OUT ON A LIMB

'Male oriented'

Dear Editor:
I am a new subscriber to your fine publica-
tion and would like to commend you on a job
well done. However (isn?t there always a how-
ever?), I am quite bothered by the very male
oriented nature of your writing and illustra-
tions. I realize that most of your readers and,
indeed, most gamers are male. But I fail to see
how you plan on gaining any female players
and readers by the continual ignoring of them.

In defense of my point: issue #72. Yes, there
are two female warriors on the cover and a

drawing of a female cavalier. But so what?
Throughout the rest of the magazine we see all
male warriors and jesters, hunters and magic
users. To top it off, Roger E. Moore's story is
wholly from the male perspective. Are there
only succubi? Where are the incubi? Surely you
know that this fiend has no true gender but
rather appears in the image of the desired crea-
ture for the victim.

Theresa A. Reed
Portland, Ore.

Yes, the cover of issue #72 pictured two
female warriors. In fact, seven of the last 10
covers we've published (not counting this
magazine) have included a female character. I
won?t count the number of times we've por-
trayed females in artwork on the inside pages
during those 10 issues -- but I will point out
that issue #72 has a picture of a female barbar-
ian (on page 27), in addition to the female
cavalier (on page 10) that Theresa mentions.

As for Roger Moore, I don't think he?ll mind
me pointing out that he writes ?from the male
perspective? because he  is  a male. If he tried to
write from a female perspective or from a dual
perspective ? especially for a story about ?sex
in the AD&D? world? ? he?d be even crazier
than he is already. And where are the incubi?
Well, to be technical about it, they're not in
the "AD&D world" (the succubus is listed in
the Monster Manual, but not the incubus), and
therefore incubi were not within the ?terri-
tory? covered by the article. And, heck, the
whole thing was for a laugh anyway, right?

I don?t mean to sound flippant. I think
we?ve done okay when it comes to representing
the roles of both sexes in the realm of role-
playing games, and we?ll continue to try to
look at the ?female perspective? whenever we
can. Like it says in the response to the letter on
page 3, we really do want to try to make eve-
ryone happy. If you agree with Theresa?s point
of view, please let us know, and (I know this
sounds high-falutin? ? but it?s true anyway)
you can play a part in shaping the future of
this magazine.  ?KM

Obviously, not all creatures wear armor with
set AC values, but instead they depend on their
natural armor and/or dexterity. The article states,
"regardless of the actual AC a piece of equipment
provides its wearer, the apparent AC of that
armor is the same for all armor of that type."
This presents problems.

Suppose I wish to handle melee between a
group of adventurers and a xorn. The xorn wears
no armor, is not too quick on its feet, and (to the
best of my knowledge) doesn't improve its AC
value through any magical means. Thus its AC
value of -2 must be enhanced by its natural stonelike
shell. What is the apparent AC of stone-mail?

The same goes for the apparent AC of, say,
Asmodeus. To the best of my knowledge he does
not wear any armor. Since his AC of -7 is obviously
enhanced by some means, what would his
apparent AC be -- 10? That can't be right.

This is mostly a minor complaint (since I?m
sure there are many DMs out there who disregard
AC adjustments altogether) but if there is
any reasonable answer to this dilemma, I would
be happy to hear it.

Rob Paige
Cheney, Wash.
(Dragon #82)
 

We checked out this question with Tracy Hickman,
who is on the TSR design staff was the
creator of the Combat Computer. He told us
what we expected to hear -- namely, that no
provision exists in the AD&D rules for taking
AC adjustments in to consideration in cases like
the ones Rob describes, which is why the Combat
Computer didn't address the question.

The problem can?t really be solved (short of an
official addition to the rules), but it can be handled
in one of two ways:

(a) Don't use any armor class adjustment for
weapon type against creatures with an AC of
better than 2, when that armor class can't be
equated to an "apparent" AC, or

(b) Treat any "problem" AC as if the creature
in question had an actual armor class of 2, which
is as low as the armor class adjustment table in
the Players Handbook goes.
    <UA: the AC adjustment table goes down to 0>

-- KM
(Dragon #82)
 

THE FORUM

In reference to Theresa Reed's letter
about male orientation published in issue
#74 of your magazine, I would like to say
that I find your articles are in general very
good, but there are occasions when they are
downright terrible. In the much maligned
issue #72, for instance, there is an article
called "A new name? It's elementary!"
Quite handy to have for naming characters,
but what if those characters are female? I
see in this article a word for ?
"prince," but I
see no sign of a word for ?princess.? Simi-
larly, there are words for ?man,? ?god,?
and ?warrior, man? but the female equiva-
lents are not even mentioned.

