F is for Fighting

Okay, to be honest, this one isn't really specific to the Kingdoms of Kalamar, but is more a list of my house-rules to liven up combat a bit.

While I do love B/X's simplicity and class balance, there are a few things I can find fault with. The first is that fighters are a bit underpowered, at least for their experience point requirements. The second is that there's really no reason for a fighter to use anything other than a sword or two-handed sword unless charging (with a lance) or receiving a charge (with a spear).

You don't really notice the underpowered nature of the fighter unless you compare experience point to experience point rather than level-to-level. Fighters may get better attack rolls every three levels while clerics only get them every four, but between 12,000 and 16,000 XPs, the cleric is fighting just as well as his fighter ally--and using the same armor, and an only-slightly inferior weapon. To be honest, I've often wondered why the fighter doesn't have the cleric's XP tables and vice-versa.

I found the answer while doing a bit of study of D&D's original "little brown books" in light of Chainmail. It was basically just a bit of digging to see if using Chainmail's original rules instead of the "alternative combat system" which later came to dominate D&D made a difference.

Hoo-boy, yes it did.

Just to start with, a 1st level fighter fights as a "Man+1" on Chainmail's man-to-man combat tables, where clerics and magic-users fight as normal men. Now this is particularly important because Chainmail's man-to-man charts (and indeed, all of its mechanics) use 2d6 to resolve combat instead of a d20. This makes a +1 bonus in Chainmail worth at least a +2 bonus in D&D. This is why OD&D didn't include any strength bonuses for combat--a fighter was automatically assumed to be much stronger and more dangerous than his fellows, with a bonus equal to a B/X fighter with a 16 strength!

It gets better. By 2nd level, an OD&D/Chainmail fighter fights as "2 Men +1." That literally means he fights as two men, getting two attacks per round with a +1 bonus to each. At third level, he can either fight as three men or as a "Hero -1." A Hero fights as four men in Chainmail, so a 3rd level fighter can either attack three times without a bonus or four times at -1. He can also (presumably) use the "man vs. monsters" chart, but that's a whole other subject.

Moreover, by 8th Level ("Superhero"), a fighter not only gets to attack eight times per round, but also causes lesser foes to have to instantly check morale just for the fact that he's attacking them!

Those are some huge perks, though not without their own parallels for the magic-user who achieves the level of Wizard. (Clerics don't appear in Chainmail.)

So here then are my own house-rules for the fighter: An 8th-level fighter is known as a Weapon-master (or Sword-master) rather than a “Superhero.” (Sorry, but "Superhero" sounds pretty dumb.) Opponents of 2 Hit Dice or less facing a known weapon-master must make a morale check or fall back before him. (Here I'm thinking of a scene in the first Wheel of Time book where Queen Morgase's guard are terrified at facing Rand Al'Thor--who nobody even knows can channel yet, let alone that he is the Dragon Reborn--just because he carries a "heron-mark sword," which only the most skill warriors in Jordan's world bear.)

Fighters (including dwarves, elves, and halflings) may make additional attacks per round as follows: A fighter may divide his attacks so as to attack one Hit Dice of opponent per level of the fighter. The highest HD opponent must be taken into account first, since more powerful or skilled opponents by necessity require the fighter's attention.

For example, a Weaponmaster (8th-level fighter) may attack an ogre (4+1 HD) twice, or two ogres once each. If the ogre is accompanied by ten orcs (1HD each), the fighter may attack any five opponents (4HD + 4x1HD) or attack the ogre twice. He may choose to focus on the orcs five times so as to thin out their numbers or may attack the ogre twice, but the presence of the ogre in striking range diverts enough of his attention that he cannot attack the orcs eight times—as he could without the higher-level monster nearby. 

This should serve to give the fighter a nice edge in fights against swarms of lesser opponents without making other classes useless--everyone still gets just one attack per round on a giant or dragon, for example, but the fighter can mow through the orcs nearly as fast as the magic-user can fireball them.

Now on to weapons and tactics:

Two-weapon Fighting: Any character can use a dagger or hand-axe in their off-hand, in which case they can use their dexterity missile bonus in place of their strength bonus to attack (not damage) rolls. Obviously this is only a benefit to characters with a 13 or greater dexterity.

Flanking: If two opponents manage to get on opposite sides of an enemy, each gets a +2 to their attack. This increases to +4 for four opponents working at 90 degree angles and +6 for six opponents working together. Creatures larger or smaller than man-sized may find it relatively easy to escape such flanking maneuvers (stepping over or under one of the attackers) at the DM's discretion, but a knight might want to avoid letting himself get completely surrounded by the angry mob of peasants. Putting one's back to a wall or that of a companion means that the maximum bonus to attack is +2.

Such flanking maneuvers always assume that the attackers are attempting to trip up, throw down, or otherwise immobilize their opponent in addition to making their basic attacks.

"Light" Blades: Characters wielding short swords, rapiers, or other such "light" weapons may also use their dexterity missile bonus in place of their strength bonus to attack (not damage) rolls.

Spears and Pole-arms: In addition to being usable from the second rank of a formation and being able to be set to receive a charge (doing double-damage on a hit), a person wielding a spear or pole-arm automatically gets the initiative in the first round of combat with a given foe using a shorter weapon, reflecting that weapon's greater reach.

Armor-cracking Weapons: Battle-axes, maces, and light crossbows get a +1 to hit against medium (chain) or heavy (plate) armor. Warhammers get a +1 vs. heavy (plate) armor. Heavy crossbows get a +2 vs. medium and heavy armor, but can only be fired every other round. Whether this affects creatures with "natural" armor is up to the DM.

Rapid-fire: Bows can be fired twice per round. A fighter using a bow can fire it either twice per round or the same number of times he can against lesser enemies, as explained above.

Missiles in Active Combat: Missile weapons cannot safely be fired into active combat, but if someone wants to try, the attack roll is made at -4, and a miss means an automatic attack against the ally engaging the target. This attack rolls as if a 1st level character, but any bonuses for strength (but not dexterity) or magic are still applicable.

Grappling: (Note: These rules are rough, and subject to changing on the fly depending on the actual situation.) Any character may attempt to grapple another simply by rolling to hit, though doing so automatically loses initiative. If the hit is successful, the target cannot move or attack for one round, and cannot do so in subsequent rounds unless he makes a saving throw vs. paralyzation. The attacker can attack barehanded (for 1d3 damage) or with a dagger (1d4) each round without breaking his grip.

I'm sure I'll have more entries here eventually, but these are the ones that have come up in my years of actual play.

D is for Demi-Humans

The original Kingdoms of Kalamar booklets, as well as the D&D3 Sourcebook, work elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings into the setting mostly by noting where they fit among the human population centers, but also giving elves and dwarves a few cities of their own and a couple of footnotes in history. Seriously, that's it. The most notable thing any demi-human has apparently ever done in the known history of the world is cursing the King of Brandobia with triplets so that they could squabble over daddy's empire, Charlemagne's-sons-style. Other than that, the entire emphasis on humanity.

