The "Left" and "Right" of D&D

   If you type the words “Svenny” or “Wurú the Unnameable” into Twitter, you won’t get anything besides crickets – even with the popular DnD or RPG hashtags.

   If you type the words “Jim Darkmagic” or “Sly Flourish” in a Dragonsfoot thread, you will get no reaction either – a big fat zilch.

   These are two separate, self-contained ecosystems. Sly Flourish is never mentioned on either Dragonsfoot or ODD74, and the good old Jakállan Underworld is never, ever discussed or evoked on Twitter.

   Why is that?

   It’s all the same game, isn’t it? It is all part of the same hobby. How in the world did Dungeons & Dragons grow into two mutually exclusive, parallel multiverses? When did this unholy schism happen?

   Well, it “happened” slowly and gradually, like any other fundamental change. A good chunk of the first generation of OD&D / AD&D players didn’t really get into Vampire: The Masquerade and other such games: they became what we now call grognards – they stick to one system and play with the same old books they bought in the seventies. I’m a bit of a grognard myself, to be honest. I still run a First Edition AD&D campaign, simply because it’s awesome – flaws and all – and why the hell not?

   The nineties saw a significant influx of new, younger players. White Wolf and its line of storytelling games brought in more women players than ever before. The old dungeon crawl lost most if not all of its appeal. The focus was now on character interactions: protagonists and allies, rivals and archfoes. In one word: backgrounds.

   Yes, White Wolf did publish an awful lot of material; in the end, the whole affair felt more like a writers collective than a gaming company. Those innumerable clanbooks and supplements added much “fluff” to the hobby of role-playing games. In retrospect, it may have been a necessary reaction to the overly technical and realist mechanics of the late eighties – when three distinct tables and one location chart were needed for every single backswing of your fighter’s broadsword.

   Rich storyline, or complex game mechanics? That is the question.

   The folks over at Dragonsfoot favor the game mechanics. “This is how the game is supposed to be played, and if you do otherwise, you’re doing it wrong.”

   The crowd on Twitter seem to favor the storyline. “We are all telling this story together, and every character brings his or her own uniqueness to the proceedings.”

   One could go as far as call it opposite political views.

   Everyone must follow the same rules and gaming etiquette, and do it exactly as it is supposed to be done. Is this the Left, or the Right?

   Everyone is welcome to do as they see fit, thus bringing more texture and flavor to the shared experience of tabletop role-playing. Is this the Right, or the Left?

   What is the mysterious Left, anyway? Is it freedom? The sharing economy? The absence of social hierarchy? No rules? But also, wealth redistribution? Everyone being equal? – And what is the mysterious Right? Tradition? Rules? Some people being better than others? But also, entrepreneurship? Freedom to do business?

   Both sides demand “rules” for some things and “freedom” for other things. The only real societal split is around where to put up fences, and where to free range.

   Is there overlapping somewhere?

   I want to see a table of crunch gurus sitting back and laughing as one of their fellow players chants, “Cheese! Cheese! Cheese!”

   In Gloomhaven, the rules are the whole point of the game, and the story – because there is one – barely amounts to 1% of what happens at the table. Sometimes my friends and I will finish a scenario, slay the last monster on the board, and then one of us will ask, “What was it that we needed to retrieve from this ‘Vibrant Grotto’ again?”

   And if the very last monster is slain before we had the chance to correctly loot all treasure tiles, nobody can say, “Let’s assume we heal ourselves and grab any remaining treasure, shall we?” Such reckless conduct amounts to “breaking the game,” according to any and all of the Gloomhaven forums. You cannot do that. No free range.

   In D&D, the whole point is the story. Any ruleset is just a frame to drive the story forward. D&D Dungeon Masters can say, “Okay, you finish off the last two goblins and grab their treasure chest. Next, you find yourselves in front of a raging, icy underground river. What do you do?”

   You cannot – ever – do that in Gloomhaven. There is no editing. No cutaways. Each scenario is one long, uninterrupted take. No Dungeon Master means your movie has no director, and all cameras just roll permanently. This is yet another difference between “story” and “rules.” The Wolf of Wall Street versus the thousands of CCTV cameras in and around Wall Street buildings.

   It is completely possible to run D&D like it was a game of Gloomhaven – but it is impossible to play Gloomhaven and indulge in what Cecilia D’Anastasio calls “the role-playing caprice.” I already touched on this subject last year in a post titled Rules Light, after one GURPS aficionado had said on Twitter, “Fuck narrativist and rules light.”

   The current “XP or no XP” debate is another shining example of this ideological split. Adding up XP is pure crunch. Awarding levels for milestone achievements is pure fluff. Is there really more freedom to be found on one side or the other? I’m not convinced, either way. Sure, math is an unforgiving, rigid frame – but so is a DM that can damn well decide when and where the characters level up. It’s like putting money in your bank account without ever knowing that account’s balance – until one day the bank says, “You’ve got enough now! Buy house?”

