Come with me to the far lands of Baghdad

Here’s a sandbox roleplaying campaign I ran a few years back. The setting: Baghdad in 800 AD (183-184 in the Hijri calendar). I often like to start out with just a setting and characters, and the intrigues that go with them, then I throw out a bunch of threads and see which the players will grab hold of. The advantage of that approach is they’re familiarizing themselves with the background at the same time as various adventure leads are warming up.

(As for the rules, we used GURPS or you might try Tales of the Caliphate Nights or Basic Roleplaying. Or even write a PbtA version if you have the time; the variety of characters certainly lends itself to that kind of system. Those are all fantasy versions set in "the Arabian imaginary", though, and if you prefer a more historical take, as I do, Guy Le Strange's Baghdad During The Abbasid Caliphate will be your most treasured sourcebook.)

The deep background to the campaign postulated a forgotten era when aliens travelled to Earth and enhanced some humans (the likes of Gilgamesh) to assist them in returning to the stars. Some of that ancient technology yet remains if the characters know where to look.

There’s no magic in this setting, but psionics exist (though very rare). Still, you don’t need to stick to any of the assumptions or storylines here. Just chuck some of these ideas at your players. All they have to do is react in character and the story will shape itself.

BAGHDAD LOCATIONS OF INTEREST

The Shammasiyah Quarter. The inhabitants of these suburbs are Armenian Christians, transplanted en masse by order of the Caliph from their original village. The centre of the community is the Samalu Monastery. Any Christians among the PCs can get lodging here if they need it, but the practices of Armenian Christianity are different from those of the Franks and tensions could soon develop.

The Mamuni Palace is on the east bank of the Tigris opposite the Palace of Eternity. This is Jafar’s residence.

The Bab-at-Tak, the high arched gate at the eastern end of the Main Bridge, is renowned as a meeting place for poets.

The Palace of Eternity (Kasr-al-Khuld) was built twenty-five years ago in the reign of Harun al-Rashid's grandfather, the Caliph Mansur. Its majestic gardens are said to rival the beauty of paradise, and it stands high above the Tigris opposite the Khurasan Gate, free from the gnats that swarm in lower-lying areas.

The four Houses of Wisdom stand south of the Gharabah Gate. Each has a professor and seventy-five students, and in the entrance hall to the campus rests a famous water-clock called the Chest of Hours. The libraries of the Houses are arranged and catalogued to make information easy to find, and for a price the students can copy any work that characters require.

For colour the referee may wish to allude to markets and professional quarters such as the Needle-makers Wharf, the Market of the Perfumers, the Date Market, the Cotton Market, and the Tuesday Market. Also canal names such as the Fowls' Canal, the Canal of the Dogs, the Canal of the Cooks, and the Thorn Bridge over the Nahr Isa canal, adjoining the Market of Shawk-Sellers, these thorns being used as kindling for ovens and public steam baths (hammams, a staple of daily life to be found throughout the city).

The Kufah Gate ("Pilgrims' Gate") in the south-west is where those setting out for Mecca leave the city. And no tour of 9th century Baghdad is complete without mentioning the Office of the Poor Tax (Diwan-as-Sadakah) which stands opposite Dromedary House.

PRINCIPAL NPCs

HARUN al-Rashid (37) the Caliph.

JAFAR al-Barmaki (33) the Vizier.

ABBASSA (28) the Caliph’s favourite sister; very smart.

ASMA (32) another of the Caliph’s sisters; schemer but not very effectual; resentful.

MAMUN (20) the Caliph’s eldest son; good at statecraft, sciences and arts, but no soldier. Likes astronomy. Mother: Marajil, a Persian slave. Advisors: Fahl ibn Sahl and Hasan ibn Sahl

AMIN (17) the Caliph’s second son; good military mind, poor  at politics & leadership; a bit strident. Mother: the Princess Zubaida.

QASIM (15) the Caliph’s third son. Honest, trustworthy – far too much for his own good. Tutored by Prince Malik (see below). Mother: Qasif, a lowborn slave.

MUTASIN (12) the Caliph’s youngest son.

COURTIERS & GENERALS

TAHIR ibn Husayn (30): a Persian general, known as Zol-Yamanein (“the warrior with two right hands”) as he fights with a sword in each hand. 

ALI ibn Isa ibn Mahan (34) a general of Bedouin ancestry, secretive and inscrutable, loyal to Prince Amin’s faction.

Prince MALIK ibn Salih (50) a troublesome character – effective general, member of the Abbasid family, proud, he chafes and gets impatient when not given a task. Has mentored the Caliph’s third son, Qasid, since he was a child.

KHUZAIMA ibn Khazim (48) grizzled chief of police, cautious, plays the political spectrum and is careful not to offend any powerful factions.

IN KHORASAN

FADL ibn Sahl and HASAN ibn Sahl

Brothers (Zoroastrian converts) who are destined to advise Mamun as viziers – assuming that the player-characters do nothing to change the course of history. (As if.)

