The Hungover Heroes Guild, Part One

So I scrapped by World of Darkness campaign. I had some good ideas for it, but I really do not like the changes that White Wolf made with their new edition of the games about six or seven years ago. Setting material is fine for the most part--what I dislike is the mechanics of the game. After playing Old World of Darkness, the New World of Darkness rules set is actually counter-intuitive. They sacked Perception, for example--this became pretty confusing for me whenever I asked someone to make a Perception + something roll and I had to figure out what other ability would fit for such a roll.

Instead, I went back to an old standby and a favorite system of mine--D&D 3.5 in the world of the Forgotten Realms.

Of course, the party is completely insane:

Luke is playing a tiefling Warlock (see Complete Arcane, I think) from Sigil in the Planes (Fated faction) who is trying to get back home so he can "pick up his friend."
DJ is playing a Rashemar barbarian on his dajemma. No, he doesn't have a miniature giant mutant space hamster but he is about three shots from being an alcoholic.
Alex is a Dread Necromancer (see Heroes of Horror) from Zhentil Keep who sold his soul to a forgotten god in order to see the Zhentarim destroyed and a just government put in its place.
Finally, Shaun is playing a half-elven Waterdhavian rogue with a glib tongue.

We played for about four, four-and-a-half hours last night. Baravis was banished from Sigil by the Scratcher and appeared in a circle of menhirs (like Stonehenge) in the middle of the forest of Cormanthor during the late winter. Arriving at a road, he encountered Drog (DJ's character) and after sharing a drink and some roasted rabbits, the two proceeded to Shadowdale where they encountered Sven (the half-elf) and Vladimir (the Zhent).

Thanks to Alex's acting chops, all Moonsea people now have a Russian accent.

Anyway, most of the session was devoted to in-character carousing and insane antics.

I took a page from old school D&D and some of Justin Alexander's ideas and decided that I'd award 1 XP for each gp spent carousing. This means spending gold frivolously on gambling, girls, food, expensive lodging, and booze specifically, NOT on magic weapons, traveling gear, spell components, or anything like that.

After breaking up some of Jhaele Silvermane's crockery (thanks to Luke's eldritch blast) and almost getting thrown out of the Old Skull Inn by Lord Mourngrym's guards, they calmed down and found their ways to their beds for the evening.

The next morning, nursing hangovers, the party ate a hearty breakfast and haggled with the renowned Lewellyn the Loquacious over rumors. Once both parties were satisfied and Lewellyn had played a nice dirge to soothe Baravis' frustrations at not being able to return to Sigil, they decided to set out for Dagger Falls, Daggerdale, and investigate rumors of dwarves stalking the town at night and a horrible plague called Dream Fever. They also heard tell of forgotten things stirring in crypts beneath the ruins of the Temple of Lathander in Dagger Falls. All this pointed to adventure and, for Baravis, perhaps a way home. So they equipped themselves (Vlad bought a donkey as a pack animal) at Weregund the Trader's and made ready to set off.

They inquired of a junior priest of Lathander at his Temple in Shadowdale of anything they might need to know about the temple ruins in Dagger Falls. As they left, Baravis let slip a farewell in his native tongue (Infernal) that Lathander found offensive, so now during the hours of daylit morning Luke's character has a -1 to EVERYTHING. Should he find any relics of interest at the Temple of Lathander's ruins or in its crypts and bring them to the Temple in Shadowdale, perhaps Lathander will smile upon him and remove his harsh judgment.

Baravis' eldritch blast nearly snagged the party quail as they walked and swigged wine. After passing (and frustrating) a patrol of Shadowdale men-at-arms ("What is with adventurers?"), they spent the night at a Shrine to Torm at the crossroads of the Northride and the Tethyamar Trail. The next day was spent with the party following the dirt track north and as night fell, they sought refuge in Anathar's Dell, a small hamlet surrounded by a stockade and home to a clan of dwarves as well as Daggerdalesmen. With the discovery that 2 gp covered food, services (such as stabling for Vlad's mule), room and linens, and most importantly, booze, the party happily piled into the inn for more drunken carousing and antics.

