2012 Book Recommendations

In 2011, I recommended an anthology of stories by Manly Wade Wellman. In 2012, though, graduate school has put an especially big damper on my leisure reading: fewer books (only 31 and 11 audiobooks), but lots and lots of scholarly papers and half-read volumes. There’s a half-dozen or so I’d recommend:

• "Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle", by Daniel C. Everett (2009)
• "The Man of Gold", by M.A.R. Barker (1984)
• "Old Peter's Russian Tales," by Arthur Ransome (LibriVox)
• "Imagined Communities", by Benedict Anderson (1983, 2006)
• "Through the Language Glass", by Guy Deutscher (2010)
• "The Klingon Dictionary", by Marc Okrand (1985, 1992)

The nonfiction book I'd recommend, I think, was Guy Deutscher's "Through the Language Glass", a modest apology for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This hypothesis is poorly regarded by linguists, perhaps not least because overreaching and fanciful versions of it have long been vivid in the popular imagination (although I'm still intrigued by the idea of language as a cognitive tool). Deutscher's leads his discussion from 19th-century debates over the limited color vocabulary of Classical Greek literature, through the scientific racism of an early Darwinism (that had not yet rejected Lamarckism, for example), through anthropology's emphasis on culture as a means of repudiating that scientific racism. He ends up talking about the cognitive influence of color terminology and geographic vs. relative direction vocabulary, among other things. It's pretty interesting. A selection of this book was presented as "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?" at the New York Times in 2010, and Radiolab interviewed Deutscher in 2012 for their "Colors" episode and "Why Isn't the Sky Blue?".

My fiction reading was pretty thin last year, but M.A.R. Barker's "The Man of Gold" was a decent yarn—if you're open to science fantasy adventure novels based on worlds used as settings for 1970s role-playing games. The fiction is ok, but the point is to show off Barker's world of Tékumel (which otherwise perhaps "doesn't photograph well"). It is a fascinating world. And as far as conlangs made to support a fictional world go, Tsolyáni is really nice, aesthetically a mashup of Urdu and Mesoamerican languages, which works much better than it sounds.

Retrospective: Dungeon #64 (Sept/Oct 1997)

Spoiler alert! Of course, 15 years is well past the spoiler statute of limitations.

These were some pretty memorable adventures; after all these years I remembered a little about all of them, although perhaps more about the scene at Lathtarl's Lantern than the actual adventure it's in.

"Grotto of the Queen", by Paul and Shari Culotta (AD&D Forgotten Realms, Levels 6-9): The ambush of a rival adventuring party offers the PCs an opening to raid the submerged temple of the evil sea goddess Umberlee. The hook into this adventure is fairly contrived, requiring a fair amount of DM engineering: the adventurers are approached by a Lantanese emissary, to recover a magical boat taken by the cult of Umberlee. The party's nemesis (a 14th-level wizard with nothing better to do than follow the party and engineer some scrapes for them) warns the cult of their attack, and the cult prepares an ambush, which is instead triggered by a rival adventuring party. Alternatively, the author suggests that the cult of Umberlee has an effective spy network, which seems like a much simpler backstory.

Either way, the adventurers travel in an advanced Lantanese ship to a pirate enclave of Lathtarl's Lantern, on the Sword Coast between Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep. This is a neat little evil pirate town: it has a huge tavern full of dozens of pirates and outlaws, along with a couple of gnolls, ogres, and half-orcs, all drinking and carousing. There's a high likelihood that adventurers will get into a barroom brawl, ending in a boxing match before a shouting, leering crowd. Most of the residents are followers of Umberlee, so the adventurers should use some sublety in town. The grotto itself is a well-conceived dungeon, built by terrestrial worshippers of an evil sea goddess. The moderately-sized complex opens with some traps, some of which have been triggered, and can catch the temple unawares. Which is good: the final encounter should be very challenging, with a sea priestess who uses the environment of the confined, flooded temple to good advantage.

I don't like the plot of this adventure, but the actual setting and dungeon are pretty great. With some modest re-skinning, it would be an excellent addition to a campaign involving grim pirates who follow evil sea gods or demons.

"Bzallin's Blacksphere", by Christopher Perkins (AD&D, Levels 12-15): In the town of Horizon, a sphere of annihilation is growing and threatening to destroy the community. The town's wizard-protector Amazzer (Wiz17) believes that his predecessor Bzallin is responsible for this. So the adventurers travel to Bzallin's ruined keep and destroy its guardians (a hibernating necromancer and some powerful undead), then travel from there to the lich Bzallin's lair: a pocket demiplane suspended within the quasielemental plane of Vacuum. It's not a tesseract, but the geometry of Bzallin's Cube is interesting enough to temporarily confound mappers. This demiplane is full of Bzallin's apprentices (themselves fairly powerful wizards), his demonic and daemonic servitors, and a number of magical traps and wards. There's many of the delicious trimmings you would expect of a high-level lich's lair, making use of a wide range of evocative higher-level spells. This is a high-level, high-magic romp, and the author is probably right in suggesting that the DM refer extensively to all volumes of the Encyclopedia Magica. There's probably about two to three dozen encounters, ranging from Bzallin's apprentices (who are mostly around 10th-level wizards) to the lich himself, a near-epic-level enounter.

One thing that's apparent about the suggested level of these adventures, generally speaking, is that an average-sized party needs to be near the high end of the level spread, not the low end. A 6th-level party in "Grotto of the Queen" will probably get killed, while a 12th-level party in "Bzallin's Blacksphere" is very badly outclassed by the big bad. Anyway, I love wizards and liches, and "Bzallin's Blacksphere" is definitely my favorite from this issue.

"Last Dance", by Jeff Crook (AD&D Ravenloft, Levels 4-6): In the city of Pont-à-Museau in the domain of Richemulot, the adventurers are hired by Madame Araby Tuvache, a psychopath, to clear out her basement of rats. In fact, she plans to trap them inside and kill them with her clockwork house of marionette horrors. The plot is simple and the dungeon doesn't seem all that dangerous, but this adventure is certainly gruesome. The PCs are not really expected to defeat the villain—if they kill her, the Dark Powers of Ravenloft transform her into an even worse creature, a Greater Animator running a haunted house—but merely to explore the environment and make it out alive. I'm not sure why the heroes don't just burn the place down from the get-go. This may be short enough to finish in a single session.

"The Mad Chefs of Lac Anchois", by Jennifer Tittle Stack (AD&D, Levels 6-9): So, Pol and Prue Dhomme, a pair of Francophone cloud giant restauranteurs have captured some grippli young (instead of giant frogs) to butcher and serve for some giantish food critics that will visit their establishment, Chez Grands Frères, in three days. The grippli tribe mother asks some adventurers to intervene and rescue the children, and why not? How PCs approach this problem is fairly open-ended: they can try stealth, role-playing, deceit, negotiation, or even a direct frontal assault. The restaurant has several kobold waitresses (Francine, Chapponage, and Amortisseuse) to serve human-sized customers, although getting past the half-ogre mage wine steward Brummel and into the kitchen will be a challenge. If the adventurers attack the chefs, they may battle a dough golem or suffer the effects of their dreaded spoon of transmuting flesh to roquefort. The cloud giants are not actually evil evil, they just don't realize that the grippli young are sentient creatures.

This could be an interesting variant on a rescue-the-princess scenario, but the adventure plays it for laughs, and humor in D&D can be quite difficult to pull off. I don't think that the author quite succeeds; it seems pretty goofy. Of course, there is a time and a place for all things. Perhaps this adventure could be lighter interlude and welcome relief from a gruelling hack-and-slash campaign against giantish foes, such as G1-3: Against the Giants, where there is little or no opportunities for role-playing with the giants. "The Mad Chefs of Lac Anchois" certainly has more opportunity for role-playing, although I think the cloud giant brothers and their minions could be portrayed in a more sinister light; the comedy of this adventure will come through in any case. It's short enough to play through in a single session, I reckon.

