Revisiting the Original GLoG

Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth by Erol Otus

For the last few months, I’ve been running GLoG. Not rat on a stick edition or Mimics and Miscreants, but the original Goblin Laws of Gaming published in the halcyon days of 2016. Since then a tremendous number of GLoG hacks have been written and each has decided to carry forward or abandon elements from Arnold K’s original ruleset. For me it’s been valuable to experience the original rules first hand and see how my players, all new to the OSR, reacted to them. I hope to share what I’ve noticed and bring some less copied parts of the rules into the light of the GLoG-osphere again.

The Numbers

GLoG’s stat generation and its use of stealth and movement stats are used to make the game riskier in specific ways. Rolling 4d4, instead of 3d6, to generate stats lowers the maximum stat one can roll to 16, raises the minimum to 4, and makes it more likely for any stat to be roughly 10. This is a break from tradition but it works well with the roll under rules. Characters with an 18 strength have a slim chance of ever failing a strength roll made on a d20. But characters with 16 strength are still strong but doubly likely to miss their target number. The new equation for deriving stat bonuses has a similar effect, but the calculation is so fiddly that I’d much rather have a table with the values of each stat.

Stealth and movement are also not usually carried into GLoG hacks. They seem a bit redundant, many GMs would much rather have players roll dex. But GLoG wants most characters to be equally good at running away and for the odds of escape to be likely, so the base movement is 12. The same is true of stealth, but the system would prefer players to run instead of hiding, so the base stealth is 9.
Rolling the dice in GLoG is always risky to encourage players to avoid doing so. But the system’s numbers want to make certain actions riskier than others. Making ability rolls should always carry significant risk of failure, but fleeing should naturally be a little more likely to result in success.

Convictions 

I feel like convictions are a good idea but not a great tool. The way Arnold intends them to be used in the original rules makes sense. He wants to encourage more risk taking and role playing, but the application of the rule feels very narrow. Players, in my experience, won’t go very far out of their way to take risks and the conviction system doesn’t do much to help that. The design feels very carrot and stick, it tries to manipulate player psychology without adding much to play. I think I’d like convictions more if there was a table of them so at least players always started with a sense of what motivated their character from the get-go.

In play, I’ve found that convictions are more interesting if they’re used more like inspiration from 5e. If the parameters of what counts as acting to your conviction is broader then players are more interested in looking for opportunities to earn their conviction point. Personally, I like the idea of inspiration being tied more strongly to a particular character motivation instead of being nebulously awarded for good role playing. I, however, see how this approach doesn’t work for every GM’s style.

Illithid, Erol Otus, 1980

Skills

The skill system is another clever idea but a poor tool to use at the table. The 2d12 skill rolls and skill progression are interesting but they don’t get a lot of attention in play. The amount of complexity they introduce feels unwarranted.  I’m also not sure about what sort of things skills should cover. The vagueness is freeing, yes, but the guidelines in the rules only tell me what skills should not be, not what they should be. A lot of refereeing for GLoG comes down to enforcing the philosophy behind the rules but there’s almost nothing to go off of here. As a GM, the skill guidelines empower me to say ‘no’ but not ‘yes’ to player suggestions.

Classes

GLoG class design has changed drastically from the original Goblin Guts classes. In my experience, the original classes are a mixed bag. I love the barbarian, whose powers are all unique and uniquely useful, but the acrobat gets a hodgepodge of situational advantages which are nowhere near as interesting. Perhaps it was just my players, but nobody seemed particularly enthusiastic to play any of the original classes. The ingenuity of players is supposed to be more important than the power of their characters and so the classes take a back seat, seem less appealing. I’m perfectly ok with this, but I feel like the classes could use more energy, more interesting tools to use from 1st level. In my game, we started choosing classes randomly from the complete table of GLoG classes, which improved the game noticeably.

The stacking template bonuses are also an interesting feature which has become less popular. Original GLoG characters are supposed to get numerically better in many ways as they level up, their save rises, their attack rises, and another number on their character sheet usually increases as well. There’s a general consensus, I feel, that a broader toolbox is a better reward for leveling up than numerical increases but I feel there’s a good balance to be struck in the middle.

