The Post-Rationalised Universe, or: What would Dave Do?

The First DM

The wilderness adventure was a problem for players from the outset of D&D and reflected its semi-random collection of influences and cavalier approach to explanation and layout. The outdoor encounter tables in the original game includes various Martian creatures such as Tharks and White Martians, none of which are detailed in the game. Encounters are sub-divided into eight types: Animals (sub divided by terrain), Men (likewise), Flyers, Giants (including kobolds etc., the origin of the ranger's humanoid enemy list, although it includes ents and some other "lawful" monsters), swimmers, dragons, undead, and lycanthropes.

It's a fairly reasonable list until these last two categories which seem a bit specialized. Combining them with the terrain gives the final chance for an encounter to be drawn from a specific type, so undead constitute ¼ of all swamp encounters, and lycanthropes ¼ of those in woods.

Number appearing is given in volume 2 (Monsters and Treasure) and are more or less as seen in the AD&D Monster Manual, although the original note to this stat is that it should be adjusted to the party (in some way).

Anyway, the booklets give very little specific guidance on placement and the move into AD&D compounded this at least in the context of wilderness encounters. Reading the DMG and the MM together always leaves me with two impressions: that there's something missing, and that the wilderness is so hostile as to be out of bounds for at least 4 character levels and even then to be Russian Roulette until average party level reaches the teens.

OD&D: The Missing Bits

What's missing from the DMG is Dave Arneson. Arneson eventually published his notes in Judges Guild's "The First Fantasy Campaign" book and map. Within this he explains how he placed monsters both underground and in the wilderness. There is evidence that Gygax used these notes when preparing the various appendices of the DMG—if you ever wondered why the dungeon random monster level table conflates dungeon levels 2 and 3, it's because that's what Dave did.

In the AD&D game, it is repeatedly stated that random determination at encounter time is a backstop for not having prepared a monster population, but no guidelines are given for how to go about this in any detail and the impression is that the DM simply decides based on their personal vision of What's Going On in their world. Which is fine. but there is a very old school alternative method: Roll Randomly and Then Explain It.

The basic idea of RRTEI is that you roll for something completely without preconceptions of what is "right"; look at the result and reject it only, only in extreme cases; then adjust all the already-compiled information to make the new result fit better with it (this is the "explain it" part). This constructs a web of interconnected locations and ideas which magically become a pre-existing plot.

This new plot can remain undiscovered and static for years until a party wander into the area, or it can be dynamic and imply things which cause the party to be drawn in. Use of the treasure types, random fortresses, and of course monsters can come together to suggest quests or rumours which can reach the PC's ears and spur action; and the existence of pre-determined encounter areas will allow meaningful answers to divinations and sage-enquiries. Once the players start to interact with the randomly generated the threads from nearby areas can start to be woven into the pattern.

RRTEI is the "non occult" force to which Gygax refers on page 87 of the DMG:

It is no exaggeration to state that the fantasy world builds itself, almost as if the milieu actually takes on a life and reality of its own. This is not to say that an occult power takes over. It is simply that the interaction of judge and players shapes the bare bones of the initial creation into something far larger. It becomes fleshed out, and adventuring breathes life into a make believe world. Similarly, the geography and history you assign to the world will suddenly begin to shape the character of states and peoples. Details of former events will become obvious from mere outlines of the past course of things. Surprisingly, as the personalities of player characters and non-player characters in the milieu are bound to develop and become almost real, the nations and states and events of a well-conceived AD&D world will take on even more of their own direction and life. What this all boils down to is that once the campaign is set in motion, you will become more of a recorder.

Back to the wilderness (I'll talk about the dungeons in a later post). Arneson's system is fairly simple (I'll assume hexes, although he also used squares):

1. Generate terrain, including rivers,
2. Roll for population of each terrain hex. This is the semi-permanent population and is effectively the number of lairs in the hex.
3. Randomly roll, based on terrain, for the inhabiting monster of each lair and the population as given in the MM.
4. Roll 1d6x10 for each lair; when encountered this will be the base percentage not in the lair.
5. Starting with one group of monsters which are not in the lair, roll 1d6: on 1-5 the monsters are that distance (in miles) from the lair; on a 6 the group is divided into two groups and the DM re-rolls. Direction from the lair is given by a d6 and groups placed in the same direction and distance can be assumed to be near enough to each other to hear any attack on the other. If one group rolls three 6's then it is assumed to more than be one day's travel from the lair; and if a group is placed on a hostile (to it) lair then it is instead placed back at its own lair where it will arrive shortly after any PC encounter to report its findings.

Probably more use than
the TSR version

Arneson used 10m hexes and this is larger than the more common modern 6m or 5m hexes and much smaller than the normal campaign-sized hexes of 30 or 36 miles. This matters a bit as one thing that doesn't scale well is time - a 10 mile hex with 2 encounters in it requires longer to clear out than a 5 mile hex, potentially four times as long. When the PCs are away from base and possibly relying on limited supplies of food and/or magic then this makes a difference.

For a 100m² area, Arneson rolled 1d6 for the number of lairs, counting a 6 as "empty", for an average of 2½ encounter areas per 100m². By the power of maths we can determine that this means that about 98% of wilderness square miles are free of lairs and from that we can work back to a 6m hex (31m²) and we have about a 60% chance of an empty hex and we want an average of .775 (2½*(31/100)). That looks like a d10 to me - 1 to 4 is that number of lairs; otherwise empty giving an average of 1 lair per hex and a 60% chance of nothing at all.

Using the tables in the DMG for temperate and subtropical wilderness, let's populate these seven hexes generated using the random terrain table on p173.

Hex 1 (plain): inhabited, single dwelling of 1 person; No lairs
Hex 2 (pond/plain): uninhabited, no lairs.
Hex 3 (plain): uninhabited, no lairs.
Hex 4 (marsh): uninhabited, 3 lairs: 3 owlbears, no treasure OB1 in lair (30%), OB2 3 miles to SE, OB3 1 mile to NW; 140 Gnolls, 6000cp, 12 gems, potions of rainbow hues, ESP, delusion, and love. 85 in lair (20%) out of lair one mile to NE; 2 giant constrctor snakes close together (0% in lair).
Hex 5 (plain): uninhabited, no lairs.
Hex 6 (plain): uninhabited, 1 lair: 6 trolls, 8000sp, 1000gp, 3 jewels, 7 gems, 5 in lair (40%) and 1 5 miles to the NW.
Hex 7 (plain): uninhabited, no lairs.

So, hex 1's encounter table is simply the inhabitant of the dwelling, Hexes 2, 3, 5, and 6 have no settled encounters (we'll look at this below), hex 4 encounters can be with: a single owlbear (30% the one in lair; otherwise equal chances of either other one), a gnoll group (80%) or the gnoll lair (20%), or the snakes. Each monster type has an equal chance of appearing (e.g., 1-2: Owlbear, 3-4: gnolls; 5-6: snakes). Hex 6 encounters will be with a group of trolls (40%) or a lone troll.

Encounters with monsters not in lair will occur in the direction listed from the centre of the hex containing the lair (you could specifically place the lair and go from there, but that's more work).

Ignore the horse

The Inhabitant
Going back to hex 1 and its lone inhabitant, I think that's worth a roll on the castle table which gives a small walled castle with keep and another roll indicates the inhabitant is a 9th level fighter.

Skipping over to page 100 we get more detail on this fighter: chaotic good, super-rich, old and rather ragged, sober, friendly, easy-going but rather anti-intellectual, vengeful, aesthetic, brave, driven, miserly, irreligious, with an interest in history.

Rolling on the table for Men, we find that he has Scale Mail +1, shield +1, +2 short sword, and a +4 spear. However, based on decisions below, I'm going to give him plate mail armour (or the best available non-magical armour in your campaign) when defending and leave the scale mail for when he's outside and needs the extra movement that magical armour allows.

His stats, modified for age: Str 11, Int 7, Wis 17, Con 13, Dex 11, Cha 13, Com 14, hp: 45, AC: 1 (3+2), combat level of 13 or 12 (spear or sword). Mv 6"

Okay, that's the rolls, here's the explanation: An old (64 year) lord still inhabits the remains of his ancestral home where his family were wiped out years before by some awful plague of which he was the only survivor, albeit weakened and never able to regain his former physical prowess. Dispite all this and the passing years, he remains a hansom and tall figure quite capable of turning the odd female head.

