Elf or devil?

A cross-post today from my Patreon page, in a brazen attempt to lure you from the antechamber that is the FL blog into the Aladdin's Cave of true treasures. It is of course specific to the fantasy world of Legend from Dragon Warriors; other medieval imaginaries are available.

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How can you tell a faerie from a devil? The first thing is to ask why it should matter. The fays of Legend were once deities. They embody the gamut of human passions and, though capricious, they’re fond of wagers and contests and they are bound by codes of behaviour that oblige them to keep to the letter of an oath. (Pay attention at the back; these details could save your life.)

Devils on the other hand are not merely whimsical but outright malicious. They will lie and deceive and are so eager to break their word (unless sworn on a symbol of the True Faith) that their very contrariness is one of the few ways to outwit them.

Faeries fear cold iron and have a distaste for holy things. Devils fear faith and goodness and can be harmed and driven off by holy things.

But this world is not a place built on scientific principles. Ask a village priest if Ned from Gallows Wood (The Elven Crystals) is a goblin or a devil and he’ll tell you they’re the same thing: 'Whatever is not godly is ungodly.' What about a White Lady? Is she a ghost? A faerie? A devil? An enchantress? A pagan goddess? At this point our friend the priest may be fixing you with a suspicious eye and wondering where he’s left the holy water.

As most people take their lead in such matters from their priest, everyday folk don’t draw a conscious distinction between the fay and the diabolic. They might say, ‘Old Robin in the spinney, ’e’s no ’arm to man nor beast. Might occasionally carry off a baby, but only if it was set to be a wrong ’un.' Or alternatively: ‘If’n you see red eyes looking out at you from the ol’ barn, you turn tail and you run. Looks like a mangy cat, but that’s an imp right out of hell, that is.’

So in the acceptance of some locally cherished goblins you may sense an echo of the time when they were propitiated, whereas the devils that came tumbling along in the wake of early missionaries are shunned and feared.

Scholars are the only ones who would perceive and debate the difference. In Ellesland that means educated clergy or wizards or both. ‘The Gentle Folk are known to be shapechangers,’ says Brother Mulk of Osterlin, ‘but we might say they are more often met in a form somewhat like a man or woman, even if gnarled or covered in thorns, though also sometimes in unblemished forms of dangerous beauty. Devils enjoy appearing in the shape of a cat or toad or rooster, especially when acting as familiar to some damned soul, but they too will sometimes appear with two arms and two legs – often with the addition of little wings, horns, or cloven hooves. Bat wings, that is, bald and leathery; the Lords and Ladies, they’d favour gossamer wings if any. But none of these rules are hard and fast. The mortal form given to us by God is one they all like to copy, the only distinction being that it’s harder for devils to put on such a shape without some disfigurement to mark out their unholiness.’

'Faerie glamour is a kind of illusion, is it not?'

'No mere mirage. Faerie glamour is a weft and warp that overlays reality. If we are to call it illusion, it is illusion that fools the senses of the world. Devils, on the other hand, more usually manifest by possessing the body of a blameless creature. We have the example in scripture of the Gergesene swine.'

‘There are stories of bargains to be done with such creatures, both fay and devils.’

Brother Mulk throws up his hand as if to ward off a blow. ‘Devils bargain for one thing only, and for that they can never offer enough. It’s true that the others can be held to a deal, for their words are anciently forceful and have power to bind even themselves. Thus in parts of Chaubrette you hear tales of the sotay or sotré, a sprite that inhabits a household and takes a proprietorial pride in keeping it swept and the cows milked in just the same way that the lares and penates of the ancient Selentines watched over the family homestead. If you meet such a one, who may take the form of a wizened old man as swarthy as a charcoal burner, you must be careful to treat him with the nicest manners. Do not compliment him directly, but even more importantly do not slight his appearance or make any reference to his incongruous clothing.’

‘What about his clothing?’

Mulk admits he is only relating what he’s heard. ‘Perhaps they affect the toga of the Selentine nobles. But the strictest rule you must follow is never to draw attention to the unusual nature of the fellow.’

‘Is that why you refer to them as “the good people”?’

