Recent history

I finished Bill Slaviscek's The Mark of Nerath last night, after a crazy evening of running around town with all the kids.  As I predicted, the "POL" setting novels got off to a bit of a rocky start.  This novel really is not very good.  It's greatest failing is that Slaviscek, as a gamer, couldn't find a voice that didn't sound like a nerdy gamer describing his last campaign.  From off-hand references to D&D mechanics and esoterica littered throughout the book, to extremely cheesy dialogue, unlikely and forgettable characters, a rather dubious plot, and a general lack of tension or excitement, despite Slaviscek's attempt to throw disposible combat at the characters right and left, the book just didn't deliver a great experience.

Part of the problem no doubt is the cast of characters.  For a novel that clocks in at just under 300 pages, a 7-8 group "adventuring party" who is supposed to be made up of interesting characters with their own backstories and personality is a tall order.  To be honest, Slaviscek makes very little attempt at it, and just barrels along with the plot.  The most interesting aspects of it, however, are the parts that are lead-ins to the upcoming Abyssal Plague trilogy (also the main reason that I'm reading it)--the rather limp Luke Skywalker esque character of Falon, or the wooden performances of characters like Shara or Uldane (I realize I'm just dropping names that you won't recognize--but the point is, at the end of the novel, I'm not entirely sure that the names meant much to me either) they were mostly just completely forgettable.

That said, the novel wasn't completely terrible.  I've read worse.  The Crimson Talisman was worse.  Wizard's First Rule was worse.  And heck, it was mercifully kinda short, too.  And it had a pretty cool WAR cover.  I'm not entirely sure if that was the best part of the novel or not, but it certainly helped.  And unlike the covers in the War-Torn series that I read earlier, I actually recognized the scene in the cover art as a scene from the book.

One curious thing that the POL setting, as presented by this book, is that it refers to stuff that happens in not terribly distant history.  Now, I've only been poking around with history in DARK•HERITAGE, and very little of it has been recent with the exception of the Pirate's War in which Porto Liure won independence for itself.  I've got my Baal Hamazi, which is rather transparently my version of POL's Bael Turath--but that's all happened a hundred years ago or more, with the exception of recent events.  It occurs to me that I can make a much richer environment, one fraught with potential intrigue, if I have a few recently concluded episodes of skullduggery and intrigue with fallout still ready to happen.  Some frail dynastic events that are recently concluded, some recent revolts, riots, religious pogroms, or whatever, all make for a more rich environment.

And looking at real history, dramatic stuff often happens much faster than fantasy would have it, which stretches things out to unreasonable lengths.  Think about it--the U.S. as a country has only been around for a little over 200 years (you can vary that amount by a bit depending on whether you start with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the actual conclusion of the Revolutionary War in 1783, the Ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781, or if you want to be a real stickler, the victory over the British in the "Second War of Independence" in 1815.)  In a fantasy setting, 200 years doesn't feel like anything, when dynasties and empires and kingdoms tend to last for thousands of years (for some reason.)  Yet for us, the founding of America and the characters who walked that stage are almost as much legendary as they are historical in the popular consciousness.  There's no reason to overcompress your setting's time frame, but there's also no reason to overly stretch it out.

Legend of the Seeker

Ever since I decided to post a "10 most recently watched" sidebar--which I may decide is best to do away with--I've been struggling with how to handle TV shows.  I watch very little on actual TV (although I do have a DVR full of stuff I've recorded from this past season) but I watch a lot of stuff via Netflix--streaming episodes if I can get them, and DVDs if not.  In fact, the majority of what I'm watching are episodes of shows that I missed the first time around but still wanted to see, so I'm catching now from Netflix.  How do I capture that?

I've been putting discs up as I watch them, the same as if they were movies.  So, if I watch Chuck Season 2 Disc 3 (which I most recently did) then I'll put that up.  But, I've also been streaming shows.  I've restarted Roswell, with my kids even, thinking that they might enjoy watching that with me, and I've also started watching Legend of the Seeker.  Do I just put up the each episode as I watch it?  Does it even matter?  Should I even be showing what I most recently watched?  Does anyone even care?  And if not, (which I'm sure is the case) why am I messing with it if even I find it to be more trouble than it's worth?  Hence, my prediction that I'll decide within a few days to probably take it down completely if I can't come up with a better alternative.

Meanwhile, though, I've been watching Legend of the Seeker.  Mostly I'm watching this because there's not a lot of traditional fantasy to watch, really.  The Legend of the Seeker is more or less based on the Sword of Truth series of books by Terry Goodkind; the first season in particular is loosely based on the first novel, Wizard's First Rule.  I actually owned that book at one time; I bought it at firesale pricing from Waldenbooks in the mall once, because the publishers had the idea that if they could give you a super cheap copy of the first book, that you'd then go on to buy the subsequent books in the series at full price.

Frankly, it's one of the worst books I've ever read.  The dialogue and characters, plots and situations, and the entire setting and everything about it was purile, ridiculous, cheesy, cliched, sophomoric, and frankly, even frequently offensive.  So why in the world am I watching a show based on it?

To be honest with you, I'm not quite sure.  I'm vaguely hoping that the show will be better than the books, and like I said, the fact that there's so little fantasy in TV and movies makes me want to like it, even if I suspect that I won't.

That said, I've got a rule about new shows--I give them six episodes before I give up.  Lots of shows take a few episodes to find their feet, but if by six they're still not any good, then the chances of them turning that around later are pretty low.  So far, I've only seen two.  So far it's not terrible, but it's also not good.  We'll see where it goes from there.

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I'm not normally at the forefront of this kind of news, but because I have the Wizards columns on RSS feed on the side there (I was actually only trying to get the DM Experience column, but I never mucked around with the feed to figure out if I could filter it as such) I saw the announcement less than two hours after it went public.  That's pretty good for me.

I'm referring, of course, to the announcement by Wizards of the Coast that they are officially working on the fifth edition of D&D.  I made a quick reference to it in the comments section of my last post, but otherwise spent more time reading what I could on the announcement and a few gamer blogs rather than adding my own input to the mix.  Of course now, nearly 24 hours later, I can't resist.

First, the obligatory "how interested am I in this announcement?"  I'm not sure.  While the design direction certainly sounds more appealing than early previews of 4e did, at the same time, I'm really not in the market for another system, as I've said many times before.  I've been fairly heavily invested in the d20 system--various iterations, which have contributed to my heavily house-ruled preferred variant--and I don't feel like my investment is amortized.  Certainly I'll pay attention to the game as it nears release, but I don't--at least at the moment--have any plans to actually pick it up.

Second, the timing.  4e has only been out since June 2008--so about three and a half years.  That's an absurdly short product life cycle given the history of editions in this game, and it strongly suggests that 4e "failed" in some way for WotC to consider replacing it so soon.  This isn't also hard to imagine given that the player base has become increasingly splintered, and Pathfinder--which is basically a minor revision to the last edition of D&D--seems to be knocking huge holes in D&D's sales.  Add to that the noise of the OSR blogosphere (regardless of whether or not that's actually a large number of gamers, they do manage to make a lot of noise), the failure of the GSL to attract and sustain very intensive third party involvement, and the dissapointment in general of a large number of fans who felt alienated by the design principles of 4e, and it's not hard to think of it as a failure, despite the large number of fans who clearly quite liked it too.

Of course, it is possible (although I believe it to be unlikely) that it's not considered a failure by WotC management at all, and because of Hasbro's strategy of continually pushing for more profits, that we'll always see new editions coming out after this short of a window from now on, regardless of how successful any edition is or isn't.

Huh.  Although I recently swore off ENWorld again, I'm tempted to make a small reappearance to broach that particular topic and see what comes of it, if anything.

D&D Ages

Although it's quite old now, this post from James Maliszewski's blog Grognardia makes an attempt to categorize D&D into "ages" and James' attempt is strongly rooted in Hesiod's own Ages of Mankind, i.e., it posits a past Golden age followed by years of gradual decline, punctuated by events or developments that can be seen as significant enough changes to mark the boundaries of each age.