Convinced that there was some unnatural source for the disease he has spent the decades since trying to locate the entity responsible. Although the castle contains the family's total wealth in its well-protected dungeon, he does not care about it except insofar that it can buy him progress in his hunt. However, its usefulness for this purpose means that he is loath to leave it unguarded but although still a powerful fighter he is unable to eliminate the major local threat of the Gnolls. Indeed, the recent arrival of a group of trolls has greatly worried him—although the two groups might not aid each other the simple presence of them has made it harder than ever for him to hunt for food and his sleep is rarely undisturbed as both groups are active at night. If you've seen Omega Man or any of the other adaptations of I am Legend, that might give you some ideas for his life-style. The space between the keep and the rather tumble-down outer wall is filled with traps and he has several well disguised secret entrances which are too small for either trolls or gnolls.

What Sir Cowden (rolled a name from my local collection of names) wants right now is some allies that he can trust at least enough to help him move against either the gnolls or the trolls. He will not throw money at passing parties just to get their help, however, and will instead attempt to befriend them and evaluate their alignments and otherwise come to some agreement that will not cost him cash. The family treasure is, in his head, only to be spent on avenging that family or rewarding those that help him complete this task. He has pared his needs down to the minimum needed to survive while keeping his hope alive. He will only offer to join a party if they first help him eliminate the gnolls (he judges the trolls too stupid to be able to break into the castle's vaults if he leaves it for any length of time).

In conversation, he will always focus on a party's most charismatic fighter and will regard magic users as little more than supporting artillery to be directed by the fighters, and clerics as medical staff; he will assume that all divination rolls are unreliable and pounce on any evidence that backs this up. Thieves will, of course, be treated with the utmost suspicion, but otherwise he is relaxed and generally assumes the best of humans and demi-humans.

The old lord's hospitality will be stretched by any party but he will do his best to feed and water them, and will certainly replace any broken normal weapons from the castle's armoury if the party seem to need such. He will light the fire in the great hall with something of an air of excitement and PCs will note the armourial shield over the fireplace which depicts: on a field of gold, a spear proper on a bend of green. Under the shield, mounted horizontally, is a spear which those characters who spend any time looking at these things will notice is actually the spear depicted on the family arms. This is the +4 spear ("Avant") which was the symbol of the Silverwind family, of whom Cowden is the last scion. The family motto translates as "To Speak Light; to Silence Darkness".

Sir Cowden has a "% in lair" of 75%—all night, and about 50% during the day. The castle is easily seen during the day and there is essentially no chance of stumbling across it, but at night any encounter with Sir Cowden will be at the castle and the normal method for castle encounters should be followed.

The Gnolls
The gnolls consist of a fyrd of 170 warriors and a further 85 females and 340 females in the ruins (this is a roll from the MM entry for gnolls) of an old village. They have no guard animals but do have a selection of 25 slaves. The group speak orc and hobgoblin well enough to converse simple (usually violent) ideas.

The party in the field has 4 squabbling leader types (16hp each) with it, and the lair contains a further four who do little while there except bully the females and children, eat, and sleep. In addition there is a chief (22hp, AC 3, 4HD/CL 6, +2 damage bonus) with 11 guards (20hp, AC 4, 3HD, +1 damage bonus).

The gnolls recently raided a caravan and made off with a case of four potions which they have not identified yet. Several of the prisoners are from the caravan, including an apprentice alchemist who can read the markings on the potion bottles; the gnolls have no idea about this. Several of the slaves will claim that there would be a reward for returning them safely to civilization. This may or may not be true; it may even be why the PCs are out here in the first place.

Art: Wendy Pini

The Trolls
The troll lair is a simple arch under an old bridge over a stream. Their hp are 36, 30, 28, 23, 21, 21 (roll for which one is out of the lair). Like many monsters, they collect treasure for no better reason than they know that it harms those they take it off. All of the gold and half of the silver they have is in the form of a collection of small (roughly 3 inch high) figures of deities and their servants from the pantheon of your choice. The workmanship is good but nothing special and the figures will only reach their bullion value. The figures were in a set of wooden display/transportation cases which are scattered about under the bridge but still in usable condition and inspection of these will suggest that 7 figures (of 56 - 16 gold, 40 silver) are missing from the collection. The remaining 4000sp is in recent coinage.

The figures may have some religious significance which would prompt a reward being posted, or a cleric to be sent to look for them along with a party of his or her adventuring associates.

I think he's seen us

The Owlbears
The owlbear nest contains four young which are 60% grown (3HD) as well as a single adult. The three adults' hp are: 23, 20, 20, and the young are 17, 11, 11, 9. Their nest is a pile of branches and leaves on a slight rise in the swamp land.

The Snakes
The snakes are simply giant constrictor snakes hanging around in branches of scrubby trees in the marsh, waiting for something to walk under their coils. In any encounter only one will initially be met, the second one arriving within d4 rounds of the first combat attack (or spell) which makes a noise.

Hp: 31, 16

Expansions

Having rolled all this up, I feel that the gnolls and the trolls are likely to have encountered each other. I generally assume that monsters have reasonably well explored a radius around their lairs up to their move rate as miles, so the trolls' 12" and the gnolls' 9" indicates a substantial overlap (see fig). A reaction roll of 62 suggests that the groups are not in conflict but nor are they cooperating; the trolls are strong but the large number of gnolls is enough to keep a balance of power. Since they have no common enemy, they keep themselves to themselves.

The fate of Sir Cowden's family and the gnolls' deserted village suggest that the plague was more wide-spread than just the castle, so I'd pencil in some major disease event and at this point I'll also commit to Cowden's suspicions being correct and that some daemon-worshipper was behind it. I'd also add a few more deserted villages in the area to give an attentive party hints that something bad happened here thirty years or so ago. To give the plot a bit more room to develop, I'll assume that the perpetrator is still alive somewhere and that his/her intention was to wipe out not only the family but the whole of their estate and that discovering that one of the core members of the family still lives would be of as much interest to them as their existence would be to Sir Cowden. Whoever they are, money was not the motive.

The final thing is the question of encounters in "empty" hexes. As mentioned, I assume a certain range for monsters so I could construct tables based on the chance that one of the listed populations are encountered outside their "home hex" but for now I'd just roll on a standard random monster table based on terrain. Note, however, that such monsters are by definition not in lair and therefore consist of 10-60% of the listed populations unless the type never lairs.

Notes
I've tried to set things up neutrally so that a neutral or even evil party have something to do here, including setting the gnolls and the trolls against each other as well as against Sir Cowden.

I've also avoided overruling dice rolls even when they didn't produce something I had in mind based on earlier rolls. For example, the gnolls do not have any hyenaoid guards. The problem with such interference is that one tends to select the same sort of things each time and unless it's the only way to avoid an encounter being completely dull, it's best to leave such things to be genuine surprises. The same goes double for treasure types; overruling those tends to lead to magic inflation such as we see in the G series.

Speaking of treasure types, the monsters with treasure were all in reasonably substantial numbers so I didn't have any problems giving them the values rolled; if they had been low in numbers then I would have reduced the treasure.

Finally, notice that prisoners are a god-send when inventing reasons for things to be where they are or why a PC party might hear about an encounter area.

