Category: Web Excerpt

“Struggle is part of fictional conflict.” (Mikael Persson)

The struggle and change of your protagonist is what makes a story a story. Many writers get caught up in giving their readers details of crisis when the true draw of a story, the thing we as readers want to know, is the metamorphosis of the character.

Conflict Versus Crisis

The difference is that crisis is usually a circumstantial event or action, such as a car accident, a robbery, a break-up in a relationship. Conflict is the choices or struggles the character has to make, sometimes because of crisis. Conflict happens inside the character. Dennis Jerz, Associate Professor of English at Seton Hill University does an excellent job of defining and simplifying conflict versus crisis on his weblog.

The two biggest mistakes new authors make are weaving in too many conflicts or focusing too much on crisis. Well-written novels and essays strike a balance of crisis and conflict. The perfect balance will evoke empathy for your characters from your reader.

When an author truly encompasses good conflict, the reader is left thinking about the story for days after putting down the book; left wondering what would happen next.

These are the Basic Types of Conflict in a Story:

• Inner Conflict: The character is struggling within themselves, with what they want or what they do
• Relational Conflict: The character is struggling with someone else
• Social Conflict: The character is struggling with a group
• Survival Conflict: The character is struggling with fatality
• Situational Conflict: The character is struggling with a situation—in this case, the character’s problems involve the interests, problems, ambitions and situations of others and their affect on the character.

Other struggles may be found in your character versus nature or your character versus God or religion.

Different genres can focus on different types of conflict or incorporate several. It makes sense to realize that romance is going to have Relational Conflict and a thriller is going to be Situational.

Conflict can also be described as internal and external. However you want to think of conflict, the struggle and growth are the main infrastructure of fiction. Without conflict, there is no story. Conflict is the suspense and the excitement that makes your story move from the beginning to the climax, the turning point. The resolution.

Simply put, the main character in a good story has to evolve, has to struggle, has to make choices to effectively transition or change. They may or may not succeed, depending on your direction and imagination. But if your character isn’t evolving, then your story isn’t going anywhere either.

— How to Write Conflict – Elizabeth Richards

Alas, that blog is gone, and the Internet Archive does not have a copy of this blogpost. I have copied the entire text here for posterity.

This is too good not to post the full text.

Conan the Barbarian is my go-to Christmas movie, and some new things really stood out to me at this year’s viewing.

I want to talk about this moment and this guy.

This is the story of Red Hair.

Red Hair isn’t much present—and that, quite different—in the latest script draft I can find, which is the John Milius third….

The final film is another story: he’s huge.

It’s Red Hair who chains Conan to the Wheel of Pain, who turns him into a pitfighter, who educates him and uses him as breeding stock, and who finally, unexpectedly, sets him free.

This is a man who matters enormously in Conan’s life, and in the story.

For Conan, who makes no decisions in any part of this sequence, this part of the film is a series of barely-connected experiences. For Red Hair, it’s a complete narrative arc in a chunk of the picture that you could legitimately argue is a standalone short film about him.

So who is Red Hair?

To understand that, you first have to understand where he comes from, which requires revisiting the raiding scene at the film’s opening. The raid on Conan’s village is carried out by three different kinds of people.

The first kind are the cultists of Set, led by Thulsa Doom, whose flunkies are Rexor (big mustache) and Thorgrim (big hammer). These guys are easily distinguished because they are a) in charge b) all about snakes. They put snakes on everything: armor, helmets, shields, weapons.

The second kind of people at the raid are Picts. These are the guys with painted faces and/or tattooed bodies, as seen in the background here and in closeup in the form of Arnold’s friend and fellow bodybuilder Franco Columbu as a Pictish scout.

The third kind are Vanir. These are Red Hair’s people. They’re a northern people, like the Cimmerians, but they wear furs where the Cimmerians wear skins, and fight on horseback while Cimmerians fight afoot.

Note that the Picts and the Vanir are doing their own thing, style-wise. They’re not all about snakes. Meaning they’re not in Thulsa Doom’s cult.

This makes sense. Remember, “two years ago it was just another snake cult.” So in Conan’s boyhood, Thulsa Doom’s set must have been even smaller.

Which raises the obvious question: what are the Picts and the Vanir even doing there?

The Wizard’s voiceover says that no one knows why the raiders came, but later in the picture Thulsa Doom tells Conan why: in his youth, he was mad for steel, and fought to get it.

