The Mixed Up Setting

 

Sometimes, always with an eye toward being able to use the published material for some well-supported game or another, I get (possibly mad) idea to take parts of one setting and combine with another so that the result wouldn't immediately be recognizable.

Ideas I've had in the past playing a wuxia game using the map of Middle-Earth (and MERP materials), The Known World replaced with Talislanta equivalents, or Creation from Exalted, but built as a D&D setting (using published 5e material).

I've never done any of these as at the end of the day the work required wouldn't be that much less than making up my own stuff in some instances, but it's still an idea that pops up from time to time.

Swords Against Sorcery: Archetypes

 In the game I'm working on, all PCs are defined in part by two Archetypes. These represent types of characters found in comic book Sword & Sorcery. In game terms, they provide bonuses to Attributes and Domains and also special abilities. 

Each archetype has a primary and secondary Attribute and Domain. Should a player pick two Archetypes with the same primary Attributes/Domains they can use that one and their choice of the two Archetypes secondary Attributes/Domains. The character also gains the Expertises and Talents of each Archetype.

While the Archetypes remain a work in progress, below is a sampling of the ones I've come up with. At this point, the plan is not to give any description of them beyond the abilities they provide, letting players interpret them as they will.

ACOLYTE

Attributes: Presence (Intellect)
Domains: Words (Sorcery)
Expertise: Religion
Talent: Divine Favor. Make a successful roll to call upon the aid of your gods or guiding spirit. Any successes can be used like Momentum to aid you or another hero for one scene. It does not add to your Momentum pool. 

BARBARIAN

Attributes: Daring (Instinct)

Domains: Wilds (Deeds)

Expertise: Survival or Hunting

Talent: Like A Jungle Cat. Gain an additional die when detecting dangers in the wilderness or when trying to sneak up on a foe.

COURTIER

Attributes: Instinct (Presence)

Domains: City (Words)

Expertise: Persuasion

Talent: We Were Close Once. Once per session, succeed at a Persuasion Challenge to create an NPC and/or declare a recently introduced one a former intimate acquaintance. A failed roll means they now harbor some ill-will against you.

DABBLER

Attributes: Intellect (Instinct)

Domains: City (Sorcery)

Expertise: Occult Lore

Talent: Just What I was Looking For. Add an extra die to any roll related to quickly finding a particular magical formula, ritual, or piece of information in a tome or even library.

GALLANT

Attributes: Presence (Daring)

Domains: City (Swords)

Expertise: Persuasion

Talent: Flashy. Use Presence instead of Might as an attribute for melee fighting when you have an audience but deal one less Blow.  

REAVER

Attributes: Daring (Cunning)

Domains: Deeds (Swords)

Expertise: Seamanship

Talent: Bloody-Handed Buccaneer. Apply your Seamanship Expertise to shipboard combats and to attempts to intimidate foes or lead pirate crews on the high seas.

WARRIOR

Attributes: Might (Daring)

Domains: Swords (Wilds)

Expertise: choice of a weapon

Talent: Valor. Spend 1 Momentum to shake off any Fear condition in a combat situation.

Wednesday Comics: DC, November 1982 (week 2)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! Today, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of August 12, 1982. 

Marvel and DC Present Featuring the the Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans #1: The existence of this crossover is a testament to changing times at Marvel and DC. The previous crossovers involved "blue chip" characters big in merchandising, but here are the current hot teams from current titles. Darkseid resurrects Dark Phoenix intending to use her power to transform Earth into a second Apokolips. The Teen Titans and the X-Men move to stop the two and Darkseid's lackeys the Para-Demons and the Terminator (Deathstroke, that is). Raven and Professor X psychically weaken the Phoenix-entity so that she it is forced to possess the body of Cyclops to survive. Reunion with her former lover returns Phoenix's memories of her life as Jean Grey, and she turns on Darkseid in revenge for his having reawakened her from death. Darkseid and Dark Phoenix vanish in a massive explosion, and later Metron sees Darkseid apparently imprisoned like the Promethean giants. Claremont delivers on what you want from one of these which is the characters interacting on complimentary ways but also briefly fighting each other. The Simonson/Austin art team isn't what we expect for either team, but it works.

