A waste of a great concept

In 1975, Empire of the Petal Throne introduced roleplaying gamers to the world of Tekumel, a beautifully detailed fantasy setting that was the first of its kind to feature non-Caucasian characters in a society nothing like the usual Graeco-Roman or medieval world. In fact it was the first ever society of any kind to appear in a roleplaying game, D&D and its imitators up to that point being just "a medieval Wild West" whose society consisted of nothing but a shop to spend your loot in.

Tekumel’s creator, M.A.R. Barker, drew on inspiration from South-East Asia, the Middle East, China and Pre-Columbian civilizations without his world actually being like any of those cultures. The result was something very different from other RPGs – and from most American or European fantasy literature. What made Barker's creation so revolutionary in 1975 was its vision of entire civilizations that didn't look, think, or act like variations on medieval Europe. Barker’s greatest gift to the fantasy genre was showing us that other worlds could be genuinely other. That lesson feels more important now than ever. Paul Mason gives a taste of what I’m talking about here.

That’s not how Tekumel gamers (a small and dwindling group) usually get to approach the setting, though. For example, Bethorm is the name of one of many Tekumel-set RPGs that have appeared in the half-century since EPT. It’s also the Tsolyani word for a pocket dimension, apparently. But why do the Tsolyani have a word for "pocket dimension"? Why do they even have the concept? It can hardly be something an ordinary citizen would use in everyday life, after all.

Consider the real world. "Galaxy" was the Middle English word for the Milky Way. Nobody knew until the 1920s that we lived in one galaxy and that there are trillions of others. Nobody knew until the 1950s that the universe is billions of light-years across. We don't even now have single words for dark matter and dark energy, and they are observable (in the first case, anyway), so I'm stumped as to how even educated Tsolyani ended up coining a word for "pocket dimension".

One argument is that the Tekumel setting incudes “learning spheres” – find one, give it a twist, and you’re an instant expert in whatever was originally programmed into it. So if learning spheres are common, that means the technological know-how of yore need never have been lost. Tekumel would be like the world in Zelazny's Lord of Light, where most people think that gods and demons and magic are real, but the select few know that's all just a way of explaining science to the uneducated. And if you spoke to those select few they would know all about quantum theory, atoms, cybernetics, etc.

(There's actually a real-life equivalent of this, incidentally. When William Kamkwamba wanted to build a dynamo in his village in Malawi, he told the locals he needed to collect old bits of machinery "to do some magic" because he knew that's how they would interpret what he was doing.)

The trouble is, we’re told that learning spheres are used up when activated. And they were constructed at least 30,000 years before the present day. So I don’t think they’d be a significant factor in the education of the Tsolyani, certainly not to the extent of making the concept of pocket dimensions commonplace.

This opens up the question of how much magic is there in "real" Tekumel. I imagine a world where priests do a lot of rituals before and during a battle, and those rituals have a real effect on morale, and many soldiers will swear blind they saw miraculous things like lightning bolts, but in fact that's mostly in the mind. So this would be a low-fantasy world with no more magic than Westeros, not a pulp sci-fi setting with spells like phaser-blasts. I do realize this would be unpopular with Tekumel enthusiasts, but after all they are an endangered species. My Tekumel doesn't consist of characters discussing abstruse cosmic concepts like bethorms.

What would Tekumel look like if it were contemporary SF/fantasy rather than 1950s-influenced Planet Stories, a bit like the way Battlestar Galactica was rebooted? Most Tekumel fans seem to prefer the space opera version, a genre that was repopularized by Lucas in the '70s after all. They play games in which the rich culture of Tsolyanu, Livyanu and the other states is all but irrelevant. Instead player-characters gad about between bethorms encountering alien/human multidimensional politics and yammering about warp drive and gravity engines, while Barker's invented societies, so marvellously different from our modern world, are flattened into the same sci-fi mush you’ll see in a dozen fungible entertainment franchises. 

It makes no sense. Barker was a linguist and anthropologist and he describes wonderfully strange civilizations which he brings to life in minute detail. That's where Tekumel shines. He wasn't a scientist and his science fiction ideas are a dime a dozen. His SF is also typically mid-20th century Western in flavour, whereas the cultures he created don't resemble any historical setting, most especially not any Western one. Not that setting alone is enough to deliver a compelling story, especially not in an era of BookTok, celeb book clubs, and dopy romantasy sagas. You need characters you care about. But the setting is the environment they move in, and if it's off-the-peg then the situations are too. Lizzie and Mr Darcy's relationship means nothing outside the special context of Regency culture and socioeconomics. Jane Austen even starts the novel with an ironic statement about that.

If I were to reboot Tekumel, I’d throw out the “Doc” Smith space opera stuff and make it more about everyday life. Much less magic and much, much, much less whizzy technology. The Eyes wouldn’t have standard names; they’d be too rare for that. There wouldn’t be an internet of telepaths reliably sending messages across thousands of miles overnight. There’d be no thousand-year-old plans hatched in “pocket dimensions”, no routine encounters with robots and gadget-wielding aliens. I’d strip it all back to what really is unique and wonderful: the cultures that Barker created. As we look toward the future of fantasy gaming and fiction, his example reminds us of the beauty of diversity. The most memorable worlds aren't built on clever mechanics or exotic technologies. They're built on the patient work of imagining how people actually live, love, struggle, and die in societies radically different from our own. That's the kind of magic that never gets old.

