Non-Human Races in Fantasy Lit

We all know that Tolkien invented the idea of non-human races in fantasy fiction, which in turn influenced D&D and other RPGs by bringing us the standard fantasy races of elf, dwarf, halfling, and orc/goblin. Before Tolkien, fantasy writers either focused on human characters only, especially in swords & sorcery, or they only used non-humans as monsters, fantastic beasts, mentors, or supernatural messengers.

But … do we really know that?

Someone’s question about swords & sorcery RPGs got me thinking about this.

For the Kiddies

Let’s start with the idea of human characters as the focus, with non-humans only appearing as mentors, messengers, or monsters. Or, to put it in RPG terms, humans are the only “PC race”, with things like goblins as “NPC only”. This seems to be mostly true of European fantasy written for children… except that there’s a lot of cases of talking animals, goblins and other “cute” monsters, or children transformed into dragons or other creatures that become companions or allies to human beings.

The best-known example, though not the oldest, is C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. In the very first book, we have the fauns (Tumnus,) the talking beavers, and the centaurs. In later Narnia books, the Marsh-wiggles and the Dufflepuds show up as “original” fantasy races, although we could argue that Dufflepuds are just a variant of dwarves, which also show up in Narnia.

Some of the characters in Baum’s Oz books are unique rather than belonging to a “race” (Tin Woodsman, Scarecrow,) but we have loads of talking animal characters and odd races like the Quadlings.

Lewis Carroll’s books are definitely swarming with creatures that are treated no differently than human characters. I actually used to have a write-up for “Cheshire cat” as a playable race (although really, it was the Cheshire cat crossed with Puss in Boots.)

Weird Sorcery

In contrast, weird tales and swords & sorcery do in fact tend to focus on human characters only. Non-human “races” do exist, but are usually treated as antagonists or monsters. They are the challenge for a specific story, or the surprise at the end. They rarely reappear. We do have serpent-folk showing up in Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Seven Geases” or Robert E. Howard’s King Kull stories, hairy humanoids like Smith’s Voormis, or Lovecraft’s fish people (frog people?) in “The Doom That Came to Sarnath”.

Since all of these writers are pre-Tolkien and therefor could not be influenced by Tolkien, this might seem to support the theory that pulp fantasy, at least, did not have anything that could be considered a “playable race” when translated into an RPG. But while none of these authors read Tolkien, they did read Arthurian legend. We do see something similar to the Fae or elves in some weird fiction. Earliest I can think of is A. Merritt’s “The Women of the Wood”, where the fae-like people of the wood act more like the “surprise” mentioned earlier. Much later, though, Roger Zelazny’s Dilvish the Damned describes Dilvish as having a little elf-blood, and Dilvish has memories of a visit to his distant elven relatives.

But the more famous example of elves in swords & sorcery would be the Melnibonéans from Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga. Melnibonéans are basically evil elves, and in some of the stories where Elric is transported to other worlds, he’s called an elf by other characters.

Back to the Worms

In addition to Arthurian legend, though, the old pulp fantasy writers and even Tolkien had another influence: E. R. Eddison. His classic novel The Worm Ouroboros has demons, witches, goblins, and pixies as main characters. The demons have small horns, the “races” don’t have any recognizable features that I recall, although I believe Lord Gro (the goblin) is said to be shorter than the others, so maybe that’s a racial feature.

You could argue, then, that these “races” aren’t fantastic non-humans or even variant humans, but just people living in various countries. This could, in fact, be one reason why swords & sorcery has a lot of human races, but seemingly no non-human races except in opposition to humanity as menaces. But both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien read The Worm Ouroboros, too. Which leads to my big question…

Are Tolkien’s Races Non-Human?

Post-Tolkien fantasy and fantasy RPGs, including D&D, consider elves, dwarves, halflings, and orcs to be non-human. Most people would probably say that’s because they are non-human in the source material. But are they?

The gimmick in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is that Tolkien made languages and a detailed history of Middle Earth, describing the interactions of the elves, dwarves, and orcs with the human nations. It’s as if they were simply other civilizations living nearby, engaged in trade and conflict with each other. This is not how the fae are presented in folk tales, where they are inherently magical and operate on their own logic, difficult for human beings to understand. Tolkien’s elves are described as magical by other characters, especially the hobbits, but not in the same way. It’s more like they are incredibly good at a lot of mundane skills, plus some of them know an occasional spell. They are basically just fancy people.

This fits in with trends that predate Tolkien. His mentor, George MacDonald, described goblins in The Princess and the Goblin as originally being human beings who moved underground. This is because in the 19th and early 20th century, myths and legends were assumed to have forgotten mundane explanations. This is also the working assumption of the pulp fantasy writers. Now, neither they nor Tolkien were above tossing in something truly fantastic, like serpent-folk or ents or barrow-wights. But Tolkien had such an impact on fantasy precisely because he created so much mundane detail about his elves, dwarves, hobbits, and orcs in order to make them feel real.

Maybe in a future post, I’ll tackle the problem of how to decide when to adapt a fantasy race as a PC race and when to leave it as NPC only, or even keep it as a one-off. But I think this post is long enough for now.

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Plans for the Blog: 2025

So previously, I laid out the reasons for why I went silent for two years, and it can mostly be summarized as “overextending myself”. My plans for the blog revolve around correcting that problem and managing things better.

