Swords & Wizardry: It's what I'm running.

HAPPY SWORDS & WIZARDRY APPRECIATION DAY FROM NORTHERN APPALACHIA!

Well, it's been more than a while since you've heard from your obscure, rambling host, and Mike Welham has thankfully kept MPR from falling into utter dereliction. It might have something to do with moving across the country and having a new baby, but even before that I was running on low. Out of the interstices I creep to update you on the state of my game, which happily, will also largely be a post of joining in communal OSRness of the S&W kind.

How I got to S&W
The past 10 months, I have been playing in a weekly PF game by Skype, which has just now gone on a hiatus (I leveled my magus up to 5th level, thank you very much). The year before that, I was in a 5e game in which part of the time I DMed Tyranny of Dragons and a part of the time another player DMed Princes of the Apocalypse. In the further past in San Antonio, I had run a S&W Complete game set in Waterdeep in which I relocated old modules to Undermountain -- we were having fun but I couldn't get the group together enough to really build the kind of campaign I wanted. North Texas RPG Con 2016 just whetted my appetite even more for a regular home campaign in which we would build an interesting setting, characters, and stories. Now that I have the kind of home base I want in the old butcher's shop beneath my house (complete with a massive table left by a short-lived textile business of some kind), I have started said game using S&W. 

The Players
I first found some experienced players among some of the college students of a nearby college town. As time progressed, they have proven to have a hard time continuing consistently because of their school and work loads, but I also have added two completely new players -- guys who always wanted to play but couldn't find people to teach them back in the day. Hey, scifi/fantasy reading clubs aren't a bad way to meet new players. I need to branch out again to find some more new players -- I'd like a bigger group and I miss the diversity that the college folks brought to the group. (Read: A group with gals is better.)

The Building Blocks
I started preparing the nascent setting by reading Hommlet and the original City State of the Invincible Overlord booklets. I decided Hommlet would be their home base and the province would belong to the City State. No Temple of Elemental Evil -- I would introduce another evil. The nearby town of Nulb? The characters original hometown, now in ruins thanks to an horrific event when they were children. Underneath the ruins? The Hall of Bones, adapted physically so that I could use the The Lost Catacombs pages for game mats.

I looked at the gods of the CSIO and decided that they were a bit of a mess -- both an inspiring mess (How do I explain this hodgepodge of deities as a historical development and how would they actually work as a society's pantheon?) and a mess that needed some straightening up (too many gods of the same basic kind and other types completely missing). Here are the gods in the original booklet:

Odin

Modron (“Great Mother”)

Brigid

Mabon (“Great Son”)

Thoth

Dagda

Harmakhis (Horus)

Teutates (=Toutatis)

Quetzalcoatl

Lugh

Apollo

Fenris Wolf

Nephthys (but misspelled, just as in DDG&H supplement)

(Spider God?)

Donn (Celtic Death)

Gods of Pegana (the so-called “old gods”)

Toad God in Mermist Swamp (Obviously I'm going to make Tsathoggua)

Unnamed Sea Goddess

Balder

Varuna

Hanuman the Accursed

Idun

The Sea God Manannan

Arghrasmak (Temple of the Gargoyle) “living god”

Crimson Dragon

The historical key to this is that I decided the City State was a originally a colony found by a southern Rome analogue who hired Germanic/Nordic warriors to conquer a region peopled by monsters and Celt analogues. Their great, older rival was an Egypt analogue from whom they appropriated some deities -- all things Romans were wont to do. (Wikipedia has introductory entries on this process in the religious vein.) That allowed me to revise the list by identifying various gods with one another in the following way:

Odin the Dagda, Odin All-Father
Sol Odinsson, Sol Invictus, Sol of the City State, Sol-Horus, Sol-Harmakhis, the Eye of Odin

Modron the Great Mother, Brigid

Mabon the Great Son

Thoth the Terrible, God of Knowledge and Learning

Quetzalcoatl, He-of-the-Mithral-Feathers, 1st Serpent, Dragon King, God of Rivers & Mtns

Fenris Wolf, Lord of Ragnarok

Nephthys, Lady of the Holy Mortuary, Mistress of Wealth

Death (Donn)

Tsathoggua, the Toad God, God of Wetlands and Caverns

Kiopa’a, Star of the Seas, Polestar, Queen of Sea Fae

Arghrasmak the Living God, God of Gargoyles.