Of course, his perspective comes as a person who's enamored with the older versions of D&D and the "primary sources" that informed it, and he approaches those conventions and tropes with nearly religious fervor, seeing any deviations from them as heresies to be strictly avoided.  That doesn't match my own experience with the game at all, nor--do I imagine--is it really a sufficiently common viewpoint that his ages will ever mean anything outside of the relatively narrow OSR community.

A guy in the comments section, on the other hand, takes a stab at constructing an alternative loosely based on the ages of archeology.  I like this one better, as it posits, at least in broad strokes, a generally progressive history of the game.  Neither one really maps perfectly to D&D, but I believe the archeological model is at least a better starting place than Hesiod (which was also mimicked by comic book fandom, which many gamers also belong to.)  But unlike in the archeological model, I don't see a progression of uninterrupted progress; there is a decadant Dark Age period as well.

Anyway, rather than merely critique Mr. Malizsewski's model, I'll offer up my own alternative to it; one that, like his, is firmly rooted in the personal taste and subjective quirks of its author, but one which I think is more broadly applicable outside of the OSR.

1. The Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age (1974-1977) Comprising the period during which OD&D was published up until AD&D and BD&D were published in 1977.  During this age, the rules were often ad hoc, made with little reference to other rules, arbitrary, and generally insufficient (in fact, they occasionally made reference to competitive products, assuming players would be familiar with and own them) and assumed a wargaming advent into the hobby.  With very little direction and insufficient rules, gamemasters, or referees as they were often still called at this stage, had to do an awful lot of interpretation to cover missing spots, and there was little in the way of tools to support them.

2. The Neolithic, or New Stone Age (1977-1984) As with the archeological age, the Neolithic is characterized by a "revolution" in technological competence; the OD&D game, while not officiall retired right away, was largely replaced by two differing lines during this age, the game eventually known as AD&D and the game that later came to be called BD&D and its eventual successor, the Rules Cyclopedia.  This is also the period of D&D's greatest mainstream popularity, including a cartoon series and a toyline, and the presence of the rulebooks in department store catalogs and shelves.  While the game still had a lot of arbitrariness and is still pretty clunky and counter-intuitive in many instances, conditions inherited from its predesessor, both AD&D and BD&D made a concerted effort to better organize, write, and present the rules of the game, adding rules to cover more circumstances and otherwise making a game that ran relatively well compared to what came before.

3. The Bronze Age, (1985-1991) Shortly after the publication of the mixed reviews book Unearthed Arcana, Gary Gygax was finally completely ousted by the Blumes and D&D went into the custodianship of other hands than its creator.  One of the changes that came about around this same time--perhaps able to be ushered in with the departure of Gygax--was the advent of Dragonlance, and the fallout of that hugely successful enterprise.  The first Dragonlance novel was actually published in very late 1984.  It wasn't the first novel associated with the D&D game, but none before then had really been very successful, and TSR were initially sceptical, ordering the minimum print run (50,000) and wishing they could have gone even lower.  As it turned out, the Dragonlance novels were immensely popular, and paved the way for TSR (and later WotC) becoming one of the most prolific and well-known publishers of fantasy literature.  A few months before the novel came out, however, the first Dragonlance module came out.  Following on the heels of another huge successful Tracey Hickman module, Castle Ravenloft, this is perhaps more important for its impact on the game itself--the realization that a large portion of the audience wanted some setting and some story and interesting characters to their D&D, and the days of modules that were just random encounters with disposible characters and monsters in nonsensical dungeons was truly over.  This focus on story continued well into the next age (and beyond--it's still a potent force in the industry).

4.  The Dark Age, (1992-1999) By this time, AD&D had had another edition published, and the BD&D line was consolidated into the Rules Cyclopedia but those changes in the rules were not as important as three other changes that happened during the "Dark Age" that profoundly impacted D&D.  The first was the mismanagement of the company financially by its owners.  A number of really bizarre products were offered and flopped (Dragonlance was moved to a new system not D&D, for instance--failed card games and dice games also proliferated) and a general perception that TSR was putting out a number of shoddy products quickly to attempt to shore up bleeding balance sheets was widespread.  When this got to its worst point, TSR, completely unable to continue paying its bills, essentially shut down completely and the product pipeline, flawed though it was, was shut off entirely until Wizards of the Coast came and acquired them, paid off their debts, and rationalized their continued product line, as well as starting development for a brand new edition that would make a much cleaner break with the past than the prior one had (more on that next age.)  Besides on the business side of the house, however, two other important things happened to D&D.  1992 was--more or less--the beginning of a number of years in which TSR put out campaign setting after campaign setting.  While this is frequently cited as a "bad thing" from a business perspective, at the same time, this is also seen as a Golden Age for setting aficionados, of which there are a lot amongst gamers, and many of these settings are remembered quite fondly.  The third thing that happened to D&D was external--in 1991, White Wolf published the first of its Storytelling line of RPGs: Vampire: The Masquerade which, for pretty much the first time ever, was seen as a serious and significant competitor to D&D.  This had a side effect of bringing a bunch of new players into the hobby, as well as a whole new conversation about how games should or could at least be played.

5.  The Iron Age, (2000-2007) With the release of Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons (and the final collapse of the AD&D and D&D split) we get ushered into the Iron Age, an age of technological advancement unheard of in D&D itself, at least, for a long time.  Not so much because of third edition itself (although as a cleaned up and rationalized bit of game design, it finally removed a lot of the arbitrariness and weirdness that had plagued the rules up to this point) but because of the Open Gaming License, or OGL.  See, Peter Adkinson, Ryan Dancey and the others from Wizards who bought TSR did it specifically to rescue D&D because of the terrible mismanagement it had suffered during the Dark Age and the risk that it was going to--literally--disappear: be locked up in bankruptcy court and out of print indefinately.  Since saving D&D was one of the primary decisions of the Wizards management--who did it as fans of the game, not necessarily as businesspeople (although making the business profitable was certainly a high priority goal), they wanted to come up with a way to protect D&D--give it to the fans forever--so it could never be mismanaged to the point where it was foreseeable that the game itself would disappear.  The OGL was the vehicle that accomplished that; by putting most of the rules into an open, nontransferable and nonrevokable license so that anyone could use it, the third edition of D&D was immediately insulated from any decisions that the owners of the game could ever do to it.  A remarkable (although not unforeseen) side effect was that a lot of great stuff was issued by third party publishers, greatly enriching the game beyond what it ever could have been able to do even at the height of the "Neolithic Age" when it was at its peak popularity, or even during the decadent product glut of the Dark Age.  Of course, a few things happened during this Iron Age which were not foreseen.  The most important one was that WotC was sold by its owners to Hasbro.  This was primarily to bail the principles of WotC out of personal debt.  It was also widely believed, and the WotC management had been led to believe as much from the Hasbro guys, that since WotC was more profitable than Hasbro, that it would continue to operate as it had, and that in fact the WotC management might be groomed for bigger positions within Hasbro to restructure that organization to match the WotC one.  This ended up not being the case, and D&D shortly started showing the effects of Hasbro management, including a production schedule that was more focused on short term profits than long term health.  Another unforeseen--or at least not committed in writing by anyone that I ever saw--circumstance was that third party publishers gradually stopped issuing very much stuff that supported the OGL, and instead used the OGL to create their own variations on the rules which were no longer compatible with the main game and therefore competed with it rather than supported it.