Topic Changes

Very little is going to change as far as the focus of the blog. Previously, I posted about RPG-related topics and one non-RPG topic that could be interpreted as “RPG-related,” if you squint enough:

• Commentary on RPGs or the RPG community in general.
• Gameplay advice.
• Useful supplemental material, such as monsters, maps, random tables. The usual stuff.
• Sharing work-in-progress material on the above (artwork or other assets, for example.)
• Media commentary/reviews.

None of these are going away. For commentary posts, I will focus on highlighting interesting discussions or posts, like the Blog Post of Note series I started. I will still follow my policy of “little or no RPG politics or drama”; I may agree that some formerly popular people who lost cred or became pariahs deserve what they got, but I still feel that such drama is a waste of time.

I am not going to link to my Minecraft videos or most of my other non-RPG projects. However, I would like to do videos for the Last-Minute GM series and some similar RPG topics. I don’t want to turn my blog into announcements for what I’m doing on YouTube or elsewhere, however. When I start a series of interest to RPG fans, I will do one post linking to the new playlist, then add some kind of widget or something in the sidebar that names the most recent video in that series. The goal is to keep it unobtrusive.

Schedule Changes

Although the post types and topics won’t change much, the distribution will change. I don’t want to do two to three posts a week again. There will be one or two long posts every two weeks, more or less. Shorter posts like quick comments or links to resources can be more frequent, but they will be on a “post when inspired to post” schedule. This will probably work out to at least one post a week and an average of six to eight posts a month, but my goal is a low-stress, no-deadlines hobbyist approach. There won’t be a strict schedule.

Format Changes

Stuff is probably horribly out-of-date and pretty ugly. I notice at least one widget has stopped working, some kind of OSR search box. Probably, it points to a link that no longer exists because the creator dropped out of the community.

Every few months, I got emails asking for access to one of the PDFs I keep on Google Docs. Google seems to routinely break their own shareable links. I probably need to check all these. I may need to look around for a more stable file hosting solution, but I can’t really afford anything at the moment.

Summary

Posting is coming back, but on a more low-key, informal basis. I’m still invested in a couple of my old projects; I just don’t know when they will be complete. Things are going to happen when they happen.

My Absence Explained

I briefly mentioned in my previous post that my two-year absence from the old school RPG blogging scene wasn’t because I lost interest. In fact, I didn’t vanish completely from the OSR. I mostly vanished from the ODD74 forum, but did continue to comment from time to time. And I’ve been commenting more on the /r/osr subreddit. So what gives?

The Video Project

About 8 or 9 years ago, I had this crazy idea: “I’m going to make Minecraft videos”, a cross between a let’s play series and a parody of old nature/travel shows like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. It took a while to build what I needed, and I used up all my creative energy working on that instead of…

The RPG Projects

I have a couple unfinished works that I still want to do, such as the Undying Neighbors and Infernal Neighbors monster books, random dungeon and wilderness generators, various old school adventure modules, and Liber Zero. Always Liber Zero. There’s so much to do, and so much software I had to reconfigure or replace, that I just got overwhelmed and didn’t do much at all.

I did discover Obsidian, which makes notes and prep much easier, so I may get this stuff back under control.

The RPG Community

A lot of OSR people vanished and a lot of others drifted over to other things. I haven’t been seeing as many posts about OD&D, improv old school gaming, brutally simple generator tables, or other topics I’m interested in. There’s been less of a hobby focus, lots more commercial focus. In this environment, I’ve had less and less to talk about here. And I believe I mentioned that I never really adapted to the loss of Google Reader, finding it harder and harder to keep track of what everyone else is talking about.

Life Itself

Yeah, there’s also the usual. Health problems. Being busy doing other things. Death in the family. Getting a new computer itself created its own hassles, as new computers tend to do.

I also like to blame the cats. When I had a stretch of bad health that had me sleeping a lot during the day, one of the cats got used to sleeping on my lap the entire time and now he’s a bit of a pest about it. I’m working on a way to work on the computer while still giving him the six or so hours of laptime he craves.

Things are slowly getting back under control, so I’m ready to return to active participation in the community. I will need to switch to a lighter workload, but I’ll talk about that in a follow-up post.

Lost in the Ruins

I know, I know. I’ve been gone for a little over two years. I may explain that in a post later this week. But what brought me back now is James Maliszewski’s recent post on Grognardia about all the Ruins of ancient old school gaming blogs, sad remnants of what our community once was.

And Nine and Thirty Kingdoms was name-checked. Damn. Now I feel ashamed.

It’s not that I didn’t miss blogging, or didn’t think about my large to-do list of RPG projects I was working on. I definitely missed the community. As I said above, I’ll probably talk more about this in another post. But one reason for my absence may also be a reason why the community dwindled: keeping in contact became more difficult.

A History of the Ruins

First, they came for Google Reader. I did switch to Feedly to keep up with the blogoverse when that shut down, but I never quite liked that as much. No matter! We could all switch to Google+ and keep up that way!

Yeah, that went away, too.

People tried to do Discord next. I think there were two competing OSR Discord servers, with OSR politics swirling around them as well. Not sure which, if any, is still active. I mainly stopped using Discord because I didn’t really like it as a communication method.

