June 2019 – panglott

The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations; or: d36 NPC Plot Hooks

One thing I’m working on is making NPCs more vivid, memorable, and plot-hookier. Not only does this make the world more interesting, but giving the NPCs more plot hooks gives the players more agency. “Everybody has their own story,” I thought, “and problems they can’t solve”—and then happened upon the Wikipedia page for The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations.

Now, not all of these are appropriate for a fantasy or sword-and-sorcery RPG campaign. For example, the myth of Oedipus is certainly dramatic, but is tonally quite at odds with most sword & sorcery ;) and also probably requires a content warning/discussion and some RPG safety tools ;) OTOH, there are dramatic situations where NPCs and PCs could fill differing roles. There are a lot of romantic plots here that won’t interest some people, and some things are to be used with caution, if at all (“two adulterers are conspiring to murder a spouse”, lol), but at the least this chart fronts some less-common backstories for NPCs.

How to roll d36? There is no d36, but there are senary dice, if you use a 6 for a 0. Roll 1d6 for the tens column and 1d6 for the ones column.

Table: d36 Plots & Dramatic Situations
d6	d6	NPC…
6	1	needs help appealing to an official for relief from a persecutor.
6	2	will need help to avoid justice for a wrong they did committed.
6	3	will soon escape justice for a wrong they committed.
6	4	seeks vengeance on a relative for a wrong committed against kin.
6	5	is fleeing vengeance by kin for a wrong committed against a relative.
1	6	is a fugitive from wrongful punishment.
1	1	rightly fears a disaster will befall their patron or faction.
1	2	is beset by unremitting misfortune and woe.
1	3	is plotting rebellion.
1	4	seeks to thwart a conspiracy against the rightful authority.
1	5	will be the target of a coup attempt within their sphere of influence.
2	6	has a quest for a special object, but which requires defeating a powerful adversary.
2	1	is plotting the abduction of someone from their guardian.
2	2	is guarding someone they fear may be abducted.
2	3	has a riddle to solve.
2	4	needs an arbitrator to determine whether they—or their adversary—should receive something of value.
2	5	is conspiring with kin that they hate.
3	6	is the rival of a relative for the affection of one they both love.
3	1	is conspiring with their lover to murder their spouse.
3	2	is in a cycle of madness escalating toward wrongdoing.
3	3	has lost something important through ignorance or neglect.
3	4	has unknowingly slain a relative.
3	5	must make a terrible sacrifice for their ideals or family.
4	6	will soon lose their lover despite making a terrible sacrifice.
4	1	is vying with a rival to acquire an object.
4	2	is conspiring with their adulterous lover against their spouse.
4	3	suspects their cheating spouse is conspiring with a lover against them.
4	4	is in a secret and taboo relationship.
4	5	suspects a villain of dishonoring their beloved.
5	6	is facing a challenge alongside their lover.
5	1	is secretly in love with an enemy that their ally openly hates.
5	2	openly hates an enemy that their ally secretly is in love with.
5	3	is contending with a deity.
5	4	seeks to thwart any investigation into how they have wronged someone else.
5	5	just found something amazing.
6	6	will soon attend the execution of their relative.

Monsters of Minecraft: A Brief Bestiary for Labyrinth Lord

The creatures of the Overworld are a little different from their ordinary Labyrinth Lord RPG equivalents. This conversion is based on the damage of an ordinary sword as a point of reference within each system. The most ordinary sword in Minecraft is a stone sword, which does 2½ hearts of damage; this would be roughly equivalent to one Hit Die or 1d8 hit points of damage in Labyrinth Lord. The player has 10 hearts, and thus is roughly equivalent to a 4th-level character. At one point, I was planning on putting together a Minecraft spin of B1: In Search of Adventure, but that is left as an exercise for the reader.

Cave Spider
No. Enc.: 1d4 (4d6)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 60′ (20′)
climb (60′ (20′)
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 2+2
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d3, poison
Save: F2
Morale: 7
Hoard Class: VI
XP: 47
Cave spiders swarm in cobwebbed mine shafts. Creatures bitten by these venomous creatures must save versus poison or take 1d6 hit points of damage on the next round. Drinking milk will prevent this poison damage.

Creeper
No. Enc.: 1 (0)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 60′ (20′)
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 4
Attacks: special
Damage: 10d6 (auto-explosion)
Save: F4
Morale: 12
Hoard Class: None
XP: 135
Creepers are upright, scrambling creatures that resemble a hideously deformed pig. They are extremely stealthy, and achieve surprise on a roll of 1-4 on 1d6. They attack only by approaching characters and then blowing themselves up with only a brief warning hiss at the end of its turn. At the beginning of its turn, before completing any movement, a creeper can destroy itself in an explosion that deals 10d6 damage to all creatures and objects within a 20-foot radius (save vs. breath for half damage). Creepers are immune to electricity, and if they are charged with a lightning bolt, their explosion will deal 50% more damage.

