Dungeon World Orcs

You finally spot your quarry- the dozen orcs that have set fire to your village and slew all of your friends. There couldn't have been more than twelve of them, but they were battle-hardened warriors where your fellow villagers were mostly farmers and their wives and children, and they put them all to the sword. None of them died. They stole everything of value, killed and cooked what livestock hadn't run, and left, singing songs in their strange tongue, mindless of the blood and gore that caked in their thick hair and in their armor.

You'd tracked them over the past day; not a difficult task, since they were obviously making no effort to hide or keep secret what they'd done. They marched at a quick pace, despite being obviously burdened with heavy armor and their huge, spiked weapons, and talked and chattered amongst themselves the whole time. Now that they've camped, they'd taken off their armor and they huddled around a single campfire, yapping at each other and wrestling among themselves, almost rolling into the fire once. They all laughed at that, but you watched in horror. These were the orcs that slew your village? Not a day ago they killed dozens of your kinfolk and now they were rolling around in the grass and making obscene gestures at each other? 

One of them, the largest one, snapped a command and the other orcs visibly sunk. Here was the boss of the warband. You had a tiny dagger that the orcs had deigned to steal, and it seemed useless against the scarred hulk that towered more than twenty feet from you currently stood. The huge orc had no helmet, and you could see that he was missing an eye. He glared out from his empty socket at the others, and cuffed one on the head. He spoke several sharp words, and then gestured at the sky. The orcs quieted and calmed down, and eventually they all went to sleep.

You were still standing there. What on earth were you going to do?

Let's talk about orcs.

In Dungeon World, Orcs are savage, bloodthirsty and hateful. They all swear fealty to a chief, and they are all trained to fight. Some of them are berserkers, transported to near-insanity during battle because of their demonic rites. Some of them are priests, who pluck out their own eye as a sign of devotion and make pacts with their gods for vengeance. Some of them are shamans, who talk to spirits. And some of them are slavers, who roam the seas looking to shanghai a crew or two. This is all directly from Dungeon World's writeups of the race, and is taken for absolute truth.

But is it? How much is exaggerated by terrified enemies, or disgusted onlookers? And most importantly- what can we infer from these descriptions?

Well, a lot, actually. Nearly everything you could want to know about a people is there, actually. Funny how that works, isn't it? So let's start with the basics and extrapolate where we can.

 

Stating the Obvious

If we take them at face value, we have a people who are pious, angry, and ready for battle, which we can clearly see from their aggressive disposition, their numerous warriors, their willingness to fight, and the central place that their shamans and priests hold in their society. This is the basic facet of orkiness- a sort of aggressiveness mixed with religiosity.

Each of these things tells a story about who orcs are, where they came from, and what they're like as individuals.

Orc armies, assembling

Ready for a Fight

Let's start with the most obvious facet of "orcishness," their combativeness. If every orc is taught to fight, then we can assume they have a strong martial tradition. Martial traditions occur only in societies with frequent low-intensity warfare, like Ancient Greece, Gaul, Mesopotamia, or Imperial China. In order for this to happen, the landscape must be of a type that supports at least city-states, and either large enough that a centralized government is difficult to administer efficiently, or dispersed enough that centralization is impractical entirely.

Both kinds share key features; in the absence of a centralized government, there are no kings to moderate in-fighting and direct their population growth towards an external enemy, there is no ethnic kinship (despite seeming similarities in language, appearance, and customs) so they remain free game to be enslaved or pillaged, and there are numerous feuds and rivalries with any neighbor, so that there is a kaleidoscopic web of temporary allies, potential enemies, and chains of atrocities committed on both sides.


This all, of  course, necessitates that there are cities, or at least permanent settlements, both because tribal nomads don't produce iron goods that orcs are known to possess, and because nomads generally do not have strong martial traditions, which orcs are again known to possess. This actually completely gels with their being described as hordes, because the peoples that have been historically referred to as hordes (i.e. the Roman's "barbarians" and the Mongolian Empire's "hordes" that enveloped swaths of Eurasia). Both of these people actually had complex societies with some fairly large cities (including the "barbarian" cities of Orleans, Bourges, and Chartres, which still exist today), trade routes, non-food producing specialists, a priestly class, and various other trappings of civilization.

