Megadungeon level 4 (map #38)

40 more rooms of megadungeon goodness are here! As always, you can snag a free PDF copy of the entire megadungeon over on my Patreon page:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/megadungeon-4-38-16704470

Roles on a Pirate Ship

[by Mark Cookman / Tribality 1, 2, 3]  @we-are-pirate, @we-are-scarlet-corsair

Officer Roles on a Pirate Ship 

If you are running a game with pirates in it, then you should know what the job entails. It’s not all boarding ships, counting booty, and drinking rum like you might think. A great deal of hard work is required to run a sailing ship with a law-abiding crew, let alone one populated by pirates. In this essay we are going to examine the five principle officers on board a pirate ship, their duties, and their responsibilities. This is part one of a three part lesson. In the next lesson we will examine the duties and responsibilities of other officers and crew members with special duties. In the final lesson, we will look at one very special group of crew members that are almost always overlooked. Read on to learn what pirates expected of their primary officers.

The principal officers of a pirate ship were the captain, the quartermaster, the pilot, the boatswain, and the master gunner. On some ships these positions were all elected by an equal vote of the crew and on others the captain picked the crew members he wanted to serve in the positions. The captain on a pirate vessel was almost always elected by an equal vote of the crew. On a privateer vessel this was not very often the case. Privateer captains were often the owners of the ship or were given commission by their monarch to take a vessel to sea. So it follows with the other officers. If the captain was elected, then generally all of the officers were elected. If the captain was appointed or held his position by means of ownership, then generally he picked the officers. In either case, an officer on a pirate ship served at the whim of the crew. Even a man picked by the captain would be booted down to a simple crewman if he could not do his job. For the most part though, a person elevated to serve as one of the principle officers did so for life. The title of this article refers to the fact that most often the authorities that captured, tried, and hung pirates concentrated on the five principle officers of the ship. These officers were generally the most intelligent and skilled crewmen on board the pirate vessel. They were people that everyone else on board the ship admired for their ability to do their job. Diligent action is the mother of respect on board a ship.

Captain

The captain, however he came to his position, was chosen for his leadership, bravery, and cunning. The captain was responsible for the ship and everything aboard her; every item and every man. He was responsible for the overall decisions affecting the ship and her crew. The captain decided where to sail and what to attack. He was the voice of his crew to all beyond the ship. He often led his crew in battle. In terms of daily duties, the captain kept a log of the voyage, managed the affairs of the ship through the officers, and generally served a four to six hour shift at the helm. The captain stayed in power by being successful. As long as there are prizes to plunder, rum to drink, and food to eat, the captain will not be voted out or mutinied against. It is when things get lean that the captain must worry about crew voting him unfit for command.

Quartermaster

The quartermaster (or first mate on a privateer vessel) was the number two man on the ship. He was responsible for enforcing the ship’s articles and administering punishment when necessary. The quartermaster was the trustee of the ship and her crew. He directly represented the crew to the captain. It was his responsibility to serve as a counterbalance to the captain in decisions that might be hazardous to the ship or the crew. A wise captain made no decisions that his first mate didn’t support. The quartermaster took responsibility for prize vessels and picked the treasure that the crew would take from a prize. He was also responsible for counting the booty and splitting the shares. Each day would find him working with his subordinate officers the boatswain, the master gunner, and the master at arms to effectively run the ship. The first mate also served a turn at the helm, generally a four to six hour shift.

Pilot

The pilot was the number three man on the ship and often the most educated. He served as the ship’s navigator and was generally the best all around sailor aboard the ship. He was responsible for plotting the ship’s course and maintaining that course. The pilot maintained all of the ship’s charts and maps as well as the tools of navigation. He was charged with keeping a daily log of every event relating to the sailing of the ship. He recorded the depth, the currents, the wind patterns, the ship’s location, the locations of reefs and sandbars, and the state of the rigging. He reported directly to the captain. The pilot oversaw the work of the sail-master and almost always had at least one assistant (a pilot’s mate) to help him with his duties. The pilot and his mate both served separate shifts at the helm in addition to taking readings from the moon and stars to plot and maintain the course.

Boatswain

The boatswain was the number four man on the ship and often the most feared by the crew. He was in charge of the provisions for the ship. He maintained the stores of food, water, rum, gunpowder, shot, sails, rope, wood, and tar required to keep the ship and crew fit for action. The boatswain also directed the loading of cargo into the hold to maintain the proper ballast to ensure level sailing. He was in charge of keeping the watches on the ship and maintaining discipline among the deck crew. He was responsible for the ship’s longboats and for picking a crew to man the sweeps when the longboats were used. The boatswain was charged with maintaining the ship’s seaworthy status. He oversaw the duties of both the carpenter and the cook. The boatswain generally had a mate to help him with his responsibilities. In general, his duties were to make certain that all the work of running the ship was done. He reported to the quartermaster. The Boatswain was often the most feared man on the ship because his obligations often made him uncompromising. It was his responsibility to keep everything “ship-shape”. Leniency was something the quartermaster might give to the crew, but it was not something the boatswain was in the position to give. Day and night, the boatswain would drive the crew to do whatever work was required. He maintained the watch log and reported any problems to the quartermaster.

Master Gunner

The master gunner was the number five man on the ship. He was responsible for the care and cleaning of all firearms, culverin (deck guns), and cannons on board the ship. He was also responsible for training the crew in the use of both firearms and ship’s weaponry. The master gunner picked and ran the gunnery crew. He reported to the quartermaster, but was responsible to the entire ship to make certain that the cannons hit the declared target. He was also responsible for maintaining the inventory of powder and shot for all of the guns on the ship. The master gunner was the only crew member besides the captain and the quartermaster entrusted to carry a key to the ship’s powder magazine. Additionally, the master gunner often led or picked hunting parties when they were called for. His day to day duties mainly consisted of drilling the gunnery crew and maintaining the guns.

