Mandragora: The Mandrake March

New, more general blog

2010-07-14T12:32:00.003-04:00

I've finally realized - undoubtedly several steps behind my exasperated online colleagues - that given my habit of working on a setting for a while and then wandering off in pursuit of the next shiny object, it may not be a good idea to maintain a separate blog for every project with which I'm temporarily enamored.

Accordingly, I've set up a "catch-all" blog, Huge Ruined Pile, as a long-term clearinghouse for setting projects, posts related to old school gaming, and sundry "I have a blog" bloviations. I plan to leave Mandragora active in perpetuity, but future posts will go up on the new blog so I don't have to start from zero every time I change setting projects.

Apologies for the gamer ADD, and for my long-suffering fellow bloggers who manfully endure my caprices by updating their blogroll and/or continuing to pay attention at all. I'm hoping to obviate any future relapses by setting up my One Blog to Rule Them All and putting everything there, regardless of specific setting or subject matter.

Hopefully my first posts to the new blog will go up by this evening, and I'll have layout issues sorted by the weekend.

Thanks as always for your patience!

Imminent return, and blog changes

2010-07-13T11:13:00.002-04:00

I've decompressed a little bit over the last couple weeks and the solo practice should be firing on all cylinders within the next week or so. I'm hoping to be back to blogging very soon, possibly by this weekend.

I may have a line on an IRL group in the foreseeable future as well. I haven't really discussed with the principals what sort of game they might be looking for - the only games I'm interested in running are OD&D, Moldvay/Cook, or Tunnels & Trolls 5th edition.

I also have several settings other than Mandragora kicking around as contenders for my next IRL campaign. Because of my persistent setting-ADD and the fact I like to blather about things other than a specific setting, it's likely I'll revamp the blog as more of a "general old-school gaming and miscellanea" blog than specific to any one setting I'm working on. I'm still working on Mandragora, but I've also been reading a shitload of classical lit; I'm actually kind of excited about some sort of S&S/"standard gaming tropes" pastiche reminiscent of Wilderlands + Greek myth, because Bog Standard Fantasy is by no means exhausted for me.

I'm still feeling creative, just strapped for time. I'll keep everyone posted, and I apologize again for the hiatus.

Still here ...

2010-06-21T10:47:00.003-04:00

... just quiet. My last day at my job is June 30, and I'm hoping to get back to blogging and gaming shortly thereafter.

Adventures in the Mandragora Setting

2010-05-27T20:40:00.005-04:00

My vision for this project is "a setting for old-school fantasy gaming with fairy tale elements" rather than a warping of the gaming experience around a quest for fidelity to the fairy tale genre and its conventions and trappings. In other words, I want a setting in which groups of adventurers can do the same sort of things they've traditionally done in RPGs - band together in armed groups, enter dangerous locales, fight monsters and other fantastical enemies, gain treasure and experience, then go do it again.

I have quite a few ideas for what sort of adventure opportunities will exist in the initial campaign area, a small sandbox-style section of the greater setting. Because of my to-a-fault tolerance for anachronism and incoherence, the locations I'm considering don't seamlessly dovetail with each other. I consider this a design feature rather than a bug, considering that the Fairy Books from which I'm drawing inspiration include tales from a wide variety of cultures and time periods.

Here are a few of the possibilities for location-based adventures (or "dungeons" or whatever) in the initial campaign area. I've provided placeholder names for the locales; these are certain to change as I get things worked out.

1. "Mordant Manor": Inspired by Gothic and faux-Gothic entertainments like The Castle of Otranto, "The Fall of the House of Usher," Tegel Manor, the Walt Disney Haunted Mansions, and fairy tales involving Bad Houses. Designed around historical floor plans such as may be found here. The usual crumbling ancestral manse of a noble clan gone to perdition. Cobwebs, gables, gargoyles, cellars, attics, mad relatives, premature burials, necromancy, restless spirits, the family cemetery, a hedge maze, etc.

2. "Tulgey Wood": An Enchanted Forest of groves, clearings, cottages, hollow trees, and the like, all accessible only by tunnel-like paths in the thorns, briars, and impassable thickets. Designed as a flowchart ("from here, can go east to _____, west to _____") in the manner of a text adventure game, solo module, or - for practical purposes - any traditional dungeon. Wolves, Woodsmen, Trolls, Bears, a Gingerbread House, etc.

3. "Dwarf-land": Caverns, grottoes, and vaults cunningly delved by a tribe of greedy Dwarfs in service to an evil King. Populated by those malign beings and their pets, as well as a fire-breathing poisonous Wurm and her spawn. Stocked with treasure and captives stolen away by the sinister fairies, including a Princess or three. Designed as a straight-up dungeon.

4. "Sabbat Peak": A mountain peak of ill omen, atop which the Witches of the region hold their Sabbats and Esbats. Infested by Mandrake Goblins, Ghouls, Werewolves, Hell-hounds, Vampires, Devil-worshippers, Black Cats, etc. An extremely dangerous "high level" location, especially on holidays when Witchery is afoot.

I also intend to include plenty of "micro-dungeons" on the map - small-scale lairs, towers, villas, and so on.

