Name Your Poison

I am currently running a Roman themed AD&D (1^st edition, heavy on the house rules) game on Roll20. I am giving serious thought to also running an OD&D (or Swords & Wizardry Whitebox) game there too. I am thinking of giving it a Norman/Crusader theme, kind of roll out with extra medievalisms, like jousting, maybe eliminate non-human characters so everything “other” is special and supernatural. Write up a bit of a culture packet, like I did with the Romans and see how that goes. I don't even know if I'll add Thieves.

The real kicker is that I think I might do it as a megadungeon campaign. My Roman themed “Lost Atlantis” campaign was decided, by player vote, to be a hex crawl and I'd kind of like to run some dungeon delving too.

I think I'd like to run jousting tournaments and stuff too. Maybe I'll have players make their characters like in Mike Davison's Flailsnails Jousting Tourney book.

I guess the point here is that I have a lot of time on my hands these days, since Mona died, and I'd like to fill it with some gaming. Pick either game, or both.

Find me on Facebook here - https://www.facebook.com/wdowie

Look to my gaming Discord server here - https://discord.gg/jYCvjPY

And on Roll20 here - https://app.roll20.net/join/2998862/sQwuRg

Keep in mind that I am a "theater of the mind" guy, so I rarely use minis in person on a real tabletop, I have yet to even try on Roll20.

New Campaign Idea

Here is my latest idea for a new D&D or AD&D campaign.

This campaign that Starts in England in 1066. I know what you are thinking here- another military style campaign with a different historical period. That is only half true, my 1066 campaign would be set during the conquest period, but not really be a part of it. Just straight D&D adventures, with dungeons and all the other stuff (within the context of the setting); my thought is that the PCs are NOT members of either the defeated Anglo-Saxon or Norman armies, but rather the type of rogues and scoundrel that follow any military undertaking, opportunists taking advantage of the chaos generated by the multiple invasions of 1066. Maybe your character is a Norwegian that got stranded in England, for whatever reason, or maybe he's a Lithuanian trader with a taste for high risk, high reward opportunities



William the Conqueror's England was not really all that stable, pretty much for the rest of his life. In 1066 England was invaded by two major north/west European powers, major battles were fought in the north and south of England. Additionally, the Scots, Welsh and Irish made major raids into England that year. The Anglo-Saxon nobility had fled to the Scottish court looking for help, Edward the Aetheling was the last surviving real heir to the English throne; his sister Margaret would eventually marry Malcolm Canmore, the Scottish king, thus cementing a weak claim to the English kingdom for the Scots. Edward would go on to join the Byzantine Emperor's elite Varangian guard, like so many other defeated English lords and warriors, which changed the ethnic make up of the Varangians to mostly English from nearly totally Scandinavian within a generation. Anyway, it was a really chaotic period of time to be in England for more than two decades.



Now you are thinking “But there are no monsters in England!”, au contraire mes amis, England has a rich tableaux of mythology, tradition and history to draw upon, from the ancient Celtic Britons to the Romans that conquered them to Arthurian myth and legend surrounding the post-Roman period in Britain and the Nordic type religion of the old Anglo-Saxons, as well as the actually Nordic mythology of the Norsemen themselves who invaded and settled England in the preceding centuries. All kinds of Christian stuff can be thrown in there too, check out some of the stories about English saints.



Add to that flavorful mix of northwestern European myth and legend the fact that this is a D&D campaign world we're designing, and you can throw in pretty much anything from the Monster Manual if you want. Humanoids? My take on this is that they are just men that have been tainted by the chaos and evil of the Norman Conquest period. Petty, tricky men might become Kobolds; brawny, bullying scavengers might be twisted into Gnolls. Dragons are all over the British isles in myth, St. George the Dragonslayer is the Patron Saint of England (although not yet, he has to wait until the 14^th century). Dungeons can be Roman ruins, or ancient Celtic sites, or simply a manifestation of the world reacting to the conquest itself. Then mix in the undead, plenty of reason for the unquiet dead to be poking their restless spirits around Conquest period England.



Plus, all of this stuff falls directly into the middle of my college major, History with an emphasis on the medieval period and my minor, Medieval Studies; so I think I can pull off the atmosphere of this campaign pretty well. Big Darryl always says that I majored in D&D at college and I don't think he's really wrong.



I might ditch some of the more anachronistic stuff, like plate mail, but maybe not, I can see an argument either way on that.

 See- They are wearing plate in this medieval depiction of the battle of Hastings :)

But not in this one :(



Lack of local players may necessitate  going a non-standard route to run this campaign, like PBEM or even Google+, despite my Luddite ways; anyone who is interested in going one of these routes should probably comment here with their preference or email me here. 

