I don’t know or care if the “blog scene” is dead, but not many people comment here, and not many people comment on the blogs I still read.  The only blog I read that still has an active “community” is a troll blog.

The Action has apparently moved to G+.  I think I have a total of three dozen people in my Circles on G+.  Most people on G+ are the same prissy douchebags who populate the big forums and they’re just there to pearl-clutch over picayune horseshit.  I don’t feel like vetting the people I don’t already know, and I don’t really participate there other than to run a play-by-post.

I don’t do a lot that’s very interesting, gaming-wise.  I’m currently working on the same dumb spitwad campaign I’ve been working on for years under different names.  I still write things down for Dwarf-Land but as always, who the hell knows when I’ll be done with that.

Anyway, there’s not really a reason for me to put things on a blog anymore.  (For the obtuse, please note that this does NOT mean that I think no one else should put things on a blog anymore.)  I just don’t want to and I haven’t for quite a while.  When I do feel the urge to send out content, I’ll probably just type it up and mail it to whoever wants it.  No idea how I’ll get the word out, but these things have a habit of getting around to the people interested in reading it.

As is my custom, I’ll probably archive what’s already on here and then Delete Fucking Everything at some point in the near future.  I’ll still be minimally active on G+, but the easiest way to reach me (in the unlikely event that there’s a need to) is by the usual e-mail address.

So yeah, it’s been fetch.

[In fact, the crabmen were a servitor race of the city's Shepherd architects.  Their racial affinity for silver stems from a dim ancestral memory of one of their former primary tasks, the maintenance of the elaborate grid of silver arcano-circuitry that once maintained the city's forcefield.]

The crabmen’s behavior is largely inscrutable, but they emerge from the depths at irregular intervals to trade coral, sponges, and pearls for silver and slaves with the merchants of Faz.  Slaves sold to the crabmen are drawn from the ranks of convicts, prisoners of war, and other low-castes, as the crabmen are penurious in this regard and favor quantity over quality.  The merchants have no illusions about the slaves’ ultimate fate.

Occasionally, the crabmen withdraw from human contact, ceasing trade and greeting any overtures with outright hostility.  Again, their motives are unknown, and nuanced conversation with a crabman is impossible.

The crabmen worship a godling whose name is approximately humanized as Zakeketukkl, an intelligent giant crab of great size and power which lurks in one of Qrol’s central buildings.  A small priest-caste of silver-adorned crabmen has developed to see to proper veneration of Zakeketukkl, which generally consists of the steady provision of food items (drowned slaves from Faz when possible) and the occasional sacrifice of silver items, although the crabmen are only slightly less miserly with their god than in any other context where silver is concerned.  Thus, silver is only offered at significant ceremonies.

[Goblins in the Faz campaign are intelligent and cunning, with even the rank and file being as smart as the average human. They look like they were drawn by Russ.  The ruling Witch Doctor caste is more magically adept than is usual, particularly where spells of fire and smoke are concerned.]

Goblins are skilled craftsmen and miners, favoring baroque designs and color schemes which humans find vaguely nauseating. They are reasonably effective fighters for their small size, but are unlikely to strike fear into opponents with their martial prowess. They also exhibit diffident morale, especially in the sunlight they despise. They accordingly look to their larger, more powerful cousins for muscle. Norkers are employed as watchmen and soldiers; their heavy truncheons, snapping jaws, and natural armor make them very effective heavy infantry. The looming, disturbingly quiet bugbears are highly valued for their odd combination of power and stealth, and are used as enforcers, skirmishers, and shock troops.

[Note that there is no "hobgoblin" race in the setting. Characters who speak the hobgoblin language speak a guttural dialect used by norkers and bugbears.]

The baleful goblin monarch, His Mephitic Magnificence the Grand Grue, is the most powerful of the Witch Doctors and is said to be part demon, or perhaps descended from the mysterious Goblin God. The Grue has a magic device that allows him to conjure smoke para-elementals, and his cadaverine arcano-influidators turn the few subjects who survive them into a variety of ghastly “thouls.” There are thus powerful deterrents against any who would besiege the Goblin City.