And that's all that happened. 100% in-character roleplaying. No combat. An old-schooler's nightmare if I ever ran one. They spent most of their time blowing through silver buying bottles of alcohol. I've got to dig up some rules on alcoholism and drunkenness in game.

Wow

Thanksgiving week was chaotic and busy. I had a tremendous amount of work to do throughout November, including a paper on my philosophy of education (which ended up overshooting the required 15-pages by about 17 for a total of 32), a test in Statistics (which I aced), homework for Statistics, and readings for my philosophy of education class and response papers (2 pages each). And to top it off, I've been preparing a D&D 3.5 game that will start in the Dalelands of the Forgotten Realms... and no one is playing a Cleric or a standard mage character.

I'll get around to posting a good portion of my paper here in a day or two. Until then, to those of you who are interested, please keep an eye out and don't think I'm dead.

Book Review -- HARRY POTTER SERIES by J.K. Rowling

It took about three months' worth of reading, between classes and settling in after my return from Korea, to finish the Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling. Unfortunately, I never got around to buying the British versions when I was in Korea, and especially regret not having done so. While in Korea, I sat in a bookstore for a few minutes doing side-by-side comparisons of the two texts and finding that Scholastic had heavily edited the American versions (more about this later).

J.K. Rowling's story of rags-to-riches is quite well known. Published on June 30, 1997, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone had sold up to 300,000 copies in the UK by March, 1999. It was an instant success as a children's novel and was rapidly acquired by Scholastic Corporation, who strong-armed Rowling into changing the name to Sorcerer's Stone because they thought American children wouldn't want to read a book with the word "philosopher" in the title (more on this later). We all know how the tale grew to become a phenomenon complete with films and accompanying books about Harry Potter's world. Rowling has become an incredibly rich billionaire.

The story is incredibly well-known so there's no reason to discuss it. Essentially, Rowling's story is not at all original but that is not a criticism. It's long been mused that between Shakespeare, the Bible, and Homer, every possible story has already been told. However, Harry Potter achieves an incredible resonance with it's readers. Rowling was able to take Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays, an 1857 novel about a private boarding school in England, add such fantasy elements as magic and antiquity, and marry it to the Campbellian heroic journey.

Her brilliance in such a combination cannot be understated. Tom Brown's Schooldays had been extremely successful and spawned an entire genre of schoolboy stories during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its great appeal was due to the interest of poor boys who couldn't afford to attend boarding schools and their curiosity of what such a life is like. It also appealed to former such academy students reminiscing about their times there. Such a setting made it easy for Rowling to incorporate the elements of a typical bildungsroman. To increase the appeal and make the story much more dynamic than the typical school novel, Rowling added the idea that the school in her story (Hogwarts) specifically existed to educate children and adolescents who displayed innate magical talents and prepare them to live in a hidden society of wizards and witches. The Campbellian monomyth provided a tremendous cultural resonance to her stories.

The influence of the monomyth cannot be understated. Written well, a story that incorporates the monomyth can evoke a powerful emotional response in the reader. Written poorly, such a story devolves into formula and cliche, much like Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara.

Rowling's prose evolves as her protagonist and audience age. In the first two books, her writing style isn't very impressive. Indeed, if she had stopped at Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I'd not have any qualms agreeing with Harold Bloom's assessment of the books (more on that later). At several points, she felt the need to recap previous events, concepts, and setting material in the form of tedious info-dumps as the series progressed. This is jarring to her narrative rhythm and honestly unnecessary. To her credit, Rowling reduces these to a few stray sentences in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and virtually does away with them altogether in The Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows. She never achieves a poetic or moving style of prose but I feel that had she attempted as much, her work would have been tastelessly turgid instead of straightforward and event-driven.

The characterization of Harry Potter and his friends is incredible. Rowling's characters feel like real people (with a few exceptions). The character dynamics between Hermione, Ron, and Harry are incredible. Many of the characters are spectacularly well-developed and fully realized on the page. Through their dialogue they take life and express their personalities. Very few of the major characters feel flat (and those that do are mostly villains, which does, admittedly, weaken her narrative, but I digress...) and their interactions are excellently enjoyable. It is difficult not to feel amusement and affection for Fred and George Weasley, for example.

