Rik's Blog

I think Jean Wells’s version of this adventure is far superior to the Moldvay version, and is indeed superior to the much-lauded Gygax adventure “The Keep on the Borderlands.” It’s tragic and all too common how Wells got sidelined and fall-guyed by TSR. She deserved better.

I was already playing D&D in 1981, and it was a very boy-heavy activity. But a couple of years ago when I was wearing my D&D t-shirt I passed by an older woman who commented that she used to play back in the late 1970s with a group of other young moms. There was always the audience for role playing games to be diverse and welcoming, but there were way too many gatekeeping trolls back in the day.

To present this lost classic module to a modern group, I wanted to use a system that replicates the old style of play better than D&D 5e does, and Shadowdark is literally the perfect system for this type of throwback dungeon crawl. It’s got streamlined modern mechanics, but the freeform deadly playstyle of ages past.

I gave my spiel about the system and the module and a little bit about the setting, and we jumped into character creation. Everyone rolled up two level-0 characters. I allowed rerolls if all the stats were under 14, but people were amazed by how bad their characters were. I reminded them not to get too attached, hahaha. They chose one character to focus on and the backups were just along for the ride.

In the old days you could just plop a party in front of the dungeon door and get right to it, but I prefer a little bit of story prelude. The PCs have all been press ganged into the Gulluvian army where they have been treated awfully. They’re part of a detachment collecting taxes and their NPC sergeant suggests lockpicking the chest and running into the mountains where there’s a haunted castle they can hide in. Everyone is on board pretty quickly.

They open the chest and grab a bunch of coins, but as they try to sneak out of camp, one of them manages to roll a -1 on stealth (nat 1 with a -2 bonus). The chase is on even before half the party has left camp! But with some creative misdirection, half of the guards go the wrong direction.

They run through the woods on a moonlit night, guards in pursuit. The halfling members of the party are able to go invisible and sneak far enough to get away. The goblin members followed one of the guards out of camp pretending to help and murdered him from behind once they were alone. The half orcs just got enough lucky rolls to survive. The sergeant who suggested the plan? Got speared in the chest by a nat 20, but the party managed to loot the body!

They regrouped and kept heading north, and I kept rolling for encounters without hitting a 1. They huddled up for the last part of the night between moonset and sunrise, and by then it was time to stop for the night.

I rolled a nat 20 for the army tracking them, so they’re not out of the woods yet, but I let them level up to 1 and I think I’ll have them encounter the tinker and his daughter if they want to buy any gear with their stolen coin before the soldiers catch up to them. Then it’s just a couple of mountain hexes to the Palace!

I was surprised by the variety of alignments my players chose, so there could be a fun amount of intra-party shenanigans. Despite coming from a couple of 5e campaigns before this, my warnings seemed to work and everyone played really smartly and had some creative ideas (while invisible one player made spooky noises that made a guard fail his morale check and head back to camp). There was plenty of tension, in a good way, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

It’s easy to get deep into the weeds arguing over if something is art or not. Is a craft like knitting Art? Is a performance like professional wrestling Art? It’s not really possible to nail down, except to say that pretty much everything is Art, in a way. Seems to me that art is just the byproduct of human imagination. And it’s easy to get hung up on the byproduct, imagining that it’s the product, when it’s really just the commodity.

Think about how movies are made: the creative collaborators have a certain story in mind, and they try to capture it by acting out scenes in front of cameras and then cutting that footage together into a finished product. But the product is not the same as the creative act. If the editor had chosen a few different takes, the product would be slightly different, but the creative process was the same. Putting on a play, you get a slightly different performance every night. Putting on an improv show, you get a completely different performance every night. But the creative impulse, the harnessing of the imagination as a means of expression, that remains the same.

Our lives are richer when we use our imagination more, when we find ways to express ourselves more. Whether there is a product or an audience involved is beside the point. In the end, arguing over whether something is Art is like arguing over whether a hot dog is a sandwich. What matters is freeing yourself from strict rules and definitions and allowing your imagination free rein to play.

I try to be wary of dehumanizing those I’m in conflict with. But it’s very hard to understand the mindset of people who value guns over children’s lives, people who profess liberty but celebrate authoritarianism. I have a hard time seeing blatant hypocrisy and not attributing it to either Evil or an almost sub-sentient stupidity. It makes it challenging to profess the inherent worth and dignity of every person when this is how some people choose to spend their lives.