OTHER BAGHDAD NOTABLES

AHMAD ibn Hanbal (20) an Arab of the Banu Shayban tribe; young zealous scholar who regards the sect of the Caliph to be heretical, and openly preaches such, but is too popular simply to throw in prison.

ALI al-Rida (45) an imam and Dean of the House of Wisdom, seventh descendent of the Prophet, rather unworldly mystical type, mentor of Maruf al-Kharki.

MARUF ibn Firuz (42) “al-Kharki”, a Persian convert from Christianity, extremely ascetic, a hardliner who looks for heresy and impiety. He was formerly the slave of Ali al-Rida.

• SARIK al-Saqati (33) disciple of Ali al-Rida and bodyguard to Maruf ibn Firuz. He is a Sufi martial artist and also has a psionic power to make people forget their family and become detached.

Archdeacon BARADAN (60) of the Samalu Monastery, a shrewd operator who keeps a low profile.

• Vazak, Musheg and Sahak (all mid-30s): assistants to the Archdeacon.

OTHER MONARCHS

The Byzantine Empire is ruled by Irene of Athens (42), who recently (797 AD) deposed her son Constantine VI and had him blinded and imprisoned. She pays a tribute to the Caliph to avoid war (the Byzantines already have their ongoing war with the Bulgars and rivalry with the Franks to contend with) but it’s known that her finance minister, Nikephoros (45), opposes this.

Charlemagne (58) has recently been crowned Emperor of Rome.

Al-Hakam I (33) rules as Emir of Al-Andalus (Iberia) which is the last surviving stronghold of the Umayyad dynasty which formerly ruled the entire Muslim world, until the Abbasid rebellion in which the Umayyad line were hunted and massacred.

Idris II (16) rules as Caliph of the Berber kingdom of Morocco. His father was poisoned by an assassin sent by Harun al-Rashid sixteen years ago, so there’s no love lost there. Still a teenager, Idris is said to be “a person of almost magical ability”.

Ibrahim I (44) is due to be installed as Emir of Ifriqiya (modern Libya and Tunisia) to rule there on behalf of the Abbasids, a response to the ongoing rebellion of the Berbers against their Arab governors.

Krum the Horrible (43) is Khan of the Bulgars. Said to drink from cups made by lining his enemies’ skulls in silver. The clue is in the name.

Obadiah (30) is Khan of the Khazars. Like most of his nobles, he is a convert to Judaism, but most of the Khazars are Tengrists (kind of ancestor-worship meets animism).

She (Hiya = “she” in her native Arabic) is ruler ofthe lost civilization of Kôr in the heart of Africa. She is an immortal, born 900 years ago in Arabia, but who has gained access to some ancient (and possibly non-terrestrial) technology and has been busy learning about it.

In Kôr, Hiya has a Chamber of the Far-Travelling Carpet which has a pattern of tiles on the floor that create a dimensional “carpet” which allows her to travel across great distances. The effect is like teleportation, and the portal remains hanging in the air until she returns to it. Using this, she has been disrupting the Silk Road trade from a hidden mountain fortress above Samarkand.

She wants the arrow (qv) from Nubia, and has sent an android assassin and three mortal but devoted followers to get it. The android is a killing machine with ebon hair and paper white skin. In ordinary human terms she is mindless, and cannot speak or interact socially; nor can she  be detected with ESP. (Tekumel fans may recognize the type.)

ADVENTURE SEEDS

These aren’t presented in any particular order, but note that some are dependent on earlier threads having been picked up.

The Envoy from the West

Charlemagne (known in Baghdad as “Shah al-Ma'in”) has crowned himself Emperor of Rome, and has sent emissaries with gifts for the Caliph. If any of the player-characters are to be European Christians, that’s how they come to be travelling to Baghdad.

Order of Succession

The Caliph is due to announce this shortly. Not even Jafar knows what he’s planning. Traditionally, the eldest son, Mamun, has been the heir apparent, but his mother was a slave whereas the mother of the second son, Amin, is an Abbasid princess.

The ceremony involves the closing of the four gates of the Round City (see below). The Caliph then proclaims that Amin will be heir, and the order of succession will thereafter pass to Mamun, who in the meantime will go to the city of Merv to take up the governorship of Khorasan (Persia). Tahir of the Two Swords comes to Baghdad to fetch him.

The Gates

To mark the announcement of the order of succession, the four gates of the Round City are all closed at noon prayers. It can be seen that each gate is covered in an array of cuneiform-style glyphs.

On close examination:

• the metal of which the gates are made is an unknown alloy.
• they are covered with some kind of graphical cipher, perhaps indicating coded charts.

History: the gates were brought by order of the Caliph’s father from the town of Wasit, which stands on the site of Zandawad, a city built by order of King Solomon. (Unknown history: they were brought originally from Uruk.)

