South Africa Simulation

(discussion of this game available on the Story Games for All forums).

TOWNSHIP REBELLION SIMULATION RULES

HOUSING: Unemployed workers must return to their Bantustans. There they may suffer from disease or starvation. The best solution is to find work in Johannesburg. If you can afford the rent, stay in Soweto. If you can't, stay at Crossroads. But remember: Crossroads is an illegal squatter settlement. The police may disperse it at any time.

FACTORIES AND MINES: Workers enter, sit at a chair, spend 1 energy token, and produce either 2 machinery or 1 diamond. No chair, no work. Chairs count as machinery, which must be replaced each year. Workers waiting for work should form a line leading to the factory or mine. After they work, they must return to their place of residence before getting back in line.

SABOTAGE: Some subversives are attempting to sabotage workplaces. To do this, they deposit a sabotage counter where their energy counter for work would go. That immediately destroys all machinery in the mine or factory, which must now be replaced by the owner. Needless to say, sabotage is illegal.

LAWS: As long as the government is in power, it may add or remove any laws it deems necessary. If the government is seen to be too soft on terrorism, or the economy starts to fail, other parties may start winning more seats in parliament. The government may ban any individual or organisation for subversive activities.

ROBBEN ISLAND: The police may throw people in jail, up to five at a time. They can be kept there for a few minutes (90 day law) or the government may make a good case (or new laws), in which they can be kept there as long as needed.

GUNS: Several parties in the game have access to guns. To use a gun, give it to the target. Tear the ticket in half. The target is now dead. They re-incarnate the following year. Roll a die. 1-2, Zulu. 3-4, Xhosa. 5, Tswana. 6, White (may be hired by police, government, or factory owners).

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT: Every time the government commits an obvious injustice, international support falls. Significant reforms may make it rise (but irritate South African conservatives). If support falls too far, there may be some form of sanctions. Maintaining law and order is not in and of itself considered an injustice.

IMPORTS: Factory and mine owners have to import new machine parts each year. The store owner as to import foodstuffs (energy tokens). The costs are the following:
Machinery - 120 rand per chair, divided by the current strength of the rand. (So 24, 30, 40, 60, 120).
Food - 7 rand per token - current strength of the rand. (2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
If there is large-scale rioting or strikes, the rand will fall in value.

TIME: Each year lasts 5 minutes. The teacher will announce year changes.

For questions about the rules ask the teacher during the game.


Scenario: It is 1983. The National Party, under Prime Minister Botha, is desperately trying to hold the country together. The government must avert economic crisis, electoral defeat, and the revolution that is brewing in the townships and the countryside.

Timing:
Before class, arrange classroom with 3 Bantustans, Zimbabwe (no SA police allowed), Soweto, Crossroads, a mine, a factory, a store, a jail, and Johannesburg. Draw up all current variables on board.

Government support: 75% (lose 5% for every reform, 10% for every year in which businesses lose money)
International support: 7 (1-year boycott of SA goods at 5, investments withdrawn at 3, sanctions and a total shutdown of intl. trade at 1).
Strength of the rand: 5
Current legislation
Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949)
Suppression of Communism Act (1950, bans subversive organisations)
Group Areas Act and Pass Laws (1950)
Immorality Amendment Act (1950)
Bantu Education Act (1953)
The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act (1959)
Internal security act (1976, bans public meetings)
Black Trade Unions are legal

10 minutes to explain rules.
-Everyone plays a role. Try to act in character. If you have any questions, ask the teacher.
-Please follow the rules on the first page. You may also refer to your textbooks at any time (unless the government bans them as subversive literature).
-The teacher may alter the rules at any point in the game due to unforeseen circumstances.
-NO actual violence, needless to say.
-I will act as moderator, international trader, and timekeeper. For the most part, the game is in students' hands.

30 minutes to play
-5 minutes per year. Spend your time ad-libbing mine shaft collapses and natural disasters.
-If game-play stalls, try a UN resolution, get harsh about international approval, start an economic crisis, or egg on the political organisers. If all else fails, have the Conservative party pick up 20% of parliament in 1987, or hand the SACP a huge arms cache (drop it off in Zimbabwe). The country should be in crisis by 85 or 86, and meltdown by 88. Stop the game in 1990.
-When in doubt, rule on the side of the apartheid regime. Enforce jailing and massacres (at a price in international support).

