Gah! What the heck have I signed up for?

So if I disappear off the blog for a few days at a time, it's because I have five more weeks to put together the following projects:

1. I need to develop questions, identify informants, film interviews, and put together a 10-minute documentary short.
2. I need to finish an implement a quiz and 1-2 interviews, transcribe and code them as part of a pilot of my methodology for my dissertation.
3. I need to write a paper on the founding of the Preuss School at UCSD analyzed from a Gramscian perspective.
4. I need to write five more weekly reflections of 2-6 pages each.
5. I need to work on my literature review.
6. Oh, and I have my full-time job and my marriage. Those also deserve some time.

My panic right now is the fact tha I will be going to see Where the Wild Things Are on Friday, going to a U2 concert on Sunday in L.A., then heading back home and going to a concert Regina Spektor on Monday, thus losing a lot of possible study time. I think the movie may have to go just to allow myself time to get ahead on my weekly writing and reading assignments.

I'm already saying no to my friend's idea of starting a Magic: the Gathering sealed-deck league, and really still hoping to put together an actual Athanor campaign, but I think that can wait until after the quarter is complete.

Now, I might keep up just fine. These days I write blogs on the shuttle trip up to work, which means I crank something out most days. But I may find myself needing that time to crank out assignments, and may end up doing transcription or video editing on my laptop on the shuttle. (Not an activity I ever thought I would have thought possible when I bought my first computer, a Mac Plus, in 1989.)

So if I disappear from the blogosphere for a while, it isn't a big deal. (Not that most of the planet would notice.) I will be back. Consider that either a promise or a threat based on how much you like the blog.

Bringing Out the Big Guns

In Burroughs' Barsoom novels, he justifies all the swordfights (when his heroes have access to some rather brutal firearms) by having all Martians abide by a code of honor that would make it unthinkable to anyone but the lowest rogue to shoot someone who has a sword drawn. The problem with doing this in a role-playing game, of course, is that most players are rat bastards who would have their character shoot a guy in that situation without blinking an eye.

On some level, that's just common sense. Maybe that's why firearms are either not part of the typical landscape of other planetary romances (like in Carter's Green Star and Callisto novels) or of reduced effectiveness (Howard's Almuric). I have tended Athanor toward the latter approach, because I like the swashbuckling idea of having some pistols around, especially if they are essentially black powder arms.

But Athanor also is home to many pieces of lost technology, including a variety of firearms. But in this case, we're talking rayguns, Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon style ray guns. Call them lasers or death rays, I don't really care. But ray guns will be rare but dangerous treasure that heroes can get ahold of, and will make guns much more likely to be used. And the PCs are going to use them with brutal efficiency.

So will I enforce some sort of Burroughsian "code of chivalry?" Of course not. There are better ways to control this through more subtle Referee manipulation:

1. Control the Ammunition
How much can players recharge their weapon? If the answer is not much or not at all, every shot from the precious 4d6 damage laser pistol is going to be tracked much more carefully.

2. No Mercy Cuts Both Ways
An arms race of brutal behavior will eventually either land the PCs in trouble or kill them. Combined withe some in- or out-of character discussion of this escalation may help curb some of it.

3. Actions Have Consequences
Ruthless cowards will not make as many friends as brave warriors. Though the players could always live by the motto "oderint dum metuant" I suppose.

However, I think that this stuff isn't necessary-- at least not in a heavy-handed way. My experience is that powerful items so long as they don't dominate all aspects of play and plot can work well in the game if they ar treated realistically. Others will change their expectations (for good or ill) of the guy who can fell a Tyrannosaur with a couple of shots. Having such an item may make you the target of the attentions of Bad People who want to take it from you, from Good People who want your help, and from Scared People who find your power intimidating. Include that kind of stuff in game, and things get interesting.

My rules my way.

I like small, easily accessible rules. So my play copy of Athanor is in a set of little digest-size booklets. Though I had originally started with the ideas of one or two books, I have now done the rules in 6 booklets: Character Creation Rules, Magic, World, DM stuff, and a book of tables.

