Yeah, I know... I said "I will have to get back to blogging" and then nothing since October. But the last few months of the year always seem to be a time when I get nothing done.
I did manage to watch this year's Superman movie in November. And watched Fantastic Four: First Steps a second time. i had promised myself "I should do a review of FF, but I want to see Superman first and compare them." I should probably get on that soon.
In this series on gems (four years in the making!) I’ve talked about how to set up gem types for a dungeon and how to assign gems to treasure. But how do the players find out what those gems are worth? How do you determine the actual value of the gems brought back from an adventure?
It’s best to postpone this assessment until the end of an adventure.
The main reason it’s best to wait until the end to identify gems and appraise their value is: the PCs have to find someone who’s able to do it. Gem appraisal is a job for an expert, and usually PCs don’t have the skill to do it themselves. So, they bring their treasure finds back from the dungeon to town and show the gems to a jeweler or someone else with the appraisal skill.
If the PC home base is a fairly large town or city, there’s really not that much effort needed to find an appraiser: just go to the Street of Jewelers or maybe even any merchant and ask “Can you tell me how much these gems are worth?” If you really need to know how long it takes to find someone like that, decide first if it’s going to take at least a turn (ten minutes) or an hour, then roll a d6: on 5+, it takes exactly one turn or one hour, while on a 1 to 4, it takes that many extra turns or hours.
If there’s some reason why it’s not obvious where the merchants and jewelers hang out, like “gems are outlawed” or “we don’t speak the language or understand the local customs, so we can’t tell who the jewelers are”, you might want to make the process of finding an appraiser more difficult, like requiring a reaction roll to see how well things go. On a Good or better reaction, the PCs find an expert. On a Normal reaction, the “expert” isn’t that good and takes much longer for an accurate appraisal. On a Bad reaction or worse, the PCs will need to look somewhere else.
Even a beginner at appraising who’s no expert can tell the PCs the names of any gems found after about a minute of examination, but it takes 1 to 5 minutes for an expert or 10 to 50 minutes for someone less skilled to determine the actual value. This part doesn’t normally require a roll if the appraiser has plenty of time to use their skills and no outside stress to mess things up. If the GM or players needs to know how long the appraisal takes, a d6 roll like the one described for finding an appraiser will do the job. In many cases, you can make this roll after giving the appraisal.
There’s only one or two rolls that are absolutely needed:
| d6 roll | adjustment |
|---|---|
| 1 | halve the gem’s value |
| 2-5 | no adjustment |
| 6 | double the gem’s value |
If there are 1 to 5 gems being appraised, roll 1d6 for each gem. If there are more, split the gems into 2 to 5 groups (whatever works best) and roll 2d6 to 5d6, reading each d6 result individually, left to right. If you need to roll the reaction roll and you use a d6-based reaction roll, you can roll all these dice at once, although that means you might be rolling 7d6 in some cases.
(The reason I cap the number of dice rolled at five is because I think rolling too many dice at once actually slows things down. Plus, if you are using these “literal” dice rolls read left to right, rolling more dice can make things harder to interpret and may even cause dice to ricochet off each other, maybe sending one or two dice flying off the table. If you’re one of those people who likes the excitement of rolling huge handfuls of dice, though, you can go another way with this.)
Some PCs may have an appraisal skill, or may train to become experts at appraisal. I’m one of those people who assumes dwarves and gnomes are experts at appraising gems, Some people assume thieves know how to appraise the value of “found” goods like gems as well. Personally, I think I’d allow most thieves to make amateur appraisals (taking 1 to 5 turns for appraisals,) but thieves with Int 16+ would be experts, taking only 1 to 5 minutes. I might even allow PCs in general to be amateur gem appraisers if their Int is 16+. You might want to check out my pamphlet on Liber Zero Adventurer Skills for more information on backgrounds, previous professions, and training in new skills.
If the PCs wait until they are back at home base, or at least until they reach some kind of safe zone, before they make any gem appraisals, there’s no need to roll for time. Just make the 1d6 to 5d6 appraisal roll to find the adjusted values of each gem.
If, however, there’s a chance of being interrupted, make the 1d6 situation roll to see how quickly the appraisal can be done: 5+ means it takes only one minute for an expert or one turn for an amateur to make an appraisal, while a roll of 1 to 4 adds an additional 1 to 4 minutes or turns.
It only takes 1 minute for either an expert or an amateur to identify what kind of gems they’ve found (the in-world names of the gem types.) The d6 roll only determines how long it takes to work out the actual value of each gem. If the whole appraisal takes more than one minute and wandering monster rolls are applicable, an expert might be interrupted by a monster arriving, and an amateur might never make it all the way through the appraisal.
I’m assuming here that the appraisal is happening in steady, bright light and the appraiser is using a jeweler’s loop or some other magnifier. An expert can skip using the jeweler’s loop as long as there are no other adverse conditions.
Adverse conditions make appraisals harder. If there is at least one adverse condition, roll 2d6 vs. Int. If the roll fails (higher than Int,) look up the result on this modified reaction roll table.
| 2d6 Roll | Appraisal Skill Result |
|---|---|
| 2 | appraisal fails |
| 3-5 | amateur appraisal fails, otherwise time x5 |
| 6-8 | multiply time needed x5 |
| 9-11 | triple time needed |
| 12 | double time needed |
If there are two adverse conditions, halve the appraiser’s Int score before comparing the result. If there are more than two, halve Int again and treat everyone as an amateur.
Adverse conditions include:
And anything else that reduces vision or affects the ability to focus.
The short version of this series on gems is: reduce the number of gem types for a location to just three or four, optionally rolling to set the base types if you don’t already have a concept, then figure out which treasures include gems in what proportions. Give players simple visual descriptions, but save space in your own notes by using gem type codes. When the players are ready to sell, appraise the gems to find out the real values.