The Winter Lords: St. Nicholas and King Frost

2010-05-27T09:21:00.013-04:00

The North and South Poles of the Mandragora setting are, respectively, the domains of St. Nicholas and King Frost. Each Pole is the site of a village from which its Winter Lord sets forth to perform his distinctive winter and Yule functions - St. Nicholas spreads holiday cheer and rewards good children, and King Frost encrusts villages in rime and punishes willfulness and disobedience, sometimes abducting or killing the particularly naughty.

The Winter Lords each have specialized servants: St. Nick has Mrs. Claus, industrious Craft-elves, and Flying Reindeer, and King Frost has the Snow Queen, relentless Snowmen, and swarming Snow-bees.

Note 1: Half the reason I wanted to include King Frost in the setting was as an eventual excuse to paint the "Monstrous Snowmen" figures from Reaper, pictured below. The other half was probably the kick-ass classic Ford illustration.

Note 2: Because of the familiarity of the source material to the general reader and potential player, my notes on Mandragora are much sparser than was the case for World of Thool. Not everyone knows about Hodgsonian Borderlands Pig-things, but there's only so much explanation necessary for what Santa does.

There are other holiday figures with domains in Mandragora, from the well-known (the Easter Bunny, Cupid, Jack-o'-Lantern) to the more obscure (the King of Fools, the Beltane Badger), operating with wildly varying degrees of influence and benevolence. Most are of the vaguely-traditional-but-Americanized stripe, much like myself.

What's in your current "gaming library"?

2010-05-26T13:26:00.012-04:00

Today, I got the last of the Andrew Lang Fairy Books I needed for my campaign canon. Along with some legal pads and my laptop, I now have a pretty lean setup that still spurs my creativity. My current gaming library consists of the following:

Ruleset: Tunnels & Trolls 5th edition

Inspirational literature: Andrew Lang Fairy Books

And finally, on an increasingly non-gaming-related note, the shelves devoted to assorted classics:

Down in my garage, I still have all my OD&D books, my Moldvay/Cook sets, WFRP 1e, and the Classic Traveller rules omnibus. I also have a fantasy library that covers most of the "inspirational reading" listed in Moldvay Basic and tons of public domain material, along with some "reference" books (dictionaries, encyclopedias, Gnomes, Faeries, etc.). There's also a lot of poetry and fiction more recent than that on my current reading list, especially Romantics, Victoriana, and Flannery O'Connor (whose grave dirt I have tattooed into my right leg). I love all of it but given limited time, I just can't use it all, so all but a tiny slice goes untouched these days.

A lot of the stuff in the garage will get yard-saled or eBayed shortly, as I'm starting to think of everything I own in terms of how many credit hours of tuition or weeks of groceries I could trade it in for.

I know old-school gaming enthusiasts' libraries run the gamut from "minimal" to "I've never got rid of anything including chits." I enjoy hearing about how other people's creative processes work, so feel free to chime in with an idea of where your tastes and resources fall on the spectrum.

Slow posting week(s)

2010-05-23T11:27:00.003-04:00

For the next week, or possibly two weeks, I won't be posting very much. I'm leaving my current employment at the end of June and haven't yet decided what I'll be doing for a living or where I'll be doing it, and I need to spend a little time putting myself in a good position for whatever's on the horizon. I also have many small projects to complete at home, I need to get my diet and workout schedule back in order, and I want to spend time with The Girl and The Ferrets.

As far as Mandragora goes, my next big step setting up my hardcopy binder, which is where the bulk of my work goes. I'm a Luddite with my notes. Call it nostalgia (because that's what it is), but I don't like to maintain and continually update digital files even if that's the most convenient way to work. I type a file once, convert it to .pdf, print it, stick it in a binder, and work from it that way ever after.

If things need updating, I either write the updates in with a pencil or type up a supplementary document. I focus better this way rather than when I'm fiddling or editing.

Anyway, I'm not going anywhere, but I need to get my ducks in a row. One reason I'm shifting employment is so I have time and energy to look after my health and my "fun" projects, but I need to invest a week or two of hard work so I ultimately have time to relax and be creative.

Settled on Tunnels & Trolls

2010-05-21T16:30:00.006-04:00

I finally decided Tunnels & Trolls 5th edition is the best fit of my favorite rulesets, and I put my D&D books back down in the garage.

I've compiled a short document with my house rules, and am jotting down a few magicky-sounding nonsense words as alternate spell names; I no longer notice the stupid spell names, but they seem to really honk a lot of hooters.

(For blog purposes, I don't think the system really matters. I don't present much mechanical information here, and the old systems are a snap to convert new material for.)

Languages in Mandragora

2010-05-20T19:27:00.006-04:00

The "Common Tongue" of Mandragora is English. All PCs and most NPCs, Fairies, Spirits, Talking Animals, and so on speak English.

For each point of initial Intelligence greater than 12, a PC speaks one additional language. If a player has a particular character concept in mind, the Referee may allow selection of one or more High Tongues rather than random determination.

PCs may not choose to speak a Low Tongue at the start of play, nor can they learn such languages during play in the usual manner except under very unusual circumstances.

The player should have wide latitude to explain how his character came to learn any randomly determined languages.

