Enough with the 2d6 encounter table, now dawns the age of the d12 unified table. The dice bell curve leads to an overabundance of middle of the road critters. I want to see more wizards and dragons and shit! 2.78% is way too low to see these cool guys on the end of the table, let’s up that to 8.3%. I don’t care about some sense of naturalism you get from a bell curve, I get 3-4 hours once a week to run this game and don’t have enough random encounters in my life to not have the awesome ones show up more often. We’re only here on this planet for so long!

Most games have too much rolling of things that aren’t a d12- the unloved and exiled aristocrat of the dice bag if you’re not playing a Barbarian in 5e. It sits scalloped and perfect in the hand, wobbling and coming to rest after the ideal amount of roll on the table. So I just got the books for Dolmenwood and I love them. It’s likely the best sandbox RPG campaign I’ve ever read. But look at all these Encounter steps! That’s a lot of dice to roll of different kinds not even counting the initial 1d6 roll to see if there is an encounter. Rolls, rolls, rolls.

Too many dice rolls with too many dice that aren’t his Royal 1d12ness. Lame! These don’t get me rolling the d12 more, my main drive in life when I wake up in the morning to cradle its glorious geometry as it whispers in my ear. Sometimes I want to play a faithful game of classic D&D and sometimes I NEED THE DODECAHEDRON in my veins FAST. Let’s switch it up, oops all d12s style.

Chance of encounter, 1-2 on a 1d12. Surprise? You’re surprised on a 1, they’re surprised on a 12, two separate rolls for surprise on different sides with a non-result of both surprised is utter decadence. What encounter is it? You’ve got 12 critters to run into. Want something more common? Get rid of another entry and have the encounter trigger on 2 numbers now. It would actually be nice to have different dice to differentiate between the sizes of groups found- but we won’t because I’m sick in the head and the only cure is more d12! 1d12 giants, 1d12 wizards, 1d12 merchants, 1d12 lightning wolves. Want more? 3d12 plague cursed goblins! Make it work! Encounter distance just put a bunch of pre-written distances on the table- do some legwork for yourself and anyone else who runs your stuff. Reaction? You guessed it! Cause it’s on a 2d6 I’ll stretch out “Uncertain, Wary” to 5-8 and bump everything above it up to fill the 1 result with “Attacks.” This keeps “Uncertain, Wary” at a still 33.32% likelihood 44.38% of all Reaction results is way too much, give the other reactions a turn to play. Sure a bit more immediate fighting but also more immediate “Eager, friendly” rolls! I love making stinky friends in the dungeon. Behavior is a sweet addition for more encounter variety (The Dark of Hot Springs Island also has a great table for this) but we just get 12 now, that’s plenty- though a 5% chance of defecating will be genuinely missed. The things I do for you, my sweet polyhedral prince. Don’t have space on the table but roll Morale on a d12 instead as well, I can’t think of a great reason for that but I’m in too deep now to quit or consider benefits of other dice. Call the d12 “The Encounter Die…” and present it with a flourish and tone filled with wary danger when you take it out of the sack- in time your table will regard the die with proper awe.

Example Region:

While you’re at it give your players a whole sack of 1d12 pipebombs to chuck at things too- they’ll have so much fun tossing those swingy bad boys into a room of fleshy opponents. They’ll curse at a 1 and lose their absolute shit at a 12 pulping a barracks of innocent guardsmen in one roll. They might all blow themselves up when the sack holder gets lit on fire accidentally and this is good and honorable fun too.

Rolling a d12 makes you smarter, luckier, a better lover. You hear those distant bells chiming? The clock is striking (d) twelve, and it tolls for thee.

I thought I would write whatever I wanted after my Grandma died.

It’s not that she was judgemental, she was one of the most kind and welcoming people in my life and I really wish she was still here with us. She loved reading what I wrote and hearing what was going on in my life.  But she was from another era and I didn’t want to disappoint her, even as an adult so I’d hold some things back. It’s only after she was gone I realized that I had been really fucking silly, self censoring and robbing myself of an even better relationship.
This will also be about RPG’s at some point.

No surprise, it turns out I still haven’t written about or done everything I’ve wanted.

While I’ve grown since, I’ve found myself holding back on sharing ideas or feelings because of the hypothetical reaction of a cast of strangers in the street, relatives, good friends, paying fans, or faceless online critics. I’m sure a bunch of you can relate to the feeling of trying to cover up the messy reality of your truest self.