6.  The Splintered Age, (2008-Present) Finally, in 2007 Wizards announced that the third edition (and it's revision, 3.5) had run their course and an all new design from the ground up called Fourth Edition (4e) was going to be coming out in 2008.  Furthermore, it gradually came to be apparent that Wizards was not going to support the game with the OGL, but rather with a much more restrictive GSL that was not popular with the remaining significant third party publishers.  The new edition came out, and sure enough, it only superficially resembled D&D that came before, which greatly divided the fanbase.  In the Splintered Age, D&D was less defined as "the game that bears the brand name of Dungeons & Dragons"  and is rather a state of mind that can be applied to several games.  The important ones, aside from 4e, include Pathfinder, published by big time third party publisher Paizo, which takes the old OGL and updates and fixes some percieved problems with it.  Pathfinder, while not bearing the D&D name, is seen by many fans as a more direct and "legitimate" heir to the D&D legacy than D&D 4e, and although sales numbers are notoriously hard to pin down, common wisdom and some circumstantial evidence suggests that Pathfinder sells in numbers comparable to D&D itself.  In addition to Pathfinder, out of print 3.5 games appear to still be fairly commonplace, and on the used market, demand (and therefore price) for 3.5 books remains high.  I know my group still plays as such.  The third significant alternative is the OSR--or old school rennaissance, which sprung up independently from--although at about the same time as--the announcement of 4e.  The big enabler of the OSR was the release of OSRIC--a fan creation that used the OGL to "back-engineer" a document that was compatible with 1e AD&D.  When it was seen that this was going to pass any potential legal challenges hurled at it, the floodgates opened, and a whole movement--a do-it-yourself movement with a lot of small heads--sprang up around playing D&D using "retroclones" like OSRIC, including Labyrinth Lord, Sword & Wizardry and others, or using OGL compatible games that hybridized old school versions of D&D with some more modern innovations in game design, like Castles & Crusades and others.

This is where we are today, and although rumors of a 5th edition of D&D being in the works are fairly fast and furious and circumstantially supportable, and not denied by WotC, it seems unlikely that the splintering that occured within D&D will be undone anytime soon--the OSR crowd in particular pays little attention to what's going on at WotC, and the Pathfinder crowd is made up in large part of people who actively rejected 4e and WotC completely and may be very unwilling to give them another look.

New WAR artbook announced

I've found Wayne Anthony Reynolds (WAR) a thoroughly polite and delightful man on the very scant occasions that I've had to communicate with him (an email or two, chatting for just a moment at his table at GenCon a few years ago.)  In addition to being modest and friendly, he's also one of the most prolific artists in the roleplaying community these days, and he's kinda evolved into becoming the face of post Second Edition D&D and D&D like games, with art that is very prevalent throughout the entire D&D product line, especially the Eberron campaign setting, the Freeport line, the Pathfinder line, and more besides (he's also done work for Black Library--I've got some interesting skaven plates in my Loathsome Ratmen book.)  And as the face of post 2e D&D... well, he's a kind of polarizing figure. While there's no denying that his work is quite popular, it's also miffed a lot of folks who prefer a more traditionalist approach to their D&D art.

I happen to be one of the folks who quite likes WAR pieces, and I've grabbed plenty of books before for no other reason than because they have WAR covers, quite honestly.  Last time I emailed him, which was over a year ago now, he mentioned that he was in talks with some folks about coming out with an artbook of his art, which would be nice because his website isn't updated very frequently anymore, he's also started putting much more low resolution versions of the pictures that it does have, and in general, I see a lot of his work on books that I can't find a decent online version of for my art files anymore.

Luckily, that wasn't just idle talk: I just saw this announcement literally today (although it's probably been around for some time and I just missed it.)  Anyway, I'm quite excited!

http://paizo.com/products/btpy8qac?Visions-of-WAR-The-Art-of-Wayne-Reynolds-Hardcover

D&D Fiction

If you've looked at my "What I'm Reading" thingamajiggies over there on the side, you'll have noticed two D&D fiction pieces.  You may also think, based on my past reviews of D&D fiction [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] that I'd be an unlikely candidate to be reading these--even my good reviews tend to be quite guarded.  Ah, but therein lies the story.  Let me explain.

First off, I really would like for gaming related fiction to be good.  Despite many poor experiences in the past, I continue to hope for an entertaining read, and I do occasionally find one.  The Paul S. Kemp books weren't terrible, and neither were two of the three Eberron novels that I read and reviewed above.  I've had decent experiences with David Gross Pathfinder fiction recently, and I've had pretty good experiences with Black Library Warhammer and Warhammer 40k fiction as well.  So, I guess, in spite of the many bad gaming fiction novels I've read over the years, hope springs eternal, and a few decently good ones are just good enough to encourage that perhaps foolish and vain hope.

That, and, I'm a sucker for a punchy piece of cover art.  I originally got into the War-Torn series, links to reviews above, because of the Wayne Reynolds cover art.  I got suckered into buying a couple of books at the book store recently for the same reason; the first two books of the Abyssal Plague series, which feature Wayne Reynolds cover art.  They also feature names known for pretty good work--Don Bassingthwaite and James Wyatt--so I was hopeful.  There's a third book (also by Bassingthwaite, I believe) due out in a few months, so I hadn't picked them up to read yet, but I was a little bit dismayed to find that there are preludes to them out there.

However... I was able to get both the novels that are part of the lead-up via Interlibrary loan, and the prologue novella is available as a free download (ebook and pdf).  My Gates of Madness link to the side there is a link; after I take that down, you'll be on your own.  Sadly, the names on the prelude novels are not know for their writing of great D&D novels; in fact, I don't know that they ever have done so.  Bill Slaviscek is at least well known for his work as a game designer, but of course, that doesn't necessarily make him a good fiction writer.

However, one other thing attracted me to the concept--it's written in the unnamed "Points of Light" setting that is the default 4e setting, and which has started to develop enough cohesiveness to actually be a setting at this point.  At first it was at best a micro-setting--the Nentir Vale area, plus some vague handwavey details about the world(s) beyond--but as more and more game material has been published, that's evolved.  There's still not a setting bible (at least not in print; hopefully WotC have one behind the scenes) but there's quite a few details now.  And these are the first novels for this new setting, so it's kinda fun to feel like I'm getting in at the ground floor on a new venture.  Even if it has a rocky launch--and I'll be pleasantly suprised if it doesn't--then that's still kinda a fun thing in it's own right anyway.

Anyway, there's the story.  I'm going to read the two prelude novels while I have them from Interlibrary Loan, and I'll probably read the prelude novella too, just because it's quick and easy and short.  I probably won't read the main series, at least until the third book is out and I've bought a copy.  So after these three prelude stories are done, I'll step away from tie-in fiction and read some "normal" fiction instead.  In fact, I'm even contemplating stepping away from fantasy altogether and reading some James Patterson thrillers--I've got three or four on my bookshelf--and I've always been a fan of the notion of stepping outside of your genre and dabbling in others from time to time.

Post Holidays roundup

Today was my first day back at work since December 23rd--not a particularly happy occasion.  However, I've got a handful of minor updates and heads-up to pass along.  Most of these are of no interest to anyone but myself, but since I use my blog as much as a rambly journal for my own enjoyment later as for any potential readers who may stumble upon it, that's OK.

First, I blogged in the past about Chris Perkins' column at Wizards website, which features every Thursday, and has since... February, I think, so nearly a year now.  Whether or not you took me up on my suggestion to go try and find the column, you might be interested in knowing that for last Thursday, the 29th of December, rather than posting a new colum, the update was a 107 page pdf compilation, with new layout for the pdf format (although curiously in a landscape rather than portrain layout) of all of the columns of 2011... which is all of them that exist so far.  Since it's free, it's reasonably interesting and entertaining to read on a regular basis, and it's probably the best column in RPGiana going right now in terms of giving GM advice (I'm not sure if I like it better than Ray Winninger's classic run on Dungeoncraft or not yet) it's a bargain.  Go check it out!  http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dmxp/20111229

