Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair

Let’s talk about magic.

And briefly - I have been reading about balance issues in Castles and Crusades. It’s my recent little muse of a game because I think it takes the most essential bits of AD&D and transcribes it in such a way that it would be more palatable as a transition point from something more modern like 5E. It’s no spring chicken - it has been around since 2004 and was a response to 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons, namely all the complex fiddly video-game shit which ruled that system. It’s considered the proper successor to AD&D by its fans. I just consider it a really nice, basically compatible OSR game before OSR was a thing.

But one complaint people have is how saving throws adjust in such a way that as you level up, if you are facing equally levelled magic-users, that your ability to save against magic doesn’t really improve. People have pointed out that this is a fundamental flaw with the SIEGE system, including one of the contributors to the game. There have been proposed ways to fix this, but it doesn’t seem like Troll Lord has any intention of doing so - they have released plenty of reprints of the game with different layouts, art, and covers, but have never had an actual version revision. It’s a double edged sword because in one sense, they don’t have the corporate hustle of desparately looking for ways to bring in more money by reinventing their system in a cynical manner, putting whatever system that came before into a limbo of obscolescence, but on the other hand, potential problems like that can’t really be fixed in the official manuals.

Whatever the case, I’ll say this; if you are really worried about your players getting wiped out by by a disentigrate spell, maybe it’s time to stop treating magic as some trivial tool people can hit up a shop to buy, and start treating it like a rare difficult part of a bigger process of obtaining power. There are plenty of Journeymen plumbers who have their ticket, but who spent the first three years of their career threading pipe and who do not know how to architect solutions because they just haven’t had the experience. This goes back to the idea of training and mentorship, which I feel is a critical component of leveling up characters, but which largely goes ignored because most players probably view it as drudgery, and most DM’s probably don’t know of an interesting way to implement it into the game world.

Magic is also inherently uninteresting in the wrong hands. There are so many bizarre and creative spells in D&D that go painfully unused in favor of more traditional “blow shit up” spells. Magic in D&D is frequently about throwing magicle particles at something in the hopes that it will die. And very seldom does it seem to be grounded in any kind of occult historicism. And look, I’m not expecting that people will start reading Cornelius Agrippa and astrology to make their magic a little more grounded, but I think there is certainly room to dig deeper with magic than what is in the Player’s Handbook.

Enter The RPG Pundit. I first heard about his work through drive-thru RPG when I was exploring and looking for material that covered more realistic medieval combat. Being a HEMA student, I thought it was an interesting subject to mine. I’ve since changed my mind about that mostly - anytime I have tried to implement realism from a mechanical perspective, it bogs down the game and people don’t like it. That may be my problem as a DM, but either way, I stumbled upon his book Lion and Dragon and was intrigued by it, so I bought a copy.

The first thing that caught my attention was the detail oriented toward trying to recapture an authentic medieval setting. One where the social hierarchy actually mattered. It was more Game of Thrones and less A Knights Tale. Bloodlines and lineage were incredibly important in medieval culture, and they determined everything about your future. On a general level there was no hopping rank. You were the son of a shit shoveler, of the son of a shit shoveler, of the son of a shit shoveler, and that was essentially non-negotiable. Of course it doesn’t fit the D&D paradigm of starting out as a nobody and rising up to the level of godhood, but lets face it; that progression is probably the biggest killer of most campaigns, since likely no DM raised on 3rd edition or higher has any concept of D&D as a game where you evolve from a tomb raider to a lord with a keep, some huge tracts of land, and a loyal following of troops at your beck and call, never mind a baked-in ruleset for mass combat.

The second thing that caught my attention was how RPG Pundit implemented medieval era ideas of magic and alchemy into the game system. While there is certainly what could be considered more “conventional” magic in there, like blasting wands, there is also attention paid to more ritualistic magic. One of my favorite examples of this is the “talking head” spell:

Jesus Christ.

Note the time this “spell” takes: 3-9 weeks. We’ve come a long way from AD&D where combat rounds were broken into segments you had to track to figure out when a spell fired off. Most DM’s just sort of handwave any time-tracking and spells fire off right away. But in this case, casting a spell is not just some arbitrary decision you make in a combat to blow an Orc’s face off. It practically becomes an episode of Breaking Bad where you need to find a victim, get them into a barrel of milk, and hang out with them until they die and their head rots off their body. There is a real story going on there that could make an entire session interesting, nevermind the moral implications of performing a rite so grizly.

The setting for Lion and Dragon is called Dark Albion, and is mythical War of the Roses set in fantasy England. The Dark Albion sourcebook itself is rife with history of that legendary conflict, breaking it down into an extensive timeline to thumb through for the unfamiliar. I’ve read several books about the War of the Roses, but as far as actually conceptualizing the timeline and scale of it, I found Dark Albion to be one of the most comprehensive, despite the obvious fictional and fantasy trappings of the world itself. A world where the French are literal frogs, no less.