Balder, the Hidden Son, Hope of Mankind

Varuna All-Seeing, Lord of Rains, Arbiter of Oaths, Guardian of Cosmic Law

Hanuman the Accursed, God of Therianthropes

Idun, Lady of the Golden Orchard, Long of Time and Limb

Typhon the Two-Faced, Tyrant of All Oceans

The rebellious gods of Pegana I kept around and the god Teutates=Toutatis (thanks, Astrix comics!) became simply a title that a social group would add to the name of their patron deity. I'm still playing around with how I'm going to handle the spider god, though Wraith Overlord: Terror of the City State has a nice idea in it. (Where the heck did that title come from? Still haven't figured it out.) And I'm still playing with what exactly I'm going to do with the Crimson Dragon. Also, a few deities also indicate that the Rome analogue not only had the rivalry with an Egypt analogue, but also some sort of contact with an Indic analogue. (Meso-america is for dragons.)

Deities I added
First off, I needed a paladin patron to take the places of Muir (I don't care for the name) and Cuthbert (I wanted to cut the odd real-world tie here and have a Joan of Arc like feel to the figure, but germanified). Thus was born St. Ingaberht. She heads the following list:

Ingaberht, Patron Saint of Templars and Holy Knighthood

Orcus, Punisher of Broken Oaths, Demon Lord of the Undead

Frey, Lugh, Lord of the Elves

Circe, Witch Goddess
Morithal, Lord of Unceasing Hunger: Remember this little gem!?

This kind of top-down work gave me lots of ideas for the setting and hooks for potential stories, and allows the players to locate their characters within the setting. Less of them took me up on the idea of having their character being from Nulb, but they still came up with ideas for why they were in Hommlet and interested in Nulb and each other, so it worked out.

Now the question, Why and how does S&W provide the ruleset for this campaign? To be continued in a second posting!

World Building with the Core Rulebooks

If you haven't seen this post by Rob Donoghue of The Walking Mind, then I highly recommend it: Inferred history of the world per the Monster Manual and a little from the Players Handbook.  This is the kind of exercise that I love for building the setting of a game, and that really inspires me to do the same.  This should be of interest to folks whether they are interested in the new edition of D&D or not, as reading game rule books for details or clues applicable to world building can be practiced across editions and games.  His schematization of the inferred history into those time periods he creates also indicates to me a kindred spirit.  Thanks, Rob!

Euryale and the Deck of Destiny

Wheel of Fortune
Pompeii Mosaic from Naples National Archaeological Museum

I've been thinking about Euryale for a couple of weeks, but it was only last night while incubating upon my bed that the pieces came together for me.  In the ancient world, the decrees of Fate where absolute.  Even the head of the pantheon was subject to Fate's decree. Thus Fortuna or Fate's rule over the destinies of gods and men was absolute.  That Gygax (and Kunz?)'s inspiration for the Deck of Many Things comes from the Tarot as well as the general idea of a magic deck of cards is obvious. What then do we find when we look at the symbolism of the cards?  Archetypal human figures, heavenly bodies, two elements, two states (I note, aligned neutrally and chaotically), four objects, one location, and two with mythological personages.  The latter two cards are the Fates and Euryale.  The only specific individual, the only proper name among the cards, is Euryale.

Elements & Alignments brought to bear: The Rod of Law

Ephesians 2 
And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; 2 wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: 3 among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. (KJV)

or a queen?

A prince?

The Classical Elements, Alignment, and World-Building

The Four Symbols for the Elements are shown below the Alchemical Figures above, from Johann Daniel Mylius’ Philosophia reformata (1622).

