Hommlet: Heart of a Village

One of the coolest things about The Village of Hommlet is that it is not just a static village setting designed solely as a medium for PC activity.  There are things going on here--big things that may have little or no bearing on the actions of the PCs.  Things that are too big for your puny PCs to affect or too subtle for them to notice.

Obviously, there's the rise of the nefarious Temple of Elemental Evil.  But what about the concurrent rise of the Church of St. Cuthbert, as members of both cults infiltrate the village, each in their own fashion.  The Cuthbertines are generally lawful good artisans and craftspeople and seem intent on becoming a part of the growing community.  The Temple members are evil and secretive and presumably are trying to return to the era of oppression that precipitated the warfare of a decade ago. We don't know which of the two groups the Druidic natives of Hommlet find more objectionable.   Though the Cuthbertines are not outwardly malevolent, tight-knit, homogenous populations are, historically, not too well disposed to large influxes of new folks with different cultural values and beliefs. 

Then there's Rufus and Burne's castle under construction on the hill east of town.  Though it's not finished, the town map conveniently shows the ultimate plan of the structure, just so you know what the future has in store for Hommlet.  Is the castle a sign that Hommlet is already being subjugated to a higher power even without the Horde of Elemental Evil? How does the village elder feel about its  presence?  Glad for the safety provided?  Threatened by the assumed diminution of the traditional authority of the village?

And at the Church o' St. Cuthbert, Canoness Y'dey has "left unexpectedly and has not returned."  What sort of business is she tending to that it is accompanied by such mystery?  Terjon, the acting Canon--who would rather be off adventuring himself--believes that she is off "on a quest", but what sort of quest do churches send their Canons on?  

Furthermore, Calmert--the officiant of the church--is mysteriously diverting funds from the church to the construction of the new castle across town.  This suggests that perhaps the church does not officially support the new castle or its inhabitants, even though R&B are devotees of the Chapeau.  At the least, it indicates that Calmert's loyalties are somewhat misplaced.     

Many of these features are, I assume, further evidence of the palimpsestuous nature of T1.  As I may have mentioned in another post or two this module is unique in that it was created for play in Gygax's own campaign but then modified to incorporate many of the actions and characters--P- and NP- alike--from that original campaign into the final, published work.  Elmo and Lareth seem like they were probably members of that original party; likely Rufus and Burne were as well.  But was the Cuthbert Infiltration also a result of the original campaign?  Was the entire Battle of Emridy Meadows an outcome of their actions? Can I get a witness?

While T1 offers the opportunity to uncover clues to the second rising of the Temple of Elemental Evil, The death knell for Hommlet has already sounded.  Soon it will be overrun either by baleful Temple followers or the docile-yet-obtuse followers of St. Cuthbert.  Either way, Old Hommlet is dying.   Which is the one bummer about the village, one gets the sense that you've arrived at the party only to find that the keg is floating in a tub of molten ice. A new regime, as represented by St. Cuthbert's middle class followers and the imposing phallus rising on the hill east of the village, has taken over and it's only a matter of time before the Hommlites of old either assimilate or emigrate.  The battle for Hommlet's soul has already been lost regardless of what those dorks in Nulb have up their sleeve.

Ethnology of Greyhawk: Racial Purity in the Hold of the Sea Princes

"In a few places the [Suel and Oerid] racial stocks intermixed -- notably in the Sheldomar Valley where, except the Hold of the Sea princes, the peoples... are mixed Oerid-Suel stock." -- Gary Gygax, The World of Greyhawk Gazetteer, 1980.

From this statement found in the Brief History of Eastern Oerik (p. 5) we are made to understand that the people of the Hold of the Sea Princes are not racially intermixed--or at least not of Suel-Oeridian mixture--but of which stock are they?  Suel, Oerid, or another race entirely?

Given the Hold's close proximity to the former grounds of the Suel empire and that slavery is practiced in this land,* it would seem a rather safe bet that the Hold is comprised of a predominantly Suel population.  Furthermore, the Sea Princes are described as the strongest naval force of the region, and have a long history of piracy and other maritime activity--hence their name.  As the historically landlocked Oerid peoples are described as being "indifferent sailors," only taking to the sea when the Great Kingdom sought to expand to the Islands off its eastern shores, the evidence clearly favors a Suel occupation over an Oerid one.

Contradicting this, however, is the map of migrations (right) which clearly shows that both the Suel and Oerid peoples managed to find their way to the lands of the Hold.

