Sky man (for Lab Lord)

Sky men are a proud and high-spirited people: they will not bear ill-usage. They are fond of adventures, emigration, and capable of undertaking the most dangerous enterprises.

They are divided into two castes: the shunned and ridiculed ground-walkers and the “true” sky men – those who have “come of age” and can walk on clouds, making their homes on shifting, drifting, fluffy continents.

The primitive and frequently squalid appearance of ground-walkers gives sky men a poor reputation among the rulers of the land, who are therefore disinclined to credit rumours of a high civilization above the clouds, or of solid sky man fortresses high in the stratosphere. Sky men are known to ride on (infest, perhaps) Timor Tom, however, and have been known to settle on other prominent flyers for a time. Garuda is said to have befriended the sky men and deigned to carry them willingly. There are even legends that Garuda taught the sky men how to live in the heavens.

Humans see the skin of sky men as always being the exact colour of the sky, making them extremely hard to spot in their usual environment. Birds and some lizards, however, which have 4 colour-sensitive cones in their eyes in place of humans’ 3, have no trouble seeing them. Under favourable conditions a sky man may gain up to +3 on all stealth tasks among humans from their near-invisibility.

All character classes have been found among sky men of one caste or another. In sky man society entertainers and memorizers of epic poems enjoy the highest status, alongside those leaders who prove their prowess by great deeds of thievery or piracy enacted against non sky men: the profession of thief is a perfectly acceptable choice for a young sky man setting out in the world. Mere warriors are seen as wasting their talents if they do not practice some other skill or rise to positions of leadership. Priests, diviners, spirit mediums and druids are viewed with suspicion but sky men tolerate them as occasionally highly useful.  Sky man children are taught to fear wizards and their ilk, and there is no tradition of scholarly magic among them. Those who learn wizardry elsewhere are considered good marriage partners, however.

3d6 for stats. Because the mix of abilities and limitations pretty much balances out, Sky Men progress in their professions at the same rate as humans/baseline characters.
Sky men share the following special features:
1. Cannot wear armour. Really – they’re allergic to confinement, especially in any kind of metal harness – will lose 1hp per hour, or 1hp per four hours in leather armour.
2. But get natural AC 5 when naked and able to take advantage of sky-camouflage. AC 8 at other times, due to tough hide.
3. being almost invisible gives up to +3 to surprise under appropriate circumstances.
4. At 3rd level, get the ability to cloudwalk – not fly but walk and/or jump up into clouds and live up there like it’s another landscape. Cloudwalkers can carry their normal encumbrance load into the sky (as human). They also get hours of precognitive weather sense equal to their level (precog will wake them from sleep, trances etc). If the clouds thin/drop, they’ll drop out of them: crit fails on precog or jump are bad news. The ability to cloudwalk marks a sky man as a leader and imposes restrictions of honour: to maintain their sytatus cloudwalkers must take an oath of piracy: never to acquire anything in trade but only to steal it from groundwalkers
5. with a run up, they can long-jump their Dex + level in feet, or half that straight up.

(Originally inspired by Ken Hite’s Ingredients for Pyramid’s first Iron Ref competition – these being “a chair upholstered in an unusual or frightening material; an injury to the eye;” and some other thing I can’t remember. Sky Men are of course the secret masters of the Bugis of Sulawesi, those “ancestors” who first descended from the sky and told the Bugis to take to ships, thereby causing innumerable headaches for Dutch, British and French colonial shipping firms in the 18th and 19th centuries)

Rumours has it that Sky Men…

– worship the sky and are unable to cover their heads or sleep indoors
– generate local weather when angry or sad
– exude a smell delicious to wild animals and monsters
– may only use piercing weapons in honor of their thunderbolt gods
– can only drink rain water, not groundwater
– find vegetables, roots and tubers poisonous
– suffer claustrophobia or malaise when under a roof
– cannot pass beneath archways
– are poisoned by stagnant air

Jim Lad and Tin Knocker: Classes for a Romantic Cornwall campaign

so +Stuart Robertson (of Strange Magic) piped up on the old “how to refigure demi-humans for a humanocentric game” concertina again, and I loves me a rollicking sea tune.

