Mummers' games

As later Dragon Warriors books were released and we began to introduce creatures that were less familiar from folklore and fantasy fiction, I liked to include adventure seeds in the description as a guide to how to use them. Some have found the Blue Men silly, for example, but my excuse is that if a bit of wackiness has your players giggling then the cold grue that follows will be all the more chilling.

Blue Men

By night in the sailors' taverns of many a port, with salt spray lashing the windowpanes, one may hear old adventurers in their cups whispering seafarers' tales. Sometimes the talk is of the Blue Men, who plough through the cold northern seas in their dragon-prowed warships, and plunder riches and souls from the living.

They come out of churning grey waves with the gnawing icy gale of an approaching storm billowing out their sail. A pallid flare of phosphorescence limns the rotted timbers of their vessel - an ancient, barnacle-encrusted hulk, waterlogged and impossibly afloat, like a grim wreck that has been raised by sorcery from the ocean depths. The grisly mariners of this ship stand silent on her creaking decks, blankly observing the terror-struck faces of their human prey. Chilled to the marrow of their bones by a cold no earthly fire could dispel, they possess the hunger of the dead for the living. Their flesh is shivery blue and their long beards are tangled with kelp, and in his hand each grips a cutlass of brine-corroded bronze. 

The Blue Men hold a course alongside the chosen ship, whereupon it is soon clear that they cannot be outrun or evaded no matter what the steersman's skill. Standing by the fierce prow, the Blue Men's chieftain addresses his prey. In a voice like thunder he calls out couplets of verse that describe the terrible fate that shall be meted out to them, but if a spokesman from among the adventurers can immediately reply with a rhyming couplet refuting his words then the Blue Men will be temporarily balked from attacking. So the chieftain might say: 

'Our prow shall split your ship like kindling,
Your own bright blood shall wash the decks.' 

And be countered by: 

'We have no fear of cold blue dead men
Blustering from their sodden wrecks.' 

The adventurers then get the opportunity for a riposte, which the chieftain must likewise deny in rhyme. The contest of verse continues until one side falters or is forced to make an unconvincing or clumsy rejoinder. If the chieftain wins, his Blue Men board the adventurers' ship and fight like demons, untouched by lesser sorcery and all but impervious to wounds. They may be driven back if the adventurers manage to inflict more than 25% casualties, returning to their own vessel which then sinks rapidly below the waves. Any character they slew will be beyond resurrection - his soul taken down with them to the depths, as the legends have it. If the rhyming contest is won by the adventurers' spokesman, the Blue Men will depart at once. 

Hardy adventurers will perhaps refuse to play the Blue Men's game. Ignoring the verse, they may attempt to take the battle on to the planks of the dragon-ship. The Blue Men will respond by lowering the vessel below the waves, and each adventurer who boarded them must roll under his Reflexes on 2d20 or be sucked down with them. The chieftain will hurl a final weird upon those who survive: their vessel will lie becalmed and stricken by plague unless every adventurer aboard can resist his MAGICAL ATTACK of 16. (In game terms, the effect of the weird is to leave the vessel becalmed for 3-30 days, during which time careful check must be kept on rations and supplies of fresh water. The adventurers are exposed to 1-3 random diseases each day the weird lasts.) 

ATTACK 23         Sword (d8 + 2, 6)
DEFENCE 10         Armour Factor 1 (take half-damage from arrows, slingshot, etc)
MAGICAL DEFENCE 8 (but immune to Sorcerer spells of lst-4th level)
EVASION 6         Movement: 10m (20m)
Health Points 1d6 + 16         Rank-equivalent: 7th

Fast-forward thirty-four years and we were in lockdown. One of our gaming group, Dr Aaron Fortune, volunteered to run a traditional Yule adventure featuring the Company of Bronze mercenary characters (later to become known as the Iron Men) whom I've mentioned before. This was on Discord, naturally. Oliver and I missed the opening session but Aaron ran a side quest for the two of us that led into the main adventure. Oliver was playing Whirrun, aka 'Cracknut', who apparently was based on a book he'd published, and I was Calidore of Warens Field, aka 'Caliburn'. This is Caliburn's account of the session, but it's also a description of the macabre Mummers that Aaron had dreamt up:

The Adoration of the Magi

We meet Sir Wulfstan in a tavern outside Cantorbridge. He’s not really a knight, he’s a member of the Company. ‘Here’s your pay,’ he says. ‘You’re to come with me to the cathedral.’ He says a lot of other stuff too but now the sun’s gone down and we’re drinking. It’s Advent, you see, so fasting all day.

