Personable Thoughts

  The Pope is deader than the OSR, and we're posting through it. For this year's conclave, here's a post about hierarchies in organised religion and how to make it gameable. In fantasy role-playing games, we are likely to be presented with a pantheon of gods (even if the depiction of polytheism does not match how it has been practised historically, or indeed today). Dungeons and Dragons also has strong Christian underpinnings , even if it is not explicitly written. Taking what we have and running with it, the Cleric class should thus bear some resemblance to the clerics of real-world religions - that is, they are a member of a religious organisation with a hierarchy, in which they have a specific role and rank. Following a Christian template, this means that they should be ordained - otherwise, you are a lay preacher and explicitly not a member of the clergy . Of course, playing a parish priest is not necessarily conducive to fun dungeon-crawling adventures, so they wou...

Liden Gunver og Havmanden , 1841, Edvard Lehmann Like all good recipe bloggers, I have added a big preamble about why I wrote this, and my thoughts on Cairn 2e backgrounds. If you just want the advancements, scroll down! I have been reading the Cairn 2e books (more on that in a later blogpost), and something about Cairn that has always been frustrating me a bit is the lack of special traits or similar to make characters unique, rather than blank slates defined only by their items and a handful of stats, and whatever the player puts into them. For a long time, people have told me, "Cairn 2e backgrounds fixes this", and I have stubbornly told them, "I will read that when I get my box set, then." Lo and behold, my box arrived a few weeks ago, and indeed, some of the backgrounds contains what I want. But only a few of them, and often just as one or two entries on the roll table. Many backgrounds contains the kind of abilities or traits I want, but tie them to items with...

  I often struggle with the depiction of Magic in RPGs, and I was prompted by a recent exchange on Bluesky with Josh of Rise up Comus to share some of my thoughts in the form of a blog post.  Magic in stories is often free-form, and while its power is usually limited, its application rarely is. In RPGs however, magic is often quantified in very specific spells, that do one single thing (at least in the paradigm of games descended from DnD). One particular egregious example is the iconic Fireball spell of fifth edition D&D, every part of it is very proscribed, you always throw a fireball of exactly the same strength (unless you upcast it). If you play the game rules-as-written, it is likely that your wizard can cast fireballs, but is unable to magically light a candle without burning the house down. Contrast for instance with the Fire Bolt spell, which essentially does the same thing, throw fire", but weaker. Again, your wizard might be able to cast Fireball, but not t...