The Beloved Rogue*

So there is this thing about thieves. Some OSR people think they are completely disposable, others will defend the rogue or 'specialist' with their lives.

In my opinion this feud seems to be a bit on the stupid side. Thieves are fun and they bring more variety to the game since they allow players to do something else than only fight, cast spells or cast spells while fighting.

The usual objection to the use of thieves is their Find Traps skill. Many seem to think that it tends to kill the "player's wits over character's skill" vibe often associated with old school game-play. I think it's a largely artificial problem that can be easily overridden by modifying the player's attempts at finding traps depending on the description of their actions.

The point is I like thieves (though I'd rather call them rogues). Period.

What I'm really getting at is that I also like bards.

In my 3ed days (and earlier) I often played bard characters and really enjoyed it. I also remember that I was shocked when long time ago, while reading Zak's blog, I found this:

"(...)but the idea of a D&D class defined by the fact that it plays music seems fundamentally dumb to me. Just be a thief/fighter multiclass and be over it. You can have whatever job you want when you're not killing monsters."

For a long time I couldn't understand why someone would hold such a bizarre opinion, since for me - playing a bard was always fun. It allowed me, as a player, to cast illusions, stand my ground when fighting, and on top of it all, charm NPCs into my bidding.

On the other hand, I always hated the portrayal of bards being trained at colleges and being part of specialized organizations. Seriously what a load of bullshit. My bard characters would always represent the oral tradition archetype, be it a Norse Skald, a Celtic Bard, or a Greek Aoidos.

Only recently, triggered by a cheap pulp novella I was reading on the train, did I realize why I really like the bard. The truth is, that it's not the class that I really like. It's the idea of poetry/music/art having magical powers that allow the artist to actively alter reality. It's the humanity old myth of the artist (in this case a musician) as a creator, that really inspired me to pick up the bard class in the first place. Interestingly enough, it's not really present in the class itself.

This is because the bard class is mostly based on the Magic User/Wizard mechanic. The "bardic" element is usually specified by the ability to use, what 3ed dubbed, Bardic Music, which has never been done well and in the 3rd and 4th was just dumb. The class itself doesn't really introduce a new minigame, or a new set of opportunities. It just emphasizes the role playing element of the game. And you don't really need a new class for that.

This is why I decided to abandon the bard and stick with the rogue. In fact any class can be "the bard" if it's built around an idea to role play it as one. The fierce Skald from the north might be a figther, while a Celtic Bard might mechanically be a druid. It's all fine with me.

The before mentioned novella helped me to stick with this decision, as it features Francois Villon as a background character. Now, I am well acquainted with his poetry and it's socio-cultural context, but I have never really investigated the biography of the poet himself.

Turns out, little is known about his life. But what little information survived is enough to illustrate my point. The point is, that the greatest poet of 15th century France was a backstabbing, dagger slinging and gold stealing rogue. So why can't the player characters be (mechanically) rogues with (role-played) love for some dirty verse?

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*The title references this. I highly recommend it.

The Maiden, The Mother, The Crone

The main reason for the two previous posts about beliefs and religion is that I find them a very important part of every setting. It tends to be treated rather lightly by many game designers, which I think is a huge mistake. In the history of our world, religion and the way people approached it, often mirrors the spirit and atmosphere of a historical period.

That is why I want to create a pantheon that will have a dark, mysterious atmosphere. From the beginning I knew I wanted at least one religion to have a feeling of primitive, wild power embodying the forces of nature.

I somehow started thinking bout Luke Skywalker's visit to Dagobah. You know, swampy, dangerous surroundings, heavy mists. A place where players might feel powerless in the face of nature... That reminded me of a comic book which has a similar atmosphere, namely Slaine (specifically "Treasures of Britain", read it if you haven't). Here are some great illustrations by Dermot Power (click to enlarge):


Now I will have to digress, but believe me, I am closing to the main point of this post.

More or less at the same time as I started to think about religions in my world, I read something about druids. I always thought that D&D druids were somewhat tasteless and lacking character. The thing that especially bothered me was the idea of them being neutral(but I think that's a topic for a different post) and "worshiping" nature. I never really bought that. I was always wondering what their religious practices look like, is there any hierarchy or organization? I never came across an interesting idea or description of druids background, but that's not the point here.