Next day at the cathedral, Wulfstan says we’re to escort Sir Joffe (who is a real knight) on a trip. ‘First you’ve got an audience with Subdeacon Elfwine.’

‘Why?’

‘Just listen to what he says.’

So we go in and this young priest tells us about factions in the Church and what his faction stands for and how there are rumours of the End of Days and that. After a bit I can’t hold my tongue. ‘Is there anyone you want killed, your holiness?’

‘Eh? No. There’s a relic at a hermitage up the coast. The hermits have been reluctant to part with it but now they’ve agreed. Go with Sir Joffe and bring it back in time for Christmas. Now, if Sir Joffe gives you orders then – ’

‘He’s not a member of our Company. We take our orders from Wulfstan.’

‘Well, pretend. I don’t want Sir Joffe to suspect.’

Suspect what, I wonder, but I don’t say anything because Church business is not Company business.

Wulfstan finds me and Cracknut and Portus. ‘It’s up the coast a ways. You’ll get another pay packet when we’re back. Also the best food and lodging, and horses all along the route.’

This sounds like when somebody is setting you up as a patsy but we don’t say anything. I put Coronach in the stables here in town because I gather we’ll be riding post up the road and I don’t want to wear him out.

Off we trot, with Sir Joffe and his five Chaubrettian guards, and a few days later we come to an island that you can ride to at low tide. Here the three hermits live, in conditions my granny would call squalid. Filthy wretches they are, claiming to be holy and that. ‘Where’s my relic?’ says Sir Joffe.

The shiftiest of the hermits, who I notice from his bloody shirt has been whipping himself, pushes back the altar and hands us an old box with three crisp new lead seals on it. Funny, I think, but I’m not paid to think so I keep quiet.

Off we go along the coastal road back to Cantorbridge. There’s a foul smell off the sea and some ominous looking ships, but the world is supposed to end soon so it’s not too surprising. Also, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and being in a mercenary company you tend to welcome bad omens.

After a bit Joffe discovers that what I handed him wasn’t the relic but a packed lunch wrapped in an oil cloth. He starts moaning that we’ve been robbed, but then I hand him the real box and he’s so happy he gives me a crown, which is five shillings or a considerable number of farthings.

Pretty soon Sir Joffe is whipping the horses so that two of them go lame. What an idiot. Then Gilbert, who is in the Company, rides up to meet us near Langdip. ‘Give me your horse,’ says Sir Joffe to Cracknut.

‘Good idea,’ says Wulfstan. ‘You three hand over your horses. Go down that track there and you’ll find the home of Mistress Godwina. She’ll give you fresh horses for the lame ones. We’ll ride on to the next coaching inn and you can catch us up.’

Now, this all seems entirely too convenient for anyone thinking to shake us off. Only two horses are lame, but Wulfstan is trying to get rid of me too. Is he up to no good?

‘Cracknut and Portus can do that,’ I point out, ‘and I’ll come with you.’

‘You stay too!’ says Wulfstan, a bit agitated now.

‘Uh-uh. I’m sticking to you like one of Joe’s turds after a big cheese dinner.’

‘I’ll see you sacked from the Company,’ he says.

‘Try it. I’ll answer to Pieter de Fleur.’

So he rides on with me right behind him. We’ll see what that was all about later.

Cracknut and Portus have barely seen us off down the road when they hear a horse whinny, and turn and see a young bloke that gives his name as 'Prince' Aengus. ‘Have a lucky rabbit’s foot,’ he says to Cracknut. ‘It will help you win a dice game against the Mummers. In fact, it will mean you always win.’

‘What you want for it?’ says Cracknut, who is no fool.

‘Nothing. I give it to you freely. And now I ride off.’

As it’s getting dark they go down the lane Wulfstan pointed out and there’s an old house, reasonably grand with a porch and that. They’re welcomed by Mistress Godwina, an old bird who lays out a good spread. She’s a friend of Wulstan, who is even more long in the tooth than Portus so might conceivably have had a thing with this crone at some stage in the past.

‘What about these Mummers we keep hearing about?’ says Cracknut, gnawing a chicken leg.

