Portable Holes in a One-Plane Universe

There’s a question about portable holes on the OD&D forums: do you treat it as a Bag of Holding, or just a temporary hole? The question assumes in both cases that there’s an extra-dimensional space involved, as mentioned in the Greyhawk supplement.

But I thought: What if there isn’t?

I’ve written before about how I prefer a one-plane cosmology with a material world that has additional states of matter beyond solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. To maintain that, there couldn’t be any extra-dimensional spaces under my cosmology. So where does the hole part of a portable hole come from? Where do things inside the hole go when it is removed?

How I interpret Portable Holes:

• Turns a ten-foot long cylinder of connected solid material into ethereal matter.
• The effect stops when it hits liquid, gas, or any other non-solid material and does not continue, even if solid matter resumes before the ten-foot range is reached.
• Objects or living beings that enter the hole at this point aren’t transformed. They are just normal objects occupying space previously filled with solid matter.
• When the hole is removed, any ethereal matter tries to return to its solid state. If something is already in the same space and can’t be pushed out, it remains ethereal until that space is no longer occupied.

This means that if someone is crawling through a Portable Hole through a stone wall when the hole is removed, they become embedded in stone. They will suffocate, if they need air to breathe. Meanwhile, there’s an ethereal stone duplicate of them occupying the same position. When they are removed from that position, the stone reappears. If the surrounding stone is no longer there, you wind up with a statue of a crawling person.

There are some other weird situations that could happen, but the general principle is that two solid objects or two ethereal objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time, but a solid object and an ethereal object can occupy the same space.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Divine Moods and Personalities

Someone brought up Gods, Demigods, and Heroes on the OD&D forums, wanting to talk about who has actually used it and how. For myself, I like the monsters, hero, and artifact entries. But the gods?

Let’s start with the kind of gods I want in my game:

1. Ambiguous desires, plans, and even existence.
2. Ambiguous source of “divine” displays of power.
3. Enigmatic miracles and manifestations.
4. Both player and GM-created religions.

These guidelines are based on two principles:

Create as much as possible through play rather than before play.

Keep the players front in center, not NPCs (including gods, the ultimate NPCs.)

So what kind of “god mechanics” would work for me?

No monster stats for gods. They may or may not be real. Any monster may be a divine incarnation, sending, minion, or hoax.

Start with a zone of divine control, what some versions of the game might call a Sphere. If using a god from mythology, this is the common interpretation of what that god is the “god” of (war, sky, death, life.)

Add a second unrelated zone of control, possibly a narrower one.

Add a profession or social role, if one isn’t obvious. Less likely professions or roles will be more evocative.

Add at least one object or behavior associated with the god. This can be turned into a myth about the god (summarize a story in one or two sentences.)

Examples

• Tut-Tut, the Warrior-Smith of the Coast, cries as he creates turtle-shell armor and shields in a sea-cave forge on the western shores. (Summary: War, Coastal Areas, Smithing, Turtles, Tears)
• Lyraine, the Huntress of the Celestial Choir, leads her chorus in battle-songs as she rides a parrot across the night sky. (Summary: Hunting, Stars, Music, Parrot.)

The first time during an adventure where the PCs do anything on grounds sacred to a god, or in the presence of a priest of that god, or involving one of the keywords that “define” the god, make a reaction roll for the god. Only do this once per adventure.

• Shift Results Down one step (Bad becomes Very Bad) if PCs harm a priest, defile a temple, or otherwise unwittingly “offend” the god.
• Shift Results Up one step (Good becomes Very Good) if performing rituals or otherwise serving the god.

On a Very Bad result (2 on 2d6) or a Very Good result (12 on 2d6), it seems as if the god is “paying attention”. This might mean the god is real, it might mean someone who worships the god noticed and is acting on the god’s behalf, or it might be the PC’s unconscious guilt or confidence. If the first result roll indicates no divine interest, this will not change for the rest of the adventure.

For the rest of the adventure, track the PCs on the Divine Mood table below, starting at (Dis)favor unless the adjusted roll is 1 or 13, in which case jump to Bad/Good Omen.

Bad /	Good Mood	Effects
(Dis)	Favor	Flip near miss or hit
Cursed /	Blessed	+/-2 on rolls
Doomed /	Chosen	Next result becomes critical or fumble. Reset.
Enemy /	Ally	Extra wandering monster roll, seeks vengeance on/alliance with PCs. Reset.
(Bad)	Omen	Minor spell (half dungeon level) cast against/for PCs. Reset.
(Evil)	Sending	Wandering monster magically appears to attack/serve PCs. Reset.
Judgment /	Miracle	Major spell (twice dungeon level) cast against/for PCs. Reset.
(Wrathful)	Avatar	Monster representing the god magically appears to attack/serve PCs. Reset.

Favors, Blessings, Disfavor, and Curses stay in effect for the rest of the adventure or until the next time the PCs “interact” with the god in some way (break a taboo, perform a ritual, help or harm a divine servant, trigger one of the other key words.) Everything else happens once.

In either case, roll 2d6 and consult the Divine Mood Reset Table. If the result is anything below Cursed/Blessed, delay the new effect until the next interaction with the god.

