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…

  • The C&C Fascist Reader

    While I was travelling my blog attracted the attention of a Danish Fascist group, the Danish National Front, for its posts on Tolkien and fascism. A post went up on their message board indicating that the Tolkien books are recommended reading for fascists and giving my post on Tolkien’s racial theories as an explanation of why. I’m not, of course, going to give a link to the message board, since I don’t want to give them traffic (from my thousands of readers, ha!) and neither do I want to draw their attention (more than I have). The post about my blog only has two replies but one of the replies, translated in google translate, gives an excellent insight into how fascists and nazis think about Tolkien. Here it is, post-google:

    There is no doubt that Tolkien’s books based on a Germanic mythology, even his linguistic inventions are rooted in language studies.

    In contrast, Harry Potter pure fiction mixed with Marxist ideology of equality. I would never let my children read Harry Potter, but even read Tolkien’s books aloud to them – there is a readily available version of them as suitable for children and adolescents.

    The post above this one also claims CS Lewis for the fascists, because

    CS Lewis, author of the Narnia series, was surely also a racist or at least accused of it (especially for being anti-Muslim and producing Middle Eastern people as bad guys, etc). May I look at a time.

    These two comments also give support to some of my claims about the conservative appeal of high fantasy.Note as well that this stuff transcends any individual national interpretation of Tolkien – now I’ve found it in the UK, Italy, America and Denmark. All strands of fascist thought in the Western world seem to have a strong appreciation of Tolkien’s racial and hierarchical themes, and see them as excellent propaganda material to expose their children to. They also don’t seem to have any concerns about the putative multiculturalism of the Fellowship, presumably because they see all the races of the West as representative of “white” men, and don’t care about the (huge) differences between dwarves, elves, halflings and men. The fact that there are no black men or “mongoloids” (Tolkien’s term) is more relevant to them than the fact that elves and dwarves are so racially different that they can’t even inter-breed[1].

    This last point perhaps also is relevant in defense against the claim that the colours of the antagonists in Lord of the Rings are not symbolic of anything. Fascists take the whiteness of dwarves and elves as symbolically more important than the fact of their racial difference. This is a pathological level of focus on the real world notion of race, since their perception of skin colour transcends the very real, “scientific” differences described in the book. But they are largely only able to do this in the works of people like Tolkien and Lewis. I think that this ability to transcend the actual racial codification in the books, and to map onto it their own models, is made possible by the reassuring conservative environment of the books, and the germanic mythology underlying them. These books contain a lot of coda that reassure fascists that they are reading the “right” type of conservatism, and thus able to draw the “right” conclusions about the racial messages in the book.

    I’ve read a lot of apologies for Tolkien’s worldview in my various posts about the racial theories inherent in them, but I think the way fascists view him and his work is a pretty clear sign that his politics is not worth rehabilitating. It’s possible to read Tolkien critically without losing enjoyment of the books, and it’s possible to play the fantasy RPGs that inherit his conservatism and racism with the same critical eye, without losing enjoyment of them (or indeed, enjoying those unrealistic aspects of their racial theory that make them so different to the real world). What it’s not possible to do, as far as I can tell, is read Tolkien while somehow claiming he is presenting a world devoid of racial theory, or even (as some seem to want) a world that is at least neutral with respect to modern standards of racial equality and racial determinism. This view of the books is only possible through sleight of hand (e.g. pretending the Fellowship is a multicultural symbol) or outright deception (e.g. claiming, as regularly happens, that the Southrons weren’t meant to be black). Fundamentally, it’s a text on scientific racism, and needs to be read as such.

    Which doesn’t change the fact that it’s a great book. It just means that it’s a product of its times and, seen in a certain light, a work of virulent conservatism and racism. But so what? It’s still a fun read.

    —

    fn1: as far as we know…

  • Steel Bullets in the Sunlight

    So tomorrow I will depart from the Northern Bay by bus to the Station of Wide Acclaim, from whence I shall take a bullet train to Double Mountain. There I change to the express over the mountains to the town I used to live, Pine Bay. I’ll spend three days there with my New Zealand friends Drs. P and B, and once I’ve exhausted their beer stocks I will take the same route back along the sunshine coast to the city of Double Blessings. I’ll spend a night with a friend there, and then return by bus to the Bay of Rice Cakes.

    I think Drs. P & B have recently installed broadband (Pine Bay is a little behind in internet, if not coffee and other imported delicacies; or P &B are), so I may be able to check my email but I definitely won’t be posting here.

  • Old Campaigns: Innsfelle

    This is one of a series I aim to run describing the old, successful campaigns I have run in the past. I think this was the second campaign I ever ran with a determined plot, to fruition, over a year or so in about 1998. My players were all friends rather than devoted nerds, though two were ex-players enticed back to the fold by me. The campaign setting was determinedly high fantasy, and it was the first and only campaign I ever ran in high level Rolemaster, starting at about 9th and ending at about 15th level. None of my players had done RM before and I had a very definite plan for this campaign, so I gave them their characters. In many ways this was the most railroad-y campaign I have ever played, and probably the most railroad-y anyone will ever play.