Treasure
The treasure was rolled using my treasure type generator and the full lists were:

Gnolls
12 gems: 
 Gem stone (Oriental Topaz) 1000gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Onyx) 50gp 
 Gem stone (Black Opal) 1000gp 
 Fancy stone (Jet) 100gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Star Rose Quartz) 50gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Chalcedony) 50gp 
 Fancy stone (Spinel, green) 200gp 
 Ornimental stone (Malachite) 7gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Star Rose Quartz) 50gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Moonstone) 50gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Citrine) 50gp 
 Ornimental stone (Rhodochrosite) 10gp 

 Potion of Rainbow Hues
 Potion of ESP 
 Potion of Delusion (cursed)

 Philter of Love

Trolls
 8000sp 
 1000gp 
7 gems: 
 Semi-precious stone (Chrysoprase) 50gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Moonstone) 50gp 
 Fancy stone (Garnet, brown-green) 100gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Black Pearl) 500gp 
 Fancy stone (Chrysoberyl) 200gp 
 Fancy stone (Spinel, red) 100gp 
 Ornimental stone (Bonded Agate) 10gp 

3 jewels: 
 3000gp silver with gems coffer
 1000gp wrought silver goblet

 1800gp wrought gold goblet

The Silverwind Family Treasure Vault
 18000cp 
 50000gp 
83 gems: 
 Fancy stone (Amber) 160gp 
 Fancy stone (Alexandrite) 200gp 
 Fancy stone (Garnet, brown-green) 100gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Black Pearl) 500gp 
 Ornimental stone (Moss Agate) 45gp 
 Ornimental stone (Bonded Agate) 20gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Aquamarine) 800gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Smoky Quartz) 50gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Moonstone) 75gp 
 Fancy stone (Amber) 100gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Sardonyx) 50gp 
 Ornimental stone (Turquoise) 10gp 
 Fancy stone (Garnet, brown-green) 100gp 
 Ornimental stone (Blue Quartz) 10gp 
 Gem stone (Diamond) 2000gp 
 Fancy stone (Tourmaline) 100gp 
 Ornimental stone (Malachite) 10gp 
 Ornimental stone (Malachite) 10gp 
 Ornimental stone (Turquoise) 10gp 
 Ornimental stone (Obsidian) 10gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Peridot) 500gp 
 Fancy stone (Garnet, red) 100gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Carnelian) 55gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Garnet, violet) 500gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Peridot) 500gp 
 Ornimental stone (Hematite) 20gp 
 Ornimental stone (Eye Agate) 10gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Sardonyx) 50gp 
 Gem stone (Emerald) 1000gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Carnelian) 50gp 
 Fancy stone (Tourmaline) 100gp 
 Ornimental stone (Turquoise) 35gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Carnelian) 50gp 
 Gem stone (Black Opal) 1000gp 
 Gem stone (Oriental Amethyst) 1000gp 
 Ornimental stone (Blue Quartz) 35gp 
 Fancy stone (Jet) 100gp 
 Ornimental stone (Hematite) 10gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Aquamarine) 500gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Jasper) 50gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Smoky Quartz) 60gp 
 Gem stone (Oriental Amethyst) 1000gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Black Pearl) 500gp 
 Gem stone (Diamond) 1000gp 
 Fancy stone (Chrysoberyl) 100gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Rock Crystal) 60gp 
 Fancy stone (Alexandrite) 100gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Topaz) 500gp 
 Ornimental stone (Bonded Agate) 10gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Bloodstone) 50gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Moonstone) 50gp 
 Fancy stone (Garnet, brown-green) 200gp 
 Ornimental stone (Blue Quartz) 10gp 
 Fancy stone (Spinel, green) 100gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Black Pearl) 500gp 
 Fancy stone (Amethyst) 400gp 
 Fancy stone (Amber) 100gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Chrysoprase) 50gp 
 Fancy stone (Chrysoberyl) 100gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Bloodstone) 50gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Aquamarine) 500gp 
 Ornimental stone (Lapis Lazuli) 5gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Bloodstone) 50gp 
 Ornimental stone (Obsidian) 7gp 
 Ornimental stone (Azurite) 10gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Aquamarine) 500gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Black Pearl) 800gp 
 Ornimental stone (Bonded Agate) 10gp 
 Ornimental stone (Rhodochrosite) 10gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Spinel, deep blue) 500gp 
 Fancy stone (Spinel, green) 450gp 
 Ornimental stone (Rhodochrosite) 10gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Chalcedony) 50gp 
 Fancy stone (Coral) 100gp 
 Gem stone (Star Ruby) 1000gp 
 Fancy precious stone (Spinel, deep blue) 650gp 
 Gem stone (Emerald) 1000gp 
 Ornimental stone (Blue Quartz) 10gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Chrysoprase) 50gp 
 Fancy stone (Spinel, red) 400gp 
 Ornimental stone (Obsidian) 15gp 
 Semi-precious stone (Star Rose Quartz) 50gp 
 Fancy stone (Alexandrite) 100gp 

40 jewels: 
 6000gp gold with gems bracelet
 8000gp silver with gems coffer *exceptional gem*
 1200gp wrought gold chain
 3000gp silver with gems statuette
 1000gp wrought gold chain
 1400gp wrought gold decanter
 6000gp silver with gems statuette *exceptional gem*
 1900gp platinum anklet
 600gp wrought gold chain
 6000gp gold with gems statuette
 6000gp platinum with gems medallion
 6000gp gold with gems pin
 2100gp platinum pin
 1400gp coral coffer
 500gp wrought silver clasp
 1200gp wrought gold necklace
 6000gp gold with gems ring
 5000gp platinum with gems seal
 2200gp jade goblet
 2000gp gold with gems bracelet
 10000gp gold with gems chain *exceptional gem*
 7000gp gold with gems goblet
 8000gp gold with gems fob
 400gp ivory medal
 1200gp wrought silver and gold pin
 1600gp coral chain
 1500gp jade bracelet
 3000gp silver with gems clasp
 700gp wrought silver and gold idol
 600gp wrought silver chain
 5000gp silver with gems chain
 900gp wrought gold goblet
 1200gp coral pin
 5000gp platinum with gems choker
 8000gp platinum with gems pin
 2100gp platinum medallion
 1600gp wrought gold medal
 23000gp gold with gems bracelet *exceptional gem*
 600gp wrought silver and gold bracelet

 600gp wrought gold brooch

This is a Type H treasure representing the total treasure of an exceptionally wealthy and powerful family and should be hidden, protected by traps, and potent neutral or good-aligned monsters. I would suggest at least one iron or stone golem and perhaps a pair of caryatid columns, perhaps a Guardian Daemon, and various symbols which do not affect any true descendant of the Silverwind family as well as more mundane locks.

Any of the large-value gems or jewellery here could be the subject of a rumour in the civilized world which could send a party out in this direction; the hoard as a whole could be the subject of treasure maps based on leaked information from the days when the castle was full of people and life. Naturally, anyone trying to get this stuff away by land will attract attention, especially if they take the 50,000gp (nearly 2¼ tons of gold, or 4½ cubic feet)

Beyond Nietzsche: 1984, Law and Evil

From 1984:

'We are the priests of power,' he said. 'God is power. But at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery". Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone -- free -- the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal.'

.

.

.

'The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'

Here (particularly in my added italics) Orwell expresses the idea of the D&D Lawful character—that the group is immortal and the individual a cell in its body. Just as each cell in the human body is committed to the whole but is replaced many times over its life, the member of a group is committed to its collective goals and sees the continuance of the group's existence as a form of immortality, similar to the way some people view having children.

Separating the specifics of the character's intent, there's nothing in this which is inherently evil. The character could apply the same attitude to medical research, cleaning up polluted rivers, founding orphanages and so on, and many people have. This is the essence of D&D's Lawful alignments—working with others and subsuming personal goals into a bigger picture.

The book picks up on the other aspect of the Smith's interrogator's alignment a bit later on:

'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?'

Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.

'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.'

This matches up well with what the DMG defines as Evil. Evil in D&D is suffering without purpose; suffering without a balancing redemptive outcome; suffering, above all, as a demonstration of domination. The DMG text for all the evil alignments mentions strength and domination - something that Nietzsche talked about a lot too and Orwell's Party is the logical end point of his "philosophy".

In the real world, these two attitudes do exist, although they are rarely articulated so clearly (the most important exception being the testimonies at Nuremberg, especially Goering's). Nietzsche and Arendt were both wrong - not only is there evil which is the opposite of good, but in its true form it is never banal except to those who are mentally undeveloped enough to expect monsters to have fangs.

So what are the opposites of these things? What is Chaotic and what is Good? For one thing, they are not simply the absence of these attitudes, they consist in the efforts to undo them and to oppose them.

