VTT maps for the Lizard Man Lair in Saving Throw — a fundraiser fanzine to help James D. Kramer

Late last night we got word that the fundraiser 'zine Saving Throw had gone live on DTRPG.  It's goal is supporting Jim Kramer and his family in their fight against brain cancer while acknowledging in some small way all of the support he gave the OSR when it was a much tighter circle of content creators.  Everything that sparks into a sustained fire needs a generous helping of "right place/people at the right time", and OSRIC and Knockspell hugely benefited from a pro knowing digital publishing and cheerfully offering his layout services (among other talents) to bring old school gaming back to a wide audience.

The cadre of contributors who answered the call are exceptionally talented, and I'm honored that my homages to Jim were included.  For those of you who haven't had the chance to check out the contents yet - I feel it is no puffery to state this much quality playing content is well-worth $13.  Everyone wanted those supporting the fundraiser to get several nights of great gaming out of the mix, and that bar was, in my opinion, surpassed.

One of my contributions is a "super-lair" of sorts; a tribe of lizard men transforming from tribal primitives to a more advanced society under the shepherding of dark powers.  While it's placed on one portion of a treasure map also included in the 'zine, it serves just as well in any swampy marsh on a DM's world if party choices lead towards encountering a large group of the beasties.  Both DM and player maps are included, but the player maps still contain compass directions and a map title.

As more groups adopt VTTs for their weekly play, I'm providing a no-frills version, and a 10' hex version,  of the player map here with all text and symbols cropped out to ease throwing the lair up on your VTT of choice (and also to more easily reorient the whole towards other cardinal directions if desired).  The lizard men have lured many previous (and overconfident) intruders deep into their village only to grind them up against their makeshift stockade - will your players recognize the envelopment and defeat it?  Or will they become the latest batch of slaves worked until they drop into the meat cauldrons of their own accord?

Happy gaming!

New rules for clerical strongholds

I've been making notes for a few years on a monotheistic campaign world I'm building in my copious (ha!) spare time.  These are some ways I'm expanding the clerical stronghold rules:


When a cleric reaches 8th level, the place of worship described must be built within the civilized realms of <the main continent> at a location consented upon by the church. This may be an area of expanding population, the re-establishment of a church previously abandoned or ruined, or other reason as defined by the DM.  Success in this endeavor gains the character the ecclesiastical title of Bishop.

If the character previously developed a patronage relationship with a noble of the appointed realm, the place of worship must be at minimum 2.5X as large (5000 SF Main Floor) and is expected to be of a greater magnificence as well; ideally, a structure of cultural significance similar to many of the great medieval churches. The patron defrays between 51%-60% of the total cost of the building (overall maximum patron contribution subject to DM discretion). 

A place of worship deemed culturally significant by the DM raises the minimum hit points of those worshipers to a floor of 2 hit points, after having dwelt within its diocese for an uninterrupted period of at least 3 years (if they leave they must start the 3 years anew). Any worshiper attending the location a minimum of once a month for an uninterrupted period of months gains a 2% cumulative "miracle" bonus to their chance per month of a cure of any existing chronic diseases and/or parasitic infestation. A culturally significant church will triple the number of pilgrimages made to the location.

Culturally significant buildings also attract 50% more followers to the cleric than otherwise normal; all followers arriving over a period of 12 months. Should a cleric call for a Holy War (see below) as the prelude to building a religious stronghold at 9th level then 2-8 first level paladins - younger sons of lesser nobility or other worthies as determined by the DM - will join to help lead the forces to Holy War on the presumption of forming the core of the new Archbishop's court. (Note: a cleric may call for Holy War regardless of the type of place of worship built at 8th level, but paladins only assemble if it is culturally significant.) 

A religious stronghold built at 9th level must be in a location not currently under the titular power of another if the cleric wishes the recognized rights of a Sovereign Archbishop. Unlike the place of worship at 8th level, a location of a religious stronghold is chosen solely by a cleric, although if sovereignty isn't desired the stronghold may be built in another noble's realm as per a place of worship, above, but this does require consent (which is usually welcomed). Religious strongholds built in either the Near or Far Wilderness grant the cleric the right to call for Holy War. This involves expending between 500 - 1,000 gp per month (1d6+4) for a year on messengers, advertising, travel assistance, and other costs as determined by the DM. 