The reason is pretty simple: KoK was originally conceived as a systemless setting, one that could be used for GURPS or Rolemaster or Tunnels & Trolls just as easily as AD&D. Each of those have their own takes on demi-human races, so why bog the setting down with AD&D's assumptions of mutli-classing vs. level limits?

Now later books, like the KoK Player's Handbook and some of the splatbooks, did contain more details--primarily in the form of a dozen sub-races for each of the playable races of D&D3. This, as with many of the 3e mutations of Kalamar, tended to erode the setting's uniqueness of being a realistic, rare-magic, humanocentric, yet (unlike Harn, which came with its own system) thoroughly D&Dish world with a minimum of canon to have to master. Indeed, when you've got a few dozen demi-human sub-races to choose from, each with its own description, culture, and perks, while human characters are just treated as the regular old baseline, you inevitably end up with a party of mostly non-humans.

B/X D&D largely averts that by having race-as-class and level limits. You don't end up with every halfling being a thief, nor every thief a halfling--that being such a common player choice that the Forgotten Realms portrayed halflings as a race of somewhat venial con-men while Dragonlance simply turned the race into the kleptomaniac kender.

Race-as-class, by limiting the selection of non-humans, shapes the game world towards humanity. Want to play a cleric or a thief? Then you'll have to play a human. Want to play a single-classed wizard? Human. Want to continue into high-level play? Human again. Indeed, the mere fact that there are four human classes to three demi-human classes in B/X means that you're going to end up with a party that is mostly human, which fits perfectly with the Kingdoms of Kalamar.

However, race-as-class does require some in-setting explanation for players who want to know why they can't play a dwarven fighter-cleric or whatever. So here's what I've derived out of my interpretations of both B/X and the Kalamar setting:

First, human history in Tellene--at least as known by those in the present--only goes back about a thousand years. Obviously, the world is far older than that, and there were many great empires by the Dejy, demi-humans, and even monsters that rose and fell on the mainland long before the rest of mankind emerged from Svimolz. The elves, dwarves, and halflings we see today lack the knowledge and might of their ancestors: An elf today is limited to the 10th level of experience due to the slow fading of his people, but the elflords of old knew no such constraints.

The present age is the age of Man because the humans are the chosen people of Law. This is why only humans can become clerics and why the human passion for taming the wilderness is without precedent in the history of Tellene. Even though halflings are nominally allied with Law and both dwarves and elves will sometimes ally with Law against pure Chaos, none of them had the passion for imposing order on the world or the blessing of the Saints of Law that humans have. Consequently, humans are presently the only race with no upper limit to their advancement (though 14th level is probably as high as the vast majority will ever go).

Nevertheless, humans share the world with many other races, including,

Dwarves (Adurek) aren't just short, bearded humans, but a race of fleshy earth elementals, much as described in the Dwimmermount campaign. I actually like the idea that "baby" dwarves are literally carved from stone and given life, but that particular detail may be nixed already by campaign canon--one of my players has a dwarf character who wears a wedding ring. While no details about his wife and children (if any) have yet emerged, this obviously mitigates the idea that dwarves have no real concept of gender. Nevertheless, I like the idea too much to let it go, so I may work it into the campaign at some point.

In any case, the dwarves of Tellene are deeply tied to earth and stone on an almost empathic level. They are often thought of as greedy, but what they are actually obsessed with is beauty that lasts. They love gold so much because unlike iron and steel, it never rusts, and unlike silver, it never tarnishes. They love gemstones for much the same reason. But they also love more base materials that others overlook. A dwarven clan that discovered a hill of solid granite lwould consider it a treasure beyond measure, and would spend a thousand years shaping it into a monument-city of such beauty as to make even a dull-hearted human weep. And if it were ever stolen from them, they would spend another thousand years and the blood of a hundred thousand dwarves to get it back and take vengeance on the thieves who stole it.

Any dwarf of name level may create magic items appropriate to their race: Weapons, armor, items of metal and stone.

The Elves (Lathlani) claim to be the eldest of the many races of Tellene. Even so, they are a fading people, withdrawing into increasingly shrinking forests and wilderlands as humankind continues to spread abroad. They do not rule great kingdoms as men do, but rather cities and strongholds of surpassing beauty. Most PC elves are Lathlani (High Elves) and have dark hair, pale skin, and light eyes. 

There are other sub-races of elves. Wood-elves (Aralarai) are a sub-race of the Lathlani. While rustic by the standards of their cousins, they still have some innate magical ability. The Doulathan, or grey elves, have hair of blonde, platinum blonde, or even white, and are, if possible, even more arrogant than their Lathlani cousins. There are also rumors of “wild elves” who live so deep in the forests that they have never met mortal men, and “shadow elves” who live deep beneath the earth and have never known the light of the moons. 

Elves are intrinsically magical and have a martial culture, so all elves are both fighters and magic-users (though in my home campaign, wood-elves are a combination of hunter and magic-user). Wood elves seldom bother with the heavy books that most elves and magic-users are known for; in each of their villages stands an irminsul into which is carved all of the spells known to that tribe. Any member of the tribe can study it to memorize their spells each day or before setting on a journey.

Halflings (Gurin) are found throughout Tellene, though they are more concentrated in the northern lands and cities. Some legends say that they once ruled a pleasant realm deep in the Wild Lands. Most peoples scoff at the idea; how could such a small and weak folk ever hold a land of their own? The Gurin themselves do not speak of the subject. They are treated as unwanted refugees by most other than the dwarves; sadly, the halfling love of open sky and rolling hills means that few would wish to settle in or near the high mountain holts the dwarves favor.

Halflings are indeed a stealthy folk, getting a +1 to all surprise checks and being able to move silently or hide in shadows as a thief of the same level. Despite these bonuses, prejudice against the Small Folk is such that few thieves guilds will admit them. No halfling may begin play as a thief—most simply lack the mechanical skill to open locks and disarm traps—but if they have at least a 16 Dexterity and can make contact with a thieves' guild willing to admit them, a halfling may be able to progress as a thief indefinitely.

Finally, thanks to their small size meaning they need less calories (though they are big eaters when they have the luxury) combined with their natural stealth and skill with missile weapons means that a halfling working alone or with other halflings gets a +1 to his chance of foraging and hunting.

I'll be the first to admit that my conception of the demi-human races was shaped first and foremost by The Lord of the Rings, but I do like adding elements of other sources as well. For example, the elves of my Tellene are not necessarily good, but like the faerie folk of Three Hearts and Three Lions, are a fey and dangerous people to mere mortals. Being neutral, they are just as often at war with human civilization as they are with the forces of Chaos.