Races are similarly grounded, referred to as ethnic backgrounds, and two of the primary classes you can be are Cymri and Scots. Clerics are necessarily faithful to their monotheistic god (no “atheistic Clerics” here) and Magisters can summon demons, who have their own political hierarchy - Hell is apparently quite an organized place. The book is chock full of art that I asusme is public domain - I’ve seen a few pieces in several occult books I have read over the years - and is very well suited to the rest of the presentation. Astrology and alchemy are also important facets to the magic system, which is essentially broken down into types, including battle magic. And very often, time is a factor here - many of these ritualistic spells, including the talking head, require weeks if not months of preparation to perform.

This isn’t a review of Lion and Dragon however, this is about the deep, educated perspective that RPG Pundit has when he builds his historical games. The most recently released Baptism of Fire is set in early medieval Poland, and Sword and Caravan is a campaign setting treatment of the Silk Road. And just like it’s predecessors, it goes through that particular setting with a fine tooth comb for anyone not inhertently familiar with the history. RPG Pundit’s games are as much a gateway into learning about these historical periods as they are games. It also contains a set of beautiful maps.

In particular, I appreciate all the regional hex maps included in the game.

The kind of escapism inherent in D&D, I feel, is something of a drawback. I especially feel it is a missed opportunity to learn the ins and outs of a completely fictional landscape when you could either:

A. Be creating your own.

B. Learn something about our history in the process, which is infinitely more fascinating than any imagined world.

This is just one assholes opinion of course, but I have now run across several DM’s who in some way are creating a fictionalized version of Earth, whether piecemeal in the case of Pundit, or more direct in the case of Tao of D&D. As I have said the last couple of entries, my current work is to create a mythical Canada which employs all the history and culture both pre-colonization and post, so these projects are of particular interest to me.

I have only taken a cursory look at Baptism of Fire, but it appears to approach the topic of mythical Poland with the same level of exhaustive detail and density as Pundit’s former projects. Like those other entries, it’s an OSR book that is decidedly outside certain interpretations of what the OSR is or isn’t, particularly these pamphlet-sized booklets that contain only the most crucial information of how to play, and don’t bore their readers with, you know, actual useful content regarding how to run and play in that setting.

And if I have learned anything about Pundit it is that he has a very particular relationship with the OSR in general. It’s very clear to me that he likes the OSR. It’s also very clear what, and who, he doesn’t like related to the OSR, and even more clear who doesn’t like him.

RPG Pundit is nothing if not opinionated. He has a tendency to be very vocal when he has an ax to grind. This has led a lot of people to put him on their personal blacklist, and even make attempts to sabotage him and his career. And yes, writing games is a career for the Pundit. It is his primary source of income, and he lives comfortably in his own him with a cat named Meatball who is notorious for getting in the way of his books on just about every video he produces. Cats have no politic. They only know how to be as obtrusive as possible. Just this morning my cat added about 100 pages of garbage to a document I was writing because he decided to fall asleep on the keyboard. And so it goes.

Apart from his published products, he has a YouTube channel in a loose format where he will generally blend his own personal thoughts with insight into RPG design. Sometimes he likes to rant about the “wokeist left” and their penetration and stranglehold on the gaming scene, particularly in corporate products like D&D. He will call out creators, he will call out other YouTube personalities, and occassionally, he will put dipshits like Varg Vikernes on blast for being a shit-eating Nazi. For as “political” as his views may come across, he is largely concerned with politics and social mood being kept seperate from the hobby in general. This is reflected in his own material, which remains distant from his own worldview in general, where he remains objective and focuses on the material at hand.

Pundit does not just write and publish historical material either. He has published books such as The Invisible College, a modern fantasy RPG concerned with the occult. There is also Star Adventurer, a science fiction RPG, and he also writes “gonzo” material for RPG’s as well. He is a DM of the most fascinating type - one who is always working.

I think it’s natural for many DM’s who take the hobby very seriously to eventually go down a path, whether it’s just making their own detailed worlds and rulesets, or actually taking the step to publish. It’s also somewhat unusual to see a creator who, in the greater public opinion, is a “villain” to go on to be successful in doing it, despite what his detractors think of him. In digging deep on Pundit, I saw many comments about how he was irrelevant, or how nobody bought his material. These assumptions don’t seem to stand up under any scrutiny, but it is clear that he is generally maligned by a chunk of RPG hobbyists. Even when I have brought him up in local D&D circles, I’ve been damn near blacklisted and lambasted for even whispering his name.

