Reblog: Anarchist Towns by AnarchyDice

The anarcho-syndicalist flag with the Circle A superimposed over it, the latter originating from the International Worker's Association

So via Tenkar's Tavern I found a link to an interesting blog.  Anarchy Dice is available as both a blogspot and now as its own website.


Links:

Anarcho-Monarchy

Anarcho-Capitalist

Anarcho-Primitivist

Anarcho-Mutualist

Anarcha-Feminist

Anarcho-Syndicalist

I'll be sure to update the list over time when new posts come in.

One of the interesting features I found was a series of posts about anarchist settlements in a D&D world, and what kinds of interesting features they may have for traveling adventures.  The blogger asserts that the common pop culture conception of anarchism as "strong rule the weak, no rules for anyone" is an inaccurate perception which a lot of RPGs propagate.  Eclipse Phase is a very notable exception.  The author himself is of the anarcho-capitalist grain, but acknowledges the different sub-sections of ideology and attempts to write up examples in a respectful way.  I generally don't talk about political stuff on this blog, but I may make exceptions in regards to how they can be used for a better gaming experience and trends in gamer culture.

Origins of Anarchism

The original ideology of anarchism was formulated in the 1800s which viewed the State (be it a government, monarchy, or company town) as an oppressive system which created a hierarchy of haves and have-nots.  The ideal society for anarchists would be voluntary associations of people bereft of such systems.  The earliest known themes are dated in the writings of the Taoist philosopher Laozi, but anarchism in its modern form sprang from Enlightenment thinking and the political turmoil of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Far from a fringe group, by the late 1800s anarchists were a force to be reckoned with in Europe.  The ideology had popular followings in worker's unions, and political activism helped normalize the 8 hour workday in the Western world.

The bomb-throwing stereotype came due to anarcho-nihilist militants bombing noble estates in Russia, plus violent clashes with the police in the US and Western Europe over worker's rights and wages.  The Haymarket Affair is probably the most famous example of this.

And this is where it gets interesting: over the past century and a half, you ended up with varying strains of anarchist thought on how to best achieve an ideal society and fight the State.  You had anarcho-communists, who advocated for the abolition of the State and capitalist businesses in favor of common ownership over the means of production.  You had anarcho-syndicalism, which held similar anti-capitalist leanings, but who focused mainly on the creation of democratic trade unions.  Then you had anarcho-capitalists, who are the odd man out in that the original anarchists were strongly anti-capitalist in a time when robber barons, child labor, and debtor's prisons predominated.  And that's not covering the more obscure derivations, such as Christian anarchism which recognizes only the word of God and no human government as legitimate authority.

Apologies for the monologue, but in spite of not being an anarchist I overall find it to be a very interesting ideology, and I think that this understanding can be useful to get a better sense of the blog posts instead of diving in unawares.

Brainstorming: Monotheism in a D&D World

Taiia from Deities & Demigods

An interesting aspect of fantasy literature is the use of a creator deity.  Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series did not overtly state their world’s cosmology, but there were implications of a single god responsible for the creation and oversight of reality.  This is not a surprise as both men were very religious Christians.  Deliberate or not, it’s quite common for a writer’s personal beliefs and experiences to feature in their work.

  

There is a lot of appeal to polytheist settings, in part because multiple deities offer a lot of variety for players and thus more potential character concepts for Cleric PCs.  But in recent days I’ve wondered about ways of creating a monotheist D&D setting which does not simply replicate the Abrahamic God.  The goal of this is not to create a religion which demands only worship of one deity or who believes in one deity, but a setting cosmology where the existence of but one deity is an objective truth.  Even in settings where one entity is responsible for the creation of reality itself (Ao from Forgotten Realms or the High God of Dragonlance), such “overdeities” are often distant figures who are not worshiped.

