Signs and Symbols

Recently I've taken to using the eight-pointed star as an explicit symbol of Chaos in my games. It fits very well with the idea that Chaos is an explicit "side" that you can be explicitly for or against, in a broad cosmic war of which factions in the campaign world are just general reflections. Chaos, as I use it, is a powerful force led by many demonic and strange Chaos lords, who are as often as not at cross purposes with one another, as symbolized by the eight directions of the Chaos arrows. It's good and Moorcockian and flavorful. I've had NPCs use it for decoration, including unholy symbols and tattoos.

This Chaos symbol comes from the influence of Swords & Wizardry, even though ultimately it's Moorcock's. S&W also has a circle for Law, which is different from Moorcock who used a single straight arrow. I like the circle, though, because it's an easy graffito. A Law circle can be drawn around the Chaos arrows, like the three downward-pointing arrows of the Eiserne Front were designed to counter Nazi swastikas.

I don't have a symbol for Neutrality that I like. Two wide horizontal bars might work for people who are "actively neutral" (that is, opposed to both Law and Chaos). The thing is, Neutrality in many ways is sort of a catch-all of unaligned, selfish, people aligned to the Earth, people who want a balance, and animals that don't have the intelligence to have an alignment.

But using the circle and the eight-pointed star has had me thinking about other symbols with clear resonances. The Elder Sign, whether it is the pentagram of Derleth or Lovecraft's "tree branch" that has five tines pointing off of a central line, is a classic symbol to ward off things that are not from this world. The Yellow Sign is a classic sigil that is immediately ominous. And I think players might revolt if they saw the Duvan'ku Dead Sign from Death Frost Doom. Or at least, if they know what it means.

The World of Greyhawk has some good entrance runes, if a bit unique to its setting. But on a similar vein I think it would be really fun to start using the classic hobo signs around a megadungeon or wilderness sandbox type environment; obviously the railroad-related ones are no good but most of them would be an interesting way to make the PCs seem more like they're part of a larger world where they aren't the only adventurers about. Simple trail signs can also serve a similar purpose, though they're more likely in the wilderness.

Signs and symbols are also a great way to introduce a mystery into the campaign. Just throw an unknown sigil at the characters, and they will naturally investigate it – whether through a sage, or asking around, or what have you. These kinds of things are a good way to pique the curiosity of players.

I'd be curious about signs and symbols people have used in their own campaigns, and what the impact has been.

Actual Play: Fun with Infravision and Alignment

Infravision in B/X is described explicitly as "heat-sensing sight." So I tend to play the sight of elves and dwarves as being very broad; only the ability to see vague shapes of heat, generally not making out anything of the details of a monster.

Which was fun with the first of two encounters my players had with velociraptors last night. The raptors showed up during the first watch of the evening, and had the players surrounded, but there were only three of the raptors. The party's elf and one of the clerics were on watch, so the raptors were considering them potential prey until the cleric shouted everyone awake. The raptors disappeared in a flash (I give them a very quick movement rate) and it seemed like a false alarm. At this point they still weren't really sure what the threat was, other than that it was three or four feet high but broad and very fast.

The PCs wound up going back to the ruined palace where they had previously slaughtered some toad-men. Some exploration got them to investigate the statue in the courtyard, which had certain stops in its direction where it pointed. Investigating one of them led to another encounter with the raptors, who were now defending their nests and not just being curious. I described their motion with some keys that echoed Jurassic Park. The players got out, with only the hobbit getting a scratch when he went to his backpack to try and get some meat to slow the raptors down.

Deciding to try their luck elsewhere in the ruins, the PCs checked out a small block of rooms. This time they found a corridor with some caltrops in it; had they gone in without being wary it would have been a bigger problem for them. Around the next corridor they did get hit by a crossbow trap, and while investigating it found that they had the interest of a big, menacing warrior type. The players' reaction to his weapon, a military pick that they later found out was aligned with Chaos.

Once they dispatched the warrior and his companions, they found more materials, including a letter written in Chaotic. This was translated for them by one of the Acolytes from the Caves of Chaos, who has been charmed by the elf and is being used as a makeshift henchman. It's been fun to sort of let the idea of "forces of Chaos" as a persistent, but not unified, threat; the way I interpret Chaos working in my world is that powerful Chaotic characters are in touch with patron deities, and each such leader is a sort of absolute tyrant who imposes their will on their underlings. So there is now someone in dungeons (not yet discovered by the PCs) under the ruin who has transgressed against the forces loyal to the Chaos god Arioch.