‘Oh, they’re terrible bad sorts. Devils, some say, or bad fairies. They live in a ruined chapel in the woods and at this time of year they come to the door when people have had a baby, and they shake dice, and when they win they take the baby away.’

‘What if they lose?’ asks Portus.

‘They use weighted dice – or so the rumour goes – so they rarely lose. And if people don’t give them what they want, they kill everyone in the house most horribly. Blood and guts everywhere.’

I guess Cracknut and Portus look sheepish at that, as they are not known themselves for over-daintiness or mopping up people’s guts after they’ve done a killing, but they tuck in and soon forget it.

Meanwhile I’m at the coaching inn and Wulfstan is distraught. He takes me aside and shows me inside the box. There’s no relic, just a velvet cushion which has got exactly as tatty as you’d expect after a few centuries under an altar stone. It looks like there used to be a mask in the box, and as it’s a relic of St Lucinda I can guess what bit of her that was.

‘Where is it?’

He shakes his head. ‘The box was empty.’

‘Oh. That’ll be why that hermit was so shifty, then. And why the lead seals look new.’

‘You go back and get the others,’ says Wulfstan. ‘Better get back to the hermitage and – ’

‘Say no more. Acquire the relic by any means necessary.’

Now it’s a good job I tagged along, and I bet he doesn’t go bad-mouthing me to Pieter de Fleur after all. But as I ride back I’m wondering why he was so keen to get rid of all three of us. He’d have been well stuffed if I hadn’t insisted – unless, that is, he pinched the relic himself and this is a wild goose chase.

As it happens, roast goose is on the table when I get to Mistress Godwina’s place. I tell the others what’s going down. Luckily Mistress Godwina tells me the story of the Mummers, because Portus and Cracknut are sitting gaping at the food like a couple of flounders on a fishmonger’s slab.

‘Well, it’s clear to me what’s happened here,’ I say. ‘Shifty the Hermit gambled the relic away to the Mummers. Guilty conscience, that’s why he’s been whipping himself. We’ll have to get it back off them.’

‘They might turn up at the house of Leofstan and Hild,’ says Godwina. ‘She had a baby yesterday.’

Sigh. We grab our stuff. ‘We’ll have to get over there and deal with these Mummers.’

‘They’re very dangerous,’ says Godwina. ‘Monsters, really.’

‘Only way to get the relic.’

As we’re riding over, Cracknut mentions the rabbit’s foot. ‘Handy,’ I say. ‘You can gamble against the Mummers for the relic.’

‘No, I want a Yule present for my wife.’

‘Give her the rabbit’s foot,’ says Portus.

‘But don’t we need it against the Mummers?’

‘Look,’ I say to Cracknut. ‘Win the relic first, save the baby, then afterwards you can give the rabbit’s foot to Lady Misery. Sorry, Maisery*.’

The house is down by the shore and it’s quite a hovel really. Poor folks, this couple, but they let us in and seem to believe our story. I suppose they’ve been quaking there expecting the Mummers and we’re a ray of hope.

So we wait, and at midnight there’s a knocking at the door. I open it to find thirteen cowled figures in masks going, ‘Mmm, mmm, mmm.’

‘In you come.’ I’ve got my hand on my sword but they’re all armed and there are thirteen of them. It’s a tight squeeze inside the cottage. The leader goes up to Cracknut, who is sitting at the table. He points at the baby, then he slams down his dice cup.

‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘If you lose we want the face of St Lucinda, which is the relic from the hermitage.’

‘I think I must name you,’ says Cracknut, and he goes on to say they’re all called Death.

They don’t unmask, so maybe that’s wrong. The leader gestures impatiently at the cup. ‘Mmm.’

So Cracknut rolls and the Mummer rolls and, thanks to the rabbit’s foot, Cracknut wins. The Mummers don’t take it well. They start up a horrible shrieking and the leader whips off his mask to show a leathery yellow face with the mouth stitched shut, and he shrieks so much a few of the stitches break and a bit of black spittle rolls down his chin. I’m very glad that nothing scares me, and I’m surprised that Cracknut and Portus don’t lose their dinner at this point.

Anyway, the Mummers have lost so they give us the relic and piss off. The relic is, as I thought, St Lucinda’s face, cured and mounted on a jewelled stick like a posh bird’s mask at a ball.