10 minutes to reflect
-How hard was it to govern the country?
-How hard was it to organise resistance?
-What did this simulation leave out?



Prime Minister Botha
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Avoid electoral defeat, a collapse of the economy, and revolution. Preserve apartheid as long as possible.
Special powers: May ban any organisation. Controls the police. May introduce or revoke any law, as long as parliamentary majority holds out.

Agent for Anglo-American Diamond Company
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Sell diamonds abroad as profitably as possible. Tackle strikes and demonstrations. If international support drops too far, however, the parent company will pull out its investments (80%).
Special powers: Runs the mine. May hire a worker to spend 1 energy token to mine 1 diamond. Every year, mine machinery will need to be maintained, requiring imports from abroad.

Agent for British Tractor Manufacturers
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Hire workers to create farming equipment, which can be sold to other African states and western countries. If international support drops too far, however, the parent company will pull out its investments (80% rand).
Special powers: Runs the factory. May hire a worker to spend 1 energy token to produce 2 units for export. Every year, factory machinery will need to be maintained, requiring imports from abroad.

Landlord
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Collect rent from the residents of Soweto. Sit back. Be rich. Mwa ha ha.
Special powers: Collect rent. Suggested start is 5 rand per year in Soweto (blacks only), and 50 rand per year in Johannesburg (whites only).

Minister of Police
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Root out the communist, the agitator, the terrorist. The state must be secure.
Special powers: Controls the police. Has a giant supply of guns. To use a gun, present it to a target and tear the counter in half. Now they're dead. You may also arrest people and take them to jail. If need be, recruit spies among the Bantu, and distribute arms to factions in the movement to cause infighting. Remember to keep the blacks scared, in their place. Have police harass them, demand to see their papers constantly.

Policeman
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Root out the communist, the agitator, the terrorist. The state must be secure.
Special powers: Supplied with guns. To use a gun, present it to a target and tear the counter in half. Now they're dead. You may also arrest people and take them to jail.





Policeman
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Root out the communist, the agitator, the terrorist. The state must be secure.
Special powers: Supplied with guns. To use a gun, present it to a target and tear the counter in half. Now they're dead. You may also arrest people and take them to jail.

Bantu Nelson Mandela (Xhosa)
Locale: Robben Island
Objectives: Stay strong. Try to communicate with your supporters on the outside. If more of your comrades are thrown in jail, do your best to keep their spirits up. Be ready to negotiate with the Botha government, but not unless they agree to end apartheid!
Special powers: They wouldn't dare kill you.

ANZAPO Organiser
Locale: Soweto
Objectives: Organise black workers into the Azanian People's Organisation. Organise a rent strike! Ally with the trade unions and support a general strike in all industries. Overthrow the imperialist capitalist pig-dogs. Create a worker's state.
Special powers: Your identity is SECRET as you are a member of a BANNED organisation. Use these false papers to avoid attention from the police.

+

Bantu (Tswana)
Locale: Bophuthatswana Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Xhosa), COSATU Organiser
Locale: In every mine and mill.
Objectives: Organise all workers in the mines and factories into Congress of South African Trade Unions. "To hell with politics, the strike is our weapon!"
Special powers: Strike! Strike! Strike! You are lucky that you can carry out your work openly, since black trade unions were legalised in 1980. The government wouldn't dare reverse that law... would they?

Bantu (Zulu)
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short. Unless, of course, Chief Buthelezi figures out how to change things.
Special powers: You have the right to join the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Bantu (Zulu)
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short. Unless, of course, Chief Buthelezi figures out how to change things.
Special powers: You have the right to join the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Chief Buthelezi
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Organise Zulus into the Inkatha Freedom Party. These ANC commie nutcases are going to ruin the country. You don't care about this "Black Consciousness" nonsense either. You are proud to be Zulu, and want the government to grant rights to the Zulu homeland. See if you can make a deal with the government. If they grant you a few concessions, it might be worth forming an agreement with them. Particularly if that agreement gets you the guns you need to raise up the Zulu Empire again. Remember Shaka!
Special powers: You are the Prime Minister of KwaZulu, under the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act. Your party is perfectly legal, as is your power.