Humor is used in a lot of my favorite adventures later on: the kobold Meepo in Bruce Cordell's The Sunless Citadel, the kobolds in Richard Pett's "The Devil Box" in Dungeon #109, or some of the goblins in Pathfinder #1—Rise of the Runelords: Burnt Offerings, by James Jacobs. "The Devil Box" is in fact one of my favorite Dungeon adventures, and it is hilarious. The key difference, I think, is that those adventures play for laughs creatures known to be small, weak, and relatively nonthreatening when encountered individually, so that humor adds some interest to overplayed monsters. Kobolds and goblins are supposed to be reckless, troublesome, and mischievous; the contrast between their evil ambitions and their individual weakness can be naturally funny. But the real villains in those adventures are not only sinister and threatening, but also powerful and deadly. In "The Mad Chefs of Lac Anchois", however, it is powerful monsters like giants and ogre magi that are played for laughs, and this corrodes the premise of the game: heroes are needed to combat the sinister threats of a dangerous world. Turning the dangerous monsters into jokes weakens the suspension of disbelief, rather than bolstering it.

Retrospective: Dungeon #63 (July-August 1997)

I started buying issues of Dungeon magazines from about 1997, subscribing (with a few intermittent gaps) until the end of the print run in 2007. I sorted them the other day, and found that I have 75 issues all together: half of the magazines published, amounting to some hundreds of adventures. It's been between five and fifteen years since I read these, but there were some great adventurers with vivid scenes memorable even after years. However, I rarely use them, because it's hard to usefully find good adventures. Although Dungeon #150 has an index that lists only the system, title, author, and issue of each adventure, and there are a few public indices online that add a short blurb, it's usually still not easy enough to find an appropriate adventure for a certain style, setting, or situation. So I'm going to start a regular feature, reading through and reviewing some my old Dungeon magazines, starting with the first one I ever bought in a store, #63. What do I remember from this issue, before re-reading it? The goblin-o-war, invisible stalker, and "Blood & Fire".

"Hunt for a Hierophant", by Chris Doyle (AD&D, Levels 6-8): The evil wizard Zerrick has rallied a horde of bullywugs from the Cragmoor swamp to invade the communities beyond the Drakewood Forest, so adventurers are needed to rouse the slumbering hierophant druid Leander. They get some clues from an assortment of fey, treants, and giants, then negotiate the druid's dungeon resting place. The dungeon combines some combat tests with puzzles and riddles, most of which look relatively simple enough for an average group to handle easily.

"Gnome Droppings", by Christopher Perkins (Spelljammer, Levels 2-4): Tinker gnomes drop their autognome cargo from a spelljamming ship, then come back and recover it. The adventurers hear a strange noise in the forest, and if they're curious, they might investigate, slaughter some evil-if-innocent bystanders (grimlocks and spriggans), and interact with a harmless-but-malfunctioning robot. There's a hook into Spelljammer (especially the goofier parts, like giant hamsters), but nobody gets hurt if the adventurers just snooze. The right group would have fun, but is this actually an adventure?

"Huzza's Goblin-O-War", by Paul F. Culotta (AD&D Forgotten Realms, Levels 4-6): A monstrous pirate ship, crewed by goblins, margoyles, and a wizard, attack the PCs' ship at sea. When I first read it, the idea of a hill giant pirate captain struck me as a little too high-fantasy for my tastes. It may seem a little gonzo, but it sure does look like an entertaining encounter, even if Huzza is probably not bright enough to be a corsair. It's set in the Sea of Fallen Stars in the Forgotten Realms, but could be worked into any sea area with monstrous pirates.

"Invisible Stalker", by Johnathan M. Richards (AD&D SideTrek, Levels 1-2): It's exactly what you'd guess from the pun: a creepy sleazeball of a villain with the power to not be seen, here accomplished via a level-inappropriate magic item. The villain's plan would be an interesting encounter, if you want to see how 1st-level characters plan to use a powerful magic ring later on. If so, it can be set in any city environment.

"Blood & Fire", by John Baichtal (Al-Qadim, Levels 5-7): The adventurers travel from Qaybar, an emirate somewhere in Zakhara, to find its missing heir (the McGuffin). They travel across the desert to the oasis of Khaldun where they discover he's been taken by the Brotherhood of the True Flame, a powerful cabal of sinister flame mages, and taken to their Ivory Tower in the Valley of Mist. The plot of this adventure is fairly straightforward, and the final dungeon is not complex; there's about a half-dozen wilderness encounters and ten or so at the Tower. But there's a great deal of attention to detail in creating an evocative Arabian-themed desert setting. There's some excellent images and encounters: leucrottas haunting the dunes at night, an enchanted young couple mystically frozen in amber, a wizard mummy who doesn't realize he's dead in his cairn, the Apparatus of Kwalish clattering in a poisonous fog. Tony DiTerlizzi did some great illustrations here; I love the portrait of the coiling dragonne Zu'l Janah. This looks like a great adventure, my favorite in this issue.

"Beauty Corrupt", by Kent Ertman (AD&D 2E, Levels 4-5): After "The Phantom Menace", I'll never blindly trust a plot that revolves around the disruption of trade negotiations (here, between the coastal towns of Orchid Bay and WyrWatch). The hook is a simple request to heal the key negotiator, who has a mystical afflication. But this adventure has a fairly creative McGuffin: a sirene's song, captured by a covey of hags as a spell component. They dwell in a fairly simple lair typical of a sea hag, guarded by scrags and merrow, with a few false entrances; the encounters look very tough, but the goal is to disrupt a spell, not kill everything in sight. There's the opportunity to adventure underwater, since a plant called quipper kelp allows characters to breathe water.

A brief tour of the Sheldomar Valley

I earlier noted that many of the classic D&D modules were located in and around the Sheldomar Valley. The Temple of Elemental Evil, for one, is located just over the Lortmil Mountains near Verbobonc. Others could be relocated nearby with some slight modifications: for example, a large swamp in the western Seahold could contain modules S1 and S2, while the Lendore Isles (and UK1, L1, and L2) could be moved offshore of the Seahold. So I've been putting together this pocket guide to the Sheldomar Valley based of various wikis and the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer; there is plenty of official information about the Greyhawk campaign setting, but it can be easy to get lost in it all. Here's a map. I'm more interested in the situation circa 579 CY, when adventurers begin arriving at Hommlet.

The Flanaess is inhabited by three main types of humans: the pale, blond Suloise, the olive-skinned Oerdians, and the aboriginal bronze-skinned Flan, for whom the region is named. Their ancient languages (Ancient Suloise, Old Oerdian, and Flan, respectively) are the ancestors of most contemporary human tongues. Across the mountains to the west live the Baklunish, and the Olman inhabit the jungle islands of the Densac Gulf, but relatively few of these peoples dwell in the Sheldomar Valley.

The Common Tongue is descended from a dialect of Old Oerdian developed by Baklunish scribes, with some Suloise influence, that developed into a language of trade and administration. Modern spoken descendents of Old Oerdian include Keoish and Velondi. Keoish is the dominant human language of the Sheldomar Valley, while Velondi is spoken by the peasants of Furyondy and Veluna. Suloise is essentially dead, but of interest to sages and scholars. It has a few modern descendants: Amedi is spoken by the barbarians of the Amedio Jungles, Lendorian is spoken in the Lendore Isles, and languages of the tundra barbarians of the north are descended from Suloise.

The Kingdom of Keoland is one of the oldest states in the Flanaess. It is a feudal monarchy, governed largely by Suel aristocracy; the king is chosen by the Noble Council of Nicole Dra, the capital. Although founded centuries ago, it reached its peak during "imperial" expansion in the 350s; several of its daughter states govern northern parts of the Sheldomar Valley. Most people are of mixed Suel and Oerdian descent and speak Keoish and Common, and few Flan remain.