Given his then-paltry followers, to fight for steel, Thulsa Doom would have needed allies. And to get allies, he had to give them something. We don’t know what he gave the Picts, but the Vanir got slaves: the children of Conan’s village.

Red Hair isn’t in on the raiding of Conan’s village. He’s just a boy himself, a few years older than Conan. The first time we see him is as part of the small group of Vanir riding off with the slaves afterward.

He goes with them all the way to their destination. Note that Red Hair is the only one without a helmet. Milius wants you to see that mop of hair. He’s marking that character.

Digression: marking a character is a film technique that isn’t talked about much but is used a lot; and feels like it’s become almost obligatory in the last couple of decades, if there’s a chance of the audience not recognizing a returning character who is important.

For example, if the character is one of a number of similar-looking characters/creatures, or is played by multiple actors because the story makes a time jump. Think of Lurtz’s big palmprint makeup in Fellowship of the Ring (2001) or Amleth’s necklace in The Northman (2022).

The first time we get a really good look at Red Hair, and see his face, he’s securing the chains binding twelve-year-old Conan to the Wheel of Pain that Conan is going to push for at least a good ten years. Maybe more.

There’s a reason both kids get closeups. They’ll meet again.

But in the intervening decade plus, this is Conan’s office.

The movie never gets into what the Wheel of Pain is actually for, but it’s clearly a mill, probably for a salt mine; in closer shots there’s some scattered white powder around the base, and if you look to the bottom right of the frame there are some additional facilities.

And the mine is not a very productive one, because over the course of Conan’s tenure slaves reassigned, sold off, or deceased don’t get replaced. By the end of his time there Conan is the only one pushing it.

The garrison is drawn down, too: by the end of its run it’s literally one guard and Conan, which sounds like a premise for a bizarre sitcom.

This is when Red Hair returns.

Again, that’s what the big bushy mop of red hair is for: telling you this is the same guy. He greets Conan’s one guard with respect, but also warmth. Then he leads Conan away, and the wheel stops. Probably forever.

Why Red Hair matters: long involvement with the Wheel of Pain and evident closeness to its personnel suggest that the facility is part of his family concern.

Red Hair isn’t buying Conan; he already owns him, and he’s repurposing a small asset, part of a failed larger asset.

This is how Conan’s new career as a pitfighter begins: either Conan’s a winner, or he’s one less mouth to feed. (Red Hair evidently doesn’t much care which, as he doesn’t even bother explaining to Conan that Conan is about to be in a deathfight.)

But Conan wins.

And wins.

And keeps winning.

“In time, his victories could not easily be counted.”

Red Hair is making bank. Conan is, surprisingly, a profitable asset. So what do?

Red Hair chooses to reinvest in his asset. Conan goes east to learn from the warmasters.

This is a sensible choice. Conan is a great pitfighter. If he learns to fight with battlefield weapons, he’s got some new career options. Maybe a gladiator, fighting for big bucks in actual arenas. Maybe even a soldier, to win real gains for Red Hair’s family and people.

Conan surprises again. He impresses the warmasters. The instructor corrects him, slaps him around a bit, sure… and nut-kicks the other guy. It’s a hard school, but—as a watching Red Hair sees—Conan is a hard worker and a good student.

And Conan learns well.

Very, very well.

So Red Hair invests further. He takes his biggest step yet.

He teaches Conan to read.

Why teach a pitfighter, a gladiator, even a soldier to read? Why give him access to “the poetry of Kitai, the philosophy of Sung?”

It shows Red Hair has started to dream big. He realizes Conan isn’t just a fighter. He’s potentially an officer. A captain. Maybe even a general.

Red Hair lives in a martial society, and he has found himself, quite by chance, the manager of a remarkable martial talent. (One he is breeding “to the finest stock,” probably [because] all of this talent development far from home is expensive and Conan’s stud fees are supporting them.)

But then Conan meets the Turanian Khan, and Red Hair—who has been making money off of Conan and reinvesting that money back into him—suddenly decides to sacrifice any hope of profit, to write entirely Conan off his balance sheet, and to send Conan off to make his own fortune.

Why does a shrewd investor like Red Hair do that?

The answer lies in the scene everybody remembers in Conan the Barbarian. Because Red Hair is in it, and it’s important that he is.

