Steampunk Disney

While I'm not huge into it, for the last four years or so, I've had a minor hobby of collecting Disney pins. By collect, I mean I occasionally buy a pin I like, or one associated with an attraction at Disney that I like, or a character from a Disney movie I like. As you might possibly guess, my pins are about 50% pirate themed and another large chunk of them are Star Wars themed. Putting the Disney characters in the role of Star Wars characters has been a big deal lately. I still haven't seen a Darth Maul Donald Duck for sale individually, but I may have to go to eBay for that one one of these days.

Anyway, while here in Orlando doing Disney again, I ran across a limited series of pins called Mechanical Kingdom that are Disney characters done steampunk. Here's an image of the artwork. Mickey and Pete are not available individually, and since I didn't feel like spending $140 for the entire set, I got the Donald pin. The background for it is a bronzed tiki head and on a tiny chain is a bar that says "Adventureland."



While the artist who designed these characters says they were clearly inspired by the steampunk fashion movement that's popular amongst some goths and whatnot these days, it's questionable whether putting the Disney characters in pseudo Victorian clothes and goggles really makes them steampunk for not. There's nothing about them that's particularly "punk" for example. Rather, I think that they feel very retro-pulpish, the Donald Duck one in particular. And for those of you who know anything at all about my taste, you'll probably know that to me that's better than punk anyway... I love the retro-pulp vibe of these pins. They make me feel more Hollow Earth Expedition than The Difference Engine or Perdido Street Station. And that's a good thing.

Sorry, sorry!

I haven't posted anything in quite some time. I haven't read anything in several weeks, and I haven't had gaming on my mind much lately either. So... sorry!

As recompense, here's a picture I took (or maybe my son took; I can't remember) a little while ago on our trip to West Texas of Sawtooth Mountain, not far from Fort Davis. We were really just passing through on our way from Lubbock to Big Bend National Park, but I really liked this mountain. As you can tell, it was a little bit of a hazy day, so the mountain itself is kind of "blued" out a bit, while the foreground is clear.

You gotta obey the law

The Texas Rangers

From a history professor who's a close personal associate of mine. Slightly redacted to take out some references that less relevant to a general audience. I know that the popular "Avatar myth" that I've referred to in several recent posts tells us that all natives are "noble savages" and that it is of course the colonial white man who is the problem. This little essay portrays an alternative hypothesis to that point of view. Coincidentally, I think this one works better for RPGs.

On a hot and dusty 6 August 1843, Jacob Snively disbanded his punitive expedition at Fort Bird on the Trinity River, northeast of present-day Fort Worth, Texas. With the cooperation and collusion of the Texas national government, Snively had formed his expedition to punish Mexico for a series of depredations including the debacle of the Mier Expedition, the Mexican sack of San Antonio (the Mexicans did this twice), and other raids. Snively’s 150 Texans roamed around the Santa Fe Trail looking for Mexican soldiers or traders upon whom they could reap retribution. You see, Texas had won its independence from Mexico, but Mexico did not recognize the new republic or its borders. In fact, Mexico belligerently refused to recognize them—hence the raids and a pernicious “shoot on sight” policy. Seven years had passed, and if anything, relations between Mexico and Texas had worsened. Mexican soldiers killed Texans on sight. Texans reciprocated. Snively’s expedition was part of the response.

The Snively Expedition was symptomatic of a series of problems that faced Texas, and ultimately the USA in the wake of the successful Texas Revolution of 1836. Sam Houston, Mirabeau Lamar, Stephen Austin and others all believed that once they had defeated the Mexicans, then “these United States” (as they were then called) would welcome Texas as the newest candidate to unite with the other states. (NOTE: Lamar was not actually in favor of annexation, at least initially.  When he was unable to get Mexico to recognize Texas, even mediated by Great Britain, unable to secure loans to finance the government, unable to raise revenue by bringing in more settlers because of the uncertain and perceived unsafe conditions on the Texas frontier, he was, however, forced to change his tune eventually.)

Unfortunately, political and military realities precluded the US from annexing Texas. Slavery snarled the political process. Since the Compromise of 1820, there was something of an uneasy truce between slave and free states, and Texas would have unquestioningly come into the Union as a slave state. Only the German immigrants, Sam Houston, and some scattered free thinkers were opposed to slavery, and they hardly constituted a majority or even a political force—Houston was drummed out of the governor’s office shortly after the revolution.

Militarily, the US was totally unprepared for war with Mexico or anyone else in the 1830s. While the US recognized Texas independence, and a majority of Americans favored Texas annexation, the government did not and would not recommend annexation—filibusters by John Quincy Adams and others effectively stalled the process. The inevitable result was that Texas’ time as an independent nation lasted over ten years. It remained a hot topic for more than a decade.

Of course, Mexico did not recognize Texas and nurtured hard feelings about the Texan’s victories. Bitterness prevailed, and lethal Mexican depredations resulted. Any Texans caught by Mexico were summarily executed, and there developed an animosity and fear all along the Texas frontier, roughly where I-35 runs today. Jacob Snively and his expedition were to punish Mexico for their “lawless murders,” unremitting raiding, and theft. Neither the Texans nor the Mexicans would submit nor would they surrender. There was no immediate solution to the bloodshed.

But that was not the only knife held against the throats of the Texans. On the north and the west was an even more implacable enemy, the Comanche. Warfare with the Comanche had always been one-sided in favor of the Comanche for the simple reason that they possessed all of the advantages: They rode the fastest horses. They were probably the best horsemen in history, or at least they tied the Mongols. They also possessed the only repeating weapon until the 1840s: Writing in 1834, Colonel Henry Dodge observed that while galloping, young Comanche warriors could drop down on either side of the horse and loose arrows under the horse’s neck, rapidly launching 5-6 arrows before the first arrow hit the ground. Anglo-Europeans had single-shot pistols and muskets. Try shooting a six-foot long musket from a galloping horse. Try reloading a musket or pistol from a galloping horse.

The Comanche owned no goods, built no towns or villages. Thus, hunters could not easily find them to engage or destroy them. Comanche wealth consisted of horses; a successful warrior could have over 1,500 horses and 8-10 wives. They fought to the death; there was no Comanche word for the concept of surrender. Nevertheless, they were not “stand and fight” warriors. They hit, destroyed, captured or killed, and rode away. But if you cornered one, watch out! Comanche leisure recreation consisted of torturing captives and they were very ingenious at inflicting maximum pain without inflicting death. Scalps were the means of keeping score. Captive women were gang-raped before being enslaved or murdered. Men were tortured on the way to being killed. Captive babies were routinely drug behind galloping horses until dead. Only small children were saved, usually to be brought up either as slaves or, rarely, as members of the tribe. These were not people you would invite to your house for dinner. The Comanche defeated the Apache, the Tonkawa, the Blackfoot, and every other surrounding Indian tribe—additionally, they also defeated the Spaniards. Alone among Native American tribes, they rolled back the advancing white frontier. One easily runs out of superlatives when describing their warrior prowess and their cruelty. The Ute word for Comanche meant: “those people who like to kill us.”

