Huge Ego

The long-standing rivalry between MIT and Harvard blossomed in 2006 with this replacement of Harvard's VER-IT-AS logo at a Yale-Harvard sports event. But that's not what we're really here to talk about. Yes, MIT cleverly mocked the students of Harvard with their hack... but we're really interested today in Ego itself. Namely, ego weapons. Like, you know—Stormbringer or the other, less well known black sword, Anglachel, wielded by Turin Turambar.

Túrin: "Hail Gurthang! No lord or loyalty dost thou know, save the hand that wieldeth thee. From no blood wilt thou shrink. Wilt thou therefore take Túrin Turambar, wilt thou slay me swiftly?"
Gurthang: "Yea, I will drink thy blood gladly, that so I may forget the blood of Beleg my master, and the blood of Brandir slain unjustly. I will slay thee swiftly."

In regards to ego weapons there are two things I have a problem with. The first is the mechanic by which they take control of players and the second is the power suites presented in the DMG.

Ego Weapons Taking Control
As written, an ego blade will deal damage to anyone who's alignment doesn't match its alignment. It can take control as a character is injured. It's more likely to take control of a badly wounded high-level character than it is a badly wounded low-level character because high-level characters have more hp to lose.

Damaging non-alignment matches
This is an extremely limiting factor to an ego weapon. If a LE sword straight out cannot be used by a CG man, what's the point of weapon possession? I hate this rule and I'm not sure what it's meant to represent... if the weapon dealt a little damage over time so the wielder was always slightly wounded and ticking towards falling under the weapon's sway, maybe we'd have a neat rule.

In fact, that's the rule I'm going to instate.

Wounds being required for the take-over
Why? Any time you're in a mentally reduced state (drunk, charmed, etc.), the blade should have a chance to take over. In fact, even depression or anxiety should be enough to produce ominous whispers and attempts at gaining control.

Low-level disparity
Why is it so damned hard for an ego sword to take over a low-level character? I mean, I know why, mathematically... but I don't like it. I don't have a solution to this off the top of my head (except maybe to allow it to force a saving throw every once and a while, I suppose), but it's always irked me. Lower level PCs should be more susceptible to rapid conversion and control, not less.

Specific Goals and Weird Powers
This is probably most easily modified by drawing up new tables. I haven't done that yet, so I'll just air my gripes. The mighty powers of ego swords are weird. Know where gems are? Know where gold is? Does anyone know the origin of these powers? I can't think of any examples from literature. They seem to be exceedingly arbitrary. A weapon designed for a specific purpose should at least draw from a neater table.

So, yes, I have a lot of problems with ego swords as written. I feel like they are in grave need of a rewrite. Have I provided one here? Not yet. But you can wager I will. Soon.

There is Malice

'There is malice in this sword. The heart of the smith still dwells in it, and that heart was dark. It will not love the hand it serves; neither will it abide with you long." 

—The Children of Húrin, J.R.R. Tolkien

The father of modern fantasy fiction (is Dunsany the grandfather?) has addressed this issue at length throughout his works and it stands amongst the other statements he's made about craftsmanship and its relation to magic; the heart of the smith still dwells in it, warns Melian. Beleg Longbow knows, but takes the sword anyway. Unlike Stormbringer, say, the malice in Tolkien's blade is not inborn to the nature of the thing, but rather the effect of its creation. The sword Anglachel is literally cast with the intention of its craftsman embedded in it, permanently marred by the thoughts of its creator. I should add that, at the very end of the Children of Húrin, the sword does indeed speak, to urge Túrin to his death and cleanse it (and thus him) of the murders he's committed with it.

Thoughts are powerful in the legendarium. Elrond can cast his thought wide over the earth and Melkor's very thought hounds the children of Húrin and leads them to their doom. The world of Arda is itself a physical manifestation of thought (as embodied in the music of the Ainur). "Spells" and "magic" are songs sung with a particular intention. Thus, the bending of intention and thought is the primary magical agent in Arda—not that those who understand it even make the distinction between natural processes and so-called magical processes.

What's my point here? I'm not certain, save that the malice in the sword is great. I've generally explained cursed items in D&D this way—for example, the Sword of Orne, borne by generations of goblin-killers, which cannot now be sheathed in the presence of goblins and will never allow the wielder to retreat when fighting its hated foe was not originally so cursed. Centuries of war and hate poured into it, and the intention of its wielders shaped it into the weapon it is today.

