The Sage and the Enchanter: Dragon Warriors rules for Blood Sword characters

Next year is the 40th anniversary of Dragon Warriors, and two years after that the 40th anniversary of the first Blood Sword book. I don't know if that accounts for the upsurge in interest in how to combine the two, which began when Tambù used the Blood Sword gamebooks as the basis for a 5e campaign. Some players grumbled that the 5e ethic wasn't a good fit for Legend, but I have always thought that the Legend of the Blood Sword books is tonally different from Dragon Warriors. One is epic fantasy, the other regular low(ish) fantasy -- and the Legend of the Jewelspider RPG will be low fantasy nudging towards realism. And in any case, there's no reason why Blood Sword 5e should be the same style as Dragon Warriors, any more than the TV version of Fargo has to exactly follow the plot of the Coen Brothers' movie.

(I realize at this point that somebody will ask me when Blood Sword 5e will be published in English. Sorry, I don't know. I'm told it's on the way, and the Italian edition is a luxurious masterpiece worthy of Gucci so I'm hoping to hold the English version eventually.)

All this preamble is to say that today we have a special contribution by regular correspondent Stanley Barnes, who has converted the Sage and Enchanter from Blood Sword into DW character professions. Thus, with thanks to Stanley and without further ado, here are those conversions. If you do have a go at putting these characters into your Legend game, come back and tell us about it.

Here come the machines

Now this is interesting. The Last Screenwriter is a movie made from a script written by ChatGPT-4. I'd like to tell you more, but knee-jerk hysteria (or so we're told) meant that the planned screening in London was cancelled. Too bad, as the filmmakers explain on their website that it was made as a non-profit experiment.

I'm curious about the use of generative AI in writing, art, and other fields. I suspect it won't lead to mass unemployment but instead will be a useful tool that creatives will collaborate with to improve their work -- much as desktop publishing has led to an explosion in the number of books. Hmm, given the quality of books these days maybe that's not such a great example.

Some people gripe (well, scream) that AI is stealing from existing authors and artists. Mostly that's a misunderstanding of how the models are trained. Yes, they look at millions of images to learn the way a picture is put together. Contrary to the belief of the pitchfork-bearers heading up to the baron's castle, the generative AI models don't record each individual image and reproduce it. It's more like how human artists and writers learn their craft.

For example, when I was a kid I'd often notice that my favourite comic book artists were having their panels "borrowed" by less well-known artists. The character poses you'd see in British comics in the early '70s (strips such as The Steel Claw in Valiant) had appeared in US comic books a few months earlier. But even among those Marvel & DC artists there was cross-pollination. Barry Windsor Smith famously started out drawing Jack Kirby pastiches and later went Pre-Raphaelite. Dan Adkins was famous for lifting poses from other artists. Writers too: H.P. Lovecraft began by imitating the style of Lord Dunsany. Dunsany was influenced by the King James Bible. Robert Bloch started out copying Lovecraft, and so the cycle continued. 

In the comics I made at school I emulated the art styles of Bernie Wrightson and Barry Windsor Smith; when I wrote my early stories I was following patterns picked up from Robert E Howard, Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, August Derleth, and others. This is how we've always learned -- and it's a much more targeted kind of swiping than the generative AI is doing. The AIs don't play favourites, which is why (now that you can no longer specify "in the style of" in the prompts) their art output tends to look like the soulless photorealistic fantasy paintings you see on DeviantArt.

I've talked before about using AI for artwork in gamebooks and RPGs. It's a good fallback for game designers who have no art budget. The snag is, people lose their shit when you so much as mention it. I've hired human artists whenever possible -- most recently Inigo Hartas for my Jewelspider roleplaying game. Of course you get a better result that way, but most independently published books don't even make enough to pay the author's phone bill. The option is often either AI art or no art -- or else public domain art like the William Harvey illustrations I used in the new print edition of Once Upon A Time In Arabia. Nobody was happy with those. (You can get a copy with Russ Nicholson's artwork on DriveThruRPG.)