Ghast
No. Enc.: 1d4 (1d4)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: Fly: 90′ (30′)
Armor Class: 8
Hit Dice: 2
Attacks: 1 (fireball)
Damage: 2d4 plus 6d6
Save: F1
Morale: 6
Hoard Class: None
XP: 38
The floating ghast shoots a slow, rocky missile that strike its target for 2d4 hp of damage, and then explode into a massive fireball. This fireball deals 6d6 points of fire damage to all creatures within 20′, although creatures that succeed on a saving throw vs. breath take half damage. A creature can use a melee weapon to “bat” the missile, sending it flying in a random direction rather than striking its target. To do this, a creature attacked by the fireball must target the fireball with a melee weapon and success at an attack roll that hits AC 2.

Ocelot
No. Enc.: 1d4 (1d4)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 150′ (50′)
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 2
Attacks: 3 (2 claws, 1 bite)
Damage: 1d3/1d3/1d6
Save: F1
Morale: 8
Hoard Class: VI
XP: 30
The Overworld Ocelot is smaller than many other large cats, but nearly as deadly as a Mountain Lion.

Silverfish
No. Enc.: 1d4 (1d4×10)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 60′ (20′)
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 1+1
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1 hp
Save: 0-level human
Morale: 9
Hoard Class: None
XP: 10
Silverfish hide in rock piles and stone crevices, and attack creatures who try to mine new tunnels or clear collapsed passages. Although a single silverfish may be weak, they can chirp to summon large swarms of silverfish nesting nearby.

Skeleton
No. Enc.: 1 (1d3)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 90′ (30′)
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 4
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6 (bow)
Save: F4
Morale: 12
Hoard Class: None
XP: 80

Slime
No. Enc.: 1 (0)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 60′ (20′)
Armor Class: 8
Hit Dice: 3+3
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6 (large), 1d3 (small), or 1 (tiny)
Save: F2
Morale: 12
Hoard Class: VII
XP: 65
This translucent green cube can be found underground or in swampy areas. If a large slime is attacked with other weapons, it splits into two individuals of reduced mass. Each small slime has half the hit points of the large slime. Striking a small slime will split it further into a number of tony slimes wiht hp each. Every successful attack creates a smaller pudding that has 2 HD and deals 1d8 hit points of damage to opponents.

Snow Golem
No. Enc.: 1 (1d4)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 90′ (30′)
Armor Class: 9
Hit Dice: 1+1
Attacks: 1 (snowball)
Damage: special
Save: F1
Morale: 12
Hoard Class: None
XP: 15
Creatures struck with the Overworld Snow Golem’s snowball take no damage, but must succeed at a saving throw vs. paralysis or be pushed back 5 feet.

Spider
No. Enc.: 1 (1)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 60′ (20′)
climb: 60′ (20′)
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 3+3
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d3
Save: F3
Morale: 8
Hoard Class: VI
XP: 65
Forest spiders have a nasty bite, but are not venomous. They are immune to poison.

Wolf
No. Enc.: 1d4 (1d4)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 180′ (60′)
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 1+1
Attacks: 1 (bite)
Damage: 1d6
Save: F1
Morale: 8
Hoard Class: None
XP: 15
The Overworld Wolf is slightly more gracile than its more common relative.

Zombie
No. Enc.: 1d3 (4d6)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 90′ (30′)
Armor Class: 8
Hit Dice: 4
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6 (slam) or by weapon
Save: F4
Morale: 12
Hoard Class: None
XP: 80

Other Mobs
Blaze—4 HD, Atk 3, Dmg 2d8 fire plus fire
Ender Dragon—25 HD, Atk 3 (bite, 2 wings), 2d6 (bite)/1d6 (wing)/1d6(wing)
Enderman—8 HD, Atk 1, Dmg 2d6, dimension door and teleport at will, take 1d6 points of damage from water.
Iron Golem—20 HD, Atk 1, Dmg 4d6
Magma Cube—3+3 HD, Atk 1, Dmg 1d6 or 1d3
Wither Skeleton—8 HD, Atk 1, Dmg 2d6 plus wither
Zombie Pigman—4 HD, Atk 1, Dmg 2d6 (sword)

Peaceful Mobs
Bat—1+1 HD
Chicken—1d4 hp
Cow, Pig, Squid—2 HD
Sheep—1+1 HD
Villager—4 HD

For the reading of Leigh Brackett’s short fiction

At some point in the 1960s, science fiction finally realized how big and interesting a topic gender and social change could be. Ursula Le Guin was the first woman to win a Hugo for Best Novel in 1970 for The Left Hand of Darkness, and then female authors won the award 4 times in the following 10 years. The late 1960s was when lots of female authors started breaking through, like Anne McCaffrey and James Tiptree, Jr.. Even more than the increasing prominence of female authors, gender became part of science fiction itself—compare the extremely dated traditional gender roles in Robert Heinlein’s “Red Planet” (1949) with his “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” (1966). There were important female writers before the 1960s, of course, and contemporary publishers have done great work to bring the works of such sword-and-sorcery writers as C.L. Moore.

