Appropriation

Welp, I've been back from my short "vaca" for a day or so, and it's time to get back to "work" (such as my work is). Had a lot of thoughts come into the old "think box" during the course of the trip...thinks that might apply to my proposed "South American" campaign setting. However, as I've found that writing 20,000 word, meandering posts tend to be less-than-effective at communicating (or organizing) my ideas, I'm going to try to break these up into bite-sized chunks.

SO, as a bit of a "precursor" allow me to say that on our way back from Montana we stopped off in Leavenworth, Washington for a couple nights. This was my first trip to "the Ultimate Holiday Town USA" and it was pretty trippy.

See, Leavenworth was established in 1906 (as the souvenir t-shirts proudly recount), but the small logging town went into a long economic decline after Great Northern Railway relocated its headquarters to nearby Wenatchee in the '20s. Located on Highway 2 (the road that cuts through Stevens Pass in the Cascades) the town would probably have appeared to be a nice little vacation getaway for folks seeking outdoor recreation...say fishing the Skykomish or hiking. But the building of Stevens Pass Ski Resort in the 1930s, the presence of Lake Chelan for boating and water sports, and the sheer number of similar small towns in rural Washington probably contributed to Leavenworth being nothing more than a wide spot in the road for road-trippers heading out of the more populous King County. I'm guessing.

So it was that in the 1960s, a pair of "Seattle business men" who had bought a roadside cafe and was looking at a way to increase the tourist traffic to the area, hit on the idea of developing Leavenworth as a "theme town," a recreation of a Bavarian village with buildings featuring architecture out of 1800s Germany, shops selling lederhosen and Alpine hats, and menus filled with schnitzel, beer, and brats. The wikipedia entry says they were inspired by Solvang, California who sport a Danish-themed town, whose town has been a tourist draw since the late 1940s, pulling a million visitors per year. As Leavenworth draws twice that number annually, I think it's fair to say they've succeeded in becoming the tourist attraction they want to be.

For me, I have mixed feeling about it. Yes, it's cute (and I am, of course, a fan of beer and brats), but it feels excessive. Worse, much of it feels, not just artificial, but a touch insincere. My kids' first reaction was "it looks like Disneyland" (they've never yet been to Disneyland), and why not? Mad King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein Castle is the model for Disneyland's iconic palace, and it's located in the heart of the region (and time era) that Leavenworth seeks to model.

And that's the thing: I've been to Bavaria. I've been to Neuschwanstein and Munich and Rothenburg. And while, yes, there's a lot of beer and schnitzel and sausage to be had, there's much more than that. There are plenty of buildings that don't have the cutesy architecture and faux gothic signage going on.  I mean, even the local hospital looks like some sort of Alpine chateaux!

The thing about Solvang is that it was a Danish community that originally settled it. And it was Danish immigrants and their descendants that, after WWII, tried to recreate some of the architecture and sculpture they'd seen in the fatherland while fighting in Europe. When the Danish Prince Frederick visited Solvang as part of his US tour in 1939 it was to see the Danish people living there...the "theme town" hadn't yet become a "thing," though I'm sure there were Danish traditions being kept alive in Solvang just as the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle keeps alive parts of the community's Norwegian and Swedish heritage (you can buy lutefisk at the right time of year, they have a seafood festival to commemorate Norwegian Constitution Day, for example).

Leavenworth, on the other hand, has no particular German heritage, and certainly no connection to Bavaria. They could have chosen to style themselves after an English village or a province of China or some town in Mexico or whatever. It's cultural appropriation, I guess...though since the culture being appropriated doesn't belong to a minority or historically oppressed people, I suppose there's no real stink to be raised about it. Probably there's some enterprising business folks in Berlin considering how to transform some small community into a theme town based on the "American West" with cowboys and Indians and saloons and whatnot.

[oh, wait...there already is (thank you, internet): Pullman City Harz is an American "wild west" town in Northern Germany. Awesome...especially as it appears to be named after Pullman, Washington (Go Cougs!). If I ever get back to Germany, maybe I'll give it a visit]

Anyway, despite my queasiness over the blatant commercialism...and a certain amount of bloatedness that comes from two days of sauerkraut and maibok....the place IS cute and a very nice place to visit. Yeah, it's goofy/weird but at least I can get a German-ish meal at a restaurant that will serve my kids, too (such is not the case with the best German-style pubs in Seattle), AND a big ol' stein of HBH. Most of the locals are engaged in the tourist industry, and most of the working folks I saw were younger than me, or not much older. I'd guess they've never known their town as anything other than what it is, and while they share a similar strained-weariness all tourist-industry folks have towards their clientele, they still approach their theme with a certain amount of gusto. When I spoke of "insincerity," I wasn't talking about the people, more the choices made in executing the "theme" (I can forgive a hotel called The Edelweiss but "Mozart's Steakhouse" is a bit tougher for my Austrian heritage to swallow).