‘I reckon she was ashamed of how often she got propositioned because of her beauty,’ I say, struck by sudden inspiration. ‘Holy people hate fucking. So she cut her own face off because being holy can make you do things like that.’

The baby was crying. We went and had a look, and Hild agreed to call him Whirrun as that’s Cracknut’s real name. I looked through the mask’s eyes at him and announced he’d have health, happiness and prosperity. But I’m not sure that blessing worked, coming from me, even though it was a relic, so I also left a shilling on the mantelpiece.

We’re riding back when Cracknut says he thinks there’s something up with the road, and sure enough it seems we’re somehow lost in a wood. Well, it is after midnight now. I take out the relic and look through its eyes and now I can see the true path as a clean gleaming trail, which leads to a warm light beyond the trees, but behind us are the Mummers and they have a cold, blue-white glow to them that’s somehow menacing.

We follow the true path and it brings us to Mistress Godwina’s place, and the warm light is shining from her. The Mummers stay lurking back there in the woods, not liking to come near. Bastards. Bad enough that they use weighted dice or magic or whatever, but to be sore losers too. I’m tempted to go out and kill them all to teach them a lesson, but it is pitch dark and it’d be thirteen to one, so maybe not tonight.

We have some mince pies and ale, then we take turns sitting up through the night, and every now and then there’s a soft thump of something hitting the door, and when we’ve had breakfast and we go outside we find three dead rabbits in the porch with their front paw cut off, that the Mummers threw against the house.

We ride on, making a good pace, and by close to midnight on Christmas Eve we catch up to Wulfstan and the Chaubrette geezers. No sign of Joffe, he’s ridden on to present the relic – well, the empty box, as he’ll find out.

We’re approaching Cantorbridge and we hear the bells ringing midnight. ‘Happy Christmas, lads,’ I say, and at that moment White Light** appears in the north like a candle that’s been lit. Or more like a thousand candles. But it doesn’t last long and then it goes out. It makes me think of that star and our Saviour with the Magi that came and did the spells on the manger or whatever. Bet they didn’t leave a shilling. Stingy sods, Krarthians***.

* Cracknut had been wed in an earlier adventure to a lady of possibly fay origin called Maisery.

** One of the so-called Ghosts of the Magi (in common parlance) or, according to official Church teaching, the Pentaphan -- five celestial bodies that appear from time to time in the northern skies.

*** Caliburn is confusing the Magi who attended the Saviour's birth, who were almost certainly from Opalar, Batubatan and Zinj, with the rulers of Krarth.

There are plenty of interesting ways to use mummers in a Legend game. You don't even have to bring in magic or horror. Those masks are perfect for concealing one's identity -- a spy, a thief, a former foe seeking revenge, a proscribed lover sneaking in to see his beloved, an outlaw coming to free his comrade from the castle dungeon. But Aaron's Mummers are actual monsters, fay or undead or diabolic, so let's consider them in terms of the DW rules.

First, Cracknut seems to think that if he can name them they will be robbed of power over him. That makes sense, especially for beings wearing masks, and traditionally you get three guesses too. But there are thirteen of the Mummers, so it won't be as easy as dealing with Rumpelstiltskin. If you're going to let your players discover all the names I think it's fair enough to ask them to memorize them, not read them off a piece of paper. Oh, come on, not every adventure can spoon-feed the adventurers their successes.

But what if the Mummers aren't named? They offer a game with rules -- which is typical of the fays, however they may twist those rules. They roll the dice. If you win, they must depart. If you lose they will take the child they've come for, or something equally precious in its stead -- unless you can outwit them. Think on your feet. 'Do we roll for the one who was born tonight?' could mean the foal in the stable. Pointing to the cradle and saying, 'The winner takes what lies there' could indicate the cat, not the baby who you cleverly hid elsewhere when you heard them knocking at the door.

If they win the game and you haven't managed to outwit them, then it's a fight. A bloodbath, perhaps. They should be more than a match for any normal group of fighting men. You'll scale them to the strength of your PCs, but here I'm assuming they are equal in rank-equivalent to the strongest member of the party.