Between the Mexicans who killed them on sight and the Comanche who killed them on sight, there was no breathing space for diplomacy, no capability for alternatives--in fact, no alternatives, period. So what’s the upshot of all of this for the Texans? They had to fight. A Texan, who wasn’t instantly capable or willing to become lethal, did not survive. The legacy of these decades of strife finds reflection in Texas attitudes for generations. Texans like Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier of World War II, viewed themselves as loyal to whatever cause they were in. The Texas Brigade in the Civil War was one of the most tested and violent units of that sanguinary and violent conflict. The Texas National Guard, called up in World War II as the 36th Division, participated in Salerno, Anzio, Monte Lungo, San Pietro and the Rapido River campaigns. The division garnered 107 Medals of Honor, 2,354 Silver Stars, and 5,407 Bronze Stars—all at a truly horrendous loss: 3,131 KIA and 13, 191 WIA. In other words, the entire division succumbed to casualties. However, it did not shun the fight. They did not discourage. The Texans would die, but they would not surrender.

This decades-long series of confrontations created other effects, as well. The Goodnight-Loving cattle trail, which snaked from Texas to Colorado and Montana, detoured way south and west into New Mexico before traveling north—why? To avoid the Comanche. Lubbock and most of West Texas was not seriously settled until the Comanche defeat was complete and the Comanche was on the verge of extinction. There was no living with the Comanche.

This three-sided struggle, Mexicans and Comanche against Texans, went on for years and created, in part, some of the popular cultural themes we associate with Texas. Hard-fighting, quick to take offense, quick to make friends (you needed them on the frontier); Texans became what they had to become to survive. That way of life was forged in combat.

The Mexican threat largely went away with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the Mexican-American War in 1848. But the Comanche continued butchering settlers and soldiers well into the 1890s.

The beginnings of change in the struggle between Texan and Comanche occurred with the creation of a novel institution and the characters that populated the institution. The institution?—the Texas Rangers.

After the Texas Revolution, settlers from the east and south came to Texas. The land had to be surveyed before it could be sold. The Comanche, while utterly not understanding anything about surveying, knew that the surveyors were forerunners of more settlers. Therefore, the Comanche routinely hunted and killed all surveyors. In response, young ne’er-do-wells were hired by the Texas government to protect the surveyors. Most of them were also killed, but these men, the rangers” who tried to protect the surveyors became the beginnings of the Texas Rangers. The survivors, by a sort of natural selection, became as determined as their enemies. The initial average life-span of a Ranger was something on the order of six months--if that long, until one of their number, John Coffee Hays, realized that the Comanche could be beaten by using the Indians’ own relentless tactics.
“Jack” Hays, who had been in some hair-raising defensive battles with the Comanche, recognized that on defense against the Comanche, you had little if any choice but to die. He was one of the lucky ones—he did not. But he learned from the experience. He realized that only by attacking was there any chance at all. His small band of Rangers drilled repeatedly, charging, firing two pistols and a musket (3 shots) and then galloping away before anyone could give chase. It worked.

Hays came to Texas from Tennessee in 1838 and began surveying, then protecting surveyors. He made a name for himself because he could protect his men. Almost motherly to his own command (he dressed all of their wounds himself), he was ice-cold unflappable in combat. Unconcerned about what the enemy could do to him, he thought only of how to take the fight to his enemy—it was all about offense. By 1840, Hays was captain of the San Antonio station of the Rangers, which was now officially recognized by the Texas government (although there is no record that the government initially ever paying them). Regardless, Hays created a new kind of Ranger who was well-mounted, super aggressive and skilled at warfare of any kind. Utilizing Apache or Tonkawa scouts as trackers (both tribes hated the Comanche, as did the Blackfeet, Utes, Kiowas, etc.). Hays’ Rangers became the guerrilla fighting force that Special Forces and the Marines developed well over a century later. They never made fires but always cold-camped. They traveled light and during moonlight. They never bathed nor took off their clothes; they were always ready to fight. Hays’ elaborate drills took 3-4 months of daily practice in riding and shooting before his new recruits were ready—an unprecedented effort. However, the results were impressive. In the fall of 1840, Hays and 20 Rangers encountered over 200 Comanche. Hays led his Rangers in a furious charge; each discharged his 3 shots (two pistols and a rifle). Unnerved, the Comanche fled, its leader shot dead.

Summer of 1841, Hays pursued a band of Comanche that were raiding and killing near San Antonio. He tracked them for over 70 miles then attacked them. Near present-day Uvalde, about a dozen took cover near in a very dense thicket. Realizing that the thicket precluded bow and arrow fighting, Hays and two of his rangers entered the thicket with knives and pistols. One by one they killed the Indian warriors mostly hand-to-hand, while keeping the rest of the company outside to prevent Comanche escape. Only two Comanche did escape. Hays and his partner killed the other ten, mano a mano. The Mexicans put a huge price on Hays’ head; the Comanche feared him more than any enemy.

Always outnumbered and outgunned, but never outwitted or out fought, Hays, in his ten years as a Ranger, lost men, but he never lost a fight. Although some were pretty close.

He and his Rangers joined with Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War. They made a huge impression on all and sundry—they wore no uniforms, equipped themselves (by this time the Texas Rangers had discovered bankrupt Samuel Colt’s revolver, the Anglo repeating weapon), and rode everywhere. They didn’t like taking orders from the Army. Rangers didn’t dismount and they didn’t walk. Seventy-five Rangers charged 1,500 Mexican cavalry and drove them from the field. The Texas Rangers became legends. The Colt revolver was discovered by the rest of the world after the Texans demonstrated its violent power.

After the Mexican War, Jack Hays left Texas for the gold fields of California where he became one of the first sheriffs of San Francisco County (hanging many a criminal), founded Oakland, California, ranched in San Mateo County for awhile, and died a ripe old age.

Well, enough of this. I wrote the above off the top of my head from some old lectures I used to give when I taught history.

Sargava: The Lost Colony

Sargava is an interesting locale in the Golarion setting by Paizo. So, the little Pathfinder Companion book (which means less than 31 pages long) is similarly interesting. It was not, however, quite what I expected it to be.

What I kind of expected was that the Sargavans were "good guys." As a Chelaxian colony that broke away from the main country after they fell to diabolism, they'd be a shining beacon of the golden age of Chelaxian culture before it became perverted. I guess maybe that's true, but if so, Chelaxian culture is, surprisingly, almost more likable under the auspices of Asmodean worship than it is normally. The author of Sargava went out of his way to paint Sargava as an arrogant, hide-bound, racist group of xenophobic idiots who are in an increasingly impossible situation, yet who refuse to acknowledge it.

Burdened with paying tribute money to the Shackles Pirates, surrounded by mostly hostile natives, especially on the far eastern frontier where they border against Mzali lands, and largely dominated by Aspis Consortium interests, there's plenty of opportunities for adventure, intrigue and more as PCs attempt to save the Sargavans from the many dangers that beset them. The question is: will anyone want to bother?

Sargava is a book that's dominated by the Avatar myth as I described in my Heart of the Jungle review. Any vaguely European-esque colonial powers must be exploitative and racist in extreme measures, caring nothing for the natives, the land, or anything else on which they live. I find that myth both incredibly insulting, and more importantly, boring beyond belief by this point. Dances With Wolves, which was hardly an original plot even at the time, has been remade plenty of times now, and it certainly hasn't gotten any fresher.