I bought a plastic set of portable stacking cases at Target for 7 o 8 bucks that nicely fits all my Old School and OSR digest-size booklets that I made, printed, or purchased. It holds a crapload of little booklets, and the top compartment holds Athanor booklets, my Deck of Stuff, a printout of the Esoteric Creature Generator, Matt Finch's city encounters, dice, pens, and a small notebook.

You can see all the stuff I cram i the top (Athanor) compartment:

The rules are, like I said, divided in books so one can loook up rules as needed, with multiple players simultaneously searching through the books. they're lacking in art, OGL declarations, and much fluff text. Here they are all at once.

Playing with the genre tropes

First of all, I want to point out that I see Athanor playing off planetary romance novels the same way that D&D has always played off heroic fantasy — I'm not slavishly reproducing the source material and am, in fact, often going a different direction from the original source genre. It is, however, the foundation for what I am doing. I like playing with the genre for many reasons: dislike for the colonialist sentimentality of the original works, a desire to allow for rip-roaring picaresque anti-hero activity that I think is generally typical of the gaming groups I have known, and a desire to loosen the reigns of genre enforcement to allow players to make the game their own. But I like to at least give some nods to what I think of as key tropes of the genre.

One of the things I think of with planetary romance is The Princess. Now, in my head, the archetypal Princess is, of course, Dejah Thoris. (And for the record, in my head she is either drawn by Frazetta or appears as a red-skinned naked Salma Hayek. Both of which I'm sure you can find pictures of on the Internet. I'll wait here while you search for them on Google.) The Princess figure even appears in all sorts of pastiches of the literature, and is central to the genre. The courtly love trappings of the relationship with Our Hero, her frequent kidnapping/departure/maguffinish disappearances drive Our Hero to go out and Do Heroic Stuff in Her Name.

But frankly, much of this really bugs me. The sexist overtones, the cowering women with moments of bravery before becoming frail little flowers all speak of a sort of boring exploitation that I find distasteful. After all, if we are going to have exploitation, let's be more interesting about it and less invested in a sort of retro-Victorian nonsense. It almost wants me to see somebody do a planetary romance with a female heroine rescuing her useless male prince (I mean, come on someone has to have done this, right? If only in some sort of fanfic?)

So I want the possiblity of romance, and doing things to impress beloveds and allow for beloveds to be the impetus for adventure. I like that. Hell, I'm cool with half-naked eye candy popping up along the way, and the occassional damsel in distress. I like the idea of rivalries for the hand of someone.

But boring women who just show up to faint and get rescued bore me. As does the hot-headed, independent woman who, once you get past her fiery nature, is just a wilting flower. (Though if you're playing an Earth woman character, maybe I can have a red-skinned Zamoran prince who constantly gets kidnapped fall in love with you and pursue your hand. That might be fun.) I'm more likely to throw in difficult to woo women in positions of power, warriors, criminals, schemers, foils, and ordinary people with strengths and weaknesses.

However, I don't want to create a race of Joss-Whedonish superwomen on Athanor. Just make them less set dressing and more interesting in their own right.

A nod to the original, if you will, but with my own sensibilities.

Hit Points and Death? Will I Ever Stop Thinking About This?

The Current Rules
Right now, I am leaning toward using a modified version of Robert Fisher's Classic D&D Injury Table for Athanor.  I like it because it seems to feel right. I dislike it because it adds one more table to roll on, and damn it, I hate memorizing or looking up tables. It isn't bad, and it's a lot less than I have done in other games I have enjoyed. But I like winging it.

It's still my number one choice.

The Full-on John Carter of Mars Rules
On the other hand, I like the idea of getting simple. And simple is what Edgar Rice Burroughs (and many pastiches) seem to call for. The heroes of planetary romance (with the notable exception of the first book of the Green Star series by Lin Carter) do not get killed. They get threatened, the get knocked out all the time, they get imprisoned, enslaved, fed to monsters in terrible dungeons. But dead? Not so much.

This would mean that a hero at 0 hit points is unconscious. A villain may do something to ensure the hero's death (but usually won't), but as a rule, the hero is out cold. He will revive hours later on his own, but may be awakened with a few hit points by an ally or by tears of sorrow or joy from a beloved holding his unconscious body.