    The setting

    The setting was the borderlands between two huge Empires, the Northern Empire being a roughly Western European-style mediaeval Empire, and the Southern being an Oriental combined Chinese/Japanese Empire. To the West was an African/Islamic-style desert kingdom, separated from the Northern lands by a Mountain range occupied by elves. In between the Northern and Southern kingdoms were a series of small independent city states and countries, with the two most relevant to this story being the Kingdom of the Lakes, a little feudal kingdom carved out of nothing by a retired adventurer (and his big-cat riding soldiers), and the key city of the campaign, Innsfelle, a massive city-state resting between the Northern Empire and the Kingdom of the Lakes, heavily fortified and buttressed to the South by the Mountain range separating the North from the Kingdom of the Lakes. Innsfelle, famously impregnable and never having been defeated in war, famously independent, and in possession of a few small outlier towns scattered through hills, forests and farmlands; a city-state that is essentially part of the Northern Empire culturally, but ferociously politically and militarily independent.

    The characters

    The characters I handed out for the players to take on were very carefully designed to work together, and partly based on some PCs I and my friends played in 1995 in a previous campaign:

    • Kusumi, a Japanese-style Fighter, essentially a soldier, from common stock (not a Samurai) who is a crucial component of this campaign. He was a key part of the Southern Empire’s armies but joined a rebellion against the Empire, and rose up through the ranks of the rebellion; but at the last the leaders of the rebellion screwed him over (see below) so he took over a large chunk of the army and led it North. He has a single, historical adventuring experience with two of the other PCs. RM class: Fighter.
    • Amber, an Elven enchantress, who adventured briefly with Kusumi, helping him to crush a smuggling ring when he was in charge of security for a Southern Lord. Amber is cast out from her own community, having rejected an arranged wedding and fled her homeland to take up a life of adventuring. RM Class: Enchantress (Companion 1 I think?)
    • Cwael, a half-black (Western kingdom), half-elven assassin-hunter who has adventured for a very long time with Amber, and essentially thinks of himself as her bodyguard. RM Class: Nightblade (Companion 1: this is my favourite RM Class)
    • Eldar 1: I forget the PC’s actual name now, but he was basically a dark elf Rogue, and Amber’s lover. In this campaign the dark elf are called Eldar and are not evil black-skinned elves from underground; they are elves who were cast out of the Elven kingdoms many millenia ago and live as nomadic mercenaries, selling their martial skills to the highest bidder. Eldar 1 is a rogue but also the leader of a small warband of about 50 eldar (half of whom are combatant). The group has this warband at its disposal. Eldar are reviled by all civilised races, like gypsies, and live in caravans like gypsies; they are also the most vicious mercenaries the world knows, and of course capable of all the non-wartime adventurer-style nastiness that you can imagine a warband of dark elf mercenaries getting up to. RM Class: Rogue.
    • Asian 2: I can’t remember this PC’s name either, but he was a Southern Battle Mage, essentially a wizard trained in blowing shit up while soldiers run rampant around him. He and Kusumi fought extensively together in the Southern rebellion, and famously won the battle of the Oni Peaks before the rebellion (they had a magic bell). They rebelled together against the rebellion’s leaders and led their soldiers north. RM Class: Magician.

    All the PCs started at 9th level. 9th level RM characters are a lot of fun.

    The Adventure: background and purpose

    The story opens with the area around Innsfelle in a state of war. Kusumi and Asian 2 were in a rebellion of young Lords in the Southern Empire, which went horribly wrong. The young Lords, finding themselves losing and being trapped in an increasingly small area, had barricaded their army in a mountain fastness and determined to commit suicide and take their whole army with them. Kusumi and Asian 2, discovering this, slaughtered the Southern Lords and fled North with their army. Reaching Innsfelle, they decided this seemed a perfectly good city, and thought they’d take it over. Thus, they laid siege to it and started capturing the outlying towns. Nice guys all round. However, they have until the end of Autumn to complete the job; it is expected that by the end of Autumn the Northern Queen will have finished putting down a rebellion to the East, and her crack force of rebellion-putter-downerers, the “Queen’s Men” will come to Innsfelle to sort stuff out. But Innsfelle, Kusumi and Asian 2 have discovered upon arrival, is impregnable…

    … At which point the campaign starts, with Kusumi and Asian 2 stumbling upon their old allies Cwael and Amber in a battlefield full of dead Innsfelle soldiers. The Eldar warband controlled by Eldar 1 have ambushed and destroyed the soldiers, and Kusumi and Asian 2 been invited to the aftermath. Here Cwael and Amber reveal that they have a letter from the Mayor of Innsfelle, sent to an important General, which makes it pretty clear that the Mayor is using the war to enrich himself. He has set up a nest of “bandits” – actually soldiers in the mountains and they raid supply trains of the Mayor’s own army, then sell the items they steal, and return the tax money they loot to the Mayor. The Mayor is so confident in Innsfelle’s impregnability – and the Autumn arrival of the Queen’s Men – that he is willing to undermine his own war effort for short term wealth.