This oversight was bad enough, but the
article about the new Duelist NPC class in
the next issue of DRAGON Magazine (#73)
was even worse. In this article the Fenc-
ingmaster?s school is described as a ?male
gossip shop? and there is no hint whatso-
ever of the female pronoun throughout the
entire article. It is true that the profession
on which the Duelist NPC class is based
was entirely made up of males, but that is
no reason for it to be limited in the AD&D
world. After all, fighters, cavaliers, and
most thieves were male, but Gary Gygax
has had the good sense not to restrict the
game in that area, and in so doing has
attracted many women to the game. (No
doubt many men find the ?him/her,? ?he/
she? approach of Mr. Gygax?s writing
cumbersome, but women resent being
referred to as ?he,? just as most men would
resent being referred to as ?she.?)

There are a few other examples I could
give of this male orientation, but as they are
relatively minor I won?t cloud over the
major issue by getting picky. I would like to
emphasize, however, that I do not want
articles written from the female perspective.
They are just as bad as articles written from
the male perspective, as they too alienate a
large proportion of the readership. What I
do want is for all articles to be written from,
an unbiased perspective.

Elizabeth Perry
Wellington, New Zealand

P.S. Sorry this letter came so late after the
subject of male orientation was raised, but
issue #74 only arrived in this remote part of
the prime material plane three weeks ago.
 

Many moons ago (in DRAGON issue #74)
Theresa Reed wrote a letter to the editor stating
that she felt that DRAGON Magazine was
?ignoring? women. I have played AD&D
for two years and read the magazine for
   nearly as long, and I do not feel that AD&D
is a ?male-oriented? game, nor  is
DRAGON a ?male-oriented? magazine.
For example, in the Players Handbook,
most of the entries that can refer to
either male or female characters are stated
as ?his or her.? I also think that a slight
strength penalty for female characters is not
sexist; it is actually rather generous, if you
consider that the AD&D game is based on a
medieval society, in which women were
rarely allowed out of the house! Compare
this to a game like the one described in the
book  Fantasy Wargaming,  in which female
player characters suffer penalties such as -2
to charisma and -3 to social class!

I must also commend DRAGON Maga-
zine for its fairness. The women we fre-
quently see on the covers of the magazine
have been anything but weak and helpless,
and are certainly clad in more than chain-
mail bikinis. I can even remember that one
old issue of DRAGON contained an article <find this article>
which strongly discouraged the use of rape
and pregnancy in campaigns.

Laurel Golding
Grosse Ile, Mich.
(Dragon #82)

Q: Is the 'Combat Computer' in issue #74
designed for actual use in AD&D gaming?

A: Yes.
It has been playtested, and from
the mail readers have sent to DRAGON
magazine, it appears to be working very
well in AD&D games.
(79.14)
 

OUT ON A LIMB

One to a customer

Dear Editor:
I'm writing about the Combat Computer
that appeared in issue #73. I found that it <#74>
worked quite well.  I would like to know how I
could get another for my group without having
to buy another magazine.

Robbie Dean
Mt. Carmel, Term.
 

We're glad the Combat Computer got such a
good reception. Unfortunately, we can't make
it available separately from the magazine. We
assume that in a gaming group of any substantial
size (say, more than three people), it's
likely that more than one of those group
members buys DRAGON® Magazine, so "the
group" probably has no trouble obtaining
more than one copy of a certain article or a
special inclusion. If you're a DM who insists
that your players not be allowed to see what's
in the magazine (and your players are willing
to go along with that condition), THEN you
won't be able to obtain multiple copies of
something we print without buying multiple
copies of the magazine it appeared in.

-- KM
(Dragon #79)
 

A player character and his money. . .
by Lewis Pulsipher
 
 

The silver standard	The origin of treasures	A player character and his money ...	Theft	Upkeep
Henchmen and hired help	Acquiring a stronghold	Religion	Taxes	Pets
Equipment	One-use magic	Information	Politics	Bribes
Research	Investments	Gambling	Small treasures, big spenders	Dragon 74

It has frequently been noted that in
some FRPGs the
amount of money available to, and actually
possessed by, PCs is
unbelievably enormous -- impossible to
transport, or to store in anything smaller
than a castle. Even a relatively inexperienced
character can, after not too long,
afford almost anything he can carry, and
such things as towers and ships are
within the range of a character?s pocketbook
before not too much longer than
that.

