At Arm's Length

Though I write most often about my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign – understandable, I suppose, because of its longevity – it's not the only RPG I'm currently refereeing. Another is the Barrett's Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign that began in December 2021. Though quite different in many ways, I realized the other day that there's actually one significant point of overlap between House of Worms and Barrett's Raiders: they both occasionally feature some unpleasant realities. In the case of House of Worms, those realities include slavery, torture, and human sacrifice, while in Barrett's Raiders they include all the usual horrors of modern warfare (not to mention the unique horrors of nuclear warfare). 

I've sometimes been asked about how I handle such things in my campaigns, particularly those in House of Worms. Even before the recent unpleasantness, Tékumel long had a reputation – somewhat undeserved in my opinion – for being a particularly brutal setting that included lots of aspects of pre-modern societies that, while perhaps "realistic," are usually glossed over, if not outright excluded from games like Dungeons & Dragons. The same, too, could be said of almost every RPGs whose setting is a time of war or strife, whether that setting be pre-modern, modern, or futuristic. How does one referee a campaign that contains such dark elements?

As with most aspects of my refereeing, I don't have any systematic answers, only anecdotes and examples. However, looking back over what I have done does, I think, provide something approximating an overarching philosophy that might be of use to others referees whose campaigns deal with such things. For example, let's look at a ubiquitous and indeed foundational aspect of most of the cultures of Tékumel: slavery. Abhorrent though it is, slavery is commonplace throughout history. Indeed, there's scarcely a human society that hasn't practiced slavery at one time or another. Though a fantasy setting, Tékumel draws on several real-world cultures for inspiration, like ancient Egypt, the Aztecs, and Mughal India, all of which practiced slavery, hence its inclusion in Empire of the Petal Throne. 

The player characters of the House of Worms campaign are thus all members of a slaveholding culture and do not question the practice. Their clan owns slaves and at least a couple of PCs have had personal slaves who became important NPCs (though one was later manumitted and adopted into the clan). Despite this, slavery has never been important part of the campaign. It's part of the "furniture" of the setting, something that's undeniable there, but that we've never really dwelt upon, because the focus of the campaign has always been on adventure, usually out in the wilds, far from any Tekumeláni civilization. 

Similarly, the major cultures of Tékumel all approve of human sacrifice to varying degrees, as have many cultures on Earth. The god most of the characters worship, Sárku, accepts such sacrifices as part of his rituals and so priestly characters have occasionally been involved in them, too. The same is true of the torture of prisoners, which is seen as a legitimate form of interrogation in Tsolyánu and elsewhere. So, again, these deeply repugnant elements of the setting have appeared from time to time, but they've never been its focus. When they have appeared, such as during attempts to invoke divine intervention (for which there are rules), we'd simply acknowledge it and move on – the equivalent perhaps of the cinematic "fade to black" of old. 

I could cite plenty more examples from both House of Worms and Barrett's Raiders, but I trust that's not necessary. What I have come to realize is that, unless it's absolutely relevant, I don't spend a lot of time going over the finer details of all the unpleasant things that happen in my games. This includes combat, by the way, which, as players of many old school RPGs know, is generally very abstract. Now, there are indeed times when the precise nature of a horrible injury is relevant – this has come up several times in the Twilight: 2000 campaign – and, in such cases, I don't shy away from the gory details. However, as a general practice, I avoid doing so, because my games are meant to be fun escapes rather than luxuriating in the darker corners of the human soul.

I offer my experiences not as a universal prescription. Each referee and player will draw his lines in different places and that's as it should be. I personally feel that there's generally nothing wrong with including unpleasant realities in one's roleplaying so long as everyone's on the same page in this regard. I don't fault anyone who wants to keep his games "family friendly," but neither do I condemn anyone who wants to venture farther into the shadows. One of the things that's great about roleplaying is that it's a flexible enough entertainment that it can accommodate both approaches – and more besides – without any difficulty. 

The Enduring Appeal of Character Classes

The other day I was looking into a roleplaying game to which I'd recently seen references and was surprised to discover that, despite its having been published in 2022 and not being a fantasy game, it nevertheless made use of character classes. Of course, character classes, like hit points and experience points, to cite just two examples, are well-established elements of RPG design, owing to their having appeared in Dungeons & Dragons at the dawn of the hobby. That even a game published almost a half-century after OD&D makes use of them thus shouldn't be the least bit shocking. 