ATTACK 22         Shortsword (d8 + 1, 4)
DEFENCE 12         Armour Factor 2 (unaffected by nonmagical weapons until the dice game has been played)
MAGICAL DEFENCE 15 
EVASION 7         Movement: 15m (30m)
PERCEPTION 14
Health Points 2d6 + 10         Rank-equivalent: 8th

The fire-god's forge

If you listened to Jamie's interview on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, you might have been intrigued by the glancing reference to a project called Vulcanverse. I'll let Jamie explain it:

"The world itself is based on the premise that the god Vulcan is tired of mankind embracing virtual worlds and pushing the gods out of their lives, so instead of fading into the sunset, he embraces it by creating these four quadrants of land. The books will be a prequel to the virtual game, documenting the journey from technology and atheism taking over to the point when the old gods must choose either to fade into memory or to take things into their own hands."

In strictly game-terms it's a Second Life type virtual world in which players can own land and construct and trade their own assets. As this article explains, there are in-world creatures called vulcanites, virtual pets that I'm hoping could mean that something like my Mean Genes idea could finally get developed. (In a nutshell: players can breed and train a stable of nonhuman gladiators who then compete online, and others can watch the gladiatorial battles as a virtual sport whether or not they actually compete themselves.) I thought that one up at Eidos over twenty years ago but couldn't get anyone then to understand it. Now that e-sports are big business and Minecraft has shown the value of user-created content in virtual "playground worlds", maybe these guys will make it happen. Ian Livingstone, who was chairman of Eidos back then, is also involved in Vulcanverse so I'm keeping my fingers (and claws, and mandibles, and tentacles) crossed that we'll see a lot of gaming there.

Of course, in a freely configurable virtual world I could put Mean Genes together myself. That's the beauty of these virtual environments. They are (as I tried explaining to the Eidos execs in the original Mean Genes overview doc back in 1997) the equivalent of a playing field and a ball -- and lots of other things besides -- and you can use them to create games or theatre or tourist spots or sports or political rallies or discussion groups or whatever you like, just the way you can in the real world. I don't know what Vulcan would think of that, but Prometheus would surely approve.

CORRECTION (15/09/20): Ian Livingstone is not a partner in the Vulcanverse venture, at least not at the time of writing. I know it says so in the press release I linked to above, but it also says I'm a partner and in fact I only heard about it last week! So, well worth investing in (I hear they raised over a quarter of a million dollars from sales of plots on the first day) just don't expect a Fighting Fantasy connection.

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.

Goodbye to the tabletop?

There's a division among roleplayers when it comes to gaming over the internet. It's not quite as fraught as the bonkers split about mask-wearing but it seems to run deep. The other day we had a player drop out of our game. As he put it:

"The whole Zoom thing is a pain. I just don't enjoy sitting in front of the screen, trying to get a word in, moving a marker around on a map, or waiting for the referee to come back when he's got several private messages to deal with. I much prefer the snacks and drinks, the face to face interaction, and the quick 'can I have a word'. It feels more real like that somehow."

Until recently I was playing in two online RPG campaigns, one on Zoom with Roll20 for dice and maps, the other audio-only on Discord. Of course there are good and bad points. I rarely bother with a full tactical map, but in Roll20 it's harder to do a quick sketch to show where everybody is. (Do please point me at some good software for that if you know of any.) As for the Discord campaign, I loved it but we did benefit from having stripped-down rules and a brilliant referee in charge. It wouldn't work so well with a complicated game system and lots of dice rolls. Also my private gripe about Discord is that it was designed as a chatroom; players who miss having visuals will comment on the action by posting cartoons and movie stills, which runs against the immersiveness of pure audio. If there was a way to turn off that legacy feature and go full theatre of the mind it would be perfect -- at least for those of us who are radio hams in spirit.

Our disaffected player's point about snacks and drinks was interesting. I like having friends round for dinner. Also I like gaming. I don't much like mixing the two. One of the great things about gaming during lockdown was that we can jump in, play for three hours, and say goodnight. Nice and focused. No need to eat supper, stow everyone's coats and bags, clear a metric pileup of crisp packets and wine bottles off the table, and so on. Admittedly Zoom and Discord aren't so good for dinner parties but, hey, you can't have everything.

If anything the quick 'can I have a word' is much easier online. You can set up breakout rooms in both Zoom and Discord and it's easy to pop over to those for a private chat. Around a table, everybody has to get up, squeeze round, avoid tripping over other players' scattered belongings... You could waste two minutes getting into the next room just to say, 'You secretly search the body and find nothing.'