This is nice and simple, but doesn't it reward recklessness and stupidity (which, if we take John Carter as our example, is fully within genre) and take away some of the threat of danger in the game (not necessarily....)

Pulpy Planetary Romance Plot Generation

Athanor is all about the pulpy planetary romance action. In that spirit, I offer my own Pulp Planetary Romance Plot Inspiro-tron. Roll on Chart A for your villain, Chart B for their evil scheme, Chart C if you need to determine a victim for the scheme or an ally for the hero to make along the way. Keep rolling for all you need, since heroes are always finding new supporting cast members to have to rescue later.

Chart D is for the plot devices, maguffins, or odd bits of alien technology that show up. Chart E is the plot twist about the larger campaign that the plot reveals. I have used a mix of actual elements of planetary romances I have read and some ideas that sounded good to me at the time. However, some word on the general plotting of Edgar Rice Burrough Barsoom-style tales is worth some time.

To be loose, general, and a little facetious, the general Edgar Rice Burrough style plot should resemble:

Villain(s) enact an Evil Scheme (usually involving the kidnapping of Dejah Thoris or another princess) that leads our hero to pursuing the Villains across the planet resulting in the Revelation of a Secret that affects the setting. In the end, the hero triumphs (usually rescuing the princess and killing a lot of bad guys along the way) with a different understanding of the world.

On with the charts.

Chart A: The Villain(s)

d10 Result
1 Cowardly and Treacherous Noble
2 Wise Scion of a Dead/Dying Race
3 Cold and Amoral Alien Scientist
4 Heartless Assassin
5 Rival
6 Bounty Hunter
7 Slavers
8 Pirates
9 Bandits
10 Cultists

Chart B: Evil Scheme

d Result
1 Kidnapping
2 Theft
3 Exploration
4 Chase
5 Attack
6 Brainwashing
7 Brain-stealing
8 Dishonor/Besmirch
9 Sell into Slavery
10 Imprison/Transform/Make Comatose

Chart C: Victim or Ally

d10 Result
1 Beautiful Princess
2 Noble Savage
3 Brave Warrior
4 Strange Alien
5 Scientist/Philosopher/Scholar/Priest
6 Ousted Nobleman
7 Misunderstood Scoundrel
8 Loyal Handmaiden
9 Brute with a Heart of Gold
10 Warrior-Maiden Who Will Not Allow Herself to Love

Chart D: Plot Devices & Maguffins

d10 Result
1 Ancient Weapon of Vast Power
2 Terrible Monster from the Dim Past
3 Advanced Power Source
4 Terraforming Device
5 Last Scion of an Ancient Race
6 Device that Will Make the User a (Near-)God
7 Mind Control Device
8 Army of Robots
9 Library of Lost Knowledge
10 Still Functioning Computer/AI/disembodied brain(s)

Chart E: Secret That The Plot Reveals

d8 Result
1 Lost City of Ancients Who are Now Degenerate.
2 Lost City of Ancients Who Have Vast Mental Powers But are Now Amoral
3 The Truth Behind the Locals' Belief About the Gods
4 A Terrible Monster Worshipped as a God
5 A Terrible Danger That is Coming From Far Away
6 A Lost Race Who Secretly Manipulates the World
7 The Villains Are Even Worse Than They Seemed
8 A Prophecy of Great Import

Carcosa: a capsule sort-of-review

Geof McKinney's Carcosa (the expurgated version) showed up in the mail on Friday, just as I had ordered. Nice, smooth and swift delivery in the mail. I have been meandering through the text as part of my regularly scheduled procrastination (even though I needed to finish my portion of a grant proposal, five articles, two short papers and a first draft of some survey questions this weekend, I only managed to read 4 articles, skim one, and finish the grant proposal piece -- I need to do a lot of work tonight and tomorrow night....)

This is less a review than a quick set of impressions.