    The characters realise that, if they can get more concrete proof of the Mayor’s perfidy, and subsequently capture Innsfelle, then they may be able to convince the Queen to grant them suzerainty over the city, since the exisitng mayor is a Right Proper Bastard. In order to do this they need to:

    • Prove the Mayor’s perfidy as extensively as possible
    • Find a way into the city
    • Make contact with the Queen

    And thus the campaign unfolds, with the PCs having 3 months to capture a city.

    Bsaic conditions of the campaign

    The first thing to note about this little railroad is that none of the PCs can die. They are all essential to the plot (except maybe Eldar 1). Everyone knew this, but there were some famous moments in this campaign where everyone was in abject terror for their lives, despite the fact that they knew they had to be kept alive for the plot. It was through this process that I discovered that, with good storytelling, the proper choice of scenes and enemies, and the correct atmosphere, you can suspend or break every one of the supposed precepts of good adventure-setting, and particularly the notion of rewards and incentives is completely irrelevant if you’re running a fun campaign that everyone gets into in detail. There were no experience points in this campaign – I handed out levels at regular intervals – and no threat of death. Yet all my players acted on the assumption that all their actions were potentially deadly, and were the most cautious and inventive players you can imagine. I think this is because, more than any other campaign I have ever run, this campaign had a distinct and definite notion of “winning.” If Innsfelle fell into their possession at the end of the campaign, they had won – and beaten me – and if it didn’t, they had lost even though they lived.

    Plus I set up a damn scary setting. During the campaign they discovered that actually the raids on the caravans by the mayor were cover for a search he was undertaking for a certain magic item, that would be used in a ritual on a hidden temple beneath Innsfelle. This ritual would free a Demon chained beneath the city millenia ago, and ultimately this campaign ended with the characters discovering the history and location of this demon, and banning it permanently. The quest for this demon and the truth behind it involved some exploration of frightening underground settings, interviews with dragons, and a variety of other scary encounters that kept the whole campaign in a continual atmosphere of creepy doom.

    This is also the only campaign I’ve run where the PCs had extensive resources to call on from the start. They were mates with the leader of the Kingdom of the Lakes, and Amber was mates with a dragon, plus they had that Eldar warband, not to mention Kusumi’s entire army, at their disposal. Though all the adventures occurred on the level of the party, the campaign itself spanned a country-level war, with corresponding forces and resources in play. This gave the players a lot of flexibility in how to deal with particular problems.

    The Eldar

    During the campaign the PCs uncovered the mystery of why the Eldar were cast out from the Elven nation – essentially they refused to commit a terrible act as part of a war between elves and humans, and were exiled. This terrible act was related to the Demon locked under the city, and at one point the characters had to visit the ancient underground city in which the original Eldar were slaughtered by their elven compatriots for refusing to cooperate – the modern Eldar being the remnants of this slaughter. I can’t remember clearly now, but I think it was a type of Masada, in which the elves were surrounded and outnumbered, so decided to kill themselves and all the non-combatant elves in the city; but the Eldar objected and fled, fighting their way out of a secret entrance and sealing it behind themselves to avoid pursuit. Eldar 1 learnt all this history during the progress of the campaign.

    Enlightenment man and Innsfelle

    The PCs clearly constituted a group of outcasts, exiled from both their own lands and the city they aimed to capture, and in some case bound to a history of exile and revulsion. As the campaign developed this became an important theme, with all the PCs looking on their eventual capture of Innsfelle as an opportunity to establish a new kingdom of exiles in the gap between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, and to establish a new polity based on the laws and histories of these exiles. As the game developed this became a kind of multicultural dream, with the PCs increasingly in a type of Hamlet role, as misunderstood thinkers standing on the edge of the Enlightenment, returned to a more brutal feudal world and hoping to change it to a new and brighter outlook. The players became quite driven by this quest by the end and, being in charge of armies and strategic decisions, were willing to make some quite hard decisions to get there.

    Role-playing weekends

    We also pioneered the “role-playing weekend” during this campaign. Two of the players moved in together in the Blue Mountains, and we went to their house twice to do all-weekend-long extravaganzas. In fact, the final concluding session of this campaign occurred as part of a weekend-long session. We would cook, drink and do other things as part of these weekends, but the main part was the 8-10 hour sessions we would do each day of the weekend. This type of immersion really helped to maintain the intense and broody mood of this campaign.

