• Appendix Nova: A Master of Djinn

    Appendix Nova is me, reviewing stuff that isn’t games. I just thought it might be fun. But, I as with everything I do, I always use these things to give me game ideas, and so I’ll loop it back around to that eventually. So honestly, this is a little bit just me taking notes, so they’ll be brief. Oh, and there’ll be spoilers. I’ll talk about what I want, but I’ll try to be vague.

    Master of Djinn is a fantasy novel by P Djeli Clarke. It’s a police procedural, about two women detectives in alternate history 1920’s Cairo, where djinn and other magical creatures have in recent memory assimilated into twentieth century society.

    A Master of Djinn features a masc gay woman protagonist, who wears the most spectacular suits (very well described), and I vibe it very, very hard.

    While I saw the “identity of the villain” twist three quarters of the book off, I really enjoyed the idea that the source of the villains powers were unclear and as much of the story was spent figuring out how the villain could be doing the things they were doing, as spent actually confounding the villain. I could see the translating into a grand campaign. A version of Dragonlance where the question wasn’t where are the good dragons but rather how are our foes controlling dragons seems far more compelling to me.

    This is doubled down with the interesting minions: Firstly, the fact that the villain controls at times the main characters allies, leading to a neat mole situation, and secondly because the two main minions are nigh unstoppable. The fact that the minions are unstoppable makes for a really compelling villain.

    I also, personally, really love villains that are petty with petty goals, because most people in real life are petty with petty goals. So the fact that the villain here — despite being driven and capable of world-shattering — is petty with petty goals makes me really happy. I can relate to a villain who is really just frustrated that they were overlooked for that promotion for a mediocre white man.

    The big thought I came out of this with was “gosh, I could picture a fascinating roleplaying game setting out of this”. I listened to it on the back of talking about working with the AFD discord community on a setting zine with a bunch of little knock-offs of classic 2nd edition lines. Al-qadim obviously came up, and was also pretty clearly too racist to adapt. But it was still a childhood favourite of a lot of people. And A Master of Djinn is a book about queer women in the middle east, but a queer woman…wait no. P Djeli Clark is a Caribbean-American man who grew up in New York. Honestly, I was shocked, but also it doesn’t feel as western a fantasy to me as, say, City of Brass does. City of Brass, which I enjoyed, feels like fan fiction. This does not. Honestly I’d be really interested in an middle easterner’s perspective on this seeming current popularity in middle eastern fantasy written or created by western folk (that jinn movie by George Miller comes to mind as well). Anyway, I would be all on board an egyptian clockwork robots and Djinn with gunpowder setting as a replacement for the tired and orientalist 1001 nights lite that was Al Qadim.

    Anyway, those’re my thoughts on A Master of Djinn. It’s a good book, especially if you enjoy queer romance, perplexing magic and historical settings.

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  • Boring swords and interesting swords

    Dan Phipps was talking about interesting swords on some discord or other, and I was talking about it in the AFD discord, and I thought the boring and interesting swords problem is worth posting about.

    Trick choices

    If you give me a choice is between a cheap, weak sword, and an expensive, good sword, in a game where money goes up I don’t actually have a choice. You’ve given me a ladder, and if I don’t climb it, I’m not playing the game.

    Meaningful choices

    If you give me a choice between a bone sword, that is weaker but is super light, aor a glass sword that is more harmful but might break, or a magical sword, that is super harmful but it invites being hunted by the local constabulary, I actually have a choice. You’re giving me three different paths, that take me to three different situations.

    All things in your game

    This can apply to everything in your game. It shouldn’t apply to everything, but if you’re adding something to make the game more interesting, it’s better to make it an interesting choice.

    Fewer ladders, more paths. Fewer trick choices, more meaningful choices. No boring swords.

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  • Bathtub Review: Beyond the Pale

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    Beyond the Pale is an 89 page overland adventure for Cairn by Cairn’s creator, Yochai Gal. For fairness sake, I’m friends with a few people who got acknowledgments on this book, but when has that ever affected my opinion on a book? I’m excited to see what the team of Between Two Cairns (Brad Kerr is on developmental editing duties here along with my friend Amanda P) can do with a project like this. It’s a very culturally specific project — it’s inspired by Jewish mysticism and real events that occurred in the western Russian Empire.

    Up front, this doesn’t go easy on terminology. I have a cold as I’m reading this, so maybe I’m a bit impaired with my memory right now, but despite using the sidebar to define all uncommon terms (by the third page of text we have Dybbuk, Venne Velte, Parnas, Estrie and Mazzikim), I initially struggled with wrapping my head around these unique — I assume rooted in Jewish culture and folklore — terms. If you aren’t familiar with the terminology, you’re going to have to put in some work. On the other hand, this declares itself loudly and early for what it is, and I really adore that in any module. The first three pages feel self-indulgent and unashamed, and if we want to talk about making modules as an art, unashamed incorporation of the soul and spark of the author are key elements to me; this screams it from the rooftops.

    The information design in entries is clearly based on Anne’s Landmark, Hidden, Secret framework, which any listener of Between Two Cairns will know that Yochai is a big fan of. It uses special bullets, which is a neat approach but not quite as clear or flexible as the approach taken in Nightwick Abbey. There are fourteen named NPCs, each with about half a page of text devoted to them, but to be honest that overstates the wordiness: It’s a one line description plus a few dot points of information on them or secrets they know; all presented as the kind of stuff people gossip over at the Tavern House. These NPCs are easy to handle and are largely people I’d enjoy embodying.