It'd be nice to see a colonial power treated in a sympathetic fashion for a change. This isn't it.

However, I've spent enough time talking about what I'd have liked Sargava to be, and not enough talking about what it actually is. For what it is, the book is reasonably successful. Frankly, I think the 31 page format is a bit difficult to do a decent treatment of one of the regions in Golarion. All of the Companion regional books feel like they expanded a bit on the entry in the setting itself, sure, but they still touched on the region almost too lightly to be much more robust. The book detailed more in the way of potential basecamps than it did actual adventure locations, which presumably you need to have Heart of the Jungle for. But as such, it gives you a number of such locations, and most of them have some potential local intrigue you can get involved with. Kalabuto even has a big built in dungeon, which really reveals the sourcebooks origin in a slightly jarring way (why do all cities in D&D settings have massive dungeons just under the streets, anyway?) However, that's easily ignorable.

Also, despite the cover art, there was only one tiny mention of dinosaurs anywhere in the book. Sad.

Classic Horrors Revisited

Paizo have made a nice name for themselves with their "XYZ Revisited" series, which includes Dragons Revisited, Classic Monsters Revisited, Dungeon Denizens Revisited, Classic Treasures Revisited, and the upcoming (slightly differently titled) Misfit Monsters Redeemed. As well, of course, as the subject of this review, which for anyone who's been paying attention to my tastes over time (Hi, Mom!) would guess would be my strongest interest in the series, and in fact, possibly the only one of the series to really call my name.

The book is formatted such that the 60 some odd pages of the book detail ten classic horror monsters, and each monster has about six pages dedicated to it. There is a sidebar (for each) explaining what about the creature touches some primal fear in mankind, and/or perhaps the history of the monster in folklore and popular fiction. Each monster has an introduction, an ecology (or necrology for the undead), some known examples of the monster in the Golarion setting, some extra rules or options for customizing the monster with new feats, abilities or equipment, and a custom statblock and illustration of a single advanced version of the monster.

The format works very well to ensure that each creature gets enough treatment that you can do something with it; if gives you loads of ideas on how to integrate one into a campaign, and make it work.

Sadly, of course, the system is Pathfinder, which as a variant of D&D 3.5, is one that is in many ways poorly suited to horror gaming. Granted, a lot of that can be overcome with metagame considerations, but it was also clear from reading through these entries that they were struggling at times to work around the obvious, "the cleric easily turns this monster" or what-have-you. Because it's a particular interest of mine, horror roleplaying, even in systems like D&D (or Pathfinder, which I consider a variant of D&D, despite the name) is something that I've given a lot of thought to, and I think that it's a struggle to work against the system in many ways. That said, this book had some pretty good advice on how to make these monsters come "alive" in the campaign, and not just be disposible encounters, which is exactly the wrong thing to do if you want to retain any semblance of a horror vibe at all.

So, I give the book two thumbs up. It takes a difficult subject; making standard, classic, well-known and probably (honestly) overexposed monsters and making them horrible again, and does a pretty good job with it, in spite of a system that isn't really conducive to that particular role. So... good job, guys. The focus was more on using the existing rules instead of really "revisiting" them, i.e., providing more options that diverged more from the standard SRD rules for the creature as originally written, but that's OK. Although I would have liked to see the latter, maybe my desires there wouldn't be reasonable in relation to what the standard buyer of this book would probably want to have seen.

The monsters included are pretty much what you'd expect, with perhaps the exception of the first one, the derro, who's inclusion as "classic" is perhaps suspect (they referred to the infamous Shaver Mystery stuff from Astounding Stories in the 50s, as well as making a more difficult link between derro and the gray alien mass hysteria phenomena.) In order, the monsters are derro, flesh golems (i.e., Frankenstein's monster), gargoyles, ghosts, ghouls, hags (lots of wicked old witch folklore here), mummies, vampires, walking dead (skeletons and zombies) and werewolves.

Heart of the Jungle

I finished the first of the five-book spree of Paizo setting material that I picked up, Heart of the Jungle, which I presume is titled as an homage to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness which was the mother of all jungle adventure stories, and wildly influential (along with H. Rider Haggard) on the developing pulp aesthetic jungle stories by guys like Robert E. Howard (Conan and others), Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan and others), Talbot Mundy, and even George Lucas (Indiana Jones).

As expected, Heart of the Jungle is primarily about adventuring in the jungle in general, and the jungles of the Mwangi Expanse in the Pathfinder setting in particular. There is an interesting discussion about the hazards of jungle travel, including lots of new diseases, parasites, predators, and more. There is a bunch of setting stuff about the locations and cultures in the Mwangi jungles. Perhaps a bit surprisingly (or perhaps not, if you really think about it) there are even more references to lost civilizations deep in the jungle... ruined cities, temples, and degenerate descendents of once noble imperialists.

This isn't discussed in any great detail (this is, after all, only a 60 some odd page book, and the Mwangi Expanse is the equivalent of many nations in terms of size and diversity) but there's enough here to get you going for quite awhile, including, to use a few examples, the Aspis Consortium's corrupt trading city, a city ruled by an undead child-god who wants to drive all foreign elements from the land, a city ruled by a demonic gorilla and his demon-tainted apes, a crashed flying city, a number of cities that appear to possibly harbor unknown Lovecraftian entities buried beneath their depths, and more. In fact, anyone who was even a little familiar with my wildly successful Demons in the Mist Pbp game will know that I stole the idea of the gorilla nation wholesale from the Paizo campaign setting (although at the time, there wasn't any detail around it at all except that there was this gorilla kingdom deep in the jungle that exterminated any human(oids) who wandered into its territory.)

Paizo included a number of partial page maps of a number of cities, but only a few of them were actually professional cartographic representations of the kind they normally use, while the rest were, they claimed, designed to represent the kinds of hearsay and dubious maps you might find from hucksters and would be guides at some of the outpost towns here and there in the area; stuff that would prompt you to go to the jungle, but give you dubious benefit once you're there. They were designed to be player handouts and aides, although in that task, I'm a little curious how well they'd really work, especially since some of them straddle the spine of the book. Curious and potentially neat idea; I'm not sure if they have yet perfected the execution of it here, though.

An inordinate amount of text was given early in the book to promulgating the Avatar myth, i.e., the idea that anyone from a vaguely Europeanesque civilization can only be there to exploit, pillage and ultimately destroy the native lands. (This idea is much older than Avatar, the James Cameron movie, of course, but I call it that because it's the most prominent purveyor of that myth most recently.) This strong emphasis early on seems fundamentally at odds with much of the rest of the book which characterizes the jungle as ultimately untamed and untameable, a raw force of nature that will ultimately triumph over the pathetic attempts of mankind to conquer it. I suppose this can possibly be chalked up to having more than one writer, probably working independently on different parts of the book. In any case, once you get past several pages of that vibe, it tends to fade away, and the book becomes much more useful again. In fact, I found much of the book very interesting indeed, and while it offers much more in the way of capsule ideas that will then still need an awful lot of GM development to be workable, I find that's OK. Many of the Pathfinder Modules will give you more specifics on certain areas, and otherwise, I like making stuff up on my own anyway. But, I also like having idea minefields that I can scour for the kernels of ideas to develop, and this book certainly is that.