This is almost a form of animism; things acquire anthropomorphic traits (like emotion) by being dwelt upon by thinking beings, by being used with intention. The idea that people cast their intention into the world itself is a powerful one, and serves Tolkien well.

Druids and Elves and True Neutral OH MY

True Neutral: the hardest of the alignments to play, the most misunderstood alignment (barring the fact that most people misunderstand AD&D alignments entirely), and the most important alignment for 10th Age elves and all AD&D druids.

There are two competing strands of elvishness in popular culture, the 10th Age, and fantasy. These are the sylvan elves of myth and legend and the civilized elves of D&D and most of Tolkien. Hell, they're even divided in Tolkien between the Noldor and the Avari (those who heeded the call to Valinor and those who did not). This reflects an inherent tension in the bifurcation that has naturally occurred in myth and legend.

In the 10th Age, this is reflected by the division between the civilized elves (called the Wind Elves) and the sylvan elves (the Wood Elves) who are themselves (surprise!) divided based on the original groups of elves who accepted the assistance of men and the teaching of magic and tower-building and those who did not. The two populations have crossed over throughout history; historically, many Wind Elves gave up "civilized life" and joined or created new Wood Elven tribes after great catastrophes and most famously after the devastation of the Red Plague that ended the 9th Age.

The Wood Elves live amongst the forests and do not build towers or walls; they encourage the growth of hedges and trees, live in their boles or boughs, and often live in caves. Their society is organized around a true neutral principal of balance and they are seen as preservers of the balance. Elves have two divine "parents" in Anunia (the Wind Lord) and Tulia (the Spring Maiden) even though they were physically created by Anunia himself as a gift to Tulia. The Wind Elves favor their father, it is said, while the Wood Elves favor their mother.

What does this devotion to true neutral mean? It means that they have a cultural commitment to druidism (a true neutral religion which worships Senia the Moon Maiden and Aloran the Watcher as well as Tulia) and they believe in the balance. I meandered around for a while before I remembered what the point of this post is and here it is: druids and wood elves and those who believe in the balance are NOT HIPPIES.

Certainly, nature is sacred to the Wood Elves. But they don't believe that nature must conquer mankind or even that it must be respected. They believe that there is a natural balance between man and the forest, between the races of the world. They believe in preserving the natural balance—and goblins, men, and dwarves are all part of that balance. They aren't radical tree-huggers (even though they hang out a lot with ents and Forest Giants). SO THERE.

Signs and Symbols of Adventure

"And I assure you there is a mark on this door—the usual one in the trade, or used to be. Burglar wants a good job, plenty of Excitement, and reasonable Reward, that's how it is usually read. You can say Expert Treasure-hunter instead of Burglar if you like. Some of them do. It's all the same to us. Gandalf told us that there was a man of the sort in these parts looking for a Job at once, and that he had arranged for a meeting here this Wednesday tea-time."

This is a well-known passage by now (and if it isn't it should be). Though hobbits and most folk of Middle Earth seem to be extremely literate, they still make use of a generally pre-literate (or simply secretive) desire to record things in symbols and signs that are recognizable without being able to decode them as alphanumeric. Never again are mentioned the sigils and signs to which Balin is here referring, unless its some dwarven rune and thus incorporated into their actual language.

However, this idea of a secret adventurers code of glyphs ACTUALLY EXISTS.

This seems like a great thing to build on and expand into an adventurer code. Perhaps something that it takes a proficiency to be able to decode. I'll get to it once my group stops adding games for me to design... the newest fling is Dark Sun. We'll see how long that lasts.

The Ever Changing Appendix N

I've been thinking recently about the sea-change in pen and paper attitudes that marks the difference between the old, hard, "realistic" games from the 70s and the newer, shinier, "fun" games from the now. Since the OSR blogosphere is abuzz with additions to, discoveries in, and reviews of things from Appendix N, my thoughts recently turned to what exactly is going on here in the pen and paper world. Games have certainly changed, and they have changed because the people who play them have changed. Gygax was 36 when he and Arneson released the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons (or so my rapid and poor calculation skills tell me). He certainly wasn't in high school, and he already had a lifelong dedication to wargaming.

But that's not the big difference. The difference between games of today and games of yesteryear are their Appendix N. What sources do they draw on? What the are they trying to be, trying to emulate? What's the feel that inspired them? It's different now than it used to be, in large part because the intended audience of D&D keeps getting younger. Like a cigarette company, Hasboro wants to hook 'em young, hook 'em strong, and keep 'em stringing along. TSR had bad penetration into the very young demographics, probably because of the language of their books and the relatively strenuous weight placed on simulation.