Some gamemasters go to great lengths
to describe goods and services in their
campaigns in terms of their ?real? (that
is, medieval) prices ? very low rates to
someone with several pounds of gold
coins. Typically, suggestions for the
?toning down? of a game's monetary system
are met with two retorts: first, it is a
"fact" of the campaign that the area frequented
by adventurers is experiencing
rampant inflation; and second, that this
is an adventure game, after all, and huge
piles of gold are part of the heroic milieu.
This article approaches the subject of
money from two angles -- first, suggesting
a means of simplifying monetary
transactions while making treasures more
believable and easier to store or carry; and
second, describing some ways in which a
referee can coax treasure away from
adventurers once they've discovered it.

The silver standard
The first part is easy. In any description
of a hoard of monetary treasure,
replace the word 'gold' with 'silver.'
(But don't change prices or values given
for goods or services.) Adopt the "silver
standard" which actually prevailed in late
medieval times. A gold piece (arbitrarily
set equal to 10 silver pieces to make calculations
easy) becomes really valuable. And
silver, once sneered at as "too cheap to
carry," takes its rightful place as the
wealthy man's mode of exchange. Maintaining
the proportion between gold and
silver, the value of a silver piece is set
equivalent to 10 copper pieces. The
copper piece is small change, certainly,
but not such a miniscule piece of currency
as it is in some games.

In a world where silver 'replaces' gold,
medieval prices for ordinary goods and
services are reasonable, and the net result
is either unchanged or decreased spending
power for adventurers.

Concerning the size and weight problem,
a display of medieval coins in a
museum will show that coins minted
prior to the modern era were very small,
rather like an American dime or British
half-penny (new pence). Consequently, in
bygone days it was possible to carry a
small fortune without risking a permanent
back problem from the weight. Try
setting the size and weight of a coin
(copper, silver, or gold) equal to the size
and weight of a dime. When this standard
is used instead of, for instance, the
AD&D game standard (where coins
weigh a tenth of a pound each), someone
who could carry a sack of 300 gold pieces
(30 pounds) in the old system can carry
6,584 gold in the new system (1 dime = 35
grains, or 219+ coins/pound). And gold is
far more valuable per piece, because the
silver standard is used. (And this system
for size and weight can only be used if the
silver standard is also employed.)

Now, personal fortunes are no longer
impossible to carry, and adventurers don?t
need magic bags or mules in order to
carry a decent sum away from an adventure
(or a theft).
 

Q: In "A Player Character and His
Money" (issue #74), are PCs supposed to
get one experience point per silver piece
or one x.p. per gold piece?

A: Characters get one x.p. per gold piece.
The 'silver standard' described in the
article will make it more difficult for
characters to buy very valuable items
(especially magical ones), but this contributes
to game balance.
(79.14)

The origin of treasures
Why, since gold circulated so freely in
the ancient world, did it virtually disappear
in the Dark Ages? Much was
hoarded (e.g., buried) and lost. Some was
successfully hoarded for centuries. Most
of the remainder flowed to the eastern
world via trade. For a time, even silver
was so rare that most transactions were by
barter rather than purchase. In a sense,
adventurers are discovering lost hoards
when they take treasure from monsters. If
the history of your fantasy world is like
that of Earth, having a Dark Age or Age
of Chaos, there may justifiably be a severe
shortage of gold (hence its great value) in
the years that follow this period. Most
personal wealth will be in goods, not
money, and consequently it will be relatively
difficult for a thief to transport or
dispose of his gains. Except through barter,
one can't "spend" a fur coat || obsidian
necklace. Unless player characters are
astute, they may sell such "liberated"
items for far less than their nominal
worth.