Furthermore, A Guide to the World of Greyhawk Volume III--the later edition of the Gazetteer published in 1983--includes a table which uses a symbology of letters to indicate the racial mixture of various regions of the Flannaes.   The entry for the Hold reads thusly:

 "Sea Princes -- SOf" 

This encryption indicates that the people of the Hold are comprised of a heavy mixture of Suel and Oerid peoples, with a bit of Flan thrown in for good measure.  Which is to say, the Hold is no different in its racial make up than the rest of the Sheldomar Basin; so why did it get called-out in the Brief History as being somehow distinct from the rest?  A rational mind would say that the author either thought better of the notion of racial purity in the Hold, or forgot that he'd ever mentioned it at all.  An irrational mind would link this oversight to the human skull in the crayfish encounter in T1.  I always prefer the latter approach but haven't come up with anything good yet.

*Greyhawk enthusiasts will know that the Suel people were the sole practitioners of slavery in all of Oerik. Bastards.

Incentivized XPs

While I fully expected to have a new orifice torn for me after my last post on Sacred Cows for XPs, I was a bit surprised by the angle from which commenters drilled my new colon.

Though never stated, my intent was to call into question some of the logic behind using GPs for XPs, but the meat of the debate in the comments focused on using XPs as a form of in-game incentive to guide player actions.  The rest of you are all saying "well no shirt Dice-chucker" but I was completely unaware that this practice existed; it was eye-opening for me.

Initially, I was pretty averse to this sort of metagamey gimcrackery infecting my own game table.  But, then, who loves gimcrackers more than me?  Nobody.  So I decided to experiment with an incentivized experience element in my next gaming session, which is scheduled for this Saturday night--assuming none of my A-hole players need to undergo another emergency vasectomy or something. 

But how to implement incentivized gaming?  I haven't counted XPs since 1986 and I'm not about to implement accounting-heavy rules at my game table now either, so XPs for GPs still ain't gonna happen.  And one-size-fits-all XPs = ker-snooozzzzzz...  Instead, characters will benefit only from challenges befitting their class and status as adventurers.  Thaumaturges rifling the pockets of dead orcs to beef up their XP score?  Puh-leeze.

So without further ado, I present to you The Dice-chucker's Guide to Experimental Class-based XP Incentives: 

Thieves: Liberating valuable treasure
Liberating treasure is more than scooping up buckets of coin.  In order for treasure to be truly liberated, a thief must ply some form of stealth, trickery, or skullduggery in its acquisition.  And while treasure may be valuable in the traditional, monetary sense, the value may be non-monetary as well: say your thief pilfers a key that opens the cell that holds that stupid fisherman from my last post. Though neither the key nor the fisherman have much cash value, they are valuable to the thief whose goal it is to free the dude.

Fighters: Slaughtering worthy enemies
Worthy enemies are those that stand a decent chance of taking out the warrior.  Myrmidons stacking up kobold corpses = unworthy.  And the worthy enemy must have some capacity to fight back.  Slaughtering hogtied hill giants also no good.  For cavalier and paladin types, the fight must be conducted in an honourable fashion; surprise attacks, use of missile weapons, low blows and cheap shots would negate the value of the combat for those noble warriors.

Wizards: Ensorceling adversaries
Ensorceling entails overcoming adversaries that would not be possible through mundane means.  "Adversaries" are pretty much any obstacle that needs overcoming.  This basically means effectively casting spells in non-gratuitous situations.

Clerics: Cleansing shrines
In order to raise level, a cleric must clean a shrine.  As they achieve greater glory, clerics must clean ever-larger shrines of greater and greater impotence.

As you can see, these are not quite half-baked.  This experiment is going to require some hammering out on the fly--my players love when I pull this kind of crap.  I don't know how this is going to play out, but I like the idea that the players may very well be at odds with one another as they try to gather incentives.  I'm hoping for lots of bickering between thieves and fighters about the appropriate course of action; as it stands, my players are way to chummy.  We'll see.

XPs for GPs: Deeply Flawed?

Let us consider:

GPs are their own reward:  Players don't need another reason to collect them.  Giving them character advancement on top of material wealth is double-dipping. 

Logical Disconnect:  Why would gathering and hauling large sacks of coins make you better at casting dancing lights or improve your standing with Thor?  Why would having a huge stash of priceless tapestries and gawdy jewelry increase your combat endurance?  By this standard, porters and antique dealers should be pretty badass.

GPs are not inherently commensurate with the difficulty of acquiring them:  A million GPs guarded by a hoard of syphilitic stirges, 16 flatulent purple worms, a commune of aggro-liches, and a venerable arch-demodragon are worth just as many XPs as a million GPs guarded by a single leprechaun sleeping off a 3-day bender.  You can make up some sort of bylaws to assure that the value of treasure retrieved is correlated to the difficulty of acquiring said treasure, but any work-around you come up with is as good as a sworn admission that XPs for GPs is deeply flawed. 

How much for the sack?

