DShomshak

Vohai? Equatorial country. The Vohinese stand about three feet tall, with skin so dark brown it's almost black, with straight black hair worn long in elaborate braids, often with beads. They introduced curry to the Plenary Empire, and if you want the very best curry in Thalassene you need to know someone in Little Vohai. But the curry at Thana Mavo's stall at the Pillars lunch counter is still pretty good. (Historical note: Ancient Rome had lunch counters!) Lots of people go there for lunch, which means Thana Mavo knows everyone. A good person for you to know, if you want to stay up on who's doing what. Dean Shomshak

Working out intensive background such as planting seasons (are there distinct planting seasons? In an invented world, that can't be taken for granted) is part of what I've heard called the "Invisible Book" style of worldbuilding. Characters (whether in a movie, book or game) might never see a lot of this background, but it helps keep what is seen consistent. It helps supply tossed-off background details that increase the sense that the world exists beyond where the protagonists happen to be. And sometimes, as I have noted earlier in this thread, bits of this background you never thought would be relevant suddenly become important and your players gape at you like fish and ask in amazement how you set that up? Or sometimes you just want to fight a frickin' dragon and get a bunch of loot. But even then, it can be more memorable to win the Arkenstone than "a bunch of gold and jewels and stuff." An important part of the Invisible Book method, though, is you don't force players to read it, because the point is still to create an exciting adventure, not a social studies course. Dean Shomshak

The Daily devoted an episode to this, with the NYTimes reporter who twice investigated Tara Reed's allegation. As LL says, no one can offer any support for her claim beyond "She told me this story," the paperwork Ms. Reed says she filed about the incident doesn't seem to exist, and Senate aides who worked with Biden for a long time say the alleged behavior is utterly out of character. They know which male senators a woman does not want to be alone with, and Biden wasn't one of them. After extensive investigation, the (female) reporter finds the allegation "not credible." This hasn't stopped a certain All Things Considered reporter, interviewing women who've been suggested as possible Biden Veeps, what they think of the allegations. I shall grant her, it would be such an exciting plot twist if the Biden campaign suddenly imploded over this.

Well, in my "Fantasy Europa" alternate history FH setting, there actually was still a Silk Road from Europe to China. I considered using it as the basis of a campaign. Instead I ended up running a campaign based on the PCs being on the first ship to the New World in 50 years, after contact was lost during the Monster War. My now-on-hold D&D campaign is in a cosmopolitan port city with enclaves of peoples with whom the city has trade contacts: Little Vohai, Little Jiranda, Timbal Town, etc. Tarside, the waterfront neighborhood inhabited by Kurithan fire-worshipers, plays the same "sinister exotic foreigners" role of Limehouse in Victorian London (or at least in Victorian imagination). I also postulated a Mandeville's Travels homage, a gnomish traveler whose book about the marvels of very distant countries is perhaps not entirely reliable. Dean Shomshak

One-shots with V&V, one of the Marvel games and Aberrant. Not much interest in second sessions. A few playtest sessions with a friend's attempt to create a d20-based system. He swears he's going to finish it someday. And several sessions with another friend's homebrew supers game. Traveller stats and dice mechanics, such as they were. The power generation system was, "Write a paragraph describing what your character can do." Of course it only worked because we all trusted the GM, and the GM was good at improvising and judging on the fly. It also helped that he created the best setting I've ever seen. Dean Shomshak