The chaotic says that subsuming one's desires into a group kills the soul. It is the individual who is uniquely creative and therefore uniquely able to achieve the heights of human potential; Lawfulness, they would say, is compromise. Compromise may achieve some things, and perhaps it avoids the worst depths but at the cost of never reaching the highest peaks either. Lawfulness is a form of slavery; groupthinking is the opponent of freethinking.

Goodness seeks to minimise suffering; to eliminate it if possible. To steal from a fat cleric's tithe barn to feed the starving peasants on his estate is not evil, it is good. But to steal from the starving peasants to fill the tithe barn is evil. The former alleviates more suffering than it creates, and the latter does the opposite. The neutral position is to not get involved.

When D&D was originally released, it was with a simple one-axis alignment system of Law and Chaos. This was an odd choice and it was instantly obvious that it was a bad one and by page 6 of Supplement I: Greyhawk Gygax is conflating Chaos and Evil, and by Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry, it was necessary to footnote the Mind Flayer's Lawful alignment with "highly evil but otherwise lawful". This was a bird that was not going to fly much further.

Perhaps if Gygax had introduced the game with just Good Vs Evil alignments we would never have seen the nine-pointed alignment system, as that is a much more commonly depicted system in stories, but the Law/Chaos axis is not unknown before D&D and it does express an idea which crops up in rhetoric, although there it is often conflated with Good/Evil. Interestingly, it's normally conflated in the opposite way to D&D: Chaos=freedom=good.

In any case, the original system was inadequate and was replaced in the fifth issue of Strategic Review by the two-axis system. Now intelligent creatures could fight "the system" and do so for the good of mankind (or thingkind as the case may be), or set up oppressive hierarchies of diabolical and sadistic faceless bureaucrats, as well as the simply cruel or charitable who did not care about such things and the plain officious or mule-headed. All was at peace....as if!

One place where confusion enters is the subtle distinction between an act which fits the stereotype of an alignment and being that alignment. This is rather like the distinction between weather and climate, although there's perhaps more of a ratchet in alignment than in climate.

Simply put, stealing an apple doesn't make a Neutral Good character Neutral, although killing the apple seller and throwing the apples in the canal probably will.

But even if the appleseller is murdered, the question of alignment is still about patterns of behaviour, not simply the last action taken, because the word "alignment" is not casually chosen or used. It expresses the fact that the game system is concerned with what philosophical view the character is aligned with, and that represents how useful to the real (in game) metaphysical forces the character is. A character who has a bad day and lashes out is not necessarily a reliable tool for the powers of Evil; a character who takes pity on a stray dog is not necessarily a reliable tool for the powers of Good etc. A single unprovoked killing may be a sure sign that the character is not reliably Good but it's not proof of the opposite.

Within the game's metaphysical laws of thermodynamics, the characters are able to do things that 99% of the population can not because they are being granted those abilities by the Alignments that find them useful. To keep things fair, the game assumes a post-rationalisation that each alignment contributes in more or less the same way, and that neutral characters receive "contributions" from multiple alignments so that it all balances out. But, ultimately this is why changing alignment causes the loss of level—the Powers lose confidence in the character and withdraw some of their sponsorship for a while, even the one(s) to which the character is now aligned. These powers (hit points, saving throws etc.) are investments and a return is expected; fickle characters are a risky proposition.

Similarly, detect evil doesn't function on characters below name level because they simply haven't enough of the good/bad stuff invested in them.

If the DM treats the four main alignments as NPCs who are not stupid but are not omniscient then it can be a lot easier to judge the effects of character actions. These Powers have goals, as discussed above in relation to 1984 and if they see creatures advancing those goals then they will pay attention to them. That attention is what changes the creature's alignment because it reflects their attunement to the Power. The lack of omniscience is why, in D&D, actions speak louder than words and a character who does good things for bad reasons will remain aligned with Good. It's of no benefit to Evil if a character feeds the starving millions just because they want to be adulated and be able to have sex with a different partner every night; the fact remains that the starving have been fed!

However, the Powers are not stupid and being forced to act against them is something that can be tolerated, but the character has to show that they regret the actions after the fact. Hence, there is an atonement spell and it is not available for voluntary actions.

Super-fast islands in Gimp

1. New image, any size but 1024x768 works well
2. Filters->render->clouds->solid noise. Randomize seed, set detail to 10; x-size to 4ish and the y-size set to make the same ratio as the size of the image.
3. Set  the current gradient to Caribbean Blues
4. Colours->map->gradient map.
5. Done

You can extend this in various ways. For a start you could add a gradient which produces a slightly more topographic feel. If you make the width of the image 2 times wider than the height (and adjust the y-size accordingly) and turn on "tilable" you get a decent world texture.

In theory you should be able to map this onto a sphere using the Filter->Map->Map Object tool, but at the moment it seems as if that expects a square texture. In any case, you'll need to add ice caps by hand (hint: try using white to black gradients in another layer using the "Addition" or "Dodge" layer modes).

If you want to adjust the ruggedness of the map you can fiddle with the x- and y-heights before generation, or use the colour levels dialogue to modify the range and distribution of heights.

The above world map was created using the gradient file linked to here in about 10 minutes (most of which was fiddling with the poles). It's been squashed into a square so that it can be turned into a sphere

Here's the above map turned into a sphere using the Map Object function. As you can see, the polar area isn't completely satisfactory but the whole process is so quick that for a game like Traveller where the GM needs planets almost on demand, it's not bad.

The d8 Book Club Round-Up

Due to the wonders of commuting in cramped conditions, I was able to read a great deal over the last few months. Here's a bunch of capsule reviews, marked out of 8.

A Rose for Ecclesiastes, Rodger Zelazny
This one has been sitting on my shelf for about 20 years. It has a gushing introduction by Theodore Sturgeon which rather set the book up to fail given how high the praise was. In the end, of the four stories in the collection, only one really flopped.

The title story about an Earth linguist attempting to come to grips with the ruins of a Martian civilization and The Furies, about a group of unusual—Vance-line—assassins tracking down a rogue ex-special forces commander pretty well made it up to the mark and rattle alone pretty well, although Rose suffered slightly from the assumption that the Martians were identical to humans and that the reader would also assume that, and so it didn't need to be mentioned until context finally made it the only explanation. At that point I had to stop and reconsider everything in the story up to that point as my assumption had been that the aliens would be alien-looking. I blame Giger.

Of the other two stories, The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of his Mouth must come close to winning the least-appropriate-title-ever and I can only assume that Zelazny thought he had cancer or something and would never have a chance to use such a great name for any other story ever, so he just slapped it on this so-so story of salmon fishing on tropical pulp-age Venus.

The Graveyard Heart is a nice piece of social satire, and a better fit for its title and suffers slightly from having been redone by others in the time since, but the characters are interesting and the setting believable enough to frame the philosophical point being made. Using hibernation-sleep technology, The Set, circle the world in fast-forward, partying like it's 1999 and beyond, aging only 1 year for every 20 in the world outside their exclusive club. But some find that immortality drags after a while and that the lifestyle they lead can mess with people's minds.

d8 score: 6

The Great Book of Amber, Rodger Zelazny

Having enjoyed Rose, I decided to go back and have another go at Amber. I had read Nine Princes in Amber years ago after playing the computer game and had enjoyed it. As luck had it at the time, I wasn't able to locate the next book in the series and so I picked up Philip José Farmer's World of Tiers, which had been doing the rounds in an omnibus edition. I didn't get far into it before I realised that the setting was very, very similar to Nine Princes and when I checked the date I saw that Farmer's book was the original. This coloured my opinion of Zelazny for years afterwards and I didn't bother reading anything else apart from a comic adaptation of Demolition Alley (itself ripped of mercilessly by John Wagner for his Judge Dredd story The Cursed Earth).

Anyway, I eventually read an interview with Zelazny where he was asked about the similarity to the World of Tiers books and he said, basically, that he'd liked the idea but wanted to read about the characters' relationships which Farmer had not focused on, so he just wrote his own version. Well, fair enough, I guess. After reading Rose, I went to get a new copy of Nine Princes and discovered an omnibus edition of all ten Amber books (running to 1200 pages of fairly small text) which I gradually read on the Tube.