I imagine some people tried to keep the community going via social media like Twitter or Facebook. I don’t think I have any old school contacts on any of those. I stopped using Twitter, although technically I still have an account, and Facebook is completely unusable, especially since their AI moderation will flag longer comments or more than two comments in a short timespan as “bullying”.

Aside: “Bullying” is probably just an excuse. I think the real reason Facebook squashes longer, deeper discussions – the kind we had in the old blogosphere days – is because people who do that tend to focus on only a few interactions and don’t spend as much time on their platform, which means fewer ads. What they want is a lot of shallow exchanges, because people lose track of time and just keep scrolling forever.

Monetizing Your Treasure Trove

Another problem some people have mentioned is the rampant commercialism. People having fewer discussions and only posting ads or updates about their upcoming products. Even I could be considered guilty of that; although I have yet to sell any of the stuff I published and wasn’t planning to do more than “pay what you want”, I got too serious about too many projects and things became less fun.

The thing about turning the creation of supplemental RPG material into a job instead of a hobby is that it makes you focus on generating hype instead of communicating with others. You read less and post more, but your posts aren’t meant to start discussions. They are just marketing.

And even if people do start discussing your product, the endless flood of product gossip tends to turn some people (me) off. Every few months, some new product becomes the darling of the community and gets talked up endlessly, which means no one’s spitballing ideas with their colleagues anymore… and we are all subconsciously aware that K-Rad Game #2376 is going to vanish in a few months, anyways, because have you even seen K-Rad Game #2377? It’s k-rad!

Conclusion

What can we do about this? Not really sure. We can try rebuilding the community, somehow, but how? The problem is that people need to

• ( a ) Go to blogs and read stuff, and
• ( b ) Post links and their reactions to their own blog, but
• ( c ) Their own blogs need other people to be doing (a) and (b) to those reaction posts as well.

We need blogs to be a web again, instead of a forest of trees.

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A Short Update

Nothing new to share in terms of D&D stuff, but I have to say I've been a little more productive on another project now that all social media sites are unusable garbage.

OK, I guess I could share this video from a YouTube channel called Extra Credits. It's a short history of D&D's corporate behavior. But really, it's a study of how the owners of D&D have repeatedly made the same mistakes, damaged their brand, and failed to learn from those mistakes. There are a couple points I'd probably quibble with, but it seems accurate. But I'd like to hear other opinions on its accuracy.

Long Time No Post

 Haven't been blogging in a very long time, probably not coming back right away, but I've definitely been mulling over RPG stuff for the duration. I stopped posting partly because I didn't have anything I felt needed to be said, but also because I have another project I've been working on that's taken all my time. I'd floated the idea before about posting about that here, too, but the blunt response was that they didn't want to hear about that.

I have several projects related to Last-Minute GM and/or Liber Zero still in the works. Some of them were announced here, some I kept under wraps, all went on the back burners when I shifted my focus to non-RPG matters. But I've had an urge or two recently to get back to work on those. We'll see what happens.

Latest PC News

So, the (third) new computer arrived Tuesday as expected and seems to be doing fine. There are only three issues:

Bluetooth Disconnects
Periodically, all the Bluetooth devices will disconnect at the same time. That’s only one keyboard and one mouse, but that’s also “almost all my input devices” (I have a USB drawing tablet I can use in an emergency.)
After 30 to 60 seconds, the devices will reconnect. This doesn’t seem to be a device problem, because (1) It’s simultaneous, as if Bluetooth itself stopped working, and (2) The same devices work with another computer that’s farther away.
Updating drivers didn’t eliminate the problem, but things seem to be better: I did have the problem after the update, but yesterday and today were problem free.

No Stereo Sound
Neither the front headphone jack nor the rear speaker jack seem to produce stereo sound, only mono (left ear.) Shifting the stereo balance proves that both channels are being sent to the left side. This might not be a hardware problem, though, because I’ve found lots of reports from people who experienced the issue on other computer models after a Windows Update. Plus, I think I had the same problem with just the headset on the old computer.

Strange Smell
I swear there’s a burning plastic smell. However, I think I smelled it before the computer arrived and can’t track the source. I have no idea if this is even relevant.

---

Other than that, everything seems to be fine. Computer boots super fast, Chrome browser opens quick. I have most of the software I need installed. Think I’ll order USB headphones and Bluetooth speakers to test some of the issue.

Why I Am Silent

Haven’t posted in a while, have I?

That’s because I was expecting to have some work to do setting up the new computer and migrating everything over.

What new computer, you ask?

Hell, I’m asking the same thing, because it never arrived.

So, in lieu of actual content this week, here’s the timeline as it stands:

• Order Gaming Computer
  Beginning of January, ordered what I suppose would be considered a mid-range gaming computer so that I could make videos. Ryzen 7 CPU, RTX 2070 Super, 16 GB, SSD. Simple list of needs. Also ordered a special Bluetooth keyboard, for reasons I’m about to explain. Expected delivery: 2nd week of January.
• Move Old Computer
  My old computer is old, of course, and kind of exhibiting signs of old age, but I figured I could still use it to play DVDs. So I started moving it over near the TV in my bedroom. This also helps clear space for the new PC, because everything around that work area is pretty much a mess. New keyboard arrives, which is good, because it has the feature of being able to connect via Bluetooth to up to three devices.
• New Computer Doesn’t Come
  Get a message on the morning of expected delivery that the computer is being sent back and my money will eventually be refunded. No explanation, but presumably it was damaged in transit. Even though they have records that their own employees never delivered the PC, they won’t refund my money until 5 to 7 business days after they get it back in their warehouse. And since I usually don’t have much money to spare (which is why I waited years to buy a new computer,) I can’t order a new computer until I get the refund.
• Get Refund, Order 2nd Gaming Computer
  Finally able to re-order the computer I want. Fortunately, although the price had gone up while I was waiting for my refund, it’s back down to the price I paid before. Also decide to get a Bluetooth mouse that goes with my new keyboard so I can use one mouse and one keyboard for both computers. Expected delivery: End of January.
• 2nd Computer Arrives
  Actually got a package this time, but it takes a couple days before I even have room where I plan to set it up. Meanwhile, I’m struggling to use the old computer, because of course I wasn’t planning on using it to do actual work, like writing or something like that. My eyesight’s pretty bad, and the TV is just too far away for text to be readable at this distance. Oh, and I did get that Bluetooth mouse, too.
• 2nd Computer Doesn’t Work
  Connect new computer in multiple ways, with multiple cables, but no video signal, even though there's obviously power. Tech support takes a couple days, but they agree. Store goes through their own rigmarole but agrees. Will not replace PC or guarantee that I can buy it again at the same price, and it’s the same refund process as before: ship it back, wait 5 to 7 business days for a refund.
• Order 3rd Computer
  Ordered a different brand through a different store Friday. Not necessarily a slight on the previous brand or store, but maybe one or the other is having problems right now? New model is only an RTX 2060, but finding something close to my tight budget didn’t leave much options. Expected delivery: Tomorrow, or at least sometime this week. We’ll see how this goes.

Did not order a computer peripheral, because maybe that’s what’s jinxing it all.

I left some things out, like the computer I wanted before I ordered Computer #1. Went through configuring the system on the manufacturer’s site, but apparently you can’t actually buy computers on their website, but must call them and give them a reference number? Screw that crap, this isn’t the 20th century.

If you include that attempt, and if I get a working computer this week, the whole process basically took two months.

So yeah, if you’re wondering why there’s not much going on here, maybe it’s because all this is distracting me.

Updates and Plans: 2021

Don't have much to say yet, because I just got a new computer that I haven't set up yet. Lots of redistributing junk in the room and moving the old computer before I can even start unpacking the new one. And, of course, no one who sells something that connects to a display ever includes HDMI cables, so I'll have to order at least one more of those.

But I thought I'd make some brief comments on plans for the blog. Obviously, I'm scaling some things back. I've also taken a break from the reviews and will probably do future reviews elsewhere, although I will post the upcoming Star Wars reviews here because that's what I promised. I just haven't watched any more Star Wars movies yet.

I do still have OD&D-related plans, but I have fewer random rules observations these days. What I want to focus on is completing some projects I've talked about here over the years, and I've concluded that the blog in a way interferes with those projects, because I've been too focused on getting material for the blog that I lose creative steam and don't work on the projects. The non-rpg reviews in a way were meant to be a way to escape that trap, but turned out to be as much work, if not more.

So, posting is going to be light for a while until I figure out what to use as "light RPG-related entertainment" in between updates on RPG projects. I am now aiming for a weekly posting schedule, instead of twice a week. But even that might not happen in the next one or two weeks while I wrassle with the computer.

Hope everyone is having a good year so far. Talk to you all soon.

Dragonlance/WoTC Lawsuit

Since we've been talking about this on the OD&D forum, I might as well link to this here. It's a lawyer's analysis of a lawsuit filed by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss suing Wizards of the Coast.

 

 

I've never been a Dragonlance fan, and WotC hasn't made any game materials I've been interested in for a very long time, but I do have an interest in (1) lawsuits related to intellectual property, and (2) what's happening or might happen in the future to the caretaker of the D&D brand. I might have further commentary later, but it's late.

How to Watch Star Wars Follow-Up

I thought I’d follow up my How to Watch Star Wars post requesting help on how best to give the Star Wars storyline a fair chance. Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions. I compared the lists of Joseph, Troy, and Big McStrongmuscle to make some decisions on how to go about this, which I will get to in a moment.

But first: I think people may have missed some important points about my project.

• I’ve already seen the original trilogy and even a couple newer movies. So, spoilers are not an issue. I already know who Darth Vader is and who Luke and Leia are, guys. Not gonna be a surprise, no matter what order I choose.
• I don’t plan to be a completionist. I don’t care about tracking down every piece of Star Wars media. I’m mostly concerned with giving the emotional and artistic elements their due. I’m not interested in filler for the backstory.
• This is not really about watching Star Wars. It’s about getting my money’s worth out of Disney Plus. That means I’m not paying extra for anything, nor will I spend time tracking down bootleg cuts that don’t include later changes.

I’m not a Star Wars fan. I thought that was obvious, but maybe people didn’t realize what this means. I’m not going to be affected by the same things fans are. For example, I’ve seen both the “Han Shot First” and “Han Shot Second” versions of A New Hope and didn’t really notice who shot first either time. It also means I’m not going to follow the Machete Cut just to skip over movies some fans object to.