Gran March is a heavily militarized state north of Keoland; the elected Commandant governs from Hookhill. Although Gran March owes fealty to Keoland, it is self-governing and dominated by the Knights of the Watch; all adult males are required to provide military service. Most people speak Keoish and Common.

The Grand Duchy of Geoff is a feudal monarchy owing fealty to Keoland; the Grand Duke governs from Gorna. It is further divided into six cantrevs, each ruled by a Llwyr (a baron). Flan culture and people are more prominent in Geoff than the rest of the Sheldomar Valley; most people speak Flan and Common, as well as Keoish to a lesser extent.

Sterich is a feudal monarchy that is formally a vassal to Keoland, but self-governing in practice; the earl governs from Istivin. Sterich was established by settlers from Geoff, and has long been a mining colony where peasants do well since labor is in short supply.

The Seahold, formerly a province of Keoland, is a sovereign state ruled by Prince Jeon II, who has taken up a campaigns against slavery and slave-raiding from the Amedio Jungle and Olman Islands. Most people speak Keoish and Common, a few speak Amedi, Olman, or other languages. (There are dark whispers that the Scarlet Brotherhood has some future designs upon the Hold of the Sea Princes ca. 589).

The Yeomanry League is a democratic republic to the southwest of Keoland; the Spokesman governs from Loftwick. It was allied with Keoland until the 360s, when it objected to Keoland's conquests. Most people in the Yeomanry are freeholders of mixed Suel and Flan descent who speak mostly Keoish and Common.

Bissel is a border state at the northern end of the region, at the crossroads of the Sheldomar Valley, the Baklunish states, and the rest of the Flanaess. Bissel was conquered by Keoland in the 350s, governed as the Littlemark, then later conquered by the kingdom of Furyondy. Furyondy's influence gradually waned, until the Margrave established Bissel's independence in a battle in 477 CY. Most people are of mixed Baklunish, Suel, and Oerdian descent, and speak Common or Baklunish dialects.

The Ulek States are a trio of three sovereign kingdoms east of Keoland. The northernmost is an elven kingdom, the southernmost is a dwarven kingdom, and a druidic human kingdom lies between.

The Valley of the Mage is an isolated and xenophobic elven kingdom hidden in the Barrier Peaks. It is ruled by a powerful arcane spellcaster known as the Black One. The valley elves are scorned by all other elves (possibly due to an ancient bargain for extraplanar lore) and reject the elven pantheon, preferring Ehlonna and the druidic Old Faith. A plurality of the Valley's residents are various humans under the rule of a human earl, a vassal of the elven king, and many gnomes live there as well, but the valley is thinly populated and has very little traffic with the outside world, even preferring raiding to trade.

The most popular and widespread gods in the Sheldomar Valley include such important deities like Heironeous, Fharlanghn, Ehlonna, and St. Cuthbert, as well as Phaulkon, Zilchus, and Norebo. Sea gods like Osprem and Procan are popular along the coast, while Flan gods like Pelor, Allitur, and Obad-Hai are popular in the western half of the region. Istus and Rao are worshipped in Bissel, while Kelanen has a headquarters in Istivin and adherents in the Seahold.

The HHH system of measurement

The hathmic system, also known as the hathom-hecand-hemoth system, is a hexadecimal anthropocentric system of measurement, created as an exercise in recreational arithmetic, as an intellectual folly, and possibly for purposes of fiction. The names aren't serious, mostly just bad puns on various historical units (fathom, plethron, li, league, fist, watch, behemoth, and quadrans).

Anthropocentric units are often more useful to humans than geocentric ones, but they should be based on some consistent scale rather than using different ratios between units. The metric system is inconvenient in anthropocentric terms, but is very convenient in being based consistently on a decimal system. But the decimal system is kind of boring, so this system based upon hexadecimal comes from a made-up culture that reveres squares. Different systems of measurement are good at measuring different things; this system is focused on representing human-scale walking travel times. For example, in one haach (of time), a person can walk about one hleeg (of distance).

The base unit is the hathom, which by astonishing coincidence is precisely 1.8 meters. This is six feet in metric (25-mm) inches, or about 5 feet 10 inches, roughly the average height of a human male. Sixteen hathoms are a lethron, which is 28.8 meters or about 94.5 feet. Sixteen lethrons are a hli, which is 460.8 meters or about 0.29 miles. Sixteen hlis are a hleeg, which is 7.372 kilometers, or about 4.58 miles.

Going smaller, one-sixteenth of a hathom is a lister, which is 112.5 millimeters or about 4.43 inches. A lister is further divided into sixteen units, each of which is each to about 7 millimeters or 0.28 inches.

The most practical unit of time is the day, one-sixteenth of which is a haach. This is an hour and a half long. The base unit of time, however, is the hecand, which is about 1.3 seconds. There are 65,536 hecands in a day.

There has to be a base unit of mass, to fill out the system; I'm just ripping off SI on this. The base unit of mass is the hemoth, equivalent to 5,832 kilograms. More commonly, people would use a huad, which weighs about 89 grams. Sixteen huads weigh about 1.42 kilograms.

A slight index to some classic D&D modules

Back in 2004 (in issue #116), /Dungeon/ magazine offered a list of the top 30 D&D adventures of all time. They're listed with some comment at RPG Geek and Grognardia. RPG Geek also has a composite ranking of the highest-rated adventures which may be more useful, as well as a list of highly-rated Dungeon adventures. Many such lists have similar items (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). For a long time, I've wondered how these old modules fit into their campaign worlds, where these dungeons are supposed to be, and how they fit together. So I've put together this little index to some classic modules, focusing on canonical geography, and jumping off from the 2004 Dungeon list.

This list is restricted to actual modules from TSR from about 1975-1985. So it doesn't include Judge's Guild modules like Dark Tower (1980), Caverns of Thracia (1980), or Tegel Manor (1977); later Gygaxian material like Necropolis (1992); other TSR modules like The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga; or Dungeon adventures like "The Mud Sorcerer's Tomb" (#37). Wolfgang Baur's "Kingdom of the Ghouls" (Dungeon #70, September 1998) is set in Greyhawk, starting from the town of Loftwick in the Yeomanry in Sheldomar Valley and traveling under the Crystalmist and Hellfurnace Mountains. Similarly, I'll skip a couple of later adventures from the Dungeon list: The Gates of Firestorm Peak (1996), The Forge of Fury (2000), Dead Gods (1997), Ruins of Undermountain (1991), City of the Spider Queen (2002), Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil by Monte Cook (2001), Return to the Tomb of Horrors by Bruce Cordell (1998), and WGR6: City of Skulls (1993).

Clearly, a campaign focusing on these adventures set in a canonical campaign world should be set in the Sheldomar Valley in Greyhawk: about three-quarters of these adventures have a canonical location in Greyhawk. Of these, about 38% are in or around the Sheldomar Valley, while about 24% are somewhere between the Free City of Greyhawk and the Pomarj. Nearly all of them could be put in and around the Sheldomar Valley with some slight geographical modifications. Paizo published a giant poster map of Greyhawk, although this map is more legible online, and this one has hexes for specific module locations. The Atlas of Greyhawk has some very detailed terrain maps. OTOH, most of the Mystara adventures are set (or retconned) to Karameikos.

Temple of the Frog (1975), by Dave Arneson, was the first module published for D&D, in the Blackmoor supplement. It was revised and expanded as DA2: Temple of the Frog in 1986, for characters of levels 10-14. Located in a deep swamp, it includes some science-fiction crossover elements. Blackmoor was included in northern regions of both Mystara and Greyhawk settings.

B1: In Search of the Unknown (1978), by Mike Carr, is a beginner's scenario intended to show how to create dungeons, for characters of levels 1-3. The Basic series modules were initially setting neutral. (W, Grognardia &c.)