*ahem* The POINT being, that Leavenworth is a fun place, and one I wouldn't mind returning to...maybe not for Oktoberfest, but definitely for a long weekend in summer or around the winter holiday season. And while I doubt I'll ever pick up a pair of lederhosen, I'd probably buy a beer stein if I found one that suited my taste (or lack thereof)...and I wouldn't feel too bad about it.

All of which, I realize, appears to have ZERO to do with gaming. But as I consider using real-world geography, history, and peoples to build a campaign setting, these issue of cultural appropriation looms in my mind. I'm not so much worried that I'd be giving offense to someone, so much as I worry I'd be perpetrating bad, false, or tasteless stereotypes in the name of "fun." How much is "appropriate appropriation" and how much is excessive? What amount of authenticity is acceptable and what constitutes "too little?" What amount is respectful to the cultures in question? Maybe these are silly, academic considerations (especially considering I'm not even running a game at the moment), but they are things I think about.

More on this later, along with some ideas I've had on possible approaches to my "problematic" campaign setting.

Food and Faith

The importance of food to humans can't be understated. True, man does not live by bread alone, in fact there are two things vastly more important: air and water. But assuming we have those two things, food comes in at #3, depending on whether or not one views sleep/rest as a "consumable."

And yet we tend to undervalue it in the Dungeon & Dragons game. "Mark off a day's rations," is about the extent of our interaction with food, unless we're talking about some sort of magical trick/trap found in the dungeon. It's just not as interesting to our game as, say, which spells the wizard has available, or the damage output-to-hit point ratio of our front-line fighters. There aren't even rules relating to starvation or malnutrition through the first half dozen iterations of the game; the closest B/X gets is this note in the Cook/Marsh expert set (page X51):

Characters who run out of food may face a variety of circumstances that must be handled by the DM. Possible effects of hunger might include the need for more rest, slower movement rates, minuses "to hit," and gradual loss of hit points.

[Aaron Allston's 1991 Rules Cyclopedia is the first place I find any hard rules on starvation, and it simply incorporates these four suggestions (need for rest, slow move, attack penalty, HP loss) into a single system...and a ridiculous one at that (a first level character who goes a single day without food and water will probably die, suffering 1d10 damage). But at least Allston was trying!]

Food and issues around food scarcity were driving factors in the European conquest of Latin America; truth be told, it is still the driving issue of these slave nations (you can't really call them developing nations when no real "development" is being done and when they are purposefully kept in a state that allows for exploitation of people and resources). You can't eat gold, after all.

Everyone reading this probably understands that the regions I'm talking about had large concentrations of people...many, many times the number of people living in the regions now known as Canada and the United States. These Central and South American (and Caribbean) lands could sustain this multitude of people precisely because it was so abundant with food supply, and the civilizations that existed had developed societies designed to make the best use of that food supply. True, there was some cannibalism among certain indigenous groups, but this appears to have been more of a ritual nature than a source of sustenance: the land already supplied the nutrition needed to grow people.

Our history books tell the story of how the indigenous Americans were mainly wiped out by diseases to which they had no immunity, germ warfare spread by plague-ridden "Old Worlders" either by accident or purposefully (the anecdotal "disease-ridden blanket" is actually from North American sources). But the human body is remarkably resilient, when in good health. Our immune systems work exceptionally well to fight off infectious diseases when we keep ourselves rested, fit, and fed with nutritious foods. Many of the issues Europe had with its own "black plague" incidents came from the poor living conditions of the people at the time.

Nearly all the European action during the first fifteen years following Columbus's discovery of a "New World" took place in the Caribbean; the first real city founded on the continent wasn't established till 1510 (a fort was built in 1509, but was abandoned after eight months). By that time, there were nearly a dozen settlements in the Caribbean, the vast majority of them being in Hispaniola.  The first recorded small pox epidemic hit Hispaniola in 1518-1519 and killed 90% of the the indigenous people remaining. However, by 1508 (ten years prior) they'd already been reduced in number from a pre-Columbian estimate of 600,000 down to 60,000.

