How to Make a God of the Hyborian Age

Well hey, long time no blog.

I've lately been getting back into the Hyborian Age, the setting of the stories of Conan of Cimmeria, and putting together a world digest for FKR-style play. Mostly this has involved pulling in whatever descriptions from various sources seem most pleasing. There's been a lot written about Conan and his world since Robert E. Howard's first story about the character published in 1932. Much of it contradictory, some of it downright silly. Largely I find the variance useful, because it means I don't have to worry at all about "accuracy," and there's precedent for making up my own crap to throw into the mix. To appropriate something often said about Glorantha, "your Hyborian Age will vary."

Case in point -- Robert E. Howard makes briefest mention of Amazon in his foundational description of the Hyborian Age, one of the African-themed Black Kingdoms. Literally no more than a name, it never appeared in any of the stories he wrote, or any of his unpublished drafts. Inevitably, later pastiches expanded on Amazon by depicting it as an oppressive matriarchy as conceived by a bitterly divorced man, annoyingly typical in adventure fiction of the 70s and 80s. I still wanted to put Amazon on the map, but in a more palatable style, so I've made it a nation of grassland nomads, aloof to outsiders and with a deep hatred for slavers. To foreshadow Amazon myths that would appear in "later" history, I kept the idea of women having high-status in its society through martial prowess, by framing a class of hunters riding saber-toothed cats.

To complete the sketch, I had to ask who they worshiped, and I wanted something unique reflecting their culture, not just slotting one of the established gods into the role. And this entailed evaluating how gods in the Hyborian Age are presented. Broadly, there are two established approaches:

* "Real" gods, who feel more or less in tone with how actual humans conceived divinities in ancient times, entailing priests and temples, the gods themselves never seen directly, more concepts than beings. Conan's often-invoked patron Crom, the "voluptuous" Ishtar, and the paternalistic Mitra are all in this style.

* "Pulp" gods, who are basically bundles of lurid description aimed at supporting the plot of a particular story or two. Yog, the cannibalistic "lord of empty abodes" (and obvious allusion to Yog-Sothoth of the Cthulhu mythos) and Ollam-Onga of Gazal are solidly in this style. 

I don't see much point in adding further pulp gods to the digest ahead of time -- as said, they're plot-specific, and seem mainly to come up when protagonists stumble into a lost city or isolated tribe and have to deal with its profane cult that'll never be seen again. "Our fearsome lord Zkta, the wasp god, hungers for your sacrifice! Hear the approaching thrum of his wings!"

As alluded, one of the consistent themes of the Hyborian Age is elements from our actual history foreshadowed in the setting, ostensibly because these elements are echoes of the forgotten epoch repeating in later ages. And that applies especially to its gods, many of whom are outright versions of real historical gods. There is an implication that these gods are still in a raw state, their myths not yet fully formed, or they are destined to fade from the world leaving only fragmentary lore. Some are notably absent -- the classic gods of Olympus and Asgard -- presumably because they haven't developed yet (and in the the battles between the mortal Aesir and Vanir tribes of Nordheim, we're clearly seeing the genesis of the myths that will one day give rise to that pantheon). 

So with that in mind I dug into mythology, and decided to draw from the Titans of Greece, the deities who preceded the Olympians, since the Amazons are associated with those myths. In a spark of inspiration, I decided Amazon would have twin sister gods, worshiped in tandem, representing contrasting but complimenting aspects of their culture. For the more civilized aspect, I settled on Themis, the "sober-looking personification of justice, divine order, law, and custom," inspiration for the Blind Justice statue of so many courthouses. Also, in a happy coincidence, likely the source of the name Themyscira for the island of the Amazons (Wonder Woman's birthplace) in DC Comics. 

For the other half of the duo, I wanted a hunter-warrior goddess, and chose Tethys. Little of her lore has survived to the modern day, she's mainly known as the wife of Oceanus and mother of many river gods, and a preferred artistic subject on the walls of baths. It was an interesting notion that she had been something wilder in the distant past, and that her association with water was only one small aspect of her originally. 