True Monotheism vs. Monolatrism and Dualism

Many campaign settings for Dungeons & Dragons attempt to go the polytheist route, but this doesn't always feel genuine.  As mentioned in my earlier Pantheist Priest post, true polytheism is rare.  A lot of fictional religious traditions acknowledge the existence of multiple deities but clerics and mortal populations choose to honor one.  This practice is actually monolatrism, for monotheism is both the belief and worship of one deity.  There is also the case of dualism where both divinities are equally strong and divine.  While Christiantiy and Islam have a Satanic figure and enemy of God, his power and wisdom is but a fraction of the true Abrahamic deity.

In some rare cases there are deities (such as Lolth of the Forgotten Realms) who keep their followers in the dark about the existence of other gods and goddesses so that they can consolidate their power base.  This is a more accurately monotheist, but it is often a constructed lie which flies in the face of cosmological evidence in the campaign setting.  In this case, the setting is still polytheist and monotheism is objectively false.

Nature Spirits, Demonic Cults, and the Granting of Spells

Oath of Druids by Daren Bader

In some settings divine magic can come from non-godly sources.  Druids draw their power from nature itself, while demon lords and archdevils can grant spells to mortal followers despite not being true gods.  While most D&D settings have divine spells as an essential part of deity worship, in a monotheist setting this may not necessarily be the case.  Below are a list of options for one to use in a monotheist setting.

Option One, Lesser Servitors and Patrons: A monotheist deity may act through divine intermediaries such as angels and saints to commune with the faithful.  Perhaps the One God’s wisdom is too great for any mortal mind to handle, so they instill an infinitesimal fraction of their essence into numerous servants to carry to the mortal realm.

Or maybe so-called “divine” spells are merely a powerful entity sharing its gifts with another; a powerful dragon or nature spirit may be able to instill spells, but they are not gods because they can fall prey to the vices of arrogance and short-sightedness.  They are merely children of the One God, like everything else in the universe.

Option Two, Stealing the Gift: An individual’s communion with the One God results in holy gifts in the form of spells, meant only for the most virtuous of servants.  Demons, devils, and false prophets might have found a way to tap into this universal consciousness of divinity and take the spells which rightfully belong to the One God.

This is an especially vile form of spellcasting, for it allows otherwise good men and women to be tricked into following selfish and wicked folk who wield divine magic as “proof” of the One God’s favor.

Option Three, the Nature of Magic: Arcane magic is ill-described in most settings as-is.  It is an irreligious form of spellcasting which comes about via study or a supernatural entity in one's ancestral bloodline.  Christianity and Islam (I cannot say for sure about Judaism) posit magic as a negative force granted by demons, evil spirits, and the like.  One could go this route, although in this case this can be very restrictive on party dynamics if clerics and mages are expected to be mortal enemies.

The Adversary

Eye of Sauron from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings

As a monotheistic setting requires an unorthodox reworking of the cosmology, this raises the ever-important question of the deity's status and why evil occurs.  The true god might be equivalent to a wise parental figure who seeks to guide mortal kind to greater awareness and prosperity.  In many cultures the presence of evil is caused by a fallen figure, a malevolent force which seeks to lead the righteous away from the oneness of God.

Or perhaps the deity is entirely beyond morality, equivalent to a force of nature of the cosmos which simply is.  That very same deity might have multi-faceted personalities, the creator and the destroyer, bringer of harvests and plagues.  Different cultures might worship and prize different aspects as befits their circumstances.  In a way it is similar to druids who revere different aspects of nature, or religious denominations who share certain core assumptions but differ on several key issues.

Or a potential idea is that the deity is actually malevolent, a cruel tyrant who cares more for loyalty above all and will inflict a host of plagues upon nonbelievers.  This is more common in some Japanese Role-Playing Games, where the mortal priesthood is not just corrupt but the creator of the world itself is a tyrant who the heroes must destroy or seal away.  This Game Theory video has a good article on Final Fantasy's religious symbolism.  Such a campaign is the most unorthodox one, as it puts heroic PCs against the power structure of not just established religious orders but the cosmology itself.

Going for a classic fantasy trope of good vs. evil is a ready-made trope common in fantasy media as well as our own culture.  But making the leader and/or originator of evil a deity or equivalent power would make the cosmology a dualistic one instead of a monotheistic one.  If the monotheistic deity is truly good, why does she/he not vanish evil from the world?  Is the creator omnipotent and/or omniscient?  Why are mortal heroes and good-aligned outsiders relied upon as intermediaries?

