Review: Veins of the Earth

This is an in depth review or analysis of Veins of the Earth. I am writing this after having DM'd a campaign using it so I am familiar with how it works in play.

Initial Impression

When I first purchased Veins of the Earth several months ago I read through it in several days, totally absorbed in it in a way that was unlike most other RPG product that I've read.  Part of this is due to it's unique writing style. It has a narrative/poetic feel to much of it, gone is the dry disembodied informative tone that most RPGs have. In a way I think this is perhaps it's biggest innovation. Most RPG books are written in a style that is similar to a technical manual or encyclopedia. When they're not written in this manner they tend to be filled with snippets of actual fiction, examples of play, stories set in the world, setting history told in a chronicle style, and other useless fluff. Both these approaches I find lackluster.

Veins does an excellent job writing about things you will actually use in-game, mainly monsters, with an an evocative and engaging style. The text does a far better job of actually portraying an engaging and flavorful setting than most multi-volume fantasy series that I have read. Reading Veins of the Earth was a wholly refreshing experience for me. It turns a cave, a simple hole in the ground, into a whole new frontier. An abyss that transcends it's geologic nature to embody different aspects of time and space, light and darkness, that force you to examine the experience of existence underground. Not just dry game stuff like how would you travel about, or what things are you likely to encounter, but how would it effect you emotionally? Psychologically? Socially? How would the alien nature of the environment really shape it's monsters? And deep time.

In this manner I find the true strength of Veins is that, beyond it's well designed monsters, it gives a good idea of the themes it is trying to convey and how to convey them through game-play. This in turn helps the DM create encounters and things for the players to experience that go beyond their stats and create a sense of shared storytelling.

What You Get

You get a 357 page hardcover book. It is illustrated by Scrap Princess with a ton of art. It has a sewn in bookmark, nice thick pages, excellent layout, and overall very high production values, as often seen in Lamentations of the Flame Princess products.

Overall as an RPG book it's a bit difficult to classify. The first 150 pages, basically half the book, is a very detailed bestiary. The second half contains rules and information on how to run an adventure or campaign in Veins of the Earth.

While it gives a strong sense of setting I would not consider Veins of the Earth a setting book. I consider all of this to it's benefit. The OSR movement seems to have largely done away with setting type books, books that act as encyclopedias on a world. I view this as a good thing. I'm not going to read 300 pages detailing the history of a world and it's places and people, all of which I will probably forget and just make something up on the spot at the table.

The chapters of the book are as follows:

Why the Underworld: 

This chapter is short, only a few pages, but really good for setting the tone and themes that Patrick Stewart is trying to convey. If you like this section chances are you'll like the rest of the book.

Pariahs of the Earth: 

Basically a bestiary. As mentioned before takes up about half the book. The monsters it in are very evocative. Some a little more off the wall than others. However there is enough of a mix of serious, quirky, odd, funny, dangerous monsters that no matter what kind of game you run you'll find some that you'll want to throw at the players. Every DM is probably going to have a different one that they will want to use in their very next adventure and one that they will never use.


Cultures in the Veins: 

These are more like essays on what the main races are in the Veins. They're short and don't really contain much immediately gameable information. People seem to be a bit critical of this. This section does feel a bit less fleshed out compared to the rest of the book but overall it didn't mind me to much in the sense that you'll probably have to adapt the main cultures and races to how you want them to function in your game so this section gives you an impression of them and leaves it up to you figure that out.

Light and Dark: 

This section is gold. Contains rules about the importance of light and how fuel for it functions a currency and other rules that really make the setting different from just a normal underground dungeon. Also written very well where it really gets across how to use the rules to make the players feel like they're in an alien environment.

Encumberance, Exploration, Climbing, and Travel:
Generating the Veins: 

These two chapters mainly about generating the Veins and traveling about in them. Overall this section probably breaks from standard DnD the most where it really attempts to present cave systems as dynamic 3 dimensional organically shaped environments, as apposed to the connected vaulting Styrofoam rooms you see on tv or in movies. It also tries to make all the minutia relating to navigating a cave, climbing, rope, exploring, etc. interesting beyond the standard skill check to see if you succeed on climbing the rope and fall and take some damage if you don't.

Overall I think this is probably the most bold and ambitious section of the book as it departs from the whole standard encounter list of combat/trap/trick/social that seems to embody DnD. After having run a campaign in Veins I have mixed feelings on whether or not it succeeded and will discuss it further in the following section.

Items, Treasure, and Spells: 
Madness and Change:
Appendices:

These sections are similar in the sense that they're all full of little things, spells, items, charts, that are evocatively described and easy to just drop in your game if the players do something unexpected or to create an interesting situation. Some are purely text and lack game statics or detailed information about how to use it in game, but anyone who is familiar with OSR material can probably generate stats or particular effects or how it actually functions in the game on the spot. Overall these sections are a really nice grab bag to pull from and you can tell a lot of work went into making each thing interesting and creative.

How it Plays

I ran Veins for about a 3 month campaign that is detailed here:

https://luminescentlich.blogspot.com/2018/01/veins-of-earth-campaign.html

I decided to run it a bit like a megadungon. Where the players would awake to find themselves in the Veins of the Earth and wander about it it. Where it would be an endless series of connected caverns.