So we've decided that they obviously have squabbling city-states, that they may or may not have had experiments in feudalism, and that they are very obviously possessed of at least a couple of disparate ethnic groups that fought constantly, leading to the establishment of a "warrior culture." This leaves us a couple of useful seeds you can use in your next game, including peaceful orcish cities, orcish ruins, and orc traders. Or possibly an ancient orcish battleground, or an orcish tomb of an ancient emperor.

Help From Above

Next up, we have their religion. Their religion is explained by three entries in Dungeon World- one of them being the Berserker, who undergoes a "kind of twisted knighthood" called Anointing By The Night's Blood, which turns a normal warrior-orc into a half-mad warrior whose madness never really ceases. This mirrors the real-life view of the Nordic berserkers, whose enemies believed that they looted, pillaged, and destroyed constantly in their horrible heretical frenzy. Of course, this isn't true- in real life, berserkers were highly valued and completely sane outside of battle, and even formed a regular part of armies and the personal guard of kings. But we do, undoubtedly, have a sort of holy warrior here. Can you say paladins?

Secondly, their religion is described in the entry on the Orc One-Eye, where a lengthy prayer of vengeance is delivered to one "Gor-sha-thak, the Iron Gallows," praying for vengeance against an unnamed foe, invoking the powers of night, of runes, and of the clouded sky. This, again, sounds fairly nordic; runes, blood magic, and one-eyed gods being a notable part of the Norse pagan worldview.

Lastly, you have the entry on the Shadowhunter, who is literally a holy order of assassins. They serve He of Riven Sight, the one-eyed god, and use poisons and shadowy magic to kill people that the orcs deem unworthy. This tells us a whole lot about orcs, once again- namely that there is enough left of orcish society to support not only a priestly caste, but to have holy assassins. This implies a high degree of organization, of information about other societies, and of frequent stretches of peace. After all, you don't send assassins to kill people that you're attacking- you send in assassins when they're not expecting it. This puts a wrinkle in the nordic theme, of course, and lends a sort of ancient middle-eastern paganism in. Which is kind of neat- now we've got a bit of interplay with lunar symbolism, the shadows of night, and a bit of the vengeance pokes through once again.

So when you put it together, what have you got?

An orcish general surveys the carnage he has wrought

Who's The Tusked Dude Over There?

A people who willingly meet their enemies in battle with no qualms for "fairness" or "honor," watched over by one-eyed sky gods hungry for sacrifice and for rivers of blood, who sail the oceans in their reaving ships, pillaging and plundering the cities of their foe-men, led by priests and berserkers anointed by night, commanded by chieftans' force of will and strength of personality in a de-centralized world of city-states and feudalism.

From this, we can extrapolate that orcs are independent, pious, and unafraid of personal sacrifice. They value personal accomplishment and do not acknowledge inherited prestige or positions, although they're not stupid and won't do things like disrespecting a king in his own castle, surrounded by guards. An orc makes friends and enemies easily, and has little to no truck with stupid notions like honor. To the victor goes the spoils, says the orc, and if the gods didn't like betrayal and backstabbing maybe they should do something about it. They tend to act rather than think. They talk with their hands and are vivacious. Their language is harsh and fast-paced, and tends to be made of compound words rather than unique words for each thing. A troll would be an uglywartmonster, and an dragon would be flyingfirelizard, for example.

Want to play them yet? Me, too. But I haven't written the rules just yet. Maybe check back tomorrow?

Dungeon World!

Last Saturday I played Dungeon World.

At the risk of sounding a bit like a crazy person I want to just go ahead and say that playing it was like a dream come true. It was a bit like a really great pair of underwear- it's got support where you need it, it mostly stays out of the way, and it doesn't look terrible, either.

