Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

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An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

  • Of Crown Princes and Lantern Princesses

    Four Wishes at Dusk

    On the weekend just been, regular commenter and past player of mine, Paul, and his wife The Indomitable G came to my sleepy resort town at the tale end of a two week tour of Japan. We had heard tell of a minor festival of bamboo lanterns in distant Hita Town, so decided to visit. We rented a car and headed to Hita Town via the excellent Ebisu Hot Spring, where we stopped for an hour long soak and a lunch of delicious noodles and fried chicken. We arrived at Hita itself at about 3pm, to find the town overrun by police, who were directing traffic very officiously. Ominously, when we stopped to ask a uniformed chap the way to the nearest car park, he told us he didn’t know because he was from out of town.

    Out of town police? What could possibly be going on? Upon inquiring at a convenience store we discovered that Crown Prince Naruhito would be passing through Hita Town on his way to an international wheelchair marathon in a nearby town[1]. By the time we found this out, groups of Japanese spectators with Rising Sun flags were gathering at suitably spaced cordons, guarded by police (including some – universally very handsome and quite macho – wearing caps emblazoned with a riot police logo). These police were giving instructions in an extremely polite tone to the gathered crowds, such as “please do not press beyond this rope barrier, as cars are coming through here – thank you very much for your cooperation” and “papa! Papa! Please step down from that wall!” (to the giggles of everyone in the crowd). So we decided to join the crowds and wait for the Crown Prince to pass.

    After 10 minutes or so our responsible cop told us that two cars would pass us by, one with a “3” written on the side and one with a “1” on it. These would indicate that the Crown Prince was 3 and then 1 minute away from us, so we could prepare our waves. One policeman had his batch of crowd practice their waves, but we weren’t so lucky as to receive drill training. In fact, I think the two cars were not two minutes apart as promised, and then were followed by a big black saloon car which didn’t, in fact, contain the crown prince – it contained two of his household staff, who were grinning inside the car and madly pointing to the car behind them. Everyone had been waving at this saloon car, but when they saw the pointing staffers they immediately turned to the following car and there inside was the Crown Prince himself, waving happily to the crowd. He was gone in a moment, and followed by two buses full of police.

    Satisfied with our glimpse of royalty, we traipsed off with everyone else towards the suburb called “Beanfield Town” (Mameda Town) where the lantern festival was being held. On the way a group of 3 schoolgirls walking behind us interrupted our conversation with gentle hellos, and there proceeded a hilarious conversation in which they tried to practice their English, and misdirected us towards the “big river” where we could see the lanterns. In fact, they later found us at the big river, and declared in unison “Big River!!!” with great satisfaction. A very cute moment of international exchange indeed…

    The Moon Princess wishes for a day job

    First though we found Beanfield Town, a section of old buildings in the Edo style, full of cute shops (all selling the same stuff) and some quaint little streams, winding between rice paddies and walled compounds, and lined with bamboo or paper lanterns hanging from poles. These being not yet lit, we wandered the town a little in search of the aforementioned “Big River,” which we finally found. This river was lined with serried ranks of white paper lanterns, such as the one shown here, all decorated with the wishes of the people who placed them. The pictured lantern is by a schoolchild, who wishes to become a nurse. Other wishes included “I want to be a medal-winning olympic volleyballer,” “I want to read 10 books,” and “I want to be proficient with my abacus.” As the sun set these lanterns were lit, and the river was lined with patterns formed from lines and clusters of candles. Even the stepping stones across the river were graced with clusters of bamboo lamps, and furthermore every shop and shrine in town had placed their own small collection of lanterns by the street, sometimes in elaborate displays (one small temple had a buddha amongst the candles). There were also some stages for musical performances set about the town, lined and surmounted with bamboo lanterns in intricate patterns, and the grounds of the main shrine in the town were full of intricate patterns and tall multi-candle bamboo poles, carved with bats and cat footprints that the candles shone through.

    As full night overcame the town we had to return to our car park, but on the way we passed back through the main town, where the musicians were warming up and the local school was selling burgers made of noodles (?). Many residents were carrying pretty red lanterns on poles, and wandering about looking in the shop windows. There is a legend in Japan concerning a princess from the moon who lives in a bamboo stalk, and was found there by an old man. Both Paul and I looked in many bamboo lanterns, but we found no moon princess. Despite this, the day was very successful and the evening festival enchanting. Next year I hope to come back to this town and stay the night, so that I can enjoy the festival until late in the evening, and I recommend it to anyone travelling Kyushu in mid-November.

     

     

    —

    fn1: which explains the wheelchair-bound athletes I saw gathering for dinner in Oita on Wednesday night

  • “Meta” Reviewing Early Reviews of Warhammer 3rd Edition

    Today I stumbled on another one of the many early reviews of Warhammer 3rd Edition, this one published at Uncle Bear Media. It seems to be a review based entirely on the pre-release advertising for the game, judging by the way it is written. This type of “review” is not unusual – I’ve stumbled upon quite a few since I inherited a copy of the game, and they seem to all follow the same pattern. Maybe it’s something about modern gamer cynicism, or maybe it was the climate of the times, or maybe it’s just that gamers are a bunch of arrogant judgmental jerks, but there seem to be quite a few things wrong with these reviews that they all hold in common. Here are a few examples of the complaints that were made about Warhammer 3 before it came out, based on reviews of the product as seen at GenCon or on the initial media:

    • The Board-game-ification of RPGs: Apparently using cards to track abilities is an example of the influence of boardgames on role-playing and this is a bad thing (to judge from the carefully-placed “groan”). I wonder if the first role-players complained about this when dice were introduced for handling conflict resolution? No, they didn’t. Getting ideas from other place is not a good or a bad thing unless the ideas are a bad thing; and they can’t be such a bad thing, since a year after writing this “groan,” Uncle Bear penned a whole post on the benefits of cards in gaming.　With, of course, no reference to where or how he might have learnt over the intervening year that actually tracking abilities with cards is quite a useful idea.
    • Mischaracterizations about miniatures: Here we hear the oft-repeated complaint that the game “looks as if they’re taking queues from Wizards of the Coast and shooting for a tactical miniatures game with roleplaying elements.” I can only presume that this is based on the fact that the game has cardboard standup characters, because even though WFRP 3 is based on a world that derived from a miniature battle game, it explicitly does not rely on miniatures. Distances are calculated in 3 abstract ranges with no reference to any form of battlemat, terrain, frontage, base size, or any other form of miniature battle game -related concept. The use of standups in WFRP is purely for flavour, and you don’t need them. There isn’t even a concept of flank attacks – the game explicitly avoids any form of placement, tactical movement, or specific details of the combat space. You are engaged with an opponent, or you are not. I’d add that the reviewer is a pathfinder player and, in any case, the characterization of D&D (any edition) as “a miniature battlegame with role-playing elements” is shallow.
    • Abandonment of the original setting: I think a lot of reviewers assumed that rewriting the rules means inevitably rewriting the setting. But the game books are actually very rules light – the rules section of the books is dwarfed by the setting information. I just received the Winds of Magic supplement, and it is about 70% setting flavour, with a few pages of rules in each book. The basic book is probably about 50% setting. The setting material is laid out in a similar fashion to the previous version, with cynical, ironic or extremely nasty quotes from observers of the time, and background details on the grim and perilous world. Changing the rules doesn’t mean changing the setting.
    • Loyalty to a shit system: I don’t know about 1st Edition, but WFRP 2 is a really poor system. Rewriting this is not a bad thing, and loyalty to a system which was presented in a beautiful book and had an excellent career system but a really, really bodgy ruleset is not a good idea. WFRP 2 needed serious reworking, and the new system has imported a lot of very clever and quite useful ideas to do that. A little openness to new ideas might be a good thing in the gaming world, I think.

    Which isn’t to say that WFRP 3 is perfect (see my shortly-to-be-written review of The Winds of Magic for where I think it goes wrong, and my suspicions about its bigger problems), but shooting it down on the basis of a press release and a bunch of assumptions is both a) crap and b) an example of an all-too-common problem in the role-playing world, of cynicism combined with low expectations and arrogance.

     

  • The Daily Mash Proves Comics are the Ultimate Chick-Magnet

    The Daily Mash today has an excellent article on how women prefer me who like comics. It even has a warhammer reference:

    They should make Warhammer condoms, shaped like balrogs and space marines

    So this is where I’ve been going wrong my whole life…

  • Faustus’s Position on the Legalization of Heroin

    This post has come about because over at Crooked Timber I was outed as one of the authors on this paper, while defending the prohibition of heroin (I’m the third author on that paper, and have a brace like it[1]). I don’t usually like to reveal my identity on the internet, because … well, because the internet is a dangerous place, and also it seems a bit pretentious. But since it came up on that thread, and I didn’t want to do a threadjack (the OP was about “zombie economics,” not “zombie drug policy”), I thought I’d give the definitive Faustusnotes position on the Legalization of Heroin.

    First though, in the interests of all this clarity of identity, I thought I’d add that I’m currently teaching this topic in a special lecture at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, on the special topic of Global Crime and Public Health, in which I get to add some of my own theories about the importance of governance and corruption in modern drug policy. My views, of course, don’t represent those of the University or my colleagues, though I sincerely hope that they do reflect those of my students by the end of the course[2] . Also, Professor Quiggin, the author of the original post at Crooked Timber, has a couple of posts about prohibition at his own blog that express a common problem many on the civil libertarian side of politics (whether right or left) have with drug prohibition – even if we accept it is practically a good idea, how can we justify it when we don’t prohibit alcohol or tobacco? I’ll try to answer that on practical grounds in this post as well.

    As a final point, I should add that my views don’t represent those of my co-authors, though I think we agree in the main on most of these issues, but it would be wise to assume we differ in various small ways about details of the wide range of issues that fall within the rubric of modern drug policy.

    The harm reduction vs. prohibition debate and the war on drugs

    As with a lot of modern policy debate, the drug “debate” has been poisoned by the involvement of the US on the prohibition side of things. US prohibition policy – the so-called “war on drugs” – is much tougher and harsher than that in action in other countries of the developed world, and involves a whole series of abuses of freedom that don’t really occur in the rest of the developed world. The US also lacks a coherent national harm reduction policy, which means that the worst effects of the drug trade on its prime victims (the drug users) is not ameliorated or softened effectively by health or welfare agencies. I find when discussing the issue of whether drugs should be legalized that it is best to completely ignore the US experience of prohibiting heroin and cocaine, because it has been done in such a cruel and heartless way that it really doesn’t represent what can be achieved.

    It’s also important to ignore the distinction between harm reduction and prohibition, and to assume for a moment that they can a) work side by side, and b) aim for the same goal (improvements in health). We can, at least in theory, argue for prohibition on the basis of its benefits for health.

    For the benefit of my American reader(s), harm reduction is a suite of practical policies aimed at reducing the damage drug use does, without attempting to judge the behaviour, and based on the assumption that harmful behaviour occurs regardless of our judgments and even where it is illegal. Because harm reduction doesn’t explicitly try to stop the underlying activity, many people think of it as a kind of “gateway policy” for drug legalization, but in my experience this is a pretty big mistake. Harm reduction is typically represented by policies like Needle Syringe Programs (dispensing free needles), free availability of methadone treatment, and sometimes more radical experiments like medically supervised injecting centres[3] or medical prescription of heroin[4]. Many harm reduction practices do actually attempt to change behaviour, reduce drug use or stop drug use (that’s pretty much what methadone is designed to do), so the claim that harm reduction as a policy suite condones drug use is a bit shallow.

    Prohibition, on the other hand, is an attempt to stop the use of drugs, typically by banning their production, sale and/or use. Prohibition has recognized negative effects, the main ones being (and these are all important):

    • Criminalization of drug users for their personal behaviour, which generally doesn’t harm others
    • Invasion of the rights of non- drug users as part of police activity
    • Stigmatization of drug users
    • Significant public health effects deriving from the need of users to keep their use secret

    Note that stigmatization is important in the era of HIV. Stigmatized people don’t seek health care. This means that there is a risk they will unknowingly spread HIV. Thus stigmatization is practically an important issue even if you, personally, think that the stigma is deserved.

    Why Prohibit Heroin?