All High Tongues and some surprising Low Tongues have written forms. Assume that a PC can read and write all languages he speaks (if they have written forms) unless he's Rustic or Simple.

The High Tongue listing is, as usual, rife with oversimplifications, omissions, anachronisms, and outright inaccuracies. It is also highly Eurocentric, as is the bulk of the source literature.

The Low Tongues are the languages of mundane, non-talking animals. Such animals can communicate little in the way of sophisticated ideas, or any concepts at all outside of their limited critter bailiwicks.

There is some overlap suggested by the chart, e.g., a character who speaks the Language of Birds can probably get his ideas across to a barnyard chicken, although he'll doubtlessly come off as intolerably highfalutin to the bucolic poultry. The Low Tongues are intentionally left very vague to allow for Referee adjudication.

The High Tongues (01-75)

01-07 Arabian

08 Backwards

09-11 Chinese

12 Egyptian

13-20 French

21-23 Gaelic

24-31 German

31-35 Greek

36-38 Hindi

39-46 Italian

47-49 Japanese

50-57 Latin

58-63 Russian

64-71 Spanish

72-74 Viking

75 Welsh

The Low Tongues (76-00)

76-77 Barnyard

78 Bear

79-80 Bird

81 Bug

82-83 Cat

84-85 Dog

86-87 Fish

88-89 Horse

90 Jungle

91 Marsupial

92 Monkey

93 Pig Latin

94-95 Rodent

96 Squamous

97 Swamp

98-99 Woodland

00 Pick a Low Tongue. The character speaks that language, and also has great facility in communicating with a particular type of speaker of that tongue, e.g., Canine [Wolf], Bug [Spider], Squamous [Dragon], etc. The selected animal type will, under most circumstances, be sympathetic to the speaker unless severely affronted.

I can see the Plateau of Leng from here

2010-05-20T17:40:00.006-04:00

So, I'm trying to quit smoking again, and had forgotten what nicotine patches do to my dreams.

I just napped, and had the following vivid dreams in rapid succession:

* I had a full-grown lion in my old dorm room, and crisis struck when I was unable to find anyone to affordably shave it.

* I was aboard a cruise vessel for a West Virginia Bar Association party beset by giant clams which had attached themselves to the hull and then slithered forth sans shells to pick off guests one by one. I'm also pretty sure Keira Knightley's character from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was piloting the flying car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but it also had underwater capabilities.

On that note, for your edification, here is a picture of Jake the Ferret on his own sojourn to Dreamland:

GET OUT OF MY HEAD

2010-05-20T13:47:00.002-04:00

This post at Cyclopeatron got me thinking about how easy and fun it'd be to run a weird post-apocalyptic Gamma-World-style game with Tunnels & Trolls 5th, some homebrewed mutation tables and lost-tech weapons, and a blank Judges Guild numbered hexmap.

Alas, one project at a time ...

The campaign canon inevitably narrows

2010-05-19T08:39:00.002-04:00

As is always the case when I start a new setting project, I've started off with a spectrum of source literature that's rapidly narrowing as I get a better sense of what I'm going for. In this instance, I've decided to narrow the source lit to the Andrew Lang Fairy Books only.

This isn't really much of a restriction; Lang collected literally hundreds of stories from dozens of traditions, so the effect is that of a wide range presented in a uniform voice.

For me, the biggest source I'm "losing" is Lord Dunsany, one of my eternal fountainheads. But Dunsany was such a pervasive presence in World of Thool - the Gods of Pegana were the deities of the main campaign region, for instance - that using his works as a major ingredient of the Mandragora setting feels duplicative.

I'm still collecting hard copies of the Lang books (the Dover editions have the original Henry Justice Ford illustrations), and I have no doubt that I can mine that vein in perpetuity. My goal is to adapt at least one setting element, no matter how insignificant, from every story in the Fairy Books.

(As my literary canon contracts, though, my library of evocative public domain illustrations is expanding.)

The Fairy of the Desert and the Yellow Dwarf

2010-05-18T12:47:00.008-04:00

Mandragora is a patchwork of tiny kingdoms (sometimes literally, e.g., the Mouse Kingdom or the Empire of the Ants). I'm sifting through my source literature for an idea of who and what I'm placing on the map as significant sovereigns, monsters, and other encounters. The following two NPCs are adapted from Madame D'Aulnoy's "The Yellow Dwarf" as presented in Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book; they are two of the setting's most vexatious Fairy creatures, and are frequently involved in plots to bedevil Men or even Kingdoms. The Fairy of the Desert is, in fact, one of the most powerful Witches in the setting.

[Note: I keep NPC write-ups pretty brief, and don't necessarily follow every detail from the stories.]

The Fairy of the Desert: A malign and fickle Fairy of great sorcerous power, the Fairy of the Desert is a tall crone, hobbling on a crutch, clad in ragged red robes with a black taffeta ruff and red velvet hood. She can take the form of an incomparably beautiful maiden to ensnare youths who catch her fancy, but she cannot disguise her gnarled and filth-encrusted feet, no matter her form.

A variety of monsters serve her as mounts, beasts of burden, and guardians. When traveling by land, she squats in a cart pulled by fire-breathing turkeys; by air, she vaults through the skies in a bat-drawn chariot. She lives in an splendid bejeweled magical palace with emerald walls, diamond arches, and the like.

