Forgetting the Realms

I don't know jack about the Forgotten Realms.

Because I'm me, I write this with a bit of puffed up pride, as in "I'm too good for that goofy property." But the fact of the matter is, I simply missed the whole FR experience. The original boxed set detailing the Forgotten Realms was published in 1987, a year after the last new AD&D book I would purchase (the Dungeoneers Survival Guide). By that time, I wasn’t even running a game, having surrendered all DM authority to my friend, Jocelyn. I would give up the hobby entirely circa 1988, only briefly returning (a couple-four years later) to DM my brother and his buddies in a turgid, short-lived AD&D campaign. My interest in the D&D during the 90s was roughly equal to the Seahawks playoff hopes during that same period (translation for non-Seattle residents: slim-to-none).

Here’s what I know about the Forgotten Realms: it was the home campaign setting of Ed Greenwood whose “Ecology Of...” articles (as voices by Elminster the Sage) I would occasionally read in Dragon magazine Back In The Day. When I was bored. After I’d already peruses any new classes, monsters, magic items, or Marvel-Philes that might be present in the mag.

I know Elminster is a prominent figure/NPC in FR. There were some video games based on the setting (Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, etc.) that I never played. I've never read or owned an FR novel, though I understand there's quite a few of them, some of which feature a Drow ranger named Drz'zt (or whatever).

Um...that’s about it.

Of the various D&D campaign settings that were put out over the years, the ones in most familiar with are Krynn, Mystara, and Oerth ("Greyhawk")...in that order. Krynn I know because I read the first seven or eight novels (multiple times for some of them), not because I ever owned or played any of the game publications. Mystara I know from reading (and using) the Gazetteers (during my BECMI days) or from more recent research. Greyhawk was a large part of our old AD&D campaign, although we never did use more of it than the map and the names of cities/regions...I couldn’t tell you anything about the “Suel” or Iuz or the Horned Society, etc. to save my arse.

[I did read Gygax’s first two Gord novels, though. Still own them, too]

And that’s it. I picked up a used (and incomplete) copy of 2E’s Dark Suns campaign setting decades later, but I’ve never done anything with it. Oh, and does SpellJammer count as a campaign setting? Steve-O game me a copy of that back in college, though we never did use that either.

Really that is pretty much the extent of my knowledge of the “official” D&D campaign settings. I don’t know anything about Birthright or Planescape (besides the fact that tieflings originated there), or Eberron, or anything else. And I know absolutely nothing about the Forgotten Realms (besides the Greenwood thing) except for the fact that everyone loves it and it continues to be a standard setting for the current edition of D&D.

Okay, okay, not everyone loves it, but quite a few people do.

More or less how I
picture Prince Gwydion.

So when I examine D&D Essentials and see this map of the “Sword Coast,” I really have no context or sense of scale or ANYTHING as it relates to the Realms. The illo on the original box cover felt reminiscent of a scene out of a Lloyd Alexander book, but I have no idea if the setting is heavily influenced by Tolkien or Wales or, well, anything. I suppose I could look up what Wikipedia says on the subject. Here, hold on a moment...

[later]

Okay, that didn't give me much...though, wow, there have been a TON of FR-themed vid games released. I had no idea.

Dragon of Icespire Peak does provide a page briefly describing this particular section of FR ("The Sword Coast"). Regarding the Realms in general it states:

"The world of the Forgotten Realms is one of high fantasy, populated by elves, dwarves, halflings, humans, and other folk. In the Realms, knights dare the crypts of the fallen dwarf kings of Delzoun, seeking glory and treasure. Rogues prowl the dark alleyways of teeming cities such as Neverwinter and Baldur's Gate. Clerics in the service of gods wield mace and spell, questing against the terrifying powers that threaten the land. Wizards plunder the ruins of the fallen Netherese empire, delving into secrets too dark for the light of day. Bards sing of kings, queens, heroes, and tyrants who died long ago."

[in other words, it's just D&D]

"On the roads and rivers of the Realms travel minstrels and peddlers, merchants and guards, soldiers and sailors. Steel-hearted adventurers from backcountry farmsteads and sleepy villages follow tales of strange, glorious, faraway places. Good maps and clear trails can take even an inexperienced youth with dreams of glory far across the world, but these paths are never safe. Fell magic and deadly monsters are the perils one faces when traveling in the Realms. Even farms and freeholds within a day's walk of a city can fall prey to monsters, and no place is safe from the sudden wrath of a dragon."

