The Affairs of Wizards

What is a D&D character to do after they've surpassed all those domain building levels? Epic level campaigns where the monsters are just have more hit points? Walk a path of apotheosis like some out of Mentzer's Masters Rules set?

Both of those are good, but they could also hang out in luxury, go to parties on exotic demiplane, try to one-up their fellow epic levels at every turn. In other words, they could act like the Arch-Magicians in the Rhialto the Marvellous stories by Jack Vance.

I feel like the hero/quasi-deities of Greyhawk are ripe for this treatment (see Mordenkainen's magical prep of what must be an epic sandwich in the image above), but Elminster seems like this sort of guy as well. I don't mean to suggest they would never go on something resembling a traditional adventure (Vance's "Morreion" is good inspiration, here.), but the main challenge for these demigods is out doing other beings of power. Sure you could kill Asmodeus, but wouldn't it be more civilized and rewarding to humiliate him in front of his infernal peers?

The Conquered Setting

I've thought about this before, so I find it a strange I haven't blogged about it, but I can't seem to find the post if I did. Anyway, tt seems like one way to ameliorate problematic nature of of D&D and related fantasy game characters killing hapless humanoids to clear them from their land and take their stuff is to have the PCs being the ones fighting off the invaders. This is not guaranteed to free a setting of racist stereotypes (just take a look at Nowlan's Armageddon: 2419 AD), but it's perhaps a start. It at least makes the PCs freedom fighters rather than conquistadors. 

Inspirations abound (I'll list some below) but something like the set-up of the 70s science fantasy comic from DC Starfire would work well. Two warring factions invite armies from other worlds to fight for them and wind up getting conquered by them. The mercenaries-turned-conquers might be orcs and drow, or something more exotic. Ideally, there should be a difference between them, but not a difference that makes one side particularly preferable as allies to the other. You could also have the remnants of the two native blocs (elves and humans. maybe) that called in the outsiders still be mistrustful of each other.

I think it works best if the invading forces lost cohesion due to infighting or to fighting with the other invaders, and are now only slightly more powerful that the indigenous folk, but not enough so that they can really mount a concerted effort to destroy them. Perhaps in many places the native people are allowed to live out their lives relatively peacefully as second class citizens in the alien-order (like the humans in the Planet of the Apes tv show--or any number of real world examples). There could also be some weird artificial cultures like the various *-men groups in Vance's Planet of Adventure.

Anyway, other genre works that could be inspiring:

De Camp. "Divide and Rule." Aliens conquer Earth and enforce a neo-feudal culture on mankind.

Burroughs. The Moon Men. Men from the Moon have long ago conquered Earth and reduced North American civilization to a more "primitive" state. Not dissimilar from the Star Trek episode "Omega Glory" if you replace the Communists with Moon Men--and Burroughs' original draft had Communists!

Killraven from Marvel Comics.

Of course, the original Planet of the Apes films and tv shows are also good.

Wednesday Comics: DC, February 1980 (wk 1 pt 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of  November 13, 1980. I've been traveling the last couple of days, so I got through fewer comics for this first installment.

Batman #332: Wolfman and Norvick pick up from where last issue left off. Robin leaves the Batcave convinced that Batman is making a mistake by trusting Talia. He goes to find a sympathetic ear: Catwoman. Meanwhile, Batman is focused on finding out who is sabotaging his company. He figures out that Bruce Wayne's secretary is working for the opposition. Before she can tell Batman everything, a hulkin, a slightly coneheaded mutate attacks and nearly kills Batman. Bruce Wayne confronts Falstaff who practically gloats over his involvement. Talia attempts to drug Batman with a kiss and goes to meet with Falstaff herself. Batman feigns being drugged to follow her. More mutates show up, but this time Batman is ready for them. Falstaff seems about to spill the beans about who he's working for, but then Talia swings in and kicks into a shimmering bubble (there's a rover from the The Prisoner thing going on in the background of this issue). Still, villain defeated, Batman and Talia lock lips just as Catwoman shows up to get jealous. 

The backup is Wolfman and Newton continuing the story with Catwoman doing her own investigation of all this. The issue ends with Talia laughing at Catwoman from the shadows.

