A coyote story

Once upon a time, the coyote was walking through the land and he stopped to rest on a rock.

He noticed the rock felt very cold, and he felt pity for that poor rock and put his blanket over the rock so it wouldn't be so cold.

He resumed his travel, but when the night fell, he felt the cruel chill himself, and he decided to recover the blanket. He went back to the rock and took it, but as he left, the rock, in its anger, moved the the whole hillside and rocks started falling down the slope. 

The coyote was squashed by the boulders. 

A white man found his body, as flat as a rug, and took it to his home where he put it on the floor as a rug.

Some time passed, and one day, the trickster coyote suddently came back to life and went right out the door.

I heard this story this morning and I wanted to transcribe it from memory before I forget it. 

 

 

Joshua K about bad things

This is an article I liked written by the aforementioned, at his instagram: Immersive Dungeon Delving. I wanted to share it here because I think it has some truths on it. All credit is his, enjoy.

 

What if instead of thinking "why do all these bad things keep happening TO me?," we instead think "These bad things are happening FOR me?" How would that change your life? 

Everybody faces challenges in life but some have a harder path than others. Is that fair? No, but what is hard for some is easy for others. It is relative and depends on your thinking and past experience. For some just driving in a big city is a challenge, for others it is "Tuesday." Some people suffer serious stress when a stranger yells at them, for others fighting two men at the same time is just another day at the Dojo. Maybe we actually need problems to gain perspective? 

Just like a 1st level PC may struggle fighting off a couple of kobolds where as an 8th level PC may just laugh at them. To be honest, we as people NEED problems, because without them we will create them for ourselves. How many times do we see rich people who have everything and every chance but are still unhappy, jaded, and plagued by self created problems? 

In old-school D&D we often see a sandbox type campaign where the adventures are PC driven and things are not always fair. The DM must be objective revealing the world as the PC's engage with it. The adventure "story" develops through PC perception as they create meaning to events and the DM enacts consequences for their actions both good and bad. Without the "problems" of kobolds, dungeons, traps, and dragons, it would be a boring game and no one would raise levels...or have a chance for self development. Kind of like real life where the kobolds are a flat tire and a dragon the tornado. 

Adventures are made of problems laid out FOR the PC's by an objective DM for "fun" to play a game. Just like jumping out of a plane can be either a problem or fun. What if life is full of problems set by an objective universe to help us...well...level up? Such proactive thinking allows a mindset to tackle challenges head on instead of falling into a "victim mentality" where everyone and everything else is to blame for ones problems. The question then becomes what kind of adventurer do you want to be in life and what is stopping you from becoming it?

Art by NerdyFrida 

Ecology of Magic Items

twitter: @kaimatten

Where do all the magic items in the magic item tables come from? 

Well, the only way mentioned in BX is through clerics, magic users and elves at name level. Much is left for the GM to decide (how much time, gold and reagents does the item need to be completed) though as a guide, a scroll/potion/item that mimics a spell requires 500 gp and one week per spell level. For other items, there are no instructions: just some examples that can work as guidance:

All right. Now I ask myself: Do all of these items we found in the depths of a labyrinth come from a name-level caster's hand? 
In my view, I always imagined that +1 swords were the forgotten weapons of heroes, imbued with certain powers depending on the battles that their wielder's fought, and that +1 is an extra strength that the sword gained alongside its wielder, or maybe "from" him, as if a part of the warrior's soul had remained in the blade. I wanted to put this in game terms: not so much to add interesting gameplay, as to explore the naturalism of the game world through its most tangible part (procedures!)

Whenever a PC dies, roll 1d20 equal or under his/her level: on a hit, add a +1, a small effect or a bane (+bonus against a specific monster) to any part of your gear. Keep on rolling until you miss. Caster classes can give the object an effect equivalent to a spell of their appropiate level

There are times, though, in which characters don't die to create a magic item. But the moment in which they imbue their essence into an item (knowingly or not) is a moment in which they forfeit personal action in favor of another hero. For example, a warrior who retires and gives his armor to his son. Or a magic user who, for the sake of saving the kingdom, must expeditiously imbue a sword with powers to arm the parting chosen hero. These imbuements do not require significant time, but they require a scene in which they are gifted to their new wielders, alongside an oath, an advice or a farewell.

In this occassions, the creator of the magic item takes a step back from the action. Magic items are never created this way for oneself, but to invest power into another. I think that level drain works nicely for this purpose: too stupid to use for oneself (the level will always be better than the sword effect) and so costly that nobody will ever use it in practice, but will always be available in the theory to explain how a given item might have been created.

