And after a fashion, we come full circle

What with having read this nifty Actual Play writeup over on RPG.net and having a copy of the Mythic GME in The Collection (Paid-For Annex), I've been getting the itch to do something Sf-flavored of my own.  As well, I've downladed and fallen in love with the FU RPG and a d6-based GME knockoff, both of which can be found through links in this post.

I've got it in mind to do some SF/space opera, pulling in chunks from Traveller, Stars Without Number, possibly Space Master, the old PC game Starflight II, a WHOLE CRAPLOAD of various self-written, bought and found random generators, and quite possibly beer for my robot brain.

So I set some ground rules for my solo campaigns.

Item 1. Humanistic SF; "humanistic" not in the sense of anti-religious smuggery but concentrating primarily on characters. I'm re-re-re-reading Alexi Panshin's Villiers novels, and that's the kind of approach I'd like to take.

Thusly:

The story goes that if you are absolutely silent and touch a bare wall at exactly the right time, you can feel the secret work being done down in the bowels of the rock. Secret tunnels. Secret rooms. Shirabi has long been gone from Star Well, but the stories continue—which goes to show the impression that Shirabi made on people. A certain sort of man simply looks as though he would dig secret holes, have leg irons in his basement, and leave greasy moisture on your palm when you shook his hand. (But go ahead anyway—touch the rock, barely breathe, listen. . . .There .)

And thusly:

 Valuing names as they do, Realists are sparing with them. They are likely to be known only as Joe or Bill or Plato. And they don’t smile much.
Nominalists have more fun. They are known as Aristotle or Decimus et Ultimus Barziza, or as Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu, or perhaps by one name in childhood and several others in the course of life.
A firm Realist misses out on one of the most satisfying of all human activities—the assumption of secret identities. A man who has lived and never been someone else has never lived.
It is true that occasionally there can be embarrassment in secret identities, but only a Realist will take the whole thing seriously enough to hit you. So have your fun, and avoid Realists.

I intend to avoid Realists.

Item 2. Who gives a rat's ass about the local world, whether or not water covers X% of the surface or Y%? What you're concerned about is whether or not you're going to get fleeced in the zocalo, or what the library is like, or what the local air smells of. Therefore, concentrating on local ambiance in opposition to lists of numbers more suited to a Scout's report.

Item 3. No aliens. Not non-human, anyway. Assume humans have adapted to worlds, and the range of human thought and experience is as wide and wild as any here on present-day Terra, but no bugs or starfish. Alien life, yes, but none sentient - that anyone knows of.

Item 4. FTL travel, maybe SWN's spike drive or Trav's jump drive. Star sectors laid out in hexes, anyway, with travel times about 1 week per hex per level of drive quality. SWN world tags, bits from Traveller, patrons maybe.

Item 5. Use FU for resolving skill checks, combat, that kind of thing. No fretting about tonnage, equipment, line of sight, range, any of that. Roll with it. Keep the story going.

So there you/I have it. Generic space opera, set in the far future of, oh, say, 5151 AD. A section of known space off by itself, where whatever Empire dominates this region of the galaxy is, as Panshin might put it, a pleasant daydream (maybe even a rift similar to the Flammarion Rift while we're at it.) This is where stuff happens.

Okay, here's a nasty thought

I'm finally getting around to printing out (and reading later) Delta Green, and the bits and glimpses I've had got me thinking.

Project PLUTO was a piece of whacked-out Cold War insanity; a Mach-3 locomotive-sized drone missile with a radioactive exhaust that would have flown at treetop level firing nuclear bombs, the sort of Doomsday device that gave military-industrial contractors wet dreams.

The sheer insanity of the project gave even the generals pause:

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, Pluto's sponsors were having second thoughts about the project. Since the missile would be launched from U.S. territory and had to fly low over America's allies in order to avoid detection on its way to the Soviet Union, some military planners began to wonder if it might not be almost as much a threat to the allies. Even before it began dropping bombs on our enemies Pluto would have deafened, flattened, and irradiated our friends. (The noise level on the ground as Pluto went by overhead was expected to be about 150 decibels; by comparison, the Saturn V rocket, which sent astronauts to the moon, produced 200 decibels at full thrust.) Ruptured eardrums, of course, would have been the least of your problems if you were unlucky enough to be underneath the unshielded reactor when it went by, literally roasting chickens in the barnyard. Pluto had begun to look like something only Goofy could love.