The classical systems of elements popular in the great civilizations are usually known to gamers in quaternity: fire, air, water, and earth.  These four are also popular in the contemporary imagination thanks to the Avatar cartoons.  Adopting conceptions of these has seemed a natural (haha!) move for cosmological mythopoesis.  If you are working on the big picture for a game setting, you can immediately start thinking of these in terms of alignment.  I like doing so using the axis of Chaotic to Lawful.  Keep in mind that I am not being absolutist here and saying that all comprised of these elements are Chaotic or Lawful, but that the preponderance of an element seems to tend in a particular direction.  Asking myself what would be the archetypal nature of each element in terms of alignment, I find myself with the table below:

Four Elements	Alignment
FIRE	Chaotic
AIR	Chaotic
WATER	Chaotic
EARTH	Lawful

This is telling for me in two ways: first, the physical world is more aligned with Chaos than it is with Law.  Moreover, the element closest to humanity (humus-human or earth-men) is Law.  Hence, humans, (and for that matter, dwarves) are usually tied more closely to Law in RPG materials because they are tied to, and perhaps even primarily composed of, earth.  "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7).  If they are primarily of the element which stands in contrast to the rest of the elements alignment-wise, this is a source of conflict.  There is a problem, however, when it comes to these four elements being enough to comprise the cosmos.  Air-atmosphere is one thing, but what about those heavenly or spiritual substances that are not material or physical?  Those that are literally no-thing?  If the atmosphere and its winds are chaotic, are not the heavenly orderly?  Don't the heavenly bodies provide the regular movements by which we may measure the terrestrial bodies below?  Is not the King of Heaven a deity of Law, the Law-giver himself?

These considerations bring us to face-to-face with the fact that many, if not most, many versions of the classical elements total five rather than four.  Consider the refinement below, which will use the letter Q to stand for the fifth, derived from Aristotle's quintessence.  


Five-Element System

Q	Lawful
FIRE	Chaotic
AIR	Chaotic
WATER	Chaotic
EARTH	Lawful

This schema might seem like just a Western variant, or perhaps even too Christian, but comparison to Indian, Japanese, and Tibetan systems reveal that it is not uniquely Aristotlean or Judeo-Christian.  (NB. I find the sections on Buddhism and China most inadequate and even confused/confusing and advise you to look further afield rather than make too many assumptions based on that portion of the Wikipedia entry.)  The system of five elements is dealing with questions and problems of thought that the fourfold system was insufficient to deal with.  Air needed to be split up to account for the kinds of questions above and beliefs about the realm above the dome of the sky.  You may call Q as best fits with your mythopoesis, but note the terms used for it in the past: Void, Heaven, Space, Aether, Spirit.  As we have moved from ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, we found a need to distinguish what was once a single word: wind/breath/spirit.  While the winds of the air blow where they will, the heavenly spirits proceed in the stately movement of their spheres -- precise and predictable. And note that, even in the world of Avatar, the story can't leave well enough (supposedly, four) alone.  The avatar (incarnate in a particular element-bender) can achieve an Avatar-state, and in addition to the standard four there is energy bending.

Image Source

A five-element cosmology still provides for plenty of conflict (three-fifths of the categories of all things are fundamentally against us?!) and for the idea that there is some connection between a transcendent Law and its reflection on earth.  For those who do not divide the elements into five but retained the four-element system, I would recognize the "split" within Air by saying that the element is Neutral.

Next time: Using this general conception of world building with gaming particulars.

Survival Tips for the Frustrated Fantasist

“Life is what happens to you when you are trying to game and blog.”   
Th. the Obscure, D.M. (Doctor Mythopoeiae)

So, long-time readers already knew I was having an academic year that was consuming my life.  I added a new home and everything that goes with that into the mix and recovering from an injury, and all blogging and gaming pretty much disappeared from my life.  (I might could have squeezed in a little gaming, if similar things hadn’t happened to the members of my little group.)  The flame would have gone out over here if it were not for Mike Welham and Craig Johnston (thanks, guys!).  So, how have I been surviving this challenge to La Mitopoietica Vita?  I have to read.

Part of this is just my personality.  Recreational reading helps me to retain my humanity and my sanity.  I must read.  (Feel free to google for escapsim quotes by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, then come back.)  I need fantastical fiction.  My primary recourse in these months as been to the ever-reliable Steven Brust.  I have read seven Vlad Taltos novels (see picture above) and two of the Khaavren romances (see picture below). 