B2: The Keep on the Borderlands (1979), by Gary Gygax, is a dungeon crawl for characters of levels 1-3. Originally setting-neutral, GAZ1: The Grand Duchy of Karameikos located the Keep in Karameikos in Mystara; the 1999 sequel Return to the Keep on the Borderlands placed the Keep in Greyhawk, in the Yeomanry in Sheldomar Valley, although it made reference to non-Greyhawk deities and some Mystara background information. Ranked #7 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

B3: Palace of the Silver Princess (1981), by Jean Wells, is a low-level dungeon crawl for characters of levels 1-3, intended for a single game session. It features a country frozen in time except for the royal palace, a white dragon, three-headed ubues, and a giant ruby. (W, Grognardia)

B4: The Lost City (1982), by Tom Moldvay, is a beginning adventure for characters of levels 1-3. It is set in the ruined city of Cynidicea, buried in a desert, mostly within a sunken step pyramid infested with cultists of Zargon at war with Cynidiceans who follow the city's ancient gods. The compilation B1-9: In Search of Adventure locates the dungeon in Mystara. Ranked #28 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

X1: Isle of Dread (1980), by David Cook and Tom Moldvay, is a wilderness exploration adventure for characters of levels 3-7. Adventurers sail to and explore the jungle island, inhabited by dinosaurs, kopru, aranea, rakasta, and phanaton. This module introduced the Known World that would become the Mystara setting. In Dungeon #114, it was relocated to Greyhawk, to the Densac Gulf west of Hepmonaland and east of the Amedio Jungle and the Hellfurnaces. Dungeon's Savage Tide adventure path had PCs sail from Sasserine and visit the Isle of Dread via Tamoachan. Ranked #16 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

X2: Castle Amber (1981), by Tom Moldvay, is a weird adventure for characters of levels 3-7. The PCs are traveling to the magocracy of Glantri in Mystara, but are drawn into the castle and must travel through a portal to Averoigne to reach an interdimensional tomb. Ranked #15 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

S1: Tomb of Horrors (1978), by Gary Gygax, is a fiendish dungeon for characters of levels 10-14, the tomb of the demilich Acererak. The dungeon itself is located on some lost and lonely hill in Greyhawk, in the Vast Swamp south of Sunndi. Ranked #3 by Dungeon in 2004. Return to the Tomb of Horrors introduces Skull City built over the tomb. (W, Grognardia, Atlas)

S2: White Plume Mountain (1979), by Lawrence Schick, is a puzzle dungeon crawl for characters of levels 5-10, which revolves around a quest to retrieve an intelligent trident, warhammer, and sword from the eponymous volcano in Greyhawk. White Plume Mountain is located south of the Great Swamp, in the Shield Lands just south of the Rift Canyon and north of the great lake Nyr Dyv. There's a revision for 3.5e for 7th-level characters. Ranked #9 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia, Atlas)

S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (1980), by Gary Gygax, is a dungeon crawl for characters of levels 8-12, in which adventurers explore a crashed space ship. It is located in Greyhawk, unsurprisingly in the Barrier Peaks north of Geoff and east of the Crystalmist Mountains. Ranked #5 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (1982), by Gary Gygax, is a monster-filled labyrinth for characters of levels 6-10, in which adventurers delve for the treasure of Iggwilv. Set in Greyhawk, the dungeon is located in the Yatil Mountains south of Perrenland. WG4: The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun is a loosely connected sequel to this. Ranked #22 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

WG4: The Forgotten Temple of Tharzidun (1982), by Gary Gygax, is a Lovecraftian wilderness and dungeon adventure for characters of levels 5-10. Set in Greyhawk, it is a loosely connected sequel to S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and has the PCs follow rampaging norkers from the Caverns to the Temple. Ranked #23 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

WG5: Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure (1984), by Rob Kuntz and Gary Gygax, is a dungeon crawl for characters of levels 9-12. Set in Greyhawk, it is located at Maure Castle, just east of Greyhawk city. This adventure was revised and expanded as "Maure Castle" in Dungeon #112, #124, and #139. (W, Grognardia, Atlas)

C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (1980), by Harold Johnson and Jeff R. Leason, is a tournament module for characters of levels 5-7. The adventure was set in Greyhawk at a ruined Olman city in the Amedio Jungle. Ranked #18 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

C2: The Ghost Tower of Inverness (1979), by Allen Hammack, is a competition module for characters of levels 5-7. Set in Greyhawk, the tower is located in the southern Abbor-Alz Hills north of the Bright Desert. Ranked #30 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia, Atlas)

N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God (1982), by Douglas Niles, is a town, wilderness, and dungeon adventure for characters of levels 1-3. Set in Greyhawk, it is located between the Gran March and the Kingdom of Keoland in the Sheldomar Valley. Ranked #19 by Dungeon in 2004. (W)

DL1: Dragons of Despair (1984), by Tracy Hickman, is an introductory adventure for characters of levels 4-6. Set in Krynn, it begins in the elven town of Solace and travels to the jungle-covered ruins of the city of Xak Tsaroth. Ranked #25 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (1981), by Dave J. Browne with Don Turnbull, is for characters of levels 1-3, with a ghostly ship and a spooky mansion in the eponymous town. Located in Greyhawk, Saltmarsh is in the Hold of the Sea Princes in the southern Sheldomar Valley. Ranked #27 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

UK1: Beyond the Crystal Cave (1983), by Dave Browne, Tom Kirby, and Graeme Morris, is an adventure for characters of levels 4-7, in which the adventurers travel to a enchanted garden of eternal summer in a pocket dimension. Set in Greyhawk, it's on Sybarate Isle in the Hold of the Sea Princes in the southern Sheldomar Valley. (W, Grognardia)

L1: The Secret of Bone Hill (1981), by Len Lakofka, is a mini-setting for characters of levels 2-4. Set in Greyhawk, it is located in a fishing port in the Lendore Isles. (W, Grognardia)

L2: The Assassin’s Knot (1983), by Len Lakofka, is a murder mystery for characters of levels 2-4. A sequel to L1: The Secret of Bone Hill, it is set in the same community. Ranked #29 by Dungeon in 2004. (W)

I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City (1981), by David Cook, is an adventure for characters of levels 4-7, in which PCs travel to a jungle city overrun by yuan-ti and tasloi. Characters can intrigue with the bugbears, bullywugs, or mongrelmen of the city, and the module also introduced aboleths and yellow musk creepers. Set in Greyhawk, it is located in Hepmonaland. Ranked #13 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

I3-5: The Desert of Desolation (1983), by Tracy and Laura Hickman, is a compilation of three Egyptian-themed modules, for characters of levels 5-7: I3: Pharaoh, I4: Oasis of the White Palm, and I5: Lost Tomb of Martek. Set in a desert, the compilation was retconned into Raurin in the Forgotten Realms. Ranked #6 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

I6: Ravenloft (1983), by Tracy and Laura Hickman, is a horror adventure for characters of levels 5-7, in which adventurers oppose the famous vampire. It is set at Castle Ravenloft in Barovia, which later evolved into the Ravenloft setting. Ranked #2 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

T1-4: The Temple of Elemental Evil (1985), by Gary Gygax and Frank Mentzer, includes T1: The Village of Hommlet within the T1-4 module, for characters of levels 1-8. Set in Greyhawk, the adventure starts at the village of Hommlet near the city-state of Verbobonc, then travels to the nearby village of Nulb and the Temple. Ranked #4 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia &c., Atlas)

A1-4: Scourge of the Slave Lords (1986), by David Cook, Allen Hammack, Harold Johnson, Tom Moldvay, Lawrence Schick, and Edward Carmien, is a compilation of modules for characters of levels 7-11, which includes A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity, A2: Secret of the Slavers Stockade, A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, and A4: In the Dungeon of the Slave Lords. Set in Greyhawk, the adventure begins in the city of Highport in the Pomarj, then travels for a hundred miles or more through the Drachensgrab Hills to the hidden city of Suderham, on an island in a volcanic crater. Ranked #20 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia, Atlas)