    There are two major “mayses or folktales”; these are basically major plots that run across the whole module, that take the form of mysteries. I like these, but they don’t fit my own understanding of folktales so the titling didn’t sit right with me: In my opinion, better to stick with “mayses” and lean into the theme as it does elsewhere, else add in a clearer description like “plots” or “mysteries”.

    It’s not clearly stated but it’s implied in the Shtetl description and in the timeline that the action is supposed to take place over about a week, with advancing time clearly marked by progression of a particular holiday over the week. The location descriptions are not tightly bound to a structure and hence are really useful: The market varies by time, for example, but the tavern has a menu and gossip. I enjoy bespoke entries with familiar core structure. The descriptions however are neither numbered or alphabetical, and I can’t figure out what order they’re in — it’s not following streets either on the map. This makes it hard to reference, despite the well signalled headings. I’m sure there is a structure here, but might have been best outright stated.

    The structure loses its cohesiveness as a result of this, combined with the unclear differentiation between town, out of town, the Blue Forest and the wider area. An extra layer of headings, some illustrations or spatial usage, could have clarified this. I’m on my phone and this would be easier in print, but I’d still have to be flipping to and fro to figure where I am. In a later section, a mini map is used for a very small nine-room dungeon; this also could have been used to good effect to clarify here, in my opinion.

    That nine-room dungeon — the Tree of Life — is a fascinating design, though. I’m not sure if this would translate to the players, but as a referee it feels mystical in a way few magical spaces in modules achieve. Part of this is its design around a familiar real-world mystical shape — the sefirot — and it appears a lot of thought has been put into conceptualising the spaces as both lair of a big bad and as ceremonial space used to summon magic. Very, very cool stuff, and I was a little incredulous when the idea was first presented to me.

    In terms of the writing itself: Workman-like but clear and easy to use. It never reaches the heights of Siew, Gearing or Yaksha in terms of pure oozing personality, but it works to achieve some real strength, which just happens to be one of the most important aspects of module design for me: These places and characters are full of interrelationships, that pull you in multiple directions until as players the hardest part isn’t knowing what they could do next but choosing what not to do. It’s a sandbox in the truest sense: There is no lack of things to do and no doubt as to how to pursue them. It presents the facade of being a real place so well that in play you’d choose to just go to the tavern and chill with the locals. I cannot understate how strong this positive is: There are only a few writers working in this space, and I’m excited to see more work done here.

    We have three people on layout here, which I’d assume is too many cooks for one broth, but honestly most of this book is pleasing to the eye and extremely usable; I’m just surprised the larger navigational issues were missed. This feels reflective of a breakdown between the information design and the layout, which resulted in the incoherent sectioning I mentioned above earlier. This is as simple as changing approaches to headings or adding a section footer or header to help with navigation! It’s fully illustrated and laid out in a 2:1 column layout not dissimilar to the Explorer’s Template. The art is cartoonish, clean line work that really suits the otherwise clean lines. I really, really adore the cartography by Ezra Rose as well, which treads a line between the cartoonishness of the artwork and usability. The main negative of this cohesive aesthetic approach is that none of this art screams “turn the book around and show the players this image”; but y’know, I think I can live with that.

    Overall, I have some conflicting opinions here: The cohesiveness of the module isn’t great from an information design standpoint point; I definitely couldn’t run this off a digital file, and I think if I printed it I’d have to label or colour code different sections to help with navigation, especially with the unorthodox location ordering. For this reason I think it’s a mistake to make the print as beautiful as it’s promised to be; it’s too pretty to be amenable to making up. But Beyond the Pale good enough at the nuts and bolts that I’m trying to figure out how I can bring it to the table. The setting is unique enough and successful at communicating why this tale could only be told through this cultural lens that I’d be excited to play through it, as well, which is saying something: It’s rare that vibes give me a strong urge to bring something to the table, but this really feels like something special.

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    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

  • Sphereclipping Brainstorm

    I decided to read through all of the supplements and write down the compelling stuff that I’ll riff on for the zine:

    Random thoughts

    • From the Complete Spacefarer’s Handbook:
      • Groundling is a great name for non-aether-farers
      • Krynn has a spacefaring population: Draconians and Krynn minotaurs.
      • Gnomes make clockwork ships 10/10
      • An Egyptian god, Ptah, has gotten loose in space and has a fanatical monotheistic cult now. 10/10.
      • Smith’s Coster is a trading company; Gaspar Reclamations is a magical artefact locating company
    • Practical Planetology is a bust, except:
      • Planets are split into elements, which means there’s an interesting thing there where I could use pseudoelements and have them substitute for the elemental planes too, just like phlogiston is substiuting for ethereal plane now. It’s a neat way to excise the planar structure at make room for Spelljammer, while leaving space for Planescape setting supplements later than centre around heavens and hells and sigil in particular.
    • Legend of Spelljammer is a bust, too, although this big Spelljammer is a cool location that might be a fun module
      • The acknowledgements all get nicknames Steve “Old Man” Winter etc. I should do this for AFD.
    • Setting-specific Supplements (I’ll do all three of these at once)
      • It’s weird to imagine that every setting has a solar system with active politics to me. Not a good idea.
      • Literally nothing interesting in Greyspace for me
      • Love that Elminster has a space hideout
      • Love that there are inhabitants of the sun in Krynnspace, efreet and “helians”. Krynnspace really doubles down on the elementals in space theme.
      • The fact the planets in Krynn are gods on Krynn seems like a massive missed opportunity to include starbeasts or something weirder like living planets
      • Asteroids connected by magical glowing ribbons of light you can walk on is also an exceptional idea
      • So are black clouds, the essence of evil people who died in wildspace. Cool weather idea.
      • Honestly why is Krynnspace so much better than the other two hahaha

    System generation

    Spelljammer really wants to be Traveller, or at least lacks the imagination to be something else; it’s super concerned with creating a realistic solar system, but does this less elegantly than Traveller did a decade earlier. More interesting than adapting that is probably to actually map out a solar system with all our faux 2nd edition settings assigned to planets, come up with a random encounter table that with perhaps a unique entry depending on the planet you’re closest to, and stick a bunch of these cool spacey locations in it.