How to game the Kessel Run

In this RPG-a-minute episode of Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice (about 27 minutes in) Roger and Michael propose a Traveler-style SF concept:

"There is a starship at planet A, you have to get it to planet Z. You are being hired to do this. You're being paid a basic stipend, and fuel and maintenance or whatever, but any money you can make along the way, that's fine, you can keep it."

It's Wagon Train to the stars – and why not? Or you could set it aboard a sea-going vessel in ancient, medieval or early modern times. Or make it about delivering a truck cross-country in a campaign modelled on Damnation Alley. There’s plenty of scope for developing picaresque adventures of the week as you go.

But that’s only half the potential. A good story arises in the tension between what you want to do and what you’re allowed to do. Consider how many Star Trek episodes are built around solving a problem in spite of the Prime Directive. So I’d suggest presenting the player-characters with their contractual terms of employment:

INTERSTELLAR DELIVERY CONTRACT

Base Compensation: 50,000 credits upon successful delivery

Time-Performance Clause:

• On-time bonus (delivery within 365-400 standard days): Additional 25,000 credits
• Early delivery bonus (under 365 days): 100 credits per day early, capped at 10,000 credits
• Late penalties:
• Days 401-500: Lose 200 credits per day from base pay
• Days 501-600: Lose 500 credits per day
• Days 600-700: Contract void, crew liable for ship's full value
• Day 700+: The ship is deemed stolen and arrest warrants will be issued for all crew, who will be liable for the ship’s full value plus damages of up to 100x that

Fuel and Consumables Accountability:

• Crew receives fuel allowance calculated at 120% of direct route requirements
• Excess fuel costs deducted from final payment
• Documented emergency detours exempt from fuel penalties

Permitted Commerce Provisions:

• Crew may conduct trade using up to 30% of cargo capacity
• Passenger transport permitted in designated quarters only
• All commerce profits belong to pilot
• Ship modifications for commerce prohibited without written approval

Route Deviation Clause:

• Minor deviations (adding less than 30 days) permitted without penalty
• Must log all stops with legitimate commercial/maintenance justification
• Employer reserves right to audit ship's navigation logs

Performance Bond:

• Crew posts 10,000 credit bond, returned upon successful delivery
• Bond forfeited if ship arrives with unreported damage or illegal modifications

Maintenance Requirements:

• Designated captain responsible for routine maintenance costs
• Major repairs (over 5,000 credits) reimbursable if properly documented
• Ship must pass inspection upon delivery or crew liable for repair costs

Any new crew member or passenger who travels outside the star system in which they came aboard is required to be a signatory to these articles and will be treated as a crew member for all legal purposes. It is the responsibility of the designated captain or their appointed representative among the ship’s company to ensure this is done, or risk a financial penalty to be determined by the courts.

This legal framework makes significant detours financially painful while still allowing the characters flexibility for interesting adventures along the established trade routes.

Now let’s consider the possible loopholes. That’s where things could get interesting – if the characters think of them:

• The Maintenance Gambit: They could claim extensive "preventive maintenance" is needed at conveniently profitable trade hubs. Who's to say the ship doesn't need a full diagnostic after passing through that nebula? Maintenance stops are explicitly allowed, and if they befriend/bribe the right mechanics to provide documentation.
• The 400-Day Sweet Spot: They lose the 25,000 credit time bonus if they take over 400 days, but penalties are only 200 credits/day after that. So days 401-425 cost them just 200 credits each against the time bonus they've already lost. If they can make more than 200 credits profit per day on those stops, they’re ahead.
• Creative Fuel Accounting: "Documented emergency detours" are exempt from fuel penalties. Pirates spotted on scanners? Better take the long way around. Stellar phenomena? Navigation hazard. Build up a file of sensor logs showing various "threats" that necessitated course changes.
• The Passenger Shuffle: "Designated quarters only" – but what if passengers are willing to pay premium rates to hot-bunk or squeeze extra people in? The contract doesn't specify maximum passenger density, just which quarters they can use.
• The Cargo Hustle: That's 30% of cargo capacity, not 30% of cargo value. They could fill it with incredibly dense, high-value items. Also, who's measuring? Is it by volume? Mass? If they claim some cargo areas are "inaccessible due to maintenance," does that reduce the total capacity and therefore increase their effective percentage?
• The Reimbursable Repair Scheme: Major repairs over 5,000 credits are reimbursable. What if they have a "catastrophic failure" requiring expensive repairs at a station where they just happen to have excellent trade connections? Or where the repair shop owner owes them a favour and inflates the invoice?
• The Navigation Log Edit: "Employer reserves right to audit" – but that's not automatic. They might not bother if the ship arrives in decent condition. And navigation logs can be tricky things: cosmic radiation, system glitches, all sorts of unfortunate data corruption...

The real beauty is combining these. Take 399 days for the journey (just under the penalty), claim you rushed to make it on time despite multiple "emergency detours" and "critical maintenance", arrive with documentation for everything, and walk away with base pay plus bonus plus a year's worth of side profits.