    Resolution

    In the end all the threads of the story – the Eldar history, the site of their original exile, the bound Demon, the treacherous mayor, the negotiations with the distant Queen, and Amber’s dragon ally – all came together to a cracker of a conclusion. Unfortunately, however, the players screwed up (I can’t remember how, now) and although they captured the city and were granted it in perpetuum by the Queen, they also accidentally unleashed the bound demon. The plan was to have a sequel campaign – a high-level RM campaign! – in which the PCs hunted down the demon. Unfortunately, 3 players had to move away and the sequel never happened. But the first part was an awesome campaign with a dark, frightening mood, a complex story enacted on many levels, and a group of interesting and well-developed PCs who became only more interesting over the course of the game. I consider this campaign to be the one in which I realised that role-playing can be about soooo much more than killing things and stealing their stuff (even though that was, writ large, the exact topic of this whole campaign!) It really provided me with an opportunity to run an absorbing, fascinating and complex story that was so much more than just another anodyne fantasy arc.

  • Life imitates China Mieville

    In the Grauniad today, an excellent article about the disappearing aquatic nomads of the Coral Triangle, the Bajau, complete with cool picture of boy with pet shark. Apparently these people live almost their entire lives on boats, like tropical gypsies, trading sea products for rice and kerosene. Some of them still don’t even have motors for their boats. They dive to depths of 30m hunting for food, and to make it easier a lot of the Bajau burst their own eardrums in childhood. At the bottom of the article is a link to the website of the photographer, James Morgan, who visited them to take the photos, where you can find more photos of the same people (as well as some excellent material on Mongolian Eagle Hunters, amongst other things).

    Of course, I was immediately reminded of <i>The Scar</i>, by China Mieville, and the inherent romance of a race of aquatic nomads. Looking at scenes like those at James Morgan’s website, I’m immediately taken in my imagination to the places they depict, where I imagine adventures and mayhem in different, fascinating alien cultures. Many of the cultural settings in his website would be perfect campaign milieux, or great places for a group of adventurers to drop by at for a brief adventure. Those Bajau are close to a perfect model for sea elves, and the photo from the Eagle Hunter’s front door has me immediately thinking of dragon hunting… as does anything in Bhutan.

    It’s easy to forget the amount of creative impetus the ordinary everyday world offers us, and I don’t think I can say enough how much inspiration and campaign material I get from the ordinary world, even the modern day world that we so readily imagine has had all the wonder sucked out of it. It certainly hasn’t!

  • Perfidious accusations of sandboxery

    In a recent skype conversation, one of my players from London accused my GMing style of being “very sandbox,” and even went so far as to imply that there is little difference between me and the OSR. This has me a little confused as to what sandboxing is, since I don’t do any of the following:

    • Random terrain generation
    • Random monster encounters
    • Random adventure generation
    • Morale checks, or any kind of non-deliberative decisions about monster behaviour

    and, as far as I know, most of my campaigns have a strong plot element (though I tend to allow the players to decide what direction to go, including which side to pick).

    So I’m wondering – if I don’t do any of these things, and I like “story,” is it possible to be a sandbox-GM? Jesus, these days I don’t really even make maps.

  • Some D&D-style Actions for Compromise and Conceit

    Here are a couple of examples of “actions” based on the skill-based d20 system I developed a while ago, combined with the Actions framework discussed yesterday. One is a spell, one a “supernatural ability” and one a “mundane” (and hideous) special ability. The Cost line in each description gives the attribute against which damage is done if the action fails. The cost is always 1 wound. In my conception of magic, arcane magic incurs a physical cost (it is exhausting) while divine magic incurs a mental cost (it drives you a little bit.. irrational and loopy). So failed arcane spells incur a wound against strength, while failed divine spells incur a wound against intelligence. In this system, a critical is achieved by a roll of a 20, at which point 2d10 are re-rolled and added to the previous roll to get a new total. On rolling a critical, all maximum effects (damage, rounds of duration of effect, etc.) are increased by some amount.

    Grendel’s Demise

    Type: Spell

    Level: 7

    Cost: Strength

    Conditions: Must have one hand free and be unencumbered, not wearing metal armour. Target must be within sight, and have at least one arm or other limb.

    Skill check: Intelligence (Offense) vs. Target Strength (Defense)

    Critical: Yes (Double)

    Effect: This spell attempts to tear off the target’s arm. It does maximum damage 7, and the target is stunned for one round plus one round per point of success (maximum 7, double on a critical). The target is also bleeding (1 wound/rd) until healing is administered. The target loses all use of one arm, either temporarily (due to massive injury) or permanently (due to amputation) at the GM’s discretion.

    Hideous death

    Type: attack, reaction

    Level: 1

    Cost: Charisma

    Conditions: Attacker must be visible to the targets of the action, who must be allies of the target. Target must have been reduced to 0 hps in this round, by the PC or one of his/her allies.

    Skill check: Charisma (Offense) vs. Charisma (Defense)

    Effect: The character turns an opponent’s death into a lurid display of horror and gore. Any ally of the dying enemy who witnesses his/her/its death is shaken for 1 rd plus 1 rd/point of success. The target experiences a -2 penalty on all actions and will attempt to avoid combat with the character if possible. If the target is already shaken due to witnessing a hideous death in this engagement by this character, they move from shaken to terrified, and will immediately attempt to flee the battle.

    If this action is being used on an enemy the character did not kill, apply a -2 penalty to the skill check.