Here’s your basic 7 classes for a Treasure Island/Jamaica Inn/Smuggler’s Cove game. Adjust seasoning to taste for Pirates of the Caribbean, Hardy, Melville etc:

Dwarf = Miner: functionally the same as ever but no immunity to arsenic poisoning. Bluff exterior probably covers up an abused and abusive interior with moments of secret, solitary poetry.
Thief = Smuggler: actually a respected profession among the lower/adventuring orders, though with “fisherman” as inevitable legit cover.
MU = Engineer: for a Stevenson’s Rocket type steampunk feel. Real world examples include Humphry Davey and Isambard Brunel. My first thought was “parson” because of the bookish, useless-in-a-fight angle, but they have no magic in this setting.
Cleric = Fishwife: handy with a (blunt) rolling pin, a bandage and a hearty scolding.
Halfling = Preventive Man: These are the King’s Men who try to stop the smugglers. They’re not all hapless redcoats; some are sneaky spies and/or gamekeepers – Johnny Law in general, and they’re no shorter than anyone else.
Fighter = Haybaler: a big, burly farmhand with drinking capacity to match his fists. Alternatively Navvy, Gunner’s Mate, Dock Worker
Elf = Whippersnapper (whether ‘prentice boy or cabin boy or plucky orphan or maid is pure window dressing). The Jim lad class, knows more than he should, listens in while the parsons and engineers are jawing in the pub, but still yearns to grow up into a “proper” profession.

I like the purity of the basic 4 or 7, but if you wanted to expand this:
Bard = Parson of the fulminating fire’n’brimstone persuasion, or Agitator/rabble rouser, to borrow a leaf from the Hill Cantons. John Wesley was arguably both;
Assassin = Pirate and Ranger = Highwayman, or vice versa – maybe you never quite know what you’re up against there;
Paladin = Musketeer (I thought we were in Cornwall? Yup, all paladins are foreigners on a mission of some kind);
Druid = Moonshiner. Eh? What’s Dust doing over here? Well, I’m using it for “crazy old coot who lives off in the woods doing something the law wouldn’t like.” And although there’s plenty of those in Cornwall, there’s no professional archetype, so I’m reaching for a spiritual cousin. Actually in Cornwall this would probably be “gypsy,” but there’s the old racism card.

This would be better if the classes really mapped onto ways of dealing with problems in the world, but they don’t in DnD either, really, once you get into the demi-humans.

Answering Zak’s call for a typical fighter

Over on G+ Zak asked people to post a pic of a typical fighter. And then that metastasized into the basic 4 character classes and…

These are the basic classes for COUNTER-COLONIAL HEISTCRAWL – my Molucca Pirates against the East India Companies setting. Like everyone else I’m all about the light armour and muskets:

Pirates(fighter/thieves)

Bone-callers (magic users)

Mediums (clerics)

Bushmen (druids)

Birdmen (demi-humans)

…and finally, some things that can go wrong if you dabble in magic:

Five new sexes for your fantasy campaign

I wrote this when I was annoyed, and I fear that annoyance rather overshadowed the content. So I’ve re-edited it to put the content first and the annoyance last.***

Also long after this, Scrap Princess wrote a gorgeous post about kathoey and other non-binary, non-Western-familiar genders that is here. It is better than this post below, but maybe one day I can think through combining the two of them.

How do these sexes come about in your campaign? Maybe they’re just there alongside the usual ones and nobody bats an eye, or maybe they’re novelties for your players to discover. Or maybe, in traditional pulp fantasy style, they’re found only in places of high magical potential (i.e. atomic horror), as products of ancient curses (moral horror), as victims of magical experimentation or other powerful weirdos (Frankensteinian creation-horror), or as spontaneous and joyful outgrowths of nature (not found in popular pulp fantasy literature).

1. Spemales can impregnate or be impregnated by any other sex, through the medium of saliva – a process over which they have no control. Where you’d say he/she (n.) or his/her (a.) for males and females, you call spemales hein (n.) and heiner (a.). They have a reputation as weak, clumsy, stupid, sickly cowards who nonetheless possess an irresistible charm.