But it astonishes me how much of Leigh Brackett‘s swashbuckling planetary science fiction is out of print. Leigh Brackett was one of the most prolific female authors working in science fiction prior to the New Wave. Leigh Brackett was a well-published and well-regarded pulp science fiction and film writer in the 1940s and 1950s. Cinephiles will recall many of her film credits, and Charlie Jane Anders had a great post on her script contributions to “The Empire Strikes Back”, with a link to Brackett’s original script. Yet Brackett’s Eric John Stark and Skaith novels are nearly her only works in print, novels that came at the end of her writing career. There have been anthologies of her earlier stories published once or twice over the last few decades, but these are currently out of print and with exorbitant prices on the used market on Amazon. But…there are eBooks these days! There’s no reason for old books to not be in print! It boggles my mind.

I’ve only read the novel Black Amazon of Mars, thanks to the public domain; it’s available from Project Gutenberg and LibriVox. One of the most striking things about it, besides its anachronistic and adventure-filled view of the solar system, is how well-developed its fictional universe is, full of references to alien societies developed over more than a decade or writing. It’s the original stories that established and developed the Brackettverse that are not in print. Certainly, the science in these stories is dated—Mercury, Venus, and Mars all have native biospheres teeming with dangerous creatures and alien civilizations that threaten settlers and adventurers. But what I read the pulps are not their hard-science portrayal of extraterrestrial life, but their weird monsters, lurid societies, and general craziness. We still re-read Edgar Rice Burroughs not for Mars, but for Barsoom—for the Tharks, kaldanes, rykors, and jetan. I expect the Brackettverse will be worth reading for some of the same reasons the Barsoomverse is.

Fortunately a lot of the pulps have been digitized and put online. For many of these stories, there’s no need to wait for an anthology to be reprinted. I love reading projects: reading every Hugo-winning novel, reading Fritz Leiber’s Nehwon stories in publication order, or reading every Earthsea book in 2019. Here’s a list of Leigh Brackett’s planetary stories in publication order (from her Wikipedia page), tagged with information from her ISFD page. Maybe eventually someone will go ahead and bring these to the wider reading public, but hopefully I’ll have time over the next year(s) to read and review these.

“Martian Quest” ( Astounding Science Fiction, February 1940 )
“The Treasure of Ptakuth” ( Astounding Science Fiction, April 1940 )
“The Stellar Legion” ( Planet Stories, Winter 1940 )—Venus
“The Tapestry Gate” ( Strange Stories, August 1940 )
“The Demons of Darkside” (Startling Stories, January 1941) [Mercury]
“Water Pirate” ( Super Science Stories, January 1941 & )
“Interplanetary Reporter” (Startling Stories, May 1941)—Venus
“The Dragon-Queen of Jupiter” ( Planet Stories, Summer 1941 )—Venus
“Lord of the Earthquake” (Science Fiction, June 1941)
“No Man’s Land in Space” ( Amazing Stories July 1941 & )—Asteroid Belt
“A World is Born” ( Comet Stories July 1941 )—Mercury
“Retreat to the Stars” ( Astonishing Stories, November 1941 & )
“Child of the Green Light” (Super Science Stories, February 1942)
“The Sorcerer of Rhiannon” (Astounding Science Fiction, February 1942)
“Child of the Sun” ( Planet Stories, Spring 1942 )
“Out of the Sea” ( Astonishing Stories, June 1942 )
“Cube from Space” ( Super Science Stories, August 1942 )
“Outpost on Io” ( Planet Stories, Winter 1942 )
“The Halfling” ( Astonishing Stories, February 1943 )
“The Citadel of Lost Ships” ( Planet Stories, March 1943 )
“The Blue Behemoth” ( Planet Stories, May 1943 )
“Thralls of the Endless Night” ( Planet Stories, Fall 1943 )
“The Jewel of Bas” ( Planet Stories, Spring 1944 )
“The Veil of Astellar” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, Spring 1944 )
“Terror Out of Space” ( Planet Stories, Summer 1944 )
“Shadow Over Mars” ( Startling Stories, Fall 1944 )
“The Vanishing Venusians” ( Planet Stories, Spring 1945 )
“Lorelei of the Red Mist”, with Ray Bradbury ( Planet Stories, Summer 1946 )
“The Moon That Vanished” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1948 )
“The Beast-Jewel of Mars” ( Planet Stories, Winter 1948 )
“Quest of the Starhope” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1949 )
“Sea-Kings of Mars” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1949 )
“Queen of the Martian Catacombs” ( Planet Stories, Summer 1949 )
“Enchantress of Venus” ( Planet Stories, Fall 1949 )
“The Lake of the Gone Forever” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1949 )
“The Dancing Girl of Ganymede” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1950 )
“The Truants” ( Startling Stories, July 1950 )
“The Citadel of Lost Ages” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1950 )
“Black Amazon of Mars” ( Planet Stories, March 1951 )
“The Starmen of Llyrdis” ( Startling Stories, March 1951 )
“The Woman from Altair” ( Startling Stories, July 1951 )
“The Shadows” (Startling Stories, February 1952)
“The Last Days of Shandakor” (Startling Stories, April 1952)
“Shannach – The Last” (Planet Stories, November 1952)
“The Ark of Mars” ( Planet Stories, September 1953 )
“Mars Minus Bisha” ( Planet Stories, January 1954 † )
“Runaway” ( Startling Stories, Spring 1954 )
“Teleportress of Alpha C” ( Planet Stories, Winter 1954/1955 )
“The Tweener” ( The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1955 )
“Last Call from Sector 9G” ( Planet Stories, Summer 1955 )
“The Other People” ( Venture Science Fiction Magazine March 1957 )
“All the Colors of the Rainbow” ( Venture Science Fiction Magazine, November 1957 )
“The Road to Sinharat” ( Amazing Stories, May 1963 )
“Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1964)
“Come Sing the Moons of Moravenn” (The Other Side of Tomorrow, 1973)
“How Bright the Stars” (Flame Tree Planet: An Anthology of Religious Science-Fantasy, 1973)
“Mommies and Daddies” (Crisis, 1974)
“Stark and the Star Kings”, with Edmond Hamilton (2005 anthology)