The halflings I've come to love as a race. Unlike Middle-earth, where the Shire benefited from the guardianship of the rangers and a particularly powerful wizard, the halflings of Tellene have been left to their own devices, and long ago lost their own homeland. In many ways, I imagine them being like the Jews in Medieval Europe--suffered for a time when they are thought to be useful, but then expelled at the whim of future rulers. Consequently, the Shire-less Gurin are a tougher race than the Shire-folk--or perhaps reflect the innate toughness of Tolkien's little people in times of crisis.

C is for Class

Repost from http://otherworldminiatures.co.uk

To class or not to class? That is the question.

A good friend and I have been kicking around a classless system for a bit, but there's a very good reason why distinct character classes remain a staple of RPGs, both of the pencil-and-paper and MMO type: They provide a solid archetype to hang your character on, a one-word description that instantly tells someone what they are:

Fighter: A warrior, whether a noble knight or wandering sellsword; Conan, King Arthur, Aragorn, etc.
Cleric: A holy warrior or mystic, blessed by God or the gods with powers beyond mortal ken.
Magic-user: The archetypical wizard, like Gandalf or Merlin . . . or one less skilled and noble, like Schmendrick from The Last Unicorn.
Thief: The rogue, the trickster, like the Grey Mouser or Cudgel, a man who lives by his wits rather than by the strength of his sword-arm or by mystic powers.

(B/X treats each demi-human as its own "class" as well as a race, but we'll get to that in the next installment.)

AD&D of course introduced a number of "sub-classes," which got picked up on by later additions. Unfortunately, many of those sub-classes are either so specific to their literary sources or else aren't thought through in terms of how they relate to the existing classes that the very idea of the archetype is lost.

Paladin: Hogar from Three Hearts and Three Lions, but with a few other abilities co-opted from the cleric. Seriously, if we already have a "holy warrior" archetype, why do we need two?
Ranger: Strider from LotR, right down to being the only fighter-type who can use a crystal ball.
Druid: The pagan, nature-worshiping priest. Had the cleric retained something of its quasi-Christian roots, this would have been a cool concept, but given that you soon had clerics for gods of every alignment and sphere of influence--including nature--one wonders why we should bother with a druid.
Assassin: Thief who sucks at picking locks and backstabs a lot.

Unearthed Arcana and 3rd Edition added a couple more:

Barbarian: Basically, Conan the Cimmerian, with a touch of Fafhrd.
Cavalier: A knightly fighter with a lot of special abilities. Why bother playing a fighter if you can have one of these? Or why playing one of these if it's just a rich, noble-born fighter?
Thief-Acrobat: Not necessarily a bad idea--basically a Western ninja--but poorly implemented. Basically, you play as a thief until 6th level, then sacrifice further progress in a bunch of "dungeoneering" skills (e.g., remove traps) to get a bunch of abilities in leaping and tumbling that are far more interesting and useful in combat. It did, however, serve as a model for what would eventually be called prestige classes.
Bard: A somewhat musically-based jack-of-all trades, and master of none.


The monk is is the only sub-class that actually stands out as its own archetype, albeit one that isn't wholly appropriate to D&D's default European setting. I have other problems with the way the class is implemented, but that's for another time. The bard could be a strong archetype--the wandering minstrel, the spell-singer--but definitely needs work to stand out as anything other than a "red mage."

Following the 3rd Edition craze, in which every sourcebook had to offer new races, classes, and prestige classes, the Kalamar Player's Guide had its own offerings. Some, like the brigand and spellsinger, were pretty pointless. Others, like the Basirian Dancer (basically, a sword-dancing variant on the bard) and shaman (similar to the druid, but gaining their power through special "fetishes"--idols, not kinks), were set solidly in the Kalamar setting and with a slightly better implementation would have been excellent offerings.


In any case, as we can see, the original 4 classes are broad archetypes, while the sub-classes impose certain assumptions (based on the literary sources that inspired D&D in the 70s) on your setting. That is not to say that I consider the original four (which didn't include the thief) as the only possible archetypes. I think D&D could use a hunter class--not as a sub-class of the fighter, but as its own woodsman / barbarian / ranger / Robin Hood archetype. And if the cleric is based in a view of Law that is "properly" quasi-Christian (going back to its roots), there's definitely a place for a shaman/druid-type "pagan" priest.

Since I think I should provide some gameable material at least once in a while, here's my take on the Hunter class:

Hunter

Hunter Experience Table
Level	XP	Hit Dice (d8)	Saving Throw	Camouflage	Climb Walls	Herbalism
1	0	1	14	10	85
2	2500	2	13	15	86
3	5000	3	12	20	87	15%
4	10,000	4	11	25	88	20%
5	20,000	5	10	30	89	25%
6	40,000	6	9	35	90	30%
7	80,000	7	8	40	91	35%
8	150,000	8	7	55	92	40%
9	300,000	9	6	65	93	45%
10	450,000	9+3 hp	5	75	94	50%
11	600,000	9+6 hp	4	85	95	55%
12	750,000	9+9 hp	4	95	96	55%
13	900,000	9+12 hp	4	100	97	60%
14	1,050,000	9+15hp	4	100	98	60%
15	+150,000	+3 hp/level	4	100	99	60%

Prime Attribute: Constitution

Hit Dice: 1d8 (Gains 3 hp/level after 11th level.)

Armor/Shield Permitted: Any medium (i.e. maile) or light (leather) armor, any shield

Weapons Permitted: Any. Hunters use the cleric "to hit" tables.

The Hunter is a man of the frontier.  He may be a ranger in the service of his lord or a barbarian from the wilderlands come down into civilized realms in search of adventure.  Though skilled in fighting, the hunter’s instruction is informal, and thus he lacks the finesse of the fighter or the training to use heavy armor effectively.  Nevertheless, on his own ground he is a force to be reckoned with, able to hide in the vegetation almost as well as a halfling and track his opponents over long distances until the perfect opportunity to strike arises.

 Hunter Abilities

Skulking: Hunters are surprised only on 10 or betteron 2d6; they may surprise others on an 8 or better if wearing light or no armor.

Camouflage:  Hunters are skilled at blending into the background, able to disappear into underbrush, beneath the forest’s carpet of leaves and needles, under a thin layer of sand and dust, or even into the crevice of a rock as long as they are wearing light or no armor.

Climbing walls or cliffs: The percentage chance is what the hunter needs to climb a wall or cliff that others cannot climb without proper equipment. If the wall is more difficult than normal (very slippery, for example), the referee may lower a hunter’s chances of success. In general, if a normal person has a chance to climb a wall, a thief can most likely do it automatically.