A player character and his money . . .
What means are available in the campaign
to separate player characters from
the treasure which, sooner or later, they
will accumulate? A few games provide a
formal system for forcing expenditures.
In the Runequest® game, characters
spend money for training and learning
spells. (Why they don?t teach each other
for free I am unsure.) In the AD&D game,
characters are supposed to spend money
for training when they rise a level. This
system seems unusable at low levels,
where a character must spend half his
time adventuring without gaining experience
just to gain sufficient funds to
reach the next level. So what do you do if
your game has no such system, or you
don?t like the one provided? Here are
some possibilities:

Theft: The obvious way to relieve characters
of their burden of wealth is to
simply steal it (rather, have it stolen), but
this can create tensions outside the game.
If players aren't used to losing money to
unseen and undetected thieves, they're
going to be very unhappy, and may think
the referee is unfair. In other cases, players
won't mind theft so much, provided
that 1) they have a chance to catch the
thief and 2) their precautions against
theft reduce the frequency and success
rate of such attempts.
To illustrate the first point: If the referee
simply says one day, "You can't find
your money pouch," the player will have
virtually no chance to stop or catch the
thief. If, however, during the course of
discussions at an inn or on the street, the
referee casually refers to someone bumping
into or jostling the character, the
player has a chance to react to the theft (if
he thinks about the possibility). Or if a
theft occurs while the character is sleeping,
he may be able to find some clues to
help track down the miscreant.
As for the second point, precautions: A
character who conceals rather than
flaunts his wealth should be less vulnerable
to theft than one who becomes known
as a big spender. Furthermore, some
players make lists of precautions to be
observed by characters when in towns or
other areas frequented by thieves, while
others take no precautions. The latter are
more likely to be successfully robbed.
A character can be conned out of his
money -- for example, when he buys a
magic spell scroll which turns out to have
flaws -- but frequent con games and similar
forms of deceit are no fun for referee
or players. Moreover, players soon
become extremely wary, making it almost
impossible to "fairly" con them. But
most important, con games, moreso than
ordinary theft, are too personal. This feels
too much like the referee, rather than the
monsters and NPCs, against the players,
obstructing the ideal of the referee as an
impartial arbiter. For this reason alone,
deceit is not a satisfactory way to relieve
characters of their treasure.
Players soon become so wary of ordinary
theft that the referee cannot successfully
steal large sums without resorting to
strongarm tactics -- for example, an
extortioner who happens to be a highlevel
assassin. Once again, this results in
an adversary relationship likely to sour
the game, if not personal relations outside
of it. Theft is not enough.

Upkeep: Since adventurers spend only
a small part of their time out adventuring,
they must spend money for a place to
stay, food, clothing, and amenities ? all
expenses that are not reflected in buying
equipment for adventures. Some rules
assume that the more experienced a character
is, the more money he will spend.
This is almost universally true, but still
somewhat inaccurate; though there is a
tendency in most people (and characters)
to spend more when one has more to
spend, an adventurer?s rise in income can
often far outstrip his expenditures.
Adventurers will always have to pay a
minimum amount for upkeep, with additions
according to the extent of largesse
and luxury they wish to enjoy. Armor
and weapon repairs, oil and rations, and
other matters of equipment replacement,
often ignored by players, can be subsumed
in upkeep. And the more expensive
a city?s prices are, the higher upkeep
costs will be for residents in the city. Here
is where the idea of local inflation ? the
?gold rush boom town? with very high
prices for ordinary goods ? can come
into play.

Henchmen and hired help: Along with
personal upkeep comes payments to
henchmen and loyal followers, including
(but not limited to) their upkeep. This
total expense can be much greater than
personal costs.

Novice and near-novice adventurers are
unlikely to have such expenses, but veterans
who may wish to hire skilled
craftsmen must pay what the market
demands, regardless of the ?list price?
given for a service in the rulebook. If only
one armorer in town can make plate, and
several adventurers or lords want to hire
him, the armorer may charge an unusually
high fee.

(It should be noted for medievalists,
however, that in the Middle Ages many
fees were set by a guild or by the city
government and could not be exceeded.
Supply and demand, as we know it, did
not operate to change prices, though it
might lead to a devaluation of coinage
through reduction of the metal content.)
Adventurers' followers and henchmen, <not all followers have to be paid: check this>
if they're to remain loyal, must be very
well paid; otherwise, many will strike out
on their own. A character who owns a
stronghold, even a simple blockhouse
with tower, will have to pay troops and
other skilled personnel to garrison it.
They must be paid well enough to
remain loyal, or the character may find
when he returns from an adventure that
he's excluded from his stronghold, or that
it has been sacked, by the garrison.

Acquiring a stronghold: Perhaps the
greatest expense any adventurer will face
is the cost of buying or constructing a
personal stronghold. An adventurer may
buy or build several strongholds in the
course of a long, successful career. The
first may be a small tower, or just a stone
house or villa, either in or near a town.
Unless he has obtained a large grant of
land as well, the character may prefer to
move to another area to build a full-scale
castle, rather than expand his single
tower. And later he may trade territories
(not uncommon in the Middle Ages) or
find a better place to build his master
"festung" in which to spend his remaining
years. Such great stone edifices are
extremely expensive, especially if the
adventurer wants it built rapidly rather
than over the course of five years.
Moreover, expenses do not stop when the

stronghold is completed. Maintenance
costs, both for material and personnel, are
anything but negligible ? and the older
the stronghold, the more maintenance of
the structure will cost.