    Heroin, particularly, needs to be prohibited for a simple reason – it is extremely dangerous when used as an injectable drug. It is dangerous for two simple reasons, and neither of these reasons will go away just because the substance is legal. These are:

    • Transmission of Blood Borne Viruses (BBVIs): particularly HIV and Hepatitis C (HCV). HCV is now the single biggest cause of liver transplant in Australia, surpassing alcohol-related liver damage, so it’s an extremely costly and unpleasant disease. HIV is a bullet that the developed world largely dodged by good luck and very rapid implementation of harm reduction policy. BBVIs are primarily spread in the developed world through needle sharing by IDUs (in fact, it’s the only way to transfer HCV). To give a sense of how endemic these diseases can be, HCV was around in Australian IDUs in the 70s, before the implementation of NSP and harm reduction policies. Its current prevalence in IDUs is about 60%, and in US areas without NSP it is up above 90%. HIV in Australian IDUs is low, less than 1% in fact, and this is almost entirely due to the provision of clean needles to IDUs before the disease became widespread.
    • Overdose: Heroin kills its users, randomly, and rapidly. During the late 1990s in Australia heroin became one of the top killers of young people, with nearly 1000 deaths in 1999. Although overdose is associated with using other central nervous system depressants (especially alcohol and benzodiazepines), the epidemiology of overdose is still not clear and there is pretty strong evidence of at least some randomness in the death rate – autopsies suggest that people who have died from overdose have similar levels of residual heroin in their system to those who didn’t, whether or not they had other substances at the time of death. OD is a random risk that heroin users face.

    If heroin were legalized, it would become much more widely available and the rates of BBVIs and HCV would surely climb. There are clear reasons why this will happen, but before I describe them, anyone who has read this far should ask themselves these three questions:

    • Have you ever got drunker than you expected from a couple of beers, or experienced greater effects from the amount of alcohol consumed than you expected? i.e. is your experience of alcohol’s potency the same every time you drink the same alcohol?
    • Have you ever had unsafe sex when you fully intended to have safe sex, had the condoms with you, and knew the risks? Do you know people who have done this?
    • Have you, your partner, or a completely reasonable and sane person you know, ever experienced an unplanned pregnancy? Do you think those people knew the risks? Do you think that the high teen pregnancy rate in the UK is entirely related to lack of availability of condoms?

    I present these questions in support of the unasked questions about the behaviour that will flow from legalization. Legalization is not a panacaea that will instantly solve all our drug use problems, and turn previously chaotic, criminally involved addicts into beautiful people. It just means more people will be at risk of these mistakes.

    The consequences of legalization

    The two main consequences of legalization of heroin are an increase in overdose deaths and an increase in the prevalence of BBVIs. These, I think, are inevitable, because of the reality of injecting drug use.

    Increase in Overdose Deaths: heroin does not kill users because it is cut with bad stuff, as many claim. It kills users because it randomly kills people. Some people claim that steady purity will prevent this from happening, because users will know how much they’re taking, but this isn’t necessarily the case. We don’t know the biological causes of overdose clearly, and we don’t clearly understand the relationship between heroin purity and overdose. I am sure it’s well understood in medical settings, but people won’t be injecting heroin in a medical setting – they’ll be injecting it in their loungeroom, with their friends, in the same context that people drink alcohol now. The effects won’t be controlled, and peoples’ behaviour is not so straightforward. There will be people who misjudge the time since they last had a drink, or how drunk they “think” they are, or who think the first shot just isn’t enough and don’t wait long enough for the second one, or who’re feeling particularly nasty today, or… then there will be people (presumably those who map to the 30% of ODs whose residual levels of morphine are lower than in OD survivors) who just die randomly. There will also be people who’ve tried to give up, and come back for a shot but forget their tolerance has gone down; people coming out of gaol or the army or a long overseas trip.

    Increase in BBVIs: HCV is not a rare disease that IDUs get through crazy mistakes. It’s an environmental hazard that happens to people who are IDUs. It happens because people shoot up in silly situations, like the toilet behind the restaurant, or the party with 5 of their mates, or 6 times today during a cocaine binge, or… I once watched 10 people in a room at a house party injecting speed, all sharing the drug from the same bag by the light of a couple of candles, most of them drunk, music loud, people passing around various objects, bags, spoons, water… in this situation needles get misplaced easily, people think they’re using their own but they’re not… with 60% prevalence of a virus, this becomes a significant risk of its spread.

    It’s also not the case that IDUs in Australia share needles because of the illegality of the drug. Most IDUs in Australia have regular, reliable and uninterrupted access to clean needles and don’t have to share, and sharing rates are generally low. Nonetheless, prevalence of HCV is high. This is because when the majority of people in your community have a disease that is linked to the main behaviour that defines your community, that disease becomes an environmental hazard, rather than an avoidable medical condition (like HIV).

    Addiction: The other thing that will happen if the drug is legalized is a lot of people will try it and become addicted. We have evidence from the Vietnam war that when the drug is available young men will try it; if legal in Australia and easily purchased, the number of people trying it will increase and with it the pool of addicted people. Addiction to heroin is associated with poverty – you can’t shoot up 3 times a day and hold down many forms of work. Addiction to heroin is also associated with loss of children (through neglect) and family. Unless the legally available drug is very cheap, it will also lead to crime – an addicted person will be having to spend upwards of $30 a day on their habit, which is worse than most serious smokers do. Having lost their job and family support, where will this money come from?

    Many people try heroin and don’t become addicted, but those who do become addicted typically see their lives fall apart around them. We don’t need to expand the pool of people to whom this applies.

    Australia’s Prohibition Success

    In January 2001 Australia experienced a sudden reduction in the availability of heroin, that led to a marked change in the heroin markets and drove a lot of young people and new users out of the heroin market, probably permanently. There was a sustained 60% reduction in heroin deaths, 70% reduction in ambulance attendances at overdose, and a 15% reduction in cocaine possession offences. There was no long term increase in acquisitive crime, prostitution offences or BBVIs. New entrants to methadone increased, indicating people trying to leave the market; it’s likely that the overall number of new and young users permanently declined. This was a huge public health gain with very little downside, and it occurred through a sustained campaign of harm reduction and prohibition that ramped up, and improved, with the 1997 release of the National Drug Strategy (under the conservative government of John Howard). Increased treatment places, novel harm reduction policies, and improved health services to IDUs, meant that they were sheltered from the worst effects of the shortage; improved coordination of federal customs and police, improved intelligence-gathering and coordination of local police, and significant reductions in police corruption, meant that drug importation stopped being profitable, and the supply side of the market collapsed.