Tracking: Hunters are able to track creatures in wilderness and underground environments. The base chance is 90% when in the wilderness, with +2% for every creature more than one in a party to be tracked. There is a cumulative penalty of -25% for every hour of rain, or -10% for every day that has passed since tracks were made. In underground environments, rangers must watch a creature to be tracked for 3 turns prior to tracking it, to observe its manner. The base chance underground is 65%, modified in the following manner:

-40% if the creature enters a secret door

-20% if the creature enters a concealed door or passage

-10% if the creature enters a normal door or otherwise takes a deviation from a path

No adjustment if the creature continues on a path without much deviation.

Hunting: Hunters, naturally, receive a +1 to attempts to hunt and forage.  This increases to +2 at 7th level.  At 10th level, the hunter can provide enough food for a party of ten with ease in most areas and with an 80% certainty even in the desert wastelands.

Set Spear:  When facing a charging opponent a hunter with a spear may "set" it, causing double damage on a hit.

Herbalism: Starting at 3rd level, a hunter can begin to make poultices and potions, with a success rate as shown.  These are effectively half-strength potions of healing, delusion, or heroism.  The herbs that create these potions must be gathered fresh and lose their potency after 1-3 days.  The hunter can also create potions that cure disease or slow poison.  These must be made at the time they are needed, since the herbs must be gathered for the specific disease or poison.  Finding the correct herbs takes 1d4 hours. 

At 7^th level, the hunter may make potions just like a magic-user.  The costs will typically run about 200 gp and two weeks of time per level of the spell the potion emulates, but the referee can set costs or require special ingredients as he sees fit. 

Stronghold: At 9^th level, the hunter may construct a stronghold.  This will typically be a place of natural beauty with natural defenses, such as a cliff overlooking a waterfall.  Once the stronghold is constructed, the hunter will attract 1d6 hunters of levels 1-3, and 2d4 animal companions, some of which may be magical in nature (e.g., a werebear or pegasus) at the referee’s discretion.

Alternatively, a hunter may opt to receive a title and construct a fortress as a fighter and gain normal men-at-arms as such.

For the Shaman/Druid, I'm thinking about adopting something similar to what Grognardia came up with (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), and then adapting it to my own purposes. I like the idea that the Neutral powers "steal" clerics from the Law, but that's definitely a new spin on the setting.

It also occurs to me that having created classes for five out of the six main ability scores, I should create a class based on Charisma just to complete the set.

B is for Bonuses

Okay, so which one of us has the "craft: raft" skill, and which one has "boating"?

Unlike both OD&D and AD&D, B/X has a universal set of ability bonuses that begin at relatively low numbers (13 instead of 14-16 for AD&D). It does not, however, develop any kind of universal skill system. As per previous editions, the kind of actions players might typically take in the course of adventuring (other than combat) operate on an ad-hoc basis:

• Literacy and Languages: Determined by Intelligence and race
• Stealth (aka surprise): 1-2 on 1d6 (33%)
• Stealth (aka evasion in the wilderness): 10-90%, depending on relative party size
• Search (secret doors, traps): 1 on 1d6 (16%) (1-2 for elves and dwarves for secret doors; 1-2 for dwarves on traps - 33%)
• Listen: 1-2 on 1d6 (33%)
• Climb: No odds given, but presumably possible for any character with the right equipment
• Foraging/Hunting: 1 on 1d6 (16%)
• Maintain Course (the opposite of becoming lost): On a 1d6 - 2-6 (83%) in clear or grasslands; 3-6 (67%) in woods, hills, mountains, oceans, and barren; and 4-6 (50%) in swamp, jungle, or desert.
• Diplomacy: 9 or better on 2d12 indicates a favorable reaction, with 12 or better indicating a very favorable reaction

With the exception of diplomacy and languages, none of the above "skills" are modified in any way by a character's abilities or class, and only a few are modified by one's race.

In addition, certain classes and races get additional (non-magical) abilities:

• Thieves of course get their special abilities, which increase with level.
• In addition to a better chance to detect traps, dwarves have a 1-in-3 chance to find slanting passages, shifting walls, and new construction.
• Halflings can hide in shadows in a 1-in-3 chance underground, and hide in natural foliage 90% of the time.

Frankly, the skills listed cover about 90% of what a party of PCs is likely to do in the course of your typical dungeon-crawl or hex-crawl. The time honored roll-a-d20-under-the-appropriate-ability method really does cover most of the rest. 

However, there are some limitations to the above:

First, there's little ability to improve one's skills as time goes on. Granted that most of a chracter's time is going to be spent improving skill intrinsic to their profession (class), but why would a 1st level magic-user and a 12th-level fighter have exactly the same chance to find food in the wilderness or sneak up on a band of orcs? 

Second, there's no real ability to customize one's character for a given background. Granted, B/X doesn't exactly focus on role-playing as an art of character study. What a PC does once play begins is far more important than what he did before first entering the dungeon. Even so, why should a city-born wizard be able to hunt just as well as the barbarian warrior?

For that matter, why should a whole party wearing plate armor have the same chance to surprise as a lone character in no-to-light armor?

Now in my younger days, that never bothered me. Negotiating ad-hoc bonuses for your character based on background, abilities, and situations was all part of the game when I grew up. But my best player, who pretty much cut his teeth on 3e, wanted to have a better quantifiable idea of what his character could or could not do--and be able to customize his character for a particular concept.

Okay, fair enough. The question was how to do it without devolving into the granularity of d20 D&D, which I really don't have any patience for anymore.

Well, the first question is whether to keep the various d6 rolls, or to come up with something else. After some thought, I decided to take a bit of advice I heard way back in my days of reading all the various OD&D boards and blogs and fall back on the ol' 2d6, using the reaction chart as a base:

2          Critical Failure

3-5      Failure

6-8      Neutral (or a minor success on an easy task)

9-11    Success

12       Great Success

A bit of calculation showed that when rolling an unmodified 2d6, one had the following percent chance to roll the following numbers and above:

2 - 100%

3 - 97%

4 - 92%

5 - 83%

6 - 72%

7 - 58%

8 - 42%

9 - 27%

10 - 17%

11 - 8%

12 - 3%

In other words, rolling a 10 or above on 2d6 had about the same chance as rolling a 1 on a 1d6, rolling a 9 on a 2d6 had a slightly smaller chance than rolling a 1-2 on a 1d6, and so forth. Using 2d6 instead of 1d6 gave a bit more granularity.

So what if I converted all of those skills a chance on a 2d6 instead of the various other dice?

• Stealth (aka surprise): 9 or higher to surprise, with characters using light to no armor able to add the bonus of the least dextrous character in the group to the roll. This would give those fighters with a high dexterity a good reason to forgo heavy armor in certain situations.
• Search (secret doors, traps): 10 or higher. Dwarves and elves get a +1 to detect secret doors, and dwarves also get a +1 to find traps.
• Listen: 9 or higher.
• Climb: Still subject to having the right equipment and a bit of fiat.
• Foraging/Hunting: 10 or higher.
• Maintain Course (the opposite of becoming lost): 7 or higher, with a -2 penalty in woods, hills, mountains, oceans, and barren, and a -3 penalty in swamp, jungle, or desert. (Maybe even a -4 penalty in the jungle.)