[Bartolome de las Casas writing at the time after living in Hispaniola for decades, puts the pre-Columbian population even higher, stating more than 3,000,000 of the native Taino people were killed between 1494 and 1508. Modern scholars feels his figures are an exaggeration, however, despite the fact that more than 20 million people combined currently inhabit the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the two nations that comprise the island once known as "Hispaniola"]

What changed with Columbus's arrival that caused such a steep decline? Half a million bullets? No, the Spanish weren't interested in killing the native population, whom they had enslaved to work the gold mines of Hispaniola (Pueblo Viejo is still the largest gold mine in the Americas and the 2nd largest gold mine in the world); the first African slaves began to arrive in 1503 precisely because of the declining population and high infant mortality rates among the indigenous people led to a smaller workforce for the mines. No, it was starvation and lack of nutrition (exacerbated by overwork in harsh conditions).

The food that sustained the peoples of the Americas...the beans, corn, squash, and small game...were not the foods to which the Spaniards were accustomed: bread, olives (and olive oil), meat (domesticated), and wine. Not only did they want the familiar foods of their homeland, they had an aversion to eating the native produce. Part of this was due to a philosophy of "right food" based on class and status; not only was it a mark of prestige in Spain to eat better (i.e. expensive) food, especially meats, but eating the food of the indigenous risked becoming like the indigenous: ignorant, heathen savages. When Columbus returned in 1494, he brought Spanish livestock with him...cows, pigs, goats, and sheep...which, devoid of natural predators, multiplied and devoured the native habitat, Planting of Spanish crops (including cash crops like sugar) helped displace the native flora as well.

But for the Spaniards, having their own food was more than a matter of comfort; it was a matter of faith. What is Catholicism without the Body (bread) and Blood (wine) of Christ? The acceptable and preferred foods of the Spanish had been ingrained through both their faith and the propaganda of times: the end of the 800 year Reconquista in 1491, the Alhambra Decree (issued in 1492, four months before Columbus's first voyage) required the expulsion or conversion of all Jews from Spain, and the Spanish Inquisition (formed in 1478 and largely used to suss out Moores and Jews) all contributed to the mindset of a "unified Catholic nation." And Catholics, unlike Moores and Jews, eat pork. Pork and pork products (like lard, used as a replacement for olive oil in the Americas) was a strong symbol of the conqueror's faith, a sign that they belonged in this new land which the Church had insisted be converted to Catholicism.

[mmm...originally was going to devote a big section to the Reconquista and why it wasn't really all that much about religion at all...but I'm already running long; will need to change the title of the post]

So yummy to nosh!

The religious conversion of the Americas went, more or less, according to plan...lip service to a spiritual philosophy and showing up to ritual services once a week isn't a big deal when the alternative is death at the hands of a gun-toting conquistador. Food conversion is a much bigger deal: people have to eat to survive. And hundreds of thousands (or millions) of people need a lot of calories to maintain health and fitness, especially under extreme working conditions (like as a slave laborer in a Spanish gold mine). The decimation of their native food supply, their restriction from eating the food supply of the upper class "lords," the enforced harsh working conditions, all combined to turn a "physically tall, well-proportioned people of kind and noble bearing" into downtrodden, malnourished people easily extinguished by the introduction of foreign viruses.

*sigh*

Alexis has done a lot of work on food in a D&D campaign: the gist is that characters require two or four pounds of food per day depending on whether or not a person is "resting" or "laboring" (characters that actually engage in fights require a lot more) with penalties (and eventual starvation) resulting from failure to eat the required amount. This is very reminiscent of the rules for food in the post-apocalyptic game Twilight 2000, in which a character must consume three kilograms of food per day, modified by the type of food being consumed ("civilized food" counts for 1.5x its weight, MREs count for double). Alexis's rules are a bit more generous, but his penalties (including checks for contracting maladies) hit rather hard. I'm not sure about his starvation rules; I'm not taking the time to run the math on his system. T2000 simply has individuals starve to death "after about a month of no food or several months of half-rations." Very abstract, with accumulating fatigue levels reducing ability scores prior to actual death.