Somehow I started thinking of druids and linking them to the swampy, secretive atmosphere. I also stumbled upon this blog entry and started listening to The Sword, who have a song entitled Maiden, Mother, And Crone.

By now you should be able to deduce what happened in my mind. I linked all ideas together arriving at druids worshiping the Mother Goddess.

The Cult of Goddess:

The Great Mother is considered to be the mother of gods and all living beings. She is the embodiment of the primitive forces and laws of nature. The Mother is said to be both generous and treacherous. She feeds all beings and all things alive are her children, but she favors the strong and cunning, and will not hesitate to kill the weak. However she is a fair mother and distributes her gifts equally among all, even if we may think otherwise.

The cult of the Goddess is thought to be the oldest in the world. However it seems that there is no larger organization than that of independent sacred groves located deep in the forests. Less than a dozen such places are known.

The Goddess is worshiped in three aspects - the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone. Each representing different aspects of nature. The Maiden is the embodiment of sexuality and strength of youth. She is often mentioned in rituals as being both a virgin and a whore. The Mother represents fertility and motherhood. The Crone is a mad, blind old woman who is thought to hold the fate of each living being, thus no man can know when to expect death. She is also said to know the future.

Each of the druidic groves is run by women. At any given moment there must always be three women being the embodiment of The Goddess. They are also the spiritual leaders of the order. On acquiring the "title", they are stripped of their previous identity and can only be talked of (or refer to themselves) as "the Mother" and so on...

Men are prominent in the cult and are the actual priests leading most of the rituals, except the most important ones. All male priests might be chosen by the priestess being "the Maiden" to be her partners, however upon taking the title of "the Mother" a priestess has to marry one priest who becomes her husband and they live in a monogamous relationship. "the Mother" has to become pregnant at least once. The High Priest is supposed to be the embodiment of an ideal husband, he also is administrating the grove.

It is said that in the middle of each grove there is a mystical "Tree of Life". Those trees are said to have been planted upon “Seeds of Life”, however nobody knows whether that is true. Many scholars think it’s a metaphor for places of power or magic knots.

Those strange Elves

As you might know from my previous posts, I've assumed that in my development of a D&D setting, the themes of the setting itself will help me choose the rules I want to use. It seems that I was wrong. Since I last decided I'm leaning heavily towards OD&D, I've been doing some thinking about the race-as-a-class rule.

When I first came into possession of several D&D retro clones, the race-as-a-class idea was bothering me. I was always aware that it existed in the original game, but I guess just because I was used to not treating races as classes, the idea seemed simply unattractive and limiting.

Some time later, as I was reading some Grognardia, I found this article in which the author states:

"Aside from mechanical simplicity, what I really like about race-as-class, at least in the case of elves, is that it helps emphasize their differences from humanity."

It is a point I totally agree with. This and an other very good post from the same blog got me on the track of thinking how to differentiate demi-humans from other races.

Today I came up with the solution. It's not a revolutionary one (at least for me, I can imagine there are people that would behead me for what I'm about to say), as I've first encountered it in the 2ed. of WFRP, where the only elven deity is a hermaphrodite. There, I've said it. My elves are hermaphrodites.

The true source of the idea is one of my all time favorites "Left Hand OF Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin. One of the themes investigated in the novel is the problem of how sexuality and gender influence culture and political life. One of many strengths of the book is a very interesting depiction of the hermaphroditic race. Here's a quote from wikipedia:

"The inhabitants of Gethen are sequentially hermaphroditic humans; for twenty-four days of each twenty-six day lunar cycle they are sexually latent androgynes, and for the remaining two days (kemmer) are male or female, as determined by pheromonal negotiation with an interested sexual partner. Thus each individual can both sire and bear children. It is hypothesised by the first representatives of the Ekumen to explore Gethen that their unique physiology arose from a genetic-modification experiment."

I think the idea to apply this description to elven race is a very good one, especially that I've already found a way in which it might serve my "prime" setting assumptions. Namely, the experiment mentioned in the above quote, will be performed on the race by itself. I can easily see my image of eternal elves conquering the world, just to decide that it's not enough for them and since they are already immortal, they will try to ascend into godhood. However the experiment went wrong in the end also depriving the race of it's close to immortal status.

So there. I know it might be too much for some of you. And I don't blame you. This solution brings many problems into my setting, but I always liked to put "difficult topics" into my games...

Oh. Btw. I'm still not decided about race-as-class!