Literature Review: "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (1970)

Happy Holidays!

This week, in honor of Fritz Leiber's birthday on December 24th, I wanted to discuss one of the most famous stories by the man who literally coined the phrase "Swords & Sorcery", "Ill Met in Lankhmar":

Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novella, "Ill Met in Lankhmar" is a prequel to more than thirty years of stories about the adventurous duo.  It is filled with Leiber's trademark twists and turns and shows off his economical yet witty style.  There's humor in his tongue-in-cheek tone and his world building is excellent, as the city of Lankhmar comes to life in these pages.

This ripping yarn  reveals "[t]he second and decisive meeting of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser," two of the most famous figures in Swords & Sorcery.  One dark night, two members of the Thieves' Guild steal some valuable jewels but are, in turn, bushwhacked by a pair of independent operators, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.  After getting really drunk, the new soul mates (there's a clear bromance brewing) decide to behead Krovas, Grandmaster of the Thieves' Guild, at the behest of their girlfriends, despite Krovas being one of the most powerful mortals in the world.

Of course, it all goes horribly wrong.

I really wanted to like this story but I couldn't get past that we are meant to treat Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser as heroes, when they are not nice guys.  Setting aside that they are murderhobos (all they do in kill people and take their stuff), the adventurous duo exhibit some sociopathy in this story, including the murder of a helpless child.  Plus, there's the fact that Fafhrd is a deadbeat dad who abandoned his baby mama for some girl he randomly meets.

However, Leiber glosses all this over in the interest of presenting them positively.

Given Leiber's influence on the development of Dungeons & Dragons (see Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide), another point that should have been in the story's favor is how much it reads like an RPG session.

Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser meet randomly when they are independently trying to rob the robbers.  There's no real reason why they should trust each other and form a party.  This is fine for an RPG but not so much for a story.

Further, there's the adventurous duo plan and disguises to infiltrate the Thieves' Guild.  Both are unbelievable and if there was any realism to "Ill Met in Lankhmar", Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser would have been immediately made, outed and executed.

If I was the DM, I would ask the players *REALLY* want to do this.  If they insisted, as an Old Schooler, I would let the dice fall where they may and then explain that the players need to roll up new characters.

RPG Design: Balancing Skills

This week, I wanted to discuss an important but sometimes underthought or overlooked issue for tabletop RPGs: Balancing Skills.  For purposes of this post, by "Balancing Skills," I'm referring to skills being balanced in terms of power/utility compared to each other.

In addition, by "Skills," I'm broadly referring to areas of a Player Character's expertise that can have an in-game effect.  This runs the gamut from swinging a sword to speaking a language to disarming a trap, etc.

You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills...

Every role-playing game has a skill system, whether or not it's expressly set forth in the rules set.  For example, in older editions of Dungeons & Dragons, skills are mostly subsumed into other parts of the rules (e.g., THAC0, ability scores, class features, etc.) or else hand waved and house ruled.  So, a PC's maximum number of languages and retainers are determined by Intelligence and Charisma, respectively.  Or, since there's no negotiation skill, the DM will often simply role-play a situation or ask the PC to make a roll against their Charisma score or some other target number (e.g., 1 in 6, 2 in 6, etc.).  It helps that D&D has a robust set of ability scores that, when doubled as skills, can cover many situations.

On the other hand, there are skill-based games such as GURPS, where the primary mechanic (success rolls) usually ends up as a skill check in actual play.  Unsurprisingly, skills usually take an outsized importance in classless games.  This is also often true in Stat + Skill systems, such as Exalted.

Problems arise when the designers to not think through their skill system.  Ideally, designers should consider both 1) Breadth and 2) Usage of skills so that a the value of a particular skill is roughly balanced against the others.

In terms of "Breadth," I'm referring to how broad is a particular skill's expertise.  For example, in Exalted, Melee covers proficiency in *ALL* weapons, making it an extremely broad skill.

By contrast, Call of Cthulhu divides up being sneaky into:

Conceal (Allows the visual covering up, secreting, or masking of an object or objects, perhaps with debris, cloth, or other intervening or illusion-promoting materials, perhaps by making a secret panel or false compartment, or perhaps by repainting or otherwise changing an item's characteristics to escape detection.)

Hide (As opposed to Conceal, Hide concerns the individual user's ability to escape detection in an unprepared position. Use this skill only in a pursuit situation, or when under surveillance or patrol.)

and

Sneak (The art of moving quietly, without alerting those who might hear. Used in combination with Hide, the investigator makes a single D100 roll, the result of which is matched against the investigator's percentages in both skills. Use this combination when silent movement is necessary.)

As a consequence, this division in CoC makes each individual skill weak and also makes it difficult to be a expert rogue.


A game's design should not only consider the general applicability of a skill, but also its Usage.  In terms of Usage, I'm referring to how often a skill is used in actual play.  Specific usage may vary due to genre or a group's play style, but usually some skills are used often and some skills are used rarely.

If a skill's Usage is relatively high, the designer should consider reducing it's Breadth.  Additionally, a game should have enough skills of sufficient Breadth to cover foreseeable situations of reasonable Usage.  So, for example, it's probably overkill for a typical fantasy game to include a skill for elephant riding.