I was tempted to turn next to the Sargava book as a companion piece, what with Sargava being the neighboring region in the setting, and presumably a nice companion to this one. And I will eventually, but first I picked up Classic Horrors Revisited, so that'll be on my gaming reading cycle for the next little while.

Pathfinder New Classes Final

I went and downloaded the (free) "final" Beta testing document for the six new Pathfinder classes that are set to appear in the Advanced Players Guide for the Pathfinder RPG today. I've had the earlier Beta versions for some time, but I couldn't tell at a glance how different these new Beta versions were, and of course, I have no idea how different the true final versions will be once they're out there. But, I thought I'd comment on them, since I'm a fan of 1) much of what Pathfinder has done to the 3.5 SRD in general to update and clean it up, and 2) new class options.

Sadly, however, these six classes are not the ones I would have chosen, and although I think some of their ideas were good ones, they highlight to me much of my dissatisfaction.

Most of the D&D (and therefore Pathfinder) basic core classes use some kind of magic. In fact, of the eleven core classes, only four of them do not have a spellcasting progression of some kind, and of those four, one of them (the monk) still has a buttload of supernatural abilities anyway. For low magic options (or just for people who don't want to mess with spellcasting in their character), then, that only leaves a bare three classes: the barbarian, the fighter, and the rogue. It's no wonder, then, that I'm a big fan of using some alternate classes. The Scout, the spell-less rangers and paladins, the Swashbuckler, various ninja or assassin alternate classes, non-supernatural alt.monks; these are all some of my favorite alternate classes to integrate into my games.

It's perhaps not too surprising, then, although disappointing, that the alternate Pathfinder classes are also almost exclusively magic-using classes, and the only one that isn't, really, is one that's not really up my alley at all either. The six classes are the Alchemist, the Cavalier, the Inquisitor, the Oracle, the Summoner and the Witch. The Alchemist technically isn't a spellcaster (although his impact in game is very similar to a spellcaster) and the Cavalier is obviously the same concept (if not exactly the same execution) as the 3.5 PHB2 Knight. The Oracle is a more shamanistic like divine spellcaster, the Witch is an arcane caster that borrows heavily from fairy tales (I actually quite like the Witch as a spellcaster, to be honest with you) and the Inquisitor is kinda like a darker, grimmer version of the paladin, except with slightly lesser combat stats and slightly better spellcasting stats.

The summoner is also (obviously) a spellcaster, but surprisingly, he gives up some spellcasting ability to be able to bond with a strange extraterrestrial entity called his eidolon, which can take many forms and fight (or whatever) in his behalf.

The mechanics for all of them seem solid enough, but conceptually, I was just disappointed in what they decided to follow. The Pathfinder setting mentioned psionics (briefly) yet we still have no Paizo psionics. These classes continue to ramp up the presence and ubiquity of magic (sadly... at least to my sensibilities), and we are still lacking some really basic core archetypes (I think a good swashbuckler is a more core archetype than many of the ones we do have, and it always disappoints me to see it neglected.)

Of the new classes (again, Beta 2 version, not final) the summoner, the alchemist and the witch are the ones that interest me the most, because they seem like stronger concepts that have some more notable differences to what's already in the game, and are strongly rooted in folklore and fantasy fiction.

The image, by the way, is one of Wayne Reynolds for the new core classes, the Oracle. Although its the only one to be released digitally so far (on the Paizo blog), we've seen pencil sketches of all of them, and there are new, small, images of all six in color in the backs of the latest Paizo books.

Gentlemen of the Road

In addition to the unusual circumstances that allowed me to finish The Plane Below before going into work, a completely different set of unusual circumstances allowed me to read most of Michael Chabon's relatively short novel Gentlemen of the Road today too, while sitting and waiting in a tire shop, sadly. Because I was only about 35 pages away from finishing it after that, I took the time to read it all the way through before looking at my shiny new Pathfinder books.

Gentlemen is an unusual book in many ways. Chabon said in the afterword that his working title was Jews With Swords for a long time. Chabon is not a genre writer, but rather a "literary" writer and a reasonably successful one at that (a Pullitzer Prize at a young age tends to do that to a writer). Despite that, he's also notoriously a defender of genre and plot-driven fiction, as opposed to the plotless character studies that make up much of the literary fiction market.

That doesn't necessarily mean that he's a genre writer himself, of course. In fact, in his afterword, it was difficult to tell if this book was pretentious slumming, or simple self-deprecation of sorts. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. His style, however, was very literary rather than genre. I'd say an integral feature of most genre fiction is that the prose disappears. Clever turns of phrase and elaborate metaphors take the reader out of the story and away from the plots and characters. Granted, they can be appreciated in their own right, sometimes, but their applicability in what is supposed to be a historical fiction swashbuckling romance with vague hints of Conan and D'Artagnan (according to the author) and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (obvious from the characterizations of Zelikman and Amram) is somewhat more dubious.

Chabon's interest in the two characters as atypical Jews, as well as the Khazar state as one of the only states of the Middle Ages to support Judaism as a state religion is kinda interesting, but borders on an annoying affectation after a time. He made too much of a point of talking about how Jewish everyone was, which got distracting after a while, as well as begging the question of how historically accurate this whole thing was meant to be as opposed to a specifically Jewish swashbuckling romance (actually, that's rather easily answered given that he features the khagan Zachariah, who actually ruled about a hundred years earlier than this novel is purportedly set. In fact, the book is set no more than ten years before the entire Khazar state was destroyed by Sviatoslav of the Rus.) His characterization of Christians, Muslims, and the Rus themselves also border on uncomfortable at times, although they fall shy of being completely insulting or overtly offensive, and from the point of view of his characters is probably reasonably historically accurate anyway.

The biggest problem I had with it was that for a swashbuckling romance, it was surprisingly somewhat light on the swashbuckling action. Chabon obviously liked his characters, and made a point of making them interesting and intriguing to read about, but the plot was more of a talking heads plot than I would have expected going into it. I suppose that's not unsurprising, given a genre novel written by a "literary" writer.

My end result, I suppose, is that the novel was interesting, quick and dirty and easy to read, and a great idea with great characters, but somehow less than the sum of all its parts, at the end of the day. I'd recommend it, but if it were much longer than it is, I'd do so much more hesitantly.

The Plane Below

I managed to finish the fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons book The Plane Below earlier this morning due to an unusual circumstance (i.e., I didn't have to be at work quite as early as normal.) As a non-player of 4e, I found the book pretty interesting, if a bit sparse. Of course, if I could have used any of the mechanics in the book, maybe I wouldn't have thought it quite so sparse. But probably somewhat; it's relatively thin compared to the themed books from the third and third and a half edition eras.

One thing that the book did for me was put to bed any lingering notions I may have harbored about 4e being just a miniatures game. I mean, I didn't necessarily hold to that opinion, but I heard it expressed frequently on the internet. This book, at least, was primarily a setting book, and while it had some mechanics in it, it was mostly a book that could be used regardless of system. It is a book that I could use fairly easily in a 3.5 game, or for that matter, in any fantasy game using any system from FATE to Savage Worlds to HERO or whatever else you'd want to use.