But those are still just plot-based exploits. More interesting still is if the contract includes ethics clauses that could constrain the characters’ ability to turn a profit. As a real-world example, some Shell negotiators in the 1990s were setting up business links in the former Soviet Union. They met with officials who proposed a scheme that would divert funds provided by the state. The officials would become rich and Shell would get a kickback. The latter had to explain that they were bound by ethical standards that didn’t permit that kind of skulduggery. Presumably the ex-Soviet officials found another company to deal with, became oligarchs, and later bought football teams or palaces on the Black Sea, but the point is the Shell guys’ hands were tied by their own company's ethical protocols. Something similar in the spaceship contract terms could pay story dividends later.

A touch of class

Roleplaying began as an offshoot of tabletop wargaming, so it makes sense that early RPGs used character classes. Each character was a unit type reduced to the level of an individual. As more character classes got added, each kludging a new build, it eventually became obvious that we needed a full and consistent skill system, hence the emergence of games like The Fantasy Trip (a sort of halfway house) and then Runequest and GURPS.

Each approach has something to be said for it. Character classes are friendly to new players as they tell you the kind of role you'll be playing. Having a single number for experience level has some advantages too. In Dragon Warriors we used level (well, rank) when resolving fright attacks from entities such as ghosts, on the grounds that a character who has knocked around for a while would be more hard-bitten and resilient than a novice.

Completely freeform systems like GURPS let you spend your advancement points wherever you like. That can lead to some oddities. A highly skilled warrior might have put no points into Will, in which case he's just as easy to scare as the raw recruit. That would be less likely to happen in Runequest because you advance in skills by using them, meaning that a gunslinger, say, will logically pick up all the peripheral skills of the trade -- Ride, Dodge, Scan, Track, etc -- as well as shooting.

Forty years on, games like Apocalypse World use playbooks which are effectively character classes, again helping players to conceptualize their character. I'll admit I chafe at all that special-casing myself, as well as disliking the intrusion of rules constraints on the world. In a Forged in the Dark campaign set in Legend, my playbook says I'm a Dreamer. As far as I'm concerned I'm a knight -- that's the diegetic role I have in the campaign. But Knight is another playbook. It's mildly disorientating, not a big problem, but on balance I still prefer skill-based systems.

Coincidentally, character classes vs skills is one of the topics for discussion on the October episode of Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice. They also seem to prefer diegetic restrictions to rules-based ones, for example the taboos placed on a Storm Bull initiate or a priest of Belkhanu, which are integral to the campaign setting.

All of this preamble is to introduce an article I originally published in White Dwarf issue 49 (January 1984) in an effort to entice D&D players into giving Runequest a try by providing them with the easy-in of character templates. There were some grumbles from readers, as I recall, who thought I was trying to jettison RQ's skills-based mechanics. Quite the reverse.

RUNES IN THE DUNGEON

One of the great strengths of RuneQuest is its system of skills, which players mix and match to create the kind of character they want. But many, particularly younger players, are put off by such complexity. They would rather have the available skills organized into distinct groups character classes, in other words. Here is a variant set of rules for RQ then. All you will need to play it is the standard RQ rulebook.

Rules Changes

Since not all characters can use magic, there is a special POW gain rule: a character gets a chance (10%) of a POW increase roll after any adventure in which he resisted a hostile spell. Magic-users also get the usual POW increase roll for a successful magical attack. Any character can increase his score in a skill by using the skill successfully in a scenario and later making an experience roll in the usual way. However, the character classes restrict the skills in which a character can buy training.

Fighters

1. Fighters roll STR and CON on 2d6+6. Only they can buy training in these characteristics.
2. Fighters start with all combat skills at 25%, plus bonuses. They can take any two combat skills at 30% plus bonuses. They can buy combat training at the usual rates.
3. They start with 2d100+350L* worth of arms and armour, plus 5d20L cash.

Magic-Users

1. Magic-users roll POW on 2d4+10. They start with 3 points of battle magic, and get another point each time they make a successful POW increase. They can also buy spells. They cannot use the spells available to thieves.
2. Magic-users can wear any armour up to cuirboilli (hardened leather); metal armour would disrupt their spells. Their combat skills start at the usual base chance, plus bonuses. They can use any weapon. They cannot buy combat training except for Quarterstaff and Dagger, both at four times normal cost.
3. They can buy training in Sage skills and all Alchemy skills except blade venom preparation. They do not need to pay for associate membership of the Alchemists Guild first.
4. Only magic-users can use spell matrices and magical crystals.
5. They start with armour of their choice (up to that permitted), a staff and a dagger. They get 4d20L cash.

Witches

1. Witches (the term covers both sexes) are a sub-class of MU. A character must have POW and CHA both 16+ to qualify for this class.
2. All the above rules relating to magic-users apply to witches also, except that they have access only to the following spells: detect spirit, spirit shield, healing, dispel magic, xenohealing, befuddle, detect magic and dullblade.
3. Witches have the following powers of a standard RO shaman: possession of a fetch (all fetches have INT 3d6 and POW 2d6+6), store POW on the spirit plane, special POW increase roll, cure disease ability, return from the dead, and the chance to control spirits.