But the key here is content. Again, none of the books I have mentioned are throw-away cash grabs. They are all well produced, dense, and detailed. For me personally the novelty of tiny games that fit in your back pocket, or one-page rule foldouts like Deahtbringer is dead, and the ground salted. And it’s not because I can’t make “rulings” or fill in the blanks on my own. It’s because I don’t feel I should have too. I am going too anyways, but when I buy a book, I want some meat on the bones. I want tables. I want background. I want options. I want to know that you as a writer felt your work was worth enough of a shit to provide those things for me to play with.

This is especially important in a historical context, where there are so many specialized eras of interest to explore that even other history buffs like Pundit aren’t going to be familiar with all of them and might want at least a headstart on engaging in that process of learning. Stop making McDonald’s cheeseburgers, and learn how to cook a fucking steak.

And it isn’t that those other games shouldn’t exist, or that people can’t be satisfied with them. I quite like Mork Borg even though it’s so particular in its function that nobody wants to play it. It has become little more than an art book that I bring out when my metal and punk friends drop by. The odd one-shot with it is fine, but I have no interest in even trying to run it as a campaign. When I am preparing for a game I am expecting to last months or years, I am always going to gravitate towards systems that feel complete and rhobust in nature.

In this, RPG Pundit delivers. And for as often as he gets hung up on the culture of the hobby in his videos, he makes a lot of salient points about the deconstruction of D&D and how this has led to an overall shittier design policy. He laments the “storygame” and the idea of D&D being a jerk-off fantasy for wanna-be Tolkien heads who want to parade around sad fanfiction in the guise of D&D, subjecting their unfortunate friends to their illiterate garbage in the process. Although he was a consultant for the fifth edition of D&D, from what I gather he generally dislikes the direction that has gone, and the Matt Mercer inspired drama-dropout nonsense that ensued after Stranger Things pushed D&D into the mainstream. And I wouldn’t say he is “mad as hell” about this - I think he just more knows what he likes, and what he doesn’t like, and he isn’t afraid to have an opinion that is outside the accepted current milieu of what is trendy, popular, and hip.

Pundit also runs a forum called The RPG Site where similarly opinionate grognards flock to discuss RPG’s. Interestingly even though Pundit is often known for expressing his political opinions to some degree, he discourages outright political discussion here, keeping in step with his general disposition about the hobby as a whole - that it should not be politicized, and pandering. These forums are primarily concerned with RPG discussion and design, and there is not even an apparent “general” section for malignant shitposting to occur. These are guys, notably outside of what a faction of the OSR would deem to have “acceptable opinions”, who love the hobby.

Though RPG Pundit does maintain a blog, it’s clear that most of his opinions are relegated to comment sections and forums and, primarily, his YouTube channel. His books are available on various outlets including DriveThru RPG and Amazon. Although my own blog is a blend of D&D related opinion and personal diatribes, ultimately it is about D&D and the application of worldly experience and knowledge used to create a deeper D&D experience. Pundit has always stood out to me a guy who shares a similar interest, and though my readership is almost non-existent at this point, I am aware that the few people who do follow this blog are interested in the same thing.

Despite the potential lashing I might take one day for even uttering Pundit’s name (to which I say loudly and clearly - get a hobby) I thought it was important to go into his work here for both the current readers and anyone in the future who might stumble upon this. There are movements called like the “brOSR” which I would consider, at the very least, somewhat adjacent to this idealism, but to me also more limited and mainly concerned with engaging in a particular system in service of their own West Marches style campaigns. I’m not so much concerned with mechanics as much as I am detailed worldbuilding, and I have found RPG Pundit’s works to be both insightful and useful in this regard. And it’s just so easy to get caught in the weeds of public opinion when you do a Google search and find so many threads trashing the guy because he has been so openly critical of a certain portion people interested in OSR games.

The fact is, we need more people like Pundit in my opinion. People who are not afraid to challenge the modern conception of what D&D is, who are not afraid to point out the inherent flaws in some of the half-assed content that is out there for public consumption, and who aren’t afraid to dismantle the cult of personality that so heavily influences the direction D&D is going. I’m certain RPG Pundit has his own dingleberry followers that cling to his every word; some people are leaders, and some are followers, that’s just the natural course of things. But the kind of content I like goes beyond the surface level, regurgitated advice of influencers looking for a WOTC sponsorship - it goes deeper. And in my opinion, RPG Pundit is someone who understands that, and this understanding is reflected in the work he produces. I may vehemently dislike and disagree with some of the things he says, but if he wasn’t saying them, someone else would. And I guarantee they wouldn’t also be producing useful and fascinating historically motivated D&D material in the process.

Plus, Meatball is a very good girl.

You can find RPG Pundit on YouTube here.

You can find Baptism of Fire here.

You can find Lion and Dragon here.