As these very questions have yet to be answered in a satisfactory manner in the real world and spawned centuries of debates among philosophers and theologians, you don't need to concoct an answer in your own campaign immediately.

Monotheism for Pathfinder

The 3rd Edition book Deities & Demigods had an entry on designing a monotheist cosmology for D&D.  It also contained the sample deity Taiia, a universal entity of creation and destruction with major denominations honoring different aspects (and thus a different set of domains).  The guidelines were that a monotheist deity should have at least 20 domains, which at the time there were 22 domains total in the Player's Handbook.  In Pathfinder's Core Rulebook, that number has almost doubled to 35 domains!  This is not including the myriad new domains provided in supplements for either game.

As the vast majority of domains govern aspects of the world (artifice, fire, war, etc) with only a few specifically devoted to morality (chaos, evil, good, law), one should allow Clerics to pick 2 domains of their choice as a sufficient option.  A Cleric with Chaos and Liberation might be drawing upon the One God's teachings of overthrowing tyranny and fighting unjust social structures, while another Cleric of that same deity derives inspiration from Artifice and Fire to build great creations and temples.  Evil, Madness, and Void might be a little too macabre for a "fair and just" deity of light, but otherwise 32 domains is more than enough for most character concepts.

Further Reading

This idea has been bandied about before, so here's a list of articles and threads:

Monotheism in Fantasy RPGs

Does monotheism have a place in fantasy?

Monotheism or Polytheism?

Making Monotheism Work in Pathfinder

How would you handle a monotheistic religion?

Although it's purely in the idea stage, I'm also hard at work on writing up a sample monotheist fantasy setting.  I might explore it in future blog posts if this one generates enough interest.

Let Them Play Drow

Goodbye Negeemiliel by Shabazik of Deviantart

A recurring element I see in the Dungeons & Dragons fandom is one of apprehension when it comes to drow, namely the inclusion of them as a playable race.  The most recent example witnessed was while browsing Paizo's Pathfinder forums, but they're far from the only player base to do this.  I find the issue rather peculiar for several reasons, which makes it rather different than a player desiring a goblin, orc, or similar antagonist-race PC.

First off is the classic Drizz't conundrum, of gamers copying mostly or whole-sale from an existing fictional character.  Understandably many players have a problem with this, although I think it's less due to a lack of originality (basing PCs off of existing fictional characters is nothing new) so much as the repetition it engendered across the decades of play.  Secondly is the problem of an antagonist/monstrous race in a party of humans, dwarves, halflings, and the like.  The fact remains in most published campaigns the drow are pretty much universally vilified.  PCs with one in their group are going to encounter torch-wielding peasants and armed militia whenever the party sets foot in a town or city.  Barring that, the other assumption is that a non-Drizz't drow PC is going to be played like a backstabbing sociopath who is eventually going to offend or turn against the rest of the party.  In short, the baggage is such that the mere option of wanting to play a drow causes lots of groups to jump to the worst conclusions.

And yet that very same fandom can't get enough of them; drow are just plain popular.  They're common antagonists in adventures both modern and classic.  The Drizz't saga is one of the most popular D&D book series.  There's a lot of third party sourcebooks devoted to them as villains, PC options, and cultural detail from Green Ronin's Plot & Poison for 3rd Edition to Barrel Rider Game's Dark Elf base class for Labyrinth Lord.  At least six adventure paths center on them in some way: TSR's Against the Giants series,  Wizards of the Coast's City of the Spider Queen, Paizo's Second Darkness, Adventure-a-Week's Rise of the Drow, Mongoose Publishing's Drow War, and Fire Mountain Games' Throne of Night.  They've been an option for playable characters in official material as early as 1st Edition's Unearthed Arcana, and 3rd, 4th, and now 5th Edition makes them available in setting supplements or even as "core options."  This is not even touching fan material like Drowtales, a webcomic which got popular enough that the creator can make a living off of it.