    The GM may choose to allow the player to describe the type of hideous death for an attempt at a bonus on the skill check. This is strongly advised! Note that failure to successfully terrify the target merely makes the PC look like a bloodthirsty maniac (charisma damage).

    Infernal Essence

    Type: Ability

    Level: 1

    Cost: None

    Skill check: Wisdom (Use) vs. DC 20

    Effect: The PC conjures an infernal essence to enhance their weapon or armour, giving a +1 to maximum damage or damage reduction for 1 min + 1 min/pt of success (maximum=character level). This is an infernal effect, so can be dispelled by demon-binding or abjuration effects, but not by magic-dispelling effects. It is usually visible as a faint glow and/or feeling of discomfort or unpleasantness surrounding the PC.

    Higher-level versions of this effect are possible, and give an effect equal to the level of the action.

  • Reconfiguring D&D: Actions, Spells and Skills

    A while back I introduced a simple skill-based d20 system, with 12 skills and 24 “disciplines” all connected to 6 attributes. If you have training in a discipline connected to an attribute, you use the primary skill based on that attribute; otherwise you use the secondary skill. On a first pass, primary skills increase at 2 ranks per character level and secondary skills at 1. There are some additional points to scatter through the skills to make for a little diversity (beyond that obtained from discipline selection) and some discussion still to be had about how fast skills accrue and what they start at. The four disciplines are offense, defense, use, and state. The last indicates the amount of damage you can sustain on a given attribute; the use discipline indicates proficiency in applying that attribute to all ordinary tasks, and the first two should be obvious. As a PC accrues damage against an attribute, that damage applies a penalty to that attribute and all those below it on an ordered list.

    Under this system “hit points” are handled by the Constitution (State) discipline; if you have trained in this discipline you have your primary constitution skill bonus as your wound level; otherwise your secondary skill. There are various types of attack for each physical attribute; Charisma (Offense) indicates intimidation, and the remaining two mental skills’ offense disciplines are for use with magic.

    As ever with this reconfigured D&D system (and the earlier versions I have introduced here), the issue comes with handling magic and combat. Having played a little warhammer 3 now, and also some Double Cross 3, I am really enamoured of the concept of actions (effects in Double Cross 3). They seem to fit very well with this revised version of the d20 system, and I think they can amalgamate unusual combat moves and magic into one system. This post is intended as a brief outline of how.

    A skill check is a basic game mechanic to determine if something a PC does is successful. Out of combat or any challenge against another NPC/PC, skill checks are resolved according to the basic skill vs. Difficulty Class (DC) rule. However, in combat a PC’s actions are restricted to the range of available Actions he or she has learnt. An Action is an activity challenged against another PC or NPC, or performed in combat, with an outcome positively affecting the PC or their ally, or negatively affecting a foe. It is characterised by an effect and a cost (which may be 0), with the cost typically measured as damage against an attribute. Every discipline has associated with it a basic action that has 0 cost and can be enacted every round. PCs can typically use one offense or use action in a round. Defense actions are typically passive, and determined by the attacking PC/NPC, but there may be active actions the PC can also use.

    Spells are simply Actions based on the offense or use discipline associated with the Intelligence or Wisdom (or maybe Charisma) attribute. They are enacted as actions in the combat round, carry a potential cost (if the caster fails their skill check) and have an effect which may include damage, and various status effects. This makes them no different to physical actions. However, because the cost of physical actions also affects mental attributes, non-magical physical effects will have a slightly lower level or cost for the same effect. But some effects will be rarer with physical (non-spell) actions, and combinations of effects almost impossible.

    In my next post I’ll give a few examples of spells from my Compromise and Conceit game, converted into actions for this system.

    A final note

    I think this is largely irrelevant because actually Warhammer 3 seems ideally suited to Compromise and Conceit. So I may try converting a few of the same spells into Warhammer 3 Action Cards to see how they work.

  • Current Viewing: Sherlock Holmes (the Guy Ritchie version)

    I’m a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, having read all the stories, including his famous meeting with Harry Flashman, VC, and seen at least part of the classic Brett[1] television series, which is generally acclaimed as the best of the lot. I think Holmes is an important character in the pre-history of both steampunk and the modern genre of Cthulhu-derivative works, and undoubtedly influenced in some subtle way movies (and comics) like From Hell and Sleepy Hollow. I’m also a fan of Guy Ritchie’s crime movies Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, even though their glorification of the English criminal classes sticks in my craw now that I have lived in London and experienced the reality of the kind of scum he depicts in those movies.