It was chock full of D&Disms, though. In spite of the fact that many 4e detractors have complained about how the 4e implicit setting is erasing years of history and D&Diana, I found this material extremely "D&Dish." Most of my homebrew settings, even while cleaving faithfully to the concept of the D&D game (something that I frequently don't make a point of doing) are much more divergent from the creaky old Great Wheel cosmology than this is.

That said, some of the most iconic D&D settings, including those published by WotC for 3rd edition, didn't use the Great Wheel either (I'm thinking of Forgotten Realms and Eberron here) and the 4e implied setting isn't really any more divergent from the Great Wheel than Forgotten Realms "Tree of Worlds" or whatever it's called is, and it's probably a good deal less divergent than Eberron's orbiting planes cosmology.

The gist of the Plane Below is that it's a combination of what were a few completely different planes in the 3rd edition Manual of the Planes and before. Much of the Elemental Chaos is like Limbo, but it also manages to be all of the four iconic Elemental Planes as needed as well, and the Abyss is buried deep within the Elemental Chaos as both a part of that plane, and yet also a plane unto itself. The thinking here, according to the WotC designers, was to make some of these planes more useful and attractive as actual adventure settings, rather than theoretical places that you couldn't figure out what to do with in game. In this goal, I think they were successful.

In others, perhaps less so. Personally, I think they didn't got far enough, and the D&D outsiders is still full of a lot of overlap in concept. While they did take some efforts to distinguish the slaad, for example, from the demons, it was a bit too little. Why aren't the slaad just some group or tribe of demons? Because of lingering sacred cows, that's why. What's the difference between a demon lord and a primordial? Especially an obyrith demon lord? Nothing substantial. At least not that's spelled out here. Pretty much all of the primordials could be called new demon lords and nobody would know the difference.

That said, the actual ideas that this book had are pretty good. Many of them are older ideas that are just restated for the fourth edition, but some of them I didn't recognize. Granted, my D&D lore may not be up to snuff, but I think they went to some pains to actually create some new material, not just represent older ideas from planar adventures.

This book certainly didn't convert me to 4e, nor did it do anything with the cosmology that was so intriguing that I'd look at adopting it (except a handful of extremely discreet units of setting design that'd be fun to borrow from time to time) but I did find it an interesting read nonetheless. Not the equivalent to the excellent Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss, but interesting nonetheless.

For my next RPG reading trick, I've got some Pathfinder material up my sleeve. I had picked up the Absalom sourcebook off my shelf, not with the intention of rereading it word for word necessarily, but to do some research for the short story competition I mentioned last time. That got me in the mood for more Pathfinder, and on a trip to my local gaming store, I ended up five books heavier, including Heart of the Jungle, Classic Horrors Revisited, Sargava: The Lost Colony, Faction Guide and City of Strangers. These books aren't very long, and I can often read them pretty quick. In fact, it's possible that I'll read them quick enough that they may not even end up on my What I'm Reading list at all before going straight to the reviews. We'll see.

A few quick things...

In a no doubt ill-advised move, I recently picked up five books from the library. Ill-advised, you say?

Well, I still have close to fifty books that I own and haven't yet read, so yeah... probably so. I've almost finished The Plane Below, which counts on my gamebook reading slot. But... which still takes up potential reading time nonetheless. I've also picked up the first Ultimate Galactus graphic novel, which will be a quick and dirty read of about an hour or an hour and a half tops. Then I got Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road, a historical fiction that's heavily influenced by Fritz Leiber'a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser characters. And I've got book four of the Vampire Earth series (I read books one, two and three earlier). And the first Star Wars Legacy novel.

Am I really going to finish all these novels? I'm not sure. And what about my short story Forgotten Realms anthology? Yeah, I'll get around to that eventually too.

Speaking of short stories, here's an interesting thing. Paizo, in conjunction with their semi-official fanzine Wayfinder, are sponsoring a short-story contest. There's actually a cash prize at the end of that one. Well, a gift certificate prize, anyway. For 3,000-4,500 words of work, $100 of gift certificates, and small-pond fame of being published in Wayfinder ain't a bad deal. I'll be coming up with something.

Weapons of Legacy

After an extremely long period of time, I finally finished reading Weapons of Legacy. Honestly, that may be a bit of an exaggeration; I skimmed the last fifty pages kinda quickly.

Weapons of Legacy reads very much like some of the driest, most difficult textbooks I had to wrestle with in college. While the idea is sound, and I actually think I quite like it, it doesn't make for interesting reading at all, and I finally decided that I really didn't need to read all of the menu entries in detail for how to build one from scratch.

The core conceit of the book is that magic items don't need to continually be replaced and updgraded through your career if you can get a "signature" one that grows with your character as he increases in level. In concept, this is a great idea, and one that certainly feels more natural to anyone who's ever read any fantasy fiction.

The bulk of the book was made up of a bunch of sample items, each of which took between two and four pages to describe, including a history, and a sample encounter on where a character might find the item. And, of course, all the rules for powers and abilities that will be unlocked over time.

At first I dove into this happily, but this is where I bogged down. This is probably best seen as a dictionary or encyclopedia; you go to the entry you want to read about, you don't try to read it cover to cover. I quickly found this difficult going and bogged down for months. Don't get me wrong; there are a lot of good ideas here. But maybe too many, almost.

After that there are rules for creating your own weapon of legacy, and this is done in menu fashion. In other words, you pick abilities from a menu and add them as appropriate. There are a number of menus that all are slightly differently balanced, so that you can choose which menu you work off of, but there are different costs and other balance considerations based on which one you use.

Not at all a bad system, but dry, dry, dry.

To be honest with you, I didn't really expect to enjoy this book very much. When I bought it, quite a while ago, I bought it from Amazon with a gift card. I picked two other RPG books, but I had a couple of bucks left, and this was the only book I could find that was priced low enough that I could get it without exceeding my gift card limit. Given the fact that the price had plummetted, and my disdain for magic item catalogs in general, my expectations were very low. I thought the concept (and the execution too) was much better than I expected, and my review of this book and its contents is therefore positive.

However, I don't really recommend just reading it from cover to cover.

I was going to pick up either Stormwrack or Complete Psionic for the next book on my gamebook reading list, but I was browsing at the library last night and on a whim I picked up The Plane Below. Now, this is a Fourth Edition book, and I don't play 4e, nor do I even know very much at all about the rules for 4e. But, I grabbed this book because it looks like it's mostly a fluff book, that explains some of the cosmology and setting associated with the "points of light" game, and I'm interested in it from that perspective. When I review it, I obviously won't be able to comment on the mechanics, and in fact, it's certainly my intention to skip past any mechanical sections of the book entirely and not even look at them.

Shadowrealm

A few days ago, I finished the last book of the Twilight War trilogy, Paul S. Kemp's Shadowrealm. As I've already reviewed both Shadowbred and Shadowstorm, I feel that in a way, there's not a lot to add just because another volume to the series. It obviously follows in much the same vein as it's predecessors, and has many of the same strengths and weaknesses. If you haven't already seen them, I'll refer you to linked reviews I wrote for the earlier two volumes.