G1-3: Against the Giants (1981), by Gary Gygax, is a compilation of three dungeon crawls, for characters of levels 8-12: G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, G2: Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, and G3: Hall of the Fire Giant King. Set in Greyhawk, G1 begins in Istivin in the Sheldomar Valley; the PCs travel overland to the hill giants' steading, from where they are magically transported to the frost giants' glacier in the Crystalmists, from where they are magically transported to the fire giants' hall in the Hellfurnaces. As part of GDQ1-7: Queen of the Spiders (1986), this was ranked #1 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

D1-3: Descent into the Depths of the Earth (1978), by Gary Gygax, is a compilation of three dungeon crawls, for characters of levels 9-14: D1: Descent into the Depths of the Earth, D2: Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, and D3: Vault of the Drow. Set in Greyhawk, the PCs follow a tunnel down from the fire giants' hall in G3 through the Underdark to the drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu. As part of GDQ1-7: Queen of the Spiders (1986), this was ranked #1 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia 1 2 3)

Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits (1980), by David Sutherland with Gary Gygax, is an adventure for characters of levels 10-14. Set in Greyhawk, the adventurers travel through a planar gate in the drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu to the 66th layer of the Abyss to confront the demon goddess Lolth. As part of GDQ1-7: Queen of the Spiders (1986), this was ranked #1 by Dungeon in 2004. (W, Grognardia)

Language on Barsoom

I read the heck out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom and Caspak novels when I was a kid. Ten years or more later, I was part of the "generations of 8-year-olds", as Carl Sagan put it, whose perspective was expanded by this fantasy:



So I've been curious about the new movie. It's gotten some bad press, like The New York Times panning the marketing effort in "Ishtar" Lands on Mars...but the NYT is generally a bastion of foolish snobbery against genre fiction, especially science fiction or fantasy. The word-of-mouth is pretty good. Erik Mona praised the movie on FB, James Maliszewski points to the clear influence of Barsoom on Gygax. Michael Chabon, interviewed on io9, loved the books too.

But of course it wasn't until I learned that Paul Frommer worked on the Barsoomian language for the film that I started getting really interested. Clearly the creators cared enough about the source material to treat it better than Star-Warsy gobbledygook. The words in the Barsoom novels are not a language, not even a systematic naming language, so it's great that the filmmakers hired someone to expand that linguistic writing and make it more systematic. The novels are dated, and do tend toward juvenilia, but E.R.B. did a lot of underappreciated work in worldbuilding, including fun little elements like jetan. Perhaps Barsoomian was E.R.B.'s linguistic handwaving, a version of the "universal translator".

Fiat Lingua has an interview by Swedish E.R.B. collector Fredrik Ekman with Paul Frommer (PDF). Frommer explains that his expanded Barsoomian is nearly isolating, with very little inflectional morphology. There's no case marking, and the language instead relies heavily on word order. Barsoomian uses VSO, which is a nice choice to avoid re-lexing English, and is a logical, underappreciated word order in conlangs more generally, IMHO. Possession is as in Indonesian/Malay: the possessor follows the possessed with no special marking. Frommer based the language on the 400+ words pulled from the books, mostly names, interpreted into a coherent system. He made some interesting choices, such as including a voiced velar fricative alongside the rhotic alveolar approximate of American English. The most interesting feature is certainly the pronominal system:

Perhaps the most interesting feature is the pronominal system, where there are distinct cases for subject and object (akin to English I/me, he/him, we/us, etc.). To form the objective case, you take the initial consonant of the pronoun and repeat it at the end of the word. So I = tu, me = tut; he = ki, him = kik. Then to form the plurals of these pronouns, you simply “voice” the unvoiced consonants—in these examples, t becomes d and k become hard g. So we = du and us = dud.

There's also some good discussion of Frommer's method and the training of the actors in "John Carter: Inventing a New Language". Willem Dafoe discussed his experiences playing Tars Tarkas with io9, with a nice video clip of him speaking a line (at about 03:29).

Pagelady has transcribed some phrases from the movie, and links to this lexicon at Langmaker (by Jeffrey Henning), culled from the same source material Frommer used. The Conlanging Librarian also has a number of posts exploring this material.

Some graphic designers at Disney came up with a "Martian alphabet"; it's pretty unsophisticated, a simple substitution cipher. And it's exactly the sort of this a graphic designer might make to look "alien" but no-one would ever use to actually write with: it would be a nightmare trying to write those characters at speed with a pen and paper, or any other tool other than a keyboard and mouse. But they have a "Martian Translator" to cipher texts and a "Martian Decoder" to decipher them; there's also a PDF. How to Count in Barsoomian has an overview of the numerals of this script.

I don't have time to read fiction these days, but Librivox has the first five books available as M4Bs or MP3s:

• A Princess of Mars
• The Gods of Mars
• A Warlord of Mars
• Thuvia, Maid of Mars
• The Chessmen of Mars

& here's the first still that got me hooked. Girallons!

2011 Book of the Year

In the last few weeks of 2011, I suffered a catastrophic hard drive crash that wiped out several years of my data; it was especially hard because, since I had generally been so diligent about backing up my information and transferring it from one computer to another, I had lots of data to lose. This is part of the reason posting has been light the last few months; the other is that I started grad school in January. So I've been quite busy. Much of my data that I still have is stuff that I've posted or saved online in various formats, though, which should itself be incentive to post more often.

Anyway: back when I lived in Japan and New York, I had gotten in the habit of reading on the train or subway; it's an hour or more with nothing else to do but sit, so it's a great time to knock out some reading. But after returning to Kentucky, I discovered that we have few to no subways here. With my most common venue for recreational reading gone, and the Internet always beckoning, I partially fell out of the habit of reading actual books.

Sometime in late 2010, I hit upon the idea of making a list of each book I read as I read it. And indeed, this led to dramatically increasing the number of books I read over the year. One of the things I lost in the hard drive crash is the detailed list of every book I completed in 2011. However, since I bought most of these books and kept them together, I remember most of the list.

From these, I'm nominating a couple of books to recommend. My "Book of the Year" is a pretty idiosyncratic "award": It's not a book that came out in 2011, just one I happened to read for the first time; it's maybe not the best book I read, just one that some folks might enjoy or draw from insight from. The nominations are pretty heavy on non-fiction, since most of the fiction was stuff I re-read: Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, Fritz Leiber's pre-1971 Nehwon books. Here are the runner-ups:

• Linguist Arika Okrent 's "In the Land of Invented Languages" both overviews a history of constructed languages and recounts her experiences interacting with the communities that have formed around languages such as Esperanto, Lojban, and Klingon. It's an interesting popular history of philosophical and linguistic follies, and pretty funny in places, as when she's interacting with the Klingonists.


• Piers Vitebsky's "The Reindeer People" probably has a limited appeal, although it's fascinating if you're interested in Siberian anthropology, or the beliefs and cultural history of Tungusic reindeer pastoralists in the Russian Far East, from the Soviet through the post-Soviet era. Read an excerpt at NPR.


• I don't know how I managed to go so long without reading James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom", a one-volume history of the American Civil War. It's been about a decade and a half since I've read any of his books, and picked this up to review for the sesquicentennial. McPherson's writing is wonderful: even over 900 pages, it's concise, fresh, and insightful.


• Journalist Joshua Foer's "Moonwalking with Einstein" details his experiences preparing for and competing in the U.S. Memory Championships, using classical palace-of-memory techniques, and discussing the neurological underpinnings of memory, synesthesia, and similar interesting topics: wacky and amazing. Read some excerpts at Time and at the New York Times Magazine.