The Next in Line to Hang – More Roles on a Pirate Ship

In this second part of a three part lesson dealing with the crew positions aboard a pirate vessel, we are going to look at the responsibilities of the Sail-master, the Carpenter, the Cook, the Surgeon, and the Master at Arms. These were all lower officer positions and were either voted upon or assigned by the captain as discussed in the first part of this lesson. The sailors who served in these positions were skilled laborers and, as such, their skills were always very much in demand on a ship. They were almost always offered a greater share of the treasure because of their skills. These were definitely crew members that a pirate ship could not function without.

Sail-master

The Sail-master was the most experienced crewman in the rigging and usually one of the best sailors on the ship. He was responsible for maintaining the sails and the rigging. The Sail-master knew every knot, line, rope, block and tackle in the rigging as well as how to repair them all. He was also responsible for training and running the sail crew as well as overseeing the making and patching of sails. The Sail-master took orders from and reported to the pilot.

Carpenter

The Carpenter was a skilled wood worker, often with some shipwright experience, who did all of the woodworking required by the crew. He was primarily responsible for repairing damage to the wooden portions of the ship and for plugging leaks that got too bad. (Ye should understand right now, before ye go to sea, that all ships leak, mates. It’s just when they really leak badly that you have to worry about it.) The Carpenter was also responsible for the construction of barrels and crates, as needed, to store cargo, as well as maintaining the tools of his trade. He took orders from and reported to the Boatswain.

Cook

The Cook was one of the most important of the lower officers. He was in charge of all matters relating to food on the ship. He made certain there was enough food, water, and rum on board for the planned cruise. He cooked the meals and suggested rationing when it was necessary. The Cook butchered the meat brought back by hunting parties and was the only man trusted to light a fire below decks. He maintained the necessary tools for both cooking and butchering. The Cook took orders from and reported to the Boatswain.

Surgeon

The Surgeon was likely one of the toughest men on the ship. He served as the barber/doctor/emergency surgeon for the entire crew. He was equally capable of shaving your beard and cutting off your damaged leg. The Surgeon dealt with not only the sick and the wounded, but also the dead. He, like the other lower officers, was responsible for maintaining the necessary tools of his trade. The Surgeon took his orders from and reported to the Quartermaster. It was rare for a ship to have a real doctor and it was common for the carpenter or the cook to fill this role as needed.

Master at Arms

The Master at Arms was often the most skilled warrior on the crew. He was responsible for training the crew in hand to hand combat. He also led the ship’s boarding parties and hunting parties when they were necessary. The Master at Arms position was not a separate position on every vessel and often these responsibilities fell to the Quartermaster. When the Master at Arms position was filled on a ship, he took orders from and reported to the Quartermaster.

These 5 core positions represent the Non-Commissioned Officers of a pirate or privateer ship. These men all commanded other men on work details and so their words carried great sway with the crew. It was often from among these men that the next captain was chosen when a captain lost his position through a vote of no confidence. Thus, these were the men that the captain had to keep loyal to him to stay in command of the ship.

And Hang the Musikers, Too – Even More Roles on a Pirate Ship 

In this article, we will be looking at the makeup of the crew itself. Remember that the only rule with pirates is that there are no rules; no two crews of any two pirate ships were exactly the same. Even so, we can narrow down some roles common to pirate/privateer crews based upon the jobs that must be done aboard ship. Most simply put, pirate crews are a mixture of brutes, gunners, swabbies, and musikers. Let’s examine each category in turn.

Brutes

A great deal of hard work and heavy hauling is involved in just sailing a tall-masted ship. In strong winds the canvas sails must be man-handled by a deck crew that is stronger. Loading and unloading supplies, most especially cannons or chests of gold, requires a number of strong backs. This is why every ship has its share of brutes – big, strong men capable of handling themselves no matter the work or the fight. In addition to the tasks already mentioned, brutes would be key men in hunting parties, ship boarding, and raiding groups as well. Keep in mind that not all brutes need to be hulking bruisers. A wiry-tough and dexterous hunter, skilled with both blades and long rifle, could be a brute as well. Brutes, no matter their size, do not shrink from a hard task. Men of this sort make up perhaps as much as ½ of a pirate crew, but they will be mixed among the gunners and swabbies, not a stand alone corp. Most of the men on a pirate or privateer ship were probably gunners.

Gunners

Depending upon the size of their shot, each cannon required a crew of either 3 or 4 men to load and fire it. So a sloop carrying 4 small guns per side would require a minimum of 24 men to fully maintain them and that does not include the officers directing the cannon fire. On a large ship, like Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge, a full gun crew would be 160 men dedicated only to firing the cannons. (It is important to note here that Blackbeard had a total crew compliment of 125 on board the Queen Anne’s Revenge.) These crewmen would have to be available 24/7 to do their job whenever required, but otherwise might have no duties on the ship. There was double-duty in most crews though. Most pirate ships didn’t keep a full compliment of gunners like warships of the time did because fewer crew members meant fewer shares and that meant more money for everyone when the treasure was split. Gunners could make up between 1/3 to 2/3 of a crew.

Swabbies

Swabbies, or actual trained sailors, are the crew members responsible for handling the rigging and the sails to keep the ship moving. These are the guys and gals who climb the ratlines into the rigging and walk the spars that jut from the masts. Swabbies sometimes fight from the highest position that they can get to on their own ship and then leap into the rigging of the enemy vessel when boarding. Often dexterous fighters, swabbies are known for leaping into the fray, but sometimes they hide in the rigging as deadly snipers. It might be surprising to discover that skilled sailors usually comprised less than 1/3 of the total crew compliment of the ship.