Damn, Brust can write.  Dense, complex plots for this genre, but not so much that you choke on them.  Intriguing characterization that makes me care about characters that I can't imagine caring about if all I had was a bare-bones character sketch of them.  And while he's not my favorite world-builder, he does a lot in his under-stated way.  And the things that stand out (the Houses, the Orb, the Cycle, the reversals or twists around "humanity" are enjoyable and make the world alien).  When it comes to food, he's the Patrick O'Brian of fantasy food.

If you haven't treated yourself to Brust, I'm telling you he is on my required reading list and you don't have to give me anything in return for the recommendation, though your comments are always appreciated.  If you haven't heard Atomic Array's interview of him, I recommend that, too.  He's done a fantastic job of keeping me fed as a Mythopoet under pressure and short of leisure.  How will it inform my gaming when I return?  I think that Brust's swashbuckling in particular will be an excellent inspiration when I can return to Swords & Wizardry in Waterdeep, and the politics among the Dragaeran houses could give me fuel for what to do with the noble houses of Waterdeep.  All this will be in the cooker when I can return to gaming.

So, what I am reading while I'm taking a break from my Brustian bacchanal?  An Elric reread: I'm closing in on the end of volume 3 in Del Ray's excellent definitive collection.  After that, I may read Paths of the Dead or stretch things out a little more by inserting a collection of Peter S. Beagle's short stories.  I picked it up here in San Antonio when The Last Unicorn tour came to town.  (While the first leg of the tour is done, keep an eye on the website for future developments in your area which will be forthcoming.  Seeing Rone Barton in action and having a conversation with Peter are worth the price of admission alone, but I was impressed by how clean the copy of the TLU is.) Well, that's it for this Tomeful Tuesday.  Baby steps back to blogging, my fellow ramblers, baby steps.

City-State of the Invincible Overlord Acquired

Gary made me do it.

Okay, not really.  I'd also heard some good press on the the 1987 Mayfair boxed set recently, (Save or Die!?  THACO's Hammer?)  although, with the annoying implication that Ed Greenwood ripped off CS for Waterdeep.  Perhaps the original JG products influenced later city products.  Waterdeep & the North came out the same year as this boxed set, and City System is only a year later and much more ambitious.  Oh well, it was probably just DM Glen mouthing off.  So: today at Ye Olde Halfe Price Bookes on 40% coupon day, I came across a box in good shape, $12-13 seemed like a good risk, and everything was indeed inside it.  I also thought this deal was much more realistic than to think I would ever stumble over the JG pieces at anything resembling a non-crazy collectible price.  The box is in much better shape than the box sets I usually find, and I was intrigued by the four added races.  I'd have to modify centaurs to be like the early Greek originals, however, as the four-legged variety seem just too much for a PC race.  In response, what words of inspiration or experience do my fair ramblers have for me on City-State?

Drinking in Waterdeep

It might not be obvious how this belongs in Tomeful Tuesday, but I'm actually asking for help I'm not finding in the books I have -- or online, for that matter.

I had a one player game Saturday night due to some unfortunate circumstances with the other player, so there was lots of time for him to get to know Waterdeep.  (I'm having fun bringing my own versions of local NPCs to life.)  It's a dance of making stuff up and reinterpreting to suit myself and the game, but also wanting to have a sense for myself and the players of what the shared experience of Waterdeep is for gamers and readers.

Zzar is the margarita of Waterdeep, culturally speaking, says this Texan.  There's an accepted description of how it tastes: a dry white sparkling wine fortified with almond liqueur.  So I was surprised to not be able to find a description of how elverquisst -- the almost totemic elven wine in the Realms -- tastes.  How is that not in Volo's?  Or E.G. Presents the F.R.?  Or in the F.R. Wiki?  Are things elvish so ineffable?

Any setting sommeliers out there who can help a brother out?

Free RPG Day Haul

Oh free RPG day, how I love thee.

This Mythopoeic Monday will be spent in thine afterglow.

Soon I think thy map shall go up in splendor, over my desk.

 

Was it just me, or was this one of the better years?