So this ties back into a common conundrum.  You got all this material for players and DMs alike, scattered across Editions about an elven subrace that a lot of gamers find appealing for various reasons.  And given they're humanoid and have several neat aesthetics (spider motif, underground cities, a magically advanced society, etc), it's inevitable that people are going to want to play as them.

I think we should let drow be playable options.  More than that, I think that we need more original settings and material to make it so they aren't near-universally reviled and evil, as well as tackling the above-mentioned problems.  The thing is, a huge amount of D&D material goes out of its way to show them off as a depraved society.  Orcs and goblins raid and kill, but depictions of drow  have them torture for fun, engage in rape and pedophilia, lack a conscience, and is mentioned in various sourcebooks (like 3rd Edition's Drow of the Underdark) that their society is so unstable that it would fall apart without Lolth micro-managing everything and intruding into her followers' lives.  In some material (Complete Book Elves, 4th Edition Forgotten Realms) the text even links their physical traits like skin color as proof of their evil taint.  This is part of several problems regarding related uncomfortable subject matter underlying their portrayal, as has been noted by others.

Like I noted in my Pathfinder/OSR monstrous PC books, the society of a PC belonging to an "evil" race needs to be more nuanced and three-dimensional beyond the whole 'depraved, violent, and wicked' aspect in order for smoother games.  Otherwise every trip to a non-drow town becomes a potential series of combat encounters.  In my current magic school campaign setting I made the decision to make drow non-evil, or at least as evil as humans are.  They still live underground, have a fondness for spiders and the like, but the major difference was that they were another fantasy civilization in a cosmopolitan metropolis (albeit in the undercity).  They belonged to an old clan of elves who once lived in the mountains, but had to retreat underground from a surface-world disaster.  One of the teachers at the magical academy is a drow, Professor Shadershin, responsible for teaching the Amateur Adventurers obstacle course and gearing the PCs up with equipment.  Another is Gazerlin, a martial artist who wears a mithril power suit in battle; she came to the city avenge the people of her city who were slain by the machinations of Theopolis, a surface-world crime lord.  Other than these two characters, drow have not really played much of a role in my games.  However, the characters I designed were meant to be more than just a straight trope.  Even Gazerlin, who seeks vengeance, does it because everyone she knew and cared about was taken from her by the ambitious greed of one wicked man.  A more typical drow wouldn't feel sorrow for the loss of her fellows.

I think we're at the point where a societal face lift would be the best option forward, both to feed the demand for drow PCs as well as assuage the common fears of DMs and play groups of coping with such an option.  Perhaps we can make their societies varied.  One stalactite city might be under the iron fist of a fascist tyrant whose upper class follows the God(dess) of War.  Another community might live amid a mushroom forest, where their druids and alchemists use the fungus for delicious food, giant specimens hallowed out to live in, and even dangerous mold as weapons against invaders!  A few isolated cities might preserve the old ways of surface elves, worshiping the pantheon like their ancestors did thousands of years ago.  Not only does this move the majority of drow beyond 'elite cannon fodder' and 'evil geniuses in training,' it also adds more variety to the potential backstories of drow PCs beyond the typical rebel/sociopath schematic.

Adding Culture: Gnolls, the syncretic nomads

Adding Culture 2: Gnolls, the syncretic nomads

Desert Gnoll by Gary Dupuis

For my latest work (and for my upcoming OSR version) I designed player character-friendly variants of existing iconic monsters in Pathfinder, such as the giant and the medusa.  Many 3rd Party Pathfinder books which provide playable races create new options as opposed to drawing upon existing fantasy archetypes.  There's nothing wrong with that, but it always felt weird to ignore the myriad creatures which already exist in the Monster Manuals.

When designing new monster PCs for Playable Monsters Vol. 1, I came upon the gnolls. Traditionally they weren't much different than orcs: evil, might makes right society, enslaved those weaker than themselves, live in the wilderness, etc.  As part of redesigning their society, I decided to  make them nomadic, people born and raised among the plains, badlands, and deserts of the world.  Eventually their far-flung migrations gave them a distinct edge in trading rare goods, and many gnolls took up the art of mercantilism.

