Lazy Blog Post - Edward Gorey

One of my favorite artists. If you've never read his stuff, Amphigorey is a great place to start.

Planet of the Vampires

Not just a surprisingly entertaining movie, but features, without a doubt, the coolest space-outfits ever. If NASA had fashion sense like this, the shuttle program would never have been cancelled.

Dave Arneson and Impartiality in the Temple of the Frog

When it comes to the perfect role model for the impartial ref, I need look no further than my experiences with Dave Arneson. As some of the comments of the linked article would indicate, impartiality can be associated with a "ref vs. players" mentality. I probably made similar associations myself in the past, but gaming with Dave dispelled the notion.

Being, for the first time, in a game run by Dave was a bit disorienting. When your character interacted with Dave's world, he became very animated, as if pouring every bit of his personality into making the game come alive. In between those parts, though, he seemed aloof, even detached. To clarify that a bit - if you happened to be talking to one of the elven guards watching the causeway to Castle Blackmoor, he was completely in character, and you could almost smell the salt spray from the bay behind the castle. However, if the players were discussing how best to proceed across Loch Gloomen amongst themselves, you could expect absolutely no reaction from Dave whatsoever. He would sit, stonefaced, not reacting to anything anyone was saying. If a question was put to him as DM rather than as an NPC, he would simply shrug and look bored.

If you've ever watched a court trial on TV (a real trial, not a show), you've seen this same behavior - from the judge.

"Judge" would actually be a better description of how Dave ran his games than "Referee". The difference being one of rules vs. rulings. Dave was firmly in the rulings camp. If you ever got a chance to sit in one of his convention games, he would pull out a pile of pregen characters - a hodgepodge of sheets from different editions and versions of editions. At one session, I received an 8th level D&D 3.0 Cleric, and the fellow next to me had what I am pretty sure was some sort of OD&D ranger. When one of the players, obviously confused, asked him what edition we were going to be playing, Dave grinned at him, held out his hand for a shake, and said "Hi, I'm Dave Arneson."

That particular session would have been in 2002, I believe, and just a couple of years into the rules-intensive environment of d20 gaming. It was interesting to watch players who were very much into rules-mastery and character-builds interact with a DM who could really give a shit about an opposed grapple check or what a particular monster supposedly could or could not do. Dave had exactly two ways of resolving dilemmas or challenges. 1) Make an absolutely impartial ruling, or 2) if an absolutely impartial ruling was impossible, roll the dice.

He would go so far, sometimes, as letting the players roll the dice for both sides of a conflict. Once, when the party's boat was a attacked by a horde of lizardmen, he told us how many there were, their armor class, their hit points, what they needed to hit us, and so on. They were stupid, he explained, and fanatic, and would fight to the death, so we should be able to take care of that ourselves, and he was going to go get a coke and he'd be back in a few minutes to check on us. Half of the players grinned at his audacity (me included), while the other half looked around for the hidden cameras or waited for the punch line.

To say that Dave was completely impartial with regards to the game was not to say that Dave was completely impartial with regards to players, often with hilarious results. Once, while the party was being attacked by some sort of flying machines over the swamps near the Temple, a player whinged a bit that, since he had been paralyzed, he had nothing to do while everyone else got to fight the machines, and how unfair that was. Dave regarded him quietly for a moment, then handed him a d6, and said "here, roll that every round." The player, confused, asked why. "That," Dave said, "is how much damage you take every round. That should keep you busy." I don't believe anyone else complained about anything for the rest of the session.

It didn't take long in one of Dave's games for the players to realize that we were on our own, completely. There would be no hints, subtle or otherwise, no clues dropped in our paths when we happened to go off-track. No mercy when we stumbled into overwhelming odds. No poison types fudged when we failed our saving throws. It was up to us to search, scout, research, prepare, plot, and react with some sort of competence. If not, characters died, or we as players would simply be informed that we had completely failed in our mission and that the session was over, better luck next time. Victory or defeat was our responsibility, never, respectively, a hand-out or a punishment. It was never ref vs. players, nor was it ref working for players. Dave was there to bring the world alive for us to explore, and to make sure we were engaged, entertained, and, most importantly, challenged. He did this magnificently, and when we won, we were actually proud of ourselves.

Impartiality of this magnitude was something I pretty much forgot about for years after that. For one thing, I moved away from Dave's neighborhood. For another, I got into a long-running 3x campaign, and didn't much concern myself with the "old ways" for a long time. Lately though, as I run older editions and their clones bi-weekly, I've been spending a little more time going over my memories of how things were done by one of the game's creators, and trying, admittedly against my own soft-hearted nature, to capture a bit of that magic myself.