‘You know that the Kindly Ones were anything but. You would not call them by their older name. God is our protector, but why tempt fate?’

‘Is there no sure way to tell a faerie from a devil?’ you might ask.

Brother Mulk (no doubt wincing at the term ‘faerie’, for he is careful to respect the fallen gods even though he knows they can do nothing against the True Faith) might reply, ‘There are signs for those who would see. The reek of brimstone hangs around devils, for example, as they have always one foot in the infernal realm. And colours too may guide you. Green is often taken to betoken the elfin folk, while many take the red of licking flames to denote a devilish presence.’ He spreads his hands. ‘But nothing is certain.’

‘Except faith.’

He nods, a pensive frown on his face. ‘Except faith.’

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.

Many a good hanging

Just a brief reminder that if you want the two books collecting our game write-ups over the years, those are available to backers of the Jewelspider Patreon page, but only till Twelfth Night. (By that I mean the evening of January 5, of course, as the medieval day traditionally began at sundown.) 

Hopefully you're not one of those people who'd pledge $5, grab the free books, and then unsubscribe -- but it has been pointed out to me that there are nihilists out there as well as good folk, so I can't grumble if you do. I will just say that if you remain a backer you'll get first look at the Jewelspider RPG, as well as a bunch of scenarios, special access to the Vulcanverse adventures, rules and setting discussions, and all the things you get here on the FL blog for nothing only with an added je ne sais quoi.

And don't let the AI art above put you off. For one thing, it's really 99% "A" and only 1% "I". But more importantly, all the artwork for Jewelspider is being created by real human artistry, notably Inigo Hartas who, as a historian, folklorist and the son of Leo Hartas who was the principal illustrator of Dragon Warriors, could not be bettered as visualizer of this new visit to the lands of Legend. Patreon backers' funding goes to ensure that talent like his is not usurped by machines.

Honour the dead

To get us into the Samhain mood, here's another of my occasional reposts from my Jewelspider page on Patreon. You're welcome to join us over there and get all the goodies and ghosties.

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Wherever possible I aim for Legend to have an authentically medieval European flavour. Whenever possible, that's the thing; Emerson's always there to remind me not to get carried away with foolish consistency.

Halloween, for instance. In the real Middle Ages it wasn’t all turnip lanterns and ghostly tales. The main themes of the season instead seem to have been prognostication and love, those two elements combining in various superstitions about young maids spilling ashes on the doorstep or flour on the kitchen floor. If in the coming year they were destined to wed, in the morning they’d see the clear footprint of the man they were to marry. Shades of a gender-swapped Cinderella there, though they’d have a devil of a job finding out which man the footprint belonged to. (Unless of course it was a cloven hoof-print.)

There seems to have been a notion that you could call back souls from purgatory, and speed them on their way by helping to finish things they had left undone. Quite a few real-life folktales, with the instinct for Monty Haul payoffs you often find in oral tradition, are meticulous in rewarding the person who helps the ghost by having them find a stash of buried gold coins or a jewelled cup up a chimney.

I like the (supposedly Welsh/Cornumbrian) tradition of lighting bonfires along the hills, especially if the rationale is that for this one night those fires mark out the boundary with the land of the dead. The fires must all be lit from one torch kindled at a crossroads. There’s an adventure seed right there, if one callow lad cheats because his taper goes out and so leaves a gap in the spiritual bulwark for something to sneak over.

Returning to the theme of prophecy, and because players will expect something spooky for this time of year, you could make something of the notion that anyone hiding in the church porch at midnight on Halloween will see all the people who are doomed to die in the coming year, their spirits walking around the churchyard and picking out the plot where they’ll be laid to rest.

Typically when a local yarn-spinner gets hold of something like that they feel the need to earn their pot of ale by turning it up to eleven, as in this version related by a Mrs Powell of Dorstone in Herefordshire in the 1890s:

'On All Hallows Eve at midnight, those who are bold enough to look through the church windows will see the interior ablaze with unearthly light, and the pulpit occupied by his Satanic Majesty clothed in a monk's habit. Dreadful anathemas are the burden of his preaching, and the names of those who in the coming year are to render up their souls may be heard by those who have courage to listen. A notorious evildoer, Jack of France, once by chance passed the church at this awful moment. Looking in he saw the lights and heard the voice, and his own name in the horrid list. According to some versions of the story he went home to die of fright. Others say that he repented and died in good repute, and so cheated the evil one of his prey.'