2d6	Divine Mood Reset Effect
2	Flip Mood (bad to good or vice versa)
3-5	Mood Wanes (shift up one line)
6-8	Reset to (Dis)Favor
9-11	Mood Strengthens (shift down one line)
12	Extreme Shift (down two lines)
13+	Flip Bad Mood to Good, otherwise shift down two lines)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Mystical States: The Astral Realm

It’s been a while, but it’s time to continue the re-thinking cosmology discussion about multiple mystical states of matter that create the illusion of multiple planes of existence in a single-plane universe…

The physical realm is tangible and detectible, the ethereal realm is intangible and undetectable to the physical, while retaining other physical properties like size and duration. In keeping with the pattern, the astral realm is to the ethereal realm as the ethereal realm is to the physical:

• Astral matter doesn’t exist for ethereal beings, in the same sense that ethereal matter doesn’t exist for physical beings. It can’t be felt, has no hardness, no temperature, no feeling of substantiality whatsoever.
• Naturally, astral matter doesn’t exist for physical beings, either, and is undetectable with any physical sense (invisible, silent, and odorless.)
• And of course astral matter has no mass, is unaffected by gravity, and doesn’t block movement for either physical or ethereal beings

Again, astral beings can see, hear, and smell either physical or ethereal matter, but are unable to touch, taste or feel anything that isn’t astral, and can pass through any matter that isn’t also astral. But while ethereal beings experience the physical world as slightly out of focus and full of echoes, astral beings see the physical and ethereal world as a mildly-glowing, semi-transparent version of reality, with all sounds at a lower volume.

Spirits are ethereal, but souls exist in the astral. I won’t go into the difference between spirits and souls again, but the short version is that spirit retains emotion, but eventually dissolves without a soul, while souls retain the personality and memories of the living. Souls generally don’t linger in the spot where they die, but move on to another place…

The astral realm tends to feel more empty than the ethereal. But the presence of astral mirror matter can change that. Magic can create a copy of a physical or ethereal object or being in an astral state, which gives it these properties:

• It doesn’t glow and isn’t transparent to astral beings, but remains undetectable to physical and ethereal beings.
• It is solid to astral beings, who can touch, move, or use it in the same way a physical being could touch, move, or use a physical copy.
• If an astral mirror is made of a being or object that is present, the mirror occupies the same space as the original and follows its movements until an astral being or object changes it in some way. This has no effect on the original.
• Astral mirrors are basically solid illusions. They persist in astral form as long as there is an astral being there to perceive them.

Illusion spells basically make astral mirrors of a spellcaster’s thoughts, which are then partially manifested in the physical realm, made visible and audible.

Summoned creatures are astral mirrors of imagined creatures that are made fully manifest in the physical realm for a limited time.

The Mirror Dimension in the MCU Doctor Strange movie is basically just an astral mirror copy of everything around the sorcerer, allowing sorcerers to cast spells in a “real” environment without affecting the originals. At the other extreme, powerful magics can be used to create an astral pocket realm (sometimes called “pocket dimension”,) which is an astral mirror of a real or imagined place that also distorts space.

• From the outside, an astral pocket realm appears in the astral realm as a softly-glowing orb with shifting color patterns on its surface. It can’t be seen without magical aid by physical or ethereal beings.
• All astral, ethereal, and physical beings pass through an astral pocket orb without effect.
• An astral pocket orb may contain an area as small as a chest or room, up to the size of entire kingdoms or worlds, all in a tiny area.
• To enter an astral pocket, a traveler must either be able to visualize the realm within the orb or get assistance from a being inside the orb.
• Some being or soul must always remain in the astral pocket or it will cease to exist.

In a future cosmology installment, I’ll start looking more into exploiting mystical states for the magical properties.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Mystical States: The Ethereal Realm

Continuing the re-thinking cosmology discussion about multiple mystical states of matter that create the illusion of multiple planes of existence in a single-plane universe…

While physical, ghostly, and eternal matter remains tangible and detectible, the essential property of matter in the ethereal state is intangibility. And here, I don’t just mean “intangible” in the literal, narrow sense of “can’t be touched”, but in the broader sense of “unable to interact with things physically”.

• Ethereal matter, from the viewpoint of physical beings, doesn’t exist. It can’t be felt, has no hardness, no temperature, no feeling of substantiality whatsoever.
• Ethereal matter is not only invisible, but undetectable with other physical senses as well. It makes no sound, has no odor.
• Ethereal matter has no mass for physical matter. It is unaffected by gravity, doesn’t block movement, and can’t be blocked by physical obstacles.

Being ethereal has an effect on the ethereal being as well. Although they can still see, hear, and smell physical things, there’s a noticeable difference. The physical realm seems slightly out of focus, sounds are less distinct and have a slight echo. None of this applies to other ethereal beings or objects; an ethereal person can’t walk through an ethereal wall, and another ethereal person could attack them and even do damage.

The ethereal realm is also a realm of spirits. In fact, spirit is an ethereal substance, something like a thick fluid, with the peculiar property of storing emotion.

• Living beings possess ethereal spirits. When they die, the spirit slowly disengages from the dead body, taking with it a record of any strong emotions it felt during the being’s life, especially any emotions felt at the moment of death.
• If an ethereal spirit somehow remains connected to the physical realm, either through the being’s physical remains or through some object or place, and gains the power to animate matter, it becomes either a ghost or undead.
• If an ethereal spirit isn’t connected to the physical, but it somehow contacted, it reacts as if it were a wild animal, with pure instinct, driven by its emotional memories.