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I’m not into westerns, which I suppose is why I never bought Boot Hill. But I was exposed to a lot of westerns as a kid, because my dad liked westerns. We watched Gunsmoke, Alias Smith and Jones, and a lot of John Wayne movies. But I didn’t stick with them after I grew up.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a handful of westerns I actually like, some of which I would recommend as quintessential. And there’s at least one western I’d recommend for people designing pseudomedieval fantasy adventures.
I’ve been wrestling with whether I would rate the 1960 version of The Magnificent Seven as an OK movie or a Great movie. For those who don’t remember, I pared my ratings system down to just three ratings: Bad (i.e. don’t watch these,) OK (watch these if they seem like your thing,) and Great (consider watching these even if you don’t like that genre.)
Just because I like or even love a movie doesn’t mean it’s a Great movie. Hardly any movies are Great. But being OK isn’t bad. If a movie hits the right spot for you, either because it’s a genre you like, or it’s got stuff in it you enjoy like rocket ships, or it’s got actors or a director you like, then go for it. I’m OK with the vast majority of stuff I like being just OK.
But I sometimes struggle with deciding which movies are Great. Remember, my criteria for being Great is that it’s something you should watch even if you would never normally watch that kind of movie. Sometimes, a movie is just too technically, stylistically, or historically important to pass up.
The problem with The Magnificent Seven is: I’m a guy who doesn’t like the vast majority of westerns who has watched The Magnificent Seven many times, enjoys it every time, and has recently realized I love it and it’s probably my favorite western ever. So is it a Great movie, or am I just being subjective?
Let’s get sidetracked for a minute and talk about the Star Wars movies. I think almost all the Star Wars movies are OK. I enjoyed some of them well enough, even the ones with flaws, but I’m not a Star Wars fan and I don’t think I should recommend, say, The Empire Strikes Back to someone who doesn’t like space opera. They aren’t Great movies.
But I struggle a bit with Star Wars: A New Hope, the movie most people just call “Star Wars”. I liked it. I know Star Wars fans think The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie, but as a non-fan, I think A New Hope is the best. It moves along at a good clip, and it’s the one you don’t need to know all the background lore to enjoy.
But is it a Great movie? I wasn’t quite sure about this, but I think I’ve settled on “yes”. A New Hope was one of the movies that changed how movies were made. It ushered in the era of blockbusters, film franchises, and big budget sci-fi adventure. It revolutionized special effects.
So back to The Magnificent Seven. It’s certainly been an influence on other films in the west, but famously it’s a remake of Seven Samurai. Neither of them invented the idea of assembling a team of champions, not even one specifically made of seven champions to fight in a battle; see The Seven Against Thebes for a counterexample in literature. But for some reason, movies didn’t seem to be interested in that kind of story telling before Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven.
But the real way that The Magnificent Seven copied Seven Samurai wasn’t the triviality of “a team of seven champions”, but in its theme. Both the samurai and the gunslingers are presented as relics of a bygone era that is on its way out. They help the peasants, despite the low pay, because few people in the world need that kind of hero anymore. The peasants are the real winners. Both movies flat out tell us this in the dialogue at the end. They both have a sense of something lost and a dark undertone that I enjoy. They aren’t the only movies like that, but they were part of a trend, included with others like High Noon or Shane.
The Magnificent Seven certainly had its influence, even including the fantasy genre. Hawk the Slayer is basically “The Magnificent Seven, but with only five champions and a pseudomedieval setting.” It’s a very D&D movie. There’s a bit of “gathering the champions” in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, a movie I love. (Aside: It has the best dragon fight ever. No, not the first dragon fight. The second.)
So maybe I just love the movie because it’s such a D&D movie. Or maybe because I may have accidentally seen Westworld (1973) before The Magnificent Seven and now my head canon says Yul Brynner is playing the same character in both.
But I still can’t decide. Is The Magnificent Seven a Great movie just because I love it even though I’m not a fan of westerns? How does everyone else feel?
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In Part I of this series on gems, I talked about limiting the kinds of gems in each dungeon to just three, maybe four if you really want a fourth type. But what I described was more about designing the top-level dungeon theme than actually stocking the individual rooms with treasure, which is what most GMs are thinking of when we talk about “rolling for treasure”. How is this actually done?
In the original D&D booklets, treasure can be divided into what I call “treasure troves” (aka wilderness lair treasure) and “loot” (aka dungeon room treasure.) The chance of gems being part of a trove are based on monster type, per the table in Volume II (Monsters & Treasure), page 23, while loot stashes are based on dungeon level, per the table in Volume III (Underworld & Wilderness Adventures), page 7, which can be summarized as “percent chance equal to 10 times half the dungeon level, round down, minimum 5%, maximum 50%.” The troves of many wilderness lairs and loot in rooms on dungeon levels 1 through 7 usually have about 1d6 gems, loot on dungeon levels 8 and below can have 1d12 gems, while the lairs of bandits, pirates, dwarves, dragons, and the like have much larger quantities.
You could, of course, use these by-the-book methods of determining the total number of gems found, then splitting them up into three batches:
What I’d like to do, however, is roll all the dice at once. It would also be nice if the procedure were easy to memorize so that I could do it all without consulting a table. We need to modify the chances and quantities to do that, however. Here’s one approach.
Roll 3d6 and read the dice results individually from left to right. Interpretation is roughly the same in all cases, but there are differences between upper levels of the dungeon versus the dungeon’s deeper levels.
Gems are rarest on the uppermost level of the dungeon, because this is usually where the dungeon entrance is and it’s thus the easiest level to raid for treasure.
If the second and third d6 match, half the mid-value gems will actually be high-value gems, round down.