First, it's fascinating to see such a different vision of similar genre stuff that Geof has compared to, say, my Athanor, Blair's Planet Algol, or even Melan's Fomalhaut. Carcosa is simultaneously Gamma World-level gonzo gaming and a grim sort of heavy-metal (both the magazine and the music) world of brutality ahd occult carnage. Its ideosyncratic use of Cthulhu mythos as it appeared in Gods, Demigods and Heroes and Deities and Demigods contributes a lot to the gloom-and-doom sensation, as does its general conceit of showing a world which began as a laboratory for Lovecraftian snake men but has since become run by the former guinea pigs, who now have limited access to the science and sorcery of their former masters, even though that spells certain disaster. The implied hopelessness and grimness of the world is very at odds with its almost-sword-and-planet feel, which gives it some interesting tensions.

Second, there is a lot here I just won't use, and that doesn't bother me. Carcosan sorcerers and the sorcery here is interesting, flavorful, largely foolish to use, and not of interest for me to GM for any length of time, largely because I can't get into it enough. Not to say it isn't good, but like the use of magic in Call of Cthulhu, it represents magic that is either a trap for greedy players looking for power, or rare acts of desperation for desperate PCs who have no better tools to save their hides.

McKinney's use of alignment is good -- and clearer than the usual law/chaos dichotomy. His psionics system and mutations charts I like. The former is a bit random for me, the latter a bit more crawling-chaosy for me, but both have a nice flavor that fits the original D&D rules he is playing with. I may end up using his random robot table, and some space alien technology for Athanor, though, and his view of other alien technologies may be fodder for my own campaign.

The random die mechanic is odd, and I'm not sure I like it. The rolling of hit dice before combat and using hit dice rather than hit points as the measure of current health between fights is either crazy or brilliant, and I'm currently leaning toward the latter, but not sure I would want to commit to that for Athanor. In Carcosa, though, it seems to make a crazy sort of sense and fit the sense of random fatalism that runs through the supplement.

His hex map key is vastly entertaining, and will have me revisiting my own Athanor hex map. He needed some wilderness random encounter tables to really flesh it out, though.

While I appreciate his presentation of the work in the style of an original edition supplement, down to layout style and font choice, the choice to do this is a bit of an odd choice. It has too much world-specific stuff to be like Supplements I-IV, but it lacks more current design elements for published campaigns like political maps, history, overviews, etc. It's neither fish nor fowl, and while the grab-bag nature of the book is entertaining, this often leaves me with a sense of having on the one hand too much of McKinney's world for me to make it completely my own, and too little for me to play in McKinney's. This isn't a major fault-- I might say the same of some of the Wilderland supplements, City-State of the Invincible Overlord, or even the original Empire of Petal Throne -- though EPT has this problem far more than Carcosa does. And we made due in the day, and Carcosa has enough for a DM to muddle through, reading between the lines in this setting and throwing in his or her own brand of weirdness. It's not as if th setting isn't gonzo enough to fit almost anything into.

Overall, Carcosa was entertaining and inspiring, if only to see how much weirdness can still be crammed into the Old-school framework.

Carcosa wending its way to me by snail mail....

Well, I ordered my copy of Carcosa. I ordered the expurgated edition -- go ahead, call me a coward, but my wife is in early childhood education, and I just don't need the kind of hassle that could come from some misguided reading of what that book is. I have enough crap to get me in trouble in my library.

I plan to raid Carcosa for elements of the weird. I doubt much of the actual world or rules will come into Athanor unaltered, but you never know. My main desire here is some inspiration for my own gaming and hopefully an entertaining read.

Making Planetary Romance Work

I'm meandering through Lin Carter's Sky Pirates of Callisto, and I am struck with Carter's attempt to slavishly emulate Burroughs' style and storytelling structure. While he certainly does so without the sly winks and sloppy stylings of Micheal Moorcock's Mars novels, Carter's Jandar novel seems to eaily and unquestioningly latch onto some of the more annoying elements of Burroughs' Mars novels. In particular, Carter's Jandar is a bigger lunkhead than John Carter himself. And a bit of a smug ass, too.

Maybe I read the Barsoom novels with a bit of bias after having read them since childhood, but despite his general bone-headedness, John Carter comes across as charismatic, and Burroughs' archaic writing seems flavorful and strongly evocative. I think Burroughs stands the test of time.