Deciphering the glyphs reveals a kind of stylized map centred on the site of Uruk. It’s clear that there must be a fifth set of gates somewhere, containing missing information required to complete the map, and after consulting the records the characters find that these other gates were sent to the Mosque of Mansur but never fitted. The Imam, Ali al-Rida, refers enquiries to Maruf ibn Firuz, who of course refuses all requests to see the gates.

The fifth gates are being kept at the Bukhariot Mosque in the Lion & Ram Quarter, west of the Round City. Even having found out that much, the characters have to somehow get to see them – not easy, as they are packaged, piled up and far too heavy to lift, and of course the imam of the mosque, Halba ibn-Jubaya, has been told not to grant access.

The fifth set of glyphs firmly pinpoints a location at modern-day Warka, which will lead the characters to the Hairy Man adventure (see below).

A Hairy Man

The ruins of a huge city wall are found by workmen digging irrigation channels for the modern town of Warka. This is part of the ruins of Uruk. This is not widely reported, so unless the characters have deciphered the map on the gates (qv) they will never get to hear about it.

If the ruins are excavated, a tomb is revealed in which lies the perfectly preserved body of a big (7 foot) hairy man with strong, almost ape-like teeth. This is Enkidu, an immortal, who has remained in a state of suspended animation for millennia. The characters may be able to revive him, but ensuring he becomes an ally rather than a rival or enemy is not so easy.

Running Amok

There have been several violent incidents in the Atikan Quarter. The first few were individuals running amok, then larger groups. Usually the pattern is attacks on property, escalating to violence or even murder, and afterwards the perpetrator claims to have only a vague memory of their actions, as in a dream. All except the first incident happened on a Friday.

First of the perpetrators was Hisham of Basra, who is due to be executed in three days. He didn’t kill anyone, but was heard shouting blasphemous remarks. If questioned, he may reveal that he had gone to the Jewish Quarter to try to catch a glimpse of a girl he’d seen.

The actual cause is a teenage girl, Anonui bat-Ezra, who is developing psionic powers that as yet are not under her conscious control. She belongs to a wealthy Jewish family (her father: Ezra bar-Adom) and travels to the bath-house each Friday in a covered litter. One incident occurred on Friday evening outside a house in the Jewish Quarter used as a synagogue.

The Road to Samarkand

Reports are starting to trickle in of disruption on the Silk Road. Caravans have been attacked by bandits out of the hills, who seem to have become unnaturally bold of late. The merchant Yao ZHANG, who claims to be an emissary of the Chinese Emperor Dezong, recently arrived with a report of having been overtaken by a sandstorm crossing the Karakum Desert, and his companions were whisked away “by bridges that walk” – or, at least, the translator thinks that’s what he said. This connects to The Forty adventure.

The Caliph’s New Palace

The Caliph no longer wishes to reside in the Golden Gate Palace, but instead plans to move out of the Round City to the (larger) Palace of Eternity on the west bank of the Tigris. Naturally this raises concerns about security.

The Arrow

A dignitary from Egypt brings the Caliph an arrow that can cut almost anything. (This is literally true; it’s like a vibroblade.) He says it was brought by a traveller from Nubia. The Caliph orders it placed in the palace vaults.

Cursed Ship

Reports from sailors in the Gulf describe a “high, bronze-hulled” vessel, “like a floating castle”.

Prince Mamun's farewell party

This episode follows Order of Succession and The Arrow. There is a party for Mamun on the eve of his departure for Khorasan.

During the party, a guard staggers up from the vaults where the Caliph's treasures are kept. He collapses in front of one of the characters, revealing two long deep sword-cuts across his back.

In the vault there is a circular pattern of rainbow light on the floor. An albino warrior with a fixed, insane expression stands ready to fight as three men with jet-black skin search the racks and boxes. This is the group Hiya (“She”; qv) has sent to fetch the arrow, and can ultimately connect to an adventure based on H RiderHaggard’s novel.

The Forty

This is the eventual result if the characters investigate The Road to Samarkand adventure seed or travel to Persia and end up investgating attacks on the trade routes.

In the hills above Samarkand, the Forty are a group of heretical rebels from Afghanistan. They have come across an ancient alien facility with a huge circular door that opens on a voice command. (One door only partly opens. There’s a smaller postern gate but they don’t know the command for that.)

FORTY THIEVES

Sword 18                                 2d+2 cut

Knife 17                                  2d-1 cut

Javelin 16                                2d+2 impale (with thrower)

HP 15                                      Parry 13, Dodge 12, Perception 17, Stealth 15

Armour: Kevlar-like material (7, weight 20) on torso; mail (4) on limbs, head.

Inside: a tunnel thirty feet tall with gantries (partly collapsed, but now reinforced with wooden poles) to a series of apartments. There are lighting globes, about half of which still work. At the end of the tunnel is a hangar where the Big Spider (a sixty-foot-tall military robot) is housed.

