In case you missed it, I was invited to write a guest blog over at DMR Books earlier this week. The subject was A. Merritt's incomparable proto-Sword & Sorcery novel The Ship of Ishtar, but the larger topic was the idea of "adult" fantasy, and how it's far bigger and more meaningful than just violence, sex, and swearing. You can read the whole thing here. DMR has actually honored me by asking me to participate in their annual Guest Bloggeramma event for three years running now. It's always both humbling and exciting to be included among the talent Dave Ritzlin and Deuce Richardson gather up each January. The writers they invite are some of the very best essayists and fictioneers in the pulp and Sword & Sorcery fields, and getting to throw my $.02 in alongside them is just as big a thrill as seeing what they have to offer every year. For completeness' sake, (and on the off chance any readers here missed them the first time around) here are links to my other two articles. The first is 2020's, which was a deep dive into the hidden history of John Bloodstone's novel Thundar: Man of Two Worlds. Read it here. The second is from 2019, which was a comparison and retrospective of Robert E. Howard's two stories about the 1014 battle that ended Viking rule in Ireland, "The Grey God Passes" and "Spears of Clontarf." Read it here.
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It's not every day that I get a cold call from a publisher asking me to review an upcoming collection. It's even rarer that said collection contains work from several of my favorite writers. Folks, I can't tell you just how fast I jumped at the chance to be among the first to lay eyes on The Penultimate Men, scheduled to be published the first week in July by Pilum Press. Longtime readers of the blog will know I'm a fan of post-apocalyptic stories. But truth be told, with lockdowns, global pandemics, riots, and other such pleasant subjects saturating the daily news cycle for the last several months, I haven't been turning to the genre as much. It's not that I've lost my taste for it. Not exactly. What I've lost my taste for is the way most authors—and filmmakers—present it. The apocalyptic genre is one that easily lends itself to nihilism and misery. Think back to some of the most foundational works of the genre, and you'll see I'm right: Max Rockatansky being double crossed and used as bait, after finally agreeing to help the survivors in The Road Warrior. Charlton Heston's helpless, maddened scream on the beach at the end of Planet of the Apes. The trigger-happy posse executing Duane Jones at the end of Night of the Living Dead. Sorry, but I've been getting plenty of doom and gloom on the news lately. I definitely don't want any more of it in my entertainment. But folks, that nihilism and misery is not intrinsic to the genre. As proof, you need look no further than the stories contained in The Penultimate Men. If a collection of post-apocalyptic fiction could ever be called a breath of fresh air, this is surely it. Authors Jon Mollison, Neal Durando, and Schuyler Hernstrom give the reader tales of heroism, brotherhood, and community. These are hopeful stories, full of wonder, awe, and struggle. Yes, the apocalyptic world presented here is dark. But the light of humanity burns as brightly as ever against that darkness. So what if those humans are sporting a few extra arms or eyes? The collection opens with a thoughtful introduction by Misha Burnett, in which he discusses genre, tropes, and the loosely-shared universe concept behind the collection: to use the setting of a post-apocalyptic RPG as a starting point (Gamma World, by inference), and for each of the authors imagine a sort of "retro-apocalyptic" future, expanding on it with their own unique, fresh takes. You heard that right, folks. What we have here is basically an unauthorized Gamma World anthology, written by some of the strongest indie voices working in the #PulpRev. Jon Mollison offers up two stories, and the range he shows between them illustrates why he's quickly becoming my favorite writer of the apocalypse. The first, "Fire and Folly," is a short, simple coming of age tale a that packs a deceptively powerful emotional punch in its final lines. The second, "Wind on the Water," is much more action oriented. Opening with an unexpected sighting of strange sails on the horizon and a call of alarm, the story follows mutant hero Wind and the rest of the odd inhabitants of his lakeside village as they try to discern if the strange fleet is attacking, or fleeing from some even greater threat. What follows is a tale of a desperate stand against impossible odds, featuring everyday protagonists—or as close as you're likely to find in this book—wretched monsters, and high stakes. This is the stuff pure adventure fiction is made of. And quite frankly, Mollison's short came closer to capturing the peculiar magic of the late David Gemmell's work than just about anything I've read since the Big Man's passing. Neal Durando is a writer whose work I was entirely unfamiliar with prior to reading this collection, so his "Root Hog or Die" was my first exposure to his work. This beautifully written short brings the reader into the mind of the mutant in a way that few stories ever do. Its opening lines are delightfully, deliberately