When wrathful, the Fairy bears a deadly lance and sits astride a fierce Griffin, and swaddles her neck and shoulders with venomous snakes. She is a dab hand at melee combat, but is most fearsome as a Witch.

The Yellow Dwarf: A tiny, ugly little bald man with a yellow face, yellow coat, and long ears, the Yellow Dwarf is fond of lurking in trees, munching citrus, and hatching plots or extracting promises to ensnare this or that Princess or other Beauty in matrimonial durance. When roused to battle, he is a quick and merciless fighter, riding a great housecat and wielding a wicked knife.

The Yellow Dwarf lives deep in the Desert in the Castle of Steel, a polished edifice with red-hot walls. It is here that he sequesters the many pretty maidens who have fallen under his power. He works hand-in-glove with the Fairy of the Desert, often riding in a box in her cart or chariot.

Both the Fairy of the Desert and the Yellow Dwarf are served by, or can summon, a variety of fearsome magical beasts -- sphinxes, dragons, giants, and two-headed red lions.

Because the pair is so infamous and obnoxious, other Fairy creatures, good Kings, Talking Animals, and Spirits will sometimes aid those who contend against them.

A Challenger Appears!

2010-05-16T19:11:00.003-04:00

I'm still kicking around the pros and the cons of my favorite "old school" fantasy systems for use with the Mandragora campaign. I've mentioned B/X and OD&D, possibly with some amount of Chainmail thrown in.

I've also, in the last couple years or so, developed a strong affection for Tunnels & Trolls 5th edition as a flexible, elegant one-book ruleset. I didn't really give it much thought when I started work on Mandragora (or frankly, for the first twenty-five years I gamed), but my eye inevitably strays towards it any time I work on anything these days.

A popular perception of Tunnels & Trolls, insofar as there are any besides "those spell names are retarded," is that it's an inflationary system in which PCs inevitably ramp up to superhero-like levels. This is supported to an extent by the published solos and modules, some of which are written for PCs with literally hundreds of Personal Adds. (When I first picked up the T&T rulebook, then looked at some of the published solos, I thought "how does a PC get 250 Adds???")

My experience with T&T is that this perception is supported but not entirely accurate. One culprit is the bolted-on system for generating non-human PCs, which (by the book) involves applying multipliers to a PC's ability scores. As anyone who's ever played Magic: the Gathering at a competitive level can tell you, multipliers lead to degeneracy and can quickly bork even a robust system if it's not designed to contain them -- a game built around very small-scale addition, subtraction, and bell curves may have trouble dealing with the rapidly ascending jumps provided by multipliers.

Perhaps the worse culprit is the panoply of completely insane magic weapons and effects presented in some of the official material. There really aren't any guidelines in the rulebook for what a magic weapon should actually do, so there was a lot of variance in how they were presented. Some of them were ... problematic.

Eventually, adventures were published to accommodate extremely powerful non-human PCs with mechanically degenerate weapons. This power level is, I think, neither the default nor an inevitable (or likely) result of "normal" T&T play.

In T&T, a Human PC has a more-or-less typical array of six ability scores, 3d6 in order. Each time the PC gains a level, one or more of his ability scores increases by a manageable amount. Without multipliers or high-powered magical effects, Luck is the only ability score likely to reach significant heights through normal play -- each time a PC gains a level, one of his choices is to add a number equal to twice his new level to Luck. (All the others involve adding a number equal to the new level, or to half the new level.)

Luck is a very useful attribute, as it's the most common score upon which Saving Rolls are based, and it increases Personal Adds on a one-for-one basis. However, by the book, there are built-in limitations on Luck-spamming. A Warrior character who raises only Luck over several levels isn't increasing his Strength or Dexterity to allow the use of better weapons and armor; a Wizard character isn't increasing his Strength, Intelligence, or Dexterity to gain and use more powerful spells.

In fact, absent some buffing item or effect placed in the campaign by the Referee, a Human PC Wizard faces a daunting juggling act. Higher-level spells require high Intelligence and Dexterity to learn, and cost Strength to cast. A Human PC generated on 3d6 and leveled up at a reasonable rate faces a significant challenge in raising three separate ability scores to fulfill the requirements to learn and cast the really good spells.

[tl; dr version: In a Humans-only campaign, without Referee-added stat bloat, by-the-book Tunnels & Trolls 5th edition is pretty tame.]

T&T has a few other things going for it that make it a possible fit for the Mandragora campaign. Assuming the Referee is judicious in assigning Monster Ratings and other mechanical challenge markers, low-level PCs are sturdier than their B/X or OD&D counterparts. Combat is dead simple -- most monsters are statted out with a single number, and default combat is adjudicated with a single opposed roll per round -- and as Ron Edwards has trumpeted, the Saving Roll mechanic both allows and encourages non-standard solutions of the very sort highlighted in the source literature.

If I used T&T, I'd start with Human PCs only, use an alternate (non-multiplication-based) chargen system for any non-Human PCs allowed in the future, and avoid the introduction of mechanically inflationary elements outside the rules-as-written.