The reason that I was surprised is that, for as long as I've been involved in the hobby, there have been loud complaints about character classes and their supposed deficiencies. One of the commoner complaints is that classes are too "restrictive" in some fashion. Others argue that the classes are "arbitrary" or even "unrealistic" in the way they categorize the skills and abilities of different adventuring professions/vocations. Still others say that classes are "simplistic," a relic of an earlier phase of game design before more "sophisticated" approaches had been imagined. Like training wheels on a bicycle, the hobby should abandon character classes now that it finally understands how to build a better game. 

Seeing a new RPG make use of characters would seem to run counter to these long-stated complaints, not all of which are without some merit. Indeed, I have at various times been sympathetic to many of them, particularly those that focus on the limiting nature of character classes. Why shouldn't a fighter be able to learn how to pick locks or climb walls? Why shouldn't a magic-user be able to pick up a sword and fight? This is the line of thought advanced by Chaosium in its early advertisements for RuneQuest, which decried character classes as "artificial" and, on that basis, ought to be rejected in favor of "a realistic set of fantasy rules based on experience and reality rather than an arbitrarily developed abstract mathematical system."

Truth be told, I understand Chaosium's perspective well, especially of late, as my appreciation for the elegance of the design of Basic Role-Playing has increased. As I continue to (slowly) chip away at my Secrets of sha-Arthan setting, I'm seriously considering the abandonment of character classes altogether, opting instead for something much looser and closer to BRP's skill-focused design, since it more closely approximates the kind of weird science fantasy that inspired sha-Arthan in the first place.

Yet, there can be no denying that character classes, whatever their putative flaws, have stood the test of time. The very simplicity that critics decry is, in fact, one of their virtues. Classes are quite helpful for newcomers, since they narrow the range of choices during character generation to a flavorful handful of easy-to-understand archetypes. In a similar way, their artificial restrictions and limitations help to ensure that every character has a delineated mechanical role. This, too, is important to newcomers, who can sometimes be overwhelmed by the freedom inherent in roleplaying games, where there is no obvious "right" answer to the referee's perennial question of "What would you like to do now?"

Now, to those who've played RPGs for years, particularly those suffering from D&D fatigue, character classes may well seem like a played out concept that's no longer fit for purpose, one that's been superseded by a number of alternative ways to build a player character. I wouldn't dare to deny this, though I would point out that, except for a handful of exceptions – GURPS being one of those with which I have great familiarity – most roleplaying games include some sort of mechanical frame around which a player builds his character, whether it's the prior services of Traveller, the occupations of Call of Cthulhu, or even the clans/tribes/traditions/etc. of White Wolf's World of Darkness games. Some of these alternate approaches are a little more flexible than D&D's character classes certainly, but are they wholly different? (It's worth noting, too, that, like many other elements laid down by D&D, many video games make use of character classes and do so for the very reasons I've outlined here.)

In the final analysis, I think it's fair to say that character classes work. They might not "make sense" according to some lines of thoughts, but they serve the purpose for which they designed, namely to make it relatively easy to generate a character and to give that character a ready-made niche within the play of the game. That's not nothing. Indeed, it's a genuinely clever bit of design that I don't think gets as much praise as it deserves. 

Units of Measurement

Development of The Secrets of sha-Arthan continues and, as it slowly evolves away from its origins in Dungeons & Dragons (and Old School Essentials), I've started pondering certain questions I would never before have considered. One of these is the matter of units of measurement.

With the notable exception of RuneQuest, most fantasy roleplaying games have employed US customary or Imperial units (or some mix of the two). On the other hand, science fiction roleplaying games are (almost) unanimous in using the metric system. Now, sha-Arthan is a "secret sci-fi" setting, which is to say, it's presented as if it were a traditional fantasy setting, albeit a somewhat exotic one, but its foundations are science fictional. Thus, there are scientific – or at least pseudo-scientific – explanations for sorcery, monsters, magic items, and so on. Since it occupies a middle ground between fantasy and science fiction, what sort of units of measurement should it use?