Nearly the same as for Dungeon Level 1.
Again: if the first two dice do not match, there are no gems in this loot.
Not as complicated, but basically the same.
Subtract the number of high-value gems (third d6) from the total number of gems found. Half of these (round up) will be mid-value gems.
Treat treasure troves as if they were Dungeon Level 6: triple the value of the first d6 and compare it to the dungeon level to see if there are any gems. There are a couple modifications for some monster types: pirates, bandits, brigands, berserkers, dervishes, mercenary armies, dwarves, and dragons all roll 4d6 instead of 3d6. The first d6 is still the chance of gems in the treasure trove, but the other three dice are used for the number of gems, as follows.
The standard practice for stocking dungeons and wilderness lairs is “stock unique treasures first, then roll for the random stuff”. If there’s a special artifact, gold statue, magic tome, or other unique treasure that is essentially part of a story or at the very least a memorable moment during play, it should be placed manually, with thematically appropriate monsters, traps, or environmental features.
This applies to gems as well. Those three or four gem types that you assign to the dungeon as a whole are ordinary kinds of gems, even if some of them are rarer and thus more valuable than others. But your unique treasure might include gems that are either unique or of a special extremely rare type.
I previously described gem types as being mad of Size, Color, Opacity and Miscellaneous. The Miscellaneous details are usually reserved for these extremely rare, manually-placed gem types and usually means “unusual behavior, perhaps magical”. For example, you might have an exotic, very rare gem called a “zap diamond”, label it Cw2 (small transparent white gem.) But zap diamonds have a Miscellaneous feature: if two zap diamonds touch, they make a bright flash that has a chance to blind people for up to 4 rounds. It takes an hour for the charge to build back up so the zap diamond can be used again.
These zap diamonds would need to be place manually, since they are not strictly treasure, but more like magic items, or at the very least a minor puzzle to figure out. They are not simply something to cash in for coins without thinking about them.
There are some Miscellaneous qualities like stripes or speckles that aren’t special powers, just ways of distinguishing two gem types of the same color and opacity. These don’t need to be placed manually.
I’m assuming three stages of play in these posts:
The gem codes, like Lb9 or Dg2, are meant to be a shorthand for the GM to record what a gem looks like and about how much it is worth. You aren’t going to tell the players the actual codes, of course, but you especially should not tell them that second part, the gem’s actual worth, at least in most cases. I wouldn’t even say the number of gems, if there’s more than about six of any given type, unless the PCs literally take time to count them (worth at least one wandering monster roll, I’d say.) Descriptions of what the PCs find should be broad and somewhat fuzzy, becoming more concrete once they return to base and begin the housekeeping phase.
The first letter of the code describes the Size, which can be broken down into small (V and X,) medium (L and C,) and large (D and M.) Remember, this is for opaque gems; transparent, translucent, and murky gems will be smaller, but still worth the same amount. Any gem that appears smaller than V/X can be called “very small”, and those of Size 2M or larger are “very large”.
The second letter is the color, and the numeral at the end is the opacity. I would not normally count Lb8, Lb9, and Lb10 as different types of gems, but one type of gem in different grades of quality. I break it down as:
Color + one of the above opacity terms = one distinct gem type. A Miscellaneous quality might make this a distinct type, however. Each gem type can come in a variety of Sizes, but speckled translucent blue gems and striped translucent blue gems might have different size ranges.
So, when the PCs find gems, the GM would describe them as something like “three small translucent blue gems, a few medium transparent green gems, and a bunch of large opaque orange gems”. The players would (presumably) write these down the same way, perhaps risking counting the gems to get the exact numbers of green and orange gems, while the GM would record exact numbers and codes in the “loot found” list as:
Lb4 = 3 gems
Dg1 = 9 gems
Cor9 = 15 gems
Thus, the GM keeps track of the approximate value of the treasure, but the precise value is only revealed in the next post in this series.
Series Index
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I found out about a post on B/X Blackrazor (via Dennis Laffey ): Why “Light Games” Suck. JB’s post started a minor cross-blog discussion about who likes “rules lite” and who doesn’t. I don’t deny JB the right to like the games he likes and dislike the games he dislikes. I’m pretty turned off by the current endless retreads of the “rules lite dungeon crawl” concept, although there were a couple rules lite games I played and liked (TOON, InSpectres.)
But that’s not what I want to address. Especially since that’s not even the main point of JB’s post.
JB’s main point is that the current OSR is obsessed with creating rules lite dungeon crawls, when many of the prospective players, both now and Back in the Day, are actually searching for more rules, not less. D&D players like crunch, because that’s what we were all looking for when D&D first became a phenomenon. Here’s a highly-edited series of quotes that introduces that point:
See, Back In The Day (that’s the 1980s for me but, presumably, the late 70s also) Dungeons & Dragons was a game for NERDS […] SO…Dungeons & Dragons was totally our jam. Here was a game that appealed to our interest in all the fantasy literature we enjoyed reading […] AND required a high degree of intelligence to parse and make sense of […] But here’s the thing, Youngsters: “light rules” was ZERO part of the appeal of these games. We WANTED our rules “crunchy.” The more crunch, the better!
(Be sure to check out JB’s original post for comparison. I’m leaving a lot out.)
But this rubs me the wrong way. Superficially, that might resemble my own experience: I learned to play D&D from a friend back in either late 1975 or early 1976, and part of the appeal was the fantasy lit inspiration behind it. I consumed more D&D, getting AD&D as it was published, trying out other games like The Fantasy Trip that got into the nitty gritty of tactics, getting enamored with the ridiculous detail of Rolemaster and Fantasy Wargaming.
But was I really looking for a rules-heavy game? Was anyone?