For me, the biggest advantage of online gaming is being able to play with friends who live at the other end of the country. They could hardly ever make it along to a real-life session. Avoiding salt-saturated snacks and tooth-corroding fizzy drinks is just a bonus. So I'm in no hurry to get back to physical games. But what do you think? Screen or table?

The Machine Stops

I had no idea there were so many adaptations of E M Forster's 111-year-old science fiction novella The Machine Stops. These two student film versions, for example (above and below).



Those movies are both quite abbreviated, but at 44 minutes this radio dramatisation does justice to the story:



Or if you want the original Forster prose with no modern trimmings, try the audiobook:



Or you could go full purist (you just know that's my call, right?) and read the thing.

And why now? Because Forster proposes a world of extreme social distancing in which everybody communicates via the Machine (the Internet, basically). He thinks it would become a dystopian nightmare, requiring technological collapse to restore the soul of mankind. The reality is that, like most futures, it may not appeal to us Cro-Magnons but it will be the accepted way of life for those who grow up with it.

Not that we'd ever want to give up all in-person contact, sure, but there are upsides. Our roleplaying games have benefited because we now don’t have to travel across London to get to the game – and that's never a pleasant prospect on a weekday evening. So instead of two and a half hours’ gaming once a fortnight, we can now fit in three or four hours every week. And, pushed online by necessity, I'm hooking up with friends I sometimes don't see for years at a time. Even when the pandemic is really over (spoiler: that's probably not when politicians tell you it is) there are some good habits learned now that will be worth hanging onto.

"Only connect!" as Forster said. If only we could pop back in time and tell him about Skype.

Don't listen to Hydra

It'd be a reckless gamer who'd dive back into face to face roleplaying right now. Whatever the Red Skull says, the coronavirus is not going to magically disappear. Fortunately there are plenty of online alternatives, and taking the glass-half-full view I quite like not having to travel to a game during London's rush hour or faff around cooking supper for a room full of hungry gamers.

Here are Scott Dorwood of The Good Friends of Jackson Elias and Joe Trier of How We Roll with a smorgasbord of suggestions for gaming over the internet. (I'll append my obligatory quibble, which is that HPL probably pronounced the "dh" in dhole as an eth. So, not like the Asian canid. But I realize it spoils a perfectly good pun, so I won't press the point.)

In our games we've stripped it all back to Discord with the Dice Maiden bot installed for the rolls. Discord supports video now, but we stick to audio because it stimulates the imagination. After a session's over my mental impression of the game-world lingers as vividly as real memories. If your games involve a lot of tactics and combat, though, you might be better off with one of the other options Scott and Joe discuss there.

One of their recommendations is ViewScream:

"Three to five players assume the roles of desperate people trapped in a world of high-tech horror. A typical game session lasts 60-90 minutes." 

We haven't had any problem with seven or more players at a time (audio-only seems to help) for games of three to four hours, but I've heard several people say that online gaming works better with shorter sessions and smaller groups, so I plan to try it out and report back here.

In the meantime, don't go drinking any bleach, will ya? Take vitamin D if you like (it won't hurt) but there's no evidence it has any effect against covid-19. As for hydroxychloroquine -- no, just no. Though if you buy into that stuff and you have a few hundred dollars to spare, why not pick up a USB stick (sic) which, as any fule kno, uses authentic quantum woo to "re-harmonize" 5G radio waves. Between Trump's twitterings and barmy internet medical myths, the coronavirus has some pretty stiff competition in its quest to wipe out humanity. Your best defences are reason and evidence. So stay alert -- to nonsense.

That's been our public health information broadcast for this week. Come back tomorrow when we're plunging into a time of superstition, plague, violence and apocalyptic fear. No, it's not another current affairs post -- I'm talking about Legend, the world of Dragon Warriors.

A little touch of the apocalypse

Still searching for the perfect online roleplaying game? The lighter the better, I say. You can roll dice and move figurines on Roll20, but a conversational style of game is a lot easier and for my money more fun. That's one of the reasons I enjoyed running Gregor Vuga's Sagas of the Icelanders, which quite honestly is a work of genius. If you've read the sagas you'll know how perfectly it captures the spirit of them, and right now it's Pay What You Want on DriveThruRPG. Oh, and Gregor is giving half of the profits to the Red Cross while the pandemic continues.