Per the pattern set by the given skills, anything easy takes a 7 or better, anything moderately hard takes a 9 or better, and anything hard takes a 10 or better. Skills directly related to a particular ability (like the stealth/surprise check above, or diplomacy/the reaction roll) can be modified by the bonus for that ability.

Okay, but why bother? Simply put, because the slightly greater granularity gives me a bit of room to introduce other bonuses and penalties. For example, foraging might only take a 10 or better in the light woodlands, but in the desert might take an 11 or even 12 (especially to find water). But on the other hand, I could introduce backgrounds that give characters small bonuses to those kinds of checks: Perhaps a person with the desert nomad background gets a +2 to forage in the desert, giving him the same or better chance of finding food and water than most other characters have in their home territories.

So how would this map to the various skills found in 3e?

Appraise - 10 or better on 2d6, modified by Int

Balance - 2d6 modified by Dex, DM sets target number based on circumstances.

Bluff - Use Reaction Table, modified by Cha

Climb - Almost always possible if character has right equipment and enough time

Concentration - No such skill; being hit always disrupts a spell

Craft - I'd have to work this out based on character background; most PCs would have spent the majority of their lives in their chosen class/profession

Decipher Script - Thief ability

Diplomacy - Use Reaction Table, modified by Cha

Disable Device - Thief ability, or by player correctly figuring out the trigger

Disguise - Use Reaction Table, modified by Cha, penalty based on absurdity of disguise

Escape Artist - Saving throw vs. Paralysis, modified by Dex, at a -4 for rope and a -8 for shackles.

Forgery - Special circumstances, requiring DM fiat

Gather Information - Ye old "rumor" table

Handle Animal - Reaction Table, modified by Cha or Wis (whichever is higher)

Heal - Modified by Int, 10 or higher heals 1 hp, 12 or higher heals 1d4; one chance per wound only

Hide - Modified by Dex, roll depends on amount of cover available. Only thieves and halflings can hide in nothing but shadows

Intimidate - Target rolls against their morale, modified by intimidating character's Cha and circumstances (actually heating irons in front of a prisoner subtracts 2 from their morale)

Jump - DM fiat, depending on Str, Dex, and how much is being carried

Knowledge - Frankly, I think PCs should have to learn most of their knowledge by actually playing,and we all know that if the knowledge is essential to letting the adventure continue, the DM will make sure somebody knows it. But for those occasions where a roll is needed, 10 or better, modified by Int.

Listen - 9 or better

Move Silently - Use surprise (9 or better, modified by Dex if wearing light or no armor); only thieves can move with absolutely no sound at all.

Open Lock - Thief ability

Perform - Reaction Table, modified by Cha

Profession - Like Craft, depends on PC background, but few would have gotten past the apprentice stage

Ride - All PCs are assumed to be able to ride, and all fighters and clerics can use a warhorse in battle. 

Search - 10 or higher. Dwarves and elves get a +1 to detect secret doors, and dwarves also get a +1 to find traps.

Sense Motive - Role play it out.

Sleight Of Hand - Thief skill (pick pockets), though in certain circumstances, let a PC roll 10 or better, modified by Dex. (Yeah, Bilbo, trying to pick that troll's pocket was a great idea.)

Speak Language - Covered under Int ability

Spellcraft - Covered under cleric, magic-user, and elf classes

Spot - Handled by modifying your chance to be surprised.

Survival - As above for foraging, hunting, and avoiding getting lost.

Swim - All characters are assumed to be able to swim. Swimming for long distances, in rough seas, or cold water will start to require the character to roll saving throws vs. death modified by Con to avoid drowning.

Tumble - Depends on what the character wants to do. A lightly-armored PC trying to tumble past an opponent might make a save vs. wands modified by dexterity to avoid taking a hit. 

Use Magic Device - Thief ability

Use Rope - Like any real adventurer couldn't. Why do we need this skill again?

So, can PC's improve their skills? Sure. Instead of having the rangers of the Kalalali Forest give the PCs gold and magic items, what if they trained them to have a +2 chance at their forage and find direction checks over the course of a summer? Instead of making improving skills an automatic at any given level, why not let the PCs seek out training and/or sacrifice XP to learn them. That way, those who want to completely focus on their class (like that wizard who is utterly obsessed with learning that next spell) don't have to make the exchange?

Obviously, this is an idea in progress, but I think it has a lot of merit. I'll let you know how it does in play.

A is for Alignment

Despite being originally marketed as a system-neutral world, the Kingdoms of Kalamar were definitely built around the tropes of AD&D, including its nine-point alignment system.

Now, in B/X D&D, there are only three alignments, or rather two alignments and a middle ground: "Law (or Lawful) is the belief that everything should follow an order, and that obeying rules is the natural way of life. . . Chaos (or Chaotic) is the opposite of Law. It is the belief that life is random, that chance and luck rule the world. . . Neutrality (or Neutral) is the belief that there is a balance between Law and Chaos." (B11)

The problem is that, as described at least, these are specifically called "ways of life" (B11), but as described seem more like philosophies than sides to be aligned with. There is no sense of cosmic importance attached, and therefore no reason (other than tradition) that these "ways of life" should come with their own special languages.

Curious, I pulled my old Holmes' edit of D&D. He doesn't describe what alignment means at all, but merely tells you what the five alignments in his edition are (LG, CG, N, LE, and CE), that each has an alignment tongue, and some rough examples of what playing an alignment might mean in play (chiefly that torturing opponents for information isn't exactly compatible with the concept of "good."

OD&D's Men & Magic was even less helpful, simply calling alignment a "stance" and giving no guidelines at all beyond a listing of the various monsters in each of the three original alignments. My understanding is that this was because OD&D's predecessor, the fantasy supplement for Chainmail, used alignment mostly as a guide as to what kind of creatures each of the players could select for their wargame scenarios. OD&D simply assumes a passing familiarity on the subject.

Not getting much guidance from any of the sources that led up to B/X, I actually consulted the dictionary. The definition that best fits the D&D scenario is "a state of agreement or cooperation among persons, groups,nations, etc., with a common cause or viewpoint." In other words, it's an alliance or a side.

My biggest problem with the 3x3 alignment system is that it loses all sense of being about different sides that a character is aligned with and instead becomes a personal moral preference. In my experience, most PCs gravitate towards the Neutral Good to Chaotic Neutral range, since it lets them pretty much do whatever they want and call it "playing my alignment." Chaotic Good becomes, by default, the "true" good alignment, with Lawful Good relegated to Lawful Stupid.While the Kingdoms of Kalamar don't entirely fall into this trap, there are hints of it, with most of the best gods for adventurers falling into that Good-to-Chaotic corner.

