Just Make 'em Human: Elves

This one's about re-imagining elves as a human culture. 

One of the issues I have with fantasyland, and oh there are many, is that humans are boring. The reason they're boring is because they've been blended and presented as this western European flavored monoculture. If you go to roll up a character in B/X or many of its literal or spiritual successors, and you don't feel like inhabiting a generic vaguely medieval European peasant, then your options are an elf, a dwarf, or a halfling. Sure, those are also generic monocultures based on our collective media touchstones, but those are your options. That is, unless the referee has put in some work and presents you with varied cultures. 

I get that some people are wary about creating fictional cultures for their game worlds, lest they repeat the myopic blunders of a host of fantasy writers over the last century. But human cultures are what make us so damn interesting in the real world, and I think it's a lost opportunity not to include it at your table. Be aware of the stereotypes of the real world cultures your fictional ones are similar to, check in with your players, and check in with yourself. Asking yourself, "am I fucking this up?" is maybe the best advice I can give in general, and it's especially effective here. I think another key component is how other cultures in your game view one another—if they have opinions or misconceptions about one another, make them unique to your world. 

In March of 2020, my friends and I started a game that I dubbed "Final & Fantasy" because I swapped the typical dee-and-dee non-humans for ones like ronso, moogle, and viera. Horses became chocobos. Crystals were sources of power. They eventually flew around on an airship piloted by someone named Cid. You get the idea. The campaign lasted two and a half years, and was the first long-term one we finished in all the time we've played together.

It was fun, but afterward I needed a tonal shift. I yearned for something more grounded, relatable. I wanted it to be humanocentric while still including the fantasyland touchstone my friends and I grew up with—elves, dwarves, and halflings. So naturally I thought, "well, what if they were human?" 

Here's how I did it with elves.  

What Is an Elf

Now to be clear, this is a worldbuilding post. You won't find anything about stat bonuses, spell tables, or being 16.7% more likely to find a secret door because a) I am firmly in the "mechanics are the least-interesting part about playing a non-human sentient being" camp and b) I originally did this for a never-finished PBtA hack I was working on. 

With that out of the way, what the heck is an elf anyway? Elves in media tend to fall into two camps: Tolkien-esque and subversions of the standard J.R.R. set. For the purpose of this exercise, I went with the former because I wanted it to meet those classic expectations (and besides, the subversion was already there by saying, "they're actually just humans.")

The following could be said about a typical fantasyland elf:

-They have pointy ears.
-They have a long lifespan, which gives them an outlook on life some might describe as aloof.
-They live in forests, with a deep connection to nature.
-They don't have a large population compared to humans. 
-They love poetry, music, and merriment.
-They possess an otherworldly beauty.
-They have a way with magic.

Now let's take it point-by-point. 

The Ears

The simplest answer to "why would humans have pointy ears? " is body modification. In the real world, body modification has its roots in non-European cultures. And a bunch of people were, and still are, fucking weirdos about it. So the other cultures in my world don't have their heads up their asses over it.

It's something they do at the start of adulthood, which brings us to our next item. 

Long-lived & Aloof

If elves are human, they live as long as humans do. So their lifespan then must be a cultural belief. In some media, elves live hundreds of years—in others, they never naturally die but can be killed. How would a cultural belief reflect this? 

It starts with their names. The name is the elf, the person that carries it is adding to the history and legacy of the it. In addition to the ears, it's something they acquire in adulthood. Very rarely does someone carry a new name, because a name is only put to rest when the bearer is killed. If someone dies of natural causes, the elf sleeps until another person steps up to act as its vessel. 

This isn't a "junior, the third, the fourth, etc" situation. Nor is it reincarnation. The elf remains the same even if the bearer is different. In writing and conversation they don't differentiate between different name-hosts, because it's something they understand through context. Thus, other cultures have developed a misconception about elves "living forever" because when reading about or speaking to an elf, they lack that cultural context. This is compounded by the fact that there are no elf children, making it that much easier for the ignorant to erroneously fill in the gaps. 