    Other supplements for Spelljamner

    I don’t really want to read the modules, and aside from them I’ve read everything now. I’m writing a zine, not a line. There are some things in Spelljammer I’m going to steer clear of, mainly because they’re boring:

    • Common heritages that occur on major planets (elves and stuff)
    • Star trek analogues in space. I can’t imagine making the space viewer work for example, without making it the center of gameplay in a way I’m not really interested in.

    And things I’m going to lean into:

    • Swashbuckling
    • Pirates
    • Evil British
    • Popular science fiction analogues like Alien, Predator
    • Cool space scenery
    • Using space as a way to incorporate some of the harder to conceptualise planar lore, like elemental planes and ethereal planes, leaving astral planes and the heavens and hells for the planescape zine
    • If there’s not evil space-monks with light swords I’ve failed Spelljammer, really, haven’t I?

    Ok, so my to do list is:

    • Example ship list with cool captains
    • Solar system
    • Bestiary
    • Heritages
    • Playtest the combat rules

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  • Rules Sketch: Sphereclipping

    So, the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons community is booming in the aftermath of its release, and a lot of the people there are excited to adapt some of their favourite 2nd edition settings to AFD! It’s been suggested we use space as a connective tissue, so I’ve taken the mantle of writing some rules to cover it.

    The Spelljammer rules are a mess. Let’s reimagine them as an analogue to the current rulesets, and pare them back to as little as we can to keep up the flavour. The biggest gap, for me, is that there is no weather tables for the phlogiston! I’m renaming that aether, just because phlogiston bothers me deeply, but if there are objections, I can flick it back to phlogiston. I’ve mainly drawn from Adventures in Space and Astromundi Cluster here, because the other supplements were setting specific.

    The Aether

    Every planet is unique. You travel between them using a Sphereclipper, a magical ship that can travel through the aether. A sphereclipper needs enough power to break through the membrane — known as a sphere — that stops the aether from drowning everyone on a planet, and it needs something to power its flight through the aether, which has a consistency slightly thicker than water. In the absence of any other power source, ships can travel on the unpredictable aetherial currents, which draw you inexorably towards the nearest sphere, unless you’re in a void, a place between the currents. Voids are usually filled with planetoids or asteroid belts that are often inhabited by aether-faring creatures.

    Each ship is assigned a captain, who takes the helm, and a crew. For each member of the crew, a single attack can be made, up to the number of weapons that are facing the target. A ship without a captain cannot move.

    Battle

    Each ship needs a token, with a fore and aft. If two or more ships are in battle against each other, place a six-sided dice between their tokens on the table. This is their distance.

    All movement is relative. If there are two or more ships, you must choose which ships your movement applies to; as you are moving in three dimensions, you can move a distance relative to three ships but not a fourth, for example, however, remember that ship movement is an abstract approximation.

    Each turn, all ships roll their speed die, either a d4 for slow, a d6 for average, or a d8 for fast. The highest roll has moves up to the difference between their die and the second highest; the second highest roll has moves up to the difference between their high and the third highest, etc. For each move, you can either close the distance, increase the distance, or you can tack to turn 90 degrees to aim your cannons.

    If the distance is reduced to 1 between any two ships, they are at boarding distance. If the distance is increased to 6 between a ship and all other ships in the battle, they are at escape distance and can exit the battle without hope of being caught.

    If you are moving away from a ship with your aft facing them, you can use charges or mines to reduce their speed or damage their ship. If you are facing a ship within range, you can use your sternchaser to damage their ship or injure their crew. If you are tacked relative to a ship, you can use your cannons to damage their ship. To attack, the marshal

    If a ship is tacked relative to your attacker, they are more likely to be hit, and their attacker rolls with advantage.

    Ship weapons are described as normal weapons, except that they cause siege damage. 1 point of siege damage is worth 10 points of standard damage. Ships are only affected by siege damage. They have a range between 1 and 5. Their position on the ship determines their effect. The ship description determines the number of guns available.

    Fore attacks can be aimed at crew members. A crew member hit will be reduced to 0 HP, however a crew member is unlikely to be hit: Number each crew member and roll 1d20. The crew member rolled is hit.

    • Rams (1d8, siege, range 1, charge, fore)
    • Harpoons (1d4, siege, range 1, grapple)
    • Mines or greek fire (1d8, siege, range 2, aft)
    • Charges (reduce speed by 1, range 2, aft)
    • Short guns (1d6, siege, range 3)
    • Cannon or ballista (1d8, siege, range 4)
    • Long gun or catapault (1d4, siege, range 5)

    Rams require the player to charge, that is to move 1 prior to making the attack. Harpoons cause a grapple effect; until action is taken to remove the bindings, the two ships are bound together.