So let’s talk about the khan scene.

People forget the first line in that scene, delivered by the khan: “My fear is that my sons will never understand me.” Or treat it like it’s a dubbed-in joke.

It is not a joke. It is not a bit of goofy ADR.

That line is the reason the scene exists.

The khan announces his fear that his sons will never understand him. He mentions some names, evidently a couple of sites of victory: “We won again!”

Everyone cheers.

“This is good,” says the khan. “But what is best in life?”

One of the younger men answers, “The open steppe. A fleet horse. Falcons at your wrist. And the wind in your hair.”

The Khan bellows: “Wrong!!!! Conan, what is best in life?”

Whereupon Conan answers: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”

“That is good!” cries the Khan.

The talk about that scene tends to focus on Conan’s answer. Here’s what that overlooks:

Why does the scene open with the Khan worrying his sons will never understand him?

Because that’s how you know the guy who gives the wrong answer is the khan’s son.

And it is not on its face a terrible answer! Imagine doing that! Falconing on the open steppe from horseback, wind in your hair? That is actually pretty freakin’ boss!

But that is not a khan’s answer.

That is a nobleman’s answer.

And here’s the thing: Red Hair is, in his rough society, a nobleman.

I bet the khan’s son’s idea of the good life sounded pretty reasonable to him. It sounds pretty good to me. But if you are a khan, this is wrong.

Khans do not make war so that they may live. They live so that they can make war. Hearing of victories is not great in the way that winning the victories for yourself and being there at the victory is great.

So consider how this scene unfolds from Red Hair’s perspective.

Red Hair has gained an audience with the Turanian khan. (This is a feat!) Conan is seated higher than everyone else, in a central position. He’s on display.

Red Hair is pretty clearly looking to impress the Turanian khan with Conan.

Red Hair’s goal in this is probably either 1) an alliance, with Conan leading Vanir troops in alliance with Turanians, or 2) selling Conan’s services or Conan himself to the khan. And so far, things are looking good.

But then the khan worries his son doesn’t understand him. To test his fear, he asks a khan’s question of his son, and gets a nobleman’s answer. The khan is disappointed.

So he asks a slave.

Asked a khan’s question, Conan gives a khan’s answer.

If you’re Red Hair, this poses a bit of a problem: what do you do when you realize that you’re holding as a slave a man who is, by the dictates of your society, your unquestioned better?

This is not about anti-slavery enlightenment, with Red Hair seeing himself and Conan as moral equals. Red Hair is a man who lives in a society of power, hierarchy, and honor. Conan thinks about these things the way the most powerful men of this society think. And Red Hair does not.

There is absolutely no way that Red Hair can keep such a man as Conan as a slave. He couldn’t look himself in the mirror, if he had one.

More: it’s not just about how Red Hair sees himself. There are real practical problems here.

Red Hair is keeping a natural king as a pet, and the only reason he can get away with it is that the king hasn’t realized that he is a king…yet.

If Conan realizes he is a king in waiting, Red Hair is dead.

If Red Hair sets Conan up with the planned Turanian gig, the khan’s son is certainly not going to be pleased to have around a man who understands his father better than he does.

If not murdered, Conan and Red Hair could be swept up in a Turanian civil war that they caused.

If Red Hair tries to kill Conan himself—and good luck with that; he’s totally physically overmatched—he’s looking at either his own death at Conan’s hands, or incurring the ire of a khan who now likes Conan better than he likes Red Hair.

If Red Hair frees Conan and keeps him in company, the best-case scenario is that Red Hair will in short order become a man following his own former slave.

So Red Hair does the only thing he can do: he strips Conan of his pit-fighter’s headdress, cuts his chain, and boots him out into the night.

Given sudden freedom, Conan doesn’t know why. But Red Hair does, and he trusts that a man who is obviously a misplaced king will find his own way.

As he does.

Look how much that character accomplishes, how important he is, how many meaningful choices he makes, and how much meat there is to talk about when it comes to this guy.

In Conan the Barbarian, the sum of Red Hair’s spoken dialogue comes to less than twenty words.

— @hradzka – Twitter

Author’s emphases.

Make very wounded creatures run away in fear for their life. Most do not feel like they need to fight to their death. Have enemies get killed by traps mid combat and make the players freak out that there are others in the area that they don’t know about. Raise the tension!!!