Batman #353: This is a pretty standard Bronze Age Joker story from Conway, helped a little perhaps by art by Garcia-Lopez and Tollin. The Joker plans to dynamite the New Jersey Palisades into the shape of his head and kill the Batman in the process. What's interesting about this story to me is it positions Gotham as not in New Jersey (contrary to more recent and other Bronze Age lore) and puts the New Jersey Palisades right across the river from Gotham, suggesting Gotham occupies the same spot as Manhattan, which is weird because New York also exists in the DCU (as seen in The New Teen Titans).

Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #1: Kupperberg and Infantino/Oksner have relocated Linda Danvers to Chicago where she enrolls in Lake Shore University and gets an apartment--with a neighbor named Johnny Ostrander? Anyway, at the campus, she has a chance encounter with Gayle Marsh, a psychic with incredible powers, and both sense the power in each other. Gayle is being trained by a Svengali-type called Mr. Pendergast to wipe out the moral "decay" around them by destroying Chicago. Marsh transforms into the scantily-costumed Psi to do just that, but she is opposed by Supergirl. She initially defeats Supergirl, but, after a mental argument with Pendergast, she's allowed not to kill her--at least not until she saps Supergirl's powers and adds them to her own!

Flash #315: Bates and Infantino bring Goldface, fresh from his defeat in Green Lantern, to Central City as he attempts to start a new criminal network. He tries to capture Mick "Heatwave" Rory to learn the Flash's identity, but Rory escapes and goes to the Flash for help. Meanwhile, the Eradicator kills again, this time to protect his secret identity--which is even more clearly telegraphed as the "bleeding heart" Senator, Creed Phillips. I'll say this, and not necessarily as a complete reflection on this story: Bates has always done a good job of juggling subplots in this title, even at times when the main story wasn't as interesting.

G.I. Combat #247: I've to feel a bit for Kanigher, because the twilight of the war comic I suspect means the sunset of his long career, but I can't be too sad about it when he recycles plot ideas. The first Haunted Tank story here is much like a Sgt. Rock story from a few months ago, where the heroes wonder through various war vignettes and wind up being stellar at a bunch of different jobs. The second HT story s better, with another of the crew seeing a ghost for once, as Craig is haunted by the ghost of Slim (the guy he replaced) until he proves himself.

In the Mercenaries story with art by Vicatan, the trio is hired to bring in a group of treacherous agents selling weapons to terrorists. The agents see through the deception, but don't reckon on the Mercenaries boobytrapping their own boat. Kana the ninja is back in the good graces of Control and doing honorable ninja stuff to help the American war effort. In the last story, an actress's knowledge of Shakespeare allows her to formulate a plan for an American victory in battle.

 

Jonah Hex #66: Hex is still on the vengeance trail, going after another of the rogue cavalrymen that left his fiancée to die years ago. Webster tries to use a criminal gang to do his dirty work but comes to ruin in the end and is exposed as a coward as well as a thief and murder before his wife, who takes a liking to the more manly Hex. Fleischer and friends are coasting.

Saga of the Swamp Thing #7: I mentioned last time that this title was weird, right? So we ended last time the reveal that most of the partygoers were cyclops-like monsters. As they attack, the Sunderland Corporation Executives escape on a hydrofoil. For some reason, Harry Kay gives Dennis Barclay a gun and tells the other executives that Barclay and Tremayne were killed. They make their way to to ship's sick bay to analyze the monsters' blood. Meanwhile, Swamp Thing discovers a large sea monster in the depths of the ship and learns by telepathic means, that it arrived on earth as a microscopic organism on a spaceship that landed in the ocean and mutated when it came into contact with an experimental strain of herpes virus (a Sunderland Corp cargo ship sank with the virus on board). The alien now continues to spread by infecting humans and destroying passing ships in an attempt to rebuild its own spaceship to go home. The monster then tries to infect the Swampy, but his blood seems to cause the monster pain. He escapes and Barclay is able to use his blood to make a serum they put in a bomb and use to inoculate the monster, killing it. Swamp Thing winds up on an island that apparently has dinosaurs.

In the Barr/Carrillo Phantom Stranger backup, the Stranger, after saving a woman from killing herself in remorse over her fiance's death, reasons that she is being punished for transgressions in a past life, so he bargains with a mysterious Voice to be allowed to show them to her so she can be aware of what she has done.