Even if you aren't interested in playing,I'd still like to see any commentary that might help me improve the experience for my prospective player, thanks!

Minor edit: I also wanted to mention that no one won the Celtic Halloween contest, because there were no entries. I noticed that as soon as I hit publish.

Not for nothing...

...But when I showed this picture to my youngest daughter Ember, we both agreed that it kind of reminded us of her. It looks like her a bit and has her attitude. Lamentations of the Flame Princess has certainly been an interesting look at old school gaming, and it's had a pretty good effect on my blog, I get a lot of hits from Finland. But I think it's starting to seep into my daughter's brains, or maybe it's just that Raggi and I are a little too alike and they'd be what his daughters would be like?

Next Question- If you had to pick an old school Star Trek game to play, would you go with FASA's Star Trek RPG and it's associated Starship Tactical Combat Simulator or Task Force Games/Amarillo Design Bureau's Federation & Empire/Star Fleet Battles/Prime Directive? I know that Prime Directive made it on to the scene a little late, but I also know that the Tactical Combat Simulator was a later add-on. Both games suffer from having to make up a lot of new Star Trek material and extrapolate from what they had available at the time, SFB/PD is still in print, although PD has undergone numerous rules changes from d20 to GURPS to the upcoming Traveler,they are still restricted by their license to ONLY use elements of Star Trek from the original series, the animated series and what they snuck in from some of the original series cast movies; everything elsethey were forced to make up as they went along. FASA did the same thing, only with a better, but more restrictive license until they got smacked down for assuming that Star Trek: The Next Generation was covered by the same license. So which old school Star Trek game do you prefer and why?

I only ask because I already had this.

But this came in the mail today.

And so did this.

All of these miniatures came today too, a good many Celts, always good for my Garnia campaign; and some Norse and Normans, which should be handy in most other cases, as well as in Garnia.

Celtic, Saxon, Viking & Norman

Since I started my new B/X game I noticed a couple of things about the attitudes towards the various ethnic groups in Britain in the 12th century by the players in the game. So then I just asked my wife and kids what they thought; this is an admittedly unscientific poll, but I have noticed that Celts are pretty much universally favorably received when they get mentioned, only slightly less so when they are differentiated into Welsh, Cornish, Irish or Scottish. I didn't mention Manx or Breton, but I am sure they would have received a favorable reaction too. That makes sense in this house, my wife is 1/4 Welsh and I am half Scottish, so we fairly strongly identify with the Celts here; it probably doesn't hurt that we live in one of relatively few ethnically Irish counties in the US* either. What does surprise me though is the over all positive reaction the Celts in general get, even from people with absolutely no Celtic connection other than the odd CD they like to listen to for relaxation.

The Saxons get mostly favorable reactions too, which is odd to me considering their conquest of Celtic Britain, but there you have it; maybe it's the good press they have in Ivanhoe and Robin Hood. Maybe it's their heroic stand against the Vikings under Alfred the Great. Maybe it's just because we all speak English. I don't know. When they don't get a favorable reaction the never get a negative reaction though and that confuses me some, because I was practically raised on Arthurian legend and Prince Valiant comic strips. When the reaction isn't favorable it's more like "Meh, Saxons, whatever".

Vikings are another bunch that get universal love. I am a little confused by this and a little amused by this. I am confused because EGG took the stereotypical Norse Warrior, the Berserker, and made them a monster in D&D; so they are clearly the "bad guys". They might as well be Orcs in Human suits. Hell, 3e 1/2 Orcs pretty much were just amped up, ugly Viking Berserkers with green skin and fangs. When D&D has to choose between the easy myth of a stereotype and the hard reality of educating people about a culture of the past, it almost always chooses easy myth, but even the easy myth of the stereotypical Viking is grounded in reality and truth, so the Viking Adventurer that is so popular among D&D players, myself included, is actually one of the more blood-thirsty and nasty bunches named here, yet, here they are, universally loved. No one is ever horrified at the possible inclusion of the Vikings.

Then we come to the Normans, and it's the prevailing attitude towards the Normans that made me write this, because I really can't think of a more significant group of people in the High Medieval Period than the Normans. The face of western civilization would be different today without their contribution, but they are pretty much loathed as a people and I am at a loss as to why; is it because of their French culture? Or is it because they were the last people to mount a successful invasion of England? The way they re-invented western European feudalism? Their role in making the First Crusade such a resounding success? The fact that they drove the Moors from Sicily and Southern Italy? Or is it just because they are the bad guys in Ivanhoe and Robin Hood? The weirdest part of this, to me anyway, is that they are the literal direct descendants of the Vikings that everyone loves; so what, you throw a little civilization** at them and they aren't cool anymore?