If you can make a good case for re-arranging the order, that’s different. If the emotional impact is better if you start with Machete order (4, 5, 2, 3, 6) and then finish with the other movies, that’s worth thinking about. But I will watch #1. Will watching #1 after #6 make it a better movie? Or does it not matter when I watch #1?

After looking over the suggested order list, I’m now considering two possible orders:

1. Strict Chronological for Live-Action Theatrical Releases. followed by The Mandalorian, then a sample of others, depending on interest.
2. Chronological by Arc, resembling release order with some modifications. Start with Rogue One, move on to films 4 to 6, then to films 1 to 3, then Solo, then films 7 to 9, followed by The Mandalorian.

Note that I’m going to pass on a lot of the animated material. I checked out some reviews/criticism of the Clone Wars material and decided to do a hard pass on the CGI theatrical film, but might try the first two episodes of each animated series until I get bored or take an interest in one.

When I start watching, I plan on doing a review of each film as I finish, from the viewpoint of someone who isn’t a fan, but giving each film my full attention and judging it on its own merits.

Oh, and after I finish all the theatrical films, I might consider picking up some of the RiffTrax “Just the Jokes” releases for them and giving them a rewatch, so I can review the riffs.

A TSR-D&D Venn Diagram

Here’s my Venn diagram illustrating the definitions and concepts behind some of the names for TSR-era D&D. Most of you will probably already know this, but it may still be useful for discussion.

The red circle is Original D&D (OD&D.( This starts with the woodgrain (brown) box that hardly anyone has seen in person and moves into the whitebox era and its supplements (Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, and Gods, Demigods and Heroes.

The yellow circle is Classic D&D. This is a name that evolved in early online discussions like on the Dragonsfoot forums or the Usenet news groups and it describes the various “Basic” editions that descend from OD&D, distinct from AD&D. Basically, everything that Arneson was awarded a share of as a result of the lawsuit. OD&D material is compatible with Classic, but there are changes and additions to Classic that were not in the original, so it can be considered its own distinct thing.

The orange intersection of those two circles is Holmes Basic. It was created as an introduction to OD&D and is almost completely identical to those rules, but there are a few minor unique points. It also fits the definition of “Classic”, though, so it is sometimes considered OD&D, sometimes considered Classic, sometimes both, and sometimes its own thing.

The blue circle is Advanced D&D (AD&D.) This is the D&D rewrite begun by Gygax to be distinct from OD&D and Classic and thus not something Arneson deserved a share of the profits for. The first edition of the Monster Manual still adheres to some OD&D dice guidelines and so can be used with OD&D without much problem, which explains the overlap. The rest of the first edition books have enough changes to the rules that they are not fully compatible with either OD&D or the Classic line, although they are close enough that you could create conversion guidelines. However, you will encounter people who use “Classic” in a much looser sense of “anything from the early days”, which is what the ghostly dotted pseudopod labeled “1st Ed.” refers to.

The Survival Guides are in their own subset loosely connected to the first edition group. These start adding material that marks a distinct stage in the development of AD&D that some people call “1.5 edition”. Oriental Adventures and Unearthed Arcana could arguably be included here as well, but I didn’t want to make the diagram into an unholy nightmare, so I just suggested that there was some kind of minimal divergence from early first edition AD&D.

“2nd Ed.” is a rewrite of first edition that incorporates the “1.5e” changes and later complicates things further with the “kits” approach. At this point, AD&D and the basic lines have diverged so much it would be hard to justify calling 2e “Classic”, so I moved it to the bottom area of the diagram, to visually suggest its conceptual distance from those versions of D&D.

All of this is TSR-era D&D. WotC-era D&D shares some terminology and a few structures/mechanics that might be recognizable as being descended from OD&D/AD&D, but in the same way that Tunnels & Trolls or Palladium’s games are descended from them. Adaptation is still possible… because adaptation is always possible. But they obviously are not compatible.

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How to Watch Star Wars

Not really RPG related, but what the hell… I need some help. I’m planning on giving Star Wars another chance.

I did not see Star Wars when it first came out. Couldn’t go to many movie theaters back then. Saw it on VCR and Laser Disc, of all things. And I thought “Eh, it’s OK, I guess.” It never really struck a chord with me. And as a result, I never really got into the craze that followed.

Naturally, I didn’t try to see any of the other movies, because I just didn’t care. But I did see most of them. Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, when they showed up on TV. Attack of the Clones in an actual theater, because my friends wanted to see it and I like my friends. Rogue One and The Force Awakens on VOD. And good chunks of Phantom Menace, Revenge of the Sith, and even the animated Clone Wars thingie. And so far, I haven’t really liked any of it except the holiday special, and that’s because of the RiffTrax version.

(On the good side, this means that I don’t hate the same movies that the fans hate. I honestly can’t tell the difference in quality between them. They all feel kind of meh.)

But I recently paid for a year of Disney Plus, because I had some extra money and really wanted to watch Avengers Endgame, which Disney has been hoarding away, as well as any Marvel movies/shows I missed (Currently working my way through Agent Carter.) And since I’ve got access to all this material, I’ve been thinking: Maybe should give Star Wars another chance? Try to watch them all again all the way through, in the proper order, from Phantom Menace to Rise of Skywalker?