New Teen Titans #25: More action in the Vega System. Thinks aren't going so well in the Titans' attempt save Starfire and the Omega Men's plan to keep the Citadelians from taking X'Hal from Oa. Raven is almost overcome by the Trigon side of her personality, and Demonia attempts unsuccessfully to betray her comrades to Lord Damyn. There's a standoff where Cyborg threatens to kill Lord Damyn unless Komand'r surrenders, but Blackfire just kills Damyn herself and claiming the throne of the Citadel homeworld. And X'Hal decides to go with the Citadelians! 

Superman #377: Kupperberg is credited as "guest writer" this issue. Terra-Man's back, but losing a battle to Superman, he accidentally warps o an alternate Earth where he meets a double of himself with magical powers. Like, mainly he makes a gun shape with his fingers and shoots a magical beam. The two Terra-Men team up to lure Superman to the magic-based Earth and defeat him. Superman has to throw out some spells he learned from Zatanna and gather magical wands and other tools from a museum to defeat them, fighting fire with fire. It's all goofy, admittedly, but Superman's method of dealing with the threat is also kind of clever, so not bad.

Lord of the Rings and the Beginning of "Serious" Fantasy

Hear me out!

I'm aware, course, that there are many works that we would now call fantasy that predate Lord of the Rings, but the conception of fantasy as a specific genre post-dates those works. The conception of fantasy as a genre grew out of fairy stories, and so what I mean here is a work distinct from fairy tale that nevertheless contains the elements of fairy tales: elves, dwarves, dragons, etc. The works of Howard, Smith, and others would be been thought of as adventure stories, weird tales, and the like when first published.

Even still, there are older works that that meet that criteria: MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin, some of Baum's works, and Dunsany's. But all the works I can think of that do they aren't obviously children's works have strong elements of whimsy, irony, and often outright humor. Even Tolkien's own The Hobbit could be so characterized. Lord of the Rings, while not humorless, is much more serious business, though perhaps not as much as Anderson's The Broken Sword, which closely follows it.

Did this seriousness play a role in it's centrality to the emerging genre? I think a bit, though it might be easy to overstate the importance of that one factor. I do think that with Howard and Tolkien sort of being the prevailing template for fantasy has served to influence the tone of a lot of works that followed and the games that inspired them.

Things to Read If the Spirit Moves You

 I've gotten into 2 good fantasy novels with connections to British esoteric spiritual belief at the turn of the 20th Century which are both good reads and good gaming inspiration.

Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi

I've praised Rajaniemi's science fiction work before. Here he goes for an alt-history and alternate physics in a spy-fi story set in 1938 were Summerland (the 4-dimensional space where the dead go) s being exploited with etheric technology and Britain and the Soviet Union are involved in an escalating proxy war in the Spanish Revolution. Behind all that are mysteries regarding the afterlife: where do souls come from? And why isn't Summerland full of ghostly civilizations? (Not all these questions are answered!) The spy stuff reminds me of a couple of novels by Tim Powers (particularly Declare) but the very science fictional rigor applied to the mechanics of afterlife physics is all Rajaniemi's own.

The Revolutions by Felix Gilman

Gilman is another author I've praised previously. In this one, a young couple in Victorian London gets involved in an attempt by a occult cabal's ambitious attempt to visit Mars by means of astral projection, but in doing so they make themselves targets in a magical war being waged between occult societies. One of the highlights here for me is how magic is portrayed in a way that is powerful, but somewhat subtle. A duel between magicians involves bystanders controlled or charmed into hurling insults or punches rather than mages hurling bolts of glowing energy.

Weird Revisited: Combat as Bloodsport

The original version of this post appeared in 2018.

 

A common reframe in the old school landscape is "Combat as War vs. Combat as Sport," often used to negatively contrast elements of 5e and particularly 4e concerned with encounter balance and "the encounter" as a fundamental unit of game action in general with the old school. Without getting into the merits of how this argument is typically framed, I think that even if we accept this as true, there is a way to lean into those elements of modern D&D and come out with something cool. Instead dungeoncrawling for treasure (mainly), maybe the dungeon environment could be the battleground of a big tournament.