NARRATE. NARRATE. NARRATE. Combat is SOO BORING when it consists of: Attack. Roll to hit. Damage. Move on. NARRATE WHAT THE CHARACTERS ARE DOING. DESCRIBE YOUR ACTIONS. Make silly sound effects, crank it to 11. It’s more memorable, dynamic, and fun every single time.

Attackers only actually “miss” if they roll a 1. Instead attacks that don’t beat AC are dodged, blocked, ricocheted, bounce of armor, literally anything but the word “miss.” Players know their attack mattered at least narratively and they don’t look like fools for trying.

The objective of combat should almost never be to just defeat the opposition. Maybe you’re trying to rescue a hostage, maybe you’re trying to get away with a piece of treasure, maybe you’re trying to buy time for an evacuation. A fight for the sake of a fight is boring.

— @MagicMissilePod – Twitter

The body count in D&D really bums me out, especially when it comes to my players (my kids).

The kill count of an adventurer who makes it to level 20 is only one seen by a small number of machine gun operators in modern times. Soldiers who kill in war have high incidence of PTSD and other mental illness. I have a hard time getting away from that idea that this “Robocop 2”-level bodycount really makes the game bleak and sad.

What if…

• most enemies stopped attacking after half damage, and tried to reach safety instead
• when you take half your hit points worth of damage you get a level of exhaustion
• when you come back from zero hit points you have a level of exhaustion
• most opponents swoon or cower after 3/4 damage
• if you have killed a person, on a long rest you had to make a flat d20 roll and beat 10+ the number of people you killed or your rest doesn’t clear any exhaustion

Does that just ruin D&D or could it still be fun?

— Enworld Forums

A few weeks ago, we talked about Stamina points as a resource players can spend. Today, we’re going to look at a different method, namely burning hit points for effect in more heroic games.

One of the oldest topics of D&D is what Hit Points actually represent, and while it’s inconsistent and imperfect, it’s generally accepted that it’s a vague mix of health, luck, endurance, luck and general good fortune.

Under these rules, characters can elect to sacrifice hit points to obtain rerolls and other benefits. By definition this will mainly benefit more experienced characters but it serves to give players another, mechanical, escape valve in a bad situation and it presents an interesting decision. While losing a hit point is almost always preferable to losing a saving throw, it will still leave you worn down by the end of the adventure.

These all reflect things that can come about through extreme efforts, whether pushing yourself physically or presenting a supreme effort of will.

Only one option from the below list can be selected in any given combat round. DM’s discretion if they must be spent before or after actions are resolved (in the case of rerolls)Please note that you could assign higher costs to some items. I elected to keep it simple.

By spending 1 hit point, a player may do any of the following:

• Make an additional melee attack.
• Move an additional 20% of their movement rate.
• Leave a combat without taking a “free swing” from the enemy.
• Reroll a failed saving throw.
• Take a hit for a comrade in the same melee (or adjacent if missile fire)
• Reroll a failed thief skill.
• Act before any other characters in a combat round (and simultaneously with characters that magically act first)
• Negate the effects of surprise for 1 combat round.
• Inflict 2 additional damage with a successful hit (melee or ranged).
• Reroll the damage dice or healing dice for a spell.
• Reroll any skill or proficiency check.
• Get one clue from the GM regarding a puzzle or situation.
• Reroll a reaction roll.
• Negate the effect of a critical hit.

Too radical? Not radical enough? Other things that should go on the list? Let me know in the comments!

— Hit Points As a Resource? – The Daily OSR

Alas, that blog is gone, and the Internet Archive does not have a copy of this blogpost. I have copied the entire text here for posterity.

As I read more classics I find that different mythologies seem to present entirely different worlds. The world of the Iliad, for example, is so different in certain ways from that of the Irish Fiona, that the systems which run these mythologies would have to be in some ways intrinsically different. For example, the handling of magic. In the Irish World of the Fiona, magic is imbued into the very living substance of the universe, and the question is how easily one can migrate between our world and the Otherworld (tir na nog). In the Iliad, however, there is no sense of humans transporting between worlds, but rather it is the Gods who step down from on high and invade ours. Rare is the hero who enters the Otherworld in Greek Myth. Common is he who does so in the Celtic Mythos.