BIG SPIDER

Acrobatics 17; Danger Sense; Combat Reflexes

Leg swipe 15               9d crush (1-3 per round) knockback

Barbed darts    18        4d twice (large piercing -> +50% damage) & reel in*

Blades 18                    3d twice (half armour)**

Dodge 7                      Armour 11      Perception 25

HIT POINTS 120

All its attacks can only be defended against with Dodge.

*If both darts penetrate armour, delivers electrical stun (3d direct to Fatigue) and reels victim in. Victim has two rounds to break free: ST vs effective ST of [damage taken x d6]. Then reaches blades and is wrenched: roll ST or HT vs effective ST of 30 or take 4d crush to neck or limb.

**Used when victim reeled in; remember that these are monomolecular and halve armour.

The Big Spider is not under the control of the Forty, but it recognizes that they control the doors. When the doors are open, it periodically patrols its route and attacks people crossing the border without authorization (ie everybody). It collects all their items, brings them back, but then discards them as nothing matches the items it is programmed to search for. When “parked”, the spider also projects a local view (5 mile radius) of the terrain as seen from a satellite.

The Forty therefore have treasure here worth about 5 million dirhams in the form of gold, gems, spices, silks, artworks, weapons, etc. This wealth is what enables them to bribe a network of informers in Samarkand, allowing them to cow the government there by assassination or bribery.

           

Samarkand

The city is ruled by a Council of Three: Arash, Jamsid and Kazem, all of the House of Aramanth. As it’s Persian, politics is less religiously dominated, though it is not so free and cosmopolitan as Merv or Nishapur.

The Grand Imam is Ardeshir al-Yaha, a moderate, originally from Baghdad.

The leading light in high society is Princess Parisa Esfani, mid-40s, bossy, rich.

The local agent of the Barmaki clan is Sitvar ibn Ghabani, a young and very serious fellow, more resourceful than his callow appearance might suggest.

WHAT HAPPENED IN OUR CAMPAIGN

The player-characters realized the trouble in the marketplace (Running Amok) was caused by a psionic and identified the likely culprit as Anonui, daughter of Ezra the rug merchant. But they couldn’t get access to Anonui until her two older sisters were betrothed, whereupon it would be possible for a third suitor to visit Anonui. So they went to Ezra and three of them asked to marry his daughters.

Charlemagne’s two emissaries, Lanterfrid and Sigimund, were due to return home. The Caliph (at Jafar’s instigation, after a recommendation by the player-characters) appointed Ezra to take some fine rugs to the new Roman Emperor as a gift. Oh, and a white elephant called Abulabaz as well. That gave Ezra and incentive to marry his daughters off, so that they would be taken care of while he was away from Baghdad.

However, Anonui was by now learning to control her power, even though largely unaware of it. She caused Ezra to demand an impossibly huge dowry of 30,000 dirhams for each of her sisters (Buran and Huldah).

Two of the PCs now decided that the best way to deal with Anonui bat-Ezra, the nascent psionic in the Jewish quarter, was not to marry her but to kill her. Yes, I know; I thought it was a dark turn too. They sneaked off without telling the others, crept into her bedroom at night, and smothered her with a pillow. When the other PCs confronted them about this, they fell back on the argument that it was better than waiting till she grew too powerful. (You may recall Nick Fury saying something along those lines. Cap wasn't impressed.)

Hashim was still executed for blasphemy, as the presiding judge Maruf ibn-Firuz (aka al-Kharki) would brook no plea for leniency. But it’s not clear whether Hashim’s fate ever figured in the characters’ calculations anyway. As one of the players put it in the write-up:

“We killed the carpet seller's daughter, making it seem that she died in her sleep. We tried to paint her as a witch to exonerate the young man due to be executed from blasphemy. He was executed anyway.”

At the ruins of Uruk, their map guided them to a hill which turned out to cover a huge man-made dome. They were able to break into this and lower themselves fifty metres to the floor below. Some falling rocks gave them gashes and bruises, but that was nothing compared to the sentry spider-robots that attacked using circular blades on their legs.

They entered what some might have considered a burial chamber, though it was obviously built with a different purpose in mind. Banks of instruments on the walls were now so damaged that only an occasional light blinked on and off. Waking up the power source briefly displayed a holographic star map filling the whole room which showed a planetary system located close in to the galactic core – not that they were able to interpret what it meant.

On a catafalque lay the hairy body of Enkidu. (His hair having continued to grow very slowly over the centuries he’d been in “Odinsleep”.)

A player said in the write-up:

“I think we activated a homing beacon, but it seemed to point straight up into the night sky where there are no ships. Are there? And we saw something that might have been a star map, but there just aren’t that many stars in the sky. Are there?”

Thereafter, having been afflicted by a device called the Eye of Humbaba, they travelled to the heart of Africa to seek help from Hiya. Or did they go to steal her power? It depends which of the players you ask.

