sword & sorcery

Starting at high Hit Points

One peculiar thing about Dungeons & Dragons, and especially in the older editions, is that characters at first and second level are extremely fragile because they have very little hit points and even a single hit by a pretty minor foe can easily lead to instant death, even if the character had been uninjured. A common reason I’ve seen people give for this is the idea of “Zero to Hero”, where you start as an absolute nobody with no skill at all and have to work your way up to become someone. But at some closer examination, that is not really the case. First level fighters are already elite warriors who are standing well above all regular soldiers, mercenaries, bandits, and other professional full-time warriors, many of which have been at that job for years or decades. Except for commanders, all soldiers in B/X or AD&D are simply “Normal Men” or “0 level men-at-atms”. A first level fighter has a better chance to hit, better saving throws, and also has a Constitution score that can get him additional hit points. You’re not a nobody, you’re already starting as someone who has come farther than all regular people will ever get.

As characters go from 1st to 2nd level, their average hit points double, and depending on how your dice fell, they might even tripple. Yet enemies are still dealing pretty much the same damage, so that is a huge jump in your odds to survive. In some recent games, like Barbarians of Lemuria, Dragon Age, and Atlantis, hit points for starting characters are handled quite differently. You start at a pretty decent number but then increase your maximum number of hit points only at a relatively modest pace. I wonder how that would change D&D?

One simple idea would be to reduce the type of hit die by one step for each class and then give all characters a number of bonus hit points equal to twice the maximum hit die result. An AD&D thief would start with 8+1d4 hp (9-12) instead of 1d6 hp (1-6) and a figher with 16+1d8 hp (17-24) instead of 1d10 hp (1-10). If you leave the amount of damage dealt by enemies unchanged this should change gameplay at lower levels quite significantly. Ignoring healing spells and potions (which 1st level parties would have almost no access to), staying power would increase about an average of four times. As you go to higher levels, that initial boost becomes increasingly less significant and you probably wouldn’t notice the difference between 9d10 hp (average 50) and 9d8+16 hp (average 56). If survival at low levels becomes significantly easier and groups can take on much larger numbers of enemies, but you got almost no difference at higher levels, it also quite likely would change the perception of how high-level play becomes either easier or harder.

However, that would mean that 1st level characters are able to deal with much larger numbers of low-level monsters at once, and I am not sure if I’d want them to be that heroic. One solution would be to also give all the monsters bonus hit points. Perhaps equal to the maximum result of one hit die (8). That would mean one on one fights are unlikely to end at the first hit and usually take two or three to win. This would be closer to what the games I mentioned above are doing.

I’d really like to try that out and see what happens.

The Ancient Lands as a Frontier Setting

I’ve been interested in making my own campaign setting for probably 10 years or so, originally starting with the idea of detailing the elven realms of Eaerlann and Illefarn from the Forgotten Realms as they would have been 4,000 years in the past. I had been playing a Neverwinter Nights campaign online, which was set around the High Forest and involved some 100 regular players. I also became one of the assistant DMs and main map builder for the forest areas. My own character belonged to a gang of elven and half-elven rangers and druids (which had a bit of a nonviolent feud with another group of elven wizards and clerics that was much more LG high elves compared to our CN scoundrels), and since then it’s always been my goal to make a true wilderness campaign that deals entirely with druids, rangers, spirits, and monsters.

And I have to admit, in all these years I never really found an answer to the question how one would actually pull that off well. Now I feel that I’ve reached the conclusion that the actual answer is: You don’t.