So then, do I simply adopt a 3x3 alignment system for my particular B/X game, or do I stick with the rules as written? Or, perhaps, should I adopt the five-point system of Dr. Holmes?

It was while reading over the Delving Deeper booklets (originally put out by Brave Halfling, but they seem to be dropping the line, sadly) that I had a bit of an epiphany. In the Monster and Treasure Reference, I found the following chart which, rather than treating Neutrality as simply the middle ground between Law and Chaos, treated it as its own distinct side. While I found some of their choices on where exactly to put some of the creatures questionable (orcs are less Chaotic than hobgoblins?), the concept of having Neutrality mean something different than unaligned really clicked with me.

This led to me rethinking alignment in Kalamar, first in regards to its deities, and then extending to its more mortal inhabitants.

The alignment of Law encompasses LG, NG, and LN, and is the side of civilization, order, and banality. Most civilized nations in Tellene would be formally aligned with Law, since its in both the best interest of the rulers and the ruled. Law being Law, there is a tight and well-organized order known as the Church of the Law which encompasses all of the faiths in that spectrum. That's not to say that there's a complete unity, however. The Lawful Neutral religions tend more towards disciplines than a belief in true gods, much like Buddhism in our world (there's a reason that the plane associated with Lawful Neutral in the Great Wheel Cosmology of AD&D is Nirvana). The Neutral Good religions, while formally aligned with the Church of the Law, are viewed as schismatics and potential heretics by those of "pure" Lawful Good.

Chaos, Law's mortal enemy, encompasses the Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Evil, and has some overlap with Neutral Evil. It is the alignment of pure chaos and the demonic, inimical to civilization and possibly to all reality, but nevertheless constantly tempting mortals into its ranks with the promise of pure, unadulterated power. Many otherwise good folk have become minions of Chaos in a moment of weakness. While the powers of Chaos are very powerful individually, their very nature prevents them from coalescing into a form that would utterly destroy Law.

Neutrality is the alignment of nature and Faerie, and encompasses Chaotic Good and True Neutral, with some overlap into Neutral Good. I base this on the fact that B/X elves are listed as Neutral. Though less lethal to mortals than pure Chaos, Neutrality is by no means a safe alignment for the common man, for the Fey powers have their own agendas and their own whims, and many treat mortals as playthings to be enjoyed. Even so, many of the Dejy and Fhokki tribes are firmly aligned with Neutrality, caring not a bit for the stringency of Law but knowing the corrosive effect of Chaos.

In addition to these, there is at least one other alignment. After all, if alignments represent sides in a cosmic struggle rather than merely a spectrum of philosophies, there's no need to limit ourselves to three, or four, or any number at all. While the "Big Three" are the sides most known to the world, there may certainly be others.

Chief among these is the New Order, encompassing Lawful Evil and much of Neutral Evil, and which is not wholly hostile to some of the disciplines of Law(ful Neutral). The New Order, formerly called the Elder Fane, was driven underground and thought destroyed millennia ago, but in recent centuries the Overlord and his entourage were released from their prisons (as those familiar with Kalamar's setting already know). The New Order has aggressively both inserted itself into the institutions of Law so as to subvert them to its own purposes and built kingdoms surrounding the worship of its own dark gods (such as the hobgoblin kingdom of Norga-Krangel or the Theocracy of Slen). Only a few know of its existence as yet, and they have not yet been able to mount an effective resistance.

With three players on the cosmic battlefield, and a fourth on the rise, it should be interesting to see which the PC's align themselves with. After all, Law may not appreciate the activities of lovable rogues--but it may well need them if civilization as the peoples of Tellene know it are to survive.

A Place For Every Adventure (Where I'm Coming From, Part 5)

A couple of things came together to result in this post. First, as I've been working on my Wyrd Kalamar notes and building up my own campaign, I've been spending a lot of time re-reading the Sourcebook and pouring over the Atlas with a particular eye for places that I'd dismissed as being not all that interesting to set a campaign in before, like Paru'Bor (too stodgy for free-wheeling adventurers, I thought). The second was that I really liked the original Blackmoor and Rob Conley's serial-numbers-filed-off Blackmarsh, and wanted to find a place that I could drop it in with some modifications to Tellene.

After some search on the map, I realized that Narr-Rytar was perfect: A city state far in the north on a huge body of water. On the Atlas, you could see where the river suddenly turned twenty or more miles westward, diverting around a low-lying area of streams and lakes that was almost certainly marsh or swamp. The city was surrounded by woodlands of rolling hills, and lay north of a vast mix of woodland and steppe (Dhrokker) which could approximate the Haak. And of course, it lay far off from a "Great Kingdom" that had shrunk from its original size.

That got me wondering just how many other "typical" or iconic settings fit into Tellene. For example, before deciding to break out the ol' KoK books (the Atlas was the winning argument, really), I contemplated digging out the old Greyhawk box. I had both the original and the From the Ashes, the latter of which had a nice 6-mile to the hex map of the area immediately surrounding the titular city, which included a pretty awesome number of biomes for the PCs to quickly wander into. In Tellene, I found Prompeldia, City of Thieves, right on the edge of the Elos Desert, but also near a forest and a northern plains area (Pekal) and within spitting distance of pretty much any race one could care to introduce.

So that brought me back to Paru'Bor. Once I got over my 21st American bias that Lawful Good = stodgy oppression = Lawful Stupid, Paru'Bor's rigid adherance to Law and Truth made a lot of sense. It was, after all, a relatively small nation surrounded by a sea of chaos: Tokis is falling to pieces even as it struggles to conquer Pekal, Pekal is a land of sorcery with a lot of fae in the blood for all that it's an allied nation, Ek'Gakel is falling apart at the seams and overrun by barbarian Dejy, Shynabyth is literally a land of godless barbarians, O'Par is untrustworthy, etc. I suddenly realized that I had a perfect candidate for the "Realm of Man" described in module B2: Keep on the Borderlands. (A module that I've always considered to present the iconic D&D setting.)

Actually, Paru'Bor is also very similar to the Forgotten Realms' Cormyr, which led me to look again at Pekal as an analogue to the Dalelands--a bit more organized, true, but still very similar in geography and outlook, at least if one assumes that the wetter eastern area has a lot of small woodlands and, well, dales dotting the landscape. Of course, Tellene is a bit grittier: Where the Dalelands just had to deal with a couple of rogue city-states, Pekal is threatened by a whole empire.

Geanevue is of course pretty much a smaller version of Waterdeep--no surprise given the hand Ed Greenwood had in its development. The northeastern Renaaria Bay and the Wild Lands likewise make a fine Sword Coast, vikings and all.

Want to run the old Slavers series of modules? Norgra-Krangel makes a good Pomarj, and the city-states of the Elos Desert a good Wild Coast.