   Role-playing games started off very much to the “left.” Arneson used to hide the rules behind a screen so that he could change them on the fly. He probably awarded XP on the fly, too. The rigid math came later. Mind you, rigid math can be fun. Last January, my Gloomhaven character finished a scenario just 1 XP short of level 4. If I had played one more of those 1 XP attack cards, I’d be level 4 now. But no. Yours truly will have to play one more scenario at level 3, tagging along with a level 4 Mindthief and a level 4 Tinkerer. Well, it’s fine: the grinding and suffering are part of the fun. In a way, it’s hilarious.

   In my AD&D campaign, since we only get to play 2 or 3 sessions a year, I would have enthusiastically granted the missing XP to any player character. “You’re 1 XP short of leveling up? I give you 10 more XP right now, my friend – and you level up!” Maximize the fun factor, always; a level 5 cleric is more fun than a level 4 cleric; a level 6 thief is more fun than a level 5 thief.

   “Story” versus “game mechanics” again. Perhaps the whole thing isn’t about Left and Right after all, but simply about “Easy” and “Hard.” Many hardcore gamers are eager to adapt RuneQuest’s magic and skills to Tri-Stat, and run that in the Malazan world instead of Glorantha. That’s the epitome of custom-made. It is the equivalent of delving into the intricacies of Linux: some like it, and others prefer the seamless, readymade easiness of Mac. Linux is “hard” and Mac is “easy” – or is it the other way around? You can do what you want with Linux, and set it up whichever way you like: isn’t that “easy?” With Mac, you’re pretty much held hostage: they’ve got a firm grip on your throat. Isn’t that “hard?”

   Linux is “Left” and Mac is “Right” – or is it the other way around? That is for someone else to ponder.

   Sly Flourish recently said that the majority of D&D players have now only been playing for the last three years. The majority? That is huge. A paradigm shift is absolutely inevitable. And perhaps five or ten years down the road, a segment of this mass of new players will get into other role-playing games, perhaps adapting American Gods for Nobilis or The Expanse for Shadowrun or The Witcher for Numenera – or something even weirder. New blood is always a good thing.

   One commenter over on Chirine’s Workbench summed up this paradigm shift quite nicely. “Back then,” he wrote, “we were playing worlds; nowadays, we play character backstories.” This is interesting. Indeed, during the seventies and eighties, the real world was very much the story, and everyone living in it felt like an extra – just a brick in the wall. With the advent of social networks today, everybody can be “the story,” and the world around appears to be merely a decor. But it is a lie, of course: you’re still just a brick in the wall – only this brick has way more friends / followers / boosters than the next brick…

   The world was the thing, like in Avatar. Characters just happened in it. Was this the “let the Free Market decide” Right, or was it the “no elites / everyone’s the same” Left?

   Back in 1983, if someone had told me that Dungeons & Dragons would one day see a sort of left-right axis, I would have replied, first, what the fuck, and second, anything else besides D&D, sure, but not D&D! Not the one precious thing in today’s cultural landscape that isn’t a god damned competitive dick-measuring contest!

   There shouldn’t be any kind of schism: we’re better than that.

   I just wish the two sides would talk more – Dragonsfoot and Twitter – the old-school “game mechanics” side, and that new majority of story-focused role-players.

The Lich and the Elephant

   Huthak the barbarian is having brunch with Rausche the druid and Grimbald the thief at a lovely establishment called The Priestess and the Sorcerer. They are busy discussing the crazy things that some of their comrades have done as of late, detailed in my previous post: Descent Into Malbolge. The three are trying to decide if these guys are uncanny mavericks, or just, y’know, insane.

   Suddenly, whoosh, a djinn appears right next to their table.

   The other patrons are flabbergasted, and some even fall down to their knees. “Three wishes! Three wishes!” they plead. To which the djinn replies, “It’s never been three wishes – I’ve been saying this for hundreds of years – it is three dishes. I am a chef, you see. My name is Prospero Sharma. They call me the Cook of the Gods. I cook for Queen Titania, for Corellon Larethian, and sometimes for Bahamut, the platinum dragon.”

   The djinn orders everybody out, except for Huthak, Rausche, and Grimbald. He tells the three that he desperately needs their help. He says, “My elephant, Spark, has been taken by a malevolent jerk who calls himself Zarr. This guy is a world-class nutcase. His real name is Bardish Dong. He’s a puny magic-user, like, not that powerful. He’s been cursed with a skull head, and decided to use that to his advantage by creating a whole new persona for himself, and pretending to be a lich. He found an old crown, wears bone white gloves, and dresses in ancient, tattered robes. And he changed his name to Zarr the lich. But he is not a lich. He is an ordinary magic-user, and really not that strong. His major assets are two magic items: a Wand of Teleportation, and a Censer of Controlling Fire Elementals. He made his lair inside mount Igrá, a volcano, and attracted a few elementals to do his bidding. The rest is just gullible Humans and credulous Drows and Troglodytes who really believe to be in the service of an actual lich.”