They can seem aloof compared to other cultures because of the beliefs and practices surrounding their names. They study the history of their name, they know what the elf has experienced and endured up to this point. And barring a tragic end, they know the elf will outlive them. So their cultural norm takes a long view of history—they're concerned with events that define an entire generation instead of a day, a week, a month, or even a year.

Forests, Nature, and Population

I'm combining the next two items for brevity's sake. 

The elves are only as healthy as the forests in which they reside. So no farms like the peoples of the fields, and no big cities either. Populations need food, water, and space (among other resources) to sustain themselves. Living in the forests, sustainably, means their populations are small compared to others. And the methods they have developed to live in such a way necessitates an understanding of flora, fauna, and best practices. 

Clearly in the real-world, this describes many indigenous populations. If you go this route with one of your cultures, make sure you are aware of the stereotypes that go along with it and keep a 10' pole between them and your table. 

Poetry, Music, and Merriment

The arts! There is a cultural emphasis on aural disciplines here  (poetry can, and should, be recited). It also just so happens that a festive celebration is a perfect place to perform these. Experiencing joy is reason enough for an elf to throw a party, for what better way to fill thousands of days than music and laughter? 

You'd be mistaken to think all their poetry and music is meant to capture or elicit positive emotions. When an elf feels deep sorrow, anger, etc there is no better way to mark such a monumental event than to put it to verse or song. 

So it is only natural that poets and musicians are well-respected, playing vital roles in the daily lives of elven culture. 

Otherworldly Beauty

This one is about how others view elves, so how did this come about? Elves aren't somehow better looking than other cultures or any of that wretched pseudoscience nonsense. What they do have is a cultural importance on fashion. Where other peoples might express visual arts through painting or sculpture, the elves do it with how they dress and present themselves. Clothing, makeup, hairstyles and the like are the avenues in which creative minds develop and push themselves and others to new heights. So when elves leave their forest, or are members of their diaspora, it's only natural others will think, 'holy shit, they look amazing." 

A Way with Magic

As established above, self-expression is a cornerstone of elven culture. The mystic arts are encouraged and supported as much as the other art forms. Again, it's not some innate predisposition hogwash, but rather the cultural acceptance and celebration of the craft and the resources that come along with that. And just like with their poetry and music and fashion, when you have a community of artists they will find ways to delight and out-do one another. No wonder they have a reputation for their magical prowess!

Other Takeaways

What else can be built out from what I've established?

For starters history and writing. One is expected to know the history of the elf they carry. It would make a lot of sense to me if elves were the first culture to develop writing, as a way to record the events attached to their names. And in that way, they were also the first to keep written historical records. And if they've been doing it longer than anyone else, it stands to reason that the academic discipline was of elven origin, as their writings quickly moved from events of their own lives to the larger world around them. 

And lastly, the call to adventure. Why would an elf PC set out to traverse the wilderness or crawl through a dungeon or get up to any of the shenanigans found in a dee-and-dee game? If an elf is a name that experiences life through a person, then your campaign will be an epochal time in that life. While being an adventurer may not be encouraged in the same way as an artist, it is a socially acceptable way to spend one's time. There is a risk of dying, the name being put to rest forever more, but all things must eventually come to an end—even an elf. 

 

 

Checking the d4-cast

This one is about weather. Let's talk about it.

(Note: it was pointed out to me on Bluesky that the math in this was off by a day when talking about repeating any weather result vs a specific one. This post has been updated to correct this. Thanks, Brian!) 

Recently Josh wrote up a really cool table-with-memory post, demonstrated with weather, over at Rise Up Comus.  I love a random mechanics with memories, and I will get up to all sorts of fun with this Stepladder Table. But in reading the post, I came across a phrase I have read countless times. In one way or another, it's in almost every O/NSR game I own* that concerns itself with atmospheric conditions...

"Roll 1d6 every day for weather," after which you consult a table to determine the results. 

It's simple, it's fast. I get why this is the standard. I've used it in a lot of games, including my own hack. And it was in the most recent playtest of said hack, wherein the players ventured through the Black Wyrm of Brandonsford, that I finally was able to put my finger on where this standard weather mechanic falls short for me.