Although standard ethereal matter is undetectable in the physical realm, two subforms of ethereal matter remain quite detectable: umbreal and empyrean matter. Each of these has a visible physical component, either impenetrable darkness for umbreal matter or brilliant light for empyrean matter. They also give off a detectable chill or warmth, but are otherwise undetectable through normal means. Umbreal or empyrean spirits act like other spirits, but appear as silhouettes of darkness or light that move under their own power.

In the next cosmology installment, things will get even more rarified.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Mystical States: The Physical Realm

In my re-thinking cosmology post a couple weeks ago, I revisited my default “one-plane” cosmology.

Short Summary:

The “other planes of existence” in fantasy media and RPGs are not parallel realities that intersect with ours, but are qualities that beings and objects may have.

Ethereal and astral beings are literally right beside us, but we are unable to see, hear, touch, or otherwise interact with them, nor they with us (except in limited ways.)

Mystical otherworlds like Hades, Hell, or Faerie exist as real places in the real world, but may be inaccessible because of their location and state (astral constructs in the center of the earth or high in the clouds.)

I want to explain more, and explain some of the new mystical states I’ve added. Starting with the Physical state, which is perhaps the key to understanding all the others.

My focus when coming up with new mystical states is to think about the physical senses, primarily sight, sound, and touch, and related physical qualities like mass, distance, and duration. In the Physical Realm, all of these are at their strongest.

• Physical matter can be felt, even if only as sensations like warmth or coldness instead of as a physical obstruction.
• Physical matter is usually visible and audible in some way, although not always so to ordinary humans without proper equipment.
• Physical matter has heft, occupies space and follows laws of motion, taking time to cross distances.

Associated mystical states that are still part of the physical realm may stretch one of these concepts a bit, but will still retain them in some way. Mystical states that transcend the physical are going to violate one or more of those concepts.

Ghostly matter comes from some of my thinking on the undead. What’s the difference between a specter and an ethereal or astral spirit? The way I’ve explained it in undead stats is that undead spirits are bound to something physical. In the case of specters and ghosts, that physical matter may be extremely rarefied, but is still borderline physical, like the dust or gasses left over from decomposition. Ghosts have an astounding control over this physical form, but it is still physical.

Ghosts (my ghosts, at least,) can’t pass through walls, but can pass through nearly invisible cracks, flow under doors or through keyholes. They are visible, but sometimes hard to see, just a haze in the air, a shadowy figure, or a dim glowing outline. If they can fly, they follow the rules of other physical things that fly, like birds or clouds. They may move quickly, but must still take time to cross distances.

Eternal matter is practically the opposite of ghostly matter. Instead of becoming borderline intangible and highly mutable, eternal matter becomes more tangible and immutable… a “more solid than solid” object. Eternal matter loses its capacity to move or interact with other physical objects, becoming a pure obstacle, timeless and unchanging. To some extent, I was thinking of Flesh to Stone spells or stories like Philip José Farmer’s The Stone God Awakens. Or the victims of Forlorn Encystment.

Eternal objects are motionless and have a dull look about them, like wax or a painted statue. They cannot be moved, cannot be destroyed, and cannot be changed until they are transformed into something less eternal. They feel cold to the touch, since they can’t provide warmth, but do not feel icy cold, since they also cannot take warmth from someone touching them.

From the viewpoint of an eternal being, the outside world and even their own bodies cease to exist. Everything is an endless darkness, and they are alone with their own thoughts.

Originally, I described eternal objects as featureless and gray, but I’m thinking immutability would not necessarily have that side effect. I’m not even sure “monochromatic” would make sense as its own mystical state, as opposed to just a visual effect. The same applies to what I previously described as Silence and Thunder.

But there is at least one other mystical state in the physical realm: two-dimensionality. The state of things like living pictures or vampiric scribbles. Haven’t come up with a good name for this state yet, although I keep coming back to “Planar”. Which I’m not using for anything else, but I imagine that would be confusing for other people. I will have to revisit this idea later.

In the next cosmology installment, I’ll talk about the less-than-physical states of matter.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Re-Thinking Cosmology

Because I’ve been bingeing fantasy lately, I started thinking again about some of my cosmology ideas. My general approach for a while now has been “There’s only one universe in my D&D world(s), but there are several states of matter, like ethereal and astral.”

Here’s a slightly expanded crude cosmology map:

left-hand	MAIN BRANCH	right-hand
(ghostly)	Physical	(eternal)
(umbreal)	Ethereal	(empyreal)
(mirror)	Astral	(pocket)

The rows define the three major arcane states: Physical matter (tangible,) Ethereal Matter (intangible,) and Astral matter (conceptual.)

The left-hand and right-hand columns are kind of vague at the moment, but in general the left-hand column is “less true” to the primary nature of that row, and the right-hand column is “more true” to its primary nature. So:

• Ghostly matter is not quite intangible, more like a gas or a cloud of dust that maintains its shape.
• Eternal matter is intangible and immutable.
• Umbreal matter is intangible but still visible and chilling to the touch.
• Empyrean matter is intangible but brightly visible and warm to the touch.