   “Why us?” asks the barbarian.

   “I am, alas, allergic to magic items,” says Prospero, “and since the three of you don’t carry any such items, you are the perfect candidates: I’ll be able to carry you through the air, to mount Igrá, and then inside the wormholes of living fire that crisscross the core of that volcano, all the way to Zarr’s Sanctum. But once we get to where this faux lich keeps my poor old Spark, you’re gonna be on your own. Zarr knows my weakness – and scatters magic items around his lair. I will be powerless in there; you shall have to defeat Zarr’s followers and free my elephant all by yourselves. I am told that whenever a battle seems lost, Zarr uses this damn Wand of Teleportation and flees the scene.”

   “But what’s in it for us?” enquires the druid.

   The djinn answers, “As I said before, I can grant you three dishes. The Dish of Strength, the Dish of Agility, and the Dish of Fortitude. Each dish will improve your physical abilities differently, and the effects on mortals can remain for up to a year and a half. I can only prepare one Dish of Strength per year, and only one Dish of Agility, and only one Dish of Fortitude. You decide between yourselves who gets to consume which meal. Bring your own wine!”

   Prospero conjures up a life-sized image of Spark. “This is who you’re looking for. He is very dear to my heart. Please, bring him back to me.”

   Children looking in through the window. “There’s an elephant in the room!” they whisper.

   The three adventurers accept the mission. The djinn can transport up to three Human-sized beings with him through air and through fire; since Grimbald is a Gnome, and rather small, Prospero is also able to bring along Rausche’s dog.

   After a twenty-minute flight, they get to the volcano. The steep, jagged slopes of mount Igrá are dotted with dozens of cave-mouths. Raging fire comes out of every single one of those caves...

   Prospero chooses one entrance and flies right into the flames, still carrying the awed Huthak, Grimbald, and Rausche. The dog, obviously, is freaking out. And yet, none of them even feel the fire’s heat – and nobody takes any damage.

   They emerge from the fiery wormhole in some sort of central, bottleneck room. A welcoming committee is already there: a fire elemental, and 6 Troglodytes. The djinn releases the PCs from his magical embrace, and proceeds to take care of the elemental. The PCs are left to fight the Trogs: 5 of them charge directly towards Huthak, but the sixth is just a very old Troglodyte elder who stays behind and bellows orders to his valiant “sons.”

   As soon as the battle appears to be lost, that old Trog flees through the next fire-gate.

   Five minutes later, the PCs and the djinn once again zip through those complicated wormholes of fire. Suddenly, Prospero is jumped by two more elementals! He has no choice but to throw the two Humans, the Gnome and the dog out of a random gate. The PCs end up in a funny place where “candidates” have to subject themselves to various “tests” in order to become “Agents of Zarr.” This is a scene I stole from Patrick Rothfuss. Love you, Viari!

   The receiving clerk in the test room was a coffer corpse named Bitar. He had nothing but positive things to say about Zarr. The “lich” apparently treats all of his employees and agents very decently: they even have an after-death pension plan!

   Having vanquished the elementals who attacked him inside the wormhole, an exhausted Prospero comes back after ten minutes. “I’ve located the Sanctum,” he says. “Spark is there: I can feel his presence!”

   The druid takes a few more minutes to meditate, regaining his spells, and then they say farewell to Bitar the coffer corpse, and barrel down one last winding, blazing wormhole. As soon as they emerge within Zarr’s Sanctum, they see the elephant standing in front of a noxious fountain of reddish liquid. Right behind the unresponsive animal is a mammoth pile of dung.

   As I prepped this set piece, I honestly wondered if the players would see right through my bluff; because, of course, that is not a pile of elephant dung – it’s a black pudding!

   None of the players suspected anything. There IS a god for Dungeon Masters!

   The Sanctum’s floor is covered with magic items: daggers, swords, spears, hammers, shields, helmets, talismans, amulets, rings, bracers, gauntlets et al. Two hooded cultists lurk in the shadows, and Zarr himself stands further away on a tribune, flanked by a Drow bodyguard. Huthak the barbarian immediately spots an assassin hidden near the top of one of the Sanctum’s pillars. Everyone rolls initiative.

   The party targets the assassin first: Rausche casts entangle on her, and both Huthak and Grimbald loose their arrows. Prospero stays by the fire-gate, and vomits purple smoke with gold speckles inside of it. Way too many magic items…

   Zarr laughs hysterically. “Look at the great Prospero – the Cook of the Gods – puking his magical guts like there is no tomorrow!”

   The “lich” casts mirror image on himself. One cultist casts magic missile on Grimbald. Rausche casts obscuration on himself. The other cultist moves forward, curved dagger in hand.