    So, I was interested to see how he would handle Sherlock Holmes in this movie, there being a risk that Holmes would become a kind of rock-n-roll gangsta crime fightaaaah! But in fact it’s really really good, even though it’s not based on any one extant Holmes story. It preserves the essential characteristics of Holmes and Watson, and is set around the time that their relationship is failing, when Watson is preparing to marry. It also preserves another essential element of the Holmes milieu – a criminal case whose only possible explanation is magic, but which in the end is all soluble through the application of modern scientific methods. It also wraps in some of those other Holmes classics: secret orders, Moriarty, and nefarious plots. Some of Holmes’s best properties are depicted in a very clever way consistent with Ritchie’s style, for example:

    • In the midst of a fight, time pauses and we see Holmes deducing the steps to victory, all played out in slow motion; then action resumes at full speed and we see his plan in motion to its vicious conclusion, including a prognosis for the loser’s physical and psychological repair – very much like the flash-forwarding through the nasty fight scenes in Ritchie’s other movies
    • Some of Holmes other techniques, that receive no attention in the books, are elucidated in very cunning style. For example, we see a brief interaction between a disguised Holmes and one of his adversaries, and a little later we backtrack from the moment Holmes decides on the confrontation to the confrontation itself, seeing all the fragmented moments in which he oh-so-casually assembles a perfect disguise as if by accident – in fact this is, I think, one of the best depictions I have ever seen of either Holmes’s method or the sheer brilliance of his investigative style, easily as good as anything Conan Doyle assembled
    • We also see a few of the moments in which Holmes is out-witted or foiled from the point of view of his adversary in that same shifting, tricky style so characteristic of Ritchie movies, and we see a few moments in the past of some of the characters in the same fragmented style, but presented so as to confuse us while leaving clues for later

    I think also this movie gives some roundedness to Holmes’s character that doesn’t exist in previous efforts. I was surprised that even though this is a Ritchie movie, Holmes’s characteristic cocaine addiction (so readily left out of onscreen depictions in the past) was also left out of this version; but it was admirably replaced by a preference for strong drink and illegal fighting (with Holmes the participant, and Watson betting on him). Something that I don’t like about the books and the Pertwee version is that Holmes is actually a really unlikeable character, but the narrative style of the books and his heroic status mean that he is often depicted as a near-perfect person. In fact he’s an arrogant, misogynist prick (beautifully lampooned in the Flashman novels), and this movie manages to capture some of that part of his character – the way he uses Watson without informing him, his dubious experiments, his insufferable manner and bad attitude towards women. It also reduces Watson from his stuffy near-perfect personality to a man with a gambling addiction and a weakness for his friend, and by rendering both of them a little younger and fitter than standard interpretations it also makes their physical prowess more believable, as well as giving it some context – Holmes is a prize fighter, and Watson a dab hand with a sword stick due to his military career.

    Another interesting aspect of this movie is its liberation of Watson from the narrative role, done explicitly – by giving Holmes rather than Watson the voiceover parts and by setting the movie at the point in their relationship where Watson is moving out and trying to break from Holmes. It gives an implicit nod to his traditional role by noting that he has a bunch of diaries he plans to write up one day. This explicit removal of Watson from the narrative centre also gives us a better opportunity to experience both Holmes’s genius and his unpleasantness, and I think this makes him a much more interesting character.

    The movie is, of course, also very amusing, with some intense combat scenes done in typical chunky, nasty Ritchie style, and some very funny interactions. Traditionally Holmes is a little stuffy, but in this he is also capable of some very entertaining repartee, as is Watson. In fact, Watson in this movie is a far superior character to the Watson of the books, and Jude Law an excellent choice to play him.

    As a study of Holmes I think this movie makes an interesting contribution to the canon of works on this excellent character, and as a Victorian detective movie it is also an excellent addition to the genre. It’s also a fun movie with an interesting plot, and lots of tricks and deceptions that it takes some time to work out. The choreography is smooth and stylish, the acting excellent and the pace just right. I recommend this to any fan of Holmes who is not so stuck-in-the-mud that they can only tolerate a traditional depiction of a character whose traditional representations have been done to death and, in any case, perfected and exhausted by Brett. For those who don’t care about Holmes as a literary figure, but want to see a rollicking detective story with a hint of steampunk and Guy Ritchie’s traditional blend of humour and violence, I also recommend this movie. For those who insist on their Sherlock being stiff-necked, stuck up and straight from the books, I can only recommend a review of the Brett series, and perhaps a shot of cocaine…

    —

    fn1: I originally wrote Pertwee in some kind of strange brain-spasm

  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3: Completing “An Eye for an Eye.”

    Last week my group completed the trial scenario from the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Adventure Book, An Eye for an Eye. Previous sessions have been reported in Japanese here by one of the players, but I have a few observations on warhammer 3 to draw from this session.

    (Warning: SPOILERS Ahead, for those who plan on running this game themselves)

    This is the first module I’ve run an adventure from for a very long time (maybe 5 years), and the first for which I’ve pretty much stuck to the script. It seems to be a well-crafted adventure, though my players beat it resoundingly, so that:

    • They took the picture that plays a key role in the final ritual, thus preventing the ritual from happening
    • They acted early enough and warned the lord of the manor early enough to prevent the soldiers being poisoned at dinner, which meant that the encounter with the beastmen was a formality (see below)
    • They were able to ambush the entire cult of the Unseeing Eye in its temple, and but for a bad roll (see below) they might have had easy pickings with this battle
    • Despite these successes, they still nearly all died

    There were two key scenes in this session, which give some insights into the game.