Thrallut and Faz are almost always on neutral terms at worst, as neither City has been able to chisel out a significant advantage in their economically codependent relationship – Thrallut’s storehouses are filled with grain from Faz’s surrounding farmsteads, and Faz’s armies are outfitted with steel from goblin forges. However, neither City loves its “ally.” Goblins and their kin infest Faz’s Underworld, spying and collecting treasure while committing what mischief they can, even murder if they think they can get away with it.

[Goblins and dwarves have long warred against each other, and encounters between the two are marked by hostility and, if circumstances allow, copious bloodshed.]

The abominable Glaath-Yigon is one of the most powerful wizards of the City of Faz, ruling a small personal Underworld beneath the forsaken Tower of Uldarus.  The High Dingus suffers the Necromancer and his unsavory activities in return for certain unique services and provisions.  In his dark little realm, he performs ghastly experiments and releases many of the products thereof to roam the tunnels and vaults.  Other wizards speculate that the Necromancer is not only proficient with magic but with certain forms of ancient technology the operation of which is lost to all others.

Glaath-Yigon is horrifying and inhuman, his blasphemous studies having irrevocably warped his physiognomy.  He is swollen and bloated, his soft body livid with bruises and settled fluid.  His visage is repellent:  his head is outsized and gourd-like, crowned with tangled black hair; a ragged hole gapes where his nose once grew; his ears are large and jutting, bat-like; his toothless grin is a slick purple grotesque.  He casts no shadow.

Squatting on his hovering pedestal, foul Glaath-Yigon wears no clothing save a simple breech-cloth covering his unspeakable nether regions, which he plies upon a steady succession of unfortunate slaves.  Despite his apparent indolence, the Necromancer is a fearsome warrior on those rare occasions when he is stirred from his perch, leaping and waddling with unnatural quickness.  In his arrogance, he will often forego his powerful sorceries for the thrill of locking his filthy fingers around a throat.

Glaath-Yigon has developed many new forms of undead, including the deviant hormads, the skeleton-giant hekons, and the abhorrent zols and vrlus.

(If it winds up being enough fun to memorialize, I’ll probably type it up as an “OD&D + supplements” .pdf or something for anyone who wants to take a look at it.  As always, it’ll be free, because now apparently a load-bearing part of my BRAND IDENTITY is hating the very concept of money and believing no one anywhere should get to have any, ever.  You can’t, like, own a dungeon, man.)

So anyway, that’s what’s up.  I’ll probably post some shit from the AD&D game occasionally, such as the following “local news” I’ve been dribbing and drabbing to the PBP group.  You may ruefully note my lack of respect for the inherent solemnity of the proper exercise of the craft; I cannot even plead ignorance, for I know better.

LOCAL NEWS

This year’s Treason Amnesty Day has come and gone, with several dozen citizens reportedly confessing to high crimes and misdemeanors, from speaking ill of the High Dingus, to membership in the outlawed cult of Grbdnf the Micturator, to mopery.  By tradition, these contrite individuals were pardoned of all misdeeds, then whisked away to some private precinct of the Palace to live out the rest of their lives in ease and comfort, never again to be troubled by cares of the outside world.

The cult of the bird-goddess Tyaa has been outlawed, its clergy exiled or borne off to the flensery, and its assets and holdings escheated to the City.  Lay adherents and initiates have been given the option to take the Rite at a new temple or suffer the same fate as the clergy.  This edict of disenfranchisement reportedly stems from a shocking and inexcusable incident at the unveiling of a newly completed statue of the High Dingus.

The Tlalocian Boys’ Choir performance scheduled for this Frogday has been canceled due to unseasonably dry weather.

A failed experiment has resulted in the infestation of the Fuliginous Tower and immediately surrounding area with Kudzu of Tindalos.  Residents of the Weird Quarter are advised to avoid corners and angular objects until further notice.

Reports that the Ministry of Mercy has turned out the most psychotic dregs of its dungeons and oubliettes to terrorize the Underworld are utterly without merit, notwithstanding the contentions of certain members of the Guild of Honest Laborers (colloquially mischaracterized as the Thieves’ Guild). The Guildmaster Plenipotentiary has issued a statement dispelling this scurrilous rumor in no uncertain terms, attributing its spread to misinformed elements within the Guild who have since been privately admonished.