Ever since I can remember there’s always been the barely audible question in the back of mind- “What if you’re not enough?”. In middle school I once wore a baggy fake black leather jacket most days for a year because someone asked me to dance at a school social when I was wearing it. I formed a cargo cult of one around that jacket, thinking that it was somehow my magic ticket to fitting in.

I’m mostly proud of the life I’ve gone on to live so far since then, the person I’ve been, and the art I’ve made- but there’s more work to do to evict that whispered part that cringes, so the part that is cringe can be free. I bet it’ll make my books better too.

In my final year of college I told a friend for the first time that I was into guys and girls. He was so fucking unbothered, chill, and unsurprised while I was stressridden leading up to to it. I expected and almost wanted him to recognize the revelation’s enormity. To be shocked and say “No way! You?”. As if I seemed like the most normal passing motherfucker in the room. People can tell when you’re hiding something behind a cardboard cutout of some vision of who you think they want you to be. The reason people like you and your stuff is precisely because you’re not good at wearing the mask and the gooey, weird, humanity leaks out on the floor.

There’s a funny dynamic in indie RPG’s online. There’s a spectrum of how personal people are in their internet interaction ranging from presenting a sanitized all business promotional front to posting passionately to strangers about the specific dimensions of their struggles with mental illness. The first group is completely reasonable and I don’t know if the Internet is always the best venue for sharing (like this), but I do value the second group’s undeniable, messy, humanity. In a time where we’re being pushed to be more mechanical with our jagged corners smoothed, that’s important. 

I’ve realized the part of me that’s uncomfortable with seeing people being weird and vulnerable is not because I think they’re weak, overdramatic, or lame but because I cringe at the thought of putting myself in the same situation, and the people I imagine judging, reacting, or commenting. The people who are the most critical and cynical of authentic efforts are often insecure themselves.

Barring some extreme circumstances- these imagined or real people’s opinions just don’t matter. Their sensation of cringe, or distaste is a reflection of whatever shit they’ve got in their own heads. I realized that I envy those that put it all out there, fail, and push again to their limits. I’ve gotten into a furrow of not pushing against my limits, my fears, and my artistic insecurities lately.

After all it took a bunch of work and growth to get here- why not take it easy? For me I feel like if I’m not working to expand the bounds of my comfort zone in life and art, I get stagnant and the looser shifting boundary zone begins to harden and calcify, like plaque you haven’t brushed off a tooth for too long. I’m going to make more difficult choices and conversations.

What this means for my RPG work in general is that I want to get more specific and personal to my interests- I’ve begun to catch the disease of thinking a bit about the marketability/business angle and tweaking even the earliest fun daydreaming stages when I’m writing a new project and it’s dangerous to let that grow untreated.  

I’m so lucky to be able to work on something I enjoy doing (even when some days suck) and it would be such a shame to slowly optimize the joy and messiness away. There’s a lot of pressure out there for folks to try to monetize hobbies and interests that are genuine and happily unprofessional. When what you love is also what pays the bills, it’s sorta like going into business with a really close friend- you’ve got to set up some pretty tight boundaries to not grow to dislike each other and kill that spark that got you started.

There’s a lot of less invasive ways I can improve the business logistics and marketing behind the work, but as much as possible I want the business to exist to let me keep living and make art possible, not the other way around. It might be impossible to be embedded under capitalism and live and make art without compromises- but it’s worth trying to make less of them, if only for my own mental wellness.

I’m fortunate that I’m a single guy living somewhere relatively cheap with public healthcare and have been lucky with the level of reception to my past stuff so I can afford to take more risks and still be able to make the rent. As long as I can, I’ll keep throwing my guts at the wall for things to stick in a way that the oracles find auspicious.

At the core, what I love most about role playing games at their best is the ability to help us take off our baggy jackets and cardboard cutouts and the other junk we’re weighed down with for a few hours and agree to be real with each other while playing make believe. It’s a venue that gives permission to gather around the table to share our weird and embrace other’s odd edges, to better connect past the walls of our solitary skull castles. It’s great when I’m running a game for friends. It also makes me so happy when I hear about distant groups of people I’ve never met playing something I worked on, knowing that some part of me connected with them and helped share a fun evening of community together.

There’s a shitload of definitions of art but I think it’s the stuff that helps us break open cracks in those outer masks that get put on us, to connect to each other, and provide shared experience.  