AD&D, like B/X and OD&D, has two entries for "rations" on its equipment list: iron and standard, both of which provide seven days worth of food to a single individual. Unlike those latter editions, AD&D defines the weight of these two different foodstuffs as being 7.5 pounds (iron) or 20 pounds (standard). Doing the math (and assuming no increase to weight for "bulk") this works out to about a pound of food (iron) or close to three pounds of food (standard) per human per day. I'll also note that 3rd edition only provides weight for trail rations (defined as "jerky, dried fruits, hard tack, and nuts") at a rate of one pound per person per day (less for "small" characters, despite hobbits' notorious appetites); this appears to be the 3E equivalent of iron rations.

But just what are "iron rations?" Hard to say as I can't find an origin for the term. Australians in WWI used an "iron ration" (field ration) designed to be eaten in case of emergency (i.e. because supply lines were unavailable) and consisted of a bit more than two pounds of food including both dried meat (jerky) and hard tack. WWII Germany issued three types of ration: the march ration, iron ration, and iron-half ration, of which the "iron" is more of a "half ration" (and weighs 1.5 pounds without packaging). The United States military's "C-ration" (a term in use from 1958-1980 and a plausible source of inspiration for an RPG designed by war-gamers of the period) had a packaged weight of 2.6 pounds. None of these were designed to be consumed for long periods of time, and all were supposed to be supplemented by fresh food or prepared food whenever possible.

I suppose in a magical world (i.e. your typical D&D setting), one can simply say the magic-infused foodstuffs provide double or triple the caloric value of our real world...but is such "cheating" necessary in a world where a 5th level cleric can conjure nourishing, life-sustaining sustenance out of thin air? It does seem that the figures provided in all published editions of Dungeons & Dragons are grossly under-representative of the actual amounts of food necessary to sustain (human) life...but without a system in place to track the very real problems of over-exertion and malnutrition, why should it bother your average Dungeon Master? It's why purify food and water is so under-utilized in your average campaign.

Yet another batch of thoughts, facts and figures I need to take into account as I build this thing.

El Dorado

The nice thing about working with real world geography is that the maps already exist. That's nice. Of course, translating those to hexes is kind of a pain in the ass (especially for a mapmaker as lazy and incompetent as myself)...but it's doable.

Setting up the trade thang though is a little tougher.

Working with the fantasy setting of Karameikos, I came to the realization that not only is this a pain in the ass (having no real world numbers to use), but it's pretty much a waste of time seeing as how I don't plan on anyone adventuring in the Grand Duchy. And rather than waste my time, I've decided to simply move into my fantasy version of South America. If I never get an "advanced" campaign going (as is my hope) I can always default to something brainless and simple like Karameikos...and no hard adjustments for a "living economy" need be made.

Alexis will probably *shudder* to read this, but I'm screwing around with his methodology a bit. I don't have ready access to the same world almanacs that he does, and while I do plan on getting some books from the library, there are a few difficulties working with 15th century South America as opposed to 17th century Europe, not the least of which is that the best references are in languages other than English. Anyway, there are a few assumptions that I need to use in order to make things work and while I recognize this won't result in anything super accurate in a "real world" sense, what I'm striving for is consistency. Something that makes sense.

ANYway: for me, the first place to start is gold because, boy oh boy, there sure was a lot of it in the new world. The internet records I found said that somewhere between 10-12 tons were being pulled out of West Africa and South America by the 17th century. As 5 to 8 tons of that was from the African continent, I'm inclined to use 4.5 tons as the amount of annual gold production in the South American region...which I'm sorry to say is also going to include Mexico and the Dominican Republic (home of the second largest gold mine in the world, Pueblo Viejo, established 1505 by the Spanish).

["sorry to say" because my adventurers probably won't be getting to Mexico OR the D.R....that's just outside the scope of what I want for my campaign setting. Plus, Mexico is just enormous...throwing it into the campaign setting is like throwing China into your pseudo-European game. I'll keep the Incans as the main empire front-and-present, thanks]

Considering a single ton of gold production per year from Europe (a bit generous at this point in history) and ignoring the rest of the world (because we're only concerned with conquistadors and the indigenous population) I end up with an average of 12 tons of gold, or 384,000 ounces, of which 144,000 are coming out of the Americas. Or rather will be coming out of the Americas...it took a while for the Europeans to start mining the hell out of their colonies. However, the gold IS there...the indigenous people of the Americas were making good use of it even before the Europeans...so I'm inclined to use the same figures.