In prepping my new campaign, I wrote a brief essay on ways people can become members of various classes -- keeping in mind that almost nobody in the Plenary Empire sets out to become a Murder Hobo/roving treasure-hunter, and even fewer succeed. (Even in decline, a thousand-year-old bureaucratic society has ways of dealing with such troublemakers.) Here are samples for a few classes: Fighter There are many paths to becoming a fighter. The Imperial Army trains the largest number of the Plenary Empire’s fighters. Its legions accept citizens of all races (and half the drill sergeants seem to be orcs), though it includes race-specific auxiliary groups such as dwarf sappers, elf archers and halfling slingers. Various knightly orders such as the Storm Riders or the Lions of the Sun serve as special forces. The Empire also has many other military forces, from provincial armies to village militias, city guards, and the private guards of rich merchants. Then there are gladiators, dueling clubs, and other people who fight for sport. In the Plenary Empire, gladiatorial combat is never deliberately to the death. Many a brawny village youth or slum kid achieves fame and fortune in the arena, though the lure of glory draws upper-class men and women to the gladiator’s life as well. Dueling clubs tend to be exclusively upper-class affairs. Fencing with a rapier is the most celebrated dueling art, but not the only one. Cities also have gymnasia called palaestra (posh) or Houses of Strength (street) that teach boxing, wrestling and basic weapons combat as well as physical fitness. Crime — street gangs, bandits and pirates — provides another path to becoming a fighter. Even less formally, some people just get in a lot of fights. Survive enough of them, and you become a fighter. Sailors often become fighters in this manner, since no shore leave is complete without a tavern brawl. Military officers often become battle masters, but so do gladiators — the special maneuvers enable a more strategic form of combat, as well as spectacular moves that get the crowd cheering. Fencing masters may become battle masters as well. Champions are more a generic fighter, dedicated to killing the enemy as quickly as possible while not getting killed in turn. Eldritch knights and arcane archers are rare and probably belong to some elite military order that you will have to define for me. See the Resources chapter for more description of fighting groups, though some of these include rangers and other classes. Plenary folk rarely draw clear distinctions between the various combat-focused classes. Ranger Note: The Magozoic setting does not use the official ranger class. My rangers don’t cast spells. There are not, in fact, any organized “conclaves” of rangers: It’s just that at 3rd level, rangers choose to specialize in various ways. Guidance from a ranger who already follows a particular subclass is useful, but not necessary. Many rangers join the class through training by a personal mentor. They don’t think of themselves specifically as rangers. They are merely skilled hunters, tribal warriors, village sheriffs, members of bandit companies, and the like. A few military organizations do train rangers. For instance, the Knights Lupercine train their squires in stealth, woodcraft and other skills suitable for scouts and commandos who operate in the wilderness and behind enemy lines. The Pursuivants are a company of rangers that began as Imperially-chartered bounty hunters but degenerated into kidnappers for hire. However, all these organizations include rangers from more than one “conclave” (and people from other classes besides). See the Resources chapter for more information about groups that include rangers. Rogue Rogues are another class with many possible origin stories and career paths. Many independent rogues apprenticed with a master thief, assassin or confidence trickster. Some rogues belong to street gangs or organized crime syndicates (though few of these groups would style themselves a “thieves’ guild”). A major city such as Thalassene has several mobs, large and small, from little neighborhood groups such as the orcish Big Bad Bashers of East Row or the now-deceased Spikemen, through roving gangs such as the halfling thieves called the Wall Rats, to major syndicates such as the Sicarii. But the Plenary Empire has other options. The elven academy of Cedrus Mons provides a holistic education — physical, mental, esthetic and arcane — whose boundaries are elvishly obscure. It’s best known for producing bards. However, the academy’s curriculum can also grant a rogue’s skills without ever calling them such. Expertise is “how to become the best you can in anything you want.” Sneak Attack arises from advanced tactics for self defense, striking for best effect during an opponent’s divided or otherwise imperfect attention. Lockpicking comes from fine mechanics as a way to develop mental and manual precision; and so on. It’s one of the most elite finishing schools for children of the upper crust, but the masters of Cedrus Mons do not open their academy for mere gold. They place higher value on students whom they find in some way… interesting. The Plenary Empire itself trains rogues as spies. So do some of its rivals. Not every spy stays forever within the Office of Inquiry and Correction or its analogs in other countries. Sorcerer Note: The Magozoic setting treats sorcery as an alternative form of arcane magic. Sorcerers gain their power through arcane study; and sorcery uses Intelligence as its spellcasting ability. Instead of the eight schools of wizardry, though, sorcerers draw on primal powers such as the elements, runes, or blood. Sorcery isn’t as flexible as wizardry, but can be just as powerful. Of the published schools, only Wild Magic is ported into Magozoic — and it is gained by an arcane initiation, not by accident. Scholarly and formalized versions of sorcery are entirely respectable in the Plenary Empire. The same schools that teach wizardry might teach sorcery, too. However, sorcery also has a “hedge magic” side practiced by the less urbanized and less literate races such as goblins, orcs and kobolds, or the tribal cultures of distant lands. Blood sorcery in particular has a reputation as an art practiced by outlanders and savages. Sorcerers lack the specialized utility spells developed by wizards, but they can make their combat magic extra kaboomy. The Imperial legions and other militias offer steady, if dangerous, employment for sorcerers. The Empire’s hobgoblin cohorts train their own battle sorcerers. Sorcerers with wind and weather magic find work in the Navy and on merchant ships. See the Resources chapter for description of some groups that teach sorcery. Wizard While wizards can study through apprenticeship, Plenary folk can also learn through structured academic programs. The Library of Thalassene is the Empire’s most celebrated seat of higher learning, including wizardry; but the elves of Fracasta and Zyrrhene and the three main dwarven cities sponsor their own schools. Graduates of such programs may title themselves as “Doctor.” The Invisible College of the gnomish troupes also teaches wizardry (along with bardic arts), though you don’t get a nice vellum scroll attesting to your skill. A determined person can even learn wizardry just from books. Plenary wizards also have many career paths besides adventurer, tower-dwelling sage or mad would-be tyrant. Simply as an educated person, a wizard can usually find a job in learned professions from clerk to physician. Many low-level spells have commercial uses, such as making ice using ray of frost. Magnates and aristocrats may want a wizard both to tutor and defend their children. Court wizards provide flashy entertainment while possibly providing more practical or sinister services on the side. See the Resources chapter for descriptions of groups that teach wizardry. --------------- I won't say the "roving soldier of fortune" model for PC groups is wrong, but I think it's aiming low. Dean Shomshak