In Shadowrealm, Kemp manages to give us a suitably epic and exciting conclusion. The action is pretty fast and furious, the amount of time that takes place over the same pagecount as the previous volumes is really compressed. There's some really great action/battle scenes that take place, and the redemption of some interesting characters who were fallen or falling, as well as the suitable comeuppance for some(but not all) of the villains of the piece. Overall, I'd definitely say that the end result was a dark one. If it was a victory, it was a Pyrrhic one in many ways. As a self-professed fan of grimmer sword & sorcery and dark fantasy stories, that certainly didn't bother me, and in fact I found it a pleasant and completely unexpected surprise for a book series set in the Forgotten Realms, which was infamous not too many years ago for pushing so hard the other way that the villainous characters and organizations were almost a joke; a mockery. Wizards of the Coast (or maybe it was late-era TSR back then) were so concerned that if "bad guy" characters had any successes, or looked at all competent, that they would be promoting evil or something.

Certainly, that's not something Paul Kemp's worried about.

Unfortunately, this book continues the trend of the last few of being probably a bit incomprehensible to anyone who isn't familiar with Dungeons & Dragons conventions, rules, and details. Since it's a D&D tie-in novel, that may not be the worst thing in the world, but it certainly isn't a great one either, and it limits the potential appeal of the novel. Since, for the most part, the audience probably can deal with that without any problem... well, I won't make a big deal out of it.

The thing that did start to bug me after a while was the emo nature of the some of the characters. A good emotional backdrop for your characters is a good thing to have. You want to see them struggle with things that are difficult, or else the story probably gets really boring. However, it can go too far and start to sound whiny and unlikeable. Also, if it's obvious (and has been for a long time) what needs to be done and the characters are just being stubborn about it because they don't want to, that starts to be less attractive a trait in a protagonist character too. I think Kemp drew the emotional baggage out too long, or just didn't handle it very deftly, or something. I didn't really like that angle of the story (and it applied in variations to several different characters simultaneously, too) and it became more frustrating and annoying rather than interesting after a while.

Dialogue still stank, too, but I won't rehash that.

All in all, I think it was a satisfying conclusion to a satisfying trilogy. It's somewhat disposible, and won't go down as a classic anytime soon, but it's still pretty good stuff, and I don't feel at all like my time was wasted reading it, or that my money was wasted buying it. And although I don't think I'll be rereading it anytime soon, when my kids get a little bit older, if they still like reading fantasy, I'll let them read it too. (As an aside, I'm trying to get my oldest son interested in reading my original Weis and Hickman Dragonlance trilogy, or the original R. A. Salvatore Forgotten Realms trilogy. Those aren't great books either, but at his age, he should love them. If only he'll get off his butt and finish reading the Inkheart trilogy already...)

Anyway, there was an anthology that came with the trilogy. It's called Realms of War and it says it's a Twilight War anthology. The first story is a Paul S. Kemp story that fills in a few blanks around the trilogy. From the looks of it, though, the rest of the stories in the anthology have nothing whatsosever to do with the Twilight War, so... yeah, WotC. That sucks. Bait and switch is bad. Anyway, I'll dutifully report on that when I'm done too...

Wildman houserules

I've blogged before about how I really like the concept of shifters (from Eberron) and other "wildmen" archetypes. And while the rules for shifters work quite well, they have two problems in being adapted to my homebrew. 1) They're not open content, and 2) They're a bit too long, complex and involved for easy retyping and representing anyway.

So, I decided to create some new rules for shifters. Since my setting doesn't have half-orcs, I decided to use the half-orc stats as a baseline, and then modify from there. Thanks to "The Orc Within" (from ENWorld) for the baseline concept and the text of the Feral Form special ability. Now, the half-orc racial stats were frequently criticized as being too harsh, especially the ability adjustments, where a +2 to Strength was frequently not judged equivalent to a -2 to both Intelligence and Charisma. The design notes on the half-orc purported that since Strength makes them better at combat, and combat is so important to the game, that it was balanced despite the obvious... well, imbalance. That, of course, depends on the game.

I've played many half-orcs in my day (in fact, I am doing so currently), but I don't particularly like the stat block for them.

Anyway, here's the entire ruleset for my vucari, or wildmen. Obviously based on the same idea as shifters. I've used D&D linguistics, just for completion; I, of course, use a completely different linguistics rule for my homebrew.

Wildman (Vucari)
• +2 Str, -2 Int
• Lowlight vision
• Survival is always a class skill for wildmen, regardless of what class they actually take.
• Wildmen gain the Scent ability
• Feral Form (Su) - Once per day a wildman can take on brutish form that lasts a number of rounds equal to 3 + the character's Constitution modifer, granting him +2 Str, +2 Dex, +10 ft land speed, and two claw attacks (1d4 +1/5HD damage). The character may use manufactured weapons while in his Feral Form, if desired. While in his Feral Form, a wildman also gains the benefit of the Pounce ability. This benefit only lasts while in the Feral Form, however. The wildman gains one additional use per day of his Feral Nature at every 5th character level he attains.
• Automatic languages: Sylvan
• Bonus languages: Common, Elven, Goblin, Orc

Shadowstorm

I finished the second book in the Twilight War trilogy this weekend, Paul S. Kemp's Shadowstorm. Right away, I picked up the third and final book, Shadowrealm, and hopefully I can finish it a bit more quickly. This book took me a long time to read, but that shouldn't be seen as an indication of its quality, really. I was distracted by a number of other things going on at home, and I just didn't pick anything up to read.

Well, if I were loving it so much that I couldn't put it down, I'm sure that I wouldn't have put it down. So I guess it says something about its quality there, but not much. Overall, my review of Shadowstorm is positive, and that it is even better than its predecessor, Shadowbred, to which I also gave a mostly positive review. I clearly didn't love it that much, but I did like it, and it had much more of what made the first book in the series work. It also allowed Kemp to stretch his wings a bit and do some other stuff as well. This book featured apocalyptic magical disasters, exciting battle scenes that incorporated D&D settings elements in a way that made sense, several "D&D adventurer combats" including one with a dragon, some great scenes of betrayal and the culmination of political manipulation, a squeeky clean character that falls out of his cliche to be a more troubled individual, and a few other scenes that really out-do what's come before.

It also had some of the weaknesses of the prior novel. Dialogue was still often trite or unnatural. References given with no context to stuff happening before the trilogy started to taper off, and there were fewer of them. And the game mechanics still showed a fair amount, but either Kemp improved his ability to hide them, he did it less than in Shadowbred, or it just worked better. I'm not sure which of the three it was, but it was less of a problem than in the first book.

One of these days, I'll also figure out how to write reviews for multiple volumes in the same series that aren't repetitive. This one isn't it, though. I'm not sure what the solution is; Shadowstorm had most of the same strengths and weaknesses that Shadowbred had (and I'd be surprised to find out that Shadowrealm does not as well).

After finishing this series, I also got an adjunct short story collection, Realms of War that I'll read, before putting aside the Forgotten Realms for a time (a long time, I don't have anything else from that series on my dockett at all) and looking for something else to read. I might pick up some of my still unread Robert E. Howard collections--maybe the second Conan collection or the Solomon Kane one--but I might read a novel concurrently, since I find that short story collections are often hard to read and I'll just be off one. There's little incentive to keep going after finishing one, it seems, so I often put it down and forget to pick it up again for long stretches at a time. I also would really like to finish the Weapons of Legacy book that I've been reading on my gamebook queue for months and months. I don't want to preview the review too much, but clearly I haven't really enjoyed reading it. Not that the idea and implementation isn't an interesting one, just that... it doesn't lend itself it just being read about very well.