The opposite is even more true:  Difficult and even heroic actions are not necessarily rewarded with equivalent tubs of treasure.  Indeed, true heroism is often its own reward.   Let's say two thieves break into the Duke of Kroten's castle.  Thief 1 rescues a wrongly-accused fisherman from the dungeons; the other raids the duke's treasury making off with an armload of bearer bonds.  Both of them succeed without engaging in combat.  Thief 1, gets the satisfaction of averting a miscarriage of justice but no cash and zero XPs.  Thief 2, for the same effort, gets fifty large plus an equivalent haul in XPs.  So why should the character who takes home a paycheck for his efforts advance further than the one who works pro bono?

Degrading Wands

In my eternal quest to eliminate bookkeeping from the gaming table, I will now turn my attention to magic wands and such.

Here's the deal, I don't want to be counting every time a wand is used.  Nor do I want the player to have any sort of concrete idea of how many more uses he can get out of the thing.  At best I'd prefer if they could, via spells such as detect magic or identify or whatever, get a general sense of how potent the magic in the wand is, which would help them determine the expected reliability of the wand.

Wand Potency
Rather than granting a finite number of charges for magical sceptres--a number which must be tracked each time the wand is used--I give it a potency level ranging from 0 (Spent) to 3 (Virile).  The number represents the number of 6-siders the player rolls against the DM's single 6-sider each time he/she uses the wand.  If the Player rolls higher than the DM then the wand works without a hitch.  If the DM rolls higher (odds ~ 1:86) then the wand is downgraded to WandCon 2 (Functional).  It still works, but, from now on, whenever the wand is used the player rolls only 2d6 to check for success. If (when) the DM's 6-sider beats the player's 2d6 (odds ~ 1:11), then the wand is degraded to level 1 (tepid).  Now rolling a single d6, this thing is on its last legs.  Another loss (odds ~2:5) results in the permanent dissipation of the wand's magic.


Tie Roll
A tie result in the wand wars could go either way; maybe your wand functions normally and nothing unusual happens at all.  Or a tie might result in massive degradation of its power or even bring about a zombie apocalypse.  Here's how it works:

If the wand roll results in a tie, another roll is immediately performed, this time at 1 level lower, i.e., a virile (level 3) wand would roll only 2d6 for the tiebreaker, a functional wand would roll 1d6, and a tepid wand would roll 1d3.  If the player rolls higher than the Cool J--who continues to roll a single 6-sider--then the wand is not diminished.  But if the DM rolls higher, then the wand is permanently downgraded.  Multiple ties can result in even lower degradation of the wand; if a virile wand ties on 3d6 and on the 2d6 tiebreaker before finally losing the roll at 1d6, then the wand is downgraded to tepid thereafter.

When the player is rolling a d3, odds are pretty good that the DM is gonna' win and the wand will be spent.  But things are even worse if they roll another tie, a tie with a d3 roll results in automatic wand malfunction.  I like to just make it explode, inflicting its magic on the wielder and anyone else within the area of effect.  Maybe make it a more potent explosion if the wand started the roll at 2d6 or 3d6.

Staffs and Rods
The AD&D rules stipulate that these guys have fewer "charges" than wands, so the formula is altered in this way: the DM rolls an 8-sider instead of a 6-sider against the players various d6 (as determined by potency level).  This obviously increases the likelihood of the rod or staff downgrading sooner, but also decreases the likelihood of tie rolls at the lower potency levels, thus reducing the likelihood of cataclysmic events.

Summary
This makes wands easier to track--you don't need to count every use of the wand, just the ones that result in downgrades.  Also, it eliminates the sense that a wand has a magazine packed with a knowable quantity of spell bullets.  There is the outside chance that even the wands first usage could be its last.  I like that kind of crap. 

Example of wand in use:

Thomas the Thaumaturgious fires off his Wand of Thunder Balls; currently rated Virile.  He rolls 3d6 and gets a 9, the DM need not even roll since she cannot roll higher than a 6.  The wand has functioned successfully.

Yes, that's exactly how it's used.  Why do you ask?

A few rooms later, Thomas calls upon the potency of his wand again, this time he rolls a meager 5 while the DM pops out a 6.  The wand is downgraded to Level 2.

Later on, Thomas fires up his Zeusian wand--now rolling 2d6 each time--for a 4.  The DM rolls a 4 as well.  Another roll is mandated, but for the tiebreaker Tommy is rolling just 1d6.  Another tie! Crom's Balls!  Thomas is sweating now as he rolls a 3-sider against the DM's d6.  He rolls a 2, but the DM rolls a 1!  Thomas unclenches his sphincter as the wand functions normally and maintains its "Functional" (2d6) status.

Had the DM, in the final roll, rolled a 3 or higher against Thomas's 2 on a d3, the wand would have fizzled into permanent uselessness.  But even worse, had the DM rolled a 2, Thomas would have been at ground-zero of Thunderbolt-o-rama 2012; which woulda' been awesome. Maybe next time.  

