N is For Nepotism

While reading C J Sansom's book, Sovereign, the nobles have a few 'hanger ons' with them that contribute little. Where I live, in good old Chicago, where we have Cook County and Illinois where we actually have a phrase used to describe how things are done, "Pay to Play", this might fall under the heading of Nepotism.

This is an old tradition that even has some roots in the church. I understand the Borgia might have had a little something to do with it eh

In a fantasy setting, especially a fantasy city, this would still probably be a fairly common occurrence. And yet... it could easily put the entire city in danger. Imagine a guard captain that's incompetent but knows some nobles. When the giants break through his gate, perhaps it's the players who get the blame despite the fact that the captain was no where to be found?

In the mage's guild, perhaps the player's who've found ancient and subtle arcane writings and items are skipped over for promotion by the son of the head of the mage's guild, despite the fact that he can't even cat a magic missile.

Nepotism can lead to all sorts of interesting bits where the players might not have to worry about the potential incompetents, but the allies and families of said incompetents. After all, in the movie Casino, it's not the fool who has multiple wins  occur simultaneously that becomes a thorn in Robert Dinero's character's side, but rather, that man's family who begin to investigate into Robert Dinero's qualifications.

The enemy takes many shapes and forms and corruption is just another of them.

M is For Memento Mori

Latin, Remember that you must die.

I've been in a bit of a gloomy mood as of late. One of my friends, Brandon Kukta, passed of undiagnosed leukemia. He went quick. Like in a day. He'd been having some headaches, but hell, most people I know have those and due to his previous experience, Brandon hated doctors so whenever he didn't have to go see them, he didn't.

I played with B for years, well over a decade. It's strange thinking that when we first started gaming his daughter was in grade school and now she's almost off to college. I wish I had an 'origin' story of when Brandon and I started playing together but it's been so long that I couldn't even tell you what game system it was.

Brandon had an interesting life. Like several gamers I know, he was in the military. Those in the military that play Dungeons and Dragons, often note that "it's something to do" that's relatively trouble free. He served in a couple of hot spots and was proud of his service to the country even though of late he wasn't impressed with the direction the country's been heading.

When we gamed, it could be one of a variety of Brandon persona's at the table.

There was the always enthusiastic Brandon. He enjoyed gaming. He enjoyed painting. He enjoyed the BS around the table and the fact that most of us were long time friends, meant that he enjoyed the verbal assaults and defenses against each other. Brandon being one of the few hardcore Republicans at the table meant that he endured some of the most of the barbs about politics but he was always firm that the last Bush wasn't a real Republican and had some other ideas on that field that I won't go into here. The important thing here though, is that his enjoyment of gaming could be contagious and he could make other people eager to play.

There was the half-assed Brandon. Despite his love of trying out new games, Brandon was never into the details of the gaming itself. I remember several games of GURPS Traveller where we, the players, were running the game sysem aspect of it because he didn't know how the rules worked. He didn't like to get caught up in the grind of the systems. Hell, even recently with some 4e games he was running, he had one of the players take the role of the monsters. He wasn't worried about the player setting up the monsters to fail, he was just more interesting in getting that aspect of the game over.

There was the campaign killer Brandon. Sometimes B would get bored of a game. Sometimes quick. In the Village of Hommlet, he burned down half the town because he wasn't satisfied with the reward a merchant gave us. In another, he killed several wanderers and caused the party to become enrolled in conflict with the townsfolk. In many other games, because he played to enjoy the game, he'd often drop and start characters because he was bored with them. Several of us who ran the game knew how to handle it with a quick out of character discussion but others ran with it and were always surprised at the end results.

There was Brandon the role player. He would sometimes find a character and concept he enjoyed, usually in a longer running campaign where we were all pretty serious about it, and run with it, even when it was sometimes wacky. The character I remember the most, probably because he got a lot of play and Brandon did an entertaining job of running him, was the Black Tongue. This half-orc barbarian was one of, if not the only character Brandon ran in the Savage Tide campaign in 3rd edition. He made it all the way to the end.

The funny thing about this guy was that he was always worshipping different creatures and demons, depending on who we meet. He was always looking for his next big score. He was called the black tongue because he had a demon tooth that made his tongue grow black.

In recent years, Brandon and another of my friends, Tom, opened up Black Sun Games. It wasn't that neither of them hated Games Plus, but that awesome store is in Mount Prospect, and well, perhaps people haven't noticed that the price of gas never really went back down for its massive rises. In addition, when they were scouting out locations, Black Sun Games was essentially the only thing in town. The Games Workshop in the Village Crossing Center hadn't opened up. The Gamer's Paradise chain had closed up. It looked like it would fill some of the void in Chicago proper.

Brandon took that opportunity and made a LOT of friends. Both the Wake and the Funeral had numerous people there that B got to know through the game scene. These people had grown to know Brandon because he made them welcome at the store. He was also doing painting and playing Eve and other bits at the store and encouraging people to come on in and buy something. He had no problem doing special orders so even if it wasn't in stock they usually got it within a day or two thanks to being in Chicago. It also provided him with the opportunity to do conventions like Little Wars and Adeptacon as a vendor.