The Grinkies, an extended family of hobbit butchers and bakers, have absconded into the Underworld after a grisly discovery in one of their shops evolved into a gruesome scandal possibly implicating the entire clan.  Authorities suspect the wurst.

The perfidy of the wicked Realm of Pnab has vigorously sodomized any notion of peace between that wretched cesspool and the Great City of Faz, the glittering jewel in civilization’s crown.  Accordingly, the most recent treaty into which Faz was inveigled is null and void, being the product of bad faith on the part of deviant perverts.  To safeguard the City’s bosom against the dagger of insurgency, the High Dingus has ordered a preemptive massacre of Pnabite settlers near the border.

Thieves and other miscreants who travel through the upper levels of Underfaz claim that the outsized Underworld cockroaches have started to display disturbing signs of intelligence and cooperation, along with a heightened level of aggression.

Rumor has it that the Uttermost Wizard of the Fuliginous Tower has cloned himself, transmogrified the clone with a girdle of feminity, and will wed himself in extravagant nuptials to be officially announced forthwith.

Due to a recent shortage of qualified idiots in the subject villages surrounding Faz, magic-users convicted of any crime are to be feebleminded and parceled out as part of an official idiot distribution program.

The following are house rules and clarifications for the upcoming “Underworld of Faz” AD&D 1e game.  This is a long entry that may be annoying to parse on G+, so I’m putting it here for safekeeping until I get around to revising the old wiki, at which point it’ll be placed there along with my other house rules.

I use the Dungeon Masters Guide rules governing level advancement, upkeep, and training costs. I realize this may cause the vapors, but I’m house ruling as little as possible, at least at the outset.

However, the rules as written seem oppressive enough that some exploration and explication seems in order. I have no illusions that Gygax was doing anything with these rules other than siphoning off gold instead of reworking the experience point system.

Let’s also dispense with any charade that this reflects a workable economic system. Just don’t even worry about it, it’s a game, and an abstract and aggressively incoherent one at that. Lighten up, Francis, roll the dice, move your thimble. There, that was an easy fix.

The Dungeon Masters Guide, in justifying very high monthly upkeep costs, refers to adventurers as “as a free-wheeling and high-living lot (except, of course, for monks).” It seems like paladins, rangers, druids, and characters with ascetic character concepts are also unlikely to go on Conan-level debauches. So I’m assuming that the upkeep costs refer not just to “support, upkeep, equipment, and entertainment expense,” but to the considerable tithing, donations, endowment of orphanages and their limpid-eyed moppets, establishment of al-mi’raj preserves, and so on.

In exchange for the monthly upkeep cost, it’s assumed that you (and your regular henchmen and hirelings) acquire, replace, and repair cheap mundane items as necessary, so you don’t have to keep track of every expenditure on torches, rope, arrows, material components of little cost, etc. You (and your entourage) are also assumed to maintain room and board at a standard commensurate with your escalating expenditures (unless, of course, you’re playing one of the deliberately penurious classes, in which case your urchins or whatever get to move on up in your stead); to abuse a steadily improving class of lagers, spirits, and opium; to engage in salacious repartee and gymnastic congress with a steadily improving class of service personnel; to prop up the traditional rumors-for-pay racket with a steadily improving class of disreputable barkeeps; and, to pay the assorted taxes, tariffs, and exchange fees outlined in the labyrinthine Unified Gygaxian Tax and Commerical Code. And so on.

Similarly, the training costs aren’t just training costs, they subsume such things as guild dues and shares; purchase of increasingly fancy quills, inks, and vellums; acquisition of certain forbidden tomes, abstracts, updates, and peer-reviewed publications; greasing the palms of fences, racketeers, and snitches; grooming fees for snooty familiars; professional burnishing and kit for your hectoring magic sword; dancing, elocution, and etiquette lessons as part of your misguided attempts to impress the toffs with whom you now rub elbows as you climb the economic ladder; and elaborate hats. And so on. (Or just lots more donations to phalanxes of assorted mendicants.)