Thieves

1. Thieves roll DEX on 2d6+6, SIZ on 2d6+4 (the usual SIZ roll for RQ characters is now 2d6+6). Only they can buy DEX training.
2. Only this class can buy training in the thievish skills. They start at a base chance of 25% plus bonuses in all of these.
3. They can wear any armour they want, but anything heavier than cuirboilli imposes a Move Silently penalty. Their combat skills start at the usual base chance plus bonuses – except for Shortsword and Small Shield, with a base chance of 20% plus bonuses. They can use any weapon and can buy weapons training at twice the usual cost with the exception of Shortsword and Dagger training, which are bought at the usual rates.
4. Thieves can buy certain spells (they call them cantrips) from their guild: silence, invisibility, speedart and detection blank. These spells are bought at 1½ times the cost listed in RQ and are not available to magic-users or witches. Thieves can buy Sage skills and (from their guild) the techniques of preparing blade venom and systemic poison.
5. All thieves make their Defence increase rolls as though they had an INT of 18.
6. They start with 1 d100+250L worth of arms and armour, plus 5d20L cash.

Rune Level Characters

When he has POW of at least 15 and three skills at 90% or more, a fighter becomes a Lord. A thief meeting these requirements becomes a Master Thief. Like a Rune Lord in standard RQ, these characters can increase their skills beyond 100%. They also have the advantage that even when their POW is depleted, they resist spells with their normal characteristic POW. They do not get any of the other advantages or responsibilities of a Rune Lord.

When a magic-user (or witch) has a POW of at least 18 and is at 90% or higher in Read & Write Own Language and Read & Write Manuscript (counts as "Other Language"), he qualifies as a Wizard. This is rather like a Rune Priest in standard RQ: the Wizard gets an allied spirit, access to Rune spells, and an easier POW gain roll of (25-POW)x5%, rather than the usual (21-POW)x5%. He has less time to practice his Combat, Stealth and Manipulation skills and cannot now increase these beyond DEXx5%. If they were already better than that, they fall to DEXx5%.

A Wizard can study the Rune spells. He acquires a Rune spell by permanently relinquishing points of POW above 18. Each time an increase roll takes him over 18 POW he can choose to take more Rune magic. if his characteristic POW (not current POW) ever drops below 18 he will need to build it up again before he can use his Rune spells. A Wizard recovers expended Rune spells at the rate of one point per day, at sunrise. Wizards select an element to align themselves with (Earth, Fire, Air, Water and Darkness). This determines the elemental that the Wizard can summon with the runepower spells.

Using the Variant

I envisage all this being used in a medieval-type campaign rather like the usual D&D universe (standard RQ has an ancient world setting.) The cults are much reduced in importance because Wizards, Lords and Master Thieves do not derive their abilities from a cult. Thus you are free to use in your campaign whichever deities and demi-gods (no plug intended) seem suitable. This is particularly useful for Games Workshop's Questworld pack which will be RuneQuest in a gothic/traditional fiction style of fantasy world. It is also useful for those who think the RQ game system is excellent but dislike the bronze age setting of Glorantha, or for those wishing a quick character generation in RQ.

* L stands for lunars, originally the currency of a specific civilization in Glorantha but which became used generically for any coinage in RuneQuest-based worlds such as Questworld.

Good versus the other thing

‘Can anybody play characters in service to Napoleon and think of themselves as the good guys?’

A gobsmacking comment (55 minutes in) from Mr Cule there, I thought -- not complaining; it’s for those comments that I especially love the show -- but presumably millions of people did follow Napoleon and definitely they thought of themselves as good guys. This interested me because a few days earlier I’d come across a note I made a few years ago:

‘Has anybody ever written a novel like Lord of the Rings but instead of being “good” vs “evil” in a generic sense, we actually get to hear the ideologies on each side? It is in effect left vs right, Dems vs GOP, or whatever.’

The thing is, that’s a very modern take on how people justify themselves. We expect to be presented with a manifesto and then pick a side. Or at any rate we think that’s how we pick a side, but other than William MacAskill and a few monks most of us really only pay lip service to these high ideals of ours, don’t we? ‘I’ve given up meat,’ we plead in our defence, while enjoying a comfortable life that three quarters of the world are denied.

As hypocrites we’re no worse than our ancestors. They would say they fought for God, but it’s funny how often God just happened to support their own country. Throughout the 18th century, most Christian groups other than Quakers were in favour of slavery. Freethinkers too; Tom Paine argued against slavery, but few of the Founding Fathers listened to him. In the French Revolution, most of the left-wing firebrands (if calling them left-wing means anything*) entirely overlooked equality for women. And "Kill them all; God will know His Own" and "Slay the pagans" show that total war and the butchering of civilians began with people who claimed to be fighting on the side of the angels.

The best we can say of most human beings is that they are basically good with a lot of blind spots. (And, yes, in that we must include ourselves.)

To return to the Napoleonic period, if we asked Marshal Ney why he considered himself a good guy I’m sure he’d talk about patriotism (admittedly a bit of a grey area for him), honour, and loyalty to the Emperor. I don’t suppose he’d cite the specific revolutionary aims he felt the Emperor stood for, though many at the time (even in England) did find that a reason to praise Napoleon, whereas nobody in the world would have declared support for the Houses of Hanover or Bourbon on the basis of their professed ideology.

So we can see a new era dawning at the start of the 19th century, one in which some men wouldn’t simply fight for tribal symbols like king, country or religion, but instead expected those to be backed up by specific principles chosen of their own free will.