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.

The shinpu hits the fan

Back in the 20th century, the grimdark fantasy tradition had its beginnings in Michael Moorcock's Von Bek novels (The Warhound and the World's Pain, etc) which surely inspired Games Workshop's Warhammer RPG. In the early '90s, Jamie and I signed with GW to write a pseudo-Japanese supplement for Warhammer, which made sense given that the Sengoku period makes the Thirty Years' War look like a tussle between two drunks outside a kebab shop. But enough of me and Jamie...

Tetsubo had been commissioned by Paul Cockburn. Unfortunately he left GW the same week we delivered the manuscript. The new people in charge of roleplaying games there didn't have much enthusiasm for an Oriental take on the game -- and possibly not for roleplaying in general, as soon after that I think GW passed the Warhammer licence on elsewhere.

So that left Tetsubo in limbo -- or rather in Yomi -- until 2018, when Daniel Fox of Grim & Perilous Studios asked to adapt it as a supplement to his Warhammer heartbreaker, Zweihänder. The good news was the renewed spark of interest drove me to dig out the Tetsubo manuscript and scan it all, most of the book never having even been saved to disk and only existing in a faded dot-matrix-printed box of papers. The bad news: after a burst of activity it sank back into the land of mists, and after a year the contract lapsed.

Daniel Fox got back in touch last month to talk about renewing the contract, but his thinking had moved on. He wanted to bring in elements of 1960s chambara movies. That wasn't in itself a problem. Jamie and I are Kurosawa fans, even though we harbour no illusions about his movies being in any way authentically Japanese. But Daniel wanted to square the circle by meshing that with a real Sengoku vibe, and he had the problem that the book as written was more of a fit with the Bakumatsu -- because, of course, GW had wanted players to be able to bring their Old World characters in.

And then there was the question of who would tackle the redesign and conversion to the new system. Daniel proposed hiring Graeme Davis, who would have been ideal, but he was too busy to take it on. Now, at this point I should probably address the notion of "cultural appropriation", whose proponents (I think; I don't actually know any) might say the game could only be done properly if it had a Japanese designer. But would "a Japanese designer" have to mean somebody born and raised in Japan? Or could it be a Japanese citizen (wherever he or she was born) with a deep knowledge of medieval Japanese culture? Or simply somebody who happens to be ethnically Japanese -- Kazuo Ishiguro, for instance, who went to school down the road from me in Surrey? You might have guessed by now that I don't subscribe to the woke obsession with ethnicity, an obsession which is supposedly progressive but in fact quite the opposite; we are all human, nobody owns culture or history, and there's no reason why the world's leading authority on, say, Classical Greece shouldn't be Maori.

But those are all just distractions. The bottom line is, a year on, Jamie and I could see that Tetsubo just wasn't going to happen. At least, it will only happen if we do it ourselves.

Currently we're mulling over whether this is worth doing as a Kickstarter. We'd need to rebuild it around a different game system, of course, and our first thought was Powered By The Apocalypse, which we enjoyed for its simplicity when we played our Sagas of the Icelanders campaign, but the appeal of Tetsubo will surely be to traditional roleplayers whereas PbtA would take it in a whole other narrativist direction. So not that.

One option is to use a variant of my Tirikelu RPG, but I'm not sure that would make best use of the skills and career paths in the Tetsubo book. I intend using Tirikelu for my Abraxas RPG (a good fit, hopefully, being science fantasy) and also Tirikelu isn't GURPS; we can't just tack it onto everything. Jamie suggested using a variant of my currently-in-development Jewelspider rules, on the principle that OSR players and Warhammer fans might have at least a nodding acquaintance with Dragon Warriors.

But then we had a brainwave. Paul Mason is an Anglo-Japanese academic who has lived in Japan for over twenty-five years. He's not only an authority on Japanese culture and history, he's also an editor, author and RPG designer with his own (as yet unpublished) game Outlaws, based on the stories of Liang Shan Po. What if we used the Outlaws system for Tetsubo? Not only would the gaming world get a taste of a brilliant and authentic Eastern-influenced RPG, but we'd get an extremely erudite Japanese scholar on board to consult on the final manuscript.

We asked Paul, he said yes, and that's the plan right now -- unless somebody throws an even better suggestion into the comments below.

 

Further reading, viewing and playing:

• Kurosawa: The Samurai Collection
• Seven Samurai
• Onibaba
• Ugetsu Monogatari
• Kwaidan
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance
• The Von Bek series by Michael Moorcock
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
• Zweihander RPG

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.

"The Only Way is Narnia" (scenario)

In this standalone and not wholly serious scenario (see Postscript) the characters are loyal vassals of the young King Allandar who is trying to unite the dozen provinces of Meropis. The provinces were previously held together under a yoke of tyranny, and now that the tyrants have been defeated after a long war of liberation there is a risk of fragmentation.

