The Snow-Storm
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sometimes it’s surprising to find that you’re the best in the world at something. Even with something simple, something anyone can do, the discovery that you are in fact the best person on the planet at something can make you look up at the stars and wonder.
Friend, I am the best person in the world at wasting my own time.
I know, I know, you’re shocked. The best in the world at poorly planning out your day and working on things that don’t and may never matter? Yes, that’s me. I wrote a long blog post about the themes of a Warhammer game that’s going to be absolute garbage because I’m running it for a bunch of people who know nothing of the setting, I’m dragging my feet on working on gameable mechanics for my house rules, and, to top it all off, I just realized all the hard worldbuilding for my setting needs to be thrown out. And that’s on top of all the work I need to do to finish my Master’s. I am truly the king of wasting my own time.
Warhammer 30K
This is the first addendum for the last article written. Two things: first, what is the everloving point of running a game of Warhammer 30K if none of the players have any experience with the setting at all? If the game has to involve the explanation of the setting, then just make a new setting. Steal obviously and flagrantly from the old setting, change all the names, add all the things you see as missed potential, and just go for it. The players can’t miss out on something they don’t know about.
Second, setting forward systems like Star Wars and Warhammer always fall apart inevitably because when you run a game in the Star Wars universe in the “Reign of the Empire” era then some jackass player is going to say “I fly to Tatooine and kill Luke Skywalker.” Unless there’s buy-in from the players that certain actions are off limits (“We’re not going to steal the Millennium Falcon from Han or go to Kashyyyk and kill Chewbacca as a baby”) then players are really just trying to steal the copper pipes from a setting. I’ve already got my head canon of what the Warhammer 30K should have been (namely with anything written by Dan Abnett thrown directly into the garbage), just do the extra work, file off the names, and let the players know all the shit they want to do in the name of Chaos is on the table. No worries about “Oh so and so character is canonically supposed to die here so blah blah blah” because it’s not the setting as is. A tabletop game’s rules evolve from table to table, why wouldn’t the setting?
Which is why knowing what the theme is so important.
Your eyes follow the lander that bears the Emperor of Mankind intensely. The first thing you see is the triumvirate sigil of the Imperium: three circles stacked on top of one another emblazoned on the head of the spacecraft. The first and largest circle, bronze inlaid with rubies, represents the Mechanicum of Mars, the engineers and mechanics of the Imperium. Within this first circle is the second, silver inlaid with sapphires, representing the Selenar of Luna, the architects of the gene-forges and keepers of the archive. Within this second is the third and final circle, the smallest but most splendid. It is gold inlaid with diamonds, fashioned into the image of an unconquered sun; it represents Him on Earth, the Emperor of Mankind. All three, combined, represent those kingdoms too powerful to be overrun by the Imperium in the early days of Unification.
In this setting, the Imperium is explicitly a Roman one. I also had this idea of a system or pre-Unifacation bad guy, but the only notes I wrote down were “Garden Tyrant, lord of a green garden fortress,” which is based and I will return to this idea in the future. Maybe when the party is sneaking onto Terra its a character they run into?
Cardinal Directions Make My Face Go Red
Earlier, I uploaded another blog post about how I was concerned about the geography of my setting and after I hit post I went to bed. As I was falling asleep, I realized something absolutely critical. One of the things that was kind of important to me about the setting was the distinction between the cardinal directions. When you travel from north to south, at some point you reach the poles and you can no longer travel south; every direction becomes north. This is the same with the north pole; at some point, every direction is south. The direction is determined by a point. East and west are different: when you travel east, regardless of how long and how far you go, you will never reach west. West isn’t a point, it’s distinguished by the fact that it is not east. And as I was going to sleep, I realized it doesn’t matter.
You see, the people on the Long Rim are trapped between a technology level of Medieval European and American Old West: there are sixguns and wagons, banks and universities, but a lot of the technology of the spacefaring race where they all spawn from is mysterious and unknowable at this point. Arthur C. Clarke and “indistinguishable from magic” and all that. There wouldn’t be a magnetic north for them to follow.
And then I came to the realization that again, I have wasted my time and people knew how to navigate before compasses, Caravaneer, they used the stars. The fact that the sun always rises and sets in the west is critical navigational knowledge, and if the sun wasn’t up then they could still navigate by following the stars. And then I talked to the man in the robe and wizard hat and he pointed out that instead of the cardinal directions, if each city or town was in a line where you hit them in order than direction would mean much less than which of the major cities you were moving away from or towards (X-ways or X-ward or something where X is the name of the city.)
So I’m just going to throw up some world building stuff for Long Rim and go die.
Three Ways East
The first city is Berseri, the Radiant City, the former capital of the world empire a thousand years ago and one of the three central trade hubs on the Long Rim. Berseri is a city of immaculately cut stone and perfectly manicured gardens and pathways, with districts both independent of one another and part of a beautiful tapestry. It almost feels like individual townships decided to start building towards one another, and have convergently evolved in the same architectural and societal way into this larger civic organism. There’s an organicness to the city: the roads aren’t straight, and you never know when a stone road will curve into a residential district, or a garden orchard, or straight to a massive cathedral. The Church of the Radiant Goddess is strong here, and while the city and the Church are not the same entity, there’s an understood allegiance in the government of the city. Many places in the Long Rim are ruled from Berseri.
The second city is Talcard, the Synergized City, a relatively new city that established its national sovereignty three hundred years ago. Talcard is like if a wooden fortress on the Russian border just kept expanding year after year until it consumed all the material around it. There are many stone buildings, usually churches but also many personal mansions and merchant manors that have been around long enough to warrant their reconstruction into a more sturdy material. The people of Talcard are liturgically led by a figure known as the Patriarch, who dictates the doctrine of faith that attempts to fully synthesize belief in both the Radiant and Obscured Goddesses. Sometimes it’s not really clear what the people of Talcard believe, just that sometimes they believe the same thing as you do “and as such you should buy from me, friend!” and sometimes they believe something completely different “and you should convert and come to my church, it’s very nice!”