The best idea, I think, is that each players' action has the potential to really make things worse, so you often have situations that quickly snowball out of control. I really do mean snowball; shit gets crazy quick.

As a good example, the first thing my players' party did was decide that they're going to a frigid arctic dungeon, deep in the north. I had them roll to make a Perilous Journey, and so they did. The quartermaster, to whom the food supplies belong (a halfling who immediately demanded that he be quartermaster as soon as he found out what that was, no less), rolled fine, so nothing happened to their food. The trailblazer, not so much- he rolled a 7. I asked him what was up, and he told me: "Oh, the map was upside down!" We decided that they'd have to eat an extra ration, since they were headed exactly the wrong way and wasted a lot of what would normally be productive travel time. But it got interesting with the scout, who rolled really, really poorly. I offered him a hard choice- you can either stand your ground here, and try and outsmart, outfight, or otherwise trick it (not entirely unlikely, since the scout was a bard,) or you can run for your life and hope that your party helps you deal with it. He chose to run for his life, and I told him what was chasing him: An enormous, slavering yeti.

And so, without any preparation or forethought to what was happening, we have a clear picture of the party; a somewhat oblivious but well-meaning bard, a possibly sheltered thief, and a halfling who is more concerned with the food than with where they're going.

I can't remember how the fight went, but I do remember that they ended up getting some help from the Druid (the last party member, who according to the Bonds that they wrote before the session, actually knew most of them from before), and they dispatch the Yeti, but not before the bard's music attracts more of the beasts. I left one of the failed song attempts hanging, because I'd had a plan for later...

Anyways, they run into a nearby ice cave (they used Spout Lore to decide that there were some caves nearby, I think,) and the thief uses his powers to detect traps, asking if it's safe. It isn't- the bard's bagpipe music has weakened the ice and it's going to collapse! But the Druid runs deeper into the cave (a result of a failed attempt to aid, I think)!

The entire session goes on just like this, with two steps back to every three steps forwards. It was like a roller-coaster ride, and I highly recommend Dungeon World to anybody who's tired of preparing game material and just wants to play a really fun, really exciting fantasy game.

DUNGEON WORLD

This Saturday I'm running Dungeon World, and I'm excited.

And why shouldn't I be? It's a semi-narrativist, semi-traditional game of dungeon crawling with an obvious love for its source material and no qualms whatsoever about giving you that old-school D&D vibe in a totally new way.

It's no secret that I'm in love with old-school dungeon crawling, especially in a system that lets you get away with making literally everything up on the spot. I mean, the entire game is based around exactly that; every roll lets the players or the GM dictate what's happening in the world, in totally in-game terms. And it's all player driven.

See, the players actually get to shape the world during character creation. You ask them what god they serve, and they just make it up. Where are the from? They make it up, and tell you a little bit about it. They have "Bonds" to other characters, and that lets them define who other peoples' characters are.

During play, it's the same way. When they want to attack something, the monsters get to hit back if they roll decently well. They can choose not to take this retribution damage, or they can choose to knock the enemy around a little. Or they can choose to hack extra hard.

And if they roll poorly? Then I get to "make a move," too. And it's always something cool. If it's just a fight, maybe their sword gets knocked away. Or maybe they slip and fall. Or maybe their enemy uses their momentum to push them towards the chasm they were fighting near. Or maybe now the valiant hero is in the middle of the hordes of monsters! Or maybe the bad guy's about to smash the super-important Crystal of Amun-Reth? It's all about making the consequences match the outcome. And it's all written directly into the way the game works.

The whole game is like that, and it's really exciting and really weird. Instead of thinking up even a skeletal plot, I've got to wait and see what the players come up with, draw (but not fill) a couple of dungeons, sites, and places, and come up with some names. I can't fit anything together yet, because I don't know what the players are going to bring. It's like getting ready for a jam session, and I really, really hope that they are going to bring their A game, because I'm going to bring mine.