Secondly, I've made some pretty good progress on some of my books since ditching the Ancient Blades trilogy that I was reading, but probably not much that warrants a full report.  Part of the reason I've made good progress was because I decided to make some headway on the 6 titles that I had in gaming books.  But that's a bit of a misnomer, right?  Four of the six titles actually weren't "books" they were issues of No Quarter magazine that I'd picked up but not yet read.  Of the first... 22 or so issues of No Quarter, I have all but three or four, and then I have a more recent one, #37 as well.  No Quarter, for the uninitiated, is like the White Dwarf magazine for Privateer Press.  The early issues focus on the games of Warmachine, Hordes, and the Iron Kingdoms D&D setting, and actually featured quite a bit of RPG content... one of the main reasons I started getting the magazines (the other reason being the art.  Well, and I also hadn't completely decided that I wasn't interested in miniatures yet at that point.  I still appreciate a well-painted mini from time to time, even if I'm very unlikely to pick anymore up again.)  And for that matter, even when it wasn't printing RPG stuff specifically, there was a lot of setting stuff that could easily be adapted to the RPG.  And, for the heckuvit, it had RPG stats for a lot of the warjacks and whatnot that appear in Warmachine (most of the Hordes warbeasts were in Monsternomicon vol. 2 already, with a few exceptions.)  The issues I read were 19, 20, 22, and I believe 37.  The earlier ones still had some RPG content in it, including an alternate base class (the combat alchemist), stats for a warjack or two, some equipment and feat stuff here and there, and several encounters--mini-modules, if you will, although those required the Monsternomicon books to be used.  Not a problem; I have them both.  I found, though, that I was skimming the painting, terrain building, and wargame strategy and tactics articles.  By the time we got to the more recent one, the RPG stuff was completely gone.  Iron Kingdoms as a D&D setting is dead except in the games of those who still play it.  Word on the street, which I've mentioned here before, is that a new book is on the horizon which will introduce the setitng anew with a house system that is more compatible with the wargames.  Whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing is debateble, I think, but at the very least I'll probably pick it up for the artwork.

Curiously, this means that No Quarter kinda paralleled the development of White Dwarf in many ways.  White Dwarf used to be a gamer hobbyist mag for Brits that focused on a lot of different games.  I have one reasonably old issue (#100, to be exact) which still features modules and ads from a variety of different companies and games, although its evolution into just being a house arm for Warhammer, 40k and Citadel miniatures was well on its way.  Most of my heavy exposure to White Dwarf comes after it lost its earlier diversity.  No Quarter always was a Privateer Press house arm, but its focus was more diverse.

Cryx, the biggest villains in the Iron Kingdoms setting

I'm curious about Privateer Press as well.  Originally founded by Brian Snoddy, Matt Wilson and Matt Staroscik, with an early bringing in of Mike McVey, it's really just Wilson's company now--and I wonder if the focus on the miniatures games just wasn't the cuppa for Snoddy and some of the others.  Just speculation on my part, but you've got to wonder.  The setting has also evolved since those earlier days... a lot of the grittier dark fantasy elements have given way to ZOMG fantasy warfare, and the elements of it that used to be more traditional fantasy have been de-emphasized to focus on an almost fantasy WWI like vibe.  A lot of the changes to the setting (consolidation of a number of threats into fewer "factions", state of more or less open warfare between two superpower nations in the setting, etc.) also limit possibilities for the roleplaying game, in many ways, while opening them up for the miniatures game.  Clearly, Wilson knows where the money is, as he's presumably making quite a bit of it, given the success of his games.  Warmachine is second only to Warhammer 40k in the fantasy miniatures wargaming market, and Hordes comes not far behind, just behind Warhammer.  Privateer Press have made a great run at challenging the market leadership of Games Workshop and making themselves a big, 800-lbs gorilla in the market.  With the upcoming release of the Warmachine video game, they're really pushing themselves into the big time.

Sadly for me, however, I think that means my interest in No Quarter has waned to the point where it won't revive.  I'm not that interested in the wargames or minis anymore and with the lack of RPG content, the magazine doesn't really offer me anything I don't already have.  What I really would like to do, however, is find a way to better utilize the RPG Iron Kingdoms material I do have.  While I will never actually run the Iron Kingdoms as is, I liberally steal from the setting, and there are a lot of great ideas that could make an appearance in a DARK•HERITAGE game here and there.

And finally, I stumbled across this article recently: history's most under-rated mysteries.  Fascinating stuff.  Check it out:  http://www.livescience.com/11361-history-overlooked-mysteries.html

Dominion

Earlier this holiday, I finished David Chandler's A Thief in the Night.  Although the final book of the Ancient Blades trilogy, Honor Among Thieves came in to me from the library, quite frankly, by the time I managed to finish book 2, I was done with the trilogy.  I might possibly return to it and finish the last volume at some point, but I doubt it.  Frankly, I just wasn't enjoying the series.  The second book had many of the flaws of the first--wooden and unlikable characters who seemed more like caricatures than characters, a weak plot supported by dubious coincidences, a ham-fisted wink and nudge towards some genre conventions, appalling attempts at comedy by using gratuitous crudity and coarseness and even more ham-fisted attempts to cram crude social metaphors into the text as well.  And to make it all worse, the setting for most of the book is a gigantic dungeon, complete with nonsensical traps, a suspicious "ecosystem" and it was--frankly--a boring setting.  It's not for nothing that it was dedicated to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, I suppose.

In any case, I enjoyed the book very little and decided to abandon the series, and return--at least for the time being--to my read-through of my newly purchased copies of the Dresden Files series.

Also, I've spent some time over the holidays playing Dominion.  We already had Dominion and Dominion: Intrigue and for Christmas this year, I also landed a copy of Dominion: Prosperity.  These are games that I think any "gamers", i.e. folks who play RPGs might like, and they've also taken the self-labeled "sophisticated" gamer crowd by storm as well, catering to folks who like the German board games and whatnot.  Dominion is itself not a boardgame, and it has frequently been compared to a CCG like Magic: The Gathering in the sense that you build a deck.  Of course, you don't buy random packs of cards; you buy the big boxed set(s) and build your decks with the cards contained therein, but the concept is still somewhat similar.  There are--basically--three kinds of cards (with two sub-kinds, if you will, included as well: action cards (including reaction and attack cards) that you play first in your round, each of which has a small and simple rule subsystem that comes into play when it is played, treasure cards which you use in the next phase of your turn to buy more cards, and victory cards which you don't use for anything and which don't do anything, but which the acquisition thereof is the entire point of the game, since they're the only ones who count towards your score when you're tallying up to see who won.

The remainder of this post will assume a passing familiarity with the Dominion rules--I'm basically going to give a quick and dirty run-down of all the cards available in each of the three sets I contain, which can be freely mixed and matched in any given game (in fact, the possibility of doing so is one of the main things that gives the game such longevity; the strategies for winning with one suite of cards may not work well with another, and the amount of permutations are, for all practical purposes, limitless.  To add to that, although the rules say that only ten kingdom cards are to be used in a game, I've played before with twelve or even more, and found that it works quite well (although the games go on a bit longer that way) so an even more varied experience can still be had.

Dominion
The original game has the most pragmatic and--dare I say it?--simplistic set of cards, but many of them are necessary to actually  play the game, and most of the rest are sufficiently useful that they are always welcome.  There are three times of treasure cards, copper, silver and gold, with increasing purchasing power.  There are five types of victory cards--three are straightforward--estates, duchies and provinces give you a set number of victory points.  Curse cards are negative victory point cards, and are used rarely, while the Gardens card is a relatively cheap card that gives you one victory point for every ten cards you have in your hand at the end of the game.  The Garden is quite a good card; I've found the normally I end in the 40s and occasionally in the 50s (although rarely in the 30s)--in the 40s, it's a bargain on victory points at four each card, in the 50s, where it's worth five, it would almost be too good.  Of course, it's hard to predict if you'll be able to get into the 50s (it happens for me rarely in a game of either three or four players) and the risk that you'll somehow end up in the high 30s and find that your Gardens were a relatively poor investment is always present.

All that said, I've found that some kingdom cards are always welcome, while others linger without being bought when we play.  Most of the trashing cards get very little play, unless there is a Witch in the deck, and frankly, the Witch isn't all that popular either (curiously, since I think it's a great card--relatively low price, good basic benefit (draw 2 cards) and giving everyone else a Curse card is nice.)  The trashing cards include Remodel, Feast, and Moneylender.  The Mine, on the other hand, is the exception, since you can only trash money cards, and you always get a better money card when you do.  The Cellar, Festival, Village, Library, Council Room, Market, Smithy, Laboratory and Woodcutter are all great cards, and actually, having several of them in your deck so that you have good chances of "mondo" turns where you keep playing actions and drawing cards, which include actions that you can play and more cards that you can draw, etc. is part of the fun of the basic Dominion cardset.