2. Trenails (n. spuiker, a. rebite) reproduce by gathering bits and pieces from one or more hosts (a sample of blood, bone, hair or scales, skin, fat) and incorporating them into their own abdomen, buttocks, upper arm or neck. Their children bud off them after a few months as small, unintelligent homunculi, which must be fed for several more months on the body parts of animals that make up for those that were not included in their initial seed-package. They have a reputation for impatience and forgetfulness except where slights and revenge are concerned. They are also imagined to have a special affinity for fire, plants, the ground and psychic disturbances.

3. Yenimales (n. ein, a. yeinne) are not easily identified – indeed, they can spend many years believing themselves to be members of other sexes. They cannot be impregnated and cannot impregnate anyone else: they  reproduce instead by creating an intense longing in the mind of a pregnant individual of another sex. This longing modifies the child growing in the individual into a yenimale, but does not change their physical appearance. Yenimales are broadly regarded with suspicion and amulets against them can be bought on street corners. They are nonetheless generally consulted before declarations of war and peace, and believed to be gifted with the power to predict the weather.

4. Hermanes (n. huee, a. liuer) change sex throughout their lives, based on environmental influences, regular rhythms or mood. Several of the other sexes imagine that hermanes must be inordinately pleased with their lot, but in fact for most hermanes the changes are accompanied by wild mood swings, which if left untreated can lead to a spiral of ever more rapid sex changing and mood instability.  Legends abound that such a spiral can lead to a condition of radical sexual instability or indeterminacy, or even the production of entirely new sexes: it is a testament to the stupidity of society as a whole that such a basic question should remain unanswered. They are thought to be irresponsible with money and can never work in the financial sector or government.

5. Seamagrails (n. siney, a. spnue) can be impregnated by thoughts or sincerely held beliefs. Following gestation (which obeys no regular rules whatever regarding duration or progress) their children burst out of their hearts or heads, Athena-style. This is utterly debilitating for the parent for one whole day, after which the parent is entirely healed and can go back to life as before. The children thus born, who may be of any sex, always spring into life fully-formed and with mature capabilities, although they are only rarely born at their full, adult size. They are  believed to have no sense of direction and are famous for taking on more than they can handle, drawing unwilling bystanders into their schemes. The idea of seamagrails wearing bracers or leg armour is hilarious.

Of course, all the sexes have some kind of genitalia and have found ways to have intercourse in every imaginable combination. The exact mechanics of this, and of the genitalia, are left up to the discretion of each DM.

* I use “sex” rather than “gender” here because I misunderstand Judith Butler. I was rather worried Jeff Rients might have scooped me on this whole topic in his wonderful Carcosan character builder (which I will certainly be using for my very next DnD character) but I bet with a bit of squeezing we could all fit together, like some kind of… jigsaw puzzle or something.
** note how I cleverly worked 5 into this post? That’s all I’m saying about it.
*** This post was prompted by recent discussions about humans-first as a value, which set me thinking – in particular Matthew Slepin’s comment that fantasy racism is victimless, since no elves or hobbits complain about it at his table – if it’s all good clean fun to indulge in some racism against imaginary beings, why shouldn’t we get to indulge in some victimless sexism too? So I wrote up these imaginary sexes* as a thought experiment: would it be safe to denigrate them at your gaming table, since no members of your gaming group would take it all personal? Should that denigration ever take rule-mechanical form? Is it actually better to say you’re imagining an intolerant society and leave it at that, or is that a cop out, since you’re choosing to imagine it anyway? I dunno.

Answering Jeff’s questions in a southeast Asian pirates game

I’ve been futzing about with an idea for a southeast Asian pirates game for just years. In the simplest iteration, it is about 1610*, and you are either (1) bold English or Dutch adventurers trying to break the Portuguese spice monopoly, or (2) harrassed Moluccan natives trying to survive the incursions of English and Dutch adventurers. I could see either one working, with the question of motivation and sandbox play being harder for the natives.

So, given that I have fewer ideas for the natives right now, I think I should answer Jeff’s famous 20 questions for them and see where that takes me.

1. What is the deal with my cleric’s religion?
– I might not have a divide between clerics and magic users. Buddhism’s nice, but the Power is in nature spirits and ancestors. You go into a trance and can Do Stuff, but the exact effect of what you asked for may not be what you imagined. Also there are nature spirits everywhere and they can be quite interfering. And when people come up with new natures, those have spirits too, so the East India Companies probably have their own Spirits of Capitalism (or are developing them), ships have their own spirits, or try to co-opt pre-existing totems, wars and massacres have spirits. The Portuguese, of course, deployed their saints. You could worship any of these for questionable rewards.