(For the record, a modified Leprechaun would probably be the first non-Human Kindred I'd allow out of the rulebook.)

There'd also be a variety of flavor alterations to the rules. The one that springs immediately to mind is a trimming of the weapons and armor tables. I've done a setting in which a Leprechaun wielding a Kukri and a Viking Spike Shield wasn't out of place, but that was Thool, and it's not really what I'm going for this time around.

Anyway, T&T has enough going for it that it's a contender. Again, for development purposes, every ruleset I've mentioned so far is so easy to convert that it really doesn't matter at this point, but it's something to consider.

Developmental miscellanea

2010-05-15T23:19:00.005-04:00

1. Mandragora is very loosely placed in an undefined medieval-to-Renaissance corner of "fairy tale Earth." That's as specific as it's getting. I'm including plenty of references to, and NPCs/monsters/items from, various Earth countries like Persia, Cathay, France, Spain, Africa, and so on. But the action won't ever shift there, and I don't plan to "locate" Mandragora or worry about anachronisms or relative geography.

2. Accordingly, I'm grappling with the decision to a) adapt or create a detailed hex-map of the campaign region or b) scribble something like the Sime "Land of Dreams" and Jaro Hess "Land of Make Believe" maps pictured above, eyeballing distances and the like. Rest assured that mine won't be nearly as arresting as the classic pieces above; I map as if I were drawing with my feet.

3. I'm also still on the fence about system. It really doesn't matter at this point because I'm not running a game, so I'm working with Moldvay/Cook and worrying about making any necessary slight conversions later. The options right now are Moldvay/Cook with OD&D/Chainmail patches, OD&D with Moldvay/Cook patches, or some mix of OD&D, Moldvay/Cook, and the Chainmail combat system.

Chainmail undoubtedly adds a layer of complexity to combat. There are a few things I like about it, though, most of which are noted at Swords of Minaria.

Chainmail combat is less deadly at the lower levels for a well-armored-and-armed adventurer fighting, for instance, Goblins with daggers -- all other things being equal, each Goblin has to roll boxcars to damage a character in Plate Mail & Shield.

And once a character reaches 2nd level, he has a good chance of surviving in combat against even "fantastic" opponents -- at least long enough to run, to bring supporting spellcasters to bear, or to figure out some option other than toe-to-toe melee.

The Chainmail combat system also combines attack matrices and "weapon type vs. armor" modifiers in a single table, and integrates a simple system for weapon speed, parries, and ripostes.

Finally, the Fantasy Combat rules are intriguing and may provide some fun options. Swords of Minaria extrapolates a very interesting "fantastic strike" mechanic that allows for Referee/player negotiation of the stakes and results of attempts at heroic actions.

I'm still reading the Swords of Minaria posts on OD&D + Chainmail, as well as the excellent free .pdf Forbidden Lore to which I was directed by a couple of helpful commenters. At some point, I'm going to have to cobble together a spitwad combat system and run a variety of sample fights. While I puzzle things out, I'm soldiering forward as if Moldvay/Cook will continue to be my ruleset.

4. I may institute a house rule reflecting the old Tunnels & Trolls assumption that each player runs a stable of multiple PCs simultaneously at each session. The rule I'm considering is this: Each player may, at his option, run multiple PCs as long as the total level of those PCs is 3 or less. Thus, early on, each player will likely run three PCs, gradually narrowing down to a single PC of 3rd level as his sole "in play" character, with a couple 1st or 2nd level PCs in the wings as alternates. PCs would still be free to hire or otherwise press into service as many Normal Men, NPCs, and monsters as finances, magic, and Charisma allow.

Happy birthday, L. Frank Baum! Even though you're dead.

2010-05-15T09:06:00.002-04:00

One of my formative and enduring influences.

"Why D&D?"

2010-05-15T08:15:00.003-04:00

I was just asked in the Comments why I picked Moldvay/Cook B/X as the ruleset for Mandragora rather than a non-D&D system that mechanically better suits the fairy tale genre.

This is a good question. D&D comes famously front-loaded with a mess of -isms, tropes, and mechanics derived from Tolkien, S&S, and historical wargames, not all of which dovetail smoothly with the action and aesthetics of traditional fairy tales. An example given was combat-based XP grinding.

The answer's pretty simple -- I wanted to do a setting for "playing D&D with a fairy tale influence" rather than a faithful genre exercise. I'm just as (or more) interested in playing D&D with all its -isms as I am in reflecting my chosen source literature, and I'm as influenced by Verbosh as by the Fairy Books.

At this point in my gaming life, I only seriously consider three rulesets when I start a setting project -- OD&D, Moldvay/Cook, and Tunnels & Trolls 5th edition. Those systems, with a little kitbashing, cover just about everything I want to do.

(AD&D has too much cruft for me, and I've only recently started toying with the idea of using OD&D with the Chainmail combat system.)

Adventurers in the Mandrake March will still delve dungeons, slay monsters, carry back bags of treasure, and otherwise participate in activities which, at this point, really serve no other genre purpose but the "playing D&D" genre. Players will undoubtedly still choose out-of-flavor names, min/max and obsess over fiddly mechanical bits, and otherwise break genre. So it goes.

But they can also marry Princesses.