In addition, the foregoing assumes that each skill costs the same number of skill points to purchase.  It's possible to balance by varying costs, using skill specialities, skill groups, etc.  However, as modern design tends toward greatly simplicity, I will stick with the assumption.


A notorious example of a game with a problematic skill system is Rifts:

There are over one hundred skills in Rifts, with gaps, overkill and redundancy.  Some are very narrow and not likely to ever be used in actual play (e.g., Boat Building).  Some skills should be combined (e.g., Automobile and Truck). Some skills overlap completely with another to make the other irrelevant (e.g., Concealment and Palming).

On the other hand, there's no Negotiation skill.

It doesn't help that there's no actual explanation of how to resolve non-combat skills.  The skills are rated by percentage, so presumably the player must make a d100 roll, but this is never expressly stated.

TV Review: "Korgoth of Barbaria" (2006)

[NB- this post is a slightly revised version of one that I published earlier]

This week, I wanted to give a shout out to a show that might have challenged "Berserk" (1997) as arguably the greatest Swords & Sorcery TV series of all time, "Korgoth of Barbaria":

A great "What if?", "Korgoth of Barbaria" was a pilot episode created by Aaron Springer and produced by Cartoon Network for Adult Swim.    This ripping yarn cranks the amps up to 11 as our eponymous hero (clearly inspired by Conan the Barbarian) carves a red path through a post-apocalyptic future Earth (clearly inspired, at least in part, by the classic cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian), in a orgy of death, sex and more death.  However, rather than grim dark, the show always has a sense of humor.

"The Great Cities have risen and fallen. Civilization's grip on mankind has grown weak and arthritic. Dark forces seek to renew forgotten covenants, and primordial beasts reclaim the wilderness. Out of the frozen north, a man emerges - a man of a barbaric age, whose merciless savagery may be the only key to his survival. They call him Korgoth!"

This show is metal, and I'm not just talking about the hard rock intro and soundtrack.  The violence is copious and WAY over the top.  The men are various shades of ugly, while the women are all lovely, voluptuous and highly sexualized.  Pretty much every frame of "Korgoth of Barbaria" could have been ripped from the pages of Métal Hurlant (known in America as Heavy Metal Magazine).  Korgoth's world is grim, violent, dirty and sexy, sometimes all at once:

"Korgoth of Barbaria" deftly veers between homage and parody.  On the one hand, the story works fine as a ripping Sword & Sorcery yarn, where the Conan-esque protagonist cleaves his way through mooks and monsters, beds a lusty wench and battles an evil sorcerer.  On the other hand, the show, as the tongue-in-cheek title suggests, also is clearly having a fun time in the process.  For example:

Scrotus: You! You will regret what you have done this day. I will make you regret ever being born! You're going to wish you'd never left your mother's womb, where it was warm, and safe, and wet. I'm going to show you pain you never knew existed. You're going to see a whole new spectrum of pain, like a rainbow!  

Hargon: You tell 'em Scrotus! [screams as Korgoth crushes his head some more]  

Scrotus: But! This rainbow...is not just like any other rainbow, it's… [gets interrupted by Korgoth ripping his skin off]

The production values, writing and direction for this show were great.  Diedrich Bader's gravelly voice is perfect as the titular character, bringing just the right amounts of world weariness, wit, menace and humor.  It's a madcap thrill ride where the viewer never knows what to expect- "They're riding giant pigeons?"

Despite critical acclaim and strong fan support, Cartoon Network reversed its decision to pick up Korgoth of Barbaria and canceled the show after only the pilot episode.  Apparently, it was too expensive to continue.

So, we can only imagine what might have been.  Still, any fan of Sword & Sorcery would do themselves a disservice if they didn't take a look at this fun and funny modern take on the genre.

RPG Game Play: Social Contracts

As the year draws to a close, this week, I wanted to talk about an important, but sometimes overlooked, part of any game: a Social Contract.

If you've got some good people to play with and a good game to play, your first instinct is probably want to just jump into it.  And, most times, there's no problem.  However, what happens when people have a misunderstanding or when someone starts acting in a way that others feel is inappropriate?

For example, what if someone's favorite character dies due to an unlucky roll?  Or, what if someone keeps showing up late to the game?

As insurance against these awkward or problematic moments, it's often a good idea to put a "social contract" in place, usually before play begins.  The Google defines "social contract" as

"an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits"

A role-playing group, like any other society, operates under certain mutually agreed upon rules.  For RPG groups, these rules cover both in character behavior (e.g., no PvP) and out of character behavior (e.g., no smoking or drinking).  People usually assume that everyone will use common sense (e.g., no cheating).  And yet, even reasonable people may differ over what seems, to them, as "common sense".  What happens when what's assumed to be mutually agreed upon is, in fact, not?

As you might imagine, it's often beneficial to make sure that everyone is on the same page in terms of expectations.  The degree to which a social contract needs to be explicit will vary from group to group.  It's not usually necessary to have a particularly high level of specificity, but it's often valuable to address areas that are likely to be contentious.

The easiest way to handle the handle is to let someone (typically the Game Master) set the rules for the group and to arbitrate situations.  This is the Old School method.

If all else fails, remember the old saw "no gaming is better than bad gaming".