I was very happy to be able to play up the Chaos and dinosaur aspects of this ruin in one session. It's been interesting in terms of PC balance, too: although there are two fourth-level fighters, who can take a fair number of hits, the rest of the PCs were 1st or 2nd level this adventure. One of the clerics hit 3rd, as did the hobbit, which will make the rest of this particular adventure interesting.

Lured Into Service

Monsters can be lured into service if they are of the same basic alignment as the player-character, or they can be Charmed and thus ordered to serve. Note, however, that the term "monster" includes men found in the dungeons, so in this way some high-level characters can be brought into a character's service, charisma allowing or through a Charm spell.

This is something that I know Mike Mornard has talked about several times with relation to Gygax's Greyhawk campaigns: the dungeon should be fertile ground for retainers.

Recruitment from adversaries is something I think has gotten neglected in OSR materials, and in later editions of D&D. The text above comes shortly before the reaction table, which in itself I think should be used more frequently. In my experience, roleplaying in the dungeon or wilderness has an interest element to it that you just can't get in a city, where the negotiation could lead to violence at any moment.

The point about the "same basic alignment" is much more interesting in OD&D than in classic or advanced D&D. Lycanthropes can be neutral, as can orcs, ogres, dragons, wyverns, centaurs, hydrae, purple worms, sea monsters, chimerae, minotaurs and giants. Among the types of men, Bandits and Buccaneers can be chaotic or neutral (50/50 chance); Berserkers, Cavemen and Mermen are all neutral; and Dervishes are lawful. This makes neutrality really interesting as a choice, because a lot of monsters might turn out not to be Chaotic after all and can be lured into service.

Flexibility of alignment is an important idea for this. If orcs are always chaotic, then an encounter with them has fewer possibilities, because a neutral PC can't lure one into service. The same is true of bandits: the 50/50 chance of them being neutral should guide the referee in how they are played. When creating new monsters, I think such questions should be considered in some instances. After all, goblins and trolls only appear in the chaotic column of OD&D, and won't be attracted by offers from neutrals. But even if you aren't using the "vanilla" monster list, your encounters wind up richer if it's possible to recruit some of them (or if PCs even seek out neutral monsters to hire).

It's also worth realizing exactly how powerful the OD&D version of Charm Person is, because it's easy to forget if you're not reading the booklets: "If the spell is successful it will cause the charmed entity to come completely under the influence of the Magic-User until such time as the "charm" is dispelled (Dispell Magic)." Supplement I: Greyhawk introduces limits on Charm that make it substantially less permanent (the system of multiple saving throws that makes it into classic and advanced). But in OD&D it's an instant henchman, if you want it - a failed saving throw is all you need.

Such henchmen give great potential reactions for subsequent encounters. Elves encountered in a dungeon may see a human with an orc and minotaur in tow and make the assumption that they're monsters to be defeated at every cost, and the human is either in league with them or a hostage. On the opposite side, an ogre guard could be the PCs' key to getting into a fantastic environment like the troll market in Hellboy II. A given monster could take the PC as a threat, or as a "monster" human allied with monsters.

Of course, turnabout is fair play; if the PCs can try to lure monsters into service, then monsters should also be able to do the same for them. Flexible alignment makes a great way to do a theme dungeon: monsters that are neutral or chaotic are the ones that are likely to try and hire PCs, while chaotics will tend to stay away from them, being on different "sides." And there's a tremendous amount of roleplaying to be done with regard to how far the PC(s) and the monsters trust each other.

In the civilized world, this will definitely have various implications. One scenario is the, "Damn it, Theseus, you were supposed to kill the minotaur, not help it escape!" variety where the monsters are treated as such and the PCs considered evil or reckless for accompanying them. And there are all kinds of possible responses, from betrayal of the monster hirelings to various shenanigans to help them pass. But the opposite choice has a lot of possibility for world-building.

OD&D does seem to indicate a world where monstrous creatures are sometimes in the employ of non-chaotic humans. It's also got a very Judges Guild vibe if you think of a village where you might go in and see an ogre – who in fact hauls very heavy things and smashes goblins at the behest of the townsfolk. It's not going to fit everyone's vision of fantasy, but I'd argue that this sort of thing is more essential to OD&D than people today realize.

There are a lot of ways to run with this one, and I think it shows a certain myopia of fantasy that this concept died out over time. It's worth thinking about what it can do for your games.

A different approach to languages

In the last session I ran of B2 Keep on the Borderlands, one of the players noted that a paucity of linguistic skills stopped the PCs from having any kind of non-combat interaction with the kobolds. Someone would have had to actively take the language, and the PCs present didn't have high enough Intelligence to get bonus languages. It's a picky and difficult thing, and monstrous languages are kind of a crapshoot where players make guesses at what might be useful.

