Going To See The Sage Should Be Awesome

The sage knows the thing that the party wants to know about. They're gonna want to visit the sage.

But here's the other thing: if you don't know about the thing the party wants to know about yet, because you haven't decided, then a great way to put off the decision for a session or two is to build an adventure around the sage.

Here are some tables for making sages, plus a few made using those tables down at the end.

Why Is Seeing the Sage Difficult? (d100)

1-10 Hermit in the jungle seething with beasts

11-20 Hermit on a mountain crawling with critters

21-30 Hermit in the forest carbuncled with creatures

31-34 Hermit on an isle where the sea teems with terrors 

35-37 Prisoner of a powerful potentate

38-40 Prisoner of traveling troublemakers

41-43 Prisoner in a deep dungeon beneath the earth

44-46 Prisoner of a rival power

47-48 Is a rival power

49-52 No-one knows who the sage is but they’re somewhere in this…

(49)…city

(50)…dungeon

(51)…castle

(52)…ship’s crew

53-57 They’re in the city but it’s a whole Raymond Chandler novel trying to find them

58-68 They’re right there but they won’t give up the information for money, they want you to go on some fetch quest.

69-73 They’re just a dick and will fight you or test you in some gatekeepy way like Pai Mei in Kill Bill 

74-76 They’re a fucked-up high-level wizard with all that implies

77-78 They speak in literal riddles so getting your answer requires figuring out some puzzle

79 They are stuck in another dimension

80 Super greedy so the price of your information is high enough the PCs need to go do some other adventure first

81-85 They are paranoid and too distracted to answer their door so they live in a wacky trap house

86 They are paranoid or just really dotty so you have to get past some dangerous jackass who doesn’t like anyone to get to talk to them

87 They think the knowledge is dangerous and want to test whether you are safe/moral/noble/smart enough to wield it properly

88 They’ve been replaced by an evil twin/clone/duplicate/master of disguise or just a liar because its the middle ages and photos haven’t been invented

89 They’re a thief or murderer or something and mistakenly think you’re here to take them in

90 They don't speak any language the party knows or can know

91-00 Roll twice, rerolling results you can’t make work together

Intelligence

14+d4

Wisdom

10+d8

Languages

In the LotFP style--where Languages Skill is a # out of 6--Sages have d8 minus 2 languages skill, with 0 and negative results being treated as 1.

In any system where languages are instead enumerated individually assume the sage speaks d12 minus 2 languages, with negative results being treated as 1.

Intellectual Specialties (d20)

Sages also have a number of specialties equal to their intelligence bonus—when it comes to rolling to see if they know things about their specialty, treat this as a skill with a 6/6 rating (They know it unless they roll 2d6 and get double sixes). 

1 Magic/Arcana

2 The Ocean

3 Religions

4 Plants (Bushcraft 6/6)

5 Animals

6 History and literature

7 Statecraft and war

8 Food and drink

9 Architecture (Assume the skill is 6/6)

10 Disease and healing (can heal 1hp on the first day and d4 every day thereafter)

11 Supernatural monsters

12 Politics and Rulers in the area

13 Sage is actually a mystic oracle with cleric level 2+d4

14 Sage is actually a mystic oracle with cleric level 2d6

15 Sage is actually a mystic oracle with cleric level 2d10

16 Anthropology of a foreign human culture

17 Demianthropology of a nonhuman culture

18 Engineering, tools and materials (Tinkering 6/6)

19 Fashion and garments

20 The mind and madness

Personal Protection (d20)

1 Roll twice

2 Short sword

3 Poison ring

4 Small blowgun

5 Knows martial arts (unarmed strike for d4)

6-7 Sling

8-9 Light crossbow

10-15 Staff

16-18 Knife

19-20 None

Gender (d20)

1-4 Bald male

5-7 Long-haired male

8 Male with bad hair

9 Male with awesome hair

10-14 Female with bad hair

15-17 Female with great hair

18 Bald female

19 Nobody knows 

20 Local nonbinary variant

Basic Appearance (d20)

1-2 Skinny old weirdo

6-10 Fat old weirdo

11-14 Mesomorphic old weirdo

15 Super-hot for some reason?

16-17 Just some girl/guy/they but glasses

20 Creepy child savant

Vibes (d20)

1-4 Bookish and pedantic

5-7 Warm, generous and long-winded

8-9 Alert and excitable, says “fascinating” a lot

10-11 Enigmatic and portentous

12 Pretty chill

13-15 Cranky and irascible

16-18 Drunk and friendly

19 Drunk and mean

20 High and spacey

What Else Is Up With The Sage? (d20—roll twice)