2. Where can we go to buy standard equipment?
– you can get a lot of stuff from your village/tribe, for debt/favours, rather than money. If you have cash money take it to a big town like Malacca or Surabaya and be careful not to flash it around.

3. Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?
– no plate mail. If there are inhuman monsters, they don’t wear plate mail. But you could get stuff made out of iron by Portuguese renegadoes or Indian smiths or Formosan traditionalists. Find a big urban centre.

4. Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?
– that’s a matter for wild rumours and speculation. Some say he lives on a lonely island, some say he’s the mafia boss on Hainan. Or Phaulkon the Farang who has hypnotized the king of Siam.

5. Who is the greatest warrior in the land?
– prince Nauri the Timawa. Either work for him or keep well away from him.

6. Who is the richest person in the land?
– some fat Chinese Hong in Malacca. But there are many kinds of riches and power.

7. Where can we go to get some magical healing?
– the medium woman who keeps a garden in the high palm groves/cliff cave/surrounded by her kin’s boats. But she’s not focused on binding up wounds, she’s much more focused on…
8. Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath?
– yeah, the wise woman. Or, depending on the nature of your little problem, the transvestite priests.

9. Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?
– there’s the transvestite priests. A lot of magic is “wild talent,” though. Having a healthy list of enemies and controversies is par for the course for any self-respecting magician.

10. Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?
– wise woman? Priests? Alchemists are mostly Chinese, you may not want to trust them. It’s said that high up on Borneo there are hillmen who bind up the heavens. They should be able to do anything – and therefore probably don’t need anything from you. Otherwise there are always people in the ports willing to take your money and spin you a yarn.

11. Where can I hire mercenaries?
– your village. You can get the Bugis involved but they’re a mafia, and might turn into your biggest problem. Ditto the Mappilas of south India – pretty soon you’re fighting their wars rather than the other way around. Chinese mafia are worse. Depending on the problem you need help with, you might be able to call on far-flung kinfolk, or form a council of the tribes.

12. Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law?
– yes, all the respectable courts on the mainland. That’s one reason you laugh at those clodhopping mainlander fools.

13. Which way to the nearest tavern?
– we have barrels of Arak right here. The beach is a good place for drunken revels. Or far inland where you can’t be seen. The Portuguese towns have Chinese towns on the sides, and between the two you can get a lot of wine, trouble and smuggling.

14. What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous?
– the English, Dutch and Portuguese. The Chinese mafia. Individual pirate captains. Spirits that drive people to do terrible things. Whales. And most of all, the Timawa.

15. Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?
– always, everywhere. It’s seasonal. The hard thing is to interrupt the wars long enough to face novel threats.

16. How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?
– like cock fights? Men mostly don’t do that themselves, but the Chinese will bet on anything if you suggest it to them. Some tribes accept applications from men who prove themselves in battle, so you might not get a cash prize but you could get a boat, a wife, followers or allies.

17. Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight?
– the Chinese have a ton, and some of them will even treat you as an equal. The red hairs (ferengi – Dutch and English) are always looking for spies (and man, everyone would despise you if they found out). Assassins are common, millennial cults can be quite respectable in some quarters… the main thing is to continue to show loyalty to your kin, tribe, prince and priests and ancestors. Right now, at least, nobody knows of a religious-type Evil Big Bad, and they’d probably take a tolerant stance toward it until it actually posed a physical threat. Like, for instance, everyone already suspects that the Sama are half Fishmen, and although they may not be willing to intermarry with them, they’ll happily trade with them for seaweed snacks.

18. What is there to eat around here?
– tripang, fish, shellfish, seaweed, bananas and other fruits, Arak, Chinese wine, tea, coffee, rice, stews.

19. Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?
– there are various magical artifacts of the ancestors (which are as likely to be spirit-coffins or shrines as they are to be krises or boats or talismans). Otherwise, most of the treasure is to be had by heist, rather than quest. The Chinese and Indian merchants, the Sultan of Aceh, hajj ships will all have lots of the shiny stuff, if you can take them on. There are rumours about the queen of the sea and her court, but how are you going to survive underwater? Do you even speak their language?

20. Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure?
– Malacca. It’s called a Treasure Junk and it breathes fire and bristles with a hundred spear points.

…and for the European adventurers?

1. What is the deal with my cleric’s religion?
he’s a lay preacher, knows little about theology, but has lots of practice calling on God and/or the saints for mercy, better weather, navigational assistance or strength.

2. Where can we go to buy standard equipment?
The ship’s equipment chest. If that’s exhausted, Portuguese ports in India, the European quarter of Malacca, Macao. ‘course, they are your enemies, so it might take some footwork.

3. Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?
kill a Portuguese professional noble and teach your buddy how to maintain his new armor.

4. Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?
Either the Great Moghul in Agra or the Great Khan of China. Try to avoid them.

5. Who is the greatest warrior in the land?
We are, of course.

6. Who is the richest person in the land?
See mightiest wizard. That might not be coincidental.

7. Where can we go to get some magical healing?
The locals around here have some devilry they work, but will they work it for you?

8. Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath?
First try the lay preacher. Then maybe the books in the captain’s cabin. Last resort, those local shamans.

9. Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?
Sorry, no witches. The Priesthood, though, does say it trafficks in miracles. or that might just be a Prod rumour to stir up hatred against the Catholic.

10. Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?
The lay preacher? A Portuguese port town? Maybe one of the big Chinese towns – Macao, Amoy, Fukien. Occasionally head office will send a curious sage to catalogue the local wildlife and test out its properties on slaves and the sick. The factory at Ambon is a good bet.

11. Where can I hire mercenaries?
Any big town. Aceh, Colombo, Ayutthaya, Malacca, Edo, Amoy. Careful not to tread on the Company’s toes, though.

12. Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law?
Ahahahaha. Well, sure: China. But then you’re mostly illegal in China.

13. Which way to the nearest tavern?
Brandy time is 8am, noon and 8pm. And if there’s something to celebrate. Also if someone’s sneaked some out of the stores. Apart from that, there’s always drinking in the Chinesetowns by the Factories.

14. What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous?
Chinese pirates, the Portuguese, the Dutch/English, the Timawa, depending on who you ask.

15. Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?
You’re already fighting them, but it’s a sign of a good captain to discover a couple more that nobody knew about. Usually through looting.

16. How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?
You can challenge your shipmates, or people from other ships, or especially Portuguese grandees ashore, but it’s generally not arena-type fighting.

17. Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight?
The Jesuits? Chinese mafias? The Timawa? You could go renegade and work for some non-Christians.

18. What is there to eat around here?
Pea soup with pork, salt cod, salted meats, cheese, brandy, French and Spanish wine, hard tack.

19. Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?
Legends abound, sure – fountains of youth, cures for syphilis, the treasures of the Mughals or Ming. But you’re here first and foremost to get the gold of the Moluccas – cloves, nutmeg, mace and pepper. Those will make you rich, if you can get back to Europe with them.

20. Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure?
It’s called the Portuguese Trading Post Empire, and you’re sailing right through the middle of it. Capture a silver ship – or fleet – and you’ll be not only made for life, but a national hero such as people will sing about for centuries to come.

* not really, because I want Bugis pirates, so it’s kinda 1610 and kinda 1660 and kinda 1760 and all that. What I mean is, it’s right at the start of English and Dutch incursion to the East Indies, before they have towns established, in the early, piratical phase.

Lesser potions

With apologies to Telecanter.

Potion of slipperiness

Originally developed to lubricate the joints of golems and quickly adopted wholesale by second-hand golem dealers, the potion of slipperiness is also widely used off-label by escape artists, sword swallowers and cat burglars. It renders the drinker’s whole body preternaturally slippery and somewhat deformable, such that they are practically impossible to handcuff or tie up, and may be able to squeeze through narrow openings, such as between cell bars or through the air feed pipes of fish tanks. They will also have to make a conscious effort not to slip out of clothes and armour, or to hold onto anything. The potion takes half an hour to kick in after drinking: it remains in effect for 1d20 hours. Note that the effect is systemic: users are advised not to eat or drink anything while under the potion’s influence.