• Michael Chabon's novel "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" took me about 100 pages to get into the rhythm of, but it's a fascinating instance of worldbuilding. The novel originates from the 1997 essay "A Yiddish Pale Fire", available at the Internet Archive, discussing a Yiddish phrasebook he found in a chain bookstore.


• Matthew Kapstein's "The Tibetans" surveys the cultural, social, and political history of Tibet from the early centuries of the Common Era to the beginning of the 20th century. Tibetan history since the 1940s is well known, but it's much more difficult to find an overview of the socioeconomic history of Tibet in the 18th century and earlier. Contemporary rationalization of the Chinese takeover often refers to the tyrannical and exploitative governance in the monastic era. Among the things that Kapstein describes is the interweaving of monastic organizations and aristocratic families in a preindustrial agricultural society. Retiring to a monastery allowed aristocratic leaders to forestall succession crises while maintaining influence, and allied monasteries could provide bureaucratic and manpower support to local authorities; monasteries could also be significant landowners, IIRC. But the Tibetan state was very fragile and weak, and Chinese troops stationed in Tibet at great distance from Beijing had a great deal of autonomy. A thumbnail does Kapstein's arguments little justice; this is a dense work surveying a long period of complex history.

But my 2011 book of the year is Manly Wade Wellman's "Who Fears the Devil? The Complete Silver John", an anthology of fantasies and short stories set in postwar Appalachia. Wellman was one the few pulp writers of the mid-20th century nominated for a Pulitzer, and the Silver John tales are Americana fantasy at its best.

Old Fort

It's been a while since I posted a dungeon map, but here's an old fort-cum-leper colony I used for some additional encounters in my Pathfinder campaign of The Coils of Set. I actually put this together at about the same time as the Wizard's Bastle, and it's similarly inspired by L-shaped towers. This Old Fort was part of a series of multipath, nonlinear dungeons: It's organized so there are multiple ways to travel between dungeon areas. Each level will fit on a GameMastery flip map; here it is from bottom to top.

Old Fort: Lower LevelsWhen I ran this dungeon recently, this level was warded with an old, permanent guards and wards spell, and patrolled by gas spores, gray oozes, violet fungi, and a mind slayer telepath. In each corner, a stairway leads up to small towers in the northeast, northwest, southwest, and southeast corners of the fort. In the central area of the dungeon, just to the north and south of the large middle chamber, there are two chambers with a large shaft running through them. In these rooms, a small shaft opens in the ceiling that opens to the courtyard above, and a 10-foot-wide pit opens to deeper areas. Below this level, there is just a simple raceway patrolled by gelatinous cubes and other garbage-eating oozes, for waste disposal.

Old Fort 1FGates to the east and west provide access to the fort's courtyard, which is defined by four small L-shaped towers. Each tower has stairs leading up, and down to the dungeon below, as well as prison cells, barracks, and other rooms (There's an error on the stairs on the western towers on this level: the stairs are reversed). Two wells in the courtyard are actually used for waste disposal, and lead through the dungeon below to ooze-pits.

Old Fort 2FSimilarly to the first floor, stairs lead up and down. Most of these chambers have shuttered arrow slits that serve as windows.

Old Fort 3FThe large rooms of the top floor would feel quite spacious if not for the fact that the walls and ceiling of these attics are the angled wooden walls of the roof, so much of the space is fairly awkward. Large windows overlook the landscape of the surrounding region.

RPGs—Kilderkin gnome

The following post is released under the OGL.

Kilderkin gnomes are an offshoot of the gnome race regarded by some as naive, innocent, and joyous, and by others as troublesome, larcenous tricksters. Less overtly magical than most of their gnome kin, they blend their brethren's immense curiosity, mischeviousness, and wanderlust with generous and kind-hearted spirit. Although commonly viewed with suspicion due to their reputation as petty thieves and shoplifters, kilderkin gnomes are not motivated by avarice; they simply cannot resist their obsession with palming and collecting small, sparkly, glittery things, and just do not understand the conventions of personal property. When confronted about their pickpocketing, they shyly return what they have taken, but learn nothing that will prevent them from lifting items in the future.

Kilderkin Gnome Racial Traits

Gnomekin: Kilderkin gnomes are humanoids with the gnome subtype.

+2 Constitution, +2 Charisma, –2 Strength: Kilderkin are physically weak but surprisingly hardy, and their attitude makes them naturally agreeable.

Small: Kilderkin are Small creatures and gain a +1 size bonus to their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a –1 penalty to their Combat Maneuver Bonus and Combat Maneuver Defense, and a +4 size bonus on Stealth checks.

Slow Speed: Kilderkin have a base speed of 20 feet.

Low-Light Vision: Kilderkin can see twice as far as humans in conditions of dim light.

Defensive Training: Kilderkin get a +4 dodge bonus to AC against monsters of the giant type.

Fearless: Kilderkin receive a +2 racial bonus on all saving throws against fear.

Gnome Magic: Gnomes add +1 to the DC of any saving throws against illusion spells that they cast. Kilderkin gnomes with a Charisma of 11 or higher also gain the following spell-like abilities: 1/day—know direction, ghost sound, detect poison, and detect secret doors. The caster level for these effects is equal to the kilderkin's level. The DC for these spells is equal to 10 + the spell's level + the kilderkin's Charisma modifier.

Infuriating: Kilderkin receive a +2 racial bonus on Charisma-based skill checks to taunt, insult, or irritate others, or otherwise make others more hostile.

Keen Senses: Kilderkin receive a +2 racial bonus on Perception skill checks.

Light-fingered: Kilderkin receive a +2 racial bonus on Sleight of Hand skill checks.

Weapon Familiarity: Kilderkin gnomes treat any weapon with the word “gnome” in its name as a martial weapon.

Languages: Kilderkin begin play speaking Common and Gnome. Kilderkin with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Draconic, Dwarven, Elven, Giant, Goblin, Orc, and Sylvan.

Conlanging is a great excuse to not write

Conlanging is perhaps the best excuse ever invented for NOT writing. Many of the people attracted to this hobby are science fiction or fantasy writers or other people who have reason to invent a detailed, verisimilistic fantasy world. Language can contribute to that in powerful ways; creating and using a coherent naming language or some phrases can help evoke a sense that the author is describing a dynamic, existant, alien world.

But it's very easy to go way overboard with this. Many writers spend as much or more time seeking excuses to avoid writing, because writing is hard. It's an inclination perfectly skewered by Merlin Mann's parody of distraction-free writing environments (via forkbombr via DF):

While some so-called environments that are less free of distraction may display one, three, or even more lines of text—all at the same time—we understand that if you could only achieve the theoretical removal of all theoretical distractions, you would finally be able to write something. And we want ū— to help you almost do that.

...We also understand that the only way to truly remove an unproductive distraction is to replace it with potentially dozens of more highly productive distractions.

That’s why ū— provides the theoretically serious writer with an incomparably powerful range of options, preferences, and customizations that can literally be tweaked forever without writing a single word—let alone half a character.

Conlanging may be similar to this kind of trap: A language is such a complicated thing that you can fiddle with how it handles voice, aspect, and morphology forever, rather than making a decision and going with it. Which is the perfect excuse not to spend the time working on plot, character, or dialogue.

Nonetheless, I certainly do wish that many more writers would pay more attention to the quality of their linguistic writing. Coherent naming languages would be an enormous improvement over the standard practice in science fiction of presenting gobbledygook as language (as Huttese) or sprinkling words with apostrophes, Qs, and Xs in order to exoticize weak linguistic writing (as Punctuation Shaker). The recent introduction of conlanging to film is a good step in this direction, be it neo-Sindarin or Na'vi.