The Giants and Drow series? Korak and the Elenion Mountains.

I asked Jolly and his crew on the Kenzerco forums whether I just reading all this into the setting, or whether this entirely intentional for the purpose of making it easier to 'port other campaign material into KoK. David Kenzer answered back just a couple of hours later,

If there are similarities, it's purely subconscious on my part -- I ran greyhawk for many years prior to working on Kalamar. The Kingdom of kalamar itself contains a lot of material from my home game, which was set in the Great Kingdom, but Adama Niepomnik, one of the original K&C Krew, wrote the first draft of that nation, so it's not a perfect analogue either (he ran FR last).

That made a lot of sense to me, as I've done it before myself, even to the point of lifting whole names and concepts into my homebrew campaign without meaning to. I certainly don't think "cribbing" in a fantasy world, whether intentionally or subconsciously is any kind of sin. Pretty much every "vanilla" setting is cribbing from Prof. Tolkien as interpreted through the eyes of D&D, after all. (Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Orcs, even the concept of mixed parties of adventurers, etc.)

Even if certain locales were deliberately patterned after some "iconic" settings, that doesn't make KoK just a pastache of them. Tellene has a far richer sense of place, culture, and history than any other setting (with the possible exception of Harn, which I don't have any personal experience with) as well as a number of unique twists of its own.

And this is what ultimately drew me back to this setting. Remember how I said I had gamer ADD? Still do, and as I said then, given my limited time, I needed a world big enough and diverse enough to be able to satisfy my many impulses, one that at the same time is detailed enough that I don't have to spend vast amounts of time creating local area maps, names, and cultures, but still open enough to give me room to plant my own adventures and ideas. No metaplot. And I found all this in the little collection of books sitting beside my desk.

Okay, enough with fanboying on the setting. Over the next several posts, I'll look at how to take an intrinsically AD&D setting and "convert" it to fit B/X D&D. Less philosophizing and a bit more crunch.

The Atlas (Where I'm Coming From, Part 4)

Yeah, that title's getting recursive. I should probably do something about that.

So in my previous post, I wrote that I rejected Greyhawk for being to, well, uniform in its "Europeaness" and the Realms for having too much meta-plot . . . and that this this led me to reconsider my old Kingdoms of Kalamar material.

In particular, the Atlas.

I'm one of the lucky ones who got a chance to buy the atlas before Kenzerco started publishing primarily through pdfs. It's a beautful piece of work, showing the whole world in a physical map at 25 miles per inch and at 500-1000' elevations. Not only the major cities and towns, but every single village with more than 500 people, every major road and minor path, every navigable river and major creek is shown in glorious detail.

Only the major geographic details (i.e., those shown and labeled on that original air-brushed maps) are labeled, so there are plenty of rivers and hills with no name, and plenty of potential small forests and swamps for the DM to place as he sees fit.

Basically, it's the same scale as the Forgotten Realms' maps of the Dalelands and the Sword Coast, but for the whole continent.

I've found two downsides to the level of detail in the Atlas. First, it takes a bit more work to drop in a pre-made module (other than those made for KoK, of course). I can usually find a place that looks close enough to the area described in a module, but it does take a bit of re-working, something changing distances or fudging what I see on the map to drop in a marsh or whatever. That's not terrible, but it does mean that I can't just drop in locales fresh "out of the box."

The second problem is that the level of "realistic" detail necessarily defines the sort of campaign you're going to run. This can be good or bad depending on what you want.

On the bad side, if you want to run a rather gonzo exploration campaign defined by epic and strange landmarks, KoK may not be for you. This is a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm on those days when I want to create a wierd hexcrawl campaign that runs on the same kind of logic as your standard megadungeon does, the rule-of-fun and rule-of-interesting trumping realism.

On the good side, if you want to run a campaign that proceeds from the versmilitude of a realistic setting, the Atlas combined with the Sourcebook does all of the high-concept work for you--including giving the broad strokes of the weather patterns, area resources, major trade routes, etc.--and then zooms in so as to do a lot of the local work as well. You don't have to come up with names for every settlement; the Atlas does it for you (which can be bad, but I'll deal with that in a later post).

So how do you fit that with the rather high-fantasy assumed in the B/X D&D books? Here, I think we need to look again at the concept of alignment, which deserves its own post, but also with a post over on the Greyhawk Grognard blog from a few years ago:

In some sandbox-type settings, the idea is to explore a wilderness and "clear it out", much like some players are inclined to "clean out" a dungeon or dungeon level before moving on. But the World of Greyhawk fantasy setting, much like the concept of the megadungeon itself (which largely had its genesis in Greyhawk) works a little bit differently. Those "empty" hexes are only empty in the context of adventurers looking for stuff to explore and things to kill. Simply put, in the civilized lands of Greyhawk (and even in the barbarian lands in the northern belt of the map) you're not supposed to go into a given hex with the idea that it is a new realm to be tamed, its inhabitants slain and its lands brought into the sphere of civilization. In many respects, it's just another part of the montage of travel, flyover country where you must travel by necessity in order to get to your ultimate destination. . .  [I]n a setting such as Greyhawk, the theme is not "exploring the wilderness, taming it, and bringing it to the realm of civilization". It's "there are elder places of deep and abiding mystery, which we reach by passing through relatively mundane spaces."

And so it is with Tellene. As it turns out, the maps have a surprising amount of area that is untamed, but even within major civilized areas like the Kingdom of Kalamar itself, there are pockets of wilderness that man has never been able to claim, or else has claimed and lost again to the forces of Chaos. These areas become even more evident with the Atlas's insistance on marking every outpost with more than 500 people--you can see exactly where civilization ends and the true wilderness begins.

In a future post, I'll talk about how I came about restructuring the nine-alignment system assumed by KoK (a holdover from D&D) into the three-fold structure of B/X, and how that impacts my understanding of the world of Tellene. But first, let me finish explaining why I came back to Kalamar.

Return to Kalamar (Where I'm Coming From, Part 3)

So why exactly did I want to play a B/X D&D campaign in Kalamar?

Well, the B/X part was pretty easy. I'd already introduced a group of young players to a mix of Holmes and Mentzer's Expert set, but the lack of legal copies of the rules was hampering to some. The release of legal pdfs of B/X made it possible to not just play a good retroclone of D&D (as good as Labyrinth Lord is), but actually introduce the next generation to the game I grew up with.

All I needed was an initial setting for the campaign.