Obviously the damn thing was never built, much less really tested, and the idea has been long abandoned.

But -

What if the "true" story of PLUTO/SLAM is just a cover story for something else?

Something WORSE, maybe?

What could have been the truth that this idea was preferable to?

"Nuttin', Honey"

So I might as usual be late to the damn party (late, hell - it's usually morning before I show up!) but evidently the OSR "community" has a Big Tsimmis going about megadungeons and "empty rooms" and wierd enigmatic shit, as witness here.

To wit:

There was one room with ghosts around a table.  They gave no clues to greater mysteries,  they provided no combat opportunities, they were nothing but a waste of time.  We all just said "Eh, whatever," and moved along.  How pathetic is it that our level of apathy towards the mystery of the dungeon is such that we just ignore a room full of ghosts around a table?

Now, I know damn well the tagline of that blog is "Joe the Lawyer is a known shit-stirrer. He stirred the shit." so maybe this was nothing more than shit-stirring, but - cripes. Would you like some cheese with that whine, sir?

I have a document in The Collection*, said document still being available here, which features NINE FRICKIN' PAGES detailing how to make "empty" rooms interesting. As the author puts it:

The first and most important thing to remember is that empty rooms aren’t. “Empty” refers to the fact that they lack an antagonist, threat, reward, or something ‘unusual’. The purpose of an empty room is to insure the players never know which one of these options they are going to face - all rooms devoid of antagonists should appear empty, so that the players never know when a trap, trick or treasure is hidden in front of them.

 Goddamnit, what are people waiting for, some kind of giant neon sign reading "IMPORTANT ENCOUNTER AREA" or what? A fucking duck to drop from the ceiling? What? (Is this yet another Renfest D&D-ism?)

Secondly - just because something doesn't SEEM to be relevant at the moment doesn't mean it isn't. From the article "Hints for D & D Judges Part 3: The Dungeons" by Joe Fischer (in my favorite non-OSR OSR document, The Best Of Dragon Magazine Volume 1):

Traps don't always have to be harmful. Sometimes it's possible for a trap to also be a treasure, depending on a die roll. A good example of this is a party, upon entering a room in the dungeons, finds a pile of bones in one corner. Discovering nothing else of interest, the leader decides to take the time to reconstruct the skeleton. Once put together, the skeleton can do one of four things; attack, serve the party until destroyed, lead to the nearest unguarded treasure, or lead to his master, who happens to be a high level magic-user. Or the skeleton can do nothing, except take up a lot of time, in which the judge can roll dice for more wandering monsters.

Vi-fucking-lola. Or maybe the DM has it in mind what'll happen if the skeleton is reconstructed in the first place and just rolled dice for show, since the skeleton is The Important Clue which leads the party to the secret stash of magic hidden by the former owner of the bones. If they decided that this was just "an empty room" they'd miss out on something cool.

Thirdly. Sometimes shit is just THERE, you know? How old is the dungeon, much less the campaign world? In Tekumel, you have tsurumyal (aka dungeons) tens of thousands of years old, with stuff down there that is going to be enigmatic just because it's too goddamn old for anyone to recognize. Or there's the example of The Great Stone Face from Greyhawk. Far as I know, Gygax never revealed why it was there, who made it or what it was "for". Similarly "The Jeweled Man", which none of the PCs ever caught, much less figured out.

As someone once said, "Shut up, Mr. Burton! You are not brought upon this world to 'get it'!"

*aka "The Collection Of Free Stuff I've Nabbed Off The Internets And Stashed Away In My RPG Folder And Have Convinced Myself I Will Actually Use Someday"

Probably not that far off the mark

Weird gaming dream from last night - a friend had just been to the FLGS and had picked up not only a 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide, but the most recent edition of D&D (not the Fourth). I picked up the new DMG, which had a dark purple cover with maybe ogres or something on it, and flipped through it - it was nice, glossy, heavy paper, but it was the same illustration as the cover... OVER AND OVER. Nothing else! The friggin' CREDITS and title page didn't even show up until something like page 53. I do believe I made some snarky comment about how much the 1st Ed DMG had covered by page 53, which is about all I remember of that scene.

Still, from the overproduced monstrosities WotC has published... I could see it happening.