The wilderness does offer plenty of challenges and obstacles to overcome, but it’s really poorly equipped to provide the players with goals. The wilderness is something you move through, but neither the source of adventures nor the destination. There might be ways to actually pull it off, but for the kinds of heroic activities I have in mind, each adventure needs to start in the frontier. It would be very difficult to have an ocean campaign without ports or a desert campaign without a single oasis. No matter how interesting your wilderness is, it does not create adventures. People create adventures. Anything that happens in the wilderness isn’t really of any concern to the players until it starts to affect people. The forest is on fire? The whole valley drowned by a flood? Move out of the way, crisis averted, threat overcome. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I’ve been of the opinion that good settings are not defined by their environment, any locations, or their history, but entirely by the people who currently inhabit it and the way they interact. You could call it the Mass Effect paradigm, as that’s usually the example I give as a perfect execution of this principle. You don’t know anything about the planets you visit and almost no specifics about their history, but you pretty soon figure out what makes the people tick and that leads to the best videogame RPGs I’ve ever come across. It’s obvious in hindsight, but if this is what interests and fascinates me the most about settings then it obviously should also be part of the approach to adventures. If the world is about the people, then the adventures also need to be about people. And the next closest place to the wilderness that has good numbers of people is the frontier.

Continue reading “The Ancient Lands as a Frontier Setting”

Reworking the Ancient Lands: The Red River

One of the major changes I made when I shuffled around some parts of the Ancient Lands earlier this month, was the completely removal of the grass covered plains of Senkand on both sides of the Red River, which formed the border between the more classic fantasy style North and the Southeast Asian inspired South.. One reason was that it broke up the single continous, world-spanning forest I had in mind for the setting, but I also learned that you usually don’t have any large dry regions on the eastern coasts of continents. (Arabia and Texas being exceptions because both Persia and the Southern United States are somehow interfering with oceanic winds going from the equator to the pole, as they would have to go over land instead of following the coast.) I wasn’t really sure what to do with this region instead, and in a way that supports the style and the themes of the setting. But I think I got it now.

The Grand Canyon seems like a perfect match for the kind of environment I need. It’s huge. It’s impressive. It’s exotic looking. And it also is majestic while still being quite desolate and quiet. At least it looks like that in pictures. Not quite sure if would be actually possible to have vast forest growing right up to the canyons edges, but I don’t think there are a lot of people who would know that either. And it looks cool. So what? It also makes for a nice homeland for the Ruyaki dark elves, for which I still didn’t have a lot of ideas other than somehow basing them on the Redoran from Morrowind.

Another change I decided to make is to drop the idea of an overland route from the Falden lands on the Inner Sea to the Eylahen lands in the North. Since it would cut directly through the giant, mystical, and unexplored forest of the northern lands, it wouldn’t really seem that giant, mystical, and unexplored anymore. Not a big loss, since I didn’t rally have any ideas what to do with this huge major highway stright through pretty much blank space on the map.

This means that all contact between the Falden and the Eylahen would now have to happen by taking ships all the way around the ocean coast. It also means that the Kaas tribes would only have any contact with the rest of the Ancient Lands through the Eylahen territories, which is an interesting new development for me. One could reasonably say that I am way overthinking things here and putting way too much detail into things nobody will ever notice, but I really like it when I have such high degrees of consistency. And it also happens to help me come up with ideas. Working with complete freedom is quite hard. Once you have several geographic and cultural limitations in place, good ideas actually come a lot easier, as you can build on something that is already there. Where there used to be a white void on the map, staring up and you and waiting for you to do something, the map now is starting to ask specific questions that it wants you to answer. And that’s usually when I come up with my best ideas.

Ancient Lands: Factions

As much attention is usually given to races, cities, and countries when it comes to fantasy settings, I think the most important thing that has a much bigger impact on the overall feel and dynamics of the world are the power groups and other factions that inhabit it. You rarely have dealings with a race or a country, and these don’t really have any shared goals as a whole. In a work about the politics and wars of kings and other rulers, you kind of have things happen between countries, but in practice it’s almost all happening between members of different courts, which really are just one of many types of factions. There are many classic types of generic organizations in fantasy, such as thieves guilds, wizard colleges, great churches, lorekeepers/spies, or medieval megacorporations (Forgotten Realms has a lot of those.) For the Ancient Lands, many of these standard factions don’t really work, as it’s a bronze age setting primarily inhabited by tribal people living in remote villages in the wilds. Can’t really have a thieves guild in a 200 people village or a continent spanning state church when everyone is worshiping the spirits of the land they live on. Coming up with ideas for factions that do work in such a setting was a bit challenging at first and I had been creating a number of groups that I’ve since discarded again. But taking a count of the groups I already have, I realized that this is already quite extensive and easily enough for a setting of this scale.