    Our argument (in the paper linked above) is that harm reduction was a key part of this success of prohibition, both in reducing demand for heroin (through methadone treatment) and in protecting users from the worst of the effects of prohibition when it happened. The long term reforms of sex work and police behaviour towards petty crime also helped with this – in my opinion, on a local level we saw the lessons of the Inquiry into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Wood Royal Commission into Police Corruption[5], the National Drug Strategy and the Drug Courts all coming together in 2000/2001 to destroy the viability of the market for heroin.

    Why we Prohibit Heroin but not Alcohol

    There is understandable concern that it’s hard to support prohibiting heroin but not alcohol; and that the bad historical lessons of the latter should inform our decision to try the former. But in fact the two drugs are completely different, and there are practical reasons why even if we wanted to prohibit alcohol we can’t. John Quiggin touches on these in his posts on prohibition, but I think he misses the point a little. We can’t prohibit alcohol for many practical reasons that don’t apply to heroin:

    • It has a long-standing tradition of use, that isn’t just window-dressing. Alcohol is an important part of our culture, not something we can just wish away, with a role in festivals and the bonds of social life
    • The raw materials are accessible to anyone – they’re in shops down the road
    • The production process is well understood and can be done in a back yard, so the prohibition is trivial to avoid
    • Declaring alcohol illegal means that the people charged with enforcing the law will be declared criminal overnight, unless they stop a long-term habit (Police do like a drink)
    • There is an existing industry with a significant role in society – not something that ever applied to heroin

    In addition, we know that alcohol can be used safely, while heroin can’t. So it’s really hard to put up a justification for banning alcohol “for the protection of the user,” while we can do so for heroin. Now, many people object to banning a substance if the only victim is the user, which is why we only ban substances we are sure you can’t use safely; or substances that affect others as well as the user. This applies in spades for heroin, which has no safe level of use, is highly addictive, and whose habitual users commit significant amounts of crime to fund their habit. Heroin is a public order as well as a personal health problem, and the possibility that legalizing it will suddenly cause all those public order problems to disappear rather than worsen is really something that we don’t need to take a risk and find out – especially since we have perfectly good policies in place to prevent prohibition from becoming the vicious, poisonous political problem that is in the US.

    A Final Note on Narco-States

    It is my firm opinion that drug dealing does not destroy nations (like Columbia or Guinea-Bissau). Rather, states in the process of collapse become havens for drug dealers, which in turn destabilizes parts of those states, and leads to massive corruption problems that further fragment the states. Australia grows lots of opium, but you don’t see Tasmania turning into a narco state. This is because we have a strong state, that can control crime in its borders. There is no causal process from drug dealing to failed states; it’s the other way around.

    Conclusion

    On civil liberties grounds alone no substance should be banned if it is just bad for the user. But if the drug is randomly fatal, causes addiction and poverty of the kind that inevitably leads people to be tempted to commit crime, and is associated with a significant public health problem like HCV or HIV, then it should be banned if it is possible to do so. It is practically possible to prohibit heroin, we have shown it can be done and that harm reduction can prevent such prohibition from being a threat to health; so I think we should maintain heroin’s illegal status, and do all we can to prevent its production, importation, and use. It should, in short, remain illegal.

    —

    fn1: including an interesting test of the relative importance of long-term epidemic trends in the heroin market, compared to a sudden shock; and a general method for statistical analysis of imperfectly-dated natural experiments

    fn2: Said facetiously, of course…

    fn3: One of which I had a small part in helping to set up

    fn4: Which I support

    fn5: Which I think was hugely important for police corruption in Australia

  • Reconfiguring Warhammer 3 for Compromise and Conceit

    After yesterday’s post on reconfiguring Warhammer 3 for playing high fantasy, I thought about configuring it for Compromise and Conceit, and I realized not much would have to change, because there are many things in the Warhammer milieu that suit my Compromise and Conceit world. The encroaching chaos, the concepts of corruption and the European setting are very familiar to my campaign; and the way magic works in Warhammer 3, where mages can use their powers almost continually and have only a small selection to play with, is also quite familiar. I also didn’t use classes per se in my campaign, instead going on a skill-based system; a good alternative to not using classes is the career structure of Warhammer, with regular changes possible to create a varied and interesting set of characters.

    So really, all I would need to do is adopt most of the Warhammer 3 rules, adjust the spell lists to suit the Orders of 18th Century Europe, and import a few new spells. So having thought about this, here are some basic ideas for how to make Warhammer 3 work for Compromise and Conceit.

    Basic Rule Adjustments: Character Development

    The main change to existing character classes is to change the development rules for stances. All PCs start the game with a single slot of their choice on the stance meter (i.e. one conservative or one reckless). They can only add the others through advancement. Everything else at character creation is the same.

    For advancement, I would adjust the advancement rules to allow each character class 7 open career advances, instead of 6. This allows them to buy an extra stance, and in their second career to advance a character’s prime attribute to 7 instead of the current limit of 6. I think this makes for more heroic characters at higher levels, which is quite important for Compromise and Conceit. These are the only rules I can think of for character development.

    New Talents, Actions, Magic

    Obviously there would be general sets of actions and talents to suit the infernal world. There would also be a new skill, Infernalism, which would be specific to the world, and a set of Summoning/Invoking actions which would match it. These would be limited, and would involve working with Infernal essence or summoning demons. I would make these actions rather than spells, so there is no equivalent to favour or magic points in the world.

    Character classes

    I don’t know what the list of advanced careers is for Warhammer 3 (I hope to find out soon) but in the meantime I would use all the basic classes, but drop commoner and gambler, and probably rat catcher. The new classes specific to the campaign would be:

    • Infernalist (a manipulator of infernal essences and, later, conjuror of demons)
    • Investigator (particularly important when the campaign is set in the 19th century)
    • Inquisitor (an interrogator for the church, possibly quite similar to an investigator)
    • Clergyman (a non-spell-using priest, I think)
    • Grenadier (a kind of mixture of military engineer and soldier)
    • Engineer (for the non-magical steampunk element)
    • Scientist (for the non-magical steampunk element)

    Amongst the advanced classes, I would include:

    • Demonologist (this being essentially stage 2 of an Infernalist’s path)
    • Technomancer (a semi-magical version of an engineer, possibly using infernalism)
    • Assassin
    • Remaker (someone who combines animals and machines, to make the Remade)

    I think for some of the basic classes (e.g. nobleman, clergyman) some kind of additional wealth or other benefit would be needed to distinguish them from priests and wizards. Traditionally in my campaigns people choose their PCs, and I would like to keep that option, but no-one would choose a nobleman without a good reason. This means that some of the commoner “best” classes like Wizard and Priest would need to have more limited ranges of skills, or some kind of entry requirements. Alternatively I could relent on this tradition and allow random selection of characters.