ANC Organiser
Locale: Soweto
Objectives: Organise people into the ANC. Sabotage the racist apartheid regime. Bring forth a new democracy that provides for all its citizens. Use acts of civil disobedience (demonstrations and riots) and the sabotage of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) to make the country ungovernable, as Comrade Tambo has called for. ...Good luck.
Special powers: You have three sabotage counters. Distribute them to operatives who you can convince to join Umkhonto we Sizwe. To activate sabotage, alert the teacher (to enforce the rules), and then bring the sabotage counter to either the mine or factory. See if you can co-ordinate a mass attack on industry, perhaps followed by or just after a strike. In addition, your organisation is BANNED. Use these papers to fool the police:

+

Bantu (Xhosa)
Locale: Transkei Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Zulu)
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short. Unless, of course, Chief Buthelezi figures out how to change things.
Special powers: You have the right to join the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Bantu (Zulu)
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short. Unless, of course, Chief Buthelezi figures out how to change things.
Special powers: You have the right to join the Inkatha Freedom Party.





SACP Organiser
Locale: Soweto
Objectives: Organise the working class into the South African Communist Party. Obtain arms from your Soviet allies and overthrow the capitalist imperialist government of South Africa. Create a Marxist-Leninist workers' state. Workers of the World Unite!
Special powers: You have a small cache of arms from the USSR. To use a gun, approach your target, present them with the ticket, and tear it in half. They are now dead. You may be able to get more guns. If you get well-organised, distribute these to the workers and prepare for the revolution... But beware! The SACP was the very first banned organisation. Keep your work a secret. Use these papers to fool the police.

+

Bantu (Xhosa)
Locale: Transkei Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Zulu)
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short. Unless, of course, Chief Buthelezi figures out how to change things.
Special powers: You have the right to join the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Bantu (Zulu)
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short. Unless, of course, Chief Buthelezi figures out how to change things.
Special powers: You have the right to join the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Bantu (Xhosa)
Locale: Transkei Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Xhosa)
Locale: Transkei Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Tswana)
Locale: Bophuthatswana Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Tswana)
Locale: Bophuthatswana Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Tswana)
Locale: Bophuthatswana Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Shop Owner [This was actually played by my supervising teacher]
Locale: Soweto
Objectives: Buy energy tokens from abroad, sell them to black workers.
Special powers: Being white, you have the right to operate a store. You can hire shop assistants if you please.

Teachers should be Gamers

At the very least, I don't think my fellow humanities teachers have any excuse. I follow Costikyan and Aarseth I view games as a form of text capable of conveying certain kinds of information more efficiently than others. Specifically, as Costikyan notes, games are systems and they are therefore amply suited to convey information about systems. This includes social structures, economics, environments, physics, chemical reactions, demographics, and politics. Teachers, think of your domain, and think of the overarching interrelations you wish to convey. A game is a much more efficient (and engaging, as the lingo goes) way of communicating them than a block of text.

Why are games so appropriate for education? To begin, no one can be forced to learn. Learning is an active, not a passive, process. End the days of didactic education: get the students moving, talking, arguing, and learning. I have students that can talk my ear off about celebrities, cars, sports, music, mythology, and (big shocker) GAMES. Why can they do this? Why do they display such motivation and commitment to becoming experts? Because they give a damn. They do not give a damn about the textbook.

A game conveys a depth of knowledge that is simply impossible to convey via other media, precisely because it offers alternatives. Play the Battle of Waterloo and learn why it happened like it did. Play third-world development (a simulation I currently have in the works for my year 7s) and understand why there still is a third world. Play political corruption and learn more than any newspaper would ever have taught you.

Of course, sometimes after playing a game, a student will discover that a winning strategy was not (or is not) the strategy taken. This sets the scene for a great inquiry project. Students will be desperate to know why Henry V didn't take Paris, since it won the game. They will critique the game, a vital skill for all kinds of literacy. They will encounter the fallibility of leaders, the contingent factors that shape history. And, with your support, they will design their own games to enable an expression of what REALLY happened, games that other students can play and critique.

And, of course, there is a political dimension to all of this. As an anarchist-communist, I desire the abolition of the distinction between work and play. It's part Aronowitz part Mary Poppins, I admit. But I don't give a damn.

Teachers of the world, play! You have nothing to lose but the dirty looks from your students, you have a world to win!