Futz with the spelling of the names a bit to evoke the sense of earlier iterations, and I ended up with the following:

Temis: The teacher of rhetoric, the giver of proper custom, bearer of strategic wisdom, who holds the judge’s baton. One of the twin goddesses of the Amazons, on all altars she stands beside and equally with her sister Tethis.

Tethis: The master hunter, speaker to animals, knower of the ways through wildlands, finder of water, giver of strength in battle, who carries the first spear. One of the twin goddesses of the Amazons, on all altars she stands beside and equally with her sister Temis.

They fit into the Hyborian Age rather well, I think.

 

Group shot of the gods from Marvel Comics 1986 Official Handbook of the Conan Universe. I'm pretty sure which ones are Adonis, Crom, Bori, Mitra, Gullah, Ymir, Ishtar, Yog, Set and Derketa ... but I've no idea whot the liitle guys lurking in both lower corners are.

 

 

 

 

 

The Many Returns of Gamma World

I started this post planning to examine my growing interest in the roleplaying game Gamma World, after having only been casually appreciative of it previously. However, I kept getting side-tracked making comparisons between the uncommonly multitudinous versions of the game. Eventually I realized that the long tenacious publishing history of GW is part of it’s charm, so I’m going to fully indulge this tangent before getting back to the main subject later.

"Edition zero” for Gamma World was Metamorphosis Alpha, written by James M. Ward and published by TSR in 1976. Inspired by science fiction novels such as Brian Aldiss’s Non-Stop and Robert Heinlein's Orphans in the Sky, MA was about primitive humans, many of them bizarrely mutated, exploring a strange and hostile enclosed world littered with inexplicable devices. Eventually the characters realize they are in a vast multi-generation space vessel (the starship “Warden,” 13 miles long, 7 miles wide, and 17 levels tall) lost adrift after a cataclysm decimated it’s population centuries before. By modern standards, MA is a very skimpy game system, just 34 pages (in an admittedly cramped and tiny font) with a handful of rules for a few specific situations, a lot of description of the Warden, and everything else left for the referee to fill in.

In 1978 Ward and Gary Jaquet took the general concepts of Metamorphsis Alpha and filled them out with a few ideas from D&D (mostly the Basic version) to produce the first edition of Gamma World proper (expanded to 56 pages and boxed with a spiffy continental map). While keeping the core concept of low-tech often-mutated humanoids poking around a twisted landscape hoping to unearth high-tech loot, the game swapped out the starship setting for post-apocalyptic planet Earth, retaining the ray-guns and robots of MA by saying the world had reached a scientifically sophisticated age before being blasted by a nuclear fire. 

In getting away from the restraints inherent to MA’s premise (can't really repeat the "you're actually on a spaceship" big reveal to your players after the first time) this change of setting carved out a unique new post-apocalyptic subgenre, where the world-before was just as strange to the players as it’s mutated present-day. It also created the unique opportunity for a referee to build campaigns by "Gammafying" their hometown, taking their local mundane roadmap and twisting once familiar landmarks and names first through a lens of techno-wonder and then another of irradiated-savagery. 

First Edition boxed set cover.

Though it didn't enjoy the same runaway success as D&D, there was consistent interest in the game, and a fondness for it among the staff at TSR. So in 1983 Gamma World got a 2^nd edition, also credited to Ward and Jaquet with an additional credit for James Ritchie, though it was largely just a cosmetic upgrade with more colorful art and a handful of rules expansions. Mostly it was mechanically the same as 1^st edition, albeit with more elaborate accouterments in it's boxed set.

The first big change came in 1985 with the 3^rd edition, which massively rewrote the rules around a color-coded universal resolution chart which had been a feature of the hit Marvel Super Heroes role-playing game the previous year. Unfortunately the change was poorly implemented, and the game text was rife with typos and outright omissions. This edition was still mainly credited to Ward and Jaquet, but I get the impression there were some interfering mandates from higher up in the company.

The 3^rd edition debacle ushered in an odd tradition for Gamma World, where whoever was publishing D&D at the time would use the GW brand to promote an entirely new rules system, or as a pitching ground for concepts being considered for the next iteration of D&D. I suppose it makes sense from a marketing perspective; there's enough name recognition to pull in an audience, but without risking the flagship brand to test the waters. As a result, counting up from Metamorphosis Alpha, there have been at least 10 distinct versions of the game so far, many of them with very different rules from each other.