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams is a recent behind the scenes view of her time as a former high ranking Facebook employee. While discussing her increasingly cold and inhuman coworkers she quotes John Updike that “Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.”

Maybe society has always been that way, but the internet age has increasingly made brand management specialists of us all, glossy false fronts chewing away at the raw real meat underneath.  

Ask the internal voices to shut up for a bit, the ones who hover around and critique you when you sit down to act honestly. Try to really accept these are bullshit insecurities and not objective revelations of capital T, truths. Make the scary thing. Touch the grass. Tell your real messy truths to each other.  

Take off your masks while there’s still something left to eat. 

The setting is the West Coast through the dark dreamlike mirror of 197X. Perhaps a decade prior, rifts ripped open to a hellish other realm of beings that feast on fear- they emerged with their forms shaped by the nightmares of humanity. Their awful flesh flowed into twisted imitations of the ghosts, aliens, cavemen, robots, glowing deep sea divers that haunted our collective subconsciousness, shaped by the fears of the area they arrived in. 

Millions of people were slain but luckily these outside beings were not adapted to our dimensions. Within a year, most of them had sickened, fallen still, and dissolved like deep sea fish ripped from the depths to bloat and die in a foreign atmosphere. They were not built for this world. Some hardy specimens remained in the deep wilderness. The damage had been done and the survivor society had splintered into enclaves, the larger cities transformed into well lit fortress towns as economic and communication networks broke down. Now the roads have been rebuilt and a trickle of commerce and travel resumed. The cities yearn to grow once more and span the earth and yoke it to their ambitions as they once did.

Outside of these enclaves of the coastal elite- there is a world left behind. Isolated farmhouses,overgrown wilderness lodges, long closed military airfields, shuttered beach boardwalks, and abandoned amusement parks too numerous to count. The detritus of a once great civilization. Haunting these ruins aren’t even ghosts but the shoddy imitators of them, sad- lonely people grown to hate everyone else and seeking their salvation through the use of terror to drive away the very community who could help them. Regardless of gender everyone just calls them The Old Men.

The lonely souls that masquerade as horrors, covering themselves in seaweed and latex, paint and rubber- are filled to the brim with restless spirits of those marooned nightmare beings. They are no longer men but flesh sheets draped over a horde of demon ghosts from the outer dark nearly bursting from their ripe pallid skin. They claim they want riches and real estate but these plots are doomed delusions. After driving their last neighbors away, they are consumed by these alien ghosts, hollow creatures made puppets in the darkness of their solitude. 

They are possessed of a base cunning. An aura of innocence surrounds them, they intuitively know the fears and suspicions of the people they know well . Someone from their settlement just tends to overlook and see past the tired look in their eye, the stain of blood on their shirt, the human tooth fallen out of a splintered crate. No interrogation in their human  form could break them. Only when they have donned their costume. the false flesh that shows the truth, can they be caught and exorcised. They cannot be easily killed but they can be caught and exorcised through successful capture and binding followed by ritual unmasking.

The forces of the law are distant and uncaring. They serve the metropole, the places where the game of musical chairs didn’t come to a stop and left everybody without a seat ushered to the doors. The sheriffs they post to these tiny borderlands towns are primarily corrupt, feebleminded, uncaring or all three. But now there is a new era of hope against the dark night of the soul. Many of the brutal warlords have been overthrown and citystate democracy has returned brimming with a fragile, idealistic optimism. The Gangs were created.

Filled with the well meaning, the restless, or those who are running from something The Gangs are wandering groups of young people provided with a running transit van to travel and sleep in and a stipend just sufficient to cover their food and gasoline costs. They leave the City for motives other than money. At their best they are beacons of light in a fallen world, bringing the fading light of reason and hope from the glowing city to the dark spots on the map.
A variety of shining youth coming from places where there is reason, hip clothes, dependable electricity, and Scooby snacks.  They may also be fools, the jury is still out. 

Nobody ever comments on the talking dog. In a world with both real and fake supernatural events, this is mundane and known. Everybody takes a talking dog with speech disability for granted. There are many Scoobys, it is a breed- not an individual. They were created through genetic engineering and an intensive breeding effort by the scientists of the City. They possess human intelligence and a tremendous good soul. There are also twisted abominations called Scrappys turned rancid and hateful- seeking the destruction of their creators. I will not speak of them today.

A Scooby is a vessel for our sins. They are pure creatures, dogs born into sheltered existences where they want for nothing. We take them from these creches theyŕe raised in and they are assigned a Gang as a puppy. Then we throw them into hell.