But here’s where I need the help. I’m not sure where to put some of the auxiliary material. I know the basic order should be:

1. The Phantom Menace
2. Attack of the Clones
3. Revenge of the Sith
4. A New Hope
5. (Rogue One)
6. The Empire Strikes Back
7. Return of the Jedi
8. The Force Awakens
9. The Last Jedi
10. The Rise of Skywalker

Now, I’m not entirely sure where to place Rogue One. Before A New Hope, or after? I’ve seen them both and know part of it happens before, part during. Not sure what position would be best for maximum impact on a rewatch, though.

And I know Solo goes before both of those. Is 3.5 a good location?

Not sure whether I will actually try to watch the animated stuff or not, but if I did, where would it go? 2.5?

Where does the holiday special go? Before Empire, or after? Should I watch it unriffed, if available?

And I don’t even know where The Mandalorian goes in this sequence, although I’m thinking I might want to delay it if it’s too early. I don’t want to get bogged down in a series that relies heavily on fan knowledge while I’m trying to make my way through the basic Star Wars starter course.

Which raises the question: are there any other changes I should make to the proper order for pure aesthetic effect, to increase impact?

Haven’t even checked what else is available on Disney Plus. I probably will skip any cartoons, but is there anything that is a real must-see, as far as you true fans are concerned?

I want to give Star Wars a decent chance this time. Really focus on the material, without distractions, and try to see its true spirit and understand why fans love it so much. If you love Star Wars, what do you think is the best way to learn to love it?

Artwork Updates

I mentioned earlier that I'm re-doing the cover illustrations for the Liber Zero pamphlets. I plan on making corrections in the already released pamphlets and updating the graphics to give them a more unified, cleaner, cartoony look. Here are four of the updated graphics, to give you some idea of what's going on.

Character
Creation

General Abilities

Character
Advancement

Backgrounds

Classifying Game Structures: Classes, Skills, Resources

Time to continue the classification system first started here, the one built around How PCs do things (Structure,) What PCs do to advance (Focus,) and Where PCs do it (Setting). Previous posts in this series:

1. focus (four options)
2. setting (and mood) (two options, not counting mood)

Changes since those posts:

• Ditching the fifth focus (Undefined)
• Ditching the third setting (Cosmic)
• The Action focus is now Arena.

On to RPG structures. Class and Level games have just a few broad descriptors that can be improved, while Skill and Talent games have many specific descriptors that can be added or improved. But there’s a little more to it than that.

Class and Level systems assume everyone is able to walk, run, notice danger, get in a fist fight, build a fire, and possibly other things as well. Class abilities are a little something extra: exceptional combat ability, ability to cast spells, boosted stealth abilities. They usually start at the bottom (level 1 or level 0) and work their way up.

Skill and Talent systems assume everyone has some default skills and trains (adds skill points) to raise some of those defaults or add additional skills like blacksmithing. The finer the distinctions between skills, the more skills there are (Melee Weapon skill vs. Sword skill, Ax/Mace skill, Spear/Polearm skill.) The skill levels may start higher than class levels, and there’s a lot more character variety. Talents are pseudo skills that are harder to add or improve and may have less range for development.

Either system may have limited features of the other type, for example general ability scores (Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity) as default human skills that are very difficult or impossible to improve.

Let’s contrast some examples:

CLEF vs. STEF

OD&D is the quintessential Class and Level Exploration Fantasy game. There are six ability scores, but by default they aren’t even used as a typical skill system, just a guideline to what the character is good or bad at. Characters have only one broad class ability – Fighting-Man, Magic-User, Cleric – at the start, and it begins at level 1. Level improves when characters explore, quantified as bringing back treasure from adventures.

Chaosium’s Stormbringer is a Skill and Talent Exploration Fantasy game. It, too, has ability scores and several default skills. Skills improve when used while exploring.

STEF vs. STAF

Contrast Stormbringer to The Fantasy Trip. The later version covered by In the Labyrinth is a Skill and Talent Exploration Fantasy, although the mechanics are quite different and there is a rudimentary class system, which really only affects the costs of talents (skills.) But in its first incarnation as Melee and Wizard, it was a Skill and Talent Arena Fantasy game. The focus was on fighting, physically or magically.

I’ve mentioned before that there’s probably only one other structure type. I’m more certain of that now, and I’ve finally settled on a name: Point Resource. Whereas the other two types focus on resolving conflicts based on character statistics, Point Resource games have point pools that are detached from character abilities and instead affect the flow of the game. Here is another game contrast:

STOF vs. PROF

TOON announces in its introduction that you should forget everything you know about roleplaying games. It starts with what looks like a simple Skill and Talent system: four abilities, 23 skills, and a bunch of schticks (talents.) But it’s worth noting that players can spend 3 plot points to pick up a schtick temporarily for one session, or 1 plot point to use a schtick once, so characters are more fluid than you’d expect. But despite the fact that you can superficially run a session as an Arena challenge (like the example cartoon olympics adventure) or as Exploration or Investigation, the real focus in TOON is on Other. Experience points, called “Plot Points”, are earned by being funny, and can be spent to make other funny things happen. This is why it’s a STOF game.