Now, to How Much Is All This Really? Let’s just rip off the band-aid and say about FUCK much. Even exemplars of proper class behavior – which you’ll surely be adjudged unless you shat the bed in particularly explosive fashion, metaphorically speaking – end up paying 1,250 gp per old level to advance to a new level. This is a lot.

Most DMs handwave at this point and say something to the effect of well since you can’t afford it here’s this quest that you would have gone off on anyways because there’s gold at the end to feed this awful metagame ouroboros, that’s sorted, see you next weekend. I’m not doing that.

Where does this money come from?

First, I’m placing larger monetary treasures in a greater concentration across somewhat smaller levels and sub-levels. Verisimilitude has already been thoroughly savaged. Too-quick advancement is not a live issue; it’s a play-by-post, so even piling on the lucre, we’ll all be dead or senescent by the time someone hits a demihuman level cap, much less name level. And as outlined above, the idea of “having too much money” will inspire mordant, ever more hysterical laughter*.

It should but may not go without saying that even at this more rapid rate of advancement, you can’t advance more than one level per delve and any excess experience points are lost as an Ozymandian reminder of the evanescence of human achievement.

And second, if you’re that hard up, you can sell off a magic item**, which will also be found in higher than usual concentrations, albeit to a smaller degree. They’re worth a lot, and this mitigates the much-lampooned Christmas tree effect.

So that’s how I’m handling various economic considerations. We’ll see how it goes before messing with it. I understand that many players are mortified by the use of these rules, and I’ll always consider input, but if you don’t like it, it’s probably tough titty.

* In your explorations, you may note a certain prevalence of hoards measured in improbably neat numbers of gold pieces. This doesn’t mean that, say, a horde of giant rats is sitting on a stash of actual gold pieces, rounded off to the nearest hundred and neatly packed in paper rolls. The gold piece value is an abstraction representing various coins, small but valuable gew-gaws, bits of precious substances, etc., and the rounding can represent the cut off the top for whatever fences and moneychangers convert your antiquated, non-fungible pelf to clean modern Fazian coins.

** Magic items are rated in the DMG for both experience point value and gold piece sale value. Once the item is positively identified, you can elect to a) take the experience point value and retain or dispose of the item as you wish, or b) sell the item immediately upon reaching the surface and take the experience point value of the gold. If you use the item in any context other than for identification purposes, you forfeit the option to get experience points for the gold piece sale value, although you can still sell the item and get the gold. Note also that only one player character can ever earn experience points in any fashion for a particular magic item.

The following notes apply to the calendar in use in the Great City of Faz and neighboring lands. Other cultures undoubtedly have their own calendars, as evidenced by the infamous “Caturday” observed weekly in the decadent City of Gnulg.

The Fazian calendar is similar to the Gregorian calendar, with 13 months of 28 days each. Each year consists of 364 days. Each month consists of 4 weeks of 7 days each.

The first day of the year is the vernal equinox, so that the seasons run in order (spring, summer, fall, winter) in groups of three months.

In the case of the months and associated zodiacal signs, I’ve chosen the sign so that its first letter corresponds with the number of the month. So the first month is “A,” the second month is “B,” and so on. In the case of the days of the week, I’ve picked names that sound vaguely like the name of our own days of the week. This makes the calendar easier for me and hopefully others to intuit.

The months of the year, each named for a zodiacal sign, are as follows:

 1. The Alchemist

2. The Bastard

3. The Clone

4. The Dragon

5. The Egg

6. The Ferret

7. The Grackle

8. The Hag

9. The Imp

10. The Jack-o’-Bear

11. The Kraken

12. The Leper

13. The Maggot

The days of the week are as follows:

1. Slugday

2. Demonday

3. Oozeday

4. Wandsday

5. Curseday

6. Frogday

7. Slatternday

And here’s a tentative list of Fazian holidays. Some are festivals over multiple days, some are a single day or night. Some are observed only in the City, some are observed even in small ruralities. There’s a mix of religious and secular celebrations which I haven’t fully transposed from the Wilderlands.