Okay, that's mostly just an overview of the D&D game's premise. However, there are some clues in this text (besides the proper names provided) as to the make-up of the setting. I don't usually think of "steel-hearted adventurers" coming from "backcountry farmsteads and sleepy villages." But when "no place is safe" and "farms and freeholds within a day's walk of a city can fall prey to monsters" that says something about the make-up of the setting: namely that there isn't any sort of serious government or military presence and that the landscape is a frightened no man's land where death is no more than a stone's throw away.

A hellscape, really...and that's something I can work with. Those "teeming cities" are probably nothing more than huddled masses of refugees from the countryside. These fallen empires and long-dead kings, etc. (not to mention "terrifying powers that threaten the land") speak to a vanilla fantasy world that's had all the idyllic/pastoral bits squeezed out of it. This isn't the Shire...it's Mordor. There's even an active volcano less than 35 miles from the area's major city (Neverwinter). The closest large town to Mount St. Helens is probably Kelso (about 60 miles away)...and it's only the 80th large town in Washington State as ranked by population. One might think it strange that the people of Neverwinter would hang out "rebuilding" after the most recent eruption (50 years before the campaign start) "badly damaged" the city. I can only assume that other areas of the region are so dangerous and monster infested that moving wasn't a real option.

Phandalin, the "home base" for the adventure is pretty much described the same as it is in Lost Mine of Phandelver (I think GusL's comments on the village are appropriate). While there are some callbacks to the idyllic ("you see children playing on the town green") I don't think it can't be rectified by playing up the mud, squalor, and horse shit of your typical medieval village (especially a slap-dash mining town as Phandelvin is). This should be something closer to HBO's Deadwood, not Downton Abbey's little village, especially one under constant menace of orc raiders and dragons.

"I've got a f*!%ing
quest for you."

Clearly then, much of this requires the makeover treatment. The town master (and "quest giver") Harbin Wester should be much more Al Swearengen and much less the cowardly Master of Lake Town (as portrayed by Stephen Fry in the film). Wester is trying to hold his little kingdom together, and he should be manipulating the hell out of any courageous dupes (i.e. the player characters) in order to make that happen.

[actually, I suppose if you really wanted to re-skin Phandelvin as Deadwood, you'd keep Harbin as is and make Toblen Stonehill, the real "Swearengen" character. Then you could set up Linene Graywind (by way of Patience from Firefly) as a competing, slightly less underhanded town faction]

Will probably kill
you anyway.

Point is, Phandelin should be more Nulb than Hommlet. And I think there's enough textual material in the adventure to support this view. Which is important to me for getting my mind right as I try to twist this bugger into something a little more playable.

The rest of the Forgotten Realms? Meh. Not all that important at this point.

Giving Up Power

No, not another superhero post.

This post has been a long time coming. Last Autumn, probably round about October I started to feel something akin to burnout. At the table. Frustration with gaming…with gaming itself. Feelings that I’d rather not be doing what I was doing on Thursday nights.

This is somewhat reflected in my lack of blog posts stemming from this period, though mainly my lack of output the last few months have been caused by my busy schedule and the overall stress of my daily life. My writing suffered from a lack of focus, not a lack of desire (and now that I finally have some time to write, I find I’m a little rusty/out-o-practice). But my gaming itself…yeah, it was getting harder to drag myself to the table, even when I had the evening free to do so.

Kayce down at Gary’s Games actually helped me figure out what was going on in my brain…I was tired of running games. I was tired of play-testing. I was tired of being in the puppet-master position…I wanted to game, I wanted to participate, but I needed to stop approaching the thing like a 2nd job…especially when I already had a 2nd or 3rd job (depending on how you count the work nannying my own child and trying to get the writing biz off the ground). 

Kayce suggested I let someone else run a game…unfortunately she wasn’t available to do so, and the games that were available to me (I’m on a couple regular mailing lists of Thursday meet-ups) were not playing anything that piqued my interest.

Fact is, I was still interested in many aspects of the GM chair, enjoyed them even…but I wanted to be a player participant in the game as well. I wanted a chance to play the hero for a change…whatever the genre. But who was going to run 5AK (or Cry Dark Future or Boot Hill or Star Wars or DMI) for me? I was writing and creating games that I wanted to play…as a player!…and I was the only one not getting a chance to play.

It was about that time I started thinking seriously about GM-less games. Giving up the power of the game "master" for an (equal) place at the table.