I started off using the cave generation methods in the book to generate the caverns. I had to drop this after a while as it became a bit too tedious and time consuming. If I had a bit more prep time I might have stuck with it more. What I ended up doing was dropping a handful of dice onto a piece of paper and tracing circles around them. These would be the caverns and then I'd draw lines in between them and using a simple chart to decide if the connecting tunnels would be large or small or what 'wall' they were on. This didn't create as dynamic cave systems as the book does but were a bit more organic than your normal 2 dimensional dungeon.

I found the main problem about running the game is that most of the material in the book falls into two camps:

1. One where the Veins is a cloistered cautious cave exploration simulator where a lot of emphasis is put on climbing and navigating through a complex cave, where every decision can be the decision between life and death and where there is a fair amount of suspense over managing resources and the minutia of cave exploration. You are alone in the dark with scary shit. Basically like the film The Descent.
2. The Veins as a alien underworld filled with strange monsters and stranger races.  Where there are societies and cultures and more your typical DnD stuff. Where it's a place for endless strange adventure as the players explore this underground frontier.

I found this to conflict at times where the cave exploration stuff is very slow, methodical, and the suspense comes from the realism which requires a lot of description and work to make climbing and navigating caves seem dangerous and interesting. While the more typical DnD stuff tends to be less realistic, a little more off the wall, and where it's engaging because it's weird and dangerous but you still kind of want to intreact with it anyways.

With the cave exploration stuff the hardest part is the DM has to come up with non-binary consequences and decisions to stuff like climbing up a wall and across a cavern. As otherwise it can become a bit tedious if the main consequence to every cave climbing action is 'you fall and take some damage'. The 'cumulative failure' charts in the book help for this. I don't really know if they have an actual name. They seem to be inventions of Patrick Stewart and I'm really surprised no one seems to have talked about them much. 

You can find an example on page 208. Basically it's a chart that requires a player to make a skill test on every ability stat and if they fail a roll something bad happens, possibly cumulatively. This is a really, really unique way of making skill tests a lot more interesting as it makes them less binary. Where one failed skill roll can lead to six different results and it stops an over reliance on strength and dexterity to simply solve all climbing related tasks. It really shows how exploring a cave can be a mental and emotional test and how there are multiple ways a situation can go wrong and get dangerous very fast.

I almost wish there was more about this mechanic in the book. Kind of how to really use the charts and make your own to really help facilitate climbing and exploring a cave being less tedious or less of a binary slog. If you created some more of them and just used a side view map of an actual cave instead of creating your own you could have a really cool one shot adventure:

Overall I find, while very interesting, the cave generation and exploration material in the book requires a bit of a different mindset and buy-in from the players then your standard DnD. The introduction of the more typical DnD material conflicted with this. 

It all wasn't a huge issue. Just that if I were to run it again, now that I've run it as more of a typical megadungeon, I think it would be fun to run it more as a short one shot. I'd take the above map, make it the lair of a monster form the book, fill it with a few weird items and other things, and reveal parts of the map as the players explore and navigate it instead of trying to describe it to them. In this manner I'd try to highlight the realistic cave exploration stuff in a one shot adventure that I found a bit more tedious in a long campaign. Although this said the stuff that I did use for my campaign was awesome and worked well.

So I guess overall it all plays very well, you just have to be a bit selective about the material in the book. It's like cooking. If you use all the spices all at once it's not going to be as good as if you're selective and tailor the spices to what you want.

Art

Scrap Princess' art style is quite different from your traditional RPG art style. I'm not an art critic so I'm just going to describe it based upon the impressions it made on me: claustrophobic, impressionistic, fragmentary, flowing, dark, scribbled, insane, elegant, unearthly, cramped.

Normally the art of Scrap Princess isn't to my particular taste. It's well done, and I don't hate it, but if you had approached me and told me that it was going to be used to illustrate an RPG book I'd just scratch my head and think, huh, wonder how that is going to work, seems like an odd choice.

But work it does. The art of Scrap Princess is perfectly matched for Veins of the Earth. Very often it's not depicting a in an anatomical manner like you'd see in a encyclopedia. Instead I find it's often depicting the monster as you would find it. That is as if you actually stumbled across it in the dark a mile underground. That scattered terrified impression it makes in the shadows of your lantern, the scattered glimpses you try to relate to others later. In a way the art does a tremendous job of really conveying the themes and emotions of the Veins of the Earth. In this manner it doesn't just depict, but really illustrates the setting.

Conclusion

Overall if I were to describe Veins of the Earth in one word I would say impressionistic.  It's not a book that lays out a lot of information in a dry manner nor a book that delivers you a lot of lore in a chronicled top down manner.

Instead I find most of all it tries to give impressions of things. How particular monsters may be scary and operate on logic that is different from what you'd encounter above ground, how caves are cramped, twisting, and confusing, how darkness can seem alive, how easy it is to die alone underground, how the weight of stone above can drive men mad.

It packages all these impressions up with enough crunchy game material so you can plop them into your game. But overall does very much leave a lot of things up to you. While the information design of the book is very well done, and it's easy to use, I wouldn't particularly call it a prep free book in that sense that it leaves it entirely up to you to decide exactly what your underdark will be like and you will have to be selective and make decisions regarding it before you start play. In this way it might not be the best book for the beginning DM although you could do far worse.

