Shadow Prowler by Alexey Pehov

Anyone else ever find they have books that they have no recollection of buying? I have this in hardcover, new, and don't remember when I bought it or for how much. I've never heard of Alexey Pehov (website here) before and as I was cleaning through my various stacks of unread books, came across this. The thing that moved it to the top of the pile?  "Reminiscent of Michael Moorcock's Elric series, drawn from the great heart of Russian folklore, Shadow Prowleer is the first work to be published in English by the bestselling new-generation fantasy author Alexey Pehov."

Elric? Alright then!

After reading it, no, not quite. There isn't a spellcaster whose doomed to slay his own people. There isn't a magical sword that drinks souls. There isn't travel to other planes and times. Those are some of the hallmarks of Elric at least to me. Oh, and short. Relatively short novels too. In terms of Russian folklore? I'm not learned enough in that field to say yea or nay but I didn't see a lot of the common tropes poking out like any visits from a certain Hut.

I don't know if it's a translation problem or something else but Shadow Prowler didn't make it up to the heights that other books I've read this year have. It's not bad by any means, and its more 'serious' than I consider 'popcorn' fiction like the various Magic the Gathering novels I read. But I'm not interested in it enough to buy the next book in the series when I'm still running through dozens of other books that need to go to make some room in the cramped apartment.

Part of it may be the naming conventions. The main hero is Shadow Harold. His mentor is For. One of the guides he speaks with it Bolt. The names are a little off to me which may be part of the translation or may just be common names in the native tongue.

The book has a nice nesting doll structure. The characters have to go to the Hall of Bones to retrieve the Ogre's Horn to fight the dark magic of 'The Nameless One' but along the way Harold winds up exploring a magically locked off part of the city, fighting assassins and goat men and using magic left and right. It has its up moments and is high fantasy with some questing thrown in for good measure along with a handful of interesting characters.

I'll be discussing some of the specifics below and how they might apply to a role playing game.

Racial Reimaginings: In this setting, orcs are the firstborn. They are the oldest race in the series. Elves have fangs and are not the creatures of beauty that other settings have them as. Gnomes and dwarves hate each other, and gnomes, while still shorter than dwarves, are the ones that have beards and cannons while dwarves have no beards but are still master craftsmen.

Background Dumps: Harold finds himself learning things through extrasensory methods three times in the book. The first is when he enters the forbidden zone of the city. The magic of that section overhwhelms him with the origin of the sector and how it came to be. The second is when he is mystically attuned to a magical key and learns how that key was forged. The third is when sleeping in a field and he learns how all of the bones came to be in that field. These methods of providing an information dump on the characters might be overwhelming but if the GM can provide the players with some pregenerated characters, the players can actually be the ones doing the fighting and determining how the story worked out. This may steal some time away from their regular characters but the investment may show them how it all went down in a way that the history books don't talk about.

Magic For Money: One of the things about the setting that reminded me of D&D, is that Harold is able to buy magic items and even use scrolls. The magic items are all locked up and take time to get to to prevent easy loss or theft and cost an arm and a leg but in a high fantasy setting, they are available for purchase. If your setting should logically support such commerce, there should be a good reason, perhaps a social or religious one, why it is not.

The Gods: One of the things I enjoyed about the setting, is that when a thief agrees to do something and is bound to it, not through magic, but tradition and the watching eye of the god of thieves, it's called a Commission. This provides a solid reason why anyone would trust a thief to do something that they might normally not want to do. By entering into these contracts, both parties can be sure that the other will hold to their end of the deal. The Forgotten Realms had something similar with mages and their unique sigils where Azuth would curse someone who copied the moniker of another mage. When looking at things that bind people to causes and duty, having the active hand of the gods be one of them, is an easy way to insure that word given, word kept.

Shadow Prowler is available at amazon in hardcover, for $19.24, mass market paperback for $7.19, and kindle for $6.83. The physical copies are prime eligible.

For those who've read other books by Alexey Pehov, is the series worth continuing into? Any recommendations in that vein?

Conan: Born on the Battlefield

Dark Horse comics has been publishing Conan comics for a while now. Not only have they done brand new stories, as well as stories based on Howard's original material, but also reprints of Marvel Comics own Conan stories as well as the stories of Conan from the magazine via the Savage Sword reprints.

In this volume, Born on the Battlefield, labeled 0, Kurt Busiek writes of Conan's youth with illustrations by Greg Ruth. Greg does a great job of illustrating Conan in his various stages of life. I've always been one who thinks more of Conan in his 'pantherish' style rather than the hulking style that is often incorporated into some of the icongraphy associated with Conan.

This volume itself is a nice collection as, like many of the Dark Horse collections, it not only has a great introduction, this time by Ed Brubaker, but has a nice set of additional materials including various sketches by Greg at the end of it. It's a bit of an odd task as Conan is a fairly well known character but it is not the first time Conan's early years and birthing even, have come under scrutiny. I'll be talking about some of the spoilers specific to the book below so if you don't want any information ruined for you, read no further.