Jack of France might be a misremembered skewing of Jack o’ Kent, a local conjurer (ie local to Mrs Powell; he was said to live in Kentchurch, in legends dating back before the 16th century) who was said to own a black stick with a hollowed end that contained an imp in the form of a fly.

For an adventure seed, let's jettison the schlock and present the player-characters (or preferably just one of them) with something quietly eerie that has the potential to grow in menace. For whatever reason, the character is in the church porch at midnight. They see the doomful procession of those destined to die, but they can’t say a word about it. They can’t warn anyone, and it may very well be that there’s no way to prevent the deaths. So first one person dies, then another, and the other characters know that their colleague has had a vision (because they are able to say that much; they just can’t give the names) and start to wonder if one of them is on the roster.

You could let this build up over the course of the year alongside other events. It even fits in well alongside an adventure-of-the-week structure, since the foreknowledge of people’s deaths serves as an épine dorsale to hold the campaign narrative together. And maybe there is a way, albeit very difficult and dangerous, to save just one innocent young soul from the fate that seems to have been marked out for them.

(One of these days I'm going to do a proper version of that DW Players Guide cover, with the "Players Guide" text in the big space Jonny Hodgson left for it at the top, and the smaller "Dragon Warriors" text at the bottom so it doesn't obscure the artwork of the hydra heads.)

Verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways

John Whitbourn, like his Binscombe Tales character Mr Disvan, seems somehow to know just about everything that's going on. Out of the blue he sent me a clipping from the 2023 Salute show guide. 

It was gratifying to see a nod to Dragon Warriors from esteemed author Sarwat Chadda, and all the more so because it sounds as if DW helped to teach him the right lesson about both writing novels and running roleplaying campaigns, namely that "character is king" and it's the player-characters and not the plot that should drive the flow of the narrative.

We've talked long and often about the importance of going with the flow, how games best create stories, narrative emergence from character, and embracing chaos as the way to drive the story forward. It's the key to how Stan Lee swept Marvel to success in the 1960s, as Reed Tucker explains in his book Slugfest:

I was always concerned that the scenarios in the original Dragon Warriors books mustn't give first-time GMs the impression that adventures should be planned out like that. To me the prepared adventure is the safety net, the characters are the trapeze artists, and ideally the net doesn't need to be used -- or at most is the MacGuffin that gives the characters an ostensible reason to interact.

That's even more the underlying ethic of Jewelspider, my second look at the lands of Legend through a more folkloric lens. The Jewelspider book is being illustrated by Inigo Hartas (Leo's son) and you can see from his blog that it's in safe hands. The Patreon page pays for the art and maps, and as well as the prototype versions of Jewelspider you get regular articles and adventure seeds, access to various things I've worked on over the years, and rough cuts of upcoming work such as the endlessly-deferred Tetsubo. Tempted to quit the well-travelled path and strike out into faerie woods? Then join us.

Yuletide in Ellesland

It's safe to mention Christmas now, and it's coming early this year. Drop back tomorrow for an old school fantasy adventure for Dragon Warriors from the fiendish, febrile and fecund imagination of Oliver Johnson.

If you can't wait even one day, there's always the option of joining my Patreon, whose backers had Oliver's scenario and lots of other good things a month ago, and will get my own Yule scenario, "A Garland of Holly", next week. Just saying.

Barons and wizards

Arthur: ‘Which is the greatest quality of knighthood? Courage? Compassion? Loyalty? Humility? What do you say, Merlin?’

Merlin: ‘Hmm? Well, they blend, like the metals we mix to make a good sword.’

Arthur: ‘No poetry. Just a straight answer. Which is it?’

Merlin: ‘All right, then. Truth. That's it. It must be truth above all. When a man lies, he murders some part of the world. You should know that.’

Court magician – on parchment it looks like such a cushy job. You get the protection of a great lord. Access to his network of connections. Resources for keeping your laboratory well stocked. Money and space to build up a decent library.