Two other games with a similarly light touch when it comes to rules mechanics are, unsurprisingly, both Powered by the Apocalypse. First up I give you Tremulus, which spins Lovecraftian horror in an improv storytelling style. I have a conflicted relationship with HPL-based games in that, if you play them true to the spirit of the Cthulhu Mythos, the heroes can't win. Having said that, going mad, giving in to despair, and suffering inevitable defeat can also make for a cathartic experience.

Then there's Alas For The Awful Sea, which appears to be inspired by Melville, Conrad, Poe, and probably HPL again. You play a ship’s crew navigating the remote British Isles in the 19th century. There they face a world consumed with suspicion, sadness, and desperation. Hard to sum it up, but the designers Vee Hendro and Hayley Gordon say this:

"Struggles for power have deadly consequences; mysterious disappearances plague the region; and those who seem human may not all be so. Amidst all this, the sea sends forth strange messages. Will you be the one to listen?"

If you liked The Lighthouse, that one's definitely for you.

I've been making some discoveries about playing online. Simple rules work best, but that was pretty obvious from the git-go. I'm also finding games run better when they're audio only. We have one game on Discord with eight players, and one on Zoom with five players. There's much more cross-chat in the latter, because any appearance in any player's room of a child, spouse, pet, pizza or whatever risks distracting several of the players into launching off on a separate conversation where they talk over everyone else. Lacking video, the Discord game is much more focussed. Players stay in character more and wait for each other to speak, so it's less of a hubbub as well as encouraging a more vivid mental picture of the adventure. There's a good reason they call this improvised radio theatre with dice.

Pop back tomorrow when we'll be jumping on the magic carpet for a trip back to the land of the Arabian Nights. Not just an adventure, oh no. Open sesame indeed, this is a full campaign complete with detailed maps of 8th century Baghdad. And whatever you're playing in these difficult days, and whether it's with voices only or facetime too -- stay safe.

Kicking and screaming into the 21st century

Matt Mullenweg is the founder of WordPress, which is used by a third of all websites worldwide - and a very good job it does too, as you can see from this one I made earlier. Recently Matt was talking to Sam Harris about how the future of work is going to be telecommuting. (Though strangely enough he seems to think that tele- prefix must be something to do with telephones... Neither a Greek scholar nor a fantasy/SF fan, obviously.)

You can listen to that discussion here. Matt should know what he's talking about -- his company has over a thousand employees worldwide but they don't bother with an office. The future has been a long time coming, though. When my last office job ended in the credit crunch, I resolved to go back to working mostly from home. The energy and time wasted in being squeezed onto trains for hours each day is just crazy. "The commute has had its day," I told business colleagues, little dreaming it would take eleven years and a global pan(ic)demic for companies to drag themselves out of the 20th century mindset.

It's never that simple, though, is it? Matt and Sam talk about the five phases of online working, which start off with companies trying to replicate the habits and work culture of bygone decades using modern tech, and then gradually evolves as they realize that distributed working is not a poor substitute for an office, it's a whole new and better way of doing things.

The podcast's subject is work not play, but there are lessons there for gaming too. We already talked about how asynchronous roleplaying could lead to richer stories than forcing everything into the format of a regular sit-down around the table with all the players. Here's another trend: the last decade or so has seen a movement to strip away the clunky mechanics of roleplaying's wargames origins and replace them with simpler rules that favour character-driven stories. Online play can only accelerate that. Tim Harford, who contributes the annual Legend Christmas special to this blog, has lately been prepping a new campaign for our group. The rules he's written are two pages long, and most of that is the magic system.

Even when the coronavirus lockdown ends (or the current lockdown, I should say) we ought to hold onto the lessons we're learning from online gaming. Don't get stuck in Phase I, like the characters in Forster's SF story "The Machine Stops". Instead embrace the growth that disruption brings, something that Tim Harford talked about eloquently in his book Messy.

Come back tomorrow when we'll be turning Japanese. Hence the video.

Keep your distance

My gaming group have been looking at ways to play online using options like Skype or Discord. I'm even tempted to do some play-by-mail. Why? Well, if you've been in the Negative Zone for the last few months, this will help explain it.

What do you do about dice-rolling in a virtual setting? Becky Annison had a good thread on Twitter about online gaming and her view on that was: "Trust your players not to cheat on dice rolls - it doesn't matter if you can't see their roll. What on earth are you doing playing with people you don't trust?"