If life is too easy for characters while
they stay in a town, they?ll have no incentive
to obtain a stronghold. The more
they?re harried by thieves, assassins, punk
sword-slingers looking for a reputation,
and so on, the more they?ll look on
spending money for a stronghold as a
gain, not a loss.

Religion: Religion should drain a significant
sum from adventurers, staying
more or less proportional as income rises.
In most fantasy worlds the gods are real,
and if not omnipresent, they at least affect
the world through manipulation of followers
and minions. Most adventurers
will actively worship one or more gods, if
only "just in case, you know . . ." Active
worship entails contributions, if not
tithes (10% of all income) or offerings of
animals and goods of the worshipper.
And if the local temple is destroyed, the
wealthy worshippers (that is, the adventurers)
will be expected to provide money
to rebuild it.

Taxes:

In the medieval or the modern
world, citizens of a town are expected to
pay taxes according to the value of their
property -- including money, in the
Middle Ages -- and non-citizens are
targets for special levies, unless the town
is particularly eager to persuade the foreigners
to stay. This eagerness is conceivable
if the town is threatened from the
outside and the foreigners (adventurers)
offer the best defense.

A character's stronghold may be taxed
by the overlord of the area. If the character
holds the land in fief, he may be
exempted from many taxes, but on the
other hand he'll have feudal obligations
to his overlord. This often includes the
providing of troops, which means that
the character must hire extra men, and
pay for upkeep of troops on campaign,
even if he doesn't go himself. This will be
true whether the troops take an active
part in the campaign or march on a crusade
to a faraway land.

Pets: The animal companion(s) of an
adventurer, especially if they are big pets,
can be a drain on the character's income
as he pays for housing, training, and
feeding the creature. Perhaps outside of
town the fighter's pet griffon or hippogriff
can feed on kills ? provided it
doesn?t take down some farmer?s domestic
animal ? but when the fighter stays in
town, he?ll need to buy animals to feed
his mount.

Training young animals may cost even
more than feeding them, because the ability
to train is so rare and the act requires
so much time. But the biggest expense of
all could be buying the young animal (or
egg) in the first place. Encourage players
to have pets, if only well trained (and
thus expensive) war dogs. Sooner or later
the pet will be killed, and in the meantime
it may cause much amusement for
the referee, and difficulty for the owner.
On the other hand, if his pet saves his life
just once, the owner will think it well
worth the expense.

Equipment: Not all equipment is
created equal. That is, some suits of (nonmagical)
armor are more protective than
others, some swords are stronger than
others and hold an edge better, and so on.
The "ordinary" price for a piece of
equipment given in rulebooks could not
be for the highest quality product. Consequently,
another way to bleed funds
from characters is to offer the opportunity
to buy exceptional, but non-magical,
armor and weapons. The best of this
might even be equivalent in protection or
striking power to the weakest sort of magical
armor and weapons; you, as the referee,
must judge where the line is drawn.

Or, if you prefer, you may simply make
"ordinary" equipment somewhat unsafe
to use, in order to encourage PCs
to buy better materials. For example,
a dice roll can be taken at the end of
each adventure (or each battle) to determine
whether armor or weapons have
broken or worn out -- and more expensive
equipment wears out much less
often. Or, stipulate that when a player
rolls a 1 when attacking, there is a chance
that his weapon breaks, and when an
attacker rolls a 20 (or 100) there is a
chance that the target's armor is damaged
and his armor class is lessened by one.
The size of this "chance to be damaged"
will vary with the quality of the equipment.
The players can either periodically
buy or repair cheap stuff, or they can buy
high-quality products and rest more
easily.

Of course, a referee could have someone
sell magical equipment to characters, but
in most worlds the price should be so
prohibitive that no adventurer could
afford anything but a trade of magic
items, rather than a purchase. Who
would be crazy enough to sell a permanently
endowed magic item, such as a
sword or shield?

One-use magic: While permanent
magic items such as armor will not be
available for purchase in most campaigns,
except between players, one-use
magic will be more plentiful. Alchemists
manufacture potions to sell them, since
they can't use most potions themselves.
Retired magicians may make a living
creating and selling scrolls and recharging
some magic items.