 Airing of the Grievances

Blobmas

Blood Moon (Assassins’ Guild)

Capybara Day

Carnival of Souls (Winter Solstice)

Cofflefest (Slavers’ Guild)

Coronation of Good King Fugly

Dearthday

Feast of Fecundity (Autumnal Equinox)

Festival of Balefires (Summer Solstice)

Festival of the Hungry Deeps (Midsummer)

Founding Day

Gala of the Gargoyles

Ghoulmas

Gnollstice

Good Frogday

Gorbeltane

Humoring of the Dotards

Lepermas

Masque of the Scarabs

Minstrel Cycle (Minstrels’ Guild)

Morons’ Promenade

Naked Day

Night of the Adjudicator

Night of the Comet

Nubilee

Neighbor Day

Dingus’s Birthday

Paramour’s Pavane

Parliament of Whores

Rites of Spring (Vernal Equinox)

Scamhain

Sellabration (Merchants’ Guild)

Skanksgiving

Sneakus (Thieves’ Guild) (originated in Arduin)

Treason Amnesty Day

Ultima Yule

Wake of Vultures (Mercenaries’ Guild)

Witches’ Court (Midwinter)

Wizards’ Convocation

Here’s the deal.

1. If you’re interested in playing but aren’t in my G+ gaming circle, e-mail me at hugeruinedpile at gmail dot com and I’ll get you added.
2. Each delve, I’ll randomly select six players from the pool of all interested players.  Obviously if you’re selected but not still interested for whatever reason, give me a heads-up.
3. Those six players’ characters will participate in one discrete delve.  Theoretically speaking, this will be one trip into the dungeon and back.  Practically speaking, it’ll be handled on a case-by-case basis – if you’re ambushed by a carnivorous toucan before you’ve explored a room and have to haul a dude topside to get fixed up, the group doesn’t immediately go to the bench.  A “delve” is a meaningful expedition into the dungeon and back.
4. When that delve is over and bookkeeping has been finished for the survivors, six different players will tag in.  I.e., the players who went on the last delve don’t get to go on the next on, and six players are randomly selected from the remaining pool.  This may still result in some players getting in more often than others, but it smooths out the variance at least a little bit.
5. For now, the dungeon is the game.  We’ll gradually develop stuff about the city above and the wilderness around, but right now it’s just vanilla AD&D 1e.
6. I’m using most of the AD&D 1e rules but not all (I’m even building on some of the neglected weirder rules like alignment languages), and will alter some subsystems to make things easier on myself.  I’m not using a fucking flow chart for surprise and initiative, but casting times and speed factors will be relevant, for instance.  The goal is to make the rules as unobtrusive and black-boxy for the players as possible – you tell me your action, secret things happen on my end, and I give you a result.  If you ever have a question how I’m working a particular rule, let me know and I’ll explain.
7. I’m a stickler for very few things.  However, I do all the dice-rolling myself, including character generation.  Our method is 4d6, drop low, arrange as desired.  I’ll give you the ability scores, you figure out class, race, weapon proficiencies, alignment, etc. I’ll roll hit points (yup, roll hit points) and secondary skills, etc.  We’ll get more into this when we actually do it.  I do use the racial minima/maxima from the PHB – you have to qualify not only for your class but for demihuman race.
8. If you already have an AD&D character from our last go at this, you’re welcome to use him or her again.  I may still have the sheets somewhere, if not you’ll have to refresh my memory.
9. We’ll work a lot of this shit out as we go.  I’m not very difficult to work with.

I feel like the first baby step should be a group of four to six players, which is manageable even with a reasonable number of hirelings along for the delves.

The default mode would be for me to either deliberately or randomly select six players from the interested folks, which allows for the usual rate of player attrition in PBP.

Last night, Aaron Funk (who’s been sagacious as fuck lately) told me that some other referees have tried something different, as follows:

1. Everyone who’s interested gets on the list and goes through the chargen process.
2. At the start of play, and prior to every discrete delve, six players are randomly selected.  Their characters get to go on that delve.
3. After that group either returns to the surface or is slaughtered to a man, GOTO 2.

Pros and cons have occurred to me, and I’m sure the hivemind will detect some I’ve overlooked.