However with it's wealth of creativity, it makes this very easy to quickly imagine how you want your underdark to be. It's literally bursting with ideas and will probably get you excited enough about them that you'll have no problem using stuff and running off on a tangent.

Innovations:

• The evocative writing and art which gives a sense of the setting and themes and which is packaged together with stuff that the players will actually encounter instead of written in a dry, top down encyclopedic manner that seems to be the standard in the RPG industry.
• Describing monster stats in a system neutral manner with things like comparing it's AC as chainmail or leather armour etc.
• Actually telling what kind of loot the monster has in the monster description. This makes each encounter more interesting, a great way to convey lore about the monsters to the players through the items they get when they kill it, and should pretty much become the standard in all RPGs.
• Those 'cumulative failure' charts that require players to roll on every stat as described above. These are a huge step in the right direction in trying to make ordinary actions, such as climbing across a cavern, more suspenseful and dramatic.

Buy if....

• You plan on doing anything underdark related ever.
• Or if you like interesting and engaging monsters. Even if you make no use of all it's other material, it has a ton of interesting monsters you can drop into pretty much any campaign.

Downsides:

• It's pricey.
• Will take some prep and a fair amount of thought to run a full campaign or really make use of it's material.

The Endless Descent: Rule Changes and Treasure Table

(This is an ongoing blog series about my Veins of the Earth Megadungeon Campaign that I call The Endless Descent. You can read the initial campaign ideas here)

Overall I find most of the rules presented in Veins of the Earth work very well with running it as a megadungeon. However there are a few things I'd like to alter in order to have it work a bit better.

Lumes:

As described in the book lumes are used as fuel for your lamp, the currency of the Veins, and experience points. Time is light, and light is very often food, and food keeps you alive.

However I consider lumes to be a very abstract  measure of time with no set value of minutes or hours. Instead certain actions cost certain amounts of lumes as described below.

Traveling in the Veins

As mentioned previously I am going to be generating the Veins cave system by cave system. Where each cave system is a series of connected caves that can be drawn out like a bunch of nodes and lines as illustrated in the book.  Nodes on the map are caves with something of interest. The connecting lines represent connecting caves that don’t have much of interest.

I'm doing things a bit differently than how most OSR RPGs track time. The lines on the map which are connecting caves make up the majority of caves in the Veins, the interesting caves which are the nodes are only a slim percentage. The Veins is a lonely labyrinthine place. The time spent in each interesting cavern (node) is considered moot compared to the time spent moving between interesting caverns (connecting lines on the map).

Therefore each time the players move from one node to another it costs a certain amount of lumes, generally 1d4 exploding. I calculate this when I initially generate each cave system (which I'll post more about at a later date).

Each movement between caverns invokes a wandering monster roll. If the characters move between caverns without light or run out of light halfway through, it invokes a wandering monster roll for each point of lume they would have spent.

Healing and Sleeping

It takes time to heal. To heal players must stop and sleep or rest. They heal one hit point per lume spent resting. They can rest without light in the darkness and still gain hit points but each hit point they heal invokes a wandering monster roll. This roll may be mitigated if they sleep in a heavily secured location.

Recovering Spells

To regain spells or other things that are regained every day, the players must stop and rest as described above and spend at least 8 lumes. 

Eating

Every session the characters must eat. If they don’t they advance along the starvation track.

Lumes and Experience Points

Based upon the leveling charts in the core LOTFP book you need to acquire hundreds or thousands of silver. Overall to really give the game a survival feel I need drastically reduce the amount of lumes given out to the players to make running out of light an actual danger and have every lume count for more. To this end I am using the following chart to for all characters for leveling up:

Level	Lumes
1	0
2	200
3	400
4	800
5	1,600
6	3,200
7	6,400
8	1,2800
9	2,5600
10	3,8400

It's basically the fighters leveling chart reduced by a factor of 10. I generally give out:

1d6 lumes for every body searched.

1d100 lumes in a cache (treasure chest, monster lair, hidden compartment etc.)

And 100-500 lumes for selling an especially rare item or searching the lair of an especially dangerous monster.

Overall it is very hard to get more than 500 lumes at a time and this keeps the amount of lumes the players gain lower, so running out of light is an issue, and how you want to spend that light more meaningful, yet keeps them leveling at around the same rate.

Gaining Experience Points

How the players decided to divide up the lumes they find is up to them. 

In terms of tracking lumes as experience points, the total amount of lumes collected in a session is tracked by me the Referee. At the end of that session a number of experience points equal to the amount is divided between all players at the session.

Additionally the players can spend their lumes to receive experience points on a 1:1 ratio. Yes, this means they are effectively getting 1 experience point when they first find the lume, and then can spend it for an additional experience point. 

This is to give even greater weight to lumes. For example say over the course of two sessions the party of 6 level one characters acquires 200 lumes. They would each have 33 experience points each. They could decide to pool their lumes and have one player spend a bunch of them to advance to second level. But this would leave them without much left to use for light or buy equipment or heal etc. In this manner the players can decide to blow their lumes to quicly level their characters, but may find it puts them in a worse off position. They will have to careful weigh risk v.s reward.

Equipment and Item Use

Very often in OSR games the players can use items they find or materials they scavenge to aid or problem solve in tasks without needing to roll a dice. Like using a plank as a bridge or rope to climb some rock. For these types of situations I am using the following general guidelines:

The players may opt to make a skill check or roll to overcome some kind of obstacle without the use of equipment or items. If they fail they incur some kind of danger.