    Ambushing the cult

    Having tracked the cult to its lair, they caught the librarian returning his banned books, and interrogated him in the temple. He revealed everything, but then the thief heard the cultists coming and everyone scarpered with the librarian into one of the corridors. The thief sneaked back to the room and saw that there were 6 members of the cult gathered, so they decided to attack, but to use guile first to convince the cultists they had soldiers with them, in order to scare the cultists. Unfortunately, though successful on his guile check, the thief also got a chaos star result. I ruled that the cult leader fell for the ruse but decided to sacrifice his cultists anyway, and sent them into battle.

    I ran the battle with more members of the cult joining in rounds 2 and 3, so that at the height of the battle there were 6 followers, the leader, a cultist mutant and a soldier NPC in battle against the characters, i.e. 9 vs. 4. The battle took about an hour of real time, I think, but a lot of this was due to rules clarifications (we’re still learning), translation issues, and passing dice backwards and forwards across the table. I’m hoping to clean up the translation (and related space) issues over the next few sessions by converting all the cards to Japanese using the Strange Eons card generator (that tool is a godsend!)

    A few points from the battle:

    • I think the rules on active and reactive defenses aren’t very clear in the book: I’ve been using guarded position in the same way as dodge, parry etc. but didn’t realise it replaces a melee action (strike), rather than being additional to it (as parry is, for example).
    • If the enemy has even one serious combatant, things get hairy for the group very fast. The chaos mutant was a nasty piece of work, soaking up a lot of damage and seriously damaging the PCs
    • It seems like attacking a weak PC first is a very good plan, because they go down quickly and once the numbers are stacked against the stronger PCs they become a lot less effective
    • Followers do not encumber the combat system much – they serve primarily to distract the PCs for a round or two before they’re done for
    • The final toll for this battle was: one PC with two critical wounds, unconscious and at risk of death (his toughness was 2, so one more critical wound would have killed him) and suffering temporary madness; one PC with 3 critical wounds on half hits (this was the soldier, the group’s best fighter); one PC with only 2 wounds remaining, and one critical wound; and one PC unharmed
    • Chaos takes a heavy toll on itself. Through bad luck in successful attacks the chaos mutant damaged himself and the cult leader actually killed himself in the final round with a backsplash of chaos energy, through rolling too many banes when he had 1 wound remaining.

    After this battle the PCs were in serious trouble. They carted the unconscious thief outside and found themselves witnessing an attack by 20 or so beastmen Ungors and 2 Gors, which they had to join in even though nearly dead…

    The Beastman battle

    Because the soldiers and servants were undrugged and the dog-handler well, this battle was expected to be easy, so I made it a formality in finishing the adventure. I had two Gors break down the main gate and the battle move to the courtyard, during which the PCs would take on one Gor and the dog-handler the other. I had considered using a Wargor, but I’m glad I didn’t as the PCs wounds would have meant at least one death. During the build-up to this battle – essentially the rally phase – I had Sonja the cleric work some first aid on the thief, who rolled really well for her check and got back 5 or so wounds (though he was still horribly criticalled, and beset by madness). He then used missile attacks only, and the PCs took on the Gor, killing it in 2 rounds of easy combat (4 vs. 1 is no contest even for a Gor).

    There followed a hilarious scene in which, for their last act of the night, the group tried to help the thief overcome his insanity to stop it becoming permanent. The thief actually had discipline trained and chucked in a fortune die too, but his willpower was low (perhaps 3), and everyone wanted to help, so I allowed the following:

    • Suzette the Cleric cast a minor ward to add one fortune die
    • Schultz the Apprentice wizard cast First Portent of Amul, essentially adding one success to any blank face of a fortune die
    • Heinze the soldier, who has leadership, spent a fortune point and used his leadership skill to convert that fortune point into a fortune die for the thief. I refused to allow this to be a straight “aid another” type scenario without the leadership check, because this is more of a saving throw than a skill check, and so I decided that the soldier had to have some mechanism for extending his fortune to another PC. It worked

    Then the thief rolled, and every single die came up a success. I ruled that a net two successes were needed (due to the madness’s difficulty) and the check had two challenge dice (because of the madness’s difficulty) – I’m not sure if this is how it works. But I think this meant that had the other players not added in those 2 fortune dice (one a guaranteed success), the thief would have been permanently mad after only his second adventure!

