F is for Fun

Fun according to the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary: 

1. enjoyment; pleasure; a thing that gives enjoyment or pleasure and makes you feel happy

• We had a lot of fun at Sarah's party.
• Sailing is great fun.
• Have fun (= Enjoy yourself)!
• I decided to learn Spanish, just for fun.
• I didn't do all that work just for the fun of it.
• It's not much fun going to a party by yourself.
• “What fun!” she said with a laugh.
• Walking three miles in the pouring rain is not my idea of fun.
• The whole family can join in the fun at Water World.
• “What do you say to a weekend in New York?” “Sounds like fun.” 

2. behavior or activities that are not serious but come from a sense of enjoyment

• She's very lively and full of fun.
• We didn't mean to hurt him. We were just having a little fun.
• It wasn't serious—it was all done in fun. 

From this definition there are a few clear conclusions:

1. Fun is a noun, not an adjective. 
2. Fun is subjective. That which is fun for one may not be for another.
3. Fun is not always serious, but it is always enjoyable.

What's the connection between "fun" and my game of AD&D, or any game of D&D? Starting with the rule books, as I'm wont to do, the original three volume set, "White Box" Dungeons & Dragons, mentions the word only once, and then when describing a randomly shifting wall in a sample dungeon. Holmes mentions the word once, saying that the game is intended to be fun in his Basic rules. Moldvay mentions it once in his Basic rules as well, saying that the player characters have fun (not the players themselves, apparently) by overcoming obstacles. Moving on to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the word is mentioned once in the Players Handbook, just in Mike Carr's forward, not the rules themselves, but Gygax uses the word 12 times in the Dungeon Masters Guide. I've gathered them below:

• The material is herein, but only you can construct the masterpiece from it, your personal campaign which will bring hundreds of hours of fun and excitement to many eager players. (page 8) 
• The fun of the game is action and drama. The challenge of problem solving is secondary. (page 9)
• ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is first and foremost a game for the fun and enjoyment of those who seek to use imagination and creativity. This is not to say that where it does not interfere with the flow of the game that the highest degree of realism hasn‘t been attempted, but neither is a serious approach to play discouraged. (page 9)
• This is not to say that a random mixture of monsters cannot be used, simply selecting whatever creatures are at hand from the tables of monsters shown by level of their relative challenge. The latter method does provide a rather fun type of campaign with a ”Disneyland” atmosphere, but long range play becomes difficult, for the whole lacks rhyme and reason, so it becomes difficult for the DM to extrapolate new scenarios from it, let alone build upon it. (page 90)
• Depopulation of one simply means that the player characters must move on to a fresh area - interesting to them because it is different from the last, fun for you as there are new ideas and challenges which you desire your players to deal with. (page 91)
• In many situations it is correct and fun to have the players dice such things as melee hits or saving throws. However, it is your right to control the dice at any time and to roll dice for the players. (page 110) 
• Some players will find more enjoyment in spoiling a game than in playing it, and this ruins the fun for the rest of the participants, so it must be prevented. (page 110)
• The inexperienced player should be allowed the joy of going on a dungeon adventure as a neophyte. You will recall how much fun it was when you didn't really know what was going on or which monster was which or how to do anything but laved every second of it! (page 111)
• ...a couple of the experienced players can act the part of some mercenary men-at-arms, as well as the roles of various tradesmen and others the new player meets in the course of play, and have a lot of fun in the bargain; but all actions, reactions, and decision making will be left strictly up to the neophyte (with no hints or other help from the others). (page 111)
• After all, ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is first and foremost a game, a pastime for fun and enjoyment. At times the fun aspect must be stressed. Thus, in my ”Greyhawk Campaign” I included an “Alice In Wonderland” level, and while it is a deadly place, those who have adventured through it have uniformly proclaimed it as great fun because it is the antithesis of the campaign as a whole. (page 112)

Gygax uses the word fun fairly casually in most of these passages in the first sense of the word, as a synonym for "enjoyment." In two places, however, he uses the phrase "ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is first and foremost" to suggest that "fun" is a fundamental component of the game. In the first instance he is immediately clear that he does not mean to discourage a "serious approach to play," explicitly point to Oxford's first sense of the word and not the second sense. In the second, he explains his use of fun in his own campaign as a somewhat exceptional. He has included a whimsical location that is opposite in that regard to the serious campaign as a whole, it seems as a 'comic relief" sort of locale. Here too he makes a point of mentioning that even this small, silly exception to an otherwise serious campaign setting, is "deadly," so not entirely not serious.