X-Crawl deals with some of this territory, I guess, but from what I read of it, it is set in the modern day, and seems very much concerned with the celebrity aspect of things, bringing in a lot of professional athlete cliches. All well and good, but I'm more interested in something more like Dragonball Z. The fighters are in it often for the personal betterment--a personal betterment that is practically apotheosis, which dovetails nicely with D&D advancement. What if the gods or immortals or whatever design the dungeons as tournament grounds, and foundries to forge new exalted beings to join their ranks?

In this context, the lack of XP for gold makes perfect sense. Also, "levels" of dungeons are like brackets of a tournament. In order to give a good spectacle, you don't want scrubs advancing to take on the contenders too soon. Mainly playing this sort of setting would just mean thinking about the game differently. The only change might be that there wouldn't be any nameless rabble or humanoid tribes with kids and the like. Everybody in the dungeon is playing the game!

Wednesday Comics: DC, November 1982 (week 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! Today, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of August 5, 1982. 

Adventure Comics #493: This digest gives us one new story along with the reprints: Challengers of the Unknown by Rozakis and Tuska/Mushynsky. This is a retelling/updating of their origin complete with the plane crash and "living on borrowed time" but seems to suggest that the crash was an accident. We'll see next issue.

Wonder Woman #297: Nice cover here by Michael Kaluta. Mishkin and Colan/McLaughlin introduce a new menace in the form of Aegeus. He's a Greek terrorist looking to establish a utopian community on an island but discovers an ancient ruin where he is given the thunderbolts of Zeus and the winged horse Pegasus. He attacks a group of U.S. military jets bringing him to conflict with Wonder Woman. In the end, he kidnaps Steve Trevor.

A new writer, Joey Cavalieri, joins artists Staton and Trapani on the Huntress backup. Helena takes a position as a liaison between the D.A. and the Police Comissioner's office, but Harry isn't exactly happy to be working more closely with his girlfriend as it reminds him of her superhero activies he worries about. That evening, Huntress is preparing to confront a gang running a protection racket, when she's startled by a Batman-like shadow. A new hero, Blackwing, joins the fray, but promptly knocked out and unmasked by the gang. It's Charley Bullock, intern from Cranston, Grayson, and Wayne.

Arak Son of Thunder #15: Arak and Satyricus are in the port city of Thessalonika trying to find out where Valda was taken. They run afoul of the Byzantine soldiers and find out Valda has been taken east as a prisoner, but they also hear that the town has been beset by a ghost or invisible monster. Arak learns that the invisible creature is actually an invisible hydra or the ghost of a hydra summoned by the tavern keeper to rid the city of the foreign soldiers. 

Racing to the docks to try to get a ship to follow Valda, Arak has to fight the monster. The tavern keeper's daughter is killed by a collapsing wall, so he learns a lesson, I guess. Arak then continues his quest to find Valda and Malagigi.

In the backup by the Thomases and Colon, Valda awakens as a captive of the Hun priest Chelchak, he of the horse-had mask. Valda killed the hun leader's prize mare and is now scheduled to be sacrificed. Chelchak has taken a shine to her and attempts to get her life spared. When the Kagan will have none o it, the priest transforms into a horse and carries Valda to freedom. At the river, Valda is reunited with Malagigi who shows her that all the horses of the frank army have mysteriously died. Valda realizes that it was Chelchak's spell which killed them. Without the horses, Carolus Magnus cannot continue the war against the Huns.

Blackhawk #252: Evanier and Spiegle have the Blackhawks tasked with the recovery of Professor Merson, a scientist and inventor who has been nabbed by the Germans. They receive intelligence which places the professor, an avid gambler, is at a casino in Beldorf. Flying over South Belgium, the Blackhawks are delayed when they spot a destroyed town. Survivors claim that a giant War Wheel was responsible, and the Blackhawks suspect that this is one of Merson's inventions.

At the casino in Beldorf, Blackhawk meets Domino, a specially trained female assassin tasked with killing the team. She gets the drop on Blackhawk, but then departs. The other Blackhawks have located Merson and separated him from the Gestapo guards, but it turns out that Merson is willingly working with the Nazis for financial gain. After capturing him again, Blackhawk interrogates him, and figures out a way to stop the War Wheel with an electric shock. Still, before Blackhawk can get Merson back to the Allies, he's again ambushed by Domino, who again chooses not to kill him, despite her orders. Blackhawk smugly muses to his team later that he must have been the kiss they shared in Beldorf.