In any case, I'd like to see The Last Screenwriter because this is the future and we may as well start getting to grips with it. Smashing the looms never works.

A magic moment

If your interest was piqued by news about my forthcoming Jewelspider RPG last time, there's more today. Much more, in fact. I've been working away at the magic system, and finally it's been unveiled to all those patient Patreon backers.

Jewelspider is set in the world of Legend (the same setting as Dragon Warriors) but it's more of a realistic take on Legend's medieval origins. This is the world as the people inhabiting it believe it to be. Magic is real, but it isn't a matter of careening fireballs and glitzy special FX. Typically a spell takes minutes, hours or even days to cast, but the outcome is much more significant than simple artillery.

The theory is that an evocative and flavourful magic system will mean that every spellcasting attempt is an adventure seed in its own right. To achieve that goal I'm eager for feedback from the Patreon backers (that wisdom of crowds thing) and after that I'll be releasing the game, first as a PDF and then in print form.

In brief, this is how the Jewelspider magic rules work:

The Nature of Magic

Magic in Jewelspider is a subtle art, often requiring tools and time to manifest. The core of the system lies in reality's reluctance to be altered by magic; overt magical effects are challenging to achieve.

Spellcasting Mechanics

Mastery Levels: To cast a spell, characters must possess mastery in the relevant type of sorcery.

Skill Use: Most spells are cast using Reasoning, though some can be woven from artistic expressions using Artistry. 

Intrinsic Difficulty: Each spell has a difficulty level that must be met or exceeded for successful casting.

The Seven Magical Laws

Each of these modifies the difficulty of casting.

• Contagion: Using personal items like hair or nails can influence spell difficulty.
• Subtlety: Spells cast without witnesses are easier to achieve.
• Deferment: Delayed effects are simpler to integrate into reality.
• Proximity: Closer targets make for easier spellcasting.
• Impermanence: Temporary spells are easier than permanent ones.
• Invitation: Spells accepted by targets (even unwittingly) are more potent.
• Sympathy: Artistic mimetic components (e.g., a feather for a levitation spell) can enhance spell effectiveness.

Tools and Time

The effectiveness of a spell often depends on the tools used. Rings, Diagrams, Books, Apparatus, and Laboratories each provide varying bonuses and require different amounts of time to use, from instantaneous to several hours.

Success, Failure, and Partial Success

Success: If the casting effect equals or exceeds the difficulty, the spell works as intended.

Failure: No effect occurs, though mishaps are possible.

Partial Success: Unexpected, often uncontrolled effects occur, adding a layer of unpredictability and excitement to spellcasting.

Counterspells and Wards

Defensive measures like Wards and the innate ability to resist spells by other sorcerers add depth and strategy to magical duels and encounters.

If you want to dive into the full details and join the conversation, head over to my Patreon page. Your support helps bring Jewelspider to life, and you'll get exclusive content and a behind-the-scenes look at the development process. Or just join as a free member, which still gives you access to a whole lot of early posts and ensures you'll get updates about publication.

(The image at the top is from Robin of Sherwood. As if you couldn't tell.)

Stranger than fiction

For Legend games I’ve always liked taking a seed crystal of historical fact (or anecdote) and growing an adventure around that. When a friend of mine told me a story about Notker the Stammerer and a stolen relic, I had the basic set-up for “A Box of Old Bones” right then and there.

Real history offers plenty of inspirational snippets like that. How about these, taken from a review in The London Review of Books of Martyn Rady’s book The Habsburgs?

“Werner the Pious was the first fabricator in the family, forging a charter that confirmed him as the hereditary abbot of the local abbey (where the Emperor Karl’s heart rests today). But this was small potatoes compared to the heroic efforts of Rudolf the Founder, who had his scribes concoct five interlocking charters claiming that previous emperors had confirmed the Habsburgs as hereditary archdukes of Austria, bolstered by letters supposedly written by Julius Caesar and Nero.” 