Yeah, but did they, though? Was the USSR really a free federation of states based on egalitarian principles? Or was it the Russian Empire under a cloak of socialism? Did Mao whip up the Cultural Revolution to bring about a utopian society, or simply to shore up his own power? Did the average Wehrmacht soldier charge into battle to bring about a thousand-year Nazi reich or because he believed he was doing his duty for his country? Did any major world power ever march into Afghanistan in the interests of the Afghan people themselves? Or just because of their own geopolitical or economic needs?

Do people today decide disinterestedly which side to take in a dispute, or do they see which side their tribe takes and then find reasons to justify it?

The British used to be under no illusions about that. In the First Gulf War, US troops were given leaflets that explained why their cause was just. ‘Saddam has invaded a sovereign state and that is against international law,’ one GI explained on TV. The same camera crew interviewed a British squaddie, who had not been given any leaflet. ‘I got nothing against this Saddam bloke personally,’ he said, ‘but he’s in Kuwait and we been told to kick him out.’

So would it make sense to tell the story of a fantasy world, or any period in history, as if ideology actually made a difference? I don’t think so. This revisits an earlier post in which we discussed whether any non-modern society could usefully be described in modern terms. For example, SF writer Damien Walter posted a tirade about how the Spartans were fascists (he also calls them cowards and pederasts) but to try to squeeze them into a modern box like that is not only cultural chauvinism, it's plain dumb.

There was a bit of a pram fight a while back about "evil races" in D&D. Before the movies came out I assumed orcs were in fact supposed to be people just like the Gondorians (if that's the right word) and that Tolkien only described them as monstrous and evil because that's how "our" side saw them. I don't have any problem with utterly inimical species in fantasy. #NotAllDaleks? Gimme a break. But I think that's a less interesting way of looking at Lord of the Rings than my misconception.

Perhaps what we're seeing now is D&D moving beyond its simplistic good vs evil origins towards a more realistic kind of world. Characters (whether human or nonhuman) are not motivated by alignment in Tekumel or Glorantha, or even in Legend come to that (apart from the actual devils, that is). Instead they have desires, foibles, personalities, political alliances, and so forth that all contribute to how they behave. Where it gets messy with D&D is the game inherited its elves and orcs and whatnot from Tolkien, for whom good and evil meant something. If you want to create a more believable and nuanced world then great, but maybe better to start from scratch in that case.

In one sense, of course, simplistically framing a struggle as Good vs Evil might be the most honest way to describe any human conflict. You just have to remember that both sides think that they’re the good guys.

* Roger from Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice has pointed out that there's almost no better use of left- and right-wing, seeing as the terms came from the seating plan of the Estates General and later the National Convention. Touché, citoyen!

The indigo triremes of Atlantis

"Experience swords and tragedy in the vein of Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné and Tanith Lee’s Night’s Master."

How did I miss this? I first fell in love with science fantasy through the Kane of Mars books by "Edward Powys Bradbury" (in reality our old mucker Mike Moorcock) which I discovered when I was about nine years old. Immediately my heart was whisked away to an exotic world of red deserts, soaring towers, flashing blades and ancient wonders. (Was Kane an aspect of the Eternal Champion? Of course not. Revisionist/marketing nonsense, that. He was his own man, and all the better for it.)

In Rose Bailey's game Bright & Terrible you wander the ancient world as an exile of lost Atlantis. It reminded me a bit of Abraxas (a lost continent of the world of fifty thousand years ago) where the players can travel to the mainland and interact with Neanderthals and Cro Magnon tribes to whom the inhabitants of Abraxas seem like gods. The difference is that Bright & Terrible is not set in deep imaginary prehistory like Abraxas but instead overlaps with the Bronze Age. All the action takes place in exile in that new world around the Mediterranean where the characters have only memories of the old world they've left behind -- a perfect springboard for stories.

Rose Bailey also wrote Cavaliers of Mars, set on "a planet of flashing swords and choking sands, of winking courtesans and lantern-lit canal cities." If you're as big a fan of science fantasy as I am there's no need to say more -- other than to thank Roger and Mike on Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice for pointing me in the right direction. Now I just have to find somebody else who loves this stuff as much as I do and maybe I can get a game going...

After the war is over

I acquired a few imaginary friends in lockdown. Regularly accompanying me on long rural walks are Melvyn Bragg, Tim Harford, Sam Harris, Ralph Lovegrove, Michael Shermer, Tom Holland, and many others, some of whom also happen to be friends in non-imaginary space. One of the biggest highlights of the month is a stroll with Michael Cule and Roger Bell-West, who always seem to be stepping through into my head from the garden of an ivy-clad Buckinghamshire cottage where bees drone in the flowerbeds and there’s the distant thwack and thump of tennis balls. (Don’t disillusion me, chaps.)

Lately a new feature has been added to Improvised Radio Theatre. In “A Gameable Age” Mike and Roger take a deep dive into a historical period that’s ripe for roleplaying. As a culture gamer that sort of thing is right up my street, or winding country lane rather. And it was particularly interesting that they launched this segment with discussions of the English Civil War and the Restoration, because a few years ago I had a notion to set a Legend campaign in a setting not unadjacent to that period.

My idea was to have the characters in Ellesland, but a version of Ellesland resembling our 17th century. Twenty years earlier, in their youth, they had been involved in a bitter civil war that still left scars on society. The players were separately asked which side they had supported, the revolutionaries or the crown. After an interregnum the king had been restored and now we were in a period of reconciliation – in theory.