off-balancing. The characters, particularly the two-headed narrator Walbur/Wilbar, don't "think" entirely human, and Durando does an excellent job putting us there. But the tribe leader, Gordo, clearly does think in somewhat human terms. He suspects there's more to life than rooting for scraps and hunting, and wants to lead the tribe to the strange lights on the horizon. Definitely a story that will reward multiple reads. "The Judgement of Daganha" by Schuyler Hernstrom is a sequel to his acclaimed novella, "Mortu and Kyrus in the White City." In that story, Hernstrom used his barbarian and monkey duo to take on one of the sacred cows of science fiction, to wide critical praise. This time around, Hernstrom uses the pair to pay tribute to classic Sword & Sandal films of the 1960's, like Jason and the Argonauts or The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Tightly plotted, with plenty of intrigue, action, and humor, "The Judgement of Daganha" manages the difficult task of improving on its predecessor, already an acknowledged classic among #PulpRev fans. Featuring scorching deserts, scheming cults, and giant scorpions, it's like the best Ray Harryhausen film you never saw, the one that only ever existed in your wildest imagination. Take my word for it. If you're a Hernstrom fan, you need to buy The Penultimate Men for this story alone. Rounding the book out are two essays by Jeffro Johnson, who brings the same level of analysis and lucid commentary that earned him fame for his landmark book, Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons. "Starship" is a retrospective look at the game Metamorphasis Alpha, and how it relates to the mega-dungeon and Old School play. The other, "Symbiot," is a look at the literary (and film) inspirations for Gamma World. This essay serves as a sort of coda to Appendix N, and if you found yourself wishing you could get just one more taste of Jeffro's gaming/fiction commentary, you'll at least find it here, as he tackles Gamma World's unofficial "Appendix G." The final verdict? A new Mortu and Kyrus novella would be reason enough to buy this collection. The fact that the other characters you'll meet here are more than worthy of sharing their company is just an unexpected and added bonus. Once you meet them, I can promise you'll never forget Spearshaker, Ironmane, Wind, Gordo, or Wilbar/Walbur. Jon Mollison, Sky Hernstrom, and Neal Durando have given us heroes for the end times. What's more, they're heroes worth rooting for, with virtues we'd recognize in ourselves. Men who fight for family, home, and one another, rather than the usual parade of nihilistic survivors, selfish loners, and emotionally broken scavengers. This is the apocalypse we deserve, genre fans. And it's been too long in coming. The Penultimate Men will be available to purchase on Lulu.com. You can get it here.
Say one thing for Alexandru Constantin: you can't accuse him of being a man who complains without taking action. Case in point: when he felt there weren't enough conservative voices in the critical sphere--an opinion he is far from alone in sharing, by the way—he decided to organize the Short Story Book Club. His stated goal is two-fold: create a body of conservative, countercultural criticism, and draw more attention to indie writers overlooked by mainstream media outlets. I believe both of these ideals are 100% worthwhile, so I'm throwing my hat into the ring to help out. The fact that the first story Constantin selected for this project is Schuyler Hernstrom's awesome novella, "Mortu and Kyrus in the White City?" Man, that's just gravy. I first reviewed Hernstrom's story two years ago, when he released it as a standalone e-book on Amazon. You can find that spoiler-filled review here, and it still sums up my overall feelings on this story: It's a balls-to-the-wall awesome piece of science fantasy, the likes of which no one outside the #PulpRev community is writing anymore. It's also a brutally sincere and final rebuttal of Ursula K. Le Guin's Hugo-award winning parable, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." I'm not going to rehash my old review here. Rather, I'm going to expand on it with a couple of details I noticed during last night's reread of both Le Guin's "Omelas," and of Hernstrom's vastly superior "Mortu and Kyrus." It's also probably going to be just as spoiler-filled as my first review, so be forewarned. That said, a brief aside before continuing with the analysis: In terms of pure entertainment, I can't recommend Hernstrom's story enough. And if all you're craving is a dose of pure, adrenaline-filled awesomeness with alien ruins, axe-wielding barbarians, motorcycles, and talking monkeys, then stop reading this review NOW. Buy Hernstrom's new collection, The Eye of Sounnu from DMR Books, which is where you can read this slice of pure heavy-metal havoc. I promise, you won't be disappointed. New Observations Reader, time has not been kind to my opinion of Le Guin's piece. I've never been much of a fan, mostly because the moral premise it presents is shoddy at best, but certain passages that I overlooked on previous readings jumped out at me last night. In a nutshell, Le Guin's parable envisions a "perfect society," a perfectly happy city called Omelas, where that happiness is somehow maintained solely via the