The “mirror” and “pocket” states will need some explaining, but I’ll get to that in a future post. Will probably be doing this as a series, one row at a time.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Delusions and Illusions

Before continuing the exploration of mystical states of matter I started in this post, I wanted to say a little more about the old mystical states of astral and ethereal matter and how they affect spell-casting.

I believe I mentioned a long while ago that illusions have a special relationship to astral matter. An illusion spell cast while the spell-caster is astral takes on its own semi-permanent reality. Hallucinatory Terrain creates a sort of pocket astral realm, while Phantasmal Forces can make self-willed astral beings. Conjuration takes this one step further, causing these astral beings created from pure thought to physically materialize for a while.

Similarly, ethereal matter is affected by desire and emotion and can be used to transfer these to another being. Call it “delusion” in contrast to “illusion”. The simplest delusion spells would transfer simple physical sensations, like sleep and hunger. Charm spells would also depend on ethereal matter.

The way I’m imagining it: spell-casters during their spell prep would imagine themselves feeling sleepy, hungry, or loyal, basically practicing self-hypnosis, while chanting magical phrases, scribing symbols, and burning incense or other ingredients, impressing their desires on etheric material and binding it to some trigger phrases and gestures so they can recall and direct it later.

Since Sleep and Charm Person are 1st level spells, while the first illusion (Phantasmal Forces) is 2nd level, I’m thinking astral equivalents of ethereal manipulations are all basically one level higher. For example, Invisibility (2nd level) transforms light that reaches the target into ethereal light, so that those unable to see ethereal things would be unable (or barely able) to see the target. An astral equivalent that is harder to detect and is more like an illusion, able to be turned on or off with a thought, would be 3rd level. Detect Evil and ESP are ethereal-based, Clairvoyance and Clairaudience are astral-based and one level higher.

Extrapolating further: Dimension Door (4th level) relies on astral distortions of distance (I know AD&D says its a form of ethereal travel, rather than astral, but I don’t see it that way…) What would the 3rd level ethereal equivalent be? No spatial distortion, but temporary intangibility. This is pretty close to Phase Door, although that is rated as 7th level. I think it should definitely be lowered in spell level, although the multiple use version could be set at 5th level (and the caster should be allowed to take up to two others through the phase door.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Shadow, Silence, and Thunder

I was going to continue my exploration of the mystical states of matter, like the eternal and empyreal states. I don’t have time at the moment for the massive cosmology post I’d planned, so I’ll just do a quick post on one additional state.

The empyreal state is intangible, bright, and sometimes hot. The umbrial state is the converse of that: intangible, dark, and sometimes cold. It’s fantasy shadow, with its ability to actively block light. It’s the way spellcasters create magical darkness (transform a patch of air or smoke into the umbrial state) and also the way other spells cool down air to create cones of cold or walls of ice.

By extension, there could be other mystical states linked to other senses. Silence would be intangible and inaudible, stifling all sound it envelops, while Noise would be audible but overpowering, a chaos of sound.

(Not sure what the latinate adjectives for these should be, to match “empyreal” and “umbrial”… it wouldn’t simply be “tumultuous” for noise, because it just doesn’t have the same feel. And “silent” would be too ordinary.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

The Fifth Element

No, I’m not going to talk about that gods-awful movie. This is a continuation of the cosmology I started in the post on the eternal state of matter. Summary of the current mystical states of matter:

• material, the base state, tangible, visible, moving through space
• ethereal, a more rarefied state, intangible, rarely visible
• eternal, a less rarefied state, impenetrable, fixed in space
• astral, a conceptual state, intangible, invisible, beyond space

You could match up the states symbolically with the Aristotelian or Hermetic elements and arrange them in a circular diagram with the material state in the center: ethereal is linked to water, eternal to earth, and astral to air. (They aren’t literally water, earth, and air, but rather are mystical equivalents.)

That leaves a fifth element, empyreal, the mystical equivalent of fire. It is completely visible, sometimes blindingly so, but smokeless and mostly intangible, but can interact with the material state in the form of fire. Again, it’s not literally fire – it can’t be smothered or doused with water, and it doesn’t consume fuel. It doesn’t even always burn combustible matter. Most empyreal matter only emits light, not heat, but some of it may be hot or actually burn, and some empyreal beings can control this, starting fires.

The source of this is some classical and medieval cosmologies which name the highest heaven The Empyrean, and describe it as a place of pure light. There’s also some influence of Middle Eastern stories of djinn, efreet, and peri, which are all described as beings of smokeless fire (in other words, light.)

I may actually have more mystical states in the works. I’ve been thinking about this in conjunction with my revamped magic system. Some of the spell effects are explained as partial or total transformation of something from one mystical state to another. So, more mystical states means more spell variety.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Astral, Ethereal, Material... Eternal?

Have been busy this week, so no time for an extensive post. But I had an idea that I might expand on at some point. It has to do with mystical states of matter.

I’ve posted before about doing away with the cosmic planes entirely and keeping astral and ethereal states of matter, rather than astral and ethereal planes. Everything is in the same world, except some things are material and can be interacted with, some things are intangible and barely visible (even then, only under special circumstances,) and some things are completely invisible/intangible to material beings, but highly mutable.