   When the assassin falls from her perch, the PCs advance towards the cultists – but then they are surprised from behind by the black pudding. Nobody saw it coming. It was awesome.

   Rausche heard a telepathic voice that seemed to be coming from one beautiful hammer lying amongst the innumerable other items. “Pick me! Pick me!” says the whispering voice. Hesitantly, the druid picks up the hammer. “Now, use me to strike an enemy: you’ll see what happens!” Rausche starts clobbering the black pudding. The hammer is +3 and indeed inflicts decent damage. Still, the druid has to take a break and cast cure light wounds on himself after being lashed at by the ’pudding for 14 damage.

   One cultist jumps across the room in an attempt to stab the prone, helpless djinn, but Huthak finishes the sneaky bastard with an arrow. Grimbald kills the second cultist in good old-fashioned melee. After that, a Trog emerges from around the corner, and Zarr’s Drow bodyguard steps down from the tribune in order to join the fight. Huthak and Grimbald face off against Trog and Drow while Rausche and his dog continue to hit that virulent black pudding. Zarr blasts the barbarian with two magic missiles, and then casts stinking cloud on Grimbald. Huthak takes 8 damage: he’s unimpressed. The Gnome aces his Save, tumbling out of the stinking cloud unharmed and in great style.

   When Huthak cuts down the Trog, Zarr uses his Wand to teleport the hell out of there – but his three mirror images remain on that tribune, silently laughing in unison.

   Bodyguard and black pudding are both finished by the end of the following round. The party is victorious!

   For the next half an hour, they carry all those magic items in the far corner of the Sanctum, and eventually the djinn can feel a little bit better. He gets everybody out of the volcano: one trip for the PCs, and then another trip for the elephant. Since Rausche had picked up a cursed weapon and could no longer let go of it, Prospero was unable to carry him out of mount Igrá himself. I had to do some last-minute DMing aerobatics there. Prospero summoned his sous-chef – another djinn. It was much easier than to keep Rausche a prisoner within mount Igrá for several weeks and force him to become a reluctant Agent of Zarr.

   Everyone got back to the inn. Prospero said, “I am a djinn of my word. Get yourselves the best table here, and gimme two hours. I’ll be back with your three dishes. In the meanwhile, here’s the menu!”

The Dish of Agility

Zesty Sphinx stew with Twin Paradises carrots, turnips, and cabbage, served with Arvandor bread made from Corellon Larethian’s own crops.

The Dish of Fortitude

Slow-cooked Blue Dragon short ribs with Elysian garlic and molasses, served with assorted char-grilled Seven Heavens greens and Feywild croutons.

The Dish of Strength

Ki-rin tartare à la Baklunish with Arcadian royal jelly and roasted Gladsheim spinach and beet salad.

*

   The barbarian chose to eat the Dish of Strength. His 16 STR is going up to 17 for the next year and a half.

   The druid chose the Dish of Fortitude. His 16 CON goes up one point – and it’s gonna boost his Hit Points.

   The thief chose the Dish of Agility. His 18 DEX is temporarily going up to 19. This is awesome. What D&D character wouldn’t seize the opportunity to get one of his stats over 18, even if it’s only for a few games?

   Zarr will be back. Liches always want their revenge!

Descent into Malbolge

   In May of 2017, Heir Malezia, a level 4 magic-user, signed an infernal pact that granted him two additional levels of experience; that character suddenly went from a puny caster of magic missiles to a multiple-fireball-throwing badass.

   In August of 2017, the entire party went to Hell, on a very specific mission. For those of you who have been readers of this blog for a while, you’ll probably remember that particular post. When the party reached Avernus, each character appeared on a large rune belonging to one of the nine Planes of Hell. Each player drew a card, and each of the cards had a short text printed on it. “If you ever return to Avernus after today, you will become a Lemur, and serve Tiamat for all eternity...” “If you ever set foot in Dis, the Second Plane of the Nine Hells, you will be transformed into a pillar of salt...” Et cetera. Each character has one specific Plane of Hell where they could never, ever return or go.

   Fast-forward to October of 2019. The level 6 Heir Malezia is visited by a contract devil who basically tells him, “Dear Sir, your time is almost up – but you can sign this contract right here, and resell your Mortal Soul to my master, Duke Hutijin. Alas, any new contract will only take effect if you break into the Infernal Vault and destroy the original contract you have signed over two Years of Man ago. A teleport circle is included herein, and you can bring up to eight comrades along with you on that heist. You won’t be able to remain inside the Infernal Vault for long, though. Every intruder will be teleported out after a brief moment. Make each second count.”

   Easy enough, right?

   But wait – the Infernal Vault is actually a meteorite that constantly moves through six of the Nine Hells, between Avernus and Malbolge. Which layer is the Vault currently into? Which character is going to become a Lemur – or a pillar of salt – because he was forever banned from that particular Plane of Hell?