The Ten books are divided into two sets of five, the first five dealing with the struggles of Corwin, one of the nine princes in question, as he tries to deal with the fact that the king of Amber, Oberon, has vanished and his siblings are jockying for position either directly for the throne or to be on the good side of the eventual winner. Corwin is unsure that he wants the throne himself but most of his brothers, at least, assume that he does and his apparent doubts are clever manœuvring. On top of that, Amber is one end of a long sequence of parallel worlds which run from The Pattern to the Courts of Chaos. In between is every imaginable world, including ours, that of the magical Camelot, Wonderland, and presumably every world of fantasy or science fiction ever written about. Corwin and other "real" people can travel over these worlds but for the Amberites they are seen as essentially figments of their imaginations, "shadow" worlds and in those shadow worlds real people stand out as especially strong, intelligent, and/or plain magical. Corwin finds a lot of these pre-conceived notions challenged as he tries to take control of his destiny in preparation for a final confrontation between Law and Chaos where the only possibility for a third option looks to be a lethal one.

The second set of five books concerns Corwin's son Merlin's similar struggle with becoming his own man as the consequences of Corwin's actions reverberate around the multiverse. Zelazny never suggests that this Merlin is the Merlin of legend, which I found refreshing to be honest, but he is a magic user all right, unlike his Dad who was a fighting man. In fact, Merlin is, to my surprise, a Vancian caster!

The first five books do not deal much with magic so having a spellcasting central character was a bit of a change of pace in itself but it was really a bit out of left-field when Merlin started to prepare spells for later use, "hanging" them in his terminology. There is a bit later on where he talks (all ten books are first-person narratives) about using up all the prepared spells and then starting to battle another wizard with "raw power" which is a lot more tiring, so it's not completely AD&D, but it's interesting to speculate whether the game had influenced the books (possibly the influence came directly from Vance, of course).

The second set of books suffers only slightly from "been there, done that" but I felt that Zelazny had trouble making the characters of Merlin and Corwin really distinct beyond their "classes". On top of that, Corwin's main enemy has a epiphany late in the game and throws in with him, something which seems to have happened a lot in books I've read recently and as this was the third time I'd seen it in a year I was a bit tired of it, never mind that Zelazny had done it first—I hadn't read his first.

Very long but overall rewarding and fun read, even if the second set made magic seem a bit too easy which undermined the value of it and implied some unanswered questions about the plot of the earlier books.

d8 score: 7

1Q84, Haruki Murakami

Junk. A classic example of a writer who thinks fantasy must be easy because anything can happen, leading to lazy plotting, lazy characterization, and a setting that is almost see-through in its flimsiness.

Although it is presented as one book in three parts, the book was clearly not written that way. Book 1 is far better than the others and it's obvious that Haruki wrote it in a burst of ideas and then found that he didn't know what to do next. Book 2 is tolerable and Book 3 is a bad joke.

Briefly, the story concerns a woman who is working as a feminist assassin, killing (in an inventive way) men who have mistreated or even killed women but managed to remain above the law. One day in 1984, stuck in a traffic jam on the way to a hit, she gets out of a taxi and climbs down an emergency staircase from the freeway to the ground below. When she arrives there, she is in an alternative reality where the US and USSR have a joint moonbase on the larger of the two moons and there are subtle differences about police uniforms related to events at a mountain commune where several policemen were killed—the deaths being attributed to the old-fashioned nature of Japanese police equipment.

An alarm bell did ring for me even at this point, because as Aomame gets out of the taxi the driver says something portentous and mysterious about the nature of reality. It really couldn't have been clunkier or more clichéd if Arnold Schwarzenegger had said it. But I glossed over it, giving the author a bit of a fool's pardon on the grounds that it was a translation and maybe the original was a little more smoothly done.

Book One progresses well from there and it becomes clear that there is a love story here but as we fade into Book Two the love story starts to sound forced, a love-at-first-sight, haven't-seen-each-other-since-school routine that might fly in Mills and Boons but was creaking under the strain of passing itself off for an adult audience. Gradually it loses all coherence, as does the story itself which may or may not involve aliens or maybe elves or perhaps some sort of albino smurfs which travel magically via roadkill.

Nothing is really resolved except through deus-ex-machinae and the alternative reality setting is apparently completely pointless and holds the writer's interest not much longer than the various characters that drift in and then out again when they've done their bit for the plot regardless of whether their actions have any internal motivations at all.

Treated as a single book, it is the worst book I've ever bothered to finish.

d8 score: 1

1984, George Orwell

Now, here's a thing. A cornerstone of our culture which is rarely actually read any more; better known through stock phrases and iconography than in its original form. I don't know if this is currently on the national curriculum but I think it probably should be. As a study of evil and the dangers of party politics it's a gem.

Orwell dissects the political mind and the need for an unending war with an amazing level of penetration for someone writing no later than the year after the end of WWII; he has no illusions at all about the grand gestures and the mirror-image opponents of the oncoming Cold War (we are at war with the Soviet Union; we have always been at war with the Soviet Union; we are at war with Terror, we have always been at war with Terror). I don't know much about his life but I do know that he spent some time as a policeman in Burma where he had to participate in hangings, and the mistrust of motives and patriotism he learnt serves him well in the depiction of a political class which has harnessed behavioural science and linguistics to control the emotions of the people who supply it with luxury and pleasure.

The weak points are the physical setting (the effects of post-bombing radiation and fallout were not yet well known and so the portrayed after-effects of a nuclear war on Britain seem fairly ridiculous to the modern eye) and the central character of Winston Smith.

Smith is a fool, basically. Although it is easy to understand his desire to rebel, it's not so easy to understand why he's quire so bad at it. He's weak and fatalistic from the start and although the trap he is caught in is a surprise when it arrives, the fact that it arrives is not. When he is broken in Room 101, his reaction and manner of collapse is strange and not entirely convincing. It's also hard to have any sympathy for him or his lover, they are so obviously doomed by their own lack of either gumption or discretion.

These points make the book feel like a play at times, where the set is dressed to give enough of an impression of place but is not really important. Which is fair enough, really, but it still felt odd when Smith and Julia went for a day out in the countryside, regardless of the suggestion that they are worried about being watched; it still reminded me of the original ending to Blade Runner when they run away into the beautiful forest.

Orwell is strongest when he is presenting the logic of The Party's policies and the motives of its inner circle, devoted to the perpetuation of the system as their personal slice of immortality and their own triumph over the weak. That material is sadly all too realistic.

The book ends with an appendix which discusses Newspeak, the language that The Party is phasing in to replace Oldspeak—English and the other languages of its empire. This is another insightful piece of writing and could almost be a guide to modern political and economic language in places; it certainly catches the intent of a lot of this sort of writing and speaking. The goal, Orwell says, is to create a language where the brain is not needed, speech will come automatically from the larynx as an animal response to the correct stimulus. Dumbing down the language is a specific tactic to make it hard to express anything which could challenge established ideas and the use of contractions is encouraged in order to slip ideas past the brain quickly without any critical analysis.

I'll have a look at 1984 and Evil in a later post.

d8 score: 7

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

A classic story of a cursed magic item which seems on the surface to be a great gift. Gray, like 1984, is a study in evil, but a more insidious evil in the form of Lord Henry Wotton who first steals and then corrupts the young Dorian Gray from Basil Hallward, the painter of the picture in question.

Wilde was a great, possibly the greatest ever, writer of fairy tales and this is a fairy tale of wishes coming true, set in a very real and adult world and like all good fairy stories it is replete with hidden sexual tension and social commentary and ends with a moral.

The book has many layers, not least in its care never to state directly that the older two men are homosexuals, and somewhat predatory ones at that, although Basil seems not to be bold enough to really force himself on anyone at all. Henry/Harry is a different matter but his attention to Dorian is not out of love but of cold, detached, manipulation for the pleasure of it. The painting's role is to hold out the promise of not simply immortality but also of absolution to Dorian and thereby, perhaps, be the catalyst for Harry's influence on the young man. Or perhaps that is simply Dorian's excuse; perhaps without the painting he would have been just the same, as his shoddy treatment of a girl he professed to love seems to imply. The text is ambiguous in many, and artfully constructed, ways. Wilde diced with trouble even publishing this version and the text of it would in fact be used against him in his trials.