It’s never that easy, of course. Even if your patron is the most sober-minded of barons, he’s going to be calling on your services at any hour of the day and night. What is a court sorcerer for, after all? There are always rivals to be spied on, messages to be sent, opposing armies to be scattered by foul weather, paramours to be seduced with love philtres, stars to be read, ailments to treat, enemies to be stricken with plague. Even Merlin is made to conjure great magic for no better reason than that his lord wants to sleep with another man’s wife.

The court wizard is not only there to cast spells. He's also read a lot of books and is supposed to be wise and well-versed in devious stratagems, making him the lord's valued consigliere. 

There can be far more frivolous demands that that on a wizard’s time. A lord needs something to fill the long winter evenings when it’s too cold and wet to go jousting other knights or stirring up petty wars. Hence King Arthur’s whimsical question about the qualities of knighthood mentioned above, or his bored yearning for strange experiences that brings the Green Knight into Camelot:

‘And also another matter moved him so,

that he had nobly named he would never eat

on such dear days, before he had been advised,

of some adventurous thing, an unknown tale, 

of some mighty marvel, that he might believe,

of ancestors, arms, or other adventures.’

Feasts, holidays, and celebrations are times for a lord to show off his wealth. Minstrels, acrobats, jugglers, jesters, wrestlers – anyone can provide such commonplace entertainment, so to outdo his rivals a lord will need to strive for something more exotic. Dwarves jousting on the back of pigs, cavorting bears, or slaves from Outremer performing the dance of Salome all count as cracking entertainment to the medieval gentry, but the crème de la crème is to bring out a court sorcerer for that frisson of the mysterious, macabre and faintly forbidden.

You might think it’s beneath the dignity of wizards like Merlin or Cynewulf to sing for their supper like this, but after all it’s not so different from after-dinner entertainment in the modern world. If you can get Henry Kissinger to turn up and regale your dinner guests with a few Nixon anecdotes and some takeaway wisdom, the real pleasure is in letting them know you can call on a man who has had the fate of the world in his hands. On a less exalted level, think of Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull teaming up to mount a Wild West show in front of European royalty and even the Pope. Near-mythic figures have never been averse to cashing in on their reputations.

What would a court magician do to entertain his or her lord’s guests? We have plenty of examples from medieval literature. D B Easter in A Study of the Magic Elements in the Romans d'Aventure and the Romans Bretons cites turning stones into cheese, causing oxen to fly, having asses play musical instruments, bringing folded paper birds to life, giving inanimate objects the power of speech, transforming animals into knights, animating a suit of armour, increasing the size of a room, making water flow uphill, telling fortunes, prophesying the future, and calling up a band of phantom warriors to fight each other.

This post originally appeared on my Patreon page accompanied by a detailed adventure seed or a mini-scenario (take your pick). I'm afraid if you want the scenario too you're going to have to subscribe, sorry about that.

Little devils

Many Legend games I’ve played in use the Five Magi as the main antagonists. It’s not surprising, given that’s their role in the Blood Sword books, but I never intended them to bulk so large in the wider world of Legend. 

The Dragon Warriors world is a facet of the Medieval Imaginary, after all, and the enemy in everyone’s mind is the Devil himself, always waiting to show you the way to hell if you stray off the straight and narrow. That threat is hammered home every Sabbath and most churches have hair-raisingly vivid paintings of heaven and hell to ensure that you get the message even if you doze off during sermons.

This month I have a Halloween adventure on my Patreon page, and so I unashamedly invite you to go over there, drop a coin in the slot, and help yourself to that and a whole cartload of other goodies.