The campaign canon

2010-05-14T12:35:00.006-04:00

"It's a mountain with a colossal stone skull. Let's call it, ehhhh, 'Stone Mountain.'"
- An Explorer, Doing It Wrong.

I decided a couple things about the new setting project early on. First, as usual, I plan to do a lot of ripping off from public domain literary sources. Second, as usual, I can't be arsed to do a decent map, so some of my maps are not from public domain sources.

Literature
* Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, which collect many tales from many sources and cultures. The Dover editions are stunningly illustrated by Henry Justice Ford. These are probably the most important inspirations for the setting.
* Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which I'm re-reading this summer in verse form. If you'd rather not parse the verse -- the language is deliberately archaic even by Elizabethan standards -- the story is rendered in Victorian prose here.
* Lord Dunsany, especially The Book of Wonder, A Dreamer's Tales, The Sword of Welleran and Other Tales, and The King of Elfland's Daughter (which may not be in the public domain). For once, The Gods of Pegana isn't a foundational text.
* George MacDonald, especially The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, At the Back of the North Wind, and Phantastes.

* The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

* The Golden Legend.

Art
* Henry Justice Ford
* Arthur Rackham
* Edmund Dulac
* Sidney Sime
* John Bauer
* Gustave Dore
* Ivan Bilibin
* and any other public domain art that fits the tone of the setting.

Maps
I'm definitely working from a cannibalized wilderness map for this setting. The short list for the initial campaign region is 1) the gameboard from Outdoor Survival, 2) the hexmap of Karameikos from the Expert rulebook with the serial numbers filed off, or 3) the hexmap from X1 Isle of Dread with the terrain re-skinned and the serial numbers filed off.

I'll probably also use some dungeon maps from canned sources, including the Stone Mountain cross-section from Holmes Basic, and Judges Guild's Sunstone Caverns and the 4- and 5-level dungeons below the City-State from CSIO.

House Rules for the Mandragora Campaign, Part 2

2010-05-14T08:02:00.006-04:00

Last night, I did a bit of reading about the integration of Chainmail with OD&D. I've decided that I'm sticking with Moldvay/Basic at least through the developmental stage of the setting, as I don't know that a baroque wargame combat system is a good tonal fit for what I'm doing here.

However, there are a few things I dislike about Moldvay/Cook, and I'm addressing them with patches from OD&D and Chainmail as follows:

* The ability score bonuses and penalties from Moldvay/Cook are a bit much for me. I'm therefore using the tables from OD&D instead. The main effect of prime requisites is to provide a bonus (or penalty) to earned experience points rather than a significant in-combat swing.

* A Fighter may either make multiple attacks against opponents with 1 Hit Die or less or make a single attack against a single opponent with more than 1 Hit Die. When making multiple attacks, a Fighter may attack a single opponent more than once, with assignment of attacks made prior to any attack rolls.

* I don't mind monsters being hell on Normal Men, but I'm uncomfortable with a run-of-the-mill Mountain Lion mowing down gangs of armored warriors. In OD&D, the majority of monsters get one attack for 1 die of damage, and powerful monsters are more often made dangerous with special abilities than with wholesale damage increases or Capcom attack combos.

In Mandragora, therefore, monsters use the same rules for multiple attacks as Fighters. This supersedes the "claw/claw/bite" attack routines presented in Moldvay/Cook. Most monsters do 1d6 damage on a successful hit; larger monsters such as Ogres, Giants, Dragons, and the like may do more.

* In light of the above decision about monster attack routines and damage, I'm not using the Variable Weapon Damage rules. One-handed weapons do 1d6; for two-handed weapons, roll 2d6 and do damage equal to the highest die.

* In the first round of melee combat, characters with spears, pole arms, or other "long reach" weapons or attack forms generally attack first in the Initiative order, depending on the circumstances.

[I'll eventually compile my house rules and clarifications in one comprehensive post.]

"Swords of Minaria" and OD&D/Chainmail

2010-05-13T16:52:00.002-04:00

As some of y'all know, "three little books" OD&D is my favorite version of D&D, with B/X running a fairly distant second. At the moment, I'm using B/X as the developmental ruleset for Mandragora, but that's subject to change up to the time I actually start gaming with it.

I'm currently looking over a lot of gaming blogs that I don't think existed when I was last active in the online gaming community. I checked out the Swords of Minaria blog based almost entirely on its title, as I still have great affection for the Minaria setting for the Divine Right boardgame.

Anyway, the gentleman blogger at Swords of Minaria has written several thought-provoking posts regarding OD&D and its original integration with Chainmail that have me re-examining my choice of rules. I've literally never, ever tried using the Chainmail Man-to-Man combat tables and "fantastic combat" system -- or even parsed them closely -- and believe it may be worth looking into, if only for an interesting change of pace.

We're a happy family, we're a happy family

2010-05-12T22:21:00.012-04:00

YOUR CAST OF CHARACTERS

Portrait of the Blogger as an Aging Doofus:

His Lurvely Damsel:

The Swashbuckling Lad:

The Very Tiny Girl:

House Rules for the Mandragora Campaign

2010-05-12T20:53:00.012-04:00

I'm not changing much about the Moldvay/Cook ruleset for the Mandragora campaign. In fact, I'm more often designing setting elements around the ruleset rather than altering rules to fit some half-baked Artistic Vision.