The characters are the King’s paladins. Pre-generated characters are provided (links below) using GURPS. Each paladin is famous for his or her archetypal talent and from these talents are derived their nicknames:

• The Anvil 
• The Cunning 
• The Hunter 
• Silvertongue 
• Surefoot

Tell the players a few of the legends that are told of the paladins. When Silvertongue once dropped his sword in the middle of a fight, he convinced his opponent to give him his. The Hunter once read a message brought by a pigeon before the bird had alighted. The Anvil once held up a bridge while the King’s army crossed. And so on. It is up to you how much these stories are exaggerations.

Tell the players the nicknames and let them decide among themselves who will play which paladin. Once they have their character sheets (you can get those as PDFs from the links above) they can name their character -- eg Merivus the Cunning. Whatever they like. Then randomly hand to all paladins but the Anvil one of the four magic swords that are twins to Auric, the Sword of Light, wielded by the King:

The Sword of Justice
None can avoid justice. Finds weak points; half usual penalty when targeting chinks in armour (p400).

The Sword of Fire
Swift and deadly is this blade. You can make Whirlwind Attacks (p232) at -3 instead of -5.

The Sword of Lightning
No weapon strikes more swiftly; you can make Rapid Strikes at -4 instead of -6 (p370).

The Sword of Darkness
Strikes in a blur; your opponent is at an extra 50% penalty defending against Deceptive Attacks (p370).

HISTORY

After a three-year military campaign, King Allandar of Durdania has freed the dozen provinces of the Meropis Isles, driving out the Seven Necromancers of Nephid who have ruled (via their puppets, the Syndics of Tasuun) for a hundred years.

Nephid is a long reef of black granite crags in the sea to the west of Meropis. It is said at high tide to be entirely submerged. Nothing lives there apart from sea-birds and barnacles, but the few who have returned to tell of it speak of the lingering presence of the Necromancers who are said to lie submerged in the kelp-choked caves.

Durdania is an island province to the east of the main continent of Meropis. Its people are accomplished sailors and were (with Novaria) the most unruly of the Syndics’ subjects. It is ruled by the young King Allandar who is accompanied by his Paladins, childhood friends of heroic courage and ability. (The player-characters are the Paladins.)

Novaria is a rich province in the north-west of the Meropis empire. The Novarians are proud and see themselves as a distinct culture. Now that the Necromancers have been overthrown they don’t want anything to do with King Allandar’s plans to forge a united kingdom. But King Allandar needs Novaria’s wealth to rebuild the poorer parts of the empire which were always bled dry under the old regime and have suffered even more hardship during the war of liberation.

Novaria is ruled by Queen Aphra, who should really be a duchess but King Allandar has granted that concession in hopes they will stay in the empire. Queen Aphra has spent her life opposing the worst excesses of the Syndics, and now seems to regard their defeat as the opportunity to free her kingdom from the empire.

Tarascon is the lion deity of Novaria, a sort of Old Testament righteous type with a sprinkling of Jesus-like teaching as it might be understood by a High Tory of the 19th century. The Novariaians resent being told they are no longer allowed to preach their faith, as they regard all other religions as heathen.

(Maps? As long as players have a rough idea of where they're going, I don't know that you really need maps for a one-shot game. I swiped from Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique, but you could use anything, even Cretaceous Europe, or Bernard Sleigh's "mappe" of Fairyland, or Narnia itself. Or pick something from a book like 100 Fantasy Kingdoms.)

Deep background (not generally known, even to Dr Kestrel): 
Aphra Luttrell is the children’s great-aunt and came through into this world from Leofold Manor in 1870s Dorset when she was 14; she’s now in her late 70s. She imposed a version of her faith (a combination of Sunday school lessons and patriotism) complete with lion emblem.

The Luttrell children 

• Freddy 10 years 
• Mel (Amelia) 11 years 
• Justin 12 years

The Luttrell siblings are from Cheyne Walk in London and left Earth in January 1941, during the Blitz. They came through to this world using a fakir’s rope that their father brought back from India. Freddy played a tune on an Indian pipe and the rope stood up straight. They climbed it, then found themselves climbing down into this world. The rope went limp and Freddy had left the flute behind so there was no going back. They have a healing salve which they can offer to wounded characters. It’s standard WW2 first aid ointment, but superior to anything non-magical this world has to offer.

STRUCTURE OF THE ADVENTURE

This is a very highly structured adventure that is designed to be run in three hours. These are the story beats you’ll be aiming to hit:

• Arrive at the palace. Get the mission briefing: stop the rebels destroying signal towers.
• Go to Lord Garious. See pigs. Meet signal officer: told that the rebel leaders are children.
• Go to woods. Meet the children: told that Vitrine the Glass Witch is alive and in the area, waiting for her casque (armour) which has been reforged in Mount Holovar. (The rebels disabled the signal towers partly because they think the empire is in league with her.)
• Find Gall: told that Vitrine’s casque is being brought by the Bear of Drear via the Old Road that runs parallel to the main highway through the scrubland. Fight Vitrine’s emissaries. Discover the armour is fake – they’ve been duped. Real casque being brought by a flock of ravens direct to Garious’s keep. Back to Garious’s keep. Fight Vitrine herself.
• Discover the real mastermind was Gall. Try and recapture him.