But what if there were a state of matter that went the opposite way? What would that be?

I propose the third mystical state: eternal.

An eternal object loses all distinctiveness, becoming a grey, motionless shape. It can be touched (feeling icy cold,) but cannot be destroyed or moved by any means. It is timeless and unchanging. Living beings that become eternal experience nothing but black silence, forever, but continue to be aware of their own thoughts.

Petrification (Flesh to Stone) may not actually be a transformation into stone, but rather a translation of matter from a material state to an eternal one.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

World-Building and Player Handouts, Part I: Cosmic and Continental

It seems like ages ago when I wrote about limiting info in handouts so that players – including yourself – don’t have to do tons of homework to play in the world. A couple people asked for a walk-through for the “factoid” approach I suggested, which means in general only describing each thing with about three short sentences and only filling in the details on the immediate locale. I’m going to break up the example over a series of posts.

Cosmic Scale Factoids

• Isolated Fairy-tale Europe tiny kingdoms in a seemingly endless wilderness centuries after an apocalypse
• Anything in European legend or Greek/Roman myth is common knowledge, even if few if any have seen these things
• Humans are the norm, but there about a couple thousand elves, dwarves, and orcs in the world. Any other “race” is one of a kind or just a handful of individuals
• Monsters don’t breed, they are created by magical accidents or lingering curses in regions.
• There are no other “planes”, but there are ethereal and astral states. There is an invisible topography co-existing with the physical world.
• The gods may or may not exist, but faith does exist, and lesser spirits can be commanded by those of strong faith.

The first three bold italic factoids would be in the player handout as something players would need to know to understand the campaign. The other three factoids are mostly for the GM, although players could learn these things in various ways. Long-time readers of my blog will have seen previous posts on all these factoids. Factoid #5 about the absence of planes is covered in the Infernal Neighbors posts and PDF, for example, and Factoid #6 is Clerics Without Spells.

Continent Factoids

Normally, factoids at this level would begin with the name of the starting continent, but because of the first factoid above, among other things, “continents” aren’t even necessarily common knowledge.

• The Great Fettered Sea is like a supersized Mediterranean Sea turned 90 degrees clockwise, with the northern straits leading into the sea blocked by the Endless Ice
• Middle regions on both sides of the sea are mostly forest and mountains, while the southern coast is more arid.
• For improvising details of distant coastal kingdoms, use the equivalent Mediterranean country for the equivalent language and culture.
• The further inland you travel, the weirder things become.

Again, only the first two factoids would be included in a player handout, perhaps with a crude map like the one below.

The third factoid merely means that, if a player asks a question about distant lands I haven’t mapped yet, I use medieval versions of existing reference points. You can see on the map that I have an elongated “clock” superimposed on the crude suggested coastline, and there are different coastal regions labeled based on what country they would be if this really were the Mediterranean rotated 90 degrees. Spain is roughly 2 o’clock, France at 3 o’clock, Italy at 3:30, and Greece at 4 o’clock.

But also, I match up the east coast of the sea with the west coast of North America, so each coastal region is a pseudo-medieval cross between a Mediterranean country and a modern day Pacific Coast urban area. France, in this case, is also the San Francisco Bay area, the dominant city being Sofaria. The starting locale in my campaign is upriver from the pseudo-French kingdoms, in Port Skar, which is on the edge of where things begin to get weird.

History and culture factoids will be covered in the second post of the series.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Making Dwarves Squirm

Ages ago, I gave elves some more distinctive features in my worlds: skin is some exotic color, hair/eyes are another shade of the same color, eyes have no pupil or whites, only unaging while in their enchanted homeland.

I’ve wanted to do something similar with dwarves, but couldn’t think of anything offhand that didn’t feel like it had been done before. More than one person has done the “carve their own children from stone” thing, for example.

But then I remembered that in Norse myth, dwarves are created from maggots or worms. And that reminded me about my backstory for my game world involving a wormpocalypse.

Dwarves are somehow descended from purple worms, or a worm race (like the Wyrmanoids I wrote up.)

Done.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Natural Demons

A Tenkar's Tavern post encouraged a lot of people to talk about alignment again. But I want to talk about demons. Specifically, the kind of demons that aren't really demons.

Occasionally, people will mention how some old swords & sorcery stories do not have real gods, but have various monsters that are worshipped as gods. There's a giant snake with fangs that drip a paralytic poison that can also trigger astral projection. It lives in a horrible temple, tended by crazed priests who kidnap children to feed to it. The priests harvest the venom and use it for their own purposes. The priests believe the snake is a god, or maybe they just tell worshippers this so that no one tries to stop their nefarious activities. The snake, though, might not be intelligent or even aware of its followers.

What I haven't seen anyone discuss is the fact that you can handle demons the same way. They could just be really weird mutant animals, perhaps left over from genetic experimentation after an apocalypse (as are the demons in Thundarr.) Or perhaps each demon is created by conjuration magic, called forth from a sorcerer's id, as in Roger Zelazny's Wizardworld novels. Perhaps demons are former wizards who either transformed themselves to achieve immortality and power, as would a lich, or were transformed against their will by dabbling in dark magic. Perhaps they are space aliens, as is suggested in some Clark Ashton Smith stories, or in the Cthulhu Mythos.