OR

The players may opt to make some kind of skill check or roll in order to use materials or items they have to overcome some obstacle to gain a bonus on the skill check. If they fail they incur some kind of danger. The items are not consumed in the process.

OR

The players may opt to take their time with the task and build something sturdy and automatically overcome the challenge but the items and 1 lume for each roll that would have been needed to be made is consumed in the process.

For example say the players want to scale a cave. If they don't have any rope or climbing pitons or iron spikes or anything like this to aid them it's going to be a straight climb check. If they fail they take falling damage.

However if they have some rope they can choose to use it to aid them in their task. Say by tying themselves to each other as they go so if someone slips the others can hopefully help them. It will still require a climb roll but the rope won't be consumed.

Or if the players decide to really take their time they can do the task without having to roll at all, but it will 'consume' these resources. Such as putting the iron spikes in the rocks in ways that it's near impossible to recover them or tying so many knots in the rope and spiking it to the rock face that you're not going to get it back.

Treasure:

Because the characters are essentially always stuck in the megadungeon and don't return to town at the end of each session or anything like this, most of the equipment and items they find are going to have to be scavenged.

I've used the equipment charts and item sections in the book to come up with my own equipment chart.

Overall my goal was to ensure a good distribution of the types of items they would need v.s more interesting flavourful items v.s powerful treasure.

Its a fine balance as I wanted the players to be expending equipment to overcome obstacles, like rope, but also finding equipment to replace it. As overall their access to merchants is going to be limited.

Thus there are three general tiers in my treasure table. The first tier is mostly mundane or garbage items that aren't worth much money and don't have much use although players might be able to find a use for them if they get creative. It features Refuse, Clothing, and Personal items. Items of these types are found 25% of the time.

The second tier is more practical stuff. Stuff the characters are going to need to survive and features Equipment, Weapons, and Armour. The players will be able to sell these things, generally for 1d6 lumes if they really want to lug them around. Items of these types are found 44.5% of the time.

The third tier is more valuable stuff. Stuff that the characters are going to really want to get their hands on. They could sell them for a fair amount of money and they are things which will come in handy to get out of tough situations. This tier features Underdark Equipment, Scrolls, and Art. The players will be able to sell these things, generally for at least 100 lumes although finding a buyer may be difficult. Items of these types are found 25% of the time.

Also I hate rolling on subtables and wanted to use this chart on the fly so in order to generate an item you only need to roll twice. Once, 2d6 to determine the type of item the party has found, and then 1d20 to determine the specific item. The entire chart only takes up two pages. Could probably get it down to one if you squished it and got rid of the help text.

Overall I roll on this chart each time the characters search a body or two and several times if they have found a cache or are searching a lair.

Here is the treasure chart.

The Gonzo vs. The Weird

(note: I originally wrote this as a comment on g+ about the differences between DCC and LOTFP. After thinking upon it more I’ve decided to expand it into a more general blog post)

In RPG gaming I find there are two conflicting ideas that have started to bother me in how they seem to be used interchangeably. Usually they are referenced directly by what I believe is their most common labels: Gonzo and The weird, which I will refer to them in this article. 

They aren’t always referenced directly but more often referenced in terms of what would make good material for a particular game like Lamentations of the Flame Princess game or Dungeon Crawl Classics. Like that’s so Lamentations, or that’s so DCC!

This bothers me somewhat as I think The Gonzo and the Weird come from two very different styles of literary sources and each will evoke a very different role-playing game. I really don’t have a preference for one over the other, I've played both styles and love both. But I do think that it’s better to try to evoke one over the other as trying to evoke both tends to fail and I do think they are incompatible in some sense.

I will begin by trying to define both, hopefully without getting to literary or boring.

The Gonzo

The term ‘gonzo’ was first popularized by ‘gonzo journalism’ a style of writing mosty notably seen in the writings of Hunter S. Thompson. It tends to involve journalsim told from a subjective point of view that often emphasis things to a exaggerated intensity or bizzarre surrealism. I’m not going to go into depth about this, but am just going to say that over time the definition of Gonzo became a bit wider to include often bizarre and 'energetically' written works of various kinds.

I find this is how the word is used today in the rpg community. Most, I find, tend to use it to refer to a style of game that involves two key things in a game:

• Gonzo games tend to have a 'pulp' feel to them; they tend to be focused on character action and lead to adventure type stories that deal in extremes, both in character and the world, rather than trying to evoke a sense of naturalism or realism. 

• Gonzo games tend to involve a mashup of genre's and are unpredictable in terms of the tropes, imagery, and cliches that they use. A player in a gonzo game is equally likely to encounter a dinosaur, a space alien, and a troupe of knights. Not only are the cliches from different genre's mixed, very often the cliches themselves are blended. Like a troupe of humanoid dinosaur knights. 
• While this may make the setting seem very random, there often is an internal logic to things and while it mixes genre's it often uses cliches in order to allow the players to formulate ideas about how things work. In this  manner the mixing of the cliches are done more in a subversive manner, than one that truly tries to create something that seems alien or incomprehensible. 

I would say Gonzo games are most closely related to Swords and Sorcery type stories. Those stories tend to be pulpy and focus on character action and advancement in the world. Very often the characters start off as destitute nobodies. 