Lin Carter's hero is less charming, his romantic interests unconvincing, and the writing through which we get to know him is workmanlike. While Sky Pirates is an entertaining read, the level of suspension of disbelief for the heroes' general stupidity is too much to bear. And Carter's writing style just seems too much like Carter fanfic.

I take this as a cautionary tale. Too much slavish emulation of a genre staple is bad. Heck, worse than being bad, it's dull. If a thing comes across as a simple pastiche without its own spark of life, it begins to seem forced, and just meanders about without its own direction.

The good thing about approaching planetary romance as a role-playing game rather than a literary venture is that a large chunk of the role-playing experience comes from a source outside of the Referee. While I may sow the seeds of the experience, it's the players who breathe life into the game. I need to set up some flavor and mood, but in the main I'm looking to the players to give this its own life and keep it from falling into the trap of boring pastiche.

Visions of Refereeing

An e-mail discussion with my old friend and current 4e DM has been illuminating. We talked about rules crunch and fluff in supplements and while he came in favor for more rules to give more character options and more detailed world background and fluff to give some shape to fantasy I came down on the side of fewer rules and much less fluff (which probably is no surprise to regular victims of the blog.)

What strikes me is that my old friend is a long-time "storyteller" DM as well as a budding writer. Part of me actually thought that he would have chosen the route of less crunch (more room for storytelling over tactical play) and less fluff (more room to strut his writerly stuff)-- but actually listening to him, it is his writer's instinct that pushes him toward liking both fluff and crunch. He chooses rules complexity to allow definition of characters on paper, and world background for setting definition on paper, and setting forth an established character and background that then interact in play, but with a set canon on which to build.

I tend to take a different approach to the whole game. My basic argument is that the game doesn't exist outside of the interactions between participants. There is no plot but the action of the characters, there is no real setting unless it is encountered in game, there is no character but what people experience in game. Now, I think that "in game" can be expanded beyond the tabletop through things like in-character journals or logs shared with the Referee and the group, shared tales of past exploits and the like, but for most groups, this kind of expansion of the game seldom happens.

It's not like we can't get together and have fun despite this difference, but it's interesting how fundamental our differences are in approaching the DM role.

Matrix games and decision-making

One of the interesting points made in response to my last post was, essentially, that whether you have many or few rules, there will always be arguing, and if they aren't about rules they will be about DM interpretation (though in my experience, a larger number of rules has always been accompanied more rules lawyering while a larger number of non-rules GM judgments sometimes leads to more player grumbling, so I think there is at least a qualitative difference between responses at the table....)

This (as often happens in my navel-gazing) has led me to think of resolution systems, which made me think of an old Shadis magazine article on matrix games. With a little digging, I came up with this link explaining the concept.

In short, players can establish a set of supporting actions linking an action to a conclusion. The DM can accept that or counter. Thus the answers can be not only yes or no, but yes answers can be appended with "and" or "but" arguments and no results can be appended with a counter argument "actually, ...."

Removing the formality (what little there is) from Chris Engle's original format gives a simple discursive way of engaging "reality lawyering" in a game play adjudication setting and allows some consistency (or at least a sense of such) to how things are resolved.

Matters of system

I think that Ron Edwards is right when he says that system matters, but I think he overstates his case. The impact of system on game-play really depends on the level to which game play is reflective of system. And I actually think system/rules is only one mediating factor in the social construction of the game as activity. The game, the social dynamics of the group, the pre-existing expectations the players bring to the game, and the ways that players and GM play out their roles, for instance, all have an influence. Each session of a game exists in a social and historical context defined by all members of a group, and each member has an individual experience even as the group has a collective experience.

So in short, system matters, but so do a lot of other things.

I have been thinking about this a lot as we play 4e in my friend's campaign. I'm having a good time, and while I am enjoying playing with the rules, I imagine I would have the same kind of fun playing just about anything, seeing how to play with the rules of the system while engaging in some interesting role-play moments. However, the structure of the sessions is clearly being influenced by the rule system. First, it clearly does a lot to structure the kinds of characters at the table. The kinds of character's at my friend's table aren't the kinds I would expect to see if the same players were in an Athanor game. Second, it structures the kinds of things that happen in combat. But interestingly to me, it structures the pace and the structure of the game.