As I said, my methodology is going to end up different from that of Alexis. I don't have books from which to draw references, so I'm making my own artificial ones. In this case, I've decided that each of my "gold references" will be 1600 ounces...a nice round number that works out to 100 pounds of gold per reference...of which there should be 90 in Latin America. To figure out the exact number of references per region, I used the current world production figures to establish percentages by country, figuring gold production has probably remained proportional over time. Probably...but even if not, it's good enough for my purpose.

90 references, of which 17 belong to Mexico and 5 to the Dominican Republic. That leaves 68 references in South America proper, about a third of which (23) are found in the mountains of Peru. The Incans were an extremely wealthy civilization in terms of mineral wealth. Even though the present day political boundaries haven't been drawn upon the maps of 15th century America, I can still use those regions to place my gold references, based on the communities I can find.

Figuring out coinage is a tad tricky because the Spanish used so many different types and denominations of coins during the time period in question and the Incans, for all their wealth, apparently had no money or economy at all. Sticking with the Spanish, we see that the Iberians had a currency reformation right at the end of the 15th century, replacing the Moorish maravedies with the silver real, in an attempt to unify both the country and the currency. By the 1530s they were also minting large quantities of gold coins (both the escudo and the doubloon or pistole) in multiple denominations, and the values of these, along with that of the real and the silver peso ("piece of eight") fluctuated in relation to the older maravedie, still in circulation.

Here's a bit where fantasy is probably going to need to come into play: I'm not writing historical fiction, I'm manufacturing a setting for play, and ease of play is going to require some compromise. What didn't change all that much in the 15th through 18th centuries was the relationship of the gold to silver as far as coins went: one gold doubloon (a quarter ounce of gold) had the same value as four silver pesos (four ounces of silver). One ounce of gold was thus equivalent to the value of 16 ounces of silver...which the Spanish had access to a LOT of, thanks to their American holdings (silver was the colonies' main export besides sugar).

Copper coins were also present, but they were much less valuable...two copper blancas were valued at one maravedi (at their best...they were later devalued), and 24 blancas had an ounce of copper in their manufacture which, if you do the math, means one ounce of silver was valued the same as (approximately) 22.6 ounces of copper...and you can multiply that by four to get copper's value in relation to gold.

I like the doubloon...the double escudo...as it appeals to my pirate fetish. So does the "piece of eight," AKA the peso or "Spanish Dollar." But I think both the escudo and real are more important, and had more historic importance in the economy of the 15th century. An eight of an ounce of gold (one escudo) I think will be the best measure of the D&D "gold piece" and the silver real (of the same weight) being the pest model of a "silver piece."

All right, that's enough money talk for now.

The gold escudo

Problematic Content I Like

My experiments with Alexis's trade system is, unfortunately, going to go on hold for the moment (family stuff takes precedence on the weekends, and the boy had a baseball double-header Saturday).

However, I still have some time have a bit of time now, in the wee hours of the morning (while everyone else is asleep) to blog a bit more on the South American campaign setting. The more I consider it and research it, the more I like the whole concept. As long as I treat the indigenous humans like, you know, humans and not some sort of cardboard fantasy antagonists, I think the setting can still provide plenty of ground for adventure while not becoming some sort of sick colonialist fantasy. I think the main thing to keep in mind is that humans are a diverse bunch of people: no group is inherently "good" or "evil," though self-interest can look like the latter when it's at the expense of others. Regardless, the game will probably have a bit more "moral ambiguity" than your average D&D campaign, especially those latter day editions that presume players to be some sort of heroic do-gooder types.

And that's fine. If a PC is murdering a fictional human in a game, does it it matter that the NPC is an Incan or a Spaniard? Is it really any different from murdering a (fictional) Traladaran or Thyatian? I think it only becomes offensive when the game states (explicitly or not) that a particular group of people is "orc equivalent" in the setting, i.e. a species of less-than-humans existing only to be slaughtered, and that there's no moral quandary for doing so, as the culture is all "evil" anyway.

I suppose we'll have to see how it works in practice which...considering my lack of gaming at the moment...might take a while. Still, I'll try to keep it in consideration as I do my prep work and world building. For now, let's just figure it's all "doable" and move on to the next offensive thing I've got planned: religion.

Specifically the re-skinning of alignment as "religion" for the campaign setting.