Druids

Probably as close as you can get to a real good guys faction. The Druids are a lose and informal association of hundreds of shamans north of the Inner Sea. Most of them belong to the elven Falden, but the influence of the group reaches to all the neighboring tribes, which includes the Eylahen, the northern and southern Skeyn, the human Vandren, and even some Brana kaas and Takari dark elves. The goal of the Druids is to fight the spread of sorcery. Sorcery is a very potent form of magic that can defy the normal rules of nature, but its use sickens the lands and all creatures that inhabit it. To the druids that price is much too high for all the great wonders sorcerers can create, and they are doing everything in their power to prevent the sorcerous arts from spreading and if possible end the practice of all sorcery in the Ancient Lands forever. While in some regions almost all shamans are affiliated with the Druids, their actual numbers are relatively low. But all of them can call upon all the warriors of their clans if they feel the need is great enough to risk the protection of their villages, which makes them potentially one of the greatest powers in the Ancient Lands. But usually most druids simply exchange information with each other and only deal with sorcery that directly threatens their homes. However, when the threat seems great, they often call together druids from neighboring clans to face the danger together, before it grows too big to be able to destroy them one by one.

Sorcerers

Sorcerers are even fewer in numbers than the Druids and have even much less organization or shared goals. Most of the time it’s just a single sorcerer and his apprentices working entirely alone, with perhaps some friendly but distant contact with other sorcerers to compare their work. As most people fear them and the Druids have a strong presence in many regions, sorcerers are usually very secretive, living in isolation from the rest of society or practicing their art in secret. Few people are able to tell the difference between a sorcerer and a reclusive, but ordinary witch, as long as they keep the destructive effects from becoming too apparent. Sorcerers are not inherently evil, but all of them are highly ambitious and at least to some degree reckless, and very well aware that many people would prefer to see them dead if they could get an opportunity. Fear of their sorcerous powers is what keeps most common people from turning against them, and most sorcerers cultivate a reputation of being very dangerous opponents.

While sorcerers usually live in secret or are feared enough to become untouchable, the elven Neshanen of Senkand are one of the very few tribes where sorcerers have some form of acceptance and often wield considerable respect and power. Almost all sorcerers come from noble families and are frequently involved in local politics and and members of courts. Unsurprisingly, the Neshanen have a somewhat doubious reputation among the other tribes, but are also among the most educated and sophisticated people who produce many of the finest goods in the Ancient Lands. And since some of that knowledge comes from the work of sorcerers, the common Neshanen are much more willing to accept their presence in their towns and cities. Continue reading “Ancient Lands: Factions”

Ancient Lands: The Sakaya

The Sakaya are a group of people from many different tribes who live countless small villages in the Vestanen Mountains, regarding all of each others as equals, regardless of their birth. They are lead by mystics who preserve and spread the teachings of their founders, which emphazise equality, humility, self-sufficiency, and excelling at ones talents. They have no nobles and no slaves and also do not worship any gods or spirits, but they make regular sacrifices to the local spirits as tribute for beeing allowed to live and work on their land.

Though the Sakaya regard each other as equals and all their villages and monasteries are forbidden from fighting among themselves, each community has its own warriors to defend against raiders and stealing of their land by other clans. Some communities consists entirely of warriors known as Sakaya-kera, who were founded to come to the aid of villages under attack by superior foes. The Sakaya-kera often take work as mercenaries for other clans, as fighting is their profession and it is not appropriate for them to seek other work when their talents are not needed by the Sakaya. Sixty years ago a commander brought many of these groups together to fight not for some foreign lord, but for their own glory and to capture wealth for the Sakaya. Since then the Sakaya-kera have become one of the strongest and most feared armies in the Ancient Lands. Usually they are spread out as individual companies doing mercenary work, but will often come together as groups of many hundreds or thousands for a raid against a wealthy city before dispersing again. If the High Commander sends out a call, he can gather an army that rivals the troops of the Mayaka king.

