This Hobbit Kills Fascists

I can see how Tolkien’s work might appeal to fascists at a surface-level. There is the racism of one’s bloodline and lineage determining one’s traits, and the portrayal of the Enemy as varieties of the people living to the East and South of Europe. I love Tolkien’s works, but I don’t like any of those elements. For a man born in the late 1800s, his views on race were average – not a virulent, active racism, but a passive, presumptive racism. His imagination was, alas, colonized as well as extraordinary.

But Tolkien hated fascists, and fascism. Not only did his sons risk their lives to fight against it, but in all of his writings, one never finds the slightest tolerance for fascism, and he had a few contemptuous things to say about fascists themselves.

More importantly, I cannot imagine a more thorough condemnation of all forms of authoritarianism than The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf, offered the Ring, which represents coercive power, responds with the appropriate amount of fear and disgust. Galadriel rejects it as well, and by rejecting it at last earns her return to the Blessed Land. She is literally saved by her rejection of authoritarianism, even well-intentioned authoritarianism. Faramir similarly ‘shows his quality’ by refusing the Ring – by refusing coercive power, and by passing the test that his brother failed. (Note that Boromir redeems himself after his failure by giving his life defending those weaker than himself – something a fascist would never do)

What we have is a story where the heroes would rather die, would rather their society collapse into ruin, would rather end, in Aragorn’s case, the thousands of years of Numenor’s legacy in Middle-Earth, than take up the Ring as authoritarians and rule by dominating other people’s wills. They would rather their culture and legacy burn to the ground than take up the Ring, and the put their hope and faith in the weak overcoming the strong.

The position that the heroes, and the Wise, take in the War of the Ring could not be farther from fascism, which is among other things the promise that through authoritarianism, through coercion, society will be saved and made pure. It is an ideology of contempt for those weaker than one’s self. I think that a lifetime spent despising fascism, and the experience of being at war with it in the form of Nazism, definitely shaped Tolkien’s story, and that fascists looking for vindication in Middle-Earth are looking in the wrong place.

D&D’s Non-Heroic Origins

Dungeons & Dragons is commonly described, and understood, as a heroic TTRPG, especially in the 5th edition, but I would say since AD&D 2nd Edition at least. The assumption is that you will grow from humble beginnings to epic capability. The assumption is that you will be heroic – brave and fighting for the betterment of the world, or at least the betterment of your character’s part of it. You are fighting evil, saving the innocent, etc.

But then you get murder-hobos. We’ve all seen players turn into murder-hobos, just wandering around, killing whenever they want and fleeing whatever consequences might arise. The DM tries to motivate them to buy into the world-saving story they had hoped to tell, and they squirm away, choosing violence and shenanigans instead.

People associate D&D with heroic stories like The Lord of the Rings, but heroic literature was not the original inspiration for D&D. The original inspiration was what I think of as scoundrel literature. I realized this when I recently took time to read through multiple Dying Earth novels by Jack Vance. D&D’s spellcasting system is “Vancian”, meaning it is inspired by the magic system of the Dying Earth novels, and Vecna, one of the great villains of D&D from the very beginning, is an anagram for Vance. If you’ve ever read Vance’s Dying Earth stories, you’ll know what I mean by scoundrel literature. His characters are selfish, arbitrary, clever enough to get into and out of trouble, but they almost never learn, and they are anything but heroic. Reading stories of Cugel’s Saga, it was effortless to imagine him as a D&D character simply doing the things that the game rewards – trying to cash in through violence and shenanigans.

Over time, D&D has moved away from scoundrel literature and more toward the heroic with each successive edition. It would be hard to imagine Cugel or Liane the Wayfarer as characters in 3rd, 4th or 5th Edition, but I feel like they would fit in perfectly in the verisons of D&D that the OSR seeks to replicate and reimagine. At the same time, the Dying Earth novels have a wealth of material and inspiration for precisely these kinds of scoundrel stories.

V5 Salubri are Unplayable (Fixed)

As written, the V5 version of the Salubri have four bloodline flaws and are, in my opinion, unplayable. They’ve always been a ridiculous bloodline, hunted by the Tremere and nearly wiped out, with a third eye punishing them for developing their signature Discipline, but V5 took this and made them much worse.

As written, V5 Salubri are still punished with a third eye whether they develop certain Disciplines or not – they simply develop a third eye when Embraced. Additionally, blood weeps, and then sprays from their third eye whenever they use any Discipline, which is incredibly punitive. So any time a Salubri uses any Discipline, they weep (or spray) blood, and the rules state that this forces a frenzy test from all nearby vampires whose Hunger is 4 or higher.

None of these are even their official weakness. That weakness is that their vitae is delicious, and whenever a fellow vampire tastes that vitae, they have to be fought off. So a history of suffering diablerie has become a diablerie imperative. Every time a Salubri uses any Discipline near any vampire with Hunger 4, there’s a chance that vampire will frenzy, and if they do, they’ll find the Salubri’s blood almost irresistable.

Why would a player tolerate this bloodline with its three weaknesses? For the pleasure of having Auspex, Dominate and Fortitude.

I’m amazed this made it past an editor, as the Salubri were already almost unplayable in their V20 form.

Fixing the Salubri

I came up with a fix for the Salubri in terms of their backstory and Disciplines for a Vampire game I ran not long after V5 first came out – I commend it to you.