Equally well-realized is the wizarding world, complete with its own lore, legends, entertainment, music, and culture. Rowling's world grows as the books progress and she reveals more and more of the land of enchantment which comes to be just as imaginative and dynamic as Carol's Wonderland or Baum's Oz and despite Bloom's criticisms (see below), much more self-sustaining. What irked me, however, was the complete independence the wizarding world experienced from the Muggle world in contrast to how events in the wizarding world would effect the Muggle world (Sirius Black's escape and the return of Voldemort, for example). Also, I found the helplessness of the Muggle world in the face of wizardly conflicts a plot hole (especially since the wizards went into hiding in the 17th century because of Muggle persecutions against magic-users). Rowling does a lot of wand-waving (heh, heh) to separate the Muggle and wizard worlds so much, often resorting (quite literally) to "a wizard did it" to deal with any potential for the isolation of the wizarding world being breached by the Muggle one.

Harold Bloom's infamous criticisms of Rowling's achievement are well known and discussed throughout the blogosphere. Just google "Harry Potter and Harold Bloom" and you'll be hit with a plethora of blog entries and magazine articles on Bloom's scathing criticism.

Bloom's primary points of contention?

• The books are bereft of imaginative vision.
• Rowling's setting and the action therein have nothing to do with reality, which he sees as completely contradictory to the "realism" of Tom Brown's Schooldays.
  
• Rowling's dichotomy of wizard vs. Muggle is offensive, especially when the Muggles are abusive, dull, and close-minded.
  
• Sex and sexuality is all but nonexistent.

However, Bloom's conclusion is quite revealing.

And yet I feel a discomfort with the Harry Potter mania, and I hope that my discontent is not merely a highbrow snobbery, or a nostalgia for a more literate fantasy to beguile (shall we say) intelligent children of all ages. Can more than 35 million book buyers, and their offspring, be wrong? yes, they have been, and will continue to be for as long as they persevere with Potter.

A vast concourse of inadequate works, for adults and for children, crams the dustbins of the ages. At a time when public judgment is no better and no worse than what is proclaimed by the ideological cheerleaders who have so destroyed humanistic study, anything goes.

The review was published in July, 2000, in The Wall Street Journal, almost at the same time as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire hit American bookstores and Harry had to deal with death and sexuality for the first time. Indeed, Bloom should have waited until the series was complete before he leveled his infamous criticisms against it. It does read as highbrow snobbery, as he frequently compares the novels to The Wind in the Willows and The Wizard of Oz as exemplars of imaginative children's literature.

Rowling's writing style and imagination matures as her protagonist--something that Bloom misses. Bloom characterizes himself as a guardian of the great books of the past. Indeed, I agree that the Western canon needs defending in this post-modern era and that many of the books Bloom holds in highest esteem deserve to be read and appreciated, I still feel that his attack on Rowling is endemic of the ivory-tower isolation of the academics from the masses and is a result of intellectual elitism.

The evidence is written all across the last novel. Harry Potter is faced with the realities of Dumbledore, his late guide and adviser, as a human with human failings and frailties of the heart. Harry is faced with making extremely difficult choices that result in the survival or demise of friends, teachers, and students. There is moral ambiguity in his decisions and although he inevitably triumphs, Rowling wisely glosses over the reconstruction and gives us a small glimpse into the lives of the characters and their children decades hence. The brevity of the epilogue leaves the aftermath vague and ambiguous, leading the reader to ask, "Was it worth it? Did everything go back to normal? How could it after such tragic events?" (The weakness of omitting the aftermath means we never see how many of the characters cope with loss and tragedy. It is impossible that the characters have all been able to return to their normal lives and I would have very much like to have seen how George Weasley dealt with his very tragic loss).

Similarly, the wizard attitude toward Muggles is never described as correct throughout her novels. With the exception of the Dursleys, Muggles are rarely encountered in the novels but it is evident that the Dursleys are not to be considered the model on which one should judge. The visceral reaction of the reader to the wizards' and witches' patronizing and (oftentimes inadvertent) bigotry toward Muggles (indeed, even the name sounds pejorative) should evoke a certain distaste in the reader. This is never a situation that Rowling addresses and is, necessarily, left up to the reader to wrestle. Though I do not believe Rowling did this purposely, that she did it is still a strength and not a narrative weakness. Indeed, she even intensifies this question through the revelations of Albus Dumbledore's friendship with Grindelwald.