Many of the "house rules" below are merely clarifications of how I read and apply the rules-as-written.

EDIT: The house rules presented here supersede those below.

I'm initially allowing only human PCs -- Clerics, Fighters, Magic-Users, and Thieves. This will persist for some time, perhaps in perpetuity. Mandragoran non-humans are creepy and mysterious, and are far more likely to test, bedevil, ensnare, or slay and eat Men than to engage in boon camaraderie.

Clerics

Clerics must belong to either the True Church (Law) or the Anti-Church (Chaos). Each church has an organized hierarchy in Mandragora, although Anti-Clerics are rightfully loath to expose their allegiances and filthy practices to public scrutiny and the righteous application of good clean fire. It's possible to switch Churches; in practice, it's far more common for a True Cleric to fall from grace than for an Anti-Cleric to leap from the lap of Delilah to the bosom of Abraham.

Fighters

When engaged in melee combat with characters or creatures which all have 1 Hit Die or less, a Fighter may make a melee attack on one such character for each of his levels as a Fighter, assuming circumstances so allow. If a Fighter is engaged in combat with even one character or creature with more than 1 Hit Die, he may not make additional attacks.

Magic-Users

I use the Magic-User spell knowledge rules from Cook Expert -- that is, a Magic-User only has in his spell books as many spells as he can cast in a day. In Moldvay/Cook, this is a pretty small number of spells. This leads necessarily to many if not most Magic-Users having different spell sets from each other, as opposed to the tendency in other editions for each Magic-User to, over a short period of time, develop more or less the same spell portfolio as every other mid-level spellcaster in the setting.

I haven't decided how to integrate this with the spell research rules; in other words, I'm not sure yet if spells independently researched will count "against" the number of spells a Magic-User can know. There are colorable arguments both ways.

I enforce the Moldvay Basic interpretation of Read Magic -- a Magic-User may not read any magic other than that in his own spell books without use of the Read Magic spell. This includes spell scrolls. Not all Magic-Users will know Read Magic, and those who do are unlikely to find it a wasted spell knowledge slot.

Thieves

For the first time in a couple years, I'm leaving the Thief class in a ruleset, and will see how it goes if and when I actually get to run a campaign. In terms of flavor and roleplaying, the class has a lot of potential in a fairy-tale-influenced setting, but this isn't Lankhmar or Fantasy Fucking Vietnam.

For each full turn of examination and study beyond the first turn, the Thief gets an extra +5% to his chance to Open Locks or Find/Remove Traps, to a maximum of +30%. Situational modifiers also apply to such abilities as Moving Silently and Hiding in Shadows -- obviously it's more difficult to sneak past an alert Elvish sentinel at the gates of the Crystal City than to backstab a squinty Ogre in a torchlit cavern. By the same token, it's easier to Pick Someone's Pocket if one has an accomplice to distract one's mark.

Levels

Moldvay/Cook tops out at 14th level for human characters. So does this setting. The great mass of humanity consists of Normal Men, and the bulk of the relatively few classed/leveled characters are in the "1st to 3rd" level range. "Name level" characters are rare even at the upper echelons of human society -- most Lords got their position by choosing their parents well, not by wading through fountains of gore.

Hit Points

Characters roll Hit Points at every level, including 1st. Death occurs at 0 Hit Points.

Languages

The "Common Tongue" of Mandragora is West Ain-Igrivian. All PCs and most NPCs and talking monsters speak it; it is surmised that fairy-creatures have some preternatural facility for learning languages, for Men had scarcely set foot on the Isle before their native tongue was being babbled, hissed, roared, and cooed at them by the creatures of thicket and cavern.

Both the True Church and the Anti-Church teach "temple tongues" to devoted lay followers; the Temple Tongue of the True Church is Classical, and the Temple Tongue of the Anti-Church is a form of backwards Classical with guttural intonations, which debased patois is also spoken by many malign fairy-creatures. In practice, this means that devout partisans of Law or Chaos often, but not always, speak the appropriate "alignment language" (and that Chaotic infiltrators in the True Church may be able to mouth beatitudes right along with the parish priest).

The language of "Magic" is usually some amalgam of sigils, Classical, Egyptian hieroglyphics, backwards speech, anagrams, and nonsense words, highly specific to the individual Magic-User.

Plate Mail

A character may, when rolled up, purchase plate mail armor for the listed price of 60 gold pieces, with the assumption that the armor is a family heirloom, a spoil of campaigning, or purchased from "Crazy Al" Miraj, the Talking Arabian Horned-Rabbit, fresh off the carcass of a Crusader fallen on foreign sand.

At all other times, the default price for plate mail increases tenfold to 600 gold pieces.

Weapons

I use both the optional Variable Weapon Damage rules and the default rule that two-handed weapons strike last in the Initiative order.

Flaming Oil

Oil may be tossed on a creature or location and then lit, with difficulty determined on a case-by-case basis. (On the other hand, I find the notion of ersatz "Molotov cocktails" in widespread use for personal combat to be both unrealistic and jarring, and am likely to err on the side of "that's dippy" when determining difficulty.)