Potion of spider climbing

Causes the hands and feet of the drinker to develop clinging claws, allowing them to climb on pretty much any solid surface, and the lower abdomen to develop web-fluid sacs and spinnerettes, allowing them to create spider webs, in order to aid their climbing. The web strands are roughly the thickness of spaghetti. A single strand is strong enough to support a 200lb man (ie there’s no proportionality with actual spider web here: the potion’s webs are much weaker than actual spiderweb of the same thickness might be). Multiple strands may be woven together into ropes to support heavier weights. The potion lasts for 66 minutes or 666 steps, whichever comes first. There is a small but cumulative chance over multiple uses of some vestigial effects lasting after the potion’s useful phase is over. Tastes unmistakably of spiders.

Ironbelly

Popular with alchemists, ironbelly allows its drinker to imbibe and/or ingest, without ill effects, the next 1d6 things they can fit in their mouth. A necessary prelude to sampling several of the more exotic potions.

Potion of firebreathing

Combined with a lit torch this allows the drinker to project a flame up to three times the span of their arms, up to three times, to deliver 1d3 cubed damage each time. Side effects include overconfidence, giggliness, loss of co-ordination and/or unreasonable belligerence, lasting 1d6 hours. For 24 hours after ingestion the user’s breath will nauseate anyone to whom they speak, causing -1d3 on reaction rolls. During this time the user may deliberately breathe on victims to cause confusion or wake them from magical or non-magical sleep. Rumours abound that this potion can also help the drinker survive in the elemental plane of fire, but these are so far unsubstantiated.

Potion of incoherence

Renders the drinker incapable of making their point clearly for 1d12 hours. Exact effects are up to the sadistic impulses of the DM or improv acting skills of the player.

Gravel of plausibility

Works something like charm person or a potion of persuasiveness on all who hear the ingester for 1d12 hours, except that the listeners’ basic agreement with the user does not extend to their taking any positive action. That is, listeners would agree to the commands “leave us alone!” or “don’t get up” but not to “come here” or “open the door” or “just hold this for a minute, please.”

Glass of cold awareness

When chewed this fragile glass makes the user acutely aware of what they’re doing, dispelling any illusions or glamours or other states of confusion and temporarily raising the chewer’s wisdom (or intelligence, depending on the DM’s philosophical outlook) by 1d3. Blessed with this new clarity, the chewer must save vs. paralysis to avoid immediately spitting the glass out, canceling the effect.

Soul swap stew

if shared among two or more imbibers this stew will exchange that ineffable, invisible, immortal part of each, that represent their innermost, unchangeable nature, with the others. Note, however, that it will not exchange their consciousness or personality, which are really socially constructed fronts of one kind or another. Deities of confessional or mystical religions will respond to the souls presented to them, not the shells in which they happen to be housed, so this spell acts as a form of transport for the powers of clerics and paladins. Other in-game effects are up to the individual DM and players: it is suggested that certain relationships might be affected (with animals or close family members, for instance) or some outward manifestation of the change of soul be made gradually clearer over time, such as a fondness for loud ties or compulsion to insult elders. Alignment, if used, may be affected.

Belated Joesky: the haunted swamp

With apologies to Land of Nod, Tim Powers, David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, all of whom I am ripping off unmercifully:

We’re talkin’ about the whole man
When he’s whole we see him smile
But take just one part away from the rest
And he’s a a crocodile.

The trouble with magic is, we really don’t know what it’s for. Oh, certainly, its effects are useful: those everlasting lights, the firebolts, the purses that can hold a horse or a house or a dragon’s horde of treasure. But why were these things made? Was it for the effects we know? Then why are there so many spells that merely unmake things? That send, for instance, gold or food or water or dead bodies away? Or that subtly change their weight or colour or nature? Take that spell that turns men into animals, for instance. Why do they never turn back? Why does one man turn into a ram and another into a jackal?

That one, at least, we know some little thing about. Because of that village in Sweetmarsh where they found the scroll and before anyone knew, every last soul had been turned into some creature or other, except four little children locked in the root cellar. It seems that spell sheers off some vital piece of the soul, the one that makes us human. Perhaps one of the five essences from which we are all made. And what’s left is an animal. An enraged, confused, miserable animal. And the piece, shorn away, goes drifting about the swamp, possessing the weak, scaring the tired and unwary with visions, and maybe just maybe attaching itself onto the animals of the swamp, to make those abominations we hear about, from time to time, lurching out of the marsh, frightening the village’s new inhabitants out of their houses.

