Upgrading the Common Orc...

The common (some might say lowly) orc is ubiquitous in fantasy gaming, and while clearly dangerous in numbers, they can become stale with repeated use, especially to the seasoned group. Fortunately, it shouldn't take much to keep them interesting. Tribal politics alone can invigorate these pig-faced humanoids. They're more than just a pretty face, and the inventive can always find ways to spice up the individual encounters where these beasties frequently appear, using the following as inspiration. The key lies in defying convention:   

1. Orc berserkers who fight on for 3 rounds after death.

2. Orcish cavalry, ritually burned, riding firedrakes.

3. Orc devotees of a dark god so foul other orcs shudder.

4. Orcish engineers equipped with high explosives.

5. Orc flagellants so pious they turn their whips on heretics.

6. Orcish minstrels who sing to summon deadly spiders.

7. Orc pacifists who eschew violence and might help the party.

8. Orcish regulars outfitted with razor-sharp boomerangs.

9. Orc shamans (magic-users) carried in baskets on an ogre's back.

Once again, they key is to defy convention, but also to challenge. Giving orcs unique, often powerful allies and servitors, equipping them with unconventional weapons, and granting them unexpected and effective strategies collectively ensures not only cinematic encounters replete with spectacle, but challenging ones to test the toughest of parties. Of course, this operates best when coupled with campaign lore. Who is the dark god feared by the foulest of foes? And why do orcs have engineers? The game alone knows the final answer...

Beating the Planetary Blues...

World building is a central tenet of tabletop gaming, and it certainly illuminates the sheer immensity involved in a living planet. Vast continents spanning climates and cultures await those willing to explore, and one need look no further than our real-world example for an education. Worlds are impressively large. Tropical islands concealing pirates, frozen tundra home to deadly, cold-adapted wildlife; inhabited worlds have a bit of everything. Physical geography is just the beginning of an endless mosaic of possibilities.

An eastern religion storms westward, brought by the sword. Rats from their ships bring a deadly plague to foreign ports, a perfect storm depending on where someone just happens to be standing when it happens. Worlds are massive, and airplanes haven't done enough to shorten the distance. Now contemplate the vast universe in a spacefaring scenario complete with occupied planets as big as our own. Individual worlds become a pitstop for wandering spacecraft, reduced to mere blips on some rock's vast surface... 

It's a matter of shifting scale, where the void of space becomes a new world and individual planets its towns and far-flung villages. An unavoidable accommodation, although not outrageous or unsound as spacefaring types can only experience the specific locations their vessels happen to land upon. Laziness is a potential risk, however, with simple one-world governments and geographies that defy latitude and spheres. For referees and writers, this is a time-saving mechanism that actively serves to diminish these worlds.

The best way to avoid this trap is to formulate some idea of a planet's situation even as the spacefarers only experience their small portion. Perhaps open (and bloody) war rages between continents, with impacts to the tiny spaceport the characters encounter, uncovered when the party converses with the locals. A few scribbled notes are normally enough for narrative purposes, although it helps to have a system. Our Planetary Worksheets designed for the Blood of Pangea: Retrospace RPG are free for the curious... 

Sketch a quick surface reference, identify its major regions complete with climate, resources, and relevant heads of state, plus whatever additional details, including catastrophic wars, perhaps driven by plagues or natural disasters, define the place. Establish a checklist, using our planetary worksheets when not a better homebrew alternative to flesh out convincing worlds on nothing larger than a regular index card. Even the smallest of planets is enormous and deserves to be treated as such, and the briefest of sojourns will benefit.

Galloway vs. Gaming Gonzo...

Devotees of D&D in the early 1980s were lucky to encounter Bruce Galloway's master treatise: The Highest Level of All Fantasy Wargaming. The title was a bold claim, clickbait in the days before clickbait, intriguing to those of us with a bottomless appetite for whatever gaming we could get our hands on. And it was certainly ubiquitous. As I recall, my 14-year-old self found his copy on Winn-Dixie's magazine rack. Mom didn't approve of its occult artwork, but knowing her offspring, she acquiesced with little argument... 