Star Wars setting stuff

A little over four years ago, I was revisiting the idea of Star Wars and roleplaying (I had probably just gone through an episode of playing Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR), but I don't remember that clearly.) One of the things that impressed me about KOTOR was that it managed to feel almost exactly like the Star Wars that we all know and love, yet was removed from it in the timeline by close to 4,000 years, and obviously very few of the details were the same; just the feel, the tone, and the broad strokes.

Rather than backwards, I'd like to go forwards in time, by a significant amount. I had said at that point 500 years, but I'd rather go even further; 1,000 years. Just to give me plenty of time to wipe away any E.U. stuff that I don't want, yet far enough that I don't have to explain it.

Anyway, here's a few of my ideas as they appeared back then. Keep in mind that this setting's conception was started just prior to the release of the Legacy comic book line; as that came out, I incorporated some of its better ideas into my setting too. After all, they were (in many respects) doing the same thing I was anyway.

1) Star Wars Legacy (the Dark Horse comic book series) has done a lot of what I wanted to do very well, so there's no reason not to borrow liberally from them, even though my timeline is sufficiently advanced from theirs that strictly speaking, I don't have to. I especially like the idea of the Fel Dynasty as an Empire Mk. II, less evil and possibly even good, albeit autocratic. The Imperial Knights are a nifty idea too.

2) Legacy did exactly what I wanted to do with the Sith Order; abolished the Rule of Two since retrospectively it proved to be disastrous when Darth Vader killed the Emperor and didn't ascend to the position of Sith Master himself and take a new apprentice.
Here's a handful of my Force using groups of note:

1) Imperial Knights: a militaristic organization that reports directly to the heir of the Empire. As in the Legacy comic books, the Empire is not necessarily evil, although chances are that few of us would enjoy living there. Jedi are mistrusted and rare in Imperial space.

2) Orthodox Jedi (Gray Marshals): a group of Jedi knights that is obsessed with reconstructing the order as it existed prior to the Jedi purges, and under the same tenets. Much of the data about how things were organized was lost, so this group also crusades throughout the galaxy for any information on how the Jedi were organized and operated during this time. They adamantly (and in fact, often violently) refuse to accept any criticism that the Jedi's organization and operation may indeed have facilitied Anakin's fall and therefore its own destruction. They see their mandate as imposing peace and order upon the galaxy as much as possible. As with the original Jedi order, often their methods are somewhat questionable ("aggressive negotiations?") and they don't always leave a happy taste in the mouth of those with whom they've dealt.

3) Skywalker Jedi : Luke did not start the Jedi order up to be like the Order his father joined. Luke was not dispassionate, he was compassionate, and his order was much more egalitarian, more open-ended in terms of who it accepted as recruits (it had no choice in the early days of recruiting) and refused to accept the dispassionate and exclusive attitudes that Jedi such as Yoda and Obiwan tried to convince Luke to follow, even as late as Return of the Jedi. Luke himself believed those principles were failed and did not inculcate them in his students. Skywalker's Jedi, as they are informally known, and the Gray Marshals have a rather tense relationship; both believing they are more deserving of the title of Jedi, while the other should consider itself some other tradition entirely. This order is the one most closely associated with the Galactic Alliance/New Republic.

4) The Cyborg Order: a group that saw General Grevious and Anakin Skywalker (he who brought balance to the Force, after all) as the ultimate prototype. Eschewing mortal flesh as a weakness, they replace their body parts with cyborg implants and surround themselves with droids. Although many cyborg designs are in vogue, a very popular one closely resembles General Grevious himself, with four arms (to better wield more lightsabers in battle). The detail of Darth Vader's own cybernetic body is lost to time, so many of the Cyborg Order have tried to reconstruct it from the little that is known about it, but interpretations of what Vader looked like vary wildly from individual to individual.

5) And, of course, the Sith. Reborn from the ashes of Darth Sidious and Darth Vader's ignominous defeat, the Rule of Two was quickly abandoned. Likely, the first of the new Sith Order was founded by up and coming pupils of Sidious or Dooku, or perhaps by early students of Luke's or subsequent Jedi Masters who found their way to Yavin, Korriban, or other worlds were Sith influence was still strong. Be that as it may, this organization closely matches that of the Legacy comic books (curse them for developing the Sith in almost exactly the same way I was thinking!) including a doctrine similar to the Rule of One and a fondness for red and black ritualistic tattooing and scarring a la Darth Maul.

In the very first Star Wars movie, the Force using traditions were significant, but not the only thing going on, obviously. From there on out it became more and more overtly about the Jedi and the Sith and has been ever since. Every once in a while, I wonder what it would have been like if it had remained a two-fisted, pulpish swashbuckling romance instead of taking on all these mystical undertones, but not for now (I've bought into the whole Jedi/Sith thing; I think it's great.)

But anyway, the Force users don't literally make the Galaxy go 'round, they're just one aspect of it. Here's some other organizations of importance.

1) The Empire: structured not unlike Palpatine's empire in administrative detail, at least, with similar ranks (Moffs, Grand Moffs, etc.) although lacking a Sith Lord at the head, of course. In recent decades, the Empire has been resurgent; from a low point of ruling just a few systems, it has swelled to encompass much of the Galaxy.

2) The Galactic Alliance: what's left of Leia's New Republic, as the Empire has waxed, the Alliance has waned. While still powerful, and controlling much of the Core systems (and still based in Coruscant) its a shadow of its former strength and size.

3) The Mandalorian Arm: The Mandalorians were a race who's culture and identity were in decline and in danger of disappearing completely before the Clone Wars. Individuals like Jango Fett were exceptional: nationalists who purposefully kept alive old traditions. Following the defeat of Palpatine and the second Death Star, many cloned stormtroopers had confusing or conflicting loyalties, as they were programmed to be loyal expressly to Palpatine and not to his government. Many of them, now deprived of their identity as Imperial stormtroopers searched for their identity by rejoining the Mandalorians, since their programming and training retained many Mandalorianisms learned from their prototype Jango. Flush with this new blood of combat experienced and highly motivated and actually rather traditionalist Mandalorian soldiers, the remaining Mandalorians underwent a nationalistic revival in the decades following the Galactic Civil War. Now, nearly a thousand years later, they still are a powerful, autonomous force in the galaxy. They don't command a lot of territory, but their armadas and troops are feared and respected throughout the galaxy. They serve in the armies of both the Alliance and the Republic at times, in a situation not unlike the Varangian Guard of the Byzantines, but only as mercenaries. Their true loyalty is to their own nation. Although no longer sporting the white uniforms of the stormtroopers, those uniforms were originally based on Mandalorian prototypes, and Mandalorian battle armor is now seen in nearly every major metropolitan area throughout the galaxy.

4) The Hutt clans have managed to hold on to much of the Outer Rim still, and maintain a presence not unlike that they had during the movies. Powerful enough to play differing factions against each other, but not powerful enough to move against any of them, they retain a seemingly endless dynasty over their region. Oddly enough, the one place that they have not managed to retain a hold is Tatooine itself. Since the Civil War 1,000 years ago, Tatooine has been swamped by pilgrims and crusaders bent on liberating the "holy ground" where both Anakin and Luke spent their childhood.