horrible abuse and neglect of a single child locked in a basement. The parable then talks about the "ones who walk away" upon learning of this suffering. They leave the city, never to return, and this is presented as "remarkable." In previous readings, I guess I focused mostly on the "stinger" of the horribly abused kid sitting in his or her own filth, because I didn't really remember much of Le Guin's description of her vision of what Omelas' "perfect" society must look like—she repeatedly reminds the reader that they can picture Omelas however they like, as the details don't matter, just as long as the reader believes what he or she pictures. Anyway, this short excerpt is rather telling, but the emphasis at the end is mine: But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, and horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don’t hesitate. Let us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger, who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea. But really it would be better not to have any temples in Omelas—at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy no. Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine souffles to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be? I thought at first there were not drugs, but that is puritanical. For those who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of drooz may perfume the ways of the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after some hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions at last of the very arcana and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as exciting the pleasure of sex beyond belief; and it is not habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think there ought to be beer. What else, what else belongs in the joyous city? The sense of victory, surely, the celebration of courage. But as we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial. Apparently, utopia is a place of guilt-free orgies in the streets, cheap drugs, and no soldiers. Not to mention no organized religion or temples. In other words, the perfect society—or at least the outward veneer of one—is a hippie Utopia. Color me shocked. At any rate, what's especially fascinating to me is that last part in Le Guin's excerpt, the part about no soldiers. To casually dismiss "the sense of victory and the celebration of courage" felt by soldiers as "the joy built upon successful slaughter" is—at best—a remarkably narrow-minded view of what fighting men actually do, and why they do it. Soldiers fight for many reasons, not least of which is to preserve life from hideous vultures like the ones in Omelas. Incidentally, the word she's looking for to describe that odd, swelling-in-the-chest feeling about victory and courage? It's "honor." And no, I won't presume the unnamed narrator of Le Guin's piece is acting as a mouthpiece for her personal beliefs. However, I will say that it's no wonder her narrator—who only sees a soldier's honor as a celebration of killing for killing's sake—can't imagine of any response to evil other than meek compliance or running away. A coward's worldview can only conceive of coward's solutions, after all, and Le Guin wrote a damnably convincing one. Compare this to Schuyler Hernstrom's characters, when they encounter a more fleshed out version of Omelas in his White City. When they learn this near-perfect utopia is maintained through stealing the life-force of orphaned children, Christian monk Kyrus wants to go get reinforcements from the nearby city of Zantyum. He wants to raise an expedition to bring the evil denizens of the White City to justice. Barbarian Mortu, however, refuses to wait that long. His response is destined to become one of the classic lines in Sword & Sorcery fiction: "You may talk of cities and justice all you wish. Tonight, the pagan wins. My anger will be sated and these wicked people brought to ruin." He then stalks out into the night to deliver bloody justice on the end of a blade. Fortunately for lovers of action and adventure, Hernstrom's White City isn't quite as peaceful or devoid of soldiers as Le Guin's vision of Omelas. There's enough violence on display at the climax to be satisfying without being the least bit gratuitous, especially Mortu's final duel with rival Tomas. Their exchange during the climactic fight is another one that escaped me last reading, among all the other great lines Hernstrom delivers in this tale. Again, the emphasis is mine: ...Mortu smiled down at him and spoke. "The souls of the children cry out for vengeance." That exchange might as well be a thesis statement for this tale, and for why I love these two characters so much. In Mortu and Kyrus, Hernstrom gave us a pair of heroes who couldn't just walk away from Omelas. He gave us heroes who not only had to do something, but who had both the courage and strength to tear the whole rotten thing down to its foundation. Of course, that's a solution requiring a less cowardly worldview than the one presented in Le Guin's story. For one thing, it requires such "fearful" and "trivial" things as honor, a subject about which her narrator apparently knows nothing. Fortunately, the same can't be said for Mortu and Kyrus. Nor could it be said, one would suppose, for Schuyler Hernstrom. Sorry for the lack of updates