I don't know if it helps anyone - but I role-play a lot and mostly online because I have small kids. I role-playing between 1-3 nights a week and I have done for years. This is what I know works to make an online game smooth and fun (1/8)

— Becky Annison (she/her) (@BeckyAnnison) March 13, 2020

Fair enough, although I'm sorry to say that in the past we had such trouble with one player cheating that I had to institute "the shield of truth", a ghastly blue plastic tray in which all dice had to be rolled. Thankfully that's a thing of the past, but if you're unsure then take a look at Rolz.

Playing online will probably reduce the amount of dice-rolling in your game anyway, which in my book is no bad thing, but if you really want the full rules-heavy dungeon-bash experience there's always Roll20, of which one of our group says:

"Roll20 does seem quite good for creating a virtual space in which we can visualize our characters. It would be enough, I think, for us to hear one another, see the rolls, and pass secret notes to the GM. We could add tactical map battles fairly easily when a particular situation calls for it. Roll20 doesn't have full integration to other systems like GURPS or Dragon Warriors so it would be simplest if we keep the rules in our heads and use the platform mainly as a communication device. We might even use Roll20 for the map and dice, while using Discord for the voice communication. The advice on GURPS forums suggests that most people use Roll20 that way, as a lite service for rolls and maps, keeping the rules, characters, and so forth offline."

Other options worth considering include: Astral Tabletop, Fantasy Grounds, Dungeonfog, and Streamyard. (And for board games try Vassal.) Some of those are full-on VTTs that include maps and dice rolling, others are just for chat. Have a look around to find the best fit for you. After all, you've got plenty of time for research.


But you could be missing a trick if you're simply looking for a way to replicate your usual tabletop experience online. Maybe there are benefits here that are unique to virtual play. For example, our group meets every other Thursday and that means at least half a dozen people travelling across London in order to grab about three and a half hours of gaming. (It'd be longer, but I can't get them to follow the Earl of Sandwich's advice and forgo a cooked meal beforehand.) Because we have such limited time for gaming, we've drifted towards a planned adventure-of-the-week style of play that's really not a patch on proper seat-of-the-pants roleplaying. The improv style of gaming is a luxury it's hard to make time for when everybody has jobs and family. It's a far cry from playing at school or college or in your early 20s, when it's possible to set up side sessions with one or two players on the spur of the moment, and the events in those sessions feed into the main weekly game.

If you're gaming online, though, it's pretty easy to recapture the sandbox, open-world approach. Each player is only a phone call away, and it's no problem finding a half hour for a Skype session involving just one or two players. That opens up a much more freewheeling kind of campaign, where one player might, for example, be sent as ambassador to a foreign court, and he or she plays that out separately, creating world events that will impact on the events of the main weekly game -- if "the main game" even means anything any more.

There is no substitute for hanging out with friends in person, but while the Sword of Damocles hangs over us, let's look for the ways that playing online could provide something different and just as entertaining.

The one-eyed god wants YOU

Just going to put this out there. I'd love to join in myself, but I wrote the adventure in the first place.

#RPG - Next Dragon Warriors Session: The One-Eyed God - Tuesday at the usual time (7:30pm UK).

Reserve your places now! pic.twitter.com/idTX3pvH4m

— Grímnir Mäyrä-Parta: Master skeptomancer & skáld (@Grimasaur) April 6, 2020

If you want the "Previously on Dragon Warriors" bit, it's right here. And, by Hárr the High One, the latest installment is now online here.

Life and death are only a dice roll away!

Only a dice roll away? That's never been truer than now for most of us, but while you're battening down the hatches there's no need to lose all contact with the outside world. My gaming group have been looking at Discord, Roll20 and Zoom for roleplaying and Vassal Engine for boardgames.

James Desborough ran a Dragon Warriors game the other night, and as you can see it's almost as good as playing face to face. Even better than face to face, perhaps, if your friends are scattered all over the country and find it hard to get along to an in-person session.

If you've been waiting for the right time to snap up all the Dragon Warriors books, Serpent King Games have them in a Bundle of Holding for the next couple of weeks. And I'm now talking to SKG about them publishing Jewelspider, which would mean wider distribution and more artwork -- which the proceeds of the Bundle of Holding sale will help pay for. See, there's always a silver lining.