See, I think JB is seeing his own past D&D experiences through the lens of decades of experiences. When I look back at my own experiences and ask “How did I really feel about D&D and more rules back then, ignoring all the things I thought about and argued about and discovered later?” I think I really didn’t know what I wanted. How could I? It was all new. RPGs didn’t exist before. They were nothing like the board and card games most of us started with, and unless you played wargames, which wasn’t that well-known a hobby itself, you didn’t have any point of comparison.
Even the RPGs designers had no clue. No one had designed fantasy RPGs before, so they had no clue what would be good design and what would be bad. So they just made supplements and advanced editions and clones and other games that were “D&D, but in space/post-apocalyptic Earth/some other genre setting”.
And we were eating up these rules additions not because we wanted more rules, but because we were either curious or hypnotized. “Wait, you can add extra detail to magic with a complicated system of astrological correspondences? You can add tables and tables of weapon-specific combat results, instead of sticking with a binary hit-or-miss system? You can add a potion miscibility table to see if your alchemical experiment explodes? I want to check that out!”
I never heard the terms “rules lite” and “crunch” back in the day. They came along in the '90s, maybe the late '80s at the earliest, after people had been playing a while, trying out rules supplements, experimenting with new ideas, until they realized what they wanted. Some people wanted more improv and a lot less rules and that led to Tunnels and Trolls, TOON and eventually to “rules lite” games. Some wanted more options for character creation and a toolkit approach and you got Hero System and GURPS. Some wanted more realism and you got Fantasy Wargaming, Hârn, Guns Guns Guns, and books with real physics formulas.
And there’s also the issue that “crunch” is hard to define because it’s not really just one thing. I think deep down JB knows this, because he gives several examples of RPG complexity. Here’s my own breakdown.
All RPG materials back in the day dabbled in at least a couple of these at the same time, and we all tried them out, eventually learning through trial and error what our own preferences were. Me, I think I lean more towards what Dennis Laffey said about structure. I think that’s the most important for me. I don’t necessarily need to have every rule for every remote possibility worked out beforehand; I just want to know how reuse existing rules to make up a new procedure when I need one, plus that framework that tells me how to run the game. To a lesser extent, I also want tactical detail, but not to an extreme. Even though D&D came from a gaming tradition, I actually don’t treat it like a game, and I’m not interested in being a hardcore gamer.
I struggle sometimes with my blog posts because I begin to question whether I’d actually use some of the ideas I’m spitballing in posts. I still toy around with options details like new character classes and races, or with realism, or even with just figuring out if there’s a creative way to add some feature to D&D. But I suppose what I’m really doing is working out structures that make those suggestions possible.
If you want to call that “crunch”, so be it. But I sometimes think of my approach as being “rules lite”.
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I ended the first post of my series on gems (Gems Intro,) with this paragraph:
I plan on detailing each of these modified steps in a separate post, with appropriate tables. I won’t be posting before next week, however.
That was four years ago, so I was right.
Part of the reason for the delay was that I had finished (or nearly finished) the next part, but then lost all my draft posts, somehow. And after I found them again last month, I had to review what I’d written to figure out what I was aiming for. Also, I’ve changed my mind on some things, so I had to rewrite parts of it. But basically, my first post laid out three or four steps for generating gems in a pile of treasure.
Step One happens before stocking individual rooms, Step Two happens when stocking the rooms, and Step Three happens during the game session.
What are my basic goals for making new gem rules?
I want two or three things:
There’s really only about eight or so gem names people are really familiar with: diamond, emerald, jade, opal, pearl, quartz, ruby, sapphire, maybe a couple others like jet, topaz or turquoise, but not everyone’s going to be able to recognize the same batch and most of the others are just different types of quartz, anyways. So recording gem names or being meticulous about base values for each type seems like a waste.
Instead, I say: reduce gem information to just Size, Color, Opacity, and Miscellaneous. The first three can be written in a single keyword, like “Xb5”. “Miscellaneous” only pops up if you want a gem with a special (magical?) ability.
I’ve used Roman numerals before for things like size categories, so of course I’m going to do that again. We only need V, X, L, C, D, M, because who cares about Size I, anyways? And the hard part of Roman numerals is counting and subtracting, but we only need one letter per gem code. Here’s a table we only need to read once and never need to look at again.
| Numeral | Size Reference | Default Gem Value |
|---|---|---|
| V | bead-sized (small) | 5 coins |
| X | pebble-sized (small) | 10 coins |
| L | marble-sized (med) | 50 coins |
| C | eyeball-sized (med) | 100 coins |
| D | egg-sized (large) | 500 coins |
| M | fist-sized (large) | 1000 coins |
One thing I use a lot is a simple d6 “table” for adjusting values on just about anything:
| d6 roll | adjustment |
|---|---|
| 1 | move value down one |
| 2-5 | no adjustment |
| 6 | move value up one |
You don’t even really need a table for this. It’s just “lowest possible result = down one, highest possible result = up one”.
I also like to use dice positions, reading left to right, to roll multiple things at once. I can reduce the number of rolls that way and speed things up immensely.
I suggested that GMs creating a dungeon key should pick a small number of gem types for their entire dungeon. Specifically, I suggest three or four gem types per dungeon, with a color scheme that matches the dungeon’s theme. One gem will be the low value gem, a second would be the middle value, and the third would be the high value. If necessary, a fourth type matching either the low or middle value, but with a different color, opacity, or additional feature like a glow can be added when it’s thematically appropriate.
If you don’t have an idea what color you want your gems to be, just use the rainbow colors (Roy G. Biv.) Start on yellow for the low value, green for the mid value, and blue for the high value. Roll 2d6 and read the dice individually, left to right.