Allowing for the purchase of "one-use
magic? can be a wonderful way to drain
money from adventurers without unbalancing
the game; in fact, it offers players
one more way to make a ?good move? in

the game by purchasing the most important
types of one-use items, such as scrolls
for healing or neutralizing poisons.
If a character finds a fairly good magic
item, such as a wand of magic missiles or
a wand of weak fireballs, he can hardly
afford to allow the thing to run out of
charges, yet he?ll probably use it frequently.
Consequently, he?ll be willing to
pay out large sums to a magician to restore
some charges to the item. It?s not
unknown for several members of a group
of adventurers to contribute money
toward recharging a wand owned by one
of them, because the wand helped all of
them survive.

Information: The "facts of the matter"
should be a valuable commodity in the campaign, something characters will buy
at a high price. This information can
come in many forms, from stories told in
taverns (?Have another drink and tell me
more?) to accounts told by rumormongers
and oral historians, to the purchase
of ancient books and the expertise
of sages. Education and training for the
adventurers themselves is a form of
information which will cost significant
sums early in a campaign; later, adventurers
will teach one another their skills,
and will learn few new ones.
The more accurate a piece of information
is, the more it should cost. Experts,
especially, are always expensive ? think

of a sage as the fantasy equivalent of a
?consultant,? with the high fees that
occupation demands, rather than the
equivalent of a reference librarian or a
university instructor. And although there
were no detectives in medieval times, it is
possible that someone would set himself
up in the ?information gathering? business
? not quite a detective, but not a spy
either. Such persons would charge high
fees because their service is nearly unique.

Politics: It is almost impossible to
become a wealthy, successful adventurer
without getting involved in politics:
wealth && prestige bring enemies and
hangers-on. The more a character participates
in politics, the more it will cost to
acquire and retain supporters, to obtain
info, to bribe.

Well-known adventurers may be
expected to spend a season at the court of
the ruler of the region. The travel,
retinue, finery, and gifts this entails will
not be balanced by any monetary gain,
although the increase in prestige &&
favor may help the character later.
Tournaments (jousts && duels) can be
expensive for adventurers who are
expected to participate in such events,
although in some areas the prizes offered
may more than offset the cost.
And if a character is really serious
about politics, he may have to bankroll a
private army!

<cf. The Politician>

Bribes: This is a way to soak up money
in an accumulation of small amounts.
Most readers will have heard of countries
in which every official, minor or otherwise,
expects a bribe in return for
accomplishing what is nominally his
everyday job. Why can't a fantasy society
be afflicted with the same inefficiency--
It's a matter of the size of the bureaucracy,
the way it's recruited, and the expectations
of the society.

<cf. The Bureaucrat>

Research: Magical research, whether to
discover new spells or to determine the
nature of found magic items, takes
money. Don't let characters pay a meager
sum in order to find out everything there
is to know about a newly obtained item.
Bleed their money away, giving a little
more information for each input of
funds. After all, magicians are rare and
should be paid appropriately for their
valuable research time.

Of course, player characters may decide
not to pay, but that's their choice; it may
be possible to discover the relevant
information through rumors, libraries,
and knowledgeable non-magicians.
The more complex a magic item is, the
more characters will have to pay to
determine exactly what it does. More than
one level of performance, or more than
one power, is desirable in an item ? even
items with (unbeknownst to the player
characters) only one power ? so that
players may continue to pay money in an
attempt to learn about additional powers
of an item long after all of its powers and
levels of ability have actually been
revealed.

For example, one researcher may be able
to determine the powers of a wand. Another
research expert may know a command word,
not necessarily relating to the known power. Further research
may reveal another command word , not necessarily relating
to the known power. Further research
may reveal another command word and a
second power, perhaps a variation of the
first one. And, the wand may be found to
occasionally weaken the user; finding out
how to avoid that effect -- or even if there
is a way to avoid it -- would cost even
more than finding out about one of the
wand's beneficial aspects.

Investments: Bad investments will cost
characters large sums. There ought to be
a few good investments available, but
most should be bad -- just as in the modern
world. Ways to spend invested money
may include schemes to manufacture new
inventions, property deals, money lending,
and most likely, mercantile ventures.
While a smart mercantile deal may net a
character a return of more than 100% or
200%, most will result in a poor return or
a loss. Characters may attempt to literally
?protect their investments? by accompanying
a vehicle or caravan picking up
or delivering goods, thereby giving the
referee opportunities to create miniadventures
connected with the trade
routes and destinations.