1 Some kind of physical abnormality like a missing eye or big scar 

2 They’re actually a kung fu master so fighting them is a huge pain

3 They are solid on the main thing they know but will volunteer little bits of fake information for fun like tell you horse sweat is great for your skin

4 They hate everyone

5 They talk reallllllly slow especially when about to say something important

6 Roll until you have three total results from this table

7-8 Elf 

9 Dwarf

10 Halfling

11 Half-orc or other nonhuman

12 They want to hang out with you from now on

13 They’re sweet on a PC

14 They’re conjoined twins

15 Pervert

16 They want the PCs to know the thing in order to enact their own secret villain plan

17 Has a pet and they want you to love it

18 Will actually teach you stuff so if the party lets them hang around they all get a bonus in something next time they level up

19 They want the PC’s help escaping from some tyrannical jerk who is forcing them to do something boring or evil

20 They have some kooky utopian enterprise they want to inveigle the PCs into helping them with which will require some fetch quests

Some Sages

Assume all sages have an 18 Int when it comes to their specialty subjects as well as maximum skill in any area related to their specialty, like if they're an expert in Architecture, their Architecture skill is 6/6.

Any stats not listed are average.

Veltys of the Broken Teeth

Int 16

Wis 15

Language skill 2/6

Restorer of the Eminent Cathedral, credited with planning the near-victory over the goblin princes at the Fret Crossin and alleged poisoner of Oolthid the Cleverer, Veltys of the Broken Teeth has served as advisor to heads of the great houses of Vornheim since before they were young.

As such, she is a difficult woman to see, or even locate. But she lives in the city, and what she knows, she knows very well.

People like Veltys exist only on the end of a long chain of guys who know a guy. Finding Veltys for the first time will require consulting at least four denizens of Vornheim in four separate locations, at least 3 of whom will be sketchy and at least two of whom will be hostile.

Her expertise is in statecraft, war, architecture, and useful plants, she carries a knife.

Despite her forbidding appearance and the layers of intrigue that suround her, she is in truth fascinated by intellectual puzzles of all kinds, and will be eager to join adventurers if they present her with an exciting problem or a chance to see something new. 

Rabbi Oplich

Int 15

Wis 16

Language skill 5/6

The Common Man's Scholar, He of the Heavy Hat, Rabbi Oplich has been doling out shrewd and well-weighed advice on the wonders of the world since the days of the False Incursion. Anyone seeking assistance with a curse, enchantment, or puzzling magic item may come to his comfortable but modest home on the shores of Lake Pyrolisk ("It's just a name" he shrugs) and ask questions of the learned rabbi.

However, before he plunges into the papery depths of his chaotic library, the great man will ask for some service--generally the retrieval of some rare artifact which he believes might benefit the community. Or go well with brisket. Once it is secured, he will answer questions.

As devotees of the Hebraic faith are not universally appreciated, he carries a short sword.

He is impatient with careless thinkers and forever quoting authorities from the unknowable past--often ones with conflicting opinions--however, if an adventuring party is useful and interesting, he will not only accompany them on adventures, but will teach useful skills, if only to avoid being annoyed by the party's ignorance: all PCs accompanied by the Rabbi when they level up will gain a one time, permanent +1 to checks involving arcana and wizards and clerics can gain a one-time bonus of 1000xp if the Rabbi is accompanying them when they level up.

Orn Undyyn

Int 18

Wis 18

Language skill 5/6

Perilous it is to consult the purple-robed eminence known as Orn Undyyn. Though possessed of the powers of a 17th-level cleric and 19th-level wizard, Undyyn is devoted almost exclusively to the magics of awareness and augury. It is said that Undyyn knows all there is to know of animals, the future, foreign nations, and the arts of garment-making.

Although affecting the sneering contempt one might expect from one of such vast powers, many are drawn to the chambers of oracle, and are susceptible to Undyyn's charms. Undyyn toys with visitors, and the crepuscular marble of Undyyn palace is rich with traps, creatures and puzzles. Anyone who successfully navigates this place will be granted an audience with the oracle, though the consultation they receive will always be calculated to serve Undyyn's own purposes.