The Sakaya are intended as one of the major power groups in the Ancient Lands. The original order plays only a relatively minor role, being mostly confined to small villages and monasteries in the Vestanen Mountains, where they live relatively isolated from the rest of the world. The Sakaya-kera on the other hand are one of the big military powerhouses. They have a headquarter and a commander, but just like the villages and monasteries, each company is highly autonomous and follows the teachings of the founders as they see fit. Since they often recruit new members wherever they find promising candidates and usually have no mystics among their numbers, many Sakaya-kera only know the principles of doing what you do best and not submitting to the rule of any nobles or priests. The other villages and monasteries, including their own warriors, don’t approve of the Sakaya-keras plundering of rich towns and cities, and few of the loot ever actually makes it back to them. But as there is no single ruler who could rein in the High Commander, they are not able to do anything about it. Since most people outside the Vestanen Mountains only have encounters with Sakaya-kera, the Sakaya as a whole have a rather low reputation throughout the Ancient Lands and often don’t use their traditional armor and symbols when visiting other lands.

Anathema

Naming things in a fictional world is a terrible and most unenjoyable task. It’s bad enough when you do personal names and place names, but when it comes to more abstract things like organizations or types of creatures, finding a name that is reasonably acceptible (it’s never good) can take a very long time. I think I wanted to have a kind of creature similar to the abominations from Dragon Age from a very early point in working on the Ancient Lands, over 4 years ago. In the meanwhile, I added more ideas from other creatures, like folding the roles of both lichs and vampires into this new creation, and taking some elements from the Inspired from Eberron and the Eternal from Spears of the Dawn. But when it came to naming these things, nothing ever came close to fitting. But now I sat down and clicked my way through a thesaurus (they are actually good for something) and came on this wonderful word:

Anathema

A word that probably most people interested in fantasy have come across once or twice. Probably always refering to something blasphemous and unholy, and just the sound of it sounds ominous, even if you don’t know what it means. I had to look it up myself and it turns out to be ancient Greek meaning “offering”. (In this case, the a- at the beginning is not a prefix meaning anti.) However, in early Christianity it was used in the sense of “offered to the devil” or “devoted to evil” and referred to an early form of excommunication. Even though I made some efforts to weed out technical and religious terms that don’t really make sense in the world of the Ancient Lands, which is very different from a standard western-christian universe, anathema seems to be a word that still works.

So what is an anathema exactly? You might recognize some of these guys. That’s what you have to expect.

Anathema are mortals who have become possessed by a demon from the Underworld, their own spirit consumed in the process and all their memories, knowledge, and much of their personalty absorbed into the demons mind. While the mortals mind still exist in some way, all the ideals, values, and desires it once had become irrelevant as the demons original personalty dominates the mind of the anathema. It usually has very little interest in the good of the mortals clan or family, but may often retain some affection to people who were close to it in its previous life. Most anathema are greed, desire, or sloth demons and almost immediately set out to some ambitious plan to sate their craving. Usually with very little reagrd to those around it, but often enough cunning to keep their new nature a secret. At least for the time being. Demons can possess any mortal whose body and spirit have been corrupted by demonic magic and all anathema are very dangerous creatures. But the most terrible ones are those created from sorcerers who willingly summoned a demon to join with it and gain immortality and great magical powers. Many anathema note that their new nature is very different from what the sorcerer expected it to be, but at that point whatever the mortal once wanted is longer of any real relevance. The demons desire to visit and explore the physical world overrides any plans the sorcerer might have had and they never feel any remorse or despair about their new nature.

So even though there are no Gods and no church in the Ancient Lands and not even true afterlives, anathema are still creatures that have turned away from mortal life and society and now exist entirely to pursue their demonic craving. They are “devoted to evil” and in the case of sorcerers “offered themselves to demons”. And they also “excommunicated” themselves from all mortal communites and their spirit will not join the clan shrine to give strength and courage to future generations. So the name fits in both its literal and proverbial meaning and it also sounds cool and ominous. What more can you want for a big bad monster?