Their innocent minds serve as monstrous bait for Gangs heading into the cursed hinterlands, the sweet smell of their terror.  They are cowards, lost in mindless terror from the first spooky occurrence. They act as sacrificial lambs to the darkness, attracting the attention of the foul beasts that feed on the fears of humanity and drawing them out of hiding. They can’t resist the banquet of terror. The Scooby Snacks contain anti-anxiety medicine as a main component.

So if tracked down, snared in some contraption that can withstand their unnatural strength and unmasked, the Old Men are unerringly bound to confess and then curse their captor. These curses are minor ill omens but those who face the Old Men in enough numbers, over time find them bowing under the weight of their ill fortune. Vans run out of gas at unlikely times, ropes snap, sandwitches you could swear were packed vanish without a trace. 

Some Gangs retire and break their fellowship to return to safe, comforting lives but for many the knowledge of mysteries out there to solve, people living in unreason and fear is too much for them to bear. For many,  injustice anywhere while they yet draw breath is an unscratchable moral itch. They may try to reassemble the old gang, or if spurned by their former companions, cobble together a new patchwork crew, never equal to the power of the first. They get back on the road, hearing the call of the journey once more, unable to be still, they return to the busted motel, the castle, the leaking aquarium and they exorcise more Old Men and bear their curses.

  Eventually the load of a hundred curses is too much for anyone. The City recommends that Gang members return and retire by 28 but have no means of enforcing this. Most return anyway, limping back to the gleaming town, scarred and shook from their bright burning lives in uneasy retirement, never fully at home in the stable and comfortable cage of the city away from the dangerous and wonderful freedom of the road, the feeling of waking up everyday and feeling that day they’ve made the world a slightly better place. 

Those who wander, stay at a roadside stop as their Mystery Machines- be it bus, SUV, or moving van painted with the bright flowers of the old times, drive away for the last time. These forsaken investigators blow into one of the small towns and settlements barely holding on against the screaming wilderness at it’s gate and find a house, it’s not hard- there’s no shortage of extras these days. They either stop shaving and try to become one with the barren unloved places or they seek positions of authority and wear the fanciest clothes they can get in this podunk settlement to do their best to bring the city to the wilderness. Both roads lead to the same terminal spot.

They find the largest monument to that which came before, a decrepit sports stadium, a mothballed cinema, or the stone temples of yet older people who thought time would spare them too. They see this and they want it.They want the howling solitude to grow. To spread to encompass the all of the land they see. They understand that it’s people who ruin things. Nasty noisy, meddling, people. These aren’t the right people. If they could drive them off and start anew they could rebuild these temples to civilization and make them better, cleaner, bigger. With them at the top they could remake this emptied world as it once was, as it should be. They would bring the good people back and everything would be beautiful. This time, they’d do it right.

 In their mad plots they fill walls with diagrams and thick manilla file folders with plans spiraling inwards on themselves. Too focused on their plots to do much else, they twist further into increasingly convoluted scheming knots to horrify and displace their community and achieve their goals. They all call themselves by some self made title, developer, scientist, entrepreneur, innovator but we know them for what they are- The Old Men. Whatever goal they claim to have is a veneer on the truth. Terror is the point.

` Each of them crafts a suit, sparing no effort on molded rubber, animatronics, or zipline installation for the deception. and begins terrorizing their hometown. They have a low cunning that serves them in hiding from the suspicion of their neighbors and even a curious Gang, following the increasingly loud whimpers of their Scooby’s bloodhound-like ability to detect sources of terror. They are vulnerable in their early stages, fumbling and clumsy in their schemes. But over time they grow in cunning and cruelty as their humanity is replaced with the tattered ghosts of the past horrors they’ve drawn to fill the husk of their body. With enough time and luck an Old Man can drive the folks from a village utterly and gain their solitude. 

Sometimes a Gang will capture a particularly wily Old Man lasso a supposed creature in their inventive or accidentally placed  traps and reach to rip a convincing green rubber mask off. The mask doesn’t budge. Sharp teeth dribbling foul saliva part in awful mocking unearthly laughter. It strains and breaks its bonds and looms before them. There is no trick, no pretense at humanity. 

No man anymore, just the beast reborn.

In picking a game setting the GM has to strike a balance between the familiar and the weird.