    Possibly there could be some amusing French character classes: Jacobin and Musketeer spring to mind…

    Essentially the game then proceeds as Compromise and Conceit with Warhammer rules. Worth a try, I think!

     

  • Adjusting Warhammer 3 to Play High Fantasy

    I really like the Warhammer 3 system, though I don’t know if it will work at higher levels, but I’m interested in adjusting it to work in a High Fantasy campaign style, rather than the “grim and perilous world” of Warhammer. To the extent that changes would need to be made, it seems that the main ones would be in character generation and advancement. I’ve been thinking about this a bit recently, and some of my ideas on how such a change might work are described below.

    Characterizing High Fantasy

    The High Fantasy ideas I’m used to basically seem to consist of the following:

    • PCs start at quite a weak and low-powered level, but progress to extremely high powers
    • Character classes follow quite a long development path, and career transitions are few and far between
    • Career transitions can be quite radical: from fighter to magic user, for example
    • Secondary spell users (like Bard, Paladin, etc.) exist

    To incorporate these into Warhammer 3 would require a change in the base classes, and an extension of the duration of a single career (perhaps a doubling) so that a single career in the High Fantasy world is roughly equal to 2 or 3 careers in the Warhammer 3 rules. This would in turn lead to more dependence on Rank as a signifier of power.

    Revising careers

    I envisage 4 basic careers: Soldier, Initiate, Apprentice Wizard and Rogue. If one wants to include semi-spell users then one would also include the Paladin, Bard and maybe a Fighter/Magic User type (Warlock?).

    There would then be a series of advanced careers, that represent improvements on the basic careers: Warrior, Cleric, Wizard, Thief. The additional careers of Ranger, Assassin and Druid could be introduced at this point, and maybe one would want to include Paladin and Bard at this stage rather than the previous stage.

    Advancement would be simpler than in Warhammer 3. Any basic career can advance to any other basic career, but for the advanced careers the progression types are limited: Fighters can become Warriors, Rangers or Assassins; Rogues can become Assassins, Thieves or Rangers; Initiates can become Clerics, Rangers or Druids; Apprentice Wizards can become Wizards, Assassins or Rangers. Bards, Paladins and Warlocks(?) could fit into this scheme in the obvious ways.

    There could then (perhaps) be a single additional class specific to each basic class: Barbarian for the Warrior, ? for the Cleric, Sorcerer for the Wizard, ? for the Thief.

    Class distinction would be primarily through the use of talents, available skills, and maybe some specific action cards. I imagine that pre-requisites would be more complex than in Warhammer 3, and there would be spells for the different classes. Alternatively, semi-spell-users could be set to use lower-level versions of the other classes’ spells (this makes life easier for the designer) and can only be obtained by non-spell-using basic classes. So then we have the following progression rules:

    • Soldier: any other Basic class; Warrior; Paladin; Warlock; Ranger; Barbarian
    • Initiate: Any other basic class; Cleric
    • Apprentice Wizard: Any other basic class; wizard; Sorcerer
    • Rogue: Any other basic class; thief; Assassin; Ranger; Bard

    I think I like this scheme since it gives a wider range of options for the initial non-spell-using classes. Alternatively you could put strict conditions on ability scores for the Initiate and Apprentice Wizard, and introduce the Bard or Paladin as more flexible versions of the same with access to weaker magic.

    To get the effect of weaker magic, I imagine defining “petty magic” as 0 level, and allowing pure magic using classes to use spells equal to or less than their rank; semi-spell users can use Rank-1. Then, the number of xps required to gain a rank can be adjusted to match the demands of a weak starting point and a powerful ending point. Ranks of spell can also be exponentially more powerful (in this system, rank 4 or 5 would surely be the limit!)

    Starting weak and ending strong

    To achieve this effect I envisage the system putting stricter limits on the  starting attributes for a PC (maybe a maximum of 5) but weaker limits on how many advances can be expended on attributes, enabling characters to develop to a maximum of 7 or 8 by the end of their second career. This would mean that careers would span twice the XP range, and allow more advances. Typically, I imagine a set of advances for one career being something like:

    • 1 Talent
    • 1 Action
    • 2 Wound Threshold
    • 1 Fortune
    • 1 Skill or specialization
    • 1 Specialization
    • 8-10 Open Career Advances
    • 2 Trait Advances to Maximum Rank 5

    So by the time a character has reached the end of this they have spent a maximum of about 25 points (not including non-career advances, which could also be more flexible). The open career advances would be handled the same way as now (on the career card) but would obviously allow more advances, i.e. more skill advances or action cards. I would introduce more scope by reforming the stances a little and giving more flexibility to assign points to them.

    Reforming stances

    Stances are a powerful effect in the game (though I think the Reckless Stance can be a little bit pointless at times). At low levels I think high fantasy characters shouldn’t have much flexibility to adjust them, so I would suggest changing the stances to give all PCs at first level 1 stance step in one direction (of their choice). They then buy additional stance dice as they proceed. They might even start off neutral-only, and be able to buy 1 stance per career. This prevents them from having lots of stance dice early on and gives monsters a huge advantage. It also means players have more incentive to buy up attributes – with stance dice being limited, increasing attributes is important.

    It would also be a good idea, I think, to make some actions – and especially some types of spell – benefit more from specific stances. Pyromancy and necromancy should benefit from reckless stances, as should anything a thief or barbarian does, while Paladins and Conjurors should benefit from conservatism (taking your time about summoning demons is a good idea). Fighters should be able to adopt very different styles by changing stance options, and I like the idea that early decisions a PC makes really limit their future development. So if a PC has bought two steps on a conservative stance, that basically means that becoming a thief is a bad idea.