My CAS Thing

Since I seem to be not working on it at the moment, and have no idea when I'll get back to it, this is what I've gotten so far for my Clark Ashton Smith/Dying Earth mashup I mentioned previously:

(The "world" is many millennia old; this is a riff off the old idea of "dying civilizations" - the entire race of humanity suffers a sense of mass ennui; everything worthy has already been done, every possible form and statement of art has been explored and abandoned, every frontier has been conquered long ago, and all that remains is a slow collapse into apathy and death - the Dying Earth without the dying Sun, Hyperborea and Zothique crossed with more than a dash of Tekumel-eqsue conservatism and cynicism.)

Mordiggian, The Charnel God, is the deity of the city of Zul-Ba-Sair, a ancient and dark conurbation of black granite and obsidian in the center of The Continent. Mordiggian's temple squats in a square at the city center, a massive truncated pyramid of grey stone, where all the dead of Zul-Ba-Sair are delivered by Mordiggian's silver-masked priests. This temple is the only religious site in the entire city; Mordiggian tolerates no other gods within his domain. Mordiggian's priests regularly travel throughout The Continent, seeking to expand The Charnel God's influence.

To the east of Zul-Ba-Sair is the red marble necropolis of Pavan-Dhul, the domain of the Kingdom of Ghouls, from which the Ghoul King Zhandeb sends his people out to plunder the tombs and crypts of The Continent, especially the ancient city of Yill further to the west of Pavan-Duhl. Unfortunately, Yill is a legendary repository of powerful artifacts, attracting many adventurers, most often to their dismay as they discover the Ghoul Kingdom lays claim to the flesh of all intruding on their domain - which they extend as far as Yill itself.

Yill was once a thriving city hundreds of years ago, but is now desolate, the tall towers empty, the population apparently having committed mass suicide for unknown reasons. The bodies lie, well-preserved, in great mausoleums, on sandstone biers carved with mysterious glyphs which apparently are an appeal against re-animation.

To the South lies the large human city of Eldarvoron, a decadent sandstone mess of sybarites worth little more than a convenient place to sell loot - or to relieve someone of an overabundance of wealth. Trade there is brisk in luxury foods, fine fabrics, gems, slaves and recreational pharmaceuticals. An unusual law requires the wearing of masks during trade - the particulars being very formal and regulated.

The Return of Shelly-Welly

You know, back last time critiqued Shelly Mazzanoble and her columns on Why Johnny Shelly Can't Play 1st Edition, I made a comment about how I hadn't had any exposure to her previous writing so I couldn't really say if her account of the birth of Majeka Magicsmacker was representative of her writing or not.

Mirable dictu, I'm poking around the Internets this afternoon when what should I happen on, but another blog post looking at Shelly's work from a feminist perspective - and, OMG I had no idea of the trail of dead neurons her writing has left.

For one, the "gosh I can do this didn't we all learn something" air of those columns was, apparently, Shelly's standard writing style:

The thing that really bothers me about this is that almost every one of Shelly’s columns seems to follow the same formula, and that always starts with Shelly being adorably and/or humorously insecure about some facet of playing D&D. This then leads into neurotic and sometimes irrational attempts to wrestle with the insecurity in which a humorous result is achieved and a lesson of some sort is said to have been learned. Only it’s not learned, because the same insecurities pop up again and again and again.

Another seems to be that the "clueless ditz Shelly" appears to be her standard personality in her writing, even from over a year ago.

To wit:

Hmm. When did I get wizard’s escape? Oh yeah, I have a shield. I double-checked to make sure this character sheet said “Tabitha Sparkles”. (April 2010, Confessions of an Overwhelmed Duckling)

“When Herteus gets to here,” Chris said, pointing to the square I just passed through, “a large green blob falls from the ceiling and tries to attack”. Hmm. Didn’t I just approve some banner ads that mentioned something about wearing protective headgear? (May 2010, An Overwhelmed Duckling Part 2)

Ten minutes later, I hadn’t finished my cup of peas, but my unaligned female elf thief was in my arsenal. Holy moley, I did it! I made a character using a book and a pencil. (December 2010, Arcana Lang Syne)

With my two gargoyles, remaining minions, and one dragon waiting in the wings, I realized the importance of placement. I was kind of throwing minions out there willy nilly and kept forgetting the gargoyles could make better distance by air than ground. Aeon had a minion and a gargoyle marked. Anwar was bloodied, and I was overlooking opportunity attacks at every corner. Dungeon Masters have a lot to keep track of! (July 2010, Canine Encounters Part 2)

“What if the dragon is susceptible to tickling, and if the adventurers tickle him he laughs so hard he spits out puppies? Unharmed, of course.”