For f's sake

Dear Reader,

I briefly played "Evony," a MMORTS... I guess. Something like that, anyway. It was alright, if you're into resource management games and mmo's you might want to give it a shot. I got quite obsessive about it though (I had spreadsheets, and diagrams... my alliance was starting to hate me) so I quit.

But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about Evony's banner ads. They used to look something like this, and look at that guy complain! Now they look like... well, it's a bit absurd. What I love is that they advertise that you can play from home, school, or work.

Shameless.

Bercilac

New Stuff!

Dear Reader,

My friend and I went to a slew of games stores in the city today. It was pretty weird seeing all of the shelves loaded up with D&D 4th Edition, made me feel pretty old. It also tanked one of my ambitions, which was to try and publish some of my 3rd Edition adventures for a few extra bucks. I have no idea how much money I could have made doing that, probably not very much, but it would have been neat, and a good way to get started in the industry.

I saw some wonderful stuff out there. It's been ages since I was in a proper games store. I was horridly tempted by the various board games set in Renaissance Italy, but I resolved to wait until I'm teaching (tax deductible!). I did, however, succumb to a few temptations. I am the proud owner of three shiny new translucent d20s: one yellow, one dark blue-green, and one clear. I saw my friends tossing around some translucent d20s at our last session of Dread Ilk and I resolved to own some myself (in addition to my sparkly apple-green one). I much prefer them to those illegible speckled monstrosities, or simple opaque colours (I have a white one: how boring is that?).

I also gave in, to a somewhat pricier tune, to a neat little rpg called "Faery's Tale: Deluxe." I have yet to figure out what's deluxe about it, but as you might guess it's all about playing as sprites or brownies or what have you. I'm a bit disappointed to see goblins and the like as evil NPCs, and the game centred on being kind and nice, but that's true of most systems I've seen and hasn't stopped me from running a monster campaign yet.

Apart from the wonderful artwork and fluff, what interested me in the game is that it's geared towards children. Don't think this makes it a frivolous system: it has nice simple dice-pool mechanics based on body, mind, and spirit, as well as gifts/traits, and a wonderful system of "Essence." Essence functions as your hit points, as you lose it in a fight; your experience points, as you gain it for desirable behaviour or great success; and as mana to fuel certain abilities and spells. There's also a great system of boons, which are essentially roleplaying rewards in the form of NPCs owing you a favour, which can be traded in for magic items, stat increases, or titles ("from knight to faery princess" boasts the blurb). It's a lightweight tome, at 90 pages of A5, most of which is taken up with flavour text and lovely illustrations, and certainly the simplicity of the rules lends itself to playing with kids (though I also find it appeals to my gaming instincts).

There's a lot in there, however, that is much more considered in how it approaches children. For starters, there's a section which introduces the concept of developmental stages (taken from good old Erikson) in how you should write your adventures: younger children are likely to have trouble with empathy and moral dilemmas, whereas as children get older they are more interested in what their personal characters are doing and more difficult challenges. There are plenty of places where the game can be tuned down: either mechanically (simplified combat, diceless, character creation based on sketches done by the child and interpreted by the GM) or emotionally (simpler challenges, avoiding death scenes with "falling into a magical slumber" or running away). And there are, of course, opportunities to take it the other way: there's a decent section on LARPing as pixies, which sounds fantastic, and encouragement for props, costume, et cetera. It suggests scenery such as couches, rugs, et cetera, but I can imagine taking a whole primary school class out to a park one day and going nuts...

I'd really like to run this game with my group, but I'd need to toughen it up slightly. The system is geared towards encouraging children to behave nicely to one another: you get Essence for being kind and considerate in various ways, and "Dark Essence" for being nasty. I'd have to develop the Dark Essence bit, since I know my group wouldn't view it as a bad outcome. The combat rules are probably fine left simple, but to hell with falling into a magical slumber: if the goblins beat you, they're going to chew your limbs off. I had an amazing idea for an adventure based on a marauding entomologist.