lately, folks. Fact is, with so much of the country having to deal with lockdowns, layoffs, and curfews as a result of COVID-19, I haven't been sure what to write about. I did have a whole slate of 'Pocky-clypse Now reviews planned, but I get the feeling they'll go over like a lead balloon right about now. Something about a deadly disease dominating the news cycle 24/7 just makes reading about the end of the world a little less recreational for some people. That said, if you are looking for a great post-apocalyptic read, I want to draw your attention to the work of Jon Mollison. I read his A Moon Full of Stars recently, with the intent of dedicating a full-length 'Pocky-clypse Now review to it soon. I do still plan on doing that. But I'm probably going to wait until after our daily news cycle looks a little less like the opening credits to the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake. Anyway, Mollison's book is a fantastic, fast-paced story full of adventure, action, and capital-R Romance in the classic Burroughsian sense. It's well worth your time, especially if you want a post-apocalyptic tale that doesn't wallow in nihilism and misery. You can buy it here. The other thing I haven't wanted to do is shill or give updates about my upcoming Fantasy Vietnam project. Money is tight for lots of folks right now, and it's not really much of a priority for me to put out a game that no one is going to have the disposable cash to buy for the foreseeable future. I'm still going to work on it. But at a slower pace. So, what does that leave? Well, Adam Lane Smith had some thoughts on that a couple of weeks ago, when discussing the possibility of his day job shutting down: He's completely right about that. What will continue throughout this—and likely for a long while afterward—is a desire for cheap, good entertainment. Pure, fun escapism is what people want right now. To that end, I've started work on something I hinted at about three weeks ago on twitter, in a joke exchange back and forth with Smith. That's right. The bad guys would have gotten away with it, if not for those meddling kids. Only this time, two of those meddling kids are recently returned Vietnam Vets, one is the take-no-shit daughter of a Boston cop, and the other knows how to mix a bomb in the bathtub. They'd better hope the police get there first... The other thing I'm doing with this project is test-driving Smith's outlining and writing process, as described in his writing book, Write like a Beast. Longtime readers will remember the glowing praise I gave Smith's book a few months back, as well as the eagerness I expressed to try out some of his methods to see how they affect my own productivity. My impressions so far? Smith's method is working for me. I feel like I have a stronger outline than I've ever had in the past. I also feel like the characters are more fleshed out, with clearer goals and motivations. My total time, from planning the characters, to plotting the story, to choreographing the two most difficult scenes ahead of time with individual beat sheets, was about two days of solid writing. While I'm not up to Smith's impressive speeds yet, this is already a vast improvement. Over my usual two weeks or more. I can already say this book was worth every penny. At least in my case. Anyway, I'm planning to start drafting this week. Meddling kids, (sort of) talking dogs, and (almost) ghosts await. As do some vicious beat downs, explosions, and hellacious firefights. Before I get into this week's rules changes, I want to talk about a planned scheduling shake-up, and call attention to a cool thing that arrived in the mail. First, the cool thing: Personally, I find that 70's rock and retro-70's rock inspires most of my D&D writing. Something about the aesthetic just gets me in the right headspace. Black Sabbath. Rainbow. The Sword. The Wizards. But as I've been writing this blog series, I've mostly been rocking out to Gygax. If you're unfamiliar with them, try to imagine a hard rock band that combines the music of Thin Lizzy with lyrics directly inspired by Old School D&D. I've been a die hard fan since their first release, 2015's Critical Hits. If you're a metalhead or a rocker of any kind, I highly recommend checking out their Bandcamp page. Anyway, Gygax released what is undoubtedly the coolest bit of band swag in the history of band swag—a limited edition Gygax Guild d20. Needless to say, I've already used this bad boy to launch a massive goblin assault, one that slaughtered an unwary wizard PC and sent the surviving party members running for their lives. Which leads me to the scheduling shake-up: As I mentioned a few weeks back, I've been at work on an Appendix N inspired science fantasy series, one that envisions what D&D fiction might have looked like if it followed the wilder literary roots of the game, rather than filling in the map of TSR and WotC's pre-fab fantasy worlds. And while I still plan on writing that, the fact is my recent thought experiments on what Fantasy Effing Vietnam would look like have gotten a bit more attention. To the point that I've gotten several messages in public and in private expressing interest in a published print version. Rule number one in this writing gig, folks. Never disappoint your audience. Especially when they're actively asking you for