Collaborative role-playing games (I believe this is the P.C. term) have been around for a while, but they are certainly a small, small part of the RPG market. Many of them feel more like storyteller type system (the card game, Once Upon A Time comes to mind), lacking a true feeling of characterization, character identification, or (God forbid!) role-playing at all…at least in the “traditional” manner of speaking.

But I knew it was at least possible to bridge the gap…previously, I’d had the chance to play Capes, an indie superhero game that works without a GM and yet still has strong character construction/identification (one of the coolest takes on chargen I’ve ever seen in an RPG, actually). The game itself shares the narration and normal GM duties between players (like challenging PCs), by setting them up in a competitive environment with a system of bids and points for control of narration. The competition level is certainly on the “light” scale…little is risked/lost when chargen is as throwaway-easy as Capes (still cool, though). Part of the reason Capes doesn’t work for me is that “little risk” factor, but mainly the system (how the game plays) is a little clunky and slow for a genre I think should be slam-bam fast. Competitive, nuanced bidding structure for narrative rights? This isn’t a bull session in the Marvel editor’s office!

*ahem*

Anyhoo, back in October when I was in the throes of this “burnout” thing, I stumbled across Western City, another GM-less game with a much less complicated bidding system of narrative control and stronger “character attachment” (players each have a main character/protagonist and then get to bid for control of minor characters and antagonists) then what is found in Capes. Western City’s method of bidding and splitting chips is an easy way for a group to determine narration rights and ensures that this control will be shared between all participants  by the nature of the spend. It still holds a few problems for me (a slow setup time, an overly complex skill system, a weird way of scheduling the day’s conflicts) that make me hesitant to actually try the thing…but just reading it got me thinking (back in November), and thinking started getting me out of my funk.

Unfortunately, my life conspired to prevent me from really sitting down and hammering out my own thoughts and concepts in the way I wanted…or writing about my blossoming ideas as they started growing in my brain. Knowing that I would be moving to Paraguay, the holidays, and tying up the loose ends at the job I was leaving (not to mention my wife’s continued travels to South America)…left me struggling for air, let alone writing time. I started and abandoned more than half a dozen blog posts during the time.

But I kept reading and researching…stuffing info into my brain in hopes it would become a digested, useable thing. I borrowed a copy of Polaris off of Tim, a game I’d been meaning to look at for a long time anyway due to my interest in the subject matter (it has a real “Fall of Ancient Atlantis” type feel…doomed tragedy is a favorite fantasy concept of mine. Well, so long as there’s some rebirth/hope that arises from the destruction). Polaris is also a GM-less…um, “collaborative” RPG that incorporates ritual beautifully, in a way that is highly reminiscent of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, another game that straddles the border of RPG and collaborative storytelling.

[as a side note, any book that incorporates the purchase and consumption of alcohol into its gameplay is a must have for this gamer’s library!]

Polaris is the basic model for a game I tentatively started designing ‘round about Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, that design has had a stunted growth, being mainly composed of half a page of notes and a headful of prosaic “color” text. Part of the problem is I haven’t actually had a chance to figure out the tone…part of me wants it very, very dark (though it is not a doom & gloom game) and the other part of me wants something much more light-hearted (albeit snarky). And, no, that one has nothing to do with superheroes, either. More on this later (probably).

To continue my story: at the same time I was really starting to groove on the idea of creating a GM-less game, one of the gaming newsletters to which I subscribe sent me a list of articles on “collaborative role-playing.” These are old articles, and the list was unsolicited…it was simply that serendipitous kind o thang that sometimes happens when you’re mind is aligned in a particular direction.

Ian Millington is the one responsible for most of these articles, which were penned more than decade ago. I’ll post the links below for folks who are interested…as I write more on the subject, I will be referencing back to some of thoughts, concepts, and ideas Mr. Millington was developing:

Shifting the Paradigm of gaming (with pictures).

Ten Principles for Mr. Millington’s concept of collaborative role-playing (not sure I’m on board with all these, but they aid in understanding his work).

An essay on “Avatarism” and a new way of looking at “why we should play role-playing games.” This one is sure to raise some hackles, though I found it quite mind-blowing.

An interview with Mr. Millington (interesting...and mentions some of the limits to collaborative role-playing he sees).

Four actual games by Mr. Millington incorporating his principles of collaborative role-playing.

Okay, that’s enough to chew on for now...more on the subject later. I hope to write individual posts about two very specific collaborative games as a follow-up to this post: Fiasco and Blood Red Sands, perhaps later this week.