Bercilac

24 Hour RPG: Out of the ashes of a failed attempt

Dear Reader

I tried my hand at the 24 Hour RPG competition, and failed. I had picked the phrase "semi-disposable," and was beginning to structure a game based on the experience of Soviet soldiers at Stalingrad. Each soldier had an individual dice pool and battles were played out in a series of scenes inspired by Grey Ranks (there were, in fact, a lot of similarities between this game and Grey Ranks or Carry). In each scene, every soldier rolled their dice pool to determine what contribution they made to a plan negotiated between the GM and one player who played the Sergeant. Successes (5 or 6) contributed to overcoming the Germans, failures (1) didn't detract from that but put the soldier at risk of death.

The interesting bit of the concept was to be a communal dice pool called the "Tactical Situation." These dice would be at the disposal of individual players, who could roll tactical dice to protect themselves from the dangers of failure. Any that weren't used in this way would be at the Sergeant's disposal to help beat back the Germans. So there was to be a tension between individual survival and group success.

The concept was flawed in a few ways:

1. I wasn't quite sure what the overall goal was, except perhaps to play until the squad was exterminated or the GM decided they'd had enough and the Germans would get defeated. It made it difficult to predict progress through the game, and how to set the stakes at each point.

2. I had a roll outlined for a political commissar, who could theoretically sack the Sergeant. But I had no idea how, or why, he would do so.

3. The game was lacking in motivation, not just for the group as a whole, but for individuals. Why would they sacrifice themselves for group success? Then again, there was little room for individual development, so why not?

I have thought of how to salvage some of the work, however. I might recast this as a medieval rpg. By that I mean emphatically NOT a fantasy rpg, but one depicting the struggle between lord and villein. Perhaps this is because I know a lot more about medieval society than the Red Army in WWII, but this causes the roles to come into sharper focus: the Sergeant becomes a Lord, the Commissar becomes a Priest, and the soldiers become peasants. The game is about the peasants trying to eke out a living, playing mostly as a team that rolls a dice pool called "the commons," or working small freeholdings of their own, while the Lord and Priest are trying to appropriate as much of the peasants' wealth as possible for their own enrichment and goals.

Possible "adventures" would include the black plague (creates a land surplus or labour shortage, depending on how you look at it), wars with France or Scotland (calls men away from their farms, threatening famine, but also offering riches), or simply start conditions off as gruelling (high taxes, incessant persecution of heresies) and see how the parties work things out (google 1381 if you want my prediction).

This game would probably be best played without a GM, with Lords or Priests initiating most of the action by naming their own goals (fight a war, build a cathedral) which would necessitate a high rate of taxation. It would need means of tracking construction projects, accumulated wealth of various sorts, and a rudimentary combat system.

It would be quite nice to design this so it could be played with up to 25 players, including several lords, priests, and even a few townsfolk, with a wide range of dice pools representing productive land all over the place, and let the rivalry of the lords (both spiritual and temporal) drive the game. Then I could use it for introducing students to medieval history.

Hmmmmmmmmm. Sorry for the rant, an idea is forming.

Bercilac

Housekeeping

Dear Reader,

If you're reading this at the time of publication, may I apologise for the dreadful state of this page's layout. I was planning something rather ambitious, but I only went halfway with it. Maybe I'll clean it up some day.

I've thought of three tools that I need to develop to give focus to my Swamp campaign:

1. A clear system for hunting. At the moment, I'm leaning towards a Wilderness Lore check to find food of some sort, then have a mini-encounter for actually getting it. In some cases this will be simple.

"You find some fruit trees. What do you do?"

"I pick it."

"Roll a reflex save..."

Other times, the food might bite back. I want to put a lot of emphasis in this campaign on survival, so the roll=rations equation ain't working for me. Plus, once players are used to roleplaying their food-gathering, I can use it as a springboard for whole adventures. Perhaps one day they hunt a whale or something...

2. The success of the wilderness lore check will determine how much food they find, I suppose. Assuming there are no problems, I'll give them that many rations. But rations are going to be like currency so, following on from this article about money, I'm going to have a physical representation of rations. I think I'll take the obvious solution: a candy dish. "Okay guys, three days pass. Everyone have three smarties!" There are two obvious pitfalls: not enough candy, so the players absentmindedly scarf a week's work of rations in one handful, or (quite possibly) too much candy, if the players get sick of it. But who the fuck gets sick of candy? I might have a separate "Out of Character" dish to combat the former, or just eat them myself to combat the latter, or if they share food with NPCs, which brings me to my next point.