So far, so good. Fun is being used in a way that I can agree with in the first edition of AD&D. Cook uses the word 34 times in the second edition Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, almost triple the number of times Gygax used it in first edition.

Scanning through the instances of the word in second edition, my progress was arrested the alarming use of "fun" as a heading within the topic of experience points. On page 45 of the second edition DMG, Cook walks on dangerous ground, designating "Fun" as one of the goals for which players should be rewarded with experience points. Like so much of what Cook wrote here, he says net nothing for each of the four guidelines he describes for assessing "fun." In the first he says that a player who actively participates in the game should be rewarded with XP, but that a player who is naturally shy should not be penalized for low participation. OK, positive points for participating, no penalty for being shy. How many points is participation worth? By no penalty, do you mean the shy player gets points as if he had participated, or just that he doesn't lose points that he's earned for other reasons? Second guideline: if the player makes the game fun for others without making it fun at someone's expense he should get XP. Again, no amount of XP, nor any definition of fun. The third guideline is for not giving experience if the player disrupted the flow of the game. The fourth is also a negative guideline for not giving experience to players' characters if the player argues about the rules.

Cook fails to be clear about objective guidelines for "fun" XP, because he means fun in the most subjective sense. He fails to define fun in quantifiable terms, yet directs the DM to assign quantities of XP based on fun. He is advising the DM to arbitrarily award XP based on the social behavior of the players, yet with no guidance on this except that character advancement should be neither to fast nor too slow for the players' enjoyment of the game. And he makes it clear that the game's objectives are meaningless on page 9 of the Player's Handbook when he says, "The point of playing is not to win but to have fun and to socialize." There are easier and more enjoyable ways to simply have fun and socialize. I paid money and spent time buying and reading the rules in order to play a game, not just "have fun and socialize."

By directing the DM to award XP on the basis of how well the DM likes playing with the player, how well he thinks the other players like playing with the player, and what rate of character advancement he thinks the player would find most enjoyable, Cook turns the awarding of XP into a negotiation. He mixes game and non-game elements nonsensically. He is attempting to define the game mechanics on the basis of what the participants agree is fun.

As much as this rant has become an indictment of second edition AD&D, the fundamental point I'm trying to reach is not about the various editions of D&D. I'm simply using them to get to the argument.

Fun is subjective. Fun is different for everyone. Fun cannot be the basis of the structure of a game. One has to derive fun from playing the game as it is defined, rather than using fun to define the game. In the latter case, the task is impossible; the activity is not a game.

I need to explain this better. G seems like a good opportunity to talk about what is and isn't a game.

E is for Elves

Playing by-the-book first edition AD&D, there are 7 races, or species, available for players to choose from when making a character: dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, halfling, half-orc, and human. As referee, I have made it clear that players may choose as they like, even though most of civilization is human. Why then, have the 11 players who have created 23 characters in this game to date, not created even one character of any race besides human?

The Dungeon Masters Guide speaks to that:

ADVANCED D&D is unquestionably "humanocentric", with demi-humans, semi-humans, and humanoids in various orbits around the sun of humanity. Men are the worst monsters, particularly high level characters such as clerics, fighters, and magic-users - whether singly, in small groups, or in large companies. The ultra-powerful beings of other planes are more fearsome - the 3 D's of demi-gods, demons, and devils are enough to strike fear into most characters, let alone when the very gods themselves are brought into consideration. Yet, there is a point where the well-equipped, high-level party of adventurers can challenge a demon prince, an arch-devil, or a demi-god. While there might well be some near or part humans with the group so doing, it is certain that the leaders will be human. In co-operation men bring ruin upon monsterdom, for they have no upper limits as to level or acquired power from spells or items.

