Spes Magna Games

Elfland’s Ethics & World Building

Let’s continue some speculative world-building, picking up sort of where I left off with the post linked above. Having gleaned from G. K. Chesterton four foundational premises, it’s time to turn to metaphysics proper and identify two first principles. Or, if one prefers, one first principle and one second principle.

All Being Has One Source

Everything that is exists does so because the Sole Creator wills it to exist. The Sole Creator stands above and outside everything, including time, which itself is one of the Sole Creator’s creatures. The Sole Creator is changeless, eternal, good, immaterial, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and simple (in the sense of having no parts or divisions). The Sole Creator is perfect and transcends all creatures by an infinite degree. Nevertheless, despite the Sole Creator’s absolute transcendence, the Sole Creator freely chooses to reveal its existence and attributes through its creatures to its creatures, all of which in their original state were created good in their very nature.

Evil Is No Thing

Evil is not a thing. Evil has no existence of its own. It is not possible for anything to be perfectly evil because perfection is a quality related to completeness, and evil is a defect. Evil negates or reduces a creature; it never adds, but instead always subtracts.

Consequences

These two principles lead to certain necessary conclusions that are not typical of most fantasy campaign worlds. Here are some of them:

1. Any other deities are not really deities. They are creatures who exist only because the Sole Creator wills them to exist.
2. Only the Sole Creator can truly create. Other creatures, no matter how powerful, can only take what already is and modify it.
3. No creature, no matter how evil, can be completely evil. Existence per se is good because existence is willed by the Sole Creator, who cannot commit any evil act since doing so would diminish the changeless Sole Creator’s perfection.
4. Since there is evil that diminishes the Sole Creator’s creatures, and since this evil cannot be the will of the Sole Creator, at least some of the Sole Creator’s creatures must have the capacity to freely choose to inflict harm.
5. Any claim that contradicts any of the four preceding consequences is false, either partially or completely.

In the Beginning…

With first principles decided and consequences accounted for, I can plan the next stage of world-building: the origin of the setting’s cosmos. Regardless of the specifics, this cosmos and all it encompasses exist because the Sole Creator wills it to exist. The Sole Creator’s act of creation is not a story. It’s not a myth. It is a fact.

The explanations used by creatures to explain the origins of the cosmos are stories and/or myths. These stories/myths use language (itself a creature that exists because the Sole Creator wills it) to express that which ultimately transcends every language. The most accurate of these stories/myths falls short because the fullness of the Sole Creator can never been expressed by even most exalted tongue.

Next Post? An overview of the player character races from B/X D&D, starting with each race’s patron deity (none of which are truly deities) and their respective creation stories (none of which are completely true).

Nota Bene: The above link is an affiliate link. If you click and buy, DriveThruRPG tosses me a few pennies.

Tags: Catholic, world-building

Every roleplaying game is in some way didactic. How explicitly didactic varies considerably, of course. Some publishers are more subtle. Others wave high the flags of their biases. Still, the lessons about intended types of experiences seen proper to the game are there, spelled out or not. The same is at least just as true about campaign worlds.

Lately I’ve mused anew about the task of world creation, and so I asked myself, “What will the choices about what I included and exclude say about the world I intend?” This question necessarily shifts my focus to the metaphysical, at least implying questions about first principles. From metaphysics come consequences related to ethics. For example, a world created by two equal but diameterically opposed Deities says something about the way the creatures of that world ought to behave.

Needing to start somewhere, I did what I often do. I turned to G. K. Chesterton, specifically chapter four of Orthodoxy. From this chapter, I derive a few core principles for my world’s metaphysics. All quotes quote Chesterton.

1. Tradition Is Democratic. Democracy is “a consensus of common human voices”. Consensus has its Latin roots in the idea of a shared feeling, and common does not relate to social class but rather expresses what belongs to all. Thus, consensus is the common sense about things which are “universal human functions”, and this includes government.

Chesterton’s most amusing example of such a function is that of blowing one’s own nose. Forcibly expelling excess mucus from nasal passages is a thing that I ought to do for myself even if I’m not good at it. I shouldn’t trust the blowing of my nose to a class of expert nose-blowers. Tradition results from the cumulative weight of consensus. Tradition is “democracy extended through time”, and the person who wants tradition overturned appeals not to consensus but to aristocracy. The appeal is not to what is common, but to what is exclusive. As Chesteron famously puts it:

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who mere happen to be walking about.”

2. Fairy Tales Are True. “Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense.” Fairy tales transcend the natural and address the supernatural, which are those things that cannot be reasonably attributed to nothing but material causes. It is good that Jack kills the giant because the giant represents gigantic pride. Cinderella shows us that the humble shall be exalted, and that the exalted shall be humbled. Beauty teaches the Beast that he has to be loved before he can be loveable.