   Is it worth risking the ranger’s life, or the bard’s life, or Brother Tom’s life, to save an evil-adjacent magic-user? That’s for the group to decide. I expected a huge debate, but in fact it proved to be rather quick and straightforward. When one member of the party faces Imminent Death, the others usually step up. And so they did.

   Landa the cleric, Huthak the barbarian and Dalmas the monk did not take part in that 2017 expedition to Avernus, so their lives are not at risk. They could still perish, mind you, but not of a “sudden death” right at the beginning of the game. As for Heir Malezia himself, his 2017 rune had been the Nessus rune, so he can never set foot in the ninth Plane of Hell. Anyhow, the Infernal Vault does not travel that far.

   They drew one of six cards – and that card told us that the Infernal Vault was currently passing through the Sixth Plane of Hell. A big sigh of relief. The bard cannot go to the Second; the ranger can’t ever set foot in the Fourth; and Brother Tom can’t go to the Fifth. In Malbolge, the PCs were all safe. Sudden death averted!

   Each of the six PCs and three NPCs appeared on a different bluish star carved in the Vault’s floor. They immediately observed that seven out of nine vaults had guardians: 3 Death Knights, and 4 four-armed gargoyles.

   Brother Tom and NPC Klovis charged one of the Death Knights. The ranger and Landa attacked one of the gargoyles. Dalmas the monk deployed his Diabolical Flying Carpet.

   Nobody ever got within 5 squares of the vault on the far left or the one on the far right, even though the one on the right didn’t have any gargoyle or Death Knight standing in front of it.

   A Rage Drake emerged from the ominous cave-mouth underneath the tower.

   The second Death Knight created a wall of ice right in front of “his” vault, and then left his post to go after Heir and Klynch, the magic-users. The party wouldn’t be able to get to that frozen vault for the rest of the scene, of course.

   One stellar moment occurred when Klynch, the level 5 magic-user (the one who didn’t sell his soul), decided to take on the Death Knight who had left his post. Just to give you some perspective here: Klynch has 14 Hit Points, wears a pair of cursed Bracers of Defenselessness, and has a +3 dagger of Petrification with only 3 charges left in it, while the Death Knight has 75 Hit Points, a 50% magic resistance, and wields a two-handed maul +1.

   First, Klynch casts spider climb to haul his ass up on the lower ledge of the tower. The following round, he casts monster summoning, and a dire wolf appears right next to the advancing Death Knight. On the third round, Klynch performs a “Kirk’s Flying Tackle” from above, and jumps back down on the fully armored Knight, attempting to stab him with his +3 dagger. I allow him another +2 To Hit bonus for the jump. Still, he misses, and takes 5 points of damage from that 25-foot fall. Everyone hears a loud crunch. Klynch lies on the ground as if unconscious or dead; he’s right beside the Death Knight’s left leg, but the Knight is busy fighting the dire wolf. On round four, Klynch attempts to stab the Knight in the foot – and misses yet again. The Knight pays no attention to him, and tries to finish off that pesky wolf.

   Round five: Klynch attempts to stab his opponent in the nuts, since he’s lying on the ground, and quite perfectly positioned to do so. He needs 16. With the +3 dagger, he needs 13. He rolls a solid 15. This time, it’s a hit! I roll 2d10 for the Death Knight’s magic resistance, and get 80. The Knight doesn’t resist to the magic. Then I make a Saving Throw vs Petrification, and roll a 2.

   The Death Knight is turned to stone!

   Epic and hilarious.

   Remember, kids: killing huge monsters is possible, even if you only have 14 Hit Points!

   Elsewhere in the Infernal Vault, Landa, the bard and the ranger whacked two of those 4-armed gargoyles, and quickly emptied two vaults full of infernal contracts. Rot grub rained down on the ranger and the bard as they poured acid onto the contracts to destroy as many of them as possible.

   Dalmas the monk brought his flying carpet around: Landa, the bard and the ranger hitched a ride on it. Down by the pool of lava, the first Death Knight cast power word: kill on Brother Tom. Save or die!

   Brother Tom made a successful Saving Throw. There was another big sigh of relief.

   Meanwhile, Ashtag the Drider, an allied NPC, fought against the Rage Drake. Heir cast one of his jump spells to close in on one of the remaining gargoyles. He then cast fireball, and rolled 30 points of damage – his best damage ever on 6d6, beating a previous record of 28.

   A pair of shrieking harpies then showed up. The Rage Drake disengaged, skirted the base of the tower, and leapt 20 feet onto the flying carpet. Ashtag took it upon himself to tackle both harpies. Dalmas had no other choice but to fight hand-to-hand with the Rage Drake. Monks – what can I say?

   In the end, the party had enough time to empty 5 out of 9 vaults, destroying 1742 infernal contracts. Then, everyone was teleported out. It’s a safety feature of the Infernal Vault. But the devils really need to improve their security, right? Eighty-one Dukes and Duchesses of Hell just lost 1742 souls – their most precious holdings and valuables.