    I also pondered linking stances to alignment (Law/Chaos) and I’m interested in the fact that the original Warhammer rules don’t do this.

    Conclusion

    I’m still thinking about whether any changes to WFRP 3 would be necessary to make it into a high fantasy game, or whether they’re mainly about play style. But if one did choose to change the game, the image I have is of keeping the same basic resolution system for actions, keeping fatigue/stress and action cooldowns, and changing character advancement so that it reflects the classic D&D-style classes. Along with a bit of tinkering with stances and some adjustments to the pre-requisites for the basic classes, this could be sufficient to make the game into a high fantasy system with an excellent (I think) skill resolution system, and some cool ideas for handling resources. I’ll be looking into this more over the next few months, and possibly also considering ways to convert the system directly to Compromise and Conceit.

  • Japanese RPG “Make You Kingdom”: Completely Random Dungeon Adventures

    Come to my kingdom, he said…

    Today was the monthly Oita Devil Spirit Convention, and on the promise that one of my warhammer players would be presenting a second session of the Japanese RPG “Make You Kingdom,” I attended during an otherwise very busy weekend. Along with an apparent horde of other people trapped in the pre-christmas work rush, my player couldn’t attend, but a different chap stepped up to the plate without any preparation, and offered to run a Make You Kingdom adventure entitled “All Random.” The premise was that the adventure would be genuinely, from start to finish, entirely randomly generated. This, as it turns out, isn’t such a great plan for a convention.

    Character Creation

    This session I chose to play a priest, and we also had a Knight, a Servant and a King. For my Priest I chose the skill “Faith,” which heals everyone in the party, and my job was “cook,” which gave me the phenomenally useful power of “Apron”:

    If a monster I kill leaves behind a raw material of any sort, I can convert this raw material into “meat,” which can then be used to make a “lunchbox.” This lunchbox can be imbued with a single skill that the monster originally possessed, and anyone who eats this lunchbox gains the skill for one turn

    Also, when anyone in the party eats a “lunchbox” or a “full course,” in addition to its normal effects they gain +1 to their Bravery for one turn. Who knew cooks could be so powerful?

    I rolled randomly (of course) for my character’s name, history, motivations, etc., and this is what I got:

    • Name: Hairan, who cannot even kill an insect
    • Background: Owes a huge debt (11 Gold Pieces) and is in trouble because of it
    • Fate: If he pays back the debt, Hairan will gain much favour
    • Age: 46
    • Favourite things: Medicine, his own country
    • Hated things: Being alone, people’s rumours
    • Item: a fragment of a star (swapped subsequently for a lunchbox)

    So I decided on the basis of this that my character was a perfectly-dressed gentleman, who somehow manages to be wearing a different suit and hat every day, carries a cane with a sword hidden in it, and is something of a drug-addicted nationalist. Tally ho!

    My character had 21 followers. Because the King’s job was “happymancer” I decided that my characters were all part of a carnival, consisting of a marching band of 10 members, 5 clowns, 5 pretty girls, and a giant.

    The Kingdom

    Our Kingdom, also rolled randomly, contained a palace, a casino and a ranch, and was called “The Ancient Empire.” It was in an alliance with another Kingdom called “Imperial Konparu Kingdom.” Konparu is a word used a lot in Japan (the hall we play at is called “Konparu hall”) but I can’t find a translation for it in any dictionary.

    Our kingdom only had 56 citizens, so if all 4 PCs took their full complement of citizens with them on an adventure, only 2 would remain in the city. Not good! This meant we had to ration our supply of followers (except me, because my healing prayer was directly related to the number of followers I had, which was perhaps a mistake).

    The Adventure

    There was no beating around the  bush – the adventure was introduced as “We have learnt of a new kingdom, let’s go conquer it!” So, we set off to conquer it. First we did a bit of exploring, and discovered that most of the distant kingdom was empty rooms full of traps, but for one room that had 4 Foxes and a Boar in it. I then went for a wander through our kingdom, which proved pointless, and off we went for an adventure.

    On the way we were attacked twice by other monsters, and suffered some damage that wasn’t serious. We arrived at the destination kingdom, and entered the first room. Here are the rooms in order:

    1. The Collapsing Ceiling: This room was empty, but had a collapsing ceiling trap that nearly killed our Servant. Nothing else was in this room, whose description I forget
    2. The foxes and the boar: This room contained 4 “Quick Foxes” and a “Sawing Boar,” and also a rose trap that puts its victims to sleep. We avoided the rose trap and attacked the resident beasts, two of whom were asleep, but unfortunately the boar woke up and nearly killed the knight. I used my single “wish” to enact my healing prayer, and healed everyone. We only just survived this room. The boar was turned into meat, which I attempted to use my “Apron” power on to convert to magic meat that grants the Knight the charge skill, but I failed. We then chose to rest here and eat a “lunchbox,” and I attempted to use my special skill (“Dungeon Feast”) to give everyone a +1 to their Bravery. This resulted in a fumble, which caused some kind of disaster that killed all 5 of my clowns, 1 of my pretty girls and the giant. So much for our carnival entry.
    3. The Dead Letter: We moved on to the next room, where the night stumbled upon a letter in an envelope. This was also a trap, and she had a choice of taking 2d6 damage (she only had 12 hps) or everyone in the party losing 1d6 followers (most people only had 5). She chose the damage, and survived, so we decided to rest again in this room so we could disarm the trap in the following room. We rested, and some of us decided to roll on the rest table. I went wandering through the room, rolled up some kind of excellent effect that depended on a skill check, and fumbled the skill check. Result: we all took damage from a dungeon disaster.
    4. The Escape Route: By now we were all down on hit points, running low on followers, and out of wishes. I was borrowing dice from my neighbour because of the huge fumble rate on my own dice. The room we were in was linked to a room that had a “trap” that sends you straight back to your own kingdom. We chose to go down that trap, and return home…

    Returning home we rolled on the “return home” table, gaining a few followers and quite a bit of money. We spent the money on building a Watchtower, which increases our available total wishes, and we also gained a level. By the time we had made these decisions, it was 4pm and not worth returning to the Dungeon, so we all gave up and decided to wait the hour till the other groups at the convention finished their sessions.