The greatest weakness is the unsympathetic character of Voldemort. Although Rowling describes the difficulties and rejections he experienced as a child, Tom Riddle's development into an irredeemable villain is rather one-note. His inability to love is not only his greatest weakness as a villain, it's also his greatest weakness as a character. Voldemort is less human than Darth Vader, who despite being more machine than man still rescued his son from death. Despite being a common trope in fantasy, the monolithic villain that is so evil as to be inhuman and incapable of love or compassion is not nearly as interesting as a villain that has purposely rejected, submerged, and killed those emotions deliberately due to some pain or suffering in his past. Voldemort is not a tragic villain, he's simply a villain. Similarly, nearly every Slytherin character is petty, scheming, and hateful (I was very disappointed that no Slytherin characters besides Slughorn opted to fight Voldemort and the Death Eaters during the Battle of Hogwarts).

Another weakness in the narrative is the over-morality of the good guys. They never resort to use of the Killing Curse and never deliberately kill any of their opponents. Since such an action will result in breaking a person's soul apart, it is considered highly reprehensible. However, since the wizard community of Britain finds itself in a civil war, the prolific use of the Killing Curse by the forces of evil results in a growing disparity between them and the forces of good as the latter's numbers are reduced through attrition. Ultimately, Voldemort's hate and villainy are self-defeating and Harry triumphs without actually killing Voldemort. While there are many other examples of Harry struggling with pain and suffering, there is never a point where he is forced to kill in order to survive. He never experiences the pain and suffering that Simon experiences in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn as he is forced to fight and kill in order to save the people and ideals that he loves. Though in the setting the good characters are spared such existential suffering and dilemmas that typical war veterans have to wrestle with due to their exemplary conduct (not descending to the use of the Killing Curse), it doesn't make for a complex, compelling, and interesting narrative.

In the end, the books are still for children. Rowling skirts such issues as good guys killing or sex and sexuality in order to keep the books "suitable" for her audience. I don't begrudge her decision. She includes a great many other complex issues and ideas in her books that young readers must consider. By the later volumes, she refuses to "write down" to her audience. Through excellent characterization and a well-paced narrative progression, she keeps her readers' attention.

Rowling has definitely accomplished something. Are these books classics of literature? Bloom says no. I say yes. The Harry Potter series is not simply a flash-in-the-pan. Discerning readers who find the Twilight series to be utter garbage still consider the Harry Potter Series to be a fantastic work of epic fiction and adventure. I've read many works of literature, like Bloom, but unlike Bloom I believe that Rowling overcomes her shortcomings as a writer and the weaknesses of many of her narrative choices to write an increasingly complex and dynamic story. No, it is not the equal of Don Quixote, Hamlet, or even The Lord of the Rings. It's rife with flaws, plot holes, inconsistencies, and characterization issues (specifically among the villains of the story). Yet Rowling's achievement is still worthwhile and I'd argue that it is just as worth reading as The Wizard of Oz.

As a final note, I'd like to discuss Scholastic Corporation's editing choices in "translating" the British dialect to standard American idiom. This is quite galling and struck me as very disparaging toward American children. Granted, many of the terms would be a bit confusing, but instead of a translation, incorporating a short glossary at the back might have been a bit more respectful to the intelligences of the readers. Similarly, the opinion that American children would find a novel with "philosopher" in its title unappealing (as opposed to British children, who had no such problems) displays the innately low opinion that Scholastic Corporation has of American schoolchildren. Considering that Scholastic is a corporation that produces schoolbooks (indeed, its very name is, in this case, ironic), this begs a great many questions about American education and the people and companies we allow to teach our children.

The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
Style A
Substance B
Overall B+

Forthcoming

I've been rather busy with work on my article, coursework for my M.Ed., and ongoing search for PhD programs in Ancient History/Classical History and MA programs in Asian Studies. This should explain the dearth of posts for the past two or three months. I've also been reading the monumental Harry Potter series and will be writing up a very large review of the entire series within a week or two.