I would even categorize some genres of swords and sorcery fiction, like the John Carter of Mars series, to be more Gonzo then swords and sorcery. I think that for a sub-genre like Swords and Planets, where the sub-genre is defined primarily because the works use a blend of genre tropes or cliches, could be better categorized as Gonzo (as I have defined it) rather than having endless sub-genres. 

Regardless, I find Gonzo games tend to be popular because they are both unpredictable and unlikely to get stale, and tend to greatly empower the players where the focus is on their characters and how they change the world through their actions.

At it’s extreme Gonzo games tend to involve the players end up traveling to new places that are so different that the world becomes a bit of a patchwork of exotic locations more than anything else. This is assuming that it all takes place all in the same world where inter-dimensional travel might be a thing. 

This said, I think Gonzo games are very much different from other high-powered dimensional hopping type games or stories as due to it’s Swords and Sorcery roots; the players are very often not that powerful, and very much at the mercy of whatever new environment they have found themselves in.

The Weird

The Weird tale and weird literature has become popularized the most by the writings of H.P Lovecraft who is seen as the fundamental cornerstone of it. I’m not going to delve into this too much either, as entire books have been written trying to define exactly what The Weird is. But instead I’ll use the following general definition:

• Weird tales tend to be inherently investigative. That is main character finds out about some kind of 'abnormality', and whether the investigation is formal or not, he main character purses knowledge about it.

• The ‘thing’ or 'abnormality' they are investigating is often beyond human comprehension in some manner. It may be supernatural, it may be an alien entity, it may evoke feelings of horror or awe, it may seem religious or occult or not, but regardless, it is outside the main characters normal realm of experience and they have trouble comprehending it when they encounter it.

• Very often the arc of weird tales are that the main character tends to go from a space of normality to a space of abnormality as they pursue the object of their investigation, before returning once again to the space of normality, very often after having been driven insane or overall having had an unpleasant experience with the object of their investigation, the 'abnormality'.

 Weird tales are often most closely related to horror. Both tend to have build atmospheres of dread, both tend to involve bad stuff happening to people, and both tend to be set in the real world and involve normal people as their main characters.

In some ways Weird Tales can be defined as a subset of horror. Mainly as horror stories that don't involve any Christian theology (as Gothic horror tends to) or elements of folklore like vampires or werewolves. Instead Weird Tales tend to rely on sci-fi or fantastical elements instead as the manifestation of the unknown and take an ambiguous towards what exactly it is or happened.

Weird rpg games tend to be popular because they often have a sense of dread atmosphere and mystery about them. You play to see what happens in all RPGs but with there being a bit of an actual mystery to explore, things become more so engaging. There tends to be less of an emphasis on pulpy action as in Swords and Sorcery. Players and characters are very often less concerned with what happens to their players, whether or not they live or die horribly from touching the accursed idol. Death is entertaining if it's comical. 

Instead I find players are more interested in discovering the truth of the mystery, in 'beating' the game not through having their character advance personally in the world, but in seeing if their thoughts and ideas about the mystery, say, what exactly is going on regarding the weird cult that worships the weird idol, are accurate or not.

Why the two are incompatible

Overall, I find the two styles of games are incompatible. Weird RPG games tend to be more investigative and less focused on dramatic action. Gonzo games are less about atmosphere than weird tales and tend to be less mystery or story based. Weird games tend to be less comical or are serious with schlocky moments. Gonzo games tend to be comical overall and like to crank everything up to 11.

However, these differences aside, I think the biggest difference between the two is simply how each handles the sense of the normal, or normality.

In Gonzo stories, very often the characters are fish out of water; they are strangers in a strange land. The only reference they have for normality is themselves. Thus, for us as the players, the only reference we have for normality is them. As a result the characters are very often down on their luck nobodies and very relatable in this manner.

Furthermore very often the setting is 'extreme' in some way. Like it's ruled over by dangerous sorcerer kings, or has a race of intelligent white apes which live in jungles that the players have found themselves lost in, or the characters have found themselves on a wholly alien planet ruled by cannibal queens. 

I say 'extreme' and not 'weird' as in my opinion very often even though such things seem outlandish, grotesque, fantastic, or abnormal, very often they are much, much less weird then the things in weird tales. This is because, to me, the abnormalities in weird tales are inherently incomprehensible.

In contrast, the strange or extreme things about a Gonzo setting tend to be very comprehensible. If they weren't the game wouldn't really work as most of the challenge that comes from a Gonzo game and setting, is ‘figuring out’ the setting and gaining power in it. For example, if takes place on an alien planet ruled over by purple aliens, figuring out who their ruler is, how to curry favour and power, what the aliens fear, tend to be very valid goals and the inherent objectives of a Gonzo campaign. Very often that once this is accomplished, in true gonzo fashion, the characters find themselves whisked away or forced to flee to a new exotic location to begin the process again.

Thus, in this manner in a Gonzo type game the PC characters tend to be ‘agents of normality’ who are intruding upon an abnormal world and slowly, through learning about it and gathering power in it, making what was considered abnormal to them, normal. Once they do, very often they are whisked away to a new location.