From all this, I think I understand much better why certain parts of the original GLoG rules have not been widely adopted by hacks. Maybe there’s a campaign out there where the original rules all make perfect sense - a game with plenty of temptations for convictions and high risk dungeon crawling – but it is not the game I run. Still, there are parts of the original rules which remain valuable or interesting and have not been translated into hacks.

This post is dedicated to Sam Vimes

Mechanics for a Viking Campaign

I've decided that my Viking Campaign (better name tbd) will be set in the same world as the Meager Country. The setting was originally inspired by Ahmad ibn Fadlan's account of his chance encounter with a group of Rus merchants on the Volga river. It's unknown if these merchants were actually from Scandinavia, but I think it's natural to approach the setting from the perspective of the other group involved in Fadlan's encounter. Naturally, there will be more places to explore than the Meager Country proper, and that part of the world will seem a lot less meager when approached from the north rather than the south.

Something very like the Viking age is going on in a place not quite unlike early medieval Scandinavia a few dozen years before any Besharan diplomat would step foot in the Meager Country to parley with tattooed Rowing People or plunder the tombs of Seluk Khagans. But put a pin in that, the precise details are to come.

Burial of a Varangian Chieftain, Henryk Siemiradzki, 1883
Siemiradzki's image of a viking funeral is also inspired by ibn Fadlan's account

Last time, I wrote about the characteristics a Viking campaign's setting should have, now I'll spend some time talking about how I plan to evoke the period mechanically and handle some important Viking activities in the game.

I've decided to use GLOG as base system for the campaign, mostly because of the huge amount of class options written for it and how easy it is to hack in good bits from other old school games. Particularly, I'll be taking a lot of inspiration from The Nightmares Underneath  and also some of the rules from Lukomorye.

Classes and Leveling up

In Viking age Scandinavia, the intuitions which controlled power in the medieval period (e.g the Church) were yet to be fully adopted and local institutions (such as the numerous local legal assemblies called 'Things') had less power than the structures which would come later. Power was held more by persons than by structures.

 So, instead of being the member of a class or calling to gain new abilities, you must find a person to instruct you in that class who is a higher level than you. To get fighter 3, you need a mentor who's Fighter 3 already and he can't teach you Fighter 4. Leveling up will probably take a week to a month of training, double that if you're picking up a new class. At home, there will probably be only 3-4 classes available. To find more, you'll need to venture out and interact with the other peoples of the world and find mentors among them. Some classes may be unique, mastered by 1 individual who will not be interested in sharing their knowledge without good reason. Also, having to spend a long time abroad may make achieving mastery of your class difficult. You may find yourself in a place where you are the only Fighter may have to adopt a local tradition if you want to benefit from a level up.

Gaining Experience

Gold for XP makes a lot of sense to use for a Viking campaign, but I think more could be done. For instance, it might be best to give xp when goods are exchanged for precious metals so furs and other valuables can be used to gain levels. Also, I may consider implementing non-combat xp awards so journeys which are commercial failures still have some value to players.

Death, Dismemberment, Retirement 

I'd like characters to retire semi-regularly so that players could try playing the new kinds of people and the new classes they'd discovered on their adventures. Vanilla GLOG usually maims characters instead of killing them, I might move the needle closer to kill or make getting dismembered more debilitating to encourage retirement. Also there should probably be a benefit for retiring characters. Maybe they'll be allowed to level up while retired, manage domains, and return to the game at a later date.

Technology

Most medieval fantasy rpgs assume a decidedly late medieval or early modern level of technology. There's usually a lot of pole arms, sometimes basic gunpowder weaponry, and abundant plate armor. I'd like to keep things  earl medieval, especially in the arms and armor department. 