The Plum-Eating Scholar

Int 17

Wis 16

Language skill 3/6

HD 6 HP 24 Speed 120' (incl. climbing or swimming) Armor 15 Morale 9 Attacks +6 to hit d4 knife

The Plum-Eating Scholar is a 6th-level cleric of Nyaa, of the Two Temperaments, and an expert on the ocean, and on the merfolk, mantamen, and other nations who dwell beneath it. He speaks in slow riddles and fends off all dangers with the deft flick of his whalebone blade.

Although eager to share the secrets of the sea, The Plum-Eating scholar is currently stranded in The Forest of Grasping Trees on the Plane of Shadow. He will be grateful if rescued, though no less enigmatic. 

Niola Lood

Int 16

Wis 13

Language Skill 2/6

Part-halfling, part-elf, Niola Lood has spent her entire life studying the flora, creatures and cultures of the enchanted wood.

Although generally possessed of an easygoing manner, anyone seeking her counsel will have to past her puckish tests, devised not only to entertain her, but to test the querent's cleverness, and their respect for growing things. She generally watches from a nearby perch, while drinking firefly mead and shouting incorrect advice.

She carries a light crossbow in case of trouble.

Some Raw Kael

 

When you're in the game blog game, what you're doing is writing nonfiction where you are describing fictions.

That's also what movie reviewers do--including Pauline Kael, the New Yorker's old critic--widely regarded as the best. Is she? She's interesting, but often wrong and gross. But whatever--either way, she had a way with prose and there's a few RPG-adjacent Pauline Kael lines that will stick with me til my grave.

Her take on Boorman's too-late-to-be-psychedelic Excalibur is about right, spotting its best images for what they are:

When Mordred is fully grown, he wears golden spiked armor and, on his head, a gold gargoyle mask that his own sneering mouth completes. This apparition of evil comes closer to mythological scale than Arthur or Lancelot or Guenevere or any of the others do.

and:

The Dark Ages section, with its armored brutes—they’re like crustaceans tearing each other apart—is a thrilling piece of moviemaking.

Her Time Bandits review not only actually explicitly references D&D, but actually kinda reads like a review of a D&D campaign:

Time Bandits

UK (1981): Fantasy/Comedy

110 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc

Written by two members of the "Monty Python" group, Michael Palin and the American expatriate Terry Gilliam, who also directed, this surreal adventure fantasy has been conceived as a movie for children and adults. It's about a little English boy who is hurtled from one era to another by a pack of six dwarfs who have stolen The Supreme Being's map of the holes in the space-time continuum, and it's as picaresque as you can get, with Ian Holm as Napoleon, John Cleese as Robin Hood, Sean Connery as Agamemnon, Ralph Richardson as The Supreme Being, who's too busy to get his three-piece-suit pressed, and David Warner, who's a great-looking Evil Genius--he wears talons and a Nixon nose out of a David Levine drawing. (The light shining up from hell makes his nostrils red.) All this seems to do something for the 8-to 12-year-old boys in the audience-the ones known to be very high on d & d (Dungeons and Dragons)-that it may not do for adults, who will probably see and hear a lot of jokes without feeling much impulse to laugh. The whimsical rhythms of the vaudeville-skit humor often seem to be the result of mistiming; the interludes with Palin and Shelley Duvall as wonky sweethearts are especially musty--the two of them seem more amused than the audience. Gilliam has a cacophonous imagination; even the magical incongruities are often cancelled out by the incessant buzz of cleverness. It's far from a bad movie, but it doesn't quite click together, either. The director doesn't shape the material satisfyingly; this may be one of those rare pictures that suffers from a surfeit of good ideas.

"Suffering from a surfeit of good ideas" that haven't been satisfyingly shaped and wasting "magical incongruities" is definitely how you feel trying to wade through all the RPG material that's been put out over the years. And many is the GM who has piled on another goblin when theres too much going on to fully freak everyone out with the one they already have.

...though if pulp entertainment tells us anything, it's that the other problem is there are no bad ideas--which Kael alludes to in her review of Godard's kinnnnda heist movie Bande à part.:

It's as if a French poet took a banal American crime novel and told it to us in terms of the romance and beauty he read between the lines.

 There's a reason Tarantino named his production company after it.

Kael was notoriously hard on Stanley Kubrick's films--not dismissive, but still hard--but she had a way of moralizing about their creepiness that only made them seem more unique:

She said cyberless-punk classic A Clockwork Orange might be "....the work of a strict and exacting German professor who set out to make a porno-violent sci-fi comedy."

On Barry Lyndon, the greatest treasure-trove of D&Dable NPCs in the history of cinema, Kael opines: "The film says that people are disgusting but things are lovely."

Fair enough, but look at those sheep, neither people nor things.