New DM shook his head, then started mumbling things like help me, please make it stop, I don’t think we’re in D&D anymore. (June 2010, Canine Encounters)

Then it hit me. The talking. And not just the “What are you having for dinner tonight” or “Would you rather have eyes in the back of your head or a giant lizard tail” table talking I’m used to. This was relevant talking. Like important to the game talking. This was – gasp! – roleplaying!

I know what you’re thinking: “This is D&D, you big dummy!” But maybe you don’t remember my irrational fear of roleplaying and playing D&D with people who are: 1. Too serious. 2. Jerks. 3. Really good at roleplaying.

This is why I usually create characters that are too sullen or naive or too apathetic to talk to strangers. (October 2010, Last of the Mojitas)

New DM has exacted the ultimate revenge! “He’s on vacation?” I whined. “He’s supposed to be helping me with my encounter!” Technically he did help, as you might remember from last month’s column. But that was a month ago. You can’t expect me to remember everything he said about traps and tactics. I can’t even find my notes. (July 2010, Canine Encounters Part 2)

Um. How... not overwhelming. And not surprising, either. (And, yes, her 4e character is indeed named "Tabitha Sparkles". *gag*)

So what's the conclusion on Shelly from the feminist perspective?

Now do I think that Shelly Mazzanoble is all of these stereotypes? No. I think that Shelly is being used by Wizards to try to broaden their appeal to women. Only their marketing department doesn’t really understand how to speak to women without being off-putting, insulting, and patronizing. So as a result, you get Shelly-the-character’s Fluffy Adventures in D&D is Also For Girls Land.

This pisses me off. It pisses me off because I don’t want the neurotic, fashion-obsessed, passive, please-decide-things-for-me, d&d-has-numbers-and-is-haaaaaard character she portrays herself as to represent me as a female player. In her columns, Shelly frequently refers to herself as Player In Chief. This implies that she is somehow representing players of D&D, which is what I am violently against. I desperately, vehemently, passionately want to be disassociated from pretty much everything Shelly’s columns say about women. Shelly-the-character doesn’t represent me or any of the women I know who play D&D, or even any of the women I know who play roleplaying games that aren’t D&D. Not at all.

For that matter, if Shellykins is actually viewed over there as "Player In Chief", it doesn't at all reflect well on WotC or RenFest D&D, regardless of gender. Not at all well.

Games I just don't get

Ever have this problem? I've got a handful of RPGs that I really, really WANT to like - and yet I can't get my head around them.

Encounter Critical: I grew up in the Seventies. Sid and Marty Krofft shows, Marvel comics, Thundarr The Barbarian. Yet I can't seem to get into the headspace of EC. I can't seem to "get" the fine line where stupid shades over into awesome. Is it thinking like a sugar-hyped 12-year-old? Is it just running with whatever you come up with and not caring if it makes sense? Maybe I'm having trouble being Not Serious enough.

Unknown Armies: A big one with this is what I need to be reading/watching/listening to to get thinking along UA lines. It looks rather like The Dresden Files by way of Reservoir Dogs, but is that where it's coming from? A Laurel K. Hamilton book re-written by Philip K. Dick?

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Now, I'm not stupid. I can figure out attacks or opportunity, I can do my own taxes, I've created more than one character for Rolemaster, I can remember a lot of background stuff for Tekumel. So why the hell do I have so much trouble keeping the various categories straight? Crinos? Lupus? Full moon, partial moon? I look at this stuff and my brain shuts right down and says "Non serviam!". Why?

Glorantha: The rules aspect of Runequest I have no problem with, apart from the unnecessary complexity of hit locations. But the world - where the hell do you begin? Where do I start learning about Glorantha and the Lunars and Pavis? Multiple game systems don't exactly help, either. Where's the Gloranthan equivalent of The World of Greyhawk Folio? I have the same problem with Tribe 8 - where the hell do you start?

GURPS anything: This is a special one, as, being a long-time fan of both The Fantasy Trip and its descendant GURPS, I get the rules and the mechanics. More complicated than I'd like, too many damn nit-picky skills, but on the whole I could cope with it. If it weren't for the books. Something about the art in the books, or the Steve Jackson writing style, the encyclopedic approach to subjects, or the typeface - whatever it is, I just find myself not giving a damn after about five minutes. Spaceship Zero and Stars Without Number get me all antsy to roll up characters and invent situations - GURPS Space just makes me go "Meh." and go looking for my copy of Human Occupied Landfill.