To be honest, my issue with 4e isn't unique to 4e. It's a lot like what I experienced with 3.x, Hero System, and GURPS, for instance. But what is striking me about 4e here is a separation of tactical and roleplaying. There is a tactical portion of the session, where we do battle and run the game strategically to overcome foes, and there is a roleplay session where we attend to the plot. It doesn't come in a particular order, but the split is palpable.

Now, I don't necessarily think this is a problem. I have happily played Hero System this way for years, and did so with increasing unhappiness with 3.x, but as I have gotten older, the systems tweaking and tactical play elements of RPGs are less and less attractive. This is part of the reason I declined playing in a friend's playtest of Pathfinder, and part of the reason I am interested in games like Swords and Wizardry (and have raided Tunnels and Trolls for some of my ideas, too.)

Frankly, part of the hobby has always craved some sort of complexity as part of the development of the game system. The added mechanics of games ranging from AD&D to Runequest to Chivalry and Sorcery, Aftermath,, Morrow Project, Rolemaster, and a whole slew of even more complex games has been driven by a desire by some players to have more rules covering more situations with more possible results. I tend to think of it as a sort of game mechanics porn that some people are just compelled to experiment with.

But to me, that stuff is less and less exciting. The last time I had a great time GMing a game was when I was running Feng Shui, when I felt happy throwing out world canon and with playing fast and loose with the rules. That carefree attitude toward Official Setting and The Rules is the hallmark of games I like to run.

So I need to keep thinking about where I can avoid having set rules in Athanor, and leave more room for making stuff up. This is why I'm pleased that my rules document is 8 digest pages, and that the rest fits into a short stack of very thin booklets. I want to keep it that way.

My Boxed Set

Now that I think the rules are fairly finalized, I am putting together little booklets of rules for the tabletop. I am laying them out for practical play and not including the OGL declarations or S&W trademark information since I am just printing out copies for myself... anything I put on the web will be a little different to make sure I follow the right procedures for these kinds of things.

My own Personal Boxed Set (which does have its own box!) consists of six booklets:

1. Character Creation
2. The Basic Rules
3. Magic Rules and Spells
4. World Information
5. Monsters and Treasure
6. Compiled Tables

My goal here is easy tabletop reference to the rules, keeping books 5 and 6 to myself, and allowing books 1-4 to be used by players as needed. We'll see how it plays out in real life.

I have put my rules in digest-size PDFs, and use booklet printing to crank out copies, using my long-reach stapler to put them together all old-school.

While I was at it, I printed out my PDF of the Esoteric Creature Generator to throw in the box, as well as a copy of Matt Finch's Eldritch Weirdness and his City Encounters PDFs, also in booklet form. Add some dice, some pencils and a small notebook, and I have box of portable game ready to play.

Playing to Strengths

It seems to me that playing a game in a weirder setting (and I think Athanor does qualify as a bit weirder than average) should focus on keeping it weird. That is, the settings and situations of a weird fantasy should emphasize what distinguishes it over what is similar to other games. That weirdness can help emphasize a sense of immersion for players and build something unique about the setting.

So, when looking at Athanor, I think I need to consider what makes the setting unique. Here's my list of Things to Emphasize:

• Arid, dying land.
• Ochre, lichen-covered seabeds.
• Dinosaurs.
• Post-apocalytpic ruins filled with high-tech artifacts.
• Fungus forests.
• Airships.
• Non-standard races.
• Two moons.
• Vog-Mur the Necromancer.
• The Overlord of Zamora and his "children."
• A semi-ruined domed city with lawless ruins at the borders.
• Firearms.
• Rare but present sci-fi artifacts.

My goal is to keep these things in mind when playing the game and designing adventures. Maybe I need to put the list in the front of my campaign binder.

Of two minds

I have been thinking about airships again and realizing that I did nothing to think about airship battles or chases. Part of me wants to define such things because, that part of my mind says, it'll be important and cool and thus needs to be defined so everyone knows just how important such battles are.