The point of the game being to play tricks with memory, I envisaged the civil war years as more like the early medieval world of traditional Legend as seen in Dragon Warriors. If a character turned their mind to how twenty years had wrought such changes in society and technology (no sign of pistols or muskets back in the civil war, for example) they’d find the details hazy. Something more earth-shattering than victory or defeat had happened – because, after all, the loss of your twenty-year-old self is an apocalypse. That’s how I intended to characterize the Doomsday of the year 1000 that is supposed to bring an end to Legend.

I realize now that this is a case of parallel development with Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, which I have variously praised, cavilled about, and neutrally assessed. In a world where magic is real and Parliament is now the seat of sovereignty, an Act of Oblivion has the force of physical law. Such supernaturally induced amnesia allows the characters to forget old vendettas and live in peace. (Hmm, in hindsight, instead of using the idea for a roleplaying campaign, maybe I should’ve written it up as a novel.) If you want to read about it in detail you’ll need to sign up for my Patreon page, but this post gives you the gist of it.

Having got back to thinking about that campaign idea after all these years, I now wonder why I glossed over the Interregnum – surely an interesting period of uncertainty and change. My only excuse is that Mike and Roger skipped it too, but I see that Melvyn Bragg has taken up that particular baton in a recent In Our Time which deals with the kings-&-dates stuff, and for the social history that interests me here's Anna Keay. Between them, my imaginary friends are fully as accommodating as Treesong’s paladins in Jack Vance’s The Book of Dreams.

• Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris
• The English Civil War: A People’s History by Diane Purkiss
• The Fall: Last Days of the English Republic by Henry Reece
• Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell's Protectorate by Paul Lay
• Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade, 1649–1660 by Alice Hunt
• The Restless Republic by Anna Keay
• The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain by Ian Mortimer

Wouldn't have to work hard

What happens when the PCs get rich? Mike and Roger raised the question on Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice not so long ago. (I get so many springboard topics of discussion from those fellows I should pay them a royalty.)

Of course, it depends if the character’s main motivation was always cash. A rock star or boxer or actor hitting the big time might suffer an existential crisis until they realize it was the art or the sport that they really loved, not the fame and fortune. They may even find they’ve lost by winning. Adventurers in fantasy fiction often undertake the quest for other reasons: glory, friendship, duty. Achilles and the others were no doubt looking forward to the payday when Troy fell – what ancient hero didn’t enjoy a bit of city-sacking? – but their reasons for being there in the first place were many and complex.

Conan becomes a king, and in The Way of the Tiger gamebooks the character goes from being a lowly sewer rat to the headaches of running a kingdom. I had a Tekumel character who was one of the lowest of the low. He struck it rich but that wasn’t nearly the end of the story, because in Tsolyani society there’s no real provision nor room for upstart commoners. The campaign only came to an end a long time later when he led his clan to the far corners of the world and conquered a kingdom.

Joining the 1%, even when that was genuinely what you wanted all along, could be the start of your problems. You don’t even have to be nouveau riche to attract the jealousy of the ruling class. Nicolas Fouquet made the mistake of outspending the King of France. He was arrested by d'Artagnan (no, really) and spent the rest of his life in jail.

Even if you keep your freedom, most societies have things that money can’t buy – especially the feudal societies of many fantasy campaigns. Sumptuary laws will prohibit you from aping your betters. Most interactions in the world will depend on custom, land, rank – all things you might obtain if you are artful and lucky, but never simply by throwing money at the problem.

It all goes to underline that you can’t say how vast riches will affect characters in the campaign until you know the society. The rich industrialist in Bleak House is treated very differently by the ruling classes than his equivalent number in Tono-Bungay, which is set just half a century later.

Retiring the character when their objective is reached is a perfectly respectable option. It’s not just over-stuffed coffers that deprive a character of their motivation. Any specific objective, finally fulfilled, may leave you wondering what to do with the character next. In both Eureka and There Will Be Blood the lead character achieves the high point of his life near the start and then must deal with the long wait for death. Those stories might be a tad contrived in order to serve the purposes of drama. While some people might be left rudderless by success, most of us on achieving one objective would set our sights on fresh goals. After Elon Musk has the perfect self-driving car, there’s always Mars.

Camus said we must imagine Sisyphus happy. Some find that a paradox, but consider it the other way round -- if Sisyphus didn't have the boulder, he wouldn't be content until he found something else to strive at. If you construct your characters around one movie-style objective then they will get there and have to hang up their spurs. Make them more complex, with multiple shifting goals, and they'll have more life.

A wizard prang

I never have managed to get a game of Ars Magica up and running, despite at least two concerted attempts. We even got as far as full character sheets. Why didn't it happen? Perhaps the degree of world-building needed looked too daunting -- though you wouldn't expect that to deter a group battle-hardened by Tekumel and Glorantha.

Mike and Roger were talking about it this month on their Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice podcast. I'll put money on their campaign happening before mine. (I'd even consider putting money on their campaign actually happening.) And I was reminded of one aspect of the Ars Magica rules that was certainly original but that never thrilled me. The troupe system.

I prefer to really steep myself in a character, which means one character at a time. In Ars Magica you play the magi and also their companions (non-wizardly adventuring friends) and sometimes the magi's servants ("grogs") -- the point being that the magi initiate things and formulate plans, but they don't all swan off adventuring together on a regular basis. For me, one of the line-up would feel like my real character and the other two would just be NPCs that I'd play for the sake of the campaign.