In my friend's campaign, I ran Jervon Cutler. As his surname says, he made and sharpened knives. He was also very good at using them. We also had a grown-up street urchin who still did thieving for her Faginesque mentor when she wasn't working as a barmaid; a teamster with ambitions of being a minstrel; and a very strong man who worked in sewer maintenance. Current-on-hold campaign has a cleric of The Lovers who's set up a storefront shrine and may be becoming the neighborhood marriage counselor and matchmaker; a lizardfolk awakened from his people's trance of race-memory, and works as a laborer to pay for lessons at a dojo in hopes of controlling his rage (*long* story); a bard who works as an entertainer, hustling for gigs at inns and taverns; a teenage girl who is really really good with crossbows (her parents make and repair them); and an orc paladin apprenticing with his gnomish artiificier kinsman (another long story) while he seeks his destiny. There may be quests in the group's future, but for now they are enmeshing themselves in the affairs of the neighborhood and the city beyond. Dean Shomshak

As for Things I'm Tired Of Seeing, I'm a bit irritated with the concept of the "professional adventurer." I suppose it's useful for getting PCs into adventures: Village/Kingdom/Whatever has problem, hires "adventurers" to solve it. PCs take the job, aadventure begins. B ut the term is a little meta for my tastes. Like, James Bond isn't an "adventurer." He's a spy. This results in him having adventures, but that's not his goal as such. Mike Hammer isn't an "adventurer": He's a private detective. The Fellowship of the Ring weren't "adventurers," either. They were on a specific quest and when it was over they went home and did other things. Though that's not very good for an ongoing game. I like when there can be some frame to explain why the PCs keep getting into trouble. Our last FH game had a good one: The PCs are the neighborhood watch. Looking for trouble, in a sense, as we stop drunken bar fights and such... but this is a Fantasy city where small events can entangle one in larger conflicts such as the power struggle between the Duke, the nobles and the merchants, or the stolen McGuffin that people are chasing is magical, or there's stuff buried beneath the city that could reveal the world Isn't What You Thought It Was. Worked out really well. The GM had to end the campaign for personal reasons, but I've lifted the concept for my own use. Dean Shomshak

As far as Voldemort trying to zap baby Harry with his Big Kill-o-Matic Spell instead of just having his sname eat him or something, I think Rowling did okay in presenting the psychological reasons. Mainly, that he started out a homicidal sociopath and got steadily worse as he broke off parts of his soul to make himself immortal. (Add that to the Evil Overlord Rules: Damaging your soul for power never ends well.) And he really, really liked using his Kill-o-Matic Spell. So why wait, like, 30 seconds to arrange some other death? Just wave the wand and do it now! And for all that he's brilliant and erudite in some ways, Voldemort is sloppy on the basics of magic -- the stuff that doesn't seem to have an immediate payoff in power. It's why he didn't know that willing sacrifice could create a magical shield powerful enough to bounce the Kill-o-Matic Spell. Or that a bit of his own soul would break off and lodge in Harry. Or correctly parsing the TOS for the Super Powerful Wand. In Harry's world, evil seems to involve a degree of stupid, or at least blindness. I'm okay with that. Dean Shomshak