Gambling: This is a good way to
separate incautious characters from their
fortunes, in the long run. Just make sure
the odds favor the house ? if the game
isn?t actually fixed ? and remember that
a really big winner may make enemies of
the owners of the gambling establishment,
or of the losers in a private game.
A referee can encourage gambling by
making participation a matter of prestige
in the locale, and by providing means of
obtaining information ? rumors, at the
least ? unique to the gambling establishment(
s). If you challenge the ?manhood
? (or ?womanhood?) of the player
characters in connection with gambling,
some of them will respond unwisely ?
that is, they will gamble to ?prove?
themselves.

Small treasures, big spenders
    The more opportunities PCs
have to spend money, in small amounts or
large, the more they'll spend. Some combination
of the methods described above
should allow the referee to reduce the fortunes
of all but the most miserly adventurers.
But the most important single method
of doing this is to make treasures small so
that characters can't accumulate large fortunes.
Whether this stringency fits the
"heroic" mold is a matter that only each
referee and the players in his or her campaign
can decide.
 

The vicarious participator
Take the middle ground in role-playing style
by Lewis Pulsipher

In the early days of fantasy role-playing (FRP) gaming,
many players did not role-play in any significant sense of the word;
that is,
they did not pretend or imagine that they were in a real world different from our own.

Instead, they made a farce
out of FRP, and their characters tended to
act like thugs || gangsters, if not fools.

Pursuit of power, without regard for any-
thing else, was typical.

In reaction && rebuttal to this, some
players went to the other extreme. They
believed that characters, through their
players, should imagine themselves as
fulfilling a role in the real world, and
further declared that each character
should be a personality completely sepa-
rate from the player, so that the player
becomes more of an actor than a partici-
pant in a game. For several years these
people were voices crying out in the wil-
derness, but as more people gained FRP
experience or heard about this “improvi-
sational theater” (or “persona-creator”)
school of role-playing, and as the more
articulate and vociferous of the “persona”
extremists found an audience for their
views, this extreme attitude about role-
playing has spread so widely that it,
instead of not role-playing at all, seems to
have become the standard.

Unfortunately, because initially they
had to express their views about role-
playing with maximum emphasis just to
be listened to, many of the people in this
second group have become intolerant of
other views. One occasionally runs into
remarks at conventions or in articles
which disparage anyone who does not
create an elaborate persona for each of his
characters, each different from his own
personality. The most hard-line advocates
of this school of thought refuse to believe
that there is any other “proper” way to
play, and they measure the skill of a role-
playing gamer in accordance with how
closely he or she meets their notions of
role-playing as theater.

There is a third group, with an attitude
that lies between the power-mad, thug-
character players on one hand and the
persona-creators on the other. The view-
point of these people, who may be called
“vicarious participators,” reflects the
original intent of role-playing gaming.
They (and I number myself among them)
believe that the point of a role-playing
game is to put oneself into a situation
one could never experience in the real
world, and to react as the player would
38J

like to think he would react in similar
circumstances.
In other words, the game lets me do the
things I’d like to think I would do if I
were a wizard, or if I were a fighter, or
perhaps, even, if I decided to take the evil
path. Consequently, it would be foolish
for me to create a personality quite differ-
ent from my own, because it would no
longer be me. The game is not a matter of
“Sir Stalwart does so-and-so” but “I do
so-and-so.” In my imagination, I am the
one who might get killed — not some
paper construct, however elaborate it may
be. (Of course, because these are games
played by people with adult mentality —
even if not of adult age — no one ever
becomes overinvolved emotionally.)
Notice, also, that I didn’t say “as I
would act,” but “as I would like to think
I would act.” Few FRP gamers are made
of the stuff of heroes, but we like to think
we are when we play the game. The game
allows us to live out our fantasies about
being heroic, or saintly, or evil, although
we in our personal lives will never reach
nor probably aspire to any of these
extremes. As one player put it, if he were
actually in a dungeon he’d be scared silly
and would flee in utter panic — but his
character does not, because the character
can have attributes (courage, in this case)
which the player does not have.
The difference between this view and
the persona-creator’s view is fairly clear-
cut, though it would be hard to define a
line dividing one style from the other.
The vicarious participator lives an adven-
ture through his character, which tends to
be a lot like he is himself. But he accepts
that his character must undergo some
changes in attributes and personality
from the player’s, whether these changes
are imposed by the player himself, by the
game rules, or by the nature of the ref-
eree’s “world,” to help him enjoy events
he could never experience in the real
world.