The default gem size for a given dungeon is based on deepest dungeon level / 2.
| Level | Gem Size |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | C |
| 3-4 | D |
| 5-6 | M |
| 7+ | 3M |
This is for the high value gems. Low value (common) gems will be two sizes smaller by default (X to D.) Mid value gems will be one size smaller. Values above M use an Arabic numeral multiplier: 3M, 5M, 10M, 30M, 50M.
Roll 3d6 in order and read the dice individually, left to right.
Opacity is recorded as an index value (9 = 90% opaque, 5 = 50% opaque, 0 = less than 5% opaque.)
The third d6 rolled is the base opacity for the high-value gem, treating a 6 as zero. For mid-value gems, add +4. For low-value gems, add +8. Opacity is capped at 10, which is completely opaque.
Opaque gems are the listed size for their size value, but murky, translucent, or transparent gems will appear smaller.
So let’s say you’re making a four-level dungeon. You start with the default gem colors of yellow, green, and blue, from low value to high value. You roll 3d6 and get (6, 4, 2). How do you write this in your notes?
The actual values of the gems can vary up or down during both the next step (stocking treasure in rooms) and the final step (getting the gem appraised.)
But what about the names? Unless a particular gem sounds like a diamond, sapphire, or emerald to you, I think you should stick to fantasy gem names specific to your world. Opaque yellow gems the size of an eyeball might be known as “Ra’s Eye gems”. Murky green gems might be “mossmist gems”. These names wouldn’t be listed in the dungeon key, but on a “list of gems in this world”, which you would build as you expand your campaign.
When players discover these gems, however, they won’t get the gem names or values immediately. Instead, just say "three small translucent blue gems, a few small murky green gems, plus a whole bunch of small yellow stones.
But more on that in a future post.
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Good news, everyone!
I was looking at my old posts to figure out all the times I said "I have more to say" and then never got around to saying it, because I vanished from blogging. The worst example of this was the first post in a series on gems. That post even has a list of upcoming posts in the series, none of which ever appeared.
The problem: I was sure I started writing (and maybe even finished) the next post in the series, but I couldn't find it anywhere. That was because I was using Stack Edit as my editor and the draft was stored inside my browser... and it appeared all those drafts and archive copies of old posts were gone. And I had know idea where I was going with that series.
Except! Now they seem to be back, and I found the draft for Part II, which might be done? I'll look it over. Anyways, it will be coming soon, although I'm not sure when Part III or IV will be ready.
I finished Season 2 of the Netflix series Wednesday, based on the Addams Family character, then realized I never reviewed the first season. So here we go.
Rating: OK
Standouts:good performances
story is a bit incoherent
not really very Addams Family-ish
Season 2 of Wednesday came out three years after Season 1 concluded. I only remember two things about Season 1:
It’s not a bad show, but obviously it’s something you enjoy for a little while, then (literally) forget about. But why?
It’s not the performances. I liked most of the actor performances. Many stood out: Jenna Ortega is good as Wednesday Addams, Catherine Zeta-Jones is good as her mother Morticia. I liked Luis Guzman’s Gomez Addams less, but still liked him. Fred Armisen is deranged as Uncle Fester; I like it. Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley was the break-out character of Season 2. Of the other teen actors, Emma Myers as Wednesday’s roommate Enid stood out, and Evie Templeton’s Agnes was very creepy, but the rest did a decent job, too. I just didn’t care about their characters.
As for what’s wrong: well, it’s a tad long, feeling more like a really long movie instead of a TV show, but that’s typical of TV shows made for streaming services, and it’s not as bad as other examples. But the story feels a bit incoherent. Too many things that don’t seem to have anything to do with the story. I think this is why I couldn’t remember much about the first season; I just couldn’t keep the story in my head.
Another issue that might be a problem for some: it doesn’t really feel entirely like the Addams Family. For one, in the '60s TV series and the '90s movies (mostly,) the family always felt like they really liked each other. Sure, the kids torture each other, but then they like torture, so it’s a sign of love. In Wednesday, however, Wednesday is at odds with her parents, especially her mother. Morticia’s at odds with her own mother. Everyone treats Thing as a slave.
The other reason it doesn’t feel like the Addams Family is because of the Harry Potter influence. They wanted magical kids at a magical kid school. But… the joke of the Addams Family has always been that the family thinks of themselves and their lifestyle as “normal”, while their neighbors and other people they encounter are weirded out.
That’s the opposite of the Harry Potter series, where the students all think “weird” is normal and only Harry is baffled because he grew up isolated from the wizarding world.
Wednesday can’t decide which way to go, so it oscillates back and forth. Wednesday’s schoolmates sometimes act like she’s weird, even though they are gorgons, werewolves, vampires, and the like. And then, suddenly, they all think Wednesday’s perfectly normal. Meanwhile, there’s a “normie” town nearby. You’d think that the townies would be the ones baffled by Wednesday and the students of Nevermore, but no… they are hostile towards Outcasts, but know all the lore.
So I can’t recommend Wednesday to the general public (in other words, it’s not Great, it’s OK.) But I also can’t necessarily recommend it to Addams Family fans. If you just want a goth girl mystery-comedy, or a replacement for Harry Potter because of the politics of the author, this might fit your needs.
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Previously, I wrote about non-human fantasy races, although my main point there was that many, if not most, of the fantasy races we think of as “non-human” are really just variant humans in disguise.
Bur whether they are really non-human or human variants, the question to ask is: When should a fantasy race become a player character race? When should a fantasy race remain exclusively for NPCs?
I have some thoughts.
Let’s ignore the trivial case of unique monsters or NPCs that aren’t “races” at all (for now) and focus instead on the obvious cases where a fantasy race should not be available to players.
The common theme here is that these races are somehow tied to the goal of a potential adventure. They have information, artifacts, or raw power that the players want. Naturally, if a player were allowed to begin the game as one of these races, it would short circuit the mystery.