    Ships

    • Name
    • Description Indicate power source in here
    • HP (Armour)
    • Travel speed (H, C or D) Indicating half, cruise or double.
    • Attack speed (d4, d6, d8)
    • Fore (#) / Aft (#) / Side (#) Indicating number of guns
    • Cargo (#) Indicating amount of cargo

    When designing a ship, your speed determines your weight: Double speed ships are lightest: 1 weight for d8, 2 for d6 and 3 for d4, followed by cruise speed ships: 4 for d8, 5 for d6 and 6 for d4, then by half speed ships: 7 for d8, 8 for d6 and 9 for d4. Your weight determines the amount of guns and cargo you can carry, up to that number. A half speed ship with an attack speed of d4, can carry up to 6 guns (a fore, aft, and 2 on each side!), or cargo instead (a fore, aft, 1 cannon on each side and 2 cargo). A ship can mount half a set of guns on a single side, causing half damage. A ships HP is equal to its weight, x 5, and a ship can board crew up to its weight. Ships can expend a cargo for a special ability.

    Travel

    In your cargo, you need rations for your crew. 1 cargo holds 10 inventory slots, so 1 cargo of rations will last a crew of 10, 2 weeks.

    A half speed ship travels at half speed, a cruise ship travels at normal speed, and a double speed ship travels at double speed. Unpowered ships drift at quarter speed towards the nearest planet.

    Most actions taken while sailing through the aether take one day. A day proceeds as follows:

    1. Expend a power, or drift.
    2. The referee rolls the exploration die.
    3. Expend a ration, or spend 1d6 HP.

    The exploration die is a 1d6, +1 per day with no result, interpreted as follows:

    1-4 Nothing happens
    5-6 Aether encounter
    7-8 The weather changes
    9 Spells expire
    10+ Shore leave required

    Follow the basic procedure until each PC resolves their action, transitioning to other procedures as appropriate.

    Repeat the cycle as long as the PCs are sailing in the aether.

    Aetherial Weather

    The lack of support for aetherial weather is a travesty, but I really can’t find anything interesting in terms of weather. I’ll pad this out later, I think, because it’s getting late.

    Aetherial Encounters

    There’s some weird stuff in the Clusterspace supplement that I think I’ll note: Dead rocks are asteroids of undead bound together. Gasteroids are asteroids made from flammable or fast-growth-causing gas. Iceteroids are made of ice; living asteroids are groups of psioncisists that meditated for so long that rock and ice formed around them; infinity vines are black vines that recoil from shadowstone and entangle ships; sargassos are areas where no magic functions; they usually have a visible boundary or a central beacon that they emanate from; temporal fugues distort time forward or backward; wrinkles are portals that link two places and are hard to detect; vents are one-way wrinkles. Starbeasts are iconic, and carry damned planets, they’re an excuse to include Discworld and things of that ilk in Spelljammer and we should lean into it.

    Aether-faring Folk

    Fascinatingly, Tanari’i first appear in a Spelljammer supplement, it seems. The idea of demonic pirates that sail the aether is compelling as hell to me. I’ve previously thought that Thri-Kreen feel out of place in Dark Sun, and AFD already has Manscorpions, so harkening Thri-Kreen back to their Green Martian origins and making them aether-faring also seems compelling to me; I’d scrap Neogi for this reason I think. Dowhar are space-faring bird-people, and if ever a bird-people belonged in AFD it’s in space, in my opinion. A great foil for the giff, which are iconic and need to be incorporated (interestingly, they only appear in realmspace); honestly I like Giff, but it’s silly considering them all warriors, they should just be space British, right? The Arcane are boring illithid-likes, and should be scrapped or should replace illithids. Illithids as an aether-faring race has always fallen flat to me, mainly because I don’t feel like they should be hanging out together, they feel like a solitary evil. I’ll have to reconsider illithids if I want to include them. Actually, more interestingly: What if Illithids and the Arcane are the same, but when Illithids aren’t exposed to aether, they become evil and in need of rescuing. That’s a hot take. That, let’s do that. Dragon-centaurs are not as cool as Draconians and are still more cool than Dragonborn, so let’s put Krynn’s draconians and put them in space. Celestial dragons are 10/10, definitely should hang out in space. Same as space whales. Maybe they can be smushed together. Krajen are tentacle-creatures that live in space, basically that thing in the Force Awakens, and yes, we obviously need a xenomorph to put in space, just like we need a predator, although I’ll have to look further afield I think to find who a predator will be.

    Ok, that’s today’s thoughts on Sphereclipping. I’ll try to playtest this little board game to make sure it works well enough to throw out there, and then I’ll start work on the worldbuilding. I’m actually excited to do some worldbuilding in AFD. Thanks AFD discord for getting me excited about bonus AFD content!

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    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

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  • Advanced! Fantasy! Dungeons!

    Hey everyone, with greatest of thanks to the volunteer labour of Hodag and J Tucker White, Advanced Fantasy Dungeons is now available and in the wild!

    Click here to pick it up for free (or donate! I always need a few dollars!).

    It’ll be available in print, soon, but remember: It’s a playtest! It’s really quite bizarre finally putting this out in a presentable form to ya’ll, as it’s a project that started almost exactly 2 years ago, here, on Playful Void, when I decided to closely read AD&D 2e, and found surprises there. Probably the longest turnaround on a project I’ve ever had!