According to a story my local paper took off the wire, Sanders genuinely likes Biden, which is why he didn't really go after Biden very hard in the debates. The reason? Back when they were both in the Senate, Biden was nice to him. This is worth remembering if you're anguished about Biden not being progressive enough, or outraged that he once worked with conservative bigots instead of pointing a finger and thundering, "Evil!" Joe Biden seems to like everyone, and it seems to have left him with no real enemies. Right now, this may be important in uniting the Democratic party and coaxing independents to join in making Trump a one-term president. Dean Shomshak

Fifth Edition is thus far silent, as far as I can tell. (I haven't read every supplement.) IIRC previous editions labeled them as creatures of "the Far Realms," beyond the arrangement of Inner/Elemental Planes and alignment-based Outer Planes. Beholders do not currently have diamonds in their central eyes. 1st and 3rd edition Monster Manuals don't mention it, either. Source, please? Oh, I just thought of a parallel from ficiton that could jibe with beholders' paranoid megalomania: the Eddoreans from E. E. Smith's "Lensman" series. Eddoreans are explicitly from another universe. Unlike all the intelligent species of this universe (all ultimately descended from the Arisians, who seeded life on newly-formed planets), Eddoreans reproduce asexually, by mitosis. Smith posits that this accounts for the Eddoreans' uniquely tyrannical way of thinking: Intelligences that reproduce sexually need other people on a fundamental level. Eddoreans don't: Every other Eddorean is a competitor. As a result, Eddoreans lack even the most rudimentary empathy for other creatures. The Eddorean civilization, or anti-civilization, is merely an extended truce between the last Eddoreans standing after eons of each-against-all warfare: Having concluded it's impossible to kill each other without unacceptable risk of dying themselves, they decided to find a universe rich in life they could conquer. Smith was not a greaqt writer or thinker, but it's an interesting attempt to define and explain a radically nonhuman perspective. Dean Shomshak

Past D&D editions had several varieties of "Beholderkin" with a quasi-biological rationale connecting them. Not anymore. I find the new version explicated in Volo's Guide to Monsters actually quite a good bit of Lovecraftiana. To summarize: Beholders warp the world for miles around just be staying in a place too long. (This has actual mechanical effects.) They don't reproduce biologically: They reproduce when one beholder literally dreams another one into existence, in a fit of self-fulfilling paranoid nightmare. It is not even clear that beholders have biology. Perhaps the reason they have no empathy for other creatures -- seeing them only as food (do they actually need to eat? not sure), pets/slaves, or dangers to be exterminated. Every beholder believes it's the only "real" beholder, and every other beholder is an abomination and a mockery that must be killed on sight. Beholders don't make a lick of sense, biologically or psychologically. That's the point. They aren't just alien to the worlds they occupy. They are alien to all known existence. They are Things That Should Not Be. Dean Shomshak

Duke posted an extended rant on this a few pages back. To summarize: Players who think elves are so cool they only want to play elves. Even in games and genres that don't have elves. A few years of this can teach a man to hate. And he is apparently not the only gamer here who has endured this. They have my sympathies. Dean Shomshak

Okay, Duke pretty much put paid to the notion of "pure evil." That still leaves "intolerable evil," of course. That should suffice for most story purposes. My issue with "They're just evil" comes from the logical regress. Orcs, or oblins, or whatever, tend to do evil, however you define it -- gratuitous cruelty and destruction, say -- because a god made them that way. So why is the god evil? You've pushed the question of moral responsibility up a level, but you haven't removed it. You can give the god a motivation. One old article in DRAGON magazine presented a myth in which Gruumsh, creator-god of D&D's orcs, came late when the gods were picking territories for the races they were creating, and nothing was left. Outraged, Gruumsh swore that orcs would take all the world, and destroy everyone else in the process. It's an okay myth, as myths go. A fair number of myths attribute some unpleasant part of the world to a god being pissed at some minor offense. EDIT: I just checked the 5th ed Monster Manual, and it used the Offended Gruumsh" story. If I ever checked before, I'd forgotten. I may actually use the myth in my D&D world -- as a myth. D&D doesn't have the good sense to leave it there, though, with evil being the fault of ass-hat gods who might be either reformed or punished for their ass-hattery. No, evil is made a part of the cosmic system though aligned planes. I demons are evil because they arise from the Abyss, which is evil, where did the Abyss come from and why is it evil? AFAIK it just is. Clearly, that's enough for many people. But I am not many people, and neither are the people I play with. At which point I was going to describe how I'm handling good and evil in my D&D game, but that's probably more than people would be interested in. Suffice to say: I am also not a Medieval European, an Ancient Greek, or any other of the peoples of past millennia whose myths and sagas inspire Fantasy. I try to make adventures that are thrilling and meaningful to me and my friends, not to them. Dean Shomshak