This has been a topic of conversation among my patrons, where a vocal (and persuasive) minority suggested that I ought to consider creating unique units of measurement for the setting, both for flavor purposes and to aid in the running of the game. I must admit that I was immediately torn by this suggestion. It's certainly true that unique terms can help to better immerse one in an imaginary setting. However, they can also be alienating, especially when there are already lots of unique terms and names in use. 

One possible way to bridge the gap between these two perspectives is to come up with terms that are both easily convertible to real world units and useful in play. For example, the six-mile hex is very popular among old school gamers and, while there are indeed some practical reasons for its popularity, it's still a somewhat arbitrary choice. But what if it weren't? What if, in sha-Arthan, there was a unit of measurement that corresponded to six miles (let's call it a meshal for argument's sake)? If that were the case, I could simply say that each hex on a map corresponds to one meshal and then explain how many meshals per day a group of adventurers can typically travel. In a similar fashion, if I adopt five-foot squares on interior maps, perhaps each of those squares is another type of unit (a dashur or "pace"). As I ponder this further, I realize that I could come up with other units to simplify the handling of encumbrance or whatever other "fiddly" details of fantasy gaming that are often cast aside because of the tedium of keeping track of them.

Of course, I might well be mistaken in this and that any theoretical gains made through the use of game-derived units is offset by the additional step of remembering just what a meshal or dashur represents. It's also possible that it's just this kind of world building that gets in the way of accessibility and one of my goals with sha-Arthan is to present an exotic science fantasy setting that isn't going to frighten people away by luxuriating in its own oddities.  

I shall keep pondering.

Shock and Betrayal

By now, I assume most anyone reading this will have heard the revelations about M.A.R. Barker. If you have not, I reproduce here a statement of the Tékumel Foundation on the matter:

The Tékumel Foundation Board of Directors wants to acknowledge that our research shows Professor M.A.R. Barker wrote Serpent’s Walk, an anti-Semitic novel that was published under a pseudonym in 1991. We have done our due diligence to ascertain the facts regarding Serpent’s Walk and Professor Barker’s affiliation with The Journal of Historical Review and we believe this needs to be recognized as part of Professor Barker’s past. While nobody today is responsible for the odious views Professor Barker presented in Serpent’s Walk, we are responsible for recognizing this book as part of his legacy.

That this acknowledgment was not done earlier was and is a mistake, and we apologize for that. We have been reaching out to several Jewish organizations to express our outrage over our findings and make our priority to work with them through this issue.

What Professor Barker did was wrong and forever tarnished his creative and academic legacy. As stewards of the world of Tékumel, we reject and repudiate Serpent’s Walk and everything it stands for and all other anti-Semitic activity Professor Barker was involved with.

The Tékumel Foundation has never been involved with or profited from the publication, distribution, or sale of Serpent’s Walk in any way, shape, or form. All of the proceeds from sales of Tékumel-related material have gone and will continue to go to the Foundation and its work, and not to any racist or anti-Semitic organizations or causes, in any way, shape, or form.

Before the public acknowledgment of this by the Tékumel Foundation, there'd been rumors that Barker had pseudonymously written a pro-Nazi novel. When I first heard them, I had no direct evidence of their truth and, honestly, I had no interest in looking into the matter, as it would have required my engaging with websites and ideas I find abhorrent. So I let all thought of it go, assuming that, if it were provably true, the truth would eventually come out – and so it has, along with much worse. Indeed, I now dread the possibility that even more might yet be revealed in the future.

These revelations are all the more crushing for me because, back in the 1990s, I was an email correspondent of Barker. Though we didn't exchange many messages, we kept in touch intermittently and he was always very kind and generous with his time. He patiently answered all my questions about Tékumel and encouraged me in my greater appreciation of the setting. In fact, he gave me some of the best advice I've ever received about how to understand a RPG setting, advice to which I still adhere to this day: "Why don't you go and take a look?" Squaring that man with the one responsible not just for a pro-Nazi novel but who also sat on the editorial board of a publication that advanced Holocaust denialism is difficult to say the least.That it is also indisputably true does not make it any easier to live with and yet live with it I must.