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    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

  • Bathtub Review: Lorn Song of the Bachelor

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    Lorn Song of the Bachelor is a 48 page module, with simplified stats that cover a range of retroclones, by Zedeck Siew, with art by Nadhir Nor. It’s a bit challenging to categorise: On a background of conflict between a colonising company and the local culture, the Gleaming Fins, a monstrous crocodile wreaks havoc, and the key to resolving this three way conflict lies in an ancient recreational center that has been warped by the psychic power of the crocodile. It’s a dungeon-crawl, to be sure, but there’s a lot more to it than that, and the lead-in to the dungeon itself is some of my favourite writing in a module. A bit of context here: I was actually doing a close read of Lorn Song of the Bachelor for a guest spot I did on Dice Exploder last week, and I realised that I’d never reviewed it and now, while I was immersed in it, was probably the best time to do so. So I wrote this in the days following that recording, and I’ve put off publishing this until after the episode comes out, as there is some overlap, and I wouldn’t want to steal any of Sam’s thunder.

    Lorn Song of the Bachelor is a beautiful 48 pages. Published as a book, it’s zine length, and between its generous white space, Nadhir Nor’s artwork that often feels sparse despite being abdundant with detail , and the bold headings I suspect that by word count it could have fitted in half as many pages. Some people would rail against a module being ‘padded out’, but not I. I think because of the layout by Dai Shugars, it absolutely sings. A module that would be hard to read in shorter format due to its density, is a pleasurable narrative read, as well as being useful to play by virtue of clear headings and consistent patterns with regards to locations and descriptions.

    Zedeck’s word choices are subtle and intriguing, drawing you inexorably towards the final room of the dungeon, creating a symmetry between world, dungeon and monster that is beautiful, makes the world easier to understand, and enables an interactivity with the way the players interact with the world that is without peer here. The only negative here, is that the best way to read this book is not at the table — which is my preference — but rather to read it cover to cover more than once before you bring it to the table. But it’s readable from cover to cover given its brevity and the compelling writing, in a way that modules rarely are.

    The reason Lorn Song begs to be re-read is because its dedication to terseness and to interconnectedness is difficult to appreciate a first read. It is possible, if you played this directly from the book, that you’d experience some of this interconnectedness emergently, as it’s very intelligently ordered to facilitate a sense of narrative throughout a read, and so you’re likely to encounter certain facts in a certain order. But I suspect multiple read throughs, and having the referee truly immerse themselves in world that is created in Lorn Song, would result in a more integrated and compelling experience.

    Normally, I’d quote the words of the module here, to prove that indeed the writing is beautiful, but a great deal of the beauty in Lorn Song is hidden under the surface, with certain aspects of the writing being deceptive in their apparent simplicity, but revealing layers in the context of the whole. It is rare the sentence or clause that doesn’t feel chosen very particularly. A few lines will often up-end the entire work, but similarly, if you miss those few words, your experience will be unique. and perhaps not as intended.

    In comparison to some other works of Zedeck that I’ve reviewed, Lorn Song is discreet and unselfconscious, and I sense conflicting trends in his writing: Lorn Song offers very little except for its words and its arts, making a little accommodation for statistics. It does not tell you how to run it, it does not talk about itself. It does not defend its choices. It simply is. In contrast with more recent works like Roach God, which provide rules and methods and explanations, it is silent about itself. In such a way, it kind of deserves the beautiful treatment more than Roach God does, which, despite the glories it does reach at its best, at its worst feels like a grab-bag of goodies from a beautiful home game, rather than an independent and coherent work. Lorn Song stands strongly, on its own, and asks you to interpret it.

    And in the way that the best art does, Lorn Song makes me ask questions about why it is the way it is. For example, page 22 is spent on a short series of tables that together describe the passages you pass through in the dungeon that follows, known as the Old Ruin. There are more words spent on describing these passages, than are spent on any given room in the Old Ruin, although the rooms are given more space and illustration. Why is this here, I wonder? Is this intended to suggest that the journey here is more important than the destinations detailed ahead? This choice comes at significant cost to the referee and the other players, in this case: The referee must spend their energy generating and synthesising some quite wordy descriptions, and the players lose information that might inform them about the rooms ahead.

    Certainly there are missteps here. While Zedeck’s writing is a hugely redeeming factor, there a number of generators here — one for Gleaming Fins folk, one for medicines — that would be best refashioned as more specific and briefer sections. There is a bestiary at the back, which has been relegated there for the sake of payout, but which renders the text a little less useable (although this is a common foible, and I forgive it this because it makes for such a compelling and readable module).

    The one place that Zedeck speaks about this work is in his notes, on the last page before what I suspect is the inside cover. Here he lays out his thesis in the open-endedness and subtlety that the text displays so far. This defence is buried in the center of the notes, as it opens with an explanation of the Bornean story upon which Lorn Song is based and ends with a suggestion to support Bornean creators. But it’s the kind of brief and intelligent defence that doesn’t do the text any harm in its explication.

    Lorn Song of the Bachelor is not Zedeck Siew’s most ambitious work, and hence does not reach the heights of Reach of the Roach God, but it has a directness and unselfconsciousness to it that I find incredibly charming. I saw a quote once, and I cannot remember who to attribute it to, or the exact words, but it was along the lines of “A film-maker will keep making the same film, over and over again, for their entire career, trying to find what drives them to make it”. Lorn Song of the Bachelor feels the purest representation of whatever Zedeck has been attempting to make, and I look forward to what future attempts might look like.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

    , ,

  • I Read Knave: Second Edition

    I Read Games reviews are me reading games when I have nothing better to do, like read a module or write or play a game. I don’t seriously believe that I can judge a game without playing it, usually a lot, so I don’t take these very seriously. But I can talk about its choices and whether or not it gets me excited about bringing it to the table.