Holy War results in the accumulation of the following groups at the previously-built place of worship, or alternate designation advertised by the cleric during the proclamation period: between 100-600 families of farmers and other trades useful in virgin settlements (each family having between 1-6 people); 100-400 untrained men recently gaining their majority; and 100-600 experienced mercenaries seeking long term employment (which do expect pay if retained). Lastly, calling a Holy War means certain availability of at least one prospect (and possibly several) of any specialist hireling type of the cleric's choice that they wish to retain, so long as that type is at least occasionally available generally.  In all cases, those assembling expect the cleric can provide for their needs during the journey and afterwards for one year or until the first harvest comes in, whichever occurs first.

While military failure in a Holy War isn't necessarily disgraceful, an inability to provide for prospective settlers during this initial year is.  Such prospective archbishops may lose all ecclesiastical titles and suffer permanent reaction penalties that double with the lower classes.  If the failure is especially great or neglectful, personal atonement may be required from above. 

While a cleric isn't absolutely required to relinquish their bishop title to the previous place of worship if becoming sovereign elsewhere, most appoint a functional under-bishop and retain the title only ceremonially - perhaps a small stipend taken from the church's revenues.  The consenting noble may insist upon nominating a replacement to this first title otherwise, unless relations remain friendly or the noble is under church censure.  However it is not unknown for such revocations to spur a conflict which can end in a noble's loss of title and rights to the cleric instead; but given the great disparity in resources between the two, and the church's natural desire to intervene in such cases, this outcome is rare. 

The farther away an intended new realm is from the civilized lands, the greater the cleric's likelihood of beatification after death (assuming the stronghold was successfully established, in most cases).

My Personal Rules as a Player

1) I do not hoard my wow-bangs. If I die with a sheet full of magical items or spells, then I played in vain. I am not here to advance a character, I am here to make fun memories with people I enjoy spending time with. Regular battles of attrition are slightly more interesting uses of my time than a 3rd grade math pop quiz.

2) Getting somewhere depends on rudimentary time management. Pixel-bitching for 45 minutes on something that isn't going to change the curve is wasting not only your time but everyone else's. I know there are one-way doors in the game, but most of the time you can come back with better information if it seems like you're missing something, rather than OCD on not-immediately obvious Q or A.

3) I surprise the DM - I do not find the margins and color inside of them. I find the weak points not considered and blow up the best-laid plans of my adversaries like the dudes walking away with their backs to the explosion. I am not concerned about dramatic tension; I am looking to dominate, bypass, confound, and neutralize. Moments of sheer panic will happen regardless but my goal is to have none.

4) Help other players have big moments - I know I'm a strong personality who will end up in a caller-like role whether consciously or unconsciously. So if leading a party, be a leader-servant. When other players are all looking at each other unsure of what to do, break the silence. When other players have an idea, help them make it happen. When you see a way for them to shine that they don't - put them in that position and try your damnedest to make everyone the party's X factor from time to time. When you all get together over beers afterwards, no one wants to hear stories about one person's character.

5) Spend your damn money - buy information, rumors, contacts, hidey-holes, strongholds (name-level or not), small armies of mercs, church support, adoration from the masses, and anything and everything else that gives your DM a lever to move your world. Whenever I look at a player's character sheet - presuming they have all of the basic game necessities met (training, maintenance, whatever) - and there's some ridiculous amount of gold scratched on there I feel like I'm sitting with a middle-manager only capable of following someone else's plan. Help them see the possibilities.

6) Have a short, medium, and long term goals that have zero to do with whatever the DM is cooking up - tying in with the above, adventure seeds are great - I'm always hunting for this stuff. But surely you know something you want to do that's intrinsic to yourself. Are you a fighter that wants a magic sword? Don't pine for it, drop out-of-game hints, or anything else. Start hunting for it; make it known within the world what you seek (at least to those who might point you in that direction). If you're a thief - make contacts way before you're thinking of setting up a guild in a few levels. Look for one ripe for takeover. Cleric? Where doth the church need extending its reach? Etc.