I haven't been this excited about a generic fantasy game in a long, long time.

Pitch and Go

I want a game that I can pitch to my players (or my co-players) when one or two guys don't show up and we still feel like playing something for a couple of hours, something that ends itself by the end of the session. Something that's a mix between a dungeon delve and a one-shot, but without the system mastery test that is modern D&D's character building. Something that you know isn't going to go on forever- a three hour movie to traditional role-playing's wandering literary saga.

I'm thinking a game about People Who Are Screwed, or People Who Were Nearly Screwed. Like if you take the central idea of Call of Cthulhu, where you're basically boned and it's up to you to be boned later, if at all, and so you fight and struggle for a while, except that CoC is basically D&D with a different theme and a lot of insanity and that's not what I'm after.

I'm thinking a game where your resources are limited and represent ways that the player can control the narrative of the game. A game in which the DM is talking and the player has the ability to say "Wait, but I," and the DM has to incorporate what he said (provided it makes sense, and the character is reasonably able to do that thing), and maybe make the player spend their resource to make sure that it does happen.


There should be a "central resource" that lets you absorb failures and keep moving, like a health system in a more traditional game. So you might spend a point of Gun but you should have spent more because the guy lives through the gunshot and punches you in the mouth, and even though you have the upper hand since he's already wounded he's a tough guy, and you lose two health as well. Or maybe you try and use your Friendly Guard to get you to a less secure part of the prison, but it turns out that you should have used more points because he put you in minimum security instead, where there's a guy from the other gang and it isn't long before he's punching the shit out of you and you can't defend yourself, so you get a little beat up and lose one health... See what I'm getting at?

So the nucleus of the game is such: You have a character sheet, which represents a character. On this sheet are a number of resources, which are rated numerically. Some of the things are possessions, and some of the things are skills, and some are otherwise depletable assets. A zombie survivor might have Gun 6 or Crowbar 2, but a prisoner might have Colluding Guard 3 and Shank 1, Drugs 2, and so on, representing the finite reserves of resources that the character has in their possession. All resources are depleted the same way, because the time frame of the session is such that meaningfully recovering one's strength is impossible; the pressure is always on to move forwards or irrecoverably lose.

Of course, moving forwards has its own risks, which is the point of the game.

And the DM would have to set a good goal, one that is (probably) possible in a single session. Escaping an alien invasion is a good goal, as is stopping a terrorist from detonating a bomb on christmas. "Finding all the treasure" is not a particularly good one, but "finding the Scepter of Torgol" might be. "Kill all the Aliens" is an extremely poor one, but "Find and slay the Queen" is fantastic.

The more I think about it, the more cool ideas I get. This idea might be the solution I'm looking for, and it should be fully worth fleshing out. I might put up a smallish PDF today or tomorrow, time permitting- I'm still on a bit of a vacation with the wife, after all!

D&D IV Post Mortem: Part 4

Glad you could join me, here's my fourth (and probably final) part of why I dislike 4th edition D&D.

You know the rules by now, so I'm going to go ahead and just get into the meat of the thing. This is the finale- I'm putting my last four reasons into one post, because I'll be honest- I am really tired of writing about this by now. It's not that I don't have the time or the inclination, I really just don't like writing about things that I don't like.

Ten Reasons Why I Hate 4th Edition D&D

7. It fetishizes fun

    Or: Why being miserable is fun, too

If you haven't watched this yet, you have no soul.

Playing 4th edition feels a bit like the game was designed for children. And I'm not being mean when I say it- some of my very favorite media was designed for children. I am a huge fan of Ponyo, for example, and I know the target demographic isn't 20-somethings. But I don't care, because it's adorable and it's cute and it has a lot of really meaningful stories in it. It's life- the kid is obviously kind of lonesome, and he has a rebellious streak and he's kind of dense, and you can see that in the background, where he's not looking, adults are going on with their real lives. His mom is lonely because her husband is always away on his boat and you can see that even in a kid's movie she has very real anger at him. And Ponyo's father (I can't remember his name) is the same way- he is a good guy and a bad guy at the same time. And he has to go through some seriously difficult decisions in the movie. In a kid's movie! It's a lot deeper than it looks, and a lot sadder.