To say that I feel betrayed by these revelations is an understatement. Tékumel has been an important part of my gaming for many years now. My House of Worms campaign, based on Tékumel, has, for the last seven years, been the vehicle for some of the best roleplaying of my life. Through it, I have met many great people whom I am honored to call my friends. Now, a cloud hangs over it all, including The Excellent Travelling Volume, which has been the primary outlet for my creativity since 2014, when its first issue appeared. TETV has been well received by my fellow fans of Tékumel and has, I have been told, been instrumental in making the setting more accessible to newcomers who'd previously been put off by Tékumel's depth and complexity.

I do not regret the time I have devoted to Tékumel, a work of the imagination with few peers. Unlike some, I am not at all convinced that Tékumel itself is a crypto-Nazi work or indeed that it contains anything that advances such a vile cause. Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel betrayed and more than a little conflicted. I have been struggling over the last week to decide just what to say about these revelations. In part, this is because I wasn't – and still am not – wholly sure of my own feelings. Even now, I vacillate between shock, anger, sadness, and despondency. My struggle is heightened, too, by the expectation that, no matter what I say, someone will deem my muddled feelings insufficient to the gravity of the matter at hand. 

I wish it were otherwise. I wish it were easier to disentangle my love for Tékumel from my revulsion at Barker's repugnant other interests. Consequently, I am in no position to judge anyone else's response to these revelations; each of us will have to grapple with it in our own way and on our own schedule. I know of long-time Tékumel fans who have simply decided to walk away from the setting entirely, just as I know others who do not feel that would be the right response, given how much genuine pleasure and joy the setting has brought them, despite the secret villainy of its creator. This latter group takes inspiration from Ted Johnstone, an early contributor to Alarums & Excursions, who famously wrote that "D&D is too important to leave to Gary Gygax." 

Perhaps the same could be true of Tékumel and M.A.R. Barker.

(I appreciate everyone who's taken the time to comment on this post. I am, however, closing comments, since it appears to me that the same points are being made again and again and not much new ground is being covered. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts.)

Taking the Sting Out of Poison

During the time when I was subscriber to Dragon, there was an article entitled "Taking the Sting Out of Poison." Written by Chris Landsea, it appeared in issue #84 (January 1984) and was itself something of a follow-up to a previous article "Poison: From AA to XX" by Charles Sagui. Sagui's article appeared in issue #32 (December 1979), which was before I was even aware of the existence of Dragon, let alone a regular reader. However, I was nevertheless familiar with it, because it had been reprinted in Best of Dragon Vol. II. As I mentioned recently, I was a huge fan of Best of Dragon and can still remember many of the articles included in these volumes, including Sagui's.

I bring this up as a bit of background to an inchoate thought I've been having lately regarding poison in Dungeons & Dragons. Now, I've never really had a problem with save or die mechanics and have, in fact, defended them in the past. I'm still not opposed to them in principle, but I've been thinking a lot about hit points and what they're supposed to represent in D&D. If we are supposed to believe, as Gary Gygax suggests in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, that only a small portion of a character's hit point total represents his "actual ability to withstand physical punishment" with the rest being a measure of his "skill in combat ... "sixth sense" ... sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection," why does the character's ability to survive most poisons come down to a single roll of the dice? Would it not, in keeping with the Gygaxian understanding of hit points, make more sense if poison dealt damage and a saving throw, if used at all, served to mitigate the amount of the damage?

As I thought about this more, I dimly remembered that the the much-beloved D&D Rules Cyclopedia included the following optional way of dealing with poison:

Admittedly, I haven't thought much about the implications of this approach. On first blush, though, I must admit to finding it appealing. Poison is still very deadly. Consider, for example, a giant spider, whose poison under this scheme would dealing 4d6 damage on a failed saving throw and even 2d6 on a successful one. That's not nothing by any reasonable definition, but it introduces a little more variability in the result, as well as being more consonant with the what hit points seem to represent.

I don't know; I'm still pondering this. No doubt some will think I'm going soft in my old age and perhaps that's true. I can only say that I've been spending more time reading other RPGs roughly contemporaneous with D&D and AD&D, like Gamma World and RuneQuest, among others, and looking at how they handle deadly effects like poison. There's quite a range of approaches and some of them strike me as worthy of serious consideration. That's in addition to my aforementioned questions about the interface between such effects, hit points, and saving throws. As always, I appreciate hearing others' thoughts on this matter.