They can be broadly divided into "Original Rules" (MA up through 2^nd edition) and "New and Different Every Time." Most of the "New and Different" versions have their good and bad points, but some have been utter boondoggles. 

As mentioned 1985’s "universal chart" 3^rd edition stumbled out the gate, and 2003’s 6^th edition was a poorly received sprawling “grim & gritty” re-imagining (licensed out to White Wolf through their D20-focussed imprint Sword & Sorcery Studios) . But if you didn’t like the last edition of Gamma World, you only had to wait a few years; there was bound to be another before long.

So ... starting chronologically from the left: 2nd edition (1983), 3rd edition (1985), 4th edition (1992), "Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega" for the Amazing Engine rules (1994), Gamma World Alternity/5th edition (2000), Omega World (2002), Gamma World D20/6th edition (2003), and last so far 7th edition (2010).

 

Personally my interest has mainly been peaked by the "original rules" era, particularly 1^st edition GW, with some clarifications lifted from 2^nd edition (it’s only some eye-straining formatting and a lack of a print-on-demand option disinclining me from settling onto the 2^nd edition text entirely). As an old-schooler it's no surprise I like the earlier more succinct versions, but I also have a fondness for 1992’s 4^th edition (credited to Ward and Bruce Nesmith) since it was the first version of the game I ever owned and played, and I still have my original copy (it’s got some nice expanded systems for character-creation without getting too complicated, but its resources for the referee are lacking).

2002’s Omega World, the first version by TSR's successor Wizards of the Coast was published as an article in Polyhedron #153, designed by Jonathan Tweet himself. It's a well-regarded fast-and-dirty conversion of the core concepts to the D20 system . 

There are also many fans of 2010’s 7^th edition, a wild and woolly and very random take built from the rules of D&D 4^th edition (leading some to refer to it erroneously as “4^th edition Gamma World”). All editions are currently available online through various venues, most of them legitimate, so you can easily compare and choose for yourself.

Admirably, the tone has been consistent across all these versions (with the exception of 2003's 6^th edition), presenting a wild and wahoo world of science fantasy where characters imbued with strange powers are as short-lived as they are unique.

Two addendums worth mentioning:

• James M. Ward eventually got back the exclusive rights to Metamorphosis Alpha and re-published the game first on his own, and them in 2014 joined up with Goodman Games to create a line of professionally designed supplements for it, more than were made for any single version of GW.
• In 2008 Goblinoid Games published Mutant Future, an OGL retro-clone of GW itself derived from Labyrinth Lord, their retro-clone of Basic/Expert D&D. So arguably that makes 11 total versions so far.

Rusty-Bladed Veterans ... Revised!

I'd been meaning to get back to "Rusty-Bladed Veterans," my hack of "Searchers of the Unknown," and I've finally managed to do it.

If you're unfamiliar, "Searchers of the Unknown" is a clever one-page OSR rules option written by Nicolas Dessaux, built around the idea that if the referee can use a single succinct line of monster stats to portray an NPC warrior, you don't really need anything more for a PC. Nearly exactly two year's ago, I was compelled to offer my own variation, "Rusty-Bladed Veterans."  And now I've finally gotten around to sprucing it up a bit.

Click on this image to Download the PDF

Besides generally clarifying the wording, there are a handful of specific rules changes: 

• Added range modifiers. The original document didn't really address ranged attacks besides listing them as a possible weapon choice.
  
• Added an armor penalty to the cost of HP-based spell-casting, 9 - Worn AC. This gives another reason to go with a sparsely armored character.
• Put some explanatory text on the Movement rating, also implemented a simplifying house-rule to movement I've occasionally applied to B/X.
• Expanded the advancement range up to 8 Hit Dice
  
• Removed the awkward in-combat healing rule. There really was no precedent for it in B/X, and it was a bit fussy to implement in practice. 
• Removed the extra-attacks for higher HD. Again, because they weren't really authentic to the B/X style. I did however keep the bonus attack for killing a foe, because there is some tradition of that in old-school D&D, and it's an easy compensation for lack of room-clearing magic-users in the party.
  