Here, I have to admit, my "gamer's ADD" was the main problem. As I got back into reading the old fantasy novels that I hadn't given away (precious few of the ones I kept were "game" novels, thank God) and started picking up some of the works in Gary Gygax's famed "Appendix N," I found myself veering back and forth between possible settings for the game, from a kind of fantasy version of ancient Israel lying on the borders of a magitek/steampunk empire, to a Borderlands campaign (ala B2: Keep on the Borderlands) set in a medieval Poland based heavily on Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, to a gonzo fantasy campaign based on Grimm's fairy tales and the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show . . . I just kept jumping around from idea to idea, map to map. Had I the time, I might have even tried to patch them all together Golarion-style (and my hats off to Paizo for that setting, btw), but the responsibilities of work and family (including a new baby) just weren't giving me that time.

It probably didn't help my limited time that I was during that same period immersing myself in the writings of the various blogs and boards of the OSR: Grognardia, Bat in the Attic, B/X Blackrazor, Blood of Prokopius,  the OD&D Discussion Boards, Philotomy's now-defunct site, etc. Had I been able to obtain legal copies of Gary and Dave's original rules, I don't doubt for a moment that I would have started up a game, but alas, I missed the window of opportunity there.

Eventually, it came down to the old addage, "Fish or cut bait." I could spend years studying OD&D, data-mining the rules for clues about its assumed world, philosophizing, endlessly editing my own house rules, and endlessly creating still-born campaign worlds . . . or I could play.

The re-release of the B/X rules settled the rules issue--I could house-rule and create new races and classes to my heart's content, but I had a basic ruleset to start from--but I still had the problem of needing a setting.

I needed a world with a lot of different cultures and situations so that I could indulge my gamer ADD (transitioning the characters from region to region instead of coming up with a new world every week). That leaned against doing Greyhawk, which is pretty much a swords & sorcery mirror-universe of Europe. That's not bad, of course, just not what I needed to satisfy all of my cravings at once.

The Forgotten Realms was a second choice that came to mind. I still have all the materials of my original gray box, though I sadly lost many of the add-ons in subsequent moves. (Losing The Savage Frontier hurts the most, I think.) My biggest problem with the Realms is that after literally decades of novels and modules and a vast overarching metaplot . . . I really don't see any way to make it my own. Granted, I could've just declared that nothing after the gray box was canon, unless I wanted it to be (I liked many of the early novels), but . . .

So that led to me digging back out my Kingdoms of Kalamar material and reading it over. And despite some of the names not really scratching my Tolkien/Greenwood itch, I found myself falling back in love with the setting again.

To be continued . . .

Discovering Kalamar (Where I'm Coming From, Part 2)

It was in the summer of '94 or '95 at DragonCon that I came across a table in the dealer room on which was spread out one of the most beautiful fantasy maps I had ever seen. Curious, I took a step over and struck up a conversation. Ten minutes later, I walked off with a box containing the map (in two halves) and two small booklets that I have poured over ever since.

Here, creatures of dark evil roam the lands in search of prey, while others rule a terrified populace from the safety of their throne rooms. Meanwhile, elven warriors battle expansionist human kingdoms to protect their forest homes, dwarven rebels plot the overthrow of their human conquerors, and the armies of hobgoblin kingdoms grow increasingly powerful.

Spies and spellcasters seek knowledge and power for themselves and those they serve, and strands of their web-like plots reach into cities and towns across the continent. Ruins of ancient empires lie buried beneath burning desert sands, and their stories told in smoky back rooms attract brave fools eager for excitement and quick wealth. The streets are full of the brave and foolhardy, eager to draw steel and strike for little cause, and war between kingdoms is a constant occurrence. The courts of the nobility also hold mystery and intrigue, provided one can master social pressures greater than the threat of a giant’s club or a dragon’s fang.

All this and more awaits you in the Kingdoms of Kalamar, for use with Dungeons & Dragons® and other fantasy gaming systems. (From Kenzerco's website)

I didn't start a campaign in Kalamar at that time, mostly because I was already involved in a long-standing homebrew. I did however find quite a few pieces of inspiration in the Kingdoms that I stole for my world and happily bought the 3rd Edition D&D books when they came out.

Now, I can understand why a lot of people dismiss the setting as "vanilla." It's actually designed that way in the vein of Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms: A world where the DM (GM) can drop in just about anything, set his characters up in just about any Western to Near-Eastern culture, and be ready to go. That is not, in my mind, necessarily a bad thing. After all, D&D is itself a very Western to Near-Eastern game, tapping into the collective legends and archetypes of this part of the world (including, interestingly, the American archetype of the savage frontier). A "vanilla" setting is just a way for the DM to jump past the large-scale world design and into the small-scale adventure and mid-scale campaign design.

However, even the vanilla settings had their own niches and flavors. Greyhawk was a pseudo-Medieval Europe (including knights and a bazillion types of pole-arms) but with pockets of ruins and lost civilizations, free cities of intrigue, and monsters that gave the edges of civilization a definite sword-and-sorcery vibe. The Forgotten Realms, on the other hand, had a very high-fantasy, Tokienish feel, with names that would have been at home in Sindarin, a Northland of scattered city-states separated by leagues upon leagues of untamed wilderness, and numerous evil domains that required strong heroes to hold them back, even for a time. (I'm leaving out Dragonlance for now because it's niche was mostly its meta-plot and the ability of the players to run through it.)

So what is Kalamar's niche? In a word, it feels real.

The setting's strength was that it was at its core a low-magic or at least rare-magic world. There were certainly powerful wizards about, but the fairly deep history provided only gave a handful of instances where events turned on some wizard's magic (such as the elven king cursing the King of Brandobia with fertility, resulting in triplets tearing the kingdom apart). For the most part, kingdoms rise and fall by the sword, not by the spell, the underlying philosophy being that it's easier for a DM to add magic to a setting than to take it away. Therefore, the geography and history, though of course vastly different than earth's, are kept deliberately "realistic," giving one a good base from which to extrapolate additional history and future events. Magic is very much a part of the setting, but is kept subtle enough in the core material that the GM has plenty of room to add it, without having to remove any core elements like airships, wizards' conclaves, or world-shaking cataclysms if he doesn't want them in there.

I have to admit, I really loved this setting.

The other core element that makes Kalamar an excellent campaign setting is the commitment of its designers to never advance the timeline or add any meta-plot. Unlike Greyhawk, there is no continent-wide war whose outcome has been pre-determined, and unlike the Realms, there is no Time of Troubles in which the gods walked among men and changed the course of history. The world is the setting for your campaign, not somebody else's. And frankly, as a DM who loved the Realms grey box but detested the Avatar Trilogy and everything that followed, that's a wonderful thing.

Sadly, despite the lack of meta-plot, there were some changes (or at least some development directions) that were forced upon the Kingdoms of Kalamar when it became an official setting for 3rd Edition. The necessary "crunch" quota for a 3rd Edition setting (races, classes, prestige classes, feats, etc.) took KoK in some directions that I never felt really suited it. By attempting to make the setting fit with 3e's assumptions, the world lost much of its rare-magic charm, a subject that I'll return to in a future post.

So why return to Kalamar? Well, that's another post in the making.