DC Comics Presents #30: Conway and Swan bring us a Black Canary team-up. Canary parachutes into the arctic to drop in on Superman at the Fortress of Solitude. She wants him to use Kryptonian science to prove the dreams she has been having that suggest her dead husband Larry Lance is actually alive are true. Turns out it's really all Dr. Destiny's doing (he's a go-to villain for Conway, it seems), and the heroes enter a pocket dream realm to stop him. An interesting thing on display here is the convoluted backstory of Black Canary of the JLA being the Earth-Two character (active in WWII) who migrated to Earth-One after the death of her husband, then took up with Green Arrow on the rebound. The contemporaneous New Adventures of Superboy would suggest that Clark was a teen in the early 60s. If he's the same age as the other Earth-One heroes, then Black Canary must be like 20 years older than them. Also, Kryptonian science is apparently like magic. It can pretty much do anything. Black Canary might as well be visiting a wizard's remote tomorrow.

The "What Ever Happened To..." backup is about the Earth-Two Atom, as the conclusion of the Atom story last month. I still do know how swapping their powers briefly restores the cosmic imbalance of them not having the same power set, but that's why Mallo is a cosmic entity and I am not, I guess.

Flash #295: Solovar, leader of Gorilla City, is worried the concept of leisure time the gorillas have learned from humans is making them dumb and lazy. Also, there's an attempt by a sort of Symbionese Liberation Army-esque group to hold the gorilla delegation to the UN hostage that the Flash has to thwart. Solovar hatches a plan to make the whole world forget Gorilla City, and the Flash agrees to power the device. Meanwhile, Grodd escapes from gorilla jail by trickery. He co-opts the device to make everyone forget him! Fairly standard Bates/Heck stuff, but not bad. I like how they are running through the Rogue's Gallery.

The Firestorm backup has Professor Stein calling a 2 week moratorium on turning into Firestorm so he can actually go on an ocean expedition where they need a nuclear engineer. Robbie agrees, though he's frustrated going cold turkey from superheroics. Meanwhile, things go badly on the ship and Stein summons Firestorm.

Ghosts #97: The cover story by Kupperberg and Adams/Blasdell has Dr. Thirteen encountering the Spectre, and it blows his ghost-breaking mind! After exposing a seance's fakery, Thirteen is present when a rich soiree is crashed by the People's Freedom Army (that's two of these this week!). Intent on taking hostages, they wind up shooting some people. Eventually, the Spectre shows up and delivers a gruesome reckoning to the murderous revolutionaries, causing their bodies to run like water! Thirteen is appalled by the grimness of the punishment and confronts the Spectre, but the ghost of vengeance merely fades away. Thirteen swears to bring him to justice.

The other stories are lackluster. Mi Mai Kin and Mike Nasser have a famous "ghost-chaser" invited to a Civil War museum he has snubbed before by a Confederate ghost intent on improving museum visitorship. Mi Mai Kin returns, this time with Don Heck, for a story of a murder via bridge demolition. Ironically, the murderer is involved in the construction of the new bridge--and more involved than he could ever want when the ghost of the man he killed buries him alive in the concrete of one of the support pillars. Kasdan and Estrada bring us "Deep Six Phantom," a tale about a U-boat captain who kills one of his officers who threatens to reveal his smuggling, but then the ghost leads the boat to destruction at the hands of Allied warships.

Jonah Hex #45: Jonah Hex is getting married, and of course, it doesn't go smoothly. Town busybodies disapprove of Hex's reputation, his looks, and his Chinese bride. They try to get the realtor to stop the sale of property to Hex. Mei Ling's family doesn't approve of her marrying a white guy. Old enemies of Hex's see it as the perfect time to ambush him. The marriage goes off though, but Hex has to break his promise to Mei Ling and pick up his guns to shoot it out with his enemies who are threatening to burn down the town. Despite saving the townsfolk, he's now refused the property he was going to buy, and he and his new bride must move on.

Brian Savage, Scalphunter, returns as a backup feature by Conway and Ayers/Tanghal. Scalphunter meets an old buffalo hunter who know his father and talks to him about finding a place where he belongs. Then, he saves a Sioux youth from plunging over a cliff to his death with a rampaging buffalo heard. The young man invites Scalphunter back to his village. Maybe Savage will fit in better among the Sioux than the white men? We'll see.

Horrors from the Past

I really should have posted this on Halloween, but entertaining horror is still entertaining horror, right? All last week the Radio Classics channel on satellite radio was a running a series of horror episodes from the Golden Age of radio. Here are a few of the best I heard:

"Three Skeleton Key": A lighthouse off French Guyana is overrun by thousands of rats from a wrecked derelict. Stars Vincent Price.