At the same time, the ability to talk to monsters is one of the more interesting parts of D&D. As an RPG, players can strike any bargain or make up any trick they want; the monsters don't have to be bags of hit points that deal damage. So this is an area of serious potential for roleplaying if the language issue can be fixed.

There could be a solution closer than people think: alignment languages. I've written about them before, and I don't have the strong objections to them that many people seem to. They are often ridiculed in no small part because the Dungeon Masters Guide makes it clear that alignment languages are meant for relatively abstruse and philosophical discussion, with practical matters all but verboten. I think this is wrong-headed.

Alignment language could play a very interesting role as a lingua franca between humans and monsters. I think this might work best with a Holmes-style five point alignment where some monsters have different alignments, but continuing to take the Chainmail-style stance that alignments are basically "sides." This works well in Holmes because goblins, hobgoblins and kobolds are lawful evil while orcs, gnolls and bugbears are chaotic evil. That means a character can realistically talk to goblin-types but not orc-types, and vice versa.

The shift would be to make alignment languages fully functional tongues - LG being something like Latin, CE being akin to the Black Speech of Mordor, CG as Sindarin, etc. While they have a ceremonial use, they are widely known and more importantly are complete languages. The other change is to make them learnable by individuals not of that alignment. So a PC could speak the CG and CE languages - and it might be suspect - but it would certainly allow them to communicate with all CE creatures. Elves would get CE in addition to their alignment language, and dwarves get LE. This is more or less close to the creatures they can speak with per B/X.

This approach has two benefits. One is that there is a "level safety" to this; if kobolds are only encountered in this one cave, your 12th level magic-user won't have a wasted slot with "kobold" on his character sheet. Instead he'll have "Lawful Evil" or the in-campaign name of the same language. The second advantage is that it lets the referee play around with different monster archetypes without making things totally incompatible. What if your PC took Orc and Goblin as languages but all you run into are beast-men? Then the slot gets totally wasted. But if there's a Chaotic Evil language you can learn in addition to your own alignment tongue, you can talk with both orcs and beast-men.

Of course, this is something of a worldbuilding question - but so is the default D&D language situation. Having "Common" and various monster and alignment languages instead of pseudo-historical or historical human languages is a definite shift away from most fantasy works, especially post-Tolkien ones that revel in their worldbuilding. The best way to do this, IMO, is to turn these alignment languages into a worldbuilding tool instead of a hindrance. Figure out why there's a common language among kobolds, goblins and that evil empire.

The one other shift referees may want to consider is whether humans have the alignment language related to their own alignment, or the prevailing alignment of their home area. For instance, in a Lawful Good town - how would a Chaotic Evil fighter pick up the Black Speech? More likely he knows enough of Church Latin to get by. It's another layer of complication but once we take it up, it makes a bit more sense out of the whole concept.

Making a Killing

The assassin class was one of the innovations in Supplement II: Blackmoor, and hails more or less (there is some difficulty with who wrote what in the supplement; its editor, Tim Kask, has said that the assassin material was revised) from Dave Arneson's work. There has been ample objection to this class over the years, and it was used in 1e AD&D but excluded from 2e with the concept that an assassin is not a true "class" function. By that measure, a thief shouldn't be either; neither stealing nor killing is a pure class. Similarly, it is pointed out that assassins aren't heroic; again the thief speaks against ideals of pure heroism. Both are breaking major moral and ethical rules as a way to make a living. So none of the arguments against them really wash for me.

The assassin character type adds to the game a built-in structure, the Assassins Guild. This lasted into 1e, but was made optional for PC assassins; in Blackmoor they are all guild members, PCs included. It also makes the fascinating observation that assassins are neutral, whereas AD&D stuck them firmly in the "Evil" side of its alignment matrix. That certainly colors your Blackmoorish neutrality and chaos differently, I think, considering that thieves can be neutral or chaotic, and hired by lawfuls. It also works in terms of insulating assassins from either "side" when viewing law vs chaos as a fight with two sides instead of a grand ethical dilemma. Assassins are for hire and don't take sides.

An assassin's guild was part of Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, built into the "Slayer's Brotherhood." This certainly seems much closer to the concept of the Blackmoor assassin than the somewhat muddled accounts of Islamic killers in various medieval sources. It has little basis in reality, but presents a fantasy setting with a very distinctly grey sense of morals. The mere existence of an assassin's guild means that society, tacitly or openly, accepts its existence.