The first and most obvious con is that while one group is (hopefully) having fun in the subterranean hellscape, the majority of interested players are durdling on the sidelines.  I don’t think this is particularly tragic for them, as most people on G+ have other gaming outlets, but stagnation is death in PBP and if players aren’t continuously engaged, they tend to wander off.  It may also be an unexpected pro, as maybe players will be more active when they’re tagged in – the initial posting period of any PBP is always the most active, and this is built-in crop rotation.

The second con is inherent to the kind of game I want to run – long dungeon delves can be hard to sustain in PBP.  Since dungeon delving is what I want to do, there’s no real kludge for this.

The third con is that if players are enjoying themselves, they may tend to prolong dungeon delves longer than they normally would, especially as their access to resources increases.  This keeps other players on the bench longer, and raises the probability of the active group overstepping their capabilities and being wiped out.  Again, not much I can really do about this.

The fourth con is that because of the (relatively) small pool and sample size, and the vagaries of variance, the dice will land on some people quite often and on others more rarely, which leads to both power disparity (not too worried about that) and some people not getting to play (fairly worried about that).  There’s probably some gimcrack system to resolve this, perhaps giving people who didn’t participate in the last delve a significantly higher probability of being selected for the next – doubling their straws, so to speak.

The big pro is that everyone gets to play at some point.  Another is that one isn’t roped into the damned thing in perpetuity, and can easily bow in and out as one’s schedule and level of interest fluctuates.

Like I said, I’m sure there are unintended consequences of this system that I’m missing.

So, if you’re interested in the game, feel free to weigh in on what you think about this.  I’ll end up doing whatever I’m going to do, but I’d definitely like input.

But I’ve run several fairly successful PBP and IRC games, success being defined as “people, including me, seeming to have fun.”  Longevity has been the issue – for instance, even successful PBP games have to be continuously prodded because any significant lull = imminent death.  Just the nature of the beast.  It doesn’t help that I flake out with some regularity, where “with some regularity” means “it’s happening sooner or later, fuckin bank it.”  Nature of that beast, too.

I recently tried running an AD&D PBP-ish game on G+ with a variety of cool folks.  It was dry-gulched by a combination of the interface being frustrating, the archival potential being less than robust, and me being kind of wackadoodle at the time.

I also explored the option of a forum-based game, which was my preferred venue in the past, but the current iteration of phpBB is so godawful as to be effectively unusable for my purposes.  (I like administering my own forum, am seriously not into the idea of running a game on any of the “community” forums.)

The other day, Aaron Funk told me about the new G+ Community function, which sounds like exactly what I’ve been looking for – a forum where one can post threads, media, and so on.  I’ve started another G+ account and am looking into that option, but I know fuck-all about it right now.

IRC or other real-time text chat conferencing is also an option – the last relatively successful game I ran used the Adium client on my end and what the hell else everyone was using on their ends.  One of the perspicacious players ginned up a practical dice script and it went pretty smoothly.

Anyway, I’ve kind of got the urge to run a game again soon – nothing weighty or nuanced, just beer-and-pretzelsy stuff, as I’m a vapid flibbertigibbet who values fun.  (I’ve noticed that beer and pretzels games sometimes evolve into serious campaigns, and po-faced serious campaigns are often piss-taken to death.)  It’d be almost exclusively a dungeon delve game, at least initially.

G+ Community is the most likely venue – in other words, play-by-post instead of face-to-face.  There’s always the possibility (probability) that the game will die off sooner than one would like it to.  Real life intercedes sometimes, and I could be charitably described as “erratic.”  BUT I would still like to give it a try.  Fairly small number of players, four to six.  The consensus seems to be that I’m a pretty laid-back and pleasant referee, for what that’s worth.

If, with those caveats in mind, you’re still interested in the possibility, let me know and we’ll talk about it.  It’d be probably a few weeks before I’d start, and I haven’t decided on the ruleset – right now I’m leaning to AD&D again with several subsystems smoothed out for playability.  I’m on G+ but I think I may have it set to where I can’t be searched up, so if you want, let me know in the comments who I should look for and I’ll put you in my circles.  (I don’t really post there right now.)

That’s a lot of words to say “if you want in on a PBP, holler,” but I have some spare time tonight and I’m about to have to sit through the bubbling feculence that is American Horror Story, and it’s my blog, so I’m bloviating.