"House in Cypress Canyon": A strange tale of something bestial lurking in a new, post-war subdivision.

"Poltergeist": No relation to the film of the same name, other than being a tale of a malign spirit moved to horrible vengeance by a desecration of a graveyard.

"Behind the Locked Door": A sort of Lovecraftian horror story about some discovered in a cave near Lake Mead.

"The Shadow People": They can't be seen in the light, but a young woman finds out their deadly reality. 

Talislanta in the Dying Earth RPG

Still cogitating on Talislanta in Pelgrane Press' Dying Earth rpg, I tried out character creation of a character from the Chronicles of Talislanta: Crystabal, the Cymrillian/Saristan self-styled "rogue magician." Here's what I came up with:

Abilities:

Persuade (Charming) 10

Rebuff (Wary) 8

Attack (Finesse) 9

Defense (Parry) 9

Health 8

Magic (Curious) 9

Appraisal 2, Athletics 3, Etiquette 2, Gambling 3, Perception 4, Pedantry 2, Riding 2, Seduction 2, Stealth 3, Wherewithal 2 

Wealth 2

Resistances: Avarice 2, Indolence 5, Gourmandism 4, Pettifoggery *[infinite]

Possessions: High-collared cloak, breeches and tunic; dyed leather boots; leather-bound spell book; rapier; pouch; shoulder bag; 2 magical trinkets; equs steed; 50 gold lumens worth in assorted coinage.

I had had the thought of just using the archetypes from 4e as the scale of abilities is pretty close to that of Dying Earth. Unfortunately, it isn't close enough--and Dying Earth's scale doesn't seem to be consistent across abilities, at least as far as I can determine looking at NPCs. This means a lot more just re-creating the archetypes, which isn't hard given the relative simplicity of the systems, but more work than I was hoping for. Of course, one could just ditch adaptation and interpret the Talislanta setting alone in the Dying Earth game, but I worry that would lose much of the flavor the archetypes provide (and make chargen take longer).

Another issue is spells. In Talislanta 1st-3rd editions, basic spells are rare broad and generically named, but advanced spells are more specific and have Vancian names. In DE, all spells are specific and have Vancian names. I'm inclined to just use DE spells, renaming some of them eponyms with the names of famous Talislantan mages, using the Tal advanced spells as a model.

Encounter with the Cyan Sorceress

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued on September 16 and again last Sunday. The party passed through the door opened by the sleep walkers and into an older structure. Just beyond the door, they encountered an animal like a great cat with a ball of energy for a head. The party fought with it, and though it had some unusual powers, put it down reasonably quickly.

They moved into a larger passage where a humming sound presaged the passing of something at high speed. During the rest of the time in this central tunnel the thing periodically passed at unpredictable intervals. They had to be careful and stay out of its way.

Crossing the dangerous "highway" they came into a room full of strange, junk machinery--and another (or perhaps the same) energy-headed cat. They fought it again, and realized finally it would stay did until they shocked it with lightning. 

More weird rooms followed that one. There were several with sarcophagi where beings seemed to be in various states of growth around old bones. Dagmar touched the semi-solid green stuff in a vat and got sucked in and would have drowned, had they not pulled themselves out. A strange, cybernetic undead attacked them, but they stopped it with the first of the trinkets they had managed to figure out how to use.

Eventually they came to a room where some of the hapless, captured townsfolk were being turned into more such creatures. When they moved to free them, the Cyan Sorceress appeared. She revealed that she was one of the Chromic Witches, in the same coven as the Magenta Mage they met back on the Candy Isle. The Sorceress's speech seemed halting, and occasionally she was confused, suggesting to the party she was being controlled by someone. She also mentioned a book as being important which Waylon guessed (rightly) was the Wondrous Wizard of Azurth. The group tried to apprehend her, but she teleported away.

Wednesday Comics: DC, January 1981 (wk 2, pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around October 23, 1980. 

Legion of Super-Heroes #271: continues the story of the last two issues. Light Lass learns the secret of the Dark Man, who is clone made from part of Tharok's irradiated brain (and apparently all evil). The various Legionnaires manage to escape from their confinement and make common cause with the Fatal Five who have decided the Dark Man doesn't have their best interests at heart. Blok (late of the Super-Assassins) gets to prove his worth to the Legion, but it all comes down to Tharok versus the Dark Man, which appears to lead to mutual annihilation.  Conway's and Janes' story is inferior in craft to the sort of stuff going on over in the X-Men at this time (and probably Teen Titans) but it's a solid story that only suffers for perhaps being a little drawn out.