Whenever a PC wants to gift an item charged with power to another, add a +1, a small effect or a bane (+bonus against a specific monster) to it. Caster classes can give the object an effect equivalent to a spell of their appropiate level. Then, you lose a full level: your XP is set to the minimum required for the previous level you have at the moment (If you are at level 8 and have +2000 XP towards level 9, you lose the 2000XP and all the XP needed from level 7 towards level 8)

Other times, magical items are just mundane gifts, with powerful intentions behind, but made by people that have no levels whatsovever. This is the case for the amulets exchanged by lovers. These can work as one-use bonuses: one re-roll, or maybe turning a failed save of any type into a success. These are an equivalent of a person that might be far away, but cares for you. So, how are they done? And how to prevent PCs make gifts amongst themselves all the time? Well, there are some under-used mechanics in OSR that more or less represent bonds to other people. Let's work with that:

Whenever a PC wants to give an amulet to another character, specify when it will trigger. It will grant a re-roll or an automatic success once, or once per level of the user (not sure yet). It will only work in absence of the giver. The giver loses a hireling slot permanently (which in case of an NPC won't matter much, but a PC will think twice before losing any resource permanently, even if its a marginal one. Amulets shared amongst the party will be mostly useless as they dont work if the giver is present)

Of course, all of this variants do not rule out the original path to the creation of magic items. They are just alternative paths. However, the time+money+ingredients way can also cover another case: That one in which a blacksmith or another artisan wants to make a magical version of his usual work. This is how dwarves, despite not having any magical abilities, achieve to make their masterwork or magical items.

All of this rules are probably never to be used. They are irrelevant notes which do not add much to a session. But if something is present and ubiquitous in the world I at least need some mental guidelines to know how a PC can interact with it. These rules main point is to provide a better understanding of the game world logic. 

Evil cannot create, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made

Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made - JRR Tolkien.

Apparently people have started using that phrase to critizice the new series: The Rings of Power. Not getting into reviewing the series because I have not seen it, nor have an intention to (despite that, or maybe because, I love Lord of the Rings)

Not only that, but I'm of those who advocate that there are bigger implications on media today that go beyond the theatrical political stances of left and right, and step into social engineery. 

It seems that Tolkien's quote has been so appropiately poignant that ThE pOwErS oF tHe InTeRnEt have spent the last year trying to cover it up as a "falsely attributed opinion" to Tolkien. The Shadow's disinformation pages that call themselves "Fact Checkers" have flooded the net with the undisputed fallacy that it was spread by a "group of astonishingly organized racist persons" annoyed by the appearance of a black elf on the show. 

I know of the title quote for years, and have struggled against it many times by trying to create an RPG magic system that is appropiate for the Middle Earth. You can see some of my latest attempts on this very blog. 

I have also seen the media erase and instaurate truths a lot of times along my life. Every time they get more effective as the hivemind structure of the internet and the social media algorythms make it easier than ever. But as a fan of Tolkien I feel that I must make my humble stand against Wormtongue's lies by making this entry, where, from now on, you can easily check that Tolkien's vision was once recognized as true as it might be: THIS LINK leads to a google search of the quote filtering results from 1990 to 2019, before the series were disclosed to the public. And here you can see a 2016 entry on Quora where a person asks: If evil cannot create things in Tolkien's mythology, how did Melkor create dragons?

Frodo itself makes the best in-setting appreciation of this idiosyncrasy on a conversation with Sam in The Return of The King:

"No, they eat and drink, Sam. The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them; and if they are to live at all, they have to live like other living creatures."

Furthermore, evil uncapable of creating must not be seen as a Tolkien's design choice: His work draws its power from the Monomyth (and that is why Lotr and other great works of all ages ring so true and have passed the test of time). It has basis on deeper, magical/spiritual/natural truths that we all know inside, and from which all fantasy, myth and visions emerge. We roleplayers know first hand that necromancers draw their armies from the unwilling corpses of the dead. We who mantain and read blogs know how true gamers create games, rules and worlds in here. Converselly, one would think that Twitter could be a blogspot degradation operated by the Shadow: reducing the character number and the fast propagation it allows not for creating, but encourages fast endorphines through insults, ego wank and mockery. Then, even gaming related accounts end up following the same path of deceit as the common man does: they are eventually lured into a political slot (left or right) and once there, they are presented straw enemies tailored to their hole (bigoted racists for one, retarded feminists for the other) and start fighting a fake war, which in the end only turns them into something they were not at the beggining (bigoted racists and retarded feminists). 

But back to Rings of Power: you can go into the link above and search as many proof as you wish, there is plenty. I don't know how much it will last, though: TV tropes have been forced recently to mark the quote as "badly attributed" and Quora's thread has been recently deleted from most of its tolkien related subs, leaving only that one available. The shadow's agents of pseudotruth are everything but lazy. So, this entry might sound stupid for some, but as both a truth and a Tolkien lover, if the dark wisps try to drown the world in dark lies, what can I do but to light a candle for as much time as I can.