Wilde said that Basil was who he really was while Henry was his public image and it's interesting the degree to which the former chastises and even mocks the latter, and the number of times that the narrative voice undermines Harry or points out his deviousness. His clever quips and amusing attitudes are routinely framed in such a way as to highlight their shallowness.

Under the evil that is done by Harry and his puppet Dorian, and perhaps that of the magic in the picture, the story is about power and the dangers of irresponsibility - both Dorian's freedom from consequences gained from the painting, and Harry's immunity from blame as his machinations are carried out by his young proxy, leaving him blame-free in the eyes of the wider world, if not Basil's. And that is the only real difference between the evil of Dorian Gray and 1984: in Orwell's book the evil has won and no longer has to hide from the wider world. But both evils have the same nature and same ultimate fear—the past. Both Dorian Gray and The Party of 1984, consciously alter the memory of the past in an effort to avoid its rebuke; the chance that they can be shown to be wrong. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1984, and, Zelazny's The Graveyard Heart, immortality is the goal that drives the core of the story, and immortality stores up a great deal of past to be afraid of.

d8 score: 8

Monkey, Wu Ch'êng-ên, trans. Arthur Waley

Who doesn't like a bit of Monkey Magic?! Anyone that said so can leave now. Actually, those that do like Monkey, should probably also steer clear of this abridged translation of the original story and keep their memories intact.

The main problem is not the translation (although that is a little dated now, having been done in 1942), nor in the fact of the abridgement. Indeed, if it had not been abridged I doubt that I would have completed it.

I guess I was expecting a novel, albeit a very early novel and full of fantastic nonsense. But I got a selection of rather repetitive folk stories which have very little internal consistency, satire of things that don't exist any more, and a bunch of characters that have no purpose.

The book starts with stories of Monkey's youth wherein he demonstrates that he is, as advertised, the Equal of all Heaven and it is only though rather unconvincing trickery that the forces of Heaven are able to finally bind and imprison Monkey. This is the key problem, as it establishes Monkey as an almost unstoppable factotum capable of anything. Going to India and back is no more a challenge to him than scratching his big baboon bum would be. Yet we have to traipse through 350 pages of him accompanying Tripitaka on his expedition to get the scriptures from a bunch of moronic and bad tempered Buddhist spirits who don't even give them the right scrolls.

On the journey he has to contend with Tripitaka's gnat-like attention span while occasionally calling on Pigsy or Sandy to do some minor feat that we know Monkey could do in his sleep because we saw him doing much greater things in the early chapters.

So, if you're still interested, read it in the frame of mind that it is not a novel, or even a coherent story. It is a very run-of-the-mill collection of the sort of folk stories that might just about entertain folk with a mental age of 7. Compared to Norse or Celtic mythology and folklore this is very definitely third-class material.

d8 score: 2

Against All Things Ending, Stephen Donaldson

The final Thomas Covenant series has been a slow progress, each book being about 600 pages long and the series itself being four books instead of three. This third book sees the action pick up a bit as Covenant himself begins to make his mark on the story, having been turned into a god, then back again, killed, and resurrected over the course of events since the close of the original three books.

Donaldson has experimented with writing this series much more strongly from the point of view of Linden Avery, Covenant's love interest from the second series and for me it has not been a success. Avery is basically a dickhead and every minute of her company is like walking over glass to a viewing platform where one can see the most incredible vista; I put up with it because I love the vista, but I really would prefer an alternative. With Covenant returning to centre stage a bit, that's at least a help.

Meanwhile, Covenant's insane wife and his estranged son are out to kill him at the behest of good old Lord Foul. Covenant's experience as the Arch of Time has given him insights, but his reincarnation in mortal flesh makes accessing his omniscient memory hard and unreliable, but he knows that at last he understands Foul and that he can not kill him without breaking the universe in which The Land exists. Much hilarity ensues. Apart from the hilarity, that is.

Exciting, interesting, and often rousing when T.C. (Thomas Covenant, not Top Cat) gets angry and starts doing things, the plot still relies far too heavily on people not saying even the simplest things to each other. It's sometimes like a French Farce played for blood. But, ah! the giants! The wonderful giants.

d8 score: 6

The Last Dark, Stephen Donaldson

Ever see an author collapse from sheer exhaustion? Well, read The Last Dark and see what it looks like. For a 600 page book, it feels incredibly rushed. Plot lines start to collapse, in some cases because the protagonists are finally getting to grips with their situations and sorting things out, but in other cases because it feels like the author has himself collapsed and frankly doesn't care any more. A major antagonist switches sides and T.C. pulls everyone's fat out of the fire and everyone lives happily ever after. There's even a rainbow. I am not joking.

Not that I didn't want Covenant to have a happy ending, but this was too pat somehow. The struggles of the previous books deserved an ending where the costs were acknowledged without casting a shadow over the victory but it just didn't feel like that to me.

Overall, a partial success but badly marred by the obvious desire to stop writing this damned series. Which is a shame after 30 years, but maybe it was just too much to ask.

d8 score: 3

The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, Michael Moorcock

It was a long time since I had read any Elric and I had a hankering, as they say. So when I saw this and Stormbringer in a second hand stall I picked them up. I was slightly wary because I knew that these were among Moorcock's earliest work and that I was pretty young when I last read them. With that slightly low expectation in mind, I wasn't let down.

Sailor is a set of three linked novellas which chart Elric's travelling adventures, starting on a mysterious ship who's captain is initially putting together a crew to find and kill a pair of alien beings before they can end the world (bloody aliens; set UKIP on them, I say). To this end, the captain has sailed the multiverse and found not just one but four incarnations of The Eternal Champion—Elric, Erekosë, Corum, and Hawkmoon who then select various henchmen from the other sailors on the ship. Elric is unaware of his connection with the other four until the final showdown wherein they combine into one super-being to slay the aliens (hoorah!)

Of this first story, the most memorable parts are the aliens who are initially mistaken for buildings, and the city they are found in which, although ruined by time and/or war, the shadows of the original intact architecture are still somehow cast across the empty streets.

The second briskly gets Elric off the ship, which sails off in search of legendary Tnemlorn, and into a rather dull sort of love story which is notable only for its introduction of Count Smiorgan Baldhead, who's an entertaining sidekick, although this being Elric we all know he's doomed from the moment he says 'hello' to our Albino jokester.

The final part of the book takes us to the original home of Elric's Melnibonéan race, revealing that long before they conquered Melnebone, they dwelt in a Howardesqe jungle on another island in the middle of a river. I was half expecting winged apes to swoop down on the party as they explored it and gazed up at the huge statue of Arioch, Elric's patron Lord of Chaos and all-round bad egg.

As it happens, this is the story that sets Elric on a collision course with Arioch and lights the fuse of the apocalypse which eventually overcomes the world in Stormbringer.

d8 score: 5

Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock

He's got nothin' you need,

He's going to make you bleed...

Deep  Purple, "Stormbringer"

Absolutely the epitome of adolescent angst and moodiness, Stormbringer is everything British fantasy used to be before the Tolkien juggernaut rolled over everything, followed by hordes of vampires and werewolves. Elric chooses his side, and decides that it will be no side; using the Lords of Law as a weapon against those of Chaos but ultimately playing both ends against eachother as he searches for a middle way.

In the process, Bruegel is unleashed on the world, and not the nice one that did the pictures of people having a booze-up at a wedding: the other one that painted skeletons chopping people's heads off.

Apocalypses are hard to pull off. I find that most attempts either don't capture the scale or overwhelm the characters with the presentation of the scale. Moorcock, it seems to me, pulls the trick off here because the world is not in fact destroyed but turned into a living incarnation of Chaos. When Elric brings the whole thing to an end replacing it with, it is implied, our real world, the feeling is indeed one of cleansing and even his final death at the blade of his own sword manages not to overplay the moment. So, all in all, I was pleasantly surprised. Or maybe I've not grown up very much in the last 30 years after all.

d8 score: 6

The Encyclopedia of Early Earth, Isabel Greenberg

Boy meets girl, boy and girl are magnetically repulsed by an invisible force, boy tells his life story to pass the time, book ends very abruptly.