Were I to create a world for running an “Iliad” game, that world would have Gods of non-infinite powers, who act directly in the game, who can be wounded by mortals (such as Diomedes, who causes Aphrodite to bleed the famous Ichor of the Gods), and who scheme and connive their way throughout the entire fabric of the story. In fact it is a story about the competitions and victories of the Gods, and almost incidentally about the Heroes. This world would require strong rules for handling God-like Powers, and for it to be reasonably sporting, the Player Characters would pretty much need to be Heroes and the children of the Gods. Conversely, you could play it low level, in the same world, where the Player Characters come within approximate range of the Heroes, get occasionally swept up (dangerously so, I should think) in their Quests, and perhaps return to the village either a richer or wiser or stronger somehow. Either way, it would be an interesting world, but the rules would have to support it.

On the other hand, when we look at such fairy tales as Kil Arthur, the son of the King of Erin, I think we’d find that a different set of rules would be required. Or if not the rules themselves, at least the parameters of those rules in which our game would operate. It could certainly be played at almost any level, as what influence the Gods may have in these stories, there is little obvious to tell. An impulse to go here, a ship perhaps sent on the wind to a magical island, or the appearance of a giant over the edge of a hill…none of which seem named to occur by the dictate of any particular deity as in the Greek mythos. No, rather it is the Character who has chanced to enter, perhaps, the Otherworld, and knowingly or otherwise, has entered upon some quest. The mood is mysterious and vague and clouded, unlike the Greeks, whose tales were starkly brilliant in their divine clarity. We know each of the Gods and all of their motives, arguments, stratagems, and follies with the Greeks.

I wonder if anyone here has attempted to put these kinds of worlds to the test in their RPGs, and how did you go about GMing for it, and how did it work out?

— The Iliad as Source Material – Literary RPG Society of Westchester

Alas, that forum is gone, and the Internet Archive does not have a copy of this post. I have copied the entire text here for posterity.

One of the interesting effects of enforcing encumbrance is that you realize how useful porters and linkboys can be. Hireling loyalty is a fun mini-game in and of itself.

— Dragonfoot Forums

Many fairy tales revolve around castles and courts. These places are filled with wonder and awe, horror and debauchery. They are both simultaneously filled with dark and light. Capricious nobles, strange and incomprehensible to us born outside their world, are ready to take advantage of us, to be overtaken by us, to destroy us and to be destroyed, to give us blessings and curses, to reward treasure, take treasure, and have treasure taken. There are secret places in here to explore, to hide in. Ways in, ways out. People in there of all kinds, different factions with different interests, all revolving around the mystery and mysticism of the castle.

These are dungeons, but less dirty, grim, and abandoned, more poetic, mystical, strange. In a dungeon, cobwebs fill hallways and the dead shamble around. This can happen in castles as well, but in fey castles or gothics, you have animated suits of armor, strange servants, weird guests.

Let’s look at two examples: Bluebeard’s Castle (fairy tale) and Dracula’s Castle (gothic).

Bluebeard’s Castle is a place of horror and mysticism. It is beautiful, and the castle’s owner, Bluebeard, is charismatic, attractive, groping. He invites you in, barrs one secret room, and gives you keys to the other. You stumble from fairy tale room into fairy tale room, dancing with strange servants, surviving strange riddles and puzzles. But there is that secret room, that dark room, that strange room with the potential treasure and horrible curse. In all ways, this is a dungeon for fey.

Dracula’s Castle is much the same. Surrounded by direwolves and spectres and will-o’-wisps, filled with vampiric brides and hiding peasants trying to escape their damnation. Locked doors that hide darker secrets that must be explored so that you know you can leave. A haunting, stalking, loping master of the castle, a threat coming through the walls or into your room.

And yes, keep in mind, there are rooms to rest in within the castles. Places to regain your faculties. Or, places in which even weirder encounters can happen. Dracula’s brides invade and you must fend them off through wit until their husband returns to calm them. Bluebeard returns and you must hide from him, keep it secret that you’ve been in that Dark Room, survive his hunting of you when he finds out.

Yes, castles are dungeons, but with more active threats. Intelligent dangers that know you are there and want to interact with you.

Strahd’s Castle is a dungeon, but an Archfey, an Elven Prince, the Winter Court can all have a similar one.