Death's twin brother

If you're a Dragon Warriors player you might already be aware of my project to return to Legend with the Jewelspider RPG. I'm running a Patreon page to fund the artwork for that, but there are also scenarios and articles of general gaming interest. The latest, for example, deals with the matter of first and second sleep in medieval life, leading into a dream-magic adventure seed that's reminiscent of a monster from the original DW rulebooks:

"Wild heaths and glades, moonlit meadows and secluded abbeys – these are the places where the demons called Nightmares are imagined to skulk. Malignant and hungry for souls, they wait and watch for wayfarers to stray upon their haunts. When the characters go to sleep for the night, the Nightmare invades their dreams. The Nightmare cannot be detected because it has no physical presence in the real world. An Eye of Foreboding may (60% chance) flicker as it approaches, but by this time the Eye’s wearer will be asleep and unable to heed the warning. If one of the characters has stayed awake on watch, the Nightmare will try to put them to sleep, matching its magical attack of 2d6 +14 against their magical defence. This is because the character could otherwise awaken their sleeping comrades as soon as they saw they were having an abnormally horrific dream. If the Nightmare’s sleep spell fails to work, the character can (if they have any sense) instantly arouse their comrades and thus drive off the demon.

"Having entered the sleeping minds of its victims, the Nightmare takes control of their dreams. It may or may not allow them to know they are dreaming, as it can make its dream-images completely realistic. One way for the referee to handle this is to start a gaming session in the normal way, gradually introducing a succession of increasingly bizarre elements until the players guess that their characters are actually caught in a Nightmare’s dreamworld. Only then do they remember how they happened to be camping out for the night, and the referee narrates in flashback what they did between the end of the previous adventure to the beginning of the dream sequence.

"The Nightmare will toy with its victims, subjecting them to a horde of weird and disturbing experiences. As it reigns supreme in the dreamworld, it may cancel out some of their powers—or alter various abilities so that weaker characters become strong while their former leaders become weak. Beings who appear to be characters in their dream-adventure may be friend or foe, the advice they offer may be for good or ill. Normal perceptions are perverted; an apparent pushover like a goblin may turn out to have the powers of a master sorcerer. The Nightmare always appears in the dream itself, usually as an archetypal figure such as an evil wizard-king in a high fortress, whom the characters must slay to obtain their safety. It may feature in other ways—as a legendary treasure the characters must find, a haunted place, a secret truth they must comprehend. In a spirit of malicious caprice, it may even enter the dream in a relatively weak persona, perhaps as a friend of the characters—if they can guess its real identity, they would easily be able to destroy it and awaken from the dream."

Christmas Eve with the Dark Lord

Brian Hazzard, host of the Instadeath Survivors Support Group podcast, recently devoted an episode to interviewing Jamie. You can listen to it here. The discussion includes: Fabled Lands, Falcon, Fighting Fantasy, Way of the Tiger, Dirk Lloyd, and of course Vulcanverse.

Kiss kiss bang bang

This year's Christmas scenario (which is not set in Legend; the clue is in the picture) is over on my Patreon page. But if you don't want to shell out for that and all the other stuff to be found there, you can select from the specials of previous years. Tomorrow there's a free boardgame here, and that's followed by a surprise extra on Christmas Eve. Ho ho ho.

Hold that thought

You might have noticed that we're not running comments any more. I enjoy the conversations that take the week's post as a starting point (the more discursive the better) but there are better places on the internet nowadays for most of the rest of it.

If you've got gaming experiences you want to share, or general chit-chat, here are some Facebook groups that are ideally suited to that kind of conversation. 

Dragon Warriors group

Advanced Dragon Warriors group

Fabled Lands group

Tekumel group

Role-Playing Games group

Tabletop Role-Playing Games group

Gamebooks group

Stuart Lloyd has kindly provided the link to a Facebook group for The Way of the Tiger, and I'm sure there are forums for it. There's even a blog. Likewise Bloodsword. There are probably more up-to-date sites too, but I'm going in the other direction from social media myself, as most of what you find posted there wouldn't even pass the Turing Test.

If you're up for stimulating discussions about roleplaying, the best place for that these days is the Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice forum. Or why not come over to the Jewelspider page on Patreon? Maybe I'll see you there. No cat pictures, I promise.

First do no harm

A rare bit of housekeeping this time. Blogger, the platform I use for the FL blog, has recently changed its interface. How best to describe it... You know how if you buy a music gizmo for a baby it will have just a few big plastic buttons in primary colours so that the toddler can play do-re-mi? And then when he or she grows up, if the music bug has bitten then a synth and a mixing desk and all the proper kit can replace that? Well, Blogger used to be the grown-up mixing desk and now it's turned into the toddler's toy.