The reason for the troupe is that you typically have your group of players turning up each time, and nobody wants to sit out in the kitchen, so the magus/companion/grog arrangement ensures there's always a character for everybody to play. But hang on a tick. If you're playing online, you're no longer constrained by the need to physically assemble a limited number of players at the same time each week. Now you could have some players take the magi; they might be the ones who can't turn up regularly or who are living a long way off and couldn't travel to a physical session anyway. A different group of players could then take the companions. You can assemble a regular game around whoever can show up (usually the companions and one or two of the magi) and keep the grand planning between the magi for special sessions.

There must have been a point where somebody said, "What about if we got two different actors to play Cordelia and the Fool?" Playing over the internet is meant to shake things up. There are different and possibly better ways for your players to enjoy themselves. So I think it's worth considering, at least.

By-the-bye, I like the idea of some characters playing strategically while others get their hands dirty. You could use it for an SOE game -- any war-based campaign come to that. Or it could be a Star Trek style exploration game, with the regular weekly players comprising the away team and those who only have odd moments through the week playing the bridge crew.

Also it occurs to me Ars Magica would be a great system for a Wizards of Grand Motholam campaign. Now will I buckle down and run it? I guess we'll see.

Go with the flow

The referee of our latest campaign shared this (from Shamus Young's DM of the Rings on his TwentySided site) after I scored a series of critical successes that stopped the Big Bad dead in his tracks -- to the slack-jawed astonishment of everybody around the table.

The comic gave us all a good laugh, but like all good comedy it makes a serious point too. "We need to adjourn for a bit of re-writing." Not a bit of it! If something like Gollum getting shot happened in a game I was running my first thought would be, "Wow, didn't see that coming! I wonder where this will go now..?"

Roleplaying at its best is jazz, not an orchestra and conductor working from sheet music. The referee is one of the band, leading but not dictating -- which is the reason I don't like terms like GM. There need never be any pause for re-writing because there shouldn't be a prescripted storyline you're trying to shepherd the players through. Play to find out what happens, as they say. The story that emerges will always be more involving than a plot you wrote in advance because the players will be right there in the moment, not watching to see which clue or trope has been planted there for them to pick up on.

And consider too the campfire mythology of the game, the stories players tell each other afterwards. Occasionally I've seen players make astonishing dice rolls that allowed them to overcome a threat that looked almost insurmountable. Years later they'll talk about that kind of victory with much more passion than one where they found the magic whatsit that was the only way to defeat the evil whosis and they used it at the exact time the scenario said to.

The pre-planned finale is not roleplaying, it's the kind of story you get in a movie or novel. There you can't have million-to-one shots come off (much as writers strive to convince you they have) because there's no element of chance. Every outcome in a scripted story is (by definition) contrived. The USP of roleplaying is that genuinely unforeseen and unlikely outcomes do happen, and immediately get folded into the action. Celebrate that and use it, is my advice; don't try to shoehorn roleplaying games into the same genres and tropes that linear fiction is bound by.

I've been thinking about this because our group is about to try the Yellow King RPG mini-campaign The Wars. I get that it's all about playing in a genre, and I'm always willing to experiment, so I set out intending to embrace that. But what is the genre? (Genuine question, for anyone who's played the campaign.)

I started out looking at All Quiet On The Western Front and Charley's War -- and, yes, I know The Wars is not WW1, but the flavour is what I'm looking for. The trouble is, I can easily see the action moving from the very specific mystery-on-the-battlefield to other settings: home leave, quiet moments back at HQ, and so forth. Do I have to prepare injury and shock cards for every eventuality? The Yellow King system looks like it's intended for games where you've carefully set the rails beforehand, but what do you do in a game like that when the players do the unexpected? I could use a less prescriptive set of rules, obviously. One option is just to have generic -1, -2 and -3 injury cards and hand them to the players saying, "OK, that's the game effect; you tell me what the injury actually is." But the point of the exercise is to see what the YK system is like. If you've tried it out and can offer some tips, I'd love to hear your comments below.

There's a little bit more about themes like this in the latest episode of the always-excellent Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice. Mike and Roger cover some of the same ground as I have, only more winningly and in stereo. (If you enjoy their discussion, don't ignore the tip jar.) But before you scoot off to listen to them, I must make a very important point:

Quick -- before they make it a crime

"At home" used to be what people wrote on a card if they were inviting you round for drinks. Now it means the very opposite of conviviality, and politicians have been using it as a mantra to ward away the plague du jour.

There is no law of reason, though, that demands you stay locked up in your room. SARS-Cov-2 is a droplet-borne infection, like its cousin the common cold, not an airborne pathogen like chickenpox or measles. As long as you stay at a reasonable distance from other people (at least two metres) and wash your hands frequently, the virus has no chance.

So if you're out for a walk or a run or a drive and there's nobody to talk to -- or the only people to talk to are the ones you've been cooped up with for weeks on end already -- here are some podcasts to ensure your imagination can soar even if the authorities think you ought to be under house arrest.

Top of my must-tune-in list is Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice, in which Michael Cule and Roger Bell-West discuss all things game-nerdy. To dip in a toe, try this episode, "Unmutated, More or Less", about Powered by the Apocalypse games.