    I was going to take the kids to the waterpark, but I’m feeling overwhelmed by screaming, whining and household chores so instead I’m locking myself in my bedroom, turning off the lights, popping an endone and reading Knave, 2nd Edition.

    Knave 2nd Edition is the 81-page expansion of a 20-page game that introduced a lot of excellent ideas into the world of DIY elfgames, and served as a chassis on which a lot of excellent games — Cairn, A Rasp of Sand, Mausritter — are built. My preconceptions up front: I find it really hard to believe that Knave can be improved with such a huge expansion to the rules, as so much of the original’s elegance is in its simplicity. I haven’t listened or watched or read much from Ben Milton, the author, about the second edition, so I’m not sure what his goal with this is. I’m interested to see what it implies about Ben’s changing approach to game design.

    Up front, this is much wordier than the first edition. It’s written in a dry conversational style, and honestly as with most people who’ve undoubtedly watched many hours of Ben’s hand-guy reviews over the years, I can hear his voice as I read it. It’s clear, simple, and tiktok punchy at times. Despite the length of the book, it feels as targeted at those with short attention spans as the original Knave was. To be clear, I mean this as praise: This is punchily and memorably written, and that behooves a ruleset that, when all pushes come to all shoves, is not only just another elfgame among thousands, but is one that has already before its release been adapted countless times.

    The principles are a good example of the punchy writing. The titles themselves were clearly laboured over, to the point where the explication is unnecessary: “Reward smart plans”, “Edit the rules”, “Apply tactical infinity”, and “Prepare to die” really speak for themselves as principles to play by.

    Knave is an Ability Check first system, it becomes apparent, reminding me a lot of the approach that Five Torches Deep took five years ago in that it tries to make all ability scores equally important. It eschews saving throws altogether, which makes it a system that leans subtly away from player expertise and towards fictional expertise, and leans away from risk management and towards risk taking, unlike more save forward systems such as Cairn and Into the Odd. I think I prefer save forward systems personally, but this is an approach far more familiar to the majority of players who might make their way to Knave 2nd Edition from Shadowdark or D&D 5th Edition.

    A significant addition to 2nd Edition is the travelling and weather rules, which utilises a classic hazard roll and the first of the random tables that were pushed so hard in the marketing for Knave 2nd Edition. I was lukewarm on the pitch of “full of random tables”, because honestly I can ask KTrey for a d100 table any day for free. If all Knave 2nd Edition was going to be was 1st Edition plus random tables, my interest was muted, particularly as I look for specificity in random tables, as I discussed at length in this episode of Dice Exploder. However (if you couldn’t sense this coming), these first few weather tables that accompany a well-described hazard die, are quite exceptional for travel on the fly, reminding me of a generic take on Atop the Wailing Dunes. The same goes for the dungeon tables that accompany the dungeon’s hazard die. The only question I have is the purpose of the entirety of the tables, which seem to overlap between generating locations and spontaneously experiencing travel. The impression I get is that Ben intends for a quantum world, because generation is folded in with exploration. That’s not a playstyle I personally would adopt, and if it’s not the intent, I feel like a few lines of explication added would have gone a long way.

    I’ll rush through a little: I like the specific reaction roll, I like the encounter activities table, but the random spell generator I could look past. I like the three unique types of magic you can choose to engage in, all of which are meaningfully different (spells, alchemy, and relic magic). I find the buildings rules anemic to what they’d be used for and superfluous in what they achieve; a page in diagetic advancement, why one would build a church of guildhall, anything would be useful here. The wee warfare rules seem a less neat version of the Into the Odd rules, and don’t echo the elegance of the the larger system. We have a two page bestiary, a few pages on recruits. Pages and pages of tables that more and more seem thrown in without explanation or organisation than those earlier disorganised wilderness and dungeon tables. The entire back end of the ruleset seems strapped on with little forethought, compared to the front end which feels elegant and well thought out. The tables are often useful (the chimeric monster generator is fun), but not included with any guidance or any real reason for them to be located where they are: Why is the city generation where it is? How would I locate it in a pinch? Why is there a two page bestiary without illustrations, when you hired Peter Mullen to do the art? Inexplicable design decisions to me.

    The back of the book have two excellent maps by Kyle Latino which…why? They’re unkeyed, are they supposed to be examples? Are they for me, the referee, to fill out? They lead me to the larger question I have about Knave 2nd Edition: Who is it for? Because the experienced referee doesn’t need the beautiful maps: a lot of the anaemic back half won’t provide enough support for the complexity of downtime, domain or warfare when it occurs in a campaign. The front half, aside from the elegant additions, isn’t a considerable leap from the first edition. The elegant principles are lovely aimed at newcomers, but those same newcomers I’d expect to be overwhelmed by ten pages of random tables. The experienced referee knows these principles already, irregardless of how well they’re stated. And back to the maps: Who are they for? An experienced referee who has run countless dungeons and hexcrawls, or the newcomer who hasn’t built them and for whom it doesn’t provide any guidance to fill them — except perhaps those poorly labelled tables that accompany the hazard dice.

    So, I’m left with the impression of a game that doesn’t have a design goal, to be honest. It doesn’t have an audience in mind, except perhaps Ben Milton himself. It pitches itself as a complete edition of Knave, but it leaves itself incomplete. I could have (and in fact long have) patched Knave with hazard dice for travel myself, and added better downtime and domain rules from Mazirian’s Garden and Paper & Pencils. This doesn’t add much, except half a book of undercooked rules and random tables, and another half book of elegant incorporations of longstanding innovations.