The reason why I was prompted to write about monster demons by Erik Tenkar's post asking whether alignment is even necessary is because alignment really isn't necessary if you are using that kind of demon. If a demon is not really supernatural, or is only supernatural in the sense of having innate magical powers, then there is no need to  link them to a specific alignment, or even to each other. Each may be a unique entity with individual needs, goals and desires. In contrast, if you want demons to be part of a supernatural menace threatening the world as part of some cosmic battle, then I think you need alignment, though what form of alignment is really up to you. If demons can be banished from this world, if holy water has an effect on them, and if PCs can choose to join demons in exchange for power or oppose their plans, then you need to be able to tag characters to show which side they are on.

It's a matter of what kind of fantasy feel you are looking for. Epic, horrific, or picaresque?

Spirit Monsters

So, picking up where I left off: when a person dies, they lose their spirit and roams around, normally decaying in a couple weeks, unless they have a strong unfilled desire that sustains them. Spirits are ethereal and thus can't interact physically except with other ethereal things.

There are tons of people dying every day, especially in a D&D world. But most of the dead have zero impact on the world of the living. Those that do, such as vengeful spirits, can attack other spirits, including the spirits of the living. They can basically harass people, rarely killing. The most dangerous spirits are those able to make psychic possession attacks, since a successful possession means they now have a body to use for their goals.

What does this mean for adventurers?

Adventurers kill lots of people, and surely many of the spirits of their victims long for vengeance, but that alone won't leave behind an angry spirit. Your typical bandit who picks a fight with the PCs basically gets what he always knew he'd get, someday. They same goes for things like goblins. A surprise ambush of not immediately hostile creatures might create some vengeful spirits, but they would linger in the area and eventually fade away. Figure if PCs return to the scene of the crime within a week or two, there might be something waiting: make a reaction roll, with a Very Hostile reaction meaning a vengeful spirit is present. The third or later visits get no such roll.

Slaughtering a townie in cold blood, even if the townie deserved it, might be more likely to create a roaming vengeful spirit. Make the reaction roll, but any Hostile reaction means the spirit seeks vengeance.

If a townie slain in cold blood by anyone had something important to do, the spirit comes back as vengeful on a Hostile or worse reaction, but comes back as non-hostile on a Very Good reaction. These would be remorseful spirits, guardian spirits, and spirits of warning. These may be of interest to PCs, even if the spirit isn't "out to get" them.

Disturbing ancient spirits is also a possibility. Usually, this is caused by defiling something. Make a reaction roll if PCs go treasure hunting in a still-active cemetery or desecrate a Lawful temple.

Spirits should be difficult to reason with. They are not quite the same as the person who died, more like a psychic shadow of one facet of their personality. They aren't even fully intelligent, just intelligent enough to be dangerous. Getting useful information out of them should be difficult, if not impossible. Speak With Dead or Contact Other Plane may basically "wake up" the soul of the departed to answer some questions that a mere spirit can't.

Of course, the undead aren't quite the same thing as a spirit. Undead are spirits and sometimes souls that have been bound to a dead body, or at least something vaguely physical, in the case of spectres. They are not as free as the truly dead, but as a consequence they are more dangerous, since they can attack physically. Most cannot make psychic attacks, the way a spirit can.

Ba and Ka

Since I'm still working on Ranks of the Undead and also thinking forward to the ethereal monsters and psionics PDF, I thought I'd ruminate on how I handle spirits and souls.

In ancient Egyptian lore, humans aren't just minds living in bodies. There are actual multiple parts to the nonmaterial side of a person. I think everyone has something like seven souls, but I don't recall the number. But in particular, there are two, the ba and the ka. The ba is the personality and takes the form of a bird with a human head. The ka is the vital essence and is what goes away when the person dies.

I've seen some examples from other cultures that use a similar two-fold division, but re-assign some feature. The more emotional "animal soul" is the one that leaves the body in the form of a bird, butterfly, mouse, or other small creature, while the personality and essence of what the person was survives as a ghostly image or shade. The animal soul is the vital part, the spirit (Greek pneuma,) and the intelligent part is what we normally call the soul. AD&D seems to use this same distinction, or at least distinguishes between spirits and souls. Occultism and theosophy get a little more complicated and distinguish between the spirit or ethereal double, the astral body, the mental body, and sometimes the causal body. But we don't have to go there...

Anyways, I follow this pattern, but keep it simple: the spirit is the ethereal part. When a person dies, the spirit typically dissolves into ethereal particles and that's that. However, the spirit is connected to emotion and passion, so strong emotion can sometimes allow the spirit to continue its existence even after detaching from the body. It may maintain the appearance of the person at first, but the distinctive features tend to erode. It may retain some memory, usually about whatever strong emotion created it, but the spirit is at best semi-intelligent and really no longer the original person.

What you would call the person exists as an astral image. When the ethereal part or spirit separates from the body, the astral part or soul loses all connection to material existence. It can only be seen in dreams or by those with psychic abilities, and usually eventually gets caught in some dream-world. It can't return to a body without some kind of spirit. The Raise Dead spell repairs the original spirit, which usually lingers near the body, while the Resurrection spell rebuilds a new spirit to forge a new connection between body and soul.

I'll have more to say in a future post.