“Cymburga, the Polish mother of Frederick III, renowned both for her beauty and for her ability to drive nails into planks with her bare fists; Frederick the Slothful, who travelled his realm with his own hen coops to save on buying eggs; the Habsburg knights who had to cut off their fashionable long toe-pieces when forced to fight the Swiss infantry on foot; Margaret of Parma, another illegitimate child of Charles V by a different serving wench, who grew and carefully trimmed a moustache to provide her with an air of authority when her father made her governor of the Low Countries.” 

“The slaughter of thirty thousand in the Lutheran stronghold of Magdeburg led to a new word being coined, ‘Magdeburgisierung’. Invaders bombarded cities with shells of poison gas, a fetching compound of arsenic and henbane. After the war, France and Germany signed the Strasburg Agreement of 1675, the first treaty to ban the use of chemical weapons.”

There are ideas for Legend there almost in whole cloth. But they’re trumped by another of Notker’s accounts which is pretty much a ready-to-run adventure:

“In one particularly bad crop year, a certain greedy bishop of Old Francia rejoiced that the people of his diocese were dying because he could sell the food from his storehouse to the survivors at exorbitant prices. Amidst this climate, a demon or spirit started haunting the workshop of a blacksmith, playing with the hammers and anvil by night, much like a poltergeist. The blacksmith attempted to protect his house and his family with the sign of the cross, but before he could, the demon [Notker describes it as ‘pilosus’, ie hairy] proposed an arrangement of mutual benefit: ‘My friend, if you do not stop me from playing in your workshop, bring your little pot here and you will find it full every day.’ The starving blacksmith, ‘fearing bodily deprivation more than the eternal damnation of the soul’, agreed to the demon’s proposition. The demon burgled the bishop’s storehouse repeatedly, filling the flask and leaving broken barrels to spill on the floor. 

“The bishop discovered the theft and concluded, based on the excessive waste, that it must be the work of a demon rather than a starving parishioner. So he protected the room with holy water and placed the sign of the cross on the barrels. The next morning, the guard of the bishop’s house found the demon trapped in the larder. It had entered during the night, but, because of the holy protections placed by the bishop, was unable to touch the stores nor exit again. Upon discovery, it assumed a human form. The guard subdued it and tied it up. It was brought to a public trial where it was publicly beaten (ad palam cesus). Between blows, it cried out: ‘Woe is me, woe is me, for I have lost my friend’s little pot!’ “

If we read that with a modern sceptical eye we can work out what had really happened, but the motif of the devil and the blacksmith is common in folklore, and the world of Legend is the Middle Ages as the people at the time believed it to be, not as it really was. That said, I doubt if any demon or goblin in my game would be quite so easy to deal with.

This is a repost of a piece on my Patreon page, proceeds for which will support the artwork (by Inigo Hartas; sneak peek at the top of this post) for the Jewelspider roleplaying game which is due for publication later this year.

The pivot of destiny

I came across this 120-player game of D&D on LinkedIn. Unfortunately the post was whisked away from me before I could note the name of the valorous GM, so apologies for not crediting him here. It reminded me of when my friends Nick Henfrey (co-founder of Flat Earths) and Steve Foster (creator of Mortal Combat) and I turned up at our university D&D society just after Freshers' Week. Dozens of new members had signed up, so we found ourselves crammed into a tiny room (five metres square at the most) with a couple of dozen eager first-timers.

"You can't run a game for a party this size," I pointed out to the GM as we all put down figurines in the traditional ten-foot-wide corridor.

"Course we can," he insisted, announcing that the two people at the front could just make out an ochre jelly or whatever it was.

We played on for half an hour, with most people there watching in bafflement as the experienced players leading the party rolled lots and lots of dice. It didn't look like many of these newbies would be coming back next weekend. Nick whispered in my ear. "Let's liven things up."