1. THE PALACE

The capital city of Meropis. As the characters approach the palace they see the signs of the long bitter siege: damaged buildings and people queuing for food.

Prisoners await judgement in the hastily-assembled courts. They hear grumbles that the soldiers of the Syndics have largely been allowed to integrate into the army (albeit on probation) and the only ones likely to be punished are the most senior officials.

The town crier is making some proclamations in the main square:

• Proselytising is now outlawed. The King wants to prevent religious schisms breaking up the empire.
• Users of magic must obtain a licence for any conjuration higher than the third decile of power.

These have no direct bearing on the adventure. They just serve to show the players how much remains to be done in winning the peace.

THE THRONE ROOM

Also damaged by the fighting. The High Throne is covered, the Eye of Nephid on the wall now effaced.

After a three-year war, the young and idealistic King Allandar of Durdania has freed the dozen provinces of Meropis, driving out the Necromancers of Nephid who have ruled (via their puppets, the Syndics of Tasuun) for a hundred years.

As they arrive, the King is explaining the reconciliation policy to his councillors. They would rather round up and punish all collaborators, but he says that the infrastructure of the realm is fragile and they cannot afford to replace every lord who made an accommodation with the Syndics’ rule.

The King’s advisor is Doctor Kestrel (Merlin type) who explains the background to their mission:

“To ward against any possibility of counterattack from beyond the Black River we have been erecting signal towers across the empire. However, the rebels of Novaria have been attacking the work gangs and burning the towers. Their short-sightedness threatens the continued stability of the whole realm.”

The King: “Now we must unify and rebuild. The empire is on a knife edge, weak and battered after years of war. Novaria was sheltered from the worst excesses of the Syndics’ rule, and did not suffer from the desperate fighting that ravaged the eastern states. We need the grain and resources that Novaria can provide to build a better life for all our subjects.”

2. THE KEEP IN THE MARCHES

New signal towers being attacked suggests the enemy camp is in the fringes of the Tinarath Woods, close to the border with Novaria.

The characters arrive at the keep of Lord Garious, warden of the marches, formerly a lukewarm sympathizer with the deposed Syndics of Tasuun, who were Nephid’s puppet rulers. Can the characters trust him?

Garious keeps a stable of fine pigs who snuff out truffles for him – the source of his wealth. The characters are treated to truffles at dinner.

The keep is by the town of Periton. They ride into stone stables. A reek of pigsties (this is where you can mention the truffle pigs) is swiftly masked by the many barrels of apples that line the upper halls; Periton Keep is also famed for its cider.

Lord Garious greets them in a drawing room with a crackling fire and gable windows looking out north across the moors.

They meet Captain Terfin, who was in charge of one of the sacked signal towers. He says that the rebel leaders were children.

(I based Periton town and castle on Dunster, especially the stables.)

3. THE WOODS

The Luttrell children are here with an airship (the Blighty). They expect to intercept Vitrine’s casque (suit of power armour) on the road.

On the ground: Freddy and Justin are with the troops. If attacked, they and their men (with a cry of “Scramble, chaps!”) ascend to the airship on individual balloons whose tethers they can cut quickly. To catch them you’d need to climb an adjacent tree really fast (as Surefoot could).

The airship Blighty nestles in a hollowed-out “crater” amid the treetops, so is not obvious till you’re up close.

Six soldiers rush forward to hold off the paladins while their comrades escape. A Tactics roll spots they are fighting defensively to buy time.

If they ascend to the airship, Mel Luttrell appears from the cabin and points an old WW1 Webley revolver at them. “If I pull this trigger, the stick will deal a sure death. But it contains only three such deaths, and I would sooner mete those deaths out to truly wicked foes who deserve them, so I’ll give you a chance to unhand my brother.”

THE CHILDREN

The children accuse the empire (they call it the Meropi Empire) of trying to assassinate Queen Aphra. They are highly prejudiced against the empire, regarding the new king as barely an improvement on the Syndics. Of course, their thinking is coloured by the world they come from, where radical visionary politicians are distrusted with good reason. As evidence of the assassination plot they present a dagger with the royal crest. “This was coated in poison!” (It was stolen from the throne room a few weeks ago by Lord Garious.)

Assuming the characters can calm things down and a truce is agreed, the Luttrells explain a little of how they came here and, more importantly, their mission:

“Vitrine the Glass Witch yet lives. She is the last of the Necromancers. It was thought she had fled, since her condition makes her wary of battle, but now we know that her casque – the impervious body armour that protects her, which was believed destroyed – has been reforged in the fires of Mount Holovar. According to our portents, the casque is to be delivered to her here in the Marches. And soon.”