On CHA, WIS and POW-based magics

Hill Cantons considers treating Charisma more directly as reputation and ditching all non-physical stats for D&D PCs.*

This post is not really a response to that, but instead a repost of something I said in 2007 regarding That Stat That Means Magical Potential. I propose that we mostly don’t know from the rulebooks what to do with INT, WIS or CHA, beyond a couple of standard applications/effects, and that POW in CoC and Runequest is even worse. The effects of STR are easy to visualize: it tends therefore to get a lot of in-game use. But the effects, the meaning, of the “mental attributes” are less understood, so we have less to apply tactically at the table. And the same is true of vanilla D&D’s magic systems, which is too bad because they could actually give us some insight into the in-game meanings of the attributes.

What do I mean by that? My gold standard for a rule is, can the players take tactical advantage of it? Can they use it as a tool, plan around with it? Can they imagine uses for it that I do not feed them? For me,  AD&D 1e MU and clerical magic do not meet this standard: the way the magic works is a glassy, impenetrable surface. (Same goes for magic in CoC, but there it seems intentional.) Players get spells and they apply them. Maybe they invent clever applications, but they can’t try out new spells unless you provide a novel system for doing so. This model of magic reminds me of what lots of folks hate about thieves: it’s like they have their explicit skills and nothing else. And if those are special thief skills, then nobody else can hide in shadows.

But if they had some understanding of how magic worked then maybe they could ask questions and invent their own effects and just plain be a bit more magical. Rangers do this all the time – “I search for tracks… I collect firewood… is there a plant that can help here?” So I find that rationalizing the magic system is one of the most important elements in making it usable by the players. And I think the following might help with that. And it would probably base magic off CHA, though WIS could do, too.

So. POW. The influence of classic works of anthropological theory on CoC is obvious: it’s written all over Petersen’s rule- and sourcebooks. Oliver Wolters (dead anthropologist, historian, colonial officer) had a theory of personal political power (the ability to influence people and events: Charisma, in D&D terms) in SE Asian society. He said such power was seen as a symptom of inner, spiritual power, which he called “prowess” or “soul stuff” (pretty much POW in CoC. Bear with me).This power varies from person to person, and determines personal effectiveness, leadership ability, ability with magic and ritual, and the occupations associated with magic (fishing, hunting, navigating and war). It doesn’t imply wisdom or education or knowledge or physical strength, but it has a direct effect on success because the universe would be inclined to go with your actions and leadership (luck), just like people would be naturally drawn to your innate superiority (“as bees are drawn to nectar”).

According to Wolters’ view of the Indonesian belief systems he observed, you were born with a certain amount of it, based either on your lineage or your conduct in past lives (opinion differs). Some further social implications follow from this, to do with the natural aristos of aristocrats, and an ever-diluting and sinking system of status, which Geertz wrote about in his book Negara(which really does read, in its completeness and airtightness, like a gaming supplement).

People are naturally drawn to follow charismatic leaders (per Wolters prowess is both POW and CHA) both as a compulsion and because, as cogs in the greater machine, they share in a larger total group POW (spiritual rapport with the leader yields a whole that is greater in combination than separately, although not necessarily greater than the sum of its parts).

This smells like a theory of gravity to me, but I don’t think any model of its relative strength over distance has been put forward – such a diminishment of force over distance seems to operate in Lovecraftian literature, though:  without it there could be no ‘moment of introduction,’ on which to hang the horror. What interests me is that this neatly explains the slippery and weird attribute POW and its associated effects. It also suggested some links with the Mage line of products. POW governs magic (natch) and also luck (which is explained as unconscious magery).

Note that on this schema, magic of all kinds is an appeal to the way the universe works, it’s neither “reality hacking” (something like James Maliszewski’s Termaxian magic) nor the trust in the Powers of Fate that prayer tends to become in RPGs. Instead, your world-view is a sort of spiritual extension of yourself, like a field of force: it exerts an influence on people and things around you.  When you encounter someone or something else your influence competes with theirs (in Greek terms, your genius has a chance of overmastering theirs).