The Mandrake Goblins: A First Look

2010-05-12T09:58:00.010-04:00

The island kingdom of Mandragora is named for its best-known indigenous species, a malicious lineage of Goblins known as the Mandragora or Mandrake Goblins. The Mandragora are, like all Goblins, Chaotic fairy-creatures antagonistic to Men, but are distinguished from other Goblins by their peculiar affinity for plants and vegetable matter.

It is said that the Mandragora spew forth from a thoroughly foul and wretched demesne on the Isle, some forsaken vale or sodden moor wreathed in snapping flytraps, flabby vines, reeking corpse-flowers, and blood-soaked fields of unhallowed loam from which new Mandrake Goblins sprout.

The Mandragora have been mostly driven out of the regions of the Isle settled by Men, but still haunt the surrounding wilds. Uniformly vile and hateful, they are responsible for a panoply of atrocities, including baby-snatching, well-fouling, milk-souring, and the occasional abduction of some more-or-less innocent goat-maid. They delight in the mortification and consumption of human flesh, and will even go so far as to render down the bones and skin of their victims into a gruesome stew, in which the Goblins soak their rooty feet.

The "baseline" Mandrake Goblin is a man-like thing about the size of a human child, clad in rags and perhaps a soiled hood, with a twisted form, fantastically ugly features, and wide mouths full of needle-sharp fangs. All Mandrakes exhibit one or more distinctly vegetable characteristics -- mossy eyebrows, wooden horns, carrot noses, gourd heads, and so on. The touch of iron is painful to Mandrakes, and they use only weapons and implements with wooden hafts -- spears, rakes, hoes, pruning forks, spades, and so on.

Larger Mandragora exist, including gnarled Hobgoblins, pumpkin-pated Bugbears, and venomous Thouls. Smaller unintelligent Mandragora, the writhing Manikins, are often used as sentries by virtue of the piercing shrieks they emit in the presence of Men; it is unknown if these are immature Mandrake Goblins or some sub-species.

The Mandragora are ruled by a caste of Witches who fly about on magic brooms, brew vile potions and poisons, and presumably engage in other practices accepted by learned men to be part and parcel of the craft of Witchery. About them little is yet known, although it is believed they hold Sabbats at which they pay tribute to a hideous Bugbear Warlock, or perhaps kiss the arse of the Devil himself.

Mandragora, or, the Mandrake March: A Very Brief Introduction

2010-05-11T21:47:00.006-04:00

Who Are You?

My name is Scott, and I'm returning to the realm of RPG blogging after an extended hiatus. You may remember me from the vaguely "old school" blogs Wilderlands OD&D and The World of Thool, neither of which I plan to revisit in the foreseeable future. This is my new setting project.

What Is This?

Short version: "The Brothers Grimm join the Judges Guild."

Long version: Mandragora is a fairy-tale-influenced setting inspired by public domain sources such as Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, the works of Lord Dunsany, the travelogues of Sir John Mandeville, and especially traditional fairy and folk tales as collected in Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, presented with a healthy dose of 1970s and early 1980s gamer culture. Visually, I'm drawing inspiration from a variety of classic fantasy artists including Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, Sidney Sime, John Bauer, and Henry Justice Ford. The ruleset is Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons, and the initial "wilderness map" is the gameboard from Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival game.

Why Another Setting Blog? Where's Thool, You Dick?

On a personal level, 2009 vigorously sucked, with professional pressures, nagging health issues, and the death spiral of my marriage of fourteen years. This combination of circumstances forced me to take a brisk step away from gaming. Thankfully, 2010 has thus far been as blessed as 2009 was cursed, and I'm feeling the itch to noodle around with a setting project again.

A few folks seemed to enjoy my Wilderlands and Thool blogs, but this isn't them. I haven't had time to get fully reacquainted with the RPG blog community as it stands now. However, my impression is that a lot of very creative people are working with the dominant influences for those projects -- sword-and-sorcery, weird fantasy, and science-fantasy -- and I don't think I have a lot to offer within those palettes that isn't already being done more ably and prolifically by others.

My two aesthetic pole-stars for fantasy gaming are pulp fantasy and fairy tales. I'm pretty burned out on the former, so this project focuses on the latter.

Mandragora

Mandragora is, per the usual initial setup for Basic D&D, a backwater border realm on the frontier between the Realms of Crown and Church (i.e., Law) and the Realms of Chaos. Its name and epithet, the Mandrake March, derive from the signature species of hostile indigenous gits, a race of vegetable-goblins called Mandrakes.

Other denizens include capricious and decadent Elves in their Crystal City, crafty and secretive Dwarves in their Cathedral Caverns, along with pointy-hatted Gnomes, wart-nosed Witches, flesh-eating Ogres, ravenous Werewolves, rheumy-eyed Ghouls, and the other usual suspects lurking in Dismal Caves, Cloud Castles, Tangled Thickets, Mouse Palaces, and Gingerbread Houses.

Much, much more to come ... I'll be adding a blogroll and assorted other gew-gaws and gadgets as I have time. As always, all feedback is welcome, and everything I do is explicitly released into the public domain insofar as I have the right to do so. Thanks for reading!