something. So, yes. A published print version of these rules is now in the works. To that end, I've been running some live play tests with two separate groups. Once that's done and all the obvious bugs are worked out, I've got two other groups tentatively lined up as my beta testers. If all goes well, I'm hoping to have these rules pretty well ironed out in the next few weeks. Then it's going to be a matter of formatting, getting some art, and making it available on DriveThruRPG. Hopefully, that won't take too long. In the meantime, I plan to keep these blog posts coming. They're a helpful way to "think out loud" about what I'm doing, as well as offer some insight into the ideas behind the rules choices I'm making. As I said way back in part one of this series, there is a guiding principle behind this project. Fact is, I don't believe D&D's ruleset was ever intended as an all-purpose, generic fantasy adventure simulator. Each edition has been geared towards a specific, implied setting, and every subsequent edition and rules modification has made different assumptions about the world it aims to simulate. And as we'll see in this week's post, "Fantasy Effing Vietnam" makes some very specific assumptions about the nature of combat. You Better Run Through The Jungle You've been watching the way Kruppa the Thief walks, the way he rolls his feet slowly from the outside to the inside with each step. The way he smoothly transitions his weight from one leg to the other. The way he seems to feel each twig and before he steps on it, and adjusts his foot to the left or right. You do your best to imitate him when on patrol, and you're starting to get good. Even Bregan the Dwarf grudgingly commented on it. At this rate, you just might survive. The forest stands around you, silent as always. Kruppa leads the way, sliding from shadow to shadow like a ghost. Bregan brings up the rear. You're in the middle, eyes and ears alert for the tell-tale signs of a goblin ambush: freshly disturbed earth, out-of-place bird calls, and bits of animal carcasses strung in the trees. The sun glints off something in the undergrowth, and you freeze in place, heart racing. Metal or glass. Has to be. You flash a hand signal to Bregan, halting him in place. It's several tense seconds before Kruppa looks back and sees you, catches the hand signal, and halts as well. Several seconds in which you're waiting for hell on earth to explode from the underbrush. Now that you have both Kruppa and Bregan paying attention, you point in the direction of the strange glint. As they're watching, the sun catches it again. Kruppa waves you all forward, angling the patrol to move in a wide circle around the strange glint. You'll check it out—could be an enemy observer, could be the remains of those missing settlers from a few weeks back. But you'll approach indirectly. It's almost a half hour before you approach the small depression where you spotted the flash. Slow, careful movement, with plenty of doubling back, double-and-triple checking for signs of ambush. At last, you arrive. It's the settlers, all right. Three families, all splayed out in the underbrush. Throats cut, valuables stolen. All except the silver mirror. The silver mirror is carefully strung up in the trees, to catch the sunlight just so... "Shit!" Kruppa says. Then the hillocks to the north and south are alive with activity. All at once, crossbow bolts are cutting through the underbrush. You feel the sting as one slices your upper arm, and another as it buries itself in the meat of your thigh. You hug the dirt, knowing damn well running is impossible. You glance to Kruppa, wondering what the plan is. And you realize he won't be telling you. Not anytime soon. A goblin crossbow bolt buried itself in his throat. He's gasping for air around the barbed tip, drowning in bright red blood. Off to your left, Bregan swears, shouting that he's hit. It's poison. He needs antidote. Somewhere above you, a crossbow bolt shatters the silver mirror. It Takes a Thief to Muck Up a Perfectly Simple System One thing I've never liked about the Thief class is that it has a different resolution mechanic for what should be a common task. For example, Climbing a sheer surface is something every PC is going to attempt at some point. But in giving the Thief a unique die roll to determine it—a percentile—the rules basically force the DM to tell any non-Thief players they either can't make the attempt, or force them to come up with a different roll for the same action. Neither option really works for me. For what it's worth, BECMI goes with the second option, which is definitely the lesser of two evils. On page 85 of the Rules Cyclopedia, under Other Character Skills, the Stealth Skill allows any PC to learn something similar to the Thief's Move Silently ability, with the caveat that it has to be terrain specific for each skill slot spent. The way Skills work in BECMI is that they're rolled on a d20 against the relevant attribute. But unlike an attack roll, a LOW result is preferred here, and a 1 is always considered a success. For Stealth, the relevant attribute is Dexterity. So let's say I have a group of four first level adventurers. Fakk the Fighter took Forest Stealth as a Skill. Takk the Thief didn't, relying instead on his class ability. Wakk the Wizard and Dakk the