The natural world is rational and logical, but the brute fact of imagination shows that rationality and logic are not all there are. Rationality and logic discover cause and effect, and then posit laws regarding the relationship of one to the other. Imagination works this way as well, sort of. There are caused effects in fairy tales, but the relationship is strange. It is magic. Cinderella complaining that it makes no sense that her horses turn back to mice at midnight does not alter the timetable.

3. Conditional Joy Is a Doctrine. Tradition and magic impose limitations on actions, but those limitations are not shackles. If one is willing to forfeit the reward, one is free to transgress. Cinderella did not have to leave the party before midnight. She could have chosen to stay late, but the gifts she received from her fairy godmother will have left her at midnight regardless.

Liberty exists, but lawlessness is a fiction. Those who transgress against tradition and magic decrease joy and increase despair, even if the transgressor is not always the one who pays the price.

4. Materialism Is False. This fourth principle is a consequence of the first three (or, perhaps, the first three are a consequence of this one). If materialism is true, everything that is is just atoms, and everything that happens is just the unwilled interaction of atoms. Materialism proposes a dogma from which there can be no possible dissent. Even if I appear to dissent from materialist dogma, I do not, because my dissent itself is an unwilled effect brought about by an unwilled cause.

Materialism assumes too much by assuming that rationality and logic explain everything. This reduces everything to nothing more than cause and effect. Tradition becomes coincidence, and magic becomes absurd.

Tags: Catholic, world-building

Once upon a long time ago, a hound lived on the lands around a castle in the vicinity of Lyons, France. The hound belonged to a knight who enjoyed hunting. When the knight went out to hunt, he left his son, still an infant, under the hound’s protection. And so things went week after week, and the hound faithfully fulfilled its duties.

After a long hunt one day, the knight returned to find his infant son’s room a terrible wreck. The crib was overturned. Smears of blood stood out in horrible contrast on the walls and floor. The hound sat near the door, its muzzle grisly with gore. Enraged and grieved, the knight drew his sword and chopped off the hound’s head.

Then, the knight heard his infant son’s cries. Moving the crib aside, the knight’s tearful eyes saw two sights: his infant son alive and unhurt, and nearby the mangled corpse of a deadly viper. The faithful hound had killed the serpent to protect the baby.

Stricken by grief, the knight buried his hound beneath a small cairn. He planted trees around the grave. The trees grew quick and tall, and the peasants honored the hound as a saint, asking the hound to protect their own infants.

Hound of St. Guinefort (Planar, Lawful)
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 3+3** (M)
Move: 210′ (70′)
Attacks: 1 bite
Damage: 2-7
No. Appearing: 2-5
Save As: Fighter 3
Morale: 9

The hounds of St. Guinefort are angelic canines believed to be the ascended spirits of heroic dogs. They appear much like muscular hounds with coats of shining fur, gold or silver in color. Their eyes glow with intelligence. These creatures can always detect evil, and they are immune to disease and poison. When fighting Chaotic creatures, the hounds have +1 to morale, to hit, and to damage. Once per day, a hound of St. Guinefort may bark instead of bite. Its bark causes 4-9 points of damage to every Chaotic creature within 30 feet of the hound. Undead within the same radius might be turned; treat the hound as a 3rd-level cleric. The hounds of St. Guinefort have infravision with a 90-foot range, and they are 75% likely to see invisible or hidden creatures. The hounds speak the languages of angels and of men.

Tags: B/X D&D, Catholic, monsters

About 10 years ago, I wrote a blogpost that summarized some of medieval scholastic thought about the nature of angels as intellectual (as opposed to corporeal) beings. You can check that out by clicking here. If you don’t feel like clicking away, here’s a summary of my summary:

1. Intellectual beings have no material substance.
2. Intellectual beings do not mediate knowledge through sensory organs.
3. Intellectual beings receive knowledge immediately via the intellect without the potential errors related to physical limitations.
4. Intellectual beings are invisible, completely immaterial, and are not physically limited by time and space.

With these parameters in mind, I propose that corporeal undead in an OSRIC campaign can be treated as corpses animated by evil intellectual beings, otherwise known as demons and devils. Let’s start with a list of corporeal undead, arranged from weakest to strongest (based on XP value). I’ve left liches off the list since I think they work better as they’re normally described.

Skeleton
Zombie, Normal
Coffer Corpse
Ghoul
Juju Zombie
Monster Zombie
Ghast
Wight
Mummy
Vampire

Next, I list demons from weakest to strongest. Devils can be treated in a similar manner, but I’ll not deal directly with them in this post. I’m ignoring the demonette and demoniac since they don’t really fit into the medieval concept of demons as intellectual beings.