Days of Future Past

I've been refereeing a Twilight: 2000 campaign using the new edition recently released by Free League. The campaign began in early December and is played weekly with a group of seven players, who've elected to call their little band (for reasons that are largely the result of an in-joke and thus have no deeper meaning) Barrett's Raiders. I've been having a lot of fun with the campaign thus far, though I don't yet feel fully proficient in the new rules, particularly those for combat, which are quite different than those in the 1984 edition of the game with which I am most familiar. That's to be expected; I am sure, after a few more months of play, that I'll be sufficiently acclimatized to the new rules that I'll be able to referee our sessions almost effortlessly.

At the time of its original release, Twilight: 2000 was set sixteen years in the future. The good folks at GDW, being thoughtful and intelligent men – in addition to being well-read on matters military – did, I think, a pretty job of imagining a limited nuclear conflict scenario between NATO and the Warsaw Pact that was both plausible and, above all, playable, given then-current information. As we now know, the real world rather quickly was at odds with this scenario and, despite the best efforts of GDW to tweak it to take into account the unfolding of history, Twilight: 2000 was soon relegated to realm of alternate history.

Now, like a lot of nerds, I have a great fondness for alternate histories. Yet, for some reason I can't fully explain, I prefer that the points of divergence in my alternate histories be well in the past. Consequently, I had a difficult time continuing to play Twilight: 2000 in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. An alternate World War II? Sure! An alternate conclusion to the Cold War? No – at least not in the 1990s or even early 2000s. Again, I don't pretend this prejudice on my part is any way rational, only that it's one I feel quite strongly, hence my putting Twilight: 2000 on the shelf for several decades.

By the time Free League announced they were producing a new edition, I had already become much more comfortable with the idea of looking on the game as set in an alternate history. As luck would have it, I was already in the midst of re-reading all my old GDW supplements when I heard the news of a new edition, which I took as a sign from the gaming gods that I ought to start up a campaign on its release. And so I did, as I've explained before. 

Free League's version of the game uses an alternate history, of course, but it's an alternate history where the point of divergence is in the early 1990s. The coup attempt against Gorbachev in 1991 succeeds and the USSR emerges revitalized and ready to launch the Sino-Soviet War in 1995. I understand why they went this route, but I don't much like it myself, preferring instead the 1984 timeline, which (for obvious reasons) does not include Gorbachev's rise to power at all. Quite simply, I prefer to referee a campaign set in the year 2000 as imagined by people living in 1984 than in one that shares the real world's history up until 1991. Once more, I say: this is not a wholly rational preference on my part but its one that makes it easier for me to run a game set in the aftermath of an alternate history World War III.

This preference has many consequences, as I keep reminding my players. So many aspects of the real 1990s, especially technological ones, do not exist in my Twilight: 2000 campaign. For example, computer technology is not as advanced as in our world. Likewise, the Internet, while it exists as ARPANET, has not had a significant impact on society, due to its limited user base. On the other hand, some experimental technologies from 1984, like the H&K G11 weapons system, entered service in this alternate history and are now more widely used. The same is true for a number of other bits of military hardware that, in our world, were never adopted.

One of the reasons I enjoy alternate histories is the consideration of paths not taken. This campaign has only just begun and the player characters have not yet got very far from their starting point – indeed, only four days have passed in-game – but I can already begin to see the seeds from which further historical divergences might grow. It's my hope, as the months roll on, that the characters will have the chance to influence events not just in southwestern Poland but perhaps farther afield. My dream is that, eventually, those that survive might make it back home to the USA and help rebuild it in the aftermath of the war. For now, I'm enjoying the ride, wherever it goes.

A Question re: Strength

If one uses, as OD&D, AD&D, and Empire of the Petal Throne do, a one-minute combat round, I think you're committing yourself to a broadly abstract approach to combat. As Gary Gygax explains in the Dungeon Masters Guide: "During a one-minute melee round many attacks are made, but some are mere feints, while some are blocked or parried." 

If one understands combat in this way, I think it makes sense to avoid talking about "to hit" rolls, since, over the course of the round, there may be many attacks, some of them even landing a blow on an opponent. Rather, the combat roll determines whether or not any of those landed blows are strong enough to overcome the opponent's armor and deal damage. Thus, the "to hit" roll is really more like a "to damage" roll.