7) Contribute to the game world - make custom spells, items, and prayers. If you're a fighter, don't just found a stronghold - find a good natural harbor and start a new city.

8) Pay attention - be ready to roll. Don't be the guy saying "huh" every time. Speak up. Move things along. Write down stuff.

9) Be versatile - every time I see a player whine because they had a specific idea for a character in mind and must have that or their time isn't fun, I get flashbacks to every high-maintenance girl I've ever stupidly dated anyway. The warning signs are always there early, and they always come true.

10) There is no arc - embrace setbacks. This is not a novel. At this point there's nothing more boring than saving the world except a nice steady progress from week to week where my character consistently waxes in power. I don't invest in the bond market, and I'm not looking to play D&D to meter my progress through the level names. You're not really winning at D&D if you never lose. Gamble. Take big risks with the equivalent of monopoly money. If you're a character-driven roleplayer, seek the admiration that comes from a populace that sees your character rise from the ashes to become even better than before the tumble. Laughing off real adversity is the role most D&D characters should be playing, not the guy who always hits their scratch off ticket for $1 more than it cost.

YAR to "The End of the OSR"

I've been meaning to start writing on this thing again for several months, and like most meanings this too was elusive.

Melan's post discussing the end of the OSR, and Anthony Huso's response, offered a chance to have -if for a small moment shared by only a few people - that sort of chained conversation that kicked the whole mess off and running.

I say "mess" with mixed feelings ranging from fondness to good riddance.

I was a lurker in the first years of the OSR, but it was the OSR that gave me a reason to lurk.  For the first time since the earliest days of rolling dice, suddenly there was more to read than I had time to consume - and being stationed on jobs for long periods of time away from my home, I had a lot of time to consume.  It was beyond heady.

Like all things, the seeds of its destruction were sown in its early period of success.

The OSR confirmed something few believed - that there was a market for old school material.  And boy was there a market.  Determined to support the home team, the earliest days were an avalanche of sales and support regardless of quality.  It didn't matter if what was offered was a fantastic new adventure such as Mythmere's Spires of Iron and Crystal, or an utterly redundant rewriting of the paladin class for Labyrinth Lord - it got cheers.  And sales.  And noise.

In many ways RPGers are a captive audience.  The hobby is time-consuming if pursued to any degree of "seriousness"; and while running an engrossing campaign is harder than it looks, writing material that allows someone else to do so easier than if home-brewing is harder still.  Most DMs simply do not have time to tend their creative garden well.  Life calls with more urgency and frequency.  So they buy, and buy, and buy some more.  DMs read for inspiration; isolated players often read for the daydream of games not found and characters not played.  The hobby pulls so strongly on unmet or unmeetable desires of our subconscious that, even if only vicariously, consumption of its offerings takes precedent as much as our bank accounts allow.

So when the noise of celebration grew loud enough across the internet to be heard above the din of masses disaffected by either 4th edition's rules or the arrogance of its propagators, a relative stampede occurred.  THIS was the spice long missed, the seasoning slowly overwhelmed across years by new ingredients.  A flood of 25 years worth of yellowed notebook pages poured forth in sparkling PDFs and print-on-demand; and the masses said yea, verily, The Man doth suck with a mighty sucking.  Perhaps we never really needed them after all.  The cafeteria that always served meatloaf on Tuesdays suddenly had both an entrance and an exit.

And revenue in any noticeable amount always, always pulls in those seeking it however they can obtain it.  Gamers are not the dungeon delvers they imagine, they are the dungeon treasure; the gold pieces.  Some who buy $500 faux leather-bound deluxe versions of what everyone else buys for $50 are the jewels whose value are bumped up repeatedly beyond the base.  The rumors had reached the tavern, and the writers-for-hire were fresh out of in-print OGL games under which to ply their wares.

These points have been made before as the fruit of sour grapes from those whose offerings didn't catch fire while watching the flames grow.  But this is not that sort of essay.  It is recognition and proper tip of the hat to the semi-professionals who entered the scene at this time and kicked it up a notch in presentation with diligent, sustained raw effort translated into playable page count.  A good content provider is not found befuddled as tastes move and shift.