Blackmoor introduced levels that require you to fight a superior, both for monks and assassins. With monks fights aren't necessarily to the death; with assassins they are. A Guildmaster assassin got there by killing his predecessor, period. AD&D added to this the Grandfather of Assassins, a level above that again can only be reached by more murdering. Too many assassins reaching higher levels automatically spells trouble, and a whole high-level campaign could be waged simply around a PC as a Guildmaster Assassin.

What is really interesting to me is the question of the assassin in a dungeon crawl campaign. Having an assassin PC seems like an invitation to basically switch over to a city-based campaign. But assassins are low-functioning thieves (2 levels lower than the already paltry thief numbers) per Blackmoor, and will be skilled poisoners as well. Consider - instead of the traditional "hack through the opponents" mission, an assassin PC could really thrive in a "faction dungeon," getting hired (with the available treasure) to take out assassinations on all the leader-types of different monster factions. It really puts the normal dungeon crawl on its head, but I think it's a fascinating possibility, even for solo play.

A final tidbit that I think wasn't followed up well enough appears in the Blackmoor assassin write-up: "Details of poison types will be handled in some future supplement when alchemists are fully covered." There's a bit more in the Dungeon Masters Guide, but doesn't really give us that full treatment I would like to see.

On OD&D Alignment and Language

This post on RPGnet has had me thinking a bit about original D&D's alignment and the languages associated with them. Alignment languages seem to be a sticking point to many people, which I understand - in AD&D they don't quite make sense since people are so fragmented between the nine alignments. But for OD&D I like it.

First, let's look at the origin of alignment in Chainmail:

It is impossible to draw a distanct line between "good" and "evil" fantastic figures. Three categories are listed below as a general guide for the wargamer designing orders of battle involving fantastic creatures:

This is then followed by lists for "Law", "Neutral" and "Chaos" with some figures appearing in two lists. The description for neutrality makes it clear how the alignment in Chainmail worked:

Underlined Neutral figures have a slight pre-disposition for LAW. Neutral figures can be diced for to determine on which side they will fight, with ties meaning they remain neutral.

The underlined Neutrals, for the curious, are Elves and Rocs. Wizards appear for Law and Chaos, and Giants and Lycanthropes can go under Neutral or Chaos.

The reason I bring it up is that it makes fairly clear what alignment was at the dawn of D&D: it meant there were basically two sides, and there were neutrals who could go either way or stick to themselves, like Switzerland. This idea is simple and makes perfect sense of why alignments exist.

As for Law and Chaos, these are taken from two sources. One is Michael Moorcock's Elric novels, which are better known than the source that they borrowed from. Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions was the first modern fantasy to create an explicit Law vs Chaos conflict. Moorcock expanded this, both in his cosmic scope and the length of the works treating it. In Chainmail, it's actually much closer to Anderson: these are sides in a conflict that is happening here and now.

Dungeons & Dragons makes it a bit deeper. More types can switch between columns - Men can be in any column, and lycanthropes are spread across (mainly because of Werebears, which can be lawful). Very little else is added; there are swords which have alignments, certain effects on clerics based on alignment, some bits given about characters in castles, etc. But the biggest come in the language section.

Law, Chaos and Neutrality also have common languages spoken by each respectively.

This mainly becomes important because of the sentence before it:

All other creatures and monsters which can speak have their own language, although some (20%) also know the common one.

So for 80% of creatures, there are two ways to speak with them: you can know their language, or if they are of a similar alignment, you can speak in alignment tongue to them. It's a bit risky, though, as we see soon after.

One can attempt to communicate through the common tongue, language particular to a creature class, or one of the divisional languages (law, etc.). While not understanding the language, creatures who speak a divisional tongue will recognize a hostile one and attack.

This is why alignment language is a good idea in OD&D. Three pages earlier, we had a list of all kinds of creatures that have various alignments - so for instance a Neutral PC could try and talk with the Minotaur in the Neutral alignment language, even though nobody in the group speaks Minotaur. Of course this could go horribly wrong, since some Minotaurs are Chaotic, and will attack if you speak in Neutral to them! Orcs, Ogres, Dragons, Chimerae, Giants and some Lycanthropes also vary between Neutral and Chaotic. Lawful PCs run the same risk talking to Centaurs, Werebears and Rocs, and - in an interesting twist - Elves.

All this makes OD&D alignment much more interesting than AD&D's alignment. Rather than an all-pervasive cosmic force or a way to categorize the outer planes, it's an immediate question of where you stand among the creatures in the world. A Neutral can get Giants on their side - but only some of them, while it takes a Lawful to converse with a Hippogriff. Chaos is bad news, as all the undead are there along with Evil High Priests and Balrogs - the big threats from OD&:D that really fell by the wayside in later editions.

I'm curious for the comments as to who's done much with alignment tongues in your games.