    I have very mixed feelings, coming chronologically: It opens strong, with elegant improvements on Knave 1st Edition, and tables that feel largely complementary albeit haphazardly organised. It ends a mess of haphazard tables and undercooked rules that are overly simplistic rather than elegant. I opened this read with some hope that this might supplant Cairn as my current go-to-simplified Knave-like; but as it looks, I suspect I’ll be waiting for the upcoming Cairn Second Edition to see if it instead supplants the crown.

    My tl;dr: I’m disappointed. I really was hopeful after the first few pages that my expectations would be upended. This 80-page version of Knave remains something that I still need to hack. I already had that in the 10-page version. I might borrow those weather tables, though, next I run a hex crawl.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

  • Appendix Nova: Paladin’s Grace

    Appendix Nova is me, reviewing stuff that isn’t games. I just thought it might be fun. But, I as with everything I do, I always use these things to give me game ideas, and so I’ll loop it back around to that eventually. So honestly, this is a little bit just me taking notes, so they’ll be brief. Oh, and there’ll be spoilers. I’ll talk about what I want, but I’ll try to be vague.

    Paladins Grace is a fantasy novel by TJ Kingfisher that I picked up because it was free on Audible, which is my primary “reading” source these days. It’s a romance, about a pleasant fellow multiclassing as Berserker and Paladin and a perfumer he meets.

    So, initially, Paladin’s Grace presents itself as a character study into the main character, Stephen, whose god dies in the initial paragraphs of the novel, leaving him heartbroken and desperate. He and the paladins that survived the god’s death are given refuge by the priests of the Rat, disliked by everyone (but honestly, they seem lovely and essential, I’m not entirely sure why they’re disliked when many of the other religions here seem to be filled with odious people). But it quickly becomes a pure romance, which was a pleasant surprise and then transforms into a courtroom drama, a murder mystery and to an action-packed climax.

    I’ve never read anything else by TJ Kingfisher, so I’m not sure if there are clues in her other works, but because of the grounded, Stephen-focused opening, I had little to no idea that this effectively took place in the a faux Forgotten Realms until there was mention of Gnolls being part of the police force in the city it takes place in, who’re better at tracking than the humans on the force. And then a bunch of the descriptions clicked into place and I realised that the author just avoided outright labelling everyone as elves or dwarves or whatever, but that likely the descriptions weren’t as metaphorical as I’d assumed. Which honestly, was a pleasant surprise and made me enjoy the whole thing more.

    The very modern, conversational tone is similar to the one I found really obtrusive in Fourth Wing, but here I found it quite charming, probably because it feels like a dime-store romance that takes place in the Forgotten Realms, and this suits it. I always bounced off regency romances because I just don’t dig the dialogue. These two are romantic comedy goofballs, with all the positives and negatives (but mostly positives) it entails.

    Things that I’d pull out of this, to put in my games: I enjoy how they just talk about sex (at least in their internal monologues), the same way as we do in modern times. Part of the challenge for me in bringing romance into fantasy TTRPGs is that I always feel some kind of obligation to regency-it-up, which just feels like it takes romance off the table (I’m not Jane Austen, sorry, I can’t write that). But this is bawdy and in modern vernacular, and that’s a lot of fun.

    I also like the basic twists on classic classes that make the main characters really compelling, particularly the unique relationship between berserker and paladin it represents. If I were doing some worldbuilding, I’d steal from that, I think, and give my gods the ability to give people with “curses” like rage and lycanthropy control over them, with the threat of betrayal of their god be to have them lose control. It’s lovely, and is such a compelling tension for the paladin, Stephen. Plays write into my classic post on Internal Conflicts, but also mechanises it in a way.

    There’s also some neat world-building around the priesthood of the Rat in particular, which starts off as a footnote and becomes increasingly more compelling and important as time goes on. By the time I got to the end, I was of the increasing suspicion that the actual main character of this series (there’s more to come, which I’m interested to pick up) is Beartongue, the Bishop of the Rat in the city they’re in, who is definitely a main character, but initially seems like they’ll be minor. She gets the epilogue, as well.

    Speaking of the epilogue, one thing I found both anticlimactic and appropriate thematically, is that our heroes don’t solve the primary problems at all, they just Romance. Beartongue and Zale (the solicitor at the trial) resolve the mystery at the end, and the courtroom drama, while the heroes have their romantic climax (pun intended), and the Evil Monster is never revealed at the end, but rather teased for a future book. This is all well and good, but it meant that 2/3 of the main plot threads weren’t resolved satisfactorily, and I don’t see our heroes returning in the second book, so it’ll probably be Beartongue or some of the other paladins in Stephen’s crew persuing that plot thread, I suspect.

    That said, as I alluded to, the romance being the core was appropriate thematically, and that’s a really interesting contrast that I’m not sure how to translate into RPGs. Like, we like satisfying narrative conclusions in TRPGs, but I wonder how much a “stars and wishes” style safety mechanism would really benefit from “which plot lines do you want resolved?” addition.

    Anyway, those’re my thoughts on Paladin’s Grace. It’s a good book, especially if you enjoy romance and high fantasy settings.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

  • Rules Sketch: Treasure

    I had quickly adapted treasure simply to Advanced Fantasy Dungeons, back before it had a fairly comprehensive monster and spell list. It was really a conversion table, keeping things simple:

    To convert a monster’s “treasure type”, instead assign the appropriate treasure type (with their rough equivalencies):
    • Leavings for monsters who simply leave a pile of their victims, equivalent to Types A to F.
    • Belongings for large groups of humanoids, largely consisting of their everyday livings. Equivalent to Types G, I , O, P, R, or W.
    • Hordes for dragons and other similar creatures, equivalent to Type H.
    • Collections for creatures who collect sparkly things, equivalent to Type Q.
    • Incidental for stuff found on odd bodies, equivalent to Types J to N.
    • Bosses for unique, high-level monsters, equivalent to type U.
    • Magical for creatures that possess magical items, equivalent to Types S, T, and V.