If any characters are injured, remember that the children have a healing salve (see earlier).

GALL THE SPRITE

While they talk they have a chance of noticing a soft slithering or rustling (check Danger Sense too):

“The Glass Witch is said to be served by a woodland sprite!” gasps Mel.

Gall acts like a snivelling wretch and claims he serves Vitrine out of fear. “I’d like her dead too. One tap would shatter her – unless she gets her casque back. That’s what she calls her armour. It isn’t being brought on the highway, but on the Old Road that lies through the woods. But beware, for it is guarded by the Bear of Drear and Minister Midwinter.”

4. THE OLD ROAD

Snow starts to fall. This is the sorcery of Minister Midwinter, a demon that owes a service to Vitrine.

The characters need a tracking roll to find the Old Road (Gall will ingratiate himself by pointing them vaguely in the right direction) and it’s magical. If you step off the road, what is on it appears only as an intangible blur. Because of the snow, roll IQ to remain on it during a fight, or IQ+5 at other times.

The Bear of Drear is a huge mound of a monster that stinks of decay. Its fur is clumped and grimy with grave-mold, its skin slimy and pitted. It approaches accompanied by a thin blue figure and, behind them, a carriage like a hearse bearing an ornate mahogany casket.

Minister Midwinter, the aforementioned thin blue figure, stands to one side surrounded by a whirlwind of ice. To reach him: HT roll to endure biting cold, ST roll to push through the wind, then any hit will drive him off and you can see the Old Road clearly.

But when they have won, they find the carriage contains only an empty box.

High up in the sky they see a huge flock of ravens.

5. BACK TO PERITON

The ravens take their burden to the tower of the castle. As they arrive, Vitrine is already armouring up (you know, like this).

She first telekinetically lifts the cobbles from the main street (or courtyard) and these hang in the air, shooting in volleys at the characters: 2d6 each round, subtract armour and shield.

Then she starts a storm gathering, which after six rounds allows her to cast lightning bolts in addition to other actions.

Then she conjures a sickle (2d+2 cut) and whip (1d+5 cr, and HT or double damage) made of coruscating silver-green energy with which she fights (both weapons each round, skill 15).

She has 20-point armour but, in effect, a single Hit Point.

6. FINAL TWIST 

After defeating Vitrine, they find a shoot and gall lodged inside her shattered glass skull. The true mastermind was Gall, who took control of the witch after the other Necromancers fell. But Gall has got away. In fact he’s burrowed underground and the only chance of finding him now is to use one of the truffle pigs (though a Perception roll beating a critical of 6 on 17 will at least confirm he can’t have got outside a perimeter).

7. EPILOGUE

Can they reconcile the King and the rebels?

Can they help the Luttrell children go home? (One way to get them home would be if Silvertongue plays a tune to animate the rope again.)

It's not expected they'll necessarily do this within the three-hour gaming session, but if not then they'll have something to think about afterwards.

POSTSCRIPT

I wrote the adventure as a birthday surprise for the 13-year-old son of a gaming buddy. The concept was simply: what if you experienced Narnia from the other side? Knowing I'd only have three hours to run it in, I abandoned my usual freeform approach and scripted it like a story -- not something I'd do often, but this time it worked. If Narnia isn't your bedknobs, here are some alternative sources for inspiration.

Boneland

The Box of Delights

The Dark is Rising

Five Children and It

The Giant Under the Snow

Inkheart

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

The Moon of Gomrath

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

Wolf Star

Mi amore chicka ferdy

The hot news today (well, it's been a bit quiet) is that Britain's prime minister, Bojo the Clown, has been watching his favourite movie. Take a guess. Darkest Hour? Churchill? No, it's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It reminded me of a prophetic scene in Can You Brexit? where PM is relaxing with a spot of high fantasy escapism:

Johnson's choice of viewing comes as no surprise when you realize that his childhood ambition (ie just before he was made leader of the Nasti Party) was to be world king. And he made it, almost, because whenever he's on TV the name Cnut springs to mind. But let's not be too hard on him; there are far less qualified wannabe world kings out there.

There's little point in trying to flog Can You Brexit? now, I guess. People think that the pandemic has made the whole question of Brexit irrelevant. So I'll just say that Spanish Flu didn't negate the consequences of World War 1, and point out that if you want to give a non-fantasy, halfling-free gamebook a go, it's still on sale and you can also play it for free here using the character sheet here. Bonus points if you can salvage Britain's national health service from the current crisis. Come to that, bonus points if you can salvage Britain.



Anyway, enough of Lord of the Rings and of UK politics. Be here on Friday when we're off on a one-shot roleplaying adventure set in a whole other fantasy land. You won't want to miss "The Only Way Is Narnia".

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.