Whenever I see fey adventures, I always see forests that, glades this. No one ever really makes adventures around the castles. But it is here that the fairy tale is the most powerful, and where the gothic can be wedded to it.

It is this wedding that I think has a lot of creative potential for dungeons and modules in the future. A castle that takes both fey and gothic elements to make something. Like the 5E Raven Queen, who is at once a god, an archfey, and a gothic horror, who resides in a Castle of Memories. This is the perfect dungeon place. Invade and plunder the memories of countless tragedies to learn secrets to defeating enemies, or finding rare treasure. Hide from the Raven Queen and her elven servants, and avoid the gloom-beasts that manifest here too. Every room can have a new puzzle or encounter or secret with ease. Other factions can be in here, perhaps adventurers or elves or those seeking audience with the Raven Queen

And let’s talk audiences. For a game about adventure, these are often glanced over. But an audience with a powerful gothic-fey (or a normal fey or a gothic creature) can be a great puzzle. You must at once dodge around their ego, have wit-duels with other members of courts, gain allies to help you, present treasures or plan how to escape, potentially have a crazy battle, potentially hoodwink or trick whoever you are having an audience with—there’s lots of potential here.

Now with this all positioned, I guess the next step is to actually make a castle-dungeon adventure. I’ll have to sew on that though.

— Castles are the Dungeons for the Fey and the Gothic – Hmmm Marquis

Author’s emphases.

Alas, that blog is gone, and the Internet Archive does not have a copy of this blogpost. I have copied the entire blogpost text here for posterity.

…An increased importance of leveling up comes from the campaign itself being unrewarding. When gaining levels and ability becomes the center of playing the game, it’s a substitute for lackluster events and stakes.

— Enworld Forums

(O)D&D’s Cleric makes sense for (O)D&D, but it makes increasingly less sense outside of the euromedieval milieu. What if you’ve got a much more immanent and plural divine in your game world than in the euromedieval model and what if there really isn’t much of a good/evil, law/chaos thing in your campaign?

Wandering Shinto-Doctor Class

…

Special Abilities:

• Can “cast” Cleric spells as per Cleric.
• At level two, choose or seek out a supernatural ally (think: patron).

…

Authority (replaces Turning):

• Roll d20 + number of spells available yet to cast today – 4
• Call on the authority of your allies and attempt to argue/plead/reason with one or more outsider/abdead/demon/oni/yokai as if you and it were on the same level. Discourse occurs in the pre-language spoken by all such creatures and is not properly telepathic or audible. Discourse is with the leader or leaders of the group (combine HD if more than one). If the roll results in a number equal to or greater than the total HD of the opposing side, they will “settle down,” depart, or simply sit down, frustrated. Bonus points for making an argument the GM considers would be persuasive to the opposing side. Takes a d3+1 rounds to complete conversation. No limit on uses. Lesser beings will likely follow the lead of their more powerful cohort, but not always. Can always be used to communicate with these kinds of creatures, if not sway them….

— Shinto-Doctor-Mushi-Shi Clerics for OD&D and B/X – games with others

Low level D&D play is about struggling against the [ever-present] specter of Death in a dark, lonely dungeon filled with monsters.

High level D&D play is about the monsters trying to survive the PCs.

High level play should be about your PCs having fun and going nuts with their power. Too many DMs and system designers don’t get it and don’t like it, and try to find ways to bring PCs back down to the relative power of beginner characters. Players, on the other hand, have an instinctive desire to make their characters ever more wildly powerful.

— Low level vs High level chars – Farooq’s Gaming Blog

Thank the gods for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, else I could not have linked to the source blogpost.

Training as a Jedi is often a series of brief bouts of working apprenticeship. Everything your master can tell you, she can tell you in a few days. What she can show you, she can show you in weeks. It’s only when you have to put the lessons into context in a real situation that you truly start to learn. A new apprentice Jedi often spends the longest with the first teacher, learning and adventuring until he or she can feel the call of the Force without aid. The mentor then suggests some other Jedi that the student might seek out that can impart different lessons, and new understanding of the Force. On the way to the next master, the student suffers through a series of interesting events, better putting training to practice. And new teachers demand their own quests before imparting their wisdom. Life as a Jedi is the life of a questing knight, forever in motion. A Jedi does not crave adventure, knowing that adventure will find her, regardless.