Talking of things apocalyptic, and with an added pinch of matters macabre & eldritch and a smidgen of the generally unnameable, spin the dial to The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which our genial hosts describe as "a podcast about Call of Cthulhu, horror films, weird fiction, and roleplaying in general." There are over a hundred and fifty episodes just waiting to slither into your ears and decorticate your brain. Here's a good one on "Folk Horror" that I'm sure will give me some ideas for Legend games.

Meanwhile there's wall-to-wall HPL at the H P Lovecraft Historical Society, run by Sean Branney, Andrew Leman, and Kevin Stidham. You can wander their virtual halls in a state of aporetic ecstasy, discovering treasure upon treasure until time has no meaning, but if you're disturbed by the encroaching shadows and the things that scuttle just beyond the range of vision, grab a few of the Voluminous Podcasts in which your hosts read and discuss one of Lovecraft's many, many, many letters. Here's a good one: "A Comedy of Vain Desire", addressed to his lifelong friend Rheinhart Kleiner.

Jeff and Hoi host the Appendix N Book Club to discuss the literary roots of Dungeons & Dragons, specifically the novels that Gary Gygax recommended in the eponymous appendix. I don't play D&D, but I like hanging out with these guys and they always have plenty to say that you'll find inspiring. Frequently I'll start out an episode thinking, okay, I read this book years ago, or I started it and gave up, but I'll hear their thoughts on it anyhow -- and then by the end I'm raring to read it again. You could start anywhere. How about this one on Roger Zelazny's Jack of Shadows?

If literary is your thing, you'll already know about Ralph Lovegrove's Fictoplasm podcast, in which he takes a novel and talks about both the story itself and the potential for mining roleplaying ideas from it. In this Lyonesse episode, Ralph is joined by me and Tim Harford.

Oh, and mentioning Tim brings me to his Cautionary Tales, which blend storytelling and drama to draw vital lessons from some of the great calamities of history, from shipping disasters to a mix-up at the Academy Awards. Why not start where I did, with the story of the ill-fated R101, in "The Deadly Airship Race"? (And for added insights listen to Slide Rule, Nevil Shute Norway's account of the building and test flights of R101's sister ship.)

Making it up as you go

Michael Cule: “You play to find out what the game is about. And the players will teach you what the game is about. They’ll ask questions that you never thought of, the questions you never thought needed an answer. That’s the sort of thing you need to be able to improvise about and turn on a dime, and stick something in, or make something up, that’s going to confirm and answer the questions you never thought were going to go into it.” 

Roger Bell-West: “Every time the players say let’s follow clue A rather than clue B or C, they’re saying this is the thing we’re interested in.”

Michael and Roger are talking there about improvising in investigative campaigns. My preferred style for running a game is improv, arguably because I’m too lazy to prep but also because I don’t think it’s the referee’s job to author a story and then herd the players through it.

My own improv is along the lines of seeing what the players are interested in and running with it. As a rule I don’t actually retcon what I’ve already decided is going on in an adventure, because that strikes me as unfair on the players. How can you uncover the truth if the facts themselves can be altered? Armistead Maupin famously retconned a key plot twist into Tales of the City when a reader wrote in while the stories were being serialized to point out that one of the characters' names had an unusual anagram. In retrospect it worked, but I'm not sure any of the rest of us should try it at home.

When I ran the Victorian scenario “Murder Your Darlings”, there was an opportunity I might have seized to change the whole story. The characters came across a twenty-year-old photograph taken in India of a woman who looked a lot like one of the maids currently working in the house of the murdered ex-major. Instead of taking it as evidence of the maid being the major’s illegitimate daughter (the result of his affair decades earlier with a family friend, who was the woman in the photograph) they jumped to the conclusion that she must be a naga or immortal shape-changing lamia. And I could have made it so. They wanted a supernatural explanation, so why not give them one? The risk in changing the plot with a significant retcon is that it can ripple out to invalidate other facts the characters have already uncovered. O, what a tangled web we weave…

Listening to Michael and Roger talking about The Armitage Files, I got to thinking about “The Unseen Hand” (last week’s scenario) and how you could run that, not as the ironic experiment in conspiracy theory it was designed to be, but as a flurry of happenstance, coincidence and enemy action from which the players could grab some threads and tug on them, and that would decide the real direction of the story.

The Tesla angle, for instance. ‘Nikola Tesla must be experimenting with AC vril power…’ one player might say excitedly. Personally I'm already heartily sick of "Tesla the sci-fi hero" stories (yawn) but OK, it’s a science fiction campaign based on Lovecraftian themes, so why not? The Tesla connection could let you fold in and embellish roughly contemporary stories such as Alpha the robot (pictured above) and his occasional acts of murderous rebellion. As the players’ investigations show you what they are hoping and fearing from the adventure, you can lay the rails just one step ahead of them. Little do they know that the investigation is going to be whatever they want it to be.

I’m still not sure about that level of “total improv”. It’s how a lot of Doctor Who writers seem to plot their stories, but once you notice that they’re ass-pulling on a regular basis, there’s not much incentive to care. Likewise, if players cotton on that you’re adapting the facts to fit whatever they say, disbelief isn’t so much suspended as thrown off the roof. So if you try it, do so sparingly – but, seeing as I did say you risk getting lynched if you play “The Unseen Hand” as written, nobody could blame you for chickening out and turning it into a seat-of-the-pants episode of cosmic weirdness instead.