More discreetly, I nudged things a bit to push an implicit niche selection: make a low-AC veteran if you want to be all about combat, go with high-AC if you want to be skillful or aspire to  focus on magic (or at least the ramshackle version that veteran's can manage).

Another issue addressed was how the original "Searchers of the Unknown" arbitrarily replaced some B/X procedures for the referee while leaving others unaddressed. For this revision, I went with the assumption that the "rusty-bladed" rules are entirely player facing, and the referee will be defaulting to the main B/X texts for resources and guidelines. 

As I said with the first version, for a one-shot or short campaign "Rusted-Bladed  Veterans" arguably has some advantages over original B/X, since it's much easier for players to jump in, and it actively follows an often-touted but rarely implemented OSR ideal: putting the emphasis on what the character achieves in play rather than what's on their character sheet.

The Besswox Design Notes which will not be in Beeswox

I've reached the point in assembling Beeswox (a flippintly-launched project I envisioned as taking a couple weeks which is now in its sixth month) of cutting things out to fit in my self-imposed limit of 64 pages (the traditional max size for saddle-stitch binding).

One of the bigger cuts is an appendix of design notes I intended for the last page. Normally I'm a big proponent of the writer taking a moment to explicitly explain how they approached the design and what they want it to do. But under my tight limits, I couldn't justify spending the space on what was essentially a reiteration things said elsewhere (PbtA rules are nothing if not explicit in their process) with some admittedly indulgent proselytizing on top.

But still, I sweated over it enough that I hate to just dump it unseen, so here it is for future posterity (or embarrassment).

Design Notes

Beeswox was more or less begat by Offworlders, a space-adventure WoX-based game with some clever ideas for handling wealth and equipment. It offered a nimble and versatile system that, with just a little work, was easily turned to all sorts of genres and settings. In pursuing that expansion I incorporated bits from other WoX games and useful elaborations from the main Powered by the Apocalypse school. Putting all that together turned into this unified generic WoX rules-set I hadn’t realized I wanted.

But why “World of X” at all? Why the ultra-lite fringe offshoot instead of the more prestigious main PbtA family it spawned from? As much as I respect the excellent work that has gone into many PbtA games, in practice I’ve found moving through their various formalized processes is a bit too esoteric for me. However, approaching those same excellent design principles through traditional elements like Hit Points, Experience Points and damage-rolls comes very easily.

Also, I’m all about minimal rules systems. Role-playing games for me are, before anything else, social gatherings for sharing imagination. The play I enjoy the most is filled with surprises and improvisation and joy sparked by communal creativity. And ever since I first put aside my D&D books in favor of Tunnels & Trolls, I’ve felt that using the fewest rules necessary encourages a focus on the natural conversation where all that great stuff happens. I prefer a sparse toolbox: some guidelines to structure the session, prompts to help the participants imagine the hell out of things, consequences to give a thrill of danger, and spurs to keep the pace up. Anything beyond that drags on momentum.

A significant secondary influence on Beeswox is the “Old School Renaissance.” Of course, given that the first WoX game, World of Dungeons, is a direct evocation of original D&D, and Offworlders is a near-emulation of original Traveller, not much more fine-tuning was needed in that direction, besides making allowances for open-table campaigning.

The Beeswox Thickens

I'm still chugging along at Beeswox, in fact writing (re-writing, and re-re-writing...) the text has become my primary quarantine pastime. I'm hopeful I'll be able to release it by the end of May.

I'd like to make a couple updates on previous posts about Beeswox.

 First, I've modified Verve a bit. To review, it's a pool of points a player spends to activate their character's special abilities. I referred to them as a fixed allowance for "doing an awesome" a number of times per session. But while that mostly worked, it still felt a little abrupt. I don't entirely agree with Dissociated Mechanics criticisms, but Verve was feeling like it suffered from that a bit. Eventually I realized that, if the problem was the artificiality of the hard terminus, then I could just make that line much softer. So now, after a player runs out of Verve, they can still use their abilities, but the referee can optionally impose side effects, call for rolls of the dice, or whatever. I'm much more comfortable with the mechanic now.