It’s interesting how often Leigh Brackett got top billing in these magazines, how many of the ads targeted women, and how metal some of these covers are.

Reviving the blog for OSR

I’ve had this old blog or something like it for a long time now, but it petered out while blogging seemed to be out of fashion. All the political bloggers I followed got real jobs, the conlang bloggers hopped from one forum/platform to another, and all the RPG bloggers moved over the Google+, where I didn’t follow, while I finally made the shift from just reading about OSR while playing D&D 3.5E/d20/Pathfinder to actually running (Advanced) Labyrinth Lord and DCC. In the meantime I spent my time on Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter. But the internet was better before all of those, full of weird little blogs and creative rebels. Facebook is a malicious Panopticon, Twitter is distilled poison for discussion. YouTube is the only major Google service I haven’t been able to escape yet.

Looking again, though, I find that the OSR RPG blog community is very vibrant. There’s been a lot of talk recently about abusive and political elements in the OSR, especially after Zak S’s ostracism. But for me, the OSR was always about retro adventures, lightweight mechanics, and creativity. The main blogs that represented the OSR for me were always Grognardia, Jeff’s Gameblog, Hill Cantons, Dyson’s Dodecahedron, Tenkar’s Tavern, and the old Save or Die! podcast. After the Dwimmermount debacle and so many blogs left for Google+, I followed the OSR only loosely, since my groups were heavily invested in Pathfinder (which I now refuse to run) and I was reading mostly 1980s texts.

Over the last year, though, I’ve finally been running a Labyrinth Lord campaign, and looking for practical GM advice has sent me out into the OSR again. I finally read A Red and Pleasant Land last year, which was my first major exposure to Zak S besides some rumors. But I discovered the Questing Beast channel on YouTube and the Fear of a Black Dragon podcast, which have introduced me to all kinds of neat blogs: CaveGirls’ Game Stuff, Skerples’ Coins and Scrolls (especially the Tomb of the Serpent Kings ), The Black Hack, The Petal Hack and other awesome Tékumelia, tenfootpole.org. @cartweel has pointed me towards lots of weird-but-intriguing indie/storygames by people like CassK’s Sun & Daughter and Avery Alder‘s The Deep Forest.

Anyway, the RPG forums have been talking about the idea of a SWORD DREAM which sounds kind of silly except for the idea that “DIY Rules Everything Around Me”. What I love about the OSR is how rules lightness and “rulings not rules” creates more opportunity for real creativity, rather than the ersatz creativity players have in a rules-intense game like Pathfinder. D&D 5E also seems like an attempt to “own” the hobby. But RPGs should be a hobby, not an “industry”, since the games work best when they unleash the creativity and imagination of everybody at the table. An “industry” in capitalism will seek to consumerize players, rendering them passive purchasers of content. The TTRPG hobby should be a gift economy, maybe with a few artist-operated studios and Kickstarter campaigns. Viva la RPG blog!

So I guess I should get around to posting some of the random tables and monsters I’ve put together over the last few years? This necro-blog is as good a place as any.