    As it is, the session finished with the characters extremely successful but badly injured and incapable of any proper healing without finding a decent temple of Shallya, or getting some long- and much-needed rest. They plan to travel on to Ubersreik in their injured state (though with probably a few more wounds healed than when they finished the last session), where they can stay for free with the niece of the lord of Castle Grunewald, and get proper healing for their many critical wounds. If even the smallest encounter besets them on the road to Ubersreik, they could very easily die…

    A few final notes

    My opportunity attack action card worked, and I managed to get through one big battle, a small battle and the conclusion in one 4 hour session, which I think is okay – especially since a lot of faffing with decision-making, rules and interpretation is still going on. Having now spent 4 experience points by the beginning of this session, I was worried the PCs might not be getting challenged by the adventure any more, but this was not the case at all, and they came out of it very worried about their future. I suggested they could follow the beastmen to their lair and kill a wargor chieftain for treasure if they wanted, but they definitively declined the opportunity, on account of accrued damage. I don’t think this kind of decision would have been made in D&D – having a cleric in the group, they would naturally have decided to follow the beastmen the next day, after healing their wounds.

    Critical wounds are well-designed in this game so that their effects are easily tracked and they are handled smoothly within the flow of events. My main concern is that some of the spells are a bit unbalanced – I am going to swap out the wizard’s Shooting Star spell for a talent, because it is essentially useless compared to Magic Dart. I worried the spell-using characters would run out of spell choices, but they can only make 3 action card choices over their whole career, so it’s unlikely they’ll get to pick even all of the first level spells, so no trouble. Also, usually they can’t use a spell every round – they drain all their power in two rounds, then have to spend a round regathering. So spell-users in WFRP 3 seem to only be able to cast a spell roughly every other round. I’m thinking this means that they will be wanting to find magic/holy items that increase their equilibrium favour/power values if their range of available actions is to keep pace with the other non-spell-using PCs, but at the moment they seem fine.

    Again, in conclusion, I really enjoy GMing this system, I like its role-playing hooks, and once my players are more familiar with it (and the translations are more accessible) things will be very fun. As has been observed elsewhere, this game has a quite unique and possibly revolutionary method of action resolution that could be adopted quite easily in other systems, to their narrative advantage.

  • Current Viewing: Tao Taiko

    The Autumn FrenzyYesterday I went with my partner and two friends to see this remarkable taiko group, Tao Taiko. Taiko is Japanese drumming, which consists of a group of drummers using keg-shaped drums of various sizes, from about that of a man’s chest to about the size of a small car. The drumming is traditionally done as part of Autumn festivities, or in connection with shrine festivals, and it is the essence of Japanese pagan seasonal rites: earthy, bawdy, rowdy, physical and chaotic. The drumbeat resembles nothing so much as a pulse, and the depth and power of the rhythm is compulsive. Even amateur taiko troupes have a strong effect, because the beat is so catchy, the atmosphere so infectiously happy, and the sound huge. Typically during performances the drummers will wear a type of traditional festival clothing, which is all skirts and flowing sleeves, though often the men go bare-chested and the women can dress quite revealingly. The women all look very tomboyish and everyone has a raunchy style  and manner, which is added to by the undoubtedly sensual compulsion of the beat, and the fact that the drummers regularly cry out in time to the music. Sometimes there is also dancing, and other traditional instruments. A good taiko performance resembles a pagan invocation or ritual as much as it does a musical performance, and it feels like you’re watching something old and magical.

    Tao Taiko have taken this style and added some classically modern Japanese elements: a strong hint of anime style, particularly Final Fantasy; a bit of rock and heavy metal presentation and flair; a little horseplay and humour; and a dash of Chinese opera/martial arts overlap. The result is 2 hours of intoxicating rhythm and power, presented by beautifully proportioned men and women in the prime of their youth. It switches between eery, melancholy musical performances, classical taiko, displays of skill and showmanship, and music/dance performances that incorporate a little bit of martial arts dancing and a little bit of eroticism.

    For example, the performance opened with a sad and beautiful quartet of drums, shamisen (a type of lute), bamboo flute and koto (a type of zither). The flute is truly evocative, with a very melancholy tone, and the drum was funereally slow. This performance faded out to be replaced by a group of drummers, and then some dancing. Later five drummers sat in a line on the stage and played a kind of game of passing the beat to each other, pretending sometimes to flip it into the air for another drummer to catch, and trying to catch each other out, with a hint of comedy bullying and posing thrown in for good measure. Later there was a very sensual performance, with a woman with a very fine body standing all sinuous and sexy in silhouette far up at the back of the stage, playing a big drum and dancing, while a man sat at a huge drum at the front of the stage in full light, and kept the main beat. There were also several astounding performances with two flutes and 8-10 drums, and it all finished up with the traditional rowdy, chaotic, multiple drum extravaganza of a normal taiko festival performance.

    I’ve seen several taiko performances in Japan but up until now they were amateur groups. I think taiko captures a lot of the essence of rural life in Japan, and displays in music that facet of Japanese life that has never changed – the pagan undercurrent that ties the society together and makes it so radically different to our conservative and hypocritical christian heritage. It’s also perfect viewing for late summer, when the air throbs with cicada and the entire country is gasping in anticipation of the change everyone knows is soon to come. It’s like you’re watching and feeling the rhythm of the seasons, and Tao Taiko have turned that into a memorable performance. They’re touring internationally over the next two years, so if you get a chance, I strongly recommend having a look!