Too bog standard and expected and the game can be boring- but too weird and unexpected and the world the game takes place in is difficult for the players to grasp and have the context needed to make interesting choices. Running historically accurate-ish games can run into the roadbump of the players assumptions not lining up enough with the world presented and creating friction between themselves and what their characters would know.

Yet the difference between the player and their character can be bridged by throwing these grounded historically inspired figures into and environment of strangeness and of unknown rules, a fantastical or horrific realm that violates the PC’s understanding of reality in the same way that it does the players. Both are lost, marooned on unknown shores and player and character share their common humanity and confusion as castaways. A kinship is fostered between the two because the incomprehensible strangeness highlights the mundane and not so different elements of their world and our own.

The most classic example of this peanut butter and chocolate pairing is Call of Cthulhu. Lovecraft was writing works that were modern and set in the era of his readers at the time of publication. Delta Green offers a similar thrill of taking the all too well known world of the Players. But by far the most popular setting is the 1930s for modern players I think that the familiar but not too familiar aspect of the era is part of the appeal. The quirks and differences between our time and the setting are made insignificant à in comparison with the unknowable eldritch horrors that threaten the players.

I don’t know H.P Lovecraft would feel about his work being used to find the shared humanity and deep connection between people with wildly divergent backgrounds and cultures but it totally can have that effect. I enjoy when the character’s knowledge of how the world works largely can match the player’s ignorance. Sure the player can’t operate a telegram and the PC may have questionable beliefs about Italians but both are utterly unaware of with how to deal with a gibbering glob of plasm that sings with the gurgling symphony of a dozen sphincter mouths.

The opening to the Fallout game series almost always start with the player character emerging from an isolated vault or suffering from amnesia (a usually hacky premise that is used to great effect in New Vegas, the peak entry in the franchise). The more you can minimize non-diegetic lore dumping, the more immersive your game can be. I often will give a player information going, “Well your character would know this due to their background” While better then having them roll for every tiny little damn thing and not giving them information they’d obviously have, it’s not ideal. I’d like to minimize the amount I need to give players background info just because their characters already know it.

If it’s truly interesting, then it’s so much more fun to discover through gameplay. I could lecture my players on the Three Sister Kings of Jahnil or we could stumble upon the bloody and ceremonial battlefield in the midst of their annual Trial of The Three Fold Champions. People both remember and enjoy more from what they’re doing than what is lectured at them. Even an in character lecture is preferable because at least your players are involved in playing the game, and they can always shoot the insufferable exposition giver in the face and rummage through their pockets- most polite players are unwilling to get up and do this to the GM themselves in the middle of an omniscient lore dump.

Putting the weird in the historic game reduces the focus on explaining the historical to the being puppeting the character and allows for more immersive exposition that is happening to both the PC and Player. To be clear, I think following the logic to the natural conclusion and running games where the players play modern people from a similar society isn’t always my favorite either. There’s a certain contempt that comes with the overly known and being able to easily slot elements of the world into their understanding schemas can feel a bit pedestrian. When I’m running thing like Delta Green the shitty real and boring elements of our world can be a bit of a downer in a long form game, though I do love the crushing and banal darkness of the vibe offered when I’m in the mood.

The past offers a place where things are different but not too different. The past may be a foreign country but it’s citizens sweat, bleed, and cry the same as the people sitting at your gaming table. The oddities of historical settings can overwhelm all but the most dedicated to your era special interest players if they get a firehose of factoids and contradictions of their understanding of the shared base reality. So the addition of elements of the supernatural or bizarre to the game allow the players to feel like co-conspirators with their character, investigating freaky shit that both start in ignorance of instead of the phantom off their own character constantly reminding them how ignorant of the world they are in spite off what they should know. Lore should be loadbearing and impact gameplay in some small way to be worth the breath to deliver it at the table.

The stuff people care most about is the info they had a hand in gather gathering, the joy of knowing more through their own efforts. Immersion is about reducing the friction the game offers between the players getting info to have context to make interesting choices, that have impact on the world. The fantasy of role playing games is closest to this for me. Getting into character is the magic trick, the truly miraculous feeling when folks at the table suspend belief to the extent that they can treat the game as a place with it’s own internal logic of cause and effect, an other realm we have summoned and at least for a few hours, live inside this private universe together. I think that’s what people talk about when they talk about flow, it’s being present in what you’re doing. The more of your mind is in- present in what you’re doing the more REAL it is. Anything that reminds the players they’re just sitting around a table making mouth sounds staring at graph paper detracts from this.