I don't want to have to go into my rant about how Americans in general don't really know anything about the French, our oldest and best allies, without whom we would not have our independence from Great Britain; or how we adopted the English attitudes towards the French in spite of our close, essentially permanent alliance with them***; but the Normans are stone cold bad-asses that managed to conquer shit everywhere, usually while they were outnumbered and in hostile territory, and hold it pretty well too for the most part**** against all comers, kind of like Mongols. The only reasons I didn't import Normans into my Garnia campaign world were that it was getting a little late period for groups to just disappear from Earth without people really noticing and I was afraid that if I did we'd have to deal with a super bad-ass French speaking aristocracy wherever they landed. That said, some of the old maps would seem to indicate that Frodia had maybe been conquered by Normans at some point

*According to US census data Oswego county in NY state has an ethnic majority of Irish. One of our neighboring counties is also majority Irish and I think two downstate counties were, near NYC. There were also some in eastern Massachusetts as I recall, I don't remember if there were any others in other states.

**Before the Sons of Norway or some other proud Scandinavian group takes offense at that statement, I am aware that the Norse had their own distinct civilization, I was speaking in hyperbolic terms for effect, the "civilizing" influences in question here were Christianity and French culture, the Norsemen in Normandy stopped being Norse and joined Western European (Frankish, as it was called at the time) mainstream culture.

***Way off topic for a D&D blog, but our War of 1812 was caused in part because we in the US tried to be neutral during the Napoleonic Wars and the British refused to respect our neutrality with regards to trading even non-war goods to the French, plus they kept impressing our sailors into their navy. We've had a rocky relationship with a lot of countries over the last couple of centuries because we didn't want to enter into any permanent alliances, but the French have always been pretty favorably inclined to us and us to them. Oddly, we have a pretty similar relationship with the British since about sometime after the US Civil War I'd say.

****The County of Edessa was maybe a "Bridge Too Far" into Turkish territory, but even it lasted over 50 years.

N is for-

Nudity in battle! Among the ancient Gauls there were an entire society of warriors called Gaesatae that fought in the nude. Their opponents, Greek and Roman, that wrote about them could only speculate as to why they did this, but they did observe that they were the most seriously hard-core bad-asses on the Gaulish side of the battle. Polybius said that the name Gaesatae meant "mercenary", but it is a much closer cognate to the Old Irish word gaiscedach or "Champion".

N is for Norsemen. I can't say enough good about the Norsemen. I love their culture, their religion and their women. The Norse had a more direct effect on how English and American democracy came into being than the Athenians did because of their democratic councils or Things. The Norsemen and their culture touched and had a lasting effect on every other non-Mediterranean European culture starting from their Scandinavian homeland and heading west to France, Britain and Ireland; across the Baltic to Germany and all of the Baltic and Slavic states there. They pretty much created Russia and it was named for them*. Aside from all the raiding, raping and pillaging, they also colonized pretty aggressively. Normandy**, The Danelaw in England***, Orkney, Shetland, Sutherland, Caithness and the Hebrides in Scotland, the entire Isle of Mann and pretty much everywhere there is a city in Ireland (Dublin, Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, Cork). As explorers they found and colonized The Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland and, briefly, Vinland****. They also were pretty hard-core capitalist-consumers. They loved trade.

N is for Normans which are what you get when you take Norsemen and "civilize" them. Teach them all about Christianity, Feudalism and French culture, then give them horses. You got a culture that retained the dynamic expansionism and warrior ethos of their Norse forefathers and gave them the sense of history, responsibility and entitlement or the Frankish aristocracy, then added the imperative to serve the church of Rome to save their souls. Oh, and they learned politics and public relations along they way too. The transitional period from the early middle ages, or so called "Dark Ages" to the High middle ages might as well be called the Norman middle ages. The Normans had two major conquests in that period, both with Papal blessing; their Duke William the Bastard got to become known as William the Conqueror in the more famous of the two, the Norman conquest of England; but they also conquered Sicily and southern Italy under the leadership of the Norman de Hauteville family after a decades long campaign.

Normans from Normandy would continue to migrate to both areas of conquest, and both of the conquered areas would become launching points for further military adventures by Normans. Over the course of the 11th and 12th centuries the Normans would come to dominate Scotland and Ireland and Wales. They would secure all of southern Italy from the Moors and Byzantines. They would wage war against Papal armies to secure their own rights by conquest. They would be among the key players in the first Crusade*****, founding Christian kingdoms and principalities in territories that had long been in Muslim hands.