Musikers

It is difficult to prove that “musikers”, or musicians as we call them, were ever a stand-alone part of a pirate crew. However, two excellent examples from the pirate period demonstrate that they have been a common part of most ships of war, pirate and privateer ships included. The first example is from the early Seventeenth century. In Captain John Smith’s advice concerning how to conduct a one-on-one naval engagement he remarks when preparing to board one should, “… sound Drums and Trumpets, and Saint George for England.” The second example comes from the early Eighteenth century. In the articles of Captain Bartholomew Roberts it is stated: “The Musikers to have Rest on the Sabbath Day, but the other six Days and Nights, none without special Favour.” When thinking about the musicians on board a ship in the 16th to 18th centuries, one must not think of a band. That would be far too organized a concept. There is no way to know how many crew members may have been musicians, but one assumes that the number is not large.

It is likely that ships of this period had crew members who owned musical instruments as varied as brass horns, mouth harps, fiddles, bag pipes and accordions. Furthermore, sailors could gather numerous instruments from the various ports of call their ship made. Examples here are numerous: cowhide and goatskin drums from Africa, dried gourd maracas from Cuba, bamboo drums and flutes from Hispaniola, and even tambourines from Morocco. Pause a moment and consider the combined sounds of all of the instruments mentioned here. Now you know why a band is not the idea you want to have. The musicians were popular with the crew, as they were entertainment as well as a valuable battle element. The musicians played during meal times and during work breaks allowing the crew some entertainment to break the monotony of long hours of tiring work. This boost in moral was welcome at anytime, but was perhaps the most effective when used in battle.

From stories of Bartholomew Roberts crew and others, we know that when a ship with musicians approached another ship with the intention to fight, the effects of the music could be terrifying to the enemy. The musicians would play marches and other martial music. There were drum rolls, trumpet and bugle calls, and perhaps even a piper given the nationality of the crew. Add to this the noise of the ship’s cook beating upon his pots and pans and the crew stamping their feet or beating their weapons against the ship. Finally top this off with the sounds of shouting, screaming, and shooting, both pistols and rifles as well as cannons and deck guns. Your imagination can supply you with the details of the scene. The intended result is achieved: the morale aboard the pirate vessel is raised to a fevered pitch while the morale of their intended prize is shaken. So do not forget that pirates and privateers know the value of bardic inspiration when you run those encounters.

Critical Role GIF of the week by Scott Miller‏: The Mighty Nein Check For Traps

Please unmute

Sam: Apparently Ashley has more dice than Laura

Laura, without missing a beat:

Q&A: Reject Cynicism. Inner Strength is about Courage

Coming out with the hard questions, huh?

The truth is there is no right way to write this type of character because “inner strength” isn’t a generic term but a personal one. In terms of meaning, strength changes from individual to individual. So, for a writer, that means defining what “inner strength” means to you.

Strong is a State of Mind.

Let’s redefine “inner strength” as courage. Courage is not being without weakness, it’s about overcoming fears and insecurities. It’s about facing uncomfortable truths even when the lies those truths hide make up the fabric of your memory.

There’s no single right answer or way to go about portraying a character who is courageous in their daily life, who stands up, who faces down what makes them afraid, and who tries even knowing they might fail. Kindness is a gift given to someone else, and while you might hope for reciprocation you’re not guaranteed a response.

You don’t need to subvert, or deconstruct, or reconstruct. What you’ve got to do is play the archetype straight. Write the character who genuinely believes kindness can change the world. You don’t need a character who starts out “strong” and inner strength isn’t easily quantified in the general sense. You need a character who is wiling to stand up for their beliefs, even when their insecure, frightened, unsure, and hopeless. Creating a character who genuinely is mentally and emotionally strong is creating a character who is learning how to be strong as they go through their experiences, in figuring out what that means for them and for you, discovering how they got there, throwing aside cynicism, and in the end believing that  kindness really can make a difference.

You’ve got to decide what “inner strength” is in the context of your story. For me, inner strength is the most important quality for any character. I define “strength” by their emotional experiences, how they deal with them, if they face them, their decisions, their beliefs, and how those shape their story within the narrative. Each one has their own qualities, their own strengths.

The irony for all the cynics will tell you their way is more “realistic” is that it’s much more difficult to maintain hope, to stay hopeful, positive, and to keep chasing after your dreams. It’s more difficult to be kind than it is to be cruel. You risk more in being open to others than you do in being closed, and its much harder to keep sticking your hand back into the fire after you’ve been burned. The mistake comes with assuming that being kind is easy. It is under most circumstances, but there are those where you need to dig deep to maintain that smile. It’s easy to see the flaws and failings in other people, and much harder to reach out. The mistake is in assuming these characters have never seen the world’s darkness, that they’re sheltered, and that once they’re exposed to that darkness they’ll change their tune. That’s not necessarily true.

Now, there are those kinds of characters whose kindness is based in both innocence and ignorance. Who are open because they have the privilege of living in an environment where they don’t regularly encounter cruelty, where no one has specifically been directly cruel to them, where they’ve never had the values they espouse challenged. Then, there are the characters who have had their values challenged. The ones who locked hands with misery and despair, who went through their crucibles, and came out the other side fire forged. These characters genuinely believe in the values they espouse, all the way down to the extreme end of pacifism where even when their life is threatened they never raise a hand to defend themselves with violence. They choose words instead.

There isn’t anything unrealistic about characters choosing a path of peace over one of war. Diplomacy is a real skill set with real value in the real world. There are plenty of people out there every day making a difference, by giving time to good causes, who chase after their own dreams of a better world. There are plenty of examples out there to show you can’t make a better world through violence. Plenty of different philosophies on the subject too.

Strength comes from growth, from picking ourselves back up when we fall down, and standing up again. Like Sisyphus with his boulder, there’s no shortage of pitfalls to knock us back down to square one. That “inner strength” comes from fortitude, from the willingness to keep going, from acknowledging our own failings, and being patient with others for theirs.

So, the question becomes do you believe in the values this character espouses? Can you be genuine when you write them? Can you be honest with their struggles? Can you be honest? Can you write from the perspective where you believe in what they stand for, but are willing to challenge them and put those beliefs to the test? Are you willing to let them fall short? Willing to see them fail?