The game features humankind for a reason. It is the most logical basis in an illogical game. From a design aspect it provides the sound groundwork. From a standpoint of creating the campaign milieu it provides the most readily usable assumptions. From a participation approach it is the only method, for all players are, after all is said and done, human, and it allows them the role with which most are most desirous and capable of identifying with. From all views then it is enough fantasy to assume a swords & sorcery cosmos, with impossible professions and make-believe magic. To adventure amongst the weird is fantasy enough without becoming that too! 

There are both fiction-oriented and game-oriented reasons. From the fiction perspective, playing a human is easier. Most everyone around is also human, so it is easy to fit in and get along. It's much easier when the characters look, sound, and act like the non-player characters with whom they interact to get to the heart of what they're after, be it trade, hiring help, getting hired, or whatever when they don't have to overcome communication barriers and prejudice. It requires no great leap in thinking for how to run a human either, since all of the players are human themselves. There's no fiction-oriented advantage to playing a non-human, but there are some advantages in game terms.

All of the non-humans can see in the dark (ignoring some exceptions for halflings). Almost all also have various saving throw bonuses, special resistances, bonuses with weapons, exceptional stealth, or/and special abilities for detecting hidden or misleading construction. The big advantage though, is that they can all multi-class.

These advantages are especially attractive at the lower levels of experience, and they are offset by the very serious disadvantage of level limits. Non-humans are all but excluded from the end game of domain management. The only non-humans who can possibly exercise domain are dwarf fighters with an 18 strength and half-orc fighters. Notably, both dwarfs and half-orcs have charisma penalties and lower maximums than humans which limits the number of henchmen they may have and the loyalty of henchmen and troops. This relegates the non-humans to side-kick roles.

The thief class is the most welcoming for the non-humans, with the assassin a fairly close second, and this points to the sort of role for which the non-human character is best suited. A scout or spy. I expect to see this in my game eventually, but at the moment all of the players are focused on developing their primary characters.

No one yet seems to have time for secondary characters.

D is for Dungeon

Surely no one has ever written this, have they? If I was only accidentally derivative in my attack on "Zeb" Cook in my last post (and I was, as it turns out "being Zebbed" is even a term I've found between that post and this in some online places), I have to know that the topic of the dungeon has been done to death. I don't care. I'm writing this anyway because this series is meant to explain my AD&D campaign, and the way that the dungeon functions is key to it. It should be obvious that I'm not even looking to see what's already been said by others before I shoot my mouth off.

I appreciate the suggestion that my writings here might be soulful or imaginative, but my take on the dungeon is neither of these. This is the sausage grinder of the game, the part that makes players and their game pieces (characters) capable of participating in the campaign. The campaign is not the series of "adventures" PCs undertake prior to achieving name level. The campaign is the battles they fight, military, economic, and political, once they get there. The dungeon, conceptually, exists to teach the game, to develop tactical and strategic thinking, as a mine of experience points, and to build the fiction of the game world.

In my campaign world, the dungeon is almost perfectly formulaic. Appendixes A and C of the Dungeon Masters Guide describe exactly how it is expected to work: what's in there for both risks and rewards, how accessible it is, just how trick- and trap-filled it is. And these appendixes are loaded with information about how to fight the dungeon. They describe exactly what an adventuring party should look like: 9 members, 2 to 5 of them PCs, the rest men-at-arms or henchmen, depending on how deep we are. And that men-at-arms won't delve deeper than the 3rd level beneath the surface. We can infer that by 4th level, PCs should be employing only henchmen rather than mercenaries for this kind of hazardous work.

Appendix C also tells us about how the surface of the world is populated with monstrous opponents, and, with the Monster Manual, what those opponents have and how they protect that treasure.