Ref Impartiality

Probably the only tough thing about running my bi-monthly Omegea campaign (unless you count trying to stand upright after a growler of Ommegang Abbey) is my commitment to remaining 100% impartial.

100% impartial.

Now, this is not the "mostly impartial" school of refereeing that seems to be most common in RPGs. I've certainly been guilty of it myself over the years, allowing godly intervention to "reboot" a tpk, fudging a roll now and then for the sake of the "story", even simple DM fiat just to nudge things in the "right direction".

No, I'm talking about complete, merciless, let-the-dice-fall-where-they-may impartiality. No breaks, no fudging, no second chances. Brutal impartiality.

This is especially tough in a game like mine, I think, because we have so many novice players. Out of a revolving corral of 8 or so players, only a couple are what I would call "veteran" gamers, and the rest are all artists and writers. These folks bring an awful lot of creativity to the table, which I love, but not a whole lot of dungeoneering experience, which is where the whole impartiality thing gets particularly... challenging.

Imagine biting your tongue as as a cleric throws (expensive) holy water on a Gelatinous Cube. Or the party stumbling into the same 10' pit for a second time (!) because they still haven't figured out what that optional 10' pole I offer with the standard starting equipment package is useful for. All to often these missteps can result in swift and spectacular deaths. I cringe as PC after PC blow themselves up, stick their faces into holes to have them chewed off by centipedes, and so on. Impartiality means watching them walk past secret doors without saying a word. Its watching them leave an "empty" room, which happens to have the most valuable treasure in the dungeon concealed under a loose floorboard, and not even blinking an eye. Its trying not to chuckle while they get ripped off by merchant after merchant because they haven't really tried to haggle much.

When we ended last session, the players had all decided to stuff their packs with 10lbs of oil flasks each. So that's how they'll be headed back into the dungeon next time. With 10lbs of combustible fluids on each of their backs. Did I mention blowing themselves up?

Now, as I mentioned in a previous post, everyone seems to have a real hoot as character after character dies, but I still worry about players getting discouraged. It hasn't happened yet though, and hopefully never will.

As tough as it is to maintain my "DM Face" (there are some who call it a "poker face"), I'm beginning to realize this no holds barred approach to impartiality is becoming one of the things that keeps me on the edge of my seat session after session. And, by the time these guys are running 4th or 5th level characters, they're going to be DAMN TOUGH! Because they learned it all the hard way.

What's your opinion of, or experience with, impartiality?

Elric - End Game

There's been a lot of discussion on the old-school blogs about D&D's implied "End Game", or what high level characters do when they're too big and powerful and important to go sneaking around robbing graves anymore. Typically this "retirement" means building a castle, clearing the wilderness around it - rendering it monster-free, and slowly entering the political power games of the region.

If you're using the Melnibonean books as campaign inspiration, however, they offer a drastically different End Game.


(I suppose I should warn you away from ***SPOILERS!!!*** if you haven't read the books yet and are planning to do so)


Moorcock's anti-hero was, of course, doomed from the beginning. We know early on that he is quite literally damned, his soul bargained away (as with most Melnibonean royalty) to the lords of Chaos, specifically Arioch in this case, in exchange for power. Adding to this doom is Elric's dependence on the dark sword Stormbringer, self-described as "a thousand times more evil" than Elric. As the series winds ever closer to its finale, Elric finds himself, often against his own will, acting as both an agent for and a foil against Chaos. Over and over, he saves his friends and loved ones from danger, only to watch helplessly as his own dark sword eats their souls. The conflict between Law and Chaos eventually heightens to the point where the entire world is consumed by their conflict.

Against all the odds, Elric proves to be a greater servant of Fate than of Chaos, and he manages to plant the seeds of the recreation of his world. There is no living happily ever after - Stormbringer inevitably claims its last and greatest victim, Elric himself.


(***SPOILERS ENDOS****)


What this all offers to the inspiration-seeking GM is a completely different set of possibilities for the big "End Game". Why not start planning the PC's demise from the very beginning - foreshadow it here and there, drop hints, insert tragedies, play up every curse and omen of doom.

Another possibility is the end of the campaign world itself. Plenty of adventure stories and games feature heroes attempting to avert the end of all things - how about making that end inevitable, but letting the player's have a hand in what comes after?

Food for thought.

John Carter trailer review

Stop by the Warriors of the Red Planet blog for my comments on the John Carter trailer.

Our Star Blazers!

We're off to outer space
We're leaving Mother Earth
To save the human race
Our Star Blazers

Searching for a distant star
Heading off to Iscandar
Leaving all we love behind
Who knows what danger we'll find?

We must be strong and brave
Our home we've got to save
If we don't in just one year
Mother Earth will disappear

Fighting with the Gamilons
We won't stop until we've won
Then we'll return and when we arrive
The Earth will survive
With our Star Blazers