Verisimilitude is a beautiful world, the quality of seeming real.
I heard it best defined a few years back talking to a coworker at Mt. Rainier National Park that had a background in doing costumed interpretation for living history. I was researching running a pop-up interpretive program outside a popular trail parking lot where I portrayed a 1920’s park concessionaire photographer with period postcards on display talking about what their era was like would go on to have mixed results. Some people really engaged with the program and enjoyed the feeling of time travel talking to me. However without adequate signage and out of my ranger uniform, lots of people assumed I was some kind of deranged modern photo hustler instead of a government employee pretending to be a historical deranged photo hustler. This is the only time in my life I’ve had an anxious parent grab their child’s hand and forcibly yank them away from me while studiously avoiding eye contact.

Anyways my coworker told me that the reenactor doesn’t need to know every single thing about the era. They don’t need to have every single button of a costume be period appropriate and sourced from grave robbing them from the moldering bodies they once adorned- the interpreter just needs to create a sense of verisimilitude, for it to feel as if it could be real. You put in the work to do an honest effort to portray the subject, the time and texture of the place they stood in and if it feels truth-ish people will meet you in the middle.

We want to believe. In magicians, in ghosts, in heaven, in aliens, and that the man in a three piece suit bowler hat, and pocket watch is somehow risen from across the years to tell a bunch of tourists in a national park about his log cabin. So if you want to take your players to medieval France, the colonial Philippines, the Persian Empire, or your neighborhood in the 90’s you have to do an honest effort to represent it. The research can be endless and in depth and should continue only as long as you’re having fun and think you can do some justice to imparting the feeling of the setting and then throw in some dragons or aliens to taste.

Take that joy and interest you feel and let lightning strike the dry facts and animate them into a twitching shambling imitation of the past. Your patchwork abomination will never be a true representation of the past, but if you squint in the right light, he’ll look right-ish enough for your players to believe in this stitched together simulacrum.

Don’t let the pursuit of perfection stop you from gaming, your misbegotten bastard of a pseudo-historical setting will be real enough for your table if you make them want to believe.

Apparently this is the year of the beta release. I ran a campaign using Mothership house rules I called Beyond Iskander’s Gate for 6 sessions that I canceled due to scheduling issues. But 10th century Central Asia is so rad and deeply underhyped as a setting for fiction and gaming and learning about the workings of Volga Bulgars, Khazaria, the Abbasid Caliphate, The Byzantine Empire, The Rus (Vikings make everything cooler) and their relations with each other kept me interested for months. Shifting frontiers between societies make some of the best RPG historical settings. Cultural variety and political instability are the bread and butter for a party of ambitious misfits with questionable ethics looking for adventure. Adding some paranormal events to the mix is even more fun.

My favorite source for this campaign was “Penguin Classics Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North” is the most gameable primary source. This review from False Machine really showcases the crazy inspirational value for the RPG enjoyer.

Campaign Overview

The year is 923. The Islamic world thrives in an age of science, law, and cosmopolitan splendor, though the Abbasid Caliphate’s political power wanes beneath the gilt surface.

You are members of the Ikhwān Al-Ṣafā, the Brethren of Purity—a secret order of scholars from Baghdad, devoted to uncovering the universal truth through every field of knowledge, including the occult.

Your mission: Investigate the truth of a mysterious letter from Ibn Fadlan, a member of the order and the caliph’s ambassador to the Volga Bulgars, where he describes the bones of a giant in the northern woods. You’ve just arrived at the great Persian city of Bukhara after months of travel and have months left before your caravan will arrive in the recently converted land of the seminomadic Bulgars, where the riches of the fur and slave trade have grown their influence in the region.

 Some learned scholars in Baghdad claim these lands lie beyond the Iron Gates built by Iskander the Great, said to hold back the forsaken barbarian tribes of Gog and Magog until the Day of Judgment.

Some Entries from the Real Journal of Ibn Fadlan

A giant
Tikīn told me that in the king’s lands there was a man of extraordinary size. When I arrived
in that country, I asked the king about him.

‘Yes, he was living in our country,’ he told me, ‘but he is dead. He was not one of our
people, nor was he an ordinary man. His story is as follows. One day some merchants set out
in the direction of the Itil River as they were in the habit of doing. The river was in flood
and had broken its banks. A day had scarcely passed when a group of these merchants came
to me and said: ‘“O king, we have seen a man swimming on the waters a man of such a kind that if he belonged to a people dwelling near us there would be no place for us in these lands, but we would have to emigrate.”