The third “city” is Karam, the Obscured City, though to call it a city is somewhat incorrect. It consists of thousands of wagons and horses, all moving in a massive caravan from north to south. Every few years, the city makes it to Berseri or Talcard and it’s like a giant festival. Karami merchants buy out entire districts of goods, sell exotic and foreign goods from around the world, and the city doubles in size. Regardless of the stone of Berseri or the wood of Talcard, for a couple months the city is clothed in the wild kaleidoscope of silks from the Karam.
Talcard loves this, it’s a season of festivals, but also of spies, of information gathering, of making alliances and gauging strength. Berseri is starting to hate this: there are quite a few wealthy old hands in the government that enjoy the return of Karam and stock up on teas and luxury items, but many new up and comers in the administration are starting to feel uncomfortable with a city full of foreigners filling the streets every few years, especially when some of them decide to lay down roots. And they’re not exactly wrong, because there are a number of Talcardi spies currently living in Berseri who made it there under the cover as Karami horsemen who decided to stay. Likewise, Karam is starting to dislike staying in Talcard long: they see the spy games as irritating and getting in the way of business, and the Talcardi missionaries are starting to get pushy about the whole “Twin Faced Goddess” nonsense (“They’re not the same, we literally asked the Obscured Goddess last time we saw her and she said no.”). The war between Talcard and Berseri is a cold one, one waged on economic and political fronts, because neither has the military ability to really fight the other.
Karam does not tax its citizens, but requires much more than the other two cities: they are bound by steppe travel, and as such trust between travelers is very important. The consequence for theft of food or horses is typically capital punishment, and in cases that need arbitration, a council of merchants headed by the Caravan Lord makes the decision, with the role of Caravan Lord changing depending on the leg of journey and the navigation skill of the merchant. The Caravan City moves as fast as its slowest participant, fostering cooperation between travelers who want to move as fast as possible. There are great merchant houses who have lived generations on the road. Sometimes these Great Houses decide to settle somewhere they feel they can dominate an industry, and a town springs up overnight. As Karam travels, caravans splinter off, going off in wild directions whenever they feel the time is right to leave the Caravan City.
Long Rim Mechanics
As the party travels the Long Rim, they will pick up followers. These are divided into three groups. The first are caravan guards, combatants that can be used in combat, the second are camp followers, who help with tasks but aren’t combatants, and the third are tagalongs, people who, if the caravan gets large enough, really just want to travel along with the caravan.
I hate running retainers. Hell, I hate running NPCs that travel with the party for long periods of time. It’s always a pain to remember who is with the party at any given point in time, and then there’s always that point where a player goes, “Hey, where’s Joe?” and then you have to go “Fuck, I forgot about Joe.” I will admit I did have an enjoyable experience playing Bouncequartz Gazetteer with Ex Miscellanea where there were basically two kinds of retainers, hirelings and heroes. Hirelings were almost like a dice modifier for mass rolls and heroes were extra characters that players could use if things got spicy, almost like a 0-Level Funnel. There was a direct mechanical benefit to having a village of peasants following you into the basement of House of Leaves.
I don’t think anyone does mass group combat and management in the OSR like Into the Odd. The section about “Enterprise and War” is phenomenal, and I recommend trying out that system at your table and seeing how your players interact with it. What I’m trying to do here is figure out the first steps into a mass caravan management that’s actually fun to mess with.
So, here’s my first doodle: a caravan has fifteen slots. Imagine a five by three table; that’s all the space a caravan can take up. In the middle of the table is the party. The middle space is a free space. It represents all the horses and equipment of the party. As party members begin to build out their caravan, they can begin adding groups to these slots. Do you want a band of nomad horsemen to ride with you? Fill the slot next to your party. What about escorting merchants? Fill a slot. If you’re carrying lots of goods, like a wagon’s worth, then that’s a caravan slot. The good has a times-ten modifier: you’re literally got a wagon’s worth of opium.
Maybe some units require more slots. Let’s say you find an artillery unit for hire; that’s two slots, one for the weapons and one for the ammo wagon. Maybe units can provide the caravan with other benefits outside of combat. You’re riding with a band of farriers and saddlers, so the caravan can travel faster and any misfortunes that make you lose animals you ignore.
If a party discovers a dungeon, players can “check out” slots to bring with them. Want the nomad swordsmen to tag along as you investigate this ruin? Done. Either: 1) Players can each check out one group to bring with them, but are responsible for managing them. If a player brings a group of shotgunners with them and forgets to roll for them or use them, then they’re around the corner nervously smoking cigarettes and avoiding work. Or 2) The party can choose one slot to bring with them, and the DM runs them. Caravan guards are unique: they will do combat, but only combat on the overworld. They won’t go into dungeons, but they’ll make sure no one fucks with your stuff while you’re down there.
If the caravan gets attacked you can figure out who gets ambushed, with the three inner slots as “safe” slots in a maxed out caravan. If a merchant with their own caravan wants to travel with you, you can combine caravans. Let the players play the tetris game of putting the merchant, the
Karam is a caravan of a hundred slots. Karam is the caravan equivalent of the titular Spelljammer from Spelljammer. Karam is the Caravan Crawl.
Conclusion
So that’s it. Technically the first official blog post of the year, since this has the triumvirate of “thing I like,” “fiction I wrote,” and “game thing.” It was getting hairy there for a moment, not going to lie. Might go back to semi-quiet for the next few weeks as work picks up again. Roll more dice, play more games.