Consider how common it once was – and perhaps still is, for all I know – to criticize the way D&D uses armor class. Why, I recall being asked, does wearing plate mail make a character harder to hit than if he were wearing chainmail or leather armor? The answer is that it doesn't. Rather, certain types of armor make a character harder to damage, which is why I recommend dropping the use of phrases like "roll to hit" and the like.

All of this brings me to my question about Strength. Prior to Supplement I, a high Strength score conferred no mechanical benefits beyond a bonus to earned experience for fighting men. With the publication of Greyhawk, this changed. Now, a high Strength granted a bonus to "hit probability" and to damage. Given the understanding of the combat roll I propose above, does it make any sense for a high Strength score to do both? 

A bonus to the chance to deal damage (called "hit probability") makes sense to me, since what that really indicates is an increase in the likelihood that a character can land a hit solid enough to harm his opponent. I find it reasonable that a high Strength might assist in this. Why, then, a bonus to damage dealt as well? Isn't that "doubling up" on the Strength's role in combat or am I overthinking this, as I often do?

I hope I've explained myself clearly enough so that my question is intelligible. If not, I'll do my best to clarify my position in the comments.

A Radical Proposal (Part II)

Strength
Knowledge
Willpower
Dexterity
Constitution
Acumen

Death, Resurrection, and the Fear of Fish

I've mentioned before that one of the longstanding player characters in my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, Aíthfo hiZnáyu, recently died as a result of an instant death critical hit. I've also mentioned that this unexpected turn of events was soon followed by the equally unexpected resurrection of Aíthfo by means unknown to the players (including Aíthfo's own player). However, it's not unknown to me, as the referee. While I had not planned that Aíthfo would die – the dice have their own ideas, after all –  I quite quickly came up with a way to make use of his death to develop further my own particular take on M.A.R. Barker's world of Tékumel, as well as to advance the continually unfolding events of the larger campaign.

Strictly speaking, I didn't need to do this and I expect that many diehard old school referees would likely balk at the idea of restoring a player character to life so soon after his demise. More than that, Aíthfo's resurrection required no effort on the part of his comrades, who had decided in the immediate aftermath of his death to seek out some means of reversing it at the next large settlement they encountered. Why rush things? Why not simply wait and see wait happened? Indeed, why not actively thwart the efforts of the other PCs to find a method of raising Aíthfo from the dead? Was I not being "soft" in blunting the cruel whims of fate?

These are all fair questions. I actually have a great deal of sympathy for those who feel that resurrection and similar spells undermine important aspects of gameplay (for RPGs are games and, at least in part, games of chance). In principle, I remain committed to not only the idea but the ideal of random, meaningless player character death, even for PCs of longstanding like Aíthfo. I'm firmly of the opinion that, if you don't want player characters to die in this fashion, why roll dice at all? For success to have any meaning, there must be the real chance of failure, up to and including the death of a player character.

In this particular case, though, there were two factors that pushed me toward bringing back Aíthfo as I did. The first and most pressing was that Aíthfo had died once before and been brought back to life. His original resurrection was a blessing in disguise for the campaign, as it gave me the chance to explore the religion and worldview of the Naqsái people whom the PCs had only just begun to understand. The other players were just as determined as to resurrect Aíthfo from his second death and that didn't sit well with me. Either I'd have to block their attempts at every turn, which felt heavy-handed, or they'd ultimately succeed, which I think would have suggested character death was, at best, a mere obstacle to be overcome rather than a significant event in the campaign.

The second factor is that there were still aspects of Tékumel I wanted to get the chance to explore, specifically the nature of the gods and their involvement in mortal affairs. I began to touch on this during the time of Aíthfo's original resurrection and had been looking for an opportunity to continue to do so. His second death seemed the perfect opportunity and I decided to seize it. Coupled with my unease at allowing Aíthfo to be raised from the dead simply because the rules of Empire of the Petal Throne allow it, I feel like this was a reasonable approach to the problem at hand.