During this time period, Brandon became a painting machine. He whipped out many a soldier for Flames of War and owned a ton of material from Forge World for the Nurgle faction of the Chaos Space Marines. He did up several pieces for demo-models for the store to display the contents of the new Warhammer Fantasy boxed set, as well as other bits and pieces here and there. He could be funny with the painting. While I probably paid more attention to certain details of the figures, B could be adamant on some things being done right, like cameo on his Flames of War figures.

Looking at the old memento mori, Brandon's gaming and his life, what I knew of it, because he was a multi-faceted individual and this is only a blog post, will be my remembrance of death and it will be my "reminder in midst of frivolity or pleasure that life's higher purposes or temporal shortness must temper joy in earthly delights."

B, the guys all miss you and you old 80's music. It's not the same listening to the Smiths or the Banshees or Joy Division without you there to tell us what it was like on the scene. We miss you're jabs at the current administration. We miss your commentaries at the movies. We miss hanging out. We may not have always agreed on everything, but you were a hell of a friend and that's far more than most bring to the gaming table.

L is For Law

I AM THE LAW

Fifteen years in the academy


He was like no cadet they'd ever seen

A man so hard, his veins bleed ice

And when he speaks he never says it twice

They call him Judge, his last name is Dredd

So break the law, and you wind up dead

Truth and justice are what he's fighting for

Judge Dredd the man, he is the law

DROKK IT!



With gun and bike he rules the streets

And every perp he meets will taste defeat

Not even Death can overcome his might

Cause Dredd and Anderson, they won the fight

When the Sov's started the Apocalypse war

Mega-City was bombed to the floor

Dredd resisted, and the judges fought back

Crushed the Sov's with their counter-attack

DROKK IT!



Respect the badge - he earned it with his blood

Fear the gun - your sentence may be death because...

Chorus



I AM THE LAW!

And you won't fuck around no more - I AM THE LAW

I judge the rich, I judge the poor - I AM THE LAW

Commit a crime I'll lock the door - I AM THE LAW

Because in Mega-City... I AM THE LAW



In the cursed earth where mutants dwell

There is no law, just a living hell

Anarchy and chaos as the blood runs red

But this would change if it was up to Dredd

The book of law is the bible to him

And any crime committed is a sin

He keeps the peace with his law-giver

Judge, jury, and executioner

DROKK IT!



CRIME - The ultimate sin

Your iso-cube is waiting when he brings you in

LAW - It's what he stands for

Crime's his only enemy and he's going to war



CRIME - The ultimate sin

Your ISO-cube is waiting when he brings you in

LAW - It's what he stands for

Crime's his only enemy and he's going to war



Thank you Anthrax for that little bit of homage to Judge Dread.

In games, its often useful to know some of the basics of how the justice system works. In the 3.5 era, Atlas Games published Crime and Punishment. A nice hardcover the provided 3.5 mechanics for a variety of things that might come up in dealing with lawbreakers.

In books I'm reading at the moment, C. J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake stars in five books. I've just received book 4, Revelation, from good old Amazon.com. Some of the things that make Matthew a good lawyer, the trust others put in him, his dodged determination to discover the truth of things, his innate curiosity,his relatively corrupt free methodology of handing issues, and his friendship with others who reinforce those good things about him, make him an individual that others seek out time and time again.

When I was a younger man, Bard Games, a company that produced the Atlantis Trilogy, had three handbooks for use with AD&D; The Complete Spellcaster, the Complete Alchemist, and the Compleat Adventurer. That last book had a class called the hunter, and under that, several variants including the bounty hunter.

This individual was one that had its own material including how much to charge, how to capture your prey, and other neat little bits. It wasn't necessarily the first time I had seen such a use, as one of the Best of Dragon magazines had a NPC version, but that Hunter version by Bard Games was neat.

And further in terms of hunting down the villains of a setting, the Clone Wars is filled with various Bounty Hunters. They make a quick way of throwing out a group of individuals that can toss a monkey wrench into things if a situation gets out of control.

The Law is something that most players in a hard core fantasy setting aren't necessarily going to worry about, but on the other hand, it's not something that needs to be the end if they are captured. For example, what about a campaign variant around the Dirty Dozen? Here the characters are captured and 'executed' and can either work for the state that captured them, or be sent to their death for real. It's a trick used by both Raymond Feist in his Demon War series, and also used in the Warhammer setting for the trilogy Blackhearts.

The Law should be something that even as its worst, can be turned into another adventure.

K is For Key

Keys are a nice little treasure that you can throw into an adventure at almost any time and if not assigned when initially created, can be used at a more appropriate time.

Keys are great for a lot of the standards ranging from jail cells, handcuffs, chains, doors, chests, and in the fantasy settings, things like gates.

Keys can vary in size and type. The key for a storm giant's treasury might be slightly different than the keys to a halflings private stash of pipe weed.

In a city with a good thieves guild, there might even be specialist who can forge keys. These keys may come in a few different types. For a quick switch out, the duplicate key may only look superficially like the real key. It's a distraction so that no one knows that the real key has been yanked. In the latter case, an actual duplicate key is made that no one else necessarily knows about.