I like this book, reading it today and when I read it the first time, perhaps 3-4 years ago, but I don't know if it would have appealed to me in '82.

 

DC Comics Presents #51: At least 3 issues this week have a Masters of the Universe preview by Kupperberg and the not ideal art team of Swan and Hunt. As this is one of them, it's as good a place as any to talk about that story. Zodac shows up at the royal court and demands that He-Man be brought to him so that he may take him from the world forever. This leads to a lot of fighting between Zodac and He-Man. Meanwhile, Skeletor is trying to get into Grayskull with the Power Sword and Superman is somehow transported from Earth and starts fighting him. (They fought previously in DCP.) He-Man finally makes it to help Superman and appears to have been killed by Skeletor, but survives. Zodac shows up to say essentially "well, it worked out ok. So, my works done." Cosmic beings, am I right?

In the main story, a Superman/Atom team-up by Mishkin and Saviuk, the Atom goes back in time by dipping in the Time Pool (which we last saw in those Atom backups in Action #522-523) to the 19th Century, sees Superman apparently killed battling aliens in the American West. Back in the present, he tries to see if he and Superman can avert the Man of Steel's seeming destiny. This involves Var-El, the ancestor of Superman whose old lab Superman and Hawkgirl visited back in issue #37. The aliens are technology thieves and Var-El--still alive in the 19th Century--has been fighting them. Superman doesn't die, of course. Instead, what the Atom saw was Superman shrinking himself Atom-style. The heroes are unaware that Var-El is still alive in the past, so that's a dangling thread for another issue. 

Fury of Firestorm #6: Conway and Broderick/Rodriquez have Firestorm escape the Pied Piper-controlled masses from last issue by creating a firehose and blasting the Piper. Defeat by Firestorm is the least of the villain's problems, though, as he finds himself being turned into a satyr by the power of the Pan's Pipes he stole. Firestorm visits the Piper in the hospital. He can't tell the hero the current location of the pipes, but Firestorm learns that a dealer in Greece named Pandrakos sold the pipes to Senator Reilly. 

Firestorm flies off the Greece and discovers Pandrakos is really Pan! The god has taken command of a ship and transformed all of the ship's crew into satyrs. He has his pipes again and uses the music in an effort to hypnotize Firestorm, but our hero traps him in a metal box and dumps him in the sea. When his music can't be heard, it's effects disappear, and everyone turns back to normal.

Justice League #208: The "Crisis on Earth-Prime" continues. The All-Stars and the JLA, meeting for the first time in 1942, fight for a bit as superheroes do, but then team-up and answer the call of FDR. He's received a mysterious piece of electronic equipment (from 1982, it turns out) and they all get to hear the ultimatum Per Degaton delivers to all the world's major powers. He's got ICBMs and he will demonstrate them tomorrow at dawn. 

Meanwhile, in Earth-Prime's October 1982, the JSA must contend with mutated survivors. They discover that the Cuban Missile Crisis went hot in this world, thanks to some missiles disappearing. The more mystically inclined suss out who's behind this: Per Degaton.

Back on Earth-Two, aboard a Royal Navy warship, the All-Stars and Leaguers stand by to observe Degaton's demonstration. Aquaman warns all sea life to flee. On schedule, an ICBM drops into the area and goes off. Zatanna shields the assembled vessels from the shockwave and other destructive effects. Then, appearing out of the center of the blast zone, a transparent flying bubble appears, carrying five unconscious JSA members. The heroes regroup on the flagship's deck and get to work on making a plan.

All-Star Squadron Annual #1: In Roy Thomas fashion, this story seems to exist to plug some continuity headscratchers. It provides an explanation (that no one was clamoring for) for the excess of champion boxing trainers in Golden Age comics--1 each for the Guardian, Wildcat, and the Atom--with a "split personality" angle. It also references the retcon regarding the relationship of the Earth-Two Green Lantern to Earth-One's Guardians of the Universe. Still, it's not a bad story, and the Gonzales/Ordway art works well for it.