— Alternate Clone Wars, Part 3 – System sans Setting

This comes from a series of posts where the blogger reimagines the Star Wars universe based upon the premise “nothing is canon except the original three movies.” I like this premise, and the entire series it inspired.

What’s your favourite kind of encounter in a roleplaying game?

One or two word answers only.

— @StoutStoatPress – Twitter

Fellow travellers: lost merchants, questing knights, itinerant wizards, philosopher-vagrants, lonely pilgrims.

Philosopher-vagrants are a whole thing I invented for Lendal so I could add more of these.

— @JellyMuppet – Twitter

Worried about your #dnd players over-optimizing? Be sure to reward them for breaking the mold.

Players work within the framework DMs give them. If they never get to use their actor feat, utility spells, or noncombat abilities, don’t be surprised when they build combat champions!

— @justicearman – Twitter

…So, imagine this:

Whatever iteration of the game you are playing, the 1st level Magic-User spells are the entire syllabus of known spells.

Fly? You wish. Fireball? Who can shoot exploding balls of fire; this is magic, sonny, not comic-books.

Of course, everyone knows that there are, in fact, other spells out there. Every first-year sorcerer has read that bit of Laconius where he mentions the Miraculous Mantle of Obfuscation, which renders the user invisible, and the intemperate uses to which he put it in relation to the Witches’ Coven of Outreterre Or known the frustration of studying that antique blabber-mouth Quinquarine, who, over the course of several volumes, promises to reveal the formula obscurely referred to as The Perambulatory Revelator of One-and-All, only to have no copies of the final volume survive the bonfires of the Irenian Orthodoxists. Or stared at the great tapestry at Biancule, depicting the turning of the invasion of the Mauvrian Hordes, and wondered what incantation allowed the fabled archimagus Villondro to enmesh the Mauvrians in gigantic spider-webs?

So, of course there are more than just these twelve spells. That’s why you are crawling down a hole in the ground with a party of cerebrally-challenged bravos, cut-purses, and roustabouts, facing death a hundred times over in the form of goblins, traps, and pneumonia, instead of staying in a nice cosy manse somewhere, casting Charm Person over and over for a hundred crowns a pop. Because there are more spells out there.

And whoever finds even one of them, is going to be star among the thaumaturgical-set. Seriously, people are going to be hitting you up right, left, and center for just a peek at your grimoire; the grimoire that contains the only known copy of Ariste’s Vertical Realignment in the world (even if some slack-witted copyist wrote it down as Levitation. But, hey, that error kept the thing lost all these centuries ’til you found it, so be nice to the guy). You now become famous as “So-and-So the Levitator” and anybody who needs something vertically-realigned has to come to you; either to pay for the privilege or to try and steal your spell (recall, in this context, the bit in The Dying Earth where Turjan crashes the chambers of Prince Kandive)….

— Gedankenexperiment: Vancian Rarity – The Wheel of Samsara

The 5e class description of Monks says

“Small walled cloisters dot the landscapes of the worlds of D&D, tiny refuges from the flow of ordinary life, where time seems to stand still. The monks who live there seek personal perfection through contemplation and rigorous training. Many entered the monastery as children, sent to live there when their parents died, when food couldn’t be found to support them, or in return for some kindness that the monks had performed for their families….”

When you actually look at official D&D settings, this very clearly seems not to be true for most of them. Classes like wizards, clerics and druids tend to be incorporated directly into the fabric of their settings. Magic schools and organizations, churches and temples of various gods, and druidic circles are all present and accounted for, providing easy hooks for players of those classes to directly attach their characters to core elements of the setting.

But monasteries that produce D&D style monks? They’re basically nonexistent. If a setting has some ersatz-[East Asia] equivalent, there might be some suggestion that many monks hail from there, but this notion of monasteries that “dot the landscapes of the worlds of D&D” is plainly not true. If there is a monastery, it is far more likely to be a western-style religious institution that produces clerics than a shaolin-style haven for martial arts mastery….

It all seems like a pretty major disconnect to me between the supposed official lore on monks that they come from these monasteries dotting the landscape, and the reality that basically no creators of official D&D content for most settings has bothered to incorporate them in any way.

— RPG.net Forums

Author’s emphasis. I could not have said it better, myself.