That trivial case I mentioned where a monster or NPC is unique, perhaps the last (or first) of its kind, or the sole current visitor from an inaccessible world or dimension, is pretty much disqualified for the same reasons. You as GM may have notes on an NPC’s innate talents or skills, knowledge, and technology available to their race, but the race itself technically does not exist. These unique beings typically exist as story or plot elements, in much the same way as the mystery villain/ally races.
If the PCs contact the last known Atlantean, who becomes their mentor, they may gain a significant advantage. But the GM may want to supply information or assistance when needed, rather than grant them unlimited access. It’s hard to justify why a PC Atlantean wouldn’t have access to the same secrets as their mentor, so it may be better to simply not allow Atlanteans as a PC race.
Related to the villain and ally fantasy races mentioned above are high-powered fantasy races in general. It’s not completely out of the question for a player to have an angel character, or a djinn, or a godling of some sort, depending on the intended beginning power level of the game. But if other players have all created standard human warriors, dwarves, and elves, one player demanding that they be allowed to play Q from Star Trek is generally considered to be a warning sign. There shouldn’t be an enormous disparity between character power levels.
A PC that begins as a member of a standard race who is later polymorphed into a member of another race, even one not normally allowed as a beginning PC race, is not subject to the same restrictions, for two reasons:
Other fantasy races may be added as minor mysteries to solve. Not full-blown plot devices, but more like little surprises to keep exploration exciting. Such a fantasy race would be unavailable as PC races at first, but once they have been encountered and their culture or other unique features have been discovered, there’s no harm in allowing players to make new characters from that race.
A slightly similar idea is a reasonably-balanced fantasy race made up by a player, or borrowed from a fantasy novel the GM has no intention to adapt in full. I feel that this kind of custom fantasy race fits in with that well-known section on “Other Character Types” in the original booklets:
There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a “young” one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee.
OD&D VOL. I (Men & Magic), p. 8
If the race is player-created, especially if the race’s culture and history are being improvised during play, that player should have the same kind of control over whether other players are allowed to play characters from that race.
I think all of the above could be boiled down to just a few rules:
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Back in my post about why players might map and why they should be allowed to choose not to map, I teased “there may be ways to maintain that element of player choice without requiring an actual map.”
I have an idea.
Chaosium’s Stormbringer, unless I’m remembering incorrectly, had a Map skill. The GM would roll percentile dice vs. Map skill to see if players make it to their destination. We could use the Int ability score in a similar way. It still feels too bland to me, so I would repurpose the reaction roll (again!) and break the trip to any destination into stages.
Players could (should?) still make simple maps, but only to show which areas of a dungeon are connected. Each area would be represented by one box each, regardless of how many rooms are in each area and where they are in relation to other rooms. The areas are labeled “outer gates”, “crypts”, “treasure vaults”, “prison”, “library”, “caves”, “fungus farms”, or whatever the function or theme of that area is. Each pair of boxes is either connected (draw one line connecting them) or not connected (no line.) No individual tunnels are marked.
If the players have a map and are looking for the exit, they would follow the lines from box to box, with the GM making a reaction roll for each transition to the next area: treasure vaults to crypts, crypts to outer gates, and outer gates to exit would require three rolls.
If the map roll is less than or equal to the Int of the character using the map, use the “Map Success” column for the result. If the roll is higher than Int, use the “Map Failure” column. Halve the Int score if the map is damaged or otherwise incomplete, or if the character is drunk, befuddled, or otherwise inconvenienced.
| 2d6 Roll | Map Success | Map Failure |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 3x time to reach next area | lost in new (unmapped) area |
| 3-5 | 1.5x time to reach next area | lost in random area |
| 6-8 | normal time to reach next area | lost in previous area |
| 9-11 | half time to reach next area | stuck in same area |
| 12+ | half time, no wandering monster rolls | 5x time to reach next area |
The steps above assume the character reading the map also created the map. If not, the GM needs to know both the Int of the map maker (or assign it randomly) and the Int of the character using the map. Roll against the lower of the two scores when using the map.
The character using the map can substitute their Wisdom if it is higher than their Int, but only when using a map they didn’t make themselves. If the map has a lower Int rating than either, however, it’s not going to help.
When buying a map, make a reaction roll to check if the map is a lie (odd rolls below a certain threshold.) These maps automatically are treated as half Int.
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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.
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.)
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.
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…
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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A couple weeks ago, I finished watching Star Trek: Picard. I put off watching Seasons 2 and 3 for a couple years, but since I was planning to cancel Paramount+ during this summer’s “streaming service massacrefest”, I thought I should at least get some value out of the account. And since I also rewatched Season 1 not too long ago, I want to revise my opinion of the series.
Refreshing my memory of what I said in my original Picard review, I’m shocked that I said that Star Trek: Picard was better than TNG. Maybe I was comparing the worst episode of Picard Season 1 to the worst episodes of TNG? It’s certainly better than some first and second season TNG episodes. And I said I liked it better than Voyager? Maybe some episodes of Voyager. And maybe the overall objective quality is better, as objective as you could be about such things.
But I didn’t enjoy Picard Season 1 all that much on rewatch. I think on first watch, I was impressed that there were several interesting moments and some enjoyable ones. But my original opinion hasn’t aged well.
The main warning sign that I longer felt the same way was that none of the scenes really stuck with me between the original viewing and the rewatch. I had forgotten almost everything except the basic three-or-four sentence summary of the Season 1 plot. Being forgettable has become a strong sign for me that a show or movie is just OK, maybe with stand-out good or bad elements.
I stand by my statement that Star Trek: Picard is better than any of the TNG movies, though. Really, none of the Trek movies are as good as any live-action Trek shows I’ve seen.