And that's what makes it good, in the end. Some things get resolved, and some don't. Some things are better, but at a very real cost. A lot of people died, although naturally the movie doesn't show it, and a lot of people suffered a lot by the time the movie ends. It's the sadness that makes the happy ending stand out as much as it does.

This is related to 4th edition D&D because the game is all "fun," all the time. There are no save-or-die effects, because it "isn't fun." There are no real penalties, because it isn't fun. Nobody likes keeping track of long-term effects, apparently, so everything gets put in a template and everything has one-round or shorter durations. You don't have a "saving throw" anymore, because who wants to fail one? Instead, it's a 50% chance that you shrug off any (save ends) effect. And there are a lot of them!

You can't die, because dying isn't fun. You can't get wounded, because that's not fun, either. And so what you're left with is a really monotone experience. You can't make a diplomatic character, because that's also not fun for some characters. Everybody's strong in combat because combat is fun, and on and on and on. The thing is, of course, that not everybody has fun in the same way, and defining fun to be "constantly getting into tactical skirmishes and winning them" is disingenuous, to say the least.

I think this point proves itself, because if you try and do anything that isn't tactical skirmishing, you aren't using most of the rules, and if you aren't using the rules, are you playing the game?

No, you are not. Moving on.

8. It's hard to create your own stuff

    Or: Why "system mastery" as a plus has got to go

The tightness of the system is lauded by a lot of people as finally bringing the excesses of the horrible, horrible design of 3rd edition to reign. "Finally," people say, "I don't have to play a Wizard or be completely useless," leaving aside that there are 20+ good fantasy games where that doesn't happen. I guess in some people's minds, it's D&D or bust, and only editions from 2000 or later count.

I digress. My point is that 4th edition is a very tight system, there is no way to dispute that. Everything's hammered down and (at least ostensibly) balanced so that there is no wrong way to build a character. You can be more or less specialized, and there are more or less optimized builds for each class, too. You have all kinds of powers you can choose from that are roughly balanced, and so you never feel like you're missing out on choice.

But what if you want to play something truly unique, something that isn't covered by the rules? What if you want to play a Necromancer Knight? What if you want to play a Final-Fantasy style Leaping Dragoon fighter?

Don't worry, it's only another 15 powers and then you can play a Necromancer!

Well, in most other games, you'd write up a quick class description, or just take the appropriate skills or abilities and make it work, because most other games let you make things up. In oD&D, for example, you could write it in about half an hour. Hit Dice, Thac0 chart, basic abilities, drawbacks, experience chart, some titles (if you care), and you're done. Completely new class, completely new fighting style, completely new experience in a game.

In 4th edition, you're going to have to get writing, because a new class takes a good 20+ powers. And you're going to want to write some feats about it, too, and don't forget the fact that you have to balance it with the other classes or nobody's going to have any fun, because the game is still about combat first and foremost, and there is literally no other purpose to a class other than to provide a role in the skirmish minigame. Have fun!

9. The artwork is hideously bad

    Or: Why Wayne Reynolds is the bane of my life

There is a lot of bad 4th edition art. I'm talking, seriously, a lot. I actually kind of feel like making a separate blog for it, because I just can't stand it and there's nothing better to prod your creativity than having to see a thing that you despise, is there? I mean, when's the last time you felt like taking to your platform of choice and saying to everybody who passes by: " I absolutely love puppies and would like to talk about it!"

Well, never.

So here's some official 4th edition art on the right there. Look at that stupid shit! It makes me want to gauge my eyes out. There is nothing interesting about this art whatsoever. Here's a wereshark or something, POW, it's attacking and there's some splinters, luckily there's a nice pirate lass with a lot of buckles and doodads ready to turn around and attack it, maybe. I guess. I dunno. It's stupid and honestly, this is a really superficial complaint, but most of the 4th edition art is about this same level of boring workmanship. With the budget that WOTC has, you'd think they could hire somebody who could at least draw a compelling scene, but pretty much everything the dude draws looks like that.