Or David J. Petersen's Dothraki, created for the HBO tv adaptation of novelist and executive producer George R.R. Martin's "A Game of Thrones". I wasn't impressed by the quality of the linguistic writing on the show at first; the names were mostly warmed-over, exoticized English. When the first words of Dothraki dialogue was spoken, I was amazed because the sophistication of the linguistic writing there was so much higher than the rest of the show. And so it didn't surprise me to learn that the producers had hired someone besides Martin to write the Dothraki language and dialogue.

But it helps demonstrate how different these types of writing are: solid linguistic writing, as in a good naming language, is good for a fantasist. But conlanging is a more specialized, time-consuming, (and non-remunerative) type of artistic writing.

Thieves' House

It may be that Fritz Leiber's stories about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were the origin of the thieves' guild trope. In any case, the Thieves' Guild of Lankhmar is a great adversary to these characters. A close reading of the stories can suggest some details about their headquarters, though perhaps fewer than a building from a movie such as the "Night of the Living Dead" farmhouse.

"Thieves' House" is chronologically later but the first published of the stories, from 1943. Thieves' House lies on Cheap Street, an empty alleyway. Its door is always open, its entry is lit by torches, but such false hospitality only heightens the foreboding of the place. The thieves on watch signal warnings with ominous whistles. Immediately inside the entrance, a shaft stretches up so thieves can attack intruders from the ceiling, and trapdoors in the floor allow thieves to surprise foes from below. Accessible from the entry corridor is a winding stairway leading up. On the second level of the building, the stairway opens onto a chamber lined with curtained alcoves. One of these alcoves has a secret stone door leading to a safehouse outside the building.

This alcove-lined room is the main setting for much of the story's action, since it is here that the Master of Thieves first examines the great treasure. From here, Fafhrd and the Mouser speed through mazy corridors, up and down several stairways, to egress through the roof or to deep cellars accessible only through ancient, forgotten stairs and passages lined with spring-blade traps.

"Ill Met in Lankhmar", published in 1970 and winning the Nebula and Hugo awards, revisits Thieves' House and its ever-open portal on Cheap Street. Fafhrd and the Mouser disguise themselves as beggars to infiltrate the building, since the Beggarmasters of the Beggars' Guild report to the Thieves' Guild. The front doorway is very low, since a niche is hidden above it on the inside from which two hidden guards may attack intruders. The front door opens into a corridor lined with four doors: three open into training rooms for thiefly skills such as lockpicking, pickpocketing, and dodging artfully, while a fourth opens into a dining hall. At the end of the corridor, a stairway winds up with curving balustrade.

On second story stretches a corridor identical to that of the first floor, except for its luxurious appointment, lined with seven doors. The first room contains costumes, wigs, and equipment for disguises. The next four doors are shut. The sixth door opens into a map room with a round meeting table and seven chairs, as well as numerous models of Lankhmart buildings. The seventh room contains the eldritch equipment and workspace of a felonious sorcerer and his imp.

Past the second floor, the winding stair continues up two more stories past two more empty corridors. On the fourth floor, a portable ladder leads up to a hatch in the ceiling leading onto the slate roof. A guard is posted below the hatch, and a thief on the roof passes signals to distant buildings with the light from a lantern.

These descriptions do contradict somewhat; in one, the characters go up the stairs to find a corridor, and in the other, they find a room. However, "Thieves' House" makes it clear that the building is rife with secret doors, traps, and secret passages unknown even to its residents. Perhaps such a secret door sometimes conceals the second-floor corridor or room.

Even more continental drift

Somehow my earlier posts about speculative future continental drift neglected the great Oct. 20, 2007, article at NewScientist.com, "Pangea, the comeback".



Most of these projections assume that, over 300 million years or so, Australia (and possibly Antarctica) will fly across the Pacific Ocean and collide with western North America. Then, the Americas will mash together and collide with the eastern edge of Afro-Eurasia. The exception is Christopher Scotese's Pangaea Proxima, which has the Atlantic Ocean stop widening and begin to shrink away.

These are all just speculation, of course, and apt fodder for fantasy. Grognard James Maliszewski, considering setting his old-school RPG in a hypothetical future Pangea, pointed out that the map of the Mystara campaign setting was based on the continents of the Jurassic. Commenter Malcadon points out the similarity between Robert E. Howard's Hyborian age and the Afro-Eurasia of 50 million years from now.

Dougal Dixon, an author of "The Future is Wild", has another similar work: After Man: A Zoology of the Future.

EDIT
Offensive redirected link removed for the Hyborian Age. Try Wikipedia here or here.

Summon monster lists in Pathfinder RPG

The summon monster lists of 3.5e never made much sense to me, since the monsters tended to be of fairly widely varying power levels. The summon monster spells in the Pathfinder RPG seem a little more systematic.

For these generalizations, ignore the CR boost provided by the fiendish/celestial creature template, which occasionally puts creatures outside of this range. Summon monster I generally summons CR 1/3 to 1/2 creatures, with the exception of the CR 1 riding dog. Summon monster II summons CR 1 creatures, with the exception of the less powerful giant centipede, while summon monster III always summons CR 2 creatures.

Summon monster IV summons creatures of CR 3 to 4; summon monster V summons creatures of CR 5 to 6; summon monster VI summons creatures of CR 7 to 8; summon monster VII summons creatures of CR 9 to 10 (mostly 9); summon monster VIII summons CR 11 outsiders; and summon monster IX summons outsiders of CR 13 to 14.

So, for example, when putting together an alternate summoning list, a CR 2 axe beak would be an appropriate creature to summon with summon monster III.

For re-reading of Nehwon

I always think of the Nehwon stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser as coming from a much later fantasy tradition than the sword-and-sorcery of the 1930s pulps, since Fritz Leiber continued writing these stories through the 1960s, 1970s, and into the 1980s. Several of the anthologies were published in 1968 (Swords in the Mist, Swords Against Wizardry, and The Swords of Lankhmar) and 1970 (Swords and Deviltry and Swords Against Death). Leiber created Fafhrd following the excesses of the rather inhuman Conan; Fafhrd may be a northern barbarian, but he is usually the more cautious and circumspect of the pair, with an uncanny singing voice.

My first reading of these stories was in the order that the anthologies have come to be arranged in: first, Swords and Deviltry (Vol. 1); then Swords against Death (Vol. 2); Swords in the Mist (Vol. 3); Swords Against Wizardry (Vol. 4); The Swords of Lankhmar (Vol. 5); Swords and Ice Magic (Vol. 6); and The Knight and Knave of Swords (Vol. 7). But this seems a faulty way to read them; it implies that the stories present a sustained fantasy narrative, when they rather are very episodic and diverse in tone and style.

I've been considering rereading these stories in order of original publication, skipping from book to book to learn of the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser as they were revealed, in order to break up the illusory suggestion of a narrative flow. In a way, this approach also shows how old many of these stories are. For rough comparison, Robert E. Howard committed suicide in 1936; H.P. Lovecraft died in 1937; Clark Ashton Smith turned toward sculpture around 1935. Leiber and Harry Otto Fischer began constructing the world of Nehwon around 1937, and Leiber published the first Fafhrd/Mouser story in 1939.

So here follows a listing of the anthologized stories in order of original publication. It's not a bibliography exactly, but more like a cheatsheet for ordering the 36 stories in the anthologies. For example, "Scylla's Daughter", originally published in 1961, later became the first part of The Swords of Lankhmar. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database, the ISFDB Wiki, Galactic Central's magazine list of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Wikipedia were useful references.