The idea, presumably, is to make it easier to post from a mobile device. You can snap that cat picture, add a quick note in textese, and you're done. But if you want a longer blog post, with formatted images and videos and so on -- sorry, you're bang out of luck. Google (they own Blogger) have decided to chase the mobile blog market and forget about the desktop dinosaurs like me.

Unfortunately in changing the interface they also broke it. The loss of features like being able to drill down into stats was presumably deliberate, but they've also made it almost impossible to place images where you want them to go. Yesterday I spent twenty minutes formatting a post, a task that used to take a minute or two with the old interface. Half the time you don't even know how to do what you want because some bright spark has decided to switch over to a purely icon-driven interface. You know, like Ikea.

I suspect all this is designed to make people give up on Blogger so that Google can drop it in a year's time without anyone kicking up a fuss. By the time it dies we'll all be glad to see it go.

But what does all this mean for the future of the FL blog? I am looking at migrating over to another platform like Wordpress. Alternatively, once I've got Jewelspider out into the world I could turn my Patreon page into the new home for FL. I'm afraid it would mean paying at least a dollar a month, but the occasional scenarios alone are worth that much, don't you think?

There'll be no immediate change, other than that I'll be checking on and replying to comments less frequently because it's so painful to have to cope with the new interface. And we have a whole stack of posts that I had the foresight to format before the old interface stopped working, so the blog will continue to look okay (if you call this okay) for months yet.

The other upside is that I've been thinking for a while now of doing some best-of books, taking the most popular posts and organizing them into topics - roleplaying, gamebooks, scenarios, and so on. Blogger buggering up its interface might be the spur I needed.

Patrons wanted for the Jewelspider expedition

My last outing on Patreon didn't work out so well. That was for Mirabilis: Year of Wonders, the project dearest to my heart. In retrospect it was perhaps overly optimistic to think I could fund hundreds of pages of full-colour comic book art through the kindness of strangers, especially since the only publisher of Mirabilis (to date) managed to lose all the copies of Book 2 in a lay-by somewhere between Bosnia and Britain.

Oh well, that's spilt milk. The latest challenge is more achievable (maybe), namely how to fund some top-notch artwork for the Jewelspider rulebook I'm working on. I'd like to get pictures by Jon Hodgson and Tancred Dyke-Wells, among others. And not just covers and a few interiors, either. I'm going to need maps and filler art (to make the layout work) and a tidier character sheet than this one.

If push comes to shove I can do the maps and some sketches myself, but that'll look worse than first edition Dungeons & Dragons so fingers crossed. If you happen to be flush with cash and want to throw some of it at the Jewelspider project, the Patreon page is here. If not, share the link with rich friends and relatives and I'll thank you forever, even if they won't. (According to Amanda Palmer, the secret of raising money is simply to learn the knack of asking people to give it to you, but I suspect I'd also have to marry Neil Gaiman to make that one work.)

What do you get as a patron? Other than the warm glow of satisfaction, you'll have access to sneak peeks at the rules. Like this sorcery phylum, for instance:

Illumination – there are various ways to summon a magical light, each with its own advantages and drawbacks: 

• Faerie motes accompany you and may even dart ahead to point out hidden things, but are capricious and will shun holy people and places. 

• Corpse light (Necromancy) or St Elmo’s Fire (Fire mastery) covers you and may affright superstitious companions. 

• Moonbeams can be captured in a globe and can be directed in a soft beam or dimmed at will, but you need to keep a hand free to hold the globe. 

• Flames (Fire mastery again) are very bright, which is useful at close quarters but can prevent you noticing things outside the circle of light. 

• A mirror or piece of glass can be induced to release daylight that fell on it at earlier times. 

• A glow can be awakened in the heart of a precious gem. 

• A hand of glory sheds a light that only the caster can see and has other powers besides: opening locked doors and preventing those asleep from waking. It requires special ingredients: the hand of a murderer cut from the gallows, the hair of a suicide (as a wick) and fat from an unbaptised child. Needless to say, constructing such a thing is considered diabolism by the Church and punishable by death. 