In my campaign world, these random monster encounter tables initially establish what opponents are in an area or dungeon when player characters first enter it. Once the dice have set the precedent of what is in a particular area, that dictates or limits what else may or may not be found. The DMG gives very specific guidance  on pages 90 & 91 for the migration and "re-stocking" of monsters if the PCs annihilate or evict what has been found. My campaign world follows this guidance. Once players have "moved the frontier," as Gygax puts it, the guidelines for territory development on pages 93 & 94 apply for determining whether anything has "wandered in."

Since I'm not trying to write a letter post every day in the usual A to Z challenge sense, there's no "challenge" component to this series of posts for me. Rather, I'm being inspired by following someone else who actually is a writer. As such, I'm going to risk burning some of the later letters' material by expanding this post into the potential "M" topic of meta-gaming.

Knowing that we are playing our game by-the-book, and having unfettered access to the DMG, as I pointed out earlier, players in my game are welcomed and encouraged to use this information to their benefit. Here's an example from a Dungeon in our last session.

In the first level of the dungeon, reputed to be a lost temple, they learned about, and found, under the Stone Fort of Flowers (Cathair Bhláth), the party encountered what they figured must be a vampire and fled. Fleeing and regrouping was a smart choice in the face of the unknown, especially in the last half hour of the game session. It's significantly more dangerous for PCs in a 1:1 time-keeping game like ours to end play outside of civilization than back in it.

Now that the players have had time to reflect (and consult the rules, as they should), I hope they will realize that what they found could not have been a vampire. From the rules-of-the-dungeon point of view, such an opponent will not be encountered closer to the surface than the 8th level in a dungeon. Even if they were tricked by sloping passages, as sometimes happens, they hadn't gone far enough in to get that deep, and they should know this. This is an example of the dungeon teaching the game.

Further, vampires live on the blood of humans, right? Who the hell would this vampire be feeding on while lairing in a remote mountain on the Dingle peninsula with the nearest settlement miles away being tiny and not apparently suffering from disappearing citizens? This reasoning helps players internalize the fiction of the game world and also learn the rules of the game.

If I hid the rules from my players, or violated them myself, how could they get better at the game? They couldn't. I'd have Zebbed the game for them and all they could get out of it is whatever shitty little story I could come up with to tell them through a "game" that was never intended to tell stories.

The game doesn't tell stories, but it does create them as the characters interact with the setting an rules. It creates these stories in the same way that our real life interactions with the world and each other create stories. Or rather, we, like our characters, create stories to make sense of the events that have transpired. No story-teller required.

C is for Competition

A little housekeeping first. When I started this series of posts, I said that I was following JB over at B/X Blackrazor, with my topics matching his. I still mean for that to be the case, generally. In this case, JB's post C is for Cascades, was very specific to his campaign setting, and because following it with regard to my campaign would be redundant with my B is for Borders post without a lot of creative license I'm disinclined to exercise, I'm diverging from JB this time. I don't know how much that will happen, but I'm expecting not much.

I just watched Coco Gauff win the womens' French Open. I'm not a sports watcher, or at least I wasn't until my daughter became a competitive tennis player. As a high school freshman she played 3rd singles for her team this season and her team has advanced to the regional finals. If they win that, two days from this writing, her team will be playing the northern region champion for the state championship. Besides her team play, she performed well enough to get a by into the top 64 before being eliminated in the first round, the only player on her team to compete individually in the state singles.

I've never been much of a sports player. When I was 9 through 12 years old I played golf with my grandfather (who played 6 days a week in his retirement) and also privately with a coach for a short time. This coach told my parents I was a natural and had a potential that should be developed, but I wasn't interested and they didn't push. And yet, I do enjoy competition. I joined my county's chess team for a short time as their worst player 22 years ago, until my work's increased travel requirements interfered too much with practices and competitions for me to continue even as ineffectually as I started. My racing sail career started earliest of these competitive endeavors, was longest, and was more successful than any. None of these results are truly relevant to the point I'm meandering toward however.