Of course, not everything has gone as expected. Yes, Aíthfo is alive again, but there's something clearly off about him. In last week's session, our 255th, he expressed an aversion to fish. This aversion was born out of the sense that fish can't be trusted: they're everywhere in the sea and they were following him. He, therefore, refused to get on the sea vessel the characters were using to travel to the Isle of Sweet Gentility (aka the Isle of Ghosts), because it would bring him closer to the fish he now feared. Only swift thinking by Znayáshu, who offered Aíthfo a "magical" bone of fish warding – an ordinary cat bone that he had in his divination bag – convinced him to board the ship and continue their journey westward along the coast of the Achgé Peninsula.

Aíthfo's ichthyophobia is a consequence of his resurrection – and a clue as to its nature. No one has yet figured out what it means or what it might presage, but there will be consequences in the weeks to come. Since hitting upon the idea behind all this, I feel much less uncomfortable with bringing Aíthfo back from the dead than I might otherwise have. There's a real benefit to the overall campaign, not just to the player characters. Plus, it makes better sense within the world of the campaign; it has meaning. For me, that's far more important than any other consideration.

Elementary Particles

I can't quite recall when I first encountered the notion of the four elements. I suspect it was quite early, probably through my reading of classical mythological stories, though it's possible I learned about it from some other source. However, I vividly recall that, when I cracked open the Monster Manual for the first time in early 1980, I was almost instantly enamored of elementals. There was something powerfully, if you'll forgive the term, primal about beings composed solely of a single substance. Also, the existence of elementals and indeed the entire conception of the four elements served as a useful reminder that I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Dungeons & Dragons takes place in a pre-modern world, one not merely operating according to different laws than our own but one whose inhabitants conceive of it in a different way than we do ours.

Over the years, my interest in the elements and elementals has endured. I remember when I first read about other elemental systems, like those of the great civilizations of Asia. What particularly struck me about the latter was that many of them included a fifth element, a concept not unknown in ancient and medieval European thought but less well known in popular presentations of them. I was likewise struck by the fact that many of these non-European elemental systems included different elements, like wood or metal. As a younger person, this was eye-opening and helped me to realize that there was room for variation within the broader notion of fundamental elements.

Lately, I've been working on a science fantasy setting rooted in Burroughs, Kirby, Wolfe, Zothique, and The Dying Earth – a formerly high-tech setting brought low to the point it appears to be a weird and/or exotic fantasy world. Think Jorune or Tékumel but more immediately accessible than either. As I began to work in earnest, one of my earliest thoughts was its elemental system, which I wanted to be unique and interesting but also intelligible. The result of my cogitations is depicted in the crude image above. While I need to give it some additional thought, I'm quite pleased with the results, especially the way it interacts with the psychic powers and sorcery of the setting. If nothing else, it's different from the usual fantasy presentation of the elements and their relationships, which pleases me. 

Lessons from Tolkien

I've always been very interested in foreign languages and writing systems. My household had a giant Random House dictionary whose inside covers had charts depicting the evolution of the Latin alphabet from its Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician alphabet. I pored over those charts for untold hours as a kid, copying them, learning the names of the letters, and, in time, using them as the basis for creating my own alphabets (which I originally used as "codes," since I was really into espionage, too, as a kid). When I discovered Tolkien, I was probably more entranced by appendices E and F, which discussed the languages of Middle-earth than by the story of The Lord of the Rings (The Silmarillion was, in this respect, even more impressive). Then came several articles in Dragon that offered advice on the creation of languages for one's campaign setting and I disappeared down a philological rabbit hole from which I never emerged (thanks, in no small part, to learning Latin, French, and Classical Greek in school).

In my mind, creating languages – and alphabets! – are forever intertwined with the creation of a fantasy setting. That probably explains my fondness for Tékumel, which, like Middle-earth, boasts several of its own. It's also why I found this comic so funny: I was reminded of my younger self, who would have agreed with the notion that the first thing a referee must do when beginning his setting is construct an entire language from scratch. Nowadays, I'm both too lazy and too wedded to a "just in time" style of setting design to consider attempting such a thing. I'm still very fond of constructed languages, though, and respect anyone who has the determination and enthusiasm to make them for RPG use. It's a time-tested way to lend depth and texture to a setting, going back at least as far as Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom novels. 

Burroughs and Tolkien; that's certainly a worthy pedigree!