Well, you know, except for the poor guy who made that special duplicate key right?

Some of the older dungeon adventurers don't necessarily use a standard 'key' though. Sometimes there were slots that required a certain weapon to be used, other times a set of phrases to unlock something.

When dealing out the contents of a person's pouch to that rogue's latest acquisition, don't forget the keys!

J is For Jail

C. J. Sansom in Soverign, has the main character, Matthew Shardlake, wind up going to the tower of London.

For all intents and purposes, this is a confession house crossed with a jail. When you do in, you generally do not come out unless the country (the king), has what he wants out of you or at least has what he thinsk he wants out of you.

The jail should be everything that the players would like to avoid under more pleasant circumstances.

1. Cold and damp.

2. Expensive. Imagine that you get gruel and to get any food or clothes, you have to bribe the guards a little bit extra every time you'd like something outside of the gruel.

3. Dangerous. The guards may put you in with people who don't necessarily care about you or your causes or why you're in there because they have their whole slew of issues that's private to them that they are dealing with.

4. A bad place to die. Disease, rats, and other terrors lurk around every corner. There's no guarantee that you'll be getting out of this one.

In short, jail should be a place where if the players think they have a good change of going, that they should probably rethink what they're doing.

I Is For Inn

One of my favorite reference books, The Encylopedia of the Middle Ages has a nice short entry for Inns and Taverns. "Until around the eleventh century, most travelers relied on the hospitality of private homes or monastaries to provide food and lodging. the increase in travel, particularly by merchants, made it impractical to rely on private dwellings, but it gave rise to the concept of "commercial" hospitality in the form of inns and taverns."

"The type of lodging a traveler could expect depending upon where he was going. In France, and Italy, a traveller could find inns or hostels in major cities, and smaller inns in outlying reigions. In the Arab countries, travelers could rest at a caravansary, which usually consisted of buildings surrounding a large courtyard. Less-traveled countries such as England and Spain offered fewer and more expensive choices, although In Engaldn travelers could get a drink and sometimes a simple meal, at an ale house.

"As travel increased, so did the number and quality of inns and taverns. Some enterprising individuals turned their homes into inns; others leased the inns from owners. Inkeepers eventually formed their own guild, which afforded a certain degree of quality control. Each room in these lodgins might hold several beds, and each bed in turn might hold several guests. Inns in university towns often rented rooms to students by the year. Inns usually had one or two paid employees beside the innkeper.

"Taverns also became more common, offering villagers, merchants, and students a place to eat and drink in simle but convivial surroundings. Already in the Middle ages merchants found a taverns a convenient meeting place to conduct their business."

In the fantasy settings that games like Dungeons and Dragons take place, the idea of a meeting place remains as true as ever. It's a bit of a cliche that the adventurers meet in a tavern, that there is a patron in the darker corners, that there are 'job postings' in the tavern wall that require specialized skills of the players. Even games like Warhammer though, aren't above using a tavern for a bit of quick fun as one of the most interesting short adventurers relies on a timeline of events and can play out different each time depending on the actions of the characters.

Inns are a place that can be customized depending upon the food and alcohol stylings, as well as any possible entertaininment that may be provided. Depending on where its located and which part of town, they may be reknown for places of gathering different types of information.

On longer trips, the Inn may transform, as it does in Warhammer, into a Waystation or sorts, a fortited tavern will walls and soldiers that has a higher cost, but is designed to keep the roads open.

As long as they're not overused or the players are seeking them out under their own power, the Inns and taverns of the setting should say something about the setting itself.

H is For History

When reading C. J. Snasom's Soverign, one of the things that comes into question is how history is formed and perceived by the people living today. There are older books that cover events and laws that become... shall we say, inconveinent and are purged from the archieves. But this isn't a universal purge as a few places that are out of the way still have this knowledge.

But not only that, but there are still some older people who recall the actual events.

Imagine a setting though, where there are elves, dwarves, and other long lived, if not immortal creatures. This rewriting of history doesn't necessarily become impossible, but it becomes more tangled. After all, it's not like people don't lie, even to themselves of older events or aren't above trying to make themselves look good, as a certain mage in The First Law series of books showed.

But outside of trying to recapture the truth of the past, either for the sake of knowing the truth or because there is vital information that is needed, history can have tremendous weight. After all, H is also for Holiday and it's not like someone just wakes up one day and announces something is now going to be celebrated. That's not impossible after all as Sienfield and Festivus proved but for the most part, holidays are build or corrupted from older events and then tied into more modern events to align themselves more popularly with todays ideas.

History can also be found in the very buildings that a city is build of. The materials and stylings of the old town may be different than the new town which may be different than the noble ward which may be different than the merchant ward and so on. History can also be found in the different styles of painting, music, dress and even outward attitudes.

When looking at your fantasy city, think about what events have given the city weight. Which events has the city hidden? Which events have become wide spread and celebrated? Which events does the city vow will never happen again? Which events has the city at one time vowed would never happen again but vigilance has long since cooled?