"What are the chances it's going to be nice out?" 

Assuming the table has six different results, one of them being "seasonally nice," it's absurd that there is only a 2.78% chance we'll experience that weather two days in a row. Let's go even further: there is a 0.46% chance it'll be nice weather for three consecutive days. Does this reflect your lived experience when stepping out your front door at all? Does anyone else look at those probabilities and go, "you've gotta be joking me?"

Listen, I know that elfgames are (usually) set in fantasy worlds and going down a rabbit hole of "but this is how it works in the real world!" is madness. On the other hand, part of the reason the genre works is because you have fantastic elements alongside the familiar. And ricocheting weather isn't the kind of fantasy I'm interested in bringing to my tables. There simply has to be another way. So here's one:

Checking the d4-cast

Like Josh's aforementioned post, I'm sure this has been done before. In its simplest form, you roll d6 to determine the weather, and then roll a d4 to determine how many days it persists. Now you have a 6.25% chance of one-day weather two days in a row, and a 1.56% chance of it happening for three days straight.

There are definitely some issues I'd have with following this blindly, but rules are tools so let's make this one work for us in an example. 

Summer Weather
1.Thunderstorms, high winds
2. Showers, overcast
3. Partly cloudy, gusts of wind
4. Sunny, cool breeze
5. Sunny, humid
6. Sunny, sweltering heat, high humidity

Now let's look at a week's worth of weather, using Monday-Sunday.

Monday: I roll a d6 for weather and get a 3 (partly cloudy, gusts of wind). I roll a d4 and get a 2. It's looking okay today and tomorrow.

Wednesday: I roll the weather d6 and get a 5. I d4-cast it, and it's a 1. One day of sunny, humid weather.

Thursday: The d6 comes up as a 1, the d4 a 3. Three consecutive days of thunderstorms seems a bit excessive, so instead "thunderstorms, high winds" becomes the destination we'll reach on Saturday. Today and tomorrow are steps leading to it. Storms often follow hot/humid weather, so let's say Thursday is 6 (sunny, sweltering heat, high humidity).

Friday: The next step in our arrival to the storm. Maybe the edge of the roiling mass of storm clouds reaches us today, and we have 3 (partly cloudy, gusts of wind) as a sign of things to come. It is probably still really hot and humid since the storm hasn't come to break the swelter.

Saturday: The storm arrives. Rejoice, storm-loving freaks! Me personally, I can't stand 'em. 

Sunday: I roll a 1 for weather. I don't even d4-cast it. Sure, I could move it up to 2 (showers, overcast) as we get the tail end of the storm cell passing through. But, this is a golden opportunity to embrace the 90s and GO XTREME. Yesterday was just a normal thunderstorm. But today? Today is the center of a massive storm cell. Tornado-warning conditions. Today is fallen trees, golf ball-sized hail, roof-ripping winds. Welcome to The Big Storm of the Summer! This is why I hate storms: inconvenient at best and downright dangerous at worst. At least tomorrow will be nicer!

Well there you have it. A little pyramid-shaped addition to determining weather. I do have some more complicated ideas on the subject. Maybe that'll be a future blog post.

*Looking at you, Errant.

  

 

Appendix S: Make-Believe

This one's about a few games I played as a child.

When I initially saw the Traverse Fantasy-inspired Prismatic Wasteland Appendices N challenge, I debated whether or not I'd join in. I could wax on about how many times I've read Watership Down or The Lord of the Rings (16 and 7, respectively). Or maybe pontificate about my love for Chrono Trigger and Dragonball. I could write about how reading Appendix N darlings Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and Dying Earth in the last couple years has influenced my recent game design. 

But as much as I like reading when other people do that, the thought of sitting down to type all that out for myself didn't fire up my imagination. So instead, I'd like to talk about something that does. TTRPGs are playing make-believe with structure, and I started doing that before I ever touched a tabletop roleplaying game. Here are some examples.