Ultimately, the difference between a character who affects the audience and a character who is eye-roll worthy is whether you admit that they’re human. Even then, so what if they are eye-roll worthy? Sometimes, you need to start with a cliche and then when given context the character emerges. There’s nothing generic about this sort of character’s strength, they are an individual whose beliefs are challenged and shaped by their experiences.

Bravery requires we take risks. Risks mean that sometimes we fail, but we can’t allow fear of failing to stop us. Learning about “inner strength” requires taking a long hard look at yourself. There aren’t any special tricks to getting past the boulder, no special means of ensuring success. Sometimes, you just need to be willing to stand there and risk letting the boulder hit you. The cynic will tell you that its better not to try anyway because you were always going to fail. However, the honest truth is that you don’t know until you try.

The act of facing your fears is growth all by itself. Putting yourself out there, even if you fail, is an act of courage.

That’s really how we do it.

One step at a time.

-Michi

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Q&A: Reject Cynicism. Inner Strength is about Courage was originally published on How to Fight Write.

Okay, let’s be serious for a moment: like 80% of the whole “being a GM is like herding cats” thing is because you didn’t bother to communicate to your players what the game was going to be about and expected them to figure it out by reading your mind.

I promise you, if you’ve written up a fancy new dungeon and ask your players “hey, want to play a game about exploring a dungeon?”, it’s quite likely that they’ll be more than happy to go to the dungeon.

Hell, save them the trouble and just start the game with them already in the dungeon - as long as you clear it with your group in advance and don’t abuse the privilege to drop them into a pit full of rust monsters on turn one, they’ll probably just go with it. In medias res is your friend!

And on the off chance that they say “no, we don’t want to go to a dungeon today”? At least you found out up front instead of pissing around for a couple of hours first - there’s literally no downside to opening that channel of communication.

(There are admittedly a small minority of players who this won’t work for because they actively and deliberately obstruct whatever they think the GM is trying to do, but they’re contrarian assholes and you shouldn’t be gaming with them in the first place.)

And most of the remaining 20%? Is because you tried to plan for your players taking a specific set of actions.

Here’s a secret: don’t plan for any player actions whatsoever. Plan what’s going to happen if the players never showed up at all.

It’s easier to let go of a plan that’s designed to be disrupted, and coming up with a good answer to “what would happen here if the player characters didn’t interfere?” forces you to think carefully about the needs, resources and and motivations of everyone involved, which is far better preparation for responding to player shenanigans than any amount of what-if speculation.

one of the lessons i learned from captain america:

sometimes you fight, not because you think you can win, but because you need to be able to look back later and say, “i fought.”

“In King Lear (III:vii) there is a man who is such a minor character that Shakespeare has not given him even a name: he is merely “First Servant.” All the characters around him – Regan, Cornwall, and Edmund – have fine long-term plans. They think they know how the story is going to end, and they are quite wrong. The servant has no such delusions. He has no notion of how the play is going to go. But he understands the present scene. He sees an abomination (the blinding of old Gloucester) taking place. He will not stand it.

His sword is out and pointed at his master’s breast in a moment: then Regan stabs him dead from behind. That is his whole part: eight lines all told. But if it were real life and not a play, that is the part it would be best to have acted.”

– C.S. Lewis, “The World’s Last Night”

So Stanford professor Ken Taylor has a whole lecture on this in Hamlet, and the role of defiant resignation (citing Kierkegaard’s concept of resignation) where you are urged to act despite understanding that it won’t change anything, simply to demonstrate your dissatisfaction with the world as it stands, and your belief in what it should be. But Steve demonstrates a lot of this.

Calendars

The easiest way to make the world feel alive is to use a calendar.

You don’t even have to fill it out to begin with. Maybe make some notes like “Hey, these are the days of the weeks, here’s what their cultural significance is” and have like I don’t know twelve months each with thirty days or something and go nuts.

But then as the campaign progresses you might think “Hey you know what’d be great a religious festival” and then boom write that down in your calendar and the next time the players enter a settlement go like “Yeah everyone’s getting ready for the Feast of St. Cuthbert” or some shit, I mean it wasn’t an established fact about the world before but now it is, and now your players will also know that they can expect a Feast of St. Cuthbert around the same time next year.

Also holy shit seasons. You check your calendar and realize that Winter is almost here and then suddenly the first snow falls and travel through the wilderness becomes much more perilous because not only do the characters have to contend with wandering monsters but also with the hazards brought on by snowfall. We’ve all probably thought how cool it would be to run a hexcrawl in a snowy setting where surviving the cold harsh wastes is the focus of the campaign, but holy shit, the passage of seasons means that Winter is basically like a time-sensitive snow hexcrawl.

And if you actually have time and aren’t lazy like me do go ahead and fill all these out beforehand in prep. Heck, if you’re feeling really brave you can even come up with a system of fantasy astrology and oh man how cool would a system of star signs each granting minor character bonuses like in ADOM be

Some ways to fantasy up your calendar:

You could change the length of the week. Faerun uses a metric ten-day week, for instance.

You can change the length of a month. Again, Faerun uses a 30-day month, like above, with the year balanced out with holidays that aren’t part of any month (intercalendary days have historical precedent in e.g. Rome), but there are other options. The Neverwinter Nights games, though nominally officially Forgotten Realms material, use a 28-day month, as does the one Heroes of Might and Magic game I’ve actually played (HoMM 3). You could use exact lunar months so that the day of the month corresponds to the phase of the moon.

You could change the number of months in a year. There are real-world calendars that do this, most having 12 months + an optional leap month (lunar calendars tend to do this, notably the Jewish calendar and also the Chinese lunar calendar)

You could change the number of days in a year

You could change the relationship of solstices and equinoxes (turning of the seasons) to the start of the year/month. Unless you’re doing something weird with your astronomy, your solstices and equinoxes will be evenly spaced throughout the year, but you could, for instance, put the new year exactly on a solstice and have your months start on the solstice/equinox rather than putting the solstices and equinoxes late in the months.

You could do something weird with the astronomy and have two, or more, moons.