5) The Sith Empire: since the disaster of the Rule of Two, the Sith have adopted differing strategies; strategies that in the past led to some of their greatest successes. One of these strategies is openly ruling an aggressive theocracy, where reverence of past heroes and traditions is encouraged, and past Sith Lords are literally worshipped as gods. Although hemmed in by Jedi (of various fracteous orders, including more than those described here) and Imperial Knights, which keep their powerful force users from swamping the galaxy in a deluge of blood, the Sith Empire is still larger and stronger than the Alliance today, and its true rival is the Fel Empire. Non-Force using Sith citizens undergo a draft and almost all able-bodied citizens are required to undergo military service. They, in accordance with ancient tradition, are outfitted in faceless body armor, and the sight of Sith soldiers brings fear across the Galaxy. The Fel Empire is attempting a relatively non-aggressive "cold war" approach to dealing with the Sith, since it doesn't relish the thought of open warfare, where the outcome is certainly in doubt. With a little luck, the Sith have the strength to overthrow the Empire, and from there complete total domination of the entire galaxy. The Alliance, believe it or not, has tried to remain neutral, and even play the Sith against the Felians.

6) Certain large sectors of the galaxy are not ruled by governments, but by corporations. As with the Separatists during the Clone Wars, for defense the Corporate Sectors tend to rely on droid troops. Few Corporate workers are willing to put their life on the line for the Corporations. They are (somewhat uneasily) allied with the Cyborg Order, and provide many of the droids and cyborg enhancements that that group desires in return for protection from the more rapacious or expansionist Force using threats such as the Sith or the Fel Empires, but the Cyborg Order does not answer to the Corporations, nor consider itself under their sovereignty by any means.

Star Wars regrets

Why did we have to get the prequel trilogy from George Lucas, when other people with licenses to play in his sandbox can come up with stuff like this? Lucas' insistance on control has blinded him to his flaws, and deprived us of what could have been some of the best movies ever made.

Setting: another POV

As I've re-read my last post, it occurs to me that while it's a benefit to encourage some level of richness to a setting, it's also potentially a trap for the unwary. Let me explain.

The example I gave in the last post is how a language extremely closely related to Ma'anyan and other eastern Bornean languages ended up on Madagascar, and in fact the native language of the whole of Madagascar and Mayotte, where it outnumbers all of the rest of the speakers of the entire east Barito language branch put together. The entire Austronesian diaspora, and particularly that of the group that moved to Madagascar is a somewhat mysterious process; the how and why of it is unknown, and all kinds of interesting stories regarding the move could be told, albeit speculatively.

While these kinds of mysteries are part and parcel of the real world, and therefore encourage richness and verisimilitude in a fantasy world, they are also potential distractions from the efforts of a gamer or a writer, unless catering to a real fan of simulationism or exploration. I think most fantasy fans have at least some element of that; they like their settings to feel "real." Even as they understand that of course they are not, they are likely to demand sufficient detail to maintain an illusion of reality to aid in suspension of disbelief. Also, I think that most fantasy fans like exploring settings, and seeing what the gamemaster or writer has come up. Tolkien's richness to his Middle-earth setting is frequently cited as one of the main draws of the setting and story both.

But, more is not necessarily better, and even Tolkien knew enough to put most of his detail in other sources, out of the way of the main story. The fact that most fantasy fans are at least somewhat fans of exploration doesn't mean that they want to experience vicarious travelogues or ethnologues of fiction places and peoples. I've seen several games (and novels!) fall victim to this trap, and the end result is that the characters and the stories that surround them suffer as a result.

Be very careful of integrating details into your campaign setting. For the most part, if there's a mystery or secret, the point of it is so that the characters can discover the solution to it. Occasional red herrings can be fun, but a world full of mysteries and secrets that never get solved might be realistic... but ultimately probably isn't very fun to explore after a while.

Historical mysteries

I like historical mysteries, e.g., something that we know has to have happened in some way, but about which we know very little, or even nothing. As I've been poking around to find some unrelated stuff out, I started getting distracted by the origin of the Malagasy language. Malagasy is the native language of Madagascar, and surprisingly, it isn't really related to any African languages at all except in regards to very late borrowings from Swahili. I've always been a fan of linguistics, and as I was checking out some stuff on the Austronesian language family, I was reminded that Malagasy is an Austronesian language. The Austronesian languages are believed to have all started on Formosa (Taiwan) long before there was any Han Chinese influence there, and spread largely south and east from there; Austronesian languages are the native languages of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. And then, in a geographical suprise, also Madagascar. And I think that's how I stumbled onto being reminded of this; four of the top ten islands (in size) are islands with these languages; three of them being part of Indonesia, and then Madgascar (four others are up in the Arctic; either Greenland or the neighboring islands of northern Canada.)

In fact, the Malagasy language can more specifically be related to Barito languages, which otherwise are found on the southeast of the island of Borneo. How some river-tribe guys from the opposite side of Borneo could end up settling Madagascar, contributing to its ethnic mix and specifically imposing their language on the entire island, even when other groups of people eventually made their way there too, is a historical or linguistic mystery. Which means that I therefore find it fascinating.

I think little things like this being part of fantasy campaign settings is something that most people don't think about. Why aren't there weird little historical mysteries that exist... just to be interesting?

Setting size

I was watching some travel videos on east Africa and Madagascar, and the narrator made an off-hand comment that Madgascar was the fourth largest island in the world, but had as much variety as a continent. That sparked a bizarre run of curiosity on my part, where I went and looked up the islands of the world, sorted by size. Let me give you the top 10.

1. Greenland


2. New Guinea


3. Borneo


4. Madagascar


5. Baffin Island


6. Sumatra


7. Honshū


8. Victoria Island


9. Great Britain


10. Ellesmere Island

Fascinating, huh? Not really? Well, here's what struck me about that list. Rounding a bit, Great Britain is about 80,000 square miles in size. Greenland is over ten times that size, over 800,000 square miles. Antarctica, a full continent, is almost exactly size times that of Greenland, about 5 million square miles.

And yet... Great Britain would make a much richer campaign setting than Greenland, or even Antarctica. There's lots of stuff going on Great Britain, no matter the time frame you set it in, whereas pretty much no matter when you set a campaign in Greenland or Antarctica, your options for interesting things to do are very limited. You've got miles and miles and miles of really boring ice sheet. There's little to do, there's hardly even any animals to interact with, much less people... Great Britain is just a much richer campaign setting in every sense.

And there's a lesson in that for campaign setting design. I think a lot of folks who run games feel intimidated by designing a campaign setting. In fact, I know that that's true, because I've seen them express exactly that feeling, in messageboard posts and elsewhere. I think, in many ways, this is because they're used to seeing settings like Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or Eberron, which are entire continents-worth of geography (at least). But honestly, to run a game, you don't need anywhere near that much material. Great Britain; even a small portion of Great Britain, is more than enough material to run a great game. Why do you need to worry about what's going on in Central Asia, North Africa, or Central America if you're running a game in Great Britain? Of course you don't. The example of Great Britain being a much more interesting setting than Greenland, despite being only 10% of the size, should be an inspirational example for those who feel intimidated by setting design. In all likelihood, you don't have to design nearly as much as you think you do.