Rabbits

Rabbits was a simple game my friends and I played at recess in the winter of 4th grade. I'm from northern Minnesota, which is no stranger to snowfall, and during the winters of my childhood the playgrounds would transform into these great empty spaces surrounded by giant snowbanks from the constant plow trucks. 

Naturally, inevitably, children dig a tunnel or two in the snowbanks. But that winter, my friends and I took it to another level. Between the various snowbanks, we had a couple dozen tunnels. An entire rabbit warren, a couple years before I'd ever crack open Watership Down. Any snow tunnel has a risk of collapse, and a project of that scale only increased the danger. So we had roles for every rabbit.

Some rabbits were Diggers, I bet you can guess what they did. Others were Movers, they'd haul out the snow as the tunnels were dug. Then there were Inspectors. They'd crawl around the already completed tunnels, reinforcing the walls and columns made by those plexiform networks we carved out under the snow. Some supports were too thin by mistake, others would wear down from all of us rabbits rubbing against them as we crawled through. 

We didn't experience a single collapse, by the way. Through organization, communication, and shared responsibility, we had a winter of make-believe that has stuck with me 30 years later. 

Calvinball

This one isn't exactly playing pretend, but bear with me. I don't know if every elementary school child in the 90s was obsessed with Calvin and Hobbes, but my friends and I sure were. I want to say it was spring of 4th and 5th grade that we played Calvinball at recess. 

Our version of Calvinball wasn't quite as chaotic as what we read in the comic strip. It was a lot like kickball. Okay, it was kickball. But with a twist! Each game, there were two referees, one that stood behind the kicker and one that stood behind the outfielders. It was up to them to not only enforce the rules, but to create new ones. They could institute a new rule whenever they wished, so long as they alternated. Certain rules became popular, whether because the players loved or despised them. All of the referees enjoyed both the groans of despair or the hoots of joy when a new rule was put into play. 

And if a kid didn't like the house rules implemented by the referees, maybe it was time they refereed themselves. Which is what inevitably happened, giving every kid a chance to be a player as well. Huh, I wonder what that sounds like. Anyway!

A Convoluted Way to Play the Game of Life/House

You know, like the board game? And house as in, "playing house" as a child? Well here's how you do it with a copy of Mario Kart for the SNES and a different board game with a name I can only imagine is problematic. Grab a friend and follow these steps.

Step 1. Take the game board and assign categories to each of the star's points. Divide the middle section in half and do the same. Things like, Career, Family, School, Money, Housing, etc work well for categories. You need 8 of them in total. You also need potential Results for each category, 3 to 7 work best. Different amounts of money for Salary, various jobs for Career, you get the idea. Map those Results to the star board as well, in whatever way makes sense with the number of entries you come up with for the category.

Step 2. Make up a person. This is your character. They could be you, they could be someone else. Think about their vibe, what they want out of life, etc. 

Step 3. Boot up Mario Kart on your Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Pick a level that's fun and easy to drive in reverse. Also, it should have walls comprised of colored blocks. I'd recommend Choco Island 2, Vanilla Lake 1, or my personal favorite Mario Circuit 3. Pick your favorite kart racer, and then drive the track in reverse a couple times. This is to ensure you don't accidentally finish the race. 

Step 4. Pick out little sections of the colored wall tiles to be various houses, schools, stores, etc. Create a little town out of those walls. You don't need to decide them all from the beginning, it's way easier to pick them out as they come up. 

Step 5. Play house! Go about your character's daily life. Narrate what you're doing to your friend. Do this until one of you starts to get bored.

Step 6. Time to shake things up! Go to the star board. Grab a marble and toss it on the board, wherever it lands is your Category. Toss the marble again to get your Result. Incorporate this life event into your character's life.

Step 7. Repeat Steps 5 and 6 until your character has lived a full life, dipping back into Step 4 as needed.

There you have it! Now you too can spend countless hours on a game I played as a child, first with my older cousin and then with my younger one. 