You don’t need to start off tracking the phase of the moon or anything like that, but once you set one, you can project forward and backward and make determining it a simple calculation. Once you are, then the phase of the moon could impact your mage’s spells.

You could go to a “lunar week” where rather than weeks having a consistent number of days they begin and end at the full, dark, and half moons.

If this is up your alley you can also check out a few articles I wrote on this very subject!

http://www.duckandrollgames.com/tavern/2017/1/10/campaign-calendar

http://www.duckandrollgames.com/tavern/2017/1/14/small-time

http://www.duckandrollgames.com/tavern/2017/1/16/counting-years

http://www.duckandrollgames.com/tavern/2017/1/24/naming-time

Are all very much relevant and touch on and expand some of the ideas mentioned above!

This is fantastic and as soon as I have some free time back I’m definitely doing it.

I made a post about this some time ago and I can really recommend using the calendar creator at donjon

Q&A: Violence in Sloppy Writing

Usually, Michi writes these up, so this time, I’ll take a swipe at it. Feel Good Violence involves situations where a writer has their character engaging unnecessary violence, without any consequence, and, often with unrealistic resolutions.

In good writing, everything that’s there has to serve a legitimate purpose. A lot of FGV is unnecessary. These are establishing sequences where a character will engage in unneeded violence in order to establish a violent reputation. To be clear, there are situations where a scene like this may be necessary to explain who the character is.

In the real world, violence has consequences. There’s some variant of a cliche to, “win or lose, they’ll know they were in a fight.” It is true. Violence has many consequences. Physically, you will feel it in the morning, with aches and pains from everything you over-stressed. There are also legal and social consequences to consider. Again, there are legitimate cases where someone can dodge some consequences. For example: an assassin may be able to escape a job undetected, avoiding the legal consequences of killing someone. That said, there’s still social consequences for being an assassin. Even if they’re being careful about their real profession, the people around them will still have to deal with the fact that sometimes they’re just not available, and that can affect their relationships.

Something we’ve said before is that violence is a tool. It’s an option your characters have to achieve their goals. However, because we’re talking about (an approximation of) people, the changes you can actually force at gunpoint are somewhat limited. FGV often has unrealistic resolutions. One of the specific examples we’ve cited before were situations where characters chase after the whole, “cut off the head to kill the snake,” routine of simply killing the villain, and having their entire organization instantly crumble. Granted, there are situations where that would make sense, for example a necromancer or a vampire who keeps minions under his thrall, but it makes far less sense when you’re talking about a corrupt corporate CEO, or an organized crime boss.

So, let me give you an example that fails at every point: You have a teenage protagonist, early in the story they see a bully going off on another kid, they step in and beat the bully into submission, forcing them to give up their ways.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen variations of this.

So, is this necessary? No. To that scenario’s credit, it is a reasonable impulse, but unless this scene is setting the entire story in motion, it’s not necessary. Very often, scenes like this are used to say, “hey, look, my character’s a good person,” and, “look how badass they are.” That’s Feel Good Violence.

Are there consequences? Often times, no. In the real world, engaging in unrestrained violence would alienate the character from their friends, especially the love interest, get them in trouble with their school’s administration, and probably leave them with injuries. But, often times, when a scenario like this is presented, the scene could be cut with only minor edits. If the violence is only there to feed the power fantasy. It makes you feel good about the violence presented.

Are the resolutions realistic? This is a little different from consequences, because I’m talking about the specific goals that the character is trying to achieve. Most of the time when you have a scene like this, the goal is to get the bully to stop. Now, any of you who’ve interacted with bullies on a more than casual basis should understand the flaw here. The bully will retaliate against their original target, in more vicious ways, because their incapable of getting retribution against the kid who humiliated them. Bullies aren’t territorial alpha predators, they’re opportunists looking for a chance to work out their frustrations out on targets that can’t fight back. Interceding does not work, it just gives the bully more material to pass down the chain.

There’s also, often, an element of cognitive dissonance in all of this. The protagonist’s behavior is never fully analyzed by the author (or some members of the audience), because they’re the hero, and therefore, whatever they’re doing is inherently different from another character doing the exact same thing. The example I just pulled apart can easily result in situations where the protagonist is as much, or more, of a bully in that situation because they’re picking a fight against someone who has no hope of defeating them, due to superpowers or implausible levels of training. However, thanks to the marvels of cognitive dissonance, they’re the good guy.

Finally, it’s worth talking about tension briefly. As a writer, tension is one of the currencies you have complete control over. You can decide how much pressure your characters are under, and you, alone, can add and remove it as you see fit. The more that’s on the line, the more threats they face, the more problems that threaten to trip them up, the more tension you have. The harder you press your characters, the stronger they’ll become (or the more they’ll start to fray at the edges), and the more your audience will be invested in their struggles.

Violence vents tension at an incredible rate. You can spend 50k words torquing up your characters, and accidentally vent it all in a 500 word fight scene. In abstract terms, fictional violence is expensive as a writer. This is a large part of why I will continue saying you need to be careful, and surgical, with your fight scenes. Particularly when they involve your protagonists. Carelessly used, violence can cause your audience to tune out and wander off.

Feel Good Violence is violence as cheap catharsis. It vents tension, and throws your story’s credibility under the bus for a brief moment of, “didn’t that feel good?” It’s sloppy, and it devalues your work as a writer. It encourages you to rob your future for a brief rush in the present.

Write a character who endures, a character who is creative, a character who is persuasive, or even viciously analytical, and your readers will remember them long after they’ve forgotten about that power fantasy “badasshole” who started their story getting into a bar brawl against werewolves in order to prove they were “awesome.”

Write characters that don’t need to resort to violence at every opportunity. Let your reader always worry that, “no, this time, it won’t work out,” and make sure that occasionally, once in awhile, they’re right.

-Starke

This blog is supported through Patreon. If you enjoy our content, please consider becoming a Patron. Every contribution helps keep us online, and writing. If you already are a Patron, thank you.

