Skip to main content

Posts

Review: The Heir to the Empire Trilogy

This review contains spoilers. I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the Star Wars Extended Universe (with the exception of the excellent Darth Bane trilogy). Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire trilogy (1991-93), however, had proven me decisively wrong - and, indeed, has shown me why so many would have preferred an adaption of Heir to the Empire instead of the sequels we got. The trilogy follows the efforts of Grand Admiral Thrawn, a military genius, to revive the Empire, five years after their defeat at Endor in Return of the Jedi. Thrawn is a refreshing take; rather than a new Sith lord leading a new Empire, Thrawn is a military commander leading the remnants of the Empire five years after the defeat at Endor. There’s no cackling evil, no random acts of violence, and no new superweapons - just a coldly calculating military genius, making intelligent use of the resources available to him. Like Sherlock Holmes, Thrawn is a character whose genius is shown through his companion, in this cas...
Recent posts

Does your D&D game need monasteries?

One major, but often-forgotten part of medieval history is the monastery; religious complexes inhabited by monks, who dedicated their lives to the worship of god, and the preservation and recording of spiritual knowledge. Monasteries served several important roles in medieval Europe, roles which could be adapted to serve the needs of a D&D game. Firstly, monasteries were incredibly wealthy. At their height, the greatest of monasteries owned more land, and had more income than, the strongest of secular lords; in no small part the result of centuries of religiously-motivated donations. More wealth was held in the form of holy relics - including the likes of thorns from the Crown of Thorns, fragments of the True Cross, vials of the blood of Christ, the bones of saints, and so on. The potential for D&D is clear to see. Monasteries could recruit player characters to track down religious relics for them, which would, of course, found in dungeons and wild places. Less scrupulous playe...

Tolkien and D&D: A ramble about two diametrically opposed world-views

There's a strong association in the public consciousness between Dungeons & Dragons, and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Indeed, Tolkien's Middle Earth has come to be seen as the 'template' for a fantasy setting; the starting point from which other fantasy settings are birthed, the black hole at the centre of a galaxy of medieval fanatasy. The late Sir Terry Pratchett sums this up far better than I could hope to: "J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji." In some aspects, Tolkien's influence cannot be denied. Take elves, for example. While elves have a long history in Germanic folklore, stretching ...

Confidant, Flame, Rival - A quick system to build messy relationship webs

 Here's a few thoughts on a system for quickly rolling up a royal household that's full of messy, juicy drama - in the vein of Game of Thrones, of the Greek Gods, or indeed, of real history. Simply make a numbered list of all of the important characters in the royal household. I'm going to run a quick example using a few Greek gods, as familiar figures. Zeus Hades Poseidon Athena Ares Apollo Aphrodite Hera Then, take the first character, and roll 3d8. The first number rolled is his confidant, the second his flame, and the third his rival. I got 4, 4, and 2. So Zeus is very close with his daughter Athena, in some unnerving ways - but incest is hardly out of place in a system inspired by Game of Thrones and the Greek pantheon! If you don't want incest, though, you can reroll, or simply have Zeus not have a flame. We also see that Zeus has a rival in Hades. Now, I'm going to skip ahead to Athena and roll her 3d8. I get 7, 2, and 2. So she's friends with Aphrodite, ...

Deed-Based Advancement

I've been thinking about advancement systems in TTRPGs.  By far the most common system I've come across is experience points, with experience points won by defeating enemies - or, sometimes, by overcoming threats in a more general sense. This has never quite worked for me personally. Sitting down to calculate the precise number of experience points I ought to award, and keeping track of how many a player has, and how many they still need - it just strikes me as unneccesary bookkeping that I'd rather avoid. The same applies to the system popular in the OSR, where experience points are awarded for gold brought back from the dungeon. It's still maths, and it's still bookkeeping - and it happens to be a dissociated mechanic as well. A fighter gets better at fighting, or a wizard at casting spells, simply by entering a dungeon, pilfering some unprotected loot, and returning.  Milestone-based advancement has been my go-to recently, where I award players level-ups at set m...