Gnoll clans also resorted to raiding in lean times, but they tended to restrict their theft towards stealth at night to avoid sparking violence and blood feuds.  As long as they took only what was necessary, gnoll clans tolerated this as a necessary evil.  Of course, this does not always end ideally, and a lot of folk who might otherwise welcome their trade fear them in times of drought and famine.

Due to their travels, gnolls interact with all manner of cultures, and as a result they learn of more faiths than sedentary villagers would.  Gnolls acknowledge the existence and influence of many deities and spirits, and often pay homage to local shrines and temples so that the deity of the region's people would grant them safe passage.  Bouts of good fortune might even turn their one-time show of respect to long-time worship, and the pantheons of many gnoll clans are a widespread combination of nature spirits, elemental entities, and deities of many races and cultures who line up well with the clan's traditions.

Note: Regarding gnoll religion, I always found the choice of limiting monsters to their own deity or pantheon odd in settings where there are so many deities of different portfolios.  As many people of campaign settings pay homage to deities in meaningful areas of their lives (like blacksmiths praying regularly to the god of the forge) and true monotheism is very rare, it would be natural for humanoids to adopt more deities into their religious rituals over time.



If this take on gnolls sounds cool and interesting, then I suggest that you check out Playable Monsters on RPGNow, or Drive-Thru RPG.  Both have full-sized previews to give you a taste of things to come.

Adding Culture: Goblin Grave Bards

Adding Culture: Goblin Grave Bards

Artwork created by Suechan

People always wanted to play as monsters in fantasy RPGs.  From 3.X's Savage Species to 2nd Edition's Council of Wyrms campaign setting, many gamers sought to move beyond the bog-standard array of Tolkien-clone Player's Handbook races.  Countless homebrew and commercial products have dipped their hand into this realm, some of it good, others bad and poorly thought-out.  Even if you get well-rounded, balanced versions of monsters suitable for player use, there's usually something missing especially in the cases of less iconic monsters.

A nuanced and three-dimensional society.

Dwarves, elves, and halflings are iconic races.  From JRR Tolkien's work to pages upon pages of setting detail across the decades, we have a very good idea of what kind of traditions and mores they hold.  With the exception of some settings, the more monstrous races such as goblins, giants, and centaur don't really have a lot going for them beyond some sparse detail and vile activities to make them suitably evil for heroic adventurers to slay.  In general, goblins are wicked, love to raid, constantly fight each other, and are more technologically primitive than the Player's Handbook races.  Some goes for orcs, ogres, ettercaps, a lot of evil giants, and other monsters.

I feel that departing from this standard can be good for many reasons: one, it allows for monster PCs to have more role-playing potential beyond "I'm a Choker, I live underground and hunt my prey!"  Two, it's just a lot more interesting to add nuance and depth to make them feel more alive than primarily as enemies to defeat.  This might not be suitable for all campaigns, but it can be a fun way to add some spice to the setting.

The Art of the Grave Bard

Goblinoid folklore teaches that spirits are capable of going to and from the Material Plane and spirit world through entry points of their corpse’s current location.  Like the humans of Aleria and adjoining nations, goblins entomb their dead in graveyards and mounds.  They figure that time spent in a graveyard can get dreary and gloomy over time, so goblin bards regularly visit sites of the dead and perform acts they figure will entertain the spirits.

Oftentimes they perform their work with no crowd, but sometimes others come along to watch.  It’s not uncommon for wealthy beneficiaries to hire such entertainers for private tombs and graves, their plays and shows personalized by the hobbies of the honored dearly departed.  More than a few people view such an occupation as disrespectful, feeling that the dead should instead be honored with quiet observance.

In the goblinoid homeland, bodies are buried in expansive tombs acoustically designed to carry sound vast distances, allowing music to travel far and wide.  Bards spend a great amount of time researching the lives of the deceased to tailor their songs and plays for maximum appeal.

Grave bards aren't always just done for aesthetics.  A grave bard with proper training and magical talent can actually infuse the area with protective magics, making it harder for necromancers and other such folk to tamper with the bodies and souls of the honored dead.