouls (among other things) is something else that I almost certainly owe to D&D.

And this isn’t just me. And it isn’t just limited to roleplaying games. By vector of fantasy fiction and film and computer, this stuff has seeped into the cultural gestalt.

This was something we talked about during rehearsals of Drakul: I think it’s actually impossible for any person in the modern world to fully appreciate Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

I mean, I’m generally somebody who really enjoys reading works with an eye towards their historical context: I get a huge kick out of reading Skylark in Space and realizing that this shit had never been done before. I can feel the vicarious thrill of imagining what it would be like to read that book for the first time in 1928. But with Dracula I can’t quite pull it off: I mean, I can sort of intellectually see that Stoker is very carefully hiding the true nature of Dracula from his readers and treating it as a terrific mystery. I can logically conclude that Victorian readers would be wondering what strange and horrible curse had afflicted Lucy.

But my brain just keeps thinking, “It’s a vampire.” She has bite marks on her neck? It’s a vampire. She’s experiencing acute blood loss? It’s a vampire. C’mon, let’s get with the program. It’s a vampire.

And so forth.

To make a long story short: I find the degree to which pop culture fantasy has eradicated the mystery of the mythic interesting to consider. Perhaps even more interesting is the question of how we can inject that sense of mystery (and majesty) back into our own fantasies.

Back to Reactions to OD&D

The description of the original helm of teleportation from OD&D recently struck me as particularly interesting:

Helm of Teleportation: The Magic-User employing this helm must have a Teleportation spell in order to take advantage of the device. Having but one such spell the Magic-User can Teleport himself endlessly about the universe, but if he teleports some other person or object the helm does not function and the spell proper is used. Thus the helm is good only to transport the Magic-User himself. Treat as a non-protective helm if worn into combat.

(A passage which also indicates that “protective helms” should have some beneficial effect in combat, but if there’s any explanation for what the benefit would be the rules are rather silent on the matter. I’ve been thinking about applying a -1 AC penalty for missing helmets. But I digress.)

What I was particularly struck by in this passage was the similarity between its mechanical construction and the construction of reserve feats from Complete Mage for 3rd Edition. Conceptually I always liked the idea of reserve feats (allowing spellcasters to make minor magic-based contributions on a regular basis), but found the actual execution to be rather broken. (Allowing wizards to do 6d6 points of area effect damage per round with no saving throw, for example, no longer qualifies as a minor contribution.)

But it might be interesting to take properly balanced reserve-type abilities and have them accessible via magical equipment (like the original helm of teleportation). I’m particularly drawn to the image of magic wands that don’t have charges, but instead allow you to use specific spells you currently have memorized in a powered-down form.

On the other hand, maybe chewing up an equipment slot would be necessary to keep this sort of thing balanced. Or what if there was a percentage chance that you’d lose your reserve spell whenever you triggered the reserve item? In a semi-similar fashion, AD&D’s helm of teleportation limited the number of uses per day based on the number of teleport spells you had prepared. (So that the item extends your magical endurance, but not necessarily limitlessly so.)

Cyclopeatron wrote an interesting post t’other day regarding the fact that blog posts which are the equivalent of op-ed commentary tend to attract more comments than blog posts containing creative content.

To a large extent this makes sense: Commentary posts inherently serve as the opening salvo in a potential conversation, inviting responses which either disagree with that commentary or extrapolate upon it. Creative content, on the other hand, doesn’t have an easy response: If you liked it, there’s not much to be said beyond “nice” (and that seems pointless enough you’ll probably skip it). If you didn’t like it, you’ll probably feel no particular compulsion to be a jerk by saying “you suck”. (A critique might be useful, but if it wasn’t invited you’re probably wasting your time and likely coming across as a jerk again.)

But the point Cyclopeatron makes is that this has a real effect on what bloggers write: The only real payment we get is the social validation from seeing people talk about what we wrote. When commentary posts see so much more activity than creative posts, we’re being strongly encouraged to write commentary posts instead of creative posts.

Despite this predilection, I agree with Cyclopeatron that the RPG blogosphere is a happier and healthier place when it’s filled up with awesome creative ideas. Towards that end, I propose Alexander’s Rule:

If you use something awesome from a blog in your game, go back and tell the creator about it.

That might mean taking fifteen seconds to write a comment. (“Hey. I ran the Dungeon Crawl of Ultimate Doom last night and it killed three PCs. Nice work.”) It might mean writing up a full session report, posting it to your own blog, and sending the original creator a trackback or link. Or anything inbetween.

Lemme take a second to practice what I’m preaching. Let me just stick a little spoiler protection for my players (who should read no further here)…

(more…)

The casting of magical rituals was once a lengthy and time-consuming process; one which often required the combined efforts of entire covens or wizard circles to complete. All of that changed, however, when wizards first discovered spells.

The earliest spells were dangerous and unstable — parasitic horrors from a primordial proto-plane of raw magical essence which feasted memetically upon the sanity of those they infected. But whether by accident or design, a small band of wizards managed to tame the spells to their own purposes. With proper training, they learned that these living parasites could hold complex rituals in a state of pressurized memetic potential. And then, by infecting themselves, they discovered that they could release the entrapped rituals upon command.

Magical rites that had once taken hours, days, or even months to cast could now be unleashed in minutes. (And later, as their arts improved, in mere moments.) The world was transformed.

The parasites, of course, were consumed in their casting. And so, every morning, wizards find themselves preparing fresh spells and then infecting their minds with them. It takes years of practice to perfect the finely honed balance required to sustain even a single spell-parasite in your mind without being driven mad by its thought-consuming proclivity. The ability to sustain multiple spells in that state of mind-rending follows more quickly, but it is always a delicate balance between power and madness for those who would follow such a path.

Generations passed before the spell parasites mutated again: Those possessed of rich, magical bloodlines began to be born infested with the parasites. Women died in horrific, unspeakable childbirths… the nature and fate of their spawn better left unspoken. Fears of plague and mass extinction followed.

But then a state of symbiosis was once again found with the new form of the parasites: Some children were born infested with parasites, but appeared otherwise normal. Some felt that the parasites had mutated into a more benign form. Others whispered worries, hurled epithets, and named them plaguebearers.

Time, however, would eventually name them sorcerers: Unlike their wizardly brethren who were forced to carefully prepare each spell before infecting themselves with it, the roiling mass of parasitic entities running rampant through their bloodstreams allowed these sorcerers to unleash extemporaneous magical assaults. Some found that they could literally “burn out” their infections by simply expending their parasites in overwhelming magical onslaughts. (Unfortunately, not all of these outbursts were controlled ones.) But other sorcerers discovered that as long as they were careful not to burn out all of the potential of the parasites they hosted, a symbiosis of sorts could be maintained as the parasites regained their strength each day.

Some name the world a better place for the perfection of these magical arts. Others still watch the plaguebearers warily, worried that some greater horror may emerge from the thought-eating worms which roam unchecked through the minds of all magicians.

And then there are others who whisper that spells may be but a lesser order of beings from that distant proto-plane of magic. If so, what greater terrors might be unleashed from such a place?