These will probably be the only weapons: Sling, bow, knife, long knife (basically a short sword), axe, spear, battle axe, sword (a rare status symbol)

In terms of armor, the shield will be the most important piece. It should be subject to breaking frequently too. Body armor, such as the classic leather and chain varieties, should be pretty rare. Most armor will be assembled piecemeal (I'll probably be drawing heavily from Lukomorye's body armor and accessories system). 

Here's some other notes: there is no glass, potions come in waterskins or ceramic jars. There are no lanterns. Your torch creates lots of dirty smoke, candles don't produce much light either. Everything and everyone is generally covered in mud and soot. People live in houses made of mud and straw. In Scandinavia they mixed it up and put the mud on the roof instead to invent the glorious turf roofed house.

Exploration

Wilderness exploration has always been difficult to do well in D&D. The space it takes place in is too abstract, too large, for the usual techniques which make dungeon level exploration work to be successful. There can still be wilderness dungeons which exist on a slightly larger scale than is typical, but trekking through the wilderness should be done differently. I may just rule that the party will need a guide, or perhaps learn the route from another source, to start out on a journey into the mostly unexplored wilderness with random encounters along the way. Still, I'd like the player's to have some freedom in deciding where to go, some chance to stumble across unexpected locations in the wild. 

Exploration by sea will also have to be accounted for. Sailing isn't very interesting by itself, but there should be encounters at sea. I think I'll need pretty robust rules for ships getting damaged and repaired, fighting on deck, and also rules for calculating how much cargo a ship can hold.

Raids and Skirmishes

Raids involve a lot of moving parts. A team of raiders, a settlement with a bunch of buildings, hundreds of inhabitants, a defense force quickly mobilizing, the actually party itself, and a whole lot of chaos. Big skirmishes with 20-50 on each side and pitched battles are not represented well at the scale of D&D combat. Good raiders will avoid this kind of battle, but they still may happen regardless. The whole raid should probably run more like a dungeon, at the scale of 10 minute turns, with the actions of raiders away from the party abstracted to a single dice roll (i.e do they succeed in doing X in the turn) 

A raid may last for hours and see the players going after large objectives, temples, places where goods are stored/produced, treasuries, the homes of the rich, while their team tries to scatter the defending forces and extract valuables from the populace. 

The party may also end up occupying settlements for days, maybe months to continue finding loot or in an attempt to establish the settlement as a beachhead for further raiding and eventual conquest. This will eventually lead to a pitched battle with a larger force of defenders brought in from the surrounding region, the only question is how long it will take for such a force to be assembled. 

In any case, exploration and raiding should make use of a morale system, I'll be using Luke Gearing's. I also need to figure out how xp and gold are distributed among all the members of the raiding party. 

Tribes 

The last time I visited the Meager Country, the different peoples of the Meager Country gained different bonuses from their spirit guardians while the Besharans were divided by religious practice and belief. I'm considering blending these systems together for this campaign.

 For belonging to a certain ethnocultural group you'd get a small bonus but have to abide by certain group practices. For the example, you couldn't continue to be one of the Untamo after violating the sanctity of the sauna, the heart of spiritual life for this particular tribe. Players would usually have no qualms about killing a person in a sauna. They're naked and not on guard, it's a perfect plan. If the violation of a taboo is involved though, and the loss of a mechanical advantage, it may give the players pause. Of course, if we've established that violating the sauna is a grave crime they may exhibit the same pause, but I think using mechanics to underline the importance of these taboos and habits can help get players into the setting. 

Economy

I don't have enough time to do extensive research into the exact value of silver in the Viking age economy and compile accurate price lists. However, I think I'll be able to get away with stealing the great item lists from the Lukomroye player's guide. I'll probably be awarding precious metal by

 weight rather than in coin values at first and use some of the information from Nightmares Underneath to figure the exact value of a gram of silver. I'll also probably be using the inflation rules from Nightmares and the item availability ones from Lukomorye. I may also increase the price of arms and armor by a few fold.  

Institutions 

Institutions are a great place for players to invest money from Nightmares Underneath and would make perfect sense for a Viking age inspired campaign. Though, I will probably have to write more setting appropriate institution types. I think the institutions can also be easily folded into domain play. Here are some more appropriate Viking age institutions. 