    It doesn’t really feel sufficient, any more, but I loathe writing treasure tables (although I love creating simple treasure) and I’ve already provided advice for the nature of treasures found in the Running the Game section of the book.

    Now, we’ve drifted away in 2nd Edition from xp-for-gold, that applying only to the thief class here. In AFD I’ve done away with it altogether, although you can still be awarded XP for gold if your ethos rewards it and you take risk to retrieve the gold. It makes sense to me, if I were to want to avoid treasure tables, but provide clearer guidance, to base treasure amounts off the XP progressions as if you were building a dungeon in an earlier, XP for gold edition. It then makes more sense to me, for thief XP progression rather than warrior to determine how much treasure you might have, given the changes to 2nd edition. This also is a little neater: Thieves level up more quickly in 2nd edition than warriors do, on the surface (as per the PHB). In 2nd edition, monster level is in the DMG, and roughly equates to HD with some exceptions (annoyingly as per MC1 rather than the MM), but it means I don’t have to do calculating. The DMG gives us number of XP/creature on each level, so we can calculate the number of creatures expected at various levels.

    Our table then looks like this, if I do a very broad interpretation of the treasure tables for the purposes of averages (I don’t know how to calculate it accurately, and I don’t think it really matters). I just took an exemplar (like owlbear at 5HD, orc at 1HD) and took their average treasure on the treasure table. These were literally all over the place; I avoided horde creatures, but some levels had no examples with treasure or without hordes, that’s why there are blanks (yes, there are examples somewhere, my patience is not limitless).

    LevelXPTotal XP/gold per dungeon level# of creatures per levelHD at dungeon level in 2eAvg treasure per HD
    212505000250170gp
    3125050001002–
    4250010 00067312gp
    5500020 000804–
    610 00040 00080510gp
    720 00080 000806–
    830 000120 00040716gp
    940 000160 000298–
    1050,000200 000209–
    AvgN/A17 7008327gp

    Interesting takeaways: Gold is more generous at level 1by far, but then seems to have an upwards curve, at a little more than 10 gold per HD. Number of creatures at a certain level by XP is also higher at level 1, meaning a long time intended there, but it really evens out at around 80 creatures for most of the levelling up. What we have, though is for 2e, a rough average for gold per HD based on dungeon level (cool!), which means for AFD, we can transmute that to a rough gold per HP, which will be 6 gp / HP.

    Ok, back to Hordes. Some of the treasure types are exceptional, namely hordes and magical items. With the roughest of math, the average horde is well over 15 000gp worth of gems and gold, plus an average of 3.3 magical items. Looking at the large variation in levelling up, and ignoring that average for a moment, it looks like a horde is basically meant to level up a thief if they manage to get it all home and laundered. We’ll back-track from there to the value of the average horde, which is about 3540gp per HD.

    Now we can write our new clearer rule:

    To assign a monster treasure,

    Firstly, assign a treasure type according to its kind (equivalencies to advanced adventure games are in parentheses):

    Leavings for monsters who simply leave a pile of their victims (Types A to F)
    Belongings for large groups of humanoids, largely consisting of their everyday livings (Types G, I , O, P, R, or W)
    Hordes for dragons and other similar creatures (Type H)
    Collections for creatures who collect sparkly things (Type Q)
    Incidental for stuff found on odd bodies (Types J to N)
    Bosses for unique, high-level monsters (Type U)
    Add magical for creatures that possess magical items (Types S, T, and V)

    Secondly, calculate the value of its treasure, which is equal to 6gp per HP, or 3540gp if their treasure is in a horde.

    Thirdly, ascertain magical items. If it is a horde, the creature’s treasure will have 1d6 magical items in it. If an individual has magical treasure type, roll 2d6 and take the lowest for the number of magical items it possesses. The roll taken, if it’s 3 or less, will consist of consumable magical items such as potions or scrolls. If it is 4 or higher, any additional magical items will be permanent

    Finally, assign a third of its total value to coins, a third to gems and a third to art objects. Detail the treasure as per the Treasure section. Create any magical items that make sense in the context of this creature.

    For any of these steps, disregard these rules if it makes more sense for any given monster to have a different kind of treasure.

    There we have it. Monster treasure, whilst avoiding writing treasure tables.

    Advanced Fantasy Dungeons is coming soon!

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

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Threshold of Evil – Dungeon Regular

Dungeon Regular is a show about modules, adventures and dungeons. I’m Nova, also known as Idle Cartulary and I’m reading through Dungeon magazine, one module at a time, picking a few favourite things in that adventure module, and talking about them. On this episode I talk about Threshold of Evil, in Issue #10, March 1988! You can find my famous Bathtub Reviews at my blog, https://playfulvoid.game.blog/, you can buy my supplements for elfgames and Mothership at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/, check out my game Advanced Fantasy Dungeons at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/advanced-fantasy-dungeons and you can support Dungeon Regular on Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/idlecartulary.
  1. Threshold of Evil
  2. Secrets of the Towers
  3. Monsterquest
  4. They Also Serve
  5. The Artisan’s Tomb

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