This one is probably the thing that most influenced me as both a game player and designer. SNES Mario Kart is the first video game I can remember playing my own game within, but it certainly wasn't the last. Now when I hack together two games to make a third, they're both tabletop rpgs, but it all started here. And to this day, any time I read or play a ttrpg my first instinct is to ask myself, "what other games are here, just below the surface, waiting to be discovered?" 

 

What's In a Name?

This one's about etymology and game design/worldbuilding. I suppose it's a devblog.

I have this hack that I've been working on. The iteration of it I released publicly is quite generic. It's the document I put together to test with my friends, to see if we liked the mashup of things a bunch of different games do, but all under one roof. The broadness of it was a strength, because it let me pick up any Odd-like adventure, taking a couple seconds to convert stat blocks on the fly. 

So my friends and I played it. We had fun! I put the pdf online (cover art courtesy of Perplexing Ruins' patreon) as a response to a Prismatic Wasteland challenge. I made a couple changes to the game. Then we played it some more, and I thought, "okay, great... now what?"

There was still work to be done. As it states on the itch.io page, and you can see first-hand in the game, there is no GM section. There are no enemy stat blocks. There's no treasure or adventures. Those things still don't exist today. But if I made them now, they'd be written for a generic fantasy game. That doesn't sound fun. So it's time to get specific.

There are many ways I could do that, but the way that always stuck out to me in the games I love are backgrounds. I'm talking Troika, Bastionland (Electric and Mythic), and Cairne 2e. Those games may leave a lot of blanks for you to fill in, but there is nothing generic about the fantasies they present. The random tables in the Bastionland and Cairn 2e backgrounds are an especially potent tool in this regard, so I said to myself, "after all, why shouldn't I? and got to work. 

The Etymology Sandbox

Sandboxes are great. There's a reason why they're such a popular campaign style in ttrpgs. You can do anything and go anywhere! So long as you stay in the confines of the box, of course. The sand is for the players, the box is for the GM. The freedom and creativity exist because it is manageable in scale. 

Game design and worldbuilding are sandboxes we get to play in as designers and GMs. Making backgrounds a la Bastionland and Cairn is doing both of these things at once. I needed to build myself a box, so I turned to my one true love: etymology.

I've long been fascinated with the way words evolve over time, but it wasn't until I heard Matt Colville talk about his problem with fantasy names* that I started applying that affection to ttrpgs. To summarize his view on the matter (and hopefully I'm not butchering it): a lot of names in fantasy novels and ttrpgs are bad because they don't sound like a language. Humans brains are wired to understand language, it's why it's possible for babies to pick them up and eventually start talking. Even if you only know English, if you hear another language your brain will recognize that it is a language being spoken because despite differences in words, grammar, etc. there is something about all languages that is... well, human. 

If fantasy names don't sound like language, that results in them sounding silly instead. I can't tell you how many years I spent coming up with NPCs and then regretting their names when I had to say them out loud. And I don't just mean the time when I accidentally named someone "urine." But even the other names didn't feel right, they were all piss-poor. (Sorry, I had to. Okay, I didn't have to, I just really really wanted to.).  

So I started using actual names for my NPCs. If I want that "fantasy feeling," I use names from 500-1000 years ago. That way they sound unfamiliar and fantastical, but they also sound "right" because our brains recognizes them as language. When I started working on the backgrounds for my game, I took the same approach. 

Gravelhack is very much an "elfgame minus the elves." A post-elfgame, if you will. I want it to feel medieval-ish, fantastical, and familiar. So I'm drawing from languages that shaped modern English: Old and Middle English, Anglo-Norman, the Celtic languages of the British Isles, you get the idea.  I want the backgrounds themselves to call on familiar archetypes, but their names would be the sandbox in which I have the freedom to reimagine these tropes. 

Here are some examples.

Vaillant d'Armes

I had recently read about the pas d'armes hastilude. I also came upon the phrase vadlet d'armes when looking for entries related to "knight" in an Anglo-Norman dictionary. I stumbled upon vaillant as the etymological root of valor. 

Once I had the name, I thought it sounded like someone who went around challenging knights to pas d'armes to prove their valor. Wait, maybe that's how people become knights in Gravelhack! Oh yeah, that's some specific fantasy right there. 