3. The tough part I'm having is how to simulate a gift economy, so that the players have concrete goals and receive concrete benefits. I think the way I'm going to do this is by having them make diplomacy rolls when they give gifts. If you have the 3.0 DMG handy (you don't?!!) the rules are on page 149. Essentially, NPC attitudes are rated on a scale from Hostile to Helpful, and depending on where they lie at the moment there are different difficulty classes to improve their attitudes to a given level (and low scores resulting in a worsening of attitudes, as you might imagine). I'll give the players bonuses to the roll for presenting a particularly extravagant gift or a particularly glowing speech about the friendship between their communities. If they get another clan to "indifferent," it will respond with the occasional mundane gift. If they get it to "friendly," it will frequently offer minor assistance. If they get it to "helpful," then it will give them some outrageous gift. Performing quests for another clan always counts as a great gift, and will shove them up the scale dramatically. A group that is "helpful" to the party will consider its debt repaid after one great gift, and return to "friendly" dealings. This means I need some treasure tables for what clans will regular give, and a list of services a player can regularly expect from friendly clans. Of course, certain things will tend to hurt a character's relationship with others: too frequent requests for assistance, failing to pay back a gift, or running counter to their interests in one way or other.

Anyway, this should provide me with a nice, characterful setting, as well as plenty of plot hooks. Always a bonus.

Bercilac

Back in the saddle again

Dear Reader,

I suspected that I wouldn't really get started on this blog until I finally launched a campaign, and now I have. So here is a post. After discarding several ideas (drafts for future work, perhaps), I finally settled on a nice old D&D 3.0 campaign. But I've subverted the mechanics in a few ways.

The setting is "the swamp." It is mostly based on my memories of doing social anthropology, in particular Levi-Strauss' Structural Anthropology and a film we watched called Onka's Big Moka, about the amassing of social capital, commodified mostly in the form of pigs and yams. These ideas were bubbling in my brain back when I ran the Green Isles and I had a little gang of native folks that I drew some genealogy charts for, but that was about it. It was mostly about mercantilism, in retrospect.

This one is totally about a different mindset. Alliances and obligations are all structured by clan relations. There are about a dozen clans, each with multiple villages, organised into five tribes (for which I'm using 5 D&D races). I've thrown out D&D's steady old equipment creep based on set treasure rewards and spending money in appropriate market places in favour of a gift economy. Gift economies are not unstructured, however. Far from it. Rather, by gathering prestige and doing favours for other groups, the players will wrack up a lot of credit around the swamp. Eventually that credit will be received both with support (places to rest, food, healing, all free of the normal cash charge you pay in D&D towns), as well as a few more major items in return for great services.

The first adventure went quite well. A minor ecological catastrophe has disrupted fish stocks for Mannanan, one of the oldest crocodiles in the swamp. He went in search of greener pastures... er, waters. This involved a rampage through the Bullfrog clan's territory, right at the end of the monsoon season when they were starting to lay eggs (is this ecologically correct? I'm not sure I care...). Many in the Bullfrog clan (Nixies) blamed Crocodile clan's (Lizardfolk, go figure) witchcraft, and gathered under a young turk named Gwair to demand vengeance.

They set out on their canoes to the Crocodile clan's village, where the party, consisting of a Crocodile Barbarian, a Birch (Wild Elf) Bard, and a Sorcerer (Grig, but exiled from the Wasp clan as all Sorcerers in my setting are regarded as contacts with the spirit world) were involved in a ritual exchange of gifts (quite an important part of the setting, and I gave the players the mantra "Who gives must receive" to structure their thinking in this way). The Bullfrog warriors demanded Crocodile Clan's eggs as payment for their young killed, under the same reciprocal logic of "Who gives must receive." The PCs drove them off without much trouble, taking several captives in the process.