Competition brings out the best in us. We push ourselves against each other's resistance, both of us thereby getting stronger. In the early game, competition in AD&D is against the game itself. The players cooperate to overcome the resistance that monsters, darkness, logistical complexity, and so on offer in order to gain the prize of XP and gold in the game. The rules define how this resistance works for the most part, with the referee primarily providing the fiction around those mechanics. Fighting the rules and the dice, however, is not the same kind of competition as fighting one another. The end game, when the players' characters have achieved name level and compete against one another, is what pushes us the hardest and best.

I've come to the conclusion, at least for the moment, that competition was dropped from the game accidentally with the second edition of the rules. Along with a lot of other mistakes, and a radical, intentional change from being a game to being a pastime.

In preparation for this next part, it's valuable to look at the afterword of the first edition DMG. The whole thing, all 146 words of it, is written in all caps, as Gygax did for things he felt important. The penultimate sentence is what I especially would like to bring to the reader's attention before continuing:

BY ORDERING THINGS AS THEY SHOULD BE, THE GAME AS A WHOLE FIRST, YOUR CAMPAIGN NEXT, AND YOUR PARTICIPANTS THEREAFTER, YOU WILL BE PLAYING ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE.

This is the part where I criticize David "Zeb" Cook mercilessly. It's too bad, because he seemed to have his head on straight when he wrote the Expert rules, but he completely and unreservedly fucked up AD&D with the second edition. I can't say that too harshly. I'd be angrier about it if it wasn't for the fact that once newer players who came into the game in later editions play 1e at my table they are converts. (Well, most of them. Some of them certainly. OK, two of them. So far!)

I'm going to rant about some of the other mistakes after I explain how the competitive aspect of the AD&D game was lost in this edition, but I want to start with the high level, strategic causes of this failure using Cook's own words.

"Bluntly, the first problems are economics and space. There are a limited number of pages that can go into the revised Players Handbook."  

Starting with tight page count constraints meant that the game had to be tightly design and succinctly described. It was neither, and part of that comes from Cook's "design by focus group" approach.

"The changes and advances we make come directly from your ideas and suggestions, so you, ultimately, are the ones making the improvements in the game."

"Of course, my boss, Michael Dobson, keeps leaving notes to make changes here, but the majority will rule." 

"I’'ve heard a lot from you and have learned some things I didn’'t know or hadn'’t thought of. I'’ve had some of my opinions confirmed and some shot down (I do these things by good old gut feeling, you see)." 

Game design by committee and gut feeling doesn’t sound like a recipe for success to me. In my own fields the best designs are the product of a single person, or, very occasionally, a small group of people. They are designs that stand up to rigorous scrutiny, because they are derived from both creativity and solid, mathematical principles. 

Where competition left the game is where Cook forgot or cut domain level play out of the game. The reason I think this may have been accidental is that a little piece of the rules were left in there. On page 26 of the Players Handbook, under the class description for fighters: 

When a fighter attains 9th level (becomes a "Lord”), he can automatically attract men-at-arms. These soldiers, having heard of the fighter, come for the chance to gain fame, adventure, and cash. They are loyal as long as they are well-treated, successful, and paid well. Abusive treatment or a disastrous campaign can lead to grumbling, desertion, and possibly mutiny. To attract the men, the fighter must have a castle or stronghold and sizeable manor lands around it. As he claims and rules this land, soldiers journey to his domain, thereby increasing his power. Furthermore, the fighter can tax and develop these lands, gaining a steady income from them. Your DM has information about gaining and running a barony.

In addition to regular men-at-arms, the 9th·level fighter also attracts an elite bodyguard (his “household guards”). Although these soldiers are still mercenaries, they have greater loyalty to their Lord than do common soldiers. In return, they expect better treatment and more pay than the common soldier receives. Although the elite unit can be chosen randomly, it is better to ask your DM what unit your fighter attracts. This allows him to choose a troop consistent with the campaign. 