Perhaps the simplest option is to Enhance an ordinary lamp so that even a strong wind won’t blow it out, although note that lamps don’t give off a great deal more light than a few candles would.

At least the pressure of seeing a few dollars trickling in each month will spur me to get on and finish the rules, even if it never tots up to enough to pay for a full-page illustration. However, having included at least one link to Wikipedia above, let me add that they too are looking for donations and their need is greater, and their cause far worthier, than mine. So if you only do one act of patronage this month, make it Wiki not me. Though I won't grumble if you want to make it both.

What lies beneath

If I can advertise what Mssrs Jackson and Livingstone are up to these days, I figure I'm entitled to mention my own work. It's a special month over on my Patreon page because I'm serializing all-new pages of my comic Mirabilis: Year of Wonders.

I've run out of inked pages (the equivalent of the power company switching off the electricity, only in this case the unpaid bills mean a lack of artist and colorist) so the rest of this issue (number 10, titled "A Truth That Wounds") will be just Leo's pencils, then next issue (sometime in February) I'll be scraping the barrel of my own illustrative (in)capability. But hey, at least I'm getting to tell the story.

More about comics tomorrow -- only this time set in the land of Legend.

Notes from small islands

Happy New Year! Normally I tend to focus on gamebooks and roleplaying around here, but maybe I can squeeze in some news of projects of personal interest now that we're at the tail end of the intercalary days.

I've been trying to continue my Mirabilis comic for some time now, and finally came to the conclusion that if I can't get it to the stage where it's a commercial enterprise that pays for the pencils, inks and colours, I can at least still tell the story. Having a few pages of artwork left before Leo gave up on it, some of which he was able to ink, I began serializing issue #10 ("A Truth That Wounds") on my Patreon page.

Those already-completed pages are running out fast. We'll soon get on to Leo's rough pencils, and after that I'll have to fall back on my own sketches. No joke, that, as you can see from the sample here, but at least the die-hard followers of the story (all dozen of them!) will eventually get to read it.

My main obsession for most of the year has been my new gamebook Can You Brexit? in which you play the prime minister of Britain through two years of negotiations, calamities, and backstabbing starting in March 2017. The book is about 870 sections long, it's now finished bar a final polish, and I'm hoping to get a proper publisher if my agent can find one who isn't too craven to handle it. Enemies of the people and all that. Maybe next year I'll tackle You Are Trump.

My wife Roz has published a book of travel memoirs called Not Quite Lost for which she has been doing loads of BBC interviews throughout December. Banish those mental images of climbing the Kilimanjaro slopes or drinking snakeblood cocktails in New Guinea. These are lyrical, whimsical accounts of our visits to various old follies around Britain, peppered with eccentric encounters à la Bill Bryson. I liked it, though you may not regard me as entirely impartial.

And if you want to hear what Jamie is currently up to, come back on Friday.




Meanwhile, if you're here looking for a gaming fix I got a doozy for ya: James Wallis's long-awaited story-game Alas Vegas is finally on sale. Buy it from DriveThruRPG or Indie Press Revolution. (Unfortunately it's not on Amazon, so if you want a print copy from IPR and you live outside the US, you'll end up paying about $50 in postage.) I'm not usually a big fan of "narrative" RPGs, but any and all original work by Mr Wallis is touched with genius, so I plan to give this a go at our next weekend special.

A fresh start for the Year of Wonders

I resisted Facebook for the longest time. It’s not that I don’t like tech, I just don’t care for people that much. (Only kidding. I like people just fine. It’s the pet photos and soccer chat I wanted to avoid.)

Finally I’ve had to succumb, and the reason is that Leo Hartas and I needed to set up a Facebook page for our comics saga Mirabilis: Year of Wonders (If you need a this-meets-that, try Tintin hunts Fantastic Beasts with a soundtrack by Danny Elfman).