I explained to them that warfare in the swamp was viewed as disequilibrium and the goal of violence was to restore equilibrium. The Barbarian took up the chant, again, of "Who gives must receive" and sent out the call to other Crocodile villages to gather up a warband to return the attack on the Bullfrogs. The warband paddled across the swamp, stumbling through a Wasp village. They failed to make the proper introductory rituals when entering Wasp territory, and the malicious Grigs (impervious to the attackers, as they were all invisible and their home was up in the trees), responded by giving them bad directions. This led them to a small lake, full of fish who had been swept in there by the monsoons (this is good wetland ecology, I did SOME research before designing the setting). The warband settled down to gather provisions and were attacked by a Tendriculous. This was, in a way, revenge on my GM who had sent one after us, nearly eating my character, in a previous campaign. Except that had been a level five party of three characters, this was a mob of level 1 and 2 weaklings, so it took a bit longer to break and managed to munch a few of the Crocodile clan in the process.

They eventually found the Bullfrog territory, to find it had indeed been ravaged by a horrid beast, as the rather aggressive "emissaries" had implied. With the help of allies they stumbled upon by "pure luck" (I asked all of my players to give me an ally, an enemy, and a goal or belief for their character before the game), they located a surviving Bullfrog village. A druid came forth to see them, receive the prisoners, and explain what had happened to them, and how the attack had NOT been sanctioned by the elders of the clan. He gave the party a ring of speak-with-animals. Equipped with this, they went to meet the crocodile.

Mannanan explained to them how hungry he was, how his home waters had been poisoned... He nearly made a meal out of the whole canoe full of the party (except the sorcerer, who, being insectile, was prepared to fly away) until they dumped a basket of fish. The party returned to the Crocodile village to rest and recuperate, and to prepare to investigate Mannanan's old hunting grounds and locate the source of the infection. We ended there, on a decent cliffhanger.

Overall, a good first session:

1. The players all had a few chances to shine in one light or another.

2. They got a vague sense of the different clans, abolished this concept of "wilderness" and instead realised that the swamp is actually teeming with different groups, with densely packed territories consisting of fishing and hunting grounds, water sources, and safe places to rest.

3. Except at a few odd moments, I managed to keep the story moving, with a good pace of action. I indulged in a few long dialogues (especially the sin of two NPCs talking: when that happened in the opening scene of the Bullfrog attack I had the NPC Crocodile representative suffer a seizure and prophetic visions to get her out of the way, and also add a bit to the story).

4. As indicated in the previous point, I improvised my head off in terms of game mechanics, tweaks to my (limited) adventure notes, and just about everything. And it worked pretty well, when I could remember it.

A few problems:

1. The players haven't really got a grasp of the kinship system. They learn pretty quickly by participating in things, so I'll need them to go to a wedding or something to show how that works, and how it affect politics... if only so they can have the opportunity to exploit it.

2. As one player points out, there were few tangible rewards. While, to some extent, it was my intention to throw away the whole D&D gold-piece counting, I was a bit vague in my replacement system to the point of devaluing it. Baskets of fish were flying right and left across the ceremonial gift mats, and the party was never in any real danger of hunger. I need to figure out a concrete system for tracking rations, determining roughly how much food a village might be able to give to friendly visitors, and polish up the starvation rules a bit so it actually matters to the party that some allies gave them ANOTHER basket of freakin' fish. But in the long run, as they get more involved in the setting, I will have allies come by from time to time to present them with the odd magic item or truly rare piece of equipment. I haven't quite figured out what's scarce yet. They're basically trading in social capital, which is cool, but doesn't give them much to write on their character sheet.

3. I need to draw up a decent map of the swamp with clan territories: I have a tiny speck of it mapped out now, and I re-arranged a few elements to suit the story. On the one hand this is fine, on the other hand I only did it because my notes were sketchy to begin with. I'd also like some diagrams of how each clan is relating to others, to show ongoing grudges, rivalries, and enmities. It gave me a pretty good adventure in this one, and I can see a lot of good ones in the future.

I'm actually stunned how quickly the players are taking to my setting. The biggest problem they're having is an ingrained ruthlessness from our group's other campaign which doesn't serve them well in a society based on mutual co-operation. I've had a few elders show up to chastise them a bit from time to time, including making up a lot of "wise sayings" on the spot. I think my favourite was "Small canoes and long journeys make strained friendships." But my dream for the campaign is to reach a scenario where the players are carefully weighing up their obligations and rivalries with half a dozen different powers, judging what gifts they might have to make to sway the neutrals, and really trying to establish themselves as the Big Men of the swamp, using all of the invented lingo and logic I've imagined. It's definitely an achievable goal, and it's going to be fun.

Bercilac