Many of the Attack cards are also sturdy, dependable and always fairly welcome.  The Bureaucrat has one of the best benefits to the player who plays it (and least onerous to everyone else) but the Militia, Spy and Thief all have their place.  Only the Thief is especially unpopular when played--for obvious reasons.  The Throne Room, which doubles any action card, is a fun addition.  The Workshop, which gives you a modest "free" card every time you play it is great for a while, although in end game, it becomes pretty superfluous.  And the Adventurer is great when you really want to get at your money further down in the deck.  And finally, the Moat is the best defense card in the three sets that I have, as well as the most useful all-round, and a fairly useful card to use even when you aren't defending and happen to have it in your hand.  The Chancellor is the only card that I really can't see the point in at all.  It, along with Remodel and Moneylender never get picked up in my  home games, and like I said, the Chapel only is useful when Curses are in play.

Dominion: Intrigue
Although playable as a standalone alternative to Dominion, I'm not sure that I recommend it exactly--Intrigue  replaces many of the sturdy, dependable cards of the original game with cards that have if/then statements on them, are more complicated to use, and often are less dependable--they can be good, but they can also be worthless time after time going through your hand.

Even at the basic level, the game is a bit different; rather than Gardens, they have Dukes, which are worth 1 victory point for every duchy that you have in your hand.  There are also three types of victory cards that are also either treasure or action cards--Harems, Great Hall and Nobles.  All of them are a bit pricey, but tend to be popular in our games, since they're useful during the scoring and also have a decent utility in play as they come up.

The Secret Chamber, in addition to sporting artwork that is an obvious homage to Harry Potter, is a lesser defense card, inferior in every way to the Moat, yet a bit more interesting in how it works.  There are a number of attack options in Intrigue (as the subtitle perhaps hints at) including the Minion, who can cause everyone to have to discard their entire hand and draw a new one, the Saboteur who can cause other players to trash a card and pick up an inferior one (an altogether nasty option), the Swindler, who can ruin your well-crafted deck by changing cards out from under you to others that are nominally worth the same, but perhaps not really what you're looking for, and the Torturer, who gives Curse cards.  There's another group of cards that allow you to voluntarily trash cards--never a very popular option unless Curse cards are flying about thick and heavy (which doesn't describe any of our games) and which mostly just become dead weight in your decks, including Masquerade, Trading Post and Upgrade, and the Steward and the Mining Village also give you that as an option that is rarely exercised.  I've also found that the Scout and the Wishing Well get very little play, and when they do, offer very little benefit.  The Courtyard's benefits also are somewhat dubious--they often don't amount to as much as you might imagine when you're stacking your deck with them.

On the other hand, the Baron, the Bridge, the Conspirator, Coppersmith, the Ironworks, the super-cheap Pawn, the Shanty Town and the Tribute cards are all quite good.  Some of them, frankly, may be a bit too good; there are cards that offer similar benefits at a more expensive price in the basic set on occasion.  The others are more solid and dependable.

One side effect of the way Intrigue is set up, though, is that I've noticed that the more unpopular cards, and those deemed to be more useless, are not often picked as options in our games.  For all intents and purposes, the Intrigue card set is more limited than the basic one, because there are more cards that we're not interested in.  Unless I mix my Intrigue kingdom cards with some other set, I really have fewer viable ones to choose from.  These means that "pure" Intrigue games tend to have less variety and play more alike.

Dominion: Prosperity
I'm not quite sure why Prosperity doesn't come with the cards to make it a "full" game, but for whatever reason, it's missing the basic money and victory cards.  It does, however, add newer "big money" versions of both; the platinum piece which is quite a bit better than the Gold, and the Colony, which is worth more than the Province at the end of the game.  The other notable addition is the ability to get victory points as small metal tokens that sit on a mat in front of you and don't therefore have to cycle through your hand.  This little off-line trade in victory points is a somewhat distracting side game, but then again, my wife swears by it, and she tends to win often by picking only a handful of cards and going big into them rather than having a broad base.

There are a number of other Treasure cards that have special conditions associated with them--Contraband can be used to buy things, but the person to your left excludes one card from you and makes it off limits.  Despite this limitation, it still is a fairly good deal anytime.  The Bank, Hoard, Quarry and Talisman are also great deals--the Hoard in particular is probably too good a deal; the card should cost more and should probably only give you a silver card, not a gold card, whenever  you purchase a victory point card.  The Royal Seal and the Venture cards, on the other hand, are somewhat less useful, and the Loan card is downright silly--I can't imagine ever being tempted to buy that card when anything else is available.

The Counting House, Mint and the City seem like especially weak action cards, and the Peddler is somewhat as well (although you can end up getting it for a steal if you're smart, which makes it at least not overpriced).  I've found the Vault very useful in games with Hoard, because you end up with a lot of useless green cards in your hand that you wish you could do something useful with.  Expand and Forge are fairly expensive and unpopular options in our games.  The Monument and the Bishop, for the victory point tokens, are very popular on the other hand.  The Goons card is way too good unless the Moat is in play, and I hate feeling like it's ruining all my turns when someone has quite a few of them and they get frequent play.  The Watchtower is a decent defense against attacks that deal Curses, but is completely useless otherwise--notably, against Goons.  The Mountebank and the Rabble attack cards are fairly low-key, not onerous, but sufficiently beneficial to the person playing the card to make them worthwhile nonetheless.  Only Intrigue has the really "mean" attack cards that get people frustrated with the game and the lack of good defenses other than the Moat.

The Grand Market and the Worker's Village are good, all-round cards, similar to other cards in the other sets that give you a few extras with little in the way of complication, and the King's Court is kind of like an expanded version of the Throne Room.  The Trade Route is another kind of needlessly complicated offline operation that tends to distract a bit from the game.  The jury is still out in our group as to whether or not it's a good thing.

We don't play this often enough to justify running out and buying Seaside and Alchemy anytime soon, but I do hope to eventually get them as well, just to keep things fresh in the world of what's available with Dominion.

Ethnicity in Dark•Heritage, part 3

After a long delay, here's the next part of my DARK•HERITAGE ethnicity series:

• The balshatoi, or Northshoremen, are an ancient ethnic group who live, as their name suggests, mostly on the north shore of the Mezzovian sea.  They are politically subordinate to the terrasans in the empire, but many of them have been highly integrated into the fabric of society, and for the most part, the northern cities--Segrià, Iclezza, and Razina--and all the lands around them, are high in people who claim balshatoi blood.  In the hinterlands, smaller villages, and backcountry, these people live much as their ancestors many generations ago--farmers and villagers with their own customs and their own languages, owing only nominal allegiance to any of the Dukes or Kings of the area--but in the cities and surrounding areas, they are fairly thoroughly "terrasanized."  The balshatoi language is somewhat endangered; few speak it in urban locales except the elderly, and culture, music, cuisine, architecture and fashion are all more recent local developments that are more based on trends from the south than they are backwards looking into their own heritage.  Although the culture of the north shore can be considered a hybrid of sorts between ancient balshatoi and terrasan mores, it's one that owed more to the south than the locals--this is the so-called nordero culture, described in the first part of this series.

Ancient balshatoi building styles

That said, as Terrasa weakens, a nationalist and separatist sentiment has been growing amongst the northern cities.  The norderos--the hybrid northerners--more and more emphasize their links to ancient balshatoi kingdoms and peoples, like Rozovķa, Ryazan, Vuronezh, Pjarmia, and Pezhek.  There have been (some merely half-hearted) efforts to revive the use of the ancient balshatoi language in its many dialects, and architecture based on ancient Rozovķan  or Pezhekan designs are popular (and of course, some older buildings from the Rozovķan or Pezhekan periods still stand.