Temples, Trade routes (mostly building trading posts), Fortifications (for protecting the trade routes and securing domains), Blacksmiths (for arming large contingents of soldiers), Great halls (for receiving guests and drawing fame), Shipbuilders.

There should probably other institutions which you can learn about abroad (i.e the capital C Church)

Downtime 

I'd like there to be a lot of downtime between expeditions. Winter is long, the season for exploration is short. What happens during downtime will probably be most determined by whether the players are more focused on the world abroad or that at home. There will be feasts and festivals to attend, assemblies and trials to see, and perhaps battles between factions to win or lose. Ships will also have to be resupplied, information about newly discovered routes will need to be acquired, fresh rowers and raiders will need to be recruited.

So that's the rough outline for my campaign, at least mechanically. I'd love to get some other perspectives on what I've presented here, especially the part on tribes.

This post is dedicated to Lawspeaker Torgny, who brought peace with his great harangue 

An Introduction to the Viking Age

Illustration by Angus McBride of the death of Olaf Tryggvason
 from "The Vikings" written by Ian Heath 

Luke Gearing has been blogging a little about a Viking campaign and it's got me excited. As readers of this blog may guess, I may have a more than passing interest in Scandinavian culture and the Viking Age. Though Luke is right that going a-viking can provide a strong start to a campaign, I've been constantly disappointed by how the Viking age Norse and their world is imagined in rpgs and in broader pop culture. There's a pervasive obsession with the Norse as a warrior culture, some subconscious idea that the raiding which defined the Viking age was the expression of a people whose primary trait was obsession with the glory of battle.

 At worst, this misconception gives us the Norsca of Warhammer, who are just barbarians who want to tear down civilization and spill blood. At best your Norse-themed fantasy civilizations emulate the aesthetics of Viking age Norse culture without replicating any of the historical context. The Banner Saga series of games is a good example of this trend. What you end up with is a series of symbols, runes, round shields, longboats, which are supposed to stand in for some eternal Viking-ness but only symbolize a wholly modern conception of who the Norse were. Granted, vikings are a popular theme in the tabletop space and there are several games which try to offer a more authentic picture of the Norse. Fate of the Norns and the fairly new Sagas of Midgard all try to offer an authentic Norse-ness in one way or another. However, I am still unsatisfied by these projects. These games want to explore Norse myth, more so than Norse history and in doing so sometimes perpetuate the same misconceptions which give us the Norsca.

While I would love to go into depth about the falseness of the warrior culture myth and the mess of misconceptions which accompany it, I do not think I could muster any argument or evidence able to completely overcome this great specter which haunts Scandinavian/Old Norse/Nordic studies. There is no way I can scoop all the romantic paintings of Thor with his winged helmet and all the modern pictures of Odin with a sleeve of runic tattoos out of peoples' heads with a few idle words. However, I can offer a different vision. I can show you what I find so fascinating, so enthralling about the Viking age. Hopefully, I can convince you that a game inspired by the historical context of the Viking age should be about a lot more than just raiding.

Introduction to the Viking Age

The Viking age (roughly 793-1066 AD) was a time of incredible change in Scandinavia and over its' course all of Norse society would be altered. The Viking age saw the first urban centers emerge where previously all of the region had been rural. It saw the rise of the first kingdoms in Scandinavia, the centralization of power to a degree unheard of before. It saw the creation of great trade routes which connected the White sea to all of Europe, the Eurasian steppe, and to the Islamic world. It saw the birth of new colonies and domains far from where any Scandinavian had previously traveled. And, of course, it saw the introduction and victory of Christianity over paganism which rearranged much of Norse daily life.

But trends don't tell us the whole story, they give us the impression that change occurred at a measured pace instead of in fits and starts. There were, for example, several waves of urbanization which saw trading posts built and abandoned before new ones sprang up. Similarly, the conversion to Christianity advanced piecemeal, with champions of the faith, like Olaf Tryggvason, coming to power and later being deposed.