The whole Law-Neutral-Chaos axis doesn't really work in a setting of moral ambiguities: if you don't have a Dark Lord Sauron on one side and some sort of Council of Good Peoples on the other, the idea of alignment becomes either a means of measuring temperament (do I like to steal and cheat?) or one that measures some type of "cosmic force" interaction. The latter works great for settings that pit players against extra-natural entities (Cthulhu and the like) or define the conflict as one of order/civilization versus chaos/wilderness. But those don't really work for my setting: there isn't any cosmic evil force the PCs are striving against, and the "wilderness" of South America already had plenty of order/civilization in the form of the native peoples of the continent. The conquistadors were really the ones introducing chaos (to the eyes of the indigenous population) even as their perception was one of bringing "the light of reason and faith" to the region.

[oh...and if you just want alignment to be temperament, then why bother with it at all? Humans change their minds and behaviors all the time. No one is inherently Lawful or Neutral or Chaotic]

However, I do have reasons for wanting "sides" in the setting (and a shorthand description for characters), and instead of traditional alignment, I've decided that the term religion will do just fine. In this case, I break it into three categories:

True Christian
Practical
Non-Christian

Part of this is tied directly to the history of the setting. When the Church allowed the Spanish and Portuguese to divide up the non-Christian world between them, part of the justification for this was the conversion of the non-Christian populations. As such, only Christians were allowed to emigrate to the Americas, individuals in fact needing to be able to prove that they were Christians (of two Christian parents) in order to participate in the colonization. For the Spanish and Portuguese, going to the New World wasn't a search for "religious freedom;" it was about expanding the Church's dominion. As such, all European explorers in South America were exclusively (if nominally) "Christian" during this time period.

Now Christianity, like most world religions, is generally pretty nice when people follow its laws and tenets. Thing is, though, you actually have to practice what the priest is preaching...just because you've been baptized and take Communion regularly doesn't mean you're not an asshole. Walking in the steps of Jesus...like walking the path of any holy person...can be frigging hard especially the more attachments you have to the worldly. Not just money and power mind you, but your family, personal honor, and self-identity (status, place in society). It's tough dissolving one's ego and "trusting in the Lord," and most of us get too caught up in the immediate stuff in front of our noses to see (or care) about the larger picture.

Those that DO see that picture, or who can at least glimpse it and care enough to try to live it, are the folks that fall into the "True Christian" category. Baptized Christians (i.e. European explorers) who habitually forget or ignore either the letter or the spirit of Church teachings fall into the "Practical" category; they still believe in heaven, and are respectful of priests and the Eucharist (superstitiously so) but they're not really trying to live Christ's example. "Non-Christians" are people who actively disbelieve or despise the Church; it includes both atheists and apostates, and any pagan peoples (like all the indigenous folk at the start of the campaign).

In addition to helping define where one falls in the conflict between New World and Old World, these alignments serve a practical purpose of helping to distinguish and categorize the character classes in the campaign; at the moment, I see them breaking down like this:

Cleric: True Christian or Practical only
- Druid: Non-Christian only
Fighter: Any
- Paladin: True Christian only
- Ranger: Any
Magic-User: Practical or Non-Christian only
- Illusionist: Practical or Non-Christian only
Thief: Any*
- Assassin: Practical or Non-Christian only
- Bard: Any
Monk: Non-Christian only, if used

I haven't decided whether or not I actually want to include the monk character class...if I do, it will probably be some sort of fantasy order/cult found among the indigenous. I toyed with limiting thieves' alignment, but I figure there might be some "reformed" types who retain their skills refraining from their sinful (stealing) ways. Mage-types and assassins are limited because, regardless of any particular devotion they might have, they continue to practice crafts (sorcery and murder) that are distinctly counter to Church law.

Being a True Christian matters mostly to the cleric and paladin classes. It is possible to be a priest or knightly warrior without being a devoted Christian, but the supernatural powers of these classes are tied to their faith. As such, I've defined seven Saintly Virtues (based on the Cardinal and Theological Virtues) that True Christians must observe to retain their status:

Charity, Chastity, Faith, Fortitude, Mercy, Modesty, and Temperance

I have notes about how each might be broken, but the effects of breaking them differ between classes.

Because "to err is human," a player may choose a single virtue that their character may safely disregard while still retaining their status as a True Christian; it is assumed this is a personal flaw/vice that they are struggling with and so long as they show proper remorse (and seek confession) there is no alignment penalty (changing alignments carries the usual penalty of losing an experience level, but it's pretty damn difficult to switch between Practical and Non-Christian without actual religious conversion!).