Contrast to a much later game like InSpectres. Again, there’s a rudimentary resemblance to Skill and Talent systems (four broad abilities.) But the focus is not on improving the character, although that’s possible. It’s on improving the franchise the characters work for. Investigating the mystery earns a pool of dice, and these can be spent to improve the franchise or eliminate Stress characters may have acquired. This is moving closer to a PROF game. It’s more obvious in the UnSpeakable (Lovecraft-influenced) variant, which doesn’t even have the four main abilities of InSpectres. Every character starts with one skill, and there are no skill levels. The game starts with a communal pool of dice called The Pit. To do things, players must roll dice: if their skill covers what they want to do, they roll one die, otherwise they must take dice from the pool or take an automatic failure. When the pool runs out, the game is going to end soon, and probably most characters will die or go insane. The dice pool, in this case, truly governs the way the story evolves, and acts like a Point Resource.

Story Games are almost always PROF/PROM games, or hybrids that lean towards PROF/PROM.

So, that gives us three Structures X four Foci X two Settings = 24 possible game types, although I’m guessing a couple of those types have barely been explored. I may want to do follow-up posts classifying some well-known games, or discussing how some games change type, either as play progresses or when using certain subsystems.

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(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Classifying Game Settings and Moods

Since I recently made a passing reference to Class and Level Exploration Fantasy games, it might be time to continue the discussion of my personal game classification system, probably best described in this post. A side discussion in an OD&D forum discussion helped clarify my thoughts on the Setting part of the classification.

We geeks sometimes focus on how realistic a setting is: Historic or Contemporary settings should be completely realistic, Speculative settings can include hypotheticals as long as they don’t violate known scientific laws, and Fantastic settings just don’t care. But judging which made-up elements are truly speculative is pretty subjective and subject to change, so it’s kind of a useless category.

What I think actually matters is not whether there are any made-up elements that are central to the setting, or are any such elements merely incidental. Do the players have to understand how the unreal things work, or have to deal with them in any way?

If there are no unreal elements, or any unreal elements have no real effect on player decisions, the setting is Mundane. A straight historical game would be Mundane, but so would a time-travel game, if the time-travel method is just an excuse to play in multiple time periods and the players can’t play tricks with time travel to solve problems (See: Quantum Leap.) Similarly, it could include adventures in space, if the space travel is just a gimmick to get characters off world and the destinations are very naturalistic.

Another example would be flavor that fits the supernatural beliefs of a bygone era, but which has no effect on events: witches making a prophecy for Macbeth, but which can be explained away as self-fulfilling prophecy.

If there are unreal elements that directly challenge the player characters, or that the player characters can use to deal with challenges, the setting is Fantasy. This covers everything unreal: magic, super powers, super science, aliens, monsters. If the fantasy elements are truly over-the-top, they can be called Cosmic instead, but it’s not strictly necessary.

These setting types can be seen through a variety of filters or moods:

• Adventure: The characters are on an equal footing (or nearly so) with the challenges they face
• Horror: The characters are outclassed by the challenges they face and may be killed, or worse
• Comedy: The characters are at the mercy of the challenges they face, but are unlikely to be killed or significantly harmed

These can be combined (Horror-Adventure) or modified by various tropes (Space Adventure, Medieval Cosmic Horror.)

I wouldn’t merge the filter with the classification abbreviation, but would just add it to the end. Thus, we have:

• Class and Level Action Mundane (CLAM) Adventure: Historic or Contemporary combat or survival games
• Class and Level Exploration Fantasy (CLEF) Adventure: D&D
• Skill and Talent Investigation Fantasy (STIF) Horror: Call of Cthulhu and similar horror-mystery games. CoC could be called STIC instead, if desired.

To my way of thinking, filters and moods can be as important to personal gaming preference as the kind of dice used or the handling time for combat, but what really distinguishes games is the main four-letter classification. There are some CLEF games that I won’t play, either because the mechanics annoy me or the style/content doesn’t appeal to me, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still CLEF games, with essentially identical structure, focus and setting.

Looking Forward: 2020

There was a lot of experimentation in 2019, and a lot happened that will feed into my plans for 2020. One thing I had been looking at was possible commercial products. A few of my blog readers have suggested that I do this, but I wasn’t sure if it would be worth it. So, I started a regular publication schedule, promoted my PDF releases more regularly, and tracked the results of my efforts.

The results weren’t encouraging.

I do get positive feedback from a few people, but the reality is that few people actually checked out the PDF links. Even map PDFs, which get a lot of attention, don’t really make much of an impact. And they require the most effort: I tried to maintain a weekly schedule for releasing maps, then reduced to bi-weekly, then eventually monthly. Map Mondays was never really that popular, and maps take up so much time that they basically destroyed my weekends and prevented work on other projects, blog-related and otherwise.

So, the current plan is to abandon commercial attempts, including Map Mondays. There will still be maps from time to time, but I’m thinking only a couple a year, with no set plans. Product schedules are being dumped. I have a couple big projects in mind, but they will be done when they are done. There won’t be regular product releases.

There will still be a Monday/Thursday post schedule, but the content of blog posts is changing. I’m thinking there will be much, much less analysis, very few rules-oriented posts. Most of the things that needed saying have been said, and I should really focus creative efforts on the remaining PDF projects rather than in blog posts. One exception, however, is that I want to do more posts about my setting. These will be short and descriptive, but infrequent.

So what will I be posting about twice a week? One thing I want to do more of is linking to other people’s blog posts. I’ll be doing less commentary on other people’s posts, maybe a few sentences, but more re-directing to things I found interesting.