As it happens,m that's the concept of one of the PCs in my new D&D game. An orc raised by a traveling troupe of gnomish tinkers and entertainers. He still identifies as a gnome, despite the difference in size. Which in my world makes perfect sense to gnomes. Trained as a toymaker like his foster-father; called as a paladin after an encounter with slavers led by a minor demon; currently in the neighborhood watch of the Oddmonger district of the city of Thalassene, where many people find him confusing. Dean Shomshak

As predicted. And, as usual for Trump, a big fat lie. ATC talked about this yesterday. WHO did issue warnings back in January. It's true, they did not use the word "pandemic" -- because at that time, covid-19 wasn't. "Pandemic" doesn't mean "Gosh, this is a dangerous disease." It means "This disease has spread around the world and will affect everyone." (Pan demos, "all people.") Governments disregarded the threat. Trump actively tried to conceal it. Dean Shomshak

Sometimes the point seems to provide a "shock of the familiar" in contexts that initially seem strange. Mandeville's Travels -- the immensely popular Medieval guidebook to the marvels of the East -- does this several times. For instance, Mandeville assures us that the king of the dog-headed men is very pious in his devotion to the ox-god of his people, and the naked cannibal savages of another country love their parents (even if the way they show it is a little, um, different from European sensibilities). Years back, I read a book about extraterrestrial life whose author mocked many SF aliens as mere "animal fables" -- using animals (or aliens, especially aliens reminiscent of Earthly animals) as stand-ins for human qualities and behaviors. Foxes, the author sniffed, are not actually sly, nor lions brave, nor grasshoppers carefree. Those are human projections. Most aliens, similarly, are clearly not really aliens but just humans in rubber suits and makeup. Which, it could be argued, misses the point. SF writers are rarely trying to create accurate forecasts of What's Really Out There. (Best evidence at pesent would be: bacteria. Nothing but bacteria.) The writers are humans, telling stories for other humans to enjoy. The same is true for fantasy authrors. "If the nonhumans aren't really nonhuman, why are they nonhumans?" Well, if the ant and the grasshopper in Aesop's fable aren't really scientifically accurate insects, why are they an ant and a grasshopper? Answer one question, and you answer the other. Dean Shomshak

I think the starting question(s) need to be divided, between having multiple intelligent races in the world, and having them available as PCs. Many of the mythologies on which we base our fantasies did have multiple intelligent races in rthe world. The Norse, for instance, had elves (light and dark), dwarves and giants (multiple varieties). The Greeks had centaurs, satyrs, and others. Medieval Europeans didn't believe that other intelligent peoples lived with them in Europe, but educated folk knew that distant parts of the world held giants, pygmies, dog-headed men, monopods, and other strange folk: Respectable Classical authors such as Pliny told them so. But they rarely told stories in which such "other folk" acted as protagonists. (I can think of a few Norse stories about dwarfs, but these were usually backstory for myths about gods or human heroes.) These "other folk" were usually quite human in their motivations, though, so I don't see any special need why they should be notably alien in fantasy. Would the myth of the Mead of Poetry be "better" if all the participants had been human, instead of dwarfs and giants? Dean Shomshak