   Duke Hutijin, the one who “bought back” Heir Malezia’s soul by facilitating the party’s access to the Infernal Vault, couldn’t care less for the mighty mess he’s created. Hutijin serves Mephistopheles, and Mephistopheles is Asmodeus’ main rival. The Infernal Vault contains infernal contracts belonging to Duchesses and Dukes aligned with Asmodeus. Vassals of Baalzebul and Mephistopheles keep their paperwork on their own Planes of Hell: the Seventh and the Eight. They didn’t lose a single soul during that most brazen heist.

   Yes: the party has unwittingly entered the tortuous field of Hell’s politics. Powerful devils will certainly seek swift revenge!

   Even the final reveal was great. I put 9 cards on the table, face down – one for each of the 9 vaults. Heir had to pick 5 cards, since he and his comrades had managed to open 5 vaults and destroy all infernal contracts stored inside.

   Of the 5 cards that had been drawn, the “Heir’s Contract!” card turned up fourth. We had awesome suspense up until the very end. The other players yelled, “Nope… Nope… Nope!…” and then, when the right card was flipped, there was a loud cheer around the table. What a perfect ending to a D&D game session. Imagine if “Heir’s Contract!” had turned up first; talk about jumping the gun!

   A time constraint, killer odds, and epic Saves to make.

   After such a game, players can truly say, “We played D&D!”

   One friend told me, “My social life ain’t much these days, and your gaming events are a welcome break from monotony!” I couldn’t have asked for a better thank you.

   Several gods smiled down on us. Arneson. Gygax. Istus. Mephistopheles…

A Study of Beholders

   With every year that passes, beholders are getting angrier.

   The beholder shown on the cover of 1975’s Greyhawk was just a smooth ball of baleful eyes floating around, expressionless. A wider, more distinct mouth was added in 1977’s Monster Manual, with silly grin and pointy teeth. Obviously, the wider mouth was put there to enhance facial expression. One central eye and a small piehole doesn’t allow for a very wide range. It’s a one-eyed fish kind of situation.

   With a wider mouth, you’ve got more options. The 1977 beholder seemed happy enough – and why would any beholder be unhappy? I’d certainly have a silly grin on my face 24/7 if I was lucky enough to fly and have a disintegration ray and a charm person ray!

   What I call the “unifrown” came along seven years later, in 1984: it was a stroke of genius by illustrator Steve Bisset.

   With both the wide mouth and the unifrown now in place, beholders could express almost any emotion they wanted – but they only became angrier and angrier. Why is that? I’ve always thought the Greyhawk beholder was eerily frightening with its blank stare and fishlike mien. And the Monster Manual beholder was creepy because of the aforementioned grin. “Look at that merry psycho sphere of evil!”

   The modern beholder, that lick-spittle ball of spikes and fury, is a little over the top for me. Why are they so angry all the time? Hey, Eye Tyrants, relax! You guys are way up there with the liches and red dragons. Chill out, will ya?

   There really isn’t much to go on in the 1983 article The Ecology of the Beholder. It reads more like a chapter in a novel about a boy who is probably going to become a paladin. The article only tells us that the beholder’s flight isn’t magical in nature, and that every beholder spits 1 to 4 eggs per year from its mouth. So, a dispel magic or an antimagic field cannot cause a beholder to drop down. Nothing would be more pathetic than a helpless beholder rolling on the floor, unable to fly. And beholder reproduction also seemed absolutely ludicrous. Imagine, if you will, those mating positions...

   All beholders spit eggs from their mouth.

   No sexual organs – maybe that’s why they’re so angry all the time.

   But let us dig a little deeper here. For instance: skull, or no skull? One could argue that the chitinous plates covering a beholder’s body are the only skeleton – or, in this case, exoskeleton – they need. But then again, they’ve got a wide maw with teeth, right? Teeth means jawbone, and jawbone means skeleton. Here is something Ed Greenwood and Roger E. Moore should have tackled.

   What would a beholder’s skull look like? It would need ten small holes for the eyestalk muscles and nerves to pass through, and it also implies that there’s an “open” spot down under, because if it was just solid bone all around, the articulation wouldn’t be able to open.

   A beholder’s stomach has to be located above its throat. When a beholder swallows its food, it swallows up into its stomach. (Yes, read that again.) The stomach connects to the intestines, and the intestines eventually circle all the way back to the underside of the spherical body, where the anus ought to be found.

   Older beholders would also have a sort of bulge underneath. With time, the inner organs would naturally begin to droop through the mandible aperture. An ancient beholder would look something like this:

   That’ll make ‘em angrier still.

   I guess I’m not helping much here.

Who Invented the Beholder?

   Allow me to reiterate something I have already touched upon in this blog. Beholders, in all likelihood, come from the fabled Tekumel “Eyes.”