But mostly, the balshatoi people who remain in their rural fastnesses are somewhat skeptical of the intention of these norderos to embrace them as long-lost brothers, and are even more skeptical of getting caught up in talk of potential wars of seccession or revolution.  The balshatoi life-style today is somewhat free, and many balshatoi men--and even entire families, clans and tribes--wander the wildernesses north of the seashore trading in furs, lumber, game and other commodities.  Their settled kingdoms of the past are often referred to as a weakness and a mistake.  The modern balshatoi has a reputation as a mountain man, plains-rider, and somewhat of a barbarian, albeit one painted in sympathetic "noble savage" undertones.  The reality is that life for most balshatoi wanderers is somewhat harsh, and many of them are little more than mercenaries and outlaws.  Indeed, many of the bandit groups that have cut off Calça from the empire are primarily balshatoi in  make-up, leavened with tribesmen from even further north and other southerners.  In fact, balshatoi as an ethnicity is somewhat dubious--it's more a lifestyle than a genetic heritage in many ways, since it's always been a semi-permeable society that accepted people of any heritage who did not fit into the urban lifestyle of the south, were willing to move into the wilderness, and proved to their collegues that they had something worthwhile to offer to society.  Women in particular have long been multiethnic, many of them captured in slave-raids, but then turned into wives and mothers for the newer generations.

Modern balshatoi camp on the prairie

Most balshatoi have a deeply tanned skin from their time outside, but are naturally fair, and occasionally freckled.  Hair colors range from dark brown to blond and even red, and eye color is brown, green, blue or gray.  They often sport exotically and barbarically shaved patterns in their hair, sporting topknots or simply bald heads, and men often wear big, bushy moustaches.  Balshatoi value their livestock, and the keeping of horses particularly is a notable affectation (as it is to the plains-dwellers further north as well) and one of the most insulting things you can do to a balshatoi is to bring harm to his horse.

• Before the spread of the tolosan ethnicity and their various subsets, the north shore of the Mezzovian Sea was largely populated by balshatoi kingdoms and their peoples.  But they were not indigenous either, although their origins and where they came from are now lost in a maze of legends and half-truths.  One thing that is known for sure is others were here before them, because one such kingdom remains, an island of a largely unmixed ethnicity--insular, xenophobic, and of dark report and reputation amongst the others.  This kingdom, now shrunk from its past glories, at least somewhat, still stands strong and impenetrable eastward of the Razine peninsula, with port cities like Mnar and Mzagi but otherwise surrounded by dark and haunted forests.  It's name is Tarush Noptii, and the ethnicity that populates it are the tarushans.  Dark and sullen, tending towards gracility and shortness, the tarushans speak a language completely unlike any other in the region, and their manner of dress, their cuisine, and their customs and traditions strike the rest of the Mezzovian sea region as exotic and strange, and frankly, often somewhat disturbing or vulgar.  Few peoples of any other ethnicity have traveled in Tarush Noptii, or visited any part of it save the port cities, so the interior of Tarush Noptii is a vast unknown, and few others have any cause or opportunity to interact with tarushans either. 

Tarushan "gypsy" in the woods near Iclezza

The main exception to this is are the refugees who live in small enclaves throughout the region, or who travel Gypsy-like across the landscape.  Speaking in hushed tones about fleeing the darkness of their homeland, these refugee tarushans are even more sullen and close-mouthed than the ones in Mzagi or Mnar, and are infamous for their superstition and fear of witchcraft (which ironically, they are very often suspected of dabbling in.)  It's no secret that Tarush Noptii is ruled openly by a vampiric aristocracy, and groups of tarushans are frequently suspected of being the traveling companions of a vampire in disguise.  They're also frequently suspected of belonging to ghoul cults--grabbing the poor and unmissed from the societies amongst which they live or pass through, and feasting on their flesh in grisly rituals meant to give them the power of their rulers.  Mostly, of course, this is complete nonsense, but it has been true frequently enough that they are rarely welcomed in groups, and frequently tarushans live alone or travel frequently to avoid entanglements with suspicious strangers.

• Northlanders are a group of people that are still mostly unknown to the Mezzovian area, but they live on the outskirts of it, north of the stranzero lands, and in recent years, a few of them have started filtering into the lands of the Three Empires (referring to the lands around the Mezzovian Sea and nearby--where the dominant political groups are still Terrasans, Qizmiri and the remnants of Baal Hamazi.)  In truth, there's a vast population of these poor souls, living as far south as the whispered Cannibal Isle, amongst the Green Mountains and the shores of Tarqan Lake and Lake Hali, and on the plateau of Leng, in the Qashan jungle, and their benighted cities of Alar and Carcosa and possibly even Kadath itself.  It's unclear the extent of their lands, what their political and cultural groupings are amongst themselves, or what their culture and goals are--too few of them come to the land of the Three Empires to get a read on them, although it is certainly possible--maybe even probable--that their own polities are as powerful as any near the Mezzovian Sea.

The few individuals who come out of their Forbidden Lands seem to almost exclusively be cultists on missions of some kind--either sorcerers looking to spawn cult cells outside of their native lands, or divine assassins, pursuing mysterious agendas, but often offering their services to bidders.  While northlanders are not often recognized for what they are, even when they do appear, the reputation of Cannibal Isle, at least, as well as Carcosa, Kadath and other cities in the Forbidden Lands, is a well-known byword for horror and fear; a literal Hell on earth.

Northlanders are physically very distinctive, though.  With pale, almost white eyes, chalky whitish skin that does not tan or burn, a tendency for extreme face piercings and black tattoos, frequent baldness and white hair (although coal-black hair is also common), they look like no other ethnicity in the area, and their original provenance is completely mysterious.

Points of Light

From a Rich Baker article on the Wizards of the Coast website, describing the implicit setting assumptions for D&D 4e:

The Dungeons & Dragons game assumes many things about its setting: The world is populated by a variety of intelligent races, strange monsters lurk on other planes, ancient empires have left ruins across the face of the world, and so on. But one of the new key conceits about the D&D world is simply this: Civilized folk live in small, isolated points of light scattered across a big, dark, dangerous world.

Most of the world is monster-haunted wilderness. The centers of civilization are few and far between, and the world isn’t carved up between nation-states that jealously enforce their borders. A few difficult and dangerous roads tenuously link neighboring cities together, but if you stray from them you quickly find yourself immersed in goblin-infested forests, haunted barrowfields, desolate hills and marshes, and monster-hunted badlands. Anything could be waiting down that old overgrown dwarf-built road: a den of ogre marauders, a forgotten tower where a lamia awaits careless travelers, a troll’s cave, a lonely human village under the sway of a demonic cult, or a black wood where shadows and ghosts thirst for the blood of the living.

Given the perilous nature of the world around the small islands of civilization, many adventures revolve around venturing into the wild lands. For example:

• Roads are often closed by bandits, marauders such as goblins or gnolls, or hungry monsters such as griffons or dragons. The simple mission of driving off whomever or whatever is preying on unfortunate travelers is how many young heroes begin their careers.

• Since towns and villages do not stay in close contact, it’s easy for all sorts of evils to befall a settlement without anyone noticing for a long time. A village might be terrorized by a pack of werewolves or enslaved by an evil wizard, and no one else would know until adventurers stumbled into the situation.

• Many small settlements and strongholds are founded, flourish for a time, and then fall into darkness. The wild lands are filled with forgotten towers, abandoned towns, haunted castles, and ruined temples. Even people living only a few miles away from such places might know them only by rumor and legend.

The common folk of the world look upon the wild lands with dread. Few people are widely traveled—even the most ambitious merchant is careful to stick to better-known roads. The lands between towns or homesteads are wide and empty. It might be safe enough within a day’s ride of a city or an hour’s walk of a village, but go beyond that and you are taking your life into your hands. People are scared of what might be waiting in the old forest or beyond the barren hills at the far end of the valley, because whatever is out there is most likely hungry and hostile. Striking off into untraveled lands is something only heroes and adventurers do.