Q&A: Violence in Sloppy Writing was originally published on How to Fight Write.

The Lich’s lair is a winery and their phylancatry is a bottle of wine

[x]

Just an amazing 200 years old secretary cabinet

This porn was not tagged

Real-life footage of “the object”

imagine all the weed you could hide in here

Experiment with political systems

Sure, having a king/queen is simple, but have you ever tried:

There are thousands of possibilities, be creative!

Older post, but I highly encourage it! Try out the weirdest stuff! Try things you think would never work in the real world because this is your world and if you say (insert political system believed to not work) works then it does

Here’s a list of Society and Government types I’ve stolen directly from the worldbuilding section of some rulebooks:

Anarchy: the social conscience maintains order, but there are no laws

Athenian Democracy: Every citizen can vote on every new law

Representative Democracy: Elected representatives form a congress or government

Clan: Pretty much whoever is older is in charge, traditions are strongly adhered to, and society as a whole is split cross many tribes that are generally similar (and usually allied) but with their own quirks and traditions

Caste: A lot like a Clan structure, but each clan has a set role in society that usually renders them co-dependent. These Castes usually follow a social heirarchy

Dictatorship: One person controls everything, and they will later pass the right to rule to someone else, whether by inheritance, election, duelling, or some other method. Not all dictatorships are bad, especially if they are formed in times of crisis or rebellion, but even those started with the best intentions may quickly corrupt.

Plutocracy: Whoever has money is in charge.

Technocracy: A group of scientists and engineers have complete control and do everything they can to run the country at maximum efficiency. The more competent they are, the more likely this is to be viewed as a good thing.

Thaumocracy: Like a technocracy, but run by a science-like form of magic (like wizards and arcanists rather than shamans and witches)

Theocracy: The Church controls everything, and their religious law is civil law. Whether this religion is real, is fake but knows it, or believes its own lies is up to you.

Corporate State: Powerful mercantile organisations have taken control of entire regions. This is a lot like a Technocracy, but with a corporate structure and a focus on maximum profitability (and no-one else is going to set them a minimum wage)

Feudal: A lot like a dictatorship, but subsidiary lords are assigned their own local power and can enforce their own law without notifying the larger state.

***VARIATIONS***

Bureaucracy: Government runs very slowly and the public has effectively no control. There is a lot of red tape and taxation is high.

Colony: Government is dependent on a mother society

Cybercracy: A computer system is the state administrator. Hopefully the programmers did a good job…

Matriarchy: Positions of authority are female-exclusive.

Meritocracy: Positions of authority require rigorous testing to qualify for.

Military Government: The Military control everything, usually but not always totalitarian

Monarchy: The person in charge may call themselves king or queen, but fundamentally this is either a dictatorship or a feudal society.

Oligarchy: A small organisation is in control, and it elects its own members.

Patriarchy: like a matriarchy, but for guys. what a novel idea

Sanctuary: A society that protects the people other societies hunt (that may be considered criminals or terrorists by other nations)

Socialist: The government directly manages the economy, education is easy to get, the government intervenes to get everyone possible a job. This is likely to collapse quickly without good technology or magic to assist it.

Subjugated: The society as a whole is completely controlled by an outside force.

Utopia: A perfect society where everyone is satisfied and nothing sinister is happening behind the scenes we swear.

Okay i love this post but ya know the government types are in the DMG right? They also have one (forgot what it’s called off hand) where ancient long lived species like elves or dragons rule over humans because since they’re so long lived they’re viewed as wise.

Shhh don’t tell them half of my really good ideas are stolen from various sourcsbooks

Q&A: Violence Is All About Efficiency

No, assuming strength, dexterity, finesse, or any other trait involves missing the most important one of all: efficiency.  In order to write good fight scenes, this is one you need to internalize. There are two terms to familiarize yourself with:

The Economy of Violence.

Conservation of Movement.

If you are not efficient with the energy you have, you will die.  No matter how much endurance you have and how much you train, your energy pool will always be limited. The entire goal of martial combat is to expend as little energy as possible while protecting yourself as much as you possibly can. Finesse, strength, dexterity, any other attribute comes in second to this goal, and you do not need a long period of training to learn to be efficient. Small, minute movements rather than large ones conserve energy; weapons make it easier to kill your enemies, and the more efficient the weapon, the easier it is to learn in a short period of time. The weapons Europe gravited toward were weapons that required little time to learn and were effective with marginal training, because you didn’t need to waste time getting someone up to snuff. The easier a weapon is, the more individuals gravitate towards learning how to use the weapon, the more widespread it becomes, and the quicker it is adapted as a cultural mainstay.  See: the handgun.

In the modern era, we can train a combat ready soldier in three months. They won’t be the best, they won’t be perfect, but they’ll be effective and, more importantly, efficient in their fighting style.

The Economy of Violence is the cost of violence, the toil it takes on the body, the time it takes to kill your enemy, and what you must pay physically, mentally, and emotionally in order to win. Violence has both costs and consequences, internalizing this concept is necessary as a writer to bring realism to your fiction. This is an economy you must create within your own writing, and keep at the forefront of your mind. Unlike the real world, you’re creating the rules and, while that sounds great, the rules are what sustain Suspension of Disbelief. Violating those rules will break the disbelief, and dispel the illusion. Not so terrible compared to the real world where misunderstanding the cost and consequence of violence will get you injured, killed, shamed, and shunned.

Fictional characters are often wasteful to the point of becoming unrealistic because they don’t need to face physical, mental, emotional, and societal consequences of their actions if the writer chooses to exclude them. They can fight forever if the writer wants.  They can do whatever you want them to. Of course, these stories lack tension, audiences cry about their believability, and there’s not much point to reading them. Still, you can if you want.