Mystery in Space #115: None of these stories are particularly interesting except for some of the artists brought to bear. "Certified Safe" has got Bolland drawing Drake's story of a hotshot, space opera general whose overconfidence is his undoing when he's killed by a weird organism on a routine scout mission. Still, his political opponents meet the same fate. Denys Cowan is artist for a humorous tale by Allikas which has contestants vying to be delegates to a convention on Planet Rxaxx, only to discover it's our viruses they consider kindred intellects, not humans. La Rocque and Sech collaborate on a space opera yarn where a couple both sacrifice themselves thinking the other can then get to earth and warn of an alien invasion. This causes the aliens to change their plans of conquest because of the human power of love. 

The other two stories have artists from an older generation. Barr and Tuska give us a story of a spacefaring Noah contending with a AI gone mad. In "The Planet of Loathing" by Utley and Ditko, aliens contact one human to offer to help earth enter a new Golden Age only to be rebuffed. They unknowingly contacted a hardened criminal on deathrow.

New Adventures of Superboy #13: This is not usually one of my favorite titles in the DC catalog and this story isn't anything special--but the ending had a twist I wasn't expecting. This sort of continues from last issues story, with Clark acting extra cowardly to convince everyone he isn't a hero, which makes Clark seem really masochistic, but okay. On a plane ride to Coast City, he meets a young man named Harold who impresses Clark by seeming without fear no matter what happens. He and Clark become friends and later on the beach, he helps Clark out against some bullies. Clark as Superboy soon  soon returns the favor when Harold gets in over his head with some criminals. At the end of the story, we find out Harold's (or Hal's) last name is Jordan, and he will one day become Green Lantern. Well played, Bates and Schaffenberger! Other interesting continuity tidbits: comments regarding the distance from Smallville to Coast City puts Smallville in the Eastern Time zone and suggests it must not be too far from the coast, so it isn't in Kansas at this point. The story also mentions the Beach Boys as if they are new, so it must be set in the early to mid-60s.

Sgt. Rock #348: The lead story by Kanigher, Ayers and Randall has Zack, former bazooka man for Easy, preparing to head home because he lost his left arm. Zack doesn't go home though, instead following Easy into battle, and helping Rock out one last time before leaving him in the hands of his replacements, Short and Long Round. Jan Duursema pencils the next story about the depravity of the Roman gladiatorial games under Nero. Kanigher seems to like these historical asides. "Runaway" has really amateurish looking, apparently early, art by Ron Randall. It's a nasty tale of deserting British soldiers in World War I who disguise themselves with cowhides and escape the Germans only to die in a grisly mishap in an abattoir. The last story is a "Men of Easy" feature focusing on 4-Eyes and what happens the day he breaks his glasses. Spoilers: he still makes the shot.

Super Friends #40: Bridwell and Fradon introduce the Monocle, who has the power to fool any sense, and pretty much makes fools of the Super Friends until they lure him into a trap by pretending Wonder Woman is getting arrested for one of his crimes. Then the Wonder Twins take him down. The backup story is about Jack O' Lantern of the Global Guardians and features a leprechaun and a piece of the Blarney Stone for really concentrated Irishness.

Unexpected #206: The cover story is a Johnny Peril tale by Barr with appealing, sort of cartoony art by Sparling and Patterson. A robot appears to acting as a brutal vigilante. Johnny traces the robots to a factory and discovers the killer robot is the prototype for an assassin (and really more a vehicle or powered armor, but whatever). The creator, Dr. Haskell, powers the robot with a star-shaped talisman given him by a mysterious benefactors--who then apparently kill him for revealing their secret. More on this mysterious group is promised next issue.

Drake, Nicholas, and Demulder open the issue with a businessman wanting to wise up the liberal, vegetarian, animal-loving son of his old mentor. He drops him on an island with a gun where he believes he'll be forced to kill a rabid wolf and give up his beliefs. He returns to find the young man does now have a taste for meat--human meat! He's become a werewolf. "The Iron Beast" by Utley and Garcia is a bit like Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" except the machine looking for commands from humanity is a futuristic tank. 

Warlord #41: 

Read more about it here.  We also get more of a "Tale of Wizard World."