‘I set out on horseback with them and reached the river. I found myself face to face with
the man. I saw that judging by the length of my own forearm, he was twelve cubits tall. He
had a head the size of the biggest cooking pot there ever was, a nose more than a span long,
huge eyes, and fingers each more than a span in length. His appearance frightened me and I
had the same feeling of terror as the others. We began to speak to him, but he did not speak
to us and only stared. I had him taken to my residence and I wrote to the people of Wīsū,
who live three months’ distance from us, to ask for information about him. They wrote to
me, informing me that this man was one of the people of Gog and Magog.

Gog and Magog
‘They live three full months from us. They are naked, and the sea forms a barrier between
us, for they live on the other shore. They couple together like beasts. God, All-high and All-
powerful, causes a fish to come out of the sea for them each day. One of them comes with a
knife and cuts off a piece sufficient for himself and his family. If he takes more than he
needs, his belly aches and so do the bellies of his family and sometimes he even dies, with all
his family. When they have taken what they need, the fish turns round and dives back into
the sea. They do this every day. Between us and them, there is the sea on one side and they
are enclosed by mountains on the others. The Barrier also separates them from the gate by
which they leave. When God, All-high and All-powerful, wants to unleash them on civilized
lands, He causes the Barrier to open and the level of the sea to drop and the fish to vanish.’
I questioned the king further about this man and he told me:

‘He stayed with me for a time, but no child could look at him without dropping dead and
no pregnant women without miscarrying. If he took hold of a man, his hands squeezed him
until he killed him. When I realized that, I had him hung from a high tree until he died. If
you want to see his bones and his head, I will go along with you and show them to you.’
‘I would like very much to see them,’ I answered.

He rode with me into a great forest filled with immense trees and shoved me towards a
tree under which had fallen his bones and head. I saw his head. It was like a great beehive.
His ribs were like the stalk of a date cluster and the bones of his legs and arms were
enormous too. I was astonished at the sight. Then I went away.

Some Entries from the Imagined Journal of Ibn Fadlan (Recovered by the Player Investigators In-Game)

Departure from Bulghar

I hired a crew of Rus, strong men well-versed in rivercraft, to take us down the Atil in their longship. Though pagans, they were skilled and reliable. We sailed toward the forest of the Samara Bend, drawn by the rumors of giants who still remain there by the bones of the one the king had brought me to see. The Rus disbelieved these rumors but have taken my coin to carry myself and Bars the Slav downriver. It is good and proper to seek to learn more about such wonders of Creation so that one may further increase their appreciation of the world and help others do so. The Atil was calm and cold, its waters guided us steadily toward the South for three day’s journey. It is in the land of the Burtas, a tribe opposed to the Bulghars and also subjects of the Khazars.

---

The Samara Bend and A Sighting

After arriving, we climbed the hills over the Samara Bend, our party reached a dense forest where the trees grew tall and close, their branches entwined. Many birds and animals dwell here but I am told no fur bearing animals live there  and the land is rocky and hard so the Burtas do not often visit. As we ventured deeper into the forest, we heard a low thudding in the distance as the beating of a great drum. The sound grew, and with it, the earth seemed to tremble. We halted, peering through the thick undergrowth towards a wide trail, there we beheld the giants.

The four giants stood thrice the height of the tallest Rus, their limbs thick and heavy, their skin the color of stone.They wore no clothes to cover their nakedness, both their men and women. Their hair hung in matted locks about their shoulders. They seemed to possess great strength but little in the way of reason. Their faces were broad and heavy, with features like boulders.

One of the giants turned its head towards us but did not see. We took this as a sign and departed, careful to avoid making any sound. We did not stop until we had returned to our beached ship, giving thanks to Allah for our escape. I have been told that these are the people of Gog and Magog by the Bulghars. Bars said the Rus named them “jotun” and pressed upon us to leave as they think them eaters of man as the Bulghars do. I reminded them of the half payment of silver still awaiting them on my return and they relented

---

The Ritual

Bars and I disembarked with caution, leaving the longship along the shore. The Rus remained behind, their faces pale with fear, unwilling to follow into the dense forest. With Bars leading the way, we climbed the hills, moving through thick underbrush and towering trees following the trail of the giants until we came upon a clearing.