Efficiency is a lesson which carries beyond violence. Embracing the Economy of Violence and learning to be efficient in your own writing will help you grow into a better writer. Your scenes will flow better, your narrative will stay on point, your characters will feel more like real people, your sentences will be uncluttered, and your writing will have purpose. You’ll understand what you’re doing, where you’re going, and what toll you’ll need to pay in order to get where you want to be. Your characters will start making choices dependent less on what the narrative needs and more on their own survival. They’ll start choosing violent actions that are more than set pieces, but based in their emotions and their smarts. Their narrative structure will support them with natural fallout.

Understand this, the make or break is in how well you control your resources. The tension is in the cost and consequence, in the time it takes to achieve objectives. Waste not, want not, after all.

If you study the evolution of violence and martial combat styles worldwide, even without the ancillary details, the focus is always not just on what works but what takes the least time. Effectiveness is the order of the day. After all, why use three strokes to achieve the same goal when you can just use one. When looking to improve, the focus rests on streamlining and raising the effectiveness of the tool at hand. The tools are discarded when better or more effective/efficient tools come along.

This is why your fight scenes need internal justification from your characters. They shouldn’t be taking out the inhabitants of whole castles on extraction missions just because they can. This path isn’t better because it wastes time, because it involves putting in more work than you need and involves taking more risks than necessary. Outside of a character justification like hubris, there’s just no point. The more capable a character is, the more efficient they’re going to be and more focused on economizing their violence. They’ll maximize their input if it achieves maximum output in the trade off. They’ll waste less time than other characters, be more capable of assessing a situation, and they’ll be ending fights in fewer blows. Everything will be contracted and concise, because it’s ultimately less wasteful and saves energy in the long run. That energy saved can be applied to the next opponent, or escape, or a half a dozen other scenarios. The goal is to be as quick as possible, and how you get there is ultimately up to you.

This is why applying physical attributes like strength, dexterity, and finesse ultimately shortchange the conversation. You can make any of those work, and can gain them with any body type, but what you can’t work with is someone who isn’t efficient, who wastes time, who makes big visible motions that don’t amount to anything. Someone who can’t conserve their energy, and who wastes it. Even when they don’t seem to be efficient, all the surviving martial arts are, in their own unique ways. Fortifications, as an example, are designed to get your enemy to spend more energy reaching you and setting up natural traps where invaders can be safely mopped up by the defenders. It’s all about making your job easier, and, keep in mind, your enemy wants the exact same thing.

I’ll grant you, finesse sounds cooler than conservation, economy, or efficiency. However, to cleave to that will miss the ultimate point which helps you write better fight scenes. More than any other aspect, you need the Economy of Violence to set up rules for your violence within the narrative. Those rules fuel suspension of disbelief, and help keep your audience invested in the narrative. They are the part of violence that is “real”.

-Michi

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Q&A: Violence Is All About Efficiency was originally published on How to Fight Write.

Sword Fights Movie Montage by ClaraDarko.

This is FANTASTIC!

Featuring:

00:01 - Kill Bill 00:06 - Hero 00:08 - Seven Samurai 00:09 - The Princess bride 00:11 - Hero 00:13 - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest 00:14 - Gladiator 00:16 - Conan the Barbarian 00:17 - Troy 00:19 - Batman begins 00:21 - Dragonslayer 00:23 - Kill Bill Vol. 2 00:26 - The Empire strikes back 00:29 - Crouching tiger, hidden dragon 00:33 - Zatoichi 00:35 - Hellboy 2 00:37 - The mask of Zorro 00:40 - The phantom menace 00:45 - Peter Pan 00:47 - Pirates of the Caribbean: The curse of the Black Pearl 00:49 - Revenge of the Sith 00:52 - The duelists 00:54 - LadyHawke 00:55 - The Count of Montecristo 00:56 - Kingdom of Heaven 00:58 - Blade 01:03 - The 13th warrior 01:05 - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 01:06 - The Fellowship of the Ring 01:07 - Highlander 01:12 - Cutthroat Island 01:13 - Dangerous liaisons 01:14 - The adventres of Robin Hood (1938) 01:20 - The attack of the clones 01:26 - Stardust 01:28 - House of Flying Daggers 01:30 - Matrix Reloaded 01:32 - The flame and the arrow 01:35 - Willow 01:36 - Cyrano de Bergerac 01:48 - Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves 01:49 - Monty Python and the Holy Grail 01:50 - Hamlet (1996) 01:52 - Rob Roy 02:02 - Young Sherlock Holmes 02:08 - The Crow 02:12 - Casanova 02:20 - Star Wars: A new hope 02:29 - The Four Musketeers (1974) 02:31 - Dragonheart 02:33 - The return of the Jedi 02:38 - Hook 02:40 - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 02:44 - Army of Darkness 02:55 - Azumi 02:57 - 300 03:01 - Excalibur 03:03 - Blind Fury 03:05 - The Curse of the Golden Flower 03:38 - Equilibrium

Q&A: Fantasy Weapon Selection

I’m just going to start out by saying, there’s no single answer to this. When many writers are making similar decisions, you can sometimes track back to a singular source, but when you’re dealing with an entire motif like this, writers (and world builders) are making their decisions independently of one another.

The first possible reason is inspiration. When you’re creating your fantasy setting it’s very likely you’re drawing inspiration from somewhere. Many fantasy authors (intentionally or otherwise) draw inspiration from Lord of the Rings. This is so ubiquitous that you don’t even need to explain concepts like Elves, Orcs, and Dwarves to an uninitiated reader. It’s so ingrained in the cultural lexicon of fantasy that defining these things doesn’t even seem necessary.

Actually, a bit of fun trivia to think about with this: the correct terms in English are “dwarfish” and “dwarfs.” The terms “dwarven” and “dwarves” aren’t completely original to Tolkien, but in modern literature they trace directly back to him.

If we’re going to lay blame at the feet of Tolkien, then it’s worth remembering that his work does include polearms, however, those weren’t the weapons used by the heroes. Tolkien’s heroes were designed to be legendary leaders, and their weapon choices reflected that to an extent.

