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.

Fallow

Creative Commons image of a fallow field, since social media wants images

If you’d like to read back, there are almost a thousand posts on this blog. I’ve been writing here for a long time – not since blogging was cool, but a long time. (I am, as a rule, never cool) But it’s been a year since I’ve updated here, and whenever I sit down to do so lately, I stop. This doesn’t mean I won’t again, but I’m just observing what’s happened over the last year.

One reason is that I have other places to write that also take my time and attention. One is my Patreon, and if you follow that link, you’ll get a taste of what I do there. Another is that I am still working on a RPG to be published on behalf of the Bodhana Group through Onyx Path Games. Turns out, writing a 300+ page instruction manual for fun with a team of other writers and designers is a lot of work. It’s fun work, but it’s a lot. (It will be shorter once it is in final form, but on GDocs it is over 360 pages). If you want to learn more about that, or ask questions, you can check out Onyx’s Discord channel for the game. We hope to start crowd-funding for the game in November, and if you want to hear more about it, you can also comment below.

There are actually plenty of things I want to write here: a reflection on how Elon Musk is a shitty dragon, on the banality of evil, on the nature of orcs in Tolkien’s work, on a cool idea for novel structure, game reviews, even Jesus stuff if people will put up with it. But for now I like to think of this blog as fallow, because I do intend to see some green growth here again.

Comparing The One Ring 1st and 2nd Edition

Image Credit: Free League Publishing

When The One Ring came out, originally from Cubicle 7, it was obviously the best tabletop RPG adaptation of Middle-Earth out there. MERP had some great supplements that I still use as resources, but the rules had little to do with Middle-Earth. Arda Marred was a cool fan project, but it’s no longer supported, and can now only be found on the Wayback Machine as far as I know. The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game by Decipher was…bad. It was d20 using 2d6 instead of d20 and that was about it. It tried, but it wasn’t a game I would play.

The One Ring nailed it, however. Better than any tabletop RPG to date. There was the right focus on conversations and meeting new people. You had to open sanctuaries between adventures. There were robust journey rules. Skills and traits were drawn directly from the text of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and used in creative ways. The art was beautiful. I ran a campaign and it was a blast.

When I saw that a 2nd Edition was coming out from Free League, I felt a mix of excitement and trepidation. What would they change? Would they just improve 1st Edition, or go in a new direction entirely? I bought the core rulebook and the Starter Set box. The Starter Set, as a starter set, is excellent. I read through the core rulebook, and my analysis as of now is that 2nd Edition is a lateral move – but I’ll say a bit more below by way of comparison between the two editions.

What’s the same:
Three attributes used in an unusual way, heroic paths that are essentially classes, cultural rewards and subtle magic items, loads of Middle-Earth flavor, abstracted wealth and standard of living, fatigue and encumbrance are connected with ideosyncratic helm rules, combat rules and stances are similar, damage and armor rules are similar

The One Ring 1st Edition	The One Ring 2nd Edition
I prefer the attributes in this version Distinctive features and traits are more diverse and interesting. There are also more mechanics tied to them The art is much better, at least according to my taste I prefer Wilderland as a default setting compared to Eriador	A few mechanics are simplified compared to 1st Ed, though it isn’t a big difference Less paging around the book to learn – a bit better organized The Starter Set box is excellent

As you can see from the above, I have a slight preference for the 1st Edition of The One Ring. At best, the 2nd Edition is a lateral move. Nothing is purely improved, though a few things change, and as always your mileage may vary. If you already have 1E, keep it and play it in good health! If you don’t have The One Ring, I imagine the out of print 1E will be expensive now, so go ahead and grab 2E. It is still hands-down the best Middle-Earth RPG out there.

That being said, reading through 2nd Edition did motivate me to dust off my homebrew take on Middle-Earth…

Have you read The One Ring? Have you played either edition? What do you think?

Working Stiffs 0.3

Image: Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines

Alright. I hacked Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition, and while running that game, I also wrote a PbdA version of VtM. Because I can’t stop myself, I just finished rewriting that hack into Working Stiffs, my general game about being a vampire serving your vampire overlords night after night, and then maybe trying to kill them. This is the 0.3 version, meaning there is more work to do, but as usual I’m sharing it once it is at a point where you could take it and try playing it. 

As always, feedback is welcome if you have a chance to take a look at it. 

And yeah I’m still writing a bunch of other stuff 🙂

working-stiffs-0.3Download

Premature Cthulhu Hack

So, turns out Sandy Petersen, one of the original designers of Call of Cthulhu, decided to share his expert opinion with regard to genomes and trans persons. Of course, he has absolutely no expertise, and could have easily just kept his trap shut. But he didn’t.

In response, I’m sharing my hack of Call of Cthulhu. It’s an improvement on the base rules, as well as a simplification, adding in a Mothership-style stress mechanic to deepen the way Sanity works. It worked really well for a few sessions of a game I ran not long ago. At the same time, this is not in any kind of polished state. These are drafts I fixed up a bit before I uploaded them.

coc-hack-rules-reference-sheet-0.91Download

coc-hack-character-creation-worksheet-0.9Download

coc-hack-characer-sheet-fillable-0.7Download

All of this is intended to be Creative Commons, Attribution, Share-Alike, Non-Commercial.

Enjoy!