In this fix, the Salubri are originally a Tzimisce bloodline that utilized Auspex, Dominate and Protean (Vicissitude) to fleshcraft and heal instead of harm. (The Tremere, their somewhat-descendants, replaced Protean with Blood Sorcery.) For the Salubri weakness, I got rid of the third eye entirely – it was always both needlessly punishing and stupid. Instead, I would keep their official weakness the same, with the reasoning that it is a counterpoint to the Tremere weakness of being unable to form blood bonds, and could also be an echo of their healing ability. Their vitae tastes slightly of the life that vampires have lost, perhaps, because they practiced the ability to restore some of that life.

An Apophatic Guided Meditation on Treasure

Focus on the idea of treasure, as introduced in the second reading

and of Lent as a time when we consider setting something aside

or taking something on

and it can be hard to discern what’s most important, what’s getting in the way

So I’ll try something I haven’t done in a while

a guided visualization.

Follow along, or take time to relax

and don’t worry, if you fall asleep

we’ll gently wake you up for the next part of the service.

So sit solid. I suggest feet flat on the floor

shoulders a bit back, so you can breathe easily

hands somewhere they can just rest

Don’t worry about being still, move and shift if you need to

Comfortable, but solid

Then, close your eyes

Imagine your life. Hold as many of the parts of your life at once as you can

Your family, and friends, and neighbors

The place you live

The things you keep in that place

The places you work

The vehicle or vehicles you use

where you sleep; where you go to read

The screens you look at, and where you look at them

Your hobbies, your pets

Imagine your life, gathered up in one huge space

Hold as many of these things as you can

It might be crowded for a moment

As you hold your life in your mind

Having brought all this to our attention,

having filled this space with our life,

we are going set some parts aside

Not forever, but for now

To learn for ourselves 

what is revealed when we do

First, brush aside the clutter

Slide it to the horizon of your mind and let it tip off and fall away

By hand, or shovel, or bulldozer

Hear the clatter and rustle

Feel the weight relieved

Enjoy for a moment the open space you can now see

Let go of your debts

Debts you owe, the debts owed to you

Forgive them as you see them forgiven

unhook the chains, cut the tethers of debt

See the things you have achieved

because you were told you had to

The expectations you have lived into

The shapes you have twisted yourself into, to fit

Loosen their hold and let them melt away

Let the hard molds turn brittle, crack, and break

Brush their dust off of you

Set down the diploma, the certificate, the mask

All you have in your life because someone told you

You had to

Slide away all the things you have accumulated

because others see you

and might judge you

The things you have that say who you are

to people who don’t care enough to ask

Everything that tells your status

the marks imposed on you

or marks you have chosen for yourself

Signs of who you are

compared to those around you

A certain kind of home, because people like you live in that kind of home

A certain kind of vehicle, because people like you drive that kind of vehicle

Clothing, how you dressed for the job you wanted, 

how you dress for the position you have now

Jewelry, name brands, fashions, fads

All gone

Let go of the toil of necessity

Relax your camped hands

Stretch your tired back

Prop up your sore feet

Put down all the things you have to do

Simply because you have to do them

The tedium, the tasks for tasks’ sake

the weekly checklist, the planner, the calendar

Let them all go

Let go of what you do because you fear endings

The noise you make to drown out loss

The small eternities you’ve sought to build, that never last

The distractions that keep you quiet

The ways you choose to be numb

Let your perception be free for a moment

You will need it

Now look around at what is left

No clutter, no debts owed, none to collect

no achievements, no shape that anyone else has imposed on your life

No wealth, no status; no poverty, no shame

Nothing on your to-do list, no chores

Nothing to numb you, no turning away

You are seeing, hearing, feeling, clearly

Look at what is left

Somewhere, here, is your treasure

Do you see it? Do you treasure it?

Let yourself be patient

to wait for your answer

to see your treasure for what it is

glittering amongst everything else

Know that you have time to be wise

Now, slowly, remember where you are

In a folding chair, at a plastic table

in a church, your church

And your life, all of it, is still there

Though you might choose to change it

And as you are ready, take a deep breath

and open your eyes

Escalating Stakes in RPG Conflict

The issue of escalating conflict is already addressed in some RPGs. The first time I realized I was seeing it was in Dogs in the Vineyard, wherein, briefly, you can escalate to violence if you fail to get your way in a social interaction. I included an escalation mechanic in Parsec when I was designing that game, and it is one of the things I think about when playing D&D 5E and teaching it to new players (which I’ve been doing a lot lately). I know that games like Burning Wheel and its child Torchbearer, you set the stakes of a conflict clearly at the beginning (kill, capture, drive off, etc.), and what’s at stake is not necessarily the ‘default’ kill that we get in tabletop RPGs and video games.

In my Hoard of House Rules I added rules for non-lethal combat in D&D 5E. It was something I wanted to think through for running the game with children, and also simply in situations where I didn’t want killing to be the assumed result of every physical conflict. But my thinking continued from there to different kinds of conflict, not just lethal/non-lethal. Here are four distinct ones I came up with:

1. Intimidate/Drive off
2. Capture
3. Disable
4. Kill

These conflict stakes escalate in numerical order, in my view, and I can see how they can escalate into each other in a given conflict. Say, a character is trying to intimidate another, and that fails, so now they try to force them to do what they do with violence – i.e. capture. That fails, so they have to take them out, but taking them out proves much more difficult than they thought, and they end up having to kill them as the only way to stop them.

In a traditional RPG, at what point do you “roll initiative?” This probably depends on your style of play – do you break social interactions into turns? But very likely you’d need to roll initiative going from 1 to 2 on the list above. The important point, though, is to make it clear to players that there is more than one possible goal to a conflict – even the violence-heavy D&D 5E character sheet has a lot that can be leveraged to accomplish 1, 2, and 3 above.