Traveller: Oh, god, Classic Traveller. Oh I love this game. I had/have scads of stuff, from the entire Book collection to classic Adventures like The Kinunir and Leviathan and Expedition To Zhodane. I used to sit up late nights during the summer, watching MTV (back when they actually played music videos) and rolling up Traveller sectors. And then I start thinking about the scale involved and how accurate the worlds are and details about flora & fauna and world histories and it just frigging overwhelms me. I'm trying to relax and think more of worlds in terms of Cliches, like in RISUS, but it's hard to turn around years of attitude.

Damn straight, I'm jumping off that bridge

Oh, the siren call of the jump-on-the-bandwagon-'cause-you're-too-tired-to-post... umm... bandwagon. Or something.

Anyway, here's to having more than one post this month.

I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Druid/Sorcerer (3rd/2nd Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-9

Dexterity-10

Constitution-11

Intelligence-14

Wisdom-13

Charisma-9


Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.


Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.


Primary Class:
Druids gain power not by ruling nature but by being at one with it. They hate the unnatural, including aberrations or undead, and destroy them where possible. Druids receive divine spells from nature, not the gods, and can gain an array of powers as they gain experience, including the ability to take the shapes of animals. The weapons and armor of a druid are restricted by their traditional oaths, not simply training. A druid's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast.


Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)



Wow. I'm not really surprised at my classes - my longest-running PC was a druid, and I've always been partial to spell-slingers - but an Elf? I've had people assert that I'm much more Dwarf than Elf. Or Hobbit, maybe - I've had more than a few times where I'd have rather been at home with a cat on my lap and a good book than doing whatever I was doing at the time. Elf? Huh. What the hell, I get to multi-class.

Let's see - I get 4 Druid orisions and 2 1st Level spells, and 6 0th and 4 1st Level arcane spells. (EDIT: Cripes, what a haul! 3rd edition PCs are so frickin' spoiled!)

Druid: 0:Create Water, Cure Minorx2, Guidance, Light
1:Produce Flame, Charm Animal
Sorcerer: 0:Prestidigitation, Light, Ray of Frost, Resistance x2, Read Magic
1:Magic Missile x2 (AUTO-HIT, baybee!), Disguise Self, Comprehend Languages

Screw Skills & Feats. I ain't bothering.

And I get 120gp to purchase starting equipment. Whee!

Taking the silly seriously

I've been working on a OD&D campaign environment for a few months (a very classic D&D kind of world named Hopsill, with a few unique tweaks) and quite frankly I'm getting burned out on it.

So for some inexplicable reason I get it into my head to fashion a Clark Ashton Smith - meets Dying Earth kind of world; millenia old, decadent as all hell, lots of ancient relics with portentous names, everyone cynical & rogueish, lots of weird cultures, picaresque up the wahzoo. Yoink stuff directly from CAS and play with it, such as Mordiggian the Charnel God and his dog-men priest things fighting a war against the Kingdom of Ghouls over rights to the recently dead. No elves, dwarves, or hobbits; throw out the majority of typical modern fantasy monsters in favor of a more sword & sorcery assortment like semi-sentient ape-things, giant spiders/snakes/scorpions, oozing tentacled elder horrors and like that there. Maybe describe it as Geoff McKinney's Carcosa without the overtly sci-fi aspects and less potential squick, maybe.

But what system can I run this creation with? OD&D? Naw, not the right feel, I think, even though Carcosa is written for it. But it has to be rules-light; I don't want game mechanics overriding setting material, so not Rolemonster or AD&D or Runequest or such. The idea is to make the game part as transparent as possible so I'm required to spend time on inventing cool situations and NPCs.

I've taken a look at Dead Simple Fantasy; not quite sure about it for some reason. Maybe because it has skills, which I dislike. Microlite74 and Microlite20 are out for the same reason as OD&D. I love Tunnels & Trolls, but that seems too lighthearted for this.

So I decided, Gobbs help me, to use Dinky Dungeons.

Oh, I can just hear the invective now. "What? Dinky freakin' Dungeons? When you said T&T was too lighthearted? What the flipping farquar are you thinking, Pere?"