Dwarf didn't take it either, because they had other things to focus on. Now say they all want to sneak up on some goblins. As it's written in BECMI, I have to roll a percentile for Takk, a d20 against DEX for Fakk, and just make something up for the others. With inconsistent shit like this popping up in play, it's easy to see why some old grognards swear the game started going downhill the second the Thief class was introduced way back in the Greyhawk supplement. That said, house-ruled fixes for this issue have been around as long as the class itself, and some of the newer retro-clones have done an admirable job of fixing this particular hiccup. As an example, I once again have to point to Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Raggi's decision to standardize all skill checks into a few broad categories—each of them resolved with a roll of a single d6—was a simple, elegant move. Furthermore, the customizable Specialist class is one of that system's best innovations, as I've previously written here. Honestly, my biggest gripe with it is that I don't think the d6 "pips" offer enough customization or variation in the dice rolls. That's where Ruinations: Post-Apocalyptic Roleplaying by Brent Ault comes in. Currently available for free in an unfinished state on Google Drive, Ruinations began life as a post apocalyptic re-skin of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, with some of Ault's own unique tweaks and rules changes. It's a fantastic game in its own right, and absolutely worth your time if you're a fan of the apocalyptic genre. One of the coolest design choices Ault made was to keep Raggi's standardized skill categories, but to convert them over to a percentile based system. So instead of all characters beginning with a 1 in 6 chance to succeed in each category, like in LotFP, Ault made it so every character begins with a 20% chance. Then, rather than individual "pips" or points on a d6 to spend at each level, the Adept Class—Ault's version of the Specialist—gets 30 percentile points. The end result is an even more customizable class than Raggi's Specialist. But more importantly, it still uses the same skill resolution roll as all the other classes for common tasks like climbing, tinkering, and stealth. Which brings me to the larger point behind this week's rules change. Remember up above, where I said every change and tweak should say something about the setting? One of the things any "Fantasy Effing Vietnam" setting absolutely needs to simulate is the style of fighting common to Vietnam and mid-20th century warfare. That means a heavy focus on stealth, ambush, and counter-ambush tactics. To that end, one of the base assumptions I'm going to make every time my players "leave the wire" is that they're all doing their level best to Move Silently, Hide in Shadows, and Hear Noises. Meaning every single PC gets access to those three Thief skills, at a minimum. Now, of course the Thieves, the home-brewed Fairy class, and the Elves will be better at it. I'm giving racial bonuses to the Elves and the Fairies, and I'm running the Thieves like Ault's Adepts, with a pool of discretionary points for the player to spend as he sees fit. Every patrol to and from the Keep should be a tense cat and mouse game, as the PCs watch out for goblin ambushes, senses alert for any sound or sign that the enemy is near. Meanwhile, they're trying to move like ghosts through the underbrush, staying to the darkest shadows they can find. Every snapped twig or dropped water skin should cause their little hearts to race, wondering if they've just given themselves away.
On the other side of things, the exact same mechanic is used for the goblins. Instead of a simple roll for random encounters, I'm rolling opposed percentiles every time groups of goblins and PCs are near each other on the map. Chance to Hear Noise vs chance to Move Silently. If one PC is scouting ahead, it's the same thing: Hide in Shadows and Move Silently vs. Hear Noise. Basically, instead of a standard "roll for surprise" I'm rolling to see if the PC's successfully sneak up on the goblins, or if the goblins successfully ambush the PCs. To further keep with the Vietnam, "ambush versus counter-ambush" feel, I've also been sticking with group initiative as outlined in OD&D/Whitebox. I've been finding it's especially useful when the PCs are moving as a group. My method so far has been to roll for ambush, with the winning side getting initiative. They act in order of Missile Fire > Spells > Movement > Melee, with all actions receiving a +4 surprise bonus. Then the losing side goes in the same action order of Missile Fire > Spells > Movement > Melee, with all actions receiving a —4 surprise penalty. Bonuses and penalties vanish at the top of next round, and combat continues to proceed in order until resolved. So far, it's been quick, brutal, and bloody. I've got some more stuff coming up soon, with Critical Hits, long-term injuries, and magic. Plus some thoughts on running the goblin side of things. Stay tuned. And stay quiet out there. The goblins can hear better than you. |
AboutI'm an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer based out of North Carolina. This is where I scream into the digital void. I like cookies. Archives
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