I, too, have been known to include certain character options because certain players have, um, obsessions. But I would prefer not to discuss details. As another example of "How are they evil, and w hy?" here's the text for a race I created as another possible antagonist, the Aegles: eagle-folk with powers of wind and lightning. --------------------- Men Who Would Be Gods. The aegle race began 12 centuries ago in the mountainous country of Maegoth. The templar aristocracy of that country devoted themselves to the storm and war god Viraskün, whose totem was the mountain eagle. In their zeal to emulate their god and conquer in his name, the templars bred with spirits of Jupiter and otherwise infused their offspring with magic to give them an eagle’s features and the power of storm. For decades, the first aegles conquered far and wide to glorify their god — and themselves, proclaiming they were the children of the Storm-Eagle and demanding that subject peoples sacrifice to them as if they too were gods. Tales say the aegles met their doom when a god finally struck them down for their blasphemous pride. Later tales say Viraskün himself punished the aegles. Earlier stories say the Storm-Eagle was well pleased with his self-proclaimed children, and some other god delivered punishment. Soberer historians say the aegles simply made too many enemies, who finally united to destroy them. However it appened, Maegoth was sacked and the aegles massacred, ending with hundreds of their young being burned alive. But it is hard to exterminate people who can fly. Dozens aegles escaped to live among high peaks very far from their enemies. The aegles eventually grew in numbers and, through constant struggle against nature and each other, achieved even greater power. Their ambition, pride and contempt for other people stayed the same. Bandit Eyries. Aegle communities live in remote and rugged mountains. They hew shallow cave-homes out of soft rock cliffs, expanded by covered, wooden porches held out on props. Since aegles live by hunting and gathering, these eyries cannot grow populous or large. Moreover, communities easily split due to personality conflicts and power struggles: Aegles have difficulty submitting even to other aegles. From these eyries, small bands of aegles fly out to raid caravans, loot noble estates or extort tribute from villages. Every few centuries, aegle warlords gather the scattered eyries to try conquering a new kingdom. As in Maegoth, the aegles enjoy early success through their individual power, but they make too many enemies. Inevitably, they are once again massacred and driven away. Aegles are now a hate-filled race, raised in bitterness that their ambition and obvious superiority have been so many times denied. Warriors of Storm. <How they fight, not important here.> Aegle Characters. Aegles may seek greater power by following a character class. Most aegles become fighters of some sort. They have a tradition of eldritch knights who specialize (of course) in spells of lightning, wind and other weather-related phenomena. Fewer aegles become sorcerers (always of the Elemental Air path), deepening their mastery over their inner magic, though every aegle carries this potential. Aegle druids are perhaps the least bitter of their race, for in dedication to the natural world they learn to curb their pride. Hardly one aegle in a century becomes a cleric: Most aegles would rather die than kneel — even in spirit, to a god — and say, “I am your servant; thy will be done.” They continue to honor Viraskün, but their rites have become hollow displays, empty of reverence. ------------------- Dean Shomshak

An excellent point. I was going to cite Fafnir as an example. Then I followed your link and saw that was what you were talking about. Never mind! Eustace turning into a dragon in C. S. Lewis. Voyage of the Dawn Treader offers another example. Dean Shomshak

I admit I haven't read all of Moorcock, but in the Elric books Chaos looked pretty much like Evil under another name. Didn't see Arioch or other Lords of chaos doing much ta\hat looked like opening up new possibilities. The made whimsy of the Dancers at the End of Time was less malevolent, but looked ultimately unproductive. But I quite Moorcock in the early 80s. He may have written other material that developed his ideas further. Dean Shomshak