Well, I mean - follow my logic here: it's 90% a serious, complete FRPG system. Drop Fuzzy Winkers (and Dwarves and Elves), and you have an ultra-ultra light set of rules for which it's a mere bag of shells to write stuff for. The full rules are only 22-some-odd teeny-tiny pages total - probably would fit on one side of a 3x5 index card, with the other side for a bestiary and maybe a list of magic treasures. Or maybe a PocketMod, even. No major reworking of the spell system is necessary, as you only have a handful of spells and those are so generic they'd fit in in almost any fantasy universe: Charm, Harm (Fire), Illusion, Light. Rename Bards as "Holy Men" or some such, make their spells Prayers, and drop Shadowwalk in favor of "Healing Prayer" (heals 1d6 damage, costs 2 SP). You could keep track of an entire adventuring party if need be on one sheet of paper. And 3d6 is the absolute most you ever need to roll. How could I not use it? How could I not take this game with a silly name seriously?

I mean, it's not like I'm considering converting World of Synnibarr to RISUS. Then again... hmmm... Talking Raccoon With Bazooka (4) and Cyborg Guy (3) against Flying Bear With Laser Eyes [5]... hmmmmmmmmmmm...

The "O' Stands for "Organic"

Okay, I may just be talking out my ass here, but In My Humble Opinion I think I've realized what the OSR is all about, what defines what it is.

PREMISE: The OSR is organic.

There are, I think, three aspects to an organic quality in old-school RPG'ing: Achievement, Neoteny, and Serendipity.

What do I mean by "organic"? Well, it's like growing tomatoes in your garden.

ACHIEVEMENT: You've planted this tiny seed in the ground and it's grown into a vine bursting with tomatoes. Tomatoes YOU have grown. No one else. It's a sense of accomplishment, and, of course, you have to regale friends and co-workers with stories of how delicious those tomatoes are, all the more for the fact that you grew them. And maybe give some away. Delicious tomatoes! Try 'em!

Achievement comes from both writing stuff (which is partly why OSR blogs are full of "LOOKIE WHAT I DID!") on the DM side, and in nurturing a character on the player's side. OD&D characters can die like flies, which is no biggie since you just take forty-five seconds and roll up "a relative" and have him wander out of the forest into the midst of the party and go from there. But when you do get that fragile Veteran or Medium or Acolyte up to Second Level, there's a sense of having accomplished something.

It's like Zak pointed out awhile back:

That "Riddles In The Dark" effect is why I like the Old School approach to plot and character and epicness and awesomeness.

Which is: you start with none of those things. You start by sucking. You start by sneaking. You start with one hit point. You start with no plot. You start anonymous and meaningless and arbitrary. You have three torches and a short sword and whatever armor you can afford and no feats or skills in a dot on a hexmap hitting another dot on a hexmap.

From the DM side, think about all the stuff that grew (organically!) out of OD&D and those three lil' books - not only the D&D gaming worlds like Greyhawk and Blackmoor and Arduin but entire other universes like Tekumel. Out of something that looks like typewritten notes in the back of someone's folder! That's achievement.

NEOTENY: Playfulness, creativity, innovation. You design your own tomato garden; nobody else has one exactly the same, even if you're working out of a book from the library. That plot is unique and what you do with it is your choice. Just tomatoes? Or maybe lettuce as well? Stick some peas in there somewhere? Nobody's going to come along and slap your wrist and say "NO THAT IS NOT THE RIGHT WAY".

OD&D was like that. Shared worlds? Hell, there were barely shared rules. Every DM ran into something he had to rule on, and the accumulation of individual house-rulings made the D&D campaign over here entirely different than the campaign over there. Over here robots and machine guns, over there pure fantasy. Over here, PCs kicking Odin and Loki's asses; over there, rugged Conan-esque swords & sorcery. Even the rules themselves mutated; use the "to hit" tables as written or come up with your own alternative? Do I want to be limited to +5 as the best enchantment on armor or weapons? Here's my "spell points" system so I can get rid of that Vancian crap. There's a detailed set of magic research rules (from The Dragon #5, reprinted in Best Of The Dragon #1) which I still marvel over, particularly the "The Sorcerer's Memorial Enchanting In Distress Rules". I have no idea if I'd use them in a campaign; they look severely broken. But I'm sure someone did. And they weren't "broken" for his world.