She made the same mistake with Blade Runner--her Nexus 6 eye identifying everything about the film's virtues except for the fact that that's what they were:

"Ridley Scott isn’t great on mise en scène—we’re never sure exactly what part of the city we’re in, or where it is in relation to the scene before and the scene after."

Spoken like a true Manhattan bumpkin just dropped off in downtown LA.

Noir is mystery and mystery means you don't know where you are, or why. Even gamers know that--that's why even though D&D is all about maps, Call of Cthulhu isn't. It's also why Manhattan--the orderly little isle of named neighborhoods and numbered streets--isn't where Hammett or Chandler lived.

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At other times, Kael's descriptions are like the stylish picture on a disappointing VHS box--they evoke way more than the thing she's reviewing.

Her take on Vampire's Kiss-- "This may be the first vampire movie in which the modern office building replaces the castle as the site of torture and degradation."

That is 100% a Demon City mini-campaign. Or Call of Cthulhu if you don't have 20 bucks.

Same for this stray shot from her review of Octopussy:  "The picture doesn't deliver on the chic perversities suggested by the inelegant title (and some of the decor)."

I don't know what would, but I know James Raggi would publish it.

For more chic perversity, here.

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You're Welcome, Universe

So, ok.

I play Slorm.

Cleric of the only true god and horrible goblin. 

Also, oddly, voice of reason in the party because everyone else in the game is a lunatic.

Principally: James Edward Raggi IV, publisher of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying, but also the OSR-founding GM, the two transfolk and the bard-playing war refugee.

Now, you may know about James Edward Raggi IV as an author and, perhaps, if you've been to an online playtest, as a game master.

What you probably do not know is that, as a player, James, is a megalomaniac game-breaking chaos munchkin of circa-1982-letters-to-Dragon-Magazine proportions. He is the kind of guy who would hear about the Head of Vecna, then immediately try to figure out how to turn himself into a hydra.

Like, I'm pretty sure this was him:

So anyway, after several days spent going through an interdimensional tech-over-our-heads dungeon we arrive near the top of the Pyramid of Whereverthefuckweare.

We are at a room with a vast and sophisticated machine.

Slorm, as is his wont, barks at the party halfling to squeeze through the gears and plasma inverters to investigate this machine, on the end of a rope. She does so.

Soon Weenie the halfling is looking at what Jeff describes as "A hole in the floor leading back through time to the creation of the universe".

We are all eager to understand this phenomenon and use it to get xp. So Slorm sends a sausage to Weenie down the end of the rope.

you have no idea how useful these have been in the campaign so far

Weenie the halfling drops a sausage into the moment of the big bang.

Then Jeff grins and says the most terrifying thing he can ever say, which is:

"Ok, there's a random table for this"

Fuck fuck fuck.

Then he says "You're going to want to roll low"

FYI: Jeff has, after the session, pulled back the veil and shown us one of the items on this chart:

14. PC's home star(s) go nova

I knew it was going to be bad. We just threw random pork into the moment of creation.

Even worse, James Edward Raggi IV, publisher of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying who plays Graham the fighter, suddenly has a gleam in his eye. Slorm does not like any of this.

Weenie then rolls a 1! The lowest roll.

It turns out the universe is, thanks to the sausage, all now more graceful and kind that it had once been. We are all given a choice of either undoing one past event we didn't like in the campaign or leveling up. Outstanding job Weenie!

James Edward Raggi IV, however, barely stops to write this down, then goes "So Graham excuses himself for a few minutes, then comes back with a potion vial now filled with white liquid. He..."

"NO!"

I know this man. Slorm knows this man. All the guys and girls and theys in the game know this man.

It is clear that James Edward Raggi IV is attempting to pour his cum into the moment of the universe's creation.

"What?" he says "everyone and everything in the universe will be me! I will rule all!"

Slorm explains that while the various players are no stranger to sexual content--despite it not having coming up much in the campaign at this point--the gods who have Blessed, Heroismed and Healed Graham the fighter many times during the last year or so, do not want his cum on them while they are trying to create the universe.

After much acrimony, Slorm manages to avert this outcome.

James Edward Raggi then throws a fit on his Facebook page.

Anyway, if you aren't all part James Edward Raggi IV now, you're welcome.

Hail Slorm.

Why Everybody's "Deeply Magical" But Humans

Elves have magic--they're so magic that there's boots just called "Boots of Elvenkind" and they're magic just because they're elvenkind. Halflings can't be seen half the time, even when they're right there, and they just stumble ass-backwards into the best artifacts in the game. Dwarfs are out here mining mithril and making armor and axes that're double-strong just because dwarfs made them. And gnomes are always talking to badgers or whoever.