Four giants stood before an outcropping around a small cave entrance where a landslide had fallen from the cliff. We watched from the brush as the giants conducted a strange ritual. They each carried a slain deer in two great hands with the same ease as a man holds a chicken. With care, they took the deer’s blood in their hands and each dripped it over glyphs carved into the stone around the cave’s entrance placing each before setting the remains aflame with loud shouts much like words but like no tongue known to me.  We waited until the giants had finished their work and left down their trail before we approached the cave.

---

The Cave and the Giants’ Return

Bars agreed to stand outside to watch so that we would not be caught and trapped in the cave without escape. The entrance to the cave through the ash and remains was not wide enough to admit the giants, and beyond it lay a wide carved passage that led deep into the earth. I followed it, a torch flickering on the walls, revealing more of the lined shapes etched into the stone. 

The passage opened into a vast domed chamber, hewn from the rock by hands larger than those of men. The air was thick with musty scent, and the walls were lined with enormous white stone vats. Curious, I pushed with strain to remove the stone lid of one. Each was filled with a dark, viscous fluid. I leaned over one of the vats to peer inside, and something cold and sharp leaped forth and bit into my flesh. I recoiled, only to see a pale, writhing worm burrowing beneath my skin. I tried to remove it, but it was too deep, its movement sickening me as it squirmed in my veins. I was overcome with dread.

Before I could gather my thoughts, Bars let out a shout of warning. The giants had returned. Their awful voices echoed with rage. I left the cave and we took flight as the giants closed behind us.They were upon our heels before we could reach the thick forest where they would be slow.

They caught Bars, and rended him in their hands as one smashes a grasshopper. A true friend, his life snuffed out in an instant. I was blessed to enter a thick stand of trees as another came for me, unable to pass quickly. I barely reached the longship as the giants began hurling logs and boulders at us. The Rus, seeing the danger, had pushed off from the shore with haste and I had to wade through water to reach the ship in time. One of their number was struck and killed by a rock of great size. The longship rocked violently but was not overturned. I could do nothing but collapse overcome by exhaustion. We returned north, each day bringing us further from this darkness by the light of Allah’s grace.

Inspirations:

Ibn Fadlan in the Lands of Darkness by Ibn Fadlan and assorted other writers
The 13th Warrior directed by John McTiernan
Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon
The Jews of Khazaria by Kevin Alan Brook 
The Long Ships or Red Orm by Frans G. Bengtsson
Ikhwan al-Safa, or Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity
The Strain (Nocturna) by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro
The Assassin’s Creed Video Game Series
Against the Cult of the Reptile God by Douglas Niles
Silent Legions by Kevin Crawford
Armies of the Volga Bulgars Khanate of Kazan by Osprey Publishing
Legacy of the Bieth by Allandaros
Iron Gates Blog Series by Skerples,
Against The Wicked City by Joseph Manola

P.S: Beware of Overprepping

The problem with historical settings if you have a tendency to hyperfixate and overprep is that the well of lore you can draw from research is endless. It’s the same difficulty with running a game in a detailed preexisting setting like Star Wars or Tekumel x10000. If you’re a recovering overprepper like me you fall into old habits and your notes can start looking like this.

When you start researching primary sources to create an accurate price list for goods when you’re running a paranormal investigation style game without asking how your players experience will improve by being able to know the historically accurate relative worth of an ermine coat and a big jar of honey you may be in the throes of a hyperfixation and not prepping useful material for your next sessions adventures.

I need to get over my misplaced desire to do “historical justice” to representing the era and embrace the “good enough, let’s have some fun” vibe that good RPG historical settings can provide. Kevin Crawford, author of Stars Without Number and a bunch of related systems recommends a simple guiding principle for all RPG campaigns, but I’d say applies even more to historical campaign prep.

“Am I having fun? If you’re enjoying yourself, then
you can keep building. We follow this hobby because it’s fun, and if you’re enjoying the process then you
should let yourself have your indulgence.
Am I going to need this for the next session? If what you’re creating is something you know you’re going to need for the next game session, then you should finish it. Don’t let this feeling of obligation extend to every detail, however; it can be easy to imagine situations where you’ll need to elaborate some NPC or organization or location, but if you respond to every such possibility you’ll never get away from the drawing board. If you’re not having fun and you don’t need it for your next game session, stop it. You’re going to exhaust yourself on minutiae and trivia and not have the energy to do the parts you really do need, or the vigor needed to actually run this for the group.”

Good stuff to keep in mind.