What my poor readers have to look forward to:

• A review of the entire Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.
• A review of John Keegan's The Face of Battle, about which I've been procrastinating for half a year.
• A review of Francis Fukuyama's End of History and the Last Man, which may or may not come anytime soon, since it's so vast and there's so much to discuss.
• A review of Michael Moorcock's The Jewel in the Skull, which I've put down and will endeavor to finish after the Harry Potter series (for reasons that will invariably be explained in the review).

I've also picked up a copy of Thomas F. Madden's Empires of Trust, which I might actually review for submission to a peer-reviewed journal.

World of Darkness Chronicle, Part the First

So, my cousin DJ and two friends, Luke and Shaun, started my (New) World of Darkness chronicle, set in 1920's Philadelphia, entitled Night Train to Nowhere, on Thursday night.

The characters are:

Lance Davenport: If H.P. Lovecraft were an English professor. Lance is Shaun's character. He writes articles for Weird Tales and other pulp rags under a pseudonym. He's had strange dreams ever since he was a kid that has led him to be fascinated in the strange and unexplainable.

Mick Callahan: Irish-American World War I vet. He got separated from his unit in the Ardennes and ended up sharing a shell-hole with a German soldier. As a fog rolled in, Mick fled as what appeared to be a vampire killed the young German. After the war, he returned home to watch helplessly as a vampire took his wife, never to be seen again.

Seamus Flannagan: Irish-American muscle who boxes illegally to pay the bills. Seamus was orphaned as a kid when his father, a detective with the Philadelphia police, was murdered with a strange cuneiform symbol carved into his head. Seamus is seeking answers to his father's murder and why it was hushed up.

The tale opened with Seamus and Lance shopping in Mick's antique shop. Father Edward Massey, a friend of Mick's, entered and asked if the characters had seen the local Catholic high school librarian, Brother Lucas Shrift. As Seamus had been in the orphanage with Shrift, he was interested immediately. Shrift had disappeared before, for five years before returning with no memory of his journey or why he had left. Father Massey feared Shrift's new disappearance was related.

The characters began by calling around for information. Seamus attempted to see the Archbishop and ask about Lucas Shrift but was stymied by a strange, sinister priest at the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul.

The trio then searched Shrift's house for clues, finding plenty. A window had been forced and the lock broken. Lance found a strange journal written partly in a strange script, the rest in Latin. Hidden in a hollowed book, Mick discovered a key, which Lance identified as belonging to some sort of safe deposit box.

After spending a day at work, the three reunited. Lance had called his close friend and reporter for the Inquirer, Hunter Jerusalem, who said he would try to get a story about Shrift's disappearance into the local papers. Mick, acting on a hunch, contacted a friend of his, Detective Dashiell, to learn about a robbery of the Museum two years ago, in which a strange Mesopotamian idol and cylinder seal were stolen. Seamus canvassed the docks asking about a ship whose captain Shrift was supposed to have met.

That evening, the characters made their way down to the docks to El Diablo Roso, a rum-runner out of Cuba. The ship's crew had itchy trigger fingers and the characters almost turned away in failure when a hulking first mate with a Cockney accent challenged Seamus to a round of bare-knuckle fisticuffs. The session ended with a narrow victory for Seamus and the first-mate agreeing to talk with the characters.

All-in-all, I think it went rather well. We only had about 3 1/2 hours to play, and it looks like we're going to be running once per month, so I'm awarding experience per every 1 1/2 to 2 hours of playing time.

Update

I'm sorry I've not been posting so often. My personal life is getting very busy and I've severely neglected the blog. I hope to start getting back into it again this month. I've a lot going on--class is keeping me busy but I'm also submitting an article to the Journal of Near East Studies and applying to PhD programs in Ancient History and MA programs in Asian Studies. To top that off, I've started an essay on the neglect of history education in schools and universities as well as planning to start another article for publication submission on Mycenaean kingship during the Bronze Age.

So, yes, I'm quite busy. But I'll hopefully have some details for readers about the World of Darkness game I'm going to start running tomorrow.

D&D Spellcasting: Pushing Beyond Your Limits

It's been a while since I last posted, so I figured I'd put up a little something I've been thinking about when it comes to gaming.