U is for URBAN SETTING II

Due to losing some family storage, I've recently had to go through a lot of old things (see my Nostalgia post).  I came across the remnants of what was once a mighty collection of illustrated children's books of the better kind.  The collection was shared between my daughter (the child in question) and myself (for use in the classroom in my previous incarnation -- okay I shared the books with my students as well, but they were taught to be careful with books from Dr. Obscure's Special Collection).  Sorting through them, I kept a few for myself, a few for my daughter, and the rest went to the shelves of Half Price Books.  Among those that I kept were two really cool books -- A Seaport through History: from the 10th Century BC to the 20th Century and A Central American City through the Ages: San Rafael.  These books by Hernandez, Ballonga, et al. are out of print and appear to have been published under somewhat different names by different publishers.  They trace a fictional Mayan city and  a Low Countries seaport through their histories, showing maps and cross-sections, with relevant information about them that would be enviable in a game setting book.  The fact that they are historical and yet fictional would make them perfect for just such a purpose, so I intend to eventually use them for just that.  It looks like there is at least one more book they did together, so I'm going to try to remember to keep an eye out for the one on the Islamic city.

Note that I just snuck in a Tomeful Tuesday, which we haven't had in a while!  Finding good material for an urban setting in unlikely or perhaps just new places, especially for cheap or free, is quiet satisfying.  I've used old National Geographics in the past, but I really like that the unique characteristics of these two books, and that they have the feel without the danger of being recognized as real places.  What resources have you found for creating urban settings?

U is for URBAN SETTING

"Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."

"A great city is, to be sure, the school for studying life."

— Samuel Johnson

The city.  Urbs.  Civitas.  Polis.  There is something powerful about the packing of places and teeming of characters that make it rich for the imagination to inhabit.  Thus it is one of the settings that I love, even for fantasy adventure.  It's not because I eschew variety: the hamlet, the wilderness, and -- especially the Underworld -- all have their charms.  But a well-drawn city matches the well-done Underworld in my book.  Dickens' London (to choose one London), lives for me and it is one of the Londons that I love; Rutherford's is another.    McCullough's late Republican/early Imperial Rome likewise seems a real place with its own distinctive character.  I'd like to find fiction set in Venice and Florence that do the same for those cities in the Renaissance.  It's been a long time since I read much Ann Rice, but I think I'd probably say her New Orleans, and perhaps to a lesser extent her Paris, read well.  The Thieves World novels made Sanctuary breathe and roar and spit.  In game settings, the Free City of Greyhawk, Waterdeep, and Golarion's Absalom (for sale here) are intriguing cities that promise strong sense of place. 

What cities do you love?  What materials from fiction or gaming deliver a city in its stones and in its soul to your imagination?  What are the touches that make the city seem a unique, living place?  Are there equivalences of the double decker bus, the little black cab, the red phone box, and the red royal post box?  How do you go about city building in your secondary creations?  I would love to hear your thoughts, examples, and recommendations!

Gnobody Gnows the Gnomes' Gniche

The Gnomish Identity Crisis in Fantasy Role-Playing Games

Ever since I first ran into gnomes, they've seemed to be a fantasy race looking for an identity.  Or maybe a better way of putting it would be, competing for an identity with the other player character races.  My thesis is that gnomes are always in danger of getting absorbed into one of the three, clearly distinguished, iconic fantasy races that are standard in D&D and other fantasy role-playing games in the D&D lineage, per the diagram above.  The order I pursue is not chronological, but thematic.

Basic Gnomes (1981, 1977)
When I first met them in Basic D&D, they were not a player character race, but in the MONSTERS part of the rulebook.  Therein, they are described as a "human-like race related to dwarves.  They are smaller than dwarves, and have long noses and full beards" (B36).  They save like dwarves and are metalsmiths and miners like dwarves, but they "usually live in burrows in the woodlands" (ibid.).  They share the characteristics of dwarven greed.  They still are enemies of goblins and kobolds, especially kobolds.  By 1981, they have already acquired their "love of machinery of all kinds" (ibid.).  Uninteresting and unillustrated, they did not stand out from other monsters.  For that matter, they seemed more like potential allies than monsters, but even then, why would a more halfling-sized, and perhaps more human-like version of the dwarf be needed when we already have halflings and dwarves for NPC allies.