   Professor M.A.R. Barker first published his Empire of the Petal Throne role-playing game in 1974, describing in it an array of 33 ancient technological devices looking like eyes, each one capable of shooting a ray of power in the direction it is pointed in. The “Excellent Ruby Eye” would cast the equivalent of a hold person or hold monster spell. The “Splendid Eye of Krá the Mighty” would shoot a powerful telekinesis ray. The “Eye of Frigid Breath” generated a pretty straightforward death ray (i.e. Save or die).

   This book was self-published one year before the Greyhawk supplement on the cover of which we can see the very first, expressionless beholder.

   What I think has happened is rather simple. Gary Gygax read about the Professor’s “Eyes” and thought, “How could these different shooting rays be thrown against a D&D adventuring party, but without the constant need of non-player characters to hold and operate the devices?”

   And the answer was, of course, take a bunch of “Eyes,” make them fly, and give them a will of their own. Theron Kuntz wrote that up, since Gary himself was so busy. After that, bundling up these eyes together was just a formality!

   I’m not saying Gygax and Kuntz plagiarized the Professor. You have to put yourself back in the 1974 frame of mind: they all borrowed from each other. Tekumel’s Ahoggyá is an obvious borrowing of Ashton Smith’s Tsathoggua – and the Ahoggyá itself inspired AD&D’s Xorn. You get the gist.

   Canonically speaking, Empire of the Petal Throne is a First Edition D&D setting, so why wouldn’t the Eyes have some obscure, arcane link to the beholders, and why wouldn’t the Xorns be distant “elemental” cousins of the Ahoggyá? I’m sure there is a way to link pre-béthorm Tekumel to prehistoric Oerth via Spelljammer. You just need the lawyers to agree – and why the hell wouldn’t they? Just imagine the galaxy-spanning science-fantasy campaign!

   There must be a Beholder homeworld out there somewhere, just like there’s definitely an Illithid homeworld. Let it be said that I, for one, would buy this book in a heartbeat.

Role-Playing Races

   Up until recently, there were no races in tabletop role-playing games, only caricatures.

   As you worldbuild, you are faced with several fundamental choices. First and foremost among those is the choice to invent new races to populate your world, or keep the Human races we know and love, and simply reinsert them into your creation. There is an abyss of difference between Empire of the Petal Throne and Warhammer’s Old World, and making a list of every fantasy setting in that intermediate space would be a daunting, herculean task. I like to think of Robert E. Howard’s “Hyborian Age,” one of the very first fantasy worlds, as being centrist – more or less.

   Howard’s races were inspired by the multifarious people and empires of real History (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, et cetera), while Gloomhaven came up with a bunch of original, new races. Both choices work, mind you; but if you keep the Human races, the difference between your world’s social dynamics and Real Earth dynamics is really going to matter. If your world map resembles Real Earth geography but with no “Africa” (like Toril) or no “Israel” (like the Old World), you might get in trouble sooner than later. If the people with dark skin are Emperor, First Sword of Empire, and High Mage – like in Steven Erikson’s books – your worldbuilding is obviously more positive and modern. If there are no people of color anywhere except in far-off, uncivilized parts, your model is indeed outdated. The Hyborian Age of Conan was created in the 1930s. Middle-Earth was fleshed out in the 1940s. It is now 2019.

   Gloomhaven is basically the TV show Grimm, except that everyone is Bauerschwein, Ziegevolk, Blutbaden, et cetera, and “woged” permanently. There are no Humans, or perhaps they only appear much later in the story. The Inox look like Chaos Beastmen from Warhammer. The Vermlings look like Men of Leng from Call of Cthulhu. The Orchids are a fuchsia version of Avatar’s Blue People. Race problem solved, right? Well, it may be an easy way out after all, but still much better than Tolkien’s “swarthy” Easterlings and REH’s “mongrel” Stygians.

   Yet, basically, they’re still caricatures. All Inox are the same; there is no Inox scientist trying to figure out why the equinoxes drift along the world’s ecliptic.

   Caricatures are easy. They’re a template. It’s like choosing a class. You’re a ranger in Dungeons & Dragons or a good old P.I. in Call of Cthulhu or a kickass bounty hunter in Star Wars. Rangers and P.I.s and sci-fi bounty hunters are all the same. The rendering is automatic, and you can “see” the character almost instantly. Add a race to it, and it’s even faster. Elf ranger. Irish P.I. Trandoshan bounty hunter. Hobbit thief. There, you’re done!

   You can also create something completely new and challenging – but it requires a little more work. For the past 20 years, one of my friends have been playing a Human fighter who believes he is a Dwarf. His mother died somewhere close to a mountain pass, and the Dwarves who rescued the infant decided to raise him as one of their own. Klorghan is now a hulking, bearded, six-foot-tall warrior. Don’t tell him he’s Human, though, if you want to keep your head, that is.