If you’re creating an adventuring hero who is secretly the lost heir to the throne, you’ll give them a sword as their weapon (unless you’re deliberately being subversive.) There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s a legitimate aspect of how western society looks at the sword as weapon, but it is worth remembering.

Now, if you’re drawing inspiration from a story about a character who’s a lost scion, or has a sword as their primary weapon for some reason, then it’s distinctly possible you’ll lift the weapon choice without thinking through why.

I’m less confidant that a similar logic applies with axes. I’m not completely certain what Tolkien was referencing when he picked the axe as the weapon of Dwarven kings, but here we are. If your setting is heavily influenced by cultural elements from Northern Europe, or he could have simply picked the weapon for more novel reasons.

In all of this, the spear, to say nothing of more advanced polearms, gets lost in the shuffle. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t fantasy settings that use polearms, but, like you said, they’re less common. In the long term, this creates a kind of “authorial confirmation bias,” where you’re more likely to be influenced by fantasy settings that eject or discount polearms, than you are to immediately think of these.

Another factor is, very often, a polearm isn’t a good weapon choice for the kind of character you’re writing. This is a little more subjective, because your world building could easily go either way. However, in general, the wandering adventurer is more likely to be in situations where they need a sword, axe, or dagger, far more often than ones where they’d need a spear.

There’s a slightly speculative quality to this logic, which then becomes self-confirming when you combine it with the previous element. If your character is a specific kind of roving adventurer or mercenary, and you expect that kind of a person to carry a sword or axe, then you’re more likely to give them a sword or axe. Again, historically, in Europe (and elsewhere) they’d probably carry a sword or axe as their sidearm, with a spear or other polearm as their primary weapon.

To be fair, there is some basis for this. If you have a character who’s a member of the city guard, or isn’t in active combat, they may not carry their primary weapon around with them everywhere, and might restrict themselves to their sidearm. This is somewhat analogous to a modern era character who carries a handgun, but they’re not going to wander around with a shotgun or assault rifle as part of their day to day gear. It’s likely something they’d have on hand, but wouldn’t carry regularly.

Also worth noting that in early modern Europe, it was fairly common for nobility, and other members of society to carry a sword as a normal accessory. Over time this fell out of fashion, but there is some basis for the idea of a character who carries a blade, instead of a polearm.

Ironically, greatswords and greataxes would fall into a similar situation. Those are primary weapons, not sidearms, but many fantasy settings will gleefully include them while ignoring polearms.

Another factor which may be relevant, though I’m not sure exactly how relevant is swashbuckler films and literature, and the resulting pulp genre. This included scenarios with combatants who would have eschewed polearms for various reasons. For example: Anyone who engaged in ship to ship combat, such as pirates, or naval officers hunting pirates. To be clear, I’m not blaming The Three Musketeers for squelching polearms in fantasy literature, but there is a progression from this material, through early fantasy pulps like Robert E. Howard’s Conan or Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser into modern fantasy.

Modern fantasy takes, pretty much, equal measure from the early sword and sorcery pulps, and blends that with Tolkein’s intricate worldbuilding. The result is, slightly idiosyncratic, but it does start to explain why a lot of authors might eschew spears or halbards when they can just give their characters a huge axe. It’s also part of where fantasy settings become anachronistic.

If you’ve never read it, Conan is deliberately anachronistic. Robert E. Howard loved history, and gleefully grabbed the bits that appealed to him, mashing them together with reckless abandon. The result is fantastic writing, but there is no way to reconcile the Hyborian Age with real world history. The names are the familiar, but everything else went into a blender.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser is a similar situation, though the names are alien in ways that should be immediately familiar to anyone who has read modern fantasy. In some ways, it’s even more significant, because the fictional city of Lankhmar was designed to be a fantasy allegory for 1930s New York, with completely inconsistent technological advancement scattered across its setting.

To be fair, I may be overthinking this. As I mentioned earlier, authors read one setting, it becomes a part of their understanding of the genre, or at least a familiar touchstone. When they go to create their own works, the things they’ve read (or viewed, played, consumed in whatever form) influence their work. So, while the specific examples I’m giving influenced a lot of writers, it’s not like those are the only possible paths. It’s also worth remembering that many authors will get their point of contact further down the line. So, they’re picking up on the influences of someone else’s influences.

This may sound like a nonsequitur, however, no one’s work is ever, truly, original in some cosmic sense. You’re influenced by everything you’ve read, watched, played, or otherwise engaged with. It becomes a part of you, and a part of how you look at the world. When the time comes to write, those influences will affect what you create. Being aware of this means you can step back and have the self awareness to start to deliberately change things.

If you want to see fantasy that uses polearms more heavily than what you see now, you’re certainly welcome to. There are plenty of reasons for your characters to use them. Especially in character archetypes that normally eschew polearms in conventional roles. For example, spears have been used in hunting for thousands of years, so it would make perfect sense for your ranger or druid to carry one as their primary weapon. Of course, most polearms saw use on the battlefield, and that’s certainly one use. You may have characters who are members of the city watch, or a similar group, who break out the polearms when things get dicey. This is before you consider the idea of arming characters like your clergy or mages with weapons you usually don’t associate with them. Again, there could be any number of reasons, you’re only limited by your creativity, and the ideas you found abandoned along the way.

-Starke

This blog is supported through Patreon. If you enjoy our content, please consider becoming a Patron. Every contribution helps keep us online, and writing. If you already are a Patron, thank you.

Q&A: Fantasy Weapon Selection was originally published on How to Fight Write.

A sample of the great gun designs and selection from the Hard West video game. While some of these are insanely implausible, they are still a lot of fun and fit the whole Weird West setting for the game. 

These were created by Tomasz Cwick an amazing concept artist. Here is his page: https://www.artstation.com/artist/tomaszcwik

aside from the two belt fed ones these are actually all real guns

Please prove it?

real gun

real gun

real gun

real gun

real gun

real gun

real gun

The belt ones are also real

Literally every single one of those guns is actual and factual.

@artisticbard