• "The Jewels in the Forest" aka "Two Sought Adventure" (August 1939), Swords Against Death
• "The Bleak Shore" (November 1940), Swords Against Death
• "The Howling Tower" (June 1941), Swords Against Death
• "The Sunken Land" (February 1942), Swords Against Death
• "Thieves' House" (February 1943), Swords Against Death
• "Adept's Gambit" (1947), Swords in the Mist
• "Claws from the Night" aka "Dark Vengeance" (Fall 1951), Swords Against Death
• "The Seven Black Priests" (May 1953), Swords Against Death
• "Induction" (1957), Swords and Deviltry
• "Lean Times in Lankhmar" (November 1959), Swords in the Mist
• "When the Sea-King's Away" (May 1960), Swords in the Mist
• "The Unholy Grail" (October 1962), Swords and Deviltry
• "The Cloud of Hate" (May 1963), Swords in the Mist
• "Bazaar of the Bizarre" (August 1963), Swords Against Death
• "The Lords of Quarmall" (January and February 1964), Swords Against Wizardry
• "Stardock" (September 1965), Swords Against Wizardry
• "The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar" (August 1968), Swords Against Wizardry
• "Their Mistress, the Sea" (1968), Swords in the Mist
• "The Wrong Branch" (1968), Swords in the Mist
• "In the Witch's Tent" (1968), Swords Against Wizardry
The Swords of Lankhmar (1968)
• "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (March 1970), Swords and Deviltry
• "The Snow Women" (April 1970), Swords and Deviltry
• "The Circle Curse" (1970), Swords Against Death
• "The Price of Pain-Ease" (1970), Swords Against Death
• "The Sadness of the Executioner" (April 1973), Swords and Ice Magic
• "Trapped in the Shadowland" (November 1973), Swords and Ice Magic
• "The Bait" (December 1973), Swords and Ice Magic
• "Beauty and the Beasts" (January 1974), Swords and Ice Magic
• "Under the Thumbs of the Gods" (April 1975), Swords and Ice Magic
• "Trapped in the Sea of Stars" (September 1975), Swords and Ice Magic
• "The Frost Monstreme" (August 1976), Swords and Ice Magic
• "Rime Isle" (May and July 1977), Swords and Ice Magic
• "Sea Magic" (December 1977), The Knight and Knave of Swords
• "The Mer She" (December 1978), The Knight and Knave of Swords
• "The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars" (March 1983), The Knight and Knave of Swords
• "The Mouser Goes Below" (1988), The Knight and Knave of Swords

It was in issue 11 of "The Dragon" that "Sea Magic" appeared, a year after TSR published a Lankhmar board game. TSR included the Nehwon pantheon in 1980's Deities & Demigods and a Lankhmar campaign setting book for AD&D in 1985.

It's a pity, as well, that my cheap ibooks paperback editions from 2003 are already turning yellow and brittle with age. Hopefully the Dark Horse editions will be more durable.

EDIT
Further comparison: The Fellowship of the Ring was first published in 1954, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was first published in 1950.

Succumbing to Warhammer

Well, I usually go to GenCon for the RPGs; in 2010 it looks like the collapse of the 3e bubble is nearly complete. There were some good deals on old stock from Goodman Games, but there were many fewer clearance sales.

This year, I got really nostalgic for the kind of strategy and war games that I used to play back in the day, but rarely play anymore. In the early 1990s, I used to play a lot of Axis & Allies, and later on borrowed some armies to play Warhammer with folks that played old Avalon Hill wargames from time to time. At recent GenCons, I've picked up dwarf, undead, and monster decks for Battlegrounds Fantasy Warfare (bgg), which is a great concept (I was hoping to pick up the Punic War deck, but Your Move Games was not at the convention this year). So I spent some time demo-ing strategy boardgames from Fantasy Flight Games. They were heavily promoting Battles of Westeros (bgg) this year, which I watched some demos of. I personally only demo-ed Tide of Iron (bgg) and Battles of Napoleon (bgg). Tide of Iron was OK; it seems like a fun enough game, but possibly overgeneralized and random for my tastes, although it did allow more than two players. Of the three, Battles of Napoleon seemed like the most fun and worthy game. It has relatively few unit types (infantry, cavalry, and artillery) that play over a large hex grid, but much of the strategic depth comes from the command structure and management. It looked like a lot of fun, but at $100, it's somewhat pricey for a game I'd rarely play.

At the last minute, I instead went in for Warhammer, splitting a copy of the Battle for Skull Pass (bgg, review) with a friend. Tonight we assemble and divide it. As another friend said, it's cheaper now, but more expensive in the long run ;)

Battle for Skull Pass includes small 500-point armies for the dwarfs and orcs & goblins and 7th edition rules.The more recent set, Island of Blood, includes small Skaven and High Elf armies and 8th edition rules, which were released in June (1, 2, 3).

Games Workshop has articles on collecting, modelling, gaming, and painting, errata and FAQs, and a nice map of the Warhammer world. There are fan forums like the 40k forums knowledge base
with basic information on gluing, painting, and stripping paint. Wikipedia has background on the game and the armies.

Mantic makes cheaper, ostensibly compatible figures and has a how-to section that includes assembling and painting dwarf and undead units at present.

RPGs—Marine eel

The following post is released under the OGL.

This seven-foot-long carnivorous eel undulates through the water, leering with its broad jaw.

Marine Eel CR 2
XP 600
N Medium animal (aquatic)
Init +7; Senses low-light vision, Perception +5
DEFENSE
AC 18, touch 13, flat-footed 15; (+3 Dex, +5 natural)
hp 13 (2d8+4)
Fort +4, Ref +6, Will +1
OFFENSE
Spd swim 30 ft.
Melee bite +3 (2d4+2 plus grab)
Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Special Attacks gnaw
STATISTICS
Str 14, Dex 16, Con 12, Int 1, Wis 12, Cha 8
Base Atk +1; CMB +3; CMD 16
Feats Improved Initiative
Skills Stealth +7, Perception +5, Swim +10; Racial Modifiers +4 Stealth in rocky, aquatic areas
ECOLOGY
Environment warm oceans
Organization solitary, pair, or nest (3–6)
Treasure none
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Gnaw (Ex) If a marine eel begins a round with a grabbed foe, it inflicts automatic bite damage (2d4+2 points of damage). A marine eel possesses a second set of jaws in its throat that aid in swallowing—it can make a second bite attack (+11 attack, 1d4+2) against a foe it has already grabbed.

The marine eel is a ferocious predator, capable of holding prey in its primary jaws while a smaller set of jaws inside its throat chews away bite-sized portions.

Temple of Amun

Kemetic temples had a number of distinctive features and layout. The Temple of Dendur was a small Nubian temple built by Augustus and now located at the Met. Other smaller temples include the Temple of Debod, the Temple of Taffeh, and the temples of Ptah, Osiris Heqadjet, and Opet at Karnak. The Temple of Amun at Karnak is one of the largest religious complexes in the world. Even smaller temples like the temples of Khonsu and Mut are extensive. These temples consist of hypostyle and peristyle courts and a naos or adyton, accessed through pylons. A sacred lake adjacent to the temple provided symbolic water for ceremonies.

Here's a map, which fits on a 24x30 gaming flip-mat, of an imaginary temple that has some of these basic features. One square is 5 feet. A smaller version of a minor temple, with an analogous layout, is at bottom.


All doors are closed and locked, and all interior surfaces are carved with bas reliefs, inscriptions, and cartouches that describe the temple, its ceremonies, and patrons.

1. Pylon Gate
Access to the temple courtyard is through a gate of pylons. Another pylon gate 50 feet to the east defines the outer courtyard and the outer perimeter of the temple complex.

2. Peristyle Court
This enclosed, open-air courtyard is surrounded by a colonnade that offers modest shade and shelter. It is in the open-air courtyard that priests meet with visitors, receive gifts, and administer services.

3. Hypostyle Court
Immense graven columns, colorfully painted, support a flat wooden ceiling high overhead. Clerestory windows over the central aisle allow some illumination. This fully covered interior court begins the private areas of the temple closed to the public. An altar can be set up in front of the doors to the inner sanctum.

4. Closets
Locked storage areas contain ritual implements, supplies, and other goods.

5. Inner Sanctum
This room contains the cult image of the temple's primary deity.

6. Accessory Sanctums
These small chapels house the cults of subordinate saints or demigods.