I was kind of looking forward to Season 2, though, even though I put it off for so long. I knew Q would be in it, and I always liked Q, although there’s maybe one or two Q episodes I didn’t like. Would Picard Season 2 keep the old magic?
A bit. But there were problems.
Let me interrupt this review to make a general statement about Star Trek in general. The three recurring Trek concepts or story lines that I hate the most are, in order of decreasing hate:
The original series episode “Mirror, Mirror” was OK, but I did not enjoy any other mirror universe episodes except the two-parter from Star Trek: Enterprise, probably because it’s treated like a one-off that doesn’t affect the rest of the series. Similarly, one or two Section 31 episodes where Section 31 is the villain are OK, but I hate that the franchise now tries to sell us the idea that Section 31 is cool. I feel the same way about the Borg. Trek keeps going back to the Borg whenever the number of views drops, but that rarely works.
So you can imagine how thrilled I was to see that Picard Season 2 brings back the Borg again. And really, it’s too soon. Technically, Season 1 included the Borg, although more as a background detail instead of an important plot element. But Season 2? The Borg Queen is back. How many times has she died, now?
The Borg storyline isn’t too bad, but I do have to count it against the series. The alternate timeline feels sort of mirror universe-ish, but we’re only there briefly, so I won’t count it as a flaw. And I actually like the wrap-up of Q’s story a bit, so I enjoyed this season more than Season 1, although I’m disappointed in what they did with the callbacks to the Gary Seven episode of TOS. I don’t think they handled that well at all.
Picard Season 3 started out OK, but felt a little flat. We’re seeing some of the same things again: Picard goes rogue, there’s a heist, lots of nostalgia callbacks. The return of the Dominion changelings isn’t too bad, although I did not like the performance of the main changeling.
Oh, look. Section 31 is back again! And they’re trying to make them cool again! Not evil!
Oh, look. The Borg are back. They are the secret real villain. This means that every season of Picard is about the Borg in some way.
Oh, look. Data is back. Even though he died in Season 1. And in one of the movies.
Oh, look. Q is back, even though he died, too. We had a good ending for Q last season, but let’s undo it at the end of this one.
Doesn’t that seem like the franchise is out of ideas and they’re just trying to keep pumping out content?
I have to rate Star Trek: Picard as just OK, with several flaws. If you just want something to watch to kill time and anything will do the job, but you happen to like Star Trek in some form, watching Picard will do the trick as well as anything else. But I can’t recommend Picard for any Trek fan who is looking for more from Trek than just filler, and certainly can’t recommend it for anyone not currently a Trek fan. It’s on the low end of the OK range.
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Recently, someone in a forum was curious how many GMs make (require) the players to map the dungeon, and I replied that I don’t require players to map, but they are taking a risk if they don’t.
That response may seem a bit flippant, but really I try to balance clear descriptions of the environment with dungeon features designed to be deliberately confusing. Sure, you could skip mapping and just try to remember which way you came. For the most part, the dungeon isn’t going to change configuration – although it might – so you could get away with it. But mapping makes it easier.
But why map at all?
To me, the reason why I make it possible for players to map my dungeons, and why I like to map dungeons when I’m a player, is the immersion. I want to get a feel for what my environment looks like and what my character is doing. I assume at least some players out there are going to enjoy it as well.
Some GMs fill every space on their dungeon maps with rooms, so players mapping as they explore may notice suspicious areas that could contain secret rooms. I used to make my own dungeon maps that way, and I’ll admit there can be a certain joy to finding a secret room that way. But how often does that work? Seems like too much effort that rarely pays off.
But even without that kind of cramped dungeon design, players looking for a hidden shrine or other location they’ve heard exists in the dungeon might notice large unmapped quadrants on a map. This might give a clue which areas they need to search more thoroughly for secret doors into the supposedly empty area. Or they could even try mining their way into it.
Still, some players just don’t enjoy making maps and won’t do it. Even if you suggest not making a map to scale, just using lines and boxes to make a crude flow chart version of the dungeon. I believe players should be allowed to take that risk, but if they were to ask me to just handwave the return to the surface, I wouldn’t go along with that. The game is about players making decisions and accepting the consequences of those decisions. Just as I wouldn’t spring a surprise TPK on players without giving them enough information to decide not to take that risk, I wouldn’t choose the players’ route back to the surface for them, especially when one route might be more dangerous than the other.
Still, there may be ways to maintain that element of player choice without requiring an actual map. I’m mulling over an idea, which I will return to in a future post.
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In Reddit’s /r/osr subreddit, someone posted a thread about having too many tables when generating adventures on the fly.
[…] I’ve found/made some random tables resources that are great, but I’m getting to the point where I have 14-17 pages of random tables. […] Is there such a thing as too many roll tables?
The easy answer would be “if you are having problems with your current number of tables, that’s too many.” But if we dive into the problem in more detail, I think there’s actually two different kinds of tables:
Most of your tables will fall into the second category. These are things like contents of treasure troves, qualities of magic swords, random names for taverns, ships, or NPCs, and so on.
The first category, however, should be a very small number of tables. Your current wandering monster tables geared for the adventure area, for example. Area event tables. The standard attack, save, and reaction tables. Maybe a couple generic multipurpose tables to help you improvise when things go off script, like a table of random letters to create initials to suggest NPC names or other names.
But how do you use Category 2 tables if you want to go full improv?
The trick is to prep lists rather than dungeon keys. Remember the TSR Monster and Treasure Assortments? Or the NPC rosters? Those were randomly-generated monsters, treasures, NPCs, and occasionally other things. You could roll or pick from these lists, instead of rolling multiple times on multiple tables. But we don’t really need 100+ entries on a list. We can shorten things a bit.