Trends also don't tell us why things happened. The changes which occurred in Scandinavia were driven by a web of circumstances, actions, and reactions. The success of the Carolingian kingdoms probably inspired Norse rulers to construct the earliest trading towns based on the model of those across the Baltic sea. The settlement of Iceland may have been driven by the higher tax burdens imposed by the first king of Norway, Harald Fairhair, which encouraged many to leave the country. There are many factors which could have lead to the increased range and frequency of raids and increased exploration which defined the Viking age. A warmer climate, a growing population leading to a dwindling amount of land allotted to each son, advances in sailing technology, the previously mentioned political changes, all probably encouraged Scandinavians to reach out to the broader world.

Scandinavians found success as conquers mostly in the same places where their raids were successful. The Baltic sea, the British isles, Eastern Europe, the west coast of Europe were all subject to raids and to a lesser extent the creation of Norse kingdoms and settlements. These Scandinavian founded dynasties would eventually be absorbed by the groups they dominated and frequently came into conflict with each other. The nobility of the Rus states, in what is now Russia and the Ukraine, were Scandinavian in origin but began to take Slavic names as time went on. The Normans, also originally Norse, spoke French by the 11th century and clashed with the originally Scandinavian Saxons for control of England. Though raids are certainly dramatic, most of Scandinavia's connections to the broader world were formed by trade not by violence. Saami and Finnic populations provided many of the furs and walrus ivory which formed the heart of Viking age trade routes. Of course, the Arabs, Byzantines, Irish, Carolingians, and English also played a vital role by providing the demand for goods brought by Norse ships. Both Byzantium and the Abbasid Caliphate were victim to a small number of raids, but all were largely unsuccessful. The only way for the Norse to access the greatest riches of the world was through trade, in fur, in amber, in slaves. These trade routes brought massive amounts of silver and lesser quantities of gold to Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, allowing rulers there to line their pockets and better cement their power. The Byzantines also made use of Scandinavians in a military capacity as guards to the Emperor, though the members of this Varangian guard would eventually stop being sourced from Scandinavia.

The raiding, conquest, exploration, trade, and settlement which defined the Viking age were both the cause of and effect of a web of changing circumstances which originated in Scandinavia and were brought to it, which transformed the homeland of the Norse and the world abroad. Though the Norse did often interact with the world in violent ways, it is critical to note that the majority of the cultural and economic relationships they formed were not. It was age when people and places which had never been connected before were drawn into lasting patterns of encounter and exchange. At the forefront of these budding relationships were people willing to risk life and limb, leave the safety or danger of home behind, to pursue gain in the broader world. It was not just the fiercest warriors who succeeded in the Viking age, but those who had the skills to turn a boat full of furs secured from the Finns in Vipuri, into a boat full of silver in the city of Itil, and finally into an army in Denmark able to take power. But not all needed a throne to be happy. Those who settled down in Iceland, Greenland, were just motivated to find a new home, for some the profit motive must have been a draw, and perhaps the call of a yet unknown world was too hard for some to resist.

But the Viking age would not last forever. There were only so many kingdoms to build, so many beachheads to take, so many rivers that lead to the sea. Some would only realize this when it was too late, once they'd already run aground on great sandbars their boats could not overtake. In 913, stranded in a city in Azerbaijan, a beardless youth from somewhere up north took his own life rather than be captured by the forces of the governor Marzuban ibn Muhammad. The party that the nameless child was part of had occupied the city for months, intending to hold it indefinitely. Things were changing in Scandinavia too. Traditionally, power was held together by familial relationships and promises sworn between charismatic rulers and their supporters, but these foundations of blood and bone were to be replaced by ones of brick and parchment. New institutions were being born in Scandinavia, ones which were much more immune to change. Castles and Churches built side by side would replace the old halls and scared groves. In 1066, in an English field, Harald Hardrada was struck in the throat by an arrow. Harald had adventured across the world for 15 years, amassed great wealth fighting wars for Yaroslav the Wise and Byzantine emperors, before returning to Scandinavia to seek the throne of Norway, Denmark, England. Could he see that the strength of his right hand would not be enough this time? Were he and that anonymous boy aware that an entire age was ending with and around them? 