Paladins who fall from True Christian to Practical alignment lose all class benefits, becoming a normal fighter (though one with a tougher XP table...oh, that guilty conscience!). The nice thing about this system is that I have actual "sins" (well, vices really) with practical limits that regulate if the character is being true to her alignment or not, rather than some arbitrary (i.e. DM defined) "act of evil." Players who want to play a more typical (and historical) "robber knight" can play a fighter of Practical alignment instead.

For clerics, the seven Saintly Virtues are tied directly to their spell-casting ability: the cleric may not cast spells of a greater level than the maximum number of virtues they obediently observe. This applies even to clerics of Practical alignment: each character has seven boxes that will be checked off by the DM if and win a character falls to the Vice that corresponds to a particular Virtue. For example, "lust" is the sin associated with Chastity, which here is defined as "sex outside the sanctity of Holy Matrimony." Since priests and nuns are prohibited from being married by Church law, this Virtue would be broken with ANY sexual relationship. This might not cause a change in alignment (especially if the cleric was already of the Practical bent) but would prohibit the character's ability to cast spells higher than 6th level...at least without proper atonement and penance.

[I am still deciding whether or not undead turning is linked to alignment...in which it would only be available to True Christians...or to class (in which case alignment matters little). Probably will depend on what I decide is the reason the ability works and how]

Aside from these things, I intend to have certain magical effects that function differently (or not at all) depending on the alignment/religion of a character: these include some spells (especially clerical and druidic magic) and some magic items as well: a pagan may burn (and take damage) from touching a holy Christian relic, and some Christians will face similar (and worse) penalties from particular pagan artifacts...though, of course, the effects will be less pronounced for "Practical" Christians.

It should be noted that while alignment might affect some societal structures, it need have no effect on which characters will adventure together. A True Christian will happily join a party that includes a pagan or an assassin with the hope that her shining example will inspire such characters to religious conversion (or, at least, to "mend their evil ways"). There is, thus, no proscription against paladins adventuring with a band of faithless miscreants.
: )

ADVANCED Dungeons & Dragons

I started a post a couple days ago titled "Growing Up" that quickly devolved into a maudlin ramble about my children and Little League baseball which...well, it was a train wreck. Let's see if I can be a little more pointed:

I've been thinking a lot about AD&D lately...the system I played through most of my youth and which I eventually gave up completely in favor of B/X. The reasons for kicking it were many, and I won't bother to enumerate them here...this whole blog can be considered a record of the "why's" when you look at the essays I've written extolling the virtues of the B/X system and compare how those virtues contrast with more fiddly AD&D.

[oh, yeah...should probably point out I'm speaking of the original AD&D here, i.e. first edition, not 2E or anything that came afterward]

But the ideas found in AD&D keep breaking into my consciousness. They nag at me. I've come to the conclusion, for example, that of all the various systems, I prefer B/X's scaling of spell acquisition for magic-users to be THE BEST of the bunch (and I've compared every edition extensively) with a single caveat: I'd give a bonus spell or two for high Intelligence scores.

[sorry...this is something I've been meaning to post about, and explain my reasons for, but I just haven't had the time to get to it]

And yet, B/X as written doesn't deal with higher forms of magic, some of which I dig on immensely (spells like cacodemon and gate, for example). And it misses out on some of the more flavorful spells found in AD&D, like burning hands, rope trick, and Leomund's secret chest. Yes, you can import this kind of content into your B/X game, but it destroys some of the symmetry found in the B/X system as written.

Thing is, I LIKE...I really like...asymmetry in Dungeons & Dragons. I've written about this before, too: I enjoy the ways in which D&D fails to balance against itself. I like that thieves use a completely different system mechanic from clerics, who have a completely different system mechanic from wizards, who are completely unbalanced and different from fighters...and how player characters abilities and stat blocks are different from the NPCs and monsters that make up the game. I like this, it makes the game interesting, it makes the systems challenging and working with those systems a puzzle for both the DM and the players. If I wanted to play a perfectly balanced game of design currency, I'd be using something like GURPS or HERO system. All the later edition's attempts to balance character types against each other (giving wizards "at will" spells, giving fighters spell-like "feats," etc.) have just gone towards eliminating that asymmetry...and creating a less interesting game.

B/X as written leaves a LOT of wide open potential for one's game, but it also destroys some of the D&D game's original asymmetry. The pegging of 9th level as "name level" for all classes, the increase in demihuman level limits (to 12, 10, and 8), the reduction of magic-user spells...these things go a long way towards balancing the classes...at least in a game that only goes to level 14 (all "Companion" books aside). And that's FINE for a little fantasy adventure game. Heck it's beautiful and elegant and downright manageable, which is something I'd have a hard time saying about most any other edition of D&D.