First off, as a Dungeon Master, I am not that interested in starting backgrounds for some games. This may sound cold or callous but in a AD&D 1st or 2nd edition game, I'm not too worried about building in too much until the survivability factor comes into its own. If you're a first level wizard with four hit points, I don't need to see six pages of how and why you came to learn sleep and magic missile.

In more... I hate to say story driven games, because I've played plenty of D&D games where it wasn't about dungeon crawling at all, but in games like Hero or GURPS, even starting characters in those games, and others like them, tend to have a little better survivability factor and more reason to have a certain set of skills and a background story can flesh that out some.

As a player, the more complex the game system is without survivability, like Rolemaster, the less likely I'm going to invest any time into making a detailed background myself. For a convention character, I might whip a few paragraphs together if he's not starting past first level.

On good old RPG.net, when the question of background comes up, there are some who prefer only what is revealed during actual game play. It makes the characters more organic and real to them. I can see that point.

I suspect that many Dungeon Masters fear that players try to build too much into their background. That player's are looking for that 'gimmie'. In some aspects, its not a goal without effort. While writing may come naturally to some people and like pulling teeth for others, it still involves some effort to write it down, to provide it in context of the setting, and to present it to the Dungeon Master. Is that worth a reward? Depends on how the DM is going to run the game and what the long term intentions are.

Anyway, most of Conan's background doesn't really lend itself too well to a RPG outside of the events of his birth where his mother is fighting on a battlefield, hence the title of the volume. Events like these can fall under an 'omens' table if you will.  The old Central Casting: Heroes of Legend provided a few different types of tables to roll on for these bits. Mind you though, there are differences between where your born and what happens when your born. The battlfield for example, is merely a location. Making the birthplace an unusual local isn't a bad thing mind you, but what if it'd been in a castle during a siege? What if it happened in jail or a brothel?

Adding other details like a twin tailed comet being visible to all on that night, or all the milk turning sour or the birth of farm animals with hideous mutations? That's an omen.

For much of the material, Conan's personality traits tend to emerge, but that would be somewhat difficult to mine for much outside of modeling a character directly on them.

However, the importance of Conan's grandfather is reinforced here. I say reinforced because while this is volume 0, it is certainly not the first in the actual printed publication and Conan's grandfather has been referenced as the one who helped instill the wanderlust in Conan.

This bit of background building, of relatives who help mold the character, are useful in a few ways. It allows the player to claim to have some knowledge of X, but that knowledge of X is coming from a third party, is coming from a perspective that's some odd twenty to thirty years off, and may be embellished to provide entertainment. This can easily smooth over any differences between what the player thinks he knows and what the setting actually is.

Perhaps more importantly, Conan's grandfather dies at the end of this volume. While that may sound harsh, it does allow Conan to go wandering without too many ties left to his home country.

For gaming purposes, Brita's Vale from its initial description alone makes a worth addition to a setting, "Dark forces seep from the blood-soaked ground. The vale attracts wizards, madmen who feast on human flesh, and worse they say." Now many game settings already have such a location as the Battle of the Bones in the Forgotten Realms, but its good to have a spot where the fields of the dead are stacked high and strange things wander.

The closer one gets to such a location, the more things can be of the 'other'. In this comic for instance, Conan dreams of a panther he has slain providing him with dire omens. When he gets to the vale itself, breathing in the dust of the dead provides him with visions of how the fighting went. In the midst of that he is forced to fight for his life against a cannibal and sees a bone-witch who appeared in other comics that series wise, take place later, although again, the printing chronology make that reversed in when the reader initially saw them.

Having such a location allows the setting to have graveyards that aren't man made but yet, are visited by men. In settings that are soaked in superstition, many sword and sorcery ones for example, the Game Master can run counter to those traditions and have it be where individuals meet to discuss various business matters as normal people stay away from these 'haunted ruins'. It could also be a place where survivors of the wars come yearly to pay their respects to the dead. It could also be a place where certain items have been rumored to be lost ever since the original conflict.

One 'moral' lesson of this series though, is an old one; No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Conan, as a youth, sees strangers coming to his homeland, a wizard and her daughter. The daughter grows up even as Conan does and the two becomes lovers. While playing, the daughter falls into a field and startles a bull. Conan leaping in to save her winds up putting the strange girl in front of his fellow villagers and that in turn brings her wizard father. The two sides do not see things eye to eye and soon the civilized lands know of the value of ore and other valuables in Conan's home.

That in and of itself leads to a war where Conan takes a place among the men and the end result? The girl and her father are dead. Not at Conan's hand mind you, but the end result is still the same. The very thing Conan sought to prevent, the death of the girl, comes about in a long drawn out way that costs many their lives on both sides, because Conan tried to do the right thing. Are there events and elements in your own setting that can trigger a negative? Something that should be done for the greater good but isn't because the current cost of doing that would be too high?

The destruction of the invaders and their fort though, follows another example of one of Howard's themes that barbarism is the natural state of the world and that it will sweep away civilization.