What there is of Encyclopedia is excellent. But because there is a substantial appendix of bits and pieces (including some stories), there's no feeling that you are coming close to the end of the book until you turn the page and find the word "Appendix" blaring out at you. It was a real shocker, as the storyline seemed to heavily imply that more was going to happen. But it didn't; the boy and the girl die without ever overcoming their magnetic resistance problem and that's dealt with in a single page.

I could have done with a book twice as long with a better ending. If I could only have one of those I'd pick the longer book as what there was, was great.

d8 score: 4

Economics: The User's Guide, Ha-Joon Chang

A good overview of the world's main economic religions theories and models and a welcome return of the Pelican imprint with its distinctive light blue covers.

d8 score: 7

Mass Combat 3: Counter Punch

So, I said in the previous instalment that I prefer to use counters than figures, so here's how I make my counters - a bit of Perl and a bit of plainTeX. If you have a Mac or a Linux machine then you should be able to use these files without any real problem; it's possible that even Windows has managed to catch up with the 1980's enough to use them—I don't know. The end result should be a 2 page PDF (see here for example based on the defaults below) which you should be able to print to get double-sided counters with one side representing the unit at full strength and the other side half. My ancient Epson 1290 manages to produce accurate enough registration for this so I assume printers made this century (yes, it really is that old) will be able to cope.

Blogger can't handle this sort of thing very well, so you'll have to trust me that you can cut and paste from the following mess into a file editor to get usable results (this is also why there's no images in this post).

The first file is units.tex which sets up some macros for the later code:

\hsize 6.2677true in%
\vsize 9.69true in%
\special{papersize=210mm,297mm}%

\newdimen\csize
\newdimen\tsize
\newdimen\twidth
\def\setsize#1{\csize=#1
        \tsize=.93\csize
        \twidth=.87\csize
        \font\BODY=phvr at .222\csize
        \font\SMALL=phvr at .18\csize
        \setbox0=\hbox{\BODY ()1234567890}
        \global\setbox\strutbox=\hbox{\vrule height \ht0 depth \dp0 width 0pt}
}
\setsize{27pt} % default
\def\centre#1{\hfill\strut #1\hfill }
\def\inline#1{\setbox99=\hbox{\BODY #1}\ifdim\wd99<\twidth\hbox to
\tsize{\centre{\BODY #1}}\else\hbox to \tsize{\centre{\SMALL #1}}\fi}
\def\line#1{\hbox to \tsize{\thinspace\strut #1\thinspace }}
\def\slip{\hrule width 0pt height .4pt }
\footline{\hfil}
\BODY
\def\newline{\par\noindent}
\def\newpage{\par\vfill\break\noindent\parfillskip=0pt\leftskip=0pt
plus 1fil\rightskip=0pt}
\def\unit #1 #2,#3,#4,#5,#6 {\vbox{\hsize\csize\hrule height .8pt
\hbox to \csize{\vrule width.8pt\hfill\vbox to \csize{\hsize=\csize
\slip
\line{\BODY #3\hfill #4\strut}\vfill
\inline{#1}\slip\slip%%%% Max width<23.36pt
\inline{#2}\vfill
\line{\BODY #5\hfill #6}\slip
}\hfill\vrule width.8pt}%
\hrule height 0pt depth .8pt}\penalty0}%
\setbox12=\hbox{0000000}
\offinterlineskip\parindent=0pt\parfillskip=0pt plus 1fil\rightskip=\parfillskip\leftskip=0pt\noindent

\endinput
\bye

Then we have the main counter defining file makeunits.pl. This contains the hard coded definitions of the counters you want to to produce. The default ones in the file should be enough to work out how to modify it for your own use. The only slightly unclear parameter is probably "count" which is simply the number of copies of that unit you want; they will be numbered so you can track damage and so on.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

@lines=();
@currentline=();
$width=shift || (27/72);

$maxline=6/$width;

$width*=72;

#Count, name, cl, ac, mv, number
units(30,"Kobold",0,7,6,40);
units(10,"Goblin",1,6,6,40);
units(10,"Orc",2,6,9,20);
units(5,"Lizardman",5,6,"6//12",20);
units(4,"Militia",0,5,9,20);
units(10,"Reserves",0,8,12,20);
units(10,"Mob",-2,10,12,20);
units(1,"Pixie",0,"1(5)","6/12",80);

print '\input units.tex';
print "\n";
print "\\setsize{$width pt}";
print '\newline';
print "\n";

pageone();
pagetwo();
print '\bye';

sub pageone
{
    if(@currentline)
    {
 push @lines,[@currentline];
 @currentline=();
    }
    for $l(@lines)
    {
 @currentline=@$l;
 for $u(@currentline)
 {
     print "$u";
 }
 print "\\newline\n";
    }
}

sub pagetwo
{
    print "\\newpage\n";
    for $l(@lines)
    {
 @currentline=@$l;
 for (1..@currentline)
 {
     $u=pop@currentline;
     ($s)=$u=~/,(\d+)\s*$/;
     $s/=2;
     $u=~s/,\d+\s*$/,$s /;
     print "$u";
 }
 print "\\newline\n";
    }
}

sub units
{
    my ($dups,$name,$cl,$ac,$mv,$size)=@_;
    local $i;
    for $i(1..$dups)
    {
 push @currentline,"\\unit {$name} $i,$ac,$mv,$cl,$size ";
 if(@currentline==$maxline)
 {
     push @lines,[@currentline];
     @currentline=();
 } 
    }
}

To use this, you pass the size of the counters you want as a fraction of an inch and redirect the output to some other file, for example

./makeunits.pl .626 >sheet.tex

Finally, you turn this TeX file into a pdf in whatever method you normally do, if nothing else then

pdftex sheet.tex

Should have a good chance of producing a file called sheet.pdf which you can print.

AC comes out at top-left; move rate top-right; combat ability (ie, the equivelant fighter ability) goes bottom-left; and the number of individuals represented by the unit goes in the bottom-right. The combat ability, as well as the tables in part 1, are intended for use with my combined combat tables but aren't hard to use with the standard tables.

Next post will probably be about something else, but in the post after that I plan to get down to some discussion of how to actually resolve some real combat with these rules (and one more table).

Mass Combat 2 - A Question of Scale

Miniature figures can challenge
even the greatest minds

Scale is something that has to be grappled with, or at least decided on when dealing with mass combat - scale of time as well as distances. D&D and then AD&D used a multi-purpose system based on ignoring the gameworld measurements and instead concentrating on the size of things on the table in front of the players, measured in literal inches as measured with a ruler or tape-measure by the DM. Sounds good, but somehow it all became a little tricky...

One of my most common arguments with other D&Ders is the question of whether one increases the size of area effect spells when using the outdoor ground scale or not. Basically, I say you do and everyone else says you don't. Luckily for me, they're wrong. Which is also lucky for you if you're interested in mass combat with D&D monsters and spells because it eliminates a load of pointless calculations.

The main cause of the arguments is the badly worded section in the PHB on the topic (p39):

Magic and spells ore, most certainly, devices of the game. In order to make them fit the constrictions of the underground labyrinth, a one for three reduction is necessary. It would be folly, after all, to try to have such as effective attack modes if feet were not converted to yards outdoors, where visibility, movement, and conventional weapons attack ranges are based on actual fact. (See MOVEMENT.)

Distance scale and areas of effect for spells (and missiles) are designed to fit the game, The tripling of range outdoors is reasonable, as it allows for recreation of actual ranges for hurled javelins, arrows fired from longbows, or whatever. In order to keep magic spells on a par, their range is also tripled. IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT OUTDOOR SCALE BE USED FOR RANGE ONLY, NEVER FOR SPELL AREA OF EFFECT (which is kept at 1” = 10’) UNLESS A FIGURE RATIO OF 1 :10 OR 1 :20 (1 casting equals 10 or 20 actual creatures or things in most cases) IS USED, AND CONSTRUCTIONS SUCH AS BUILDINGS, CASTLES, WALLS, ETC. ARE SCALED TO FIGURES RATHER THAN TO GROUND SCALE. Note that the foregoing assumes that a ground scale of 1” to 10 yards is used.