But real life isn't that nice and neat. Real life is full of messy inconsistencies. Real life is hardly manageable...I have a hard time managing it, and I'm a fairly smart guy blessed with so many real life advantages that I should have zero cause for complaint or grumpiness. Damn it, I drive a car that has satellite radio and voice activated systems, and I STILL find reasons to bitch-and-moan! How frigging ridiculous is that?!

It's hard to manage real life (even though it should be easy for some of us); it's challenging because it's messy and complicated and full of messy, complicated humans. And while we play D&D, in part, to escape that messy, complex reality, if we leave it simple and elegant and streamlined we are perhaps cheating ourselves of an even deeper form of fantasy play. We are still playing on "easy mode" when we could be playing something that challenges us more strongly, giving us a stronger experience, a more intense fantasy escape.

I say "we," but I mean "me."

Things that I once felt (perhaps) "needlessly" complicate the D&D game...things like time and aging, encumbrance, disease & illness, training requirements, weather (and its effects), or a "living" economy...these things have the potential to make for a richer gaming experience. They also make the game more difficult to play, and much harder to manage. They are not Dungeons & Dragons in its Little League form...they are ADVANCED Dungeons & Dragons.

It's been a long, long time since I played "advanced" D&D.

I don't even think that 3rd edition, for all its extra rule minutia, really counts as an "advanced" version of the game. Most of its extra rules...most of its rules period...pertain directly and solely to combat. 3E simplified most of the game itself down to D20 rolls against target numbers using modifiers...often clunky and unwieldy to use in practice (especially at high level play), but simple enough to grasp. 4E and 5E have dumbed-down the game even further. I've written at length at how 5E DMG is mostly padding, providing pages and pages of tables to generate random "ideas" for a (presumed novice) DM, but very little info on how to manage a messy, asymmetrical challenge of a game. Wizards of the Coast was right to file the "Advanced" term from the title of the game...I see very little in the post-TSR era that I would consider to be an "advanced" concept.

I feel that I want to get back to playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Not AD&D "by the book;" I've done that before...did it for years, using speed factors and casting times and helmet rules and all the various minutia. Much of that part of the AD&D books does little in aid of making for a better game. But other parts...the parts that expand on the concepts found in B/X, the parts that elaborate the  scope and depth of the fantasy campaign...those are parts that I want to incorporate into my game. I think I've grown beyond the game I was first introduced to as a kid.

I want to get messy again.

From the Ground Up

This post is meant to be a "placeholder" of sorts.

I've been reading, streaming, and thinking a lot these last several days. A lot.

[and here my words just trail off again...jeez, sometimes starting these posts are so hard!]

And just WHAT I've been thinking about, is about the campaign world I want to build. That's the brief of it.

Not just the setting, mind you, though that's part of its elements. I'm talking about the rules, their form and function, as much as anything so worrisome as naming kingdoms and the placing of orc tribes. I'm talking about the purpose of systems, both in what they model and what they represent at the table. I'm talking about deconstructing the game and building it from the ground up...about doing a tear-down of the game engine and seeing how its component parts fit together and why.

And really, the why is more important than the how. It's easy to see how something works, but I'm tired of being altogether lazy about stuff. I want to understand the principles underlying the thing. I want to know why the wheel is round so that I don't have to keep going back to the drawing board and asking, "is there a better shape for this wheel thing?" I've grown somewhat fatigued by that particular exercise.

Over the next few/dozen posts I intend to post my ideas on various design elements here, as this blog has long been a repository for my evolving thought on game design, specifically with regard to Dungeons & Dragons. Probably some of this will be treading old, well-trod ground. Some bits will, no doubt, be counter to things I've written in the past...over time, many of my opinions have changed.  I suspect the end result will still, largely, resemble the B/X game...but maybe not.

Maybe not.

Not trying to be cryptic here, and certainly don't want to sound like I'm embarking on some lofty intellectual journey. Like I said at the top, this is a placeholder...just an introduction to something I'm going to be pursuing, in posts, over the next (who knows how long). Just want folks to know that that's what I'm going to be about for a little while: not about ranting, not about reviewing, not about waxing on about my past or personal stuff. When you see this "Building" label, it's going to be (I hope) something purposeful that may be (some day) incorporated into a larger document.

That's my plan anyway. We'll see how it goes.