I didn't know hobbits at the time, so I didn't think of them when I read that they lived in burrows.  I would have more likely thought of dwarves, who also lived in the ground.  But once you know of hobbits, the gnomes loose the distinctive nature of their homes, with the exception that they live in woodlands, unlike dwarves -- but like elves!  I was not familiar with the Huygen/Poortvliet gnomes either, later popularized by the David the Gnome cartoons, Amélie, and Travelocity, but these gnomes live underground in woodlands (in trees root-systems, in fact).  But they are much too small to be D&D gnomes -- they're smaller even than some of D&D's fairies, and arguably too small to work well as a PC race.  But even if one imagined them living in a woodland of giant trees (and animals), they are more similar to various fay or elves that live in mounds or trees in folklore.  They'd be left with the distinctives of beards and dress, which is not much more than the distinction from dwarves by a nose.  Now we have an impression of gnomes as fey dwarves.  In a fay focused campaign, there might be a call for such an elf-dwarf hybrid.  It's not the first time that gnomes have been associated with elf-kind, nor, we shall see, will it be the last.

[For the Holmes crowd, I note that the very brief description of the gnome in his Monsters section is very close to the above, but instead of "woodlands" it has the more vague "lowlands and hills."]

Dragonlance Gnomes
The idea that gnomes are tinkers or engineers seems to me to have picked up on the phrase about their love of machinery in Moldvay's Basic and expanded it to the proportions for which they are well-known in World of Warcraft.  As I understand it from various podcast interviews, this was a contribution of Jeff Grubb to the Dragonlance setting, which took off in 1984, just a few years after Moldvay. 

While this is one of the more successful attempts to distinguish gnomes from the other demi-humans, it doesn't preclude gnomes being an off-shoot of dwarves or elves.  For that matter, Dragonlance has its version of halflings, the Kender, as an off-shoot of gnomes.   I think it is obvious that gnome tinkers could be as much a development of dwarf smiths as gnomes could be an off-shoot of dwarves as a race.  But why do I bring elves in again?  Think Keebler elves.  Or Santa's elves.  Or the cobbler and the elves.  Once again, gnomes are overlapping with the elves/fay niche.

I'm not a fan of the Dragonlance setting as a whole.  There are some really great ideas in it, that I would consider re-purposing for another setting, but the whole package doesn't appeal to me.  That doesn't mean that the gnome as (fey) tinker might not reach the desired level of distinction if it fit as a key element of design in a well-conceived setting.  If anybody can put together a setting where this concept would come off strong, I think I know who that publisher would be.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977, 1979)
The description of gnomes grows in AD&D.  Not all of this description is distinctive: like dwarves, the basis of society is the clan and they are miners.  On the distinctive side, most are said to be colored wood brown.  (Note, another fay characteristic.)  They are said to live in both earthen burrows and rocky hills (the latter, again, like dwarves and now 75% of the time).  No explicit mention is made of woodlands, but the common presence of badgers and wolverines in their lairs and their ability to communicate with burrowing animals would seem to suggest woodlands more so than rocky hills.  Finally, they are identified now with a particular class in which they are talented: illusionist.  The common number of gnome illusionists or thief/illusionists is suggestive of a trickster figure -- a direction that we will see developed in Dragon Magazine and later publications.  Both tricksters and illusionists are especially identified in folklore with fey creatures.

4e and Pathfinder Tackle the Problem
This ongoing dilemma is passed on to the current generation of designer-heirs to D&D.  This is particularly interesting to the extent to which they represent opposing reactions to how to extend the legacy of D&D, yet pursue similar solutions.  While I don't know much about 4e, it is evident to me that both sets of designers took the gnomes in the fey direction, to distinguish them from dwarves and halflings.  That brings them closer to the elf camp, and so perhaps it is not accident that both attempt to remove elves from feykind.  Fourth edition did this by introducing the eladrin as another fey race, Pathfinder attempted to make the elves some kind of star race.  Both of these seem to me doomed attempts, as elves are by definition related to fairies -- both within folkloric sources and in the text of first generation D&D primary source materials (1974-1981),  However, it is understandably an attempt to keep gnomes from just being little elves.  Note that, in addition to all the setting material about gnomes being creatures of the First World in Pathfinder's setting, the iconic druid is a gnome (below).  (Pathfinder still has you covered if you are a fan of DL or WoW gnomes, by the way.  The obsessive trait gives a bonus to profession or craft skill of their choice.)

WAR's Lini is a lot cuter than 4e's freakishly fey gnomes, but she's still a wild child.