The Normans weren't completely about conquest and war either, they were patrons of the arts and of the church too. The Bayeux Tapestry was a Norman commission and most of the medieval cathedrals in England are Norman built. They were big on poetry and feasting and hunting and stuff that most nobles of the middle ages liked too.

N is for Nobunaga. Technically it's Oda Nobunaga, but he's famous enough that people will recognize him just from his first name. The Japanese video game company Koei has put out an entire series of Nobunaga's Ambition games; including an MMORPG set in feudal Japan. Sadly not all of the series have had English translations. The first two were available for the NES though and were part of what got me interested in Japanese history, particularly the Sengoku Jidai period. Oda Nobunaga himself is the first of the three great unifiers of Japan. Before he completed his work and unified the nation, ending the age of battles; he was betrayed by his retainer Akechi Mitsuhide and forced to commit seppuku. His unification of Japan was ultimately completed by two of his vassals Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

N is for Neverwinter Nights, specifically AOL's Neverwinter Nights. AOL NWN was an SSI Gold Box AD&D 1st edition computer game adapted by Stormfront studios for multiplayer online play. I know that I spent literally thousands of dollars for my wife and I to play this game, making it one of the most expensive entertainment expenses I have ever incurred, and I do not regret it. The community of players made it worth every penny. My wife and I once traveled, with Darryl C and his wife Muriel, to a wedding in another state for a guy we had only ever met online, and he was from a rival guild! In July it'll be 14 years since that game stopped being and I still miss it and I know I am not alone. I am pretty sure that if someone were to get the game up and running again most of the old players would come back, crappy graphics and all. I mean, the graphics were already 10 years out of date when we were playing the game in the late 90's.

N is for Ninja. Mystical bad-ass assassins and spies of feudal Japan. I have found that in every Oriental Adventures campaign there is always that one guy that wants to be the Ninja. I have tried to work with that guy on numerous occasions with varying degrees of success. My advice is that Oriental Adventures campaigns come in two types- Samurai campaigns and Ninja campaigns, keep them separate. Other then that the only real thing I know about Ninjas is that there weren't any at my wedding******.

N is for Naginata, essentially a Japanese Glaive. Traditionally considered a good weapon for women because it increased their reach, this did not discourage their use among men. The Japanese don't really have a lot of pole-arms, the only other one I can think of off the top of my head is the Yari which is just a spear.

N is for Nomads. I have to give Nomads a shout out because not only are the Mongols nomadic pastoralists, but I lived a pretty nomadic life for much of my young adulthood anyway. I used to limit the amount of stuff I owned to what I could easily move, with a couple of friends helping, in one day. Getting married and having kids kind of put the kibosh on that, but I still like the concept of a semi-nomadic lifestyle. Of course now it's just because I am getting older and don't want to deal with the Oswego county winters anymore. I keep telling Mona that when Em graduates from high school we're moving someplace with less snow, like Alaska or Canada.

*Actually what the Greeks called them, Rhos or Rus.

**Funny story that's largely forgotten by history; apparently there were very briefly two different Normandys in France. The records of the era are spotty and there isn't much information available on the "other" Normandy in English. Maybe not in French either, I don't know.

***Or, as people with maps call it half of England.

****How long the Vinland colony lasted is disputed by scholars, which should come as no surprise since scholars didn't believe in it's existence half a century ago. Scholars also argue about how long the Norse maintained contact with North America after the failure of their colony. Archaeological evidence from Greenland and Iceland suggest that the sagas weren't bullshitting us on this one either, they probably continued making trips to North America for wood into the 14th century; when global climate change made the trek across the north Atlantic near the Arctic circle in a small open topped boat dangerous. Also, Eskimos probably killed the last of the Greenlanders off.

*****The First Crusade is arguably the only really successful one, and it came in two waves. The first wave was a bunch of poorly trained and led religious fanatics, many of them peasants and clergymen; they were pretty soundly beaten, which may have been what caused the Muslims, who were also busy at the time fighting among themselves, to not take terribly seriously the second wave of professional soldiers that pretty much handed them their collective asses wherever they stood to fight. Professional Norman-Style Christian knights were inarguably better trained and better equipped and better led than any of their Muslim opponents during the First Crusade. For later Crusades the Muslims got their shit together and started taking Europeans seriously, then it was the Christian Europeans that didn't take their Muslim opponents seriously, which was a big mistake when you are trying to maintain a series of colonies hundreds of miles from home in an alien environment surrounded by hostile natives with a tech level roughly the same as your own.

******Or were there?