SERENDIPITY: Oh boy. Oh boy, oh boy. There are quite a few tomatoes on that vine. Didn't expect that. Can 'em, cook 'em, freeze 'em, hand them out to people on the street. "HERE, HAVE SOME DAMN TOMATOES!" The family starts complaining about the proliferation of gazpacho and marinara sauce and tomato salad. I just freakin' planted some damn tomato seeds. Who knew?

On the gaming side, us OSR types sure do love our random tables. Whee! Tables! Monster encounter tables, monster building tables, "stuff in a wizard's workshop" tables, random NPC tables, tables tables tables. Give me a bunch of tables and a couple appropriate dice and I'm a heppy, heppy "kat".

So are we really a bunch of morons whose only defense for a Vampire with a cow's head and three red dragons in a 10x10 foot room is "I ROLLED IT ON THE TABLE!"? No, please.

The tables are there for inspiration, which is why most of them shouldn't be used at a game, but before. (Which is a problem I have, as evidently others do, with the was-going-to-be-great DCC RPG. Although, you could just roll up a list of random results before the game and consult it when a spell goes wrong, I guess.) The dice are there to show you something you might not have thought of on your own, due to personal bias, gaps in experience or whatever. It's like opening a lil' Christmas present - what will I get?

There's also the quality of the unknown to Serendipity - the thing of "Hey, I didn't know it could do that!" q.v. the first time a new player runs into a Wand Of Wonder or a Bag of Beans or and Amulet of The Planes - or, better yet, one of those sweet artifacts from Eldritch Wizardry. Whee, a +5 Holy Defender sword! Only, why does everyone else's magic items keep getting drained...? And why are the hirelings so pissed at me?

OD&D was highly organic on all three counts. 3d6, in order, your M-U starts out with 1d4 hit points and a rusty dagger, 1st level Clerics get no freakin' spell. But keep on with it and pretty soon the Sorcerer is throwing Fireballs and the Cleric's doing Raise Dead. Achievement. Neoteny? Hell, you're barely given a set of rules, for Kord's sake! DM or player, you're going to have to innovate to get this thing working properly. Serendipity? What the hell can I do with this character that I rolled up? What's that magic sword that I found do, exactly? Hell, one of the very first articles about D&D, 'way back in Strategic Review #1, was Gygax's solo random dungeon generator. I also think of Paul Montgomery Crabaugh's "random monster" tables from Dragon #10 - which, he points out, are presented specifically to keep a sense of mystery about monsters for players who know 'way too much about the rules.

First Edition AD&D was organic - it kept the limits on beginning characters, but started the ossification of the rules, ideally in the name of convention games but possibly because someone at TSR - Gygax, whoever, - thought they needed a better rein on what was being called "D&D". But Serendipity - yowza! Just take a look at the back of the Dungeon Master's Guide - random tables out the wazhoo, including a reprinting of the solo dungeon generator. And they gave you this shit in a core book! Man!

Second Edition I don't have a lot of knowledge about, but it seemed to be less on the organic quality - you had a lot more options, but the rules seem to have ossified further. This was also the golden age of shared settings - Dark Sun, Planescape, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Mystara, pseudo-Greyhawk, Ravenloft. Which were great and all, but someone else was doing the universe-creating. And (as far as I know) all the cool tables were dropped from the back of the DMG.

Third Edition - even less organic, what with forgetting about recommendations for building your own world as opposed to gaming in one of their pre-made ones like XCrawl, Eberron, or Forgotten Realms V2.0. Achievement, meh - creating a character became a lot more complex all of a sudden, meaning instakill poisons and energy drains got nerfed. And the magic item list lost its cool artifacts in favor of "official" artifacts, with a list of "official" powers and drawbacks. And no more random tables in the back of the DMG.

Renfest D&D - hell, it's nigh impossible to die because that has been decided as "Not Fun", everyone is awesome from the start so Achievement becomes just BECOMING EVEN MORE AWESOME, the magic items are in the Player's Handbook for crissake, we've even disposed of wandering monsters, and there aren't any more secrets or surprises because that might inhibit taking full tactical advantage of one's situation. Lists of "magic items I want to get next level"! JESUS! You might still have the Neoteny, though that's pretty much it. And with an "official" character generator, that's that much less opportunity to write your own rules; give characters healing potions instead of healing surges, limit powers, that kind of thing.

So there you go. "That is the theory that I have, and which is mine, and what it is too."