Between the casual, unexamined sexism (obvious even to a teenage boy) and overly dense rules keen on subverting the players' agency, a fine collection of essays spanning fantasy literature's greatest themes got the reader thinking, and its medieval reference materials may have been its ultimate triumph. And in all fairness to Galloway, his obvious distaste for Gor tempered some of its generational misogyny. His remains a seminal offering, but my younger self rejected what was clearly his leading argument, summarized below: 

"In many ways, however, D&D is unsatisfactory...The party of adventurers will usually be an oddball assortment of warriors wearing armor and bearing weapons from a wide variety of cultures and historical periods; Black and White magicians; thieves, clerics...Apart from the sheer unlikelihood of such a motley crew being able to agree on any course of action without coming to blows, why should they associate together in the first place...Motive is the key word. D&D scenarios exist in a vacuum, and that is why we call them unsatisfactory...a fantasy scenario must contain its own consistent and intrinsic logic."

This was doubtless a marketing ploy. Why buy the book? Here's why. Galloway must have understood that the rules weren't imposing a setting so much as providing raw materials, drawn from history's abundant source, to fashion the campaign. Want history? Referees can make it happen. But most campaigns don't even occupy our universe, redrawing the lines beyond all reproach. Dwarves invented Renaissance plate armor, elves the English longbow to their specifications and on their timeline. This, alone, negates any argument...    

But there's more. There's gonzo. Take the game as offered and you do get a collection of armor and weaponry. You absolutely achieve that motley assemblage. Chaotic wizards, respectable, law-abiding heroes. And so what? There's this thing called fun, and an eldritch logic can still prevail in this environment. The introduction of dragons and wizards, alone, violates realism, and the same logic which allows this can exert its own consequences when some rule gets broken. In Wonderland, this intrinsic logic can be different.

These objections percolated within my adolescent brain, and to his substantial credit, Galloway appeared to anticipate as much, beseeching his D&D-oriented readers to see the power of his point despite such disagreements. Galloway's greatest achievement was a medieval reference manual complete with essays on everything from fantasy literature to the art (indeed, the necessity) of world building. And it taught this 14-year-old the value of his personal intuitions and how best to turn disagreements into something worthwhile...

Note: I still disagree on many counts, but find things to praise in this historic publication, including, most especially, its astrology, angels, demons, and solid essays.

The Player's Handbook Pulse...

Dungeons & Dragons has gone through many iterations, and its cover artwork has always encapsulated the state of the hobby at any given time. But it was the various Player's Handbooks, being dedicated to the ultimate act of adventuring, that spoke to how the game saw itself and the players (and characters) in its charge. Without a doubt, these evolving covers documented big changes over time, especially the first three, which straddled years of evolutionary changes while broadcasting exactly what experience was offered... 

OD&D MEN & MAGIC (1974). Arguably the first Player's Handbook, this sported a simple, line-copy illustration of a medieval-inspired fighting man. No action-packed heroics. No background save the card stock it was printed on. This was amateur production from an as-of-yet amateur industry, one suggestive of its quasi-historical influences, complete with a disposable fighter emblematic of its wargaming premise. Basically, a skirmish-type wargame where players identified with a revolving door of replaceable characters.

AD&D PLAYER'S HANDBOOK (1978). The first handbook by name, this one began D&D's transformation towards something more professional. Trampier's hardcover was at once amateur and accomplished, with its dungeon setting leaving no doubt as to where the action was supposed to be. Its fighters were medieval authentic, its magic-user straight from the storybooks that inspired them. Dungeon expeditions, captained by enduring character types, marked the transition from traditional wargame to more story-centric adventures...

AD&D 2E PLAYER'S HANDBOOK (1989). The evolution from amateur press to professional property was finally complete, although this doubtless occurred in the mid 1980s with the mainstreaming of the D&D product. Jeff Easley, part of the next generation of gaming artists, rendered OD&D's lone fighter as a mounted hero, which might have suggested a growing slant towards individual characters, but probably not since the original OD&D boxed set took a similar approach. Mostly, the cover speaks to D&D's commercial status.  

Of course, it's easy enough to retroactively assign meaning. The above is no exception, although D&D's transition from amateur to professional is obvious enough when comparing cover artwork alone. But OD&D's interchangeable hero and quasi-historical pretensions absolutely suggested a 1970s wargame as opposed to Second Edition's modern superhero style, with AD&D showcasing the hobby's golden balance. If anything, these first Player's Handbooks had one finger squarely on the pulse of a game that remains diagnostic...