I mean, honestly, look at it. Have you ever seen anything less compelling? Ever? It's an atrocity that this man is allowed to draw anything, let alone that he is on the cover of the flagship of the single largest role-playing names in the industry. It's damn pathetic, and every time I think about it I get a little upset inside.

Here we see Generic McSwordswarrior, posing for the camera with his boots full of buckles, his hair perfectly coiffed, and absurd looking weapons. If there is a more boring pose, I'm looking for it. Everything about it screams shallow psuedo-edginess, like this has been focus-tested into oblivion and mathematically formulated to appeal to the lowest common denominators. I really, really hate the art.

But you know, I could look past this point if not for my last point.

10. I absolutely cannot get into it

    Or: Why does everything feel the same?

Nothing feels magical in 4th edition D&D. And I mean nothing. Magical items are a dime a dozen and are little more than either stat sticks or trinkets. By default, everybody will be bristling with magical items.

All the characters all have a series of powers that they cast, but they almost all take the form of "deal damage, add a one-round effect" for encounter powers and at-wills, and the only really interesting ones are the daily powers, which, obviously, you can only cast once a day. There's no really neat stuff like druids shapechanging or being able to summon creatures, or anything. Everything is focused on extremely temporary effects (a single turn, in most cases, and probably not more than two or three for the most part), which means that whatever it is that you hit somebody with, they're shrugging it off after their turn is over.

I can't get into it. I'm sorry, but I can't. What it feels like is that each player and all of the monsters are self-contained spheres; everything slides off of them without much effort, they glide effortlessly over most terrain, and they are generally untouchable. They don't feel like human beings anymore. They're the Fantasy Superheroes I was talking about in the last post, and you know, I just can't get into it. It doesn't feel like fantasy anymore. It doesn't feel like anything.

Nothing holds your players back. Nothing permanently stops your enemies, except, of course, for beating them to death over a period of a couple of turns. And that's why I can't get into it. There are no reasons to take prisoners, or to negotiate anything, or to interact with the world in

D&D IV Post Mortem: Part 3

The third part of my D&D 4th edition post-mortem, where I talk about the things I have learned to dislike about 4th edition D&D through experience.

Disagree? Take a drink, leave me a comment, and tell me why I'm wrong. I'm actually looking forwards to it, for once. I wanted to like this game, but the more I played it, the more constraining its limitations have felt.

Try not to get too carried away with the drinking

Anyways.

Let's continue.

Ten Reasons Why I Hate 4th Edition: Part Three
 

5. There is nothing to do but kill things

    Or: Why am I playing pen and paper Diablo?

I get that people really enjoy combat sometimes, because 3rd edition/Pathfinder is stupidly popular and in it, the only system that is worth anything is the combat system, but let's be serious; the combat minigame is just one way to resolve conflict. At least, it is in a system that makes any sort of sense.

D&D IV Post Mortem: Part 2

Let's get this started without screwing around.

A man can dream...

As before, I expect you to take a drink every time I say something you disagree with, and then when you're done reading, to go straight to the bottom and tell me why. Bottoms up!

 

 

 

Ten Reasons Why I Hate 4e, Part Two 

3. Character roles are tightly defined at character creation 

    Or: Why doesn't my character actually learn anything new?
 
Before somebody shows up to tell me how this is actually the system's saving grace, can it. I completely understand what the system is trying to do, and I think it does a fairly good job at it. The system is set up such that by saying "I want to be the guy who does all the damage," you get to be that guy. And other people will pick other roles, such that you are essentially shoehorning teamwork into a party that might not otherwise have anything to do with it. Additionally, it makes discussing who is doing what very simple. "I am the defender," you might say, "so you be somebody else. We only need so many tough guys here."