But here's the thing - no tribe has ever prospered in the long run by relying on mercenaries.  They come for the pay, not because their heart is engaged to the same degree as the volunteers.  The OSR tearing itself apart was as inevitable as gravity pulling down an escaped helium balloon as the molecules eventually pass back through the latex.  When you have no other options, you write what other people want.  When you have clout, you persuade people to buy what you really want to write.

As more people with contrary desires all flew the same flag, the flag meant nothing in comparison to the specific captain flying it.  Everyone still mingled together, but more and more it was as agents for their chosen champions as much as it was members of the same tribe sharing the same interests.  Whenever captains contended with each other, we saw what came first for many people - personal allegiances and interests; i.e., their friends. 

The clock continued to turn, the tent continued to grow, and nearly anything popular writers wanted to include under its roof was enthusiastically accepted as OSR.  Gamers love the idea of community and hate the word "no".  And for a long time, everything could co-exist in this dramatic scene of ever more varied offerings that attracted even more people who only tangentially enjoyed undiluted early styles of play - but were observably creative even so.  Momentum only slightly slows right after people stop pushing in similar directions.  It takes a while for anyone to notice.

5E, and then G+, made this all much more plain.   Semi-professionals were again flying the flag offering the highest pay.  Hasbro had made several homages to the game's roots, often sufficient to entice gamers wanting a seat at any table both full and offering familiar names on the menu.  And most importantly, it was OGL.  More and more people were grumbling that stuff they bought no longer easily dropped into their campaigns, and it didn't feel so much like real old school play, but like an airline who convinces you that the two fewer inches you have in a coach seat this year was never that important, complaints were shouted down.  Again the choice was given - community or what you really want: take your pick.  Just like it had been given before; in 1989 and 2000.

Many new-ish and younger members of the OSR had never given games they didn't quite like the finger and rode on; I don't think they either expected or noticed the grumblers pulling away and taking a teensy bit of that momentum with them when they left, along with a large part of the live-and-let-live mentality for a wide gamut of personal choices that gamers of many decades experience have almost always had by pure necessity, if a full table was any sort of goal.

All that was left was the pure primordial chaos of general creativity born from overwrought personalities who couldn't get along.  There was no single other factor tying everyone together except a social media platform.

Which went poof.

And that was it.  Many had joined something already running, and the choice was: join or not.  This is where the tent is.  Selecting new ground for a tent, and who will be allowed to come in this time, is an entirely different matter.  The captains of course could not agree because most of them had been trying to get one or another kicked out of the tent for years, and their individual followers also didn't care to unify; they had nothing in common with those other people except an acronym no three people could agree on the meaning of, and even the use of that was now subject to feud.

This dynamic has played out thousands of times across thousands of scenes.  Everyone wants to think that people join something you consider yourself part of because they're just. like. you!  Conversely, people joining a scene in progress assume everyone else in it is just. like. them!  Nobody wants to believe that their needs are truly only served best in a small segment, or that in a big tent they're mostly seen by the popular captains as a dollar sign.  Our egos cover our eyes.

So is the OSR dead?  Yes.  If you consider the OSR to be mainly the good memories of possibly hundreds of responses to a conversation started over lunch.  That illusion is dead; and it was always as illusionary as the tip of an iceberg seeming the whole of it.

The simple truth is that our fantasies are deeply personal and only partially compatible.  The more people you try to fantasize jointly with, the greater the tug-of-war over where it goes.  And the less it satisfies all involved.  It will seem most vibrant while its cracking at the seams; the point in time when receiving the most communal energy in unspoken desires to mold its final form.

So is the OSR dead?  No.  I've found the most enjoyable material has come after the mercenaries have left and the volunteers have persevered.  Once again I have more material than I can possibly use, but which drives me to my own creative heights just in the reading.  I continue to have full tables of younger gamers at my convention games who hang on every roll of the dice.  I no longer get daily updates on the latest round of insults between the captains.

Harmony reigns once again and even in the diaspora, the old OSR did a yeoman's work - I don't think anything as jarring as 4E will ever again see the light of day.  Too many people gained a taste for something different, even if applications vary.

So I do not mourn the splitting of the OSR any more than I mourn the setting of the sun at the end of the day.  It is a cycle which will repeat over and over again.

I throw dice still, if temporarily by candlelight.  Which is the warmest light of all.