We were in the middle of the party, so we started blasting spells and swinging swords in both directions, slaughtering folks on both sides until the experienced D&D players waded back and killed us. Outside in the corridor, one of the first-year players whose characters we'd killed asked, "So what are we going to do now?" I didn't know then, but he was Mark Smith.

I opened the next door. It was another meeting room even smaller than the first, maybe four metres square this one, but it was empty. "Have you ever heard of Empire of the Petal Throne?" I said. And that's where we started a game with the core of a group who went on campaigning together for a long time to come -- decades in some cases. There were several who went on to careers far removed from games (and hi there, Les, Sheldon and Pauline, if you happen to see this) but most notable among them was Mike Polling (yes, the author of "The Key of Tirandor") a friend and creative mentor with whom I did much of my early writing. Mike and Mark had been at school with Jamie Thomson, and Mike soon introduced me to Oliver Johnson -- and so, directly or otherwise, that Sunday afternoon connected me to most of the RPG writers I'd be working with over the next forty-five years.

Maybe life is full of those "Turn Left" moments. I met my wife because of another, but although that's obviously of paramount importance to me personally there's no gaming dimension so I won't recount the story here. What about you? Are there people or games that have changed your whole life which would have gone entirely unnoticed if you'd made just one different choice?

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe

Traditionally the Fourth of July stands for the people standing up to rid themselves of incompetent and backward-looking government. The UK electorate will get the opportunity tomorrow to claim their own share of that. If you are reading this in Britain: vote for who you like just as long as you vote, try not to demonize people who have a different opinion from you*, and don't let me influence you. Well, beyond saying that the choice is pretty much summed up in this Brian Bilston poem.

And my thoughts too are with our neighbours across La Manche, also in the midst of a fraught election. The result there could have far greater consequences than the vote in Britain, given that one of the party leaders openly supports Putin over the EU. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion isn't even close.

* Unless they really are irredeemable, that is.

The sense of an ending

My first memory of the public library is of lugging home a volume of Norse myths as heavy as a thunder-god’s hammer. A red-bearded bruiser with a laugh like the sky splitting. A silver-tongued schemer who can’t help brewing mischief. Together, they fight giants. I was hooked right out of the gate.

Soon after that Doctor Who’s cliffhangers held a generation of children spellbound week after week. James Bond felt like he’d go on forever. (Funny, that.) And the British comic TV Century 21 wrapped all those now-classic Gerry Anderson puppet shows into one shared universe. It all fed the notion that stories don’t ever have to end.

"Give me a child until he is seven..." No truer word, only in my case it wasn’t the Jesuits, it was serial storytelling. And that's fine for kids, in the eternal summer they inhabit, but as we get older we realize the ending of a story is what gives it meaning and value.

What about roleplaying campaigns? In the old days, campaigns were as open-ended as a daytime soap. Campaigns like that can eventually reach a natural conclusion, which is perfect if all the players agree. More often they fizzle out for external reasons, which is rarely satisfying. Nowadays, when campaigns are often built around a high concept with a beginning, middle and end (like Tim Harford's brilliant Redemption campaign, or his equally inspired Earthsea-style saga The Conclave) or designed in seasons like a TV show (Camelot Eclipsed or Keeping the Peace) it's worth thinking about how you can bring them in to land.

Writing guru Rebecca Makkai has some great tips about this. It's a longish series, but worth studying.

• Part One is about open vs closed endings.
• Part Two is about endings that come about structurally. For example, in Redemption the campaign ended when we reconsecrated the abandoned chapel we'd been sent to find.
• Part Three is about meaning, the takeaway you get from the ending.
• Part Four is about the sound, style and tone of the ending. (To apply this one to roleplaying campaigns requires a bit more work.)
• Part Five deals with the change brought about at the end.
• Part Six concerns the way the ending shades into past, present or future.

And author Brandon McNulty has an excellent video essay on what distinguishes good endings from bad ones.