In contrast, Weird tales or games tend to follow the almost opposite arc. The characters tend to begin in a normal world. It may take place in the past, may have a few things about it like demihumans, that our normal world doesn’t. But by on large the world tends to follow a Gygaxian Naturalism scheme where it’s mostly full of non-adventuring people just trying to make their way in life as they would in our world. 

Normality is everywhere, it surrounds the players. What separates them as adventures from other peoples in the world is simply that in some way the abnormal has intruded into their lives. Where for some reason or another they have gotten wrapped up in something that they have decided to investigate. The more the approach the abnormal singularity, the stranger things become, until they are generally forced to withdraw, regardless of whether or not they have actually figured out the abnormal singularity; as often times there really is nothing to figure out. The abnormality simply is.

You can't conquer the Weird setting in the same way you can in a Gonzo setting. Both do explore the setting, finding out more about it, but whereas the Gonzo player does more to advance their character personally, in my experience, the Weird player does more for the sense of discovery itself; the abnormality is fantastically weird enough that merely getting a glimpse behind the curtain is satisfaction enough.

This is partially why I think some people really don't like negadungeons such as Death Frost Doom. Where their characters don't fiddle with anything and the entire dungeon grinds to a halt or seems unfair. With Weird games there is an inherent understanding that it's not the personal advancement of your character that is the goal, as seen in swords and sorcery and other OSR games. It's the thrill of discovery and the atmosphere of the fantastic and weird that is the goal. 

In this manner, the goals of a Weird campaign are fundamentally different from a Gonzo one. In a true Weird campaign, you would never be able to ‘normalize’ the abnormality in the same way you could in the Gonzo one. 

In a true Weird Game you can’t gain knowledge of the abnormality and power over it in the same way you could a very strange alien kingdom in a Gonzo campaign. You can gain power and knowledge from the normal aspects of a Weird campaign. Like the kingdom the intruding weird thing is found. And such power is generally used to try and destroy or reject the intrusion of the abnormal. This rejection of the intrusion tends to form the underlying goal of the campaign.

In conclusion, I find the biggest difference between the two is that:

The Gonzo: the characters are the objects of normality and it is the characters that are intruding upon the abnormal setting. Their goals tend to inherently to normalize the setting through gathering knowledge and power over it and conquering it.

The Weird: the characters and the setting are the objects of normality and it is the abnormality which is intruding upon them and the normal setting. Where if there was no intrusion by the abnormality, there would be no game in a way. Furthermore, the players ability to conquer and ‘normalize’ the abnormality is generally very limited. Very often they won’t be able to gain much knowledge or control over it. Instead they tend to seek to try and block, defeat, or reject the intrusion of the abnormality through their personal actions or at times with the aid of the normal forces of the world.

Ten Questions to ask each Class

One thing I like about LOTFP is that it keeps the four classes very distinct, where each excels at a particular thing, and has a particular niche in the game. Yet, at the same time, the classes are ambiguous enough that the archetype your character embodies is handled through role-playing rather than little nitty-bitty +1 to things rule changes.

In this manner you could conceivably have two different fighters, one very barbaric, a Conanesque figure, and the other a chivalrous knight. This ambiguity I feel really helps players characterize their characters however they want without the rules getting in the way or trying to dictate things. It allows character to grow and change and become more nuanced.

To this end I have written up 10 questions to ask players about their character in order to get them imagining and thinking about, not just the back-story about their fighter or magic-user, but what kind of fighter or magic-user their character is. These questions are meant to prompt a true sense of characterization and are as follows:

Fighters:

1. Do I have a signature weapon and what is it?
2. Who taught me how to fight?
3. Do I enjoy violence?
4. What vice do I most commonly spend my ill-gotten gains on?
5. Have I served in any armies and been involved in armed conflicts?
6. Have I ever fought for a cause I believe in? Do I still believe in that cause?
7. Have I committed any atrocities?
8. Do I seek vengeance for any reason?
9. Do I feel guilty about those I kill?
10. What is the name of the person who bested me in combat?

Magic Users:

1. What does my spell book look like?
2. Who taught me magic?
3. Why did I decide to learn magic?
4. Which do I enjoy more: the company of people or books?
5. What am I curious about?
6. What great mystery would I like to solve?
7. Am I afraid for my soul because of the dark powers I deal with?
8. Did I live a sheltered life before adventuring?
9. What spell would I sacrifice everything to obtain?
10. Which magic-user is my rival arch-nemesis?

Cleric

1. Who is the ‘Bishop’ or what authority to I answer to in my religion?
2. What local community am I from? How did it shape my religious beliefs?
3. Do I truly believe in the higher power I represent?
4. Have I committed any mortal sins?
5. Do I feel the presence and inspiration of my god? How does it manifest?
6. Do I agree with all the tenets of the church I serve?
7. Did I always follow my religion? Or was I converted, ‘saved’, or ‘born again’?
8. Have I taken any holy vows (poverty, silence, abstinence, etc.)?
9. Is religion a personal matter to me or do I seek to spread the word?
10. What is the name of the authority figure who I know is corrupt  but cannot prove?

Specialist

1. Did I grow up rich or poor? And if so am I proud of my heritage?
2. Have I ever murdered anyone in cold blood?
3. Do I trust others easily? Do I have anyone I truly love/care for?
4. Do I pride myself in my skills or is it just a means to make money?
5. What great treasure would I like to steal?
6. Am I a sociopath or compulsive liar?
7. Do I know any great secrets about anyone? About other party members?
8. Do I ever wish to retire? What would I do?
9. Do I have any vices? What are they?
10. Who would I really like revenge on for something in the past?