I too find noptions of "Team Good" and "Team Evil" kind of boring, at least when there's no serious thought about what Good and Evil actually mean, or why people (or species, or gods) are on each team. In Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature, he cited a sort of evolutionary path of moral foundations that might be useful in designing different cultures (whether different "races" or not). Or at least a path of greater abstraction. 1) Primordial solidarity: We are one. We are good because we are us. Others are bad, or at least dangerous, because they are not-us. As Scott notes, this was the dominant moral theory for most people through most of history, and I dare say a great many people today still operate on this level, even in the most "advanced" societies. Why not, for hundreds of thousands of years of living with scare resources, it kept our ancestors alive. 2) Obedience to authority. Do what the king says, because he's king. Or what the priest says, because he/she speaks for God. Or the Party Secretary. Whatever. Follow the rules because they are The Rules. Again, this has been quite a useful ethical system for many times and places, because it helps people organize in large numbers. 3) Reciprocity: You did something to benefit me, so I am obliged to do something that benefits you. It brings some logical clarity when rules, authorities and group identities become multiple or muddled. 4) Contract: We spell out what each shall do and what each can expect in return. If anyone doesn't agree to the contract, well, there's going to be problems. I also like the "Moral Foundations" theory of psychologist Jonathan Haidt. His experiments find six moral bases for the snap judgments people make about right and wrong: *Care/Harm: To inflict suffering is generally bad; to relieve it is generally good. * Freedom/Oppression: It's good to be able to do what you want, and bad to be forced to act otherwise. * Fairness/Unfairness: Cheating to get what you don't deserve is bad. So is being denied what is your due. * Loyalty/Treachery: Working for the benefit of your group is good. Working to harm your group is bad. Working to help an enemy group is especially bad. * Authority/Insubordination: Following leaders is good. Defying them is bad. Note: There's a flip side, in that people in positions of authority are supposed to do their duty by their followers. Authority is a two-way street. * Purity/Defilement: This is perhaps the slipperiest, most abstract of the moral foundations, because people can have quite different notions of what constitutes purity or sanctity, or what fields they apply the concept to. But disgust at what is seen as defiled is a powerful motivator. What I like about schemata like these is they open up wider possibilities for what makes bad guys bad, or why good guys think they're good. You can have a ferocious struggle between two (or more) sides who both think they are righteous -- and they are, within their system of moral reasoning. (Which most of them are not consciously aware of, naturally.) (Working with such systems can get uncomfortable, though.) For instance, my just-starting D&D campaign is starting in a port city. Looking for potential adversaries, I find the sahuagin: fish-people who savagely attack all other sapient creatures. Why? Well, they worship the evil shark god Sekolah. Why? Um... They're just evil, okay? Shark people are going to be savage killing machines. Boring. So what can I do with them? Well, D&D has other fish-people: the kuo-toa, who are dangerous because their ancestors were enslaved by Horrors From Beyond and the crazy got burned in so deep it's hereditary; and the locathah, who are just people. I put 'em all together: the kuo-toa and sahuagin both began as locdathah. Things in the eternal darkness of the ocean deeps took the kuo-toa and broke them. The sahuagin are descended from locathah who set out to fight the Horrors. And they decided that only devils were strong and fierce enough to win a war for the survival of the world. So they think they are (to borrow the phrase from Captain Marvel) noble warrior heroes. Everyone they kill is a sacrifice to Sekolah, to feed the Shark God for its own battles in the Deep, and to raise magical power for the sahuagin's own use. It's brutal. But they are hard fish-men making hard choices, to save a world that doesn't even understand the threat, and their own deaths in battle are glorious martyrdoms. They are driven by an extreme code of duty, loyalty and a world purified of cosmic evil. Nevertheless, I expect the PCs will probably agree the sahuagin need to be stopped from killing them and the people they care about. Hm. Longer than I planned, Sorry. Dean Shomshak

we may differ on what we consider "humans with a coat of paint." But I may have inadvertently made your point for you. If a Fantasy setting can include people with dramatically different appearances and abilities, living in dramatically different environments, but who can nevertheless be classified as human, what is gained by saying they aren't? "Culturally or mentally distinct"... hm. That's a high bar, given that H. P. Lovecraft ended At the Mountains of Madness with the narrator empathizing with the aliens and concluding that everything they had done had been comprehensible and, in many ways, admirable. "Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star-spawn -- whatever they had been, they were men!" Arguably, even they ended up as "humans with a coat of paint." Anyone care to nominate examples of Fantasy nonhumans who would meet this standard but were still characters with whom one could empathize? Dean Shomshak

Yesterday the BBC interviewed perennial liberal Noam Chomsky, who amazingly is still alive (age 92, IIRC). He said the coronavirous was only the latest evidence that the radical capitalism of the last 4 decades or so Just Doesn't Work and we need to return to the days when corporations were regulated and billionaires were taxed. To get an opinion from a very different source, today the BBC interviewed the editor of the business magazine Forbes. Who then said almost the same thing as Noam Chomsky: Milton Friedmanish, only stockholders matter free market absolutism does not work and must be changed. Corporations also need to operate for the benefit of workers, communities and society as a whole. The editor claimed that many of the billionaires he's interviewed say the same thing, though few are as yet willing to say it in public. Okay, so talk is cheap. But I was surprised even to hear such talk from one of the cheerleaders of big business and big money. Dean Shomshak

Yesterday the BBC interviewed perennial liberal Noam Chomsky, who amazingly is still alive (age 92, IIRC). He said the coronavirous was only the latest evidence that the radical capitalism of the last 4 decades or so Just Doesn't Work and we need to return to the days when corporations were regulated and billionaires were taxed. To get an opinion from a very different source, today the BBC interviewed the editor of the business magazine Forbes. Who then said almost the same thing as Noam Chomsky: Milton Friedmanish, only stockholders matter free market absolutism does not work and must be changed. Corporations also need to operate for the benefit of workers, communities and society as a whole. The editor claimed that many of the billionaires he's interviewed say the same thing, though few are as yet willing to say it in public. Okay, so talk is cheap. But I was surprised even to hear such talk from one of the cheerleaders of big business and big money. Dean Shomshak