Tolkien's Gnomes
One of the acknowledged literary sources* of D&D is the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien.  Does he offer a solution?  By no means!  For Tolkien, gnome is a term that he initially used for the Noldor, one of the elvish lines, specifically, the line that is exiled to Middle Earth.  To follow Tolkien would lead us back towards the elves -- his elves, which have nothing short or funny about them.

The Problem Isn't a Problem
The problem of the making the gnomes a distinctive race may not matter to some gamers, although, from the amount of buzz I hear on this issue, not to mention the number of gamers who just want to ignore the existence of gnomes in their games, I think a sizable group of people are thinking along lines similar to mine.  But if you are happy with gnomes as an off-shoot of dwarves or another fey relation of elves, then you only need to develop them into a distinctive sub-race, if you will.  Just as sub-classes are only a little distinct from the larger, iconic class from which they derive, gnomes are smaller more specialized versions of their relations.  For those who only want a shade of distinction, this is enough and gnomes aren't problem.  Whether they are all that attractive is another matter, and I won't presume to speak for such folk.

A Way Forward
As you might have supposed, I do see another way forward.  I will treat the directions I am taking to develop gnomes along a distinctive line, breaking them out of the overlap of the other demi-human races, in a future installment.  I've also been going back to look at old Dragon Magazine articles, so I might flesh out some of what I have pointed out here from those sources in some future installments as well, but on this I am still undecided.  For now, I will note that the direction I am going to be pursuing does take them in a non-fey direction, but in settings where the fay are particularly important, I wouldn't worry about making faerie the distinguishing factor.  In such a setting, dwarves, gnomes, and elves would all be fey creatures, along with many others, as they all are in the original folkloric sources, and the focus would be on distinguishing kinds of fey creatures from one another.  However, that is not the way I will be pursuing in the settings I currently have in mind, nor in this series.  If you are interested, stop back for the next installment of Mythopoeic Monday.


NB.  I use fay as a noun and fey as an adjective.  If I'm in an archaic mood, I'll use fae instead of fay.  Fairies (or faeries) are diminutive fay.

Execution by Element

wirenoose.JPG  By: taliesin

I had another one of those thoughts, recently.  (Hopefully, I'm not among the last folk to have it, and just don't know it.)  A steady diet of period pieces and fantasy sometimes prompts these things at odd moments.  My thought is this: it seems to me that before the modern period, it may be that all forms of execution may be grouped by substance of the cause or means of execution.  How?  Elementally, my dear readers.

Recall the four classical elements, then think about how premodern convicts were executed and the element involved.  Those who are stoned or buried alive: Earth.  Those who are drowned: Water.  Those who are burned: Fire.  The only element that may not obviously be associated with a historically popular means of execution is Air.  Perhaps hanging or being tossed from high places corresponds with Air.  Perhaps strangulation also belongs with Air.  What other means of execution are left?  Beheading?  Arguably, execution by metal would also be an Earth execution.

In a fantasy setting, I would like this elemental um, element, to come to the fore.  Going by the old adage, let the punishment fit the crime, certain executions, if not all corporal punishments, would be by the element according the category of the crime.  Crimes against people gaining their livelihood by the Earth would be met by an Earth execution.  Criminals who violated lèse-majesté would be hung.  Criminals sentenced to death for acts of pollution would be burnt with Fire or immersed in Water.  Perhaps offenders of the most heinous sort would be sentenced to multiple executions.  "Guilty of high crimes against the gods, his liege, the people, and all creatures, the Doomed one is sentenced to be stoned, removed before death and hung, removed before death and burned, and finally his ashes scattered in the Sea of Woe."  Or strangled while being held underwater, roasted, and then drawn and quartered (to the four quarters of the earth).  Given what he know about judges and human nature, creativity would come into play.  I've had another spurt of inspiration for the World of Ygg (the setting for my in-stasis S&W game) the last couple of days, and as I develop it, I will bear in mind the place of the elements in certain areas and how that would play into their system of justice as much as, say, their religions (these come up in the Greek and Persian analogues -- Kalokanikai and Aryanistan -- particularly.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  Even if it is a tad morbid, this is how I wish you happy mythopoeicizing this MP Monday.