    Conclusion

    Rolling a random dungeon was not such a good idea, if there was any risk of the dungeon being filled entirely with traps. Traps aren’t that interesting as an obstacle. So, we had a slightly boring adventure that finished early. Make You Kingdom adventures are certainly deadly – this is the second time I’ve played, and the second time we’ve survived by the skin of our teeth, consuming our fellow citizens and all our items in the process – but this time around a large part of the deadliness was random.

    Make You Kingdom remains a really interesting and fun system, but this session made me think that it’s real strength will show in a campaign, not single adventures. Gaining levels and building up your kingdom is a really essential part of this game, as is achieving your fate, and a campaign where you get to do this would be really fun. I think this is going to be my next campaign after Warhammer.

  • 隊列を乱す者3回目：秘密のネズミ捕りの舞踏会

    マスターのコメント：今回の題目は英語の参照である。「秘密の警察の舞踏会」という映画は「The Secret Policeman’s Ball」というコメディーである。

    始めに

    前回は、PC達がネズミ捕りを捕まえてもネズミ捕り組合の安全家(アジト）を見つけた。今回、調査の途中でレポートを始める。ヘインズ、シューゼット、シュルツが捕まえたネズミ捕り達を尋問するときに、アルソンがアジトを調べてみた。

    アジトの潜入

    アジトは、倉庫部の港にある倉庫だったが、秘密に入るよに、川向きドアーに入ったほうがいいから、アルソンが川側のドアーに行った。盗賊だから、直接盗める船を探しに行って、すぐ適当な船を見つけた。最初の企ては、成功的に桟橋に漕ぎ着けたが、つないでみたときに配達報告鈴の糸に絡まれて、大きい音がでた。アルソンが、早くて慌ていて船に戻って漕ぎ行って、中から出すネズミ捕りはアルソンを間違えて鈴を鳴らした通っている民だと思いそうだった。アルソンがまた船の所に行って、次の船を盗んで、また倉庫に行った。今回、川上にある前の倉庫の桟橋に止めて、かべを登って屋根で目的の倉庫に行こうと思っていたが、着いたとたんに登りにくそうだと思った。だから、中に入って、３階の窓から屋根に行こうと思ったが、中にいる人の人数がわからなかったからやめた。川下の倉庫に行って、そこでも中のいる人の人数が確認できなかった。暴走的に入って、ハッとしてだれもいなかった。

    この建物のロフト部屋から屋根まで降りて、目的の倉庫に行った。その屋根からロープで３階おの窓に下がって、建物に入った。小さい事務所があって、だれもいなかった。渡して、倉庫の中のドアーを開けたと、下には大きいリンゴの倉庫だった。リンゴがぎりぎりを入れた箱が置いても、ネズミ捕りの４人もいた。この会話が聞こえた：

    • ネズミ捕り１：オレが、部長にこの冒険者に着いて伝えに行くぞ！
    • ネズミ捕りの皆：はい！！行け！

    そして、「行くぞ」のネズミ達がリンゴの箱の側にある秘密なドアーを開けて、秘密の階段で地下に下がった！アルソンが、状況が分かったから倉庫から秘密に出て、屋根で船でPC達の獄舎に戻った。

    ネズミ捕りのジレンマ

    こんばん、「Prisoner’s Dilemma」の翻訳を習った！でもネズミ捕りの囚人ジレンマは普通より大変だった。PC達は、暴力的な尋問の意図も持てるから、囚人ジレンマの失敗は、死亡だった。ネズミ捕り達がは両人同じ選択枝を得た：真実を教えないと、死ぬ。これは、もちろん、「Grim and perilous world」だ。

    両人は、お互いが異変的に強く信用ができたから、両人は答えなかった。PC達は、答えを応援するように、一番強い意志力を持ちそうなネズミ捕りの指を折ったが、そうしても両人が答えなかった。PC達が、待ったらネズミ捕りの抵抗が弱くなると思ったから寝ながら待とうと決めた。

    ネズミ捕り戦い

    １０時間待った後で、ネズミ捕りが同僚を助けるように戦った。シューゼットさんが隠密のネズミ捕りを聞いて、PC達の皆さんを起こして、戦闘が始まった。敵が弱かったのに、戦闘が時間かかって、３ラウンド後に囚人が逃げられるようになった！兵士が残りの敵を戦って、ほかのPC達が逃げているネズミ捕りを追いかけた。

    戦闘がすぐ終わって、ネズミ捕りの囚人がまた捕まった。弱い意志力の一人が恐怖になって、答えていた。

    ネズミ捕りの組合

    かれの答えで、この事実が習えた：

    • 組合は普通ではなくて、いる貴族にいろいろな怪しい行動をする組合である
    • 冒険者みたいな行動をする組合：冒険、スパイ、暗殺など
    • このネズミ捕りは普通に下水の部分の警備兵だった
    • 組合のメンバーは、普通人３０人、数人の特別な人
    • このネズミ捕りの最悪の行動は、他のメンバーの娘を激しく殺すこと。理由は、彼女が組合の秘密を出した
    • このネズミ捕りの同僚の最悪の行動は、シグマー神殿に入って、神々のアイテムを盗んだ。
    • アルソンが見つけたアジトのトンネルは、ほかのアジトに行っても、このネズミ捕りの上士に行った

    このネズミ捕りは、死ぬと信じたから、pc達と交渉してみた。かれは、PC達がかれの組合の皆さんを殺すようだったから、かれが生存するように裏切りをあげた。組合にもどって、３日間毎にPC達にレポートを出すと提案した。PC達が、彼は本当に恐怖のようだったから、本当のスパイになると思ったから、同意した。

    そして、かれは１つのお願いがあった。組合のメンバーがかれの物語を信じるように、「ほかの捕まった同僚を殺してください」と願った。

    いい人だね、ネズミ捕り達。

    PC達が、殺してもいいと思ったが、狂気になるおそれがあったから、アルソンが悪知恵で殺すものまねをして、ネズミ捕りが同僚が死んでしまったと信じた。それから、ネズミ捕りが組合に戻った。

    PC達が残りのネズミ捕りをシグマー神殿に連れて行った。かれは、同僚のお願いを生存したのに、すぐ死にそうだった。理由は、シグマー神殿で刑死の恐れが高い！

    以上です！

    これから、PC達が昔の魔法使いのお墓に行くと決めそうだった。

  • At last, a good report on modern Japan

    They’re few and far between, but finally the Sydney Morning Herald has managed to produce an article which gives some kind of sense of how Japan feels when you’re here, instead of just swarming the reader with cliches.