But humans are just these guys. If you found a "Axe of the Human Lords" what would that even do?

A great mystery--but I just now figured out why.

This table:

The demihumans all have level limits.

So, ok picture this:

You're elves, ok? Just won a fight:

Here comes the human general:

"Hail to thee, brave captain of the elderkin! Were it not for thee and thine veterans of aeon wars untold we mayhap would not hast defeated Sauron!"

"Not a problem, bro! He sucked, It was an issue, had to be handled."

"Yeah fair! Cool, so I talked to the DM and he says we get 9 billion seven hundred and sixty-eight thousand xp for defeating the horde of unfathomable darkness bent on wending all life and time round the iron gauntlet of its iniquitous will. So it looks like your share is...."

"Nah keep it."

"Whoa what? Are you peacing out on the campaign? Tolkien says next week he's got a one-shot with halflings!"

"Nah just we're all 7th level dude. We can't level up. And I checked with our wizards--they're all maxed out at 11, too."

"Truly the songs were modest when it cometh to praising the generosity of the eldár!"

"Nah its cool man, is it cool if we take the items?"

"Like the magic items?"

"Yeah...sure?"

"Cool! See you next week!"

Why are all the other races but us so magical?

After a certain point, every time they go adventuring, they get all the items. That's why Galadriel's over here just giving campaign-saving items away because she's got extra.

Campaigns Are Inconvenient--And Always On Your Mind

Here's a thing you notice if you hang out in fan spaces--I'll use comics as an example because with games it'd be confusing.

A comics critic/pundit/gadfly starts talking: "Batman Batman Batman Spider-Man Iron Man Batman Superman X-Man X-Men Spider-Man Batman"

But then they're asked what their favorite comic of the year is--is it any of those superhero comics? No it is not. It is some indie comic they haven't mentioned all year.

They then go back to talking about Spider-Man and Batman.

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I don't think they're being disingenuous or just trying to sound smart. I think that person genuinely does like the niche indie comic that they are trumpeting far more than the latest iteration of the fannish pop stuff they spend most of their free time in the fan-space talking about--even when they're not being paid to talk about that popular market-dominating thing.

Because the thing is, no matter how much you love any slice-of-life indie comic: it started, it ran for a few years or months, and then it ended.

Batman, on the other hand, not only has had thousands of stories, not only has been in print since 1939, not only is connected to Wonder Woman, Aquaman and every other character in his publisher's intellectual-property universe, not only has been translated into every medium imaginable where even more stories are being produced, but also: will have a dozen more stories out next month.

If you want to talk about only what is topical and what just happened--your favorite indie comic is over when it's over. Batman is still making moves. Stupid moves, maybe, but who doesn't want to talk about stupidity?

Even if (and perhaps especially if) all you have to say is how bad the new Batman material is compared to the stuff you like, there is always something to talk about. Whereas your favorite indie book is just sitting there, still being done and finished and not breaking news.

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This isn't just about market share or popularity--it's about the content mill continuously putting the subject in the commentators' head. There's always something new going on with the X-Men, even if it's not new. You can't say that about Maus.

In the world of RPGs the equivalent isn't just a product with a content mill (like D&D or Pathfinder) it's a campaign.

Lots of you have off-label favorite games. Maybe you even get to play them once in a while. But what do you talk about, spread the word about, kibitz about? Your favorite game over and over? No: you talk about the campaign you're in.

You talk about what's going on--even if you like Barbarians of Lemuria better you're still talking about the breaking news: what happened in your D&D campaign.

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I especially think about this in terms of the games from the indie RPG boom that are mainly good for one-shots: they have limited popularity not just because they're one-shots (there are, for example, indie-crazy groups happy to try a different indie game every month) but because you just don't want to keep talking about a single session that happened 4 months ago.

Despite indie rhetoric that games designed for one-shots and mini-campaigns should be more popular with busy adults than the time-consuming, scheduling-nightmare, lore-heavy, years-before-you-even-get-to-cast-Fireball-gorilla in the game store that is Dungeons & Dragons, the fact is that life-devouring games just make you talk more about them, which means people hear about them more, which means they get popular.

I also wonder this: do one-shot-friendly games have a popularity ceiling? Like: a point of popularity past which they just can't grow?

I don't know. Anyway I guess we'll eventually find out.

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