Let's take a look at a couple entries from the first table:

Why do you seek glory and honor?

1.  To expiate a misspent youth. You got a good, hard look down a path your life may have tread. Now you go another way. You have a set of lockpicks that you still remember how to use. 

2. To earn the respect of a parent. You are the illegitimate child of a noble and a commoner. You know that, should the need arise, you can seek begrudging aid from your noble relations.   

Clamber

One thing I've always liked about the old-school Thief is their ability to climb sheer surfaces. Clamber is a pretty old word that most likely comes from Middle-English. Naturally, I thought of this description for the background:

You are brave enough to scale the cliffs thievpies make their homes atop. The climb may be dangerous, but it is much safer to steal jewelry from a bird than a person. They may peck you, but it sure beats what the town guard does to thieves. 

And a couple entries from a table:

What helps you deal with the thievpies?

1.  A wooden bird-whistle that can lure or repel birds depending on how you play it.

2. Glass pebbles that catch the light, and the eye of any creature interested in shiny objects. 

There we have it. Gravelhack exists in a world where knighthood is earned—not through family or service as a squire, but by besting enough of them in one-on-one melee that they simply have to give it to you. Also, there are these magpies that nest atop cliffs to protect the shiny objects they steal from humans. And if you can believe it, there are some SOBs that are crazy enough to climb the freaking cliffs to steal from the birds! 

I don't think I would have ever come up with either of those backgrounds if I hadn't given myself etymology sandboxes to play in. I'm excited to keep playing in this sand and see what happens next. I haven't even started working on the talents the backgrounds will get as they progress in level. Those should be fun!

*I tried to find a video where Colville talked about this, but came up short. Maybe it was from a livestream? Alas. 

"For the Princess? ...To the death?"

"I accept!" 

This one's about verisimilitude, combat procedures, and fixing morale (if you think it's broken).

Why We Fight
(One of my favorite albums, by the way.) 

I've played elfgames for over two decades, and have been on both sides of the screen for plenty of combats where neither side seemed to have a reason to fight besides "we're all here, so let's hack and slash one another." It sucks. Few things break verisimilitude for me like pointless fights.  

So why would any NPC, person or creature, choose violence? There are a multitude of reasons, to be sure. Defending a lair, protecting or reclaiming a treasured macguffin, holding the heroes at bay until the ritual is complete—you get the idea. Violence is one way to get something, to accomplish a goal.

If you're playing an OSR game, reaction rolls are a big thing. When an NPC's reaction to the party isn't obvious, roll on a table. Sometimes that can clarify things, sometimes you're left struggling to come up with the why. It's why my hack has the GM pick three possible reactions from a potential five—I'm never left going, "well I'll roll for it but I really hope I don't get one of these because it doesn't make sense to me." 

As a quick aside, d4 Caltrops has a great spark table that gives possible reasons why an NPC might be friendly. I think it'd be fun to make a dungeon that gives hostile/friendly spark tables for its denizens, tailored to the person/faction/creature. Hmmm...

Anyway! I think NPC combat goals matter  They should be things the PCs can potentially figure out, whether before, during, or after the combat has ended. Having internally consistent logic as to why someone is choosing violence not only makes the world more believable, but it gives the players the ability to make informed decisions in game. You know, a cornerstone of survival in OSR play. 

Speaking of verisimilitude surrounding combat...

I Don't Like Morale

Okay, that's not entirely true. I just don't care for how morale rules are implemented in most OSR games. 

Has this ever happened to you? The party is facing off against a group of enemies, and you check morale after the first one drops. The enemies pass. The battle continues on, and you check again when half the enemies are felled. You even give them a -2 modifier because they're clearly losing. They pass again, and now they're in it until death. And you sit there wondering things like, "how long is the rest of this fight going to take?" and "really? now there's just one stirge left and it's just gonna keep attacking until it's dead?" 

Call my sense of immersion a song featuring Amy Lee the way it's broken.  