Not Your Father

Religion, some say, is a way to answer the question: "Why are we here?" Those referred to as "ethical religions" often begin their answer by comparing God or the divine force to a parent. These religions are so common today that we think of this as the natural way of understanding God.

But it wasn't always so. Greek religion, for example, does not include the idea that Zeus or the other Olympians are the parents of humanity, except in unique, literal instances like Hercules or Theseus. There are a couple origin stories for human beings in Greek mythology, but all of them portray humans as sort of the rebel brothers or cousins of the gods. Some versions have humans born of Gaea, practically making them co-equals with the Olympians; others have the Titans Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus make human beings and ultimately side with them in opposition to Olympus. The Greek gods are powerful and cause many things in the universe, but they are not like God as conceived in post-Greek religion; Greek religion is about finding some compromise, some state of truce, between mankind and the Olympians.

In swords & sorcery stories, almost any god that makes an appearance follows the Greek model, only moreso. These "gods" are usually monsters, sometimes not even intelligent monsters, sometimes not even pleasant or useful. I've probably said it before, but I think this Greek/swords & sorcery model works best for adventures, including RPG adventures. It creates more of a sense of imbalance and iffiness, giving adventurers more of a reason to take charge of their own destiny.

What about that ethical version of the divine? I think that's what Law as a force represents. Some kind of force, named as "God" in modern religions, but left mostly unnamed and unrealized in D&D and other RPGs with alignment. When a player decides to play a Lawful character, they are basically saying "My character is going to act on the basis of some Universal Good, even if the gods of this world do not fully embrace this themselves."

Elemental Forefathers

Regardless of the strength of an Elemental, only one of each type can be brought into existence during any "day". Thus, if a character possessed a device to call up an Air Elemental, but before he could employ it an opponent conjured an Air Elemental, another could not be created until the next day. (Monsters & Treasure, p18) 

Sounds like a dissociated mechanic, doesn't it?

Almost. Except that I think it actually arose from the idea that an elemental was a creation rather than a being summoned from elsewhere. The Conjure Elemental spell caused a substantial quantity of matter to take on a crude intelligence and independent behavior. Thus, once the earth or air in an area has been used, it can't be used again; you have to conjure a different kind of elemental. So, it's actually a very associated mechanic, treating matter in the area as a limited resource.

This was before the elemental planes were conceived, remember. You can see this in the Invisible Stalker description that comes immediately before the entry for elementals: stalkers aren't considered air elementals yet, and they are said to come from a non-dimensional plane.

The elementals in The Fantasy Trip have this same feel of being created rather than summoned. Both TFt and the LBBs fit my "plane-less cosmology", although the LBBs do have these suggestions of "extradimensional space" that doesn't have a clear concept yet. I'm actually OK with that: an endless number of "pockets" outside of normal space and time that are vague and difficult to comprehend.

Underused Pantheon

A discussion of the name "orc" reminded me of just how cool William Blake's mythology is, and how strange it is that, to my knowledge, it's never been used for swords & sorcery or heroic fantasy gaming. Even the names are cooler and more fantasy-esque than the ones we see in commercial settings: you've got your rather remote sky god/creator god Urizen, a force for Law but not necessarily for good; you've got Luvah, the god of love, passion, and feeling, who masquerades these days as the more violent and rebellious Red Orc, on the verge of breaking free of his chains; you've got a creative, inspiring force embodied as Urthona, who could be a great patron of magic-users.

It's an especially useful pantheon if you want to do a battle between Law and Chaos with Chaos as the (potential) good guys.

Leaping and Lingering

I want to finish up the topic of morality, gods, and cosmic forces in D&D-like games (previous installments were "Gods Against the Cosmos" and "Capital Morality".) This installment gets a little more practical and applies specifically to what I am planning for the namesake setting of this blog, the Nine and Thirty Kingdoms; it also incidentally addresses a passing thought Noisms expressed in today's Monsters and Manuals blogpost, on the subject of detail in gaming and fiction.

In yesterday's installment, I mentioned that the standard fantasy in many D&D-ish settings mixes medieval and classical influences, but leans more towards the latter than the former. D&D worlds tend to be superficially medieval, but with a pagan heart. If that is the intention, I argued, then why focus on Good and Evil as cosmic-level concepts, when that is so alien to polytheistic cultures? But the flipside to that example is to try for a more medieval feel, dropping the polytheism and having most NPCs worry about the state of their immortal soul, seeing demons everywhere. It's actually close to what I plan to do for the Nine and Thirty Kingdoms; I like the medieval-classical blended worlds, but I've long had a dream of a more medieval option as a break in the monotony.

There have been some products aimed at a more medieval setting, from Hârn to Yrth, but the approach of these settings seems all wrong to me. They seem to try for a medieval feel by looking up actual historical cultural details and listing them all, perhaps with some slight alteration to make a consistent, unique medievalesque fantasy setting. It's realism through enumeration. That can be useful for some, but a comment in Noism's post summed up how I feel about it: it's "obsession with the minutiae of the setting which categorises all geek pursuits from Star Trek to Dragon Ball Z and which sometimes feels like stamp collecting".