   We’re also quite fond of caricatures when it comes to iconic enemies. “A necromancer lives in that old tower, and he’s got scores of Orcs under his command.” What DM never used that hook? Orcs got a raw deal very early on, aye; after decades of bad rap, they’re slowly and finally breaking out of that washed-out one-dimensional straitjacket.

   Now that we’re able to play a Lawful Good Orc paladin, or a Sun Elf assassin, is there any race left to be the iconic enemy? One answer is: choose anything not alive; golems, gargoyles, elementals, the undead... Another answer is: fight other “normal” people, and this one is rather interesting. Just get rid of Alignment. You’re going to square off against other people – not Evil people, but folks who want (or need) to achieve the opposite of what you want to achieve.

   Take Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen, for example. In book #1, you have real, multi-faceted people (the Malazans) fighting against other real, multi-faceted people (the population of Darujhistan). Book #1 is awesome. In book #3, Darujhistan and the Malazans unite to defeat evil, disgusting cannibals. Book #3 is crap. In book #4, everyone unite (even the undead!) to defeat disgusting, evil child molesters. Book #4 is mostly crap. In book #5, normal people (the Tiste Edur) clash against other normal people (the Letherii). Book #5 is the best of the series: you read it and you literally hurt.

   If you fight a caricature, chances are, it’s gonna be crappy. If your opponents are real, multi-faceted people, it’s gonna be awesome. This recipe works. Just try it.

   Speaking of the undead – may I remind you that we all played vampires for ten years during the ‘90s? I even played a friggin’ mummy for a while! Vampires are nuanced and conflicted. Some of them couldn’t kill Humans. Some of them even acted as humanity’s guardians. So, “evil” or not? If a vampire can be nuanced and conflicted like that, why not a ghoul, a wight, a ghast or a wraith? Skeletons and zombies are not as evil as they are dumb. Evil requires an intent. Zombies are mindless: they have little to no intent.

   I can picture a whole party of undead. The magic-user is a lich, the thief is a Nosferatu vampire, the cleric is a ghost, and the dumb fighter is some sort of Bugbear zombie in splintered mail. Maybe their sworn enemies are a bunch of flesh and blood Humans.

   There ought to be good Orcs and evil Orcs, just as there are good Humans and wicked, evil Humans. And Hobgoblins. And Kobolds. If a race is monolithic, it is almost always a caricature. For instance, why would Elves be immune to mental illness? There are Elves with schizophrenia and psychosis, right? Why not an Elf serial killer? An Elven Hannibal Lecter? Why not a gay Dwarf scholar who never touched a battle-axe or a hammer in his entire life?

   When they needed evil Dwarves, instead of taking ordinary, Gimli-like Dwarves, and giving them wicked intentions, they came up with the Duergars. When they needed evil Elves, they did the same – and came up with the Drow. That is absurd. You can have so much more depth than that, and it really isn’t such a big endeavor. Tolkien’s original Moriquendi did not have dark skin, and weren’t any more evil than the cruel and obnoxious Noldor. The “Dark Elves” are the ones who never saw the light of the Trees in Valinor: it’s a metaphor.

   Back in the day, a French role-playing game called Bloodlust dealt with those stubborn caricatures in a very caricatural way – and then proceeded to replace the expunged crap with complex, nuanced races. Because that’s precisely the point, isn’t it? Nuances. Do you think all Illithids are the same? There has to be different social groups in their society: individuals with high psionic powers, and individuals with low psionic powers. It’s like our IQ. Only the high-psionic / high-IQ Illithids ever get to fly spelljammers and probability-travel around the Prime Material Plane. The others are stuck on the Illithid homeworld, toiling away. Why not play one of those? An escaped psionic slave. A Mind Flayer Spartacus.

   And what about nuances in Call of Cthulhu – why not play a “good” Deep One, or a tolerant and worldly Mi-Go? A Drizzt from Yuggoth, if you will.

   Mammalocentrism dictates that we favor mammals. Cats are cute, not spiders. The Mi-Go are insectoid in nature, and the Deep Ones are fish-like. Human is much closer to Goblin or Ogre than it is to Mi-Go or Serpent Man. Yet, you have played a Dragonborn, and that’s already half reptilian right there. Just keep going in that same direction, is what I’m trying to say.

   If there is a Mind Flayer Spartacus, then Mind Flayers really are a “true” race, and not just a caricature. If there is a Sun Elf serial killer, then Sun Elves are a race, and not a caricature. If there is a humanophile, worldly Mi-Go, then the Mi-Go are a race, and not a caricature.

   But it requires more work on the DM’s part, that’s for sure. No longer can he or she say: “You see a bunch of Orcs, and they immediately charge towards you.” If you use the nuances filter, whenever somebody – anybody really – is charging the party, they’re gonna need their own agenda, motives and motivations. Again: real, multi-faceted people against real, multi-faceted people.

   It isn’t a caricature anymore. I believe Dungeon Masters / Gamemasters / Keepers are ready to go the extra mile. I know I am.