Of course, sometimes the players
will enjoy using the wrong scale

The text is, in fact, a slightly modified extract from an extended piece on the subject in issue #15 of The Dragon where Gygax ponders the question of scales in June of '78, a couple of years after the publication of the final D&D supplement: Swords & Spells, which was a mass-combat system

He rightly puts his finger on the fact that for mass combat, ground scale is the most important issue as the players will be constrained by physical space and that time scale is affected by ground scale insofar that movement must be noticeable. He does make some assumptions about what the reader already understands, however, and never fully explains the reason behind the use of "inches" and D&D.

He also assumes a rather generous 5'x10' playing surface—much larger than most people have today—and picks a scale that makes that equal to 600 yards by 1200 which he takes as a typical battlefield for mediæval combat. Now, when one inch on the table represents 10 yards in the game world (1:360 scale), then a round must be a minute to give reasonable movement rates, where "reasonable" means easily handled by a typical ruler of 12" length. Since the ruler and the table are taken to be fixed sizes, there is a direct relationship between ground scale and time scale; double one and you must double the other or units will be making tiny movements.

Taking the outdoor ground and time scales to be 1":30' and 1rnd=60 seconds this means that the indoor ground scale of 1"=10 feet (1:120 scale), requires a round of 20s to give reasonable open-air movement rates. The important thing is that a fighter makes an attack every round and everyone can only make a charge movement once in ten rounds and so on, all while a combat can be contained on the table in front of the players.

Now, an underground round is not 20s long, of course, it is in fact still a full minute. There's two reasons for that and one of them is the question of moving about in dark corridors with slippery or rotten floors with the chance of sudden ambush around every bend. The other reason—magic— is more problematical and I'll deal with it below.

A significant presence

Next we enter the rabbit hole as Gygax raises the issue of figure scale. If 1"=10yards, then you can get a lot of people into that. With spears or other thrusting weapons, a 10 yard line might take 16 men standing shoulder to shoulder and each being backed by another 16, for 256 men in that one inch. This is very dense packing of the sort probably only encountered in special formations like Alexandrian pike phalanxes or Roman shield tortoises, but that's okay, really. Most figures have slightly smaller bases than that but then they are normally taken as representing 20 men. Except, this is fantasy and a single person can be a massively significant presence on the field of battle and therefore require their own figure.

Life being what it is, the figures used in D&D, Chainmail and other table-top games are all a certain size, and don't come with tiny versions to represent individuals. So, the idea was introduced of using some figures to represent player characters and important NPCs while some other figures the same size represent 10, 20, or 100 people. This was not a good move at all and led directly to the text in the PHB quoted above.

In short, the problem becomes one of spell effects. A spell effect is given in inches as normal for movement and weapon range. So long as the target(s) are/is in the same scale, that's fine. But what happens if the spell, say fireball or flame strike, or even bless land on a group of six figures that represent, not 120 orcs but 6 PCs. Well, Fig-1 shows how this plays out - first the party in marching order (each grid line is 1"), then a fireball is "called" and lands on the Reverend Bill's head.

At first glance, it doesn't look too bad for the party - Villa's safe and Corry and Fred will be saving for half or no damage as they are mostly outside of the fireball's area.

But this is all wrong. That fireball is 4" wide, as required by the PHB, but that's 40 yards wide. On the scale of these figures that... Well, actually it's hard to know what that is. A figure base of 1" is typical of 25-30mm figures, which is roughly 1"=6' (1:72 scale) or 1"=5' (1:60 scale). Taking the latter, as that's currently popular and it's easy to work with, the fireball is now a measly 20' wide in relation to the party. That's not right. The book says that the fireball even in indoor mode should be 40' wide, or twice the size it is here. Villa should be fried with the rest of them.

Well, okay, then, we'll stick with that. But what if the party are near some troops? Now the scale only works part way (fig-2) and we have a problem: if the party's figure/indoor scale is used (i.e., an 8" fireball on the tabletop, the outer circle) then not only the party but all the 120 goblins are turned into leather armour pop-tarts. But a fireball scaled to the goblin's outdoor scale (the inner circle) would have, if centred on the cleric, completely missed them all. And neither circle is even the "official" indoor scale of 1"=10', which would be a third circle bid-way between the other two, again affecting the goblins incorrectly. What a mess.

Transferring the indoor scale to the battlefield leads to the problem which Gygax says in the Dragon article was pointed out by none other than Len Lakofka:

"A huge area can be covered with webs from a lowly magic-user’s second level spell. Of course this is ridiculous, as the 1" = 10 yards scale only applies in cases where all other scales are in proportion."

Which is what we see here with the fireball. This quote sums the problem up but also gives the correct answer at the same time - keep all the scales in proportion. Don't use a separate figure scale in the first place! If you do, you will have headaches; no one wants to have to deal with this crap during a game.

The text in the Players Handbook tries to say this, but fluffs it. It should, for clarity, instead read (my addition in bold): "IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT OUTDOOR SCALE BE USED FOR RANGE ONLY, NEVER FOR SPELL AREA OF EFFECT UNLESS A FIGURE RATIO OF 1 :10 OR 1 :20  IS USED FOR ALL FIGURES".

This means that a single figure or counter is used for a group of PCs, just as it is for a group of orcs, goblins, or knights. This allows us to represent the area of effects consistently as shown as the still unnumbered fig-3 at left where we can clearly see that no goblins were harmed in the production of this diagram.

The crucial factor in all this is that miniature figures are three-dimensional and therefore very hard to overlap. In fact, instead of replacing the party with a single token, we could mostly solve the problem by allowing units to stack.

Stacking also allows us to eliminate the need for different sized tokens for different sized creatures—Swords and Spells uses ⅝" wide stands for humans and 1⅜" wide ones for ogres, trolls, and some horse units. We can instead simply adjust the maximum number of individuals represented by a token or counter. So, if a 1" counter could normally represent 100 men, it can only represent up to 45 horses, say.

Since an individual counter can represent from 1 to 100 or more individuals, it may seem that the DM must have a system for judging the actual placement of those individuals within the area covered by the counter. I personally have never found this necessary and the normal D&D 1" melee-range fuzziness generally covers all rationalizations, at least when the counters are 1" or less in size.

A New Type of Encumbrance (goody).

If the DM keeps an idea of a "stacking limit" in their head, things start to work quite smoothly. Taking 100 men as the normal limit in a 1" square, we can count a centaur as 2 men and say that a counter of 25 men and one of 37 centaurs can stack together and still move normally (other issues, such as facing and formation will have to wait for a future post); if we allow over-stacking to, say, 250 men in a square then we can penalize them for movement as they are perforce moving in a tight formation. The DM can regulate this as s/he sees fit, but it means that it's allowable to have working units of mixed fire giants and hell-hounds, for example.

"This is all jolly interesting, isn't it, Frodo?"
"Strictly's on soon; can we go?"

Magic Problems
I said that magic is one of the things that undermines the idea of completely abstract ground scale adjustments. The reason is that such ground scale adjustments logically require time scale adjustments, as mentioned above. But the players are told in the PHB that a casting time of one round represents a minute and a segment 6 seconds and this runs counter to the intent of the system.

That intent is that a game can be played in a balanced way regardless of how much space the players have to work with. A fireball's width is always a third of an unencumbered human's move rate; walls of force and thorns always represent the same level of obstacle, and charging units are always exposed to ranged fire for the same number of turns. Realism is completely ignored for the same of playability at scales other than 1:360.

Of course, you can scale a fireball up too far

This even works for fighters because we know that to-hit rolls are not made for every single blow; with a different time scale we just gloss over the fact that by the clock the combatants are getting more rolls, the important thing is that they get the same number of rolls per round.

Same for spell-like powers...can you see the problem? If spellcasters are taking a set time to cast spells, then the abstraction breaks and spell-like powers become disproportionately strong compared to real spells. This can, obviously, be fixed by simply ignoring the casting-time to real-time linkage, and that can be fun, but many players will find this hard to swallow, I have found.

There is a further problem, and that is missile (and spell) ranges which have to be "topped out" so that at large scales thieves are not throwing daggers half a mile, but that's much easier to accept than fiddling with time for various reasons.

Counters
In the next post I'll put up some software for making double-sided counters (one side is full strength, the other half strength).