I think the standard morale rules are a good simplification of the morale procedures from Chainmail. Those rules for medieval miniatures are for clashes between units of trained combatants following orders issued by authority figures. Wargames don't care about the individual soldier that breaks the first time an arrow goes whizzing past their head, or the one that defies orders to carry his injured brother to a medic. I believe elfgames should.

I know that morale is often an optional rule, I could just do all of this without it. But I like procedures, and I think morale is a good idea—I just wish it was different. You might be thinking...

What's Your Solution, Smarty-Pants?

For me, it comes down to two things: goals and checking morale more. 

The goal supersedes procedures. What is the goal, and are they willing to die for it? The title of this post is a quote from the iconic battle of wits scene in The Princess Bride, wherein Vizzini and The Man in Black agree to the terms of their duel. No morale check needed, they're both in it til the bitter end. 

If they aren't willing to die for it, then they will flee or surrender when faced with their own mortality—let's say when 25% of their HP remains—or whenever it is clear their goal is no longer attainable. 

Those not willing to die will also check morale before the points listed above. Individuals comprising groups and solo creatures will check it the first time they are hit (adjust up to +/-2 for especially high or low damage), and again at 50% HP. Groups will check when the first amongst them falls, and again when only half remain. 

It might seem like a lot to check morale that much, and maybe it is, but I think it's a way to still use the procedures while lending to the verisimilitude of small-scale combat. It makes it easier for me, as the referee, to play as these adversaries. The first time I might rethink a fight is the first hit I take, followed by when I feel like I'm halfway to being dropped. As a group, I might turn tail at the first casualty or once things start to look bad. No matter what, if I'm not willing to lay my life down to see my objective through, I will try to live to fight another day. 

 

 

Incentivizing Death

This one does what it says on the tin.

I have been told I'm a contrarian. That I have a strong aversion to authority. I am rather infamous in my friend group for having the highest reactance—the quickest way to ensure I never do something is by telling me to do it. If you think that sounds annoying, I can assure you my friends agree. Thankfully, they have found plenty of other reasons to love me anyway. 

I'm sure it's not difficult to see how my personality can put me at odds with something like, say, a book that says, "here are rules for playing a game. Follow them." Which is why I love when a book presents them as suggestions. Oh, I can use whichever ones I want? Cool! I'll try them all out, at least for a while, and then change to taste. 

On top of that, I also headbutt with prevalent attitudes held by ttrpg communities. Nothing makes me want to make a PbtA dungeon crawler more than seeing people say it wouldn't work. Same goes for skill systems in OSR games. But sometimes it goes deeper than that. 

For example, sometimes I see people in OSR spheres discussing character death, and I think, "what if we incentivized death? What if we rewarded it? What would that look like?" Well, if we used the lingua franca of OSE/BX, maybe it would look like this.

Death, Advancement & The Mythic Underworld  

The deadly dungeons and strange subterranean places adventurers delve into is a different world, a universe unto itself. The player characters are interlopers into the Mythic Underworld, which rejects them—even in death.

Rule 1. Don't be a weasel. This first rule is taken straight from Blades in the Dark. No getting into combat and refusing to fight, that sort of thing. You're still playing a character who wants to live, because dying still kind of sucks. Surviving a fight is probably a step toward a larger goal, and dying puts you further from accomplishing that. Plus, it now it changes you. More on that shortly.

Rule 2. There is no XP. Gold for XP naturally leads to the question, "why does my character need all this gold? Why are they willing to risk their life to get it?" Those questions are still in play. You've made a little freak and are sending them off into freaky places, figure out why they're doing that.

Rule 3. When you hit 0 HP, you're taken out of action. You're dead, but the Mythic Underground won't accept you. Once the battle is over, the trap is overcome, etc. you come back. Hopefully your party members brought your body along. If your body was destroyed, it materializes where you were last out of harm's way.  

Rule 4. When you return to action, you level up. That's right, you heard me. It's probably a good idea to start leveling your character up as soon as you're taken out of action, that way you're ready to go once your surviving party members finish up with what killed you in the first place. 