For example, he will accept the
requirements of an extremely good
alignment and crusading zeal of a
paladin, or the requirements of a charac-
ter who is evil, or even a character of the
opposite sex. To him, the question is
“What would I (like to) do if I were such-
and-such in a fantasy world?”
The persona-creator, on the other
hand, places himself at a distance from
his character, regarding it as a separate
entity almost with a life of its own. He is
not interested in what he would do, but
in what a creature of such-and-such race,

intelligence, likes, dislikes, etc., would do
in a given situation. If his character dies,
his reaction is not overly emotional,
though he’ll certainly regret the loss of all
the work he put into the character.
The difference between the two styles is
manifested in many small ways. For
example, a persona-creator playing a
character of low intelligence will play
dumb. If he has a good idea, he probably
won’t mention it to the other players,
since his character wouldn’t have thought
of it. A participator, on the other hand,
doesn’t always care what his character’s
numbers happen to be. It’s really him in
there, anyway, and he’ll use his own
brain and other faculties to the fullest to
keep his character alive and accomplish
his goals.
This difference can be generalized to
show the attitudes of the two types of
role-players to the aspect of luck in char-
acter generation. The persona-creators are
not much concerned with being able to
choose aspects of the personality of their
character. In a sense, they try to be like
the most versatile film and stage actors,
who can play any role well. Consequently
they would not mind, and might even
prefer, playing a game like Chivalry & Sorcery,
in which virtually everything
about a character — alignment, race, even
horoscope — is determined by dice rolls.
On the other hand, vicarious participa-
tors want to have some choice in the role
they play. They prefer an activity such as
the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® game,
in which only the ability scores are
determined by chance, while race, align-
ment, social status, and so on are largely
matters of choice. The participators
resemble film or stage actors who have
specialized in a type of role; in this case,
they specialize in being some variant of
their idealization of themselves.
As stated before, one cannot draw a def-
inite line between the two styles. As par-
ticipators play more characters in differ-
ent situations, they begin to approach the
persona-creators in effect. They play
many different roles, increasingly differ-
ent from their original notion. Many
persona-creators, on the other hand, do
not care to play a persona they have not
created themselves; that is, they put much
of themselves into the character. There is
still a fundamental difference in attitude,
however, between “I am doing it” and
“This character is doing it.” Persona-
creators, even of this limited sort, have
been known to write stories about their
characters and develop plot lines which

do not arise from any game or any ref-
eree’s action. Participators would never
bother with this.
How does the vicarious player differ
from the power/thug gamer? Again, there
is no sharp dividing line between them.
In some cases the power/thug players are
simply indulging in infantile fantasies —
they haven’t matured yet, or they don’t
bring their maturity to their gaming ses-
sions. Vicarious players realize that in
this and every world there must be limita-
tions on what a person can do, but those
limitations are different in the game than
they are in real life. For example, I have
never met a participator who could
believe in (or tolerate) a situation in
which mortal characters defeat gods. Yet
such scenarios occur frequently in
“power” games. The power/thug players
are quite content to ignore all limitations
on their characters, and they find referees
who allow or encourage them to act in
this manner. Some role-players sneer at
this attitude, but many people enjoy play-
ing this way. However, while persona-
creators and vicarious players can co-exist
in a campaign, provided they are aware of
their differences, neither type can practi-
cally co-exist with the thugs.
The most important point I want to
make is that there is nothing superior
about the persona-creation method of
role-playing. Vicarious participation is
neither less mature, nor less intelligent,

nor less “true blue” than persona-
creation, though all these claims have
been made at times. Persona-creators
should accept that many players simply
do not want to become actors. Refereeing
requires quite enough acting for most of
us, for the referee must separate himself
completely from his non-player charac-
ters or he cannot be objective and impar-
tial — he must be a persona-creator in
order to be a good referee. Perhaps this is
the clearest indication that persona-
creation is no better than vicarious partic-
ipation: Many excellent referees, who are
necessarily excellent persona-creators,
nonetheless prefer vicarious participation
when they play. The vicarious style is a
matter of choice, not of inability to act.

The Golem's Craft
    Want to build a golem? It isn't easy . . .
    by John C. Bunnell

Charybdis

PURPLE DRAGON