Born on the Battlefield is an interesting take on Conan's early years. It makes him a little "too" much in my opinion as he's always killed various animals, experienced the supernatural and taken part in a war, well before leaving the homeland, but at least its not so far out there that future adventures he has are reduced to repetition or lesser actions. If you're interested in seeing how Kurt Busiek, known his his initial tenure on the story, The Frost Giant's Daughter, back in 2005, this is a good volume to pick up.

Player Narration and Game Master Narration

After Usagi's trials and tribulations on the road for the past several books, he decides its time to go home.  As he's walking home, he recalls the last time he saw his mentor, Katsuchi and how his mentor was attacked by Dogora students intent on avenging the default of their school by Katsuchi's pupil who just happens to be Usagi.

Usagi arrives just in time to see Katsuchi lose an eye and fall to his 'death' off a cliff.

To me, this could be the player narrating how things happened to his mentor. But it could also be a little back and forth between the GM. For example, the GM could ask, "So what happened to your mentor." at which point the player relays the information ending with, "And he was killed by the school" but the GM asks, "What if you saw him lose and eye and fall to his death above a raging river?"

I say this because Usagi decides to stop by his mentor's old dwelling and surprise, not only is the mentor still alive, but he's taken on students. When he fell, the river dragged him further downstream and he was saved by two orphans. One of those orphans had already left Katsuchi's training but was killed... in a duel against the very same Samurai that Usagi just dueled to the death before coming home. There's that foreshadowing again. We now know how there can be another swordsman with Usagi's style because it's his mentor's style and the man is still teaching.

By leaving areas of the character's background open, the player and GM allow each other some room to play off the character and their background elements. It's equally important though not to trash each others ideas but try to come to some accord. If the player insisted that his mentor was dead, or Stan decided yeah, that guy is gone, the readers would havel ost out on some great bits like the further volume Duel at Kitanoji. By allowing the background elements to influence current events, the whole has more fabric to it, it's a stronger material.

Usagi Yojimbo: Book One, Chapter One

Usagi Yojimbo is a hell of a comic. It's often described as "A masterful adaptation of samurai legend to sequental art."  The story is that of a masterless samurai named Miyamoto Usagi who often acts as Yojimbo or bodyguard.

I was introduced to Usagi many years ago but can't recall the specifics. Unlike the manga Berserk, published by Dark Horse also, I actually don't own all of the Usagi books yet. The series has been around for a long time and is still being printed and still being collected.

In this first chapter of the first book, our Samurai Rabbit approachs a house and asks for shelter and it is granted. The elderly woman inside relays that her husband was killed in a great battle, one that Usagi also took part in. 

Here Usagi's background comes out just a little. We learn that he served a lord and failed. The lord died but Usagi escaped with the Lord's Head to prevent it from being disgraced.  Usagi asks the old woman why she doesnt' fear the goblin of the region and she says it is not here karma to die by such a creature's hands.

During the night when the beast attacks, Usagi is ready and quickly dispatches it. He learns that it is his old mentor's betrayer and that he was once 'normal' like Usagi but guilt and rage drove him to become monstrous.

The part I'd like to touch on here is the background. It's brief but it presents a motivation for Usagi to wander. It's brief, but ties into the scene. It's brief, and it can be expanded.

In that I'd like to offer my own character Rus as a way of comparrision. One of my friends was running a Forgotten Realms 4e campaign. He is known by the group to be a pretty fair GM, one who gets into character's background and other bits. I didn't both putting down anything because I was more interesting in some light popcorn style playing and testing out some game mecahnics and more importantly, my friends and I were aware that despite his good habits as a GM, his worst habit is being a flake and quiting after running for a brief time.

So the inevitable happens. He stops running. But another player picks it up. He's interested in our backgrounds and would like more details. I resist the urge and put only the faintest bit of background into it so that I can keep gaming. It provides the other players, who are mostly new, with a lot of scenarios designed around them, but I still don't know the new GM so I hold off on it.

I do however, write out my character's take on how various adventurers go based on what happens to the game and throw some reference to the background ideas I have there. After a few months of this the GM wants some more information directly from me and I provide it in layered spades as at this time, I'm pretty sure the GM is going to be running for a while and is more than capable of taking things into the game from background.

The thing that I'll tie this into Usagi though, is that as the game has continued, I've added little bits of background to the game. In one instance, this was to form a tie or link with another new player. I thought it best if the new character had some ties to the campaign. The other time was when I was adding some details about the character's family. 

Neither instance effected the current campaign save to provide it with more opportunities.

This is more easily accomplished if you're not playing a wet behind the ears character. Sure, it may seem strange to flashback to your character being roughly as effective as he is at higher levels, but this is in part the nature of the game. If the Game Master is willing to let the players narrate their past histories with the setting and to include events in it, the Game Master can take those elements and add them to the campaign. This allows the world building to be done by the players and gives them more interest in the setting as they've now helped to develop it.

When thinking of background, it can effect current game play but most importantly, shouldn't get in the way of game play.