Rule 5. When you return to action, you've changed. When the Mythic Underground bludgeons your soul back into your body, it leaves a little bit of itself with you. Roll on the following d84 table and note the way your character is different now.

1. You grow vistigial... 
    1. Wings 
    2. Tail
    3. Tusks
    4. Antlers/horns

2. Another 1d4 eyes appear on your...
    1. Head
    2. Arm
    3. Torso
    4. Leg

3. Your hand becomes...
    1. A crustacean claw
    2. Tentacle-fingered
    3. A snake's head
    4. A bird's foot

4. Your legs become that of a...
    1. Sheep
    2. Feline
    3. Lizard
    4. Aphid

5. You grow another...
    1. Arm    
    2. Leg
    3. Mouth
    4. Row of teeth

6. Your head becomes that of a...
    1. Mantis
    2. Wolf
    3. Bat
    4. Frog

7. You have...
    1. A tongue that forks like a serpent's
    2. A third eyelid that blinks horizontally
    3. Translucent skin
    4. A second, discordant voice

8. Your...
    1. Mouth(s) become a beak
    2. Hair is replaced by feathers
    3. Shadow moves slower than you    
    4. Ears grow fingers

Rule 6. When you have changed a number of times equal to your maximum class level plus one, hand your character sheet over to the referee. The transformation is complete. Your character is a part of the Mythic Underworld now. The referee should play them as they would any other powerful underground-dwelling NPC. Like most other denizens of the Mythic Underworld, they now stay dead when killed. 

 

Well, there it is! I have not tried it. I may never try it. But it was fun to come up with. I like the idea of this otherworldly place rejecting you until it transforms you into something it will accept. I like the potential roleplaying consequences of adventurers delving over and over, returning to the World Above more alien the more powerful they become. I like that if I do end up using this, my players would undoubtedly engage with more of the danger I telegraph. 

If you have or do come up with a way to incentivize character death, let me know about it here or on Bluesky.

Rites of Castage

This one's about clerics, and going all-in.

Who am I to resist a Prismatic Wasteland prompt? Religion is usually given as little attention as possible at my tables. I am on-record as saying my inevitable OD&D hack will not feature clerics, but instead a secret third thing. So yes, I have all the usual misgivings about religion and clerics in elfgames.

Perhaps my biggest problem with clerics is they tend to show up in Generic Fantasy Games. I think out of the core three (or four) classes, clerics suffer the most from generality.  We can't fill in the blanks like we can with a fighter or wizard because there are no cultural touchstones for the strange Templar-cum-vampire hunter set before us.

So when do they work for me? When a game doesn't water them down. The first one that springs to mind is the Priest supplemental class in Outcast Silver Raiders, there's some nice specificity about a deity revoking spells in there. And it got me thinking, what would my specific cleric look like? How would I go all-in?

Let's Get Clerical, Clerical

Why do clerics just get their spells? The answer in most OSR games is, "magic-users must learn them, clerics must earn them." They seem to do that most often by simply... reaching level 2. How boring! If clerics are the righteous vessels through which a deific entity enacts its will upon the world, then faith should be something they do.

Prismatic Wasteland's blog about clerics states, "Magic must always be dangerous, whether arcane or divine." What if that danger was front-loaded? What if a cleric had to face personal risk or responsibility to get each and every spell their deity granted them?

Well, if we used first level OSE spells, maybe it'd look like this:

Cure (Cause) Light Wounds
Seek no aid for a grievous wound, having only faith that it will heal. 

Detect Evil
Raise not your hand when an evil act befalls you, and witness fully a hate-filled heart unbound.

Detect Magic
Allow the arcane to wash over you, unresisted, and may you know it well. 

Light (Darkness)
Let faith be your light in the dark, blindfold yourself from all other sources.

Protection From Evil
Stride into danger armored only in your faith.

Purify Food and Water
Spend all your riches and a week of your time feeding the poor.

Remove (Cause) Fear
Go where none would dare tread, alone.

Resist Cold
Provide shelter to one without, that they may know the warmth of body and spirit.