This is part of our big push to get the Mirabilis project moving again. The story was originally serialized in weekly British anthology comic The DFC, published by Random House. When The DFC folded, our story was left unfinished but our rights were tied up in a complicated contractual tangle. It took me months of increasingly desperate negotiation to find a way out of that limbo, made all the more fraught by the fact that none of the people involved in the mess would even return my calls. Luckily I knew Philippa Dickinson, the original publisher of Dragon Warriors and one of the truly nicest people you could hope to work with, who by now had risen to be the head of RH’s children’s publishing division. She pulled strings with the powers that be and got me and Leo our rights back.

Thus unfettered I could stop chewing my nails, but it was still far from plain sailing. We secured a publisher for Mirabilis, but though they did a beautiful job of the production they failed to get copies into any shops. I had to lug a couple of bags stuffed with copies to the Gosh! Comics store in London – if you bought one of those, hang onto it like a Penny Black with Queen Vic in a hipster beard, because they were almost the only copies that ever saw the light of day. The rest, I hear, went astray between the printer (in Bosnia) and the distribution warehouse (in Lancashire) and may now be propping up wobbly café tables somewhere in Germany.

So, back to the drawing board. A comics publisher reached out, but the deal they offered was like a handshake from Don Corleone. We were expected to sign over all rights in perpetuity to them, even though there was no obligation for them to keep the book in print. After the epic struggle with Random House there’s no way Leo and I could accept terms like that. As a creator, all you have is your work. You can't let other people lock you out of it.

What about Random House themselves? Well, Philippa had retired by this point, and the mildest way to put it is that having escaped the clutches of the contract we didn’t really have a lot of friends there. We were in our gulag and, at any other time in history, there we might have stayed. But this is the 21st century, right - with social media and crowdfunding and shit. So Leo and I have spent the last few weeks getting ready for a full and concerted relaunch of this mighty fantasy saga. Our plans include:

• a Patreon page where aficionados can come and pledge as little as $1 a month to help fund new instalments. Pages of the comic go up there Mondays and Fridays with higher-level backers getting access to backstage blog pieces and other goodies.
• a new website where everyone can read the comic absolutely free – just a little way behind the paid-up supporters on Patreon, who also get higher-res versions of the art.
• the aforementioned Facebook page where you can get updates on Mirabilis and any other books, comics, movies or games that we thing might interest you.
• a Twitter account with daily instalments of the comic.

And we’re toying with the idea of a Kickstarter to fund a Mirabilis gamebook. Or app. Maybe a boardgame. Possibly all three and - I dunno, a roleplaying game too? The Patreon backers may get a say in that. The exciting thing is that it's a community where everyone gets a voice.

Here’s the thing. We could really use your support – which is, after all, the whole point and rationale of what we’re trying to do now. We’re bypassing the publishers and distributors and going straight to the people whose opinion and backing count most. That’s you, we hope. The readers. Already we've got backing from Jason Arnopp, the 21st century's Stephen King, from the Jedi Master of gamebooks Stuart Lloyd, and from musician, artist & game designer Frazer Payne, among others. Good company to be in, and an absolutely priceless vote of confidence when we're starting a new venture like this. Thanks, guys.

If you can spring for a few dollars to actually fund the work, then you’re our BFFs till the sun dies – but even if not, a like on Facebook costs nothing and can really help boost interest. You never know, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The Way of the Tiger - video review

Marco Arnaudo did a great review of the Critical IF books a while back, so it was a nice surprise to come across this review of The Way of the Tiger series. If you've only recently thawed out of a glacier since the early '80s, the series is based on Mark Smith's Dungeons and Dragons campaign and its unique blend of high fantasy, ninjutsu and Cthulhu mythos makes for a memorable setting coupled with a clever tactical combat system and richly immersive descriptive text.

Ooh, while you're here, in other news I've been working on a fully responsive rebuild of the Mirabilis website. This is a precursor to me and Leo Hartas launching a Patreon page, and quite probably a Kickstarter for an all-new gamebook.

Yes, I know my comments about the viability of using Kickstarter to create a book are on record. It would work a lot better if it was a gamebook app rather than a printed book, as that way all the funds raised could go towards the actual content rather than being eaten up by print and shipping costs. But I have a feeling that most gamebook fans prefer to own a physical copy, so that's something Leo and I will have to think hard about. More about that project and the Patreon page in due course.