I grew up questioning authority. The people who raised me valued thinking for yourself. (Of course, they also raised me in the Catholic Church. Ask me if I had a fun childhood.) I understand GIGO. If you’re raised believing lies, it can be really hard to escape the lies, and if the tools of escape are forbidden, what can you do? So can you truly blame these destructive theocrats? They were bullied at every stage of life, using the carrots-and-sticks of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. If they questioned, they were punished, if they toed the line, they were rewarded. They were programmed to be as they are, so who can blame them?

Except we don’t accept “just following orders” as an excuse. We figure there is a spark of humanity in everyone, no matter how beaten-down. Maybe that’s not fair. Certainly the leaders of their movement, the ones who went to Harvard and Yale, had the opportunity to think for themselves. Even if their daddies didn’t love them, even if they were forced into prayer groups with religious extremists from day one. Becoming an adult means taking responsibility for your own brainwashing.

I do have compassion for those who are always at the bottom of the death cult, who are most likely to work hard against their own interests. They do seem like zombies, or robots programmed to destroy. I have a lot MORE compassion for the people they bully and hurt, though.

Our society built system-wide tools to try to keep people from becoming zombies. Free public education is supposed to give everyone tools for critical thinking. The social safety net was supposed to keep the masses from becoming so destitute they would rise up. But the same power base that always defended the ownership of people and the rejection of bodily autonomy sees these tools as a threat to their twisted values system. They want unthinking robots.

I was bullied as a child, and the older I get, the more I realize how that has colored my life ever since in ways I often don’t see. My experiences of being bullied were rich and varied. One kid who was new at school and harassed me on my walk to and from school every day–John Beckner–turned out he just wanted to be friends and only showed that through abuse. Other kids systematically targeted me for name-calling for years. Others were actively violent. I was a peaceful kid. I never stood up for myself. I literally believed the words of Jesus, to turn the other cheek, to give in.

And of course, that rewarded the bullying. That gave the bullies exactly what they wanted and it never once made me feel better. Adults accepted bullying as if not playground justice, at least harmless kid stuff. They’d been hazed or been bullies themselves as children (and most likely as adults, too), unquestionably.

We have lived with unacceptable behavior too long. We’ve let people hide behind dog-whistles. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. My first priority is not to find a cure for the zombie plague or to try to teach robots to love. Those are great goals, but what’s more important is protecting the people who are actively being killed and injured by zombies and evil robots. My whole life has been about holding off the storm, and some of that has been appeasement. I don’t want to be the last one saying “let’s just get along” when trans kids are being killed, when Black people are being shot in their beds, when refugee children are in cages.

I was always afraid if I stood up to a bully I’d get hurt. I was afraid if I lashed out, that would make ME the bad person. Instead I turned all that anger and fear inward. That never did me any favors. So let me draw the line here. My compassion has its limits. If you were raised in the death cult and so you don’t have the tools to find your way out of Trumpism, that’s tragic, sure. But it’s less tragic than the effect you have on the people you target. Fuck Jesus and his eschatological bullshit, we need to stand up and fight for bodily autonomy, for right and equality and REAL liberty for all folks, not the kind of “liberty” that says “I get to tell you what you’re allowed to do.”

Our toaster lasted about 25 years, but two of the four slots died, so my parents got me a new toaster for my birthday

OMG, I just realized I’ve had that toaster half my life! That’s a weird thought. Can I throw it away???

I seem to have a knack for discovering music twenty years late. Whatever. Anyway, I’ve been obsessed with this Flaming Lips album lately, and I think I need to write an RPG about it. Here’s my pitch:

The city you live in is awful. Wave after wave of industrialization, offshoring, crime, neglect, overpolicing, war, and/or natural disasters have left it a semi-functional ruin. Even the best apartments are burned-out. Utilities are intermittent (though the bills are not). The old malls and factories stand abandoned. Still, there’s one thing you love about the place that keeps you here (aside from the laws limiting resettlement, that is).

Oh, the other thing that makes it awful is the constant robot attacks. But in a way, that’s a good thing, since fighting robots is your best-paying job. Not that it pays well, mind you, and you have to supply all your own equipment. But working for the city is at least consistent. All the other gig work you take on is a lot less stable. But there are bills to be paid. Rent, utilities, LOANCARD payments, drinks.

Because a twentysomething robot fighter has to keep themself entertained. And the dating scene? YIKES. But that enby on your strike team has been flirting with you, and you’ve been having dreams about the DJ at the club taking his shirt off (in between dreams of being torn apart by murder machines, anyway). But you’re keeping those secrets for now, and you’re keeping up the hustle. It seems impossible that you could ever level up to the gated suburb where the managers live and have families of their own, and honestly who would even want to? All we have is now.

I think my friend Kiki and I are going to collaborate on it.