Between sessions, use those random tables to create a list of 6 to 8 ships, or pirate captains, or taverns, or unique named monsters with personalities, or whatever else you know you will need for the areas the PCs will be exploring. You may need several pages of lists for your entire session, but at any given time, you will only need a few of those lists: the ships and pirate captains lists when down by the pirate docks, or the tavern list when wandering the streets.
Rather than treating a list as a table, use this generic table to pick entries from the list:
| 2d6 | Result |
|---|---|
| 2-3 | Use second item on list |
| 4-7 | Use first item on list |
| 8-10 | Use last item on list |
| 11+ | Use second to last item on list |
Put a checkmark next to an item when it’s used. The second time you use the list, skip items that have been used. Between sessions, restock your lists. You will probably never need more than 6 to 8 entries for any given session.
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In a thread on Reddit’s /r/osr subreddit, someone asked about ways to award XP for disarming or otherwise dealing with traps. I replied with this comment:
Just take the easy route and award XP based on the ability score used multiplied by some factor, perhaps based on the difficulty of the trap. EXAMPLE: PC uses Intelligence to disarm a trap that does 2 dice damage, so multiply Int by 2.
Now, this is based on a blog post I wrote ages ago about the more general topic of using ability scores for XP awards. This was originally meant to be an alternative to XP bonuses based on prime requisite, for example Fighters with Strength 18 earning +10% experience for monsters slain. I later broadened the idea to XP for actions other than combat or treasure, which would include dealing with traps. But how large should this reward be?
I and some other people playing OD&D use 100 xp per HD and 1 xp per gp for treasure, which means prime requisite bonuses would be +5 or +10 xp per HD or per 100 gp of treasure.
I bring this up because I would set the difficulty of non-combat, non-treasure tasks as either an HD equivalent or a treasure value equivalent. For traps, their “Hit Dice” could be set equal to the damage they do, as in the example from my Reddit comment.
Or, if the trap has a non-damaging effect, the GM can find a spell that more or less duplicates that effect and use the spell’s level as its “Hit Dice”. For example, a trap that drops victims safely into a small cell to keep them from leaving could be treated as Hold Person (Level 3.)
Multiplying an ability score by HD or spell level would thus give an xp bonus in the range of +3 to +18 xp per HD. Higher than -20 to + 10 xp under the traditional system, but not far off.
My original suggestion was to multiply that score bonus by 10, because I was thinking “average ability score of 10 times 10 equals 100 xp, same as for a 1 HD monster.” But I think I’d prefer one of these two alternatives:
I think I prefer the second option, since it’s easier: just halve the ability score and add a zero to the end as an extra digit (the easy way to multiply by 5.) But I may have more to say about this in a future post.
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Back before my hiatus, I did several media reviews, mostly superhero, fantasy, science fiction, and horror. This also included my attempt to watch the Star Wars movie series and review them from a non-fan perspective. I had stalled out in this process after watching and reviewing The Phantom Menace, but I’m done now. I should give everyone an update.
But first, I changed my review guidelines and should explain how they work. My previous review guidelines used a letter-grade system similar to the common primary and secondary school grading system used here in the US, with C being average.
I always have a hard time ranking things, even when using a semi-subjective grading system instead of pure subjective ratings. So I’ve simplified this even further for what I call The BOG Standard Rating System. BOG stands for Bad, OK, Great, which are the new ratings.
In addition to this base rating, there’s what I call stand-outs. This is anything worth noting about that media: an actor’s performance or a specific scene that is better or worse than the rest of a movie.
I described my Star Wars plans in a How to Watch Star Wars post and a follow-up post. I will mention again, though, that originally I had only seen either five or six of the movies. My goal was to watch all the Star Wars movies as a non-fan, review them from a non-fan’s perspective, and give them a chance to win me over. I also planned to watch The Mandalorian, which I think was the only TV series available when I began this adventure.
So I rewatched IV, V, and VI as well as Rogue One, and watched Solo and The Phantom Menace for the first time… then I petered out. But during the two years of my absence, I rewatched all the movies and made it all the way through to the end. So, it’s time to update my review and give my final thoughts on Star Wars.
The ten live-action movies that came out after A New Hope are all OK. As a non-fan, I didn’t hate any of the movies as much as some fans do. They all have their downsides and some have their good points, but none of them were bad for at least two-thirds of their runtime.
The worst of them was the last one, The Rise of Skywalker. It feels incoherent in several places, and it’s dull for about 50% of the movie. You can tell that by that point, many of the people making the movie didn’t really care; they were just phoning it in. The worst part is the whole “somehow, Palpatine has returned” bit.
The best of the Star Wars movies is A New Hope. It goes along at a good pace and is never dull. There are things I don’t like about it, but I can still enjoy it. I think I would rate it as Great because of its historical importance. It rewrote the rules for how many movies are made, especially science fiction movies. I think even people who don’t like space opera could appreciate it.
The other movies are OK because I can’t see recommending any of them to someone who isn’t a Star Wars fan. That’s the real flaw of all the sequels, including The Empire Strikes Back. It’s hard to care about what’s happening unless you are a fan, steeped in Star Wars culture. The goal of the sequels is not really to tell a story with broad human appeal, but to expand the franchise universe.
I rewatched all of those movies as part of my “job”, educating my friends’ kid on famous movies and TV shows. When we made it to the end of the last movie, I said “We never have to watch Star Wars again.” And I really felt it. I doubt I will ever watch The Mandalorian, or the latest series Andor, despite hearing that they are really good, because I really do feel done with Star Wars. If I walked into someone’s house and a Star Wars movie was on their TV, I wouldn’t mind it and might even watch a bit, but I have no plans to ever seek it out on my own.
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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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
We need blogs to be a web again, instead of a forest of trees.
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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.