  • Rats in the Ranks 3: The Secret Rat-catchers’ Ball

    The last session ended with our heroes capturing clues about the mysterious rat-catchers’ guild – a second prisoner and a safe house, in fact. We rejoined them this week in the midst of their inquiries, with Heinze, Shultz and Suzette dragging their second prisoner to their dubious makeshift prison in the Labour Quarter, and Aruson the Elf spying the front of a Ratcatcher safe house.

    Infiltrating the Safe House

    The safe house was a warehouse on the docks of the Warehouse district, that could be entered via a highly conspicuous front door, or through a delivery door at the rear which, sadly, could only be accessed by boat. Aruson being a thief, he immediately set off in search of a suitable boat, and soon found a nest of rowboats suitable to the task. His first attempt to get onto the pier at the back of the warehouse succeeded, but in tying the boat to the pier Aruson managed to entangle the ropes of the delivery bell in the boat-ties, and alerted all inside to his presence. He aborted his attempt and leapt back onto the boat, flowing downstream in time to appear as nothing more than an annoying passer-by. He tried again, stealing a second boat; and this time he stopped the boat at an upstream warehouse, intending to climb onto the roof and cross to a top-floor window by that means. However, he realized upon alighting on the pier that his climbing ability is very poor, and he couldn’t identify who (if anyone) was inside the targeted warehouse; so he cast off from the pier and drifted downstream, only to find the same problem. So, he gave up, and entered the warehouse through the door, unable to discern its occupants. Luckily for Aruson (who regularly gets beaten near to death), noone was there. He exited to the warehouse rooftop and ran along to the target warehouse, where of course the same problem applied – he had to climb down. But this time he could use rope, so the problem was trivial (and anyway, there was a river to catch him), and he soon found himself inside the safe house.

    Passing through the upstairs room, he opened an inner door to find a set of steps leading down into a warehouse full of crates of apples. In the middle of the warehouse floor sat a group of ratcatchers around a fire. One of them was heartily declaring “I will tell the Lieutenant about this situation,” with the others urging him on. Without further ado he marched up to a crate of apples, opened a secret door in its side, and disappeared down a flight of stairs…

    With this knowledge, and a sure suspicion that this crew are not normal rat-catchers, our suspicious elf returned the way he came, and thence to the dubious prison for act 2…

    The Rat-catcher’s Dilemma

    Tonight I had a chance to learn the Japanese for “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” though it passed me by in a blaze of mumbling. Fortunately wikipedia serves as an excellent translation device for concepts and phrases, so I now know it. Because it turns out that my players are not shy of a little bit of rough play, and their version of the prisoner’s dilemma involves death rather than release or imprisonment. Both prisoners were offered a simple choice – if you don’t talk, your friend will, and then you’ll be surplus to requirements. And this is a grim and perilous world.

    Both prisoners chose to cooperate with each other, because they appeared to have a supernaturally strong trust in their guild. They both initially refused to offer any information about their guild, being sure that the other would not either[1]. However, the characters noticed that one was looking a little shaky, while the other was looking very solid indeed. They threatened the shaky-looking one, and broke the tough-looking one’s finger, just to make a point, then decided to wait a day to soften them both up.

    Rat-catcher attack

    After 10 hours of waiting, the unexpected happened – a ratcatcher attack. Suzette, on guard duty, heard it, and had a moment to warn the others before the 4 ratcatchers struck. Although their foes weren’t strong – in fact, incapable of hurting Schultz through his armour – they took time to grind down, and after 3 rounds the characters’ prisoners somehow escaped, running for a window at the end of a hallway. Three of the PCs followed while the Soldier took on the remaining two ratcatchers, and they managed to recapture all the escapees and hold them back from the window until Schultz could eliminate the remaining two ratcatchers and come to their aid. They restored the prisoners to their cells, and decided to have a frank exchange with the weaker-looking one. By now they had killed or injured or captured 10 of his colleagues, defeated one escape attempt and uncovered his safe house, and he could be fairly confident that ultimately they were going to find and destroy everyone else in his guild, so he decided to talk.

    The Rat-catcher’s Guild

    The rat-catcher told the characters that

    • His rat-catcher’s guild was not a normal guild, but did sinister jobs for a local nobleman, whose identity he did not know.
    • The members did adventurer-type things, such as spying, assassinations, and investigations
    • He was largely responsible for security in a part of the sewers
    • This guild had about 30 or so normal members, and a few exceptional folk
    • The worst thing he had ever done was visit the daughter of another member, to admonish her against foolishly leaking their secret – by killing her horribly
    • A colleague of his had broken into Sigmar’s Temple to steal a holy item
    • The safe house that Aruson had seen gave access to a tunnel that led to a different safe house and also to his superior

    The rat-catcher, now convinced he was at risk of death, begged the PCs to spare him, and offered a deal – he would turn spy for them if they promised to spare him. The PCs weighed up his situation – 1/3 of his guild slaughtered, the likelihood more would die, them threatening to deliver him to Sigmar’s church, and him in their custody – and decided he was probably being honest. They agreed to do this if he would meet them in three days time. He then asked them to kill his friend, to ensure the story of his escape would make sense.

    Nice folk, these rat-catchers.

    The PCs agreed, and originally intended to actually kill the man in cold blood. I pointed out to them that such an act carried a risk of insanity, so instead they arranged a trick hanging (using Aruson’s guile skill), which would preserve the victim so that they could hand him over to Sigmar’s Shrine (who would almost certainly execute him). Aruson arranged this fake hanging so well that not only did they convince their prisoner that his friend was dead, they horrified and terrified him with the violence of the death, and further convinced him that he had escaped a terrible fate. He left their prison eager to prove his worth and so avoid an equally awful fate.

    Here the session ended.

    Other notes

    The characters all reached Rank 2 tonight, so a frenzy of spending xps on skill training ensued. The PCs remain greatly afraid of even minor battles, and are desperate to improve their skills, and the best way to do that is through skill training (it really matters in this system!) Soon some of them may choose to progress to the next career – which may mean purchasing new spell books…

    —

    fn1: the original prisoner’s dilemma doesn’t include a third game theoretic option, a fate worse than death.