The other part of my mind says that of course this stuff doesn't need to be defined because ship-to-ship battles played out on the board are totally disruptive to immersion and really step out of the game play, often give players little to do, and really bog a RPG down in a miniatures battle only a few people will like.

Both of which seem to have some grains of truth.

What do do? Do any of y'all actually know of some siple rules to steal inspire me if I do go that route?

Some More Capsule Reviews

I'm not in the review business, and haven't been since the days when I wrote several reviews and the single most boring and academic article in the brief history of Cryptych magazine. I know I got a "Hook, Line and Sinker" and I think a single review published in Shadis around issue 10, too. That's my entire career in the gaming industry, right there. It's stunning, really.

But I throwing out some quick impressions I have of Lamentation of the Flame Princess products because I think James Raggi is onto something. I'm not going to claim Raggi is the Second Coming or some crap like that. But he's putting out products that I think are really making me think hard about how to organize, present, and run my games.

I just got myself PDF copies of his No Dignity in Death: Three Brides and People of Pembrooktonshire and I have to say, I'm impressed. Like his recent Death Frost Doom, the adventures in NDIN are grim, interesting, and filled with really robust roleplaying opportunities. And his scenarios engage issues of class, race, misplaced faith in tradition, horror, and social isolation. All in a pretty small number of pages. Even if I never run his adventures, I'm pretty floored at what he has done in pretty system-neutral terms and with uncompromising clarity.

As far as PoP goes, it takes Pembrooktonshire and gives the town a litle more depth and a lot of quick characters with personal quirks and motivations that go a long way to making Pembrooktonshire the possible setting for an extended mini-campaign. Characters are described in a handful of sentences, and by creating a quick sketch that includes a quirk and a motivation, each of these characters can be a quick springboard for adventure. The people of Pembrooktonshire aren't interesting because of game mechanics (this is a pretty much systemless book), but due to the web of interweaving character motivations and potential springboards for activity in the town. In a lot of ways, this book lays the foundation for understanding how to set up a poltical or role-playing heavy sandbox setting more than anything I have read.

So even if you don't plan on running old-school RPGs, these two adventures (and hell, I still stand behind telling you to by Death Frost Doom) are worth getting your hands on. If you're a cheap bastard who hates waiting, get them off RPGnow in PDF like I did. Because these books might, if nothing else, be pretty stimulating in thinking how to set up a game that give characters meaningful, difficult choices in a dynamic setting where their actions and not a prescribed set of moments build into a personal plot that is driven by the players and not the GM. Which is pretty tough to do.

The Familiar and the Strange

I realize that among the the items in Athanor that seem most out-of-place on Athanor are dinosaurs and the use of Earth-analog languages and cultures in Athanor. Part of this is an experiment. Back in college, I had tried to have more complex cultures as part of my FRP, but I remember the reasonable and convincing words of my friend Dean who essentially told me that nobody wanted to have to study to play D&D.

As you can tell, I have fun doing world-building. I like the weird, the fantastic, and event the nonsensical in my games. And while I have friends who like to read up on a fully-realized game world, my experience is that games should feel like fun, not work. I think this is part of the problem with worlds like Tekumel and Glorantha and even, to some extent, the Forgotten Realms. Too much crap to read. Tekumel confounds this further by having odd languages, weird names, and strange customs. Most of the players I have known don't want to play amateur anthropologist.

So how to do alien and pulp and weird and fantastic? I chose to use elements of the familiar. Dinosaurs because 1) they're cool, 2) they're a bit gonzo, and 3) they are a signal that this isn't a typical D&D campaign. The language and culture thing... well, that's an experiment.

When I was first thinking of Athanor, I had complete generic fantasy cultures in mind. That's where the historical names of the Aquilan Empire and the Witch Kings of Ylum come from. Those are names that have been tumbling around the old RPG setting mind for a while, and I have even used them before in other campaigns. But along the way, I grew dissatisfied. Fake names have little resonance, but if the cold, emotionless, rigid blue guys with a sense of racial superiority have Germanic names, maybe that creates some sort of easy mental shorthand by taking advantage of people's existing stereotypes. We'll see. Maybe this won't work. Beats me.