So how do you use it? What I like about this interpretation is that it makes the attribute a more active part of the magical exercise – untrained magery could work something like Clerics without Spells, turning undead could be a POW vs POW (or WIS or CHA) battle, and raising the supernatural stakes is liable either to draw the heroism out of your spellcaster (as their POW overmasters the opponent’s) or turn them (either away or to join the enemy, who has superior supernatural charisma). The ability to increase POW through a POW vs POW battle is not analogous to spiritual ‘exercise’ or ‘increasing skill’ – when you overcome someone else’s POW you effectively snip off a bit of their authority – they spiritually ‘pay tribute’ to you, increasing your authority directly (though this is not modelled in the game as a zero-sum operation… not sure why, or if there’s some further bit of thinking here). This maps neatly onto Polynesian ritual cannibalism, BTW, in which one ritually ingests the strength or force of one’s enemies.

There are other implications for games with Cthulhuvian elements, which might include your flavour of D&D:

– POW also governs SAN, because it represents one’s spiritual negotiation with the world. Encountering another person’s POW is dangerous but intelligible: no matter who wins, you stay in much the same mental/spiritual place. CoC Monsters are spiritually powerful and fundamentally other (we’re not really in Wolters’ territory any more, but you can kind of follow him in this direction, with the right twist of mind…). When you encounter them, their power actively disrupts yours, their world-view intersects with yours and is toxic… modeled as SAN loss, a loss of self-guided mental structure. This is the sense in which I’ve understood John Tynes’ discussion of the more powerful monsters as a kind of mental plutonium. The disruption of your POW is either experienced as trauma (simple diminishment) or a reconfiguring to the monster’s perspective (which is why you can’t play a permanently insane character: all such folks go over to the enemy, as reprogrammed but disfunctional drones). Implications for the undead are left as an exercise for the reader.

– The pooling or investing of POW explains the formation of cults and the strange hold cult leaders have over their followers: they start when the cult leader is overborne by the POW of a monster. The resultant collective POW (that of the monster reflected through the leader) acts as a honeypot for impressionable souls (those with comparatively lower POW), who ‘pay tribute,’ to the collective POW pot, further emPOWering the monster/leader. This is why you have to both mentally and physically separate followers from their leader before they will be ‘cured’ of their cultism. It may also explain why monsters adopt mad human leaders as intermediaries between themselves and larger groups of followers, rather than leading cults personally – aside from the scaleability advantages of a franchise organisation model, the monster may realise that its own direct presence will disrupt the POWs/SANs of its followers, making them somewhat more loyal but a great deal less functional – the leadership effect can be had without the damaging side-effects by refracting their personal magnetism through the leader, who acts as a sort of power-translator or transformer [Ken Hite notes: must write up the “magic as electrical engineering” rules in my head.Yes]

From this perspective, the tendency of cultists to enact summoning rituals may be seen by the monsters as an annoying pathology in their control network (because it brings cultists into direct contact with the monsters, reconfiguring their own POW/worldviews), a bit like being stalked by fans. On the other hand, the whole cult-formation thing might be seen as an irritation or simply irrelevant: there’s no evidence that anyone can control or ‘switch off’ their charisma/soul stuff/POW – it might just be a side-effect of high POW that people trail around after you.

Now I just wonder why Sandy Peterson did such a poor job of explaining it in the rulebook, and if Greg Stafford (or whoever first put POW in Runequest) also read Wolters, or came up with the whole thing in yet a different form. Which, given Greg’s penchant for shamanism,  he may have.

Best short ref to Wolters’ own work: his essay “some features of the cultural matrix” in O W Wolters: History, culture, and region in Southeast Asian perspectives (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982)

*In response to ckutalik, yes I see what you mean. But I like having mental stats for PCs, even if they’re hard to roleplay. Challenges are good. They help you visualise who your character is, even if you don’t always succeed in being them. And you can save against them (INT for memory/education, WIS for common sense, will, morale, CHA for persuasion).

Tasmantis

Tasmantis among the Supersyndics

Tasmantis at the Seminary

Tasmantis: Calvinist Insect Avenger

Cuts through Papist obfuscation!

Explores Australia!

Bites heads off!

TASMANTIS.