Despite his claim that the DM has information about gaining and running a barony, there is no mention of this whatsoever in the Dungeon Masters Guide or anywhere else in the Players Handbook. If Cook meant to remove domain play from the game he failed, and if he meant to include it he failed. The game was done its greatest disservice in second edition by Cook’s failure to include this large swath of rules. He gutted the only competitive component. It’s possible Cook simply didn’t understand the nature of competitive play in AD&D, perhaps because he never had participated in such. His misunderstanding of the assassin class seems to suggest this.

"Assassin --— Still dead. Again, this is more a matter of mindset than a separate occupation. The unique abilities don’t work, in my opinion (the Assassination Table is a crock). The question of “image” that came up had nothing to do with any kind of religious pressure, as some of you mistakenly thought. Sorry, it’s much more mundane —-- a lot of potential players have been turned off by bad experiences with uncontrolled assassins destroying parties, campaigns, and fun for everyone else. No fun at all."

The assassin, as an adventuring class, is a compromise between a fighter and a thief, and that’s how the character should be used in a party. His unique ability, to assassinate, as described by the assassination table, is not a combat action. This is a downtime, behind the scenes sort of action. It’s the dark side of domain play, the assassin being a mere henchman or tool, happy to spy and do wet works in exchange for money and XP. It’s the only class designed to gain XP outside of adventuring because that’s what that class’ place is in the game. I don’t think Cook understood this.

There’s a bunch of other stuff he fucked up, but arguably worse than gutting domain play rules, is his conversion of the game into a make-believe pastime for children. The rule books are loaded with examples of how second edition is not, in fact, even a game. From the same Dragon magazine article in which he reiterates the death of the assassin in second edition, he states:

“Finally, there is combat. There are a lot of things I don’’t like. I don’’t like rules mechanics getting in the way of play and would like to make combat as simple as possible. After all, who uses weapon speed factors or armor class adjustments anyway? Why should we bother with restrictive rules about the size of weapons since rules that people don’t like aren’’t used anyway? I also detest critical hits and hit locations."  

There are a few things in this statement worth noting, but chief among them is a confirmation that Cook does not fully know or understand the first edition rules. Critical hits and hit locations are not in the first edition rules. Gygax directly advises against adding such house rules into the game in the Dungeon Masters Guide. Armor type, not class, adjustments are an optional rule already. Weapon speed factors create interesting trade-offs between employing certain weapons, without which the game contains more weapon choices than have any value. Weapon choices are not merely “color,” the combat rules make having weapons of different speeds and sizes, not just damage dice, useful and a way in which player skill may be gained and expressed.

Why are marathons so long, Mr. Cook, if so many people get tired before the end and many don’t even like to get sweaty? Let’s make it 26.4 feet long instead, that way everyone can “enjoy” a marathon. Listen, if you're not having fun following the rules in a game of chess, why not improve it by dropping the inconvenient rules? I mean, why should the king be slower than the queen? It doesn't make sense, so let's give him the same movement rules as the queen. In fact, let's do that for all the pieces; it'll be so much simpler, we won't have to think so hard, and we can just have fun with our friends. Won't that make a better game? Also, no one likes losing, so anytime your king gets put in checkmate, you can just put him in a different spot on the board. Doesn't that make chess a million times better?

This segues into taking the game out of AD&D with second edition. Consider this from the 2e DMG:

To have the most fun playing the AD&D game, don't rely only on the rules. Like so much in a good role-playing adventure, combat is a drama, a staged play. The DM is both the playwright and the director, creating a theatrical combat. 

Read that again if you’re not angry. The players are puppets in the DM’s play. The rules don’t matter, because players are not playing a game in second edition, they’re acting out the DM’s play. The DM is "playwright," he wrote the story. He's the "director," he makes sure the actors play their parts correctly for his story.