Another implication of this basic conceit of the world is that there is very little in the way of authority to deal with raiders and marauders, outbreaks of demon worship, rampaging monsters, deadly hauntings, or similar local problems. Settlements afflicted by troubles can only hope for a band of heroes to arrive and set things right. If there is a kingdom beyond the town’s walls, it’s still largely covered by unexplored forest and desolate hills where evil folk gather. The king’s soldiers might do a passable job of keeping the lands within a few miles of his castle free of monsters and bandits, but most of the realm’s outlying towns and villages are on their own.

In such a world, adventurers are aberrant. Commoners view them as brave at best, and insane at worst. But such a world is rife with the possibility for adventure, and no true hero will ever lack for a villain to vanquish or a quest to pursue.

How does the DARK•HERITAGE setting coincide, and how does it differ from this point of view?  First off, that's largely true of my setting.  The Terrasan Empire, the main force of civilization in the lands of the Mezzovian Main and surrounding areas, is a decrepit, rotted, and ineffective excuse for an empire, and honestly, calling themselves an "Empire" was perhaps more grandiose wishful thinking rather than accurate labeling in the first place.  Overland travel is increasingly dangerous, and increasingly avoided, hence the "loss" of entire provinces like Calça or Baix Pallars.  The major city-states that are the core of the empire, on the other hand, are connected only by sea.

Even that route is plagued with problems, though.  While the Mezzovian isn't known for its tempestuous nature, making it an ideal road for travel, sudden storms aren't unknown either.  More importantly, the shipping and travel lanes are more and more plagued by pirates, corsairs and raiders, and Terrasa's navy is completely unable to rise to the challenge of detering them.

Strange kingdoms, races, tribes and peoples have lived in the area.  Although the terrasans and their allied peoples are ascendent (if only just) still, they are the last in a long litany of former inhabitants.  Many of the inhabitants are, in fact, mysterious.  The most recent kingdoms, particularly the so-called balshatoi kingdoms of the North Coast are reasonably well known, and descendents of those proud ancient peoples still live throughout the area.  But before them, only the vaguest rumors, legends, ghost-stories and crumbling, mouldering ruins of often mysterious purpose still linger.

Where DARK•HERITAGE most notably differs from the D&D assumptions, as spelled out by Baker above, are in two major areas.  First, in my setting, there is no assumption that the protagonists will be heroes.  In fact, given my recent (although years long now) infatuation with darker, grimmer, "fantasy noir" tropes and conventions, it's a pretty good bet that my protagonists aren't heroes at all.  At best they're anti-heroes, although they could frequently be likeable rascals and scoundrels or even complete and utter villains entirely.  The the second way in which it differs dramatically is the incidence of monsters.  In this older post of mine from about 13 months or so ago, I mentioned my preference for tropes and characteristics of supernatural horror over that of high fantasy.  What that mostly means is that monsters are never disposible; they remain monstrous by being rare and frightening, never routine or commonplace.  That requires a more careful touch; Baker can cheerily populate his wilds with all kinds of crazy monsters.  That's what the high fantasy genre (which more and more D&D starts to resemble, despite it's sword & sorcery roots) calls for.  However, my game has slightly different genre requirements.

Den of Thieves

Just a few days ago, I finished David Chandler's Den of Thieves and I've already embarked on a read through of the sequel, A Thief in the Night since I had it from the library.  Together with the just released (or just about to be released; I haven't been paying close attention) with Honor Among Thieves, this makes up the Ancient Blades trilogy, a very old-fashioned style fantasy story (so far.)  The dedication on Den mentions Leiber, Howard and Moorcock, and the dedication on Thief is to G.G. and D.A. in the outer planes; clearly a somewhat coy reference to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson of "we created D&D" fame.  That should also give you some indication of what kind of story it is.

The books' publisher, HarperCollins, on the other hand, would have you believe that it's in the tradition of the new darker, grimmer epic fantasy; they refer pointedly to Brent Weeks, Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, and even make a wild claim that Chandler might have toppled George R. R. Martin from his throne as superlative grim and gritty new fantasy writing.  He was also compared to R. A. Salvatore and Raymond Feist; in my opinion, those are more reasonable (and accurate) comparisons.

In Den of Thieves, the setting is basically a single city, the Free City of Ness, where no man is a serf or villein.  The setting is very Medieval in some ways--rather than merely being "generically" Medieval like a lot of fantasy, this one referred specifically a lot of Medieval institutions and practices, much moreso than most fantasy that I've read (it did use the word villein, after all, as one example.)  That said, it's hardly meant to be a work of thinly veiled historical fiction; the main character, Malden, is a thief with a fairly modern attitude, who finds himself caught up in a web of intrigue and sorcery somewhat by accident.  The main action of the book is two "dungeoncrawls" where he raids two separate facilities to steal the same crown.  Both have a very D&D dungeoncrawl feel to them, including magical traps, demons to overcome and more.

In fact, in all ways, I had a funny feeling that this was the kind of book Gary Gygax himself would have enjoyed, and would have seen as iconically D&D (especially keeping in mind that Gygax also liked to use more authentic Medievalisms than is popular in the game--or the fantasy genre overall--today.)

I found it a little bit less satisfying.  Much less so than, say, Douglas Hulick's recently released novel, which had a similar title and somewhat similar premise.  There were three "main" characters, Malden the thief, Sir Croy, a painfully naive knight, and Cythera, the cursed witch with whom both of those two fall in love (but who cannot touch either of them, and who is enslaved to the main antagonist, sorcerer Hazoth.)  A few minor characters round out the call sheet; Cutbill, the head of the organized crime outfit that employs Malden, the Burgrave, the leader of the Free City, Bikker, the mentor and trainer of Sir Croy, who has turned cynical and mercenary, Slag the dwarf, who makes all of Malden's fancy thief tools, and Kemper, the cursed card shark who assists Malden in his second, more dangerous, heist.

For the most part, I found all of those characters flat and unengaging--more like wooden caricatures than real characters.  This was a major turn-off, as a character like Malden really needs to be somewhat charming and likeable to work.  Sir Croy, in some ways, was the more engaging character, until during the last act of the book, he became frustrating and annoying, and seemed like a tool whereby Chandler could deliver the ham-handed message that honor and idealism is for suckers.

Although the book is reasonably well paced and the action scenes are described beautifully, I also thought the plot and motivations were pretty weak and unconvincing.  More than once, I found myself scratching my head (not literally) and wondering exactly why something had happened, only to decide that it happened because it had to happen to advance the plot, and for no other reason.  Needless to say, that kind of thing takes you out of the book's "reality" when you're reading, and breaks the fourth wall on accident; never a good thing.  One good--and interesting--bit of world building that Chandler did was the concept of the Ancient Blades, which the series is named after.  A number of magical (albeit ugly and utilitarian rather than fancy and Excalibur-like) magical swords, which are the only ways in which demons may be harmed, make up the backstory of Croy and Bikker.  Curiously, this first book doesn't advance that very far, leaves no real open ends to tie up, and leaves little indication that it's part of a trilogy of any kind; it's a very self-contained book, and the series title would seem to be not very apt based on just this book alone.

I think a lot of D&D players will like this book.  It has a very D&Dish feel; maybe even moreso, in some ways, than the official D&D novels.  However, it seems to have some of the same weaknesses that a lot of D&D fiction does; it feels too much like a D&D game and less like a novel in which organic events happen to real-seeming characters.  I'm glad I convinced my library to spring for this series for me; I would have been disappointed if I'd bought these books myself.

Meanwhile, I'm halfway through the sequel already, A Thief In the Night, which looks like it will have much of the same flaws and strengths.  Curiously, I'm still waiting for this to feel like a trilogy and not just unconnected adventures which happen to feature (some of) the same characters.  We'll see how it goes as I advance through the series; the third one is "On Order" via the library, and I'll get it as soon as they have it available and processed.

Gaming update

My own recent attempt to run a game of DARK•HERITAGE fell victim to time constraints, and I had to bow out and not run anymore, after kicking off a few initially successful sessions, and then devolving into mediocre sessions where I "punted" and just ran the characters through lame quick and dirty Dungeon module adaptations.  After that, we fell back into our Rise of the Runelords game.  We're about halfway thorugh that, having finished three (of six) modules, I believe.  However, we've been plagued by poor scheduling, and the "bombshell" revelation of a few days ago--the GM is feeling burnt out, feeling like other priorities in his life are suffering as a result of his dedication to always being there and always having to prepare, and--in a nutshell--he's pulling the plug on the campaign.