XPs For GPs: Demi-humans

I won't lie to you, I don't award XPs for GPs and I never have.  Old schoolers praise the crap out of XPs for GPs as the be-all end-all of XP systems, but really, it's very deeply flawed premise and we all know it.  Dare I say it... XPs for GPs can suck it.

That's why OSRians started requiring players to actually spend the money before they got XPs every time they returned a case of Mountain Dew empties for the deposit.  This notion has much more to offer, but, as it applies to demi-humans, I'd like to take it further; to do something with it that will make demi-humans feel more different from humans.

One of the prime differences between humans and demi-humans, I'm thinking, is their particular relationship with material wealth.  Us humans, we like wealth for the power of buying whatever the heck we want, be it hot tubs, influence, chain mail, cock rings, what have you.

This oughta' get ol' Blodgett up to 5th level

Elves are indifferent to the baubles and gew gaws that impress the other adventuring races.  Rather, they prefer the beauty of the ephemeral arts such as music, performance art and ice sculpture.  If they do invest in things of long term value, it will be in the preservation of sacred places; stands of ancient trees, significant rock formations, that sort of crap.  As such, they gain XPs only for those GPs spent commissioning works of poetry, songs, or flower arrangements, and the creation and maintenance of nature preserves, public parks, and gardens.

For dwarves, the value of wealth is not the spending of it, but the hoarding.  They derive ecstasy from the gathering and stockpiling of precious metals, gems and other products of the earth.  XPs are not actually earned until treasure is safely stashed either in a secure financial institution, the vault of a trusted ally, or a dwarf's own personal storage structure; somewhere where it is safe from being spent.  Many "dungeons" are actually the treasuries of dwarves of legend.  Bonus XPs can be earned for transforming gold and gems into fine jewelry, ornamental weapons and other such eccentricities which can be given as gifts or worn about.

Halflings view material wealth as a means to domestic tranquility; as such, they gain XPs only for GPs spent on the acquisition and improvement of real estate.  This ties halfling characters to place in a very measurable way.

As you can see, humans can drop their cash in G'hawk, Mordor, or Lankhmar, and it doesn't much matter.  But for demi-humans, their wealth will be closely affiliated with a place somehow.  Either in the grove of oak trees in Sherwood Forest that Melf has endowed, the treasure hoard and associated safeguards that Gimli has stashed under Mount Fuggitt, or the plantation that Poblo Fraggins owns in Aquilonia, demihumans have some sacred place that they need to be tend to.  Or they can just forego XPs for GPs; which is fine by me.

PS.  The photo was swiped from http://pinterest.com/wandans/hobbit-ty-homes/.  They've got other photos of hobbitty places if you're into that sort of thing.

Men Without Cloth: Non-Holy Clerics

You are not a clergyman.  You have no interest in tending the flock for some narcissistic deity, much less converting more sheep to the cause.  Despite your divine powers, pious is not a word that applies to you.  You don't pay for your miraculous abilities on bended knee.

Get off your high horse, Turpin.

Forego edged weapons?  Bishop Turpin can suck it.  No, you come by your powers by other means, and you pay an even darker price than the ritualized humiliation mainstream proselytizers are subjected to.

Rather, you've made a Faustian deal that saved your Aunt Stacy's knitting store from foreclosure and now some pompous, immortal a-hole owns your soul.  You know that using the "divine" powers for which you paid so dearly ever-increases your malicious patron's grasp on your being, but you can't check your self-destructive behavior.  Or maybe that's his growing influence at work.

Or maybe your grandfather was the byproduct of a tryst between Zeus and a rather adorable parlor maid. Though you've never met Great Granddad and he certainly doesn't know of/care about your mortal existence, you've inherited enough nascent divine favor to crank out the occasional heal wounds or fire storm.

Or you're just a guy who's found a cosmic loophole that's allowed you to hack into the server of the divine realm. You've spliced into Odin's cable box and you're watching ESPN: Old Norse on The All-Father's dime.  Maybe one day Asgard's IT staff will secure its wifi and damnation will be served.  But, increasingly, you're coming to believe that the gods are just guys like you; guys who've figured out how to hotwire the cosmos to their advantage.  Guys who've achieved immortality by convincing the world that they're something special, and who've come to believe in it themselves.

Of course, you can limit yourself to the holier-than-thou, preaching-the-faith-in-exchange-for-cure-light-wounds scene if you want to.  And maybe you can justify why your sermonizing n' moralizing minister is wandering through the 5th level of FU2: Asylum of Turgid Munchkins helping a party of infidels murderize a colony of troglodytes and scarf up their treasure--spoiler alert: not likely.  But the point is, there are other options besides the worn out catholic-priest-with-a-mace that those TSR beardos foisted on us way back when. Try one on for size.