Ildavir, Goddess of Nature

Ildavir, Goddess of Nature

Goddess of the primeval woods, of the Silver Stag, of the holly branch and moonlit grove. Her forests as dark and limitless as oceans, there are no roads in her green realm, only unseen paths. In every raindrop, in every moss covered rock, in every wayward leaf, she is found. It was she who gave the fox the colour of its fur, it was she who gave the raven the lustre of its feathers. All that roams the woods keep her well and whisper her name when they come across one of watching eyes carved by her priesthood.

Her followers know well how to read her moods; they see her fury in the storm, hear her laughter in sunlight, and feel her majesty in the greenery that cloaks the land. She watches her followers struggle and survive, watches them live and nurtures their soul with the strength to find their freedom.

Title:

1. Hermit

2. Walker

3. Guardian

4. Druid

5. Archdruid

Creed:

To live is to be wild, and to be wild is to be free.

Alignment:

Neutral.

Holy Symbol:

Their holy symbol is an oak leaf.

Restricted Weapons:

Clerics of Ildavir can use any weapon as long as it’s made from wood or resembles a common tool. Otherwise they roll at one dice lower. In general they tend to wield bows, slings, staffs, wooden clubs, and scythes or falxs.

Favoured Spells:

First Level: Food of the gods, paralysis.

Second Level: curse, neutralize poison or disease, wood wyrding.

Third Level: remove curse.

Fourth Level: affliction of the gods.

Fifth Level: weather control.

Unholy Creatures:

Un-dead, abhorrent or alien extra-planer creatures, demons, devils, lycanthropes, perversions of nature, oozes, slimes, moulds.

Communing with Ildavir

Clerics of Ildavir commune with her by meditating in nature. They gain insight into what she wants or her pleasure and displeasure through the actions of animals that serve as omens. Such as the flights or calls of birds, the appearance of a stag or bear on a nearby hill, the path of a mouse that crawls beneath a tree, a squirrel carrying an acorn across a tree branch, etc.

Clergy and Worship

Clerics of Ildavir tend to live as recluses or hermits living within, protecting, and caring for vast swaths of forest and those that live nearby. They view all life as equal and are equally inclined to save or help a wounded fox as they are to for a human child. They generally live in small huts in the forest near human settlements and build no other buildings and prefer to sleep under the stars if weather permits.

They protect the wilderness and are at times at odds with human civilization. They abhor deforestation caused by farming and the spread and squalor of civilization. Most clerics of Ildavir care not for the petty politics of the world and don't get involved to much in the affairs of the civilized world. Each cleric of Ildavir loosely belongs to a group of other clerics who live in nearby forests. Together they form a Circle and this tends to be the extent of the clergy’s hierarchy.

They tend to be indifferent to humanity or the other races but will stay on good terms with nearby settlements often tending to and caring for the sick or injured livestock of the common folk and finding them when they get lost in the woods. They are often sought out for their medical advice and contain a great knowledge about the healing properties of certain plants.

However the bulk of their time is spent simply existing in nature as they wish all would exist. They tend to their lands and the natural creatures within it, and blaze trails to erect thin totem poles with a myriad of strange shaped eyes carved into them. These totems called eyes of Ildavir by the common folk and rumour holds it that the Druids erect them so Ildavir herself can look through them and watch all that walk within the forest. The Druids say they simply serve to mark boundaries or function trail markers. Like many things about the practices and rituals of Ildavir their true purpose is unknown.

They have no temples or churches and only gather on certain nights in sacred places found in nature; groves full of ancient trees, at the edges of moonlight lakes, within circles of ancient standing stones, anywhere that the beauty and majesty of the wild strikes deep within the soul.

These meeting involve many sacred songs and rituals and are part council where the Druids of Ildavir discuss much about what has been going on in their forests and how they want to further their goals of building more Eyes of Ildavir and maintaining the forests.

Healing Description:

When healed by druids of Ildavir the individual watches as their flesh begins to move and grow as if it has a life of its own; bone sprouts like a tree at a prodigious rate and muscle worms its way around it like a snake followed by skin which flowing forth like water. Wounds snapping shut with scars appearing to seal them and spilled blood moves with a pulse of its own.

Deity Disapproval:

Roll
1	Walk barefoot for one day.
2	Take a vow of silence for one day.
3	Harm no animal, no matter how hostile, for one day.
4	Cut your palm and let the blood flow freely mixing with the earth. Take 1d4 damage.
5	Heal at 1 reduced die for a day as your connection with nature and life is lessened.
6	Seek out a hurt animal within 24 hours and nurse it back to health or suffer a -1 penalty to spell rolls for one day.
7	Carve a new totem, an eye of Illdavia’s eyes, deep within the forest within 1d3 days or loose 1d3 randomly determined spells for 1d3 days.
8	Lose the ability to cast one random spell until you plant a tree in Ildavirs name.
9	Suffer -2 to spell checks until you spend one night naked and alone meditating in nature.
10	You must subsist on nothing but the forgings of the forest, mainly roots and berries, for 1d12 days. Due to the fasting that results from this you only gain 1 hp when resting at night and recover no lost ability points.
11	Test of the Wild: you must venture into the woods and face a silver wolf summoned by Illdavia and fashion it’s pelt into a cloak.
12	Help 1d20 hitdice worth of sick or injured livestock of nearby farmers with your lay on hands ability. If you incur disapproval while doing so you take 1 str, sta, or agility point damage as you empathetically take their injuries into your body.
13	Kill no living natural things, no matter how hostile, for one day.
14	Seek out and destroy a greater corruption of nature. Be unable to turn unholy creatures until done.
15	Restore 1d20 hectares of farmland to forest. This generally involves hiring people at your own cost to help plant trees. Take a -3 penalty to spell checks until complete.
16	The cleric must give away all his gold to the poor, nature alone shall provide for him.
17	Clear a ruin or lair deep in the wilderness and take nothing from within. Ildavir will destroy it afterwards with an earthquake so that nature can reclaim it.
18	Blight the crops of a village to stop them from encroaching on the forest. This will cause the cleric to be branded an outlaw with a sizeable bounty placed upon their head in civilized lands.
19	Suffer from the sickness of civilization as the pain of the earth itself is felt. Suffer from Affliction of the Gods at a spellcheck of 1d20+17. This lasts a number of days equal to 1d4s rolled on this chart.
20	You suffer the curse of Illdavia and are cursed with lycanthropy and are one of her forsaken. You must go on a quest to find redemption and to have the curse be lifted.

Call of the Wild Ritual

To perform this ritual the Druid needs part of an animal or plant to act as a magical focus of the same type that they wish to call or interact with. Generally this is a bit of hair, tooth, root, flower petal, or leaf. The ritual involves the druid cutting their palm with a special ceremonial knife and letting their blood fall from their palm and mix with earth in a specially crafted oaken bowl worth no less than 50gp. The earth must be from a forest and be fresh, no older than 1 day. They must hold the focus in one hand while they mix the earth and blood with the other and smear traces of it on their forehead and face in Druidic letterings. 

Call of the Wild
Level 1	Range: Self     Duration: Varies    Casting Time: 1 hour  Save: N/A
1-11	Failure.
12-13	They can speak to and understand any natural animal or plant of the same type as the focus for CL hours and of equal to or lower Hit Dice of the caster. The animal or plant will act in a non-hostile, or (depending on species)  friendly manner towards the Druid but does not have to obey it's commands.
14-17	As above but if an animal of the focus type is present within CL miles of the caster they are called forth to the caster. If it is a stationary plant they are not called forth but the caster knows where it lies.
18-19	As above but the animal or plant will obey the caster’s commands within normal bounds; suicidal commands or those contrary to its nature have a 50% chance of releasing a monster from service. Due to the nature of the summoning, the caster cannot directly harm a creature he summons.
20-23	As above and they can see through a single sense of the called forth animal or plant and can communicate with it telepathically at a range of CL x 100 feet.
24-27	As above but instead of calling forth the animal can choose to take its form of the animal or plant. He assumes the creature’s form and manner of locomotion, as well as the ability to survive in the creature’s normal habitat but gains no other powers.
30-31	As above but the caster can change himself completely into a new animal or plant of Hit Dice equal to twice his caster level.
32+	As above but the caster can change himself completely into a new animal or plant, gaining all of that creature’s powers and abilities. The creature cannot have more Hit Dice than twice the caster’s level. The transformation lasts until the caster chooses to return to his normal form or 24 hours have passed

Divine Aid

There are a couple considerations about invoking Ildavir. The first is that being the goddess of nature herself it is near impossible for her to manifest aid in place where there is a lack of animals or vegetation, such as deserts, wastelands, barren mountain ranges, etc. However to make up for this, in areas with abundant life and vegetative matter the cleric rolls with a d24 instead of a d20 when seeking divine aid.

Furthermore Ildavir is somewhat of an amorphous goddess. She has no concrete form and instead is part of life and nature itself. When she manifests it tends to be in a profusion of growth and life itself. Examples are provided as follows:

DC 10 - Simple effects limited to affecting only the caster and manifest in almost natural ways.

• Plants and trees sprout from the land around the cleric rising from the earth, restoring it and hiding him.
• Life flows into the cleric from earth and they are healed of all damage.
• Storm clouds begin to billow and rain begins to pour obscuring sight.

DC 15 - Miraculous effects that aid the cleric and his party and are distinctly supernatural in nature.

• Vines grow from the ground wrapping around the enemies of the cleric ensnaring them.
• A wall of thorns sprouts up and blocks off creatures pursuing the cleric.
• The cleric and his party step into a tree and appears from a tree several miles distant.

DC 20 - Extraordinary effects that directly harm the enemies of the cleric and are blatantly supernatural.

• A dozen dire wolves are called to aid the cleric against his enemies.
•  The sky clouds over supernaturally fast and lighting beings to strike down the clerics enemies one by one.
•  The skin of the cleric and his party turn to bark greatly shielding them from damage.

DC 30 - Direct manifestations of the God; any creature (including the cleric's party) who cares for their wellbeing should immediately run.

• Wild growth bursts forth from the earth ensnaring and tearing apart any who aren't quick enough to get away.
• Hail the size of apples begins to fall as lighting strikes any moving target.
• The trees themselves come alive as Treants and walk forth led by the Greene man.