Second, I've redone the cover ... twice. While I liked the last design, the dice images on it increasingly struck me as sloppy, and I couldn't verify their copyright permissions. So I stacked every ivory or yellow-toned d6 I had, took a picture with my cheap phone and made a new arrangement on top of the image. I admit it's a little goofy, but that just makes me like it more:

 

Then, while digging up graphic resources, I found a great color photo in the Flickr Commons. But I didn't have a place for it, until I took it as a prompt to make an alternate minimalist cover:

The stark "all-business" contrast to the original cover amuses me, so when it comes time to offer POD, I'll post both versions.

Subtle Verve

In putting together Beeswox, I ended up adding a couple rules without precedent from the original sources, but I feel they tighten up the system as a whole.

In full PbtA games nearly all character actions and resources are expressed as Moves, little distinct resolution packets that broadly define an action and its potential outcomes. A typical Move is structured more or less like this:

In situation X, roll the dice and add Attribute Y to see if Z1, Z2 or Z3 happens.

In contrast, WoX doesn't use Moves. Instead, for broad actions that any character can attempt it uses simplified general-purpose attribute rolls, results interpreted on the spot based on context. Unique PC resources are expressed by Abilities, which are structured tersely:

Your character can do Z.

As I thought about it, that seemed too broad. Without the "in situation X" limit, there's really nothing to urge a player to consider if an ability is appropriate or not. Some implementations account for this by saying "you can attempt to do Y," but that implies anyone without the ability can't attempt it all, which is a headache of permissions to track.

Other Abilities do add an "in situation X" limit, but on consideration I decided against expanding that to all Abilities because it would have been more text to track in play.

My solution is to give PC's a pool of points, called Verve. New characters start with three, they regenerate to full at the start of each session (one of the things you can get when you advance is an improved Verve pool). To use most Abilities, the player has to spend a Verve point (Abilities of more limited scope are just always on). Basically, each session a player can buy a limited number of pre-defined "I do an awesome" moments, enough for their character to shine but not so many as to bury the developing fiction under spam-attacks.

Pretty simple as a pacing mechanic, and I think it does what I want. However, I was concerned that there really isn't a precedent for this in either PbtA or WoX (that I know of), so I asked around for input. Most replies I got felt it seemed workable, but were concerned it might make play feel like Fate.

That may be true from a very broad perspective, but I don't think it will come close in the details. One of the things I find off-putting about Fate is that keeping on top of the flow of Fate Points and all the Aspects producing and consuming them in a scene can lead to disconnection from the fiction. Players can end up intent on making things happen, but without actually experiencing it viscerally. Big moments become just an exercise in cultivating and deploying Fate Points efficiently. I deliberately set up Verve to have no economy flow to avoid that.





 

Keeping Under Cover

I've been working on a new project:

It's a compilation and weaving together of rules and guidelines from the many rules-light "Powered by the Apocalypse" games which followed John Harper's World of Dungeons (a three page take on what Dungeon World would have looked like in it's "original" 1974 version).

I'll have more to say about the game's rules and my goals for the book, but for now I feel like musing on the synergy between rules design and graphic design. Y'see, originally I designed a cover like this:

I almost always get sidelined into layout and art long before I finish a text. Common wisdom says this is a sloppy way to work, but increasingly I'm seeing it as a productive expression of my mindset. I'm pretty good with words, but I'm at least as visually oriented, and organizing things graphically helps me understand things I don't catch when they're just text.

In this case, the name "Pocket Wox" at first sounded dashingly clever, with allusions to being a useful tool that's also conveniently portable. But as I fussed trying to figure out how to arrange those watch faces, looking at those precise gearworks prompted me to wonder if that was really what I was going for. Am I really making something meticulous and metal-hard? No, it's subjective and pleasingly malleable. With that insight I took another look at the text and spotted areas where I had gotten overly technical and started rewriting with better understanding of where I was going.

And then I changed the name and started browsing the Flickr Commons for pictures of bees.