What if magic-users in the D20 system could somehow push beyond their limitations? What would be the risks involved?

Well, the D20 Wheel of Time book from the early days of 3rd edition has a system for Aes Sedai channelers of the One Power to do just that. So... why not adapt some of those rules for sorcerers and wizards in 3.5 D&D or Pathfinder? I've house-ruled the ability for wizards to overprepare and sorcerers to overcast their spells and fiddled with the rules for doing so until they fit how I wanted to use them.

First, there are two things a caster can do. They can attempt to cast or prepare more spells than available slots, or they can attempt to cast spells that are, as of yet, beyond their ability to know, or have been enhanced with metamagic feats beyond the magic-user's capacity to cast or prepare.

Once the caster has decided to do one of those things, he or she must make a Concentration Check. Finding the Difficulty Class isn't hard.

To cast/prepare a spell with no slots left: DC = 15 + (spell level x 5)

To cast/prepare a spell higher than highest possible slot: DC = 15 + (5[spell level - highest possible slot level]).

It looks more complicated than it is. Check out the chart below.

Concentration Check DC	Overpreparing/Overcasting Attempt	Fortitude Save DC
15	Cast/prepare a 0-level spell with no slots left	15
20	Cast/prepare a 1st level spell with no slots left	25
25	Cast/prepare a 2nd level spell with no slots left	35
20	Cast/prepare a spell 1 level higher than highest possible slot	15 + spell level
25	Cast/prepare a spell 2 levels higher than highest possible slot	25 + spell level
30	Cast/prepare a spell 3 levels higher than highest possible slot	35 + spell level

So, let's say Fazzle Bandazzle the Great (Sor 5) wants to cast a fireball, but he has no slots left. His Concentration check DC is 15 plus five times the spell's level, so he has to beat a DC 30. Now, if Nort the Mysterious (Wiz 3) wants to prepare a lightning bolt, but he's not high enough in level, he can still try to force the spell into his head with a Concentration check equal to 15 plus five times the difference between his highest possible level spell (2nd) and the spell he wants to cast (3rd), so his check DC is 20.

These attempts are not without their risks! If either of them fail, the attempt doesn't work and they have to make a Fortitude save. The formula for this is simple, too.

Failure to cast/prepare a spell with no slots left: DC = 15 + (spell level x 10)

Failure to cast/prepare a spell higher than highest possible slot: DC = 15 + (10[spell level - highest possible slot level]).

If the Fortitude Save fails, consult the table below for some nasty side-effects. For one, the strain of stretching one's mind too far can be painful and strenuous. In addition, there could be a magical back-lash, physically harming the caster who failed to either prepare or cast the spell properly.

Fortitude Save DC missed by	Result
1-5	The caster suffers a severe headache and overwhelming fatigue. As a result, he or she suffers a -1 penalty to all skill and ability checks, attack rolls, and saves. He or she recovers when able to rest for at least six hours.
6-10	The caster suffers headache and fatigue resulting in a -2 penalty on all rolls. He or she also takes 1d6 points of damage and cannot attempt to prepare or cast more spells than his or her level permits until he or she gets six hours of rest.
11-15	The caster suffers headache and fatigue resulting in a -3 penalty on all rolls. He or she also takes 2d6 points of damage and cannot prepare or cast spells at all for 24 hours.
16-20	The caster suffers headache and fatigue resulting in a -4 penalty on all rolls. He or she also takes 3d6 points of damage and cannot prepare or cast any spells at all for 48 hours.
21-25	The caster suffers headache and fatigue resulting in a -5 penalty on all rolls. He or she also takes 4d6 points of damage and cannot prepare or cast any spells at all for two weeks.
25+	The caster is burned out entirely—completely unable to prepare or cast spells ever again. In addition, he or she suffers headache and fatigue resulting in a -6 penalty on all rolls and takes 4d6 points of damage.

Some DMs may opt to change some of the side-effects, for example, adding temporary or permanent damage to the character's Intelligence. The character may also acquire some sort of curse or insanity. The DM is encouraged to be creative with some of the penalties for failure. Doing this sort of thing has to be risky.