I call this the "rational detail" approach. The problem with it is that it's not very good for improvised or sandbox-style play. What I'd prefer is a handful general principles and themes that can be used to paint a setting with broad brushstrokes and give DMs a tool to improvise details within the boundaries of that setting. I call this the "leaping and lingering" approach, from the way descriptions work in Scottish border ballads: the writer leaps from scene to scene and focus to focus, treating each as if it were a snapshot of the total sequence of events, and lingers on a few details at each point to suggest the situation as a whole without enumerating every single detail within that situation.

To give a crude example of this approach in something more concrete than morality, consider dungeon design. Some first-time DMs make the mistake of just describing the monster, traps, and treasure in the room without any other detail. If a room has none of these, the DM describes it as empty, or gives a superficial detail to break the monotony of an empty room. Some designers try to help a DM avoid this situation by describing all the contents of a room in detail. A better approach, though, is just to label a room as "alchemist's storeroom" or "barracks", and list a few general points about the dungeon or its inhabitants that help distinguish them from other dungeons or creatures. Describing a dungeon as "ruins left over from the Bronze Age" allows a DM to improvise details suggest this: wooden features show signs of rot, metal tools and features are usually bronze or copper, and there's lots of rubble on the floor. If the players search the rubble in the "barracks", the DM can mention scraps of cloth and wool. In the "alchemist's storeroom", mention pot shards and powder residues. There are no lists made in advance, the DM just improvises based on the needs of the moment.

Back to the topic of medieval morality in a fantasy game, what we know or believe about Cosmic Good and Evil, or Law and Chaos, becomes one of these general principles used to improvise details about the setting. Knowing that a particular creature type is aligned with the forces of Good, and that the stereotypical associations with Good include "light" and things like halos, pleasant odors, self-sacrifice, and service, we can improvise details about its appearance and behavior that suggests a Good creature. Likewise, we can improvise details about Evil-aligned creatures, like a hint of scaliness, or or the odor of brimstone, or a fondness for inflicting pain. We don't need all the details in advance, just the general sketch of Evil and how this particular creature differs from the Evil norm.

However, in keeping with the "leaping and lingering" approach, I would not want to predefine the plans of the forces of Good and Evil, or the events in the upcoming cosmic battle. In fact, the cosmic battle might not even happen in the characters' lifetime. It's better in my opinion improvise details as needed, in keeping with the general principles of what Good and Evil want. Furthermore, the aim of the Nine and Thirty Kingdoms specifically is a sword & sorcery setting with a medieval feel, so despite the fact that the inhabitants of the Kingdoms believe in a cosmic battle, the focus is more on individuals with personal concerns influenced by their feelings about Good and Evil, instead of on large scale maneuvers of the cosmic forces. Even in a setting informed by cosmic forces, it's easier to manage a narrower human-level focus than a broader universal one, and easier to understand as well.

Capital Morality

Continuing to discuss James Raggi's recent topic of Good and Evil in RPGs, I'd like to support his point about separating morality from divinity by pointing out how unrealistic a battle of Good versus Evil is. No, I don't mean that there is no Good and Evil, or that there has never been any battle between them. What I mean is that the whole concept of a battle between Good and Evil, in their capitalized forms, is not only somewhat inconsistent with a sword & sorcery aesthetic, it's a comparatively recent idea.

D&D and several other fantasy RPG settings are sort of a mish-mash of medieval-era and classical-era ideas. Although the technology, politics, and culture are medieval in flavor, the fantastic elements seem to mostly come from classical myth and legend; clerics and elementals are the most medieval of the fantastic elements in the original rules, with the rest -- magic scrolls and swords, dwarves, elves, most of the monsters and magic -- coming from Greek, Roman, Celtic, and Germanic pre-Christian sources, sometimes by way of later literary works like Tolkein. In particular, D&D chooses polytheism as its religious model instead of monotheism.

And yet, the battle of Good and Evil comes mainly from monotheism. The Zoroastrians are the first to propose a moral battle between supernatural forces as an explanation for events of history and everyday life. The Hebrews absorb this concept into their religion after the Persians liberate them from Babylon; from there, the concept drifts into a couple fringe cults of Judaism, including one that becomes Christianity. This new form of Judaism breaks out into the rest of the world by focusing on Gentiles, and eventually one such Christian of the Arian sect founds a new offshoot, Islam. These two together come to dominate most of the world.

Polytheists, in contrast, did not believe in Evil as a huge, immanent supernatural force. There were terrifying acts of the gods, the same gods who could also give boons. There was sacrilege, blasphemy, oath-breaking, and the breaking of taboos by foolhardy human beings. The closest the ancients come to Evil are embodiments of chaos, such as Apep or Ymir or Tiamat or Typhon; Chaos is not so much immoral as dangerous and destructive and thus needing to be controlled.

Polytheists did not even believe in Good as a huge, immanent supernatural force. The first "good" is lowercase, in the form of good fortune or material blessings. The next "good" is virtue, which stems from piety and respect towards the supernatural combined with social graces that promote good fortune and material blessings, the first "good". The ancients do not talk about aligning yourself with Good, but with leading a good life.

My feeling on this, then, is that if I want to have a polytheistic culture and a more fantastic, classical-style setting, I should stay away from Cosmic Good and Cosmic Evil and instead focus on more mundane versions of good and evil. Of course, there's another side to this coin, which I will deal with my next installment.