Kullule
Dretch
Quasit
Shub
Class A (Vrock)
Ekivu
Uduk
Babau
Class B (Hezrou)
Succubus
Class C (Glabrezu)
Class D (Nalfeshnee)
Class E (Marilith)
Class F (Balor)

When a demon inhabits a corpse, the demon animates the corpse as an undead monster. The easiest way to deal with this in game is to just treat the fact as background information. The undead monster’s abilities need not change. The more complicated (and interesting) choice is to modify the undead monster’s abilities based on the type of demon involved. Regardless, it might makes sense to say that a demon’s intelligence limits the type of undead it can animate. A semi-intelligent kullule could animate a skeleton or a zombie, but it couldn’t animate a ghoul since ghouls typically have low intelligence. The undead monster’s alignment changes to that of whatever animates it.

After the choices of demon and undead monster are made, select one of the demon’s abilities, plus one more ability for every two HD the demon has. Treat each spell-like special ability as a single choice. Also, don’t forget to look at the standard demonic suspectibility to attack forms. In all cases, a demon-animated undead monster may be turned by clerics of levels 8+ and paladins of levels 11+. Using these rules, groups of undead monsters of the same type may have different (even wildly) different abilities.

For example, let’s look at a wight animated by a shub (a 5+1 HD demon). Changes to the standard wight’s abilities are bold-faced and marked with an asterisk.

Shub Wight
Size: Man-sized
Move: 120 feet
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 4+3
Attacks: 1 (claw)
Damage: 1d4 + level drain
Special Attacks: Level drain
Special Defenses: Fire resistance; silver or magic weapons required to hit; spell immunities
Magic Resistance: 40%*
Intelligence: Average
Alignment: Chaotic evil
Level/XP: 6/680 + 4 per hit point

Shub wights are undead corpses animated by shubs. Their undead power is linked to the negative material plane, and thus they permanently drain a level of experience from a victim when they score a hit in combat. Although they are not damaged by sunlight, they loathe the rays of the sun and do not emerge from their barrows and lairs during daylight. Shub wights are immune to sleep, hold, cold, and enchantment spells. Once per day, shub wights can teleport* (without fail, otherwise as the 5th-level magic-user spell). Fire inflicts one-half damage* to shub wights. They take 2d4 points of damage from holy water (per vial), and are destroyed by the casting of a raise dead spell. A human killed by a shub wight becomes a wight under the control of its maker.

Tags: Catholic, monsters, OSRIC

From the AD&D Monster Manual, page 76:

“Leaders and above will always have two weapons. If a subchief is with a group the tribal standard will be present 40% of the time. The standard is always present when the tribal chief is. The standard will cause all orcs within 6″ to fight more fiercely (+1 on hit dice and morale check dice).”

Way back when, our characters fighting hordes of orcs (or similar evil humanoids) targeted leaders. The idea was simple: Those leaders were stronger. Defeating them clearly showed that our characters as more powerful, which caused the rank and file to lose morale and flee. My main character, Lord Korbok, even had a magic spear that pointed out enemy leaders within a certain distance (6”, if I recall correctly).

As a DM, I loved using large groups of humanoids. I even used the typical weaponry breakdowns to determine how many of the monsters were armed with what weapons. Leaders were assigned X number of subordinates. Organized humanoids, such as lawful evil orcs and hobgoblins, fought with as much military precision and discipline as I thought I understood. The leaders barked orders, and the position of the standard bearer shifted in order reinforce weak points, signal a push in a particular direction, or indicate a specific target.

The benefits from being within 6” of the standard are simple: “+1 on hit dice and morale check dice”. Orcs inspired by the standard’s proximity are less likely to break and run. I applied the “+1 on hit dice” as an attack roll bonus, but I’m not sure I like this interpretation as much at age 54 as I did at age 14.

If I were to run that humanoid horde today, I’d be more literal. An inspired 1-HD orc would fight as a 2-HD monster. This changes the orc’s THAC0 from 19 to 16, an effective +3 to-hit bonus. I’d also be inclined to grant the affected orcs more hit points (what later editions of D&D refer to as temporary hit points). Not only does the more ferocious orc hit harder, but it’s also harder to kill due to an additional 1d8 hit points.

For additional fun, at least some standards ought to be magical.

Magical Standard: All magical standards must be held aloft by the bearer, and the magical standard must be visible for it to have any effect. This requires the use of at least one hand. Creatures allied to the bearer who are within 6” of the standard fight more fiercely, gaining an additional hit die (to include hit points) and a +1 on morale checks (if applicable). A magical standard has one or more additional powers, all of which function the same way as the aforementioned effects. Roll 1d8 and consult the following:

1-2: +2 bonus on saving throws versus charm and fear

3-4: 50% magic resistance to sleep

5-6: +2 melee damage bonus

7: +1 melee attack per round

8: Same as result 7, and roll 1d6 to determine a second power.

Tags: 1E AD&D, magic items