I also plan on expanding the focus of the blog. It’s been almost exclusively tabletop RPG-related for more than ten years now. I’ve talked before about doing reviews of non-RPG stuff I read or watch. Still mostly fantasy adjacent, or nonfiction that ties into fantasy, but as time goes on, you’ll be seeing more stuff that has no real connection to pseudomedieval D&D fantasy. Also, I may have some things to say about a couple video games. I am not really into video games that much, but the few I do play, I play a lot. I may want to talk about them.

There may actually be a few other non-RPG topics I may blog about. I’m just warning everyone now: 2020 will be mostly RPG, but not completely. So don’t be shocked when 30% of the posts turn out to have no relevance to D&D.

2019 Blog Year in Review

Time for my yearly look back at what happened on the blog, starting with the top ten all-time posts.

1. Clerics Without Spells
2. Dungeon Shorthand: A Quick Reprise
3. Shield Rule
4. Classifying the World
5. Legendary Weapons
6. Dungeon Shorthand Addendum
7. Liber 3d6
8. Weapon Damage Tables
9. Index Card Character Sheet
10. Reaction Table Combat

The big change here was that a 2019 post, “Index Card Character Sheet”, pushed “Reaction Table Combat” down to the number 10 spot, knocking “Lawful Stupid” out of the list. Also worth noting is that the permanent Maps page got about 50% more views than “Clerics Without Spells”, and two other permanent pages, LMGM and Links/Tags, are ahead of “Dungeon Shorthand”.

Top ten pages of 2019, excluding the home page but including permanent pages, are:

1. geomorph label
2. Maps page
3. Clerics Without Spells
4. LMGM page
5. Random Subhex Wilderness Generation
6. Town and City Block Tool
7. Dungeon Module Design
8. Index Card Character Sheet
9. Resources page
10. Hag Pits of Viper Marsh

There are some discrepancies between this list, compiled with Google Analytics, and the all-time list, compiled from Blogger’s control panel. I suspect Blogger is inaccurate, but I’m not sure why.

Top ten posts, excluding permanent pages and labels, are:

1. Clerics Without Spells
2. Random Subhex Wilderness Generation
3. Town and City Block Tool
4. Dungeon Module Design
5. Index Card Character Sheet
6. Hag Pits of Viper Marsh
7. Generic Bandit Tower Pamphlet Dungeon PDF
8. Sketchbox Dice Tool: Temporary Instructions
9. Is This Metagaming?
10. Ability Checks Are The Devil

The busiest months of 2019 were:

1. March
2. July
3. August
4. April
5. May

March 2019 was when I was working the most on city street mapping, I believe. July was the start of the Dungeon Expander pamphlet series. August had a lot going on; I’d like to think part of the traffic was because this was when the first Liber Zero pamphlet PDFs came out, but it was also the month of my post on Lankhmar, City of Adventure and a couple popular rants.

I’ll have 2020 plans post next week, but in between now and then I might do a follow-up analysis post.

End-of-the-Year Maintenance and Plans, 2019

I took a spur-of-the-moment vacation from blogging this week, and have in general not had much time or energy for many projects, for a variety of reasons. The main issue is that there is just too much going on in November and December to allow me a good chunk of uninterrupted design time. As a result, I did not complete any of the tasks I set myself for November: no maps, no reference sheets, no player’s guide.

I’m not expecting things to get better in December. Lots of stuff going on. I will, however, work on the Liber Zero player reference sheets and maybe get started on GM reference sheets. If I can, I may squeeze in a map, but the chances of that happening are not looking good.

(The difference between the two, for those wondering, is that I’ve thought and written a lot about Liber Zero over several years and already have what are essentially rough drafts scattered throughout various posts, so it’s mostly a matter of tracking things down, tweaking a few rules, then rearrange and rewrite, whereas map work requires actually making something new from scratch. It takes hours just to make the maps for a pamphlet dungeon, and that doesn’t even include coming up with the ideas or writing up the text. A larger dungeon takes at least five times as long. That’s a huge disparity in the amount of creative effort needed to make a map versus making an LZ reference sheet.)

The Assembly of Ill-Formed Flesh and the LZ Player’s Guide will probably be delayed until next year. Also, I’m mulling over changes to my blogging. There will be a full report in my annual retrospective and planning posts.

Reload Last Save?

I’ve been playing modded Skyrim again recently, so it’s reminded me about something that irks me in video games. It’s easy in Skyrim to get suddenly overwhelmed by enemies and swiftly killed… and then the game loads the last save and you start over. The worst things that can happen are:

• forgetting to save for a long while and losing a lot of progress,
• getting killed so close to your last save point that you get stuck in a “death loop” and have to abandon that save, rolling back to a previous save.

Sometimes, it’s even better to die in a couple situations to gather information about coming dangers. All of this can break immersion, if that’s what you’re looking for in your game experience. Dying really doesn’t matter.

Which brings us to a point many OSR bloggers have made before: dying has to matter in old-school games. This is why there’s so much pushback against “fixes” like negative hit points, healing surges, or eliminating save or die situations. There’s certainly room for discussing proper GM practice, or giving players a few more options to avoid instant murder. And honestly, old school play isn’t really more deadly than other RPGs, as long as you play smart. But the general feeling among the members of the OSR community is that play should be thoughtful and cautious, and death should be a constant threat. Remove too much of the threat and you turn the game into a meaningless adventure simulator.