The DM has accidentally pitted his player characters against a group of creatures too powerful for them, so much so that the player characters are doomed. To fix it, the DM can have the monsters flee in inexplicable panic; secretly lower their hit points; allow the player characters to hit or inflict more damage than they really should; have the monsters miss on attacks when they actually hit; have the creatures make grevious [sic] mistakes in strategy (like ignoring the thief moving in to strike from behind).

Just in case you thought I was reading too much in the playwright/director analogy, the above should dispel any doubt the reader has that second edition might be a game, and not a story-telling vehicle for the DM. 

Experience points are a measure of this improvement, and the number of points a player for a game session is a signal of how well the DM thinks the player did in the game – a reward for good role-playing.

Here Cook tells us that the players’ characters’ advancement is entirely at the whim of the DM. Advancement in the game is a function of entertaining or impressing the DM with one’s play-acting. That’s new with second edition.

I've definitely drifted from theme, but clearly, there is no competition in second edition of AD&D. There isn't even a game.

Just to close the loop here, and show the reader that there is, in fact, competition in the first edition of the game, from the first page of the Players Handbook:

Players will add characters to their initial adventurer as the milieu expands so that each might actually have several characters, each involved in some separate and distinct adventure form, busily engaged in the game at the same moment of "Game Time". This allows participation by many players in games which are substantially different from game to game as dungeon, metropolitan, and outdoor settings are rotated from playing to playing. And perhaps a war between players will be going on (with battles actually fought out on the tabletop with minature [sic] figures) one night, while on the next, characters of these two contending players are helping each other to survive somewhere in a wilderness.

AD&D assumed player-versus-player conflict, and mentions this aspect of play in several other locations throughout. It's never mentioned in adventure play, because it's poor strategy to shoot your teammates in the dungeon. Once teammates have become rival lords, however, the circumstances have changed.

 

B is for Borders

The geography of this campaign world is what I started this blog talking about--how I took NASA's SRTM data and turned it into fictional, but realistic contours on which to then overlay fictional settlements, also based on real settlement data, and then followed a method to distribute infrastructure and human population based on those. The story can be read starting here and reading in chronological order.

There are other, easier ways to start a map. One can find any number of online map generators out there that produce really lovely maps. I've even taken the time to write my own and used it as a player in a Traveller game I've been playing for years with my brother and others, at times. Here's an example. This rectangular projection distorts the surface of the world least at the equatorial latitudes and the 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270° meridians, and most at the poles and away from these reference meridians. The data is built on a sphere, however, and I made a 3d viewer to look at it that way too.

 

Elevation

 

Climate

Climate Legend

But this, like all of the other online generators I have seen, is fake. We all use various mathematical methods to create random, seemingly realistic elevation data. In my generator's case, I also used temperature and wind data based on the planet's star type, orbit, and atmosphere to calculate moisture and thus climate. It was a very fun exercise and I learned some things from it, but at its heart it is fake. I haven't figured out a way to simulate plate tectonics to generate elevations in the first place, and so everything that follows is necessarily garbage.

Fortunately, I have excellent data for a planet that I'm sure is as real as it gets, because I seem to be standing on it.

I chose Ireland because it felt like a good size for a campaign start. It's big enough to provide some traveling and fighting room, and it's an island. It's on the edge of the known world, yet not greatly removed from it. And I don't need to give it edges, because I have data for the whole sphere. If and when characters go extra-planar I'll need an answer, but I'm kicking that can down the road for now. Ireland is about half the size of Honshu and perhaps 10% of its population in the year of fake history I've chosen. That leaves plenty of room for the non-human population. I mention Honshu because I wanted a campaign setting which bore some resemblance to Sengoku era Japan.

AD&D is a human-centric game. Dungeons, dragons, and typical adventure games exist only mostly outside the human world. I needed both room for these adventures to happen so that players are able to work up to name level, but still to have enough of the space be a human-centric environment for the real game. The war game. The game of thrones, as they say, no George R. R. Martin reference intended.

So we're playing in a fantasy Ireland, "Erin" as we call it, in 1478. Now 1479.