 Change progresses like the tide, going in and out, but slowly reshaping the coastline. Earth is undermined, then falls away. Grain by grain the sand is replaced. In the long view, from up high, it is clear that there is only a slim chance things could turn out any other way, but on the ground, when it seems each transforming wave could be the last, the outcome is impossible to tell. I think this is how it was for the vikings, the explorers, the merchants. Though many would go unremembered, though many would be dashed against the rocks, they could see the world had given them a chance to reach out and hold their own destiny. The pages of history were yet blank, the mortar was still wet on the stones. This is why I love the Viking age. There was still time to write your name or carve it on the walls of the Hagia Sophia. There were still new lands to see full of new people to meet, new faces to kiss, new fruits to eat which are gathered in no other orchard, and new sunrises to gaze upon.

Baptism of St. Princess Olga, Sergei Kirillov, 1993

The Viking Campaign

As we have seen, the Viking age was about a lot more than raiding. If you want to run a proper viking campaign then what matters is not that you preserve a Viking age Scandinavian aesthetic, but play in a world where the historical context of the Viking age is preserved. I wouldn't recommend reproducing the exact circumstances of any decade or century in the Viking age, but rather trying to capture the major and most gamable aspects of the period as a whole. 

The homeland of the player characters should be on the edge of domains which are not immune from raiding or conquest but have superior technology, higher populations, and more centralized authorities. Nearer to the homeland, should be populations able to provide valuable trade commodities (fur, ivory, amber, ect). Forming lasting relationships with these populations can provide steady streams of income, but they'll probably need the party to help them fight their local rivals or send them on a quest. 

Beyond this, the world should be mysterious and mostly unknown. The game's mercantile element should come from having to find the wealthy empires who'll provide the most silver for the party's goods. There will be many trade routes, some dangerous, some full of middlemen looking for tariffs and duties. The elites of the world's empires may also have an interest in the party. Having a group of foreigners with a slightly different attitude towards violence on hand is always useful for those with power. 

 There should also be a kind of adventurer diaspora forming. The party may have rivals who set up kingdoms and settlements close to theirs, compete for access to the same trade routes. The trajectory of the viking game should see the party doing small scale raids and exploratory missions which lead to greater opportunities for profit and eventually transition to more domain focused play, abroad or back in the homeland, in classic old school fashion.    

For players, a viking campaign should be an opportunity to play as a character who is half a rogue trader from Warhammer 40k, a risk taker looking for profit in the unknown, and half Conan the Barbarian, an outsider come to see and judge the heights of civilization.

For GMs, a viking campaign is an opportunity to describe an orange to a character who has never seen one before, to test their player's skills in areas beyond dungeon level problem solving, and to design a political sandbox for players to mess with.

So that's my introduction to the Viking age. I will stress that it is just an introduction. There's a lot more to say about Viking age Scandinavia and its context than what I have presented here is not uncolored by my own reading of history. If you want to learn more about the history of the Viking age, there are many books which serve as deeper introduction to the material than what I provide here. However, I prefer reading the original source material. 'The Viking Age: A Reader' provides a wide variety of sources from many perspectives. I'm a big fan of 'Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness' personally. The doctoral thesis: 'The Rus in Arabic Sources' is also a big influence on the way I see the Viking age. If you want a book with a more rpg focused book, let me recommend 'GURPS Vikings', which does a good job of dispelling common misconceptions about the Viking age.

Thank you for reading this whole thing, hopefully in a few weeks I'll have more details about my own viking campaign  (which will basically be Meager Country v2) ready to show you all.

Hour of the Wolf, Minna Sundberg, 2019

This post is dedicated to that Arch-Lair, that Deceiver, that Great Poet and Preserver: 

Snorri Sturluson