Today our armies are parallel societies or total institutions. They take in individual recruits, separate them from their prior friends and relations, and teach them everything they will need while they are isolated from their civilian associates. They re-organize these recruits into a new hierarchy of units for both everyday and tactical purposes (people in the same platoon both live and fight together, at least in the field). Armies like the army of Classical Athens were nothing like this and yet they fought….

Soldiers in Classical Greece were expected to teach themselves or seek out whatever training would be useful. Cities which wanted to be skilled at war encouraged pastimes such as archery or choral dancing to prepare their men for war. The closest thing to this in our societies are the Scouting movement…, physical education and free lunches in schools, all of which were meant to create a population of healthy and skilled recruits. Except in Sparta, there is no clear evidence for mandatory peacetime training of infantry before 338 BCE (although armies could train together once they were assembled with their arms). We have a number of examples in Thucydides and Herodotus of armies and navies which refused training or work which their commander wished them to perform.

Greek cities were small and recruited their troops by subdivisions such as the tribes of Athens or messes of Sparta. Soldiers in one of these groups knew each other before they joined the army. It would have been impossible for most cities to break up these ties, since they had only a few hundred or a few thousand adult male citizens. In the Iliad, enemies like Glaucus and Diomedes sometimes know each other, and since many Greek wars were between great families not great cities, this may not have been unknown in real warfare.

We [today] have elaborate systems of professional military education modelled after universities and public schools with examinations and grades and certifications. Commanders of ancient armies learned in their families or through apprenticeship with more experienced commanders. They sought out idiosyncratic personal training and education from all kinds of sources. Among other things, this let groups which were good at war like the Spartans keep their practical wisdom for themselves and only share it with people who took time to befriend them. Anyone [today] can go to a leadership course for senior NCOs or a staff college by meeting meritocratic criteria, but someone like Iphicrates had to like you or decide you were useful before he took you under his wing. If you were in the position to decide who had access to secret knowledge, you had social power.

…Classical Greek armies grew out of Classical Greek societies, rather than creating a new parallel society with new rules, social ties, and systems of reward. Good generals worked with this rather than trying to turn these armies into something more like the Roman army of Augustus or whining that their solders were self-governing citizens not mute pawns from a board game….

— Ancient Greek Armies Were Part of Ancient Greek Society – Book and Sword

During the Fourteenth Century [C.E.] an area of approximately 1,050 square kilometers just south of the forest of Fontainebleau near Paris had twelve forts, 28 fortified churches, five towers, four fortified manor houses, and six full-fledged castles, for a total of 55 fortified places, or roughly one for every 19 square kilometers, so that few people were more than six kilometers from a place of refuge.

— Al Nofi’s CIC, Issue #137 – Strategy Page

…Ah, but what if you’ve got to kill a dragon and there’re no 8th-level warriors in the party and you’re totally willing to sacrifice yourself heroically? Good question! I’m doing away with the rules for subduing a dragon (duh) and instead instituting something I like to call “Going for the Kill!” One PC of the party can draw the dragon’s attention and ire and get all close-and-personal…as opposed to dancing around hoping to hit the jackpot roll while avoiding dragon breath. When you “Go for the Kill!” you receive a +5 bonus to your attack roll….

Going for the kill is not all wine and roses, however. By (pretty much) challenging the dragon to single-combat and getting in close, you will be subjected to dragon fire. That means no “rollover save” to avoid the flames…the PC isn’t trying to avoid the flames, she’s trying to deliver a death blow. The mechanic works like this: you must announce you’re “going for the kill” before rolling initiative. If you lose initiative, or if you miss your attack roll, then your character is bacon…or, at least, mortally wounded (I believe I mentioned before a little resource called “grit?” It allows characters to fight on after being mortally wounded, which means you can see a Beowulf or Sir Orrin type combat, where the hero still slays the dragon despite being slain himself). It’s tough…but that’s the price you pay to be a hero.

— Chop! Dragon Breath (Part 4) – B/X BLACKRAZOR

Author’s emphases.

The dice only exist to give players a chance to fail at something. The dice do not allow you to do things, you do that yourself when you declare your action. Rolling dice only gives a chance of hindering the players, not helping.

D&D is at its core, a dice game in which you declare your action and then roll dice to see if you fail. If you don’t, then you continue onward to gain power and glory.

— The Dice are Not Your Friend – Farooq’s Gaming Blog

Author’s emphasis. Alas, that blog is gone, and the Internet Archive does not have a copy of it.