It looks like now that a long-anticipated (by much of the group, anyway) Star Wars game run by one of the other guys that I've never played under is our current direction.  We'll see how that goes.  Personally, I'm a bit leery of the notion of playing in a pre-written game--and when he makes comments like "rewriting the NPC monologues" and stuff like that, I further cringe, as those are usually danger signs of a major railroad and possibly oh-so-precious game by a would-be novelist. 

But that's speaking in the abstract.  As I said, I've never played under this guy, and he's been a good enough player and good enough friend that I'm certainly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and try his game out before writing it off as incompatible with my preferred style.

Hiking and Sightseeing 2

OK, here's my revised itinerary.  This includes a drastically reduced stay at Colorado National Monument, including eliminating most of the more serious backcountry hikes, but adds a nearly full exploration of the hiking potential of Arches National Park and Natual Bridges National Monument.  It also presents a more even mix of staying in el cheapo hotels along the way and camping, plus eating fast food on the way vs. cooking myself or packing in lunches when possible.  Part of my "sales strategy" for this trip is that it'll be cheap, after all.

Day 1: Drive from Metro Detroit area to Lexington, NE (15 hours).  Let my oldest son get in some practice on the freeway while I'm at it, although he should be (barely) officially licensed and good to go by then.

Day 2: Drive from Lexington to Scott's Bluff National Monument (about four hours) then stick around for about three hours there stretching our legs, and seeing the visitor's center briefly and what hiking there is to do.  The hiking isn't much... there's a mile and a half hike to the top of the bluff (and then a mile and a half back--but you can take a shuttle.  I'm thinking shuttle up and hike down makes sense).  Hit the road again and drive the remaining seven and a half hours to Grand Junction, CO, probably arriving a bit late.

Day 3: Sleep in, go to church in the morning, then go to the monument, sign in for a campsite and set up tent.  Do the Rimrock drive, plus four ½ hour hikes that have trailheads either at the visitor's center, the campground, or along the road, including the Window Rock Trail, the Canyon Rim Trail, the Alcove Nature Trail, and Otto's Trail.

Day 4: Sleep in a bit, and spend the entire day doing slightly more ambitious hikes, including the Coke Ovens Trail, the Devil's Kitchen Trail and the Liberty Cap Trail.

Day 5: Get up early, take down tent and drive two and a half hours across the state line to Arches National Park.  Again, go register for camping (reservations to have been made in advance); I'll spend two nights in this campground, cooking on the camp stove and eating pre-packed lunches.  There are a number of very short hikes (about half an hour or so) that are off the main drive at Arches; the plan is to do all of them (if possible) this first day, although there should be enough time in the later two days to catch one or two if they get missed.  These include Balanced Rock, Broken Arch, Courthouse Wash Rock Art Panel, the Delicate Arch Viewpoint, Double Arch, Sand Dune Arch and Skyline Arch.

Day 6: Some of the moderate length hikes within Arches, including the Park Avenue hike, Landscape Arch, The Windows Hike, Tower Arch, and Delicate Arch (the real hike, not the Viewpoint hike, which we'll do the day before.)

Day 7: Pack up the tent nice and early, and do two longer hikes, the Devil's Garden Primitive Loop, and Double O Arch.  Also, the guided Fiery Furnace hike, which can only be done with a ranger, I believe.  Spend the night in a hotel in Moab, taking showers and maybe picking up some fast food.

Day 8: Morning drive to Natural Bridges National Monument--three hours away--get campsite, and then spend the afternoon hiking all the (relatively short) trails.  Relaxed evening by the campsite, and early bedtime.

Days 9 and 10: Long drive home, stopping halfway in Omaha or Lincoln or somewhere 'round there.  It still makes for two fourteen hour days, though.

Curiously, three of the four parks are smack in the heart of "red rock country" and therefore will be offering, in many ways, very similar scenery to enjoy.  In particular, I wonder if Natural Bridges will feel somewhat underwhelming after three days at Arches.  Ah, well.  If it is, well it is.  It's not even a full day, really, and that's kind of the last, more relaxing stab at doing something fun before the grueling drive back home, so it'll be whatever it'll be, I suppose.

Sightseeing and hiking

For those who have followed my blog--that is, for me basically, and maybe my mom (hi, mom), it shouldn't be any surprise that my idea of a perfect vacation is to escape to a wilderness area somewhere in the great American west and hike around, seeing as few people as possible, and generally absorbing the wilderness ambiance that--not coincidentally--makes up an important part of the DARK•HERITAGE setting. Of course, so would be hanging around the Mediterranean coasts of Spain, France and Italy, as well as exploring Sicily, Sardinia, some of the Moorish architecture of Andalusia, and maybe hanging out in Casablanca or Marrakesh.  That's less likely to happen in the near future, but I've made a tentative plan for a late spring ten-day sojourn westward.  My wife's not completely on board yet, but I'm thinking me and the boys in my smaller car is a better bet than the whole family in the minivan anyway.  Here's the tentative itinerary, just for the curious.

Day 1: Drive from my home in the Detroit area to Lexington, NE--about 15 hours.  This is enough to keep me busy all day; that's a lot of hours to drive all by yourself.  Of course, my oldest son can take a turn behind the wheel if he comes--but he doesn't have any experience with long-distance driving yet, so I'm not going to have him log all that many hours, I don't think.

Day 2: Drive from Lexington to Grand Junction Colorado, with a small detour to Scott's Bluff National Monument, which shouldn't take more than about three hours and which will give us a nice chance to stretch our legs and get out of the car for a while.  The bluff itself is kind of a singular geographic feature, so there's not a lot of hiking to do.  Basically, you see the visitors center, spend maybe an hour or two on the few short trails, and take a bunch of pictures of the bluff, and then a bunch of pictures from the top of the bluff.  Then you get back in your car and hit the road again.

Day 3: After sleeping in a little bit, we go to Colorado National Monument, register for a campsite (because they're first come first served, although I've been told by the ranger that they rarely ever fill up) go see the visitors center, and do the Rimrock drive.  There are a number of short (about half hour or so) hikes that have trailheads along the Rimrock drive, so we'll do those on Day 1.  These include the Window Rock Trail, the Canyon Rim Trail, the Alcove Nature Trail and Otto's Trail.  Starting this day, we also eat only what we brought with us--six days of backpack lunches and dinners cooked over a camp stove in the evening.  We're also in the desert, so everyone drinks three bottles of water every day, plus as much as you want in the morning and evening.

Day 4: Three slightly longer trails, including the Coke Ovens Trail, the CCC Trail, and the Devil's Kitchen Trail.

Day 5: Now we get into more serious, backcountry trails, including Serpents Trail (called the crookedest road in the world) and the Black Ridge Trail, each of which is a good half-day of hiking.

Day 6: Two other 4-5 hour hikes: Monument Canyon Trail and Liberty Cap Trail.

Day 7: Three other backcountry trails: Ute Canyon Trail, Old Gordon Trail, and Corkscrew Trail Loop.

Day 8: The most ambitious of them all, the all-day un-maintained No Thoroughfare Canyon Trail.  As the name implies, the last few miles are basically trailless, so we'll probably be bushwhacking.  In the evening, we leave the monument, stay in a hotel, eat out, and take showers.

Days 9 and 10: Driving home in two 12 hour stretches.

When we're done, we will have completed pretty much all that those two national monuments have to offer, as well as having done some fairly ambitious hiking.  Without going on multiday backcountry hikes, which I'm not ready for, especially if I really do bring my two younger boys along, it's about as ambitious as you can get, especially the No Thoroughfare Canyon hike which is an all-day walk in the desert on a trail that ranges from poor to nonexistent.

Not only that, my budget for a trip like this is fairly small; I can do the whole trip for just a little over $1,000. Bonus.